I immediately threw the sheets off the bed and grabbed my staff from the corner of the large open room, doing my best to not wake the others. As I picked it up and held it in my hands, I could feel an aura similar to what I felt when using the amber stone.
With that thought in mind, I grabbed the amber and went outside to try something. I tried to envision the staff growing a sharp blade from the side, and slowly, one began to form in the shape of an axe blade. It took a couple minutes, and I was sweating my the end of it, but I smiled nonetheless. I actually could use it outside the grove. Everything I saw in my dream was true. I couldn't believe it.
I recalled the names of the elementals, the types of god that existed in the world, everything. I was ecstatic! When Jake came outside he jumped when he saw me drenched in sweat holding a wooden battleaxe.
"What the fuck!" he shouted, "How? What? Huh!!"
"G'morning Jake." I nonchalantly responded, "Sleep well?"
Ignoring me, Jake continued, "How did you get that! What did you do?"
"Do you not remember what I told everyone yesterday?"
He stood there, mouth agape for a second before saying, "Umm…No, I wasn't listening."
I gave him a look that said 'Seriously?' before explaining everything, just shortened as much as possible, "So basically I can sense other creature's emotions and use this amber to manipulate plants."
"Ah." He said, "'Ight, Imma just go then."
"Where are you going?"
"I'm…" he trailed off, "just gonna go process this."
As he walked away, I heard him mumbling to himself, "How the hell did I miss this? This is more than just a little important."
I chuckled to myself as he left and tried to remove the axe blade, and it took much less time as the wood at the base of the blade rotted quickly and it fell to the ground before rotting into the soil.
'Hmm, I guess it can do a lot more now. I wonder why.'
I remembered the Dryad saying my soul was strong and that's what was used for this magic, so maybe it's more powerful now compared to when I was using the Sprites' energy.
I took the staff and amber with me as I grabbed a change of clothes and headed to the stream to clean myself off.
When I got back, everyone else was awake and Jake had told them that I scared the hell out of him this morning having turned my staff into a battleaxe, and they all looked at me with curiosity.
"Prestin, did you figure something out? You said you needed to be near the place we found you yesterday to do the magic." Mr. Smith asked.
"Yeah, I did." I said, "I found out that while going to that place is faster, I can do it myself to make more complex changes." To demonstrate I slowly started to grow a flower from the ground and picked it, handing it to Maddie who had walked up to me while Mr. Smith was talking.
She looked like she was about to say something, but stopped and tucked the flower behind her ear and smiled. Since mostly everyone was already gathered, Holly called Maddie over to help her and Jack make breakfast, and Troy came up to me and asked, "Hey Prestin, do you remember what I mentioned to you the day before yesterday? About exploring the area where the drafis came from?"
"Yeah, I do, do you want to do that later today?"
"Yeah," he said, "I wonder what we'll find down there?"
"Well if we find more drafii, we'll need to keep some gold or something on us to give to them."
"True, I've found a bit more gold during the last trip in the caves, so it won't be a problem."
"Perfect."
He talked a bit more about the trip, and Conner asked if we would need any help before being reminded by Bravo that he was needed in a hunting party later today with Maddie and Liam.
He seemed nervous, but I assured him we'd be fine, and made small talk while we ate breakfast. After we had finished eating, I asked Mr. Smith if he could forge a ring for me that could hold the amber, so I didn't need both hands to do things.
"Sure thing," he said, "but I'd need the stone to make the ring."
"That's fine", I said, "when would it be finished."
"Probably by tomorrow. I can start now, and let it cool overnight, and polish it tomorrow morning. We just found some silver recently, and I've been wanting to make something with it."
"Great, how much will it be?" I asked.
"I don't think you need to pay me for it." Mr. Smith said, "We haven't been using much money anyways. There's not enough people here for it to mean anything."
After confirming that he would do it for free, I told Mr. Smith there was one thing I needed to do with it first, and he asked if he could watch, so I let him.
I sat down with the stone and my staff, and as the amber glowed green I envisioned a pickaxe blade forming on one side of the staff, and a wider short blade on the other side. It took a few minutes for each blade, but it was done and I was drenched in sweat again.
"That's impressive." Mr. Smith said, who didn't look away the whole time, "I've never seen anything like this in my time. But it sure takes a toll on ya."
"Yeah. I'd go to the grove, but I want to get practice so I can use it quickly." I responded.
Now that I had a pickaxe, I handed Mr. Smith the stone and he quickly headed to the forge to start work on it. I took a deep breath and took my new 'pickaxe' to the cave entrance where Troy was waiting.
"Woah, that's cool." He said, gesturing to my staff, "Will it be strong enough to break stone?"
"It should be, I want to test its durability while we're down there."
"Nice. Here take this." Troy tossed me a small chunk of gold ore, "Just in case."
I nodded in response, and we walked down the path to the cave chamber. I had brought my staff and some leftover rope from the first expedition, while Troy brought a torch, a bronze pickaxe, a backpack, bandages, a snack for each of us, more gold ore chunks for the drafii if we encounter them.
When we got to what we had designated the 'main' chamber, we took a look down the leftmost path where the drafis came up from last time.
"Dang that's steep." Troy commented as he pulled a hook and hammer from his backpack and began to secure it into the rock. After wrapping rope around the hook and testing to make sure it wouldn't fall out of the rock, he tied the other end of the rope to a rock before letting the end of the rope fall down the rocky shaft.
We didn't hear it hit the ground, so we were going to need more rope, but I volunteered to go down and see how much further we would need to go.
When I got to the bottom of the rope, there was an opening to a small chamber a few dozen yards below the end of the rope, but the shaft continued downwards beyond what I could see.
I climbed back up the rope, and told Troy, "We're going to need a lot more rope. There's a spot to rest along the way, but the bottom of the shaft is much further."
"Ok, did you tie the rope you brought to the end of it?"
"I didn't but I just brought what was left over from last time, it wouldn't be enough to get to the rest chamber."
"Dammit," Troy muttered, "We'll have to do the rest tomorrow."
"Yeah, I'll make some rope once Mr. Smith is dome forging the ring I asked him for. Then I could try to just extend the rope so we don't need to bring so much with us."
"That sounds like a plan."
We walked out of the cave and found it pouring down rain, and ran from the cave to the town hall, where we dried ourselves off.
"How'd the adventuring go?" Maddie asked, who was already inside the hall.
"It went." I responded, "How'd the hunting go?"
"It went." She responded, with a smile, "we did manage to get a rabbit or two, but we lost the deer when it started raining. I didn't have enough visibility to make the shot. What about you, how'd it really go?"
"We got to the pathway, but it goes down much farther than we thought, and we didn't bring enough rope to even see the bottom, so we decided to postpone it and head down tomorrow after Mr. Smith has finished forging me a ring for the amber."
"Wow. Maybe I could join you guys. Sounds fun."
"Sure thing." Troy said, "We should get Conner to join us too, he really wanted to go today."
"Sounds great!"
We continued to talk about this and that for a while longer until the downpour stopped, where we went outside and made ourselves lunch.
Jake, Conner and Liam also joined us for lunch, and we asked if Conner would want to go with us tomorrow into the caves, and he excitedly accepted. After we finished he hurriedly went to prepare for tomorrow, while I went to change clothes and bathe again in the river nearby.
The four of us going to the caves tomorrow were bored just waiting around doing nothing, so in the meantime Troy suggested we walk around in the forest until dinner, so we gathered some water and our backpacks and set out to explore the surrounding area.