2 The Light of the Astronominom

There were more words in front of my face when I came to the carriage with my head in my mom's lap, with everyone looking down at me concerned, but for now, I ignored them.

"Piper, are you okay? Girl, you need to listen. It's not a wonder why you fainted, seeing that witch go crazy and then your father having to shoot her," my mom said, slight disapproval in her voice, although I thought it was mainly concern.

Fainted? Yes, let's go with that for now rather than... whatever actually happened. Because everyone knows how much of a blushing maiden I was. I wouldn't live this down, but it was better than admitting the witch affected me in some way.

I wondered why they thought it was the death of the witch that upset me and not the death of that villager. He had struck someone's giant, hundreds-of-years-old pearapple tree with enough force that it stripped the bark off in a human-shaped area, leaving what amounted to a red smear behind as his broken body fell to the ground like someone had spread wildberry jam over a dinner roll.

There was no way he survived that, but perhaps Alicia didn't see how much damage was done; if so, I wasn't about to point it out. She was much more delicate than I was, despite being older. I sat up slowly and said, trying to be contrite, "Sorry, Mother." I then sighed and said, "I guess we will be delayed here a little while."

"Why"? asked Alicia, tilting her head to the side, "The witch is dead, for sure. Nothing more to do, eh?"

I personally agreed with her sentiment, but I shook my head, "You need to pay more attention to the priests, especially if we're going to be living in the capital now." I paused and then continued, "They'll burn the body and maybe even spread the ashes and bones over running water so that she can't come back."

Both Alicia and my mom looked aghast, although Mrs Robins looked, for once, quite approving of me. She was devout and apparently liked that I listened. Alicia asked, "Come back? Surely that's not possible."

Mrs Robin frowned at her but remained quiescent for now, so I shrugged, "I dinnae think so, but before today I would have said it was impossible for a woman to shoot lightning bolts out of her fingers. Better to be safe than sorry, right?" That had everyone's agreement, thankfully. I settled myself down in the padded seat and accepted a portion of some travel food, which consisted of some cured meat and cheese.

Nibbling on a corner of some orange cheese, I finally gave the words hanging in front of my eyes since I woke up the attention they deserved.

** Name: Piper Eversly

** Title: Noble Daughter

** Strength: 5

** Dexterity: 6

** Vitality: 5

** Intelligence: 10

** Willpower: 7

** Psi Capability: 29 (Zeta)

I recognised most of the words, except for the line about whatever Psi capability was, but it was my highest number. The only word there I recognised was capability. Vitality was a little confusing too, but finally, I remembered the High Gothic word Vitalis and combining that through context, I figured it was, perhaps, how healthy I was. But I felt healthier than a 4, although I had no reference for how low or high any of the numbers were.

Following that, there was also a list of what was labelled skills which included things such as "Reading" to "Housework." They did seem to correlate to things that I had more than a little skill in, for the most part, and their values seemed arbitrary like the others, but it was clear that my "Reading" skill was three times as high as my "Embroidery" one, so that followed.

Three skills didn't belong, though. The first was one that was labelled "Observe." If I hadn't seen the previous words right before I fell unconscious, I would have thought that it was simply a measure of my general observational skills, but thinking about the name caused more text to appear.

** Special Skill "OBSERVE" (LV1): An undetectable, active skill to find a target's information, and the perfect skill for sneaky little girls like yourself. Every player receives ONE (1) special skill.

I blinked. Was this thing alive? Was I possessed by a daemon? I certainly hoped not, as that wasn't something that you really got better from, from what I could tell. While I certainly wanted to live as long a life as possible, I also didn't want to go bonkers and wake up one morning to find I was wearing my loved one's skin as clothes.

Witches, actual witches as I had just seen for the first time, weren't very common, but from what I remembered, they weren't entirely unheard of, either. And the priests were firm on the danger they presented, both to themselves and everyone around them.

This would bear thinking on. If I thought I was going crazy, I would turn myself in or even do away with myself before I was too far gone. I'm sure if I was as pious as Mrs Robins, I would go outside and leap upon the dead witch's pyre right now, but I wasn't quite that devoted.

The two other unusual skills were listed right next to each other.

** GAMERS MIND (LVMAX): You have a more calm disposition, helping you to examine things logically as if life is a game. You have a slight to very moderate resistance to corrosive mental effects and disorders.

** GAMER'S BODY (LVMAX): In order to help the user to live in the real world like a game, many injuries will be more rapidly healed.

A game? Live life as though it were a game? That didn't sound like a good thing to do. Games didn't generally have consequences for winning or losing; they were just for fun. If you lived life as though there were no consequences, that was a fast buggy ride to hedonism, heresy and perdition. Or, even if you didn't care about those things, then getting shot by people who did.

Perhaps that was why I was thinking so calmly and not having a mental breakdown despite being rather upset and full of emotion right now.

Could I be imagining all of this? A delusion? I would need some information being given to me that I couldn't know. I thought about the Observe skill and glanced down at the cheese I was eating, mentally trying to "activate" the skill.

Text appeared right above the cheese, occluding part of my hand: [Cheese].

Oh, well, thanks. How useful. I thought it would tell me who made it if it was some sort of supernatural skill. I thought it would give me eery, uncanny information I couldn't have figured out on my own. Then I could ask my mom to verify that information and have confirmation I wasn't being delusional. Sighing, I glanced at her: [Human].

[OBSERVE has gone up a level.]

Gone up a level? I considered the unusual sentence for a moment with my eyes closed before opening them; I tried it again: [Human Female]. Looking at the cheese again confirmed to me that it was indeed [Cheddar Cheese].

Yes. Much better, thank you, suspicious power. But that did answer a question about what the LV meant. Double checking, I confirmed that it was now LV2. I had guessed that the numbers by each of these things were correlated to ability or proficiency, but I hadn't really considered using the term level to describe them as if I were using the levels of a building. However, that was a fair enough analogy and simple to visualise if you could imagine hypothetical buildings with dozens and dozens of floors in them.

[INTELLIGENCE has gone up a level.]

Wait, what? Had my "smarts" just increased after utilising them? Although I could accept the idea that perhaps if I did constant physical labours using my body, then perhaps my "Strength" would increase, I was almost certain you couldn't just think yourself smarter no matter how fast the mouse that powered your brain spun in its wheel.

If you could, then certainly most of my brothers would be geniuses by now, as they have worked hard to understand even simple concepts. There was still no way to determine if I was suddenly ten per cent smarter, though. I would need some standardised way to gauge my intelligence to know for sure.

I was jarred when the wagon started moving again. Had I been thinking for that long? I thought it would take at least an hour or two to deal with the remains of the witch and possibly the villager, too, as he had been exposed to her malevolent magic.

I didn't particularly want to ask how long I had been woolgathering, so I remained quiet until our convoy stopped for the evening. After we did stop, everyone stretched their legs, and I was amused by the fact that both my brothers seemed like they could barely walk after riding a horse all day. They begged Alicia and me to swap with them in the morning, which I wanted to do anyway, but neither of us agreed until we received suitable bribes.

With the stranger armsmen, Mrs Robin was hovering over me, and Alicia was especially fierce, and I couldn't get away from her to try to get one of them to practice my swordsmanship with. The old hag hissed at me, "You stay away; those men will eat you up!"

I decided to be intentionally obtuse, despite the fact that nobody growing up on a farm would be ignorant of the birds and the bees, and I knew exactly what she was implying, "Probably not, I dinnae have much meat on my bones." My stare was an implication that the plumper and more mature lady would be far better eating, which got me a swat.

The next morning, I refused to use some ridiculous side saddle like Alicia and instead wore britches. I liked riding horses, but I thought that this was going to get boring quickly.

And it did. However, over the week and a half, I did some new "levels", specifically over ten levels of Cooking skill as well as two levels in Teaching while helping prepare dinner. The armsmen had their own supplies, but none of them really had any experience cooking, and at first, they had just been boiling meat in water like some kind of savages.

I had also gotten four more levels of Sword Mastery, along with three of Archery, all without being devoured, and last but not least, I had gotten ten entire levels of Observe from using it nigh-constantly. Now it actually told me somewhat interesting information, including names of people, and I had already confirmed that it was true. Pretty good if I did say so for myself.

The only entry to the island of Landing was on an amazing quarter-league-long bridge. As I rode next to my father, he pointed at a mechanism near the middle of the bridge and said, "They can raise and lower a large segment of the bridge there, making it basically impossible for any force of men to get across the other side."

I frowned. It sounded good on paper, but... I asked, "Why do you say that? A small force could easily storm the bridge or sneak into the little house there and stop anyone from raising the segment."

He grinned at me, clearly pleased with my idea, "That's my girl. Of course, they could. However, the bridge can be raised and lowered from the capital itself, overriding control here. Even if a small force snuck in, the Duke at the capital could still open the bridge, and the people here couldn't stop him."

I blinked, looking at the large gears; I could see the edge of the large toothed wheel on the other side of the bridge, mostly hidden by the little building, which I had thought controlled the mechanism. "How? Through what mechanism?" There was no way there could be a rod or chain that long. The island of Landing was pretty big, and the city that comprised the capital was still leagues and leagues away.

My father frowned and said, "Like a lot of things at Landing, it is an elec-trick. There are motives that move the bridge, but I don't know how they work."

I was quiet while I considered that. As we got to the far side of the bridge, there was a large gate that would funnel people into a small area, which I thought was another obvious defensive feature. There were armsmen here, but I was shocked that they were all carrying what looked like rifles, although they looked much different than the carefully protected wooden and metal of our family's hereditary weapon.

"Hold!" one of the men at the gate yelled, and our procession came to a stop. My father glanced at me, smiled, and then pulled ahead on his horse. The same man called out again, "Identify yourself!"

"Pierce Eversly and family. I am also escorting twenty-five armsmen from Baron MacKenzie," my father said in an equally loud voice so that the guards could hear him over the twenty metres or so of open ground.

The armsman in the unusual uniform glanced down at something in his hand for a few moments before nodding, "Knight-Captain Eversly! Well met, sir. Please proceed through the gate and set up temporarily to the west. You'll have to leave the wagons and beasts here, but some trucks are already on their way, sir."

Father barked some more orders to the armsmen, and we ambled through the gate. There was an open grassy area with some posts, and we tied our horses to them. I asked dad, "What about our horses and the trixit? And what is a truck?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, "A truck is a horseless carriage. It is propelled by elec-trick motives, as I mentioned before. And the servants will take our horses and the wagons back home. No doubt that was why the Baron detailed thirty men instead of the twenty-five he was required to send."

I had a terrible feeling like I was some small-town rube coming to the big city, which was exactly what I was. I knew my father served the Duke directly almost twenty years ago, being an officer in the "Planetary Defence Force," and had nodded along when he talked about how much different things were at Landing, but this was something else entirely. I hated feeling ignorant, though.

He noticed my expression and chuckled, dusting the road dirt off of himself. "Don't worry. Everyone, even Alicia, is going back to school here. There was a limit to how much could be taught if you were not a citizen of Landing, but now our entire family is. You're not really much behind anyone."

I wasn't sure how much of that I believed, but I knew I wouldn't stay ignorant for long.

I saw one of the Duke's armsmen walk up and quickly used Observe on him.

[Dan Simmons, Adult Male Human, Corporal of the Orkney Planetary Defence Forces First Regiment. He isn't looking forward to helping your family unload all of their belongings.]

The man stopped sharply before my dad and saluted, although it was with a stiff hand, with fingers pointing to his temple instead of the normal closed fist over his heart, which I recognised. Still, the gesture was obvious, and my father returned it before the man began speaking, "Sir, the trucks will be here in fifteen minutes. Are these some of the new recruits? They've been arriving in drips and drabs for weeks now."

My father nodded, "Excellent, Corporal. And yes, I believe so. When the trucks get here, I'll have them help us unload and reload everything. There is no need for your squad to be distracted from your duty."

The man looked relieved, glancing at the large number of things that were in all of the wagons. Then he startled as if he forgot something and said, "Sir, I have this for you, but you will need to sign for it here, with me." With that, he fished out a leather belt and pouch out of a small bag on his hip. He handed it to my father, who took it and immediately put the belt on. "One Laspistol, three power packs, one belt and a holster. Sir, if you'd like to perform a function test first."

My father nodded and pulled the... laspistol out of his belt. He fiddled with the obvious weapon for a moment before saying quietly to the weapon, "May your charge be strong and your shot be true, Ave Imperator."

With that, he took aim at one of the dozen or so wooden posts and pulled the trigger. Instead of the boom and cloud of dense white smoke, I was expecting, the weapon fired a brief red flash and put a smoking hole through the entirety of the post. I blinked, flabbergasted, as my dad replaced the weapon in the holster. That was as unbelievable as the witch shooting lightning out of her hands! He smiled widely, "Looks good to me, Corporal."

The other man nodded, "Here, sir. If you'd just sign this dataslate, I'll forward this to the Quartermaster." They exchanged another object, and I couldn't see what happened, but I quickly used Observe again on the object.

[Dataslate, good condition, an electronic device used to view, read, modify and transmit documents, currently loaded document pertains to acceptance of responsibility for military equipment]

I decided to just roll with the punches, as it were, and stop trying to decipher every new piece of information I received. However, when the Corporal left, I hissed at my dad and motioned to the post he had shot, "What was that?" My two brothers, having sidled up next to me, nodded. Although one was a year older than me and one was a year younger than me, I had long ago forced them to see things my way, so they mainly didn't try to take charge when I was around.

He chuckled, "Children, the world we live in is just an unimportant speck in a far grander universe. I've taught you that much, if nothing else." That was true. I knew that we theoretically were part of an "empire" consisting of a million worlds just like ours and ruled over by a divinity in human form. The latter was often a central subject of the subjects taught by Mrs Robin.

He pulled out the weapon again and held it in his open palm, letting us inspect it.

[Laspistol, Civitas Pattern, good condition. A laspistol is a weapon that fires coherent beams of light at high intensity.]

"This is a Laspistol. It's standard equipment for the Duke's armsmen, the Planetary Defence Force. However, for a variety of reasons, I was not allowed to take anything like this with me when I was released from service twenty years ago. Instead of a bullet, this thing shoots light," he explained.

My brothers Peter and Willy looked amazed and started jabbering back and forth about how it was impossible, but I just frowned. I glanced at the hole in the wooden stump. When Willy was five or six summers old, he had almost burned the barn down using our father's special magnifying glass that he had stolen out of his study so I already knew that light could be dangerous, but that barely set some straw on fire, not burned a hole clean through a stout piece of wood.

He shooed us away when the "trucks" arrived, and I just stood there watching something else amazing. The things moved without making hardly a sound, and I watched with my sister as the men quickly shifted all the belongings into the trucks. I was grinning because I didn't see anything resembling a truck version of a carriage, and sure enough, we all had to ride in the back of one of them, although at least there was only us in the back of the entire truck. My father glanced in the truck bed and said, "Alright, sorry about this, love. But it should just be a ten-kilometre drive or so. We'll be at our house in a half hour at most."

Ten kilometres was about two leagues, so it really wasn't that far, but two leagues in half an hour was a lot faster than the best speed our convoy was making.

My mother didn't particularly like the "truck ride", as she seemed to hold my hand in a vice grip the entire time, but I thought it was quite interesting.

Landing was a very large place, and a lot appeared to be built and sat empty, including almost all of the houses on our street. It was built directly up against a large cliff face, and my father said that there were at least a hundred times as many rooms built into the mountain than the city itself, and almost none of it was used. He said that just the rooms in the ten levels inside the mountain had enough rooms to house ten million people. I didn't know how many people Landing had, but it couldn't be much more than fifty thousand. That was a lot of empty space! It made me want to explore.

"It's bigger than our old house," Alicia said, pleasantly surprised, as we pulled up to the three-floor building. Dad had the men unload everything into the foyer. He paused before pulling out his rifle from the belongings and then handed it to me, "Landing is very safe, but just in case." I nodded at him.

My older brother was beside himself that dad had handed me the rifle despite the fact that he was literally a year older than me and he was a boy. I didn't think he would damage it, as my dad had trained us all, even Alicia, in its use, but my dad knew I was the better shot and more responsible besides. Thinking about it, I told Peter, using my tone to make it sound like I was doing him a favour, "If you move all of my things up to my bedroom, I'll let you stand guard instead."

He grinned and nodded and, with a quickness, started grabbing handfuls of my belongings and carrying them into the building, yelling, "Mom, where is Piper's room?"

I yelled after him, "Be careful with all of that!" Ah, brothers. So stupid. So easy to manipulate. While I was waiting, I carefully broke open the rifle and verified it was loaded with a single brass cartridge, along with around eight similar projectiles that were loaded into a loop on the stock. Nodding, I sat there and waited.

---xxxxxx---

"So, Piper, why don't you tell me what you know about the God-Emperor," said a matronly woman of middle age. I was sitting in front of her, alone, in her office.

[Chastity Jorus, Adult Human Female, Sister Missionary, Her duties include supervising the education of children in Landing. She despairs at the ignorance she encounters.]

I wasn't sure how high up this Sister was in the church, but it certainly seemed in my first week that they, like everyone around, were ramping up operations. Her father said the Duke was raising an entire new Regiment, of which he would be the commander and intended to do the same thing year after year for at least the next four years.

When you considered that before now, the Duke had at most one understrength Regiment for... well, as long as anyone could remember, that was a new datum. Something was changing on the sleepy planet of Orkney, but I didn't know what it was.

I suspected most commoners wouldn't even know there was an Emperor or that he was a God. But I had basically lived with someone who ought to be an honorary nun for years now. So I coughed into my hand and said, "I dinnae know anything about his early life, but I was told that he had been around since before humans invented writing. Perhaps he wasn't born at all, at least the way we would think of it." At first, she frowned at my summarisation and speculation but then got a thoughtful look on her face and nodded. I continued, "I also dinnae know what he did during the time after that, but eventually, he got fed up with the way things were and sought to unify humanity. Things went well for quite a while but then didn't go as planned when his own son betrayed him, and ever since then, he has been sitting on his throne, glowing."

She blinked at me. I had intentionally made my answer sound a little more childlike, as I could easily play that up a little bit. Most people liked that, but I got the impression maybe I made a mistake here when she then rubbed the back of her neck, "That's actually a lot more than I thought you would know, young lady. But He is not glowing."

I tilted my head to the side, "But I was told he lights up the Astronominom, like a lighthouse. And that without that, trillions and trillions and trillions of people would die. For a light to be seen all the way from Holy Terra, he must be glowing really, really brightly. Apparently, it hurts more every second for him than I probably will hurt my whole life." That last was what Mrs Robin emphasised, and I didn't have any reason to doubt that it was true, and if it was, it really did seem that only a God could be so selfless as to endure torture for thousands and thousands of years.

She had been staring at me while I spoke, but something of what I felt must have bled through because her face softened, and she nodded, chuckling once, "That's true. He does suffer immeasurably every single instant, all for us. For you, Piper. How does that make you feel?"

"I feel like someone should make a better Astronominom to give him a break," I quickly said, sure of my answer this time.

However, that was, apparently, the wrong answer because now I had to spend two hours every weekday listening to sermons and reading mostly boring books. Oh, and apparently, it wasn't an Astronominom. Still, on the bright side, I discovered I could get brand-new skills. And this one, I detected a change immediately. Even at level one, I noticed a noted improvement in my ability to remember the prayers I was supposed to recite out loud.

[Skill Memorisation gained at LV1.]

I also occasionally made up my own, but only when none of the nuns could hear me. I whispered, "Emperor, deliver me from this church..."