Chapter Three?

  Running

  Freya leapt over the wooden bench just in time for Brick to crash through the center of it, falling into yet another heap of shattered wood. She took off for the the Mind's Mirror. It had been a long walk so she had no real chance of making it there before Brick caught up to her. Her only hope was that he would give up the chase once she got far enough away. The townsfolk made way for her as she sprinted through the crowds. Shouts and curses went up behind her, Brick was on her tail.

  "Run kid!" Eldrin shouted from his stand.

  Like she needed him to tell her that. His advice on Brick needing a couple hours to sober up had also been complete bullshit, now she was running from the closest thing to the Hulk she had ever seen. Of course it wasn't going to be that easy, why did she plop down right in the middle of town?

  It wasn't long before Freya was out of The Gate and heading up the hill. Her legs burned in protest, it felt infinitely steeper than it had when she was heading down. In only a a few minutes she was clutching her side and wheezing. Was she really this out of shape? It had been about six months since her life started falling apart, six months since she had been to the fencing club. Had she really been languishing for that long?

  Heavy footfalls behind her brought a surge of energy, it was hard to tell if Brick was tired behind that mask of rage. One thing was clear, she would give out before he did. Time to change her strategy. Freya dove between the trees beside the path. Brick's wide frame would hopefully keep him from chasing her through the brush. A choked shout behind her confirmed that assumption. She didn't bother looking back until she didn't hear anything but her own ragged breath.

  Freya ducked between a pair of tall trees. She rested her hand on one for a moment, but recoiled upon feeling tacky sap against her palms. The moment to breathe gave her unfortunate time to think. What the hell had she been thinking? The first thing she chose to do was piss off some guy three times her size?

  Rep even warned her. Though a part of her knew this had nothing to do with this strange place. Freya had been completely out of control these last few weeks. At every turn she had been as belligerent as possible. When her parents pressed her on plans for the future she snapped at them, shocking them so badly that they couldn't even muster a response. When student aid contacted her about getting back to school, she hung up on them. And just yesterday she had been fired from her job after punching out a customer.

  There was something wrong with her, that much was easy to tell. But what?

  After a few minutes of no sound other than chattering of an irate squirrel, Freya made for the road. She emerged from the tree line and let out a breath upon confirming Brick wasn't anywhere to be found. The sun was getting low in the sky, dimming to a soft orange. It was time to get back to the Mind's Mirror. She didn't want to be caught out in the dark.

  The Mind's Mirror stood tucked into the center of a grove. The way the glow of sunset reflected off the front of the inn made Freya's stomach flutter. The orange hue gave the forest an otherworldly air. It had to be one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen. She approached one of the windows in the front, the inn was quieter than when she arrived.

  A handful of people milled about chatting with each other. A man sat in a corner alone hovering over a pile of papers, he was writing something. Movement in the window's reflection drew Freya from the happenings inside. A dull shadowy figure in the glass was staring straight at her. There was nobody outside with her, and oddly, the reflection didn't show her at all. She reached out a hand, the figure's hand moved with her. Beside the first figure appeared another, this one glowed fiercely.

  "You've had an eventful day," The Gardener said.

  Freya jumped, and the dull figure jumped with her. She tried to feign nonchalance. "Kept tabs on me?"

  "I often do for the first day."

  The first day. The concept of returning to this place was beyond thrilling. But she wouldn't get her hopes up. "How did I do?"

  "You should have left The Gate as soon as you collected payment. He almost caught you."

  "Almost."

  The Gardener smiled at that. Then nodded to the window. "I imagine you have questions on our appearance."

  "That's what that is?" Freya waved, the figure matched her movements again "Why are you brighter than me?

  "It is something like a measure of your potential energy. When a written work is produced, it manifests within the author's soul in this realm. The more well read their work is, the more power those works can project. Which results in a brighter reflection."

  "Is that what the papers I keep seeing come from?"

  "Yes." The Gardener held out a hand, two palm-sized strips of paper appeared with a flash. "These are yours, a donation from Rep."

  Freya reached out slowly, the same way she would if she was concerned something would burn her. They were paragraphs that looked as if they had been ripped from a novel. One of them made no sense on its own. But the second she recognized. It was a passage from the first chapter of C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. The passages sent a tingle up her fingers after a moment, like touching a very low voltage wire. There was so much Freya needed answers for. Did that mean the currency here was literally written works from the real world?

  "I don't want to owe him anything." Freya offered the passages back.

  "He isn't that sort."

  "Still."

  The Gardener closed Freya's fingers around the passages. Her fingers were surprisingly rough. "The man does it for everyone, he insists that everyone use them to trigger the description system."

  The tingle in Freya's hand grew stronger, almost uncomfortable. "I don't-" Smoke spilled through her fingers. "What the hell?" Freya opened her hand to find the pages missing, with the tingle relocated to her stomach. How did she manage to destroy them?

  "The words are not gone, you've just absorbed them."

  "Warning would have been nice."

  "Where would the fun in that be?"

  Freya pushed away the annoyance, that was probably something she would do too. "You said something about a system?"

  "Yes, magic manifests in any form we desire, so long as we have the pages to power it. Some forms of magic are so widely used that the pages more easily bend into that form. Creating a kind of communal source. Since the LitRPG crowd have been becoming more numerous, it has become pretty cheap to implement some of their favored systems."

  "LitRPG systems? You mean like levels and stat points?"

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "You can pick and choose, I don't do any of it, old school I suppose, but Rep insists that all new Fable-Walkers use the item description system."

  "Fable-Walkers?"

  "That's you. People who are originally from the Source." The Gardener waved her hand. "Not important. You should feel a well of power within your stomach, kind of like you ate something way too hot. That's where your pages are stored. You can will them to give you power, in this case, will them to tap into the communal information of an object."

  Freya felt at the well of power. It was there, but how the hell was she supposed to will them to tap into anything? She was about to complain when she felt a string of energy leading down into the ground. She focused on it and could sense the description system The Gardener spoke about. She reached for it with her mind, and it snapped toward her well. The burn lessened as the power of her passages was tied up in the string.

  She looked at a large rock on the ground, then pushed on the bundle of power she had just wove together. A blue trimmed window with a white background popped up in front of her. Freya cocked her head, this was just a ripoff of the Windows XP theme.

  Object: Rock

  Details: It's a rock. Shocker.

  The Gardener nodded her approval. "You're a natural."

  "You can see it?"

  The Gardener tapped the window, it shook. Other people can interact with it, good to know.

  "I have so many questions."

  "I only have time for a few. Apologies."

  Freya would have to pick carefully then. "Why is the description snarky?"

  "Like I said, I don't use it. You'll have to ask someone else."

  "Very helpful, thank you." Freya said, trying to impart as much sarcasm as she could on the words.

  The Gardener shrugged.

  This was going to take a little while to get a good grasp on. Especially if the Gardener was going to be playing coy about everything. Freya thought on the The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe passage. "You gave me part of the Chronicles of Narnia. Are there copies of this all over the place?"

  "No, only the author generates pages that can be shared."

  "Since I have this page, does that mean C.S. Lewis doesn't have the power it comes with? I mean he is long dead but…"

  "Death in the Source Realm does not mean death here, the same is true in the reverse."

  The possibilities that opened…she had always been disappointed Tolkien was gone before her time. "C.S. Lewis would be something like one hundred and thirty now."

  "Magic. You should know what that could mean."

  The Gardener did say she was quite a bit older than she appeared. So much to keep track of. "But I don't know anything about the magic here. What are the rules, what are the limits?"

  "I've given you as much help as I can. If you wish to learn quickly, The Esselem Institute would be your best bet. I can leave you with this though. Magic is not some completely obscure art like Tolkien wrote, nor is it simply a branch of science, like Sanderson writes. It is unique to every one of us."

  That certainly didn't help. "Why doesn't C.S. Lewis have this paragraph?"

  The Gardener's face darkened. "He passed on."

  "But you just said-" Freya stopped herself, best not to pry. "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardobe is one of the most popular fantasy novels ever. That must mean this has a lot of power."

  "Not quite. Only a complete work can it tap into its true potential. In scraps like this, it is just as valuable as any other." The Gardener opened the front door, the hum of hushed conversations spilled out into the darkening sky. "You will want to head to bed soon. There will be plenty of time for you to figure out how things work."

  Bed? Why? Freya felt her eyes droop, and finally noticed the haze falling over her thoughts. How long had she been this tired for?

  "One last question."

  "Yes?"

  "I saw someone with a sword sporting Tolkien's elvish script. Is Arda real? What about Temerant, or Discworld?"

  The Gardener chuckled, then gave her a sad smile. "Not quite. The worlds we love, the ones we create and consume, they exist solely in our imaginations. Each person who reads a work imagines something slightly different. The touch of our minds twists the author's original intent beyond what they imagined. In a way, we all are creators of our own personal The Lord of the Rings. You will find numerous people who use magic to recreate items and abilities from all their favorite worlds. But a man flying through the sky with a glowing spear isn't a Knight Radiant. The woman in a blue dress bending reality to her will isn't an Aes Sedai. And the woman you see with an Elvish sword isn't carrying an ancient blade made in Gondolin. They have simply chosen to manifest their power in an homage to something they love."

  Freya's chest tightened. Magic, her own magic. All the things she could do. "How can I get more pages?"

  The Gardener smiled like one might at a child endlessly asking 'why?' "Off with you. Third floor, last door to the right."

  Freya tried to protest, but the words died in her throat as The Gardener strode across the room to berate a woman who was levitating a very unwilling cat.

  The stairs were wide, with a slope so gradual that Freya wasn't sure how it was possible to climb to the second floor in only a handful of steps. At the landing was a large room full of doors embedded into the walls. Next to each door was a statue made of grey porous stone. Just beside the staircase she could make out a statue of Brian McClellan. She went to take a closer look, but caught herself mid-step. That was a mystery for another day.

  In another handful of steps the third floor branched off into two paths. A hall ahead of her, and one to her right. Both paths were dimly lit by bronze lanterns hanging from wrought iron hooks, there was one for each room. Freya took the path forward, the floor creaking with every step on the rough hewn floorboards. The last room on the right had a bronze nameplate fastened on the door at about eye level. It read 'The Bookworm'. What to call herself had been the last thing on her mind. But that was as apt a title as she could imagine.

  The lantern's handle was warm to the touch, but not so hot to discourage grabbing it. Her door opened quietly, on the inside was an identical hook to the one in the hallway. Her room was larger than she was anticipating. A large bed was tucked in the corner, with a bookshelf and chest beside it. A reasonably sized desk was next to the door, it was stocked with paper and a wide array of writing instruments. Everything about this room implied warmth and comfort.

  Freya hung the lantern on the hook, and flopped into bed. The tug on her mind from the day's events urged her to stay in bed. She told herself she would get up to explore this room in a few minutes. She just needed to rest her eyes.