Heretical Fishing

Paul tried his best to hold it in, but the sneeze came rocketing out anyway, the sound amplified by the rocky tunnel they found themselves in.
“Bless youuu,” Theresa sang from up ahead.
“Bless you,” Toby echoed distractedly.
“Thanks!” Unlike Paul, the others didn’t have enhanced hearing, so he mixed a bit of power into his voice—a little too much. The siblings flinched, hands covering their ears. “Sorry,” he added.
Neither cared much. They had tasks to be about.
Theresa’s curls draped down as she hunched and grabbed a vaguely rectangular stone. She made it do a flip, her arms rising in celebration when it stuck the landing. She had been playing with the rocks for literally
If not for her enthrallment, they’d have left long ago.
By comparison, Toby was a vision of maturity as he inspected the remains of a boulder. “Was this a part of it too?” he asked. “The one that contained silver?”
Their Buzzy Boy chaperones, the first resting on Toby’s shoulder, the other hovering near the mine entrance, made vibrations so affirmative even the unawakened teen could decipher their meaning. “Thought so…”
“How could you tell?” Paul walked over to join him. His cavernous armor clanked wonderfully with each step.

“See the slight difference in color?” Toby picked up the chunk and pointed at different parts of it. “This section is so gray it’s almost black. It would have been the outside of the boulder. And this part here? It’s much lighter.”

“I think I see what you mean…” He didn’t. They both looked like rocks.
“If it wasn’t part of that boulder, and was instead like the rest of the iron ore, it would be a reddish brown… where’s a good example?” Toby searched for a moment before snatching up a jagged lump. “This piece.”
Paul squinted at both. “Ohhhh! I see!” And this time, he was only half lying. “I remember Ellis saying something about stone with high metal content turning rust-colored. What was it called again?” He tilted his head to the side, tried his best to remember the proper term, then decided it wasn’t at all that important.
Being a half ascendant was annoying at times. Like waking up from a dream, remembering that the already-faded memory felt significant, but not being able to recall
It was like that with so many things: words, knowledge, and… more words. Okay, it was
just words, but that didn’t make it any less bothersome. ‘The words we use are important’, as his mom loved to say. She’d said so only two days ago, when he’d referred to Sturgill’s pastries as ‘fracking delicious’, which hadn’t been Paul’s fault. They
delicious, and ‘frack’ was a great… mollified adjective? Or was it
He shook his head, deciding to let it go and focus on the positives.
he thought, twisting his gauntlet so it reflected the nearby torch’s light.
cool
But other annoyances drifted to the forefront of his mind.
Earlier today, while Theresa played with rocks and Toby examined… other rocks, Paul had finally felt safe enough to assess the knots that kept forming in his stomach. Paul’s brain was… different. Even before ascending, he had always been responsible—except for when pies were involved, but that didn’t count. Baked goods and bad choices went hand in hand.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
His mouth started to water, and he used the sensation to launch himself back toward the positives. He had a perspective unique to any other, one foot in the mind of a child, the other in the brain of a responsible adult. Half kid, half cultivator.
It was a blessing. Something nobody else had experienced for who knew how long. So why did his stomach keep twisting over itself, causing that terrible feeling? He’d thought spending the day with people closer to his age would fix him, or at least help him find the answer, but it hadn’t done either.
Even now the feeling lingered in his abdomen, always there, like a winged insect that had dive-bombed and ruined an otherwise delicious slice of pie. You could fish it out, sure. Eat your dessert and pretend it hadn’t happened. But a part of you knew.
“Uhhh,” Toby said, waving one hand. “I know they’re cool, but I didn’t think you found them that interesting.”
Paul, realizing he’d been just staring at the two lumps of rock with a blank look on his face, pressed his lips into a line. “Sorry. Got lost in thought.”
“It’s fine. I understand completely. They’re mesmerizing, aren’t they?”
Paul didn’t deny it, letting Toby run with the assumption. He gazed up at the mine’s ceiling—or tried to, but his oversized visor blocked most of it. He slid it out of the way, stared up toward the heavens, and sent out a silent prayer, asking to one day be as strong and sure of himself as Fischer.
“Okay!” Theresa announced, hair bouncing as she stood up. “I’m done! Can we go explore the other area?”
The two boys—who were actually young men, if you really thought about it—shared an amused glance at how fast she’d gone from engrossed to bored.
Paul gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry, but it’s too late. We gotta head back.”
“You said we were going to the beach as well!”
“That was before you played here for hours, sis…”
Theresa added a pout to the peevish disposition she was showing her brother. “Then you should have told me!”
“Uhhh, Paul tried to. Five different times. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Amazingly, her visage got even more severe, brows lowering, eyes forming a slit. “Oh.” All at once, her frown disappeared, replaced by a wide-mouthed yawn and mumbled words that sounded almost like, “I forgot.”
“Even if it wasn’t too late, you’re clearly tired.”
“No I’m not,” she retorted, which was immediately undermined by another yawn. “I could stay up alllll night if I wanted.”
“I bet.” Paul strode toward the front of the mine. “But then we’d have to delay tomorrow’s adventure.” He raised one hand, pressed his fingers between his lips, and let out a sharp whistle. The sound flew out into the darkness, barely audible—to humans, anyway.
There was a soft cracking sound, and a purple portal tore into existence. Two beasts leaped through it. Borks was all wags, his back legs struggling to find purchase on loose stones with how happy he was to have been summoned. Teddy landed with more grace than a bear his size should have, softly nuzzling the boys on his way past them to Theresa.
“Baby bear!” she yelled, wrapping her arms around his neck and squeezing him tight, his savage-looking spikes soft an malleable to her touch. “Where have you been? I thought—” This yawn was the largest yet, her knees bending as she released it. “—you’d forgotten about me.”
He grunted an apology and dropped to the floor, inviting her to climb his shoulder—which she accepted immediately, of course, her sleepiness momentarily fleeing.
Borks, who’d taken a seat on his still-wagging haunches, cocked his head at Paul and whined, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.
“Yep! We finished collecting ore a few hours ago, actually. We’ve just been playing.”
The hellhound shaped like what Fischer called a Golden Retriever leaped toward the collection of unsmelted ore, nudging it with his nose when he got there.
“Nope,” Toby answered. “If we’re going to do it from start to finish, we should load it up ourselves, right, Paul?”
Paul’s chest grew a little lighter at that. They’d spent most of the day here, gathering an amount of ore that Fergus or Duncan could have collected in a few strikes. The knots in his stomach had been twisting when he thought about long they’d been here, but Toby’s words relieved the tension—not a single second had been wasted.
“Yep! Let’s do it!”
agreed Borks, his tail once more sweeping back and forth as he opened a portal and watched the boys—who were basically men—carry large chunks of iron ore into his storage space.