Wayspring Wanderer by Joedan Worley

Author:Joedan Worley [Worley, Joedan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Alley Press
Published: 2025-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

31

KANG THE CLINKER

It took Oskar a few moments of staring into the distance for the shape to materialize from the heat on the horizon, revealing the first set of cliffs he had ever seen in this world. However, within a few minutes of walking, the tall, flat plateau disappeared behind the dunes ahead.

When they gauged they were a half day’s walk away, they searched around and found a Wayspring, then set up a two-person watch for the first time. Oskar climbed up between the streamers of sand and realized he could feel textures in the streamers. He stared at them, but didn’t see anything but the same smooth, thin ribbons of sand blowing off the dunes overhead.

How does it feel like something and look like something else? Is the physical and magical separate? Is this the Magic Below?

The PUB was silent, which was its strange way of helping affirm his ideas while carefully following whatever strange laws or rules it was beholden to. The fact remained, though, that he was feeling geometric shapes that he wasn’t seeing with his eyes.

It reminded him of a science class he’d taken in high school where his teacher, a serious, but good-hearted man named Mr. Ameye, played music through a speaker with a metal plate on top of it. He’d surprised the entire class by choosing “I’m Shipping Up To Boston” by Dropkick Murphys, and as the song began, he poured salt on top of the plate. Immediately, geometric shapes appeared in the salt due to the resonance and vibration, and it had been fascinating, even then. He’d impressed Oskar with the music choice, though, and maybe that’s the reason why the lesson stuck.

Watching the streamers of sand, still flowing overhead as smooth as liquid, he realized the shapes dancing in his subconscious reminded him of seeing Sora’s colors in the wind currents above. They weren’t physically there, at least not in the normal sense. Another reminder that magic was everywhere, even in what this world’s inhabitants considered mundane.

He made his way up the sand to study the plateau where the Gramm Collective, and all the clinger-on Collectives that relied on them, made their home.

When he reached the top of the dune, he saw the edge of a flat rock plateau above them in the distance was silhouetted by the slowly setting red sun. The sky was getting more and more purple as the setting red sun slowly fell between a V-shaped split in the cliffs that towered above the flat rock where the Great Collective lived. In the gentler lighting, he could just see colored banners dotting the descending switchbacks on the far side, almost out of sight. Apparently, there was a path that led up the series of switchbacks with dots of what Fox claimed were the Clinker tents. The Clinkers were groups of the not-quite outcasts of all species that made up this world. They lived outside the Collective proper, but traded with those within for water and food, and occasionally

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