-"The Voice of Exeter"
“Jor!” I look down at the man, feeling his face. His skin is pale–well, paler than usual–and clammy sweat sticks out on his skin.
Dovik falls to his knees next to me, wobbling hands bracing him against the ground as he takes huge gulping breaths. To my other side, Jess falls back into the leaves, face turned up toward the sky as she tries to conquer her breath. Around her, the blades fall limply to the ground, splashing into the leaves or stabbing into the soft earth.
“You…got it…” Dovik struggles to say, staring toward the body of Ghostflame, still suspended from six spears thrusting out of the ground. He shakes his head, sweat dripping from the loose strands of his hair. “I knew we…we needed you on this team.”
“How is he?” Jess asks, her eyes still closed and her face turned up.
“He isn’t moving,” I say. “He isn’t moving at all.”
Dovik drops one of his swords, leaning over and placing two fingers at Jor’Mari’s neck. “He is breathing, and his heart is still thumping away. He will recover.”
“How can you know that?” It is only when Dovik’s eyes widen at my words that I hear the venom in them. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he says, sitting back in the mulch. “He told me about his healing ability. Our boy Jor’Mari is apparently an alpha magician, just about unkillable. He will get over this.”
“We should have recruited a healer,” Jess says, finally wrestling her breath into order. “You aren’t supposed to have a full team until you have a healer.”
“Half our team heals themselves,” Dovik says. “Besides, I didn’t want to risk diluting our combat strength and having our grade lowered. It was very difficult to secure a silver grade with an unproven team of new rank twos.” He puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it tight. “He will get better. Have some faith in him.”
So, we wait. I pull back my aura, cutting off the fuel of my mana to the churning thunderclouds overhead. A few more bolts of magical lightning arc down from the infant storm, striking chaotically in the detritus, but none come close to hitting us. I can’t pull my eyes away from Jor’Mari, watching him struggle to breathe.
Dovik is right. Just as I begin to fear he might die right here and now, his breaths coming in hitched swallows, Jor’Mari’s skin flashes with darkness so total that I lose the shape of him. The shadow envelopes him for but a moment before it runs off of his skin like liquid, evaporating into smoke even as it pools to the forest floor below him to stain the colorful leaves. As the darkness leaves him, I see bare skin through the bloody hole in his chest, and any trace of a wound has vanished.
“See,” Dovik says, evident excitement in his voice. He wasn’t sure it would work either. “See, he will be fine.” Dovik taps Jor’Mari’s cheek a few times, but the man shows no sign of waking. “We can let him sleep.”
“Right. Now, would you be so kind as to go and get my ship?”
“Me?” He has the gall to look offended.
“You crashed it,” I say. “I passed it by on the way over here to save you from these magical beasts.”
“Firstly, thank you for saving us. I didn’t know what we could have done to get out of that fog, and frankly, I don’t know what you did to do it. Secondly, I resent that you say we crashed the ship. Jess, did we crash the ship?”
“The ship certainly did crash,” she says. “I don’t remember anyone controlling it at the time.”
“That’s right, we were fighting a flying wolf at the time,” Dovik says.
“Dovik Willian, are you seriously going to look me in the eye and tell me that you have never piloted that ship before? You want me to believe that you never took your grandfather’s golden flying ship out and that as you were approaching the trees you couldn’t have made it land safely?” I ask.
“I don’t know where you would get such an idea,” he scoffs.
“The ship keeps an internal log.”
He stares at me for a long moment before planting his feet beneath himself and groaning as he makes his way to standing. “Key?”
I throw him the key to the ship. He spins it in his hand before setting off at a jog back the way we came. Checking Jor’Mari’s pulse again, I find it relaxed, his breathing smooth and regular. Tension falls out of me, a tension that I didn’t even realize I was holding onto as I rock back onto my heels.
“We did it,” I say.
“We did,” Jess agrees. She peeks at me, a slight smile on her lips. “You really did save us there.”
“I figured out how to get out of that trap,” I agree. “But I never would have had the chance if you hadn’t saved me on the ship. I never saw that attack coming. It could have killed me.”
“A team is there to watch each other’s backs,” she says. “You should give yourself some real credit. You are a dangerous woman, especially with that.” She nods to the body of Ghostflame. A pang of sympathy jolts through my heart at seeing the beautiful creature mutilated and suspended there.
“It is a powerful tool,” I say. I hold my arm toward the body, and my aura, back to its regular crimson and gold, pushes out like a second hand, stretching the distance to Ghostflame and enveloping the body. The spears of black sand melt away, becoming a bed that cradles the body as it floats back toward where we sit. “I am still learning the limitations.”
Jess watches the crawl of the sand over to us. It flows away into spheres in the air orbiting high above, leaving the body of Ghostflame in the leaves. “That was an incredible creature,” she says. She makes a sign with her hands, muttering words in a language I don’t understand as she bows to the body. “These are the parts of being an adventurer that I don’t like.”
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“Have you needed to kill a magical beast before?” I ask.
She nods. “Once before. I joined my aunt on a hunt that ranged out into the wilds. Out there, a lion beast that had lived peacefully with the inhabitants of a river for centuries began to prey upon the locals suddenly. That creature was such a specimen to behold, a true marvel of the natural world, but it had to be slain.”
“Why would it do that suddenly?” I ask, still looking at the body of Ghostflame. I remember the sadness in his eyes, the clear intelligence.
“I don’t know,” she says. “They are like people. Sometimes, having too much power reveals the dark parts of a person. I can only assume that it is more common to happen to magical beasts.”
“And when that happens to a person?”
“Adventurers put down monsters, Charlene.” There is a reverence for the slain beast in her tone, but also a steel that I hadn’t expected. “It doesn’t matter what they started out as.”
“Right.”
She sighs, turning her face toward the treetop once again. “I should probably go and help Dovik with the ship.”
“That would be useful,” I say. “I think that I need to scrounge up what I can from the fighting. There is more than one discarded weapon that needs to be found.”
“I should go help him,” she says again, tilting her head. “But I hear a song that I’ve never heard before.”
“One of…those songs?”
She nods, pointing toward the biggest tree in the copse that I can barely make out up the leafy slope. “I need to go that way,” she says. “I can’t let the tone go.”
Jess explained it to me once before, how lizardkin gain or strengthen their natural affixes in the second rank. Humans do so by consuming food laden with mana, Celenials do it by novelty–I still do not understand how that works–and lizardkin do so by finding the natural tones of magic. Somehow, they can hear the magic they are attuned to, catching its tones out in the open wild. I have no idea how they turn this “music” into the strengthening of their affixes, but then again, I don’t know how I do it either.
“You should go then.” I push myself to my feet. The fatigue is mostly mental, a thudding headache that slaps my brain around inside my skull like it was a disobedient child, but I can push that down. “I will take care of what I can here. You should look out for yourself.”
“And if there is another one of these wolves waiting for us to let our guard down?” Jess asks. “Should I leave you alone here to watch over Jor’Mari?”
I open my mouth, but my words fail me. I hadn’t even considered that, but nothing is stopping us from encountering more magically potent wolves. “Good point.”
Jess pulls herself to her feet, sliding the blades back into their lacquered case with ease. She gestures to Ghostflame. “Go ahead and break that one down. We will search for what we lost after we get the ship righted and put Jor inside. He will be safe in there if we keep the dome up. Then, I will follow the rhythm back to the font of magic.”
“You won’t lose it if you don’t go now?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It isn’t going anywhere.”
“As long as you are sure.” I look over the body of Ghostflame. “You might not want to watch this.” I raise my hand, and the black sand flows up into the air, becoming a blade positioned over the corpse.
“Can’t your ability just break it down,” she asks, cringing. I can’t remember her looking squeamish before, not that I can blame her.
“It can,” I say. “But I am not willing to lose that horn.” With a gesture, the blade of dark sand descends.
The night is a cool time inside the ship. Once we had our pay from the baron and demonstrated proof that we killed Ghostflame, he was happy to let us on our way. A somber celebration of our first official mission as a team was had, which mostly consisted of Dovik trying to provoke games out of our melancholy as we drank around the table on the ship. He succeeded, mostly. The mood seemed to improve as soon as I left to sit on the throne in the center of the ship, tracking our route back to Gale, contemplating the day. I listened for a while to the sound of them playing that card game once again, and couldn’t help but smile at the noise.
As soon as the sun started to fall in the sky, they wasted no time in retreating to the cots set to the side of the ship. Jor’Mari snores loudly, having drunk the most of all it isn’t all that surprising. There was something frantic in him since he woke up in the ship on our way back to see the baron, a slight panic that he tried to push down. I can understand that feeling; I’ve felt it too, that dangerous glee that creeps up on you after you survive something you didn’t think you should be able to.
I spin Ghostflame’s horn in my hand, looking through the clear dome of the ship out at the slowly drifting stars. With no moon out tonight, the scene outside the ship is almost as black as the ocean, and if I don’t squint too hard I can almost believe that it is. Ghostflame’s horn rests heavy in my hand, the proof we brought back to show the baron.
Glancing up, my status window paints cool letters on the sky.
Charlene Devardem
Human(Level 51)
Emperor Conflux
Attributes
Vitality: 99(111)
Strength: 88(100)
Magic: 793(1040)
Defense: 113(123)
Magic Defense: 92
Speed: 433(493)
Recovery: 703(858)
Perception: 87
Free Points: 180
Healing Points: 1110
Mana: 10395
Stamina: 4210
Presence: Emperror’s Presence(far)
To be honest, the numbers boggle my mind. In just a day, I have seen more improvement in my attributes than I have over the entirety of my career, and the number of free points available to me is, frankly, ridiculous. Again, the artifact that Arabella gave to me proves its value. I never would have made it this far without it.
“Bring speed to six hundred, and then put the remainder into recovery,” I tell Galea. There is a wash of power that runs through me, followed by a muted light that shines from my skin. A moment later, Galea appears in the air at my side, holding a new window open for me to see.
“You have surpassed the second threshold for speed mistress,” Galea tells me in a cheery voice.
Speed(2nd Threshold): Surpassing the second threshold for speed has further enhanced your reactions to the world around you. You will notice that in times of great stress, the world will seem to slow around you, and with practice, this skill can be mastered. Additionally, the vitality-sapping fatigue of the battle fever lessens on you.
“That is quite something,” I say, still spinning the horn in my hand. “With that, I have broken three attributes past the second threshold. That shouldn’t be something I am capable of until the end of the second rank.”
“You are quite the exceptional magician,” Galea says, preening. “You have me to assist you after all.”
“I have been lucky,” I say.
“Mistress Charlene does not give herself enough credit,” Galea says. “Your accomplishments speak for themselves.”
“Accomplishments I earned with assistance.”
“All receive assistance,” she says. “But not all accomplish great things.”
I sigh, setting my head back against the back of the throne. “I am not so sure I have accomplished anything great.” I hold the horn up for her to inspect. “So, you are certain that you need this?”
“The mirage mana contained inside could be a vital component in increasing my potency as a fey spirit, and that potency will then be passed on to you, mistress.” Her greedy little claws reach out but are unable to touch the horn.
My eyes linger on the horn, my own greed telling me to snatch it away for myself. There is no doubt in my mind that there is enough magic inside the horn to grant me a new affix. The enchantment patterns that I have been working with could also make use of mirage-affixed mana. It seems that much of my life going forward will be about deciding how to split the mana I come across.
“And if I give this to you, you will become strong enough to work more on the crown?” I ask.
“I believe so.” She nods.
I run a finger over the hard metal of the circlet on my head, by far the most powerful item I have in my possession. What more might it have to offer me? “Very well. Tell me what I need to do with the horn.”
For the remainder of the night, I follow Galea’s instructions as she walks me through the process of strengthening the Eye of Volaash with the mana of the horn. We talk with one another until the sun begins to lighten on the horizon, and for a time, I forget the melancholy that has come over me. That night, we pass into Gale. I have come home.
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