Vina stepped through the portal and faced complete blackness. Something burned her face as she stepped forward and the sound of battle numbed her ears. A flash of various elements lit the area as several guards used aspects, and Vina saw a brief glimpse of what was happening.
Dark creatures of all kinds tore into her guards. Men and women yelled and screamed as they fought for their lives. She snapped her lantern on and the eerie red light further illuminated the situation around her. Someone bumped her as more guards came through the portal behind her. Someone grabbed her shoulders. “Activate a new portal!” Parin yelled into her face. When she hesitated, he dragged her back to the portal ring just as the connection winked out of existence.
“Open a new one!” Parin yelled to her again as he sliced a creature in two with his long sword and blocked the claws of another with his massive shield.
Vina whipped around and forced her blood into the ring. She powered the runes as quickly as she could. The portal flashed into life and the pool of blood began to take form. Several thin inky tentacles reached out of the darkness and wrapped themselves around the portal ring tightly. They lifted it with ease back into the darkness that surrounded them.
“Parin, it’s gone!” she screamed above the sounds of combat. She turned back and saw Parin and the guards fighting for their lives as creatures attacked them from all sides. She felt the blood pouring from their wounds and tried her best to tell it to stop. She pulled blood from her own reserves, created multiple globes, and activated blood bursts. She controlled each shard while being careful to avoid injuring her allies. But she could see her enemies’ health bars and they numbered in the high hundreds with some reaching over a thousand. She could never do enough damage to kill one of these on her own. One after another, her guards began to fall and their vibrances faded from her senses.
Parin roared in pain as a claw got through his defenses. Vina stood by his side, throwing knife after knife, and using her own claw and sword when something got too close. Time and again Parin interceded between her and a creature. In the chaos of battle, she saw barriers with strange symbols pop into existence before her guards and then shatter with flashes of light when a darkened creature struck it with their claws. She didn’t have any time to try to figure out what was happening however. The blood around her warned her of the suffering her people were experiencing. She used Blood Aid on every guard she could touch, but her patchwork healing only slowed their inevitable deaths. She pulled at the blood of those she knew had died and cast it about violently in retaliation.
Vina felt a barrier flash at her side, and she saw a creature had managed to get close enough to strike her if not for whatever had blocked its attack. One of her guards charged forward with their weapon and impaled the creature. They didn’t stop and pressed it back into the crowd of other waiting creatures. She immediately felt their vibrance fade as they were ripped apart in moments. Parin grabbed her arm and pulled her close to him. He placed a hand on the back of her neck, ”I need you to listen to me now, Vina”, he said quickly. “It’s time for you to go. Find Trina, and don’t stop for anything.”
Vina turned her head toward him, “Parin! I can’t….”
“I said GO!” he yelled into her ear. He grabbed the collar of her armor and pushed her forward toward the same creatures that had moments ago killed the person who had saved her.
You have been afflicted by Trina’s Sanctuary. For the next 5 minutes you are impervious to all sources of damage, cannot be impeded, and cannot be detected by enemies.
Vina ran. She activated free running and sprint as well as parkour. She raced through the army of shadow creatures that surrounded them. Tears streamed down her face when she heard Parin’s voice yell out in defiance. Her steps almost faltered when she felt his vibrance fade behind her. Outside the ring she ran through the darkness and numb surroundings. Nothing ahead of her was alive, and no one behind her was alive anymore. All around her, the gloom was an endless void of emptiness that mirrored what she now felt inside. Beneath her feet, there was only dirt and dust.
The only thing that filled her mind were Parin’s words. So Vina ran and pulled Trina’s aspect of life from her backpack. She held it up, and in the void, its vibrance lit up like a beacon, but it gave off no visible light. In the distance her tracking skill found another vibrance which lit up in response. A glowing path of vibrance appeared in Vina’s vision to fill the space between them. “She’s close”, she thought. Vina turned and raced along the path toward her target in the distance. She had left the horde of shadow creatures behind her now and didn’t worry about them catching up anytime soon.
Five minutes later, Temporary Sanctuary expired and Vina felt the burning sensation on her face once again. She held her lantern out in front of her and saw the air was filled with little black spikey specks that rained down like snow. When they neared her body, they zipped toward her exposed skin. Wherever they touched her, they burned.
“Shadows?” she thought. She activated her Blood Cloak and wrapped it around her body tightly. The burning immediately stopped, but the black specks seemed attracted to the cloak just as much as her skin. Now they had more surface area to target. She felt them slowly begin to drain the cloak’s blood. She fed her own blood into the cloak to compensate for the loss. “They’re attracted to its vibrance”, she thought.
As she ran, the shadows zipped around her like flies. They made no sound, but to her each one felt like a small void of vibrance. The feeling of a growing abyss behind her and the occasional drain on her cloak let her know they had not given up on killing her. “I can’t stop”, Vina said to herself. Her voice felt wrong in the quiet around her. Stopping for too long would mean death.
But as she ran toward Trina, the shadows grew thicker. She tried to hold her lantern ahead of her in defiance, but the shadows flew around the red light and targeted her unlit back. She held the lantern above her head in an effort to gain the best coverage, but found the shadows no longer got out of her way as fast and she ran directly into a cloud of the things. The lantern would disperse them quickly, but not before they managed to damage her cloak.
She gritted her teeth and prepared a blood burst, unsure if it could harm something the size of dust particles. When it exploded in all directions, the shadows zipped away, but none of them fell dead. However, she achieved a few minutes of relief before new shadows found her in the darkness, and she was forced to do the same thing again. “This isn’t sustainable”, she thought to herself. She had already burned through her Blood Lake reserve and only had what remained within her locket and the lantern. But the lantern was doing its own work and she couldn’t touch that without immediately being overwhelmed.
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You are afflicted by Runner’s High. You have regained 10% stamina.
She felt the burst of energy flow through her body, but there was no emotional high that came with it. Vina looked at her stamina, blood reserves, and then at the distance to Trina’s vibrance. “Which is going to run out first?” she whispered softly to herself.
She tried to figure out what happened. How did they get here? This was supposed to be on the fringe of The Gloom. “Why is a portal ring even at the edge of the gloom?” she wondered to herself. But Parin’s death, the environment around her, and the constant small attacks by the shadows wouldn’t let her focus. Her mind danced from thing to thing as she struggled to balance her resources to survive.
A figure in the dark took shape suddenly in front of her, and Vina knew it could only be a creature. In the darkness, she couldn’t make out many details.
Creature: Six Eyed Manterop Level: 31 Rare No further information.
Despite it being over twice her level, she could see it had only 250 health. Only ten more than herself. Vina activated her Weak Points skill and drew her thrusting sword. An area between the creature's three shoulders highlighted with a red dot and she knew immediately how deeply she needed to stab it. She activated charge and plunged her sword as deeply into the highlighted spot as she could. She used her strength to force it down to the ground and pinned it there.
The manterop squealed and thrashed under her blade, injuring itself further. She stabbed it several more times and it finally stopped moving. She felt the black blood leak from its corpse, but it too was dead to her. She had no control over whatever blackness leaked from its body. Vina ran onward, but could hear the sound of its body ripping open.
“I can’t have creatures chasing after me along with the shadows”, she thought, her lungs began to burn too much to speak. A part of herself knew that justification was not real. She was angry and scared. Killing that creature allowed her some feelings of control. But those feelings were an illusion, a temporary coping mechanism against stress. Neither her Masterpiece nor the gloom would allow her to be so self deluded for long.
Her fears were soon realized when a chorus of roars rang out to her side and she knew her kill had not gone unnoticed. She scattered the shadows around her once more with a blood burst and took a stamina regeneration mixture from her backpack. It was the only one she had remaining. With the adrenaline running through her body, she had trouble keeping her hands still enough to take out the stopper and drink the mixture. When she finally managed it, she watched her stamina regeneration increase.
Combined with Blood Dance and her already moderate endurance level, she could nearly run for free until the mixture wore off. “Trina, I just need a runner’s high activation in the next few minutes”, she mouthed silently as she eyed her stamina bar.
In the distance, Vina saw something. A glowing sphere in the desert of darkness began to take shape. The trail to Trina ended just ahead and Vina redoubled her efforts, but the creatures behind her had caught her scent. She stumbled when something slammed into her back, but she rolled forward and back onto her feet without missing a beat. “Why didn’t mobility warn me?” she wondered absently. She sneaked a peek behind her and saw dozens of creatures, all with health bars in the hundreds. “Fuck…!” she muttered.
She reached into the blood in her pendant and used it to scatter large drops of blood behind her. The small shadows shot down, seeking the blood she dropped. Every droplet lit up bright to her blood sense skill, and as soon as a dark foot, tentacle, or otherwise contacted it, she formed it into a small spike. She didn’t look as she ran, but she heard groans, squeals, and hisses of rage and pain. She did this twice more, and soon the crowd behind her began to fall back. She didn’t kill any of them, but they were far more cautious in chasing after her. She scattered the shadows around herself once more, and her heart sank when she felt the pendant empty out.
The sphere in the distance took shape and she could see a figure inside, surrounded by the bluest grass she had ever seen. All around the figure a misty white globe kept the falling shadows at bay, and a border of light and darkness was created where the semi-sphere touched the ground.
Vina looked at her stamina and saw she wasn’t going to make it. At that moment, her blood cloak quivered and evaporated behind her. The shadows began to once again sting her no matter how she angled the lantern. She tried to create a blood burst to scatter them, but a warning flashed in her vision.
Activating this ability will use more blood than you can safely use. Do you want to activate this ability?
Her blood bar hovered somewhat above the vertical bar signaling her death. She mentally selected No and continued to run. But the pain of the shadows was too much as they seemed to start cutting into her skin and armor. She could feel they were no longer satisfied with merely hurting her. They wanted something more.
She wiped at whatever was attacking her face, but it only caused her more pain. “I need blood!” she thought. She looked at her blood bar once again and saw it was regenerating far too slowly to save her. Her brain raced as she tried to come up with any solution to getting the shadows off of her, but her thoughts were interrupted when she felt a vibrancy void deeper than any she had felt so far.
“The Darkness”, she thought in fear. Blood Sense told her it was heading toward her. She had not felt fear like this since… “Ebba!” Vina shouted despite being so winded. Without stopping she pulled a box from her backpack and opened it up. She pulled half of the blood out and immediately created a blood burst. The shadows raced away, and she had a moment of relief. She looked at the glowing sphere, trying to gauge the distance, “Thank you… Ebba. One more… should do it”, she said, breathing heavily.
She looked at her stamina bar next and shook her head in disbelief. “Trina… Runner’s High… now, please”, she said, nearly out of breath. There was no response and her stamina continued to tick down. The edges of her vision started to get blurry, but she managed to cast her final blood burst with Ebba’s blood. The Darkness was gaining ground on her, and Vina knew if she passed out, that would be the end.
“Runner’s… high…. now… Trina. No one… is ever getting… this close… again”, Vina panted.
You have regained 10% stamina.
Vina ran without examining the notification message too closely, only thankful for the chance to keep living.