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Intermission #11: Etana

Etana pulled her sword out from Faer’s face. She had immediately recognized the runes glowing on his chest. There was no chance they weren’t blood runes. Her suspicion was confirmed when she received the kill notification.

You have slain Faer Hodo - Eighth of the Twelve, Level 37 Architect with the help of Vina. Experience will be split equally. You have earned 36,000 experience points (72,000 experience points divided by 2).

Etana Level Up: You have reached levels 8 and 9, and have 6 more attribute points to allocate. Your strength has increased by 4, your dexterity has increased by 2 and your endurance has increased by 2. You have gained 20 health and 10 stamina. You have earned three class ability points. Your destroyer class passive skill power has increased by 5%.

She smiled with pride. “You’re still fighting them, Vina.” She looked down at Faer’s body and examined his wounds. She knew Vina used blood skills, but had never seen her use them in combat before. When she saw Faer’s missing hand and that the other hand still had a red shard impaled in it, she couldn’t help but cringe, “In Trina’s Name, Faer… what did you do to piss off Vina?”

She bent down to inspect the other red crystallized knife in Faer’s foot, but was immediately dragged to the ground when an aspect leapt from his heel into her necklace. She felt a world forced into her mind as the concept of travel was redefined for her. A list of rune addresses and a vast network of portal rings were written onto her soul. Notifications sprang up, not in her vision, but in her head as thousands of travel prompts made themselves known. The prompts paused and seemed to take notice of her. She had a moment to whimper before they converged on her, and she was inundated with travel requests. Every single one awaited her approval.

She screamed at the overwhelming amount of information. With a single struggling thought, she approved the first message and felt her divinity reduce by an infinitesimal fraction of a point. Etana felt the queue ever so slightly shift and she began to approve the travel requests with abandon. Her divinity began to slowly burn down as she emptied the queue. As each travel request was processed, her mind began to clear.

Etana took a deep inhale of breath and tried to make sense of what happened.

You have been bonded with the Aspect of Travel. Attunement 100%. Trina Detected. Disabling automated approval process for travel requests. Rerouting all travel requests to Trina.

“But… I’m not Trina…” her voice trailed off, as she touched her necklace. She checked her divinity once more and saw it continued to drain. She quickly placed another attribute point into divinity and suffered the painful consequences.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Divinity: 4. Your divinity resource is increased by 200. You have 5 attribute points remaining.

She waited a moment, mentally processing each travel request as it came in and watched her divinity bar. Slowly it began to win out. “The recovery rate is a percentage of my total divinity”, she mused.

She turned back to her knowledge of travel and tried to figure out what had happened to Faer. Although all travel knowledge was in her head, she found it easier if she redirected it into a window. She scrolled through the thousands of log entries for portal ring travel and the dozens of entries for travel with the aspect. “He came from… Faer’s Tower… of Solitude?” she said with a raised eyebrow. If Vina was there, she was going to save her. Then she saw something very distressing.

Portal Ring 47627: Disabled. Portal Ring 22510: Disabled. Portal Ring 00216: Disabled.

The list consisted of a total of eleven portal rings disabled within the last few weeks mostly located in the City of Halos. The latest one was disabled today. Etana checked it on her map. “Ctomina.” she said. “Vina isn’t trapped in Faer’s tower then.” She looked at Faer’s body, contemplatively, “That’s how you pissed her off. You tried to stop her, didn’t you.”

Etana scrolled through the last travel notifications and found Vina had visited the City of Halos some days ago before the portals were eventually disabled with someone else named Norimor. “Okay, What about Ann? Oh… Ah! There she is”, Etana smiled. Both of her sisters were still alive. She frowned at realizing she had no means of traveling to them. The portal rings were disabled and she had never personally been to the destination.

She looked around, suddenly realizing she forgot her meeting with The Committee. They were awaiting her report on the fight at Randar. She smirked as a plan began to form in her mind. She had three true aspects now and that demanded respect.

Etana picked up Faer’s body and slung it over her shoulder. She walked straight through the air and into the committee room. Portals were no longer required for someone such as her. Seven pairs of eyes flicked her way when she appeared in the room. She flipped Faer’s body off her shoulder and onto the table. “There’s an open position on your committee. I’d like to apply.”