“Just activate it for me”, Etana demanded as she held the bandit’s fingers.

“I can’t! They’ll kill me if I do it!” he squealed.

“Look, you either open a portal to your command post, or I take a few more fingers. Which is it?” Etana said, her tone turning dark.

The man groaned as he punched in a few runes on the circular portal in front of them. “I did as you asked. Please let me go. I didn’t want to do this work anyway. I’m just trying to survive like everyone else.”

She looked at the bandit in the eye and then over at the women that were just a moment ago tied up. “Should we ask your captives what kind of work you do here?”

The man’s mouth hung open in fear when one of the people spoke up, “He’s scum. Just like the rest.”

Etana smirked, “I thought so.” She chose then to use her aspect of removal. She found The Darkness had been using this aspect to very limited effect. With sufficient Divinity, she could simply reduce a person to atoms. That was a costly thing to do however and the price seemed to scale with the person’s level and skills. The man before her was level three, and the cost was a mere 45 divinity points. He simply ceased to exist.

She bent down and picked up the aspect that fell to the ground.

Fake Aspect of the Hidden Artifact This is a fake aspect of Trina. This is a bad copy of the Aspect of the Hidden.

Etana waited to see if her necklace would respond to the aspect, but nothing happened. She crushed the aspect in her hand when it refused to bond with her. She turned to the people in the room, “The way out is clear. You’ll find a small town to the south. Please go, now.” They quickly got up at her request and soon left the three story log building.

Etana paused for a moment, waiting for her divinity to refill. It had been a strange experience that led her to this moment. She had stumbled on a bandit camp quite randomly. They had attacked her and she retaliated by dissolving their weapons. With her aspect she had virtually no difficulty in bringing the camp under her control. She had searched around the area and eventually found the orders they had received from their command post and a portal ring like what she had seen back in Termily. What she had seen in their orders proved to her she needed to take this opportunity to travel directly into the heart of this operation.

She didn’t want to do any of this, but now that Vina and Ann had both been taken by The Watch, she needed resources and what she had might not be enough to locate and rescue both of them. The Adventurer’s Guild at Randar may well be too expensive for her. But she knew from the letters and notes she read here that the bandit organization had deep roots and access to all of the resources she could need.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She momentarily checked her attribute page. She had not received any experience for the complete atomizing of people, but if she finished a person with a weapon, she could collect a portion of the experience points. With the kills she had from this camp, she had reached level 7 and gained three additional attribute points to place wherever she wanted. “I’m doing this to save my sisters”, she said to herself. She took a deep breath and placed a point into divinity. The pain she felt caused her to crumple to the ground. She could feel the necklace drawing something from within her she couldn’t identify. It ripped away at whatever made her herself and pulled it into the necklace. After several seconds of this, her divinity bar gained 50 points.

“It doubled in size”, she thought to herself as she lay there. She gritted her teeth and placed her final two points into divinity at once, suffering the same consequences. After another few painful seconds filled with pain had passed, she was now looking at a 200 point divinity bar. She did the math, “The first point gave me 50 more points and doubled my bar which was already at 50, the second point gave me 50 points out of the new cap of 100 and the third point gave me 50 more out of the cap of 150…” She trailed off and took a big sigh. “At some point gaining 50 points will be such a marginal gain, it may not be valuable at all.” She decided she would wait to see how effective her aspect was with this higher bar before allocating more to divinity.

She stepped through the portal the bandit made and stood in a large stone carved chamber. As soon as she stepped out she heard someone yelling at her. “Papers, please!”

She shook her head as she addressed the man, “I do not have papers. I would like to sign up with your organization.”

An alarm suddenly went off, and she noticed for the first time there was a second floor open above her that was filled with archers. They all aimed their bows at her and fired. She raised two hands and immediately felt the options available to her. For just a few points of divinity, she could simply dissolve the weapons or the arrows, and her distance was not limited in this situation. She moved the fingers on one of her hands to signify the decision to remove every weapon in the room. The arrows, bows, and swords winked out of existence.

“I said, I’m here to join your organization! Stop your attacks before I take more drastic action!” she yelled above the noise of confusion around her.

The man nearest her stepped back wildly enough he fell on his backside. Hands went to hilts only to discover their swords no longer existed. A man across the room approached her. Strangely, he still had a weapon. Etana looked at it with some deep consideration.

“You wish to join?” he grunted.

Etana nodded, “Yes. I want to find more aspects and profit off of their sale.” She waddled a finger at the man, but really she was trying to probe the weapon. Why couldn’t she destroy this one?

“The name’s C786. The C means command. What’s your name?” He said.

She paused for a second, “You may call me Keres.”

C786 nodded, “You have a true aspect? Can you bring back our weapons?”

Etana shook her head and began to move around the room, “They are destroyed. I do have a true aspect and would like to use it to achieve our common goals.” She flicked a finger and tried focusing her attention on destroying the man’s weapon. She received a popup window.

Soulbound items cannot be individually removed. To remove this item, remove its owner first.

“The Committee will want to meet with you.” C786 said.

“I want to meet The Committee too”, Etana said with a smile.