“A Warden and his Relic are inseparable, linked together until death or destruction. The Warden is never to take another in his life, and is able to summon his relic from across the battlefield to his hand with a mere thought. Sadly, this is not the case between a Weaver and her Warden. It is a sad truth that acts of infidelity are common, especially among the nobility. I sometimes envy the Provincial Weaver who live far from the machinations of High Society and the backstabbing of fellow Weavers; their lives may lack our glamour, but they seem far happier than us.”
- Lady Marrian Tredel, Loom of the Western Tower.
Cain- Friday, September 27th, 564 AB
Solomon’s dagger pressed up against my neck for the seventh time that day, he wasn’t gentle, and a line of blood dripped down my neck.
“Faster. But you need to be more confident in your movements, not just quicker,” he said, stepping back.
I sighed. “You think I got a shot tomorrow?” I asked.
“Do you?” Solomon asked.
“I don’t…” I began but he cut me off.
“You need to believe in yourself Cain,” he said. “I see in you the makings of a great Warden. You could be among the legends of our time but you need to do more than wish, you need to believe. If you don’t bet on yourself, if you don’t believe in yourself, then no one else should either.”
“I can’t just be confident,” I said. “Celestial Healing,” I muttered, healing the scratch on my neck.
“Sure, you can,” Solomon said. “Reach down, grab your balls and pull it out of your ass. Walk like you’re the toughest man in town. Act like people shouldn’t mess with you. Keep doing that and when someone tests you, which they will, you put them down. All the way down if you have to.”
“Is that what you did?” I asked. “I’ve heard there are stories about you, though I’ve never actually heard one of them. But, people walk like they’re on eggshells around you. Lord Scarisen seemed pretty sure you’d beat Sergeant Acheron if you fought him.”
“Kill, not beat,” Solomon said. “I used to be a duelist. I don’t mean I fought in duels, I mean if someone had a problem with a Warden. They wanted them humiliated, discredited, or dead, they went to me. I lived in the capital, I ate the finest foods, had the best clothes and possessions a man could want.”
“You killed people for money?” I asked shifting in discomfort.
Solomon snorted in dark mirth. “You're still so young, I’ve heard you killed a bunch of bandits on the way here.”
“Those were bandits, not fellow Wardens. That’s different,” I protested.
Solomon walked over to one the tables at the side of the room and poured himself a shot of whiskey and tossed me a waterskin. “What is the difference? There is nothing implicitly moral about being a Warden. You could hand a rapist or murderer a Relic today and make him a Warden and not a damn thing would change inside him.”
I didn’t have a response to that. I wanted to argue but I had nothing to argue with.
“I’ll answer your earlier question,” Solomon said. “Yes, I think you’ve got a chance of coming out ahead in your assessment tomorrow.”
“Thank you for…your training,” I said. “It’s helped a lot.”
“Like I said Cain, you have skill. Your father did a good job of setting your foundation, but only you can determine what gets built on it.”
I left and returned to the academy. The sun was still high in the sky since it was only midday. Aranea and I hadn’t been able to spend much time together the past few weeks and I knew it was bothering her. I stopped and looked down at the bracers she had made for me. I turned my horse around and rode outside, heading for the Mist.
Solomon had driven into me the need to be crafty. To cheat if I could get away with it. What I was about to do wasn’t exactly cheating but, if people knew they’d probably have different feelings about it. The corner of my mouth turned up on that. If people knew the trick I was about to pull, they might kill me. I dismounted and proceeded into the Mist alone unslinging my bow. I activated my mini-map and proceeded forwards, scanning the area heading for the center of the fog land.
I didn’t activate Ghost Walk. While the skill was incredibly useful, I didn’t want to be dependent on it. I used the techniques Rineer had taught me to move soundlessly through the underbrush without leaving an obvious trail or spooking the wildlife.
There was a snarling in the underbrush and I pulled up short, crouching low and drawing back the drawstring on my bow. I peered through the autumn foliage and watched as stag and a Mist Beast squared off with each other. The stag was massive, most creatures that could survive in the Mist were. It pawed the ground, warning the Mist Beast, which of course ignored it. The djinn hurled its spear, another one manifesting in its hand as soon as the first had left it.
The stag jerked its head to the side but the spear still dug into its shoulder, with a bellow of rage the stag charged forwards and gored the beast on its antlers. The djinn popped like a soap bottle, showering the ground with bits of crystalized corrupted ether in the form of bone, leaves and moss. The stag’s head jerked in my direction. I stared into its eyes and it bolted off into the underbrush. That was fine the djinn as what I had come for.
Achlys absorbed the corruption as I knelt down over the remnants of the Mist djinn.
3 Corruption absorbed by your Relic, 3 Corruption absorbed by your Core
It hadn’t been a beast for long, it must have killed some other imp to get the corruption it needed to evolve. That was only three points of corruption to my core, not enough for what I had planned. I moved deeper into the Mist. It took me a few hours but I found a group of five imps and two beasts, they weren’t moving and I guessed they were freshly spawned.
I drew back my bow and fired, taking out the first Mist imp in one shot.
5 XP gained
The imps and beasts looked around them in a panic but I already had another shot lined up and took it.
10 XP gained
One of the beasts went down and the imps and beasts looked my way, tracking the direction the shot had come from. I pulled another arrow from my quiver, drew back and shot the other djinn as they charged forwards.
9 XP gained
I drew another arrow and shot point blank into one of the imps as they broke through the bushes in front of me.
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5 XP gained
“Hurricane Step,” I said, disappearing from in front of the two imps and appearing fifteen feet behind them.
Another arrow hit one of the three remaining imps.
7 XP gained
The imps, as mindless and full of rage and hunger as all their kind, just turned around and charged me again. I drew back my arrow and lined up a shot, smiling as for a moment they lined up perfectly. I released the arrow and it passed through both imps, the leaves, moss and bits of bone that comprised the physical parts of them raining down like autumn leaves.
11 XP gained
I moved forward and started absorbing all the corruption. They were only beasts and imps so I got twenty-six corruption total and split between myself and my Relic. That was only a sixteen percent bonus with the corruption from the djinn I’d absorbed earlier. I looked up and looked at the sun through the trees, the bare branches letting me see the sky easily. I had maybe five hours till sunset, not enough to go to another patch of fog land or to comb through this one again for more djinn.
There was something else I could do, it was risky but…
“I’ve got to believe in myself,” I said.
I moved towards the very center of the fog land and looked at the skitterer hole from atop the ruin I’d teleported to with Hurricane Step. Skitterers moved in and out of the hole every few minutes, some carrying small rodents of other animals in their mouths in preparation for winter. I followed one skitterer with my eyes and waited until it was alone and isolated.
“Hurricane Step,” I whispered.
I appeared above the skitterer and pounced before it could moved driving my dagger through the chink between its head and body.
24 XP gained, 1 Corruption absorbed into your Core
I ran my dagger into its twitching corpse absorbing the corruption there.
8 Corruption absorbed by your Relic, 9 Corruption absorbed by your Core
I grabbed its body, shoved it into a sack and used Hurricane Step to teleport back onto a ledge of the ruin. A block of stone shifted under my feet, and I teetered for a moment before catching my balance. It was a long way down to the ground. I settled my beating heart, the skitterers had picked up on the death of their nestmate. I could see them moving around searching the area, but I’d left no trail and I watched them give up after a few minutes. There were rules against riling up nests so close to settlements but I’d just needed a bit more corruption and I had it. I now had a twenty-five percent boost to my stats. That would give me a great edge in the assessment tomorrow. I teleported back down to the ground and left the Mist heading back to my horse.
It wasn’t too late when I got back to our apartment, Aranea was seated at the table. I placed the greaves down in front of her.
“I tested these for you,” I said.
Aranea looked up startled, not having heard me come in. “I thought you were training with Solomon today?”
“I was,” I confirmed. “But we got done early and wanted to do this for you, I know I haven’t been as available because of my training and I know you needed this tested.”
“Thank you,” Aranea said.
She set the greaves down and extracted the cores from them. Then she took out a brass device and struck a tuning fork against them, examining a dial on it.
“They collected around thirty ether,” she said, making a note in her journal. “How many djinn did you fight?”
“Five imps and three beasts,” I said. “I just went into the Mist. I didn’t have a quest or anything, I can test them again with Enoch next week if you still need me to.”
“This data is a start,” Aranea said. “We should remove your corruption…”
I tensed up, if I let her remove the corruption I would lose the bonus to my stats tomorrow. “I want to stay focused for my duels tomorrow,” I said. “Can we wait until after?”
Aranea looked at me and I detected a note of hurt in her. “It’s never been a problem before.”
“I just have a lot riding on tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t want to be focused on it and not have any distractions.”
“I’m a distraction?” Aranea asked.
I looked her up and down. “Yes.”
Aranea blushed at that, a bit of a smile creeping up her face. I helped wash up the few dishes after we ate, and we headed to bed. Aranea kissed me along my neck and chest. It was hard to resist her but I held fast and eventually she fell asleep, her body tight against me. It took me a while longer to fall asleep, the need in my loins to take my wife fighting with my desire to win. Eventually I was able to relax enough to fall asleep and just enjoy her presence in my arms.
----------------------------------------
Aranea- Saturday, September 28th, 564 AB
I headed to class after breakfast. I sat down with Hanah and Deliah and opened my journal as we waited for Madam Layrora to arrive. First bell tolled and we began whispering as Madam Layrora still wasn’t here.
“Is she sick maybe?” Hanah speculated.
“I saw her this morning,” Deliah said.
The door to the lecture hall opened and Madam Layrora strode in. “Pack your belongings class, we are headed out to the muster yard today, Sir Valren has an announcement to make.”
There were more whispers as we put our books and other belongings from our desk into our carrying baskets. We filed out of the building joining the rest of the girls in the hall. There were the other first year Weavers from the three other classes and the second, third and fourth years as well. Everyone was whispering, asking what was going on but no one seemed to know. We lined up with the girls from our classes as we looked out over the muster yard. All the Wardens were grouped up according to their elements. I caught sight of Cain and waved at him but he didn’t see me.
Sir Valren got up on a wooden platform at the center of the muster yard to address the assembly.
“There will be no assessment today,” he said.
There were some grumbling and I watched Cain’s face twist in annoyance.
“You may be wondering why the Weavers are here watching you instead of attending their classes,” Sir Valren continued once the grumblings had been silenced by their trainers. “We have received advanced word of an approaching ether storm, we have at most three days before it passes over us.”
Panic rose in me and I could see I wasn’t the only one. Ether storms were the most dangerous thing in the world, a quarter of all Wardens died during their first ether storm and a tenth of them were overcome by corruption and become Warlocks. I looked at Cain, my heart dropping into a pit at the thought of losing him.
“All of your classes and quests are canceled until the storm is over and the aftermath cleaned up. You will be given mandatory assignments, see the master of your school or your teacher for further details. Class dismissed.”
I hurried over to Cain, ignoring my classmates and threw my arms around him. I looked up at his face and didn’t see any fear, just…disappointment for some reason.
“Are you ok?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” he said, pulling me close.
“Le’meer!” a stern man called out. “Let your wife go, you have duties to attend to.”
Cain ignored him, bending down and kissing me for a moment before stepping back a twinkle in his eye.
“Yes sir!” he called out.
----------------------------------------
Cain
I watched Aranea run back to her classmates before returning to the ranks. Lord Scarisen gave me a reproachful look, but didn’t say anything further.
“Today, you will all be getting a crash course in charging ether cores,” he said. “Normally we wouldn’t bother teaching you this until halfway into your first year but you're going to need some reserves of ether if you're going to survive this. Ether storms are always dangerous, but this is already a naturally high ether zone so it will be ten times worse, every one of you will be expected to fight on the wall for however long the storm and waves of djinn last.”
“Now take out a core from your inventory, it doesn’t matter what type for this lesson,” Lord Scarisen instructed.
We all got out cores, I brought out the Jotunn core I’d gotten when hunting with Rineer and Enoch. I rolled it around in the palm of my hand as I listened to Lord Scarisen continue.
“Charging a core is actually very simple,” he began. “You know the feeling of ether going through your body, focus on that feeling and bring it to your hands. Now push on that ether, and it will start to leave your body and be absorbed by the core.”
I closed my eyes and began to do so. It wasn’t hard, just as he said, but the moment I did so sharp pains sparked across my entire body like I’d sat on an ant hill or broken out into an intense sweat. I nearly dropped the core, but managed to clench my hand and hold on. All around me I could hear many others fail to do so and their cores dropped to the ground, accompanied by muffled curses and swearing.
“The issue is of course that it’s painful,” Lord Scarisen continued, his tone somewhat amused. “You will be given three Jotunn cores, which you will be expected to have filled within the next three days. Drawing from a core is exactly the same, only instead of pushing that ether, you're going to pull. Luckily it isn’t painful going in.”
“That's not what she said,” one of the Wardens behind me muttered. There was some general laughter, but we got serious again real quick as Lord Scarisen looked us over.
“Many of you will not survive this storm, but this is the solemn duty to which you were sworn. Your assignments have been posted to the board in the quest hub. Go, and may the Voice guide your steps.”