A click echoes through the barren room of stone, a pebble bouncing forward toward the ring of torchlight in the center of the room. I look down at my boot, barely illuminated by the flickering lights in the center of the room. A shudder runs through me. I clench my right wrist with my left hand. The pain dancing through my fingers is acute, it is always so much more powerful here.
“We are in the illusion,” I tell Macille. The man stands next to me, shadowed. I focus back on my hand while the man turns in my direction, a lack of consciousness in his dull eyes for a moment. Panic attacks me, my chest heaves and I feel sweat breaking out on my back and neck. My right hand continues to spasm; the last time I was here the monster snipped it off. I clench my teeth, biting down on the pain, and begin to channel a Dragonfire Bolt into my right hand. It helps a little bit, the magic flowing through my hand overpowers the cramping muscles.
“I…I know,” Macille tells me. I see the light of thought begin to fill his eyes. “I know,” he repeats. “Thank you.”
“Get ready then,” I say to him through clenched teeth. I finally get my hand back under control but the pain just won’t go away. I look at Macille, sweat glistens on the side of his elven neck, catching and pooling the light, but he seems calm. It has been almost fifteen seconds; my ability is half channeled.
“Right,” Macille says. He pulls his sword from its sheath, and I watch as he reinforces the armor he is wearing with one of his abilities. Slowly, the sword he holds begins to emanate a green light. Macille shudders, and then he looks back at me. “I’m sorry,” he says, swallowing, “I forgot to reinforce your armor.”
“It’s fine,” I say. I punch my clenched right hand into the breastplate I wear hard enough to tear the skin of my knuckles. A momentary explosion of orange light answers the hit, but I don’t lose any of the ability’s building potency. I breath out a sigh, the new pain of my scraped knuckles replacing the old, crippling pain of the missing hand. I don’t know why Macille isn’t effected by the continuous deaths in the illusion like I am. It’s a good thing he isn’t.
My breathing continues to come on rapid and shallow. I stare up at the darkness where I know the Desert Spearman waits, ready to fall into the center of the room at any moment.
“How much longer?” Macille asks. He stares up with me into the darkness, though ever since the battle with the hounds, I understand his vision is much better than mine.
“Ten…seconds,” I answer through breaths.
“Are you okay?” I hear him ask.
“Don’t…worry about…me. I’ll be…fine,” I lie. My heart is already pounding in my ears. I can hear the monster rumbling across the stone at me, feel its claws closing around my soft flesh. A long scream tries to bubble up in my throat, the same scream I had given when it started to eat my stomach once before bothering to kill me first. I choke on the scream, holding my breath, trying to force my breathing to calm down. It doesn’t help. I just end up panting more the next time I try to breath.
“Maybe Ms. Willian will--”
“It’s coming,” I say, seeing a shift in the shadow.
As it has each time we entered the illusion, a huge blob of darkness releases from the ceiling overhead and plummets to the stone below. It throws its many legs wide as it crashes into the stone, bracing itself for the impact. Unlike the first encounter, Macille and I are already in motion before it rights itself.
Desert Spearman
Before the monster can even stand, a streak of orange fire is sailing in its direction. The bolt of dragonfire, the largest one I have ever thrown at something, explodes as it collides with the monster’s hard exoskeleton, just above the joint of the monster’s right claw, whatever it has there in place of a shoulder. My dragonfire explodes, loud enough to drown out the monster’s cry of pain at being assaulted. Orange flame clings to it for the barest of moments before it is snuffed out, seemingly by nothing, leaving a triangular wound in the monster’s side that bleeds purple blood. I smile, despite the superficial damage of the wound, and begin channeling another Dragonfire Bolt.
The Desert Spearman resettles itself, the motion causing cracking lines to spread away from the wound my dragonfire left in its side. Macille reaches the monster in the next moment, his glowing green sword arcing at the monster as he finishes his own charge. On previous encounters with the spearman, we realized that allowing it to charge was the worst thing we could do. Macille engages it now in the center of the room, surrounded by the torchlight.
Macille cuts into the monster in the same place that my first attack injured it, his glowing green sword spraying gore away from the wound. The monster moves in the last instant, swinging its other claw toward Macille, making the man pull out of his strike and weakening the blow. It roars into Macille’s face. He winces, the momentary distraction making him almost miss the injured claw coming down at him. Macille catches the blow on his shield, ethereal armor flashing over him in the moment of impact. His knee slams into the ground, but he holds strong enough to keep from being crushed.
My next Dragonfire Bolt flies from my hand, not fully charged, but I did manage to over channel it some. The opening was just too much for me to ignore.
Its claws held apart, its uninjured one rearing back to swipe down at Macille once more, my dragonfire splashes into its face, over its eyes. This time, the roar of the monster is enough to ring my bones even with me at the edge of the room. It screams and stumbles away from Macille, leaving the man panting on a knee as he looks on at the monster scrambling away from him and scratching at its face with its claws. Macille doesn’t waste the opening either, turning his focus to his sword, pouring green power into the blade while the monster is distracted.
The dragonfire fails to catch light on the monster’s exoskeleton, but the burning is an afterthought. When it gathers itself, it stares at me across the gulf of space, the eye I managed to strike reduced to dripping waste and the eye socket scorched and open. I begin channeling another Dragonfire Bolt. The Spearman’s attention shifts to my glowing hand. It roars again, not in pain but in anger, and its multitudinous legs begin to power it toward me like a boulder, unstoppable.
Or so I thought. Having been forgotten by both me and the monster, Macille dashes sideways, reaching out for the monster as it charges past him, uncaring. Macille’s glowing sword flashes in the torchlight. Three steps later the beast twists and falls, its front leg on its right-side skidding away from it in a smear of purple. Blinded by hate or whatever such a thing might have for emotions, it limps up and charges me once more, Macille running along behind it.
I run a circuit of the perimeter of the room, pushing my enhanced speed for all it is worth, trying to keep myself on the monster’s left side. Without its front right leg, it can’t turn fast enough to catch me. I hear the collision behind me and turn to see the Desert Spearman with the horn at the front of its face embedded into the stone of the wall. I throw another fistful of dragonfire at the monster, missing its eye this time, but splashing fire over its face once again.
The impact of the fire does little. Its remaining eye, one massive orb of black darkness, turns my way as it backs itself away from the wall. I see its tail twitch. I try to shout, but Macille notices it just as I do. The spear of chitin is fired away from its tail, and as Macille continues to charge the monster, he raises his shield and catches the spear at an angle. The missile bounces off of Macille’s shield, tearing the shield off Macille’s arm, and ricocheting up somewhere in the darkness. Macille’s arm twists horribly as the shield is wrenched away from him, but the man refuses to stop his charge. Screaming, he brings down his glowing blade on the spearman’s claw-joint once more, and this time the blade bites all the way through the limb as it continues to turn to face him.
The Desert Spearman stays silent, carapace shuddering from the loss of its arm, and swings its uninjured claw down at Macille, trying to snap him in half. Macille rolls back, stumbling and falling on his injured arm. He cries out, and I see red soaking through the sleeve of his shirt beneath the armor.
Before I know what I am doing, I am running forward, throwing uncharged bolts into the monster’s face to distract it, but I am on the wrong side of it now. The eye on my side of its head has cooled, the gore oblivious to the flashing dragonfire that slides off of its armored carapace, leaving only the slightest of scorch marks. It slams its claw down at Macille, the man only barely managing to roll out of the way as the massive claw crushes the stone where he had just been. Macille rolls onto his back, up to his feet, but his sword lays on the ground a distance away.
I make it to the monster. It is uninjured on my side of it, except for the ruined eye. My fire can only really damage it when I have a full charge, and there isn’t time for me to attempt that again. With only two seconds of charge on the dragonfire in my hand, I prepare to hurl the fire into the already injured eye socket. Pain lances through me as I ready to throw. Spit bubbles at the sides of my mouth. I look down and see one of the spearman’s legs soaked in blood, my blood.
My brain refuses what it sees, it doesn’t make sense, and then, as if the beating of my own heart forces the pain to be recognized, I realize that the spearman’s leg is going through my own. As I cry out, my free leg giving out, spiking more pain through me as my impaled leg is pinned in its position, I fear that the monster will turn and slap my head off my shoulders with its remaining claw. The pain of the monster’s leg sliding out of my own is almost enough to make me lose consciousness. My vision becomes black and then white. I only know that I stay conscious, since when the flickering torchlight starts to bring the world into contrast once more, the flashing of orange fire over my right hand has built to an inferno.
Macille cries out, swinging his glowing blade up at the monster’s face, missing. The Desert Spearman limps toward him, the elf’s two working legs just barely enough to keep him from being smashed into paste. Macille’s breathing is ragged, his left arm hanging limply at his side as he dances with his sword more brilliantly than I have ever seen him before. He swings his sword at the monster when its green glow has returned, scoring a line across the spearman’s face, superficial. The spearman catches Macille’s sword in its claw as he tries to pull it away. With the sound of wrenching metal, the spearman snaps Macille’s sword in two before swinging a backhand at Macille. The strike catches the side of Macille’s face, just barely, but the grazing blow is enough to tear long lines into the flesh of Macille’s face.
He screams a gurgle as he backpedals faster than the monster can keep up its limping advance, his torn arm coming up to cover the cuts across his face. I see Macille’s eyes stay on the monster that advances on him, blood seeping through the fingers he uses to cover half his face.
Something pushes me to move, something too profound and deep inside my soul for me to put a name on it, but I know the feeling that wells up in my chest, hotter than the pain, more aching than the splintering bone in my thigh. I hate this fucking monster.
White overtakes my vision as I push myself to stand, and when I stand, clarity returning to the world, more color lives there than it did before. I see the ghost of magic slipping off of the monster, a sandy beige that seems almost too heavy for the air, its soul presence like a shroud of transparent color around it. It lashes out at Macille, red and yellow streaking through the shroud of beige in a complex display that I cannot fathom. Macille catches the claw on the remaining half of his sword, yellow ethereal armor springing to life around him as he parries the blow, but there is more to it. I see Macille’s soul presence as well, a soft light of yellow and blue that flickers as he moves, always shifting, nothing permanent or set. The impossibility of seeing the soul presence of a first rank magician is the furthest thing from my mind.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I don’t realize that I am limping forward toward the monster until I notice it growing larger in my vision. My eyes are glued to a point in the beige of its soul presence that looks like a black wound on the air, directly over its ruined eye. It doesn’t notice me as I limp slowly in its direction, and as Macille fights for his life head-on with the monster, I doubt he notices me either.
I see the spot like a blaring weakness on the monster in front of me. It would be obvious to someone thinking about it for a moment, but to my eye, the wound in the soul presence screams for me to use it to kill the monster. I oblige without even thinking about it. Roaring, I plunge my hand into the dead socket of the monster’s eye, my fully charged Dragonfire Bolt disappearing inside of the spearman’s carapace. Then, it notices me, but it is already too late for it.
The spearman jerks away from me, the jagged chitin of its eye socket biting and cutting into my wrist as it tries to rear away. Before it can take my hand off with its shaking, I release my magic. The detonation of fire inside of the monster’s skull is enough to blow my hand out of its eye socket with a sickening squelching sound. I fall, my wrist a bit cut up from the spearman’s thrashing, but my hand unburnt and covered in purplish blood. By the time the spearman has reared all the way onto its back legs, I can see that life has already left it. The detonation next to whatever the monster would call a brain has blown off half its head.
I have a half-second to realize that I have actually killed the thing, before a full ton of dead monster comes crashing down on top of me.
The leg of the sofa beneath me scrapes against the tile in a whine that brings me back to my body, my real body. I am in Arabella’s office again. She sits across from me, sipping on coffee as my body shakes from the illusion. My mind tells my body that it needs to be breathing hard, we are fighting a monster, and the shift as my lungs go from breathing normally to furious bellows puts a lump in my throat. I choke for a second, feeling my right leg seize in a spasm, and wrap my hands tight around my leg, trying to squeeze the pain and muscle back into their normal state. How many seconds has it been?
Before I can even consider the thought, I hear a growl at my side. I turn, fingers still digging into my leg, and see Macille sitting next to me on the sofa, his right arm gripping his left forearm like he intends to tear it off. The man brings his breathing back under his control far quicker than I do, but the sweat that soaks through his expensive dress shirt and that pools into the hollows of his eyes tells me how disturbed he still is.
With an effort only the pure, chemical hate my brain pumps through my veins can bring, I wrench my fingers away from my leg. My brain expects an explosion of pain, but none comes. The tingle of my blood starting to flow through the leg again distracts me; it tells me that the fight really is over. I collapse backward, my weight liquid, panting and focusing on bringing my breathing back under control. I roll my eyes to the side, seeing Macille more composed, but just as exhausted. Despite all of it, looking to the bars in the top of my vision, all of my vital energies are still full.
“Three seconds,” the words, as much as the piercing ring of Arabella’s spoon on the porcelain of her coffee cup, ground me in the moment. “You opted not to draw out the fight.”
“What would that have helped?” Macille asks, doing his best to keep his voice even.
Arabella shifts her eyes my way. “It may have been a stratagem.”
“No,” I say. It takes me a moment to strangle my heart back to racing normally. “I don’t think that I am strong enough for a strategy like that. Macille is stronger than me, that limited what we could try to do.”
Macille’s eyebrows rise at my words, but I notice that he doesn’t deny it.
“Yet, you are the one that landed the decisive blow,” Arabella says. “You killed the monster.”
“I did,” I say. “I won’t say that I was lucky, but I think Macille did the real damage to it. All I did was make the creature angry, I didn’t stop it from attacking us.” I look at Macille. “That sword of yours is incredible. You cleaved its leg off with one swing, and you could even get through its armor.”
I see confusion in the man’s eyes. “You were the one who killed it, Charlene. The praise goes to you.”
“I stuck my hand in its eye while it wasn’t even looking at me. Can I really count on circumstance to let me do that again, in a real fight? No, your glowing sword and my fully over channeled fire did about the same damage to it. You are the strong one.”
“So, you at least learned something,” Arabella says. She looks at me. “What was your biggest mistake?”
“I got too close to the monster,” I say. I can’t hold the woman’s piercing stare.
“Why?”
“I was trying to help Macille,” I say.
“Because you did not trust him to handle his part of the fight,” Arabella says.
“No,” I deny. “No. He was injured. I needed to get the monster to stop attacking him for a moment. Give him a chance to get up.”
“No, you did not trust him,” Arabella says. I open my mouth to deny it again, but in a flash the blue of Arabella’s soul presence conquers the room. The ice of death presses into my skin as Arabella brings her fist down on the arm of her chair, shattering it. “No! If you were in charge of your faculties, you would not have tried to approach the monster to offer covering fire! You acted out of instinct, the wrong instincts, and threw away the advantage of range to rush at a monster hunting your friend whom you did not trust to defend himself. You do not have the skills to stand toe-to-toe with a rank two monster, as demonstrated when it carelessly maimed you just because you were too close to it. You complicated the fight, put one of your teammates in danger, you, and forced Macille into a position where his own awareness and judgment could be compromised.” When she finishes, Arabella turns and smiles at Macille, the presence of her magic vanishing from the room in an instant.
The remembrance of cold leaves a chill deep in my skin. I click my teeth closed, unable to say anything back to Arabella about her tirade. She is right, I acted without thinking, running toward the monster just to be killed. If Macille had noticed me on the ground while he was engaged with the monster, the entire fight might have ended in disaster. It hurts me to admit, but that had been truly stupid. Never again.
“And you learned…” Arabella says to Macille, prompting him.
“My mindset is not strong enough,” he says. “When we first arrived, Charlene needed to break me out of the panic that came over me. I forgot to include her in my magic. If I had made her armor stronger, maybe the monster wouldn’t have crushed her like that.” He looks at me. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
“Is it?” Arabella asks. She looks between us. “Would you consider yourselves successful?”
“Yes,” I say instantly.
“No,” Macille says a moment later.
Arabella ignores Macille for a moment. “You would consider yourself successful?”
“We killed the monster, didn’t we? That was the objective, the mission, that you gave to us.
“And yet, you died.”
“But we did kill the monster,” I say.
“If I had given you the same mission in the real world, would you consider it a success then if you killed the monster and one of your teammates was killed in the attempt?” Before I can answer, she holds up a hand. “Do you care so little for yourself that you would throw your life away on something as petty as a rank two monster? Is that what I am to expect as a return for my investment in you?”
“Put us back in,” Macille says, interrupting her. Arabella looks back at him. “We managed to kill the spearman, but one of our teammates died. That is a failure for us. We still need to complete your test for you to let us move forward, right? Let us try again.”
“Yes,” I say, a moment later. “Let us try again.”
Arabella looks between us for a long second before a sly smile crosses her lips. “If that is what you wish,” she says, bringing up a hand that begins to glow a brilliant lavender.
I stumble into my room a few hours later, the phantom of illusionary pain still echoing in my thoughts. Despite that, I can’t keep the stupid smile off of my face. I collapse into bed, grinning and kicking my boots off.
“We did it,” I breath. Finally, I never have to see that stupid monster again. It took us four more attempts to kill the Desert Spearman with no casualties, but we did it in the end.
“Congratulations,” Galea says, appearing in the air over my bed. “Mistress Charlene has completed her first real challenge from Ms. Willian. The happiness you feel now must be truly overwhelming.”
“I feel like the hounds were a challenge,” I say, staring up at the hovering spirit. She lazily flies a circle over my head, staring down at me in turn. “This was big though. I still have a way to go, but today was important. Now, I need to focus on getting stronger for the real contest.”
“That is a good mindset,” Galea says. “As further good news, I have finally come to an understanding as how to fix Mistress Charlene’s ring.”
“Fix my ring?” I sit up in bed, forcing to spirit to move and hover at my eye level. I look down at the wooden ring around my finger. “There is nothing wrong with my ring.”
“It is inefficient,” Galea says.
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“The construct governing its magic is of poor quality. If Mistress Charlene might allow, I can improve its operation considerably.”
I look down at the ring.
Wooden Ring of Storage(Rare):
The wielder of a Ring of Storage is able to place and retrieve items from a space outside of reality. Items stored inside of the ring will not degrade or experience time. Cannot store living materials. Space Remaining: 57/60.
“You can make this even better?” I ask.
“Of course I can. I am a brilliant construct,” Galea says, puffing out her chest.
I shrug at the spirit. “Go for it then.”
Galea dives into the ring like it were a pool almost too fast for me to track. I feel magic flow through the ring, heating my skin where it touches my finger, and the entire wooden band begins to glow red. Smoke rises as the ring sizzles. In the next instant, it is all over, the glow from the wooden band disappearing, leaving its surface charred and ash gray.
Galea hovers into my vision from over my shoulder. “A success, I think.”
Ashen Ring of Integrated Storage(Very Rare):
The remnant of a Ring of Storage that has been tempered by a fey spirit, this item allows for the storage and retrieval of items placed into a liminal space outside of reality. Items stored inside of the ring will not degrade or experience time. Cannot store living materials. Space Remaining: 87/90.
“You increased what it can store by half,” I say, shocked.
“I have done more than that,” Galea says.
With a wave of the spirit’s claw, a black, transparent black rectangle springs to life, suspended into the air in front of me. The floating message displays empty boxes, and the numbers in the top right(87/90) lets me know that the empty boxes represent the inventory of the ring. The first three boxes are filled with pictures representing what items I have still stored in the ring, and in the top left corner are a set of figures denoting the amount of money I have stored, none so far. The most incredible thing about it, my mana didn’t drop a bit at having opened the message. I reach my hand forward, pulling a pear I have stored in the ring right out of the sign. My mana doesn’t drop a bit.
“You took away the mana that the ring uses to store and retrieve things,” I say, looking at Galea, wide-eyed.
“I told you that the ring was inefficient,” Galea preens.
I laugh, taking a bite from the pear, and let my head fall back onto my pillow. Staring up at the ceiling, I sigh, the sweetness of the fruit in my mouth only helping the sense of satisfaction the day has begun. “It might ruin the understated look that Arabella wanted, but I can’t really bring myself to care just now.” I look over at Galea. “Thank you for that. Truly.”
“You are quite welcome,” Galea says, looking at her claws.
"What are these called anyway?" I ask Galea, gesturing at the floating rectangle in front of me. "I have been calling them messages in my head but...well, this one isn't really a message is it?"
Galea shrugs, "Call them whatever you like, Mistress Charlene. I think that some call them signs, signposts, windows, or boards."
"I see, windows because you can still see through them," I say, putting the "window" between Galea and myself, looking at her through the black, transparent sign.
"I don't believe that is the reason, Mistress Charlene," Galea says.
"I'll call them that then," I say, ignoring the dragon. I don't really care why people call them whatever they do, just need a name. “Today has been…the best one in a long time.”
“Even better than the day you met me and received your essentia?” Galea asks.
“That feels so long ago. It has only been a few weeks. Maybe not better than that. Still, it’s been good.”
“So, what will you do now Mistress Charlene?” the dragon asks.
I sit up in bed again, taking another bite of my pear before breathing a long exhale. “First, I am going to take a long and well-deserved bath. Then, I am going to get back to work. There are only a few weeks left until this competition begins. This competition is supposed to be for geniuses. I’ll have to work my ass off to compete with them.”
“Will going straight into exercise not ruin the effects of your bath?” Galea asks.
“Then I guess I’ll have to take two.”