Without turning my head, I watched behind myself as the wraith followed me, moving half as fast as I was. So at least I could out-pace one of the wraiths. I didn’t know where the other one was--and I didn’t know how many in total were buried in this hellish ‘garden.’
I swerved around a chunky outcropping of fungus then under a low-hanging metal branch. I passed another hexagonal opening leading to another hexagonal corridor, but that one was so shallow that I sensed the dead end while still at at the door.
I grabbed a skinny trunk, spun myself in a half-circle, and a flock of spitbats launched from a treetop just above me.
Goddamn. How’d I missed those?
I summoned my hatchets and slashed at the first one before I realized that I wasn’t tracking the membranous wings of bats, flapping toward me, but the fine membrane of leaves drifting downward after I’d tugged on that skinny trunk. I’d dislodged them myself.
I snorted derisively, and one of the leaves slashed a cut across my elbow. Metal! Metal leaves. Leaf-bladed leaves--goddamn this hellscape!
I scrambled away from the cutting fall of leaves, and the only warning I felt was a sudden wash of freezing air.
Without thinking, I turned to smoke.
An instant later, not even a heartbeat, a wraith erupted at me from below and intermixed with my smoke. A hollow opened in my soul. Pain and despair and hopelessness tugged at me, but I forced myself to move. I forced myself to hope. I pushed my gaseous self away from the wraith, I held its spectral tendrils at bay for a handful of seconds, and I shoved against the killing ice until I felt the slightest sensation of momentum return.
I was through to the other side. I turned solid and hit the ground running. I fled in wild terror, metal branches battering me, the twigs stabbing me.
Health: 17/57
Still, I pulled away from the the wraith. Not fast. Not far. Three feet, five feet, eight feet--and then I caught a hint of another doorway. A hexagonal one, not the stairs where I’d entered, but I still veered toward it, my breath shaking, my arms pumping.
And a snail jabbed me in the calf.
Without even thinking, I summoned my hatchet and sliced that goddamn snail in half and--
TRIUMPH! Look at you, killing a snail.
REWARD: A tiny mote of expoi. A frankly-embarrassing increase, barely measurable.
BIG NEWS! Level up.
EVEN BIGGER NEWS! Increase tier.
WELCOME TO SALT TIER
Choose among the following four--
“Not now!” I gasped, hurling myself through the doorway.
A hexagonal corridor stretch out in front of me while the wraith glided closer, still ten or fifteen feet behind me--and I realized that this was the same corridor.
The same goddam dead-end corridor I’d already reached the end of.
I’d gotten turned around yet again, and run back the way I’d come. Into a goddamn deathtrap. Still, I jogged deeper in. What else what I supposed to do?
ASH GOLEM: FACET ONE
Summon a creature of ash and embers, roughly equivalent in level to yourself although with limited intelligence and initiative. Alternately, temporarily depart your own body and inhabit the golem, pouring your mind into the synthetic creature.
STATUS: That very nearly doubles your strength. Also, the utility of leaving your body behind, tucked into some safe nook, and exploring or fighting while inside a golem body, cannot be overstated. In the event that the golem is destroyed, you will merely wake up, having experienced everything that--
“Yes!” I blurted, still retreating toward the dead end. “Great, I choose that one! Anything! Fast, hurry, I need anything.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
GUST: FACET TWO
Transform into smoke and move across the battlespace in a heartbeat. Your range is limited but you can add ‘Nightcrawler’ to the superheroes you keep blathering about.
STATUS: Yes, this is like minor teleportation. And yes, Nightcrawler was your favorite X-Man as a kid.
Nightcrawler?
Damn, that was my dream. You can have Wolverine, I’m all about that sexy blue devil. Er. Which made me wonder about my immediate fondness for Oksar.
Anyway.
Would ‘gust’ help me live to enjoy the dream? How far exactly could I--
STATUS: The range is not sufficient to gust you out of this hallway and safety into the garden beyond.
THE CHARRED HAND: FACET THREE
Consecrate your own flesh as a burnt offering, then strike through the veil and into the spirit world. Zero range; must make direct contact. Inflicts not-less-than-minimum damage upon mundane targets, even if you cannot pierce physical defenses, such as when faced with extremely-armored crachen. Also, excellent for fighting specters.
“Oh, just throw in that last sentence,” I panted, still racing along the hexagonal corridor. “Fine, I’ll take that one.”
CHAINS OF SMOKE: FACET FOUR
Bind your foes with chains of smoke that drift across the battlefield. Bind yourself, if desired, for security or immobility. Control the battlespace with nigh-unbreakable barriers. The chains won’t last long at this tier, but in terms of flexibility and utility, this is more powerful than you can imagine. Recommended.
“Will the chains bind wraiths?” I asked, slowing as I reached the dead end of the corridor.
I didn’t see the pursuing wraith, not yet. I didn’t even feel the chill.
SUPPORT: Partially. Unreliably, at this level, but at least partially.
“Okay, then I pick—”
SUCCESS! You chose the Charred Hand.
SUCCESS! Consecrate your flesh before striking to--
“I didn’t choose anything!” I snarled in my mind. “Not yet. No fucking way. You’re not pulling that again. I’m taking goddamn Chains of Smoke.”
A strange gravity shifted inside me, then a burning ache carved channels in body as my spirit or mana started to shape itself into the form of this new power. Into the form of the Charred Hand. I resisted. With all my fear and anger and confusion, I resisted. I wanted what I wanted. I chose what I chose. So many choices had been taken from me, and I--I’d run into a dead end. Which felt like more than a death trap. It felt like a metaphor for my life.
So I refused to be ignored, to be overruled.
I resisted, and twist of internal force tossed me aside. I slammed into the wall but managed to stay on my feet. I spat blood and the scalding ache burned through me with a roar of combustion.
SUCCESS: You merged two facets into the CHARRED BLADE.
The inferno of pain shifted through my body, draining from my legs and head and chest into my shoulders and arms.
And then my hands.
The centers of both of my palms burned. Not metaphorically. Literally. They caught on fire from within. Literal fire: for the first time in days, there was light around me, as well as shocking heat. And in that light, I watched the flames consume my flesh from within.
Only for a moment, though. A bad moment, during which I freaked out and flapped my hands and may have accidentally thrown a few sparks onto a a bundle of desiccated foliage on the trellis. Then the pain stopped, and the flames stopped, and in the light of the flickers flames on the foliage, I saw burn scars covering my otherwise-uninjured palms.
Thick, ropy burn marks, like I’d pressed my hands against white-hot cannonballs. Completely healed, though, like I’d burned them years ago and the scars would never fade.
Magic pulsed in the scars. Or in my palms, I couldn’t tell. Huh. Magic pulsed, and wanted to ... move?
I stepped away from the embers of foliage and summoned my hatchets.
After a moment, I pushed my spirit through the burn marks on my palms, through the hafts of my hatchets, and into the sharpened metal heads. The hatchets turned black in the fading orange glow of the fire. Faint lines appeared in the wood and metal both. Cracks, like in a charred log at the bottom of a fireplace.
I felt my mana tick down.
When I checked, I realized I’d just spent a single point.
And a moment later, my hatchets’ appearance returned to normal. Except I still felt an extra heft, an extra bite in them. I’d empowered them or enchanted them or ... or imbued them.
I grunted, then I turned to face the wraith drifting down the corridor at me.
Except there was no wraith within the range of my senses. For a moment, I thought I’d lost the one that had been following me. Otherwise, it would already be eating my soul. Because surely I’d been standing at the dead end for three or four minutes, reading notifications and wresting the Charred Hand into the Charred Blade?
Except like my mental conversations with Princess, my review of question updates and status comments happened at the speed of thought. So I’d probably only been standing there for ten seconds. Well, maybe fifteen. Or thirty.
Don’t ask me! How should I know? One of the most annoying things about getting summoned to fantasyland was not having a reliable way to measure the passage of time. Though being attacked by thornspiders and Sixers and skinbears and wraiths also rated pretty high. As did the lack of hot showers and bath gel. And, for that matter, internet connectivity. That was my Yelp review, right there. “I loved the whole ‘islands floating in a sea of mana thing,’ and the snail sushi was delicious, but the wireless code didn’t work.”
Right. Okay. Apparently wrestling with Status--or with my gem, or maybe Status was my gem?--for a different faceted power had made me giddy. Or maybe I was feeling slightly nervous about the wraith wafting closer, preparing to crush me like trash in a compactor.
I didn’t know what she meant until she showed me with a tug of thought. I followed her lead, trying to add a point to my Fortitude even though I didn’t have any points.
And my Fortitude increased.
Health: 60/60
Oh! Apparently I did have points--from advancing a tier, no doubt. And I’d unlocked the ability to raise my stats higher than 15. Damn, sixty health. More than ever. Enough for a wraith, now that I could ‘pierce the veil and strike into the spirit world?’ Well, we’d see.
And then, as I cracked my neck, the air turned cooler.
Then icy.