In the light of the fading embers of the foliage, I caught a glimpse of white tentacles emerging from the darkness of in the hexagonal corridor. A heartbeat later, I felt the wraith with my senses, drifting toward me like a cloud of radioactive gas. Okay. Deep breath. Time to test the power of my awesome new ... salt tier. A whole goddamn level-up named after a condiment. That didn’t bode well. I needed to reach sriracha tier before I could handle threats like--

Princess murmured.

Right. I was losing my train of thought again. Okay. Less internal monologue, more focus on the spectral monster approaching on horrible snaky leg-parts.

Princess said.

I didn’t ask how she’d guessed that. I just let the words calm me as I exhaled and poured spirit into my hatchets again. I felt them change in my hands when mana flowed from the hafts to the heads. One point, two points. They grew denser, yet also lighter. At least that’s what it felt like. Or maybe they were heavier but I was stronger? Or they’d gained layers of power, density of power, yet at the same time they’d also gained a closer connection to me.

Yeah, let’s stick with that last one. My bond to my hatchets strengthened, scaling with their new power.

A frostbite chill touched my face. The wraith spread wider as it neared, anemone-tendrils squirming to brush the walls on either side, to fill the corridor, to block my escape.

I didn’t panic. I bared my teeth at the wraith and thought: I can punch your ass in the spirit world now, you milky can of worms. I shifted my weight. I didn’t have room to maneuver, but I couldn’t let that thing land a single hit on me, not if I wasn’t in my smoke-form. With a flicker of thought, I checked the hatchets were ready. Consecrated, empowered. Or imbued, I guess.

I felt the mana, in them, solid and primed. And then I, um, attempted to strike through the veil and into the spirit world.

In other words, I threw a hatchet.

At that range, with a target spreading across an entire corridor, I couldn’t miss.

My hatchet spun end over end, leaving a looping trail of smoke behind. A cord of smoke, so thick that even in the darkness my senses felt its braided thickness like it wasn’t vapor but was an uneven, sinewy cord.

Oh! A chain of smoke.

A solid chain of smoke issued from the blade, trailing behind the head.

Or an--excuse the image--umbilical cord. Because I still felt connected to my hatchet, even in flight, like maybe if I concentrated right I could shift its trajectory.

But I didn’t know how to concentrate right, and it didn’t matter at the moment: the hatchet spun into the outermost, ghostly haze of the wraith ...

Then thunked into something solid.

Or actually, it thunked into something spectral. It struck the body of the un-solid wraith and a moment later my other hatchet did the same.

The wraith shrieked and trembled. Three tendrils slashed toward me, but the spirals of smoke still lingering in the air blocked them. The wraith shrieked again. In shock more than pain, I thought, at the contact of the blades and the chains of smoke.

I returned my hatchets into my hands and said, “Not so much fun when your prey bites back.”

The chains of smoke faded and an eel-like tendril speared at me.

I blocked with a hatchet, but the tendril shot right through it and caught me in the right hip. Threads of pain spread into my thigh and stomach, then started clenching. Tightening. My body cramped. I felt myself squeezing sideways, crumbling like an aluminum can beneath a boot heel.

I hadn’t imbued the blade! I hadn’t consecrated or empowered or charred the blade.

Health: 33/60

Almost half my health was gone in two seconds. Fear touched me again, but even as the pain distorted my body, I forced mana into my hip. Nothing happened except another pulse of agony, so with one last burst of effort I forced mana into my hatchet, feeling the charring blackness spread, and slashed at the tendril burrowing into me.

My blade sliced through it.

I chopped the tendril in half.

The wraith recoiled and with a roar of pain, I fell toward the wraith, my right leg weakened, imbuing my other hatchet as I hacked. I slashed through its ghostly form then imbued and tossed my other hatchet underhand and the chain of smoke unfurled through the creature’s spectral form like a ribbon. A killing ribbon, a razor-edged ribbon that impaled the wraith.

Its black mouth opened impossibly-wide and its piercing shriek clawed at my ears--but in return, my piercing hatchet stabbed its fucking face.

It trembled and writhed until the smoke chain faded and then it fled. Without turning, it swiveled its now-cleaved face to its other side and started juddering away, retreating unsteadily toward the garden.

Or trying to, but screw that. I leaned against the wall to stay upright and followed, my shoulder scraping the trellises, throwing my hatchets again and again, my blades and smoke-chains pumping forward like pistons.

Every impact tore another hole in the wraith, dug another tunnel in its freezing, spectral cloud. Every impact tore another shriek from the wraith, too.

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Music to my ears.

Five feet from the exit to the garden, the wraith finally quieted--then died. Hundreds of spectral eels collapsed into a pile of goo that glowed briefly white before dimming.

“Punch you in the ghostly dick,” I growled, weak from relief and victory.

You couldn’t touch wraiths, you couldn’t fight wraiths, you couldn’t beat wraiths--except I had. Once they were no longer unassailably ectoplasmic, they weren’t even tough. Reach through the goddamn veil with hatchets and chop them into the little bite-sized Caspers.

Princess asked.

I bit off the swear. <...ovel. Bullshovel.>

She let a glimmer of suppressed humor escape.

“You’re teasing me,” I said aloud.

I said, at that outpouring of babble. Then I looted seven pearl beads from the death wraith.

She tried to sleep, but couldn’t, so we chatted for a while while I recovered. She calmed down after a minute, and so did I. The hyper energy, the thrill of relief, ebbed and we just ... talked. She’d been asleep for half of our time in the Old City--more than half--but even asleep, she retained some awareness of her surroundings, and we’d been through a lot. With the Sixer ‘gifted’ and then with the narcotic bats and paralytic snails. It had been, well ... a lot.

So we talked. And talking helped.

And eventually she fell asleep, but even that helped, somehow. I couldn’t tell how at first, but then I remember what I’d already realized: I wasn’t just trying to keep myself alive. I mean, I was doing that. But it wasn’t all I was doing. I was also trying to keep her alive. And that helped me find meaning in the violence and the trauma and the strangeness. Meaning made everything easier.

Anyway, I rested for a time, then I raised to my feet with a soft grunt of pain from my knotted, twisted hip. I needed five or six or eight more pearl beads. So I cast my senses into the garden. I felt every needle-sharp twig and razor-thin leaf. My ‘spheresense’ settled easily into my mind, becoming second nature.

I even noticed a slight temperature gradient ahead of me.

I followed the hint of a chill to the wraith pit. With my eyes closed, I mapped my surroundings. Then I summoned my hatchets and imbued them with my newest power and instead of waiting for the wraith to attack me, I struck first.

Crouching slightly, I threw both hatchets at the same time, aiming low over the pit, across the pit, instead of inside it. I watched as two chains of smoke unfurled behind them, like knotty ropes stretching in the air a couple of feet above the ground.

I resummoned them immediately, to keep them from striking a metal tree and chiming, yet the wraith noticed me before they even returned to my hands.

It burst from the pit--and slammed into the chains that were hanging in the air. Two thick garrotes dug into the wraith’s incorporeal body and it shrieked and recoiled into its hole.

The chains dissipated in to heartbeats, but by that time I had my hatchets again. I threw one and shoved down with my mind on the loops of smoke-chain and I didn’t manage to control it. Instead, the hatchet flung wildly away--but not before a new chain formed above the pit and the second hatchet thudded into the wraith.

It shrieked again and I struck again--and again and again. With the smoke chain of one hatchet I kept it bottled into its pit, and with the other I carved slices of spectral energy from its outflung eels.

Thirty seconds later, I was standing over a pile of goo, looting eight more pearl beads.

I combined them into a gold and healed--and then I hunted.

I killed three more wraiths in the garden. My smoke chains weren’t wide enough to truly bottle them up; the shock of ramming into a physical object was what seemed to keep them in place. And sure enough, two of them escaped their pits but I took them down anyway. And in the end, I had every single point of my health and two spare gold beads.

Also, four unassigned points.

I’d been holding off on them in case I needed a Fortitude heal, but with two gold beads it was time to invest.

Alex Levin

Anomaly

Level 10, Salt Tier

Archmage Status

Arachrys Blooded (Spheresense, Twinmind, Protection)

Boons:

Domain (3/5)

Intuit (1/5)

Support (2/5)

Treasure (1/5)

Gems:

Smoke (The Charred Blade)

Aptitudes:

Spear

Fighting Hatchets (specialities: dual-wielding, veil-attuned)

Attributes

Strength: 12

Agility: 12

Fortitude: 16

Dexterity: 15

Alertness: 12

Speed: 10

Spirit: 13

Design: 14

Derived

Health: 60

Mana: 25

Craft: 14

Movement: 10

Available Points: 4

Well, that looked a little different than I remembered. At least I understood everything ... well, except Speed. Which also happened to be lagging a bit. And how was Speed different from Movement?

STATUS: A Speed of 10 is slightly above-average for all races save Striders, for whom the average is 15. Speed primarily determines rapidity of motion across terrain, though also, to a lesser extent, processing rate. Movement determines travel speed.

“Oh. Huh.” I thought for a second. “Um, are you okay? That was uncharacteristically helpful.”

There was no answer.

I asked.

she said.

she added, then fell back asleep.

“Okay,” I said, then sat there for five minutes, unable to decide.

I needed more of everything. Though I still needed more Spirit most of all. That was still the key, just like Oksar had said, what felt like a year ago. Except ... I remained trapped in the Old City, and I continued to chop things apart to survive.

So after another few minute, I said, “Ah, screw it.”

I added two points to Speed and one point to Alertness. Making myself faster and harder to surprise could only help.

I saved one point for a Fortitude-heal, then I started searching for a way out.