Amara
Profession: Glancer (Pyromancer)
HP: 10/10
LVL: 1 (0/100 EXP)
Base Attributes Rating /50 Resilience 3 Reflexes 8 Strength 3 Channeling 5 Speed 10 Charisma 2
The words moved around her eyes like small stick-insects coated in black ichor.
Glance...Glance...Glance...
The thing she had inside her. The thing that had saved her.
The thing they hate me for having.
She groaned with the effort of sitting up straight and straining to look past the words to what lay beyond them - the desert plain caked with dust, carrying the echoes of creatures she'd never heard before.
Her mouth gaped with wonder to see it all from up on high. She sat above the land, seeing sand-encrusted ruins, tiny caves baked into the flat earth, and a red rimmed sun burning above it all, baking every grain of the land dry.
"Where am I?"
Home, the Voice answered. You're home, Amara.
She staggered to her feet as the realization struck her. This was the Everloft. The First Layer. A place hotter than any she'd ever experienced. Even the air itself tasted arid, and burned. With every breath, she felt her heart race. It was everything mom said it would be.
She looked at her scarred hand and saw the little embers running up along the grooves in her palm - grooves left by pain or time. She didn't even feel the power draining from her, and that's when she knew mom had been right.
She was stronger now.
And you'll only grow in strength, sweetheart, she heard in the back of her head. This place is only the beginning. The deeper you travel, the more power you shall attain. Then you'll be ready to tear apart the world up there. You'll be able to make the whole damn place yours.
She closed her eyes to the world as she let the memories of Anna play in front of her again. She let the memories of the burned cat-slavers fill her vision, the memory of the boy burning because he looked like he might have had the Glance.
Then her memory raced back to the source of it all: daddy down there in the old cellar, his corpse nothing more than charred, broken bones.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on the burning inside her - and found new doors unlocked inside the seething maelstrom that was her blood. New sections of her being that had once been blocked had opened with a kind of dream-like lucidity. She saw now, what she had known all along:
Incantations List
Acolyte Level Flickering Ember Firebite Fireball Infernal Cloak
There they were - the tools that had let her dominate the foolish and the gullible up there on Averix. The parts of her being that were granted to her by right of conquest. Now she could see them clearly. Now she could see exactly what they could do.
But this is just the beginning, dear, the Voice whispered against the growing desert storm whipping up all around her. There's so much more you can learn, and greater feats you can perform. You think you've seen what the flame inside you can do? You haven't seen anything yet.
She nodded with a strange sense of excitement filling her breast.
Where to first? she asked.
The Voice chuckled in its funny little way.
My dear girl, it said. You're already here.
She'd been so focused on the raw energy swirling inside her, waiting to be released like a caged bird, that she only now felt keenly the coldness of the ancient stone ground that lay beneath her feet.
She was standing on what looked like the tip of a great Ziggurat soaring high above the entire landscape - built with layer by layer of ancient stone that eventually ended in a small square peak. It was this peak she'd woken up on, and as she turned this way and that, trying to maintain her balance, she spied the small, human-sized crevice that was waiting just behind her.
And before she even had the thought, her eyes told her what she needed to know:
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Appraisal: Success
Ruin Entrance (Temple of Bhashera)
Recommended LVL: 1-2
Enemies: ???
Unfortunately, it won't give you all the information that could help you, my dear. Yet, I think-
"I don't need to know," she said, and in the next moment she was staring right over the edge of entrance. "Down here's where I can get stronger, right?"
The Voice replied with no hesitation. Oh yes, most certainly.
"Then I don't need to know anything else," she said with growing excitement, growing thirst - a desire that had gripped her being like a vice. Not even the deep dark of the descent scared her. She had known darkness all of her life. She had nothing to fear from it.
"All I need to do is burn."
And when she threw herself down into the throat of the ruin without another word, she felt her mother's voice chuckle again.
...
- Layer I -
- Temple of Bhashera -
Her plunge was brought to an abrupt, and ethereal halt, as she reached what must have been the bottom of the structure. A cool wind had picked up around her feet and carried her to a safe landing. Once she stood up, she looked around to see only shadows, and the faint silhouettes of objects marked out against the corners of the room.
The air was thick and musky, as though the place had been undisturbed for ages.
Just an illusion, the Voice told her. This is but one of many first-level dungeons meant to test the worthiness of those who delve down here.
Amara scoffed.
"Everything has to be a test, doesn't it?"
She focused again on the flame budding within her like a blood red flower, and then her list of 'incantations' danced before her again.
She was looking for something to light her way, and found that her arsenal accommodated, just like the Voice said it would:
Incantation: Flickering Ember Rank: Acolyte Effect: You conjure a tiny ball of flame into your hand that serves as a light source. For 60 seconds this flame will provide illumination in a 60ft radius around you. Channeling cost: 1/60 seconds.
She didn't need to see any more. She nodded at the flickering words, they disappeared, and then she found her hand burst with energy and a little flame danced just above her palm, quicker than she'd ever summoned one before.
Instantly the entire room was bathed in the red-orange bur of the little ethereal candle, and she saw the place for what it was: a small, square space with walls covered in intricate drawings and hieroglyphics. The only objects she could see were three oddly shaped sarcophagi staring down at her with grisly, dead eyes. She slowly started forwards and gingerly touched the arm of one such sarcophagus with her free hand, and just as soon as her fingers made contact with the thing, its door swung open and sent her reeling back.
Darling, the Voice said as she saw a mass of black split apart from the dust-caked insides of the sarcophagus. We have the Appraisal skill for a reason...
She wasn't paying attention. Instead, she was focused on the black ball splitting apart into five toe sized beetles that scurried towards her, little pincers raised, ready to strike.
Through her panic, the Voice was calm.
The cloak, Amara, it said. Use it!
She closed her eyes and let the word rush through her - cloak - and when the first tiny insect lunged to bite at her leg, she saw it and its friends fly back into their uninterred home - singed and screeching in pain.
She looked at them - but saw so much more. She wasn't just looking at them. She was looking at them through a thin veil of flame that covered her entire body. An aura of fire itself.
As the little creatures shook the fire off themselves and prepared to renew their assault, she concentrated on another thought:
Incantation: Infernal Cloak Rank: Acolyte Effect: Basic protective incantation: call up a 10ft aura of flame that surrounds you. Any creatures entering the radius of this cloak take 5pts of fire damage per second. Duration: 10 secs. Channeling cost: 5
She smirked to see the little bugs scurry right back towards her.
"Want some more? I've got plenty."
All she did was step forward and watch them burn - watch their little black carapaces melt away before her power, till all that was left of them was five little collections of smoldering ash.
Foes Vanquished: Scarab x5
EXP: + 30
How's that feel? The Voice asked her.
She breathed in deep, and let the cloak subside.
"Strong."
Damn right.
The other sarcophogi held nothing within - a quick Appraisal told her they had nothing to offer her but dust and bones.
So she turned her attention back to the little clumps of ash that had attacked her:
Morphology: Scarab
HP: 0/10
WK: BLNT, ERTH
"Morhp-what?"
Morphology, dear. Its a classification of creatures. Each one you discover will be added to your Bestiary - your repository of creature information. You need only dredge up an image of a creature in your mind to access what information you know about it.
She nodded. "And improving this 'Appraisal' thing is the way to find out more."
You're catching on quick, sweetheart.
"How come I couldn't do none of this while I was up there?" she asked, noticing the exit to this chamber and slowly heading through it to a corridor filled with more intricate markings that meant nothing to her.
You were chosen to bear the Gift, the Voice replied. But there is only so much that one of your kind can do up there, where the old magic has been debased, and the ways of the Glance killed in the people's minds. It limits us. Limits you. It is why the opponents of Glancers like you rule - not because they have any divine right to, or because they are our betters in terms of skill. This place - The Everloft - it is our domain, Amara.
She listened as she entered another small chamber and met more Scarabs ready to jump her. A quick Infernal Cloak dispatched them with ease, and she left nothing but more smoke-stacks in her wake.
Close quarters combat and a skill that dominated in tight confines. She was in the right place, with the right tools.
That certainly made a change.
Foes Vanquished: Scarab x8
EXP: 15
"Huh," she pondered, stopping at an intersection leading to two more chambers. "Less than last time."
The Voice as always had the answer:
Vanquishing foes is one way to increase your power, but eventually your gains shall be limited. A better way is to complete quests and clear dungeons like this one.
"Let me guess: by 'clear' you mean 'exterminate', right?"
Not quite, dear, the Voice laughed. Only one must die in this place - the Dominion Lord.
She listened intently as she picked the path to the right and wandered through into another slightly larger chamber. Unlike the others, this one had two torch sconces in the middle that lit themselves with two azure flames when she cleared the doorway.
The Dominion Lord is the most potent creature in the dungeon, the Voice continued. Normally, entities with specific names. Once proud Magisters reduced to mere playthings by the Chainbreaker's imprisonment. They take what vengeance they can by luring Delvers to die in their dungeons, but ultimately they exist to be bested. Death is the best way to release them from their slavery.
"Slavery?" Amara asked.
But before her mother could answer her, she heard a sharp, metallic click just beneath her foot as it touched a small square of the floor that started to glow, and instantly a wall slammed down behind her, blocking the entrance to the chamber.
She pivoted, saw that she was now penned, and called out on instinct.
"Mom?"
No response.
No response, at least, from her mother.
At the end of the room another sarcophagus creaked open slowly, pushed by an arm covered in dank, yellow wrappings, barely held together. Then a low, burry wail sounded throughout the room, reverberating off the walls of Amara's consciousness.
She turned to meet the thing for what it was - a shambling humanoid draped in bandages with two dark eyes staring at her through what looked like melted flesh. Its wail came again - a sound of strained agony that could have come from the thing's mouth or from its own thoughts of pain echoing in her own mind.
Gerjiyk Xonmei (mummified)
HP: 50/50
RES: SLAS, BLDG, ERTH
WK: PYRO
PYRO...
Even without her mother's counsel in this moment, she knew what that meant - she could tell by the way her torchlight flared at the mere sight of the creature's bandages and blistered wounds that this was a challenge made for her.
She focused again on her Appraisal - this one had a name.
"So, you're this 'Dominion Lord', right?" she asked the being, getting nothing but another pained roar in response.
She allowed herself a smile as she cupped a larger ball of flame in her hands and visualized the form of the snickering serpent- Arekis - before her.
"Let me put you out of your misery."