A crack of thunder echoed across the room moments after Rensyn’s question. Sophia ignored it; she couldn’t hear any rain, but they were in an interior room on the ground floor; it was surprising enough that she could hear thunder. Hearing rain would be more of a surprise.
She shook her head. “Not that many. The rewards from the feats were mostly increased Ability levels, not Wisps.”
Rensyn straightened in his chair. “Oh? That’s an excellent award. It means you’ll be able to use what Wisps you have for your other Abilities and for new ones. You might…”
Rensyn stopped with a frown and looked over at Amy. “I know what Amy’s headed towards. Shifters are unusual, but you’re wanting to be a versatile scout and fighter, aren’t you? You have a small and quick form and a long distance agile form now; the next two choices are usually a big bruiser or flight. What are thinking?”
“Flight,” Amy answered immediately. “The book says owl is available at level two, and that leads into the nightowl line of Abilities. I was thinking about it even before I met these two, but with them I think the nightowl should work well. I might even shift over to scout and support, but that’ll have to wait until I can upgrade my Sphere. Other than that, I need to pick up some general archery Abilities; I wasn’t nearly as useful against the corpsevines as I should have been. I want the shieldbreaking line, even if it’s not very useful against things like the corpsevines.”
Rensyn nodded. “That sounds like a plan that would fit in a lot of different groups, though if you don’t buy any of the wolf line you won’t be able to effectively fight in that form past the first upgrade. Are you sure you want to specialize? Nightowl is useful, but there are things that are immune to its Abilities.”
Amy seemed determined. “The corpsevines proved that my wolf shape can’t get in close the way they can against anything with poisonous attacks or anything that I can’t bite. That’s at least as limiting. I might go with one of the esoteric wolf Ability lines, but I haven’t decided which yet.” She bit her lip and looked down. “I already know what I’m doing with my other shape.”
“Your other shape?” Sophia couldn’t resist asking. “I didn’t realize you had another one.”
Amy flushed a little and kept her gaze on the floor. “Weasel. My other shape is a weasel. Wolf food.”
Sophia wasn’t sure why Amy was acting like she was ashamed of it. “Sounds like a useful shape. They’re small and can get all sorts of places you wouldn’t think they could get, sort of like cats and squirrels.” She winced a little at a painful memory. “And if you ever have one jump on top of you and bite you when you weren’t expecting it, you’ll know they can fight, too.”
Okay, that was a dungeon weasel, but it was in a very minor dungeon full of forest critters. Sophia remembered expecting the wolves to be dangerous and was even wary of the deer, but it was the tiny wildlife that surprised her. They had to make their way into sensitive spots to really hurt her, but they did. More than once. She was properly geared for it, so it wasn’t truly dangerous, but it was certainly memorable.
Another crash outside said the storm was getting closer. It wasn’t the first rainstorm Sophia had seen in the Broken Lands, but it certainly sounded like it was probably the most violent. Maybe she’d get a chance to admire it once they were done with Rensyn.
“Have you decided which way you’re taking your weasel shape?” Rensyn asked gently.
“I planned on darkness, but I’m not sure now. Might be too much overlap with the Night Owl,” Amy muttered.
Sophia tried to remember the elemental arrangements she’d figured out from her available Abilities. Wait, she wrote it down somewhere, didn’t she? A quick search of the notebook Sophia kept in her bag said that yes, she had. The common sub-elements were Heat, Light, Ice, Acid, Stone, Metal, Wood, Sound, Lightning, Force, Corruption, and True Death, with higher-level elements of Fire, Air, Water, Earth, and Magic. Darkness wasn’t even on the list, so it had to be one of the “more exotic” elements, probably the one the Nightowl had given the name.
Most of the elements didn’t seem very appropriate for a stealthy weasel, but she could see ways that they could be. Acid could make or enlarge holes, perhaps, while Water or Air might let the weasel flow through even the tiniest cracks. Even Earth or its sub-elements might be useful, if they would let the weasel merge with them and move through them. One sub-element stood out above the others. “How about sound? Owls are really quiet in flight, but it sounds like you’re going for darkness there, so maybe go for sound from the weasel?”
“Maybe,” Amy half-agreed. “I don’t know. I’ve thought about releasing the shape instead. It would save me a slot, plus everything I’d need to put into it to make it useful, and if I’m not going to use it…” She shook her head instead of continuing the thought. “I planned to upgrade into a more flexible shifter, but now I’m thinking I might want a more focused setup. For now, I think I’m going to use what points I have to add the owl; I can’t add an element until next level and I can’t specialize into a shape like nightowl until I get an upgrade. With that limitation, I’m thinking that I’ll pick up a few archery Abilities but otherwise push to the first upgrade.”
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Rensyn seemed fully involved in giving advice now. “That’s one of the common routes, pick your specialty and push into it so that you can get the Abilities you need to make it work. I recommend reviewing the archery book so you can see which Abilities will support you before you start.”
“Archery book?” Sophia glanced at Dav, but he looked just as interested and puzzled as she did. “Is there a book that lists possible Abilities and when they’re available?”
Rensyn started to say something, then chuckled and shook his head. “I thought I mentioned them when we first talked, but we were in such a hurry that I didn’t go over your current Abilities in detail; I must have also forgotten the book. Yes, that’s one of the things the Registry does; we try to collect as much information as we can on Spheres and Abilities so that people can plan their future. We also provide common Ability groups to make picking them easier; there are a lot of Abilities that are niche and others that almost everyone with a particular Sphere takes. For you two, I know I’m going to be recommending some swordsmanship Abilities for Dav, but I’m really not sure what to recommend for a siege mage. I guess we should talk about where you want to go before I start pushing the paperwork at you.”
“Telepathy,” Dav said before Sophia could speak up. “Or some other form of battlefield communication. I want to be able to talk to Sophia, Amy, and Taika even when we’re in the middle of a fight or at a distance from each other, when we can’t see or hear each other. If possible, it should be silent, but quiet is acceptable.”
Rensyn pursed his lips in thought for a long moment before he answered. “That’s a hard one because there are a lot of communication Abilities. It might appear on your spell list; that’s the first place to look, but I’m not sure what we have in the way of summoner spell lists.”
Sophia nodded at Dav’s answer. She wasn’t sure telepathy was her absolute top priority, but it was well up there. “I need to know more about Force, Corruption, and True Death spells, and probably some more about spellbreaking. I know the basics, and have one Ability that seems to work pretty well, but it’s not quite the same.”
She frowned at the thought of spellbreaking. It seemed generally less useful here than on Earth; even in a city named after spellcasters, there weren’t all that many and no one used wards. Well, no one used small wards; she’d seen exactly two so far and neither the one upstairs nor the one that guarded Fallen Kestii was what she usually thought of when she talked about wards. More importantly, few of the monsters used spells. “I wasn’t able to break the illusion the corpsevine crown used, and that’s one of the things my Affinity is supposed to be for.”
“Force is very common, so we have a good list,” Rensyn answered. “Corruption is unusual; a lot of people avoid it because they associate it with Warping. It’s usually only taken by people who specialize in it, so there should be some listed, but we probably don’t have much information on how it interacts with other elements. True Death is going to be the difficult one; I think our list of True Death spells comes from a couple of very specific undead-killing Spheres that were past the first upgrade when they gained access to the sub-element.”
Sophia shook her head. “I need to know what they do more than what the spells are, most of them are the same as my available Force spells, just with a different sub-element.”
“Are you willing to share what you have?” Rensyn seemed eager. “It might help you organize your thoughts; more importantly, it may help someone else who’s trying to figure out their future.”
Sophia shrugged. She didn’t see any reason not to; it would take her a little time, but it sounded like she needed to go through them all anyway. “Sure.”
“Then let’s get started,” Rensyn stood. “We can get into more detail about it once you’ve had a chance to look at what we have that might help you choose a way forward. I can help you with equipment, too, once Halven figures up what you’re owed.”
This definitely seemed more like what Sophia expected from a mentor than the half-scrambled actions Rensyn made when they first met. She now knew that was because of Commander Walsh playing on Rensyn’s terror of the corpsevines, but it still made her question him a bit. Throwing a team together to go look for something that terrified him before bothering to figure out how he could help the people he was supposed to be mentoring didn’t seem like good mentoring to Sophia, but at least he was trying now.
This time, the thunder was followed by something far more ominous than the noise itself: a warning from the Guide that they had entered the Domain of the Hungering Spark. That was all the message said, which made it more like the snake nest back in the ruins of Fallen Kestii than the Leveled Challenge or even the area of the Shard of Kestii; both of those had more information than simply the announcement. Sophia didn’t take that as a good thing; this was something the Guide felt it should announce, after all. It probably just meant that the Guide didn’t think there was anything else to say.
Sophia knew they hadn’t moved, so either the Domain was new or it was moving. Given that it was called the “Domain of the Hungering Spark” and she could hear thunder, Sophia had to guess the two were related. Was there a lightning elemental outside or something? Was there even a storm at all?
Rensyn paused long enough to read the message, then blurted something about talking more later as he hurried out of the room.