Three hours after the fight, Sophia finally remembered to check and see what she’d gained from it. There were no new spells, but for once she was happy about that. The Hungering Spark had some very interesting Martial Techniques.
A glance at her Status told Sophia the bad news. The Hungering Spark was far less rewarding than the Leveled challenge. She gained forty Wisps from it. Based on what Amy said, that was a lot for an individual monster, but it wasn’t anywhere near what Sophia wanted.
Cliff learned five Martial Techniques from the Hungering Spark, but it only gave them forty Wisps. That was barely enough for Sophia to buy one level two Martial Technique slot, and she wanted three of the Techniques.
A second look at the list made Sophia sigh in aggravation.
Ride the Lightning
Move from one location to another with the lightning. You are not protected from the lightning. Requires conditions appropriate for lightning.
Storm Phase
Become the stormcloud. While merged with the storm, your Shield is disabled. Protects from attacks that will not damage storm clouds. Environmental conditions may cause damage.
Bleed Lightning
Lightning is the lifeblood of Storm Elementals. You have learned to send that lifeblood to your enemies to harm them. Be wary lest you harm yourself more than your enemies.
Devour Ashes
Food is best when it’s burnt. Quickly gather the ashes of your next meal.
Lightning Rain
Call lightning down like rain from a storm. Requires appropriate weather.
Devour Ashes was easy to reject. Sophia thought she’d skip Bleed Lightning, too. She definitely didn’t want to have her blood turn into lightning inside her and throwing blood at enemies when it wasn’t lightning wasn’t much of an attack. The way the Hungering Spark used it seemed useful, but Sophia was happy to look for another way to get the same result. It might work with Storm Phase, but she’d definitely want to try that Technique first.
Lightning Rain was the next one Sophia cut off her list. As much as she loved the idea of calling down lightning strikes to deal with an army, she wasn’t likely to fight an army any time soon. She was much more likely to fight things like the fire beavers or the corpsevines or even the Ruins Constrictors, and none of those were in a storm.
Ride the Lightning looked awesome, even if it was potentially harmful. Sophia was pretty confident it would work fine with Storm Phase active; that was definitely what the Hungering Spark did. She wasn’t sure what “conditions appropriate for lightning” meant, though; if it only meant “during a thunderstorm,” it wouldn’t be that useful to her. The Hungering Spark brought a storm with itself wherever it went. Sophia didn’t.
At the same time, it might just mean that it required moving through the air. Lightning didn’t move through the earth and she wasn’t sure about water. If that was the limitation, it would be useful.
Not that she could try it out. Since she could only buy one slot, she had to use it for Storm Phase. It sounded like a really good Technique for her, too; it wouldn’t stop her from using magic but it would protect her from most attacks. Even magic passed through the Hungering Spark. She’d have to check and see if it had a vulnerability like the Hungering Spark’s tongue, but even if it did it seemed worth using.
Sophia was happy to have the new Technique, even if it didn’t seem like she’d get to use it any time soon. She couldn’t exactly turn into storm clouds on the back of a horse, no matter how much she wanted to. The horse would walk right through her.
She almost wished there would be another attack. They were hours away from the spot where the Hungering Spark met them and Dav and Amy were talking about roads. Who cared about roads?
Sophia knew that she was grumpy over the lack of Wisps to get the Techniques she wanted, not over the roads, but that didn’t make her any less grumpy. It wasn’t until Amy mentioned that the attack from the Hungering Spark might not have happened if they’d been on an active enchanted Transit Road instead of the road they were on that Sophia really started to pay attention.
She remembered the road to Casterville; they’d met it soon after they entered the Shard. Arryn, the merchant they accompanied on the trip, explained that it did the same thing as a Nexus. Now that she knew a bit more about local Nexuses, Sophia thought there was more to it. The road didn’t discourage monsters by creating a lower-magic area where Abilities were less powerful and monsters were uncomfortable. It was more like the second feature of the City Nexus that actually supposedly kept monsters out unless there was a full-scale assault on the city.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
That didn’t matter here, though. As Amy said, there were no enchantments on this stretch of road. Sophia couldn’t even see any signs that there had once been enchantments.
Dav was ahead of Sophia. “I thought you said this was the direct route from Casterville to Izel. I thought that meant it would have a good road.”
Amy shook her head. “This is a good road, mostly. It’s just not a Transit Road. If we went through Rockport, we could be on Transit Roads the entire way, but that would take at least an extra month of travel. We’re lucky the old road is still passable. I think it dates back to the Empire, and other than the bridges, we’ll only have to leave it to cross Shards.”
Amy paused, then admitted, “I’ve never taken this road before. I came the long way when I left home, just sort of drifted until I ended up in Casterville. It wasn’t what I expected.”
“Oh?” Dav somehow managed to imbue the single word with the sense that he’d seen as much of Casterville as he wanted to see.
Or maybe Sophia was just projecting her feelings. She was happy to be moving on. Amy’s homeland sounded interesting; Amy promised people who were interested in exploring and seeing new things. Sophia couldn’t wait to get there.
image [https://i.imgur.com/wD6BlP2.png]
It was a week and a half from Casterville to the spot where they had to turn off the “main” road they were on and onto a smaller one. For the entire trip, they saw aggressive wildlife three times. The first was a day after the storm, when a green snake decided to wrap itself around the left foreleg of Sophia’s horse while they were stopped near a stream. It was easily frightened off by the horse itself, but Sophia had to walk for the rest of the day while Amy made sure the horse wasn’t too injured to ride.
Sophia didn’t mind. She finished the day less sore than she had the previous night.
The second attack, if it could be called that, was a hawk that decided Taika looked like a delicious bunny. Sophia didn’t see why it missed, but once it had it got to find out that while Taika was fluffy, he wasn’t alone. Amy was very happy about the feathers and meat she took off its corpse afterwards.
The closest they came to a real fight was on the eighth day out from Casterville when a group of wild dogs found their campsite during breakfast. They were easily chased off, but not until after one brave dog managed to steal the sausages Dav was cooking for and dump the bowl that held pancake batter into the fire.
Sophia helped Amy chase the dogs off while Dav cleaned up the campsite and restarted breakfast. “Is this normal?”
“Is what normal?” Amy tugged gently on her reins and her horse turned away from the fleeing canines. “Opportunistic wolves? Yeah, they’ll take what they can get. I think we’ve chased them far enough; they’re not likely to follow us now.”
“You don’t think they’ll come around and attack Dav, do you?” Sophia felt guilty about leaving him behind. She hadn’t even thought about it, but now she was imagining something bad happening while she was gone and he was alone. What if there was another dog they didn’t see?
Amy shook her head. “Nah, not when they got part of our breakfast. It won’t feed them all, but we’ll be gone before they get back together and start hunting again. They look healthy, so they’re not likely to risk taking us on after they’ve alerted us they’re here.”
Whether Amy was right or not, they didn’t see the wild dogs again that day. Instead, they had a long argument about whether they were wolves or wild dogs. They didn’t look much like wolves to Sophia; the long shaggy coats were a golden color that reminded her of a happy, friendly dog rather than the image she had of an aggressive wolf. At the same time, Amy had a point when she said that they lived on their own and weren’t domesticated.
It was a nice way to pass the morning. As far as Sophia was concerned, it was worth the late start and lost breakfast food.
That afternoon, they reached a spot where the road seemed to dive into a hollow before it turned to the left. Amy led them part of the way down the slope, but kept her attention to the right.
“Are we close?” Dav asked before Sophia could.
“It should be here soon,” Amy confirmed. “It’s supposed to be easy to find; you just look for a cave where the road turns. I’ve seen a couple caves, but they were both way too small.”
It was only a few minutes before Dav pointed out a dark spot on the cliff wall. A few minutes later, the cave was obvious, just like Amy said it was supposed to be. Sophia frowned at it. “It looks awfully natural.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/u598PUe.jpeg]
“That has to be it.” There was relief in Amy’s voice. “The portals can look like anything. I went through one before I got to Rockport that looked like I was walking into an old building.
Sophia cocked her head to the side and took a long look at Amy. She was supposed to know where she was going, but it sounded an awful lot like she wasn’t certain this was the right place. Sophia wasn’t sure what they’d do if it wasn’t; there wasn’t exactly anywhere nearby to get directions. She’d just have to hope Amy was right.
Dav led the way into the cave. He continued past the point where it grew dark and Sophia had to remind him to stop for a moment so that she could light her magelight. Sometimes it was annoying to travel with someone who could see in the dark.
Once the cave was lit, it was clear that it continued on for a while and stayed high enough that they had no trouble remaining mounted. They were well inside the cave when it suddenly lit up with nearly blinding colored light. In the distance, Sophia could see a white spot where the lines of color met. She twisted in her saddle to look behind her and saw only darkness where the lines started, just like the first time she moved between Shards.
The feeling of magic building around her was similar as well. It was definitely teleportation magic of some flavor, but there was still something about it that completely eluded her, and she knew it wasn’t just the hidden spellform. It was closer to an enchantment than a normal spell, but she couldn’t even say why she knew that. There was just something about the way the magic came together that seemed like it was controlled by an item instead of a person.
Sophia wasn’t sure if the transfer took longer this time or if she was simply impatient to move on. It could have been both. There were new adventures waiting for her on the other side of the portal.