Chapter 16

I tapped on the Skill Selection menu next, spreading them out before me. The original choices remained, offering a variety of specializations, none of which particularly appealed to me. The enhanced perception seemed like an interesting pick, especially as it was boosted by my wisdom, but I pushed past them to the new skills.

Flamewatcher’s Insight (Basic): It is said that the answer to all questions lies within the heart of a flame; certainly its’ allure is unmistakable, and the promise of wisdom draws the weak-willed like moths to flame, consuming them. For those with the power to see what lies in the heart of the flame, those answers may be laid bare. Effectiveness scales slightly with Intelligence.

Avaricious Flame (Basic): Fire exists only to consume. You may nurture your fires with offerings of wealth and valuables, allowing you to tame an Avaricious Spirit of Flame. Beware, however, for if left unfed, those flames may consume you, or desert you when you need them most. Effectiveness scales slightly with Presence.

Fires of Courage (Basic): The most important fire is that which dwells within. You may enkindle the flames of others, driving them to greater acts of courage. These flames consume doubt and fear, leaving only bravery in their wake. Effectiveness scales slightly with Wisdom

Crystalflame (Basic): You may create constructs of flame, which last for a period of time based on the strength of the fires imbued into them. They may be used as weapons or armor without risking harm to the bearer as long as the bearer possesses Heat Adaptation and is an ally of the creator. Effectiveness scales slightly with Willpower.

Awaken the Living Flames (Basic): You may instill some of your spirit into a flame, enforcing your Will upon it. This will allow the animate flame to assist you for a short period of time, at the end of which the fires it was summoned from will be extinguished. Effectiveness scales slightly with Willpower.

It was an interesting set of picks, though I was able to immediately rule out Flamewatcher’s Insight and Fires of Courage. While the abilities didn’t seem useless in general, they were useless to me. Standing around staring at candles didn’t seem like a good use of my time, and I didn’t really have any allies, nor any need to boost their ‘courage’. Avaricious Flames seemed useful, but double-edged, with the potential for it to turn against me if I didn’t feed it enough. Awaken was too vague, and it was too unclear what exactly the animate flame could do. I mean, what if it was a candle? Or even just a torch? Unless it was some kind of huge fire elemental, it didn’t seem like it’d do anything I couldn’t already do.

Crystalflame appealed to me, despite the fact that I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it. Maybe it was from that vision of the man in armor that seemed to be on fire? It says I could make weapons or armor, but what if it could make other stuff, too? It’d be nice to be protected by something a little stronger than robes…

Finally, I focused on Crystalflame, adding it to my skill list. The skills seemed to come every ten levels, and I didn’t lose any of the options I hadn’t picked before, so I could always go back and take a different one later. For now, though, Crystalflame seemed the most immediately useful skill. I felt a faint pressure behind my eyes as I seemed to absorb information, new thoughts and concepts fluttering through my mind like a slideshow at maximum speed. I drew in a deep breath, dwelling upon one of the concepts that had appeared to me, and created a firebolt in my hand. After a moment, it seemed to squeeze and condense into a dagger of flame. It didn’t look awfully complex or detailed, and the only ornamentation on the blade was the rippling look of fire just beneath the surface. The hilt was warm to the touch, and when I grasped it firmly, the blade seemed to ignite, the air around it twisting in a heat haze. I jabbed it at the stone wall beside me, and it sunk about an inch in before it stopped, the stone reddening around the cut. I drew the knife back, and… it dissipated in a puff of smoke, its’ limited energy spent.

I jogged back down to the previous floor, and tried it again, this time turning two firebolts into a pair of daggers. I stood there with them in my hands, and they remained coherent for about thirty seconds before they dissipated. I resummoned them, and immediately stabbed them into a wall; they dissipated as soon as I withdrew them, even though it had only been a few seconds. I frowned in thought, figuring that any usage would drain most of their duration, though it’d make for a powerful first hit.

I pushed my hands together and conjured dual firebolts, filling them with power to form a Fireball… and then tried to shape it into a sword. The blade that emerged was nearly as tall as I was, and the blade shone so brightly it hurt a bit to look at, even in my peripheral vision. This one lasted for a handful of cuts, leaving long gouges in the stone. Another pair of firebolts turned into a bow and arrow, and I rapidly discovered I had no sense whatsoever for how to use one; the bow collapsed as I released, having overdrawn it unintentionally, and the arrow spiraled off to strike into the floor. When I looked at the wound it left on the stone, I realized the arrow had nearly passed through it entirely.

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I crossed my arms over my chest in thought, considering how much energy I had put into each construct and how quickly they dissipated. It seemed that the more concentrated the energy, the more powerful the attack, but the faster it lost coherence. I looked down at my hands in thought, contemplating the firebolts that had become my standard attack. While they worked well enough, and served as a unit of energy measurement in my head now, they felt… limited. I conjured and dispelled them, one after another, trying to feel how the energy coalesced. It was such a complex sensation, and had so many moving parts, that I wasn’t sure how I had figured it out in the first place. It felt like the deeper I dug into it, the more detail there was to learn. When I tried to recreate the process step by step, however… nothing happened.

But when I willed a firebolt into existence in my hand, it simply popped into place as if it had been hiding there all along, waiting to be called. I pushed my hands together and summoned a fireball between them, watching the way the energy tumbled together into a chaotic mess; there was no way I could untangle that ball of string and figure out how it worked. So why did it work? Was it the System at play? Or was it based on my Willpower?

I closed my eyes, and imagined how it felt to hold a sword. The sense of solidity, the grip in my hand, the way the weight of the blade dragged the tip downward. I squeezed the pommel in my mind, feeling how the textured grip grabbed onto my palm, unmoving. I held onto this idea, and pushed in a way I can’t really explain, and I felt the familiar heat of a firebolt in my palm, though it felt like I’d spent far more energy than that.

When I opened my eyes, a longsword rested in my palm. It was a near-replica of the one I’d held at a Renaissance faire years ago, though the details looked almost blurry. I cut a few swings through the air, and the blade held steady. It even held together as I cut into the stone, nearly carving off a pyramid-shaped chunk of stone from so many deep cuts, before the blade faltered and began to dissolve.

I tried to think back on how the blades were made, bits and pieces from various TV shows and a live demonstration I saw once. The blade I eventually conjured was such an abomination that I simply dispelled it at once, suddenly glad there was no one present to witness the monstrosity my mind had made. It looked like a half-melted crayon drawing made by someone who’d heard about swords once in conversation. I shook my hands as if to rid them of the mess I’d made, and tried to refocus myself.

I realized that the summonings were taking quite a toll on my energy reserves, and opened my eyes just in time to see fire spurt through the hole I had made in the side of the tower, an awful lot like a bellows blowing into a furnace. A tongue of flame burned into the hole, greedily devouring all of the air it could pull from the extradimensional space of the tower. It clawed at the edges of the stone inside, turning it a ruddy red.

As I stared into the flames, a plan began to come together in my head. I sat down on the floor, conjuring one dagger after another, cutting various ideas and patterns into the stone as if writing on parchment, the black scorch marks showing up clearly against the grey stone.

Much to my surprise, the notification came sooner, rather than later.

[Skill Increase] Crystalflame (Basic -> Initiate)

You may create constructs of flame, which last for a short period of time based on the strength of the fires imbued into them. They may be used as weapons or armor without risking harm to the bearer as long as the bearer possesses Heat Adaptation and is an ally of the creator. Effectiveness scales somewhat with Willpower.

I grinned as I read it over, noting that the only changes seemed to be the duration and the effect of Willpower. The next dagger I conjured lasted for nearly six swings, dissolving upon the sixth strike. It was a drastic improvement from the one strike it had managed before, but I wasn’t sure if that was because of the skill-up, or the fact that I was now conjuring them directly instead of making firebolts and changing those.

I stood up, looking over the crude plans I’d scratched into the ground until they were burned into my memory, imagining the way it all fit together. I took the time to rest as I stared at them, letting my mind work while my body recovered from all the energy that I had spent. When I felt like I was sufficiently recovered, I walked toward the gap in the wall where the flames clawed at the stone, trying to get in. The fire leapt at me, harmlessly, scattering against my chest and splashing to the stone in a rain of sparks. I held out my hands in front of me and made a motion like grabbing onto the flame, and I began to drag it inward like pulling a rope. At first the flames bit greedily at my hands, more and more pouring into the opening as if possessed of a limited will. After a handful of seconds, however, as I pulled the energy into the engrams I’d wrought in my head, the fire reversed course, trying to escape from my grip and back out into the world. I could feel the fire being dragged off of the trees and bushes around the tower, clawing at the dirt and bark for grip before being relentlessly pulled into my hands.

By the time I was done, I was garbed in armor as solid and immense as a crusading knight from some grim and dark future, my left arm wielding a shield that had been built onto the vambrace itself and welded in place by my will. My right hand wielded a sword as long as my arm, the blade seeming to struggle to remain solid with all of the energy I’d packed into it. I didn’t know how much stronger it’d be, but considering their duration was ‘based on the strength of the flame’ and I’d just poured a whole section of a wildfire into it…

I had a feeling it’d be significant.