Chapter 24:
When I woke up, every single inch of me hurt, from my skin right down to my soul, but if things were hurting, I wasn’t dead, and that was important. I opened my eyes and the lights were too bright, the shadows too dark, and everything was blurry. I groaned loudly, turned to the side, and threw up. Acidic bile sprayed from my lips and across the floor, or wherever I was lying. Someone took my face and guided me away from the horrible smelling liquid, before someone held a wet rag to my mouth and sprinkled water onto my tongue. I swallowed greedily, and thirst surged up my throat like a desert in high summer. “More,” I wheezed, desperate for more water, more anything.
The rag was returned and I gripped it with one weak hand, squeezing water into my mouth.
“Easy, ‘Cadia, go easy. You'll be sick again if you try too much.” Mias’ voice was quiet, scared, and rough, as though she were exhausted, and I suddenly needed to see my sister, see she was safe. I moved the rag to my blurry eyes and tried to clear them out, wet them, before blinking as rapidly as possible, each time the view I could see becoming clearer.
When my eyes were focused enough to just about see Mia clearly, if a little fuzzy at the edges. What met my eyes was a pale girl with black and gold eyes, and white hair and ears, but one that was covered in bandages.
Her neck was wrapped, one eye and cheek were covered, and there were more at the bottom of my vision over her thin chest and shoulders. “What…happened?”
“You nearly died, again. And I wasn't there, AGAIN!” Mia looked pissed, and I tried to recoil, before realising I was still lying down, and was also very close to a pile of sick. I felt awful.
“Help me sit up?” I asked, plaintively. Mia relented, and didn't just help me up, she picked me up, moving me away from the acidic puddle and what I saw now was something like a futon and pillow, and sitting me next to the wall in a sitting position. Turns out I was also covered in bandages, tied over my stomach, chest and arms. I was otherwise just in my smallclothes, and I had a brief moment of discomfort when I wondered who had stripped me and who had dressed the wounds. I pulled at one and found the inside was coated in a poultice. Poultices were a lot like the potions from healing bottles, if a little stronger and for a longer healing process. They were made with an actual herbal recipe, placed inside a Runically engraved pot and left to infuse with essence for at least six months, with new essence being added whenever the enchantment was drained.
Only a dedicated Runesmith focused on healing enchantments could make a poultice - which was certainly neither of us, or Boone. Still, there was a benefit in that a poultice could heal more serious wounds effectively. I remembered that the Winter wolf that had had me on my back had torn into my stomach and practically bitten through my arm. I hoped against hope that whatever healing had been applied wasn't the same sort of flash healing that had left me with the scar around my neck.
I started frantically digging at the bandages, pulling them away from my body to see what lay beneath, my heart racing. When I saw the wounds - or what was left of them, I did have a moment of horror at seeing how bad they must have been, but I also found that they could have been much worse. On my stomach, a series of silvery lines of scars were nearly invisible unless you looked closely, and though the new skin was a different colour to the tan of the rest of me, I hoped that with enough sun, they'd be hard to notice. My arm was similar, but the puncture wounds had become slightly sunken round scars with a slightly rough texture. Mia saw me looking, and decided to clarify.
“When the healer arrived, he wanted to heal you quickly, so that you could be ready to fight again, but it would have been…bad. The wolf tore into you pretty bad. I…’Cadia you nearly died, and your stomach was a mess. It would have looked horrible.” She looked at the scar around my neck briefly while her face went a horrid mix of green and pale white. “But it would have been cheap. We would have still had some Crystals. I told him to take anything he needed to make sure you were healed fully, and the skeleton eventually produced the poultice, but told me it would cost us all our rewards, including most of what we’d get going forward. It would also be slow - so we’d have to fight without you. But…I didn't want you to be that badly scarred. Boone didn't either. He practically tore the skeletons’ bones to pieces with his telekinesis, threatening him and trying to fix you. Did we do okay?”
I reached forward and grabbed my sister in a hug, bleary eyed from relieved tears. Scars were common in the Divide. Injuries from monsters happened often, and potions could only do so much. Better healing required rare and higher level abilities. I didn't doubt that three demi-god-like entities and an actual Goddess had access to things that could heal us perfectly, but everything also came with a cost. I could live with a few shallow scars, and I would repay Mia and Boone for helping me, but I dreaded to think what cost would have been extracted for perfect healing.
I suddenly realised I hadn't seen my friend yet, and felt down our link to find him deeply asleep. Somewhere close, but not immediately so. “Where's Boone!?” I tried to yell, but my voice only came out as a dry crack, and Mia was forced to get me a proper glass of water as I began to cough.
“Boone is better than either of us: He fights at range. He’s just sleeping. He used up all his Essence in the last challenge.”
“But I fought the Wolves. He was recovering. You were asleep.” I rubbed at my head, confused, and sipped at the water carefully, practically having to massage my throat with each swallow.
“Yes, you did. You also took all the Ability Crystals from the first treasure.” She glared at me at that, but it was half hearted. “Boone and I took the next challenge and chose quantity.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “We had to fight giant centipedes made of bone. Hundreds of blades. They were…very strong. But, we won…sort of. we even have all five gold crystals to move onto their boss now.” She smiled at me, but there was pain and a lack of confidence in the expression.
“Sort of?” I had to know why Boone wasn't here. It was very weird to be apart from him when I woke up. It was weirder still for him to be asleep when I wasn't. Usually that only happened when one of us was sick or injured, or as we found out in the Courage Trial, when one of us needed to be on watch.
“Well, Boone actually did most of the work. Destroyed them with telekinetic bullets at first, and by the end was smashing broken ones into whole ones. But by that point we were so injured I couldn't even stand up, and my health was about bottomed out.” She looked at her bandages through her one uncovered eye, and I really looked at her now. There were few places that weren't covered in at least one poultice infused bandage, and I winced at how much all of that must of hurt. Then I remembered that I was pretty much the same and winced for myself. There had been something wrong with me in that fight. Even counting breaking the fear aura, there should have been a point where I did get scared. But there wasn't. I had been angry and fearless and practically suicidal. I needed to figure out what had happened in there - because that was the second time I'd dispelled a fear effect and had ended up as a rage monster. Something told me that wasn't how the Ability from [Dawnslight] was meant to work.
“That was when the Minotaur came into the changing room. He looked nervous when he saw us all banged up. He blustered for a few minutes about 'valiant combat', then he ‘rewarded’ us by calling for a healer. I think he was making it up though. i think if he wasn't made of metal he would have been sweating. I think he forgot we were supposed to have had one on hand, honestly. Seems weird to have a rest if we can't heal.” that…made too much sense not to be a thing. Most likely we could trade rewards for healing between fights if we needed it and Minos had completely forgotten to mention it, being as caught up in his own narrative as he seemed to be. The other guardians seemed to be much more stable and assured, much more mysterious and wise, or mysterious and creepy in the Lions’ case, but Minos seemed more like a kid playing dress up. Undoubtedly he was old and powerful, but he said himself that he usually did other things for Kintsuji. I wondered what those tasks were, and also why the first Trial Master was, apparently, ‘not here'.
“So we basically got screwed over by the Minotaur, and now he's making things up to cover his ass.”
“I know what most of those words mean. ‘Cadia, when you talk like that, I can really believe you used to be someone else. What's ‘Screwed’ mean?” I suddenly realised that despite have polyamorous parents, Mia had grown up sheltered, and our parents had never really talked about physical relationships with us, claiming we’d ‘find out when we were older’, and on top of that, Earth slang just didn't work without the cultural context that came with it - something that Axis mostly lacked. Some things were similar, even some species were shared between the worlds, but nothing could really make up for a few thousand years of cultural language development. Unfortunately, all I could really do was follow in my parents’ example, stating: “I’ll tell you when you're older. So, what now? Did we pass the trial? Fail it? Do we still need to fight?”
“That’s a little…unclear right now. Minos said he had to go talk to someone and then left us here…”
—---------------------------------------------------------------------
Her children were Idiots, Kintsuji decided. Well meaning idiots, perhaps, but idiots nonetheless. One had proven to be…overenthusiastic. Their terror tactics had nearly ruined everything, and they were forced to use the emergency recovery room, and claim that was ordinary. One had performed admirably for the first couple of hours, then grown bored and nearly thrown everything away for personal entertainment, and then even worse had struck a deal and given out a stone for free - and not even the stone she was meant to give out!
And Minos…at 900 years, he was young for a Great Spirit, but with the Great Bear attempting a solo mission on the other end of the Multiverse, Kintsuji had been loathe to recall him and her youngest - second youngest now, she thought with a snort - had been requesting more responsibility for years now, but when given the chance had completely ruined the entire trial and reduced it to an - almost - deadly game-show.
Now her anchor points were even left alone in the Trial, injured and beaten down, true, but even they currently considered the whole Trial to be some kind of joke. Currently, her children were gathered in the first room of the Dungeon, in their human guides, while Kintsuji sat before them in judgement, her youngest unconscious and gathered in her lap, where he was recovering from complete essence burn-out. If Boone wasn't soul linked to Arcadia, there was a very good he would be dead, and that really would have ruined everything.
“I have been watching, and if it wasn't for the fact that I've had some…exceptionally disturbing news concerning this planet and the work we need to do here, and you have all tried very hard to ruin my only current anchor points on this world!"
The three Trial Masters bowed their heads and had the good grace to look embarrassed. Kintsuji sighed, and rubbed at her eyes with one gold veined hand. “The Trails are meant to be ceremonial. They are children for crying out loud! Do you think even an anomaly like Arcadia was ready for a full Core World Trial while effectively being eight years old!?” She snapped, and Boone stirred in her lap, whining in his sleep as his wounded Core slowly healed under her teasing essence. Core damage was almost entirely spiritual, rather than physical, and was much more difficult to heal in a speedy way than even the full atomisation she’d…accidentally…performed on the parents.
As a soul reached the higher ranks of progression, the physical world became easier to manipulate, trivial even for someone in the mid Celestium ranks like Kintsuji, but souls and spirits were a different story. Heck, even her Great Spirits weren't perfect creations, and lacked a true soul of their own. Kintsuji had tried using monster cores when she created her children. it wasn't until Boon that she thought to tie one of her Spirits to an already existing soul. hopefully, in a few centuries, it would lead to the proper breakthrough she needed to make her children whole.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Still, Kintsuji could only consider this her fault. She had seen an opportunity to embed her anchor points in the spiritual landscape of this world, which would have allowed her the same access as a native god for the time she was here, and had jumped on the opportunity - throwing together a slapdash ritual and hoping for the best.
“I don't mean to snap, darlings. But I need you to understand. We have come to this world under false pretences. While we have been building a foundation before approaching the Pantheon with a solution, we have been blind to just how bad this world has gotten.” Kintsuji sighed, before shaking out her wings and hair and rolling her shoulders to try and relieve some of the stress from meeting with the false Trickery god, Mischief.
Of course, she would need to independently verify, and contact the rest of the Pantheon, and most importantly, return to her ship and try to get a message through.
Like Mischief had said, her personal communications appeared to be blocked or scrambled further out than the planets’ atmosphere. Her personal vessel, however, had a far more robust communication array, and returning to the ship would allow her to access it physically. Hopefully that would allow her to punch through whatever jamming signal the moon was putting out.
That was the truly worrisome thing though. If those defences on the moon were real, and not an elaborate ruse by Mischief - and Kintsuji considered herself old enough to not fall for a Trickery Gods' plays quite so easily - then this planet, no, this whole system, had been hiding secrets for millions of years, and if anyone in the Bureaucracy knew, they hadn't seen fit to tell Kintsuji.
“What would you have us do, Mistress?” The Rainbow Serpent, Quetz, bowed low, her long ruff of feathers trailing across the floor with how low to the ground she placed herself. Kintsuji sat, and allowed her only daughter to prostrate herself until it must have become uncomfortable while she ran fingers through the fur of her youngest creation. What to do indeed?
The trials were very nearly ruined. Without Brutus to hold her more rambunctious and spontaneous children in check, they were as much a liability as a strength in an endeavour like this. They would be much more useful if allowed to operate openly, but this situation was going to become delicate very soon. it was best for now to keep them contained to the trials until Kintsuji could create dedicated Masters.
“We need to finish the trials, and we need to salvage something from the Stone you gave to the sister. I was setting her up as an assassin and a guard dog for Arcadia when she eventually graduates from a ripple in the pond to a tidal wave, but the Dragonfly stone you threw into the mix skews her development in a different way - powerful, yes, but far too flashy for an assassin.” Kintsuji rose from her shadow throne, cradling the unconscious fox in one white marble arm, and began to pace. Moving helped to stimulate her thoughts and stop her dwelling on what had already gone wrong. “Minos, what were you planning for the final parts of your Trial? You clearly had something in mind if the Aspirants had actually managed to fight their way through your encounters.”
The steel Minotaur looked chastened, and scraped at the back of his neck with the sound of steel on steel creating a squeal in the domed room. “I was planning the final combat to be against a steel bull, throw a little of myself into the trial. It breaks the theme but, you know, undead have never really been my thing. They'd get their fifth stone from that. Then into the fight with the original Dungeon Boss - the zombie Chimera you kept when you took over. That would have given them the essence to forge their classes.
“And how, exactly, were you planning on them surviving a steel bull? Their tactics and powers are already badly matched against undead - constructs and machines are something that aren't even native to this age. The sister wouldn't even know what one was!” Kintsuji snapped, and had to physically reel herself back from a precipice of real anger at the Great Spirit. He was trying - sometimes a little too trying - but Kintsuji had perhaps put a little too much on his shoulders at such a young age. Kintsuji called to the Dungeon Core and it obediently floated towards her, already so nice and tame. The story about the gods being gone could be entirely possible just by how Fallow this core had been allowed to grow - it has had millennia of stored up Essence inside of it when Arcadia had fallen through the roof - part of the reason she had survived in the first place - and had nearly been feral. But Kintsuji had dealt with far worse creatures than a dungeon core that didn't want to do its job. Now it was nicely whipped, and ready to obey. Kintsuji checked on the level of the zombie Chimera and winced. It was nearly a stone ranked beast from the glut of essence it had received even in its storage state, and Minos hadn't even checked. It would have turned the two children in this trap into paste.
“Minos, I'm sorry I seem to have given you too much responsibility too quickly. This is truly my fault, I should have run this first Trial myself. You are a good boy, but what you had planned would have killed both the mortals we really need to stay alive for now. No, we need to change things, make it a fair challenge - but still a challenge. It has to be enough to qualify either of the girls for the World Achievement for a first Champion. That will start a cascade effect that should start to push this world in the right direction…”
Kintsuji lapsed into silence as she teased the inner workings of the Dungeon Core to open to her and she began to poke and prod with gossamer tendrils of essence, making changes and plans to the third trial. After this, she would have to make new Trial Masters anyway. Her core crew were too important given the state of this worlds’ essence circuits to waste away in the first Dungeon she converted. Once she had this one finalized, and her anchor was properly embedded, Kintsuji would have to send them out into the world to capture dungeons and make both Trails and Temples. She would have to convince what passed for the Pantheon to do the same. If the rest of the Iridium Immortals were also using death masks to access the reserves of the old gods, then that was a finite supply without external generation. But if they started raising temples and trials for their own use…Kintsuji mused. Frankly, what she really needed was a Mana Fusion warhead, a couple of battleships with siege drills, and a few divisions of Immortals to flood the moon once they managed to crack the shield. At the moment, what she had was herself, her spirits, two nine year olds, and maybe a couple of squads of Immortals who had been out of their depth for a long time with no support. Kintsuji sighed and went back to dungeon design while the caves around her began to rumble. She created passages, and climbing walls, blade traps and balance beams over pits, places for archers to hide and small platforms for show piece fights. The dungeon core cried out in muted resistance as Kintsuji completely warped it's caves and internal structures - basically its body - but it was not strong enough or feral enough to raise a proper resistance. Finally, at the end of her improvised assault course, she created a boss room with a more level appropriate Chimera to fight. It wasn't perfect, and it would need work adjusting the other two trials with new Guardians to run them at an appropriate level, but it was better than her first attempt, and would serve the purposes of an epic tale to activate the global achievement system. Now, she would just have to convince the two girls she had rather let down so far to do this last thing for her. They would need rewards, and motivation. Honestly, Kintsuji really hated dealing with children and Mortals. But she kept doing it, anyway. She sighed. Some parts of being a mortal never faded no matter how old and strong someone grew.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------
The rumbling and the groaning of the dungeon started to die down, and became just slightly aftershocks felt through the soles of our feet, and I let go of the bolted bench I had had in a death grip since the whole room had started to bounce and shake and throw dust from the ceiling.
Mia and I had just about managed to removed all the infused bandages from our bodies to find unblemished skin, or at worst, barely visible, silvery scars where before there had been vicious wounds. The magic of the poultices also dulled the memory of the wounds themselves, and I could look at my stomach and only look clinically at the memory of the Winter Wolf pack leader tearing its claws into my guts again and again while I tried desperately to choke it to death. The magic made it more like something I’d seen in a movie, still disturbing but in a distant way.
I was just about to comment on how amazing I found it all, when the room had shuddered and began to move and bounce, throwing Mia and I around so hard we had opened new bruises and cuts to replace the ones we had only just gotten rid of.
“What in the thousand Hells was that!?” I cried out, copying a phrase I'd heard the adventurers at the sunken pyramid had taught me. Across the room, Mia was just picking herself up and dusting herself off. Neither of us had been wearing our Armour - or even many of our clothes as we had been about to dress.
“No idea. Wasn't fun though…ow.” Mia was holding her side and I could already see a welt forming where she had smacked into the side of a bench when she fell. I hoped, with her Body Attribute, however, that it wouldn’t have broken a rib just from that.
“My Apologies, Aspirants.” The Booming voice of Minos assaulted our ears before the Minotaur himself emerged from the floor. He was carrying a very uncomfortable looking Boone in his hands, who struggled until he slipped from the Minotaurs’ steel arms, and scrambled on the floor until he was running into my arms, where I pulled the fox into a comforting embrace for both of us. “My Mother in her wisdom has decided to change the challenge for this Trial. She wishes to offer compensation for the inconvenience. She will of course meet with you if you wish to make a complaint - you are the first to run the Challenge after all. I have also been instructed to offer my own apologies for the…” he groaned and looked like he was forcing words from between his teeth, like a kid apologising for breaking a window with a thrown ball, “the unprofessionalism of my Trial, and am to offer personal reward for your efforts until now.”
“Are we allowed to leave, then, if we have complaints?” I asked as the Minotaur laid down four large Ability Crystals and turned to sink back in to the floor. The Minotaur sighed and looked at a spot in the ceiling with a glare.
“No,” he said regretfully. “Kintsuji has told me she will tell you more as to why when you finish this last part of the Trial, but she did say if you asked that it is exceptionally important that you, specifically, finish this trial - and even better if your sister does too.”
“Why? We’re just kids.” Mia asked the twelve foot tall bull man. It was the first time i had heard her speak up to the Spirit, but there was none of the fear in her voice from dealing with the Lion. She just sounded tired, and angry. “I just want to go home.”
“You are important to the plans of the Goddess to fix this world. You are to be the pebble in the pond - and so much depends on this first step.” With that, he faded into the floor, but his demeanour almost looked beaten, like he was a child that had been roundly rebuked by a parent, and I wondered if Kintsuji really had disapproved of the dungeon as its Trial Masters had run it. Still, considering she created the dungeon in the first place, I didn't know how that could be.
When he was gone, I forced myself to my feet and set Boone on his paws. “I do not like this family, Arcadia. I do not find myself having much in common with them at all.” Boone frowned at where the Minotaur had disappeared, and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace.
“Well, it's a good thing you don't need them, then. You have us, and soon you'll have mum and our dad's as well. You’re my family, and if you don't want to associate with that lot, you don't have to.” The fox stood on his hind paws and climbed his way up my body until we were face to face. I ruffled his fur and scratched behind his ears.
“Thank you, Arcadia. I think the same of you. That lot are all crazy. At least you come with Bacon included.” I laughed and kissed him between the eyes, before grabbing a handful of bacon rashers from the travellers bag and feeding them to my little glutton.
Mia had also walked up and put a hand on the Foxes' head, careful to avoid the teeth and tongue desperately seeking fried meat slices, and she smiled up at me, tired but determined.
“If there's no way out but through, we should probably get to it, shouldn't we? Try not to almost die on me again, okay? It's a really bad feeling and I will kick you.” She laughed, but without any true mirth in it, then handed me one of the Ability Crystals. “You took all of the first lot, and we spent the second lot to heal. This is only fair.” I looked down at the crystal in my hand and Identified it, my eyebrows raising as I did so.
Ability crystal: Wood 10
The Ability Crystal I was handed was by far the biggest one I had ever seen, inside this dungeon or otherwise. In a city like Eto it would be worth a fortune, as in the lower ranks it practically guaranteed a level in a skill, unless the skill was over level 5 already. If the other three were of the same strength, we had just been handed enough to purchase a small apartment. In another life I would have dithered on whether we should use them, but there was only one way out of our current situation: through it. I jammed the crystal into my mouth and bit down, feeling the gagging feeling of liquid being forced down my throat before it became an electric tingle that passed throughout my body.
Ability Crystal Detected. Applying Upgrades. Mind Attribute Levels Up: [Wood 1 0/3] > [Wood 2 0/5]
I felt my mind Burn, and new ways of thinking, at new speeds and in new directions, were etched into the creases of my brain. Then I felt my Core absorb a tonne of the excess Essence and expand. I felt like my Essence Capacity doubled. If it had been one hundred points, it felt more like two hundred now. All of my Receptacles grew by a fraction as well, allowing me to store more essence in each. Most of the spare Essence, however, completely overflowed my Receptacle and disappeared into the ether - wasted. It was unfortunate, and I do not know why the System was set up like that. Mum had always said the excess from the stones was the tax of the gods that created the System. Heck, maybe they were right. Increasing my mind was pretty much the perfect thing for me, the look on Mias’ face was rapturous. After three stones, each flooding her abilities, it looked like something massive had changed for her. “Mia? Did you unlock something good?”
“Yes. Good, very good. I received two levels in Body, and one in my shards ability. Arcadia, I unlocked my first gate and my first Attribute Evolution!”