The Cervidian Woods were not always calm and they were rarely safe. The hunters who prowled its outer regions did so at their own peril but they knew their trade. They knew the beasts they hunted and the beasts that hunted them. Men and women with the skills to venture into the wilderness and come back with the spoils of a good hunt did so every week. They were brave for it took courage to face creatures that could and would happily make the hunters into their next meal.
Yet for all the skills and bravery the hunters possessed, they were still only hunters. They hunted animals, not monsters. A monster could look like an animal and many did but to ignore the difference was to die. A monster was a creature suffused with mana, sometimes born of mana. They rarely bore the same instincts of survival that other creatures did and often held a preternatural hatred for whatever they encountered. They followed no rules nor natural laws save that of mana itself which just as often produced indiscriminate killing machines as anything else.
When these terrifying creatures crawled from the depths of the Cervidian Woods and fell upon a camp of travelers, it was sure to be a horrifying display. Men and women would be hacked apart, torn to pieces, and left for dead as a gruesome reminder of what end so often befell the weak in a den of monsters. It was a fate all but guaranteed unless that camp of travelers was full of adventurers.
Rory had only gotten one word to the sleeping camp before getting taken in the chest by the black, cleaver-like slab of metal. That one word was enough. Kseniya slithered out of her tent, scepter in hand. The snake woman saw the boar man on the ground and immediately formed an umbrella of magic with her scepter and pointed it at the direction the metal projectile came from.
Duncan was out of his tent and somehow fully dressed in his plate armor despite the impossibility of the act. It had to be a skill. He was taking up a protective stance over his brother with his shield and battle axe. Nyx zipped out of her tent keeping low to the ground and jumped behind the lamia’s magical shield.
After Rory was knocked by down by the metal blade, three more were thrown in quick succession at Brivaria. A beat of the angel’s wings put her in the air to avoid all of them. She watched the group assemble from above. Pebbles appeared in her fists and she infused them all with mundane light spells. Shadows vanished and the woods lit up as she flung them outward in the direction the attack came from.
“Bird girl, my brother,” Duncan shouted. The angel landed next to Rory as Kseniya released a barrage of green bolts toward their attackers. The boar man who’d been struck in the surprise attack calmly put a hand on the slab of metal embedded in chest and pulled it out. The attack wasn’t even close to lethal for the bronze-rank adventurer but Brivaria used Healing Touch to refill his health anyway. The wound vanished and Rory grunted a thank you to the angel. It had been his watch so the warrior’s mace and shield lay nearby. He took them up and joined his brother in the defense of the camp.
“Come on you bastards, you messed with the wrong lot this night and it’ll be your last,” Duncan shouted at the forest. His voice all but shook the trees in its volume. It was a direct challenge to the monsters and they accepted.
Brivaria saw them coming. A few were already in the light cast by her pebbles and more came behind them. The things that emerged from the forest were disfigured abominations of rock, clay, wood, and some kind of black metal. Some were vaguely person-shaped but many were not. It was like a golem-smith attempted to create golems resembling people from different material but given up at different points on each. Some were looked to be nearly fully formed with arms, legs, and even a quasi-human torso. Others possessed additional legs and arms while yet a select few were missing such limbs. Some walked, some ambled along on incomplete or mismatched limbs, and some just crawled.
“Manaspawn. They’re not alive. They’re constructs so break their bodies,” the angel shouted as she drew her sword and launched into the air. Bleak Radiance infused her shield causing it to shine while Withering Ray was channeled into her sword. These weren’t normally formed monsters, they were mana discharge gone awry. They were no different than fleshspawn except for their makeup and the amount of mana that produced them.
“Oh,” was all Kseniya could say as she watched her green bolts harmlessly hit the living-yet-unliving monsters. “Nyx, I will be taking down my shield, I think. I will have to change strategies.” Nyx looked up to see Kseniya’s scepter change from its forward-facing, magic umbrella to a giant hammer. The lamia slithered forward alongside the boar brothers to meet the horde.
“Ha!” Rory shouted while bringing his mace down on the nearest rock-type manaspawn. The brief glow of a skill turned the heavy strike into something far more devastating and the construct shattered completely from the blow. “It’s like fighting the Rockwar only without the lizard parts.” The moment of joy was short-lived as two more manaspawn replaced the one he just destroyed.
The angel watched Nyx attempt to use some kind of claw skill on a hardened-clay monster to no avail. The swipe only stole a little of its momentum as it continued barreling at the cat woman. A golden ball of fur slammed into it from the side and knocked it off course. The monster went sprawling onto the ground and the angel landed squarely on its chest. Brivaria drove her sword through its body. Glowing blue fluid emerged from the chest wound and Brivaria held the creature down, letting the withering effect on her sword finish it off.
“Nyx, focus on the wood ones. They’re most vulnerable to your claws. Avoid the others.” The angel’s words were clear. She was calm and collected despite the situation. The winged girl launched into the air and surveyed the battle once more.
Her allies were doing well but some foes were moving to flank them. Brivaria cast Withering Ray on four of the clay manaspawn clever enough to encircle the group. The things could be incredibly hard to injure depending on what material they were made up of but the magic that animated them was especially vulnerable to her decaying magic. Where a properly made golem or construct had an elegant network of flowing mana that was resilient to interruption and damage, these things were just barely functional. They were haphazard, unstable creations that were thus easily disrupted.
Trixie was a golden ball of chaos on the battlefield as the dog simply bounced off monster after monster. Most people had trouble avoiding being bowled over by a heavy dog running at full speed so the inelegant constructs of haywire mana didn’t stand a chance. Monster after monster toppled which both slowed their advance and gave valuable openings. Duncan, Rory, and Kseniya were pulverizing anything that got near them. If Trixie knocked something over within their reach, it was done for.
While the trio of high level adventurers took down the majority of the manaspawn, Brivaria focused on isolated targets. Anything far enough away from the others to let her safely dive onto it and strike with her sword was fair game. The monsters were far too solid to cut with her thin blade so she resorted to thrusting attacks. Sometimes her sword pierced her target thanks in large part to her deadly light magic and sometimes it scraped their bodies doing no outward damage but delivering a pulse of deadly, withering magic.
It was only while doing this did Brivaria even notice Silas in the fight. The reason she noticed the human was because he got to one of the fringe manaspawn before she did. The reporter simply appeared behind the monster, jammed something into its back, and then stepped away before a flailing backhand could connect. The reporter didn’t exactly vanish or turn invisible but he became indistinct, harder for the eyes to follow.
Brivaria had seen high level scoundrels and rogues in combat before. They moved silently and left terrifying wounds in their wake. They were rarely anyone’s first choice in a team but, against unthinking monsters such as these, Silas was every bit as devastating as Duncan. The reporter struck silently, quickly, and the angel could see a dozen manaspawn bearing evidence of the man’s passing. While not nearly as flashy as Kseniya’s magical hammer, it was just as effective. Each injured construct was a single blow away from destruction making everyone else’s jobs that much easier. The reporter very had much undersold his abilities back at the inn for certain.
The problem soon came in the form of manaspawn that didn’t easily break. Mixed into the horde were constructs made of a black metal and they were just as tough as the black material of which they were comprised. These were the manaspawn that had injured Rory at the start of the battle. They were walking boulders of black metal with arms that ended in cleavers.
One of them swung at Duncan and he stepped back to avoid the blow. The cleaver detached when it missed and flew off to the side. Kseniya cried out in pain as the flying blade struck her. Duncan cursed and slammed the thing with his shield to no effect. The gaborn had the skills to break rock but those skills were not suited to these foes. The sorceress slithered back and Brivaria came down to heal her. The boar brothers were holding off the remaining manaspawn but they weren’t winning.
The angel winced at the mana cost but decided to cast Luminous Desecration. The decaying magic worked well on the things and they needed to soften up the metal monsters. She wanted more sources of Bleak Radiance and this was the biggest, best source she could provide. It was also the most mana-hungry. The angel mentally waved goodbye to 20 points of mana as the spell completed. The entire area began to glow.
The angel then vaulted over the group of metal monsters with a flap of her wings. The ground glowed with brilliant, strength-stealing magic as did her shield and even her body. Her glowing sword drove toward one of the metal monsters and glanced off its body but she felt the withering magic seep into her target. Another turned and lunged at her. Trixie jumped and bounced off the monster but the angel saw the dog’s paws slightly crumple the metal. She smiled.
“Use skills now! My light is weakening them,” she shouted at her allies from the other side of the manaspawn. The boar brothers went into motion, battering the monsters with skills. Nyx followed Trixie’s example and went for the legs of the walking boulders. The cat’s combat skill couldn’t shatter their bodies, even when they were weakened, but Nyx could and did knock legs out from under the things.
The end of the fight wasn’t a grand sight or especially dramatic. It was just a handful of adventurers following the age old rule of “if it moves, keep hitting it until it stops moving.” Every fallen monster got a few more swings for good measure to break them apart further and ensure they were well and truly dead. Brivaria used Healing Touch on each party member to ensure everyone was at full strength afterward. No one was seriously injured but Brivaria winced inwardly at the realization that she’d spent nearly 70 mana. Of all the angelic virtues she liked to think she possessed, restraint was not one of them apparently.
“Well done, lads and lasses. Aside this fool getting knocked on his arse,” Duncan punched Rory’s shoulder as he spoke, “that was a good showing. Monsters are dead and we’re not.” The boar then swept his gaze across the group.
“From the top. Snake, your green missiles were useless against those things and your combat form is sloppy. You need more spells or more training with that scepter of yours.” Kseniya frowned at Duncan but he simply moved on.
“Silas, you’re a damned ghost. That’s fine. If we can’t see you then you need to see us. It’s waste if to have you, bird girl, and Rory all spending skills on the same monster. Pick targets better.” Silas nodded his head.
“Cat. Nice work knocking the damn things over. Pick more offensive skills.” Nyx blinked as though she’d expected more. She spoke up.
“Wait, that’s it?” the catfolk girl asked.
“Yes, that was your first real battle, right? You didn’t freeze up or do anything particularly stupid. I’ve seen men lose their nerve against far smaller, far weaker foes. The fact that you were mildly helpful is even better.” Duncan’s words earned a sour look from Nyx. It was a compliment, if a back-handed one. Despite the girl’s sour expression, her tail had steadily been rising. Brivaria smiled and waited for the surly boar to grade her performance.
“Rory, you’re an idiot. Good job not dying.” The other boar brother laughed and grinned. The angel wondered if that was praise or not.
“Bird girl. Tell that dog of yours that it did good work. Now let’s get our camp fixed. Some of us want to go back to sleep before our timers reset,” the gaborn shouted. Brivaria’s wings drooped at the fact she’d not received a grading on her performance from the gaborn. She then shook her head at her own childishness. This was a trivial encounter that just a month ago she could have solved with a single skill. The angel put such thoughts aside and got to work along with the rest of the group.
Where fleshspawn all but disintegrated upon being defeated, the manaspawn simply collapsed. As constructs, once they were suitably damaged their bodies lost their motive force. The flow of mana that animated them ceased to do so. The result was a bunch of very frightening, corpse-looking things made of wood, clay, rock, and so on. Where they differed from their golem counterparts was that manaspawn bled.
“Trixie no,” Brivaria said as she saw the dog licking the bright, blue liquid coming from one of the things. While the glowing goo wasn’t pure mana, it was something close to it. It was also tainted. This was one byproduct of unstable magic. Whatever spell or intent lay behind the failed magic lingered within thus contaminating the blue goo.
“She has a good idea, I think. I’m going to take some for study. You never know what could be handy,” Kseniya said, having also noticed the dog begin to lick up the blue goop just before Brivaria’s scolding.
“Please be careful,” the angel advised, “it’s not harmless. It carries the intent of whatever force created it. Since we don’t know what that intent is or was, it would be very dangerous to use it.”
“I suspected as much but it can be studied and potentially purified. I have several bottles meant to hold spell components but perhaps…” Kseniya looked at the angel and Brivaria knew where this was going. Just like the chalice from the dungeon near Keaton, the safest place for anything dangerous or unstable was a certain winged girl’s inventory.
“Okay, collect what you want and I’ll store it.” The angel was pretty certain she’d become a pack mule if this kept up. At least she was training the Inventory skill with aggressive and frequent use. On a related note, she had a familiar and consolidated notification.
You have reached level 24.
Gained +5 Physique, +3 Endurance, +4 Arcane, +5 Spirit, +2 Awareness, +5 Presence.
Gained two new skill selections.
Brivaria was exceedingly pleased. The levels were still coming quickly despite having gotten her second class advancement. If they could find a few more packs of manaspawn then maybe she could get to her next class advancement before the week was through. Things were looking up.
Name: Brivaria
Race: Angel
Class: Sky Dancer
Level: 24
Stats: Health 51/56, Mana 20/102, Stamina 49/72
Attributes: Physique 44, Endurance 28, Arcane 48, Spirit 51, Awareness 28, Presence 53
Active Skills: Healing Touch, Holy Bulwark, Sky Step, Tailwind
Passive Skills: Inventory, Lesser Flight, Lesser Shapeshifting, Lingering Decay, Rest, Traits (Angel)
Magic: Light of Decay
Unspent Skill Points: 2