Logging out of Elderpyre had never felt this pleasant before. One moment, Hunter was barely keeping it together from all the stress and pain. The next, Alex was waking up in his bed, pain-free and comfortable. What’s more, it was only late afternoon. For the first time in quite some time, Alex wasn’t in a rush to log back in. So he ate a big lunch, spent some time in the yard, exercised a bit, played a few hands of poker and chatted a bit with Bob the cafeteria guard until officer Carpenter came in for a cup of coffee and gave them both an earful, got back to his room, and had a long, hot shower.
He was about to turn in early when he noticed the time. Packman and Aries and the gang would probably be getting ready for one of their weekly raids right now. He walked over to his room’s telephone, dialed zero, and asked the guard on the other side of the line whether he could call Packman.
“Sure,” said the bored-sounding man, “but be aware that your call will be recorded and screened for… you know, any number of things you shouldn’t be talking about. You okay with that?”
He was. He gave the guard Packman’s contact info and waited for his friend to pick up.
“Go for Packman,” Alex heard him say, and his heart sank.
“Hey there Pack. It’s Alex.”
“Alex? What the hell happened? We’ve been trying to reach you, but they said they were moved to another place. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I took a plea deal and got transferred to a… well, to a minimum-security place. Everything’s fine.”
“Glad to hear it mate, you got us all worried over here.”
There was an awkward pause, as Alex wasn’t certain what to say.
“So… What are you guys up to? Are you on a raid?”
“Same old same old, they’ve updated Blackwater Spires with new content and we’re about to go take a look. Wish you were with us.”
“That makes two of us. Say, is Aries online, too?”
“Yeah, let me get you both on speakerphone so you can talk to her, too.”
“Alex!” Aries said a few seconds later, her voice slightly distorted. “Where the hell are you? We had to do Greystone Keep without you!”
“Glad to hear you too, Aries,” Alex said, and he meant it. “How are things without me?”
“Oh, you know. Predictable, for once. No hairbrained schemes.”
“So, boring?”
“Yes, a little bit,” she laughed. “Not that I’d expected I’d ever say that. How are you doing?”
“I’m well. I was just telling Packman. I took a plea deal and will do a little time, but it’s not all bad. I just wish I could spend time with you guys. I missed you.”
He wished he could tell them all about Elderpyre, or, even better, explore Aernor with them at his side.
They talked for a few minutes and only hung up when his allotted phone call time ran out. Alex wished he’d called them sooner. They were more or less his only tie to the outside world, the real real world.
And he’d missed them a ton.
He went to sleep with a lighter heart. He had a great evening, much better than getting smacked in the face and ribs with ancient corpses by a hulking mutant gorilla zombie-thing. He hadn’t realized how much he needed a change of pace.
He woke up just after dawn–his internal clock had started to get used to it–and logged right back in. Predictably, he materialized in the same spot he was where he’d logged out the previous day. Not so predictably, Fawkes, Fyodor, and the Brethren were nowhere to be found.
He was alone, trapped in a pitch-black vault with six dancing mummies and what looked like a fancy coat hanger–which probably was a dangerous artifact of some kind. The only silver lining in all of this was the one his Low-Light Vision cast around the objects in the vault, saving him the abject horror of being unable to see. That, and the fact that his wounds were mostly healed. His ribs felt bruised and his nose was still completely numb, but at least there was no pain.
All in all, not great, not terrible.
The Kannewik paid absolutely no attention to him. That was good. They didn’t even seem to be aware of his presence, or anything else for that matter. They just danced in a circle, same as they’d done for centuries. His poncho, tunic, glaive, and backpack had been left lying in a tidy pile next to him, which was a good sign; it meant Fawkes hadn’t left in a hurry or somehow forgotten him, and he was pretty sure she wouldn’t just abandon him locked up in there.
Much as he disliked the idea, what he should do was sit tight and wait till Fawkes and the others came back. They’d probably gone to scout ahead or secure a safe route or something along those lines. He had no reason to worry. They could take care of themselves just fine, those three, right? Better than he could, probably.
Looking for a way to keep his mind busy, he decided to check his notifications from the previous day. He had a buttload of them to comb through; between the whole fighting low-creatures and being unconscious, hadn’t had a chance to check them at all.
Most of it was combat log stuff; him dealing some damage, him taking some damage, him bleeding out like a stuck pig. Then there were the Skill and Ability increases–those were the interesting parts. His Close Combat and Pole Mastery were now at 17 and 16, his Evasion at 4, and his Low-Light Vision at a whopping 19–that was 9 whole ranks worth of Ability growth.
His Conjure Familiar had climbed all the way to 17, too, and his Augmented Familiar to 14. That was to be expected; Biggs and Wedge had put in some serious overtime spamming Ill Omen and pelting the low-ogre with curses. He was glad he’d chosen to keep investing in them.
What he had not expected was to see there was a new Ability available to him–one aptly called Toughness.
This was huge; not only did it sound solid, it was also a gamechanger for the way he got access to new Abilities. Until now, he’d only gotten them whenever his Insight quality increased, or, in the case of Survival and Wildcrafting, when he got one of his skills high enough. Toughness, however, he’d gotten through pure circumstance. It was like an achievement of sorts; he’d been beat up and kept going anyway, and gained access to an Ability related to just that.
Interesting.
Very interesting indeed.
After getting battered and beaten like that, higher Health and a higher pain threshold sounded too good to pass up. He’d gained two Inspiration points when he'd anchored himself to the Place of Power outside the Halls, and he’d sat on them long enough. Spending one to learn Toughness was a no-brainer.
That left him with another point of Inspiration, as well as 600 Aether to spend on his primary attributes. He’d been holding on those thus far for fear of ruining his character build, but he was starting to regret that decision.
He was in the middle of a dungeon–a high threat level dungeon, facing off with elite enemies–and was not in his best potential fighting form.
That was… not okay.
If he’d entered a raid like that back in his gaming days before Elderpyre, Packman would have given him an earful.
Again, it came down to game knowledge; the information the game offered about how skills and abilities worked–the meat and potatoes of things, like damage calculations and stuff–was scarce to non-existent. How was he supposed to know what to invest in?
For example, what attributes did his attacks scale off? How was it decided whether an attack was a hit or a miss or, even more importantly, a critical? How were the damage values calculated? How was his familiars’ Ill Omen success rate decided?
Sadly, barring pure speculation, there was no way to get any answer to those questions.
Well, that wasn’t strictly the case. He still had Mystic’s Eye, the ability that allowed information to simply pop up in his head, as if it had always been there. The knowledge it provided came at the steep price of nosebleeds, migraines, and who knows what else, but it was an invaluable tool.
Still, the information he had gained through it so far was mostly fluff and filler. Side-effects or no side-effects, he had to make it a priority to increase its Ability ranks as much as possible when all that Vale business was over.
For now, he had to work with what he had at hand; speculation, educated guesses, and conjecture. He lit a torch he found in a sconce on the room’s wall–the gloom was beginning to get to him–and started asking himself some questions.
What was his top priority?
To make it out of his Elderpyre-fueled prison stint with his wits intact and with as little mental trauma as possible.
By suffering as few injuries and deaths as he could, though that hadn’t been something that he’d been exceptionally effective at so far.
And how would he manage that?
Easy.
One; he would try to stay out of trouble.
Two; if he absolutely had to get into trouble, he would try not to get hit.
Three; if he absolutely couldn’t avoid getting hit, he would try not to get hit hard.
Four; if he absolutely couldn’t avoid getting hit hard, he would try to be able to survive it.
And five; if he absolutely couldn’t avoid getting killed, he’d try to make his death count in some way, glean some kind of advantage from it.
Seeing how he was locked up in an ancient underground vault chock-full of monsters, dancing mummies, and dangerous artifacts, staying out of trouble was kind of out of the question–at least for the time being.
Letting Fawkes drag him along to investigate massacres and looking for lost friends in ancient burying grounds wasn’t exactly safe, either, but it was arguably safer than going his own way. Sooner or later he’d get in some kind of trouble, and the swordswoman wouldn’t be there to help him get out of it in one piece.
Not getting hit, on the other hand, was a sound strategy. He was already kind of doing his best; he had invested in his familiars, had gained a weapon with a long reach, had learned the Evade Skill, and was more or less trying to be tactical when he had the chance to.
Not getting hit hard, on the other hand… that was trickier. He would keep an eye out for some armor or a shield or something, sure. Other than that, the relevant options his skills and abilities gave him were close to none. If there was an obvious way to build his character like a brick wall in Elderpyre, he had yet to figure it out.
Surviving hard blows was a bit more straightforward. He’d already taken his fair share like a champ–so much, in fact, he had gained a special Ability to show for it. In this case, boosting his survivability was cut-and-dried. To be able to take more punishment before giving up the ghost, he’d have to boost his Health.
And as for getting killed… Well, he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Not again, or at least not anytime soon. Transient or not, the memories of pain and fear and dread were enough for him to shudder.
That was that, then. That’s where he should invest his Aether. But what about his Insight? He had one more skill he could learn on the spot, and half a dozen to choose from. Out of those, the ones that looked the most promising were Craft Spirit Charm and Mystical Phenomena. He pulled up the descriptions for both of those and took a look to refresh his memory.
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Both sounded equally useful, each one in its own way–and both descriptions were equally nebulous when it came to actual details. What’s more, both had some vague drawback: spirit charms infused with negative effects on one hand, unwanted attention on the other. Whoever had penned the wording of those descriptions should be flogged.
Mystical Phenomena sounded cooler, sure, but Craft Spirit Charm was the way to go if he wanted to play it safe. A charm with bad juju was one thing; drawing the attention of something that even vaguely related to “the laws of the cosmos” had some cosmic horror vibes Hunter had absolutely no intention of messing with. He was too genre-savvy for that.
Lacking any concrete information about those, he could weigh the pros and cons all day and not reach a decision. He might as well get done with it right away.
“Tiffany’s tits!” Hunter exclaimed, and his voice echoed in the vault chamber. The descriptions were a bit on the dubious side as always, but he had a gut feeling he had struck gold with this one. If Craft Spirit Charm worked the way he suspected it worked, it would be an excellent way to use all the dead thing parts and essences he’d been low-key hoarding.
Tasteful? No.
Creepy? Yes.
Worth it? Absolutely.
Anxious to try his new toys, Hunter rifled through his backpack, looking for potential materials he could use. He still had clumps of Blackbriar, Ancient Bones and Ancient Antlers from that shambler he’d fought when he first came to Elderpyre, Giant Spider Web, Glands, and Chitin Plates from the arachnid back in that barrow, and numerous pieces of Warped Flesh the low-dwellers had dropped. He also had essences from all of those creatures, wispy strands of spirit-stuff that were barely even solid.
He didn’t have the slightest idea what any of those materials did, or how rare and useful they were. He’d have to find out the old-fashioned way; trial and error. Trying to create a Bone Charm was as good a place to get started as any. Not too eager to waste any of those harder-to-get materials like the Essence of an Ancient Shambler, he decided to experiment with one of the half-dozen-or-so Ancient Bones and the more freely available Warped Flesh and low-dweller essences.
Unsure of how the specifics of the crafting process worked, he sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, gathered the materials in front of him, and summoned his essence.
Knowledge flooded his mind, same as back when he’d first tried to cast Conjure Familiar. It was instructions to a ritual that he felt he knew as intimately as the back of his hand, but had somehow forgotten and was just now starting to recall.
He’d trusted those strange impulses before and everything had gone well. Even more confident in them now, and reasonably so, he let them guide his actions and set to work on creating that Bone Charm.
First, he knew he had to create a transmutation circle, whatever that was. He cut his thumb on the edge of his glaive, mixed the blood with the dirty brown-gray wisp of non-matter that was the Essence of a Low-Dweller he had decided to use, and used the sticky paste those two produced as paint to draw the circle on the floor. It had to be perfect, or at least nearly so.
Hunter’s skills in arts and crafts hadn’t improved much since kindergarten. The most artistic thing he’d ever done was draw anatomically improbable penises on his school’s bathroom stall doors back when he still was a pimple-faced teenager. Still, he somehow managed to finger-paint an almost immaculate circle on his first attempt. It was as if an invisible hand was guiding him, making sure he wouldn’t mess it up. Then came the occult symbols; runes and sigils and triangles and curlicues, each one stranger and more mysterious than the next.
He felt his connection to the circle tug at his core and fill him with coldness and clarity that was almost glacial, and he knew this step of the crafting process was almost complete. Still guided by some otherworldly instinct, he took a knife from his backpack and grabbed the Ancient Bone. It was a weather-beaten human tibia, the shin bone of the dead huntsman whose remains had been encased within the shambler’s body.
Hunter started carving it, etching shapes and scratching off imperfections, giving it a shape that felt right. He was focused on the task with a fevered intensity that felt almost uncanny. It was a slow and deliberate process, but he was so absorbed that he hardly noticed.
Finally satisfied with the bone, he set it down in the circle and picked up a piece of Warped Flesh. It looked and felt like the world’s most disgusting meat jerky; Hunter could almost feel the energy trapped in it beating with its own pulse, whispering to him in a tiny voice and language that were far too alien for his limited mind to comprehend.
He poured some of his essence straight into the flesh and saw the muddy lines of the transmutation circle come alive with a weird radiance. It started melting into strands and wisps of luminous, tan-colored cotton candy, slowly wrapping itself around the carved Ancient Bone. Soon, there was nothing left of it.
“Hmmm. More.” Hunter heard a voice rasp–his own voice, he realized. “There is room for more.”
He repeated the process with another piece of Warped Flesh, and then another, and then another. When the fifth piece had dematerialized into thin wisps and seeped into the bone, he stopped. The Ancient Bone, now an almost finished charm, had reached its capacity for holding the energies of the low-dwellers’ flesh and essence. It was time for him to complete the process, tie any proverbial loose ends, and see what he’d manage to create.
Instinctively shaping his essence into a funnel, he drained every last drop of power the circle held and pushed into the bone, forming a seal that would make all the changes he’d made to it permanent. The seal on the back of his hand suddenly felt as if it had caught fire, but he was too engrossed in the process to even flinch.
Something was off, he could sense it. There was an unease gnawing at him, the same unease he got every time he saw a painting hang crooked on a wall. Still, there was nothing he could do to correct it. He had no idea how and it was probably too late, anyway. What was done was done. With a final push and a mental flourish, he cut the link to the circle.
A whole cascade of Skill and Ability Progression flooded the HUD on the top-right corner of his vision, confirming what he’d suspected all along; the Ancient Bone he’d used as a base for the charm must have been a very high-quality material, much higher than what a total Craft Spirit Charm newbie was expected to work with. Even being partially successful at completing the crafting process was enough to boost his Skills and Abilities through the roof.
Partial success or not, Hunter was exhilarated. It wasn’t just about the final product, the Bone Charm. The process itself, though exhausting, was… Well, he couldn’t describe it, not exactly.
There was something primal in that act of creation, in taking raw materials and turning them into something greater than the sum of its parts. It got his heart racing and his blood pumping and his brain full of sweet, sweet endorphins.
Like a runner’s high, but without all the running and sweating and chafing.
Smiling beside himself, he looked at the finished item in his hands, and then at the small pile of materials that was peeking from inside his backpack, all but begging to be turned into charms.
He had a lot of work to do.
First, however, he had to see what it was that he'd created. He took a breath, swept the sweat from his brow, and took the bone in his hands.
The charm itself was something horrendous; the carved bone had somehow taken on the appearance and texture of low-dweller flesh. It was rough and tan and and blotchy and unpleasantly warm to the touch. He could feel a slight aura emanating from it in waves, making the hair on his arms stand on end when he touched its oddly smooth surface.
‘Partial success’ probably meant that it had gained some negative effects along with the positive ones. Hunter was itching to try it and see what it did, even though every instinct he had, both gaming- and survival-wise, told him it was a bad idea.
He should probably put it away and test it later in a safe and controlled environment, or even have Fawkes take a look at it, or…
“Oh, who am I kidding?” Hunter thought and pushed a smidgen of his essence into the carved bone, activating it.
The effect was immediate; the eerie aura of the charm meshed with his own, and he felt his skin boil and stir and twist in grotesque ways it shouldn’t be able to. For a moment there, he was overtaken by the powerful, abject dread of body horror. He braced himself for the waves of unspeakable agony that were sure to follow, and then…
Nothing.
The moment passed, and Hunter was back to normal.
Well, almost normal. His skin had turned the blotchy and yellow-purple of an old bruise, and was now as hard as leather hide. His flesh and muscles had stiffened, too, and felt like big, dry pieces of meat jerky.
Curious, he checked the notifications that had appeared on his HUD.
Neither of those effects sounded particularly positive, though the wording suggested that Warped Flesh was beneficial and Wasting an affliction.
The Warped Flesh one wasn’t too difficult to figure out. All he had to do was throw a punch at the dark stone wall. It was as he suspected; with his flesh and skin so stiff and tough, he barely felt the blow at all. The specifics eluded him, of course, but it was safe enough to assume Warped Flesh was a damage reduction buff of some sort.
One effect more-or-less figured out, one to go.
Based on the wording, he would probably expect the Wasting affliction to gradually cause him bodily harm. It might slowly weaken him, or it might rob him of his stamina, or it might sap his physical strength. It could even be a damage-over-time effect–a DoT, as players used to call those back in his raiding days. There was one way to find out; wait and see what happens.
He only hoped it wasn’t anything permanent. Wasting or not, he’d hate to be stuck looking like a third degree burn victim.
As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait too long. It was about a half minute later that the first burning, itching twinge spread through his flesh, followed by a sharp convulsion and a notification.
“Son of a…!” Hunter cursed through gritted teeth and braced himself for a second wave of pain, which, thankfully, never arrived.
It would probably hit him again in another half a minute or so, but he wasn’t too eager to do any more experimenting. He’d had enough of Wasting to confirm it was a DoT alright. Good thing he was already basted in Trollblood Salve, though he didn’t know if the stuff’s healing effect was still potent.
Salve or no salve, now he had to figure out whether he could somehow actively cancel the charm’s effects, or they had some internal duration he had to wait out and let them fade out on their own.
Hoping it was the former, he tried to simply will the effects away.
Nope, nada, nothing, but it was worth a try anyway.
Maybe the charm acted as a switch of sorts, allowing him to turn the effect on and off. He held it in his hands and let another smidgen of essence run through it, only to get hit by another nauseating wave of its flesh warping effect that left him even more deformed than before.
That was the exact opposite from what he was trying to do. It was good to know that he could stack the effects multiple times, but it probably meant that the Wasting DoT would probably grow in intensity too.
That wasn’t good; necrotic damage hurt like a bitch. He’d have to try something different, preferably before the next wave of Wasting hit him.
Willing the effects away didn’t work, he thought, and activating the charm again simply added to its effects.
What else could he try…?
Acting more on impulse than anything else, he tried to do both of those things again–at the same time. He pushed some of his essence into the charm, tugging at its enchanted aura, and willed it to take its effects back.
To his relief, his impulse paid out. He felt his skin boil and stir again, but this time backwards. It was like every single muscle in his body had been painfully cramped and twisted, and was now slowly relaxing and unwinding itself back to normal.
That was… interesting.
He sat down, breathed a sigh of relief, and put the charm away for the moment. Having a source of damage reduction was good; the fact that it came with a built-in DoT effect, however, made things infinitely more complicated. Hunter could think of a number of practical applications for the charm, but it was kind of a double-edged sword. Maybe he could try to properly recreate it when his Craft Spirit Charm Ability was higher, so that it wouldn’t have the Wasting negative side effect.
In retrospect, it might have been a good idea to start with something smaller and less complicated.
The other recipe he had learned along with the Craft Spirit Charm Ability was the Corpse Hair Knot, which, morbidity aside, sounded much simpler:
Resistance to magical effects… Would that include all those times he failed those so-called contests of will, first against the standing stone spirit, then against the medicine woman, and finally against the bear godling?
If it did, this was big; he hated having his agency forcibly removed from him in such a cheap way. It was just bad game design, as Packman would have said.
There was one way to find out; craft a Corpse Hair Knot and wait until someone blasted him with one of those contest-of-will effects again.
Of course, that required hair from a dead person. Hunter didn’t make it a habit to carry any of those around. Unless…
Just a few feet away, the Kannewik mummies were dancing around the podium at the center of the room, just as they had done for who-knew-how-long. Dancing or not dancing, they were dead as doornails. Their hair looked more or less intact–probably thanks to the almost sterile atmosphere of the Halls.
Should he…?
No–Sister Peregrine had stated in no uncertain terms that the Kannewik were not to be disturbed.
Still, would simply plucking a hair or two really count as disturbing them?
It was one of those ‘My dumb ass knew better, but my dumb ass did it anyway’ situations Hunter somehow always managed to get involved in.
He knew better than to try and pluck a hair from the head of an enchanted mummy that was guarding a probably dangerous artifact. He knew it was a dumb idea–just as he knew it was now just a matter of time before his dumb ass went on and did it anyway.
Well, he was already on a roll.
He might just as well get it over with sooner rather than later.
He got up on his feet, inched toward the dancing Kannewik, and-
There was a noise at the wall that served as the room’s entryway, the noise of nails scratching frantically at the smooth dark stone. That, and the muffled crying sound of a very big, very scared dog.
“Fyodor?” Hunter called, and his worried voice echoed in the room. “Is that you, boy?”