Arthur's entire body was tense, veins bulging at his temples. Rivulets of crimson blood ran down his chin, onto his sweat-soaked shirt. He was currently managing three separate streams of ether, one to maintain vapour's grasp, another to hold an orb of water at waist height and the final stream powering the timed bomb he’d created out of its faint shadow.
It was, without doubt, the most mentally taxing endeavour he’d ever undertaken. After his skill evolved into Shadow Trap, Arthur could now place timers on the bombs he created. He could also, to a limited extent, dictate the manner and direction the traps exploded in. So far he’d only used it to create poor approximations of dart and spear traps you’d find in only a good RPG game.
What he was attempting now was in a different ballpark altogether. He needed the tangible shadows the skill created without the resultant explosion. A slow bomb. Is that even a thing? Regardless, that was what he required right now and he’d make it happen one way or the other.
Seventeen seconds.
His timer was starting to run out. Arthur hadn’t invested much ether into the skill, just enough that it wouldn’t end up a dud. The little he had spent would be volatile enough that he’d struggle to control it anyway. Try as he might, he’d yet to create a trap that didn’t operate on explosive force and this was the weakest he could currently go.
11 seconds.
Ten.
Nine.
In his periphery, Arthur noted that Alyssia had returned, a wide grin on her face. She opened her mouth to speak before wisely realising that this wasn't the best time to speak. She darted away, moving at sub-sonic speeds and took a seat on the grass two hundred yards away from him, a distance she felt was sufficient to ensure safety from whatever Arthur had planned and close enough to intervene if things went sideways. Pulling out a snack from her dimensional bag, she sat down to enjoy the show.
Arthur, of course, noticed none of this, only that she'd left the field of his vision. He stood on a razor's edge, anything less than one hundred percent focus would leave him cut.
Four seconds.
Three.
Two.
One.
Two things happened at once. The charged shadow exploded and Arthur released his hold over the orb of water. He had a fraction of a second to act, a margin of time so small it could hardly be differentiated from the moments preceding it. Even with eyes enhanced with 92 Perception Arthur couldn't track the magic's detonation.
He didn't need to. Halting a skills activation was something Arthur was well versed in now. It was how he'd managed to evolve his Shadow bomb skill in the first place and he'd only gotten better at it over the past few days. He had 300 ether left to use in Shadow manipulation before the system's assistance left and it evolved into a new form. He'd been 250 of that remaining reserve within the skill's matrix since he'd begun this risky plan of his, forcefully locked in place before it could complete its circuit.
Arthur let go of that control now and allowed the newly-affinitied ether flow out of him. He didn't give it any specific direction, only that it seized control of every shadow within a one-meter vicinity of him.
All of that took place in the breath of a split second, so fast he doubted even Alyssia with her insane agility understood what was going on.
The former water bullet, now under the dominion of gravity, began to drop. It didn’t get far. A millimetre into its descent, Arthur’s magic took hold. SEIZE! The exploding shadow bomb froze in place as if it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen, a pool of darkness that hovered in the air, an absence of light that welcomed nothing. Two-thirds of his invested ether immediately disappeared, used up in halting the bomb's explosive momentum.
Shit, that was close. He’d almost not had enough. The orb of water had dropped a centimetre now, and it had already started to lose its shape, resembling a very large raindrop now. If Arthur had his way, it wouldn’t get any further. He wasn’t being efficient in his ether usage right now. Speed was the name of the game and being thrifty meant slowing down.
Alyssia’s eyebrows rose, and her hand paused on its way to her mouth. She dropped the meatball it held back into the bowl and grinned. She’d figured out what he was trying to do. The tangible shadows moved at the speed of thought, powered by the last dregs of his attuned ether and surrounded the drop of water.
It was a terrible mimicry of what the shadow panther had done to him, a large hammer to the small mallet the beast had employed, with no finesse or skill to it. The result was still the same at the end of the day though. The water bullet froze in place, just as he had all those weeks ago.
Arthur’s invested ether began to quickly drop. Turned out that manipulating shadows with substance costs a lot more. Cursing, Arthur poured forty more points of ether into the skill and prayed it would be enough.
In all honesty, it was a long shot. He had no idea if this would work but it was the best idea he could come up with. He’d created a link between shadow manipulation and his domain, vapour's grasp, using the only method he thought would fit the skill. Fair enough, it was a weak link, using two skills, shadow trap and molecular water shot as an intermediary but the principle of the thing remained the same.
He’d gotten two skills to interact in a way that facilitated unison. Now he just needed to watch and see if his plan worked. When his invested ether dropped into the single digits, and he had mere seconds left with the skill, he felt a shift occur within him. Arthur grinned and let go of all his skills allowing the water orb to finally splash onto the ground.
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The flash of a system notification came a second later.
Congratulations! Through adept use of ether manipulation, you have created resonance between two of your skills and allowed them to merge. Shadow Manipulation has been subsumed by Vapour's grasp to create the New skill. Dark Vapours Grasp.
Dark Vapours Grasp (Rare+)- Generate a gaseous domain of charged water vapour and shadow around you. Size depends on the ether pool. Slows down all within it by 20% and limits visions. May select targets within the domain and shadow-lock them in place. The strength of the lock is based on the host's strength attribute.
Cost of skill: 200 ether/minute. Shadow lock 50 ether/second/target +10 Ether cost for every additional target.
“So I guess it finally worked,” Alyssia's voice sounded beside him, her bowl of snacks left forgotten on the ground beside her bag of holding. Arthur wordlessly nodded his head, quickly reading through his new skills description. It was both better and worse than he expected. Dark vapour's grasp was on the very edge of rare rank, he’d missed elite by a hair's breadth which was disappointing.
Shadow lock, however, was everything he’d wanted out of his experiment. The only problem was that its power was based on his strength, one of his weakest stats. It was a deficiency he hadn’t seen coming, but in retrospect, made sense. In essence, the skill locked a target's motion by directly bringing it into conflict with the hosts and so the victor of said battle would naturally have to possess a higher strength. Why couldn't scale of vitality or constitution, though? Arthur complained.
“So what’s it to do?” Alyssia bubbled, all but jumping on her feet as she repeatedly poked him in the arm.
Arthur had learned ignoring her when she got excited like this was a bad idea, especially when she was poking him with the repeated intensity of a sewing machine. “Well,” Arthur leaned to face her, a mischievous grin on his face, “I don’t know yet. The system didn’t give a complete description,” he lied.
“How about you help me best it out?” He suggested innocently. The green-skinned woman took a step back from him, suspicion colouring her features, healthy caution warning her something was up.
By now, Arthur knew Alyssia quite well, especially since establishing a bond of Bhai Giya with her. Evolution seemed to have skipped her out when it came to listening to your cautionary instincts. She would walk into a trap eleven times out of ten, even with her supreme aura reading. There was a reason why she’d been the target of so many pranks back in her village. The excited smile quickly returned to her face and he knew he had her then. Damn, I almost feel bad.
“You're quite flexible, aren’t you?” Arthur asked, randomly. She nodded her head distractedly. “Well, the skill says I need my target to have a good conduit with the earth. Can you touch the floor with your head without bending your legs, it’ll help the energies of shadow and earth to flow through you better.”
Keeping a straight face while spouting so much bullshit was a superpower unto itself. He’d gone too far this time though. Even Alyssia, in her naïve stupidity, would realise he was pulling her leg now, she could read his aura like an open book. Surely she’d realise something was wrong.
She didn’t.
Arthur watched in shock as she followed his instruction, contorting her body like an Olympic gymnast to get into the right position. This isn’t even fun. It's like stealing candy from a child. I think I can convince her that Earth's clouds are made of cotton candy at this point. Arthur could no longer see Alyssia's face, only the back of her head, covered as it was by her wavy hair. Even with her incredible athleticism, Arthur knew holding that position wasn’t easy. Before she could move, he quickly triggered his latest skill.
His domain rapidly expanded out around him and he felt his ether reserves rapidly decline to maintain the exorbitant cost of his shadow lock.
“There’s a problem Alyssia, " Arthur said, false panic tinging his speech.
“What-what's wrong.” Her voice sounded muffled, contorted as she was.
So I guess it doesn’t prevent speech then. “The system finally revealed my skills description. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t know this was going to happen. I wouldn't have used it on you if I knew.”
By now Alyssia had tried to move and quickly realised that she couldn’t. Her strength was abysmally low. “What's happening Arthur? I can't move,” she cried out in panic, her struggles redoubling. It sounded like she was going to burst into tears. Arthur steeled his heart and continued the charade.
"My skill says you've been locked in place," he replied, voice heavy with regret and worry. "You're going to have to stay like that for eight hours."
Alyssia didn't say anything, the only sound was her heavy breathing as she questioned all the life choices that had led her to this moment. She tried to move once again but realised it was futile, giving up and resigning herself to her fate. She looked so despondent, a pitiful puppy that had been left out in the rain. Arthur's heart wasn't so cold that he could keep this up for any longer and his ether reserves were rapidly approaching rock-bottom.
"Okay, Alyssia. We're best friends, aren't we? We've got a whole magical ritual to prove it." Arthur said carefully. "I just want to remind you about that before you do anything hasty." Releasing the skill, Arthur started to run away as fast as his legs could carry him. He didn't get very far. Three meters and then she was there, standing in front of him, chest heaving in rage, cheeks flushed a deep shade of green. She had tears in her eyes. I fucked up. "Okay Alyssia," Arthur babbled, hands raised outwards like he was dealing with an angry lioness, not that he had any experience in the field. "Let's talk things over like adults." That hadn't been the right thing to say.
He didn't even see the slap he knew was coming.
Two hours and a very minor beating later, Alyssia had finally calmed down, though she did send the occasional glare at him over her bowl of steaming soup. Arthur of course, was eating a cold porridge, nursing a swollen cheek that still hadn't healed yet. His face looked almost cartoonish with how it ballooned upwards to the left.
The damn woman had slapped poison of all things onto his face, giving him the ultimatum that if he washed it off or used healing magic to counter it, she wouldn't cook for him for the next year. As threats went, it was an effective one and he did kind of deserve it. Turned out Alyssia was claustrophobic and freezing her had dredged up some unhealed trauma from her childhood. Nasty stuff involving a kidnapping and a dark box far too small for a child to fit in.
He’d had to apologise for twenty minutes before she’d even deigned to look at him. As pranks went, despite seeming so minor at the time, he'd gone too far, targeting his friend where she was weak. It made him feel like a scumbag, dirty in a way that couldn’t be washed off, and so he bore the stinging pain on his cheek without complaining. He’d wait until she permitted him to wash it off and with his constitution, it was practically a non-issue. Just a little irritation to serve as penance.
They sat in silence. It was a little awkward at first, but soon returned to the companionable peace they’d come to enjoy so much. Alyssia finally graced him with a sentence.
“I broke the challenger stone,” she said quietly, “You know what that means, right?”
He did. There was nothing else left to do. They were ready to face the hydra.