CHAPTER 336 – RECKONING

The artificial breathing apparatus Tom created collapsed back into its component stone and the rock that had encased him opened as his will pushed him up toward the surface. A second later, fresh air flooded in and his lungs sucked it down. The unassisted breath was both agony and amazing.

Everlyn with tears running down her cheeks sunk to her knees next to him and grabbed him into a hug. “Tom, you’re alive, you’re safe.”

Her healing magic flowed from her arms into him. It lacked the refinement of the dedicated healers, but every bit of help was welcome. Then six other denser streams of healing energy joined in as the human and chosen focused their magic on him.

Battered near dead organs were restored almost instantly.

His breathing became even and unlaboured and his struggling heart slowed its beat now that it no longer had to work as hard as it had due to the repaired circulatory system.

“Tom, what the hell were you doing?” Michael demanded.

“Has he done that before?” Vidja growled, affronted. “Because screaming when we have an open camp is crazy.”

“Shut up,” Michael snapped at her. “He almost died.”

“First time its happened.” Everlyn added angrily. Then she looked into his eyes. “Tom, talk to me.”

“Oh, that’s okay then.” Vidja sounded flustered. “I was going to suggest if it’s a known problem that we put sound cancelling stuff up from now on when he sleeps.”

Everyone ignored her.

Everlyn was hovering over him, mothering him. She had a hand on his forehead, measuring his temperature.

He sat up as the earth shifted to prop up his back. He was resting on an unadorned stone throne in the middle of the forest. It was a little surreal. Monsters were still coming in but everyone was up and even with half of the people focusing on him the remainder were more than enough to cope with the monsters still trickling in.

Michael grabbed his shoulder firmly with his fingers digging in as Tom attempted to stand. “Stay seated. That was some bad internal damage. What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are we in immediate danger?”

Tom suddenly realised why everyone was crowded around him. Of course, that was the logical place for their thoughts to go. “No.”

“Then why did you react the way you did?”

“There was a True Dream.” Tom swallowed in an attempt to free up his vocal cords. He didn’t want to remember what had happened, but they deserved answers. “It was a dragon.”

“So?” Michael looked confused at why he had stopped talking.

He sipped from his water flask to buy time and wet his throat. “Her GOD was in the vision.”

“Tom… talk to me. You drifted off for a moment. What do you mean by her GOD? A statue or shrine? Did she pray?”

“No, it was her god.”

“You mean you were physically in his presence.”

Tom nodded.

Michael exhaled sharply, then looked at the sky. “Oh, shit.”

He licked his lips. “It’s worse, the god spoke to me.”

There was a long silence.

“What about?”

Tom shook his head. “And so then…”

Michael gently pressed on his shoulder to get his attention and then gestured for him to continue when Tom looked his way.

“Words…” he stopped talking.

“Tom, it will help if you talk about it.”

“Words can’t capture what that feels like.” He gripped the healer’s hand tightly.

“The shock caused you to have a mental break,” Michael concluded.

“Cracked, shattered like an egg. I can’t fight that.” He knew he was not making sense, and that tears were streaming down his face, but there was nothing that he could do about it. “It was a GOD. Do you know what that is like?”

“No, Tom, we can’t imagine it.”

“I had no control… it was just.” He stopped talking as he felt the world closing in on him once more. Then there was a warm pulse inside of him and he remembered the system room. Yes, the dragon’s GOD existed, but he had his own that would protect him. He had to trust in that. “For a while, I didn’t believe any other GOD existed. Which meant I had no protection from it. And it had said it was coming for me.” Tom licked his lips and gulped down some more water for any sort of normalcy to try to settle himself.

“I see. You were overwhelmed so, you screamed and retreated into the earth to let it protect you,” Michael concluded. “Did it attack you? Is that why you were almost dead?”

Tom snorted. “No… That was a lack of oxygen nothing more.”

“You asphyxiated yourself?” the healer blurted out in shock. “By accident?”

There was another warm pulse from within him. The terror that had been starting up once again was instantly driven back. “I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“You scared us.” Everlyn told him.

“What I want to know,” Keikain interrupted. “Is why you were spying on a GOD?”

Tom looked at him. He hadn’t meant to. It was a side effect of trying to work out why they needed something that could be used to forge a weapon that could kill a god. A task Keikain had insisted he do. “Because you told me to do it!” he snarled, putting some fake heat into the words. Possibly not that fake, he thought to himself when he registered just how angry he was.

“I did no such thing! I would never. The idea is preposterous.”

Another warm pulse drove some more of the fear out of him. He massaged his forehead. He considered the purpose of the dream and then the implication of that particular vision. The panic in him started rising once more. The memory of Dux’s words helped settle him. The GOD had been in a True Dream to understand why they needed the precognition blocking.

The Directed Dream had contained a GOD.

He shuddered.

His mind raced to connect the dots.

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The item the giant had sold had been a potential component of a GOD killing weapon.

Internally, he screamed at the revelation. They did not need an artefact to stop a precognition skill of the dragon but rather that of a GODs.

“Shit, shit.” He hit himself in fury. The surrounding rock crumbled and reformed in response to his frustration. “Thats the answer. It’s not a precognition skill. MARKOS warns her if she is being threatened.”

Silence deadened around them.

“Oh shit.” Thor said suddenly. “We’re going to need something capable of blocking the sight of a GOD. That…” he paused a pained expression on his face. “Will be expensive.”

“And require fate,” Michael concluded grimly. “We won’t find anything like that on the human auction house. We’re going to have to rely on the Spectaculi and force it to have something we can use once we gather the funds.”

They were all doing the calculations. Mentally, they had been prepared for the cost of stopping a tier nine or ten precognition ability, which depending on its specific use cases could have required a cost of anywhere from one to a hundred million credits.

To stop the capability of a GOD… None of them even knew how to price it, but it was going to take all of their credits they could generate between now and the end of the trial and multiple days of fate expenditure at a minimum.

“We can source it.” Michael said finally. “With enough sacrifices, I’m sure we’ll be able to buy something. The GODs and Tom’s skills wouldn’t have set it up if it was impossible to solve. For now, we should sleep and then double down on getting out of this zone as quickly as possible.”

“Are we really going to ignore the fact it spoke to him?” Vidja asked.

Tom’s eyes snapped wide open in fear. That was definitely not something he wanted to think about. Michael scratched his head. “I was planning on leaving that to be addressed tomorrow. Given…” Michael waved at Tom. “His state I didn’t think indulging in curiosity was important. It’s obviously not time sensitive because for the GOD this happened months ago.”

Vidja appeared embarrassed.

“It happened before the trial,” Tom confirmed Michael’s guess. “I mean the scene I entered happened before then. To answer Vidja’s question… well the GOD.” Once more, his voice failed him, and it was not his social skill.

“You don’t have to tell us.” Michael assured him hurriedly, shooting furious looks at the other team’s leader.

“It’s okay.” Tom assured him. “I can do it. Markos said that he was coming for me and my species.”

“Shit, why? How could you take this type of risk?” Vidja asked. “If a GODs coming…”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Everlyn interrupted. “He can’t control his visions. This is on us, not him. We told him to investigate and if I remember correctly Tom didn’t want to. We pushed and none of us guessed this was a possibility.”

“Don’t stress about it Vidja, The GOD was only trash talking.” Michael glanced up at the sky as if daring it to declare that he was committing blasphemy. “Either he was lying to scare you, or he was already gunning for humanity. Either could be right. But no GOD is going to change their actions because a non-directable skill like True Dreaming lets its user see stuff it shouldn’t have. At least immaterial, not secret stuff like a GOD helping its champion. And guys stop looking at me like that. It’s not blasphemy because it is not about our GOD, and we’re allowed to talk about something that actually happened.”

“I would still prefer you didn’t get so close to the line,” Thor said quietly.

Michael agreed. “Fine, agreed, but I maintain I was a long way from the line.”

“Be as that might be. It’s not really the point.” Thor told him. “Blasphemy is not something to play chicken with.”

The healer frowned. “True. Now if Vidja’s curiosity is satisfied let’s go back to sleep.”

“I have one last question.” Keikain interrupted. “Tom, how did you take the rock from my control. I could influence stone underground, and you couldn’t. My powers were stronger, so how did you win.”

He froze as he remembered that moment. How he had applied his will, and the stone had switched to his control. Everything since he had woken up had been dream like, but he had been shaping rock subconsciously. He glanced down at the seat he had created for himself. It was solid rock, but shockingly comfortable.

“Tom? Can you explain.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.” His mind was racing. Could he really have missed the creation of a new skill? He recalled the horror and helplessness he had been suffering from. The answer was yes, when he was in that state he could have overlooked a system ding.

Without physically moving, he flexed a new muscle that he had only, kind of, been aware of. A chunk of stone from his chair separated from the rest and rotated around him. It was in two pieces and then four. There was no need to chain Remote Earth Manipulation and Throw Rock together to control the motion. They just obeyed his wish effortlessly.

A small, tentative smile broke open on his face. He licked his lips and internally prayed that this was the domain he had been looking for.

“It’s a domain isn’t it.” Keikain said flatly.

“I don’t know. It wasn’t an evolution because I wasn’t given a choice. But I got something when I was panicking.”

“Yes, yes,” the earth mage interrupted. “There’s no point speculating. Why don’t you check.”

He nodded and stepped into his system room.

Congratulations, you have created the skill Defensive Earth Aligned Domain.

His heart jumped, and he sighed in relief. It had been lucky that his state of distress had been picked up by the system. Usually, high tiered abilities came from evolution, not straight out creation. That this one appeared as a new skill could only be explained by the system helping him. If it had gone down the standard path and he had been presented with a choice when overcome with the terror of seeing a GOD, then Tom would have been unable to respond.

If he had lost the domain he had been working on, including sacrificing days of fate, it would have been a terrible… he shook his head and put the what ifs aside. They hadn’t happened. He had got the skill, and that was all that mattered now.

The text changed as the room registered that he had absorbed the first message and could deal with a new one.

As this skill was automatically accepted, you have the right to delete it.

Do you want to delete it?

“No.” Tom said instantly. It was a domain. Why would he consider removing it. Then he wondered if there was something wrong with it. Why was the chance being offered to remove them? “Actually, can I review it before deciding?”

There was a slight pause, as if someone was ruling whether to enforce the first decision or if the correction had come out in time.

That will be acceptable.

Tom sighed in relief. He couldn’t believe he had said no without checking the details. “Please show the domain summary.” The wall shivered, and detailed text replaced everything that had been there.

Skill: Defensive Earth Aligned Domain – Tier 6 – Level 2

A domain over soil, rock, metallic ores and metal that is primarily focused on physical and magical defence. It possesses the following properties. Note: unless otherwise stated the effects only apply within the domain.

* Volume covered is spherical with a radius of thirty-five metres.

* Incorporates all the functionality of Earth Sense, Remote Earth Manipulation and some of Throw Rock.

* 160 kilograms of rock (or a lesser amount of soil and metal) may be levitated and manipulated for free.

* Contains framework intelligence to aid in the interception of projectiles (spells or physical).

* Properties of rock manipulated can be briefly infused with templates from the Living Rock ability. This enables common rock to temporarily mimic higher tier materials when used for offense or defensive purposes. Infusion must happen within the domain, but effect will hold for almost a second outside the domain.

* Earth Spells are 30% cheaper.

* Manipulation costs are 50% lower than the base Earth Manipulation spell on material not included in the free limit.

* Capacity to contest for control of earth magic.

As this is a domain, you can win control of any earth spells active within it if successful in a contest of will.

This process is automatic but can be boosted by conscious help. Your contested strength will equal your affinity plus the tier of your domain plus your distance modifier if you are consciously aiding the seizing of enemy magic. Your distance modifier is 30 minus 1.4 times the distance you are contesting at. The capacity of the spell to resist is as follows.

* Uncontested magic. If the tier of the magic multiplied by thirty-two is less than your contested strength, you can seize full control of the spell.

* Contested magic. The higher of uncontested value above and opponent’s affinity plus eight times the tier level of the spell.

Threshold Bonus 2: Infusing your will into stone for five seconds prior to use lowers any future mana manipulation, costs by a further 75%

Threshold Bonus 4: Relative time when using domain for complex activity is doubled.

Tom stared at the domain in shock as he tried to understand what it was offering.

He was definitely keeping it.

There was so much to take in. Any earth magic cast near him that was lower than tier three he could seize control of and even tier four magic would be vulnerable closer to his body. Then there was the fact that metal was included, and a large volume could be manipulated for free. If a hundred metal tipped arrows were shot at him, then he could redirect all of them.

The domain had so many complexities that would take a while to unravel. What did it mean by Earth Sense being fully incorporated into the skill? Did that imply the spell was permanently active and cost nothing now?

As he pondered that implication, a new message appeared on the wall.

The skills Remote Earth Manipulation, Earth Manipulation and Earth Sense are contained within Defensive Earth Aligned Domain.

Would you like to permanently remove these skills.

Note. No experience refund will occur, but the skills will not count in system calculations anymore.

Tom stared at the message in surprise. That was new and unexpected.