Chapter 173: A Leisurely Apocalypse
“In short: The Svartrsoelis is real, and it’s a diamond rank apocalypse beast that consumes light, and it has been sealed in the black ice monoliths for thousands of years by the Einvaldi. The storm is a function of the black ice monoliths, which reduces the temperature and amount of light of the area directly around the monoliths to keep the Svartrsoelis sealed.”
“Thank you, Eufemia. Very concise.”
“Someone has to be,” she said, flipping a lock of hair as if to demonstrate her oratory superiority.
“Svartrsoelis—the light devourer, the Sun Eater,” Aliyah explained, consummate master of lore (for research purposes), “is an apocalypse beast that consumes all manner of heat and light.”
“Yup. Rather obvious end of the world scenario there. Wait, you guys do know that plants need sunlight, right?”
“Yes, we know that.”
“Do you know how—”
“No, probably not to that extent. I want to know, truly.” Aliyah looked uncharacteristically exhausted. “But let us move on.”
“I don’t entirely understand—,” John said.
“—Unsurprising.”
John sucked in a breath. Then let it out. Oh, he loved his damn partner, but sometimes she saw a button, and since no one bribed her to otherwise stop, she pushed it, just to see what it’d do. There was a method, to her riling others and getting riled in turn, a reason, John knew, even if he didn’t always appreciate it. “Eufemia. I am an investigator. This isn’t just one of my ‘I don’t understand magic’ questions.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Right.” He stared at her challengingly, waiting for another interruption. She huffed. Sensing no further interruption, he asked his questions. “Why is the storm expanding? If the seal is weakening, or the black ice monoliths are losing strength, shouldn’t the storm be shrinking?”
“These are good questions,” Aliyah validated.
“Thank you, Aliyah.”
“The monoliths, according to Kallid’s records and research, are perfectly calibrated artifacts. The size of the storm they create is perfectly calibrated, with some room for error, to seal the fragments of the Svartrsoelis inside. The black ice monoliths consume the ambient mana, in forms of heat and light. Part of that mana is used to generate a storm, and the other part is used to seal the Svartrsoelis.”
“A double backup.”
Aliyah nodded. “The monolith consumes heat and light energy so the Svartrsoelis cannot. If the storm is expanding, that means the power needed to maintain that equilibrium has changed.”
“The monoliths need more power.”
“If a perfectly calibrated artifact suddenly needs more power—”
“—Then something is wrong.”
It was an interesting sealing mechanism, Nara thought, using the very properties and powers of the Svartrsoelis against it. In some ways, it was its very own weakness.
“It could be damage to the structure, or some other sort increased load on the magic matrix. Or, something is draining the energy the monoliths need, and thus they’ve increased their affected area to compensate. Kallid isn’t sure yet, and running any sort of tests on the monoliths are difficult. The energy drain kills anything that gets too close, freezing them within moments.”
“Tyranel can’t get to it?” Nara asked. Tyranel was the resident diamond ranker, after all. Surely, she could do anything.
“There’s a concern that if the monoliths cannot drain Tyranel, which is already not preferred, then it would give the Svartrsoelis the opportunity instead.”
“Which would be Very Bad. She can’t just, I don’t know, uh, look at it from afar?”
“The storm and drain field interfere with magical and aura perception, although ordinary physical perception works, as far as light can penetrate. But as we’ve helpfully learned from John about Black Holes…”
“The surface of the monoliths are entire dark, without any spectrum of light, so no physical damage can be seen.”
“Well, there are some perception abilities that can see through even absolute darkness, but it’s unclear whether any damage Tyranel can see now has already been there or not. Since no one has been capable of imaging the surface of the monoliths before anyway. No one besides a diamond ranker.”
“And the Einvaldi of before didn’t think to do that for us. That’d be too easy,” Eufemia groused.
“No one says he was a good record-keeper; Just look at the mausoleum,” Roscoe unhelpfully supplied. “A rather exemplary architect, but a terrible archivist.”
“What a cultural icon.”
(She shouldn’t be so harsh: Sanshi hadn’t kept great records for the Celestial Book Trials either. For all the obsessive record keeping of Erras, historic and cultural practices seemed to slip notice.)
“Either way, the apocalypse has started. Or rather…has been restarted, but not very quickly. At the current rate of expansion, it’ll be…” Aliyah performed a quick calculation, “…well, years.”
“You couldn’t have led with that?” Eufemia said dramatically. “Raised my stress levels all for nothing.”
“I am not so naively optimistic to think that whatever has restarted an apocalypse would maintain its leisurely rate of expansion so that it may be foiled,” Aliyah said reasonably.
“The monoliths haven’t just naturally decayed?” John ventured. “Do we know that there’s interference for sure?”
“Something which has lasted unflinchingly for thousands of years doesn’t just start decaying, John. Diamond rank artifacts don’t’ just start to fail.”
“Right, perhaps I deserved that one.” He’d been on Erras long enough to know better than to expect anything but eternity from diamond rank artifacts, at least, from the way myths and legends spoke of them, and from his own experience in the mausoleum, which had operated for millennia without fail.
Aliyah let the team digest the news for a moment, but impending apocalyptic doom seemed nonsensical until it was actually upon them. It was the same in which all living beings regarded the inevitable heat death of the universe: with a day of paralyzing, existential dread, then ordinary human indifference, because nothing was to be done, and small, finite human minds could never understand the sheer tragedy of it. Not even magic for all of routine physics-flaunting could compete with entropy on the universal scale; Physics would have its final laugh.
(That was the role of The Builder, to create new universe seeds to perpetual physical existence against the unrelenting decay of entropy, but that was a story for another time.)
“We have two options,” Aliyah began once she thought her team (plus extras) had processed enough. “We could leave Kallid, although it wouldn’t really matter. If Kallid fails here, and the Svartrsoelis is unleashed, then everyone on the planet will die, except the diamond rankers. We can stay and help with the situation.” Aliyah paused, and said, a little chagrined. “And by ‘we’ I mean Lawrence and me.”
“Or,” Encio said, “we figure out how to escape the world.”
Everyone stared at him. Someone dropped a pastry and apologized sheepishly as they tried then failed to pick up the crumbs in a somewhat dignified manner. The nebula floor ate the crumbs instead.
“Someone had to say it; it’s an option! I don’t agree with it, but it’s there.” It was clear that he was reluctant to say it, and not enamored with the thought of abandoning his home world. But the team, with their two outworlders and experience with the Edelsterians, had more experience than almost any other team in the world of the potential of inter-dimensional travel.
“If we have years,” Lawrence considered hesitantly, “Mass evacuation may not be…entirely unreasonable.”
“What does the Societies think? Kallid might be wary, but I can’t imagine the rest of the world cares so much. They’d need to pull their heads out of their asses first.”
Eufemia raised a good point. Civilization had never been particularly good at defending against some distant apocalypse, in both time and geological distance, and Kallid was about as removed as civilization got. Essence user based society was superior at it thanks to the convenient lens of an extended lifespan, and the geological shortening of portal travel.
“The magic society is sending additional researchers for a start. A gold rank teams will also be staying in Kallid, along with several silver rank teams.”
“No diamond rankers?”
“It isn’t as if Kallid just has Tyranel.”
“Rumor has it there’s two more diamond rankers with direct relations to Kallid,” Roscoe said. “Bringing in any more diamond rankers without some clear target is pointless. You only need one diamond ranker keeping an eye on things at a time.”
It was all a big fuss, in the end, but the team didn’t have much to show for it. Sen adjusted their schedule to 2 weeks of mausoleum hunting, and 2 weeks off, since Aliyah’s time was now hotly requisitioned by Royalty and the local government.
(Lawrence privately wondered if this was the reason he had been sent off by Knowledge to follow around Nara as a sentient photocopier (it wasn’t), and if he had some world-saving role in the apocalypse (he didn’t). He was a young priest after all (of a respectable and famed church), and an adventurer (for the membership benefits), and like every other adventurer, he was not entire disabused of delusions of grandeur. He however, intelligently kept them to himself, and the privacy of his dreams.
Knowledge knew, but she knew everything.)
*****
“Another fucking flea,” Theodore scrunched his nose with disgust at the minor bug-stain on his hammer. It had been spotted then summarily executed, but they would never be able to kill them all. Familiars and summons did project a part of their summoner’s aura signature as well as their own (if they had one, non-familiar summons did not), but the aura of the fleas was just as minuscule as their size. Theodore was finally allowed to follow the group into the labyrinth, although he had no token to use; he had long sold his, choosing to make his own equipment instead. He’d rely on what he had fashioned with his own hands.
Exterminating the fleas had become company policy, as well as mandatory voice chat when they were outside of the cloud vehicle. Since they couldn’t bring it through the portals (unless they wanted to wait 20 minutes to move it each time), they kept the nebula construct in one location and would portal there to take breaks.
It was the 2nd week of their 2nd month of artifact hunting, and Nara was beginning to wonder if their team had been scammed by Jago Dahl. It wasn’t as if a month and a half in Kallid had been a long time, but the option of grabbing the next growth artifact and auctioning it some distance Adventure Society seemed more and more a viable option.
“Here it is: bronze rank room, 2 people, escalating survival for 50 minutes,” Roscoe explained through voice chat. “Obsidian Hall, no light.”
“I have to be one of them,” Eufemia said, flipping her hair with a confident swish. “You lot don’t have any light powers.”
“You could take Chrome,” Nara offered. “Crack him a few times and he might get brighter.”
“I am not a glowstick, Nara.”
“But do you get any brighter?”
“I am not dim, Nara, no matter what you insinuate of my intelligence.”
Sen and Eufemia were finalized as the two challengers. Sen’s abilities let him function out-of-the-box, ready-made for destruction. Eufemia’s abilities required a bit of selection. Before every battle, she shopped; she thought it was appropriate.
The first ability she copied was Nara’s Overture. With a 1-minute cooldown, she could cast it on herself and change to another ability later. It’s effects would not last the entirety of the battle, but it would help initially grow her strength.
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Then, she copied John’s Mana Tide and Nara’s aura; she and Sen would need the sustain.
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Ability: [Mana Tide]
Special Ability (recovery)
Cost: Low mana
Cooldown: 4 hours
Effect (Iron): Draw mana from the astral to replenish allies. Mana recovery begins slowly and escalates over time. Local dimensional conditions may impact the rate of recovery.
Effect (Bronze): Allies affected by this ability increase their mana recovery by spending mana. The more mana spent, the greater the recovery increase. Abnormal local dimensional conditions may produce positive or negative side effects.
Ability: [Astral Blessing]
Aura (holy, boon)
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Allies within aura gain an instance of [Integrity] when expending or losing a low threshold of health, mana, or stamina. Instance threshold is determined by the [Recovery] attribute. Greater or continuous expenditures result in gaining additional instances.
* [Integrity] (boon, heal-over-time, mana-over-time, stamina-over-time, holy, stacking): Periodically recover a small amount of health, stamina, and mana. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
Effect (Bronze): Allies within aura gain an instance of [Tranquility] when gaining a holy or magic boon. Instance threshold is determined by the [Spirit] attribute. This effect does not trigger upon gaining an instance of [Tranquility].
* [Tranquility] (boon, holy, stacking): Increased resistance to boon dispel. Additional instances have a cumulative effect. This boon has increased dispel priority over other boons.
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Her final decision was which of her own abilities to copy: Prodigious Sorcerer, or Martial Gift. Her partner was Sen who was heavy on physical, melee abilities. If she was bringing Mana Tide to help supplement the start of the battle, then she may as well choose an ability that used Mana. She’d miss the staple special attack of Relentless Assault, and she sheer physical strength increase thanks to a doubled up Martial Gift, but chose to lean into magic.
Prodigious Sorcerer it was. (Privately, Eufemia felt the name of the ability was ridiculous—she’d never be a prodigious sorcerer, no matter the effects of the ability. If she had to hear Aliyah claim she wasn’t a prodigy, then she hadn’t any chance. She’d at least never claim she was one in front of Aliyah; else she’d earn an impassioned lecture on the follies of genius.)
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Ability: [Prodigious Sorcerer]
Awakening Stone: Magus
Special Ability / Spell
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Gain the ability to use a known spell of a target. This may make your version of the spell higher or lower rank than the original, including losing or gaining additional effects from higher ranks. This ability has the same cost and cooldown as the original spell. Ability chosen cannot be changed until the ability is off cooldown. Chosen ability is available until changed.
Effect (Bronze): Maximum mana and the [Spirit] attribute are increased.
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With that, she duplicated Mana Burst, Aliyah’s bread-and-butter that handled swarms like a meat grinder handled meat; That was to say: it made chunks out of them.
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Ability: [Mana Burst]
Awakening Stone: Magus
Spell
Incantation: “Mana, burst forth.” / “Burst.”
Cost: Moderate mana / High mana / Very high mana / Extreme mana
Cooldown: 30 seconds / 20 seconds / 10 seconds / None
Effect (Iron): Briefly gather mana at a location, the detonate it, dealing large disruptive-force and explosive damage in an area.
Effect (Bronze): Enemies affected by the burst are the source of secondary, delayed explosions.
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The first 10 minutes had been easy enough. She had looked through pure darkness, expecting her eyes to adjust but they never did with no light to adjust to. Lumi had spread her flickering swarm into the room, enhancing her brightness to her maximum level. It was weaker than normal—an effect of light suppression of the Obsidian Hall—but it was enough to somewhat uncomfortably see. The faceted obsidian-stone walls glimmered; sharp edges sharpened by revealing light. The blackness of the material dimmed the room, light cutting itself and dying upon it’s edges. Eufemia wondered if it bore a relation to the black ice of the monoliths, and the knowledge of an impending apocalypse tremored her mind and shivered her body.
She thought it odd sometimes, that she lived as if nothing had changed. They all did. Nara and John, she understood; they had survived their own apocalypse, of a sort. Their world was gone to them. Granted, their separation was (hopefully) temporary, but the reality was they lived in a world that was not their first. The imminent destruction of life-as-they-knew it within a generation was at best a shrug-worthy thought when they had already experienced lifestyle destruction.
The first 10 minutes had allowed Eufemia’s mind to wander. At minute 15, Eufemia thanked Aliyah for Mana Burst, as well as the foresight of her own mind. (And she was the best—her mind was a weapon, forged by poverty and adversity.)
Monsters started to manifest in baker’s dozens, except they were the sort of muffins that tried to kill you, and were largely unpalatable, bloodthirsty predilections aside. Dark elementals of shadow whispered across the walls like ominous omens and bedtime stories told in the dark hours. Eufemia prioritized them, spears of light burning holes through them like Kallidian cheese, or Mana Bursts ripping them like soggy, ink-stained paper.
Sen focused on the melee. His abilities still affected incorporeal beings, thanks to his racial, Inescapable Wrath.
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Racial Ability: [Inescapable Wrath]
Abilities affect all beings. Intrinsic immunities are treated as resistances. Physical attacks can affect incorporeal beings.
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But Eufemia’s disruptive-force damage would always be more effective against the incorporeal and mana-formed. The other monsters that manifested were that of nightmares—dark hounds with lamprey maws, swirling with rows and rows of shark teeth; dark black beetle masses that crawled over themselves as a single whole, splitting to dodge, before skittering across walls; a screaming monster that was more sound than a physical presence, a drone that increased in volume until Eufemia had bled from her ears—they delt with that quickly from then on, pinpointing the small, scaled creature and thoroughly tearing it to pieces.
At minute 20, Eufemia thanked Nara. Mana Tide had worn off, sputtering like a tap with no reserves to drain, squeezed like a lemon with no juice left to give. The Integrity boon kept Eufemia and Sen’s stamina reserves up, which they had no other way to recover; they’d both need stamina recovery potions before the challenge was done.
Sen was constantly hovering at equilibrium, even with Integrity and Good Karma stacking, which boosted his Recovery attribute.
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Ability: [Karmic Warrior]
Awakening Stone: None
Special Ability
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Gain an instance of [Agent of Karma] when subjected to damage or any harmful effect, even if the damage and/or effect was wholly negated.
* [Agent of Karma] (boon, holy, stacking): The [Power] and [Spirit] attributes are temporarily increased by a small amount. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
Effect (Bronze): Gain an instance of [Good Karma] when healing others, cleansing others or suffering damage. Enemies that attack or take offensive actions against you are inflicted with [Bad Karma]. So long as any enemy has an instance of [Bad Karma], you have [Karmic Sacrifice].
* [Bad Karma] (affliction, retributive, holy): Suffer a small amount of retributive, transcendent damage when making an attack or other offensive action against anyone without the [Karmic Sacrifice] boon. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
* [Good Karma] (boon, holy, stacking): Bonus to [Recovery]. Damage from enemies with [Bad Karma] is reduced. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
* [Karmic Sacrifice] (boon, holy, heal-over-time): Gain an ongoing healing effect, with strength determined by the amount of [Good Karma] you have accrued. This effect immediately ends if there are no enemies suffering from [Bad Karma].
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Combined with his aura, Guardian’s Retribution, Sen became the priority target.
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Ability: [Guardian’s Retribution]
Awakening Stone: Shield
Aura (retributive)
Cost: None
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): All allies within aura have increased damage resistance and increased resistance to afflictions.
Effect (Bronze): When allies within your aura are attacked, enemies suffer a slight amount of fixed retributive transcendent damage. This effect does not apply to you.
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The retributive damage effect of his aura was small, an irritation, rather than a true threat. Combined with Bad Karma, enemies with punished twice for attacking anyone other than himself. That pushed the irritation evaluation of his aura effect into potentially problematic in the long term. Combined with his mobility, damage, and ramping attributes, Sen made himself into a guardian that couldn’t be ignored—a guardian that, if you ignored, would kill you.
His Avatar of Wrath familiar, Regis, served a similar role as himself, to be where he was not. Additionally, as an ally, he could trigger the effects of Sen’s aura and Bad Karma. For when Sen fought alone, his abilities would still activate.
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Ability: [Avatar of Wrath]
Awakening Stone: Avatar
Familiar (summoning, ritual, retributive)
Cost: Extreme mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Summon an [Avatar of Wrath] to serve as a familiar.
* Has high regenerative properties, physical strength, and speed.
* Can swim adeptly in water.
* When attacked, inflicts retributive fire damage back to the attacker.
* Can unleash a breath of flame. This flame can burn even in environments that would disallow it, such as water.
* When subsumed into the summoner’s throat as a tattoo, the summoner can unleash a breath of fire.
Effect (Bronze):
* Can link themselves to an ally, inflicting retributive fire damage on all those that attack the ally.
* Enemies that attack the familiar are inflicted with [Burning].
* When subsumed into the summoner, enemies are inflicted with [Burning] after attacking the summoner.
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Linking to Sen may shift Sen as a priority target, so Eufemia was Regis’ protected link: any attack against her was punished thrice.
A roar of flame ripped through the cold and dark oriented creatures, disorienting them in the blaze of light and heat, if they had not been outright roasted. Regis had been particularly helpful in Kallid, his flames burning even across mud and snow. Now, in a room of darkness, he was a blaze, eyes glowing with wrath, a flaming mane licking the arch of his spine and down the length of his tail, fighting with a frighteningly controlled battle lust of Wrath.
Regis was methodical in the same way that Sen was, identifying what targets where a threat to those he protected. His attacks were brutal in both efficiency and power, and any semblance of wild rage was more about getting the job done than actually losing control. But where Sen’s outward emotional expression was controlled, Regis snarled and grinned, flashing saber canines as his final send offs.
“10 more minutes,” Sen methodically warned. His strategic brain kept track of the battle to the dot.
They were both soaked through with sweat; Eufemia envied the outworlder’s odd quirk of a lack of sweating. Their armor was painted with blood: some hot, the ichor of the living, others a burning cold, ice-blood that burned with frost. Eufemia swapped to the last of her other duplicated armors, and felt her body temp rise a few degrees. The ice-blood chilled, sapping her of her warmth and reducing her Recovery attribute despite her physical exertion, but Eufemia didn’t know if she’d rather bear the freezing encroachment, or the gag-inducing rainbow smoke caused by looting. She scrunched her nose at the thought of this room filled with that noxious haze. Better not.
Sen was below equilibrium, but not close to death. She eyed him, sparing a moment to glance his movements, and envied how he never seemed to visibly flag: He was used to fighting at a low physical condition. Each step was always as powerful as his last, each blow with just as much power or more as the start of the battle.
She gritted her teeth and told herself that she wouldn’t be the one to tire first. Eufemia could do whatever she put her mind to, and in this battle, she would not be a burden.
The battle was as much a physical struggle as a mental one. The monsters continued to pour out, fresh and new, while they persisted though the slog of battle. There weren’t any other particular threats, the monsters were much the same as the beginning of battle. Eufemia still aimed her Mana Blast at the thickest throngs, taking out more monsters than she would have in the beginning. She and Sen were a fluid duo, no words needed, neither through voice chat nor verbalized, to identify which monsters to hunt down, to cover each other’s backs, and to sweep and clear the room.
Eufemia wondered how Nara did it: 50 minutes to her must feel like a walk in the park. Her lips curled in smug superiority when she thought of Encio toiling away in a battle like this, and thought she’d at least fare better than he. He had patience, but not the patience for mindless, unvarying repetition.
It was a relief when they noticed the monsters stopped streaming into the room. The floor was already covered in bodies, draped over raised ledges by Salvador Dali’s hand and pooling in lowered floors, almost disappearing within the crevices of dark obsidian.
Eufemia didn’t care; she slumped against the obsidian wall, her armor screeching against the stone.
“Gods. Finally. I thought it’d never end.”
“50 minutes,” Sen said, “was 3 minutes ago.”
“Helpful.”
He rolled his eyes, still standing, and infuriatingly able.
“Can we just, wait a bit? I want to walk out as if I hadn’t just bathed in the blood of my enemies for 50 minutes straight.”
Sen frowned. “But you just did.”
“That’s not the point.”
He didn’t say anything, just staring with a lack of understanding as if to say what is the problem with that? He rolled his shoulders out, and stepped towards the pedestal.
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Item: [Intrepid Heart] (bronze [growth], legendary)
Classification: accessories (bracers)
Effect: Conjure barriers of force connected to you around targets. Suffer damage and effects blocked the barrier. The barrier can suffer a limited amount of damage before breaking and needing to be reconjured. Maximum barrier surface area and distance is determined by the [Spirit] attribute.
Effect (Iron): The barrier adopts your resistances. Barrier conjuration has a greater degree of flexibility, such as size and shape control.
Effect (Bronze): Damage suffered to the barrier may be suffered to any resource, such as stamina or mana. Additional stamina or mana may be paid to reinforce a barrier about to break, with cost increasing the longer the barrier is further maintained.
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The bracers were crafted of a dark, warm red leather inlaid with bronze-gold metal plates tooled with two symbols: the left, a she-wolf; the right, a stylized everlasting fir, trees that endured the ages, and heralded the spring. Protection and endurance, guardianship and hope: The bracers possessed an aura of those sentiments, the reason adventurers fought, to usher those dear and strange to vistas of safety.
Sen nodded. “I like it.”
Eufemia was unsurprised yet incensed. “You just like it because of the wolf!”
“It’s not just because of the wolf,” he said. Likely, it wasn’t entirely a lie.
“It’s a significant part of why you like it.”
“It’s useful. I benefit from protecting allies.”
“Why is your mind filled with nothing but battle and wolves. Why are you so logical about everything else, but when it comes to a wolf you lose all reason?”
“Wolves have never led me astray.”
Truly. Wolves have led him to Capsian, to Nara, and now, to the rest of the team. Wolves are the patrons of his family, and their family was blessed to bond with two different magic beasts—Fenrirs and Simurghs. Wolves are clearly portents of good fortune. His sister understood.
(And while, true, not everyone in the family got or wanted a wolf familiar, especially because it didn’t fit every essence user, every essence user of the Arlang family did like wolves. Outsiders didn’t need to know that perhaps the rumor that they had a vault of wolf paraphernalia may not entirely be a rumor. Or that there was an accord that anyone without a wolf familiar inside the family could pet or snuggle the wolf familiars of those that did. Or else there’d be issues.
…Or that he had been disappointed that his soul crest didn’t have a wolf on it until his sister pointed out his landscape was a home for wolves.)
“That’s—no. That’s not how it works. We kill wolf monsters Sen. Just because it’s a wolf doesn’t make it good.”
“This and that are two different things.”
“How!?”
“Monsters are monsters, and wolves are wolves.”
Eufemia pressed fingers up into her forehead. “Apparently you don’t need a hobby because you have an obsession. Nara really shouldn’t bother.”
“It is…not an obsession. It is a way of life,” he stated, too self-assuredly.
“That’s not any better! That’s worse! You don’t even acknowledge how far gone you are!”
“It doesn’t affect my judgement in battle,” he assured. He knew he was the youngest in the group, yet they all put their confidence in him when it came to strategy. He knew that, despite his thorough training throughout his life, his youth still made him inherently untrustworthy to others. That it was odd, to have a party with those so much older than him, like John and Aliyah. He was grateful for the trust of his party, and that no one questioned him on the basis of age, but of different experiences or his lack of knowledge.
Eufemia sighed and met his eyes to give a reassuring half-smile, sensing the tangent of his thoughts. “I’m not worried about that. It’s never been a problem before. I trust that you know not to let this interfere when it matters. Whatever! You’ve made your decision, haven’t you. Just...ugh. Grab the damn bracers.”
Of course, he did.