Hoshun
Village Wreckage
Sound and feeling were distant sensations to Akamori’s mind as consciousness slowly ebbed back to him. He was faintly aware someone was shaking him and calling his name, but the words felt distant. Like he was hearing and feeling it from a vast gulf. He groaned softly, trying to form words.
His eyes fluttered open. He sat forward with a grunt and took stock of the situation. He flicked a glance towards the bottom left of his vision and his HP bar went from opaque to fully visible. His health was maxed again. A system prompt exclamation point was also flashing. So he selected it.
System Info: You have triggered a Latent Miracle: Broken Seal.
Broken Seal: When your HP total is reduced to 0, The Broken Seal miracle is triggered granting a buff. The buff restores HP to max, preventing the character from regressing into unconsciousness. A 120 second invulnerability buff is added. All stats are doubled, and the racial limit of 5 is ignored. Aetherpool is unlimited. The effect of Broken Seal can only be triggered once per scene or day, whichever is longer.
Temporary spell gained: Mass Disintegrate. Cost 10ap. Effect: AOE spell that attacks all enemies. Damage: 50. Mastery, Yes. +30 Bonus.
To double check, he noted several cooldowns were ticking off. He sat upright slowly and glanced around to see Amara and Kusinaki, both wearing long expressions. He looked past them and saw the devastation. His dead father laid prone with a blanket placed over him.
No… nononono he crawled past Amara and Kusinaki next to his father. Kalenza’s skin was cool to the touch. He’d been dead for several hours now. Akamori looked up and noticed the sun was beginning its evening descent. He’d been out since this morning. He turned back to Amara, who was giving him a moment. “How long?”
“Most of the day,” she whispered.
He turned back to his father. “I failed,” he said, sitting back. Both his mother and father were dead. He looked out to the village at the wreckage wrought by the battle. In the distance, several mountains lacked peaks. Neither Kusinaki nor Amara seemed to have anything to say about the wreckage.
“What happened?”
They both shook their heads at him. “There was a brightness, and then nothing. We woke up a while ago and you were at the bottom of this crater. Whatever happened, you were front and center for the worst of it,” Kusinaki said.
Akamori stood up, and Amara gave him a pained look as she glanced at Kusinaki. “Should we tell him?” she said.
Kusinaki’s expression sank. “I would want to know if it were me.”
Akamori waved his arms, feeling as though he were forgotten suddenly. “Hellooo. Standing right here, thanks.”
Amara smiled apologetically and rose. “Sorry, Aka. It’s just…” she paused, fidgeting with her robe. “I noticed that after the battle, after the brilliant burst of light and power, that you bear a powerful gold binding. More complex and powerful than any I’ve ever seen.”
“As an Artificer, I can also attest to its complexity. The elders in the Order can only create a 7th level seal and that’s through a coordinated ritual.”
“What he’s saying is that you’ve been godtouched.”
“I don’t feel godtouched. My head is splitting,” he complained, sitting back on his haunches and surveying the wreckage around. “Are we the only survivors?”
Amara nodded somberly, letting the silence linger respectfully for the dead. She exchanged a glance with Kusinaki as Akamori shook his head in disbelief.
“I don’t understand.”
“What do you mean?” Amara said.
“Why attack us? We’re not near any vital trade lanes, and we aren’t even a major power. We’re just a small, forgotten colony. Why would the dragon wings descend to attack us?”
Neither Amara nor Kusinaki responded, as they didn’t have any answers either. Akamori stood up, trying to push through his confusion and the haze of the morning. He spotted something glinting high in the sky and squinted to make it out clearly. He spotted a flash, and then a portal opened on the ground, small, circular and billowing radiant shadow and violet energies. A beat later, bodies began emerging from it. A small group of figures in high-tech military looking spell armor. It looked nothing like the style that Kalenza had worn. They held rifles, a cannon, and a staff.
Amara and Kusinaki rose swiftly. They assumed ready postures. Poised like coiled vipers. Primed to strike, but not moving just yet. Akamori reached out and felt the pool of air energy swirling around his soul’s core. It pulsed a ready eagerness. Ready to be unleashed. On touching it, he realized what he had access to while sizable was only a sliver. There was more, but it felt… gated, locked away deeper within him, beyond his reach. Perhaps this was the gold seal Amara was talking about at work. It felt like a magical dam, holding back something immense and only allowing a small flow on its opposite side.
Ahead of them, the small group of soldiers fanned out from the portal before it winked out. Several took knees, and the largest of them stood next to and at the side of what Akamori assumed was the group leader.
“Godsdamned…” the big guy muttered.
“Silence Sergeant,” the leader growled. He gave Akamori a nod. “You there. Are you all that remains?”
“Looks that way,” Akamori said. “An entire wing of orcs and undead descended on us, led by hatchlings and a large red dragon. Are you here to help or to fight?”
The leader glanced around silently for a moment, surveying the landscape and the survivors as if weighing whether this was a worthwhile trip. He let out a put-upon sigh. “Attacking country trash is not a tradition of the Federation.” He gestured to his men, who all relaxed their weapons and rose casually.
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Akamori relaxed his muscles and let go of his grip on his air magic. A slow breath eased past his lips quietly as released the tension he’d held firmly mere moments ago. Akamori fully prepared to die just then. On his feet and fighting.
“Now then, local, what happened? In as much detail as you can provide,” the leader said, looking down his nose at Akamori metaphorically. The leader actually had a helmet on with a dark tinted visor. He was certain this guy was looking down his nose at him, though. It was in the tone of his voice.
As the trio approached the soldiers, Akamori noted there was a nameplate on the leader's armor that read “Rayshe”. Akamori ground his teeth, his jaw clenching. He was one of those kinds of people. Wonderful. “The local has a name. I’m Akamori. And this is Amara, and Kusinaki,” he said, gesturing to each in introduction.
“Noted,” Rayshe said impatiently. “Now out with it.”
“Uh, Eltee , I don’t know if we should provoke the locals. We don’t know if they’re the reason the place is thrashed or not,” the big man with the sergeant chevrons on his armored biceps said.
“To be honest, we aren’t really sure what happened. The undead were first strike. The orcs and several hatchling shacklers lead them. There was… there was a massive red scaled dragon that appeared. It was a large wyvern.”
“You seem to know a lot about draconic breeds for a country nomad,” Rayshe said, eying the survivors.
“We were once part of an air dragon wing. Our dragon mother died, stranding us here. We’ve kept a village for the Air mother ever since. Maintaining our last mission.”
“And that mission was what?”
“To remain here and wait.”
“Wait for what?” Rayshe pressed.
Akamori shrugged. “I don’t know. Not sure we were ever told that much. We’ve been here for a long time, though. Keeping the faith. And this was our reward.” He gestured around at the devastation.
Rayshe nodded and then wove a quick message spell. A moment later, an illusion of a woman in an ornate blue uniform materialized in front of the lieutenant. “Captain. We’ve found survivors. They claim to be survivors of an attack.”
“Do you believe them?”
Rayshe remained silent. “For now, yes. Though what they say adds up. Sauridius forces fell upon this world and eliminated the air clan. Like you, I remain skeptical, though. This attack serves no tactical value and feels out of place for Ominek. And we haven’t scried their souls to see if they’ve been shackled or not.”
The woman nodded. “Very well. Bring them with you. I should like to speak to them.” Then the illusion spell fell to glittery pink aetheric dust, blown away in the wind.
Rayshe glanced up at the trio. “Come with us, please.” The request felt strained coming from Rayshe.
Akamori got the sense the man didn’t use the word please very often. “Where to?” Akamori asked. Not quite agreeing, but not just blindly marching to their beat, either.
Amara put a hand on his shoulder. “I want to fight for what’s left too, but look around? There’s nothing left for us here. We’re all that’s left, and if we want to protect that, it makes sense to go with them. They seem like they’ve been fighting against whoever attacked us.”
Akamori glanced down, then his gaze panned out to the ruined landscape. The houses, farmland, even the temple, all of it reduced to strewn rubble, like a giant hand swatted everything over. Small fires still smoldered throughout the hellscape. Bodies of kin and enemy alike were half buried everywhere. His gaze lifted to the mountain tops in the distance, the peaks of which looked evenly chopped off like a pruned house plant. This had been his home once, but no more. Now it was simply a chaotic grave marker for most of his clan.
“Take a moment to gather some things if you need. We’ll wait by the portal,” the big man with the three chevrons on his armor next to Rayshe said. His nameplate read “Sirsir.”
Akamori’s face scrunched at that. What an odd name. He turned and approached his father and took a knee. He lifted his father’s heavy spell blade. He could remember as a child he could sense the air aether from it. Now there was nothing. He placed the blade up on the blanket covering his father and traced his hand along the side of his father’s face. “I see you, father. Chieftain of the Air Nomads of Hoshun. Leader. Warrior. Father. Safe journeys under the wing of our mother.”
As Akamori rose, a strong wind blew through the village, teasing his hair from his face, and throwing it over his shoulders wildly. It was a warm wind, the kiss of the goddess, or so their local legends held. In a surreal sense, he felt an odd kinship with that wind. It spoke to him. Fly, it said. Fly to what, he wasn’t sure. Fly on their spaceship? Or fly to war? Or fly to new stars? He glanced up at the darkening skies. He used to long for this freedom, and now that he had it? He wasn’t sure what to think of it. The cost felt too high a price for it. Yet they paid it no thanks to that blood red dragon. He turned back to the ruined landscape of what had once been his home.
He coughed out a short laugh, his eyes blurring with a held tear. “I’ve wanted this since I was old enough to run on my own, and now that I have it, I don’t want it.” He felt Amara put a comforting hand on his shoulder. He turned to her. “I never wanted to be clan chief. I just wanted to travel to the stars. I felt like a chain held me down to the planet. It made me miserable thinking about it. And now that destiny releases the chain… I don’t want to go.”
“There’s nothing left for us here. The best thing we can do to honor them is to go. Live as best we can,” Amara urged.
“I know. I guess I’m just scared,” he laughed softly with a shrug. “This all feels so much bigger than me.” He shook his head. “I never wanted a crazy life. I just wanted to explore and be left alone. There’s a part of me that burns at what happened. I want that fucking dragon to burn,” he said.
“But I look at those marines and I see the same chains I struggled against here. I don’t know… Father wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d charge right into it, embracing it every step of the way. Here I am, dragging my feet because I don’t have my parents to hold their hand anymore. A scared boy trembling at a dragon’s shadow.”
Amara frowned, “That’s not true. You’re a man now, and accepted by our wyrm mother. And your father always hesitated before acting.”
Akamori’s brow lifted curiously. Amara nodded.
“Kalenza measured every word, every step, every action he took with you in mind. If he doubted you would be there, or safe or happy, he hesitated until he was confident it would be alright by you. You were his life. Without you, I don’t think Kalenza would have had the same decisiveness. And without your parents, maybe you need to find your own edge now, too.”
“So, what you’re saying is this is normal?”
She shrugged, “Perhaps. Only that you’re probably struggling to figure out who you are now that all of this has been crushed underfoot. Will you stay here in the ashes of the life you always longed to leave? Or go with them and face the unknown?”
Akamori nodded. He wasn’t sure who he was. He’d always known this place wasn’t quite where he felt he belonged. But leaving it always seemed like some far-off dream. Now he had to confront the reality. He remembered the words in the wind. He closed his eyes. “Fly,” he whispered to himself. Then nodded. Much like the young Amphiptere dragon mother after its first molt, it was time for him to take flight. A gentle warm breeze gusted behind him, and he felt inwardly that it was the spirit of their guardian encouraging his choice.
“Ok, let’s go.”
Amara nodded and followed him as Kusinaki fell in with them as they approached the soldiers near a freshly opened portal. It swirled and billowed in its unending spiraling spin. “Alright, we’re ready,” Akamori told the soldiers.
“Very well. Follow us.”
The soldiers all filed into the portal one at a time. With each one, the portal’s surface rippled like the surface of an inky black and violet pool. As everyone but himself stepped in, Akamori turned back at the ruined war-scape of his home. Whatever life he’d had, worries and hopes. None of it survived. He sighed, biting back the sting of tears in his eyes before wiping them dry and stepping through the portal.