It is the tree with many branches that is damaged most by the wind.

- A Quassian Aphorism.

“Enough! It is time to test your skill and resolve,” she exclaimed, ignoring my attempt at delay and drawing the sword at her side with the rasp of sharp metal.

It was too soon. I sensed that I had but enough Mana to cast only the simplest of spells. Reflexively, and against my better judgment, I threw an Identify at Fen.

The spell failed to take hold, seeming to skitter off her, even as she adopted a fighting stance. With a casual grace, she drew her weapon, gripping it lightly with both hands. The weapon itself was a simple archaic oriental blade, single-edged and ending in a curved sharp tip. However, it was possessed of a silvery sheen that was not of mere mortal steel. It arrested my attention, and with it, the focus of my spell.

Feather-Quill Saber ‘Sharur - Smasher of Thousands’ [Mithril]

Durability 700/700

Cheating whore’s daughter, I cursed under my breath, the local invectives coming to me naturally. To my chagrin, I was going more and more native with each and every passing day.

The woman was going to use a Godmetal weapon against a mere amateur. Had she no pride? Dirty, cheating, cheating whore.

At that moment, I felt as if I had been cast adrift. Hopelessness began to chip away at my earlier confidence.

But hope is a stubborn thing, and like a weed growing in the cracks of a blazing hot pavement, it would not easily die.

For I had seen the message. The revelation of the Divine. Sweet glorious joy. And with the message, returned to me now was one of my advantages, my system. My blessed system.

A defiant smile lit my face as my eyes roved over the attributes, skills, and experience that made me… well me. And, with the system’s return, the floodgates burst open as the command of my magical abilities returned to me in full.

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I felt in my bones the imposed constraints of this place were crumbling.

“Arrogance. Know that I am more… more than you could ever, ever be…” I exclaimed with a wicked grin, meeting her gaze with my own. “I am the chosen of the Goddess, beloved of the Mother, and the bringer of the Endtimes.”

Though the words were not completely my own, they felt right and resonated within me. They were my calling. They were my purpose.

Wait a moment… voiced a kernel of doubt, a small voice that was soon smothered by the needs of the now. I clocked it up to nothing more than a youthful flare for drama.

I imagined that I saw a flicker of doubt flutter across the brown of her hazel eyes. But if so, it was a fleeting thing as her expression set into one of focused determination.

Then suddenly she burst out into fresh laughter.

“Do not think that you are the first Visitor drunk on power not of their own that I have slain…” my teacher replied, sheathing her blade, lowering her center, and shifting her stance.

“If you will not attack and come to me… then I shall come to you,” she exclaimed, rushing at me as she drew and slashed at me in a single fluid motion.

Her sword sang, no screamed, with vicious intent as it flew toward me. Had I been a lesser disciple in the ways of war that would have been the end of me there and then.

But Fen had trained me, and despite my protestations otherwise, had trained me well. From the moment she had resheathed her sword, I had known she was preparing for an attack.

As her sword flew at me, so too did I use Dash to retreat, and this time there was genuine surprise on my former teacher’s face as her blade failed to connect. There was skill, and then there were Skills, I thought with satisfaction as I adopted a defensive stance.

Entropic Aura begged to be used, and I nodded in mental assent. A black tide burst from me at its center and ripples of grey pulsed with negative energy.

“Excellent. I see that you have taken some of my instructions to heart,” the Weaponmaster praised.

“So this is the kiss of oblivion? No doubt, I am supposed to feel fear. To fear the final end of all things. Perhaps it is because I am a shadow that I feel no fear of death. Or is it because I have crossed the Shallow River already that oblivion holds little sway over me? I have seen so much of death,” she mused as she walked casually into the monochrome circle of my aura. “Was this what you were holding back from me, or is there more?”

The voices within answered for me, singing a malicious song that helped me rapidly form the construct of another spell.

Like an arrow loosed from a warbow, darkness flew from me on wings of blighted midnight. A thick tendril of my Drain spell, enhanced by the pulses of Entropy, sought Fen’s heart, questing for it with a hunger unbound.

But, like my Identify spell before it, the spell skittered off Fen, failing to sink its fangs into her.

I knew that the gap between us was a big one, but was the level difference so great that my spells simply failed to work on her? Frustrated, I instead turned the spell on a different target, the very area around me. On Entropy itself.