Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. What was I thinking? Zyneth warned me. He told me not to go too high or wander off on my own. And I blew him off like he was babying me.
Okay, calm down. I can figure this out. First I need to know what I’m dealing with.
[Name: Raz]
[Species: Human]
[Class: Flame Artificer]
[Level: 46]
[HP: 100/100]
[Mana: 1051/1055]
Fuuuuuuck.
Raz, the highest level I’ve seen in this world, strolls toward me with his hands clasped behind his back.
“This must be some mistake,” I say, desperately trying to buy time. Will his spell time out? Or does he need to lose focus? “I have done nothing against you.”
“Fascinating,” Raz says, stopping before me. “I’ve heard homunculus equipped with basic speech modules before, but never with this much nuance. You appear to be a homunculus, at any rate. But I witnessed you perform a spell earlier. Such a thing should not be possible, unless something more is going on here. Perhaps you act as an intermediary for your mage’s arcana? Fascinating indeed. Tell me, creature, where’s your creator?”
“Dead,” I answer, too panicked to figure out what response would be the most in my favor. “And he was not my creator. Now if you would please let me go.”
“You’re capable of lying? Delightful,” he says. “But a homunculus cannot merely stroll up here on their own. They should be bound to the same level as their master. So try again. Where is your creator?”
“It is just me,” I say. “I am not lying.”
He tsks in disappointment, then crouches down next to me. “Such craftsmanship.” Raz reaches out to run a finger along my hand, and revulsion explodes through me at the touch. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Glass is a peculiar choice.” He takes hold of my finger, and in one deft move, snaps it off.
“Ahhh!” Pain jolts up my arm.
[5 points of Sundering Damage sustained.]
“Hmm.” He examines the finger. “Not very stable, I see. It could be crafted for better durability. Tell me, did you actually feel that, or is the reaction merely an imitation of life—a complex function of your spell?”
“Expletive you,” I say. I feel hot and tingly all over, every inch of glass straining to move, to run, to defend myself. The pain in my hand dims to a dull thrum beneath the staticky panic.
“Expletive?” Raz repeats with a chuckle. “Are you trying to swear at me? You may be the most complex simulation of life I’ve ever seen in a homunculus. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me where you came from?”
“I am not a homunculus,” I say, fear spiking as his gaze travels slowly over my body, as if deciding which part of me he wants to destroy next. “I have a soul. Please, let me go. I can explain everything, just do not hurt me.”
Instead of answering, he grabs my head next—the inverted glass pyramid, and pulls it from where it was frozen above my neck.
“Hey!” My vision spins wildly around, half obscured by his hand. I would have lost my balance if I wasn’t frozen in place.
“Strange,” he mutters to himself, pulling out a knife. There’s strange runes carved into the flat of the blade, which illuminate as he brings the point up to my head. I can feel heat against my glass as if I’m pressed up against a furnace.
“Wait!” I try, panic welling up inside me. “Do not do this, please, I am a person, a real person, there’s a soul in my—AHHHHHHH!”
[7 points of Searing Damage sustained.]
He might as well be cutting into flesh. Searing heat slices through me as his knife cuts off a corner of my vision. A glob of glass drops to the ground, molten. My mind swims in a pain-filled haze. I’ve broken my glass a hundred times by now, and while it always hurt like a nicked finger or bruised knee, this burns. It hurts, it hurts so much more than it should. I want to pass out. To shut my mind down and stop feeling what I’m feeling. But that’s the worst curse of this body—I don’t ever get a break from existing.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“Hush now,” Raz says, as if admonishing a noisy child. “I’d much prefer to get some answers out of you, but I will apprehend that translator if you get too loud. You do seem to feel pain, at least—or are producing a very good simulation of it. I must find your artisan. Masterful design, really.”
“Stop,” I croak. “Please.” All I can do is beg. Pathetic.
I relax a fraction when he sheaths the molten knife and tucks it away once more. However, his next move jolts my sluggish mind alert.
“Now, what was this you were saying about a soul?” Raz asks. He brushes the corner of my cloak away, revealing my core, hanging on its chain. Only a thin layer of cloth separates me from his grasp. Raz reaches for it.
No, no, no, no, no. The idea of his hand closing over me sends waves of claustrophobia through my body. I have to move. I have to do something!
Immobilized, I blurt to Echo, desperately stumbling over the thought. It’s just restraining me physically, right? I can still do magic?
[Affirmative,] Echo says.
I don’t waste another moment. Activating a Sculpt, I reshape the glass in my head piece, wrapping it around the man’s hand like his fingers have sunk into a pile of wet clay. My vision warps insensibly, wrapping in over itself, and I quickly shut the sense off, plunging my world into darkness. But my trips to the Between have left me used to this blindness. I don’t need to see to feel.
Raz cries out, shaking his hand, but I only clamp down harder, forming the surface into spikes as I stab into his hand. Now, it’s his turn to scream.
[15 points of Piercing Damage dealt. Immobilize effect neutralized,] Echo says.
I sag to the floor, barely stopping myself from toppling over. My head piece still attached to Raz’s hand, I scramble away from the insane mage. Pulling out my signing glass while I do, I quickly use a Sculpt to mash it together into a sphere and turn my sight back on in the floating ball—just in time to see Raz smash his hand against the floor, shattering all the glass around it.
[12 points of Piercing Damage dealt.]
[35 points of Bludgeoning Damage sustained.]
“Ahh!” Phantom pain stabs through me as the prism shatters into a hundred pieces, and I can feel every essence of myself in that glass fracture apart. But it’s not as bad as the molten knife, and I can’t let it get to me—I don’t have time to nurse wounds. I scramble to my feet as Raz rounds on me, blood dripping from his clutched hand, a snarl on his face. He raises a finger on his good hand, light forming at its tip.
“Lightbeam!” I cry. The fractured pieces of my head snap into configuration, and I pump every ounce of mana I have into the spell.
A searing white light crashes into the mage. He screams, in pain or rage I’m not sure, and I sure as fuck am not sticking around to find out. I keep the Lightbeam on him as I sprint to the end of the shelf, only shutting the spell off as I round the corner and recall the glass to me.
[35 points of Light Damage dealt.]
I race down the spiraling library as fast as I dare. Maybe now that I’ve gotten away, he won’t follow.
“You bastard!” he calls, and I hear a crashing sound, then the rapid thud of pursuing footsteps. Well, so much for that.
It’s all I can do to push my legs faster. If I trip now, I’ll break off a lot more than just a limb.
[Spell Level Up!] Echo happily declares.
Now is not the time, Echo! I cry.
[Lightbeam: Level 2. The spell now takes 20% less mana to cast, or can be used with 20% increased light damage.]
Oh goody, I am so thrilled to have this information forced through my brain right at this moment when I couldn’t possibly have anything more important to be focusing on!
A fireball crashes into the shelf right next to my head. I reel away, stumbling into the railing. My forearm cracks as it strikes the banister.
[5 points of Bludgeoning Damage sustained. Bludgeoning damage resistance Level Up!]
What the fuck is wrong with this guy?
[Bludgeoning Damage Resistance: Level 3. Damage taken from bludgeoning related sources reduced by 30%.]
Echo, I swear to fuck.
“How dare you,” Raz snarls, storming after me. There’s swirling fire in his hands and a red heat shimmering from one of his eyes. A thin stream of smoke wafts up from his other eye, scorched black where my Lightbeam struck him. He paces toward me, steps measured and inevitable, as a venomous sneer stains his face.
If he’s trying to look terrifying, he’s goddamn succeeding.
There’s still another ten floors to descend before I can make it to Zyneth—ten long, grueling circuits down the spiral. It would take at least five minutes, and that’s if I were running, and that’s if I weren’t dodging a deranged mage.
With his 1051 mana against my 56, I can’t out-magic him. And with his human body against my glass, I can’t outrun him. Backed against the railing, there’s only one way to get down quickly that I can think of.
It’s probably a terrible idea.
See, technically, I should be able to float. I can levitate my signing glass just fine. And as long as the stuff I’m lifting isn’t heavier than the glass itself, I can also carry stuff around—like this cloak and Noli’s bookbag. The biggest issue I’ve run into is trying to focus on each individual piece, trying to hold them all in my mind at once. If I don’t actively make each one float, then they just become dead weight. Thus, all the walking.
Even trying to get them to float as a tiny walking glass vial, with much fewer pieces to worry about, had been too hard for me. Of course, I didn’t have heaps of opportunities to practice, given the crunch time of my spell expiring, but this last month I’d played around with it as I was building up my new body. I could often get whole limbs to levitate on their own: both arms. A leg and a torso. My head and hands. Hypothetically, it’s just about remaining focused. Hypothetically, if I concentrate on only levitating all the biggest, heaviest pieces, they should be able to carry the weight of all the smaller ones.
Hypothetically, this isn’t suicide.
Raz paces forward, bringing his hands together as a ball of fire grows into existence between his palms. I clutch the railing, my soul fluttering with the horror and stupidity of what I’m about to do. Raz looses the fireball, and I jump.