Current Quests
The Safety Of Walls: Reach a walled town with Samorn Khantong.
Abandoned Forest Town: Investigate the abandoned forest town Courbefy with local…
Survive Lord Ross: Survive Lord Ross hunting you in this area. Kill Lord Ross for extra…
Sam led Dave across the terrain until she found a stream which they splashed through for a while before once more returning to land, to make their scent hard to track.
“One of them has an animal essence. Something with tracking. Maybe lion or lynx?” said Sam.
Dave just nodded. He felt a little dejected. With all of his spell slots used, a few more hours until even one came back, he wasn’t much more than a warm body on the battlefield. He couldn’t even use his Attack Of The Razor Quills prestidigitation. The metal nibs of his pens had bent and broken from the constant usage on the way to this town and against the goats so the magic didn’t recognise them as writing implements anymore. Luckily, Sam had thrown on her pack before engaging, her couple of years being randomly attacked by monsters during work hours as a ranger and then running away had developed this good habit in her, so they still had all their gear but it was sad to not be using the cabin on the first day he’d cast the spell.
“It even had temperature controls,” said Dave wistfully as he was using Grand Mage’s Gravitas to dry Sam and himself off from the stream crossing. In response, Sam turned around, pet Dave on the head and smiled.
“It’s fine! We alive.”
Dave chuckled weakly.
“It doesn’t feel fine.”
Sam turned back to marching with a spring in her step leading Dave on through the late morning.
“I will protect you!” she called back over her shoulder.
“About that,” said Dave, following her, “where did you get such good fight instincts?”
Sam looked self conscious and grinned.
“I learned fighting with my brothers. There are show fights in my hometown sometimes and they would compete to earn a little money. I am the oldest so I would always help them.”
“You didn’t compete?” asked Dave.
“No. Nobody pay to watch girls fight.”
“Seems a little sexist.”
Dave could practically hear the eyeroll and little nod of agreement.
“Well, I’m glad for it,” said Dave earnestly. “Where are we going anyway?”
“Looking for shelter,” said Sam. “Best idea is to find it now rather than looking at the end of the day when the light is bad.”
“Makes sense. Lead on!”
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Dave followed Sam but they soon encountered a small herd of psychotic goats.
“Tree!” stated Sam urgently.
Dave didn’t hesitate and instantly pulled himself into the branches of the nearest conifer. The glazed-eye goats immediately rammed the tree trying to shake Dave and Sam out of it but Dave drew his wand and started shooting into them, killing one with a well placed shot to the throat.
The rest of the herd retreated out of sight but not out of earshot. They climbed back down cautiously and Dave looted the dead goat. His eyes idly flicked to the text box as he noticed green. Green was the colour of text indicating loot of uncommon rarity. He clicked it. It was thirty-three glass quintessence gems!
“Sam, why did the goat give me glass quintessence?”
Sam gave him a confused look. Dave pulled one of the gems out of the small stack in his inventory. A small, quartz-like rock that, to Dave, looked like cheap jewellery.
“That is weird,” said Sam who handed it back.
Dave checked the rest of his inventory as Sam started walking again. It was full of stacks of quintessence.
“Sam, I have huge amounts of quintessence.”
Dave quickly used Stop And Think and Library Of The Mind to replay the memory of looting the goats and this time, looked at the text box in his HUD. As he suspected, there had been a deluge of different quintessence being looted that Dave didn’t notice at the time. He deactivated Stop And Think and asked Professor Tome to show the psychotic goat entry in Bestiary Of Frankish Byzasian Empire.
Sam turned back and looked at him quizzically but said nothing as Dave read from the book.
“Here we go. It was hidden in the details section. ‘...while the most common loot is lesser spirit coins and goat meat, if they have persisted in this world for more than their usual amount of time, they have been known to consume quintessence and incorporate it into their bezoar.’ Nice! Pity that murderous rich kid is here now.”
“It’s fine. We are alive and you will make a plan,” smiled Sam. “You always have plans! Oh, did you get enough light and fire quintessence for lantern?”
Dave checked.
“Yes!” He said with a wide grin.
Sam grinned with him as he gestured professor Tome over.
displayed Tome.
“Yes I have, Professor. Please open to the summoning page,” said Dave.
Tome opened to the page and Dave incanted the spell.
“I evoke from the aether a luminous ally of enlightenment!”
A single point of light glowed weakly in the circle and grew, changing from a weak yellow to a brilliant white that seared the eyes as it grew to the size of a person’s torso. The light pulsed and faded, leaving behind an intricate lantern hanging in the air that gave off light from a ball of light trapped within.
“Wonderful!” said Dave, gazing at the hanging light. Sam clapped and laughed. The light pulsed with Sam’s claps and gained different coloured tints.
displayed Tome and then flicked to a page of Essence Abilities, Magic Essence published by the Magic Society.
Dave read the entry.
“Ah, ‘some can understand the languages of the caster and speak with a distorted imitation of voice.’ I see. Well, hello! I’m Dave.’
Dave extended a hand for it to shake. The lantern pushed itself into Dave’s hand and bobbed up and down. It was pleasantly warm.
=I have awaited in the aether longing for this day for so long. Well met my new friend. Good summoner, I promise that I shall bring you many victories in battle. Our enemies will rue the day we meet.=
It was like listening to an automated voice with full reverb effect from the other end of a drain pipe. As the lantern ‘spoke’ its light shifted as one might expect from a waveform generator.
“Do you have a name, lantern?”
=I do not. It is the role of the summoner to name the summoned.=
Dave thought about it for a few seconds.
“Well, What do you do? What are your dreams? It seems like you’ve been looking forward to this realm?”
=Long have I trained in the endless space between worlds, looking for one like you who would need me.=
“That’s good. What training?”
=Aggression. Battle. War. I seek to illuminate all knowledge in the realm intersecting magic and war. I sensed your need and I came.=
“Oh, well. That’s sure a bit more… enthusiastic about the situation than I was expecting but welcome! I sure am in a spot of bother right now.”
=I am not just for the now but also for the future. You would not have been able to summon me if your future wasn’t soaked in the blood of your enemies who are now my enemies. Together we will walk the path of bloody victory across these lands.=
Dave didn’t know how to respond to that. Sam was holding her hand over her mouth and giggling at Dave’s dumfounded face. He pulled himself together.
“Oh? Well… I hope you’re comfortable with small beginnings. Right now all I can offer you is a violent youth and his gang?” said Dave wearily.
=His skull will be placed at your feet by my light. This is my task and I accept.=
Dave nodded. You can’t complain about an enthusiastic ally no matter how unexpected.
“You know, I have a name you might like. It’s the name of the most influential military strategist in history from my world. How do you like ‘Tzu’?” said Dave.
=It is a great honour to carry such a portentous name. I shall carry it with pride. I am Tzu.=
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The new quartet of Sam, Dave, Tome and Tzu was lucky and only encountered single monsters before Sam found a dilapidated farmstead worth staying in. The first two monsters were time mastiffs; fast, two-headed dogs that could travel back in time in bursts which they used to drag Dave off his feet both times as they attacked from behind.
In both encounters, Tzu was the first to respond with a beam of disruptive force pouring from its glass-like frame onto the creature, tracking the mastiff, drilling into fur and skin. Between his wand and the force-laser, Sam noted that Dave’s ability to do damage wasn’t able to be ignored anymore. Tzu glowed with a proud, purple tint.
The last attack was a pebble skinned viper, an enormous snake with pebble-like scales which would have struck Sam had Tzu not shot a laser into its hidden, coiled form which gave Sam time to avoid the strike.
Sam reflexively cast her beetles over it and Dave hastily drew his weapons. Fortunately, Sam was carrying her shield, which the giant viper struck blindly through a haze of beetles. The snake coiled its body forward around the shield arm while taking blows and struck at Sam’s arm. Sam grit her teeth and the whole team piled the damage on. The snake died quickly after that to Sam’s sickle but she had already been envenomed. Dave looted it for some healing unguent and some viper venom which was apparently a poison that could be used on weapons and an ingredient in anti-venom.
Dave did a mental mouse-over the debuff hovering under Sam’s stamina bar. [Viper Venom] (affliction, poison): Your health, mana and stamina are reduced by half and you cannot regain health, mana or stamina.
“You alright?” asked Dave.
Sam nodded her head in the universal sign of ‘no, but I won’t admit it’.
“Recon we’ll find a place to rest soon?” asked Dave.
=Forward brave warrior, Sam! This is but one battle. We have many before us!= buzzed Tzu.
Sam smiled weakly at Tzu’s encouragement.
“If we keep following this stream,” Sam pointed at the one ahead. “We should find a house soon.”
“Sounds good but make sure to lean on me if walking gets hard,” said Dave with concern.
“I can walk. Just don’t make me fight anything,” said Sam with a small smile.
They didn’t have to fight anything. The house–dilapidated cottage really–was only a few hundred metres away on a small rise.
“How did you know it’d be here?” asked Dave as they approached the cottage.
“Good spot for a house,” said Sam with a tired grin. “Morning and afternoon sun, close to the steam but on a hill so won’t flood. A good place to build a little house for an aunty.”
Dave smiled back. She made it sound wholesome.
“Let’s make tea,” said Dave as he moved inside.
There was no furniture, some unknown critters scurried into the corner but it had walls and a fireplace. Dave took a bedroll out of his inventory and sat Sam down on it then set about making tea.
When the tea was made, Dave made a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches from his inventory with his item creation ability and handed one to Sam with the tea.
“Want to go through the loot while we eat?” asked Dave.
“Sure,” said Sam.
Dave sipped on his tea and munched on his tasty sandwich. He started pulling out quintessence examples and conjuring a paper number to lean against each one. Unsurprisingly, goat quintessence was the most numerous at two-hundred-and-seventy-four followed by plant quintessence at two-hundred-and-thirteen. Most of them were in the one to two hundred range; air, bird, bow, cloth, dog, earth, hunt, rake, shovel, snake, staff, trap, vehicle, wolf and even skunk. Only a few dozen of some of the more rare quintessence; blood, claw, cold, feast and glass. Despite looking a bit wan, Sam laughed as the loot piled up.
=Truly you are mighty, Dave!=
“Thank you, Tzu.”
Dave was looking through his inventory and rearranging items by type. He’d looted a bunch of items from the two people they’d killed from the hunting party. A growth essence looted from the iron ranker that the golem killed was always welcome and came with some looted robes which he looked up the details of. Item: [Fine Robes Of Magical Casting (Iron)] (iron rank, uncommon). These vestments make the wearer resistant to spell effects and decrease the chance of other creatures resisting your spells.
“Hey, check these out, Sam! Professor, show her on your pages. He also dropped a bunch of mana, stamina and health potions,” said Dave as he handed her the robes. From what he could tell, they were basically a loose fitting dress with some neat embroidery at the seams but Sam oohed at them appropriately.
“Hang on, what’s this?” asked Dave, focusing on a symbol he didn’t know in his inventory, it was… a purse? A bag? Dave took it out.
“That’s a dimensional bag!” said Sam.
“Oh!? Really. It looked really goofy in my inventory. Well, I already have a storage space so this one is yours.”
“Thank youuuuu!”
“Just keep healing me and we’ll call it even. Open it up and see what our loot is!”
Sam grinned with happiness despite her sickness and opened the bag eagerly.
“Oh? Yes! There’s probably… HA!” said Sam to herself as she rummaged in the bag.
Dave waited with a bemused look and blinked a few times as Sam withdrew a small bottle the size of a finger from the bag and immediately drank it. Within a few seconds her viper poison condition was gone.
“Oh, that makes sense now,” said Dave. “For a second there I thought you were crazy.”
Sam grinned with more enthusiasm than she had moments before and started rummaging more.
“Dave, I think we got very lucky! This guy was carrying a lot of their equipment. Lots of potions of all kinds; more antivenom, cleansing potions, a few bottle of crystal wash, more healing unguent and many good quality adventuring gear,” said Sam as she browsed through it all with Dave.
“Ooh! I even have proper armour now,” said Sam. She pulled out a proper arming jacket and most of a set of plate armour to wear over it; Breastplate, pauldrons, plackart, faulds and tassets with a matching sallet helmet. All used. It was magical armour but only in the sense that it was self repairing and would change size to fit its owner.
“Please clean!” requested Sam and held the arming jacket out to Dave.
Dave began cleaning it all with Grand Mage’s Gravitas.
“After getting all this, I guess we’re obligated to go adventuring then?” asked Dave.
“Another cup of tea,” said Sam comfortably. “We both need to meditate our experiences.”
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During Sam’s rest, she suddenly glowed with a blue-grey light and then stretched comfortably on the ground.
“Rank up!” said Sam happily.
Dave took a look at her character sheet while he congratulated her.
Name:
Samorn Khanthong
Race:
Runic
Rank:
Iron
Progression:
3.75%
Attributes:
Power (Animate): Iron.
Speed (Balance): Iron.
Spirit (Death): Iron.
Recovery (Life): Iron.
Racial abilities:
Spellborn
Wellspring
Spell Aptitude
Magic affinity
Adaptive Resistance
Mana Beacon
Essences:
Life [Recovery] (2/5)
* Biogenesis (familiar): Iron 6, 43%
* Health Blossom (spell): Iron 0, 14%
* Regrowth (spell): Iron 0, 03%
Death [Spirit] (5/5)
* Corpse Explosion (spell): Iron 3, 00%
* Death Sight (special ability): Iron 0, 35%
Balance [Speed] (2/5)
* Life Recirculation (spell): Iron 0, 26%
* Transpose Composition (spell): Iron 0, 11%
Animate [Power] (1/5)
* Summon Skeletons (spell): Iron 0, 08%
“That’s really awesome, Sam!” said Dave.
They sipped their second cup of tea and reflected inwardly for a few minutes.
“Do you have a plan for today?” asked Sam.
=We destroy our enemies in the light of my wrath!=
“Close, buddy. I’m out of spell slots so, I’m basically an incompetent damage dealer,” said Dave to Tzu and turned to Sam. “Your abilities are great and if we keep our heads you can probably solo most of our encounters using me as a distraction. We just need your skellies to come off cooldown.”
“Cooldown?”
“Oh, it’s a term from my world. It means the amount of time you have to wait before you use an ability again. It’s like using the ability makes it hot and you need to wait until it’s cool again to use it.”
“Alright! I understand.”
“How long until the cooldown ends?”
“I feel like not long? Can’t you check?”
“It feels like I’m invading your privacy,” said Dave meekly.
Sam laughed at his manner.
“It’s fine! You’re not peeking at me in the bath. This is like looking how fast I run, not peeking,” giggled Sam.
Dave couldn’t help but still feel weird about it.
“You’ve got 24 minutes left.”
“Enough time for you to put up a roof!” said Sam cheerily.
“You can’t help?”
“No, I still have tea and you don’t.”
That was true. Dave used a tent inside the house, tying it to the remains of the rafters. There was pretty much nothing left of the thatching. Sam, actually, did finish her tea and help.
“Time to go?” asked Dave.
“Give me Tome.”
“Thank you, Professor,” said Sam with a slight wei.
Tome flipped to a page with a magic circle and Dave put his hand on the book with Sam who cast the spell in her native Siamese. Ethereal dust swirled and formed into five skeletons all holding basic weapons from Sam’s new dimensional inventory. Sam clapped and bounced up and down on her toes.
“Oh, cool! The auto-equip must be because you have a dimensional storage space now. Nice! Here, take some more weapons,” said Dave enthusiastically, handing them out from his own inventory. His best weapons were gone, left behind when they fled the hunting party but Dave still had some small hand axes, daggers and long knives which the skeletons all took.
“Let’s go!” said Sam.
=Only in battle will we find peace!=
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They went adventuring. They had decided to try and get into the town proper to experiment with Dave’s quest system and map.
“The quest says that there are thirty-two magical items to collect but there’s only a single marker on the map. I get the feeling that there should be a marker for each objective,” said Dave as he splashed through the stream with Sam.
Sam smiled and nodded.
“The other day, you said you get a detailed map reveal? When we find a new area?”
“Yep! Kind of. Major landmarks and buildings only. Until I get close.”
“That’s still good!” said Sam brightly.
Dave was an experienced hiker but only on modern Earth with signs and paint on the rocks where people were supposed to walk. Actually being in the wilderness was a new experience for him but for Sam this was literally her day job. With one look at a map, she could tell where the best trails would be while Dave would have picked a path through a bramble patch.
The first group of monsters they encountered were a group of pixelax. Metre-high stick-men figures with sharp, pointed fingers. Although they were in a large enough number to swarm over the group, Tzu spotted them at a great distance. It and Dave began shooting them from that distance causing them to converge on Sam’s army. When the leading pixelax fell from ranged damage, Sam blew up the corpse, almost killing several. Their speed closed the distance swiftly but since quite a few were already damaged, whenever one died, Sam’s army retreated several steps and she blew up the body so that the explosion took the monsters in the back. The battle was soon over.
=YES! Die at the feet of the mighty Sam!= buzzed Tzu as it floated gently above them.
Sam didn’t know how to react to that so she just smiled.
After that simple swarm encounter, they crossed another stream into the town proper and Dave’s map updated. Dave gestured for Tome to show Sam.
“Thanks, Tome!” she sang.
Sam picked a path to the nearest objective. The woods weren’t as tall around the town, it was new forest and so there were a lot of shrubs and even some saplings. Dave’s magical sight detected a light haze of magic permeating the entire area. It felt rather unsettling.
“Oh, it’s in there,” said Sam in a low voice, pointing to a ruined house. Neither of them believed that they’d get to a magical objective without a fight but since crossing into this area, the world had turned eerily silent.
Sam’s army carefully entered into a fenced off yard full of vats and racks. Dave looked around with confusion and raised an eyebrow at Tome.
Dave nodded his thanks to the professor. They walked past the dusty vats and by the light of Tzu, Dave saw shadows moving unnaturally, his own magical sight showing that something was gathering.
“Sam, I think there’s unseen monsters. Don’t trust any direction,” said Dave.
She nodded, she felt weird about the place too, and pulled her skeletons closer into a formation that looked in every direction. They went through the small house, towards the blue dot on the map, and found an awakening stone of the cat on a rotten rug. It was shining with magic. Sam picked it up.
“UraaaAAAaaaagggg!” screamed an ethereal, disembodied voice, making Sam and Dave jump out of their skin.
Scraps of shadows rapidly rushed to solidify into a scrappy-looking cat on the rug, a man at the door and a woman behind a bench who rushed at Sam’s army. Shadows streamed off them as they moved giving them an emaciated appearance.
Dave used Stop And Think. He selected the shadows and, finding their tooltips to show them all as the same type of creature, used Epistemology and queried ‘type’.
Shadow monster. Usually an undead manifestation of solid shadow, often as a reflection of something that was once living. It is now merely a non-living echo of what it once was.
Dave unpaused time and shot a mage bolt at the man-shadow as Tzu concentrated a beam of light on him as well. Sam was struggling with a shadow cat that was wrapping around her leg and refusing to let go but she wasn’t panicking. Three of her skeletons advanced on the woman who had a shadowy knife and two on the man who now had a large, tanner’s fleshing blade.
“They’re undead!” said Dave, quickly and loudly to Sam who immediately put a Life Blossom on each of them.
The shadow creatures were incredibly resistant to physical damage. Under Sam’s instruction the three skeletons attacking the shadow-woman had surrounded her and whichever skeleton was behind her was delivering skull crushing blows to the back of her skull however, the machetes and hatchets were landing as though into black oil under a dark sky and being withdrawn with little effect other than a steam-like wisp of darkness following the withdrawal of the weapon. In contrast, the shadow under fire by Dave and Tzu was fading quickly.
“Professor, give me the vulnerabilities of shadow creatures!” yelled Dave.
The professor flicked open to a page. Dave turned his head, used Stop And Think and read the page. He read that their etherealness meant that physical attacks were mostly disruptive to their form rather than damaging and that they were antithetical to disruptive force, concentrated light and flame. He quickly checked the fight log in his chat box and saw that Tzu was doing three times the damage he normally would. He noted that, as undead, they’d still take damage from life magic and that spells would do full damage.
“Thanks professor!” said Dave, snapping back into real time. “Magic is our best weapon. Sam, hold out and we’ll win!”
Sam nodded with a strained face as her leg was ethereally shredded by the shadow cat.
=Return to the beyond, spirit! HAAAAAA!=
The shadow man was streaming away under the constant beam of force shooting out of the delicate lantern hanging near the ceiling. Dave kept shooting with his magical pea-shooter as quickly as he could while the shadow faded into nothing, melting like wax into the surrounding shadows of the room.
In a few more seconds, Health Blossom bloomed. The shadow cat exploded back into the darkness and the shadow woman followed. The threat was over but the skeletons were a little damaged with no easy way to heal them. Sam sat down, waiting for her own Health Blossom spell to heal her leg.
“This whole area is blanketed in some type of magic and the shadows spawned when you picked up the stone, right?” asked Dave.
Sam nodded while putting a spirit coin in her mouth and washing it down with a mouthful of water.
“Yeah, that’s gotta be connected. Let me review the fight memories.”
Dave sat down and used Library Of The Mind to replay the fight in his head but this time, paid attention to the monster’s magical signature.
“Ha! I thought so,” said Dave with a grim smile. He snapped out of memory and looked at Sam. “They’re concentrated versions of the magic that encompasses the whole town.”
“What does that mean?” asked Sam.
“I’m not sure yet but… How do I say? The essence of the stuff that makes them is already here. I don’t know enough magic theory yet to know what summoning really is but from the word alone I know it doesn’t mean using what you’ve already got.”
Professor Tome hovered in front of Dave and flipped open.
Tome flipped open to a textbook which described the magic of manifesting. The magical knowledge was beyond Dave but he understood the gist.
“Okay, it looks like there’s a magical background radiation lying upon the entire area and it sort of settles into the magical objects of the area and when those objects are disturbed, that concentrated radiation manifests into undead shadows of previous inhabitants?”
“Good point. Thanks, Professor,” said Dave.
“Thank you!” beamed Sam.
Dave looked at Sam.
“We have to find another stone and give it a good examination before we pick it up,” he said.
They walked warily to the next closest magical object on the quest. Dave was paying particular attention to his Eldritch Eyes along the way. The magic he could see now flitting along with the shadows, making them move unnaturally was the same as that which made the shadow monsters. It was like they were straining at the boundary of darkness and light trying to push their way in.
Sam looked around the shadows as they walked towards a woodyard and then looked straight up.
“Dave, it’s middle of the afternoon. Why so dark?”
Dave looked at the weak sun in the sky and the shadows cast by the light of Tzu.
“Ahh, hell. I guess that’s an effect of the evil in the town and all this shadow magic.”
“It’s creepy.”
“Yep. I suppose that’s why it’s called ‘evil’ in the quest.”
She gave him a withering look.
They walked carefully into the woodyard. A pile of moss and a dead tree in the centre of what was once a factory that turned trees into lumber and hefted it into carts to be sold at distant markets.
Tzu suddenly shone a spotlight on the pile of moss in the centre.
=Trap. Kill!=
Dave didn’t need telling twice. He was already shooting his wand at it as the pile came to life. He selected it and discovered it was called a Woodland Shambler. He got Tome to show him the entry which he read in Stop And Think. Apparently they could hide their aura and camouflage as a dead, moss-covered tree and attack passers by for food. Fortunately they were quite slow.
“Sam, only attack if you’re behind it! Anything it faces should back off or defend!”
Sam acknowledged by willing her skeletons to change from a wall formation to spread out. She poured her familiar towards it, to disrupt its senses and the skeletons varied between running and attacking until the slow shambler fell underneath a hail of light beams, mage bolts and opportunistic hacking. He was about to loot it when Sam stopped him.
“Don’t!” she said. “We have a body to explode for the shadows!”
“Hey, yeah! Good thinking,” grinned Dave.
They set about searching for the magical objective. Dave spent a whole minute walking back and forth through the doorway, not finding the stone. Eventually, Dave zoomed his minimap all the way in and confirmed that he was, in fact, standing right on top of it. Just outside the doorway to the main factory on the entryway.
“Oh, it must be underneath,” said Dave, slapping his head.
Sam grinned at Dave’s changing expressions as he kneeled on the wooden floor and saw through the cracks in the floorboard magic underneath. They soon had removed a stair from the entrance and sent Dave crawling under the raised structure. Lying down, underneath the floorboards, holding up candle flames on his own fingertips for light to examine an awakening stone of the hand resting on top of a rotted toy heidel that had been made by whittling. A child's toy.
“Well, this is interesting,” said Dave. “The awakening stone has a resonance with the background shadows and, let me check, I don’t think this will manifest the monsters but watch out.”
Sam tensed and Tzu blazed brightly. Dave tapped the awakening stone with a knife. Shadows all around the area strained and wobbled against reality.
“Did you pick it up!?” asked Sam, a little too loud.
“No, I just tapped it. Help me out, I think I know what to do.”
The skeletons helped Dave slide out. Sam looked at him expectantly.
“If this awakening stone is any indication then what’s happening is that there’s a whole bunch of magic trapped in this area like a giant reservoir and moving the magical items releases a bit of it,” said Dave.
“Alright, so we do each item, one at a time?” asked Sam.
“Yes, but that won’t deplete the reservoir. What we have here, it’s like a concentration gradient. You know what that is?”
Sam shook her head.
“Yes, that’s what a concentration gradient is,” said Dave.
“The shadow magic is the dye?” asked Sam, confused.
“Kind of. There’s a huge amount of magic stored and normally that’d manifest as monsters and stones, right?”
Sam nodded.
“But there’s some ‘evil’ in town preventing that.”
Sam nodded again.
“But some leaks out in the weak bits and, I’m guessing now, over the years it’s concentrated into these stones which act like plugs.”
“Ooh!” said Sam, her eyes going wide. “We’re removing the magic plugs and getting monsters!”
“Yes, except not just normal monsters. Specific monsters caused by the ‘evil’ for some reason.”
“Does that matter?” asked Sam.
“Probably will! For starters, they won’t provide loot. Professor, can I have that text book page on monster manifesting?”
Tome opened to the page and Dave used Stop And Think.
“It looks like if we can remove the source of the corruption, the big reservoir of magic will be free to just make normal monsters as usual,” said Dave.
“What?”
“What?”
Tome flicked to a different textbook page about magical resonance reservoirs and their release valves. A certain paragraph was underlined. Basically, removing the plug would cause a momentary convergence of both the corruption and the backed up magic spawning the corrupted shadows over the entire affected area.
“Oh.”
“Oh dear.”
They were silent for a moment and then Dave grinned.
“I bet Ross doesn’t know this.”
Sam relaxed to recharge her mana over the next few minutes. Dave used spare bits of wood to make falling traps that would drop heavy logs on the enemies to come and tethered a rope up a tree. Then, Sam stood up.
“Ready!” she grinned.
Dave nodded and climbed his rope up a tree for a good vantage point to shoot from. Sam had insisted he use the distance on the basis that she wouldn’t have to worry about him there. One less person to heal.
Dave concentrated on a spot at the back of the yard they’d already selected and invoked his latest Warming Fire prestidigitation. Over the next few seconds, a cracking campfire appeared on the spot and Sam’s army lit wooden torches that Sam had made for weapons. Sam willed her skeleton under the stairs to take the awakening stone.
“SUUUURRRAAaaaaaaaggh!” screamed a half heard ethereal voice as six shadow people and a dog appeared. Thanks to the preparation, the encounter went swiftly. Sam and her army retreated, dragging the shadows that were scattered through traps and spent some skeleton health getting them to the forest shambler corpse.
It wasn’t all to plan, though. The shadow dog attacked a skeleton and dragged it to the ground where another shadow figure moved to attack it but Dave and Tzu focused their fire on the dog and the skeleton managed to scramble, battered, back to its fellows.
Once all were gathered at the forest shambler corpse, Sam’s army backed towards Dave’s fire and Sam exploded the corpse at the back of the shadows, felling two of them including the dog. This injection of health reinvigorated the skeletons and now, flaming brands in hand, they outnumbered the shadows and began leading them, wisp by wisp, into Dave’s fire. A few moments later, the shadows had all dissipated.
Dave looted the destroyed corpse. Because Sam’s sickle had killed it, it yielded several tins of unguent and -
“Ooh!, said Dave. “Magic item. Bark shield of the woods. Shield that traps your enemies weapons in it, self repairing and can be activated once a day to disguise you as a tree stump for a minute. For you!”
Dave handed over the shield and Sam equipped it gladly, handing over her beat up cardboard shield to a skeleton.
The skeletons were still more beat up than before the fight had started which didn’t bode well for their future fights however, the skeletons helped looted the building and Dave was glad to find some rusted, but still serviceable pens in an office area.
“I guess they didn’t take their broken pens with them, hey?” said Dave, displaying the handful to Sam who smiled.
“We can’t do many more fights today,” said Sam.
“Not unless we can come up with something clever. No chance we can kite them?”
“What’s ‘kite’?”
“Sorry. Gaming term from my world. It means to cause damage to a monster while always running away so that it dies before it reaches you.”
“Can you move your fire?”
“Alas, no.”
“Sad. They can’t move very fast.”
“Yeah, I noticed the dog. Pounced but couldn’t run. Apparently part of what got corrupted was their ability to move quickly.”
=I can burn them in my light but I cannot fight this battle alone!=
“Why don’t we just take the stones and run away?”
“Because… Ooh! yeah. Why not?”
Dave was stunned. Of course! They couldn’t even loot these shadows. Why fight them? Just take what they wanted and leave! The shadows could make small bursts of explosive movement but definitely seemed lacking on cardio.
Sam beamed at Dave’s implicit compliment.
“Let’s test if it works,” grinned Dave. “We’ll feel downright silly if we trigger a whole town of shadows to pursue us across oceans but I think you’re really onto something. Tome can I have the shadow monster from the active monster registry and the Bestiary Of Frankish Byzasian Empire?”
It wasn’t in the Bestiary. It wasn’t a common monster but Dave quickly read both pages in the active monster registry with Stop And Think.
“Yeah,” he said. “Nothing to suggest that they have preternatural sensory or tracking abilities. What do you think, Tome?”
“So let’s try it!” said Sam.
----------------------------------------
They travelled northwards, staying at the very edge of the zone and avoiding the middle of the town for now until they found the next awakening stone. They’d have missed it if it weren’t for Dave’s magical sight.
“It’s underneath the water!” said Dave with triumph. Sam was looking around and smiling with appreciation.
“This place is nice,” she said.
The ruins of a house were not far off, it looked like a large farmer’s house and over where Sam’s army stood now was a stone bench and a tree with a big love heart carved into the bark next to a peaceful stream.
“I think that whoever lived in that house was a couple and they would come here to relax,” said Dave, nodding.
“That’s romantic!” declared Sam happily.
“It is,” agreed Dave. It made him smile to think of a happy couple, reading in the shade of the tree, taking the time to relax together. Dave had never got the hang of long relationships, his studies and career had bounced him between two continents and different towns. Even the constant conferences would have been interruptions to a settled life if Dave had wanted one. They were part of the reason he didn’t want one but he saw the appeal.
“Well, let’s uncorrupt it!” said Dave.
Sam laughed. She looked at Dave’s map on Tome, mapped out a path of retreat and set up two of the skeletons on the bank ready to pull a third to the shore and leg it. Dave stood nearby ready to run.
“I will do it now!” said a nervous Sam.
The designated skeleton reached into the stream and snatched up the awakening stone of the stream out of the stream.
“URRRAaaaaaggghhh!” came the now familiar echoing, ethereal scream.
A shadow husband and wife coalesced together on the stone bench along with three children who were in poses suggesting playing on the bank of the stream. The skeleton with the stone was immediately pounced on by the children. The stricken skeleton was dragged down into the water.
Sam’s will, however, didn’t falter. She stared at them with concentration. The swarmed skeleton passed off the stone to the other two who began running and the skeleton in the stream spent the last seconds of its summoned time pushing through the children to tackle its way through the adult shadows to disrupt their form and slow them down.
Sam’s army began running. They were definitely faster and soon had a good lead on the shadows however, soon discovered why it was so problematic that the shadows were spawned from a reservoir.
“HUuurrraaaaaGGGHhh!” came the familiar cry around them as they passed through a glen, A shadow fisherman and his shadow son pursuing.
“I think that as long as we’re carrying the stone we’re going to activate every corruption we pass!” yelled Dave.
Sam was smarter and saved her breath for running. And, run they did. Activating shadow after shadow, Dave and Sam were pursued by the creepiest conga line he’d ever seen while running the fastest three kilometres cross country he’d ever run. In a momentary break, Sam took two stamina potions out of her pack, handed one to Dave, they both drank and then kept running.
They splashed across the stream to get outside the bounds of the town area and kept going until, after a few hundred metres, they noticed there were no more ethereal screams. Dave and Sam turned back to see the shadow creatures all lining the edge of the small river they’d crossed, milling around. Dave looked at Sam who shrugged.
“Maybe. Let’s test something else. Sam, send your skeletons over there to the east. See if any shadows are interested in your skeletons without us present,” said Dave.
She did and the shadows were. As soon as the skeleton stepped foot on the opposite shore, the shadows started moving towards it. Sam called the skeleton back.
=We can distract them with the skeletons and deal a decisive blow!=
“Maybe buddy. Let’s get out of sight and see if they leave or if they’re going to track us and wait for our return,” said Dave with a grin.
Sam led them into the forest, breaking line of sight with the stream and looped around a hill crest, waited about ten minutes and then they crawled into some bushes that peeked over the hill crest. The shadows were gone.
“Yes!” Dave hissed in relief.
“We did it!” said Sam with her biggest smile.
----------------------------------------
With a solid strategy to at least half-complete the quest, Dave and Sam had a cup of tea before moving on with the strategy.
“Why didn’t we get any extra shadows when we took the first awakening stone?” asked Sam.
“I don’t know,” said Dave, “I’ve been studying magic for all of about a week and mostly, I’m relying on Eldritch Eyes but from what I see in my memories, defeating the first batch that come up seems to flush the corruption out of the stone? I don’t know how it works but that’s what it looked like.”
Sam accepted this and blew on her tea. Dave waited until they’d both finished before talking again.
“You want to use any of the awakening stones?” asked Dave.
“Yes, both!” said Sam.
“Both?”
“Professor Tome showed me that stream has good chance with life essence for a healing effect and my last hand spell was so good. I want another!” Sam almost sang.
“Then Professor Tome can come over here and hover where we both can reach,” murmured Dave.
Tome awkwardly flew between them, flicking its pages to the correct magical circle with a note in the margins.
Dave chanted the ritual and watched the light show as Sam absorbed the awakening stone of the hand. Pale coloured and oblong like two clasped hands. He checked his chatbox and went into his UI to read out the new ability.
“Dragged To The Grave, the hands of skeletal bodies rise from the ground and grasp enemies, eventually dragging them to the ground and even partially underground. This ability causes moderate damage over time in the selected area. Medium Mana. Thirty seconds cooldown,” quoted Dave.
“Dave, I’m afraid I’m evil again!”
She looked at him with big eyes and Dave burst into laughter. He couldn’t help it. She grinned guiltily and giggled.
“I might turn a bit evil for an ability like that. Control and damage in one ability? It’s especially good in that it stays for a while and we can shove enemies into it,” remarked Dave.
“Want to push Ross into it,” said Sam in a little voice while covering a big smile with her hand.
Dave snorted.
“Yeah, I can sure support that,” said Dave with a cheeky grin. “Let’s get the stream stone on and see if we get healing?”
“Yes!”
Dave gently took Tome from the air who flapped open to the ritual circle page and Dave chanted the ritual. Sam took the especially large crystal and absorbed it with a gentle light display. Once again, he quoted his text box.
“Aura Of Life. Life energy streams away from you healing all allies in your aura. Nice! If the amulet stacks with this your healing is going to go through the roof!” said Dave.
“Bad for skeletons, though,” said Sam and fondly patted a beaten up looking skeleton.
“Let me check the expanded details… yeah, life energy effect. Sorry skeletons!” said Dave.
The skeletons shrugged and Sam’s eyes twinkled when Dave looked at her.
“Yeah, emoting through your summons is pretty neat,” said Dave with a grin.
=I support Tome on this front.=
“I wasn’t even thinking about you guys! You can emote by yourself. I was going to do it with giant golems.”
“Dance party!” cheered Sam.
Dave chuckled.
=Many cultures have dances of victory. I find your suggestion acceptable.=
“You can do that?” asked Sam.
“That’s still great! I love music!” called Sam.
----------------------------------------
Dave and Sam decided to go to the cottage they’d found and have a cup of tea but when they arrived in sight, Sam froze and sank slowly to the ground. Dave and her minions mimicked her.
“What’s wrong?” he hissed to Sam.
“Ross is there! They tracked us.” she whispered back.
Dave padded quietly up through the heather with Sam and peered around a tree from a prone position and saw, a couple of hundred metres distant, a group having an obviously restrained conversation with Lord Ross, who turned his back on the people who were talking to him and looked at someone Dave recognised from the baggage train who pointed along the trail where Sam and Dave had first trekked into the town proper.
“They must have spent all day combing the streams to find our trail,” murmured Sam.
“Well, we did kill at least one of his friends,” whispered Dave, thinking about the renewal essence he’d looted from one of the bodies. “Hopefully their healer.”
“Their tracker is good. They’ll follow our trail through town all the way back to here by sunset.” said Sam softly, clearly troubled as they watched the hunting party reluctantly follow Lord Ross after their trail.
“So we know where they’re going to be for the next few hours? Good,” said Dave after a long moment. His brow was furrowed and Sam looked at him strangely. “I have a plan. I… think this might work.”
----------------------------------------
Sam and Dave spent the rest of the afternoon scouting awakening stones. Thanks to Life Recirculation, a small pack of psychotic goats and a pair of people-eater boars, the skeletons were back to full health. Sam, however, was spending an inordinate amount of time in melee, taking hits but insisted that she was fine. After the encounter with the pigs and Dave witnessed one of them bite a chunk out of Sam’s calf muscle he had to bring it up.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“I’m fine! Can’t you see my health over your eyes?”
“I can see your health bar, sure, but you’re taking real big hits and I don’t know where this regeneration is coming from so I’m checking you’re alright.”
“Me neither! But is good I heal so fast. Is alright.”
“For sure! Just don’t be afraid to back out if you feel badly about something.”
Sam nodded and grinned.
Sam used Dave’s map to plot out a path between the best awakening stones they could find in the area in only an hour and then scouted Ross’s party. Then she pulled a jar of some oil from her pack.
“Dave. Clean us and then this leaf oil on yourself,” said Sam.
Dave looked at her quizzically.
“Their tracker probably has an essence ability and scent abilities are common. We don’t want to risk they’ll know we’re coming.”
Dave did as she requested.
Sam began moving stealthily ahead, like she was stalking game. They came close to the lumber mill from earlier and Sam circled it through the brush until she could see the path they’d entered and exited from. Seeing no human subjects, Sam released her familiar to swarm forward slowly towards the house, relying on her empathic link to give her an idea if there was a human presence inside. Dave watched her but after a minute she gave a shake of her head.
“They’re slow, you think?” asked Sam.
“Yeah, I expect so. They followed us all day over some hard to track trails. I don’t think they’re giving up now.”
“Could be already gone?”
“Can’t be. Unless they picked up the pace by a lot. You said half a league per hour at best so let’s just have confidence in your estimation, okay?”
Sam still looked nervous.
“If it’s bothering you, go take a look and see if there’s tracks in the yard that aren’t ours,” said Dave with a shrug.
Sam nodded and crept up on the yard. Just as she ducked through the crumbling fence. A flash of movement caught Dave’s eye up the trail. He looked again and his stomach fell through his feet. An armoured person was walking towards the lumber mill. Not even waiting for more details than that, Dave cast his prestidigitation Swift Message Of The Mind to Sam.
“They’re-coming-get-out,” he whispered rapidly and let the prestidigitation complete. Her eyes looked up just in time to see a distant figure hold up a clear ball which refracted light. A beam that went towards the lumber mill seemed more prominent than others and the ball holder jumped into the stream of light and moved along the beam as though a speed skater with a backing wind.
Dave looked into the yard with his heart in his mouth looking for Sam and panicked for a moment when he couldn’t see her. Then he saw the large tree stump that hadn’t been there before and he remembered her shield. Clever woman. Dave cast Swift Message Of The Mind again.
“Good thinking. I’ll let you know when they’re not looking.”
The hunting party picked up their pace a bit now that they’d seen the lumber mill and were chatting to each other. There definitely was a rat-faced fellow that the more prominent members of the group walked past. Dave guessed this was the tracker.
This would delay the plan but Dave figured he’d have to just take it in his stride. He chewed on his lip as he waited for them to stop analysing the tracks in the lumber yard and go inside the building. Eventually they did and he signalled Sam who stopped being a tree stump and disappeared into the forest back to Dave.
“You okay?” asked Dave in a whisper.
Sam nodded.
“They talking about awakening stones, ka,” whispered Sam, still nervous from her adrenaline rush. “Maybe they find one?”
Dave checked his quest objectives in his UI.
“Yeah, they did. Total number is down by one. Nevermind that now, let’s just get the plan working. Can we run now?”
“We can, yes!”
Now that they had confirmed where the hunting party was. Dave and Sam ran to the first of the five awakening stones on their path they’d scouted for this plan that Dave had. An awakening stone of thread, found in a front room where there was a nice view out of a window of a garden area where flowers had grown wild. They ran most of the couple of kilometres here, took a spirit coin each and began the plan.
The plan was good: A skeleton would pick up the stone and, in one motion, throw it underarm to Sam and then begin sprinting away. She would inventory the stone and Dave would mage bolt anything that tried to hold the skeleton back and then they’d all run like hell to the next stone. Then do the process over again four more times before finding the hunting party and dragging a small army of shadows on top of them. Just like dragging a monster to the town guards in a video game. Except in the game, the guards weren’t also trying to kill you. But, nevermind that. Dave had played on hard mode before.
So, they started the plan. The skeleton flicked the stone up to Sam – it looked like a ball of string – as Sam caught it, a familiar haunting scream echoed out from the house and the shadow of an elderly woman with knitting needles and a man in the garden with a chipping hoe came into being. The thrower skeleton was already exiting from the back of the house and Sam was already putting the stone into a pouch at her belt. The running began.
They made it to the next stone, only awakening one other screaming echo along the way. They hadn’t stopped to see what it was. This awakening stone was next to the ruins of a doll, but lost in the woods this time instead of under the stairs. Clearly patched and worn before being lost in the brambles. The skeleton flicked the awakening stone of the hand – it looked like two hands clasping together – to Sam, who caught it. A screaming echo of a small child formed and rushed the skeleton but Dave was already shooting it, sending pens into it and lighting it up with bolts of force from his eyes. The form of the shadow was disrupted enough for the skeleton to escape with only minor damage and they ran on.
The next awakening stone was one of the feast. It was resting where Dave guessed a family would have taken dinner in the remains of their house. Guessing the shadows wouldn’t form around active flames, Dave and Sam held flaming brands in the space where they wanted the skeleton to escape.
Dave was right. When the skeleton picked up the stone, the shadows got shunted off to one side of the flames, which stopped them from surrounding the skeleton.
The skeleton sprinted between Dave and Sam but they were both rushed from the sides. Dave got hit by a shadow family member as he retreated backwards to the door, fending them off with the flame and Sam did too, briefly waving her sickle through a shadow to disrupt it.
Sam and Dave ran on, taking a stamina potion each, and arrived at the next awakening stone. One with a webbed pattern on it; an awakening stone of the net. The shadow that came from this area made Dave guess that this was someone’s favourite fishing spot. They ran on, activating more shadows on the way. The net wasn’t a particularly attractive awakening stone outside of industry and gladiators but it was on the way and Sam figured, why not?
Lastly, was an awakening stone of heart with a shape like a physiological heart. Dave didn’t know if the stone bestowed powers in the sense of the physiology or the emotion. Perhaps both? It was associated with buffs as much as gruesome execution abilities. Sam didn’t mind a bit of death with her life anymore but Aztec-like behaviour wasn’t something she was willing to risk. This was another pickup on the basis that we’re running past it so they may as well snatch it up on the way past.
The skeleton tossed it to Sam and Dave had just enough time to see a family measuring a child’s height next to a tree form out of streaming shadows with the usual howl before he started shooting and running.
They ran back to the lumber mill, quietly as they could along the path they’d used previously. Dave was running along behind Sam.
“Look!” said Sam, quietly but intently and with a grin.
Dave looked and saw they had got lucky. The hunting party was halfway up a hill. Dave remembered that hill from before. It looked like a smooth grassy slope but was actually pockmarked with rabbit holes that required careful footing to avoid a broken ankle. By the time they’d ascended it earlier, the shadows had all the time they needed to catch up. Sam quickly interrogated Tome who’d popped out from Dave's arms at her request.
“Yes!” she exalted, looking at the map. “This way.”
She led Dave across a stream to the left and then followed it for a bit and then crossed it again right. She looked back constantly to make sure the shadow army was ambling along after them. From what he could tell she would be dragging the hundred-or-so shadows across the hill at any moment.
Sam was smiling in a satisfied way when it happened. The hunting party crested the hill, prominent against the skyline, and the shadow army emerged from the trees to find the hunting party right in their path. Sam’s army dived into long grass to hide and the shadows started streaming up the hill.
“Can we take a look?” asked Dave.
“Should we risk it?”
“I want to see the battle and review it later. If they survive, I want to know how.”
“Why?”
“So I know how to stop them next time,” said Dave in a low voice.
“You crazy!” whispered Sam intently but she led the way out of the long grass and to behind a bush.
The crest of the hill was now a fortress. Literally. About shoulder high and with a single opening. This was puzzling for a moment until Dave saw a heavyset youth with slicked back hair throw a large rock via telekinesis and realised that this combatant must have earth powers. Dave guessed a fortress confluence considering the actual fortress present. He focused on the other members of the party.
The rat-faced man was in the middle of the fortress holding potions and two others were in the same position as him also holding potions and spare weapons.
Ross was there at the fortress gate, punching electricity into the shadows with great effect. Unlike physical damage, electricity did its full damage to the shadows. As Dave watched, Ross built up a combination that ended with an Emperor Palpatine-style lightning spray that hit many shadows.
The shadow’s resistance to physical damage was clearly an issue for the next of Ross’s cronies. Dave didn’t know what this person looked like when they weren’t transformed into a giant bear but he sure hoped they were smaller and less intimidating. Clearly a transfiguration confluence, Dave figured they must have a combination that included bear, something that had good special attacks and something else that got good staying power. Maybe bear, might and growth? Bear, potent and balance? It didn’t matter. The bear-person could sure take a beating. Could probably give one back too if they weren’t facing physical damage resistant shadows.
The last member of the group was the light-walker with the boyish face. Dave guessed he was a celestial. He was quick. So quick that Dave guessed either a swift essence or got lucky with some awakening stone of the foot because he could move very fast. Dave figured he was the team’s scout. In this situation, he appeared to be leaning heavily on his ability to make balls of light and throw them at his enemies, the damage was considerable, but he was also quickly intercepting any shadow that climbed inside the fortress wall quite quickly.
“Yes!” hissed Dave fiercely, clasping a fist in triumph.
“What?” asked Sam softly.
“I did kill their healer!”
----------------------------------------
Having seen team Ross’s fighting roles, Sam and Dave skulked off. They checked the cottage from a distance but it was being guarded by all of the noble’s essence-user guards.
“Hang on. Sam, if they’re guarding here they’re not…” said Dave, leaving the idea hanging.
“They’re not guarding the cabin!” she sang quietly but happily.
In the fading light of the afternoon, they trekked back to the cabin Dave had made in the morning. It was a long walk on account of Sam taking them on long walks along streams to mask their trail. Sam’s happy mood wasn’t even spoiled by the thorny tongued frog they encountered on the way. She even had Dave use Grand Mage’s Gravitas on their shoes for extra care to erase scent. They were shivering by the time they made it to the cabin but walked inside to a pleasantly warm temperature.
“Oh! I love it!” cried Sam and started singing to herself as she took off her dimensional bag and took out a sleeping roll.
Dave was also enjoying the warmth of the room compared to the Autumn evening chill outside. It was magically climate controlled, just like setting the temperature of a room with climate control on Earth. Dave checked the magic. It’d last a few more hours when he’d have to spend the same spell slot to keep it going all night and so long as the external temperature stayed between zero and about human body temperature, it’d be magically adjusted to be comfortable within.
“Time for an awakening stone, a little battle analysis and a big sleep. We should probably be gone from here before dawn. Just in case people come looking,” said Dave.
“Yes! Good idea. I will set up noise traps,” Sam put her coat and shoes back on and went out the door. She came back in a few minutes later having set up traps to make an awful lot of noise if set off.
“Awakening stone!” she called with her signature smile.
Sam held the awakening stone of thread and closed her eyes as she absorbed it. Dave kept his eyes on the chat box. They were expecting it to interact with the animate essence for a string-based animation. Maybe telekinetic thread control? Although there were some more esoteric options. Some people could detach body parts and control them at a distance, some could animate objects, some lucky ones got partial influence over monsters.
“Cruel Puppeteer. Extend your hand and exert control over an enemy proportional to your relative rank and stats. Very high mana,” quoted Dave automatically then ran what he had said through his head. “Bloody hell, that’s good!”
Sam was grinning with happiness and guilt. Maybe she thought it was evil but they both knew it didn’t matter if it was. This was a very powerful spell. The possibilities were amazing. Just thinking of their current location, Dave was eagerly imagining Ross involuntarily hurling himself off a cliff. Dave might have imagined it but a certain savageness in Sam’s smile suggested that she’d had a similar thought.
“It certainly fuels the imagination doesn’t it?” said Dave.
“You think it works on animal?” asked Sam, speculatively.
“Probably,” said Dave, opening his interface and digging into the details.
He dug around for a few minutes extracting facts about the spell from his UI but in the end, decided experimentation would be better.
“Just cast it on me,” said Dave.
“What? Dave!”
“Yeah, cast it on me. Most essence abilities have an intuitive sense of how they work, right? So use it and feel how it works. I’m here, I can be targeted with it. You don’t have to do anything nasty with it. Just make me clap my hands or something and let go.”
Sam looked very unsure of herself.
“I’m literally volunteering, Sam. Do it!”
“Alright!”
She sat up straight, calming her thoughts and used a Siamese phrase to cast the spell. Dave felt a sense of control settling over him but it wasn’t his control, it was someone else's. He let it settle in. It wasn’t uncomfortable but now that he’d let it take hold of him he couldn’t move. He tried to wriggle his body and many of his muscles responded but in a restrained manner. Like a large being was holding his limbs so despite trying to twist his body, he only faintly shivered.
“Stop it! It’s hard,” said Sam.
He tried to verbally apologise but couldn’t and immediately stopped trying. Clearly, Dave thought, his own attempts to move were hampering Sam’s efforts. It seemed like the spell didn’t take control of a person from the nerve impulses. As the name suggested, it just sort of restrained you and then -
Suddenly his right arm flopped across his body. Sam had her hands extended towards Dave with a look of concentration on her face. The arm flopped back. Then, both arms flopped together into a clap and Dave felt the control imposed on his body release.
“Ahh!” explained Dave, working his jaw. “That was weird!”
Sam looked pensive but broke into a smile when Dave grinned at her.
“Did not hurt?” she asked.
“No, just couldn’t move anything without fighting you for it and when I stopped fighting, you could move me easily. Spell is as advertised, I guess. You figure much out?”
“Yes! Is like I can take bits of you in my head and hold them and make them go. Is good but very complicated.”
Dave nodded thoughtfully.
“We’ll practise more but for now, we’re done with awakening stones, right?”
Sam nodded.
“Okay, I think I’m going to read over all of your abilities and figure out why your healing jumped up so much. Let's settle in. Can you make tea?” asked Dave.
Sam decided that she could. Dave concentrated on a fire and Sam fussed with a kettle while Dave read over her abilities. About five minutes later he understood.
“Oh! Yes. Of course. It’s so simple,” he laughed abruptly.
“Hmm?” asked Sam.
“Your familiar!” Dave grinned. “You absorb it to heal, that reduces the swarm size but swarm size grows with healing, yes? Which it normally does when you have it absorbed using your passive healing but each individual insect can grow faster when it gets healed. Just that’s not often because it’s a swarm. Except now you have a healing aura so each individual beetle is always healing. Your life aura is supercharging your familiar’s growth ability giving you a better healing ability.”
“Oooh!” exclaimed Sam, understanding. “I heal beetles, beetles come faster and I absorb more beetles to heal.”
“Yep!” said Dave happily. “Your familiar is effectively a second pool of health with faster regeneration than almost anything. They can just pour health into you and now you can pour it straight back into them.”
“I like it!”
Sam handed Dave a cup of tea and they blew on their tea in silence for a minute.
“We don’t have to beat him. We can just leave,” said Sam suddenly in a little voice.
“We can’t,” said Dave with resignation. “Maybe if we’d run when we first met him he’d have just forgotten about us but we couldn’t. We were trapped on a cliff.”
Dave sipped his tea, his face stern with the recollection.
“He’s a bully and an important man. My guess is that he’s never realised his whole life that the people he cows with his bullying are making a risk-reward calculation in their heads. If anybody hurts him, his family will hurt their family. If anybody tries to run away, his family can reach them. He’s always protected because there’s always a way he can make someone’s life worse so they tolerate him and he remains unaware that they do it because of implicit threats. He just thinks it's the natural order of things. We’re probably the only people besides other aristocrats that he’s ever not had implicit power over. Except he’s finally found a situation in us where the stakes are so high we have to kill him and all of his friends and he doesn’t even know he’s accidentally fabricated the situation. I’d feel sorry for him if he hadn’t dug this hole for himself.”
“We have to?” asked Sam’s little voice.
Dave shrugged and sipped his tea.
“He wasn’t listening to reason when we met. Our only peaceful option was to get disarmed, be at his mercy and hope. Do you think we were getting a fair trial when he took us to his court? What happens when you get to court?”
“Probably fines?”
“They’re not going to check our essences?”
“Oh.”
“As I said. Him and all of his friends.”
“Even his bag carrying people?”
“I hope not. They’ve all stayed back and didn’t get a good look at our faces but definitely all of the nobles. Their word counts for more in any legal system, right?”
Sam nodded glumly.
“How do you know so much about this?”
“My world also has rich people and a history with nobles. Some things are just always true, it seems.”
Sam nodded glumly.
“Don’t worry, Sam,” said Dave gently. “I’ll do all the evil stuff.”
Sam shook her head and smiled wanly into her tea.
“Even so, if we get into another fight with him and his boys I don’t know what we should do. The fortress and the bear? It’s too strong,” said Dave, shaking his head.
“Their scout can turn to glass and run on light,” said Sam.
“What?”
“Like light beams in the sky? But he makes them and runs on them? He changes his body like he is made of glass?”
“Oh, damn.”
Dave stared at the floor as though it might give him answers.
“Yeah, I really don’t know,” he muttered. “From what I can see, their bear and the fortress confluence have super staying power. If they still had a healer, they’d be impossible for us to kill. Not without an area denial ability, which you kind of have with corpse explosion but is it enough? Ross and glass-man are super mobile so they can attack anywhere they like and just run back to the fortress if they get into trouble. Or, more likely, they fight until there’s trouble and just put the fortress there. I have a dispel, I can dispel the fortress but they’ll probably have other defensive abilities from that essence and then I’m spending all my spells on one fortress-maker while his friends stab me to death.”
Dave trailed off, murmuring to himself.
“What should we do?” asked Sam.
“Get some sleep and keep exploring tomorrow,” said Dave with a wry grin. “Maybe the evil we find in the town will kill him for us?”
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Sam’s skeletons kept watch. In the loot from the still nameless healer that Dave had killed was a magical pocket watch. Before going to sleep, Sam had resummoned her skeletons, handed one the pocket watch and told it to wake her up in five hours and forty-five minutes. The other four were given various watch duties with instructions to wake her and Dave up if they saw any large creatures of any kind, monsters of any kind, any creatures or perceived anything that might damage the cabin or anybody inside it. The skeletons grinned with understanding. Sam and Dave went to sleep.
Dave slept through Sam’s second summoning of skeletons but was woken up by her before the dawn.
“Dave, let’s go!” Sam hissed.
Dave looked around blearily for a second but jumped into action when he saw that Sam was already roughly stuffing her sleeping roll into her dimensional bag. Only understanding that it must be important, he started doing the same.
“What is it?” asked Dave.
“My bell trap went off.”
Realising the importance, Dave caught up to Sam, who was already packed, by abandoning his packing and just ran for it with her carrying his bedroll in his arms. They squeezed between the cabin and the cliff and scrambled along rocks until they couldn’t see the cabin anymore.
“Where are the skeletons?” asked Dave, looking around.
“I sent them to the top cliff to throw some rocks as a distraction.”
Dave checked her cooldowns. Only three hours into her Summon Skeleton cooldown.
“The aristocrat must have gotten up very early,” remarked Dave dryly.
“And now his tracker is close enough to catch our scent,” said Sam miserably.
“I know,” said Dave, sharing her frustration. “But I’ve got most of my spell slots back. Should I summon golems we can ride and he’ll have to track us pretty quickly after that?”
“Maybe he can?”
“Maybe, but I bet Lord Ross and gang run out of stamina potions after the first lap of the town.”
Sam smiled again. Dave bumped her on the shoulder and grinned back.
“They’re a powerful group but we have advantages too,” said Dave.
----------------------------------------
Sam led Dave on a ride around the valley until sunrise. The duo became a trio as Dave let Tzu out of his eyes.
=I agree with your tactical decision to retreat until a time of strength. You have the makings of a fine general.=
“Thanks Tzu,” said Dave with an entertained smile. “I enjoy your enthusiasm. It keeps me motivated.”
=I am pleased to perform my function as a warrior mentor.=
Sam led them to the side of town that would catch the first rays of sunlight through, unfortunately, a lot of bitterly cold water. They were both shivering, despite Dave’s ability to dry them both. They cleared a space and Dave magiced up a fire where they warmed their hands in the last minutes before dawn.
“Can I have a mana potion?” asked Dave.
“Why?”
“I re-read my spell slots ability last night. It says that I get an extra slot if I have mana ‘regeneration or replacement’ abilities active during the day? I think potions are replacement?”
Sam nodded and handed over the potion.
“How many do we have?” asked Dave.
“Nineteen. Eighteen after that one.”
Dave nodded.
“What’s the bet that Lord Ross uses a lot of these?”
“No bet!” said Sam with a big grin.
The light crested the low parts of the horizon and the light fell on Dave as he swigged the potion and both felt and saw in his HUD, a fifth spell slot become active. He felt a certain tension leave him. A sense of vulnerability lifted.
“Extra slot?” asked Sam with a smile.
“Hell yeah! Five slots a day and now twenty percent better than ever!” exulted Dave.
“Alright, more golems!” laughed Sam.
“Hang on, need to memorise spells,” grinned Dave. “But I think I’ll keep the slots in reserve. Just in case.”
Dave brought out Tome from his dimensional space, greeted him and memorised one Comfortable Country Cabin and two more Origami Golem spells. Like the ones he and Sam were riding, they had an updated seat Dave had written in last night. They were now high saddles which allowed for easy mounting and dismounting.
“Where should we go?” asked Sam.
“Right into town,” said Dave. “We need to figure out this ‘evil’ in my quest. It might be important.”
Dave and Sam had a much easier time travelling and dealing with encounters because of the golems which was great because they ran into a lot of them as they made their way through the forest. They first encountered another of the scattered packs of psychotic goats who bleated with malevolence, braced themselves and charged. Both Dave and Sam were very glad to have their massive, cardboard pools of hitpoints and damage back.
They had the same feeling after a particularly large people-eater boar, another pack of goats and a fergax which ripped Sam’s golem up with its claws quite a lot. They took several minutes off from travelling to heal the golem.
“If we’d encountered three of them…” said Dave, leaving the thought hanging, shaking his head at the fergax corpse.
“The bestiary says they are solitary so it’s fine!” sang Sam brightly. Her spirits were up.
“I know, I’m just thinking.”
“Always planning. Good boy!” said Sam and cheekily patted Dave’s head.
Dave chuckled at her silliness.
“Yeah, I’m planning to live. We have good power but no escape mechanisms. I guess I’ll work on that, hey?”
“Keep thinking!”
=To destroy your enemies in the fire of your wrath or retreat to heat the forge of redemption? A warrior's quandary!=
“Truly we are the intersection of the battlefield and scholarship,” said Dave looking between his familiars with a smirk, “but my current schedule doesn’t allow for scholarship or wrathful fire.”
Somehow, without arms or faces, Dave’s familiars managed to shrug at each other.
----------------------------------------
While the entire valley was Courbefy valley only the town was designated as Courbefy proper. Sam’s army wasn’t long into the area that Dave’s map designated as proper Courbefy town when there was a familiar scream.
“UggggrrrrAAAaaagh!” came the echo as a man and his two hunting dogs dripped from the shadows in the heather into being.
“Get ‘em!” called Dave.
Sam had been preparing to run but hearing Dave, instead dismounted and went into combat. The golems went about disrupting the forms of the dogs while Sam, Dave and Tzu made an unrelenting attack against the man. The echo man dissipated quickly only causing a week-old bruise on Sam’s arm and, with numbers on their side, the two dogs were soon dissolved.
“We didn’t even take anything yet!” complained Sam.
“Hang on,” said Dave, having a brain wave. He took out the awakening stones from the previous day and moved them back and forth around the meadow while staring intently at them.
“Is it a magic problem?” called Sam who was patiently tolerating the odd behaviour.
“Oh? Oh, yes,” said Dave, snapping out of his concentration. “The stones from yesterday haven’t lost their absorbed shadow energy yet. We didn’t defeat the corruption inside them, I guess? In any case, we have to leave them behind or we’ll be fighting the whole way in.”
“Oh! No problem!” said Sam brightly.
“Oh?”
“Yes, we can just ride the golems back to safe area, put them under a rock and keep going.”
=Damn!= buzzed Tzu in a disappointed tone.
“Oh, then… let’s do that!” said Dave with a look at Tzu.
=I like battle more than I like running= buzzed Tzu by way of explanation.
----------------------------------------
Having hid their treasures, Dave and Sam were soon in the middle of town, weirdly encountering no monsters along the way, with Dave staring around like a crazed man.
“That is… a lot. A lot of magic resonance,” said Dave. “Can’t you feel it?”
Sam shook her head.
“I feel like a pressure? Like there should be a stormcloud?” said Sam as they investigated the main town square. This area and mainstreet were paved with cobblestones and so hadn’t had as much natural reclamation by the forest as the rest of the ruined farmsteads they’d encountered although the buildings were still crumbling.
Dave lit a flame on his finger and used the stagnant water in the fountain as a reflection. He waved the small flame back and forth at an even level above the water.
“See how the flame changes as it moves? Bright yellow to deep orange? And the reflection is causing ripples? That’s not me, that’s the background magic. It’s practically vibrating,” said Dave and exhaled strongly.
Sam blinked and smiled in appreciation.
“Sorry, Sam. It’s just… it’s like being in a power plant and seeing exposed wires.”
Sam repeated her previous non-statement.
“Oh… like being… surrounded by caged monsters and you don’t know who has the key.”
Sam nodded. Her skeletons, which she had recently summoned, politely clapped.
“Thanks, Tome. Anyway, don’t touch anything. Unless I give the go-ahead. Where should we look for the evil first?”
“The streets,” said Sam firmly. “The buildings might break and something moves but the ground won't, so we walk first.”
Dave nodded. They mounted their golems and Dave began using Magician’s Megre Magics to levitate a small stone, stopping often and noting how it vibrated in the air. Sam led him all the way up and down the main street.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Lots. We walked past seven of the magic item icons on my map but only two areas had a huge resonance effect. Where we started and that large building about halfway down,” said Dave.
“The watch house?” asked Sam in surprise.
“I didn’t see the name. Too busy looking at my rock but, let’s take a look inside it,” said Dave and gestured that she should lead the way.
They went back, Dave focusing less intently on the rock and this time and noticed the faded police badge painted onto the side of the building.
“Yep! This is the one,” said Dave.
They walked inside carefully, Tzu leading the way to provide light and its unique ability to uncover hidden enemies being leveraged by Dave at this moment. He was close behind himself with his sword drawn, ready to skewer anything that charged him or Tzu.
The building they slowly walked through had an entrance with a desk, Dave guessed that chairs must have stood at the sides once, and continued through a perished door to a lunch room, areas for storage and/or desks, all long since cleared.
“There’s nothing here,” said Dave, staring at his rock and checking the result by lighting a flame in his other hand.
“Cellar,” said Sam.
Sam showed him a horizontal door that Dave had missed earlier under the stairs going to the next level.
“How do you know it’s down, not up?” asked Dave.
“The shadows we fight are dark. More of them underground,” shrugged Sam.
Dave couldn’t argue with that and so, descended the stone steps to what was not a cellar, but a prison block. A long, stone hall line with the doors to cells. Dave walked past them, checking as he went until he found a skeleton with the remains of clothes over the bones and, nestled in the rib cage of the skeleton was…
“A darkness essence,” breathed Dave. He could see it glowing with a fake blue outline in his HUD. This must be the evil. His text box had flicked a new message up. Quest: [Abandoned Forest Town] has been updated. He clicked the quest and he saw the updated text.
Quest: Abandoned Forest Town
Description
Investigate the abandoned forest town Courbefy with local guide Samorn Khanthong and collect magical items throughout the town; 7/29. Remove the evil from the town; 0/1. Bonus objective: Remove essences from the town, 0/3.
Detailed Information
“I can’t see it,” said Sam.
“Hmm? Oh, I suppose not. Tzu, can you come in here?”
The lantern increased the light intensity until the essence that looked like a pocket of nothing was visible underneath the ribs.
“What’s it look like to you?”
“It’s highlighted as a quest objective on my HUD. It’s one of the three essences causing the evil. Apparently.”
“Three essences?”
“Yes, my quest just updated. Show her, Tome.”
While she read, Dave, fingers of his right hand lit, extended them towards the essence. The flames didn’t just change colour, they began flickering sideways and then flicked out.
“Holy shit,” breathed Dave.
“Hmm?”
Dave reached his hand behind him and relit his fingers.
“I think these essences are acting as not just plugs but also filters for that magical reservoir I talked about.”
“That sounds bad. Oh! That must be why we get shadow monsters! Darkness!” Sam smiled to herself having figured it out.
“Yes but also, if we move any of them, that’s unplugging the reservoir, remember?”
“That also sounds bad!”
“It would be. Definitely enough magic to wake the dead of the entire town.”
Sam shot the essence a frightened look.
“Hands to myself! Come here, Dave!” said Sam with false brightness as she walked to the stairs.
Dave turned around to follow and then noticed the walls covered in writing. Accusatory writing. Most prominent; ‘MAYOR FABRIZIO BLOCKHAM IS GUILTY’.
----------------------------------------
Dave had only spent a moment on the rest of the scrawl covering the wall, capturing it with his eyes for mental replay with his Library Of The Mind ability later. It appeared to be a list of misdeeds but Dave hurried on to catch up with Sam.
“We need to find all three so that we know which buildings to never touch!” announced Sam.
“Or for Ross to fall into,” grumbled Dave.
“Not if we’re in town! We’ll die too!”
=You just need a bastion in which to resist the hordes in glorious battle!=
“I’m afraid it’s the enemy who has the defensive fortress, Tzu. If we could dispel it though... Wait! I could actually do that! Wouldn’t help though. We’d still die,” said Dave, going through a range of emotions in a single sentence.
“I think not. Heist strategies for today,” said Dave.
They walked to the town hall, Dave checking magical resonances by flame and by stone.
“Same as last time,” said Dave as he and Sam dismounted.
Tzu hovered forward and Dave followed. They searched the entire ground level and found only offices and meeting rooms. This time Dave simply held his hands close to the floor and then above his head to check if up or down was the better option. He felt a little dumb he hadn’t thought of that the first time. Upwards this time.
They ascended some surprisingly solid stairs. They’d clearly been made out of high quality oak that had been treated correctly to ward off rot. In the largest office which opened to a small balcony which oversaw the square, the mayoral office Dave supposed, there was an open safe in the wall in which standing all alone was a HUD-highlighted corruption essence. It was a cube of sickly, rotten brown and looked like it should be dripping with oil even though it was dry.
“Ugh, well that’s it,” said Dave.
Sam nodded, looking put off. They took their eyes off it and looked at the only other strange thing in the room: The desk was still here. Most of the furniture in the town was gone with the residents. Dave guessed it was because the desk’s construction had been finished in the room and it couldn’t be moved out. You’d need a team of men to lift it and even if they could, it wouldn’t fit through the doors. Naturally, they searched the desk.
“Weird! There’s a book!” said Sam.
Dave stopped going through his own set of drawers and looked at Sam’s found book. The book was delicate with age and the writing faded but on his HUD, there was an exclamation mark.
“It has a quest for me,” said Dave in flat astonishment.
“Is it safe?” asked Sam.
Dave tested flame and pebble near the book and tapped it lightly with his finger while looking closely.
“Yes. Magically inert,” said Dave and mentally right-clicked the book. His text box showed a new quest. New Quest: [Justice For Courbefy].
“Hang on, getting quest information,” said Dave and clicked on the quest.
Quest: Justice For Courbefy
Description
Find justice for the victims of the corrupt mayor of Courbefy. Use the accounts balance book to find a lead to investigate.
Reward
100 iron spirit coins per lead discovered.
Detailed Information
“Well,” said Dave, dumbfounded. “The mayor was really corrupt.”
Sam gave Dave a look that named him as Captain Obvious.
“The quest asks me to use that accounting book to find a lead to ‘get justice for the victims’,” Dave shrugged and accepted the quest. “It seems as good a quest as any.”
Sam smiled and nodded.
“Your name is I-get-money-Dave!” announced Sam and laughed.
Dave inventoried the book.
----------------------------------------
The next essence was harder to find. Inside a warehouse away from the mainstreet there was a small room that looked like a storage closet in the corner of the warehouse that had been converted into a makeshift bedroom with a small pallet on which the remains of several blankets still lay. On top of the blankets, lay an echo essence, looking like a grey crystal cube full of smoke rings.
Dave used his ability Find Documents.
“Mayor.”
On an overturned box, several documents lit up on his HUD. Dave collected them and glanced at them. They appeared to be legal documents issued to one Liam Holzhauer, age 68, of various infractions. One of tax avoidance, one of financial crimes and the top most of vagrancy. His text box flicked. Dave saw that he had just been given 100 iron spirit coins and a lead to follow up on Liam Holzhauer. He inventoried the papers.
“Apparently, a Mr Liam Holzhauer who lived here got a lot of attention from the mayor,” said Dave as he walked away from the scene.
Sam read Tome’s display with Dave and nodded her agreement.
=Legal battle. The worst and most dangerous kind of battle but I will have the courage of a dragon, Dave! I will follow you to the end.=
Dave also nodded.
“I agree with all of you but I think detective work comes after our current problems. Let’s nab some awakening stones and give this Lord Ross some hell.”
----------------------------------------
Dave had come up with a plan to take advantage of the previous day's attack which he conveyed manically to the others.
“First, we scout all of the awakening stones and leave a marker on the map by the ones that Sam wants. I scry Ross and can triangulate his position on the map using angles between local mountains that Sam can use. Then, still scrying, Sam collects the stones while I don’t stop and always move ahead. Once we have the stones we move towards Ross’s party and as soon as they make any indication they’ve seen us. We turn at a right angle. Now that we’ve done the dragging-monsters trick once, they’ll probably run away instead of fight. Honestly they’re welcome to fight but they’re not that dumb. Once that’s done, we’ll run off again and just repeat this strategy once or twice more in the day because that’s how many spell slots I have left.”
“Yes. If they do that we have two options. Option one is they pursue us but remain in sight of their allies, in which case Sam will do her best to slow them down and we continue running while trading ranged attacks. Neither of them can heal so we’ll win a running battle by attrition. Option two is they engage with us while their allies are out of range to help. In this case we attack, the golems will keep one of them occupied while the rest of us deal with the other.”
=I hope they engage us in a glorious, winnable battle!=
“We know you do, buddy. We know you do.”
“And we do this until we get all the awakening stones we want?” asked Sam.
“Yes, and to generally scare them out of town so that Lord Ross can’t set off the essence traps while we’re inside. That way, we can pick up our loot and get you stronger while remaining safe from Lord Ross making an accident of all of us.”
It was worth a go. With the plan set, they got into motion. They scouted out the awakening stones with only a single pixelax encounter to slow them down. In the graveyard behind the town’s all-purpose church, which there was an awakening stone in, Sam drew up a path on the map between some selected awakening stones.
“Here’s the order!” announced Sam happily. “Shovel, earth, dance, rain and judgement!”
Dave could see Sam’s smile in anticipation of the bounty to come. It was a nice thing to see on a friend. He hoped this worked as well as he thought it would. In theory it was a long golem ride with an intense ending that they’d run away from but theories always have a rough way of meeting with reality and coming up incomplete. Still, their team had the speed and healing advantage.
“Time for scrying,” said Dave and incanted the spell while holding up a mirror that he’d borrowed from Sam. “Sight beyond sight, sound beyond sound, senses beyond sense,”
The mirror fuzzed and became a portal to a magical sensor that was hanging above Ross’s head like the camera in a 3rd person game which Dave could see through the mirror. Moving the mirror that he was holding, Dave found that he could see in any direction. The exact area that Ross was in, Dave could only see three metres clearly but all the landmarks in the distance, which Dave was familiar with, were clear. Dave called out the angles he saw the biggest mountains at.
“Mount Jora; sixty, Mount Bornand; two hundred and eighty and Mount Albert; one hundred and sixty.”
Sam quickly drew on the map that Tome was displaying. A line through each mountain peak at the called angles would intersect at the location Dave’s magical sensor was at. The lines intersected at a space in the northern part of the valley region the town was situated in. Dave nodded in understanding.
“Let’s go!”
----------------------------------------
They were already at the location of the awakening stone of the shovel. Sam had pre-arranged places for the origami golem to kneel down so that she could nab the stone and sprint straight to the golem. Here, it was quite easy in the relatively open space of the graveyard. The awakening stone was resting peacefully in the middle of the ruins of a garden shed. She picked it up and immediately jumped into the saddle of her golem.
“RUUAAaaaaaaaagggGH!”
Shadow creatures appeared directly in Sam’s path. One with a shovel and one wearing priestly robes, both unavoidable for Sam and her golem. Despite the swiftness of her departure they had time to position themselves with shovel and holy book extended as the golem moved through their forms, disrupting them but their hands were high enough to remain unaffected and their objects passed right through Sam’s legs and hips.
Sam grit her teeth and buckled over as her legs became covered in bruises. She put both her healing spells on herself.
“You okay?” Dave called back, still staring into his mirror piece checking on Ross who was starting to feel jumpy ‘like someone is looking at me’. Dave mentally adjusted the distance of the magical sensor from Ross.
“Pain, but fine!” called Sam with a sweat across her brow but was able to make a small smile.
They cantered to the next awakening stone, one of earth, bringing the usual small army of shadowy figures with them. They followed a dirt path and crossed a field to a raised square of soil where Sam said there would have been a garden where the owner grew plants on imported soil that wouldn’t grow here otherwise.
“SCCRREAaaaaaaaGGH!”
Although Dave was ready with his wand out and eye-beams ready to go, the amount of children holding tropical fruits in their hands was enormous. They didn’t have a lot of health but even so, Dave didn’t have the firepower to disrupt many. With her right hand holding the stone, Sam shield bashed her way through one, who still reached out and scraped across her elbow, and ran past it as the child-shadows clawed at her arms and back as she left. She put three stacks of Health Blossom on herself as she held on grimly to the hand hold at the front of the saddle with gritted teeth.
They got unlucky at the dance awakening stone, which was located in the town field. Fortunately, Sam had predicted this might be the case and already put a line of the eight torches that they had between the pursuing shadows and her, which Dave quickly lit without breaking concentration on his ongoing scry spell. Ross and friends were still searching the entirety of the farm house they were in. Dave had noticed that his quest now had a total of twenty-seven possible magical items for him to loot, meaning that Ross had found five.
“URRAAAaaaaaaaaahhh!”
They abandoned the torches. Dave had originally intended to pick them up, put them out and ride on but as Sam snatched up the awakening stone of dance and began riding, a series of twirling couples appeared, cutting Dave off. He and Sam took a small amount of damage himself as they rode away. Sam used a single health blossom on them both. It was a mana efficient spell but even so, they’d used more mana than they’d expected getting the stones and there were still two more to go.
The next awakening stone was one of rain, which Sam didn’t even need to get out of the saddle to procure. It was on the platform of a raised water tower that fed a large field which Sam said was probably used for pasture. All the shadows appeared in Sam’s intended direction of escape but she just diverted her galloping course around the shadow goatherds who appeared.
The last was an awakening stone of judgement. This one was tricky since it was in the mostly collapsed courthouse of the town. The amount of shadows set off on the way in was, predictably, numerous now that they were in a populated area so they had little time to get ahead of the trailing wave of shadow monsters.
The side of the courthouse wall had collapsed. Tome guessed that the tree which had grown only a couple of metres outside the wall had shifted the earth over the years and caused the wall to fall down. In any case, Dave had the foresight to put a ritual circle on the ground which increased the power of wands used from that location and was standing there, wand ready, one eye on the scrying mirror when Sam pulled the awakening stone of judgement off the rotting judges stand.
“GRRAaaaaaaagggggh!”
Shadow people appeared, tearing themselves into somethingness from existing shadows and they completely blocked Dave’s vision of Sam. Dave noticed a judge and a witness in the court near Sam but they were completely overshadowed to him by the double line of jurors who appeared with their back to him.
Dave was already shooting eye beams and mage bolts before the jurors turned around but when they did, Dave had to dive backwards to stay safe from their grasping arms. His golem began disrupting their forms with pure force of presence at the gap in the wall but that meant he couldn’t mount it either, what with all that combative jostling.
Dave sprinted for the entrance of the courthouse and mentally sent Sam’s golem galloping ahead of him. When he arrived, he saw peaceful stairs.
“DAVE!” called Sam’s voice from the other side of the building.
She’d gone out the back! Suddenly her health bar dropped considerably. Dave felt his stomach drop away in panic and began sprinting back the way he’d come. He mentally ordered Sam’s golem to the back of the courthouse. It pushed off a nearby tree to become a giant pinwheel, racing past Dave’s golem which was swishing its legs violently through most of the jury.
Sam came into view, leaning on the wall and hopping along on one leg. She ordered the golem down and with a falling dive, hurled herself over the saddle sideways. The golem sprang to its feet with Sam draped over the saddle and began scuttling away.
Dave called his own golem to him, made a running jump into the saddle and followed Sam, barely ahead of a horde of murderous shadow people.
“You alright?” shouted Dave, checking the mirror. Ross was leaving the farm heading south-east having already checked the barn and garden shed.
“I have a twisted ankle,” said Sam in a strained voice. “I had to jump out of a window at the back and landed badly.”
“Take a potion if you need to.”
“No, my familiar can handle it. We have minutes. Where are they?”
“About three hundred metres west of where they began, turning south.”
Sam nodded and concentrated through the pain, letting her familiar reposition her ankle ligaments back to full health. Her gasps gave the impression it was as painful as Dave imagined it would be.
Despite their injuries, they rode quickly through echoing screeches with Dave offering updates to Sam who guided them through the outskirts of the town. They were just coming up on the forest proper when Sam started riding with her feet in the normal position again.
As they were coming up on where they expected the hunting party to be, Dave realised a flaw in his scrying spell. In order to get a forward view from Ross, who was coming towards him, Dave had to hold the mirror behind him. Not ideal. And, that’s why he was a little bit late noticing that he’d already come into view of Lord Ross’s hunting party across a field.
Both parties noticed each other at the same time.
“Dave!” complained Sam.
“Sorry! The mirror is awkward!”
Sam took the lead, turning a hard left and Dave let himself concentrate fully on his mirror to hear Lord Ross and his friends' plan.
“Get him,” said Ross with vindictive satisfaction. Dave took his eyes off the mirror and looked across the field at the group. Their scout had a large, glass javelin in his hand and made as though to stab right in front of him, puzzling Dave.
The javelin came out of the mirror and shattered as it pierced Dave’s forehead sending sharp glass spraying across his face.
Dave yelled in pain, dropping the mirror. The small glass spear had been stabbed through the mirror at an upwards angle so that the point entered Dave’s forehead and exited at about his hairline.
There was a thunderclap as Lord Ross teleported across the field in the form of a lightning bolt and then immediately shot lightning at Dave with a punching motion. Dave, already low in the saddle, took it across his right shoulder. It set his garments on fire and blackened his arm. It didn’t make him yell with pain, he was already doing that. Dave dimly noticed that his health bar was half-gone.
Ross was winding back for another punch when Sam cast Cruel Puppeteer and Lord Ross’s face changed from anger to confusion as he punched himself in the knee and fell over. He fought against the controlling strings of magic that Dave could see attaching to the man’s joints but his movements were slowed by Sam’s resistance.
Dave’s golem had slowed to a halt to avoid throwing the insensate Dave off the saddle but as Sam cast Health Blossom and Regrowth on him, Dave gathered his wits and grasped the saddle pommel so as to allow his golem to start moving again. Sam continued her spells and cast Dragged To The Grave with Ross in the centre, still struggling to walk from the effects of Cruel Puppeteer, he was immediately dragged down and squeezed roughly by the skeleton hands.
Holding on with his left arm, unable to use his right, Dave was feeling the glass being pushed out of his face by Sam’s healing as his golem sped up and Sam joined him in flight from the hunting party.
“You alright?” called Sam over the sound of the wind.
“Nope! But I will be,” said Dave while wiping blood out of his eyes.
The scout with the boyish face had caught up to Sam and Dave, skating along a rainbow to catch up to them and, projecting light from his left hand in front of him, continued to speed skate across the ground, keeping pace with the duo on golems who were moving about as fast as a sprinting human. Wary of this new threat, Sam easily avoided the glass javelin that he threw at her.
It was at this moment that cries came from the rest of the hunting party that was in pursuit. They had noticed the couple of dozen shadows that Sam and Dave had dragged with them and were changing tact from vengeful pursuit to, as far as Dave could tell, tactical retreat with vengeful pursuit as an optional extra. You couldn’t have everything, figured Dave.
In response to the scout’s presence, Sam put herself and her golem between the scout and Dave who was clearly the weaker target, while the last of the glass pushed out of his face and the smoking skin of his arm was still coming clear. The scout skated ahead of them and threw a small mote of light at Sam who ducked behind her shield.
The mote of light cracked like the noise of an old camera and made a blinding flash which dazzled Sam but the golem, who had no eyes to dazzle, ran around the glass pike that the scout had braced on the ground. They manifested a shadow while running past but neither Dave nor Sam cared to look back to see what they’d awakened in their flight.
Cursing, the scout made a rainbow, the first time they’d seen him do it, and Dave realised it was actually a dome of light which came up beneath his feet on which he seemed to perfectly balance on the slipperiness of it. It was a very skill-intense ability by the looks of it. He came rocketing down the rainbow slope of the light, made a glass javelin in his hand and threw it at Dave. The throw was good and Dave was only prevented from being skewered by hurling himself forward, out of the saddle. He only stayed off the ground because the golem compensated its weight by lifting its front two legs up to tip Dave into a sprawled position onto them while taking to a jerky gallop with only its back two sets of legs.
Dave was hanging on mostly by his left arm around the golem’s front leg and getting his feet scrambling towards the saddle when he saw the scout skating wide for a flanking attack against the awkwardly positioned and mostly immobile Dave. Dave used Stop And Think. He took a mental breath and took in his entire vision. Sam’s health bar showed that the blinding flash ability had worn off so she was probably about to turn around to help. Dave reckoned that the scout knew the timing of his own ability so he’d be aware of Sam too, making this his only melee attack run. His course was predictable, it was the fastest route that the scout had to come around the side of the golem and make a lancing attack against Dave… unless Dave wasn’t with the golem anymore. Yes. Dave unpaused time.
Dave flicked his fingers and five pens shot out of his pocket. In that moment the golem dropped Dave underneath its legs onto his feet in a crouched position. In the next moment the scout stabbed a long javelin of glass into the golem’s leg where Dave had been and Dave’s pens took the scout in the ankle, tripping him and causing him to fall and tumble, bouncing along the ground. The light from his hands went out, he shouted in alarm and there was the sound of him tumbling into darkness. Dave was already hurriedly re-mounting the golem.
Ahead, Sam had turned around.
“Hurry, Dave!”
The momentary dismounting had lost Dave a lot of distance that he desperately needed from the hunting party. Dave leapt onto his mount which immediately began running after Sam. Lord Ross teleported to the scout’s side but before they could do anything more, Dave committed to making a wall.
“Milled for my purpose,” said Dave and a surprisingly wide two-metre-high wall printed itself into existence between Dave and the hunting party. Lord Ross began punching holes through it but when he got through, could only peer with rage watching Dave and Sam go over a hill.
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Dave felt quite a relief several minutes later once they’d entered into the dense forest which his map marked as the border between the town of Courbefy and ‘North Courbefy Forest’. They slowed, but not much, as they turned west and began searching for streams, rivers and rocky areas over which they could either lose their trackers, or make their trackers unmounted lives so wearisome that they’d need a good rest after following.
“Time to use those awakening stones and discuss our next move?” asked Dave when Sam slowed the golem down to a walk while studying Tome in her hand who was displaying a map.
“Oh? Oh, yes,” smiled Sam, snapping out of her concentration. “Actually, let’s go over to the next field on the map. It looks big! Very safe to see people coming across it.”
And so they did. Both of them took a spirit coin and Dave brought out a bit of old cured meat and cheese from his inventory. It was curiously fresh.
“Hmm, Sam? Does this look fine to you?”
“Yes?”
Professor Tome soared over in the style of a drunk chicken and flapped open.
“That’s a thing?” asked Dave, bewildered. Sam’s face held the same expression as Dave and they both looked to Tome.
“Yes, Professor, we could indeed!” said Dave with wonderment in his eyes. The idea was genuinely interesting. The idea of different dimensions moving at different velocities in time and yet connecting to one another. The implications were mind boggling.
Sam smiled at the look of far, away happiness on his face and took the food items.
“Dave, come back!” she said, waving a hand in front of his face. “Make a fire and clean us up, yes? I want to feel good when I use the awakening stones.”
Bumbling in his return to reality, Dave complied. Two prestidigitations later and there was a crackling fire and grime was flowing off first Sam and then Dave. They heated up their snack on a pan and started eating.
“Only one spell left today?” asked Sam.
“Yep,” said Dave. “The cabin. Don’t want to spend that!”
Sam giggled. They both knew they’d be fine for a night without it but really, really didn’t want to.
“Time for absorbing rocks!” said Sam, as she finished the food.
Tome flopped lazily into Dave’s lap, open on the ritual circle page with a note in the corner.
=I hope your new abilities make the bards sing and your enemies quake with fear!= hummed Tzu like an encouraging, distorted guitar amplifier.
Sam put down a towel, kneeled on the ground, lined the awakening stones up in front of herself in the order she found them and picked up the first awakening stone. It was mostly round and looked like a bunch of interconnecting shovels. Death and shovels. There wasn’t a lot of information about the kinds of abilities one could expect from the death essence – death essence users tended not to have their abilities recorded by the Magic Society – but Dave figured it’d be a good combo. Life and balance had some shovel awaking stone results but they weren’t common. He held Tome open to Sam who put her hand on the circle in the book and he chanted the ritual.
The awakening stone crumbled into dust that blew into Sam, through her skin and settled, it looked, into her bones. Dave checked his text box. Her new ability was called Return To The Grave. He mentally clicked on it for more information and read out the spell to Sam.
“Return to the grave. Spell. Extreme damage to animated creatures. Moderate damage to summoned and extra planar creatures. Very Low mana. 5s cooldown.”
Dave and Sam shared a dumbfounded look as they both re-ran his words through their heads.
“This is nice!” squeaked Sam and laughed loudly. She got up and skipped over to Dave for a hug. Tzu hummed loudly like a supportive waterfall of battery fluid as it flew in figure eights around Sam while flashing different colours. After a moment, even Tome did a little barrel roll.
“Well,” said Dave, hugging his excited friend back. “This does change our plans.”
“The shadows won’t bother us anymore!”
“And just think, that’s only the first stone,” said Dave wryly.
Sam laughed and went back to her towel on the ground to pick up the next stone.
This one was a rock. An earth essence but the only way to describe it would be to say it was a rock. It was a rock that was made of dirt but managed to look impressive about it. It was the kind of rock you’d see on a walk in the woods and take home with you for a respectable life as a paperweight.
Sam held Tome with Dave as he chanted and she absorbed the rock. It too, crumbled in her hands but fell to the ground, gathered around her feet and became part of her. Dave read from his text box.
“All-Eating Slime. Familiar. Summon an all-eating slime as a familiar. Hang on, Tome, show the entry for all eating slime.”
“No, is fine!” smiled Sam. “I know it. Is favourite of slime herders. Very good at making top soil but has to always be watched because they will eat everything. Very dangerous if they get too big!”
Dave flicked his eyes over the entry Tome had flicked to.
“They’re basically a blob that rolls around and eats everything? Wouldn’t that include the topsoil?”
Sam shrugged.
“They eat everything and make it into topsoil.”
“Sounds like a massive fungus.”
Sam continued shrugging in the manner of someone who’s already explained all the facts.
“Fair enough. Sounds like if adventuring doesn’t work out you can get a job as a wandering slime herder.”
“Also good for adventuring! They get big and can be very mean.”
“How big?”
“Umm, as big as a small room!”
Dave raised his eyebrows in appreciation. The picture in the book didn’t do the scale justice.
“So, it’s big enough to just roll over an enemy and absorb them?”
“Yes!”
“That… will do nicely. I’m so glad you’re on my team, Sam.”
“Next stone!” cheered Sam.
Again they went through the ritual together. The dance stone this time. It was surprisingly shiny but patterned with human figures in silhouettes of movement. It sank slowly into Sam’s hand but the patterns rippled along her skin for a second as though they were dancing into her soul. Dave read the ability.
“Dance Of Life And Death. Spell. Spend mana, stamina or health to get a damage absorbing shield that converts damage to health, mana or stamina respectively for five seconds. Moderate mana. Twenty second cooldown.”
They both tried to line it all up in their heads and failed.
“Tome, could you display the text for that spell?” asked Dave, who took out a pen. He double checked that the blood had been cleaned off it.
“Okay, okay. Mana goes to health. Health goes to stamina. Stamina goes to mana,” said Dave, circling each connected stat with a different colour and linking them up with lines of the same colour on the page. Then he saw an easier way to visualise it and wrote them in a triangle with the arrows going clockwise. Mana to health to stamina and back around to mana again.
“Yes! Makes much more sense now,” said Sam, following the lines. “I like it! I have so many spells and sometimes run out of mana but I don’t use stamina for anything.”
“You just need to convince something to hit you lightly,” said Dave.
“Easy. I just stay near you. Someone always trying to kill you!” grinned Sam, covering her mouth.
Dave opened his mouth to retort, realised how true that statement was and dumbly closed his mouth. Sam giggled behind her hand.
“I wish that wasn’t an accurate summary of my time in this world but you’re right,” said Dave, breaking into a grin and laughing with her.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t want to make you look bad!”
“Nah,” said Dave and bumped her shoulder. “You’re actually spot on.”
Sam beamed at him and picked up the next stone. An awakening stone of rain. Clear quartz with imperfections like droplets. One ritual later and the crystal sublimed in her hand while the imperfections flew delicately into her face. Dave read the ability as it appeared.
“Death Aura. Aura. Death energy rains down around you.”
Dave raised his eyebrows and pulled an appreciative expression. Not bad at all.
“A little bit evil but I can heal skeletons! So, I take it,” said Sam with a cheeky grin.
“Oh! Yes!” exclaimed Dave. “I’d forgotten. That’s really good. Also, enemy swarms will die as fast as your swam heals.”
“Oh? Oh, yes. That’s fast! Ha!” laughed Sam.
“I like it,” said Dave with a serious nod. “It’s simple but effective. Between this and your life aura it means that your team will always be healing and the other team will always be dying. If we can make any battle long enough we’ll win eventually.”
Sam beamed once again.
“I am a patient person,” she said with a mischievous grin.
“Me too, but all things in balance. Once more?”
“Yes!”
Sam picked up her next awakening stone. An awakening stone of judgement. The one that’d almost gotten her killed acquiring it. Unlike most of the awakening stones she’d used so far, this one wasn’t common rarity but of the rare rarity which, Dave reflected, wasn’t a good word to use to describe rarity. With that personal context and the stone being one of judgement about to join her essences defining the balance of life and death, Dave quietly expected a very powerful ability.
“Indeed it has, Professor. What do you think, Tzu?”
=I’m glad she’s on our side. She can one-shot me now,= hummed the lantern.
Sam grinned guiltily.
Dave took Tome from the air and held it by the spine as it flicked to the correct ritual page. Sam put her hand on the circle and Dave chanted her in. The awakening stone of judgement was very regular and put Dave in mind of weights used on weighing scales. Sam activated the stone and with decisive simplicity it flew into her chest as though gravity for it alone had gone sideways. Dave kept his eyes on his text box preparing to read.
“Reanimate Spirits. Spell, summon. Recall the spirits of the dead to serve you. This spell brings back ghosts or shadows of dead creatures to do your bidding for the next six hours. Mana cost varies depending on the abilities of the returning spirit and how long they’ve been dead. Mana varies. One minute cooldown.”
Sam hadn’t moved. She seemed frozen.
“Sounds good?” asked Dave. “Certainly makes you a bit of a minion-mancer. What’s wrong?”
“I am mo phi!” she squeaked.
“What’s that?” Dave blinked at the Siamese word.
“Ugh, um, witch doctor? Spirit doctor?”
“That’s bad?”
“Yes! No!” She tilted her head side to side. “Same-same but different.”
Dave considered the context for a moment.
“Bad guy in children’s stories?”
Sam nodded her serious face and looked at Dave with her big eyes.
“Well, you’re an adult now so be a nice mo phi instead of an evil one,” said Dave with a shrug.
Sam looked confused for a moment as she ran the idea through her head and then grinned at him, slapping at his shoulder.
“You never serious, ka! How can you think like that?”
Dave laughed.
“I don’t know, it’s just obvious, you know? Where I’m from there are children’s stories with witches too but as I got older I think; damn, that witch is putting so much effort into baking children. It’s a pretty good work ethic. Imagine if she just stopped with the children, got a recipe book and opened a bakery-cafe or something, hey? She’d have a pretty good life and a small business.”
Sam’s shoulders were shaking and her eyes dancing with quiet laughter at Dave’s introspective rant.
“Yeah,” Dave continued. “Adult me is pretty sure that any witch would be a valuable member of the community. Not some crazy person in the woods. I think you just worry a lot because you’re got that death essence but, you know, like McCartney and Lennon wrote; we can work it out.”
“Who are they?”
“Great philosophers and musical artists from my world.”
“Oh, seems too easy advice? You sure they are great?”
“Ah, well. There’s a lot of context in the song about different perspectives and how life is short. Nevermind, I’ll make that tea,” said Dave in the best reassuring tone he could.
Sam offered a mischievous smile.
“You could sing the song?”
“Oh, best if I don't,” said Dave. “I sound like a startled bird when I sing.”
“Want to hear it and get recording crystal. Will play it to frighten bears at night.”
Dave snorted and laughed.
“And you’re afraid that it’s your essence abilities that will make you evil?”
Sam grinned and covered her mouth. Dave made tea.
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“Hi Honey, how you settling in?”
Dave could hear his mum loading the dishwasher on the other side of the world.
“Settling in fine mum,” said Dave, smiling as he unpacked his own dishes onto the kitchen counter. “I lived in Heidelberg for five years, remember? Cologne is a shorter move than Brisbane to Sydney.”
“Well, yes,” said his mother in full maternal hen mode. “But that was just studying, you have a real job now.”
“Yes, the master’s and PhD on a student’s stipend was a complete breeze,” said Dave sarcastically. “And the new job where most of my work is automated and I get paid a hundred-thousand euro per year is just going to be the worst!”
Dave heard her roll her eyes and then the muffled handoff of the phone.
“What’re you doing in your new job?” his dad asked, his German-accented voice crackling slightly over the connection.
Dave grinned, pulling another mug from the box. His dad never remembered these things.
“The corporate hacks tell me, through their Kool-Aid tinted glasses, that I’ve accepted a position as an Evidence-Based Development Strategist on the Clinical Data Analytics Team,” he replied. “A fancy way to say cog-in-the-wheel biostatician working for another biostatician who knows how to talk to the suit-wearing types.”
“The suits will try to wear you down,” said his dad in that matter-of-fact way he had. “If you get sick of it, quit and come home.”
“I will,” Dave assured him, setting another mug on the counter. “Five years of paychecks, then I pivot to research. That’s the plan. I’ll just smile, nod, and wait for my retirement investment money and then get a job I actually care about.”
“Good,” said his dad. “Corporate life has a way of taking over if you let it. Make sure you take all the holidays you’re entitled. And, never go in when you’re sick.”
“Promise, Dad.”
“Oh, and meet a girl.”
“I will dad.”
“And date her.”
“I gathered dad.”
His mum rescued him from his Dad’s sense of humour, taking back the phone.
“Listen to your father, honey. He’s right about not letting the job take over. And the dating part, too.”
Dave laughed, moving his stacked plates to a likely place in the cupboard.
“Don’t worry, Mum. I’ve got a plan, remember?”
“You always do, honey,” she said fondly.