Zalia pushed a rock off the remains of a table and it fell to the floor with a thud.
“Not much in this building either, looks like,” Zalia muttered.
They had searched many of the complex’s buildings finding nothing but bunks, a mess hall, offices and other utility structures. The reason Zalia was still hopeful was she hadn’t found anything akin to a storage room or an armoury of any sorts. She was of course assuming that anything like that even existed and wouldn’t be completely degraded. She looked over to Boreal.
“Want to check the next building?” she asked.
Boreal was busy dashing through the rubble of the room, playing cat and mouse with the shadows as far as Zalia could tell. She stopped sprinting around at the question.
“Next!” Boreal exclaimed.
She had far too much energy. Zalia remembered her cat when she had been growing up had been something like this but Boreal had the added power of a magically enhanced body and didn’t require much sleep. The combination of the two resulted in a restless bundle of fluffy energy incapable of focusing on any one thing for too long.
As they were leaving the building, Zalia had to smoothly catch her balance by stepping to the side as a piece of the stairs crumbled and fell away. Moving a little more carefully, they made it down and out, looking towards the other buildings in the complex.
“Do you want to pick one this time?” Zalia asked.
Boreal ran across the field of dead skeletal Bathar most of which had patches of fur sticking to their bones until she arrived at one of the other buildings, Zalia following behind. Zalia couldn’t help but notice again just how much Boreal had grown since they had found her. Once up to barely mid calf she was now almost up to Zalia’s waist. As they entered the low inconspicuous building, Zalia was surprised by a message popping up in her vision.
Congratulations! Your passive “Feline eyes” shared through your Beast bond with Boreal Taori has reached Bronze.
Feline Eyes - passive
Tin - the sharpness of your vision is dramatically increased.
Iron - when activated, you may see heat in addition to your normal vision.
Bronze - you are now able to see vibrations in the air and ground around you to a much more significant degree.
Immediately, Zalia could see the vibrations. It was like when she used to be able to see the heat waves coming off of roads in the summer. It was similar, yet so different. The waves were directional, each of Boreal’s steps letting out vibrations so small as to be barely noticeable as each movement pushed the air in a visible yet almost indistinct manner. In fact, if she wasn’t looking right at Boreal and knew she was there, the vibrations would have been so small as to be invisible. The same applied to her own as she walked and she realised that the Iron rank of the Stealth passive was most likely the cause. It inhibited other forms of senses and it turned out this counted as one.
While the new sense was disorienting, she quickly grew used to it and began experimenting in ways she could walk to minimise her own impact even as they entered the building chosen by Boreal.
“Nice new ability,” Zalia said.
“Wavy,” Boreal replied.
“Wavy,” Zalia agreed.
They moved into the low building and found themselves in what was definitely a store room. There were severely degraded boxes that were close to dust, their contents mostly in similar shape yet she was surprised to find a small piece of parchment squared off with leather edges in perfect shape. The reason for its survival soon became apparent as she picked it up, shaking off the dust and decayed wood that lay atop it.
War map - Bronze rank.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t an heirloom item and had managed to survive this entire time without falling apart. She was more than certain that there had been many more magical items in a city this large, most of them fallen to pieces by now. She carefully unfolded the map and was met by a detailed image of the military compound and the surrounding area. What was initially most surprising about it was the fact that all the damage done to the surrounding buildings showed up on the map. That meant it either updated itself automatically by some sort of divination magic or it had been made quite recently.
The answer to that soon became apparent when a small translucent red dot appeared on the map and looking closer, Zalia could see it was an undead. It was odd, the quality of the drawing was as if it were a drone video streamed from above. She watched the undead shamble slowly towards the military compound, measuring the map to show maybe one hundred and fifty metres in each direction from where she stood.
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Oddly, she couldn’t see herself or Boreal on the map and walking outside, found it to be the same. Not only did one of the translucent dots not show up, neither did their image. Once again, she remembered her Stealth passives ability to inhibit other senses from seeing her. It was a war map after all, probably more for seeing the surrounding terrain and general troop movements than watching for stealthy rogues or spies.
She folded up the map and slipped it half under her pants waistband, covering the other half with her shirt. It would stay there alright if she didn't jostle around or fight too much but she was really missing her spatial bag. She stepped back inside and searched the rest of the building with Boreal. They found only one more item which both of them now stood over, inspecting it.
War Harnsh Plate Armour(Heirloom) - Unbonded Iron rank.
“What is a Harnsh do you think?” Zalia asked.
From what she could tell, it was some sort of a four legged beast that the Bathar must have used for war. She hadn’t seen any undead versions of that in the city yet but was definitely not looking forward to doing so based on this armour. It was a set of full interlocking plate armour that would cover the creature's entire body leaving only slits for the eyes. The mouth section looked like it was designed to attach to the lower jaw to allow for full movement of the jaw so that whatever wore it could still bite.
Each section looked fitted in such a manner that it would not hinder movement, the pieces so well made that as she moved it around that they soundlessly slid past each other. The entire set was coloured in a matte grey, a perfect colour for Boreal. Thinking back to the way her armour had shrunk and moulded to her form, Zalia turned to her.
“Want to try?” she asked.
Boreal hopped up excitedly.
“Try!” she yelled in Zalia’s mind.
Zalia nodded, considering whether it was entirely a good idea to give Boreal a set of Heirloom plate armour.
“Alright my little bowling ball, let’s try then,” Zalia agreed.
What followed was probably an hour and a half of Zalia trying to figure out how to put the armour on Boreal. Much as she suspected it would, the armour did shrink to fit Boreal’s form but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that plate armour was incredibly difficult to put on, not that she had even tried it herself. It was much harder because she was entirely unfamiliar with how it should work for what was essentially a cat and the pieces only shrunk when she tried to put it in the right place on Boreal. Luckily, the pieces had all been assembled before she had started so she had a vague idea of what to do and they eventually got it equipped.
“Alright, try it out,” Zalia said, hands on her hips as she admired her handiwork.
Boreal started moving slowly before speeding up until she was sprinting around the place like a madwoman. The plate itself didn’t make much sound but it definitely had a very noticeable effect on Boreal’s ability to sneak as she walked and landed a bit heavier. Through the vibration sight Zalia could see the difference in a more definite way.
“Feel good?” Zalia asked once Boreal had finally stopped sprinting around.
“More heavy,” Boreal replied, panting heavily.
“Damn, I was hoping it would be good for you to use in combat,” Zalia muttered.
“More heavy good,” Boreal exclaimed.
The statement came with an image of Boreal hitting an undead at high speeds wearing the armour.
“More heavy good,” Zalia agreed, smiling a little.
While a work of art, the mental image wouldn’t compare to seeing it happen for real. With a mixture of flight and a charged pounce, Boreal would most likely explode even a Bronze undead on impact.
They left the long, low storeroom and searched the rest of the complex’s buildings but didn’t actually find any kind of armoury. Maybe it was in another part of the city or maybe the soldiers all kept their own gear, she didn’t know. Giving up, Zalia got a bearing on where she was and mentally recalled where the other places she wanted to search were located.
She was getting much better with that as her rank increased, just being able to recall and remember things accurately with less time needed to memorise them. The two closest places to them were the central market and the magical research facility. She definitely knew which she wanted to go to more but asked Boreal her opinion anyways.
“We can either go to the central market or a magical research facility. The latter is most likely to have some interesting things but I don’t know what type it is or what kind of markets they had here so its anyone's guess,” Zalia informed Boreal.
Boreal looked intently at Zalia with her piercing blue eyes glowing from beneath the plate armour. In addition to how big she was now and the trail of glowing prints she still left behind despite the armour, Boreal was actually starting to look less cute and more… scary.
“You,” Boreal replied, giving the sense of trust.
“Research facility it is then,” Zalia said with a smile.
Despite how much of a little shit Boreal could be sometimes, when it came down to it she still trusted Zalia and it kept a small flame burning in her heart so frozen over from years in the snow.
They left on wings of wind, Boreal slightly quicker now despite the extra weight because she was somewhat streamlined and had less drag from her thick fur due to the armour. They arrived near the designated location and Zalia frowned at what they saw before them. She had been expecting a large tower-like structure similar to a wizards tower with a fanciful design but instead was met with the sight of what was essentially a bunker. The central part of the bunker was a pit that led far into the ground with windows watching out, lending it the appearance of a reverse tower.
She could have just flown down to the bottom of the pit and into one of the windows at the bottom but once again wasn’t so keen on the idea of getting stuck down there surrounded by enemies so decided to take a little bit of a different route. She landed atop the roof of the circular bunker on the surface and prepared her ritual against being seen by the shades above. Looking forward to yet another fight, she activated the ritual and let out a loud yell.