Completing Class

Naha sat in the Shadow Room within the Academy, breathing deeply as she recovered from her ordeal. She had done it, finally, she had shaped the Way of Shadow. It had taken her a while, it wasn’t that it was hard for, but rather that she was worried about how to go about it. Shadow was important to her, and there were many others who also utilized its power. But she had an epiphany today, and had done it.

She had a close relationship with Shadow, even stretching to the time she was young, back on her homeworld. The Great Plain was a dark place, filled with shadowy corners. Children were taught not to fear the dark, but embrace it.

As a ravzor cub, she had played in dark caverns all her life up until the Framework arrived. And those early years had always stuck with her. Shadow was always her friend, even in the Infinite Realm.

When she had shaped her Way, she had forced her ideas and understanding on it. She didn’t do much, a lot of what Shadow’s core principles were, she believed in wholeheartedly. What she had done, though, was enhance and improve facets of it. She made it so that those standing in the shadows would be harder to notice, made it so that Shadow would protect those that needed to hide. She understood that it would also help those who used it for nefarious purposes, but those people would do so anyway.

But by making it better at hiding those that needed its embrace, the Shadow would help more. She remembered her past well, knew what it was like to run and hide in dark corners hoping that you wouldn’t be seen.

Even when she had lost herself, when she had turned away from her path, the Shadow had been by her side, hiding the things that she had done.

But she was on a new path in life now. Their Academy would need more than just a knife in the dark. It would need protection, and Naha would be that for every student that will eventually enter their halls. She could’ve pushed her Way in the direction of more power, sharpen in into a tool to kill, but that was not who she was anymore.

She was someone who protected, as she had been long ago. She glanced at her sheet, looking at her Class evolutions, seeing her path laid down before her.

On her homeworld she had been a Skinwalker, a sacred figure from their histories. Able to change her body to fit in everywhere she walked. To be among the people and protect them from the shadows, and she had done so. She had protected as many as she could, advancing her Class into Shapeshifter. The Infinite Realm had challenged her after, and she had failed. She had allowed the wickedness of others to carve a gap into her soul. Allowed it to seep into her heart, to change her. Her pursuit of power had forced her to spread and push her other focuses, the focus madness only served to widen the gap that the selfishness of those around her had forced upon her. But the steps were her own.

Her first step off her path was the Devourer. A Class that had twisted everything that she was supposed to be. If she hadn’t met Zach, if she hadn’t fallen in love, if he hadn’t been strong enough to help her, she would’ve remained that broken beast, devouring everything in her path on a misguided quest to protect the weak through twisted acts.

Her next evolutions set her back on her true path, leaning into her shape-shifting abilities: Primal Shifter, Primal Chimera, Primal Metamorph. They had allowed her to escape the evil she had done, to avoid retribution and do as much as she could to atone. Zach had told her often that allowing herself to die would do nothing to change her crimes. Justice was a knife that cut out the rotten, but she had the opportunity to balance the scales, to do more good than she had done wicked.

She understood now, and agreed wholeheartedly with his views. Everyone deserved a second chance in a world where immortality was a reality. There was always time for people to turn away from the wrong path. To do good.

Her next Class evolutions had brought her back to who she was as a child, a little cub that liked playing in the dark. She had always felt safe in the Shadows, and she had pushed her skills in that direction, influencing her Class. Paragon of Shadow’s Call, Paragon of Shadow and Fear, and Primarch of Shadow and Fear were her steps in that direction, but also on a path that was more than her past had been. She was back on the path of protection, of helping people, fighting for those who couldn’t fight themselves.

They had learned a lot over these few recent years. They understood more about focus madness and the meaning of a being. Naha didn’t have any conflicts within herself, she knew what she was and what her goal in life was. She was Zach’s shadow, and she was the shadow that kept others safe, that embraced them in its grasp and hid them, protected them.

But she had also accepted her monstrous past, the piece of her that was the Devourer, the Night Horror. The Grand Spirit of Horrors had taught her a lot. She had come to understand what it truly was. Horror was not a thing, it was not an abomination or a monster. It was an emotion, a reaction to seeing something that was so evil, so twisted, so… wrong. It was a mechanism of protection, all living things felt it, and horror, fear, terror, these things told us when something was wrong. Those emotions gave us insight into ourselves and they protected us from the things outside of ourselves.

Naha had learned that fear was a powerful weapon, a tool that could be used to protect just as much as it could be used to harm. Everybody had fears, and if she knew them she could protect them better from them. If she showed them to others, she could force them to stay away. She could terrify instead of kill when her hand was forced.

Naha had accepted that she was that thing in the dark, lurking in the Shadows, that instilled fear and horror in others. Knowing oneself was important, and Naha, despite everything, understood who she was.

It was almost funny to her, sometimes, that she knew herself so well while not even remembering how she used to look. She had lost her original body long ago. Naha had tried to recreate it, but she had forgotten it. But that wasn’t really who she was. She had been a shapeshifter for far longer than she had worn a singular flesh. She was not her body, she was not her gender, or race, she was Naha.

And now she was also a person at the peak of her focus. She had advanced her Class, taking up the last evolution of her journey, she was now the Custodian of Primordial Fear and Shadow. And with the forming of her Way, there was one more thing that she now had to do.

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Fashion her Oath.

She glanced through her last two evolution perks, the most recent ones, reading through them again.

Spread Fear (Class Perk)

Five times per day magnify the fear in your target and spread it to up to 100 targets nearby.

True Link—Shared Might (Class Perk)

Allows you to transfer up to 20% of your stats to your bond partner. Effect duration depends on your bond with Zacharia Gardner.

Fear Daggers (Class Perk)

When using daggers, your attacks inflict a fear based mental attack.

Harvest Fear (Class Perk)

Harvest Fear of any being around you, removing the effect from them and boosting all your stats and regeneration effects by up to 1000% based on the amount of fear harvested.

Aegis of Shadow and Fear (Class Perk)

Once a day summon a protective shield made out of shadow around yourself and every ally in a large range giving them fear immunity for the duration of the shield. The shield's durability is equal to 15x your intelligence and 5x your endurance.

True Link—Teleport (Class Perk)

Once per day, you may teleport to your linked partner. Requires True Link-Zacharia Gardner to be active. Distance depends on your bond with Zacharia Gardner.

Shadow Bulwark (Class Perk)

Once a day while standing in the shadow and when you take are about to take a lethal blow, collapse into a shadow and reform instead of taking damage.

Primarch’s Shadow (Class Perk)

Improves your Paragon's Shadow to now last 1 hour. Your Paragon's Shadow now has a passive fear effect, which paralyzes low resistance targets near it and deals passive fear based mental damage to others. Once a day, you may boost your Paragon's Shadow, granting it your stats plus 10%, and allowing it use your shadow and fear based powers

Primordial Call (Class Perk)

Once every three months summon and imbue yourself with the core principles of Shadow and Fear Aspects, increasing your effectiveness with them based on your understanding of them. While imbued, all powers are free to use, their cooldowns halved, and charges doubled. Duration of effect dependent on mental stamina and will.

They were good perks, ones that she had chosen with Zach, as she did most of her advancements. But now she had a choice to make if she was going to make an Oath.

The manner in which that system worked was interesting. Naha opened up the window and looked through it.

On one side, she saw the blank space where she could make an offering, and on the right she would be allowed to choose what she wanted in return. The Framework would fashion her Oath for her, based on who she was.

She could also pick and choose from options already prepared, and there were many, both for the sacrifice offerings and for the gains.

Too many for her to really go through them all. The rewards, or the gains. They were even sorted in neat little categories like offense, defense, passive, active, attributes, and many others. A lot of the things she could look at also appeared in more than one category if they fit.

Naha could offer three sacrifices, and get three gains in return. She remembered what she had seen in the Empire, when they had been shown an Oath of the Azure Blaze. It was powerful, and she knew that the value of what she gave away was directly linked to what she would gain.

She had some ideas about it, and she had already talked about it with Zach. She had a rough idea of what she wanted to do for her first one at least. It was a large sacrifice, and she was sure that she would get a large gain for it.

She planned on giving up all of her Class abilities, she was just not sure what she should get in return. She had a lot of options, but she could also try and ask for something unique on her own. The Framework would tell her if what she wanted was doable or not. And she had been toying with a perk, though she hadn’t managed to get it to fit the sacrifice yet.

But there was one thing that she was certain she wanted and that would fit her well, a reverse of an Oath that she knew about—the Oath of the Sun God. Heor Darkhoof had an oath that made him far stronger during the day, but came at a price of being weaker during the night.

Naha possessed a powerful item, the Piece of Night, which allowed her to turn day into night every three months. If she made the same type of Oath, one that would make her stronger during the night, she would have a powerful trump card even if she was caught during the day.

And yet… her power wasn’t really connected to night, but Shadow, so she still toyed with the exact wording she wanted. Though if she made it so that she was stronger in Shadow the gain just wasn’t as powerful, but then again she had a lot of boosts for when she stood in Shadow.

With narrowing of her eyes, she put in what she wanted and saw the sacrifice required. Half of all her stats during the day so that she could have double her current stats during the night. It was… powerful, but it would make her weaker during the day. Though… she did some quick math, not for the first time, and saw just how much her boosts would increase her halved stats during the day. She wouldn’t be weak, not by a long shot, just weaker than she was. Though, she was also fairly reliant on her skills and image, so she would never really be helpless, and with Piece of Night even if she ever got ambushed during the day she would have a way to turn it around.

Naha rarely even fought without being prepared, without first scouting out and knowing her battlefield. And besides, she was almost never away from Zach, it wasn’t that much of an issue.

She tentatively put her first Oath in. Then moved over to the next. She put in giving up all of her abilities as a sacrifice and then looked at what she could pick. There were some powerful perks offered, but also different types of buffs.

What she was drawn to was a buff that made all of her non-power based actions more powerful by making her stats more effective. She would lose abilities, which meant that she would rely more on raw physical attributes.

The effectiveness of your stats is 120%.

It would stack well with the other Oath if she chose it, making her stats truly high as a base-line at night, if she counted her boosts and what would come in the future… She would be really powerful.

She put that in as her second.

The last, she returned to the perk she was fashioning for herself. She tweaked it some more, then put it in and saw what the Framework requested as a sacrifice. There were things like losing another half of her stats, only this time base stats, losing some of her senses even, but the one that she narrowed her choices down to was losing one perk from every Class tier. It wouldn’t be that much of a sacrifice, especially since she could choose which perk to give up from each tier, if it wasn’t for the fact that it meant she would lose her last perk. She didn’t get to test the Primordial Call yet, but she could tell that it would be powerful.

And yet, the perk she had made for herself was powerful too.

She was… indecisive. She needed advice.

Then, as if her thoughts had summoned him, the door to her room opened and Zach stepped in.

“Hey,” he said. “I need some advice.”

Naha smiled and stood up.