Your target, Guardian of Balance, is immune to petrification.

Tides of Woe had never failed me before, but apparently you couldn’t petrify a stone statue. I had never run into an immunity to one of my random ailments before, and it annoyed me. Strangely, the statue wasn’t immune to bleeding. The bleed from my Dragonfly Strike sent ruptures across the stone entity, and a dark gray ooze wept from the wounds. I liked the idea of bleeding stones, it was very dramatic, a little bit poetic, and showcased how amazing I am.

I didn’t let it throw off my game and drove a flurry of five hits onto the Guardian, of which the fourth strike of my combo activated Calamitous Touch, and the bleeding effects of the statue grew more severe. Drawing back from the combo as the statue turned to face me, finally, I activated Chromatic Cascade. Green still shot through my aura, as the wave of Life energy blasted away from me and struck the Guardian. A sickly brown miasma clung to the statue, which I knew to be a healing prevention debuff.

Fire shot out of the statues eyes at me, but I activated Dragonfly Strike again, and after I struck the back of the statue I rebounded back to Morgan and Cassius.

“How fucking fast are you?!” Cassius spat in disbelief. “And how does punching stone not break your hands?”

I didn’t answer Cassius, we were a little busy.

A huge veil of darkness exploded from Morgan, and took the form of four flickering goblinoid figures. Each one was made of wispy shadows, but possessed a solidness that left me without doubt they could cause physical damage.

“Attack,” Morgan commanded the four imperiously, and the four ran forward to engage the slowly turning statue. I positioned myself to hit the Guardian, the goblins, and Morgan with Aurora Burst. Unlike Chromatic Cascade, Aurora Burst afflicted enemies with a random ailment regardless of my active Kinesis, cleansed debuffs from allies hit, and if there were nothing to cleanse it would give you a random buff.

Cassius Thorn gains Guardian’s Ward: Reduces incoming damage by 15%.

Morgan (and summons) gain Celestial Guidance: Improves accuracy and evasion by 20%.

You have gained Radiant Glow: Heal nearby (10m) allies for 5% of their health every five seconds.

The Guardian statue unleashed a blast of flames from its palms. The already agile shadow-goblins avoided the attack with an alacrity that surprised me. Admittedly, I was a little jealous Morgan and the goblins got the evasion buff. Even more shocking than the speed the shadow summons displayed the flame attack ricocheted off the floor and swarmed to Cassius, who cast Absorb Flame and channeled the flames into a rapidly expanding orb.

Something seemed to change in the Guardian, and its eyes went from flaming to shooting streams of highly pressurized water. Morgan, I, and three of the goblins avoided them. One goblin got obliterated, but its wispy form coalesced after a second. The crash of pressurized water into the flames Cassius controlled was far more impressive. The water hissed as it evaporated, and visibility dropped as steam flooded the immediate area.

I reactivated Tides of Woe on the Guardian, and it froze in place, stunned.

“Freeze it!” Morgan shouted at me, and I cycled my Kinesis to cold, and blue dominated my kaleidoscopic aura. I went with the tried and true one-two punch of Dragonfly Strike, to refresh and add another stack of bleeding, followed up by Chromatic Cascade, which unleashed a full wave of cold directly into the backside of the statue.

“Burn it! As hot as you can!” Morgan demanded of Cassius, and I could see where we were heading with this. Hot and cold, rock, this could get messy depending on what Morgan’s next move would be. I backed off the Guardian, but it was pissed at me and lifted both hands to smash me. Flames cascaded across its back, and I left patches of ice behind as I used Rainbow Dash to it’s fullest to make some distance.

Morgan had the goblins move in first, and they smashed the back side of the statue. Hunks of stone fell off, and then Morgan twirled the weighted end of the chain of her sickle. A few quick rounds to build momentum, and then the weighted end elongated and wrapped all the way around the statue. Then Morgan pulled, and I tripped over my own foot, face hitting the ground.

The statue crumbled to pieces. The ‘chain’ cut through the statue with relative ease, and huge chunks of its form crashed to the ground. On the ground, the remaining pieces lost cohesion and turned to dust, leaving behind four marbles (one each of red, blue, brown, and green).

Congratulations, you have passed the Trial of Worthiness.

“Oof.” I groaned, but the healing buff pulsed before I wiped blood away from my nose, returning me to as good as new.

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“Your mom is insane!” Morgan laughed a little hysterically. “Why does the chain cut?”

“Didn’t you read the description?” I asked and read the part I assumed was applicable. “Made from Sickleium, a transcendant metal. What happens when you make a sickle from sickles, all the way down to the atomic level? Why not make the chain of sickles too. Be very careful about what you want to cut while wielding this weapon.” Unlike Morgan, I had familiarity with the need to read the finer details on anything made by my mothers.

Cassius coughed. I thought he was trying to gather my attention, but he was really just trying to disperse the lingering steam clouds.

“What are those marbles?” Morgan asked.

“I think they’re for Cassius. Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water cores.” I’d seen their like many times before. These were potent, but not nearly on the level of the ones mom kept in her smithy.

“What do we do with them?” Cassius asked.

“I could answer that,” the Ifrit from earlier said as he appeared in a heat haze. “Are you ready for a class upgrade, young man?”

“Yes!!” Cassius shouted in excitement.

I took the time to walk over to Morgan, and peck a kiss on their cheek. “Good job.”

“Let’s watch the show, first,” Morgan said with an impish smile. They wanted to see what happened next with Cassius.

“Focus, young man. Concentrate upon the elements, draw them into your being. How well you do will determine the class you gain.”

I’d never seen a class upgrade before. Cassius grasped the four elemental cores in his hand, closed his eyes, and presumably concentrated. Whatever he did, it resulted in multiple hues of light shining from his hands. The more the light shone, the more tiny motes of color filled the ruins around us. First five, then ten, then hundreds of tiny lights that looked like fireflies darted everywhere. They flew around Cassius in chaotic orbits that filled the air with glee.

“Spirits, right?” Morgan asked me in a hushed whisper of awe.

“I think so?” I assumed what we were seeing was spirits, but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t a nature kind of class, and none of my abilities control spirits that I knew of. Maybe hanging around Cassius would unlock a Spirit kinesis? What color would spirits even be?

I could see Cassius talking but couldn’t hear him. Before I could ask if he needed help, all of the swarmed spirits congregated to Cassius and gave him an epic bear hug. They squeezed and squeezed, and then Cassius glowed like a sun for a fraction of a moment, and then the spirits were all gone. With them went the sense of glee and wonder that had filled the ruins, and I felt a slight emptiness inside myself with their disappearance.

“We beat the trial and I got a new class! I’m a Primal Caller now! All of my abilities upgraded. Thank you so much, Alexander, Morgan.” Cassius rubbed the back of his head with one hand, awkwardly. “I’m sorry for the past.”

“I forgive you, but I hope you’re better at talking with spirits than people,” Morgan said. Their tone rode the line between sass and sincerity so tightly I couldn’t quite tell where Cassius stood in Morgan’s eyes, their sass had a cut to it that was as sharp as the chains of Moral Dilemma.

“We’re good, man. You’d better apologize to Lilith when we get out of here, or she’ll keep holding a grudge forever.” I felt slightly conflicted. On one hand, Cassius had been an oafish bully for as long as I could remember, but on the other there was a version of him who wasn’t an asshole. I had to forgive the version of him I hated for him to become the version I might be able to call a friend. It wasn’t a difficult choice.

Small, quiet voices whispered in my psyche that I shouldn’t have helped him to begin with, that he might regress to being an asshole now that he didn’t need my help anymore, that maybe the sight of those amazing spirits would lead to Cassius stealing Morgan away from me. There were so many tiny, spiteful, pitiful what ifs in my mind that it just turned into the droning of mosquitos—a dull background noise that I ignored, because it didn’t matter.

Why did so many other people have such a hard time just silencing the drone of base thoughts? It seemed so easy, but Lilith said it was because we weren’t human. She claimed that the quiet drone we heard was more like a blaring horn for humans, and most other races, too. I have no idea how she knew that, but maybe she learned it from our mothers? She asked a lot wordier stuff of them, while I mostly pressed momma to teach me more fighting.

“Now where’s the loot?” I asked almost exactly at the same time as the System spawned an impressive looking magic circle with a chest in the middle. Unfamiliar sigils glowed in arcane script, and the runes slowly circled the chest in a slow even rotation.

“May I?” Morgan asked as they walked to the chest.

“Go for it,” Cassius said.

“Wait,” I kissed Morgan’s cheek. “For good luck.”

“Thanks,” Morgan’s eyes rolled a little in response to the kiss on the cheek, before they took the last step and opened the chest. Fireworks filled the air, confetti fell from the sky, and the chest vanished. Two items remained behind.

“Dibs,” Morgan laughed and picked up a pair of sunglasses. They were made of platinum, had mirrored lenses, and ornate metal scrollwork across them. I’d never seen a pair of glasses made before, but it made sense since they were System creations.

“Those look fantastic on you.” I didn’t have to wait long to compliment Morgan, they put the glasses on immediately.

“They make me immune to blinding and give me a bonus to resisting light with my darkness. Worth it. What’d you get?” Morgan looked down at what looked like a gray puffball of fog in my hand.

“Believe it or not, it’s an accessory item.” I laughed, then equipped and activated it. “It’s called Runic Fog.”

I laughed because within two meters of my legs fog billowed around my legs. While it was only calf high, it obscured my feet very well. The fog provided a great backdrop for the chromatic shifts of my hair and aura and combined to create a sensory distortion. Within the fog strange runes occasionally formed, creating even more illumination and color mischief within the dense fog.

“Fighting you would be the worst,” Morgan groaned. “What’s it do?”

“It confuses enemies and makes me harder to target.”

“It makes you harder to look at, for sure.” Cassius said with a grimace. I’d been about to turn the effect off, but I left it on for a little longer to spite him.

Trial clear. Exit the dungeon.

The System demanded even as a portal of golden light appeared.