Groaning in pain and soreness, Mel awoke with a start. She thrashed around, trying to defend herself, before she realized that nothing was attacking her. She was safe.
For a given value of “safe”.
“What the hell happened?” She put a hand to her head. It came away sticky with old blood. A quick look at her health bar didn’t show any new status effects, wound markers, or much of anything, so she figured it was just a standard old injury.
At least this way I can see if I get a concussion, Mel thought to herself as she sat upright.
Using the wall for balance, Mel got to her feet and took stock. Judging by the bright light filtering through the canopy of trees outside, she hadn’t been out very long.
That was a good sign.
Curious, Mel checked her status.
[Mel Harper]
Race: Human
Standing: [#N/A] Exile (G-League) [1st Echelon]
Class: Mystic
Rank: Mundane
Next Rank: Copper (20%)
[==Attributes==]
Strength [No Aspect Bound]: Mundane (Grade 0)
Agility [Mist Aspect]: Copper (Grade 0)
Vigor [No Aspect Bound]: Mundane (Grade 0)
Sense [No Aspect Bound]: Mundane (Grade 0)
Arcane [No Aspect Bound]: Mundane (Grade 0)
[==Aspects==]
[Mist Aspect] (Copper Rank) (Grade 0)
● [Hidden Mist] (Grade 0)
Mel nearly pumped her fist in excitement. Though there were still many questions left unanswered, she understood at least one thing: binding an aspect was important if she wanted her stats to get out of Mundane rank.
And in a place full of monsters eager to kill Mel, that was priority number one.
Despite feeling like she had just gone ten rounds in a boxing ring after a weeklong bender, Mel could tell she was lighter and faster on her feet.
She shuffled her feet back and forth, amazed at the ease and speed while she punched in short, fast jabs in the air.
“Damn, I could whoop Ali’s ass and look fine as hell doing it,” she said, conveniently ignoring that she was over a foot shorter than the famous boxer.
“The Mist aspect!” she cried, suddenly remembering.
Blazing in front of her eyes was her very first Mist aspect skill.
[Hidden Mist]
(Mist Aspect)
(Copper, Green/Spell)
(Grade 0 [0%])
Cost: Modest Mana
Cooldown: Moderate
Shroud an area in mist, obscuring the vision of your enemies and making them easy prey.
Imprint(Copper Rank): Create a layer of obfuscating fog that you and any allies you designate can see through. Area affected by fog is considered difficult terrain. Mana cost increases as the area of fog increases. Additional mana may be expended to illuminate the fog from within.
Mel held her hand out and made a few motions with her fingers. She didn’t know why she did, but it felt right. As if she had done this a million times before.
Unfortunately, nothing happened.
“Hm.”
She tried several times before eventually giving up. Mel was glad that the only witnesses to her failure were the two ghostly stagecoaches. No matter what Mel did, they charged up and down the ramps in their eternal circuit inside the Hero’s Tomb. At one point, she began to flail her arms like a flightless bird.
That was when she knew she was on the wrong track.
“Let’s try this again,” she muttered to herself. Despite a lack of any status effect telling her something was wrong with her brain, she knew something wasn’t right.
Her memories came in fits and starts, though she guessed being locked in a sarcophagus and deprived of oxygen might have had some lingering effects.
Mel moved past it, aware somewhere deep inside that she had always done that when the going got tough.
This place was dangerous. She needed to focus on surviving. Learning how to use that aspect spell could help with that.
Mel refocused herself, standing tall (for a given value of “tall”) and upright with her palms pressed together in a meditative pose. When she looted monsters, there was a tingling feeling in her middle. It was the same way when she bound the aspect and when she opened her magical inventory.
Following that line of logic, Mel found the wellspring of Mist within and threaded a tendril of mana toward it. The moment she did, something huge and hungry tugged at her soul and the ground wobbled beneath her feet.
At first, she thought it was an earthquake, but later realized it was her own unsteadiness as she tapped into her Mist aspect for the first time.
Aspect Skill: [Hidden Mist]
Cold fog pooled around Mel’s ankles, creating glistening patches on the stone floor. In the span of a few heartbeats, she was completely enshrouded in a chilly mist. It spread out in every direction, seeking to fill every void in the tomb.
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The mist rolled out of the doorway in one direction, and deeper down into the tomb in the other. Mel could see through the mist as if it wasn’t even there, yet she was completely aware of it at the same time.
Weird.
Glittering patches gathered on the age-worn statues, and sarcophagi lining the walls in alcoves.
“Cool.” Mel whispered.
Stepping forward, she only made it a few steps before she nearly swooned, stepped on a patch of slick stone, and fell flat onto her back.
Stars popped in front of her eyes when her head cracked against the stone, but the pain was only temporary. Worse by far was the lightheadedness she felt.
Judging by the thin sliver of blue remaining in the bottom-middle of her vision, her mana was nearly empty. And still draining.
“Forgot to turn it off,” she groaned to herself.
It was the work of a moment to halt it, which gladly didn’t force the mist to dissipate. Instead, it hung around. Its constant outward expansion was halted.
“Good to know,” Mel said, getting to her feet. She avoided the slick patches this time. An easy enough task, since she could see through the mist.
She could feel where the edge of the mist was without even looking. There was a light haze to her vision, a faint brightening that told her she was inside her created mist.
“This would be awesome on those sweltering Brooklyn summer days.” Mel stepped up to the edge of the ramp and froze, mostly from the sudden memory of playing in the spray of a fire hydrant, but also because she heard the ghostly stagecoaches rumbling toward her.
She had to find a way to deal with them, but she didn’t see how causing a little mist would let her do that.
A ghostly stagecoach thundered by, its bladed wheels throwing sparks through the mist and rumbling the ground beneath Mel’s feet. She waited for it to halt just short of the wall and to turn around in place, as it always did.
It slammed full speed into the wall. Several pieces of its ghostly timbers and armor lining the coach’s body cracked. Lines of brilliant light shone through the gaps, revealing that there were no passengers within. The stagecoach righted itself and turned around just in time for the second stagecoach to crash into the wall as well.
“Oh damn. You all just ate shit worse than me,” she said, startled.
Neither stagecoach seemed to care or notice. They never reacted to anything, in fact. She had assumed they were following a specific track like a roaming trap.
It seemed they were relying on sight this entire time.
By the time they were halfway down the ramp to the lower levels, both stagecoaches were no longer damaged.
“Something must be healing them,” she muttered to herself, making for the middle of the ramp that she used to fight the last two possessed suits of armor.
The stagecoaches had been a huge problem for her initially. That was until she realized they were basically robots.
The damned things didn’t care who or what they ran over, but they also didn’t care to chase her. If she was in their way, they would have crushed her flatter than a crepe. However, if she was just a few inches out of their way, they wouldn’t bother to shift their route to hit her.
They were more like an environmental hazard than a real monster, and she had used them to great effect to help her dispatch the other monsters.
Now, however, she needed to find a way to kill something that she could not fight. The only advantage she had now was her new aspect skill: [Hidden Mist].
First one, then the other stagecoach rumbled past her. There was a faint tug as they streaked by, exhilarating and terrifying all at once. It was similar to the feeling of standing near the edge of a subway platform when a train car rushed by.
Interestingly, Mel noticed that the fog followed her. It was like a massive, flowing cloud with her at the center. That was a pleasant surprise, considering how much mana she used to create it.
In the time it took her to go down several levels, she noticed the mist thinning. It wasn’t eternal. Eventually, it would fade away. She could pull it into a smaller radius, thickening it back up, but it was only a matter of time before it vanished completely.
“I can work with that.” Mel stood still as the stagecoaches rushed by in different directions. She spun in place as the countervailing currents pulled in different directions, then continued on her way.
Mel’s improved agility, and her [Rustwing Boots] made the trek down much faster. It wasn’t only the lack of monsters, other than the stagecoaches, but her increased speed and confidence.
Ahead, the sloping ramp dropped off into the dark abyss of a gorge from which she could see no bottom. A narrow stone bridge crossed the gap to the boss room she had originally come from.
“Hell of a start to an adventure,” she said, looking at the bridge and the door beyond. “Who starts at the bottom of a dungeon? Honestly, what a dick move.”
Then again, she doubted she would have been strong enough to face the mistwraith at the bottom if she hadn’t snuck up on it. In a fair fight, that thing would have sliced her to ribbons.
Thinking of how she did the mistwraith dirty by cutting off its strength got Mel thinking. There was a way she could deal with the stagecoaches after all.
Focusing, she was able to release [Hidden Mist] entirely. She didn’t trust herself to walk across the narrow bridge and avoid the slick patches her mist made.
Once on the other side, she took a few minutes to let her mana replenish back to full and used [Hidden Mist] again.
This time, she focused on trying to shape it. An impish smile curled on her lips. The mist was as easy to mold as putty in her hands.
Frosty blue mist spread across the bridge and expanded over the gorge.
She could even focus where the slick icy patches formed. The distant thundering of a stagecoach told her that time was running out, so she pushed as much mana into her efforts as possible.
To either side of the narrow bridge, she created large patches of ice. Thick mist consumed a few yards before the drop and hung in the air over it. That last part had been particularly tricky. The mist kept wanting to fall into the gorge.
She had to concentrate to keep the mist in place, which meant her mana was being constantly drained. Denying gravity her due was harder than it looked.
The first stagecoach rushed by, performing its customary route, followed shortly by the other.
The ice cracked and shattered beneath their wheels. The stagecoaches noticed the problem too late. Though they tried to stop, their wheels couldn’t find purchase on the slick ice. One after the other, they plummeted into the darkness.
Mel stared after them. She was shocked that it had worked, then frustrated as she realized her mistake.
“Dammit. My loot!” There was no way she was getting anything from them now.
She completed the quest, however.
Quest Complete: Tales from the Crypt
Additional Objective: Defeat every monster within this Hero’s Tomb (12/12).
Reward: Bonus runes of experience.
Countless runes riding streaking lines of light rushed out of thin air aimed straight at her heart. Mel summoned her twinblade and nearly struck at them, before she remembered they were not dangerous.
Right, I’ve done this before.
The moment they hit her chest, she understood their purpose. They were power given form. Her veins felt like they were on fire, her face flushed with heat, and her entire body went rigid on the balls of her feet.
Once she regained control of her body, she leaned against the thick doors of the boss room. She couldn’t quite put a finger on the sensation. Exhilarating, yes, but it was also draining. She felt like she had just won a marathon, but that she also ran a damn marathon.
Safe in the knowledge that the monsters in the tomb were dead, Mel allowed herself to slide down the door and sit on the ground. Shardscript flashed across her vision, confirming her suspicions.
You defeat (2) [Grave Stagecoaches (Copper Rank)].
You gain runes of Mist aspect experience.
You gain Battle Points.
Your [Hidden Mist] Mist aspect skill advances to [Copper Rank (Grade 1)].
Your [Agility (Mist)] attribute advances to [Copper Rank (Grade 1)].
Mel leaned her head against the splintery door, right below her old bloody handprint. She smiled and shut her eyes.