Commander Bridge soared through the sheets of rain, flanked by the other adventurers from his expedition who could fly. They chased after the Wyvern as it flew beyond the Craggs, crossing over the ridge of small, vertebra-shaped mountains that divided the Craggs from the Redwood Forest. Bridge swore in his mind, and if there were anyone he could speak to right now he would be swearing at them. Nothing about their intel indicated the Wyvern was nesting beyond the Spine.
The distance was greyed out in all directions by the rain. He could see only the faint silhouette of the fleeing Wyvern, and the tops of the trees a hundred feet directly below him. He knew the region, however, and up ahead would be a series of plateaus that jutted up and out of the forest, and it was there that the Wyvern must have been nesting. Soon enough, one of those plateaus came into view, and the Wyvern began to circle it for a landing.
Lightning struck. A thick, powerful bolt that pierced the sky like a fracture in reality. The flash blinded the commander for only a second, when he regained his vision he saw the Wyvern falling. One of its wings was ripped in half and fluttering limply in the wind, while the other flapped desperately but only drove it into a spiral. The Wyvern punched through the canopy of the forest, crashing down somewhere below.
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Victoria and the other survivors returned late in the evening, unscathed from their transit. The mage, Michael, was half-asleep on his feet as he walked, with three of Victoria's summoned cards floating around his head to keep his mind subdued. It wasn't a cage or prison, she explained, but a comforting blanket that staved off the hallucinations and delusions of the venom before they could take hold. It was a technique she had only developed over the past few days while treating other bite victims and this was the first time she had put it to the test, but mercifully, it worked.
The mage was laid to bed, and Victoria stayed by his side while she put him into a deep sleep. After he slipped from consciousness, she removed two of the cards to conserve mana and replaced the third with a card to help keep him from waking. Even in his sleep, he twitched and whined occasionally, and Galt stood guard in case he woke in a frenzy.
Soon after their arrival, as many of the adventurers were daring to allow themselves restless sleep of their own, a messenger from Ranger Kerrick's party arrived, conveying news and instructions from the Dreamweaver. All groups were reporting that the forest was quiet, and seemingly all spiders had moved to the northeast, one group even reported that a small horde of spiders suddenly fled in the midst of an ambush against them. Additionally, there was a wave of reinforcements from the healer's outpost on the way, and the current plan was for all groups to rendezvous with the Dreamweaver in the early morning.
The rain hadn't stopped. For most of them, it had become a constant and undeniable fact of life. For a few, it remained a dreadful nuisance that threatened their sanity. In Iris's case, it was a mix of the two. So far she had barely cared about the rain, having plenty of other concerns to keep her mind occupied, and only in rare moments had she been present enough in her surroundings to truly feel the fatigue of unending rain. Now, as the realization settled that there truly was no end in sight, and perhaps the rest of this expedition would be spent in the storm, she began to question just how much she could handle.
It didn't help that her sleeping bag was still ripped and torn from the beastmen highway robbers they had encountered the prior week. Sewing equipment -- and sewing lessons, she imagined -- had earned themselves a top spot on her list of things to buy when she got back to the city; if she had actually written the list down they would be underlined and circled. Still, though, she did the best with what she had in the moment, and awkwardly twisted and contorted the tatters to at least cover her face with whatever solid scrap of fabric she could, while still angling an opening towards the campfire for a small amount of flickering light.
There, in the relative peace from the rain, she pulled out her adventurer's journal -- something she hadn't dared to do for days in the rain. Carefully, to not disturb the covers that shielded her from the rain, she cracked open the book and angled it towards the fire. The pages flipped quickly to her main stat sheet.
IRIS ORION
Hero Rank, Level 7
Experience Points: 256 / 7030
Progress to next level: 3.64%
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Recent Accomplishments:
Powerful foe slain, partial bonus experience 2750 awarded.
Attribute Scores:
- Vitality : 27
- Strength : 34
- Speed : 22
- Intellect : 22
- Spirit : 30
Unspent attribute points : 5
She smiled to herself. She had been hoping the large male spider she had helped kill would count as slaying a powerful foe. She guessed the reason she only received a partial bonus was due to not causing the bulk of the damage against it, and that delivering the killing blow was what caused it to count in the first place. She decided she would test this thoroughly in the future.
Then came the matter of her attribute points. She still wanted to be stronger, not just more powerful but physically stronger. The thought of being overpowered and restrained made her squirm, and without any high impact abilities she felt driven to compensate with raw, undeniable strength. If she could appear behind an enemy on the battlefield and ruthlessly overpower him, she would be a force to reckon with. Almost with mourning, however, her attention shifted to her Spirit attribute. Mana had been a constant concern lately, and she had spent entirely too much time teetering on the edge of debilitating mana sickness in the midst of battles. If she didn't see to that issue soon, it was likely a short matter of time before she pushed herself too far and blacked out in a fight.
She briefly considered Vitality, as well. She had a habit of getting horrible wounds that took days to fully recover from even after magic healing, but she reasoned that at her level, against the kinds of foes that the Giantrock Region had to offer, no amount of points she could put into Vitality would make a meaningful difference. The way she saw it, her best bet was to get hit less often in the first place, not try to make the hits hurt less or heal faster.
With that thought, she had her answer. She wanted Strength to be a priority, but ultimately it did very little to help her avoid getting hit. Her best tool for that was her blip, and the best way she could buff her blip right now was with more mana. She nodded to herself as she made the decision, and then closed her eyes to focus. When she reopened them, the numbers on the page rewrote themselves to reflect her decision to put all five points into Spirit, making it her highest stat by one point.
Satisfied, she briefly thought to herself, *have any entries from my mom to show me?* To her surprise, the journal responded. It flipped a few pages over, revealing a newly unscrambled page.
Thoughts About Wizards
We reached the Shining Peaks several days ago, mostly unharmed. Darren took a bad snake bite to the leg, but being Darren, he caught the snake and brought it along with us to the Towers. The wizards here were able to concoct a simple antivenom, and he's making a good recovery.
The wizards are fascinating and annoying. Each and every one of them is extremely peculiar in their own way, and the knowledge locked away in each of their libraries rivals that of nations. I'm certain there are secrets in those tomes that have been forgotten for centuries. Unfortunately, all the wizards seem absolutely convinced that I'm here to be their apprentice, and refuse to talk to me about my business here because they're 'not currently accepting apprenticeship applications.' I am not anyone's apprentice, and I'm not trying to be. I'm here to obtain the means to charge the Stone of Forgotten Woes so we can enter the Veiled Catacombs, that's why we're all here, that's why we walked here all the way from fucking Calderan, and if one more wizard treats me like a fangirl I'm going to explode their ugly fucking tower off the mountain.
I hate them. I love their books, and I wouldn't mind having even a scrap of their unparalleled magical power for myself, but they are infuriating. Yesterday one of them asked for my blood! For an experiment! Word of advice to anyone reading this, if you're thinking about visiting the Great Wizards in the fabled Shining Peaks, don't. They're going to piss you off and probably won't even help you.
- Mary Orion, 969
Iris read the journal entry with a wide smile and more than a few giggles. She relived memories of being a young child, fascinated by tales of powerful wizards and desperate to learn more about magic, while her mother insisted that "you never want to meet a wizard, everything goes wrong when there's a wizard around" and "you can't trust wizards, not because they'll lie to you, but because they'll forget what they promised you," and, on a rare occasion when she accidentally swore in front of Iris, "every single one of them is an annoying, useless bastard." Still, though, she had always ultimately relented and read Iris the tales as many times over as she asked.
Iris had never heard of the Stone of Forgotten Woes or the Veiled Catacombs, but was immediately jealous of her mom's seemingly grand adventures. Calderan rang a bell, she was pretty sure that it was a city far to the north of her valley. She had read plenty about the Shining Peaks, and the assortment of spires and towers that jutted out from between them where the oldest and wisest wizards of the Emerald Empire resided. She had always wanted to visit, despite her mother's assurances that she really didn't, and she wanted to go there now more than ever for the chance to speak to anyone who might have met her mother.
Her eyes were growing heavy, as was the journal. She slipped it into her bottomless bag, cinched it tight, and then held it close as she fell into a slumber with a faint smile on her face.