Damien wasn’t out of it for long, awakening with a jerking motion as he felt a pressure on his left shoulder.
“Okay, good, you’re awake,” Ash said, helping Damien sit up with a nudge of his head against the Traveler’s back. “C’mon, I think you’ve got some shit to sort through. Better do it fast.”
Damien shook his head, knowing that the Shadow Wolf was right. He acknowledged the familiar with the nod, and Ash went back down into his shadow as though he had never been. He glanced around the room, finding Leon exactly where he’d been before. He didn’t look great, but it seemed that his injuries had stabilized. As much as someone could stabilize broken ribs without actual medical attention, anyway.
The Traveler looked down at his own injuries, and found that while they were still bloody and stung like fire, they were healing, though slowly. It would scar, but he was fine with that. At least he’d have one hell of a story to go with it.
Then, Damien began to stroll through everything he’d received over the fight with the Mountain Wyrmling. It turned out to be quite a lot.
[Shade Strike]
Rarity: Uncommon
Ability Type: Attack
Description: Sometimes, the shadows do not wait. Sometimes, they simply strike.
Effect: Wreath a weapon or limb in Umbra-Attuned Mana, allowing the next attack you make to be charged with it.
Range: Melee
Cost: Low Mana, Moderate Stamina
Activation Time: 0.1 seconds
Cooldown: None
[Bloodcasting]
Rarity: Epic
Ability Type: Enhancement
Description: Through a sacrifice of blood, your magic gains strength.
Effect: Enhance the effect of the next Spell cast by your target by a factor of two. This will increase the Mana Cost of said Spell by a factor of two. Can be cast with Invocation simultaneously.
Range: Self/Touch
Cost: Low Health
Activation Time: Instantaneous
Cooldown: 4 hours
[Invocation]
Rarity: Epic
Spell Type: Enhancement
Description: Mana permeates all things. Invoke its will, and set your heart ablaze.
Effect: Enhance the effect of the next Spell cast by your target by a factor of three. This will increase the Mana cost of said Spell by a factor of three. Can be cast with Bloodcasting simultaneously.
Range: Self/Touch
Cost: Low Mana
Cast Time: Instantaneous
Cooldown: 4 hours
[Unnamed Spell]
Rarity: Unique
Spell Type: Attack/Control/Utility
Description: The weight of power is heavy like a chain. As it should be. None should find the burden of responsibility a light thing. Those who would are unworthy of it.
Effect: Summon spectral chains of Umbra-Attuned Mana that can bind, bend, or restrict as you please. These chains can be broken, either on command or by the bound target, dealing a moderate amount of Umbra damage. You can summon a number of chains equal to your Intelligence divided by ten rounded down.
Range: 10 meters
Cost: Moderate Mana per Chain
Cast Time: 0.2 seconds
Cooldown: None
Would you like to name your Unique Spell?
Yes | No
Damien almost laughed as he saw the prompt, and the Unique rarity highlighted in red. Yes, of fucking course he wanted to name his Unique Spell. Why wouldn’t he? And thanks to that remembered conversation with his dad, he had the perfect name in mind.
ALERT! The name you have chosen will be permanent. Are you certain?
Yes | No
Damien hit ‘Yes’ without hesitation.
CONGRATULATIONS! Your Unique Spell is now named [Chains of Tartarus (Unique)]
He felt strangely proud that he’d chosen that name. Not only for its connection to his home planet, but for the connection to his dad. Though he’d had plenty of time to grieve, and he wouldn’t be bursting into tears anytime soon, he still had the odd feeling of melancholy when he thought of them.
Damien lifted himself from the ground then, reminding himself to look at his Stats later on, now that he had Leveled Up three times in one day. It was probably like night and day compared to before. He made his way over to Leon, leaning down next to the young man with a grin on his face. “Hey. We fucking won.”
“Niiice,” Leon said with a thumbs up, wincing as his hand darted to his side. “So, uh, I don’t suppose you’d know how to set broken ribs, would you?”
“Not a clue,” Damien admitted. “And I’m gonna have to move you anyway if we want to get those patched up.”
“Oh, right, Dungeon Quest got completed automatically,” Leon idly noted. “… I’m gonna fucking hate this, huh?”
“Probably. You ready?”
“No. Please get it over with.”
It took Damien longer than he’d admit to get to the Dungeon entrance, but only because his Strength Stat was far and away his lowest, and because Leon was heavier than he looked. Or maybe it was mostly him. Still, he managed to get them to the door to the Dungeon, touching it with his hand and transporting them back to the sewer.
The Traveler thanked his foresight for allowing him to preemptively tamp down on his senses of smell and taste. It was just as disgusting as the last time, and just as dark. But he did see a familiar figure rush forward to him and Leon, with another, older looking man right behind him. Corbyn seemed genuinely relieved that he was alright, giving him an intense once-over when the older man took Leon off of his hands, feeding the young man a vial of red liquid.
“How are your wounds? Here, drink this,” Corbyn said, shoving a similar red vial into Damien’s hands. The Traveler looked at it for a moment before shrugging and chugging it down. The Health Potion immediately began its work on his damaged torso, closing up the wounds on his torso. “Other than that, are you alright? Are you suffering Mana Withdrawl?”
“No, I’ve still got my head on straight,” Damien said. “Thanks for being so concerned.”
“It’s… I’m just glad you’re alright, kid,” the Canis said with a smile. He turned to the elderly man, who was currently making sure Leon was alright beyond his injuries. He looked like something of a hardass, but even he seemed relieved at Leon’s survival. Though Damien hadn’t known him for very long, he’d come to consider the young man something of a friend. At least, he hoped he was his friend. After everything they’d just gone through, it’d be ridiculous for there not to be some kind of connection there.
“So… how much does he know?” Corbyn asked, seeming to take in the human for the first time. He wasn’t hostile, just curious.
“Enough,” Damien said with a shrug. “And I already swore him to secrecy. He’s a man of his word.”
“Good, that’s-” Corbyn stopped mid-sentence as he whipped around, a surprised look suddenly appearing on his face. “By all the Spirits, why is she here? We’ve got a handle on this!”
“Corbyn? What’s going on?” Damien asked, clearly confused.
“No time,” his mentor said, pulling something out of his Inventory Ring and handing it to Damien. It was a mask, black, wooden, and almost completely blank in its construction, with the symbol of the Order of the Night Wolf carved into its face with no eyes holes. There was magic in there, he could feel it through his fingertips, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. “Just… put this on and play this by ear with me, alright?”
Damien nodded, placing the mask over his face and finding that it fit him perfectly. The second he had, he found that he was able to see through the mask as though it wasn’t even there. He placed is hand on the hilt of his jian, preparing for visitors in whatever forms they came. It was unlikely there would be a fight, but he would be prepared for one nonetheless.
----------------------------------------
Felicia had been having the strangest of days. At first, she hadn’t thought anything of it. Wake up, do her exercises, practice her forms for about an hour, do her Profession in private for another hour, and then meet up with her mentor for the rest of the day. Not all of her days were like this, but this was one of them. The most unusual thing about it was the fact that, halfway through her regular morning exercises, she had been contacted by her mentor about something odd happening down in the sewer, and to bring along her obfuscation mask.
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She’d come immediately, of course. Felicia wasn’t one to disobey her mentor’s requests, not after the woman had done so much for her. Yes, she owed Anya Tevili a great deal, not the least of which being the fact that an Arbiter had taken the young Seraphite under her wing. Her! So yes, she did owe her much.
But that didn’t mean she was going to keep silent about being forced to walk through the Spirits damned sewers!
“C’mon little Angel, it’s not that bad,” her mentor teased with a chuckle and a smile.
“It is. You’re just used to it,” Felicia quipped back on instinct, smiling at the woman in front of her like a sister. Despite the number of siblings she had, Anya was one of the only people she felt truly close to.
“Fair enough. Still, we should hurry up. Otherwise we’ll miss it,” Anya replied as she moved further into the sewers, her apprentice hot on her heels.
Anya was not a Seraphim like her apprentice, but instead a human woman who looked to be in her early middle years, though her true age was somewhere closer to about a hundred and sixty-something, with fair skin and long red hair bound up in a long tail to match the blue eyes that somehow managed to glow in the darkness of the underground. She was slender and lithe with hidden power, with a slender saber’s hilt bouncing at her hip. Her form was covered in sleek, form-fitting leather armor dyed white, from her chest piece to her boots, save some decorative flourishes. Felicia knew that if Arianna had more of a say in her armor’s creation she’d have belied their implementation, but what was done was done.
Truth be told, Felicia felt a little lesser beside the resplendent woman, with only the more basic stuff that her mentor let her use, saying that ‘if she wanted better armor, she’d have to earn it.’ That was fine by her. It also meant killing monsters, and a lot of them. So, for now, she settled for the leather chest piece that felt a little too small for her with a simple, plain shirt underneath that she didn’t mind getting dirty, along with a pair of leather vambraces, some leather greaves and a matching pair of boots, along with a set of form-fitting black pants, to help her move around easier.
The two wound their way around the sewer, the Dawn Arbiter seeming to know where to go by sheer instinct. It was actually a Skill of some kind that allowed her to track things by magical signature. Felicia didn’t have anything similar, so she would have to rely on her own Tracking Skill, which wasn’t at a high enough tier to track the people they were going to meet.
When they were a few turns away from their destination, Anya gave her the signal to put on had obfuscation mask. She did so, the smooth white wood magically attaching to her face and allowing her to see through its flush surface, the symbol of the Order of the Radiant Seraphim emblazoned onto its face. It consisted of the outline of a sun with a pair of spread, angelic wings held therein. It always seemed to have an odd way of making her feel… protected. Not comfortable, but safe. As they turned the next corner, they say the people they had come to meet.
One was a Canis who towered over them all, dark-furred and slender, though muscle was visible on frame, with dark leather armor of the same quality as her mentor’s, a Mana Blade clipped to his hip and Amber eyes looking at them with… annoyance? With him was a human man in his elder years, with simple robes and a staff in his left hand as he tended to a dusky-skinned human boy in what looked like Mechanic’s attire with a staff similar to his. Obviously a master and apprentice pair.
But strangest of all was the person who sat near the Canis, clearly recovering from visible injuries to his torso. He would’ve been tall, were he standing, and wore shredded, dark clothes that seemed strangely familiar to her, though they were so ratty and caked in so much blood that she couldn’t have identified how. A decent length straight sword with a square guard - a jian, she believed it was called - rested at his side, the edge chipped, but slowly regaining its sharpness. Whatever the hell he’d just been through, it had been hard and long. And despite all of that, he was instantly on edge, his hand drifting to his blade even before they’d entered the room. The only reason she’d managed to see the motion was because of her angle. He too wore an Obfuscation Mask, though this one was colored black instead of white, and had the wolfs head symbol for the Order of the Night Wolf on its face.
Anya beamed at a suddenly frustrated Canis, walking up to him like an old friend. “Corbyn! Damn, it’s been a while. A decade, right?”
“A decade and four months,” he answered, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “What are you doing here, Anya? And why’d you feel the need to bring your apprentice? We’ve got this under control.”
“I know, but I had to come and see you for myself! It’s not every day I get to see you flustered, y’know?” Anya teased, red hair bobbing with her motions. “Anyway, I did also come to check the Dungeon. The Boss is dead, right?”
“Dead and fucking buried,” the masked apprentice said, pumping his fist as though to congratulate himself. Which confused the hell out of her for a moment… until she saw the Dungeon Door. It was blank, and seemed almost carved out from the earth itself, the only real hint of its magic being the slight, fading bronze glow. Without another word, Felicia used Identify on it.
[Unnamed]
Dungeon Type: Combat, Exploration
Level: 5
Affinity: Terra
The fact that it was unnamed wasn’t surprising; they hadn’t known the thing existed before a spike in power alerted everyone to its presence. What was surprising was the fact that the thing was only Level five. Which was weird. Given the spike that they’d seen, they’d expected something around Level ten, at the very least. This didn’t seem like a particularly difficult Dungeon to beat. Hell, she could solo it easily, given that she was about four times the Dungeon’s own Level.
That was when Anya started asking some questions.
“So, then… uh, since we’re following protocol, I’m technically not allowed to know anything about you. Mind if I just call you Rook?”
“Do I look like a damn bird?” the young man asked, clearly annoyed. When it was clear that Anya was waiting fo an answer anyway, he shrugged helplessly. “Fine, you can call me Rook, if that makes it easier.”
“Good! For the sake of clarity, please call this apprentice of mine ‘Dove,’” Anya said as she put a hand on Felicia’s shoulder, causing the young Seraphite to tense up a bit.
“What’s with the bird names, ‘mam?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“Oh, nothing. I just have a bit of a feeling you two are going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next few months, and since you can’t use your real names, I figured this would expedite things a bit. Also, I like having names with a theme.”
“You like anything with a theme,” Corbyn said.
“Of course I do! Themes make a lot of things better,” her mentor said as she skipped over to the newly dubbed ‘Rook.’ “Now, Rook, if you’re not too uncomfortable with the prospect, would you mind telling me what Level you were when you went into the Dungeon?”
Though he hesitated for a few moments, Rook did eventually confide the information to them. “Two. And I’d only reached that about five minutes before we were forced in there?”
“Forced, you say?”
“Yeah, there was a whole fucking swarm of Vermisca coming after us like a goddamned tidal wave. We were almost out when they chased us back here, and by then the Dungeon had completed forming and… well, it was basically our only way out of that situation.”
Anya nodded, as though this checked out with whatever information she’d gathered beforehand. Felicia had always felt a little annoyed about getting left in the dark, but she always explained things properly once they were in a private place. She continued with her questions then. “And… what Level are you now?”
“… four,” he answered, suddenly very uncomfortable. Felicia could understand it, but this… holy shit, that was impressive. Clearing a Level five Dungeon in less than two hours, even as young as it was, while only at Level two to start with was no mean feat. It probably wasn’t something she could’ve done alone. Hell, Rook hadn’t even done it alone; that human had been with him, and the two had still come out looking like absolute hell.
And they had managed to do it anyway.
“I think that’s enough of that,” Corbyn said, stepping in before Anya could ask any more questions. “I’m sure you’ve already got everything you need from him.”
“Yup,” Anya said, bouncing back up to her full height. “Anyway, are there any more Vermisca we should be aware of?”
“No, everything like that’s already been killed for the next… five city blocks?” Corbyn idly calculated. “No, six - I forgot the theater.”
“You always do,” Anya teased.
“… so how do you guys know each other?” Rook asked, clearly wondering how such disparate personalities could somehow become acquainted.
“I must admit to my own curiosity,” Felicia said. “Did you guys meet on a job or through training or something?”
“Ah. Um…” Corbyn hesitated before he started answering. “That’s something of a long and complicated-”
“We used to fuck.”
The silence that followed that blatant and unashamed statement was so tense that one might hear a pin drop to the floor. Sure, Felicia knew that her mentor was somewhat promiscuous, especially back in the day, but hearing about it firsthand from her, and that she’d been to bed with another Arbiter to boot? She… Felicia really wasn’t sure how to feel about that other than shocked and intensely curious.
“… lady, do you have any concept of shame?” the elder man said, reminding everyone that he was there as he continued to administer medical attention to the young human’s wounds. “That’s not something that most people would just up and say to a bunch of strangers.”
“It’s not really something to be ashamed of,” Anya argued. “If I let Corbyn explain everything, he’d use forty words when four would do just fine. So, even if some nuance is lost, I got to the point right away. We used to fuck. Let’s move on to greener pastures, yeah?”
Corbyn sighed, pushing his thumb and index finger against his temples as he fought off an incoming headache. “It was more complicated than what she just described, but I suppose you could summarize our relationship like that.
“… Anya…” he said, clearly wanting to continue, but not with a bunch of people around to listen in on what was clearly something deeply personal to him.
“Later,” the woman seemed to agree, her smile soft and welcoming and… forgiving? What the hell had happened between those two? Because if the way they were making eyes at each other was any indication, it was clearly much more complicated than ‘they used to fuck.’
“Well, I guess we’re done here,” Anya said, turning around without any trace of that earlier familiarity and vulnerability on her face. “Let’s head out, yeah?”
“Uh, yes ‘mam,” Felicia said, still slightly shocked by her true history with the Shade Arbiter. Once they were properly out of sight, the young woman took off her obfuscation mask and glanced at the Arbiter, who looked much more… energetic than she had in years.
“What is it?” she asked. “I won’t pretend that I’ve known you for nearly as long as you’ve apparently known the Shade Arbiter, but I can tell when you’re feeling something particularly intense.”
The Dawn Arbiter sighed at her apprentice’s observation, knowing that she’d hit the nail right on the head. “I can’t hide too much from you, can I? Not when I get like that. Well, at one time in our lives, we were… something of an exclusive contract for a long time. Almost fifteen years. And about a decade ago, I asked him to marry me.”
Felicia hadn’t thought she would be able to feel any more shock than she already had. But apparently, her mind still had some room for it, and let her know about that fact with unrelenting force. The idea of it was startling to her. Her mentor, the self-proclaimed ‘free spirit’ that she was, never gave off even the hint of a hint that she would think of binding herself to another being like that. Sure, marriages could be undone, but unlike the bonds of the old world, a hundred thousand years lost to them now, the System made such vows matter.
“I know, I know, it’s a shock,” Anya said, waving Felicia’s reaction away with a smile on her face that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’ve loved very few people the way I… the way I loved him. And he was the only one I ever proposed to.”
Her hesitation suggested to Felicia that her feelings might not be as past-tense as she made them out to be, but made no comment on it as she continued. “And given the fact that you haven’t seen each other in ten years… I’m guessing he said no?”
----------------------------------------
“Well… I, uh… urgh, I didn’t say it like it was a ‘no, never in a million years’ type of thing,” Corbyn said, rubbing at his temples as Damien sat across from him. The two were sitting at a cheap cafe in the southwestern part of Lamora hours after the incident with the Vermisca and the Dungeon, dressed in casual, clean clothes that didn’t give away their affiliations. Damien even had a bandage wrapped around his right hand, making his disguise look like a fashion statement. The Canis continued on, clearly struggling with his words. “I said it like it was a ‘no, not now’ kind of thing. I… I wanted to say yes, I really did, but… I was still being stubborn and stupid and I thought that the only way I could work on myself was by myself. Like a dumbass. I’ve told you before I made mistakes, and that… saying no to her the way I did was definitely one of them.”
Damien simply nodded, letting Corbyn vent his feelings. Just because the guy was a lot older than he was didn’t mean that he couldn’t feel and hurt in the same ways that he could. When it looked like he was done, at least for the moment, Damien asked a simple question. Though he hadn’t been in a proper relationship before, he did know a bit of common sense that his mother had imparted to him, even if he’d never had the chance to act on it personally. “Do you still want that with her?”
“I… well, yeah. She’s… probably one of the only women I’ve ever loved like that - that I still love like that. You don’t stay together for fifteen years just for sex. Not in most cases, anyway. But it’s been… too long. I’ve changed a lot. And given what I saw of her today, she’s changed a lot too. And I wonder if there’s… even still a chance for us.”
“Corbyn, she literally looked you in the eye and said ‘later.’ I think if she wanted nothing to do with you, she’d have made it more obvious,” Damien said. Corbyn probably wasn’t seeing things too clearly, since he only had the perspective of his relationship from the inside. Damien had seen only a little, but it was enough for him to see, even in that little interaction between those two, that they cared about each other deeply. They weren’t exactly subtle about it.
“… I guess I’m just scared, really,” Corbyn admitted, his snout drinking a long sip of dark coffee before he continued. “That something might go wrong or I’ll say the wrong thing or… or that she’ll have somehow changed for the worst. That I won’t have changed enough. And a million other things that I can’t seem to get a grasp on.”
Damien didn’t have a solution to that. He would probably need some actual experience in an actual relationship to have something like that, and even then, he probably wouldn’t know how to alleviate Corbyn’s worries fully. But still, he did the best he could with the little knowledge he had.
“I won’t pretend to understand the nuances of what you two mean to each other, because I don’t. Not really. But I think if she wants to try, and you want to try too… I say go for it. Even if it doesn’t end in the best way possible… it’ll be better than never trying at all, right?”
“… yeah,” Corbyn said, rubbing at his face as he shook his head, as though chiding himself for not realizing it sooner. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Which is weird for me to say, because by your own admission, you’ve never been in a relationship before.”
“That might be true, but my mom did beat some common sense into me,” Damien said, knocking his knuckles gently against his skull. “Outta put it to some kind of use.”
Corbyn just smiled at his apprentice. “Well, thanks. I’m not sure when we’ll get into proper contact, but she used to use ‘later’ as a bit of a codeword, back when we were together. It meant that she’d contact me. So… guess I’ll have nothing to do but wait. And in the meantime…
“I think it’s time we took off the safety net for your training, eh?”
Damien suddenly got a chill running down his spine as his mentor prepared to put him through hell. Lovingly, of course, but a loving hell was still hell nonetheless.