Nymin hated clever people. A solid half of her job was cleaning up whatever nonsense they cooked up, which anyone with a bit of sense would realize was a terrible idea. She should be grateful for the job security provided by their inevitable mistakes, but it was hard to have any positive feelings for anyone who created something like this.
Not that she could really lose this job. Working for the city, where the local government could keep an eye on her, was a condition of her being allowed to stay, and the recycling plant was where they’d placed her.
She’d considered moving to somewhere more accepting of her condition when Rottomin had died and she’d been given that ultimatum, but hadn’t had the heart to force Dyani to move away from her friends and everything she’d ever known.
Now that Dyani was an adult, moving was looking more and more appealing. There were sure to be cities and nations where her talents would be valued more than they were feared, but she would only consider it if Dyani was willing to join her.
Back in the here and now, Nymin had both of her hands pressed against a twisting sphere of copper pipes, which was spraying water in an endless stream. She was burning through mana to keep her grip on it.
Fortunately for her, there was so much mana erupting out of this device that using some to keep her hands tangible hardly mattered.
Any child knew that conjuration skills only created temporary material that would eventually dissolve if not maintained with mana, while the much rarer summoning skills actually pulled their elements from their respective Domains, magical dimensions associated with different affinities.
The process took significantly more mana, which made it a poor choice for a combat skill, but essential for other applications, where you needed an element for more than a few hours.
The microscopic tear in space that summoning skills used to pull out their material thankfully closed by itself, but there was always some clever enchanter that thought they were the first ones to try holding the aperture open to gain a steady supply of whatever they were summoning.
Those enchanters always discovered how bad that idea was. Usually that came from a mentor or careful research, but in Root Perch alone, around a dozen decided to figure that out for themselves. It was one of the only occasions where Nymin was forced to work outside of the plant.
The streams of water that had been flooding out of the enchanter’s shop and down the street were slowly dying down as Nymin’s drain barely managed to stay ahead of the runes that were gathering in the abundant water mana flooding out of the aperture along with the physical water. Everytime she pushed against her maximum mana, she was forced to release the excess in a chaotic burst, which caused her spirit and mind to flare with pain, though the latter was more from a sense of waste than actual damage.
She soon reached a tipping point as she focused on draining the mana gathering runes themselves, instead of the mana they were constantly into their accompanying capacity runes.
“Is the area clear?” she yelled past the rush of water.
“Clear,” her boss yelled, “Give me the countdown.”
Nymin liked Wahkan, she really did, but it was hard to get past the fact that, along with managing the plant where she worked, he was also charged by the city with ‘handling’ her.
Things had been better when Rotto was alive. His position, relative fame, and strength had insulated Nymin against the worst of society’s prejudices. Now her right to live and work in root perch was dependent on a city-sanctioned job and Wahkan’s continued supervision and approval. Even the plant’s policy of requiring their mana drainers to return all the power they drained had been established to limit her.
The powerful were much more comfortable with a controlled weapon than one who directed her own fate.
“Countdown is 60 seconds.” Nymin started a timer in her interface, which sent an alert to anyone nearby that they should flee the area. She shook her head and half smiled when she was notified that 1 person had been notified, which she knew was just Wahkan.
This procedure was mandated by the city for any employee doing something that could cause this level of damage, but the expense of interfaces and similar devices, combined with the low levels and incomes of the average citizen, meant the alert rarely reached anyone.
Thankfully they had a contingent of city guards to alert people and clear the area the old fashioned way.
As the timer ticked down, Nymin isolated the Summon Water skill core within the artifice. She could sense the structure was already destabilizing and knew from experience that it would be covered with spreading cracks as the portion of the skill that opened and sustained the dimensional aperture was overloaded.
Breaking it would be child’s play, but she needed to reduce the damage dealt when the aperture finally destabilized.
Normally the connection between this world and an elemental Domain was so stable and short lived that there was no issue, but when you supercharged the parts of the skill that created the aperture while deliberately suppressing the parts that closed it, you got backlash.
Domains were jealous things, and they didn’t like being stolen from.
“Ending it, now!”
Nymin performed several extremely delicate pieces of mana manipulation. She completely depowered the charging runes that were feeding into the skill core while simultaneously pulling a large amount of water mana directly from the aperture, faster than it was naturally pouring out. The natural flow of mana slowed as whatever location in the Water Domain the aperture connected to recovered its strength.
Finally, she displaced the mana within the skill core. She didn’t drain it, instead pushing it out of the portion of the crystal sphere it was concentrated on.
She wasn’t able to identify the part of the core that corresponded with cutting off its connection, so sending a final burst of power through every part of the skill that hadn’t been overloaded was the most she could do.
The aperture wobbled in her spiritual senses as she shattered the skill core with a single, sharp drain attack.
The gushing of water that had been ever present since she arrived slowed and became an occasional drip. Everything seemed peaceful, but Nymin had done this enough times to know that couldn’t last. She flew from the building, pouring as much mana into her flight skill as it would take.
She wasn’t even a block away when the ambient mana screamed as the closing aperture drank it down.
Nymin, whose body was composed entirely of mana, was yanked back, her flight skill unable to compensate for the sudden, violent force. The backlash was short lived and more focused on drawing in water mana and physical water than her body’s mana, which consisted mostly of a mix of hunger and pure mana. It only affected her this much because her system still contained enough drained water mana that hadn’t yet been converted to her own mana.
When the backlash ended, Nymin finally had the presence of mind to examine the aftermath. The streets and buildings were damp in a ring around the enchanter’s shop, but the vast majority of released water had been reclaimed by the pull of the Water Domain, while everything within twenty meters of the device was bone dry, including the desiccated remains of a rooftop garden.
She sent the all clear alert to everyone in range, which was once again, just her boss, before flying back to the crumbling remains of the shop. The sudden influx of thousands of liters of water had been far too much for the building and its contents, many of which were bound to be enchanted items and unstable magical materials. She had more work to do before this disaster was over.
While she was draining the last of the destabilized devices, a mechanical bird that was flopping around on its side while making sounds associated with every kind of animal that wasn’t a bird, she was joined by three people, a relieved looking Wahkan, the stern city guard that was in charge of this mess, and a soaking wet man with his hands tied behind his back.
The wet man surged forward as soon as he saw Nymin, but the guardswoman had a solid hold on his tied hands.
“What did you do?! Years of work, of my life, all destroyed!”
“Every single time,” Nymin whispered.
“That’s enough,” the guardswoman said, pulling the man back from Nymin. Nymin was grateful for that. In truth, people didn’t always react this way, it just felt like it sometimes.
Enchantors tended to have two responses to causing these sorts of disasters. Most were horrified and guilty, but others had insane levels of self-confidence and total absence of shame that allowed them to shift the guilt onto someone else. It seemed this man was the latter, and he had found his target.
“You destroyed my shop, just to spite me?”
“I think you’ll find that you destroyed it, if you were the one to make that device.” Nymin pointed over to the crumbled ball of copper that was all that remained of the water summoning artifice.
“It was working fine before we were interrupted.”
The guardswoman was having none of that.
“I believe the description we received when we were called was, ‘Endless flooding, and enough water mana to drown a ghost’.”
That was enough to give the enchanter pause, a moment Nymin seized.
“Wahkan, can we talk outside?”
“I’ll be out in a moment, once this gentleman and I confirm the device is fully deactivated and there aren’t any other devices we need to dispose of.” The enchanter started to yell at Nymin again, but she didn’t stay behind to hear it. Her job was done. The streets were still clear, thankfully. She didn’t feel like facing a wall of gawking eyes.
Her wraith-like body was attention grabbing enough, but being in the center of this mess was even worse. With the level of stress she was carrying, even gratitude might be too much.
She took the opportunity to review her status for the thousandth time.
* Name: Nymin Farlight
* Level: 3.3
* Experience: 100%
* Attributes:
* Hunger: 0
* Integrity: 3
* Cunning: 1
* Release: 1
* Perpendicularity: 1
* Talents:
1. Gain the physiology of a mana-fueled Wraith.
1. Your body is intangible and immune to all physical damage.
2. You may expend mana to exert limited physical force.
3. You do not naturally regenerate mana.
4. Your Attributes have been altered.
5. Your health, stamina, and mana pools have been combined into a single mana pool.
6. Gain Skill: Wraith’s Hunger. (This skill occupies your level 1 skill slot.)
2. You have increased maneuverability and proprioception while in flight. Gain Skill: Wraith’s Flight.
* Talent Skills:
* Wraith’s Hunger (Unique):
* Type: Drain, Hunger
* Range: Short
* Cost: None
* Effect: Absorb mana from nearby creatures or objects or gradually absorb nearby ambient mana. This effect scales with the Hunger attribute.
* Wraith’s Flight (Unique):
* Type: Mobility
* Affinity: Pure
* Range: Self
* Cost: Very Low Mana.
* Effect: Fly for a negligible mana cost while intangible.
* Skill Slots:
* Occupied by Talent Skill: Wraith’s Hunger.
* Obfuscation (Uncommon):
* Type: Manipulation, Stealth
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Reduces your visible profile by warping nearby light and shadow. The mana cost of this ability scales inversely with light level.
* Empty
She had long since come to terms with the results of her talents, but even now, its level of complexity was astonishing.
The average number of effects per talent was around two, which meant a large number of people had only one. While she knew that the results of a one effect talent that could be summarized by a single line of text could be substantial, her level 1 talent was a whole paragraph.
Musing on her talent could only keep her distracted from the real issues, her level and experience, for so long.
She was on the cusp of level 4. She’d been stalling there for months, wasting any new experience she gained from practicing her few skills and the occasional, more spiritually complex item she destroyed at work.
The decision to wait to advance until Dyani had come of age had been a reasonable one. Nymin had resolved to finally advance her Hunger attribute, something she’d avoided for years due to the suspicion it would increase the amount of mana her body consumed. Between caring for a child and her unique need to literally eat notes, money was already tight.
There was also the not insubstantial matter of the monitor installed in her interface by the city, which gave them constant access to her status. She wasn’t outright prohibited from advancing, just from hunting monsters, but even advancing normally could prove problematic if her level 4 talent cast further suspicion on her.
Even considering all that, Nymin had resolved to go ahead and level up, and had even prepared a specific counter to her interface monitor, one she was almost certain would work.
But Dyani’s awakening had come and gone without her moving forward, the fear she’d put off creeping back into place, that increasing her Hunger attribute would change her on a fundamental level.
She could always advance one of her other attributes, but she could already feel the imbalance in her spirit from the difference between the four attributes she’d invested in and Hunger, which was still at zero. Attribute imbalance, especially when one was literally at zero, could have all sorts of side effects.
Nymin obviously wasn’t at risk of tearing her muscles from a Strength/Toughness imbalance, bursting her heart from overexertion from an Endurance/Vitality imbalance, or running into a wall from a Speed/Mind imbalance. She had no idea what an imbalance of her unique attributes could cause, but, afraid as she was of becoming the monster so many already thought she was, she knew better than to risk her health.
It had been her daughter that had finally convinced her, though she didn’t know it.
Nymin loved Dyani dearly, but she was still young and inexperienced. It was astounding how many young people forgot that others had eyes and spiritual sense of their own, and might very well be paying attention to what they were up to.
Despite her incorporeal nature, Nymin had the same senses as anyone flesh and blood, including a fully functional sense of smell that could recognize the filth that increasing one of your physical attributes left behind, even after hours of cleaning.
Dyani hadn’t even bothered veiling her core to conceal her new level, oblivious to the fact that it would be clear to anyone on the street, let alone someone who lived in the same house.
The moss infection had been even more obvious. It might technically be possible for such a toxic plant to be found nearby and they didn’t live in the cleanest district, but it was far more likely Dyani was going somewhere she shouldn’t be, somewhere with both experience and danger.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Experience and danger usually meant monsters.
Nymin had initially been afraid Dyani was sneaking out of the city, but after following her daughter on one of her excursions, with a veil and stealth skill in place, she’d discovered that the truth was both less dangerous and more worrying.
Only the facts that Dyani had wisely chosen to increase her Vitality, that hunting monsters underground was exactly the kind of thing that her late husband would’ve done at that age, and that if she interfered Dyani would find an even more dangerous activity to pursue, kept her from dragging her daughter back home right there and then.
But, as much as Nymin privately respected the courage and initiative, she wasn’t about to let her daughter get killed by some toxic sludge monster.
And if she didn’t want to lock Dyani up in a box, that meant protecting her with her own hands, something that would be much easier with the power from advancing.
When Wahkan finally finished up evaluating any further dangers inside, Nymin made the excuse that channeling such large amounts of mana had exhausted her and that any further work would risk spiritual injury. He agreed to give her the rest of today off without argument, even insisting she take tomorrow off as well.
He really was a nice man, and easy to fool.
Nymin was a bit tired from her work, but her talents and body were designed from the ground up for absorbing mana. It would take more than what she’d done today to actually hurt her.
No, she needed to get off work for another reason. Unlike when she worked at the plant, there were no devices here to measure and extract the mana she’d absorbed, and advancing was much easier with full resource pools.
Normally, that wouldn’t matter, given the interface monitor she was required to absorb by the city government which reported back on her status, but a recent job had given her the tools she needed to circumvent that issue.
***
Logomancy generally brought to mind a very specific aesthetic, clean lines, polished metal, lines of identically shaped crystals in a myriad of hues, and smartly dressed salespeople ready to guide you to the perfect product for your needs.
Those more familiar with the actual methods and history of logomancy could recognize the facade. Logomancy had its roots in a more primal branch of magic, soul-splicing, and the practice was exactly as brutal as the name suggested.
At their heart, both logomancy and soul-splicing involved expanding an individual’s mental capabilities, utilizing spiritual energy from other sources. They differed significantly in how they went about it.
Logomancers made their creations out of anima. Anima was the result of the mind breaking down upon death, or at least the portion of the spirit that resided in the brain and correlated with the Mind attribute. That process was similar to how experience was created from the rest of the spirit breaking down.
Plenty of slayers had tools for harvesting it when killing monsters, after which the Slayer’s Guild sold it to various logomancers.
It was a versatile raw material, from which logomancers could craft a variety of mental constructs. Those constructs were limited by the intelligence and creativity of their designers, and required a great deal of training and skill to create.
Soul-splicing was a much older art. Instead of using raw material to form specific functions and designs, its practitioners worked with living creatures, surgically removing pieces of their mind and soul, and implanting it into, usually, willing recipients.
It was not without its dangers, ranging from spiritual rejection, altered personality, and even insanity, but it did have one significant advantage over logomancy
It was easier.
If you wanted to grant someone an improved memory, all you had to do was find a donor with that ability, hopefully a monster, identify the part of their spirit responsible for that ability, extract it, and transplant it into the desired recipient. It didn’t require complex runic diagrams embedded into conjured crystals and years of trial and error to get it right.
It was also very illegal, not just in Root Perch, but in the entire Old Grove empire, but that didn’t mean it was impossible to find a soul-splicer if you knew where to look.
Nymin hadn’t known where to look, until she’d been called out to deal with a magical disturbance, along with her manager and handler, Wahkan. The soul-splicer’s shop, disguised to look like an ordinary enchanter’s, would’ve been inconspicuous, if not for reports of random bursts of emotions invading the minds of nearby residents.
The guards had responded, discovered the problem, and contacted the recycling plant. Dealing with runaway enchanted objects was best done by the professionals.
Nymin had drained and broken down the offending object, a chaotically bouncing crystalline sphere covered with narrow spikes, like a sea urchin, which projected a different emotion from each of its spines.
The mana draining had been easy enough, but it had actually been a bit of a challenge to stay unharmed. The crystal could actually touch her, since it was made entirely of mana.
That would’ve been the extent of her involvement, if a number of factors hadn’t tipped her off that this was more than an ordinary enchanter’s shop.
First, a conjured crystal with mental powers screamed logomancer, but lacked the standardized shape of a function or interface crystal.
Second was the enchanter herself. She was a woman in her mid forties with busy hair tied back with a ribbon and glasses that magnified her eyes to twice her normal size. And she was acting much more nervous than a failed experiment and potential fine for disturbing her neighbors would account for.
Last was the faint scent of blood emanating from under the floor. It was nearly lost under the other odors, the floral scent of a candle, alchemical reagents leaking from shattered bottles, sawdust, and sweat, but the enhanced senses Nymin gained from her Cunning attribute were more focused on hunting prey than a human’s more generalized Mind and Perception attributes, and detecting the scent of blood certainly fell into the category of hunting.
Nymin tried to float down through the floor, but was rebuffed by a set of wards that had been undetectable until she touched them. The enchanter's eyes snapped to hers, face flooding with panic.
That was enough for Nymin. Something was dead or dying in the basement below, a piece of its soul extracted to create that emotion projecting spikeball.
“Deactivate the wards,” Nymin whispered, not wanting to alert the guards outside, or Wahkan in the store front. The woman shook her head.
“I can’t,” she whispered back.
Nymin understood her fear. The punishment for soul-splicing was banishment at the least, and outright execution if any people had been significantly harmed.
“I can break the wards, but that will draw attention.”
Nymin’s words provoked confusion and the tiniest spark of hope in the woman’s eyes. She did as she was told, pressing a hand into a nearly invisible rune on the wall and deactivating a section of the wards under a nearby rug, one which hid a trapdoor, if Nymin’s guess was right.
“Are you done, Nymin?” Wakhan shouted from the front room, causing both women inside to jump.
“One moment,” Nymin shouted back. She darted towards the section of unwarded floor, stuck her head inside, and blinked rapidly until her eyes adapted to the dimly lit basement. This was the soul-slicer’s real workshop, filled with books, bottles of unknown liquids, and eldrich tools with blades that glowed with an ethereal green light. In the center were two examination tables, like a healer would use, only with more straps and restraints than seemed necessary.
One was empty, while the other held a monster which looked like a shriveled turnip with arms and legs, as fat as a barrel but as short as a child. Despite its plant-like appearance, red blood dripped from a jagged slash along its throat. It wasn’t human, which was all she needed to know.
Nymin jerked her head up, just in time as the wards snapped back into place.
A second later, Wakhan stepped through the door.
“You alright, Nymin?”
“Yes, sir,” Nymin said, “Just checking to see I got all of it.”
“And did you?”
“I did. We’re good to go.”
The soul-slicer met her gaze as she left, giving her a small, nervous nod. Nymin had done her an enormous favor, and the woman knew it.
Nymin saw the woman speaking to the city guards before she left. She’d never seen anyone so happy to pay a fine.
Nymin wished she’d kept that secret out of the goodness of her heart, but she wasn’t in the habit of lying to herself. As soon as she’d deduced this woman’s profession, Nymin had realized she had a golden opportunity to prepare for something she’d been putting off for far too long.
Her daughter kept throwing herself into more and more danger, and Nymin knew she had no intention of stopping. Once she became a slayer, something that Nymin was confident Dyani would find a way to make happen, regardless of any obstacles, things would only get worse.
Nymin needed the strength to protect her, to help her, without alerting the monitoring function within her interface.
And while no logomancer was likely to provide her with a method to trick the function, a soul-slicer would have no such compunction.
And Nymin now had one who owed her a favor.
***
Rather than stinking up her home, Nymin took a page from her daughter’s book and descended into the sewers, a simple task when you could phase though the ground.
It took some wandering through earth and stone before she found a sewer corridor, but it wasn’t like she needed to breathe, a fact that also helped her endure the stench down here.
Her sudden appearance spooked an orange gelatinous…thing feeding on a patch of particularly thick mold. It fled, trailing tendrils and leaving a streak of clean, if slimy stone behind.
Nymin’s spiritual sense didn’t detect any mana beyond that required for life, but it was still obviously a monster, just a very weak one.
Relief and gratitude flooded through her. If this was the level of opponent her daughter faced down here, Nymin had nothing to worry about. Dyani might be young and low leveled, but the city’s public school had a particular emphasis on combat, and she’d never slacked in that subject.
The cynical part of Nymin’s mind noted that training the hosts of children that couldn’t afford private schooling in combat was just a way to turn the poor into soldiers, guards, and slayers.
While it was true that recruiters for those groups focused heavily on poorer areas and public schools, that wasn’t a problem Nymin could fix. She had enough problems of her own.
Nymin crossed her legs hovering several feet above the stone floor. She might be intangible, but she was still wary of touching anything down here if she could avoid it.
Focusing on her interface icon caused a four pointed star to unfold in front of her eyes. Only three of its sections had labels for her available functions, Status, Analyze, and Monitoring, and she only had access to the first two.
Despite being dull and unlabeled, she selected the fourth section.
The interface display fizzed and flickered as the function she’d received from the soul-slicer activated. It obviously didn’t mesh perfectly with her interface, but the distortion faded as a version of her status opened up in front of her, with the heading ‘False Status’.
So far, it was identical to her real status, but every section had options for altering the information it displayed. Nymin simply locked everything in place, preventing anything from updating with her real status.
If this function worked like it was supposed to, and she kept herself veiled at level 3 whenever she was in public or at work, no one would know about the level she was about to gain.
Nymin was extremely nervous, but she’d done everything she could to prepare, so there was no point waiting in suspense.
Closing her eyes and delving into her spirit, Nymin focused on her gathered experience.
The first few times she’d allocated her experience, it had been a shot in the dark. Thanks to her altered attributes, she didn’t have a neat guide for where to send the energy. Hunger was the only exception. She had known from the start that the experience would need to go to the dark pit of hunger at the center of her core, where anyone else had a conduit that refilled their mana.
As if that hungry maw could hear her thoughts, it began pulling on her experience. It took an effort of will to allow the experience to trickle through her fingers.
When the last of it was consumed, the maw silently roared and began drawing in mana at a worrying rate. It drained her core in seconds before reaching out to the ambient mana. The orange slime thing seized as the bare minimum of mana that allowed it to live was stripped from it, leaving it to dissolve into a puddle.
Nymin didn’t have much control, but she used what she had to keep herself from draining anyone above ground. A human would have more mana and greater resistance than a bit of ooze that barely qualified as a monster, but could still be hurt.
Nymin heard other creatures cry out, around her as they were drained, and felt puffs of experience as some died. The experience was pulled in along with the mana, though it was sucked down into the maw, instead of remaining for her to allocate.
The drain stopped, leaving her wobbling in the air. Her flight skill cost a negligible amount of mana, but it still required mana, and she was completely dry.
She was forced to drain a small amount of ambient mana from above to keep herself from floating down into the earth. Nymin immediately noticed how smoothly it flowed into her.
Her skill pulled more mana, more easily than she expected, and more quickly converted it to her own mana. The increased effect seemed too significant to be the result of a single attribute point, but before she could open her status for answers, the second half of advancing came knocking.
Advancing always had side effects, but everyone knew that the first advancement of an attribute was the worst.
Nymin was also facing the 4.4 wall, though at a lower level than most. Level 4.4 was the first level where someone with ordinary attributes could allocate to every attribute, prompting a more complete transformation of their body and spirit. With only five attributes, Nymin could’ve passed the wall as early as level 3.2, if she hadn’t delayed.
She was paying for that delay. Her body burned as power rushed through her, breaking down and remaking every piece. The increased density and durability of her spiritual form granted by 3 points in Integrity only meant there was more to tear apart and reconstitute.
Opalescent slime dripped from wherever her body was advancing. The slime was only semi-tangible, seeping into the stones below as if they were sponges, granting them an unearthly glow.
That was the sort of thing Nymin normally would’ve found interesting. She was too busy screaming to notice.
The scream was initially indistinguishable from an ordinary human’s, but it swiftly became higher pitched until it passed out of the audible range.
The sound, unbothered by anything as tangible as stone, was too unfocused to harm anyone, but that didn’t mean it had no effects.
In one home, a dog huddled under a bed, paws covering its face. A baby stopped crying and started laughing instead. A restaurant server lost his sense of balance and dropped a bowl of hot soup on a customer’s lap. Two young lovers exchanged identical looks of fear and dread and fled from each other without a word.
* Name: Nymin Farlight
* Level: 4.1
* Experience: 0%
* Attributes:
* Hunger: 1.002
* Integrity: 3
* Cunning: 1
* Release: 1
* Perpendicularity: 1
* Talents:
1. Gain the physiology of a mana-fueled Wraith.
1. Your body is intangible and immune to all physical damage.
2. You may expend mana to exert limited physical force.
3. You do not naturally regenerate mana.
4. Your Attributes have been altered.
5. Your health, stamina, and mana pools have been combined into a single mana pool.
6. Gain Skill: Wraith’s Hunger. (This skill occupies your level 1 skill slot.)
2. You have increased maneuverability and proprioception while in flight.
1. Gain Skill: Wraith’s Flight.
3. Gain Skill: Banshee’s Wail
* Talent Skills:
* Wraith’s Hunger (Unique):
* Type: Drain
* Affinity: Hunger
* Range: Short
* Cost: None
* Effect: Absorb mana from nearby creatures or objects or gradually absorb nearby ambient mana. This effect scales with the Hunger attribute.
* Wraith’s Flight (Unique):
* Type: Mobility
* Affinity: Pure
* Range: Self
* Cost: Very Low Mana.
* Effect: Fly for a negligible mana cost while intangible.
* Banshee’s Wail (Unique):
* Type: Attack, Ranged
* Affinity: Song, Death
* Range: Medium
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Use your voice to produce high frequency sound that has a destabilizing effect on mana constructs, including spirits. Effects vary.
* Skill Slots:
* Occupied by Talent Skill: Wraith’s Hunger.
* Obfuscation (Uncommon):
* Type: Manipulation, Stealth
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Reduces your visible profile by warping nearby light and shadow. The mana cost of this ability scales inversely with light level.
* Empty
* Empty
***
Kuruk Beastlord had as many schemes as he had beast companions, though few had been as troublesome as his plan for the Archweavers’s lost son and his pet.
Nymin Farlight had been a potential asset from the moment of her awakening but his soft-hearted past self had opted to leave her to range freely until he had a potential buyer. Thanks to his weakness, the target had attached herself to a scion of one of the few families in his city whose opinion he could not ignore.
Rotomin’s untimely death added another tangle to his recovering plans, leaving him with no way to disentangle the girl from the Archweaver’s name. The mage family were happy to cut off the girl and her spawn from their name and assets, but, in their pride, they would tolerate no other power taking possession of her.
An optimist might call it compassion, but Kuruk knew it for what it really was, fear. Any actions taken against Rotomin’s broken family could be seen as weakness on their part.
And in politics, perceived weakness was as dangerous as the real thing.
The city lord had kept the girl housed, employed, and most importantly, watched for years, in case an opportunity presented itself, or she increased sufficiently in value to risk making an enemy of the Archweavers, but had largely forgotten about her to pursue other potential profit.
His most recent endeavor had been even more promising, and for his own sake, but the boy had managed to escape through unknown means.
Lack of evidence hadn’t stopped him from executing a pair of palace guards as examples to the rest, but in his mercy, he had opted to kill those whose loyalty was already suspect.
He would have the boy soon, but this time he wouldn’t allow his continued weakness to stop him from taking the precautions he should’ve taken the first time. A couple of steel bolts running through each limb should be enough to restrain him, without undue risk.