Val had a feeling this conversation would come around before the year could end. Reminiscing on where they left off in the trials, she did leave Caro hanging in suspense. So what startled her wasn’t so much the question, but rather the place and, more specifically, the time it cropped up. Didn’t think she’d last a week, and here we are. Six months later.
In silence, they strolled through the lovely-looking cobblestone yard outside Harbour’s, aided by the purple glow of the several oil lamps hanging on the hotel’s walls. The girls made themselves comfortable on one of the smoothened boulders in the stone garden and dropped their heavy luggage at their feet.
Leaning backwards to stretch out the tight muscles in her lower back, Val’s gaze swept the brown-leafed hedges surrounding the square-shaped space. “Here’s no better than Thunderstone in terms of privacy.”
“See, I knew you’d say that,” Caro unclipped the area-silencer Jesal previously left in her hands from its clasps along the backpack’s side.
Val’s gaze gored the back of her red head. “You said you wanted to check it out because—in your words—it was cool.”
Caro tsked like a disappointed parent, thereafter stabbing the area silencer into the ground with a grunt. “Never let them know your next move, ‘Lore. I thought I taught you better than that.”
“You’re not funny,” she muttered.
“I choose to ignore that lie,” she quipped and pressed a thumb on the tool’s side. Val perked up, the sight rekindling the waning adrenaline well near its final legs. As much as Caro retrieved the tech for ulterior motives, it was, in a sense, among the coolest tech she’d seen at work.
Despite witnessing the phenomenon twice in less than twenty-four hours, Val marvelled at how its metal skin branched out, the enchantments inside crackling to life. A thrum shook the ground, the vibration perceptible through the bench beneath, and a wave washed the vicinity in grey, marking the area officially silenced.
Just like that, audio couldn’t dream of escaping the tool’s domain. The price must be off the charts.
“Alrighty,” Caro exhaled. “We’ve got no aether creatures breathing down our necks and no overseers to tape this conversation. Even on the offhand chance we have an eavesdropper, the area silencer deals with that.”
She brought her knee up on the stone, twisting around to face Val in full. “Spill. I kinda know you’ve been researching for the past few months. I’ve got the vibe that you want to keep that to yourself, though, and honestly? Fine with me. Wouldn’t be much help, not gonna lie. What I want to understand is why—and how, really—AIS degrades her healer status to the point of sworn secrecy.”
Val couldn’t believe she rolled her eyes. “No one’s sworn secrecy.”
Caro’s snort thought otherwise.
“It’s just…” Her fingers went up to her ear, messing with the tooth-based charm she bought all those months ago in Adventurer’s Market.
AIS. Aether Incontinence Syndrome. The words in themselves grated at her consciousness, the very same Aetherial Vessel Abnormality that sent their home into different states of worry, dread and at times even fear. “We have protection. She lost it.”
Caro’s eyebrows knitted together. “What doesn’t she have protection from?”
“Greed. Evil. Power,” she sighed, catching herself rambling. “I know I make no sense. Don’t say it.”
“I wasn’t going to. You’ve said more that meant less before, y’know.”
Val's lips briefly tilted upwards at that, evening out as she revisited the days spent in the hospital. They had reached this juncture countless times in the six years of knowing one another and—like every heart-to-heart before—Doc’s warning blared in her eardrums. Loud. Resounding. Unignorable. Yet, seated at the mouth of Blue Cave, dead-tired in the final stretch of the trials, she understood the fact that she couldn’t do it alone even if she wanted to…
With a sharp inhale, she threw the cautionary advice to the back of her mind and pressed onwards.
“I can’t explain it too well, because I don’t have it down to the specifics,” Val clarified, and her friend nodded in understanding. “Okay, so. We know that our channel and vessel inherently store energy. Even if we use arts that, say, help us put it in our bloodstream or muscles, it doesn’t stay there for long thanks to our metaphysical makeup.”
“Yeah,” Caro agreed, rubbing a hand across her brow furrowed. “Right.”
“Right,” Val echoed. “This feature protects our refined aether. If my arm ends up being cut off, I would retain all unused energy. In fact, even if I was using energy enhancement, my dead arm wouldn’t sustain anything as soon as it was disconnected.”
“I remember reading about that somewhere. Aether in our bloodstream can only be there so long as it's in harmony with the energy channels. It’s still not adding up for me though,” she admitted.
“AIS removes that. Completely,” Val said, looking over the yard, and yet not seeing purple lights, the brown leaves, or the cobblestone. “At her worst moments, her arm is no different than her AV. Attached or detached.”
“It has energy?” Caro asked, earning an affirmative grimace. “Like, the energy you’d find in a remnant?
“Exactly,” Val said, not at all surprised at the hiss that escaped Caro’s lips.
“Could I… would people…” she struggled to find words, the implication enough to render her speechless.
“You can say it. She’s a living, breathing aether battery that can be recharged, cut up, diced, and used whenever they—”
“Okay, okay, okay,” Caro shut her up, a tiny bit green in the face. “Heavens. I get it. I really do. I simply… don’t think people would take it that far? Would they actually?”
Val raised her eyebrow for an answer, and Caro’s jaw snapped up in a quiet click. Ciazel was fond of shielding mages from the cutthroat world thriving in the shadows of the brightest cities. The elemental world, in the end, was a race to the top, a climb toward cultivation-based enlightenment. As a result, the vast majority craved easy methods, never mind the ethics and morality behind it.
Ding, ding!
The girls jumped a mile high at the notification chiming from the area silencer. They turned their sights to find the disturbance, blinking at the six-foot-tall Anchor waving at them from outside the sequestered space.
The pair traded sidelong glances, and a mutual understanding hung heavy over them as they silently agreed to end their conversation there and then. Caro let him in three heartbeats later and, noticing the delay in their response, he scratched at his cheek, attention flitting between either Striker. “Hope this wasn’t a bad time.”
“It’s always a good time to trash talk Gale.” Caro switched topics so effortlessly, it left Val at a loss on what to do with the sense of helplessness eating away at her gut. “Someone has got to call him out on his bullshit soon, or I’ll do it myself and it won’t be pretty.”
“Why do you think I’m out here?” he chuckled, pivoting one of their luggage—the monstrous thing, large enough to cover the entirety of their backs—towards him and reinventing it as a seat. “I thought it’d be better to split the team evenly, so we all share watch duty.”
“Then we’ll all be tired,” Val pointed out.
“After just this?” Jesal shook his head in mild disbelief. “You should see my LIE marathons.”
Caro gasped, her almond eyes wide in giddy surprise. “You play?”
He bobbed his head. “Support.”
“Ah,” Val nodded along, Lenson’s devastating power automatically coming to mind. “You do most of the damage, then.”
“No, that’s DPS,” he corrected and a smile crept onto his face that, weirdly enough, both gamers shared.
Val cocked her head. “Diving points?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and glanced away, reminding her a lot of someone trying their best to hold in a laugh. “What?”
Caro, of course, went right ahead and guffawed. “Never change, Valory Efron.”
“What?” she insisted and their amusement renewed with a vigour that made her eye twitch. “Someone please explain.”
Val endured two exceptionally long minutes of their snickers until Jesal, the nicer of the pair, graciously clarified the true meaning of the acronym. Understanding the context behind the phrase damage per second, unfortunately, mattered incredibly little as the two veered into a back-and-forth dense with indecipherable terms that seemed like an entirely new language.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Even still, she was content to simply listen to the fiery discussion, each variation of “I don’t believe you!” chipping away at the dispirited feelings within.
----------------------------------------
First Halo of Ciazel,
City of Atera,
The Dark Mineshaft (Copper-Rung Labyrinth)
-Fourteen hours later-
It was safe to say that Nightingale completely jinxed Hammer Squad’s second day.
Slipping through the sparse morning crowd outside Basecamp’s earthen walls, they made their way to a route located opposite the entry gates. With tunnels comparable to Atera’s roads in numbers and yet no street signs to tell apart one from the other, the Noivces could not thank their artifacts enough.
They uploaded a shared copy of the labyrinth’s layout, marking the journeys they aimed to take in the coming days. Putting hours of their time into the activity, they planned out each step over the IBR-connected table in their shared study. It showed as much in the colourful minimap obscuring the top-right corner of her vision.
On account of day one kicking off to—admittedly—near-perfection, Hammer Squad had a headstart in terms of energy cores. That meant today should’ve begun with ore hunting and should’ve gone by without so much as a single blade drawn from their sheath. Life always had different plans, didn’t it?
Fifteen minutes into Path Ore—as titled, according to the translucent map in her HUD—Lenson’s high-pitched whistle paused their motion at once. She caught their attention in such a manner up to ten times just yesterday, and the action conveyed the same meaning as it did the instances prior.
They had company, and not the good kind.
Val frowned, registering footsteps behind them a brief moment later. Where they stopped, Path Ore ballooned into a gymnasium-sized space, four pathways digressing into what remained as an unmarked territory on her map. The details weren’t lost on her, even as she observed ten adventurers—with decidedly lacking equipment—sauntering into the open area, weapons brandished.
Time was as precious as remnants among mages, which signified that a small number of people acted without reason. So, Val searched, scanning for their motive and paying special attention to the eyes roaming over Hammer Squad.
Following their line of vision led her to Lenson's moving figure—who was busy repositioning to the new backline—and the detail deepened Val’s frown. One piece of her armour was valued high above three of their company’s outfits and, judging by the greedy gleam in their irises, they knew it as well.
Nightingale stepped forward. “Don’t you see our colours?”
“Idiot,” Caro muttered under her breath.
Val grimaced at the reminder that Hammer Squad stood in the cavernous space decked out in Age of Atera’s colours, stamping on their prestige—and price tag, of course—for all to see. Otis, occupied with keeping his head on his shoulders yesterday as he dealt with leadership obligations, forewent the cloaks folded away in their packs and dived immediately into Darkshaft. Whereas Nightingale, on the other hand, remembered the formality during their night at Habour, demanding the blue cloaks be worn on their next outing. Yep, definitely jinxed us into this ambush.
A man matched his motion, wrinkles weaved their way around his dark skin, and his curly hair was a mixture of grey, white and white. “Oh we see alright,” he grinned, his blue eyes travelling from mage to mage in glee. “Bunch of spoiled kids playing around in a place a little too dangerous for them.”
Nightingale's scoff carried across to the other side easily. “Spoiled kids who are dressed far better than you are.”
“I said spoiled, didn’t I?” His smile widened. “On that note, drop your stuff while you still have it.”
The ultimatum gave rise to a quiet stalemate and gazes flitted about in an attempt to get a read on the opposition.
“What’s our move?” Jesal whispered from behind.
To Val’s surprise, he peered at her for an answer, genuinely ready for a suggestion. She threw a subtle shrug in his direction, unwilling to dip into someone else’s territory.
Something like disappointment flickered in his eyes. “Alright, then. Ekon, lay low while we stall. We’ll wait for you to come back after you verify that none of them are hanging out anywhere else.”
Nightingale ripped his sights from the gloating adventurer to face Jesal. “I’m the captain.”
“Yeah, and a Hunter, genius. Do your job,” Caro replied through gritted teeth.
“What she said,” Jesal added.
Nightingale’s fist clenched and loosened at his sides. “This will not be taken li—”
“I’m tired of all y’all’s yapping!” The chieftain of the thieves flamboyantly drew his sword from its bone-studded scabbard and held it over his head. “Boys! Let’s get us some loot!”
“Ekon,” the request in Otis’ voice was drowned by the excited hoots and stomping boots storming over to meet them.
“I’m going.”
|Ekon Nightingale - Novice
* Observed Elements: [Darkness], [Sound]
* Evidence of Subelement [Shadow] has also been shown
Aster’s title for the Hunter disappeared shortly after his shadow extended from beneath to swallow his frame whole.
“We’re going with cannon and moat,” Jesal ordered in haste, the urgency of the situation—quite literally, due to the thieves crossing into the 100-meter range—leaving no room for rebuttals. “Strikers.”
“We’ll be on it,” Val confirmed, decoding the premade strategy and unclasping her luggage’s several links on the double. “Otis, we need a shield, and we need it soon!”
“Barricade!”
He must have been thinking along the same lines from the very beginning for the white jade to extend beautifully from wall to wall so promptly, erecting twenty-some feet of white jade high into the air. In the face of the formidable defensive force, the thieves resorted to concentrating heaps of Tier 1 spells—fireballs, water bullets, and lightning bolts—at a single point.
Otis fell to a knee in a fight against the elemental beating and lost out as a final Wind Burst blasted open the fortification spell, sending shards of cream-coloured gemstone far and wide.
“Sword Graveyard.”
“Amplify!”
His efforts bought twenty resourceful seconds for the cannon part of the plan to come online. The aether strands Jesal poured into his amplification spell heightened Lenson's highly-offensive conjuration spell to new levels. Fifteen ice swords exploded laterally, the thieves in the center of their crosshairs.
The chieftain paled. “Shields up, all together! Now!”
At once, they dislodged and activated three water E-shields. As water often liked to do, the configurations reached out for their counterparts and merged into a broader, thickened version able to surround the band of ten. Smart, Val acknowledged, smiling in awed disbelief as a few managed to pierce through nonetheless, striking three.
“Magma Flood!”
Much stronger this time around, Caro’s Tier 2 spell manifested as a river of bubbling, molten material, completing the latter half of the haphazard tactic. Leaning into the balls of her feet, Val dashed in ahead of her fellow Striker as the secondary offence, and the thieves threw a couple of spells in response.
“Reactive Guard!”
Crystals whizzed past her head, taking hard lefts and rights as they homed in on the trajectories of the incoming attacks without fault. Seconds before a head-on collision, the gemstones unravelled into octagonal shields. The spells crashed in them and they shattered like plates, in a burst of sound and shrapnel.
Almost there, she told herself, drawing nearer and nearer to the opposition. Caro, using the endless energy she possessed, flooded her legs with aether and conducted a super jump across the ten-foot-long magma moat. She came down heavy—slipping into old habits of frowned-upon charges—but continued on forwards anyway.
Val leaped as well, finishing off the long string of frames she spun together mid-air. “Metal Skates!”
A pair of coldsteel sheets of metal manifested under her boots, and she bounced off them at first contact, clearing the magma river with ease. Taking advantage of her adjustment period, a thief sprinted at her—an axe clenched in a two-handed grip, high above her head—only to fall a couple of steps short.
“Saints!” The thief swore, taking a blow to the lower leg dealt from a silent, scentless, invisible arrow shot across the entire expanse. Lenson’s aim is seriously scary.
The temperature in the area surged. Red blurred Val’s vision.
She lunged to the side, narrowly escaping a firespade to the head.
“Gravity’s Grasp!” she heard Jesal’s distant shout.
A stifled curse whipped Val’s head around to the fire mage crumpled to the ground under the gravity mage’s spell. In spite of the weight pressing on his shoulders, he wrestled out a grin, unabashed by the attempt to harm her beyond a G3 scroll’s repair.
That heaven-forsaken—
“Stop this fight or your leader is dead.”
Val had never been happier to hear Nightingale’s voice, smug and all. Using the very two elements which aided him in scouting the surrounding pathways, he hid behind the disarray of a full-on elemental clash and exploited the thieves’ weak spot. His dagger rested on the chieftain's throat, and his other hand remained idle at his side, primed for a spell if need be. He hitched his blade higher, and a dribble of blood trickled down the his captive's neck. “Do I need to repeat myself?”
One by one, the ragtag group disengaged in whichever scuffle they landed in, sheathing their swords and laying down their weapons. The nearby fire mage let out a breath of relief as Jesal cut his spell, scurrying over to pick up the crippled axe-wielder.
The Thales undergraduate, as if in an unspoken agreement, fought to injure, not kill. You couldn’t outright ask anyone of the same standard in a rift, especially when the opposite held themselves to no such rules.
The thieves hightailed out of Path Ore, heads hung low, their brown leathers and worn-out plates no nicer than they had been previously. A long-winding sigh escaped Val at the sight, and she plopped down on the stone floor, too bewildered to account for the wet surface. That firespade was way too close for my liking. Aster denoted the fire mage’s attack as red—fatal damage if she remembered the grading system correctly.
“Demise at every corner,” she mumbled listlessly, failing to register just whose words she quoted. She started, but the awareness came too late, unable to stop the flooding memories of the damned CAU associate visit half a decade ago from emerging.
“A captain protects their squad. They don’t lead them to an untimely death on purpose.”
The parallels in the statement—one that felt harsher than a whip, in the distinct moment—returned as a chilling sign surrounding the importance of sound captaincy. Rifts rivalled the most active volcanoes in instability, and the faults of a dive, no matter the circumstance, fell on the leader.
Today, at least, passed without any major losses. It can honestly only go up from here, Val thought, shaking off the final vestiges of the once-buried sentiment.