The trip north was just as bad as the sheriff suggested it might be.
We left Chatrig early the next morning, just after sunrise. The road led north from the town but quickly twisted east, putting the sun squarely in our eyes. The greenish orb shone on the tall, waving stalks of grass, casting them into long shadows that hid whatever might have lurked beneath. The Sonkhee lay to our left, burbling and dancing over the rocks that hid beneath the surface and narrower than I had seen it before. The sky overhead shone clear and blue, and the gentle wind sweeping in from behind kept us cool as the air warmed. It was a good morning to start a trip.
Sadly, by late afternoon, that had all gone to hell.
The first clouds drifted in about midday, hovering overhead and obscuring the blazing sun. I was grateful at first, but as the clouds darkened and thickened, my appreciation swiftly waned. Thunder rolled across the sky as the clouds seemed to pile up to the east, and flashes of lightning ripped through the thunderheads, lighting them up from within. The air cooled rapidly, and we stopped to pull out our waterproof coverings, which were nothing more than ponchos woven with layers of waxed threads, really. I sent my terror eagle up above the clouds and brought my cloudhunter down to perch on my roadwalker just as the sky opened up, and rain descended on us in a sheet.
The rain only lasted an hour before passing on, but it was just the start of the miserable weather. Storms rolled in every afternoon or evening on the way to Copperbell, turning the road to mud and making travel slow and hazardous. We rode in the grass when the road became soup, and we huddled under our tents at night since the roadside shelters were packed with large groups and caravans. It was a miserable trip.
The only good thing was that the storms kept most of the monsters away from us as they hid from nature’s fury. We still faced the occasional air, lightning, or wildwind type that apparently lived in the storms, but few creatures beyond that. The first attack came from a school of cloudcracklers, electric blue flying fish surrounded in a glowing aura of static electricity that shocked anything that got close to them. During the next storm, a swarm of snow-white bees a foot long swept down on us with poisoned stingers; after that, a pack of what looked like ice-blue coyotes galloped out of a hailstorm, running on air and breathing frost. We faced attacks from storm-gray falcons with icy talons, sparkling dragonflies that looked like–and probably were–larger versions of my buzzfly, and even a pack of winged monkeys that fortunately flung hailstones at us instead of what I was afraid they might.
None of the creatures were individually dangerous, but they never attacked individually. The beasts rode the storms, and when one struck, more swept down on us in a wave. Fortunately, most were at least partially affiliated with lightning, making them vulnerable to the metal of bullets and easy to target with their glowing forms. The rest were mostly an annoyance to my powerful pets. Killing them didn’t even give me much in the way of XP, so the battles were a waste of time and a pointless risk–although the creatures did provide all of us with a fairly steady food source, if nothing else.
Copperbell was a mining town like Whitestone, except more raucous. The town lay along a mountainside, centered around a mineshaft cut into the earth and spreading down the slope like a fan from there. The buildings had been built haphazardly, and the only straight road was the wide main one leading directly to the mine. We arrived in the late afternoon, apparently during a shift change in the mine, and the place was already loud and chaotic. Two men brawled openly in the muddy street, rolling around in the ooze, punching, clawing, and kicking, while others stood around and cheered. People walked around carrying mugs of something I assumed was beer, and I watched as three men cornered a fourth and robbed him in plain sight of everyone.
We’d planned to spend the night in the town, but after a glimpse at the utter chaos, we decided to keep moving and camp outdoors another night.
“That place needs the damn Empire,” Chomai muttered as we sat around a low fire, huddled up against a rock face that kept most of the wind off us. “And maybe a good fire to clean it out some.”
If the trip to Copperbell had been bad, the road north to Farpoint was far worse. We rode in the shade of the Mahads, the road winding and twisting around hills and through canyons. Cold air sluiced down from those peaks, and without the heavier gear the sheriff had suggested, we’d all have been chilled to the bone. The rain often mixed with sleet and even snow, swirling around us as we rode and making the rocky trail slippery and treacherous. Rivulets and streams ran down the mountain slopes, cutting across the road and forcing us to pick our way carefully across.
The other difference was the frequency of monster attacks. Creatures swarmed out of hidden canyons and small caves or swept down from the clouds above to strike at us with fair regularity. Many of the beasts were earth or metal types, making them harder to kill and more resistant to bullets. Fortunately, the beasts were still mostly Simple and Lesser creatures, so while they were dangerous, they didn’t really present a credible threat to us and wouldn’t have to any well-prepared group.
We had just finished dealing with one of the attacks, a herd of stubby, three-foot-tall deer with mottled gray fur and iron-black antlers, when a thought struck me. I dismounted, bent down, and examined one of the creatures, pulling open its mouth and checking its teeth. What I saw brought a frown to my face.
“What the hell are you doing, Naasi?” Chomai asked impatiently.
“This thing’s an herbivore,” I said slowly. “It eats plants, doesn’t it?”
“Yep,” the sheriff nodded. “Valleyjumpers eat the scrub and trees that grow in the hidden valleys in these peaks.”
“Why’s that matter?” Chomai asked.
“Why would they attack us?” I asked quizzically.
“Because they’re beasts, idiot,” she said, rolling her eyes.
I shook my head and rose to stand. “It doesn’t make any sense. These things aren’t predators, and there’s no way they would have made a den this close to the road, so they weren’t protecting their young. Even if they were hungry, they wouldn’t attack us; they can’t eat us. So, why did they attack?”
“Beasts always do, boy,” the sheriff drawled. “You’re right; it don’t make no sense. It never does. If they’re close enough to see you as a threat, they attack, plain and simple. Always been that way, long as anyone can remember.”
I remounted with a frown, but the sheriff’s words bothered me. It really didn’t make any sense. I’d seen animals in a few different worlds, and for the most part, they all behaved the same way. They’d attack people that they considered a threat, but if they were too badly injured–or their initial attack failed–they’d usually flee. Otherwise, they ignored or hid from humans unless they were hungry, sick, or protecting their young. Of course, on Soluminos, beast magic could drive animals to attack, but that was a magical effect…
I paused at that thought and turned on See Magic. The world around me lit up as magical energies swirled about me, but I tuned them out. I was looking for a specific type of energy, one that was very hard for me in particular to see. It was an ephemeral thing, misty and nearly transparent, and while I’d seen it before, that was on a different world. My eyes scanned the area for the veiled presence of world energy, the power inherent to this planet that Sara tapped to provide most of her functions. It took me almost an hour to detect it, but when I did, I almost gasped aloud in amazement.
World energy flooded the landscape in a heavy haze. It looked like a fog, drifting around everything, slithering about and embracing the earth beneath us, the stones around us, and the few plants about. When I looked at Chomai, though, it looked vastly different. A hard, red power surrounded the woman, pulsing and throbbing like a sore tooth in my vision. When the world magic met that power, the fog was dragged down into it, channeled through the crimson haze into the marshal’s chest. A glance at the sheriff showed that he looked the same.
I turned to the galestrider loping along beside me and blinked in surprise. The creature moved through a haze of misty world magic that it took into itself with very breath, but a hard, red harness wrapped about its body, with a scarlet tendril of that power tracing back to me. World energy flowed like liquid through that tendril, compressed so densely that it distorted the field around it, and those distortions spread out around the creature–and around my arm when I glanced down at it.
“Sara, are you seeing this?” I asked her in amazement.
“Yes, John,” she answered quietly.
“Have you always seen this red stuff? Do you know what it is?”
“I never saw it, no–I can only see what you do, remember–but I’ve felt it. It’s not normal world energy; it’s too dense, and far too organized. I’m pretty sure that it’s what I interact with for your professions and analyze ability on this world. My best guess is that it’s what allows everyone to have professions and levels like an Inquisitor.”
“What makes you think that?”
She hesitated briefly. “Because the energy signature is slightly familiar. It almost looks like the energy field of a SARA.”
“What?” I stared back at Chomai, my mind reeling. “You mean, they both have something like you?”
“No, probably not,” she said quickly. “In fact, I’m almost certain they don’t. The aura isn’t correct for a SARA: it’s far too weak, for one thing, and it’s too simple, as well. It’s almost like someone tried to replicate the effects of a SARA and only partially succeeded.”
I stared at the two former handlers, then at my pets with a growing certainty. “What if that’s exactly what happened, Sara?” I asked quietly. “What if that’s why the creatures on this world are so crazy?”
“What do you mean, John?”
“Remember how you thought that Ujali was an Inquisitor? Well, the sheriff said once that she was the first person to come up with the Analyze rune and codify handling. What if that’s how she did it? What if she gave everyone something like a SARA that she could read magically?”
“That…” Sara fell silent for a moment. “I’d like to say that it’s not possible, but the fact is, it might be. It would have taken a large chunk of this world’s energy to do it, but we saw on Soluminos that this sort of thing can happen.”
“Maybe that’s what Ujali did,” I guessed. “Maybe she copied her SARA into a rune and attached those copies to her followers. That would explain how they got so strong, and how they conquered everyone around them so easily, wouldn’t it?”
“It might, John. Although it would have to be a fantastic rune, one way more powerful than that Epic one that called Old Sena. From what the sheriff said, it would have to be classified as Mythic in this world–or a Divine rune by normal classification. For an Inquisitor to cast a Divine spell, they would have to be incredibly powerful, maybe hundreds of years old and probably toward the end of their career.”
“It seems like that would imbalance the world’s energy field, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Then that could be what’s driving the creatures of this world to attack people: they can feel the imbalance.” I frowned. “Of course, wouldn’t I feel it then, too?”
“Not necessarily, no.” She suddenly appeared in front of me, hovering in the air and floating backwards to keep pace with my roadwalker. “If Ujali really did this thousands of years ago, John, the world would have rebalanced itself in the meantime, and you wouldn’t feel it. You only feel active imbalances, not ones that were fixed long ago.”
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I suppressed a grin, sure that my guess was, if not accurate, at least pretty reasonable. “Whether Ujali did it or not, I’ll bet this is why these creatures always attack when they see people,” I said, feeling a flash of satisfaction at puzzling out a possible solution. “The people of this world are like a thorn that they have to try and remove.”
“I think you might be on to something,” she said slowly, tapping her chin in thought. “That–that could be very useful, John.”
“Do you think so?” I laughed silently. “I think it’s a good idea, but I don’t see any possible use for it. It’s not like I can undo whatever this is, can I?”
“Probably not, no. If this really is a construct, we’d both need a lot more skill, training, and power to be able to counter it. I’m fairly certain that the only way to undo a Mythic rune is with another Mythic rune.” She paused again. “Still, I think there’s something here I can work with. Give me some time, and I’ll try to come up with something.”
She vanished, and a new notification popped up in my vision.
Partial Adaptation!
You have partially adapted to the world of Puraschim.
Current Adaptation: 87%
Effect: Mental stat penalties removed, +25% to Puraschim stats.
A surge of the crimson-colored energy rolled out from me and wrapped around my pets, binding them all more tightly to me but also sinking into their bodies and drawing more of the world’s inherent energy into them. I watched as that energy strengthened them, made them tougher, faster, and stronger, and surrounded them like a shield to absorb incoming damage. That was the secret to the invulnerability a handler and their pets shared. They were armored in world energy.
I shut down my ability and pulled up my status and pet sheets to see what my new adaptation had changed.
John Gilliam, Guardian of the Sun
Mental Stats
Reason: 50 Intuition: 39 Perception: 38 Charm: 27
Physical Stats
Prowess: 30 Vigor: 26 Celerity: 15 Skill: 32
Professions
Inquisitor (Hidden, Divine): Level 4, XP: 30,153/58,800
Generalist (Rare): Level 5, XP: 12,163/12,500
Dominia: 49 Personia: 49.3 Arcania: 55.6
Max # of Pets: 31 Max Pet Level: 40 Max Active Runes: 19 Max Runes Per Day: 42
Pet Stats
Name
Bond
Atk
Def
Dmg
Spd
Dodge
Buzzfly (Simple Glowwind)
288
50
18
48
60
27
Cloudhunter (Greater Air)
1,013
157
36
105
212
78
Galestrider (High Wildstorm)
2,396
272
123
295
238
151
Mistfreezer (High Ice)
2,620
195
172
173
261
259
Moonstalker (High Predator)
2,200
336
117
288
240
160
Sparksnake (High Lightning)
2,683
220
138
324
278
184
Terror Eagle (High Wildwind)
3,135
444
125
320
447
189
Wave Horror (High Water)
3,386
96
352
140
181
508
Pets Ranked by Role
Attack
Defense
Dodge
Damage
Speed
Terror Eagle
Wave Horror
Wave Horror
Galestrider
Cloudhunter
Buzzfly
Mistfreezer
Cloudhunter
Buzzfly
Terror Eagle
Moonstalker
Sparksnake
Mistfreezer
Moonstalker
Wave Horror
Galestrider
Terror Eagle
Terror Eagle
Terror Eagle
Buzzfly
Cloudhunter
Moonstalker
Buzzfly
Sparksnake
Mistfreezer
Mistfreezer
Cloudhunter
Sparksnake
Cloudhunter
Sparksnake
Sparksnake
Buzzfly
Galestrider
Mistfreezer
Galestrider
Wave Horror
Galestrider
Moonstalker
Wave Horror
Moonstalker
My partial adaptation resulted in a significant boost to my handling stats, and that boost had empowered my pets. It also slightly shifted their recommended roles, but not in a way that was going to affect my strategies. Seeing my little buzzfly high on the attack and damage ranks made me want to rank it up, but I ignored that temptation. I had plenty of pets doing heavy damage; its ability to pass unnoticed was more important to me than getting another attacker.
The upgrade, though, allowed me to add more pets to my menagerie, so we took a day and headed up into the mountains looking for another ranged-type monster. With my terror eagle soaring over the peaks, its incredible eyes easily picking up the creatures below, it didn’t take us more than a few hours to locate something appropriate.
Bond Complete!
You have bonded a Greater Shockfloater. This creature is attuned to the Lightning element, granting you the following abilities:
Shared Resistance
Your Lightning Resistance (not immunity) spreads to all your pets.
Inductive Field
You can sense living creatures through their bioelectric field. The range is dependent on your Perception stat.
Shockfloater (Greater)
Type: Lightning
Bond: 1,023
Attack: 112 Defense: 60 Damage: 302
Speed: 238 Dodge: 259 Heal: 53
Special: Special Damage +32%
Special Attacks: Charge Field (209), Lightning Strike (211)
Special Defenses: Numbing Aura (45)
Weaknesses: Metal
The shockfloater looked almost like a four-foot-wide, perpetually inflated puffer fish; silvery scales covered its skin, and long, thin spines jutted out from it in every direction. It had a pair of wide-set, bulbous eyes and a wide mouth filled with teeth like a piranha’s. Arcs of electricity snapped and buzzed from spine to spine, and a low hum filled the air around it. Being near it made my skin tingle and my hair stand on end, and I knew from experience that any enemy that got too close to it would eat a static discharge, whether the creature could see them or not. The monster wasn’t that strong, but it was fast and did a lot of damage, and I planned to keep it out of combat, just using its special abilities to rain lightning on the battlefield.
A day outside Farpoint, my terror eagle spotted a group of four marshals traveling our way with their pets. They were moving casually but not incautiously, and I guessed that they were the reinforcements sent south to take over in Chatrig. Ramka wanted to try to avoid them, while I preferred to have my pets hide and ride past them like regular travelers, but surprisingly, Chomai objected.
“That ain’t gonna work,” she said flatly. “If those marshals are heading south, you know they’ve got to be Kamath’s Riders. They’ll have our descriptions, and seeing three people riding this road alone, they’re gonna suspect us of being handlers and pay attention to us. Best thing we can do is hit them before they know we’re here.”
“I never thought I’d hear you talking about killing other marshals,” Ramka noted neutrally.
“They ain’t marshals,” she spat. “Not real ones, not if they willingly follow Lightning Hands. The Service is better off without them.”
With the terror eagle’s incredible eyes scanning the area, it wasn’t hard for us to set up an ambush where the road passed through a narrow spot, a place where a slab of rock bigger than most houses had crashed down and cracked in half, allowing the road to pass through the middle. We hid beneath Sanctum runes until the marshals reached the middle of the gorge, then hit them from all sides. My wave horror and sparksnake blocked the exits, keeping them from fleeing, while my mistfreezer and terror eagle struck from above, along with Ramka and Chomai armed with rifles.
It wasn’t a battle so much as a slaughter; Chomai’s Tilted Battleground and my chained runes made an already bad situation for the marshals utterly hopeless, and her Stillness rune sealed their fates. With most of their pets trapped where they couldn’t actively fight, their roadwalkers rampaging in panic and dying beneath them, and their runes weakened, the marshals fell swiftly, leaving the pass a mess of corpses. Two of the roadwalkers survived, as did one of the marshals, a man named Chotu who’d been leading the group and who I judged most likely to have answers that we needed. I’d expected to have to convince him to talk, but after I had my wave horror grab him in its Acid Flower and hold him for a bit, burning and blistering most of his skin in the process, all it took was an application of Terrifying Demeanor to make him sing like a canary.
“So, where are you coming from, Chotu?” I asked him pleasantly, trying not to look at the nearly nude man’s peeling, blistered flesh hanging in strips from his body. The acid left him so wounded I didn’t even have to bind him; he lay on the ground, shivering and shaking, and my biggest fear was him slipping into shock and becoming unresponsive.
“U-Uttar,” he whimpered. “S-Sin…” He took a deep breath. “Sinakha.”
“Is Kamath there?”
“N-no. Anpad. H-he’s got a camp in the Anpads.” He began to weep, his whole body shaking with the sobs.
“How can I find it?”
“Tr-trail signs. L-look for white s-stones. Arrow underneath.”
“How far is it from Sinakha?”
“S-six days. More if it sn-snows.”
“You’re doing great,” I said encouragingly. “Tell me about the camp. How’s it laid out? What kind of security and defenses does it have?”
I listened as he spoke for several minutes, describing the layout of the camp, the signals used to move around in it, and the pets roaming the forest and hills around it, watching for intruders. When he finished, I nodded.
“Okay, last question, Chotu. “What’s Kamath doing up there?”
“G-gathering pets,” he gasped. “H-he’s been t-taking them from all o-over. Ohr, Ut-Uttar, G-Gistal, everywhere. All h-he can find.”
“And what does he do with them?”
“G-got them in cages. He’s k-keeping them. Don’t know w-why.” I frowned, and the horror moved slowly forward as I felt the deception in his words. His eyes widened, and he tried to crawl away, but his burned body failed him. He spoke again, his voice a high screech. “H-he found s-something! S-something in the Anpads!”
“What did he find?”
“A beast!” the man said, his voice high and panicked as the horror slid closer. “A Mythic one!”
“Mythic?” the sheriff asked, stepping up by my side. “You don’t find Mythic beasts. They sleep buried deep underground, too deep for a man to dig.”
“Marshal f-found one,” the man said smugly. “He’s m-more than a h-handler. H-he can feel beasts n-nearby, for m-miles around.”
“What’s he doing with that beast?” I asked quietly, already sure I knew. I didn’t have all the answers, but the pieces were falling into place.
“G-gonna raise it. Crush the G-Gistal. N-nobody can st-stand against a M-mythic beast.”
“That ain’t possible,” the sheriff insisted. “Nobody can raise a Mythic beast! Ain’t never been done!”
“M-Marshal says he c-can. If he s-says it, it’s t-true.” The man laughed weakly. “You’re g-gonna die. All the en-enemies of the Empire will, and M-marshal’s gonna h-hand the Gistal to the Empire!” The man’s laughter swelled into hysteria, and I knew he’d said all he was going to. My weapon bucked slightly as I pulled the trigger, and the man’s cackles ceased as the bullet punched through the center of his chest.
“This is a damn catastrophe, boy,” Ramka said somberly, no trace of his normal mocking tone in his eyes. “No, worse than that. If Kamath can find and raise Mythic beasts, ain’t no force on this planet that can stand against him.”
“Is it really that bad?” I asked quietly.
“Probably even worse,” he sighed. “Five hundred years back, a Mythic bird called the Typhoon Eagle appeared in the Masaag Ocean, west of here between Mukkal and Dusar, home of the Republic. It created hurricanes and tidal waves, flooded every coastal city on that ocean, and destroyed the entire Imperial colony of Kahet. It also obliterated most of the Imperial Navy, crippled the Republican Navy, and turned the Nayeg Grasslands southwest of the Gistal from a hospitable place into a giant salt marsh that nobody can live in. It raged for two years, unstoppable, then just disappeared.”
He shook his head. “Five centuries before that, a Mythic turtle called the Quake Tortoise woke up just off the shores of Teera and crawled across the continent. Took it ten years to do it, and it raised damn volcanoes and set off earthquakes the whole time. Almost completely wiped out every city on Teera, destroyed the Sarjan army there, and allowed the settlers to rebel and create the Gathan Confederacy. Losing Teera hurt the Empire enough that its colonies in Dusar felt safe rebelling and forming the Kazar Republic. That one beast pretty much destroyed the Empire.”
He gave me a grave look, and I could read the worry plainly in his eyes. “In all of history, there ain’t no record of anyone killing a Mythic beast. If Kamath raises one…” He fell silent, but I understood his words.
“Then we just have to make sure he don’t raise it.” Chomai’s voice was firm, but I heard the quaver in it. “Come on. We can talk on the damn trail. Every day we wait is another day for Kamath to destroy the damn world.”