Status Effect Received

- Exhaustion I -

You had a terrible sleep. Your Vitality and Sanity receive a -20% recovery penalty and your Endurance and Willpower receive a -20% penalty to their maximum values.

Shit.

Overnight I must’ve managed three hours of real shut-eye, while the rest of it was interrupted by visions of smoke and dino parrots. Angie was upset I didn’t wake her so she could meet Lucky and steal his bird, while Kiril was only interested in the invitation. He read the letter by firelight five or six times in silence while we all prepared to head out.

Breakfast on Killjoy Island was an interesting affair. Jade, Patrick, Angie and I hovered around Patrick’s open sack of nature goodies, strategizing about who would eat what to maximize the journey ahead.

You couldn’t just eat what you wanted when you wanted, you see, as each ingredient was invaluable not only because they kept you alive, but because of the powers they offered. My stomach was grumbling constantly, but I couldn’t grab a handful of roots and flowers and shove them in my mouth. What if I ate all the Doughertus Sephorus? We’d have no more Charming Glare. What if I ate the last of the Doughertus Nosferatus? Those were not easy to replace.

“Patrick, you don’t need any of these,” Jade said, sectioning off the food that gave powers relying on constitution, “because you’ll need to save your con for sight. Angie, I think you should have one of these and maybe save a second for after your fortitude recovers.” She placed the grey and purple blotchy mushrooms that gave the Pale Gaze ability into her hand.

“I don’t think I should waste them if I won’t use the ability,” Angie said and began sifting through the pouch for her counter offer.

All in all it took fifteen minutes of heavy discussion, weighing the pros and cons for each ability while keeping in mind party roles if we happened to stumble into combat.

It was dizzying.

I ended up with the uncomfortably stabby Doughertus Prickus, a vine that gave Nature’s Barb (we had plenty since no one wanted to eat them), but since that was not a passive ability and only drained constitution on a per use basis, I was also handed a reserve of Doughertus Prickus The Secondus, an enticing looking flower with minuscule thorns all along its petals that held the ability Hail Of Thorns.

Killjoy Island continued to live up to its name—breakfast sucked.

The Completionists said goodbye to the Anchor after a long argument between Jade and Kiril, where she managed to convince him to let slip some of the party’s precious favour for six healing potions, one healing elixir, and three calming potions. With everyone mildly satiated and our abilities active, we trekked into the morning gloom.

The rain peppered our backs and the clouds swept low, crowning the tallest trees. We made our way west, Kiril told me, braving the Silent Hill-esque landscape. It was hard finding a bird for Patrick, but every once in a while a Bluefire would perch on a branch, ruffle its feathers and burst into a brief ball of flame to dry itself. The signal made them easy prey for Jade, whose arrow knocked one to the ground.

Eventually the rain stopped, the fog settled around our ankles, muting the forest colours, and the hills flattened into swampland.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Patrick observed when we paused for a rest on a dry patch surrounded by pools of murky water. He placed his hand against a tree with black bark, its spindly roots curving out of the water and arcing overhead to wrap around nearby trunks.

I set Gnome down and sat on his lid. “He says that every other day, doesn’t he?” I asked Jade, who crossed her legs in the mud beside me.

“Pretty much.”

“Ben, c’mere,” Patrick called. He had rolled up his pants and waded knee deep into the water.

Reluctantly I made my way to the botanist, staying on dry land. “Yeah?”

Patrick was hunched over some reeds, regarding them closely. He ran a finger down a stalk and tipped it in my direction. “I wanna show you something cool.” He produced a small leather book from his pouch, sigils and diagrams carved into the cover like something you might buy at an overpriced curiosity shop, and flipped through the pages until he arrived at a blank one.

“I’ve never seen this before,” he said. “This book came with the gatherer pack. It records things I identify using my title.” He waved his arms as he spoke, caught up in his own excitement. “Right now I got a prompt telling me what it is and asking me for a custom name.”

Patrick held the page up to me, and I watched as ink appeared on the paper, complete with a sketch of the plant itself. Doughertus Aqueous.

“Neat, what does it do?” I asked.

Patrick read the page as he spoke. “Found in marshy wetlands, the Doughertus Aqueous grants the tier zero fortitude ability Manipulate Moisture. At higher tiers the amount of water that can be controlled increases to…” Patrick looked beyond me. “…Jade?”

I turned my head to see Jade standing, staring into the fog. Without replying, she took a step forward, and then another. “Jade?” I seconded Patrick’s question.

Kiril was watching her too, and Angie pointed into the dense fog. “Look,” she said.

I followed her gaze to the swirling balls of light in the distance, faintly glowing in the midday cloud cover. They hovered in the air above the water thirty feet away from our plot of dry land. And Jade was walking towards them.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

By the time her foot reached the water I was beside her. I grabbed her wrist. “Hey,” I said. Her head snapped around to face me. She seemed surprised to find out where she was and took a step back. The swirling lights faded.

“Sorry, I just kinda…” she mumbled. “I don’t know why I did that.”

A scraping sound alerted me to Kiril drawing his sword. “Will o’ Wisps,” he said.

Patrick pulled himself out of the water and joined us. “Anyone know how they behave?” He asked.

“I dunno, but I think they’re gone,” said Angie.

The five of us huddled close together, away from the water, watching the rolling fog. Other than the occasional bird and the squelching of our feet in the mud, the swamp was silent.

“Are they—“ Patrick’s words broke into a grunt. A crackle of electricity flashed beside him and knocked him to the ground, wracking his body with convulsions.

Creature Discovered

- Will o’ Wisp -

Challenge: 3

You’ve met a native to the Island! We wish we could claim responsibility for these little assholes, but they’re Fae bred through and through. They have a tendency to—

A sharp bolt of pain entered my shoulder and spiralled down my muscles. My body seized and briefly I began to topple over before regaining control and backing away, pulling an ax into my hand.

- Shock resisted by endurance -

- Conductive resisted by endurance -

“They’re invisible!” Kiril said, sweeping Mercy in a wide arc above Patrick. A tendril of light leapt up from the shaking body and travelled up the sword, singeing Kiril’s hand and forcing him to release the hilt.

“Careful, it says he’s conductive,” Jade declared, backing away, stopping short of the water. She lurched to the side and clasped her thigh. “Fuck!”

One by one we activated our abilities. Jade had swapped hers out for the bird she killed earlier and wreathed herself in blue flames. I swallowed Doughertus Prickus The Secundus and realized to my horror that the tiny-thorned petals had the texture of a cat’s tongue. Within moments of the ability’s activation I willed a storm of thin needles to whirl about me. Normally you’d control a fraction of the thorns to fire out at a target, but it was just as effective when used defensively.

Angie threw her arms wide and let the cloud of Sense Life spread, settling in wisps around all of us and nothing else. “Guess these things aren’t alive,” she said.

Kiril backed away from his sword, and smoke began circling his hands. He didn’t eat anything at breakfast. Whatever the abilities he relied on were, they definitely came from his titles. He hissed and jumped, lashing out in the direction the pain came from, striking at nothing. “I can’t see them!”

Angie took the next hit and fell to the ground, limbs flailing. Patrick recovered and moved to give her a dose of Cleansing Hands, but flecks of electricity staggered him back. Kiril yelled a second time, Jade’s arrow zipped through the air and sunk into a tree, and I could see nothing.

How the hell can we fight them? I began shuffling around the battlefield, hoping my thorns would run into one of them when I caught sight of the reeds again.

Manipulate Moisture. Right.

The water was cold as I stepped into it. My feet hit the mud but kept sinking, and each step required a strong pull to dislodge my boots.

“Ben, if they shock you in there—“ Jade began.

“—I’ll be fine,” I said. My swirling veil of thorns cut through the water around me and, sure enough, there was a crackle in the air and what might have been a squeal. I turned and caught a glimpse of one of the orbs of light retreating from the airborne daggers before it faded into invisibility.

I wrapped my fingers around one of the stalks poking out of the swamp, snapped it in half, and shoved it in my mouth. By the time I made it back to the others, the prompt appeared.

Ability Discovered

- Manipulate Moisture -

- Tier 0 -

- Fort 1 -

Our most exciting ability yet. You get to move things with your mind, but only if it’s sopping wet. Woooo…

The water undulated at my urging. I focused beyond my whizzing barrier and willed it to move, dance, separate. A globe the size of a basketball clumped together, rising from the surface of the murky pool and floating above it. I directed it closer to my friends, waiting for the next one to jump.

Angie, who was back up and breathing heavily, yelped and collapsed again, and I threw the ball of water in the air above her. It splashed over something, a smaller sphere in the sky, and though the Will o’ Wisp recoiled and danced away, water dripped off its surface.

“There!” I said.

Jade spun to the section of fog the water clung to, drawing an arrow back and coating it in fire, but Kiril was already on it. He dashed around her, slashing out with his fingers. The orb hissed and flashed white, and was shredded into thin wisps of light that fluttered harmlessly to the ground.

“Find the next one,” Kiril ordered, spinning and crouching low.

I summoned a second watery ball and hovered it over land in time for the next Will o’ Wisp to strike. Kiril grunted and staggered forward and I launched my projectile behind him, coating the wispy bitch. Patrick slipped in with a knife and thrust it into the invisible creature, killing it.

He took the third hit, succumbing to the shock before another watery sphere revealed the monster’s location. Jade slayed it with a bullseye.

After a minute passed and none of us were hit by electric shocks, Patrick and Angie each downed a healing potion. I scooped up the flimsy remains of the Will o’ Wisps using my knife and slipped them into Patrick’s pouch while he gathered his bearings.

“Friggin’ things kick like a mule,” he wheezed.

“Might get something good out of it, though,” I said, being careful not to break the delicate membranes as I gently brushed them off the edge of the steel.

Patrick shook his head. “Anything less than invisibility and it isn’t worth it.”

Kiril brushed by me on his way to help collect the rest of the torn bodies. “Good work,” he said, almost begrudgingly.

It wasn’t a level of bonding, but with Kiril I’d take my victories where I could get them.

As the hours went by the fog peeled away and the forest loomed large around us. We made our way further through the swamp where the trees grew gnarly and crooked and the plants rivalled us in height. Multicoloured fireflies buzzed about in the daylight and Angie flitted along our marching order trying to catch them in an empty potion bottle.

The shadowed trunks of trees rose high in the distance, thinly veiled behind the retreating fog, and as we neared I got a sense of just how tall they were. Twenty five or thirty storeys, for the shortest ones. The highest stretched up to fifty, rivalling the steel and glass urban monstrosities I had been used to my entire life. The branches were as wide as sidewalks, and the sedan-sized leaves could support a nuclear family and their dog.

“Holy shit,” I breathed. Jade echoed the sentiment.

Kiril stopped not far ahead. The path widened to the front gates of Treetop Town, a forty or fifty foot tall stone and wood barrier separating it from the comparatively boring wildlife beyond. Guards in chitinous green and black armour patrolled the top of the walls, with several more looking down on us from their rocky bastions, where vines sprouted from cracks and snaked to the forest floor.

Two heavily armoured figures stood in front of the gates, their gear similarly insect-like and plastered with leaves. In one hand they held turtle shell shields (I wondered what Lucky would think of that), and in the other golden spears doubled their height.

One of the guards tipped their weapon towards us. “Approach,” commanded a booming voice behind the helmet.

The rest of us were busy gaping at the colossal structures while Kiril, without saying a word, marched forward.