"He's really attached to this thing," one of the satyr said as he struggled to move Fievil so I could fit through the office doorway. Already there was a deep scratch flanked by the occasional burn mark in the linoleum floor that tracked from the entrance courtesy of the chitin blade on the Shard weapon.
"Helped me live..." I groaned out. While my lungs seemed to be working fine, my shoulders and abdomen were still recovering from Slurry Ichor's stiffening effect. Speaking was still difficult. "Not inclined to let go."
"Those muscle idiots are not going to like when this story starts to circulate," another of the satyr said, chuckling as he lowered me onto a couch that had seen better days but felt godly compared to a muddy hole in the ground.
Potentially sacrilegious words there, Fievil. No comment? The Shard weapon had remained silent since my soul visit, even if I could still feel them, so I wasn't panicking... yet.
"Ezrah, stay with him while we try to find something that might fit a quintuple extra large," a chuckling satyr said while pointing at the one who'd had to move Fievil. The other two vacated the room, leaving me with Ezrah as the younger satyr leveraged all his hoof Strength to get my muddy legs up on the couch. With a gasp of air, the man took a seat opposite the couch.
"How are you feeling, sir?"
"Like I fell off a building," I managed, feeling the Exhaustion Afflictions settling deep into my bones.
"It was very impressive," Ezrah said, nodding his head in a frenzy. "Normally we only get to see displays like that when the Shaman is working on some big spell. The Clansmen don't much like us 'stable muckers'. They sure don't complain when the steaks end up on their plates, thought!"
"Speaking of steaks..." I started, turning my head slightly to catch an eye roll from the young satyr.
"The insect bars will help you recover, sir. I'm sorry about the debuff but neither Teion nor Berton are here today. They are the Shaman's grandkids and our best healers by far!"
"I'll need to get my friend in touch with them then. He's quite a good healer and having someone to patch you up is key in this mess." I gestured vaguely towards the ceiling, Ezrah clearly catching on my meaning. If it wasn't for Sam, our success on the surface would have been dubious at best.
I let the eager satyr spill the beans on how things had been around his Faction ever since the Hog Parade, taking note of the positive tone towards the Zebelos and more than one bit of praise for our own group. He mentioned being enchanted by Jolene's display during the Mage Dance, and had the statement not been filled with a fairly technical analysis of her use of mana I might have needed to do more than squint my eyes at the youth. He was very thorough in his explanations. Several minutes later, the laughing satyr returned with a tray of non-descript beige and brown bars on a tray along with the older goatee'd human. A meek slime followed at his heel, but I immediately waved Blobby closer.
The slime deposited his saddle to the side before leaning into my free hand. I reassured it that nothing it had done was its fault; in all honesty I shouldn't have brought the slime so far outside its usual territory. Despite that, the gelatinous creature didn't seem to hold any grudges and merely settled in around my arm, propping it from where I'd been resting it on the ground. As sizeable as the couch was, it hadn't been designed for people with the width I had grown to be.
"Your slime is very well behaved," the older man said with a gentle smile.
"It's a bit of a trouble maker, but Blobby means well," I responded, patting the slime once more as it quivered with happiness.
"Fantastic. Now, about your treatment... this should help top you up," the older man said, walking towards me with the tray of bars and sitting on the air without a single shake of the thighs. I did a double blink at the strange move, but he merely explained it away by saying it was one of his mutations. I focused on the man, raising an eyebrow appreciatively at what the Implant spat out.
That certainly explains any oddities with his Traits. Maybe he's like those trap-jaw ants I read about? Also, I must have heard his name somewhere for the Implant to attach it, maybe while I was half out of it? Shaking the thoughts off, I realized the man had continued speaking. "--calory dense and will help to improve your innate regeneration. Considering you are a giant in the Sixth Threshold, I'd recon... four or five hours before you can walk out of here?"
"I think Sharon had other plans for me," I said, grimacing at the idea of doing anything other than relaxing for the rest of the day. However, if she was able to help with figuring out why Fievil was unresponsive then I could endure a sore day.
"Ah, right. My mother and her plans," Dyonte said wistfully. "Don't feel obligated. Other than forcing her to break a sweat today, what happened to you isn't uncommon. The uncommon factor comes in the form of your magic not being Life or Air."
"Yes, it certainly seemed like people were quite prepared," I said, recalling the last few moments before I got ejected from the tower.
"Anyhow, Sharon will be here in the building for the rest of the day. Restroom across the hallway works, if you need it, and Ezrah will bring you another tray of bars in two or three hours. I'm just next door if you need anything," Dyonte said. With one fluid motion he twitched and was on his feet in an instant. The two satyr left the room, their 'boss' pausing at the door while they moved off to whatever they'd been doing prior. "For the record, I appreciate what you are doing Mr. Terrigan. While my mother likes to complain, it is easy to discern the true ones from the grumbly ones. Your efforts to change things are... needed here in Ocala. But I'll leave it at that. I'll make sure she doesn't come poking around for you at least until after lunch."
The door shut with a quiet click, dropping the light back to a slime goop tube placed on the ceiling. My mind immediately started to drift. While it was true that I could fall asleep if I blinked wrong, I didn't feel it was the time for it. The number of breakthroughs I'd gone through since waking up was too many. The success of my purposeful absorption of Dregs, the relationship between mana and elementals, Fievil's growing coalescence and now the ability to trigger Skills using the Shard Weapon's reserves rather than my own.
Almost as if an after thought, I started to trickle mana into the axe-hammer. The mole Totem stirred, but didn't otherwise react to the motion and took that as an immediate positive. I had only managed to recover half of my mana since taking a dive but I worked to balance my regeneration so half went to my pool and the rest went into Fievil. It was like trying to clench individual abs with different intensities and put mana muscles I rarely worked to use.
Each time I lost the thread of concentration, it took less time to grasp it again and it lasted longer. Despite the strange discomfort that came with that effort, it left me excited. The more I learned about magic, souls and crafting the more I realized there was to learn; it was the best kind of vicious cycle.
Along with that realization, I connected another series of dots that had been aggravating me since Attuning to Earth magic. Containment versus Refinement. I was sure now that it was a 'chicken or the egg' type quandary. With a large mana pool came the capability to cast more, but with a higher regeneration you could cast more often. However, the nature of the elements lent themselves to different uses. Each of my Skills, with perhaps the exception of
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Just the idea of keeping multiple of my Skills channeled twisted the mental model I'd crafted for my Skill use into a pretzel of arcane proportions.
The question, now that I was fiddling with mana outside of my own, was which direction I should take my progress. The better question is which path is likely to keep you alive through the fights with the Aberrants. If I was being honest with myself... I didn't see an end to the task of the Dreg Warriors. The scale in which the Entities operated, just the idea of a multiplanar existence hurt to consider. So, while once more being honest with myself, how far could I reach effectively.
Already, dealing with the scope of Ocala had me pulling my hair. Part of it, of course, was because the Aberrants had clearly been more circumspect about how they worked in the city. The other was simply how... washed out... personal interactions became on a grander scale. I wasn't some grand politician, but I did feel capable of championing my ideals without faltering. Even my crisis in Wildwood after the pyrrhic victory at Summerfield hadn't stopped me from working to better the lives of other people.
With all of those things thrown in the mix what I wanted got washed away. I wasn't self righteous enough to take a selfless sacrificing path forward, since I would pick the people I cared about over those anonymous around me every time. I'd also come to realize that didn't make me a bad person, even if it made me 'clash' with people on similar paths.
Coming to Ocala had made me realize how much wonder there was in discovery, but if we survived the Aberrant's plans for this city... I didn't think I would be hopping right onto one of the caravans I'd heard mention came and went to the cities farther north. It would be a poor bet on not encountering something that needed rescuing, even if it wasn't related to the Aberrants. That I knew I wouldn't be able to ignore. For better or worse, as soon as someone presented me with a problem I could wrap my head around it was time to start bashing my head against it.
"God this tastes awful," I mumbled, chewing the insect bar as I contemplated the future. "Why is it so moist!?"
Without anyone other than a slime and a semi-sophont weapon the comment went unanswered, but Blobby did pluck one for consumption when it thought I wasn't looking. You can have it buddy. With the grounding moment slipping through my fingers, I sighed and laid deeper into the couch. A clear solution hadn't presented itself, but at the very least I had questions I could ask myself moving forward.
"Like how to be a better wizard," I said, chuckling to myself. I finally let my mind go blank other than to keep the stream of regenerated mana flowing into Fievil. I wasn't sure how much I'd been able to muster before sleep did take me.
--+--
"You aren't a wizard, you nimrod," Sharon stated flatly.
The three-- six if you counted the Totems lurking within our Items-- of us sat in an office higher up in the hospital overlooking part of the city as rain continued to fall outside. The sleep and protein dense bars had done marvels with my recovery and while I still had the Overhealed Affliction, it wasn't Over-Overhealed. Now it only felt like I'd fallen two stories instead of the seven plus I actually had. Ezrah had indeed come by with more insect bars for lunch and a summon to the Shaman's office that he felt unable to not deliver despite Dyonte's insistence. I'd reassured the young satyr and the Shaman's son that it was alright before following Ezrah up to Sharon's office with an optimistic outlook. Until she'd shattered it, of course.
"I can already see you have a rebuttal building up in that rock brain of yours. You aren't a wizard because you are a warlock, Ronan. Us Shard users at the very least, and from my understanding so are you and your so-called 'Dreg Warriors'."
The woman's equality flat explanation brought me up short, mouth half open to deliver just that rebuttal and instead setting my brain spinning. Skills were definitely granted by the Entities rather than self-made like the Gifts pretty much everyone on the surface had to form themselves. While it was true that there were a few exceptions, like
We barely had leverage to call ourselves sorcerers, with what we'd been able to massage our Skills into, but that was the pedantic answer.
"This is just giving me a headache," I grumbled instead of voicing any of the mess that had run by my mind.
"As well it should," the archaic woman nodded, leaning back in her recliner with not a single ounce of concern. The lines of her face were deeper than in the morning, and considering the display I'd seen from her it was possible she'd used up some of those reserves she said she had to build up in order to use magic.
"Are you alright?" I asked, frowning when the woman hesitated to answer. After a pause, and a curious flash of light from her staff, she sighed and rubbed temples.
"No, Ronan. To be perfectly honest, with you-- shut up, you were the one that told me I should open up more it's not up to you who I do that with," Sharon snapped, wagging a finger at her Shard staff. Clearly a mental conversation there. Is this what it feels like for people without Implants when we aren't circumspect with the comm-plant?
"Uhh, Sharon?"
"One second," she said, snapping out a finger while glaring at her staff for a solid minute. "Right, where was I? Ah, yes, to be perfectly honest... no, I'm not alright."
"You are just going to leave at that? That's probably the worst way of answering a question with a clear hint to explain the resulting answer!" I didn't think calling her out on her avoidance would work, but just like many things regarding the realities of the world... I'd been wrong."
"Yeah, you are right. I suppose if I am going to drag you into this fight then I need to be clearer with you. However..." Static built in the air, and sweat immediately broke my skin as the humidity rose in the room. "If you breathe a word of anything you heard here I will haunt your ass. Understood?"
Instead of using words that might come out snarkier than I meant, I simply nodded.
"I mentioned how I gather power as a non-Fallen. As a matter of fact, were it not for my staff I warrant I would have been snuffed at least two decades ago, Thresholds or not. Since my last run in with one of the Anemoi, the rate at which my energy recovers has been decreasing. I'm not sure if it's a factor of my age, the corkscrewed relationship I've built with my Totems or something else but I don't think I got much more 'Storm Ruling' I can manage in the coming years." She waved a hand in the direction of her staff, alluding to the name I wasn't sure she knew I'd already read from the Implant... somehow. Did the Entities communicate with her Totems?
"You haven't told your Faction?" I asked, pushing past the question not because it wasn't important but because the information she was giving was paramount for the future. Considering how old she was, I didn't consciously think that she was going to be able to keep a hold on the local weather as well as she had been doing. Subconsciously, I'd already started to think of the woman as a feature of the region especially when one could link her to some of the major diversions of hurricanes that had threatened the people of Wildwood-- I'd checked as much with Jolene.
"Oh, my children know but they know not to spread it around," Sharon said, waving her hand dismissively. "Obviously not much that can be done, but unfortunately my husband had to have an entirely different predisposition than the winds or rivers, so my family will not be able to keep the staff."
"Is that why you wanted to train me? You mentioned Sargon also had a Shard Weapon, but you don't like him?"
"Originally I wanted to use you as a pair of hands while I hold things together," Sharon admitted bluntly. I couldn't help but feel a stab right to my ego.
"No, please, go on," I shot back, frowning.
"Petulant, but I suppose it's expected from someone that's seen beyond reality. I quickly discovered I needed to change tack. Ronan, let me put it like this." The woman leaned forward, jumping off her recliner with more force than I had expected and grasping my chin in her weathered fingers. A pulse from Fievil stirred the weapon before Sharon's staff suppressed it and I felt my body buffeted by unseen winds of mana as the Arcane Sinks of both Shards overlapped. With a flex of my own mana, spell chains formed around me. They hugged my body barely an inch off the surface and leaking mud and sand under the combining elements. Despite that, they allowed me to rise to my feet.
Surprisingly, the Shaman still clung to my chin even as her feet left the ground when I'd attempted to tower over her. Her voice hissed out of her lips. "Use it. The thing that lets you see beyond and understand. I know you have it. I'm not sure it's the same as mine, but it is the only explanation. The growth, the perspective, the parallelism between your power and mine. Show me another true Shaman, Ronan Terrigan!"
Her nails broke through my Limestone Skin, and the moment a drop of my Slurry Ichor made contact with her fingers the world swirled chaotically.