Greed entered his heart as Jasper quickly scanned the box.
Select (1) of the following spells:
VoidSpeaker - Allows one to summon and interrogate the ghost of the recently deceased. While the spell is active, you are able to understand the speech of the ghost, regardless of the language spoken. Cost: 1000 spirit
Lamentation - Let the living hear the cries of the dead and tremble. For two minutes, summon a rift in the void to let all hear the wailing of the dead. Provides a 10% debuff to the highest stat of enemies in earshot. Cost: 500 essence
Equalizer - As the hand of Kasdael, it is your job to protect the goddess’ interests both within and without the Void, but there will always be those who are stronger than you. For five minutes, this spell will draw on the strength of the spirits of the void to equalize the gap between you and a mortal opponent. Cost: can only be cast once per month.
Veil of the Void - Draw upon the power of the void to veil yourself from the eyes of others. Cost: 50 essence per second
For a change, he wanted them all. Well, maybe not the VoidSpeaker that much; cool name aside, Jasper wasn’t exactly dying to talk to the dead. Frankly, he found the whole idea a bit icky, a little too close to a necromancer class for comfort. But despite the inherent ick factor, he recognized the spell’s potential usefulness nonetheless. Who knows what they might have been able to learn if he’d been able to interrogate that assassin after the duel? At the very least, they’d probably have learned how many more assassination attempts to expect.
But even if he wasn’t completely sold on VoidSpeaker, the other three were definitely up his alley. Lamentation was an interesting spell for a number of reasons; a 10% penalty to strength for a warrior or inspiration for a mage could potentially swing a fight in Jasper’s direction. But the best part of the spell was that it didn’t seem to have any limit on how many people could be affected as long as they were in earshot. In short, it was the type of spell that could affect an entire section of a battlefield which, with the war looming in his mind, made it an extremely attractive option.
Yet, the Equalizer was perhaps even better. It was, as far as Jasper could tell, a spell of the same caliber as Hand of Judgment, an ‘ace’ that could completely flip the odds of a battle, even if, like the Hand of Judgment, it could only be used once per month. On the one hand, the limited uses made Jasper slightly more reluctant to pick it, but he supposed an argument could made it in the other direction as well; since Hand of Judgment could only be used once a month, it would be nice to have a second trump card in his back pocket.
The final option, Veil of the Void, wasn’t quite as flashy, but it, too, had its appeal. The usefulness of invisibility was hard to overstate - whether it involved vanishing in the middle of a battle, sneaking up on a foe, or infiltrating an enemy camp. But at 50 essence per second… Jasper quickly calculated the cost in his head; with roughly 11,000 points of essence right now, he could only power the spell for a touch under 4 minutes. Useful but limited. Plus my skills aren’t really geared toward the ‘silent and deadly’ style of an assassin.
With some regret, he decided against Veil of the Void and, after another moment of consideration, crossed out VoidSpeaker as well, leaving the choice between Lamentation and Equalizer. Do I prefer a spell that I can always use as long as I have essence or something that I can only use occasionally, but could save my ass against a stronger opponent?
It was a tough choice, but as he thought of the many times Ophan had saved him - against Nabul, the Dorēsah, Captain Dannûl, and most recently, against the assassin of Mūt-Lais - he realized just how often he’d relied on the Hand of Judgment. Hoping he wasn’t making a mistake, he selected Equalizer and closed the window.
All that was left now was to assign his stat points. With 26 levels to assign, Jasper had 78 points, more than enough to make a significant swing in any one stat, but that didn’t make the choice any easier.
For now, Inspiration and Willpower remained the most important of his stats, as the majority of his spells relied on essence, but he had a growing repertoire of spells now that relied on spirit instead, which drew on endurance and intuition. He debated dropping most of his points in there, equalizing his spirit essence reservoirs, but there was a third option to consider as well - strength.
While Jasper knew he would never be able to match a warrior blow-for-blow, he’d often found himself relying on his glaive once his magical reserves ran low. But the physical strength of the warriors he’d faced recently had been simply overwhelming; he could barely even hold onto his weapon against men like Captain Dannûl and the assassin, let alone bring them to bear. Is it worth investing more in a stat that doesn’t directly benefit my class?
When playing a game, it was almost always beneficial to min-max your stats, but here Jasper had to worry about survival. While resurrection was theoretically possible - as he knew too well - it was far from assured, and even the most favored of the gods were unlikely to survive more than a few trips to the void. Strength gives me more health too, he reminded himself, although he knew that it was a weak argument as endurance also fed health, and better yet, would juice his spirit stat.
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Reluctantly, he decided to forgo putting points in strength and split them between endurance, inspiration, and willpower - choosing endurance over intuition as the stat fed both health and spirit.
Jasper Welles
Health 8000
Spirit 8000
Essence 13560
Heritage(s)
Dayyāmmūt Djinn
Watchman of Aldāru
Level: 149
Level up: x0
Hand of Kas̆dael
Level: 50
Level up: x0
Stats
Racial Traits
Class Abilities
Class Abilities
Strength 75
Scion of Flames
Shooting Star
Scales of Justice
Endurance 125
The Broken Shackle
Seraph Burst
Scourge of Despair
Vision 60
Maṣṣāru (Dayyāmmūt)
Eternal Night II
Hand of Judgment
Inspiration 171
Unlocked
Fiery Shackles II
Punishing Hand
Willpower 168
Locked
Into the Valley of Death
Circle of Forgiveness
Intuition 75
Locked
Heart Stopper (Undead)
Purge
Locked
Flame Charge
Equalizer
He took a final look at his stats, delaying the moment he’d been dreading ever since he awoke back in the void a few seconds longer, before closing the window with a sigh. “I guess I’m done,” he said with a grimace. “Anything else before I go?”
“Do you want me to look for her?”
Jasper paused, surprised by Kas̆dael’s offer. “Is that even possible?”
“It won’t be easy,” she warned. “Arallu ̂is not my domain, and I cannot abandon my responsibilities here to search for her, but I might know someone who can help.”
The pain he’d thought long-buried surfaced, the raw, oozing ache that had torn in his soul the day he’d first seen that barren patch of dirt where she’d been buried when it had finally sunk in that she was truly gone. Can I really put myself through that again? He dismissed the question the moment he thought of it. It was absurd; he would do anything to have her back again. Anything. “Yes, I’d like that,” he replied stiffly.
Kas̆dael smiled lightly, and pulled him into her embrace, readying her fist for the blow that would crush his ribcage. “Then for your sake, I shall look. All I ask is that you stop avoiding me.”
“If you find her, I’ll come here every day,” he whispered.
“Don’t make promises you won’t keep,” she laughed, “or I might just hold you to them.” Before he could respond, she plunged her fist into his chest. There was a moment of agonizing pain as his bones splintered, his flesh split, and her fingers wrapped around his throbbing heart. Then she pulled it out and, in a final crescendo of pain, he vanished from the void.
----------------------------------------
“Yuck!” Kas̆dael tossed the heart onto the ground with a grimace. It hit the pale marble with a wet thlop, sending splatters of blood across the tile like a Pollock original. Oops. With her hands freed, she cast a spell that banished it all - the blood, the heart, and every other questionable liquid that had violated her person and her temple. I don’t think he realizes how much I dislike this myself. She might be a goddess of death, after all, but gore was not part of her domain.
With a final grimace, she rose from the throne and headed deeper into her temple. With Jasper gone, silence reigned supreme in the halls of S̆uhruru, a silence so profound that not even the patter of her feet against the frigid stone tile dared break it.
She left the great basilica behind, and headed for the throne room, an idea already taking root in her mind. Kas̆dael had told Jasper the truth; she wasn’t going to waltz into Arallu, even if she was fairly certain that most of the gods of the realm were already dead, but that didn’t mean all of them were.
Her thoughts turned back to the strange, savage woman who had helped defeat Yas̆gah. Over here, ‘Barbartu’ had been weak enough to nearly escape Kas̭dael’s notice, but by the end, she had realized the woman had a spark of the divine around her. A diminished one, true, but not nearly as badly diminished as Jasper’s father. Unless she’d missed her guess, the woman was a minor divinity in the realm of Arallû and, judging from the offer she’d made to bring Jasper back to his world, one that retained enough power to be useful.
Reaching the throne room, she circled around the colossal seat and paused in the small enclave behind it. A large silver basin protruded from the wall, filled from brim to brim with crystal-clear water which, despite the frigid temperature of the void, remained free from ice. Placing her hands on both sides of the basin, she leaned over it and breathed deeply.
Ripples spread across the water quickly, rebounding off the sides and crashing into each other until the water resembled a storm-wracked sea. And then, when the waves had reached their apogee, she plunged her hand into it.
As the essence poured out of her the waves calmed, not that Kas̆dael noticed. Her eyes remained closed as she focused her mind on her prey. Barbartu.
She knew immediately that the name was not a true one. If it had been, she had no doubt she would have immediately found who she was looking for, but instead, the spell returned nothing, nothing but the faintest hint of resonance. She grinned slightly, glad that the years the woman had spent living under that name had made enough of a mark on her soul to identify her, and focused harder. She closed in on the soul like a predator tracking its prey until she cornered it.
Lamas̆tu. It was as she expected; the woman was a minor divinity, her soul still alight with the spark of creation that only gods could bear, but her power was too weak to be any threat to Kas̆dael.
Not worried about offending her, she clamped down hard on the creature’s soul and, ignoring its struggles, dragged it toward her. The silence of her hall was broken as the screeching woman burst out of the silver basin, coughing, spluttering, and cursing. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Unperturbed, Kas̆dael simply smiled. “I need you to look for someone.”