They started lining up the awakening stones to see which they should do first. They all luckily had the Outworlder ability to simply absorb the stones rather than doing a ritual each time. Gerald appeared at the doorway and coughed loudly.
“Sirs, Ma’ams. A rather flustered magic society official has just appeared at the gate and begged me tae interrupt you immediately.”
“Thankyou Gerald, it must be Rueben, please show him through.” Lucy said.
“Rueben?” James asked with a raised eyebrow.
“The magic society guy who wants to study us a bit.”
“We learn their names now? I thought anyone who wanted to study us got told to rod off.”
“Rueben has leant me a lot of study material in exchange for nothing more than what is really an extensive questionnaire. He’s a nice man, be nice.” Teddy and Kyra hid smiles as they saw the big man being scolded by his wife.
The gangly scholar made his way into the room. He had a vortex tornado behind him swirling away with scrolls and books an other random items in it, they couldn’t feel anything from it and it didn’t effect the room, as if it was a hologram.
“Thankyou Mrs Lucy, after last time the acolyte of knowledge has refined his timing a little, my mother will be disappointed as I was meant to be having lunch with her but this promises to be worth an apology catch up meal.”
“We were just discussing the order in which to do them, only out of what would be easier or more interesting.” Kyra started. “I think we get mine out the way as I only have one to do.”
“Yes, yes, yes. I’m happy to observe whichever order you would like to do them, I don’t want to interfere or change what you would do.” Reuben answered as he was laying equipment around the room to monitor the ambient magic while they carried on. He threw a recording crystal up and nodded that he was ready.
The order that they had decided was Kyra, then James, then Teddy and Lucy going last with her fancy gifted awakening stone. Kyra pulled out her awakening stone.
Item: [Awakening Stone of the Mist] (Un-common)
An awakening stone filled with eddies of mist. (consumable, awakening stone).
Requirements: Unawakened essence ability.
Effect: Awakens an essence ability.
You are able to absorb [Awakening Stone of the Mist].
Absorb Y/N?
She gave her mental assent and the cube seemed to explode into mist from her hand, it then started to absorb into her body through her skin, sneaking under her sleeves and around her collar.
She had shared her interface with the others and they saw what she got.
Ability: [Clean living] (Life)
Special ability (cleanse)
Base cost: Varied
Cool-down: Nil
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): Creates an area of purified air around the caster. Allies within the area of effect have instances of poisons and toxins cured. Mana cost is increased for amount of afflictions being cleansed.
You have awakened the life essence ability [Clean living]. You have awakened 5 of 5 Life essence abilities.
You have awakened all Life essence abilities. Linked attribute [Recovery] will advance in conjunction with lowest-rank Life essence ability.
“Well thats certainly useful, a cleanse power was missing from my retinue. I’ll be able to clear out most of the clinic waiting room just by walking through! Should help it level nicely.”
“Constantly thinking about the volunteer work! How about you can now make sure your husband stays healthy all the time!” Teddy whinged.
Lucy passed Reuben a note with the interface information copied out and he bowed so low they thought he might hit his head on the table.
James pulled out his awakening stone of The Ranger.
“I must say I am very excited what an Animage specialist will get from this stone!” Reuben interjected and leant forward even more.
James gave Lucy an uncertain look, still unsure of being studied then he carried on, giving his mental assent to the stone. It melted in his hand and twisted into several long sinuous ribbons that wrapped up and around his arm. They slithered their way up his arm until they got to the shoulder, then they reared and struck at his neck then absorbing in. James flinched, no one could blame him, having an inanimate object come to life and attack you was mildly distressing to say the least.
Ability: [Snake sorcerer] (Animagus)
Special attack (poison)
Base cost: Low mana
Cool-down: Nil
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): The user can summon snakes that will be cast towards an enemy over a moderate distance. The bite of the snake does a mild amount of damage with the possibility to inflict poison.
“Thank god its not a bow and arrows.” James said.
He then used his power, a snake appeared around his fist and wrist, a thin snake in orange and blue, different to earth snakes it had a ruffle down its back like a long floppy fin. James looked out into the garden and flung his arm, the snake flew like an arrow from a bow at the tree in the centre. As it struck it vanished in a rainbow puff. As he looked back around the table he saw a lot of white knuckles relaxing.
“Looks like no one is a fan of snakes then?”
Teddy gave an involuntary shiver then started laying out his awakening stones, he put the two reaper stones together then the stones of The Call.
“Rueben, any advice on which order to do these in?”
“Well Mr Mitchell I certainly didn’t come to interfere, I feel very privileged that you have allowed me in your home at all. If I were to suggest I would say the two stones of the Reaper first, I am right in thinking you have two slots in the Dark essence? Good, this would be the ideal match for these two stones. Completely unfounded by the way, why these went out of fashion, people started to think there was an implied contract with the order of the Reaper for accepting these stones when thats simply not true.”
The others looked at each other with a mild wariness.
“No one said anything about contracts with the cult of mysterious assassins, just that some folk who took them turned up dead.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Oh no I wouldn’t be worried, lots more people accepted the stones and nothing bad has happened to them! The powers they unlocked have proven to be some of the most useful and exotic powers there can be.”
Teddy didn’t look completely convinced but picked up the first stone. It absorbed in a rather mundane way, coating his skin and disappearing.
Ability: [Slippers of the Shade] (Dark)
Special ability
Base cost: Nil
Cool-down: Nil
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): The user makes no sound when making contact with the ground or objects. Can extend this effect to others by touch for an ongoing moderate mana amount.
The second was much more attention getting. Tendrils with tiny fingered hands on the end started clawing over one another out of the cube until his whole body was covered. When his whole body was covered it jerked him once or twice towards his shadow on the ground then it too disappeared into his skin.
“Fascinating.” Reuben said.
Ability: [Hands of the Reaper] (Dark)
Special attack (poison, constriction, execute)
Base cost: Moderate mana
Cool-down: Low
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): The user can summon the hands of the Reaper from nearby shadows, these will attack a single target attempting to pin them in place and drag them down. Targets will suffer [poison] and [constrict] damage when under the effect. For a High mana cost can be used as an execute ability. The Hands of the Reaper will pull the victim out of existence with transcendent damage that escalates with the amount of damage already inflicted on the target.
“I think I speak for everyone when I say we do not need a demonstration of that second power, that sounds scary as shit.” James said.
“Again, Fascinating! This is right in line with powers previously awakened by the Reaper stones, aggressive and utility.”
The two stones of The Call absorbed easily enough, straight into Teddy’s hand and felt unpleasantly hot on the way up. He was pleasantly surprised with both, for such cheap common stones they had given him incredible powers.
Ability: [Unleash the void] (Void)
Summon (ritual, summon)
Base cost: High mana.
Cool-down: 1 hour
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): Summon a portal to the void which will unleash terrible creatures from outside our reality for a short while to attack the summoners enemies. The void itself will have a gravitational effect on enemies pulling them towards it and damaging them if they resist.
Ability: [Dimensional warrior] (Dimension)
Summon (ritual, summon)
Base cost: High mana.
Cool-down: 1 hour
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): Summon a warrior to fight for the summoner for a short duration. Type of warrior will differ from summon to summon. The warrior will either use rapid weak attacks on multiple enemies for a very brief duration or one large attack on a single target up to the value of the summoners highest damage attack. The warrior will mirror the summoners strength and defence.
Teddy instinctually knew that unleashing void beasts in the house would not be a good idea and that a dimensional warrior would not be best pleased to fight a training dummy.
“Looks like I’ve got a few to try out live next time we see some bad guys.”
“I genuinely can’t wait to see what those can do.” James said.
Summonings and familiars differed in quite obvious ways. A summoned familiar was formed by providing the ingredients for a physical being then inviting an entity from the astral to fill it. Bonded familiars are real creatures of the world that, with the right powers, could be invited to be bonded. Summonings were short term creations, still embodied by spirits of the astral but they were very limited in duration and a different being might be summoned each time.
The fact that Teddy had gained his shadow lantern familiar was lucky, the short time that he had been in the world he had picked up a skill book on ritual magic which was a pre-requisite to being able to get an ability to summon a familiar. The bonus two summons he had just gained were invaluable. Although they both cost high mana they were force multipliers in battle and gave an edge. Most summons required a circle of material to be laid out to be enacted, James needed a circle of compost for one or a circle of leaves for the other, Kyra needed powdered diamond dust - the non magical variety being low cost in this world. They both saved time on the Summonings with their storage powers, Kyra could store her diamond dust as circles and James’ storage power animals would lay the materials for him. For Teddy’s new powers they came from dimension and void, so either a slash in the air or a thrown ball that formed a void in reality.
Lucy was setting her stones on the table, she was rotating the order and skipping them over each other. Almost like she was juggling them on the table. She had the awakening stone of Avatar, the highest rarity and they were all thinking it was guaranteed to get her another summoning power. Her other stones were a stone of The Chamber and a stone of Midnight. They agreed they should do the highest rarity last, giving the most options over three essence abilities; Illusion, mind and vision.
She started with the awakening stone of The chamber.
Ability: [Telepathy] (Mind)
Special ability
Base cost: Low mana, increasing to high with distance.
Cool-down: Nil
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): Can initiate mental communication either with those in immediate eye line or by contacts list.
“Contacts list?” James asked.
Lucy realised the others couldn’t see what was on her interface and it wasn’t a shareable item.
“Looks like everyone I’ve ever spoken to. I can change the sorting, It’s defaulted to distance, I guess because of the associated mana cost with contacting people further away.”
She scrolled to the bottom and could see her parents names at the very bottom, amongst other friends and family from the other world that were listed as ‘unavailable’. She suddenly felt a pang of home sickness she hadn’t felt in a long time.
James saw this on his wife’s face and tried to distract her.
“Awakening stone of The Chamber? How did you get telepathy from that?”
“Water link chamber I guess, should’ve figured it would be a communication power, I only picked it up because I couldn’t decide and it was such a good price! Someone said that they were popular stones for the rarity.”
“At least it gives you an ability to silently communicate with people outside our interface. It’d be interesting to see if it works with your astral projection power.”
At this suggestion from James Reuben perked his head up from where he was writing copious notes.
“Please inform me if that works! The magic society is constantly on the lookout for how different essence combinations and racial gift evolutions work together.”
They had to curb his enthusiasm before he insisted that she astral project immediately and find a random person to try it on. As Lucy wanted to get the rest of her stones over with. The next was the awakening stone of midnight.
Ability: [Enter Sandman] (Illusion)
Special ability
Base cost: High mana.
Cool-down: 5 min
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): When activated enables the caster to cause a moment illusion in front of an enemy. This illusion is what is most likely to terrify the target causing them to panic.
“Huh, thats weird, the spell to activate it is ‘Hush’, thats pretty spooky.”
Teddy was trying to look as in obtrusive as possible so that she didn’t try it out on him. Lucy eyed him slyly then shouted ‘Boo!’ Into his mind with her new telepathy power. Everyone around the table looked in concern when he jumped and almost fell out of his chair backwards.
“Not funny Lu, don’t use your scary mind witch powers on me and I wont have freaky shadow arms pin you down while creatures we can’t imagine from another dimension take a nibble at you.”
“I think that calls for a mirage PvP match!” James said.
Teddy and Lucy kept eye contact and nodded.
“It would be interesting to see if you can get those spells off before you’re impeded by nightmares.” Reuben said.
They all looked at him and realised what a bad idea it would be.
“I don’t think I want to do that to you, even in a mirage chamber.” Lucy said.
“No me neither, lets just stick to you mentally messing up the bad guys and I’ll make sure they get to the Reaper the short way.”
They all leant in excitedly as Lucy absorbed her last awakening stone, the last one that any of them would ever absorb.
Ability: [Lechuza] (Vision)
Familiar (ritual, summon)
Base cost: Extreme mana, extreme stamina, extreme health.
Cool-down: None
Current rank: Iron 0 (00%)
Effect (iron): Summon an Owl Familiar to serve as a familiar. [Lechuza] has the ability to mirror some abilities of the summoner. Summoner can project themselves into the familiar from a moderate distance away to see through the summons eyes, have some control of the body and use some powers through the familiar. The body of the summoner is left unprotected during this time. When the summon is absorbed [Lechuza] can reflect most incoming physical damage.
“Lechuza? That’s the name it came with? Is that a common name over here?” James asked Reuben.
“No, It’s not one that I’ve heard of but the world is wide and I have only seen a part of it.”
Teddy had posed the question to his interface and shared with the others what he had found.
“So it’s a legend of a creepy nightmare bird from our world. This interface is amazing! It’s better than Google. The various events all centre around a scary mind witch character.”
They all turned to look at Lucy.
“Hey I’m not just a scary mind witch, I can blow things up too!”
They made sure that Reuben had copies of all the descriptions, he asked them some more questions about the experience they had just gone through unlocking their powers and bade him farewell.
“So… Shopping?” Kyra said. “We need new summoning materials for Lucy, we could see if they’re cheaper here or in Vitesse but I vote we get them here so Lu has as much time as she can with her new familiar, even if it is a crazy, creepy witch lady turned into an owl. But we should definitely be on the next boat to Vitesse as soon as we can, that’s where the good shopping is, then we come back and start really training as a team using the Greenstone area to grind?