James left the temple of the healer. The meeting had gone well, the church was used to discreet matters and he had requested a private room to meet a priest, the Mitchells were still meant to be keeping a low profile in Greenstone until things cooled down and the seven foot man found it hard to keep a low profile. The church had read the scroll from Boko, asked James a few questions and double checked the location of the desert dwelling and then said they would send the right person as soon as they could. They gave him a few textbooks to take back to Kyra to aid her in the meantime.
He had borrowed a travelling robe from the temple, he was picking long ginger hairs off it as it was previously a Leonid priest’s. He joined a supply cart that was leaving the temple heading out of town, sat on the back curled up in the cart he drew no attention. The cart was actually going in the direction he needed so he took the opportunity to take a ride while waiting for his Inner Beast power to come off cooldown.
He spent his time chatting to the acolytes of the church of healing who were also slumming it in the back, the cart was on its way out of town to do the rounds in the local settlements. They were a cheerful bunch that enjoyed their work, they were telling him about the villages they were headed to and the kinds of people they met there. Both adventurers and healers enjoyed being welcomed to wherever they went, a side effect of either killing the monsters bothering people or taking care of the injuries caused by monsters. The healers got invited into the private lives of the the people though, the intimacy of healing them engendered a trust into the community that accepted the priests and acolytes as confidents.
They arrived at the first village outside the city. They were warmly greeted by what looked like all the village coming out to see them. James wanted to get back as soon as possible to see the others but he got caught up in the joy of the Healer’s people turning up to the village. After a while he caught himself unloading crates into the village infirmary and figured why not, the specialist healer was making their own way, they had given tomes for Kyra but they said they would be of limited use until the priest got there, he was actually in no rush. He agreed to stay the night. The village rolled out trestle tables and big cooking spits, the church supplied the food and it was one big cookout.
The next morning James agreed to help them out until halfway to the next village. The road curved and at the apex was the closest the cart could take him to his journey back. An hour or so after trundling out of the village he was mid conversation, a group of young pretty female acolytes were teaming up against one of the young men who had been flirted with all night by one of the older village women.
“I kept telling her she’s got the wrong church, if she wants that kind of acolyte she need the church of fertility, or the church of lust the amount she was pushing.”
“Oh come on, don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy the attention.”
They all fell about laughing at the young mans indignation. They all noticed however when James sat upright, scanning the brush at the side of the road on the path ahead intently.
“Shh, shh. Everyone shut up. James what can you see?”
“It’s what I can’t, there’s no wildlife to that area. All the area around that bog has no animals or creatures, but I can’t sense anything in the water.”
They all looked, the wagon was about to roll right past the water ahead. So it stopped.
“Well it’s probably a safe bet there’s a monster in there.”
He stood up and looked forward, one of the girls in the back of the wagon let out an involuntary squeal as a snake slithered out the top of James vambrace. It had the fluted ruffle down the top and blue and yellow markings, it tasted the air with its forked tongue and snaked around the armoured arm to pool in his hand. Before the wagon got to the bend with the bog. He flung his arm out and the snake flew through the air, hitting the middle of the pond. As it arced through the air it had spat flickers of electric. The pond erupted in chain lightning. The reeds at the edge blackened and smoked, a frog came to the surface convulsing; unhappily collateral. The main event appeared. Rising hissing from the water a giant eel with a great spiked mane. It’s tongue snaked out, it’s eyes bulging with pain. James was satisfied with the first use of his new vambrace power.
Item: [Vambrace of Menagerie] (iron rank [growth], legendary)
Armour that when developed will increase the effect of transformation powers.
This item is bound to you and cannot be used by anyone else.
Effect: When engraved by a magical armourer (or mystical tattooist’s with the necessary skills) will grant the wearer benefits to transformation powers. Benefits will be limited to size and skill of engraving. Once an engraving is in place it cannot be removed. Engravers must be at least equal rank to the item, higher rank engravers will produce a stronger effect.
Effect (Bear Claw): When making physical attacks with this item it will create a slashing effect that will cause the [Bleeding] condition to occur. Against targets that do not bleed extra damage of the resonating force type will be added.
Effect (Eagle wing): When making attacks that involve a wing it will sheathe the wing in metalled blades. The attack will be much stronger than without this item. Attacks will have resonating force, disruptive force and trace transcendent damage. Any transformation to wings will include these effects. Ranged effects will be augmented by this accessory. [This effect cannot be improve until silver-gold ascension but will still need upgrade materials per ritual of ascension]
Effect (Lightning): For a high mana cost imbue attacks with an electric effect. Small chance of paralysis and ongoing muscle spasms.
[Bleeding] (affliction, wounding, blood): Deals ongoing damage by causing or increasing blood loss. As a wounding effect, this condition absorbs or negates an amount of incoming healing, after which this affliction immediately ends.
Growth Conditions (bronze):
Bound user must be at least bronze rank.
4 kilograms of low grade (bronze rank) star-fall silver
100 bronze-rank iron quintessence gems
100 bronze-rank magic quintessence gems
100 bronze-rank animal based quintessence gems (per engraving)
[100 bear quintessence]
[100 wing quintessence]
[100 lightning quintessence]
1000 bronze rank spirit coins
Silver rank Artificer
Ritual of bronze ascension.
“Err Mr Mitchell?”
The leader of the expedition, a newly ranked up bronze on his first time leading the expedition.
“I don’t think anyone’s got any real direct combat powers, I assume you have this under control?”
“Yeh sure, I almost recognise what it is.”
One of the young men in the back piped up.
“It’s a viper eel. Low lying swap dweller. High end iron monster, high stealth very good at aura masking… you may have noticed that already. Strengths are stealth and high attack. Weakness are low health and vulnerable to poison.”
Everyone looked at him.
“I have an eidetic memory, comes in handy for monster cataloguing.”
James shrugged and turned back to the monster in the pond.
“Doesn’t like poison eh?”
He immediately started throwing hand over hand, snakes flying through the air. The eel thrashed, most of the snakes hit and caused damage before puffing into rainbow smoke, others latched on causing the poison damage, he even managed to throw another lightning imbued snake to tie up the monster in muscle spasms. He hopped off the cart which bounced quite a lot on its suspension now his weight was off. He released Koda to play with the big eel. As he walked out he got bombarded by messages.
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You are in the area of an allies [Cleansing wind] aura. Your [Spirit] attribute has been increased. Your base health and health regeneration have been increased.
You are in the area of an allies [Verdant growth] aura. Your [Power] attribute has been increased.
You are in the area of an allies [Healers breath] aura. Your health and mana regeneration are increased.
You are in the area of an allies [Bezoar stone] aura. Your resistance to poison is increased.
You are in the area of an allies [Karmic drain] aura. Attacks made on you by the enemy will drain a portion of their health to bestow upon you.
You are in the area of an allies [Snow wellspring] aura. Your attacks may be boosted by freezing damage. You receive ongoing mild healing.
You are in the area of an allies [Cleansing wind] aura. Your [Spirit] attribute has been increased. Your base health and health regeneration have been increased.
He had the overlapping auras of all of the occupants of the cart.
“That’s a lot of healing based auras.” He muttered to himself.
By the time he got to the monster it was already not looking well from the poison and the repeated shocks of lightning. He and Koda traded off diving in and distracting the monster while the other took hits at it. Between Koda’s huge claws and James bleeding and slashing effect from his vambrace they carved chunks off the monster. As the fight was winding down and the end was inevitable James became curious about the overlapping auras, he let the monster catch him, its huge jaws and long teeth biting into his upper left arm. He kept an eye on his interface and saw that his health barely moved, he could see the jaws in his arm but his health remained completely topped off. He gave the monster one more blow to the head and it was done. As the monster fell away he was hit with four different healing spells from the cart.
When he headed back to the cart with the rainbow smoke disappearing behind him the others wanted to know about his lightning powers, they had got to know him over the previous day and knew he had animal based powers. He showed them the design on the back of the vambrace, the section just above the elbow where the lightning had struck him. The lighting web damage had been worked into the image of a severe looking bird, it looked fierce, everything about it was spiky, the wings were un-aerodynamic in the amount they pointed all the way around. Even the bird’s head was spiky with triangular eyes and a long sharp beak. It was posed in front of the lightning damage and the bird had zig-zag lightning coming from the tip of each wing. The main body of the bird was made up of Charlie’s signature fourth stage crystal as a silvery-blue inlay.
He said goodbye to the healing expedition as they carried on, now slightly worried about them knowing they had no fighters, he consoled himself that with so many healing powers amongst them they could probably poke a monster to death eventually without any of them dying. He had shown off a little as they left, using his Inner Beast power to transform into the huge Thunderbird again to cover the distance back.
He rose into the air and climbed as high and as fast as he could. He winged his way over the thick delta, heading away from the roads to cut cross country, his animalistic mind not worrying about the remoteness of his journey.
As it turns out, that should have been a concern. After an hour or so he was smashed from the air by something much larger than himself. As he was already a huge bird of prey he couldn’t understand what had hit him from above. Although his Thunderbird transformation looked impressive it was still only an iron rank power, so as much as it looked powerful it was like picking up a badass mini gun to find out it shot air rifle pellets. He raced to the ground, injured and barely in control, he felt the aura of the thing that attacked him only as it was upon him and he felt how strong it was, it was definitely bronze rank, maybe even silver. As he understood instinctively the natural order of prey and predator he knew this was something that he did not want to fight, he just needed to run. He was hit twice again on the way down, the second time he had to give up his animal form to shrink out of the grip the deadly talons had on him. For the second time in two days he was in free fall, this time towards the dense delta. He flipped on his back in controlled descent to see what it was coming for him. It looked like a ginormous Pterodactyl with four wings, two on each side, its maw was wide with multiple rows of teeth, it had powerful back legs and short arms sat underneath the wings that looked too small to be useful for anything. He flung a few snakes the monsters way and flipped back over scanning the canopy of the trees to see where he was landing.
He hit the gap in the trees he was aiming for, his prehensile tail wrapping around a tree limb to catch him and slow him, turning his fall into forward momentum as he went straight into a run. The tree he had used exploded with the force of the monster hitting it. The behemoth tucked its wings and did its best to follow James. He was running for his life, jumping logs and ducking branches. The powerful monster smashed through it all, so intent on the chase. As the hunted, James didn’t want to waste any time trying to fight, he was injured from their clash already, he daren’t release Koda, he wouldn’t even the odds and he wouldn’t be able to keep up. He could see the trails the smaller animals used, the most efficient way through the dense vegetation. Every now and then the monster would take to the skies, make up the lost ground between them and strike like a thunderbolt, there were some very narrow misses and James was becoming more hurt than he had time to heal. He used every trick he knew how to keep ahead and evade the creature who showed no sign of giving up, his mana was running low from multiple animagus transformations to take advantage of the environment, his stamina was running low from the constant chase and his health was slowly dropping over the now hours long chase. He didn’t know where he was running to as he didn’t know where he was or what was near at this point, he was just steadily running in the same direction.
A few hours later he was getting desperate, he had started taking potions to try and stay ahead and the monster still kept up, his stamina was bouncing off empty and he had no mana left. He had finally found a small undercrop of rock to hide under for a moment to get his breath back, he knew he couldn’t stay as the predator would find him. He had no idea what to do, he looked at his interface wishing that he could communicate with his wife, even just to say goodbye at this point. He knew he needed to go run again but the false security of his little shelter was a fantasy he longed to have. Planning his next run he felt something surge within him, blue-grey light, the shade of iron rank started to light up within him.
“Shit.”
That was all he needed, waving aside the interface notification he heard the screech as the monster saw where he was. He dove from his cover, coming neatly out of his roll onto his feet. He almost made it, the bank he had been hiding under exploded as the monster hit it, great clumps of earth and stone clobbered James from behind knocking him back down to the ground. He crawled forward, not having the energy to get up, the interface nagged at him, pushing the message in front of him again.
Outworlder racial ability [One with Nature] has evolved to [Staff of the Everglades].
Ability: [Staff of the Everglades]
Transfigured from [Outworlder] ability [One with Nature]
Place a staff that conjures an everglade around you.
Anyone that is not invited to the glade will not be able to perceive either it or you, subtle illusion magic will direct them around the glade.
Health and mana regeneration is increased in the glade.
The Staff of the Everglades is only available once per day.
Racial gift evolution was triggered by dramatic or traumatic events. Being the closest he ever thought he was to dying this definitely counted James thought. He unconsciously knew how to use the power and hearing the monster thrashing in the mud trying to extricate itself he used the power for the first time. A pale green marble staff seemed to grow from within his hand, reaching the height of James standing up it was wrapped in vines and leaves up and down, it was capped either end with dark jade orbs. From his position lying where he fell he pushed one end into the ground. Immediately radiating from the staff a glade formed around him, stretching maybe twenty feet in radius. The nature of the grass and the trees had changed, trees ringed the space that weren’t there before, the sounds were dulled and it seemed peaceful. He could hear and see out of the glade but it was as if a mist were between the two. He could just sit up and place his back against the staff in the centre. He watched as the monster got itself free of the ground and looked around, seeing the tracks James had made in his attempt to flee. The monster leapt, James knew he was going to die as it came straight towards him, then sailed over the glade, it carried on, crashing through the delta looking for him. The relief and exhaustion caused James to black out.
When he came to his back had rolled off the staff in the centre of the glade. He sat up again and breathed. The monster had gone, in the dusky twilight he couldn’t hear or see anything outside his little protected zone. He released Koda for company as he was feeling vulnerable in his near death escape. He noticed that he had recovered quite a lot in his time unconscious and felt well enough to take a stroll around the glade. Now that he looked he saw all types of small animals all over the glade, while he was keeping an eye out for all the different creatures he saw his stuff. All of his items that he had in storage were all over the glade, under logs and between rocks, some old armour that didn’t resize with him he hadn’t sold yet was stacked against a tree. He realised that this racial gift must be linked to his ridiculously named ‘Princess power’. Teddy had literally fallen over laughing at the name when he saw it on the interface. The mechanism of having animals bring him his items was reminiscent of Snow White being brought things by woodland creatures, but for an alien ‘operating system’ to recognise this and name the racial gift after it was hilarious. He restocked his potions that he kept on his person for combat and settled back near the staff. There was a large rock that had two slabs stacked against it covered in a deep, soft springy moss that looked suspiciously like a chair. He sat in it and looked over his interface. His stamina had mostly come back, as had his mana. His health was the slowest to climb back and so he activated his Shaman power, all the animals that had been minding their own business around the glade burst into action, all kinds of creatures suddenly bringing leaves to lay around James in a circle. When he fed blue mana into the bottom of the circle red health came swirling out of the top. He spent his time in the summon circle meditating whilst topping of his health.
When he was fully recovered he went to pull the staff and found that with all his prodigious strength it wouldn’t budge. Seeing no instructions on what to do he shrugged and left the staff in the ground, he walked to the edge and steeled himself and stepped out. Looking back he could feel the glade was still there but could only see the delta. He reached a hand back and as it crossed the threshold he could see the whole glade again. He checked and double checked around him but the monster had moved on. He climbed a tree and got his bearings. Hitting the floor he used his Inner Beast power to transform into the sabre tooth tiger he has used before to reach the magic anomaly battle. He felt much more secure covering ground on foot until he was sure he was away from the predator.
Two days later he was running on foot, the Inner Beast power was on cooldown and he was still making good progress. He was now running on sand having made his way out of the thick delta and felt he was on the home stretch. When his power came off cooldown he transformed into a small neat falcon, keeping unobtrusive and fast he sped along the desert. He came into range of the others on the interface at the same time Lechuza joined him as a wing mate.