Lucy had worked out a new approach after two days. The struggle of fighting against the arrays effects had lessened. She could now use her full suite of powers having trained non-stop since arriving. Lechuza in her Bush Witch form hugged the shadows. Incapacitating the monsters with illusions that affected even the monsters without eyes.
Now that she had all her powers and leverage all her mana at her disposal Lucy had a lot more options. But there was still a pressure acting against her. The research that she had been doing was how to adapt rituals in the arrays effect. Normal rituals wouldn’t work copying them from a book and they had to be painstakingly adjusted to function correctly. Her Rune Lore power still required her to know the ritual layout in order to work effectively. To work around this she used one ritual to best effect. She had cast a buffing ritual for magic items and spells cast within, she had put her own personal flair on it by casting it in a manner which meant as she stepped the glowing runes stayed centred around her feet moving with her.
She blasted at a Rock elemental with her Death Stick, vaporising a hole in its torso as she shot high pressure water from a wand in the other hand at a fire elemental that was slicing sections off like a jet machine in a stone quarry.
As the two elementals in front of her succumbed to her attacks the emplaced magical guns on the walls and floor erupted in fire at the remaining monsters.
Lucy turned around to see the council member that had dropped her sentence to two days with the two escort Stonewallers. Kyra, James and a peaky looking Ragnar had joined them.
“Mrs Mitchel, you are relieved. Your sentence has been met and you are absolved of your crimes.” The council member said. “Are you repentant?”
“I am, my own desire to advance my understanding of magic and this wonderful town should not have recklessly endangered its inhabitants.” She said humbly.
“Then you may leave, though your sentence is complete and you are absolved any further infractions will be met with the previous in mind.”
With that the Stonewallers made their exit.
“It’s good to see you Lu.” James said striding forward and hugging her. He looked behind to the shadow. “And you too I guess Lechuza.”
She hissed at him and rumbled in an ancient language that their language adaptation racial gift didn’t pick up. She then re absorbed into Lucy’s back forming the long stripes down her face over her eyes and down her cheeks.
“Well that was a serious workout!” They all hugged and caught up with each other.
While they were just starting to chat a rift opened in the air next to them. An even more bedraggled and wired Teddy stepped out. He was worse than they had last seen him, bags under his eyes that darted around like he was on his tenth coffee that day.
“Really?! A portal power down here?!” Lucy exclaimed. “That’s seriously impressive.”
He glanced about and threw himself at Kyra hugging her, he buried his face into her neck and whispered so low only she could hear. He pulled his head back and kissed her. Then turned to the others looking at each in turn, hardly able to form the words. He finished looking at Lucy. He passed her a large canvas bag.
“Here.”
Then he kissed Kyra again and stepped back through the rift without saying anything more.
“Truly a powerful man, portalling while I, the meanest of assembled warriors stand here with weak knees.” Ragnar said, leaning against the wall again in strain.
“Oh Ragnar! Let’s go up top.” Kyra said, dazed at the whirlwind appearance of Teddy.
They made their way back up top, exchanging pleasantries with some of the Stonewallers that had heard of the strangers being able to survive in their town but they couldn’t stop for long until they had Ragnar out of the effect.
When they got back upstairs Ragnar’s stamina was starting to return but James still had to half carry him up the last flight of stairs an drop him on the sofa.
“Getting used to carrying you Ragnar.”
“Pray we leave this poison temple then I shall show you my prowess again, you will not believe you survived this long without my shield at your back and my axe at your foes.”
“So you two really fought a silver rank monster together?” Lucy asked. They had started telling the story when Teddy tuned up.
“A great battle, two mortal warriors against the silver spawn. The innocent village held in the balance of our skill versus its ferociousness!” Ragnar started, with the gusto of a bard telling a great tale. By the time he was done Lucy had filled a few pages, writing it the way he was telling it as it sounded so impressive in his words. Everyone was hanging on his every word, even James who had been in the fight.
“Well damn brother, that was awesome!” James said.
“Truly and honour to fight alongside you James Mitchell, a brother indeed.”
“And you think the gang of lizard riders were sent after you specifically? Who would have done that?” Kyra asked.
“Well the families tried something on us as we arrived here, they may still be after us but can’t get to us down here.” Lucy posed. She got up off her cot where she had sat to listen to Ragnar and in her tiredness of fighting for two days straight she clumsily knocked the bag Teddy had given her onto the floor where it landed with a clank.
“What’s that?” James asked.
“I don’t know, lets see.” Lucy answered as she picked it up and took it to the table that they had revealed James’ vambrace.
She pulled the cord to open the neck of the bag and two pieces of armour fell onto the table. She turned them over and saw what looked like a matched pair of vambraces except one was slightly chunkier than the other. She left them tops facing up. The right one which was skinnier had a motif of a kite shield much like Teddy had made for Ragnar, inside the shield was taken up by two owl wings taking up the entire space of the shield. Around the central shield were falling feathers and autumnal leaves. She still had her hand on it and decided to pick it up to look closer. She was surprised at the weight of the dark steel armour and looked inside, it had padding to make it comfortable but she could see that it had all been bonded to the same tight grain dark wood looking material as Ragnar had and realised it was made of the same Bahamut scale material.
She waved away the interface notification and turned to the left vambrace. The engraving on top was similar to that of the wooden box her essences has been given to her by Hero in the temple. Stars and crescent moons surrounded crossed wand and staff, with complicated diagrams and pentagrams filling in the rest of the space. There was a clasp on the inside and she felt the small amount of magic that would keep it shut against anything but purposeful opening. She opened it up, flipping the top section back and saw three racks inside, perfect for the slender combat wands she used. She pushed it closed again and looked in the end and saw the narrow opening like a muzzle above the hand plate.
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Now she had a good look at the items she checked out the interface description.
Item: [Armour of the Combat Witch] (bronze rank, legendary)
A bespoke item, crafted with care and thought from exotic materials.
Effect Right Arm: Armour that can deflect the strongest blows of its rank. The magic imbued within the exotic material is recharged by ambient magic to provide a reservoir of power to negate magic based attacks.
Effect Left Arm: Armour that can deflect the strongest blows of its rank. Selectable stowage of combat wands. Three wands may be placed in the racks and the user may select which they use to fire, wand selection is instinctive allowing for rapid fire and rapid changing of selected wand. The magic imbued within the exotic material is recharged by ambient magic to provide a reservoir of power to Power the wand rather than the user’s inherent mana supply allowing for multiple castings not including this piece of armour (only one wand may be fired at a time).
Effect Matched Set: With both pieces of [Armour of the Combat Witch] equipped gives the user a 10% decrease to mana consumption for all spells and magical tools.
“Holy mother of War Teddy. You’ve turned her into Iron Man.” James said reading the description as well.
“This is incredible!” Lucy said in a low voice. She was awed at the work in front of her. She could see the intricate interplay of the magic rubbing through it. As complicated and alien magic as it was she could see that the person who had invited the magic into Teddy’s design had left the architecture open much like the gifts from hero, people kept gifting her twofold, not only were the wand sheath and this new armour priceless they also gave her the magical insight into their construction. She wouldn’t tamper with the Stonewallers magic… yet. But she had depths of insight into it that she couldn’t have through casual observance she had been practicing over the last few weeks.
Lucy had taken to wearing a jacket she had found while shopping in Vitesse, a dark forest green with fitted forearms, loose upper arms to a fitted torso. The jacket was a wraparound securing on her left side but looked a little like a leather biker jacket with the lapels. The bottom of the jacket flared out like a skirt and complimented the fact that she normally wore tough leggings with optional armour padding. She had painstakingly added reinforcement magic to the cloth, after practicing and ruining various garments she didn’t care for and was now happy to wear it in combat. She slipped the vambraces on and was happy that they would be able to sit nicely on the outside of the sleeves.
“Very nice,” Kyra said, checking out the addition to the outfit. “Can you explain the bit about the left bracer a bit more?”
“Well it seems that I can put three wands in, and use one at a time like I normally would if I were holding it. Part of the limitation of grabbing a handful of wands and firing them all at once is the need to push my mana through them meaning that I can only use one at a time. The benefit of this is that it charges over time so it allows me to use the magic stored within and I can still hold a wand or staff to fire magic.” She was absently scrolling through her rune portal dimensional storage, swiping as if scrolling on a phone as wands rotated past the aperture. She seemed to find a suitable selection and placed them in and snapping it shut, she added a few more to the holster that she had been gifted by Hero.
“It seems advantageous to have the flexibility to change your tack while embroiled in the chaos of battle.” Ragnar noted from where he lounged.
“Flexibility has always been a factor for me, but it’s cumbersome to switch from tool to tool, much easier to have the essence abilities to cast spells at need. This way I can have some mainstays loaded ready to go that I can switch between, if we find out what we’re fighting ahead of time I could even tailor it.”
“Seems like we should go test it to be honest” James said.
Kyra held a hand up to stop Ragnar from rising, he had already reached for his axe to help himself stand up. “No, I think we need to rest a while. A few days to reset at least. Ragnar, you’ve been pounded every time you come back here and I don’t think you even get the same long term benefit from it that we do and when you’re not here you’re hunting monsters which is hardly restful. James you took a week below, we can all see how much that affected you, for the better mostly but you need rest and meditation. Lu you’ve only just finished your stint and you should rest. I’ve been moving hundreds of tonnes of rock the last few days and I know I need to consolidate.”
“Trust the healer to recommend not jumping from one dangerous thing to another.” James grumbled.
“Yes it’s not the most exciting but we all need to rest. A few days is all I’m asking.”
“It looked like Teddy needed to rest to be honest.” Lucy pointed out. “He’s getting worse each time we see him.”
“Don’t mind Teddy, he can take it. I’m keeping an eye on him on the interface. His struggle is beyond our help at the moment.”
“What do you mean?” Asked Lucy, she wasn’t used to not knowing what was going on.
“As far as he can tell this has never before happened. The secrets of armour and weapons smithing from the Stonewallers has never been shared due to their isolated nature and general hostility towards outsiders. Teddy is committed to taking it as far as he can, the advantages he will get out of the education will give him an edge when we move on. I won’t let him hurt himself though, he’s just going through the wringer. They have a ‘thems that falls behind, stays behind’ attitude to the novices in the forge. The longer they last the more secrets of forging they’re trusted with.”
“That’s…”
“That’s how they’re a cross continent weapons and armour manufacturing institution. They only send out perfection. The trainees take decades before anything they make leaves Stonewall, Teddy is incredibly lucky to be allowed to do what he’s doing.”
Lucy was mollified by the answer and trusted Kyra’s judgement. They all listened to her, she had become an authority on their own bodies, knowing their limits more than them. They had to, her role was to manage the battlefield as best she could. They all had interlocking responsibilities when it came to team fights, Teddy fought team tactics, Kyra fought team weaknesses, Lucy fought enemy weaknesses and James was the strength that held the team.
They also trusted Kyra on their advancement, she was right that they needed to stop and so they hung up their weapons, slept, ate and mediated.
………
“What do you mean they ran away?!” Beatrix asked, her it had been rising over the conversation.
“What I says, they had ‘em in the village, like I told them to, with a reserve of guys on the outside ready to come in.”
“And they managed to scare them off?”
“No ma’am, the big ol silver rank monster did that.”
“And these two took it on by themselves? Two bronze rankers? Why didn’t the gang take them out after such a big effort?”
“Well it didn’t seem like such a big effort you see, weren’t no walk in the park from what I could see but they could’ve gone on for another few rounds when the big beasty gave up.”
Beatrix shook her head, she hadn’t been overly pleased to hear of Sebastian’s plan but she gave him autonomy and he rarely disappointed, if she came down on him too hard he might lose what made him valuable to her.
The news that two more of the party seemed to be incredibly competent adventurers was not good news, trying to find an angle to take the contact of this family seemed impossible.
“And you think they’ve gone to ground for a while?”
“They’ve been down there a few days now, got a few boots keepin an eye while I came back to tell yous what I seen.”
“You’ve done well, not necessarily how I would have played it but there are limited options. It would have needed to be a much more competent group to pull off a kidnapping on a member of this family and trying to get that sort of job together in short notice is bound to get back to us. That’s the only way I could think sending a gang against them would pull them off the job, if they had to chase down their captured family members therefore pulling them away from the contract. We could either step in and claim negligence or absence. Woe betide the gang when they catch them though.”
“Sorry ma’am, you ain’t got the quality round ere for that right now anyhows, wrong season for most of the gangs you see.”
“I thought it had been quiet recently. Good work, get back out to it, I can trust you, take opportunities if they are worth it but do not risk too much.”
“Yea ma’am.”
Sebastian left the richly appointed drawing room, exiting the grand house by the double doors and walked through the small front lawn and flower gardens to the gate, as he got there there was a stark change as the expensive magic that sustained the biome of the ground ended and he was back in the dusty little township. He saw his saddlebags were full on his lizard with a large tin of the chewing leaf he preferred sticking out. Miss Beatrix really could be a good boss sometime.
Back in the house the silver rank leader of their remote house Miss Beatrix was contemplating. She had to entertain the wishes of her big town cousins as they had influence over her even out here but the situation seemed untenable, she wasn’t above disreputable practices but this wasn’t her fight and she saw no way to win it for someone else.