Venix: also known as the ‘jungle phoenix’, this monstrous bird is one of the most uncommon creatures to inhabit the forests of Orard. Their fire is said to be selectively flammable, which is why the whole forest hasn’t been immolated by now, but survivors of venix attacks are so uncommon that specific details are hard to come by. If you ever see one, your best chance of survival is to very quietly back away and find a place to hide.
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Maelstrom’s silver light glared off the massive bird’s oversized green eyes, the pre-sunrise dawn leaving the rest of its body in shadow.
The venix stepped toward Jair with slow deliberation, neck ducked, beak open eagerly in a barely-audible hiss.
Jair knew he looked like easy prey. Worn out, barely upright, gasping for air. But right now he had the same advantage the venix did.
Neither one of them cared if they died, but only Jair would receive permanent benefit from successfully killing the other.
The venix was outmatched from the start.
Its triple-jointed wings lit up with green flames as they spread above and behind, blocking out the sky and casting Jair in deeper shadow.
Maelstrom flared up as though in response, silver pulse racing with Jair’s heartbeat, the brobeg-flavored glow at its tip flickering in unsteady counterbalance.
Jair waited, sword raised. The venix launched itself into the air, swooping by overhead. It snatched down at his head with one claw. Jair ducked aside, allowing it to swoosh past harmlessly, and slashed up at the claw with Maelstrom in the same motion.
A brief shriek of pain, luminous green venix blood dripping down its injured but not severed claw, and then it was past.
He turned, tracking its dark fiery form, as it reached the edge of the trees and circled back. Eyes beginning to glow with their inner yellow light, it dove at Jair with a piercing scream.
His manabody trembled at the sound, its boundaries barely strong enough to hold its form against the assault. If he weren’t a mage-type class, he’d probably have collapsed then and there.
Well, why not? He didn’t have anything to lose.
He fell to the ground, as though stunned by the magical attack, and let Maelstrom fall beside him.
The venix swooped down triumphantly, pinning his torso beneath one massive claw as it landed atop him. Its head whipped down, stabbing at Jair’s face with its wicked beak almost faster than he could follow.
But he’d fought this thing enough times by now to be fully familiar with its patterns. He’d already shifted his hand into position over his collarbone pointing up.
As soon as the venix committed to its attack, Maelstrom flashed back into Jair’s hand. The full-force collision smashed Maelstrom’s hilt backwards through Jair’s chest, accompanied by a venix beak. He didn’t know which of the two shattered his ribs and crushed his lungs, but he did know the venix had Maelstrom’s blade sticking through the back of its skull again.
Jair’s hand and chest were destroyed, but his other hand came up and recalled Maelstrom, swiping in another arc through the venix’s neck, then back around to stab it through the eye before it could react.
It hissed in anger and jerked its head backward, tearing Jair’s spine out through where his chest used to be.
Then there was no time for anything but mitigating his own rapidly approaching demise, keeping the essentials moving how they needed to.
It wasn’t easy to sustain himself while missing so many functional organs, but with sufficiently drastic manabody intervention he could do it. He really hoped he’d done enough damage to finish it off, because he wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything else.
Taking control of his body and blood from inside without any of the normal physical connections to help was much, much harder to do now than it had been in the recent future. He’d not done anything drastic to improve his magical strength over the future six months with Qahrvirna and Eythron, but even basic usage on the level of ‘survive the Oriad’ was enough to increase the sturdiness and connectivity level significantly.
He had to take some major shortcuts and cannibalized basically his entire lower body just to keep his head functional. It was the kind of thing he would never survive if he planned to stay longer than a few minutes, drastic changes that could never be reversed and would leave him worse off in the end even if he were immediately healed.
Being a time traveler gave him the unique position of being able to effectively utilize techniques that would ordinarily be sheer desperate folly in any other situation.
The venix used its own magical tenacity to continue tearing his body apart, despite being blinded and in two separate pieces, but its persistence wore out before Jair’s.
In a flash of yellow flame, the impaled venix self-immolated. Bracing himself to act immediately, Jair activated Temporal Reversion.
There was no spike to grab onto this time, since he’d reverted past it, making the tiny beginning of a shelf he’d used previously more difficult to keep hold of. Going back only a few days was a lot more challenging than going back a few months. If he hadn’t been so practiced at it by now, he’d likely have missed the ledge entirely.
He grabbed out at it, gratified to see that it had grown more solid since last time. At this rate, it would grow into a proper shelf over time, giving him a nice backup starting point to his Oriad endeavors. Once he had a few more imprints to his name, he’d want to find a new midpoint spot, but finding times to revert to was less of a science and more akin to rummaging around in mud hoping you found something worth grabbing.
He pulled himself through the timefall and back into reality.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Jair and Qahrvirna walked through the jungle night together, their path illuminated by the glow of Jair’s staff.
Jair immediately summoned Maelstrom. Silver light flared up.
Qahrvirna shielded her eyes against the sudden glare. “I can see why you need Eythron’s help, that weapon’s leaking power like a dying jackal.”
“Not as much as it used to.” He didn’t inspect it immediately, looking over Maelstrom’s physical shape first.
One edge was clean and sharp, the point was sheathed in a shimmering sickly-green veneer, and the other edge was jagged with spined serrations. The hilt, which had once held a thin green strand of color from the venix’s influence, now had become fully the deep green color of venix feathers with just the faintest hint of black in the deeper grooves.
Jair felt warmth as he held it, an echo of captive flame.
─ Maelstrom
─ Type: Ascended Soulsword (3rd Form)
─ Rank: Legendary (Integrity: 25%)
─ Abilities: Darkflame
Imbued with the pure energy of Mount Sanctum and the lifeblood of its creator, this blade has transcended its humble origins and become a weapon of limitless *****?
After ****?, this blade now contains traces of darkflame, has taken on the ****?, and ***? and will **? once accumulated in sufficient quantity.
─ Class Requirement: Mageblade
─ Bound to Jair Welburne
The integrity percentage had been steadily creeping upward as he killed the venix over and over, but it somehow staggered him to see it at 25%. A full quarter of Maelstrom’s soul was settled in form. It felt oddly disconcerting.
But the important part at the moment was seeing what he’d obtained from his months of efforts.
“Darkflame.”
Heat surged through his hand, Maelstrom tugging at his manabody. He allowed the connection. Power flowed and transformed.
Maelstrom’s silver glow was joined by black-green fire that flared out from its blade and flickered eagerly along its ridges. The only place it avoided was the very tip, where the brobeg essence repelled everything else.
Qahrvirna yelped and jumped back, letting out a feral hiss. “What have you done? And how have you done it?”
“Honestly? No idea.” He grinned and gave the sword a spin, shifting it from hand to hand, then tossed it into the air and caught it again.
The initial connection had stopped, the fire self-sustaining. Disconnecting it from his manabody, no longer holding it physically, neither one deactivated the Darkflame effect.
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to volunteer a piece of your soul to experimentation, my dear?” Jair asked sweetly.
“It depends on how you plan to take it.” She smiled and bit at her lower lip with one fang, but there was an undertone of unease in her voice.
“Fiery sword of doom?”
Qahrvirna shook her head, taking another step back. “There’s some things we don’t play with.”
Jair nodded. “Unfortunate, but I understand.” He deposited Maelstrom back in his soul, then pulled it out again. The Darkflame remained active without demanding more mana. “I don’t suppose you have any enemies you wouldn’t mind losing their souls?”
Qahrvirna’s eyes gleamed in the flickering multi-hued Maelstromlight as she smiled coyly. “Now that’s a proposal I’ll never turn down.”
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Two nights later, Jair and Qahrvirna arrived at the octide nesting area where the venix had first ambushed them.
He’d done this fight twice before, and both times he’d been initially overwhelmed by numbers despite Maelstrom’s absurd cutting strength. Jair’s body could only move so fast at this point in the timeline, and he had no way to control the directions from which the octides approached. They could drop down on him, surround him, and only when he’d thinned out their numbers a bit could he safely switch to definitive final sweeps to clear them out.
“I’m going to go kill those octides. If you see a venix, do not run away. Call for me. I will use my darkflame to counter it and my sword can eat its soul. If you try to take it on alone, you’ll die.”
Qahrvirna snorted. “I’m not fool enough to attack a venix.”
“It’s planning to attack you. Remember, if it shows up, run toward me. I can protect you.”
She gave his still relatively scrawny form a skeptical once-over.
“Need I remind you that I have a legendary sword?”
“You’ll get yourself killed.”
“And that bothers you?”
Qahrvirna shrugged. “No. But you’re interesting. If you were going to die, I’d rather it not be something pointless like getting eaten by a venix. I can offer much better alternatives.”
“I won’t be the one dying. This venix and I have a history.”
She glanced at Maelstrom, still flickering with the green-black flames, then searched Jair’s face. “Again, I find myself believing you against all reason. You are an enigma, Jair Welburne.”
“And I don’t even have to try.” He raised Maelstrom in a salute, then nodded his head toward the distant glint of octide shell lurking in the treetops. “I’m going to go clear those octides. Call me if the venix shows up.”
Qahrvirna nodded. “I will.” She sounded surprised even as she said it.
Jair charged forward at full speed. He didn’t bother with a normal approach, just sprinted straight into the heart of the octide nest’s territory.
It may not be the ideal testing ground for Darkflame, but it would at least be a pretty easy comparison. Since he’d redone the fight only a couple days ago, the memory was clear enough.
Two younger octides skittered down, ready to deal with the intruder in their midst. Jair slashed the first one’s forelegs as it stabbed out at him—
The entire creature immolated in a flash of green and black. The dark fire took the single moment of contact and spread instantly up the octide’s body and burned it away.
Jair’s swing passed through the cloud of ash that was all that remained of the first octide, the Darkflame no longer visibly present in Maelstrom’s aura. He felt the ability tugging at his mana as Maelstrom neared the second, and allowed it to resurge.
The second octide was still moving toward him when Maelstrom nicked its side, and the green-black fire rushed down and engulfed it, leaving Jair standing next to two piles of octide ashes and left momentarily without an opponent.
It was over so fast, he hardly knew what to think. The drain on his manabody was substantial, but not crippling. Two instakills and he felt as though he could do it another dozen times at least before pushing into overdraw.
“I wish you could hold more than a single charge at once,” he told Maelstrom, as Darkflame sprang back up around it. “If I’m going to be channeling mana nonstop, that’ll mess up with my imprints.”
Perhaps it would be better to save it for emergencies, but right now he had nothing better to do and about a hundred octides eagerly rushing to their death.
Just how far could he push this?
It was on his fifth octide that something went… odd. As the blade struck the creature, the flash of fire was tinted distinctly with the brobeg’s slime green rather than the darker green of the venix.
Just like the previous four, it immolated and burned away to ash, but instead of staying a pile of ash it immediately reconstituted into a confused looking octide whose crystal shell had taken on the same yellow-green as the glow of Maelstrom’s tip.
“Well. That’s… different.”
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