The Mistweaver

I fell to my knees feeling drained. My muscles were burning as if I had just run at top speed for half a day straight. The mist cleared, drained through the holes in the arena. A grinding noise drew my attention to the wall just ahead of me, where a door lowered to reveal another set of stairs leading deeper into the mountain.

I stood on shaky legs and took a step forward. A part of me wished to go back to Shadow and tell him that I’ve passed the first test, that I even managed to get a waybound skill, though I suspected that he already knew. The reason why I continued was because I felt it was right. I had taken the first step on this test, and it felt like I had to walk it all to the end. Besides, Shadow was unable to discuss anything about the test.

I stopped next to the steps and gathered my breath for a few minutes before climbing up. On top I found another arch, leading into another arena submerged in mist. On the walls around the entrance were images, the same as before.

They showed a similar movement set, with small alterations, and with the addition of small short lines shown flying toward the figure, with the mist whirling around them as if it was catching them.

I frowned, not quite understanding what it was meant to represent. I remembered that Shadow said that there was danger, that I could die during this test. I still thought that he underestimated what being a vampire meant, but I took his warning seriously.

I studied the images, trying to figure out what they represented, and realizing that the last image was also different. Instead of the mist getting pushed into the walls, it was moving in a circle around the figure, with the new lines carried by the mist.

There wasn’t much else to do but try it. I was confident that I would be able to use the skill again. I could already tell that it wasn’t like my other skills, not something to be triggered with a mental command. I had to be in the same mindspace, to execute the same movement set. I realized that it was about the alignment of a movement and my intent, a resonance with the world.

I could see why this was hard to achieve by most. It required a fine control of every muscle in ones body, a great coordination and timing. All things that vampires excelled at.

I stepped down the stairs and into the mist. I walked to the center and assumed the first position.

A dozen tiny clicks sounded all around me, startling me. I moved on instinct, following the movements I had created before. Things flew by me, flying almost as fast as a bullet. Something nicked my ear and made me lose a step, then something pierced my right hip. I grimaced and ignored the wound, focusing on avoiding the rest. My movements became wild, I’ve missed the steps I was supposed to take.

I realized now what the images were showing me. There were some kind of launchers all around me in the walls, and they were firing through the mist. The way that sound echoed in the arena, muffled by the mist, made it hard to hear the sources, but I could still hear and feel the bolts as they flew through the mist and displaced it.

There were dozens of bolts coming every second, accelerating, more and more being fired at shorter intervals. For every dozen I evaded, another found its mark. I stepped out of the way of one and another pierced my cheek, getting stuck in the bone of my jaw. If I had less dense bones that would’ve pierced straight through.

I turned and another stabbed through my chest, in between the two ribs. I let instinct guide me as I focused on the core tenet of Scarlet Moon Style. I ignored the bolts, ignored the wounds I was sustaining. They were immaterial, I was a vampire and I didn’t die easily.

I remembered what the images showed, what the goal of the test was. I focused solely on the aggression of my movements. I whirled through the mist, focusing on it, and willing it to move.

[Scarlet Moon Style; Dance of the Shifting Mist]

The world answered. The mist moved as if it was part of my body, shifting in tandem with my movements. I spun and it spun, the mist churned and started sending the bolts off target. Then, as I continued through the positions, it started to move around me, creating a large half-sphere of fast moving mist that acted like a shield—catching the bolts and keeping them trapped in its spin.

I reached the end of the dance, and the bolts stopped firing. I heard a click and another door started to open on the other end of the arena.

As I stopped, the sphere of mist slowed, then collapsed, letting all the bolts clatter across the stone. The mist rushed back into its position, and I took a deep breath.

I was covered in blood, bolts pierced me over my whole body, dozens of them, a few of them piercing deep. I grimaced as my heart beat with a wooden bolt through it, sending an agonizing dull hurt through my chest. I started pulling the bolts out, one at a time, my wounds healing in seconds.

This wasn’t the real world, yet in moments like these it felt like it was. I knew the consequences of dying in this place, Shadow had told me that some Invokers had been found brain dead after failing their ways of getting skills.

I pulled a bolt from my eye socket, throwing it to the ground along with what was left of my eye. The itching of it regrowing started immediately. Once, it would’ve taken me days, weeks even to regenerate that, now it happened in less than a minute.

I’ve noticed in the trial just how stronger I was, more durable. But it was the tortoise’s fire that had really driven that point through. That flame was so hot that it melted the skin off my bones, and I’ve survived it. That would’ve killed the Fledgling me in an instant, even the Adult me. I could heal from pretty much anything, but do enough damage in a short enough period of time, and even a vampire could die. Fire, aside from silver, was the greatest danger to us.

There was a reason why humans had stories about vampires, pitchforks, and torches. Set a fire to a vampire’s home, especially during the day, and you could be reasonably sure that you killed them.

It took me a few minutes to pull out all the wooden bolts and another few to heal fully. Once I was done, I continued on, heading out of the mist and up the stairs to the last test.

I felt like I understood it more now. The test was meant as a sign of passage, of maturity and capability for the Tengu-gi that wanted to venture down the mountains, into the mists of Asha Kai-ni. It made sense that their people would want to equip those who wished to go with the tools to survive in what Shadow had described to me as a brutal world.

I didn’t know how useful what I learned here would be to me, Asha Kai-ni was the land of never ending mist. Earth not so much.

Still, I continued on, reaching the next arch. There were no images, nothing to indicate what I should do. I frowned, after the dangerous nature of the last test, I was a lot more weary of what this one could be. But no instruction at all… I sat down in front of the arch with my legs crossed, and thought.

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The Tengu-gi were a solitary, introspective race. They lived above the rest, focusing on mastering themselves. Being in touch with the world, and contemplating on its nature. They didn’t interfere with the world below their mountains. This test was for those who wished to go into the mists, so there had to be some logic behind it.

The first test was to move the mist, a useful thing in the world where they were a constant presence. The second was to teach the person how to use the mist to protect themselves. I didn’t know what capabilities the Tengu-gi had, Shadow only mentioned something called the Way of the Mind, but they had to be capable of surviving the second test. I doubted that the way I survived it was as intended. Few things could survive taking so many wounds.

The last test then had to be another lesson, something to help those going down to survive.

I stood and walked into the arena. As I reached the center, I heard soft clicks, too low for anyone but someone with my level of hearing to notice. An equally low hissing sound started surrounding me as something was released into the mist.

Poison? I wondered. I didn’t move as it filled the arena and mingled with the mist. I grimaced, this did feel like cheating, as I was a vampire and didn’t need to breathe that often. Especially not if I wasn’t moving at my top speed.

I walked through the mist slowly, studying the arena. The walls around me were smooth, with no openings anywhere for me to push the mist into. I started to think what the goal of this test could be.

To simply survive the poison seemed too simple. There was only one thing that I could think about, and that was to remove the poison or at least its threat.

The mist surrounding me was thick enough that I couldn’t really see anything, and it was dark as the arena was in the shadow of the mountain—surrounded on all sides. I couldn’t see the poison, if it even had color. But, it wasn’t mist, so I settled in the first position and started my dance.

I focused on the mist and my intent. Slowly, it started to move, swirling around me in a half-sphere that I’d learned to do in the previous test.

I focused on pulling only the mist, and pushing everything else out. Quickly I stood in a swirling mass of mist, and somehow I knew that the poison was pushed out to the outskirts of the arena.

Suddenly, the floor at the corners opened, and the poison and mist were sucked down. I remained in the arena waiting. I’d passed the final test, a bit anticlimactically perhaps. I had earned a waybound skill for myself, and now I had earned Shadow’s skill.

I knew that I had to return to him, so I took a deep breath and turned, walking back through the other arenas and down the mountain. Heading to find my much older adoptive older brother.

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Shadow waited for me on the plateau below, sitting on the edge and holding a glowing sphere in his hand—the skill. He stood as I approached, his expression blank but his eyes glinting with mirth. He bowed, his nine tails spreading behind him like a fan. Then he raised his hands and offered me the skill.

I straightened, then mirrored his bow and took the skill in my hands.

“Congratulations on finishing the test,” Shadow said.

“Thank you,” I said slowly.

“I see that I was worried for no reason,” Shadow grinned.

“Not with no reason, the second test would’ve been hard if I had attempted it earlier,” I told him.

He inclined his head in agreement.

“I got a waybound skill,” I told him. “It seems almost like I cheated, I get two skills from you.”

Shadow shook his head. “No, you did not get the waybound skill from me, though I suspected you would. There were other ways to accomplish the tests, ways that you could’ve achieved with different skills. The goal was not to follow the instructions, it was for a young Tengu-gi to demonstrate that they could survive in the mists of Asha Kai-ni.”

I blinked, opened my mouth, then closed it and shook my head. “Well, I guess that it doesn’t matter now.”

I looked down at the skill in my hand. “This skill, what is it?”

Shadow just smiled at me.

“Can’t tell me, or won’t?”

He didn’t answer. I sighed, then looked away.

“Once I leave this place, you’ll be gone.”

“Yes,” Shadow said.

“I shouldn’t have done this now, I should’ve waited. I—”

“—Do not need me. And besides, the real me is still out there.”

I grimaced, saying goodbye wasn’t something I was good at. And I wasn’t ready just yet.

“Saia,” I said, and the dragon manifested next to me in her drone. Her head almost reached to the middle of my chest now, she had been gathering a lot of mass in the challenge.

“Can you go and put this skill on one of my empty shelves?” I asked her.

The dragon looked at the sphere in my hands, then back at me and nodded. She took the sphere and flew out of the room.

“What are you doing?” Shadow asked, the ears on top of his head twitching.

“I don’t want you to be gone before seeing me using your skill. I want you to see it.”

“Little Star,” he said with a kind smile. “I am just a copy.”

“That doesn’t matter to me.”

Shadow looked at me for a long moment, his tails swaying behind him.

He was important to me, even this version of him, a copy. He had been there for me when I needed him, and while I always knew that I would lose him I still felt sad.

I felt it when Saia placed the skill on the shelf, and focused.

[Quick Swap Slot—Slash > Mistshroud]

I activated the skill and felt a sensation similar to the one that I felt when I connected to the mist in the arena. Something poured out of me, and covered me whole. I felt stronger, I felt tougher, and my senses felt sharpened.

I looked down at my hands and saw them covered in black mist. I raised my head and saw Shadow looking behind me with a warm smile on his face.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw tails, nine of them to be exact. They were shaped out of black mist, almost looking like smoke, shifting around constantly.

“Tails?” I asked, surprised.

“It is my skill, it makes you look how it looks for me. You even have ears on top of your head,” his eyes glinted mischievously. “It looks good on you.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I recognized the skill. “This is the skill that you used on Ish Vimza.”

Shadow blinked, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t remember showing it to you. I was too injured to try it.”

I frowned. “It was when we fought the sikiri monster, back when the blight attacked my mind. When you helped me fight it off.”

“Uh,” Shadow tilted his head. “Little Star, I don’t think that happened.”

“What? You must remember! The blight was invading my mind, then you arrived, with this skill. You stopped it and it called you Khanum.”

Shadow shook his head. “I—” His froze. Then his entire being twitched, as if he had just glitched out. I took a step back on instinct. I watched as his features returned back to normal and a mischievous grin spread on his face.

“It looks good on you,” he said.

I just stared at him for a long while.

He tilted his head. “Little Star, is something wrong?”

“Are you alright?” I asked.

He frowned, but answered. “I am glad that you’ve gotten this skill. It is my favorite, the one I love the most. It will protect you and give you strength when you need it.”

I couldn’t listen to his words, all I could think was what had just happened. That had to have been the Grand Spell interfering. There was something that it didn’t want me to know, but… there wasn’t anything that I could do about that.

What just happened confused me, but it also convinced me that the copy in front of me wasn’t the real Shadow. I had always held a little bit of hope that it was some part of him. And though in a way it was, it was also a puppet created by the Grand Spell.

I closed my eyes, and then put a fake smile on my face.

“Before I go, and you vanish. Tell me about the skill and what it can do.”

There were mysteries that I wasn’t yet equipped to delve into. But one day, I will.

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I stood at the entrance to Shadow’s room, looking back at the stairs leading to the plateau. He was back there, waiting to… disappear, I guess. I didn’t know if he felt any fear. He didn’t show any when we said goodbye, but he was a trickster, I was sure that he could hide it.

I took a deep breath, then left through the door and closed it behind me. I waited for a moment my eyes closed, then I turned around.

The door was still there. I waited for a few seconds for it to start fading away—it didn’t. I frowned, I had gained the skill, the purpose of the door was done. The other doors that I got from people had dissipated once I got the skill. I walked back in and up to the plateau, finding Shadow in his usual spot.

He raised an eyebrow. “Back already?”

“You’re not gone,” I just said.

“Guess not.”

“How? Why?”

“It is your Mask, your rules, Little Star.”

“I… your blood was freely offered, but I had others who did the same.”

“You did, only they did not know what exactly they were giving, did they?”

“Uh, no, you think that matters?”

“Masks have strange rules, yours is one that I have not encountered before. Even if its principles draw from Invoker type Masks.”

I didn’t have an answer, but instead I allowed a smile to blossom on my face. “Whatever it is, I’m glad. I enjoy our talks.”

Shadow tilted his head. “As do I. We shall see how long this lasts.”

With that, I turned and left, feeling slightly lighter knowing that I wouldn’t lose his counsel.