Cadence was quite sure she had never felt as tired as she did at that moment, staggering down the path leading back to the central farmhouse on the Beltely’s property. In retrospect, the fight with the dog and goat-goblins, which had left Cadence unconscious on the ground, had been little more than a warm up. At Storyteller’s suggestion and Ryme’s insistence, she had indeed tested her skills against the warped minions created by the magical miasma that had abruptly assaulted the Beltley’s farmlands.
The pigs had been simple enough. There were four of them, but they were little more challenging than the dog-goblins had been. The squat and grotesque beings had tried to rely on brute force to overwhelm Cadence and Brian, but the pair were more than skilled enough to handle them. Cadence had borrowed Brian’s special attack from his gift of grace again, and the two had literally run circles around the four gross pink monsters. Cadence hadn’t even needed to use her Soul Surge to beat them.
Though, she had reflected afterwards, if the monsters had been armed with even simple tools or weapons, that likely wouldn’t have been the case. She didn’t understand it–a barn stood only a short distance from the muddy little pen the pig goblins had been contained in, but they seemed to lack the intelligence to leave the unlocked sty. Or, she realized with a start, they simply didn’t have the initiative to arm themselves. The dogs and goat must’ve been free roaming prior to their transformation. Perhaps that had been why only they had come to attack after Storyteller drew their attention.
The chicken coop proved to be significantly more problematic. The transformation from small bird to rangy goblin had left the resulting monsters undersized and skinny, misshapen in an entirely different way from the bloated pig-goblins. While the eight white-feathered chickens wouldn’t have been too bad by themselves, the black plumed goblin that must’ve once been a rooster had nearly gotten both of them killed.
The conversion to goblin had given the rooster a magical ability, something incredibly rare in minor monsters. The ability was simple, an inversion of a rooster’s crow that worked to put those who heard it to sleep, rather than waking them up. Unfortunately, simple was more than enough to nearly kill the two youths, as the remainder of the chicken-goblins had come flooding out of the coop even as Brian had collapsed under the soporific magic.
Cadence had only resisted the effect by Surging her will, giving herself the presence of mind necessary to fight off the invasive effect. Of course, that had left her unable to use her Soul Surge on more combat-focused abilities. In the end, she had taken advantage of the same reluctance she had noted in the pig-goblins. Though she took quite a few cuts and scrapes in the process, she dragged Brian out of the pen and whittled down the chicken-goblins from the safety of the fenceline.
Brian had woken up shortly after the rooster-goblin had fallen, and had helped Cadence clear out the remaining chickens. That was the around same time Cadence’s Surge had finally buckled, leaving her to pay its cost, on top of those she had incurred using Ryme’s powers against the goblins.
And so now she limped towards the farmhouse after her mother, stubbornly refusing Brian’s help and trying her hardest to ignore both the throbbing in her head and the way every one of her muscles felt ready to give out.
It’s only because of all the training that I can even stay conscious right now. Cadence thought to herself as she trudged onward. The first time I tried to use Soul Surge, the cost alone knocked me out.
The bright side of her new ability to perceive her own attributes was that she had concrete evidence of how far the past weeks had taken her, hard numbers that somehow felt more real than the taut energy of her muscles or the sharp clarity of her mind.
Cadence of Felisen
Level: Novice
Gifts:
[Gift of the Wanderer]: +3 to stamina and awareness
[Gift of the Echo]: +1 to all attributes, stacks with all other boons
Attributes:
Strength: 6 (5 + 1)
Resilience: 6 (5 + 1)
Stamina: 10 (6 + 3 + 1)
Coordination: 7 (6 + 1)
Speed: 6 (5 + 1)
Will: 6 (5 + 1)
Knowledge: 5 (4 + 1)
Focus: 5 (4 + 1)
Awareness: 10 (6 + 3 + 1)
Charm: 6 (5 + 1)
Her training and lessons with Storyteller had rapidly raised many of her less-used attributes. Combined with the boost the gift of the echo had given her across the board, she felt like a whole different person.
Unfortunately, her experience was beginning to stagnate. The gift she had copied from Denning was one of the last left among Felisen’s hunters for her to reflect, and her gift of the wanderer had gained barely any experience since she received it!
A rough scraping noise jarred Cadence out of her exhausted reverie. She looked up to see Storyteller emerging from the farmhouse. Apparently the door dragged on the wood planks of the house’s broad porch, the noise repeating when it slammed shut behind him. His face was serious, his bright blue eyes concerned. His gaze flicked from Brian to Cadence, pausing for the barest instant to give the girl a pleased nod, before returning Ryme. “Mistress Ryme…” he began, his voice troubled.
Before he could continue, however, a shout drew the attention of all four of them.
“Watch out!” Markey’s voice called in warning.
Ryme and Storyteller’s heads snapped around, turning towards the field the other three hunters had gone to clear out. Brian and Cadence did the same, admittedly, but much more sluggishly than the advanced battle-gifted.
A monster was charging towards the farmhouse, the two wolfish hunters chasing after it. But even calling on their gifts, they were unable to match the raw speed of what had clearly once been a draft donkey. Despite the distance of the charging monster, Cadence’s improved awareness let her examine it.
Unlike the smaller animals, it hadn’t turned into a goblin, but Cadence had a hard time seeing that as a positive, by comparison. The donkey’s mottled gray fur was covered by odd, rigid patches of flesh that looked like something between bone, leather and flat iron plates. They covered its back, its neck, its stomach, and even its eyes, giving it an unnervingly unnatural, almost insectoid appearance.
Even more alarming were the protrusions along its flanks. It looked like the animal's ribs had straightened horizontally, bursting out its warped flesh and hardening in the same way as its skin. Rather than a carapace though, they had turned into a line of wicked-looking blades. At the speed it was running, Cadence had no problem figuring out their use, and her mind treated her to a vivid image of the beast running right through the middle of their little group, those horrid blades cutting them in half in the process through the beast’s sheer speed.
“My mind needs to calm down,” she muttered to herself, wearily watching the mutated donkey approach. Any other day, she’d probably be frightened, but exhausted as she was, she just couldn’t muster the energy for such intense feelings. Besides. Ryme and Storyteller were right there.
Storyteller had already turned to face the monster, and Cadence blinked in muddled surprise to see the lean man toting his long, two-handed sword. Three gems embedded into the length of the weapon glittered in different shades of blue, brightening as they approached the tip, and this close, Cadence could see the fine, spidery runes traced along its blade.
Where did he get that? Cadence wondered. She was sure he hadn’t been wielding it when they approached the farm–in fact, she hadn’t seen it since the day they met, when he had slain the ogre in the barrens.
However, before Storyteller could move towards the charging animal, Ryme put a hand on his arm to stop him. He turned towards Cadence’s mother, then gave her a smile and made a little “after you” gesture.
Watching her mother unlimber her greatbow, Cadence managed to muster a smile. She had been waiting for the chance to see her mother in action.
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Only a week before, Ryme had finally reached Initiate with her gift of the hunter, after taking down a vicious brambleboar that had menaced some of the lumber workers in the forest.
“Initiate,” Storyteller had explained to Cadence, “is the end of the first stage for a gifted. It's when attribute boosts truly start to reach superhuman level. But it’s also a plateau, as gifts can’t level up past there by themselves. Instead, the soul itself needs to be reinforced by the acceptance of a third gift, which then also needs to be raised all the way to Initiate as well.” He had shaken his head. “It’s a long road to Adept. But it’s worth it.”
Shortly afterwards, Storyteller had helped Ryme complete a trial to show her mastery of the bow. As it had been her preferred weapon for most of her life, she had easily gotten the gift of the archer from the Warrior archetype, the perfect complement to the skillset she had already developed. And it had produced a very interesting augment.
Ryme very calmly lifted her bow, sighting on the charging monster, which was apparently too stupid to notice that its “prey” was ready for it. The thick staves of the greatbow bent slowly, with an audible creak. The weapon was designed specifically for the increased strength Ryme’s gift of the bear lent her, and the slender woman easily drew back her arrow despite the fact that the bow was thicker than her own wrists. Then Cadence felt the pressure beginning to build around her mother.
It was an odd feeling, like nothing Cadence had ever experienced. It was like a tightness that thrummed through the air itself, as Ryme progressively drew in more and more power, all focused at the tip of her arrow. Cadence still didn’t fully understand what “potency” meant, but she knew it was some sort of measure of how powerful an attack was, and she knew that the Sniper’s Shot ability produced by Ryme’s augment allowed her to progressively increase the potency of her attack based on how long she held her aim at the same target.
The transformed draft animal was fast, but it had a long way to go to reach its target, and Ryme used all of that time to charge up her attack. It was barely a hundred feet away, close enough for Cadence to see the glittering fangs that lined its maw, before Ryme released her arrow. The combination of the potency granted by her sniper’s shot, the power of her greatbow, the skill of a lifetime practicing with the weapon, and the perfect aim of Ryme’s superhuman awareness and coordination attributes produced an attack far beyond what any lesser monster like the mutant donkey could survive.
Cadence didn’t even see the blur of the arrow moving. She simply heard the deep thrum of it being released, felt the pressure of Ryme’s attack bursting outwards–and then the beast collapsed in a sprawl of splintered bone and broken limbs, its momentum still carrying its corpse forward, digging a trench in the ground that ended at Ryme’s feet.
Everyone, from Storyteller to Cadence and Brian, to Markey and Smith, who had pulled up short at the display of power, simply stared at the felled monster in stunned silence.
“That,” Storyteller finally acknowledged, “is a good combination of gifts.”
#
“What’s wrong with them?” Ryme’s brusque tone couldn't hide the shock and concern that hid in her voice. It sent a little shiver of fear down Cadence’s spine. The last time she had heard her mother speak in that voice, it was before she went out to slay the frostfur that had killed two hunters.
“They’re fine,” Storyteller promised. “The raw magic of the miasma was a shock to their systems, it must’ve knocked them out.”
“They’re alotta things, ‘Teller, but ‘fine’ isn’t one of them.” Denning rumbled. The big man was pale as he stared at what had once been the Beltley family.
After the last of the monsters had been defeated, Storyteller had led Ryme and Denning into the root cellar attached to the little farmhouse. As they were the closest things the hunters had to leaders, their presence made sense, while the more junior hunters kept watch for any other monsters outside. Cadence had just sort of inserted herself into the group with a quiet insistence, and none of them had bothered to send her outside with the others.
But Cadence knew that could change in a moment, if she became an annoyance to the trio of serious adults, so she kept her mouth carefully shut. It was difficult, though, looking at the family.
Cadence had never been particularly close to the Beltleys. They lived outside Felisen proper, and had no children near her age, so there hadn’t been much reason for her to get to know them. But she was still familiar with them, having met all of them at some point during festivals or market days.
The elder Beltleys, the husband and wife who had originally purchased the farm property, were a couple decades older than Cadence’s mother, though still younger than Old Man Callahan. As they got up in years, they turned most of the farm’s operations over to their eldest son and his wife, each about ten years older than Cadence. Their second and third son still lived on the farm as well, along with the younger Beltleys couple’s two toddler aged children. They had all inherited a uniform set of features, favoring stockiness and straight, brunette hair. The eldest Beltley man had a strong jaw and a chin that could chisel rock, which his children all shared to some extent.
Now, Cadence reflected, they did still share a lot of features. But those features had become things like thick, yellowish skin, bristling green hair that reminded Cadence of pine needles, and weird, bark-like growths at their joints and around their ears.
“I’m not concerned about them being unconscious, Storyteller, I’m concerned that they appear to have turned into Elder-damned monsters!” Ryme’s voice rose by the end of her sentence to the point that she all but shouted the last word at him.
Storyteller grimaced. “Not monsters, Mistress Ryme. The human soul is too strong to allow magic, even magic as thick as a miasma, to truly transform us. The changes are only aesthetic. When they awaken, you’ll find them to be the same people.”
Ryme’s eyes narrowed, and her lips moved silently, processing the man’s words. In the tense silence, Denning interjected, “Like wraiths?”
“Not like wraiths, sir. They are wraiths.”
“That makes no sense!” Ryme snarled. “I knew the Beltleys. They didn’t have any wraith blood in them, and even if they did, you don’t just become a wraith. You’re born one.”
Storyteller sighed and shook his head. “Not true, Mistress Ryme. You are simply familiar with wraiths as the descendants of the original tribes, who had the poor luck to dwell in the Wastes before the Realm was founded and the bastion cities erected. They were warped by the magic leaking in through the Wastes–over years, their bodies drank it in, and they were changed, so thoroughly that their descendants still carry the marks of those changes.”
Storyteller waved at the unconscious forms of the inhuman looking Beltley family. “They were exposed to otherworldly magic just as potent as that which transformed the original wraiths. It’s rare these days, but not unheard of.”
“But they’re still… them?” Cadence couldn’t help but ask. She had only ever heard of wraiths. They were more common in some of the cities, she had heard, but she had never seen one before.
“Yes. Perhaps with some spotty memories and a bit of trauma, but still them.”
Ryme looked from the family to Storyteller and back. Slowly, her face transformed from alarm to thoughtfulness.
“Folks are gonna have a rough time of it, though,” Denning rumbled.
“Indeed,” Storyteller agreed. “I suspect you’ve had little interaction with wraiths out here?”
“You’d be correct,” Ryme said quietly.
“I’ve seen ‘em in the city before,” Denning added. “Even in Correntry, they stood out quite a bit.”
“It’s unavoidable, unfortunately. Wraith traits seem to be indelible, but they’ve always been a small population,” Storyteller shook his head. “Out here, it’s going to be even harder for them.”
“No,” Ryme said simply. “It won’t.” She stated the words without any particular emphasis, as simply as if speaking about the weather, but Cadence heard the bedrock firmness in her mother’s tone, and it made her smile. “How long should it take for them to awaken?”
Storyteller shrugged. “Difficult to say. Depends on when they passed out in the first place.”
Ryme nodded. “Very well. I’ll stay here. Denning, take the boys back to Felisen. I don’t like leaving the village without any of us around for this long.”
“You sure?” he asked.
She nodded. “Come by tomorrow, if I haven’t come back yet. You can spell me.” She hesitated for a moment.
Denning nodded without needing to be told. “Don’t worry, Ryme. I’ll make sure the town is ready.”
“Good.” Ryme frowned. “Storyteller…”
“No need to fear,” he said simply. A smooth, long-fingered hand landed on Cadence’s shoulder. “I’ll get her home.”
Cadence looked from her mother’s face to Storyteller, dismayed. “But, I want to-”
“No.” Ryme said simply. “The less people they see while they’re adjusting, the better. I expect they’ll be in for enough of a shock, even after I explain.”
“C’mon kid,” Storyteller said. “We should talk anyways. I want to hear about how you fought these goblins.”
Cadence winced dramatically, but sighed and let herself be led out of the root cellar and back into the spring sunshine without a further whine. Her mind had already turned down another muddy road.
First the ogre, now goblins, miasma, warbeasts, and wraiths. Something was changing, something that endangered her home. Her mother.
Cadence wanted to leave Felisen. She wanted to see the world, to have adventures. To do what she wanted, when she wanted. To have real experiences, not just those she read about and heard in stories. But how could she do that, when it seemed like everything was going wrong at once here?