“I have a few tricks that might help,” Sable admitted as we stood at the edge of the grid. “I practice nature witchcraft. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept?” Her tone was businesslike and she didn’t even bother glancing our way, as if she was sure we would be up to speed. Which…I kind of wasn’t.
I glanced over at Dominic, who shrugged back, and then tentatively informed her. “I mean, not really. I know Witchcraft is an ability that lets you affect things through links. Thaumaturgical links make things that happen on a small scale happen on a large one. It’s really versatile, and one of my mentors growing up practiced Cosmic Witchcraft, but I never really got the details of how it worked.”
“Basically like you just said. Small scale changes bring about large ones. It’s a flexible ability that can mix well with most things.” Reaching into a pouch, she pulled out a handful of seeds, scattering them on the floor in front of us. As I watched, the seeds started to crack open, buds extending out and intertwine, winding together as they grew to create some sort of root golem.
I wasn’t sure how that was witchcraft, but clearly she’d done something. She gestured her golem, a humanoid figure made of densely packed wooden roots, onto the grid, and it stepped forward, taking two steps…and bursting into flames.
“Was it supposed to do that?” I asked cheerfully. “Because I feel like maybe you had other plans.”
Dominic snickered, averting his eyes and actually whistling when Sable turned to glare at him. She sent another root golem forward, this one taking a different path. This one got impaled. Then one got cut up by wind blades. The next one got struck by lightning. One of them turned into a ghost and just sort of…faded away.
By the time she ran out, she was panting and glaring at the grid. We’d identified a path about halfway across (some of them needed to be jumped) but Sable had been spending her own energy on growing the plants, and it seemed like her power was reaching a limit.
I considered my options. I was keeping a low profile, but even on top of my mask, this temple was a divine structure that blocked at least my own senses. Chances were good scrying into here was a no-go, and I was so close to the end. With a sigh, I reached over, put a hand on her shoulder, and called Zagan.
A wave of bright green life fire washed over her, drawing a shocked gasp from the other Ascendant, but I ignored it channeling the power through her. Her haggard appearance receded, shoulder straightening and skin flushing with vigor. “That’s…” she gasped. “I feel so alive. How did you do that?” Her eyes snapped to me, confusion evident on her face. “I thought you were a brawler?”
“What, was it the name?” I asked jokingly. “I’m a complicated person. I contain multitudes. Will that help, or not?”
She laughed breathlessly. “I feel like I could fly just by flapping my arms right now. So yeah, that’ll help.” She cracked her neck, glaring at the floor. “Round two. Let’s see who gives out first.”
She reached into the pouch, casting more handfuls of seeds. Great heaps of the things this time, splitting and intermingling and creating a fucking thicket of roots, from which sprang more and more golems. She rushed them forward, eyes blazing green, cackling madly as they hit the squares. One after another they were destroyed, wrecked by the defenses, and one by one they showed the way through the trap, giving us the squares we needed to proceed.
We started doing so, slowly following the path laid out, and Sable would throw her seeds onto the next empty square. Luckily the black and white marble squares of the floor weren’t small, and all three of us could stand inside them easily enough (though I had to fold my wings). Seeing the endless wave of root golems spawning because of a few casual bursts of Zagan was kind of intimidating.
My healing and purification form, for all its limitations, was easily one of my most powerful forms, and having it boosted by Sammael made it even more terrifying. Working with an Ascendant who drained their own life force (I was pretty sure) to create plant golems, I could essentially fuel her army forever.
Of course, everything had limits. While her energy reserves were able to be topped up indefinitely, as I’d recognized with Jessie’s power when I was starting out, mental strain wasn’t something life force could treat. After about forty minutes, I noticed Sable swaying on her feet precariously, and we decided to stop in a middle square and sit down to recover a bit.
This was made even easier by Dominic taking out some kind of bowl and setting it on the ground, then just…stepping into it. Sable and I shrugged at each other and followed him in, finding the inside to be some kind of cave dwelling.
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“Welcome to my Den,” said Dom proudly. “D-rank portable dwellings are hard to find, because they have to be incredibly stable to hold multiple Ascendants of that rank, not to mention the material requirements for supporting that foundation. I got this one from the family when I reached Master.”
I whistled as I looked around. “This is cool. What happens if the bowl breaks?”
“We get ejected,” he shrugged. “It won’t though. I told you, the material requirements to support this much Impact are crazy. It’s still technically D-rank, but higher up the ladder. We’re fine in here for now. The rest we can worry about later. For now, Sable, why don’t you get some rest. You’re stumbling around like a drunken bumblebee.”
She snorted, but nodded. “Fine. But I don’t know either of you, so forgive me if I don’t trust you with my safety. Last thing I need is to get knifed in my sleep because I thought you big meatheads were too stupid to betray me and didn’t take precautions.”
“You’re mean when you’re exhausted,” I said in a faux hurt tone.
She rolled her eyes, then took out more seeds, scattering them around. She winced a bit at the effort, but soon enough a big dome of roots wrapped her up, completely shielding her from sight. The layers kept stacking too, interweaving to create and extremely dense shield. I didn’t take it personally, I didn’t trust either of them that much either. I still had my C-rank plate to keep me safe though.
Dominic, to my surprise, didn’t seem to worry about it either way, just flopping down on his back and going to sleep. With a shrug, I sat down, crossed my legs, and triggered Piece of Mind so a parallel could monitor my body while I took a nap. The parallel could hear and react, so it would be able to wake me up if anything suspicious happened, and at my rank, having my eyes shut wasn’t exactly an impediment anymore.
Unsurprisingly, I was awoken what seemed like minutes later by Dom letting out a loud booming yawn. My eyes shot open, my parallel alerting me immediately, and my head snapped over to track him, but he just gave me a lazy wave.
He reminded me of kind of a weird combination of Abel and Punchin’ Carl. Just a big simple battle maniac who wanted to fight. He wasn’t as crafty as my mentor, though he might be as ruthless. He HAD tried to sneak attack me when we met. Still, I was a little bit biased towards liking him because of the similarities.
Sable, meanwhile, didn’t remind me of any of my friends. She’d been mostly pretty aloof and semi-formal until her power boost, then she’d been a lot more blunt. I didn’t really mind either, but I had to admit her power was impressive.
I was also sure she wasn’t showing me even a tenth of what it could do, because making plant golems wasn’t Witchcraft as far as I knew. Chances were good she had some kind of doll or puppet she’d made that she was connecting to them. Maybe the seeds were from the same tree as the doll.
I’d tried doing some research into Witchcraft back in the day after we met that witch at the Conclave, but the fact was, it was so vague and versatile that it could do basically anything. Witches could heal, control, curse, enhance. Any connection two people or even a person and a thing could have could be amplified or subverted. At higher levels witches could be fucking SCARY, but it was a resource heavy ability set. You needed special materials that could withstand the linking and be used for symbolic avatars.
Because of that, and because Ascendants were glory hounds and Witchcraft tended to express itself more subtly and from a distance, it had fallen out of favor in the mainstream. My mom had been surprised to see it for that exact reason.
With our nap out of the way, we all emerged rested and ready, and resumed our journey through the grid shaped room. With some rest, Sable was able to withstand the boost from Zagan much more easily, and it wasn’t long until we made it across the room, emerging on the other side of the grid none the worse for wear, though presumably minus a LOT of seeds.
“Finally!” groaned Dom as we stepped off the grid. “That was fucking tense. I kept worrying one of them would have a delayed trigger and blow us up or something.”
I’d actually worried about that too, but I’d decided to trust my instincts, Fatewalker might not be perfect but it was better than going in blind. I hadn’t gotten a particularly bad feeling, though my Danger Sense had obviously been screaming the whole time, given the pervasive risk of just being in this fucking place.
On the other side of the room, there was only a single thing. A door. Or rather a set of large double doors, carved from the same stone as the temple. Unlike the smooth glassy walls, the stone had been etched with intricate designs, a story actually, and a quick glance told me that it was about Strakkenthar.
It was also almost definitely propaganda, based on the very optimistic tone, portraying the psychotic night god as a benevolent savior arrived to save the universe from war and sorrow (I was paraphrasing, because it was all images, but the last thought made me chuckle at the irony).
So we ignored the doors, placing our hands against the dark stone and pushing as hard as we could, revealing the room behind.
Inside was another water chamber, and I braced myself for another puzzle, but to my surprise, it didn’t seem like there was one. The chamber was full of peaceful, tranquil liquid, and in the center, equidistant from each other and the walls, were three islands.
One island held a massive two handed scythe. It was jagged and menacing, and floated in a beam of light, rotating slowly as if displaying itself to the world. In the center was a pedestal on which sat a single night black stone, and opposite the scythe was a black plant wreath covered in white flowers.
Even from here, I could feel some sort of heaviness in the air. Not Impact, that was being restrained, or we’d probably have been crushed, but just a sense of weight and meaning beyond normal objects.
Taking out my stone, I held it up, and to my complete lack of surprise, the arrow spun and stopped on the central pedestal, where the ink stone sat. “Well,” I said wryly. “Good news. I can definitely confirm we aren’t after the same thing.” The question was would Strakkenthar’s corrosive energy make it impossible for me to accomplish my mission. I supposed we’d have to find out.