The biggest problem that I ran into with Zagan was that I wasn’t sure how the hell I was supposed to use it. Not the mechanics, I could just shove healing energy into people, but the actual staff form. Each of my forms possessed a physical moveset, a series of staff arts that anchored them to Goetia and made them a holistic part of my combat style.
Mephistopheles was a lot of sharp brutal thrusting attacks, Mornax was a defensive stance that involved rooting my staff to the earth to soak up a charge, and Belial was all deflection and misdirection. The physical forms were all heavily influenced by their natures.
Which was why I was sitting in my room in the inn, spinning my staff in circles between my hands as I contemplated Zagan. Its nature was simple, but also complex. Purification, life, Vitality. It energized and cleansed and empowered. I considered a series of short sharp swipes of increasing speed, playing into the energy aspect, but nothing felt right.
I heard the door click, and looked up, unsurprised to find Callie beaming at me. “I felt all that excitement.” She said as she walked over to flop down on my bed. “Seems like this was a big one. Now I’m just getting frustration though, anything I can help with?”
I shrugged, keeping up my slow spin as I passed the staff to from hand to hand. “Not sure. I’m trying to figure out an actual staff technique to anchor my form, the way I have with the others.”
“Well, why don’t we try to test it out?” She said with a shrug. Hopping to her feet, she drew a pair of daggers, gesturing me to the middle of the floor. “First thing is first, maybe try telling me what it’s NOT.”
That was a good idea. I gave a hum of agreement. “It isn’t violent.” I paused. “It isn’t ONLY violent. It’s not an attack. It’s not exactly defensive, standing and tanking or knocking aside blows isn’t right. It’s not slow, but not too fast.” I groaned aloud. “I sound ridiculous and this isn’t helping at all.”
“No, it is.” She said in a pondering tone. “Maybe it’s defensive but not of you? Protection?”
I paused, feeling that out in my mind, I slowly shook my head. “That’s…wrong, but closer? I think I’ve got it! Try to chain me up with your shadows, just cover me in them.” She shrugged, and with a flick of her fingers the shadows around the room lanced out as chains, trying to wrap around me.
A few quick flicks of my staff and a few flashes of green white fire and the shadows dissolved. “Got it!” I cheered happily. “It’s a counter technique for control abilities. Goes perfectly with the purification thing. It’s meant to cleanse effects, and most control Skills are some kind of effect.”
It was extremely useful, even if it was also functionally incapable of dealing damage. I could feel from the Skill that Zagan couldn’t hurt anyone, and it would fundamentally clash with things like Belial or Mephistopheles. However, it was an excellent support power, and would synergize well with Mornax.
“That tore through my shadows like wet paper.” Callie said in an impressed voice. “My Might is HIGH now, being able to do that is no joke. Might have just been the the fact that it was literal fire though.”
I raised a brow at her. “Actually yeah, I hadn’t had a chance to ask about your stats. How much exactly did you improve over the last four months, Miss Godslayer?” I grinned to let her know I was mostly teasing, at least about the snarky title. I really wanted to know exactly how far she’d come.
We’d been so busy I hadn’t really had the time to check in on her progress. I knew she’d been keeping it to herself so she could surprise me, the same way the rest of us had. When I was using all my wishes on myself for stat gain I was much less involved with my friends and their advancement, for good or for ill. Callie grinned proudly as she wrote out all her stats, and I whistled in awe.
Calliope Reynolds E-rank. Ability: Expert Abyssal Infiltration- Enter the shadows and emerge where you will within range, shape the darkness to your call, moving it as if it were part of your body, and even extend your senses through the shadows to spy on your enemies. Might 11,550 Impact 65 Vitality 742 Fantasy 10,105 Focus 908 Perception 9375 Creation 2485 Progress to next rank: 35230/100000 Soul Strength: Sapphire Soul Body Pet: Wolf named Rellia Skills: Minor Tracking, Beginner Dual Dagger Mastery, Intermediate Stealth, Intermediate Trap Mastery, Beginner Disguise, Lesser Balam Mastery, Expert Shadow Manipulation Mastery. Intermediate Paired Dueling. Path of the Abyss Illusory
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“Damn.” I said in shock. “You weren’t kidding about your Might. Now I see why you were so shocked at how easily Zagan dispersed those bindings. I guess being completely specced toward healing and purification makes it way more broken than I expected.”
I suspected that the pieces I’d used to make it played a part in that. The Purification Flame was a bloodline power, and one that I technically HAD the bloodline for. I was curious if it would have worked so well for someone else. Chelsea’s version of it was the real one. I knew from seeing Enshrining Darkness around that you could make lesser copies of bloodline powers, but from what I could tell they were much weaker.
More than the stats though, I was impressed with her Skills. “I can’t believe you hit Expert in Shadow Manipulation. Not to mention Intermediate in Stealth AND Traps, and Beginner with your daggers. When the hell did you have time to do all this training?”
She grinned at me wolfishly. “I didn’t. Or rather, I did, but I also didn’t. I’ve been spamming my shadow clones and imbuing them with Piece of Mind. It wouldn’t work for anyone else or I’d have mentioned it, but my ability lets me see the world through shadows, and my clones count. The combination with Piece of Mind means I can actually learn with them.”
“That is so broken.” I said in an amazed voice. “I love it. Can you do it with any Skill?” I was excited about the possibilities of this. Could she learn all her Skills faster? I couldn’t copy it I didn’t think, at least not at this level of the bond, but maybe someday, I cut off my fantasizing as she shook her head.
“No can do.” She said sadly. “It basically stops working at Intermediate. I can practice rote stuff, but innovating like that doesn’t work for some reason. Shadow Manipulation was an exception because I was using shadows to do it, and the actual learning seemed to count.”
I sighed unhappily. I had a few shadow clones saved I’d been planning to try it with, but for Intermediate Skills it wasn’t worth the soul strain. My DS Mastery was my most important Skill anyway and it was at Expert. I’d already passed the phase where I could just smash new Skills into the old one to try and improve it too, I knew too much about Skill crafting and how badly that had almost fucked me over the last time.
Any combinations of Skills I made would need to be carefully crafted from specific Skills or stored attacks. It was made even more complicated by the fact that they were subskills of my Expert level Path Skill, which was why I’d been working on my forms instead of trying to directly alter DS Mastery.
I’d even considered condensing all of my individual subskills into various forms and trying to alter my Path into the Path of Goetia or something similar to slim down my focus a bit, but I was still a long way off from that. I could feel that I’d need to finish all nine forms for that to even be an option, which meant I was less than half done.
“So…” I asked as I walked over and slumped down on the bed next to Callie. “What do you think Griff needs us for tomorrow? I get the feeling that whatever it is, we’re not going to be doing something nice.”
She smirked at me, hair falling over her face as she let her head loll to the side to stare into my eyes. “Oh, you don’t think Griff is planning a puppy parade? Maybe we’re going to brush ponies for charity.”
“I…I don’t think you understand how charity works.” I said with a snicker. “It’s like…giving to those less fortunate.”
She snorted. “I guarantee you that I’m richer than a pony.” She paused. “Actually, there are probably A-rank ponies with like Imperial Platinum tassels on their manes and saddles made of dragon leather. I’m probably richer than most E-rank ponies.”
“More money than an undersized beast of burden." I said solemnly. “Clearly we’ve come up in the world.”
“I want ponies at the wedding.” She said loftily. “I need to teach them their place so they don’t mouth off about how much money they have when they get stronger. We could have Bethy tame one for the ceremony, and I could ride it down the aisle!” She seemed to be getting more and more excited as she talked, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
Reaching up, I covered her mouth with my hand. “Ok, please stop. Because this started as a joke and I feel it spiraling out of control. You are not riding an E-rank pony down the aisle. Half the guests are lower rank than that, and I’m positive ponies aren’t trained to restrain their aura. It would crush your mom like a bug.”
She slumped and I removed my hand, noting her pout. “I bet some ponies are trained.” She muttered.
“Yes, but we can’t afford them, I’m sure.” We actually probably could, but I wasn’t paying for an E-rank animal trainer for a pony she would ride one time. “Actually, can animals talk?” I asked as I thought back to her joke about ponies making comments. “Like, they seem to get smarter, I’d imagine that they reach a point where speech is possible.”
She blinked at me. “You don’t know about that? I always forget how little time you’ve spent as an Ascendant. No, animals can’t talk, but when they hit D-rank they have a chance to evolve into humanoids. They rarely do, because animals in general tend to be pretty content as animals, and D-rank animal forms are terrifying, but that’s the only way they gain speech.”
“I’m surprised, I keep expecting Randall to start talking.” I paused. “Or I guess he does, but like, talking our language.”
She shook her head. “His throat isn’t designed for that. Some of them develop telepathy, but it’s really rare. Much more common to find them bonded to a person or to just not care about talking to humans. I’m interested to see which direction our animal companions all go when they hit D-rank. Especially Luggage.”
The idea of a humanoid hellhound sounded pretty interesting, I had to admit. I was curious about that too, though who knew which way Bethy would try to push her pets. They were getting stronger fast so it might not be too far off that we got to actually find out. One of the many interesting perks of traveling with a Vampire.
We sat there like that for a few hours, chattering about nothing, cuddled up and enjoying our time together. I hoped I never stopped making time for moments like this with Callie, after the wedding or a hundred years from now. I was never happier than when I was holding her, sitting in a feedback loop of love and adoration through the bond. Eventually we drifted off to sleep, and I did so with a big smile on my face. Whatever came tomorrow we’d be ready, for now I was just happy we were together.