Shackled, p.39
Shackled, page 39
An explosion shook the cliff, and pebbles rained down from above. He needed to move.
Another second went by as the sound of metal on metal grew more frequent. Why was he having so much trouble thinking of a spell?
The problem solved itself at the same instant he realized what the problem was. As an Ancient Master, he had received a bonus to improvised spells. Now, that bonus was gone.
He called out the spell that had come to him, hoping it would be strong enough to do what he needed it to do. It was complicated, and he had never used most of the words before.
"Shah. Vitalis. Complu. So'wis. Wo'sic. Sic'mo. Mic'so…” As he spoke, he felt the pressure building in his throat. With his increased mana reserves, it was easily something he could handle. The last word of the incantation, the one that would ensure he did not waste another moment with Hime in danger, was a doozy.
“So'wiswo'sic'momic'so." His tongue felt like it was going to split in half, and he almost bit it several different times, but he managed to complete the spell without issue.
Beneath his hands, the rope writhed and pulsed like a snake taking its first breath. His magic had imbued the rope with life and bound it to his will, then invested it with the most powerful Movement effect possible.
Take me to the top of the cliff, where the battle is, he thought at it. The rope throbbed in agreement, then snapped like a rubber band, launching him into the sky faster and higher than any arrow.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” He screamed involuntarily for a few moments before he realized the rope was still wound around his waist. He felt something tugging at his robe.
“Naaaaaaaaaaaa!” Aurrie was perched on his shoulder, hanging on for dear life. His moment of feeling bad about forgetting the little golem was eclipsed by the trouser-staining terror he was experiencing.
As he shot past the clifftop, he caught sight of Hime embroiled in a melee with a group of mechanical nightmares shaped like long, sleek cats. Where their faces should have been, there were only giant, glowing lenses. One by one, the lenses brightened and shot more of those light-lances toward Hime. She dodged between them all and somehow found time to slash one of them with her sword. Its foreleg sheared away and it jumped back, limping to safety.
The ground dropped beneath him, already fifteen meters away. He started to panic, but he felt a gentle reassurance come from the rope. He knew that he would reach the ground safely; the rope would make sure of it. That meant he could use the time to the fullest.
As the air rushed past, he opened his aetherium channels, drawing in the darkness of the night as he soared ever higher. This act, which had become so familiar over the past few weeks, seemed more difficult than he was used to as well. In switching classes, he had lost ten percent of his mana conversion, making it slightly more difficult to transform absorbed aether into mana.
He felt his upward momentum begin to slow, and he knew he needed to work quickly. The earth was now at least fifty meters down, and the red bolts threatened to overwhelm the Sword Sage. Korrash began to chant, his mind serene even as he reached the apex of his flight.
"Diahl. Sholashz. Phasmus. Ro. Ha. Din. Ba. Koth. Sha. Min'naas." He was relieved to know that the entirety of his ability to improvise hadn’t vanished with the Ancient Master class. The spell took shape in the air as it fell to earth in a rain of twisting, misty shadows. In moments, the battlefield was coated with fog-like shadows.
The red beams burst forth below once more, as Korrash realized he wasn’t actually plummeting to his death. The rope had grown stiff and twisted itself to give him a foothold, and he balanced easily on the tether.
He was thankful to find that the spell’s Effect had been strong enough to counter the weapons of the strange automatons. As the projectiles flew through the shadowed air, the darkness sapped their strength. This time, a few of the bolts hit Hime as she lunged toward one of the creatures, but the impact had been robbed of its energy. Unfortunately, he’d been unable to include any extra duration in the spell, so it would be short-lived.
Go, the rope pulsed in his mind, and he saw how it intended him to join the battle. He smiled; this was going to be a lot of fun.
He drew his sword and clutched his staff tightly, then stepped off of the short, horizontal perch onto the gently curved rope that led back down to the ground and shifted his weight along the line of the slope. He felt his boot grow slick as his Mucosal Metatarsi ability took hold, and he began sliding down the rope at speeds that quickly evolved from fast to insane. The wind rushed through his hair as he contemplated how to strike at his enemies.
The first salvo needed to be simple, so he began to build mana into an overcharged Projection. He focused on his increasing abundance of Darkness mana, hoping to maximize the effectiveness of his new Pact.
From his vantage point, he saw a new threat rushing onto the battlefield. Instead of the cat-like creations, this group was composed of bipedal creatures shaped like Savannah Velociraptors, their metal claws tearing at the earth as they sprinted from the far-off tree line. Strange blue flames shot from protuberances on the sides of their sinuous torsos, and they accelerated so fast that the air shattered with a deafening boom as shockwaves burst out behind them.
At that speed, they would be on Hime before she could react. He needed to do something, but a spell would have to wait until he discharged the bolt of Darkness. He aimed at the lead Razoraptor and released, hoping he’d properly compensated for the speed of the bolt and the target.
He needn’t have worried. A blob of quivering darkness the size of a watermelon solidified at the tip of his staff and began to spin in place. It was so dark that it almost seemed to not be there at all. Writhing, tentacle-like strands separated from the surface, their tips orienting on the speeding mechanical dinosaurs, and then they vanished.
Korrash scanned the area where his targets had been and saw only blackness. The sounds of explosions reached him a moment later, and the blackness was gone. Where the pack of twenty or so creatures had been, only craters and bits of scrap metal remained. What had just happened?
He rained more bolts down on the feline creatures as he sped toward the ground, keeping an eye out for a good place to jump off. None of these bolts had anywhere near the same effect as the previous one, and Korrash added a third thing to his mental juggling as he tried to figure out what it could have been.
He estimated that he was about seven meters from the ground and that this distance was probably optimal for a dismount. He pitched himself forward off of the rope and braced himself against both the impact and the momentum of his slide. As he fell, the realization hit him as to why he couldn’t figure out the cause of his too-powerful Aether Projection.
He’d forgotten to turn his skill notifications back on! With a thought, he remedied the error.
His Shadow effect had dissipated, though Hime had used the brief window to her advantage. The cats were down to single digits now, and were struggling to mount an effective attack. Korrash felt his feet hit the ground and flexed his knees, ending the Mucosal Metatarsi effect to keep him from sliding off of the cliff only ten meters away (Athletics 7 was obviously a success; look, you need to not turn me off again! What’s going on? Why…). He quickly shut the strange notifications off, but not before he felt the information he needed enter his mind.
HiddEn CLass / Skill Interaction: Ascendant Cursemage and Infernal Arcana. Hidden within the lexical labyrinth of the Contract Inerrant are clauses that allow the bonuses to Infernal effects and abilities when certain conditions are met. You have discovered one by accident; increasing Mastery and skill levels may allow you to research new ones by studying the Contract.
Condition: Use a REsource-dePleting ability while at 666 Resource (ModifiEd by Resource Scale on a per-resource basis).
Bonus: Increase all factors of the effect bY up tO 566% based on individUal pArameters and appropriateneSS of resources.[message append]+!
The rope beside him suddenly collapsed, the magic used to animate it expended, and he threw himself forward, using his hands to slow himself even more. He skidded to a stop just a few meters away from the cliff’s edge.
As he regained his footing and sprinted toward the battle, he saw the pall of his created shadows fade to reveal Hime locked in a deadly dance with two of the cats. Their single eyes glowed no longer, sitting dead and dull in their oddly-shaped faces now that their energy had been discharged. Their razored claws, however, were not affected by this loss of energy. When she spun to strike at one cat, the other would use the opportunity to strike at her unprotected side. She was keeping up, barely.
The other five cats had gathered in a wary crouch about fifteen meters away from him. They faced each other, then began to shiver. The metal plates on their sides fell away, and things began to crawl out of the revealed cavities.
The smaller automata were still feline-shaped, but they lacked the sleek form and power of their hosts. Each was less than fifty centimeters long and covered with hexagonal panels. Each larger cat had carried two of the tiny things, which were now clambering up the sides of their hosts with strangely clumsy movements.
Korrash aborted his rush toward Hime, instead sending a bolt of darkness streaking toward one of the cats that harried her. The bolt struck it in the side, and it tipped over.
Hime saw the opportunity, lunging at the cat in front of her. It recoiled, falling for the Sage’s feint. She spun around and charged the downed machine, sword held out to her side.
The cat’s legs kicked as it sought to right itself, but it wasn’t fast enough. Hime closed in, the tip of her katana drawing a thin line in the dirt. Behind her, the cat she had disengaged was crouched, its segmented tail held out behind it as it calculated the distance.
Hime hopped into the air as she closed on her target, clearing the flailing paws by ten centimeters and simply allowing her trailing blade to run across the metal body beneath her. It parted easily, wires and gears scattering like gobbets of flesh. The cat went still, and its partner sprang through the air, hurtling toward Hime before she had even reached the ground.
The zapping sound of lightning drew his attention back to the other group of cats. The smaller creatures had attached themselves to the larger ones, and blue lightning flowed over their tiny bodies and into their hosts. One by one, red eyes flickered back to life, and the smaller cats began to go limp and fall to the ground.
He had no time to intervene in Hime’s battle if he wanted to take this opportunity to strike at the other cats while they were still weak. He had to settle for shouting the words of a spell in what he hoped was a panicked voice.
"DIAHL! DIN! BA! RO! HA!" Darkness formed in a ball at the center of the cats, lines of purple shadows arcing from the sphere like lightning as it grew from the size of a peach to the size of a cannonball in a heartbeat.
The pressure in the air changed suddenly, and he felt a slight breeze, but he was too concerned with the chaos around him to worry about the cause. Hime had turned and thrown herself into a roll that he hoped would be enough to dodge the metal beast. That, too, was quickly pushed to the bottom of his priority list.
Something was wrong with his spell. The orb that had been pure darkness a moment ago now glowed with a dirty, yellow-brown light. The spell should have erupted by now, exploding outward from the center of the Effect and tearing apart the cats, who were beginning to reorient on their original target.
Frustrated, he willed his interface to behave.
Just act like you always have! I’ll visit a shrine in town and have the Reinstaller Priests look at you soon! I need to know what’s happening right now if I’m going to survive! He hoped the mental plea would suffice as he re-enabled his notifications once more.
ShadoWs of the Deep HAs acTivated, imbuIng your Spell with the [Corrupt] descriptor. The delay between castinG and activatiOn was INcreased by a random inteGer between .01 and 10 secONds, and the Potency of the Effect will be increased by a correlated value between one percent (.01s) and 1000 percent (10s). This effect will also impregnate the local aether with Corruption. Your own Corruption score will be increased based on the random integer as well, between one and 10 percent. [message append]+?
While it wasn’t perfect, it would have to do for now. He took a deep breath and surveyed the battlefield.
Hime’s sword lashed out as she came out of her roll, somehow severing all four of the cat’s legs. It flipped end over end and rolled to a stop in the dirt. As another second ticked by, Korrash took off running toward Hime, hoping the now-Corrupt spell would go off in time. She looked at him and smiled. The smile dimmed and turned to a frown as she glanced up at the sky.
He glanced up quickly, then back toward where his spell still gathered power. The sky seemed to have too many stars, which was odd but not as threatening as the scene behind him. The cats had organized, their ruby eyes swelling with power as they prepared to bombard the pair with their beam attacks.
“Holy shit, missiles!” Hime shouted and started to run toward him. He planted his feet and came to a stop, trying to figure out what Hime was worried about. He opened his mouth to ask Hime what she meant, and then his spell went off.
A brief, filthy light illuminated the grasslands as the orb of power detonated with a roar that sounded like the death screams of a hundred different creatures, human and animal alike. Sound and force swept out in a swirling disc that obliterated the gathered cats. Corruption-laced wind exploded outward, lifting him off his feet and sending him tumbling a few meters. He breathed in a wisp of yellow smoke, and it burned his throat.
Corruption has increased five percent (one Environmental, four from Pact effects). [message append] +wtf?!?!
As he tumbled to a stop, the screams of the damned were replaced with a high-pitched whistling sound. As he looked up to the sky, he realized that the stars were catching fire and streaking toward the ground. They weren’t stars, after all, but strange, oblong metal shapes. They had fins on one end, right where the fire was coming out, while the ends that faced the earth seemed to have been painted red, with jagged markings that made the whole thing look like an angry, flying fish.
They didn’t look like any missile he’d ever seen. They were far too big to be arrows, and too thin and metallic to be from a catapult. They weren’t magical, either. Was there another type of missile?
Hime slashed the air, and a ripple of air shot out from her sword. It impacted one of the metallic fish, and the fish exploded with a deafening bang and a very large amount of fire.
Korrash knew they were doomed. He had far too little mana remaining to shield against that much power.
Or, he realized, he would have, if he were still an Ancient Master. As the flaming fish-missiles sped toward them, he did some quick math (Primordial Magic Theory 10 success; Talent 15 success).
He cast his mind inside himself, down to where he could feel the presence of his Pact, wriggling like a cuttlefish somewhere between his beating heart and his soul. He spoke a word beyond language, a concept-turned-number that defined the weight, and worth, of a soul in easy-to-measure increments.
Evil bloomed in him, and his body melted like wax under flame. Trapped in helpless horror, he felt that wax sculpted into new and horrific forms under the brimstone touch of a Prince of Hell.
His tongue swelled in his throat, choking him, until it snapped off and wriggled its way between his clenched teeth and out onto his face. He tasted dirt and his own sweat-soaked skin, and saw from his own eyes and two pulsing, taste-bud-covered eyestalks.
His organs pulled together and began to twist inside him, as if they were trying to escape a predator. His bones popped and disintegrated as his body discarded its need for them. He was now fully formed and held upright by a hydrostatic skeleton, his body having become mostly water. You have Gained a new Focus: PROweSS (Hydrostatic Skeleton).
As his transformation shuddered to an end, he felt his maximum mana deplete as his Corruption increased. The missiles fell another few centimeters, and his awareness expanded once more as he activated another passive ability.
He could feel the Corruption seethe within him, powering his transformation into whatever he was now, and yearning to pull him further into its embrace. As if in harmony with that inchoate need, his slug-tongue let out a blorp that was, to his dismay, evident to all five of his senses, some of them in stereo.
He pulled his mind away from the subtle horror of having two senses of smell and grasped the wriggling Corruption inside him. As if sensing his intent, it struggled against him, refusing to obey anything but its infernal master. His Class showed him the truth: this was his Corruption, and with the proper knowledge, it could be brought to heel.
He drew a strand of it out from the rest, creating a long, yellow thread. His will tightened around the construct, and he pulled it away from itself, forcing the part of it that was energy to join with his body like he would the aether, and forcing the part that made it Corruption out of his being entirely and back into his surroundings.
His spirit lightened just a bit, and he expanded his focus until it encircled the entire cloud, burning away the diabolic onus on his soul until only the small, unalterable core remained.
His tongue keened, his rasped jaw flexing as the slimy organ forced its way back through his clenched teeth and reconnected itself, but not before emitting one last, piteous plorp. It shivered, retracted its eyestalks, and became a healthy, pink tongue once more.
His hydrostatic body rippled and tore itself apart, his floating organs detorting (a painful term he wished he didn’t know), and compressed its internal mass with such force that the liquid inside him ossified, and just like that he had a skeleton again. His feet twitched and crackled, and the feeling of standing in a puddle vanished.
Your Corruption has decreased to 10 percent. YOU have juSt prodUced 1452 mana. Current Mana: 1602/1602. You have lost BacKwards Steps, Limocene Lingus, and Mucosal Metatarsi.
