M.D.Syl
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Chapter 64 colorless
🕑 Added 2023-03-21 10:11:11 +0000 UTCVolume 2, Myrsha, the Law of Wolves and Sheep.
Chapter 64 Welcome to the Gray Islands.
Every group of sheep needs a shepherd and a wolf.
A wolf to threaten their existence,
and a shepherd to look up to in a crisis.
But a shepherd to one is a wolf to another.
And there are crueler fates than being eaten.
Nuriss, the Maiden of War.
As we pass the corner at the edge of the alleyway, the scenery changes.
We walk by a tall arch into the ruins of a fortress. The place is abandoned, large fallen stones block some of the passages, and half of the wall is broken beyond repair. The most eye-catching details are the enormous spider webs and cocoons hanging from the walls and archways.
Kolag stomps forward through the only clear passage, tearing apart the thin spider webs that bar our way.
“Graaaaah.” The voice comes from the nearest cocoon. Lezere and Salik raise their axes in alarm, and Berthold draws his bow. Kolag stops hacking at the webs and aims his massive claymore at the nearby cocoon, pulling the handle near the chin of his helmet.
Ryon chuckles. “Someone’s alive ind‘ere! They pay us if we save ‘em.” He paces toward the cocoon, drawing a dagger before anyone can stop him.
He doesn’t have to open the cocoon; a pair of shrunken hands tear the webs apart, followed by a disfigured face. The humanoid creature pounces at the surprised half-elf.
With a screech, all the cocoons in the area get torn apart, and wrinkled corpses climb out of them. From shrunken humanoids in all sizes shapes and forms to animals. Deflated, almost skeletal canines and felines, alongside harmless herbivores such as deer, and even small ones like rabbits. All of them rush toward us, blocking the only path outside.
Ryon jumps backward, throwing one of his smoke devices. The flash blinds everyone, and with the obscuring smoke screen, we can no longer see the walking corpses. “Run!” Ryon calls as he disappears within his manmade fog.
Oh really? Run? "Felul!" <wind!> my magical breeze clears the fog and allows us to see the approaching undead. There's no sign of Ryon.
“When I find that skinny cat, he’s dead!” Lezere growls as she hacks at a corpse of a shriveled dead deer with her axe.
“Focus Lezere! We’ve been through worse.” Kolag waves his claymore in wide circles and chops two scrawny heads in a single swing.
“Of course you would say that, metal man!” Lezere chops a dead leopard’s head and kicks another humanoid undead. But not unscathed, I can see the marks of the leopard’s claws on her arm. “They can’t even touch you!”
Sharla and Jerro manage to retreat and get into the fortress, under the protection of Berthold’s seax and Salik’s axe. The latter two stand and block the entrance. Berthold knocks arrows into the withered creatures, and Salik hacks at any corpse who gets too close. Unfortunately, Berthold’s arrows don’t seem to do much good other than sticking out of the corpses, he soon switches back to his seax.
These corpses are fast, they circle Lezere and Kolag and reach me in an instant. “Myrsha Samir!” <Gravity protects> I call out when the corpses get too close. A flickering red barrier appears around me, slowing down their strikes. I put my hands on the nearest shriveled heads and weave a duplication pattern. “Myrsha ritsa!” <gravity repulse!> I wince at the explosions of rotten gore.
Behind me Loyal stands on his back legs, waving his hooves violently. One kick sends a skinless wolf to the ground with a broken skull, and another crushes the ribcage of what seems to have been a human once.
“Kolag! Lezere! Into the keep!” I call out. The doorway near Berthold and Salik has a rotten wooden door hanging on a single hinge. It may not be the best barrier, but it’ll help us control this flood of monsters. Narrowing it down to a small doorway should make it manageable.
“Felul felik!” <wind cut> my wind magic doesn't do much to these corpses. The cuts are shallow, and my ‘Wind Blade’ isn’t strong enough to chop their legs. But swift wind blades aimed at their legs slow these creatures down. Dead or alive they still need their shriveled muscles to move around, muscles which got torn by my wind blades.
We retreat. Lezere—bleeding from multiple nasty gashes—leads Loyal down into the narrow doorway. Salik and Berthold enter right after her, leaving me and Kolag behind. “Go!” Kolag shouts at me.
“In a second.” I pass and stand between him and the incoming corpses. With all the shriveled corpses coming from one side I have them perfectly lined up. “Folo fotyr!” <flying fire!> I exhale, and my breath turns to fire. The shriveled corpses screech. These things seem like something that'll be phased by fire.
I gasp when I see they keep on coming, even aflame, their assault continues unhindered.
Kolag grabs my arm and pushes me inside. He blocks a flaming corpse with a metallic hand. Too close for the claymore he punches the creature and waves his sword in a vertical hack.
Inside, the rest of the group is already working on a barricade. They pile up rotten furniture and bricks in the inner doorway. A small defensive wall, meant to narrow the flow of the undead, forms swiftly. I join them, using my telekinetic abilities to speed up the process.
Kolag moves inside too, walking backward and waving his massive claymore in wide circles. The flaming creatures don’t seem intelligent enough to keep their distance from the weapon; they try to overwhelm him with their numbers. He deflects their blows with his sword or fist, but there are simply too many of them.
"Graaa!" Lezere pulls a wrinkled rabbit off her thigh, leaving behind a small bleeding spot. She tears the rabbit's head off with her bare hands, and goes back to helping with the barricade. I notice that a few more of these got past Kolag, mainly the smaller of the undead.
I stop helping with the barricade and focus on a walking corpse of a child with my magic. “Latsa!” <Lift!> I lift the little zombie above Kolag’s head and; “Ritsa!” <repulse> I launch the child into the mass, causing the undead to fall on one another. I repeat it once or twice, giving Kolag some room to retreat. He blocks the hole in the barricade with his massive armor, and keeps swinging the claymore up and down in the narrow space, almost as if he is simply chopping wood.
Only now do the rest of the flaming corpses collapse, burning on the ground, motionless. Fire takes time to take effect I guess… especially on creatures that don’t seem to fear pain… I’ll have to keep that in mind… Should I freeze and slow them down? No. Cold might make it more difficult on Kolag too...
“Aaaaaahh!!” The shrill scream behind me makes me jump like a startled doe. I turn sharply only to see Sharla being pinned to the wall by a gigantic white spider. I pounce toward the ugly thing and press my hand against its abdominal sack. “Myrsha ritsa!” <Gravity repulse!> *Thooomp...* *Pluck!*
The sack explodes, showering me with greenish and white gore. I wince and wipe the green blood from my face, awfully aware of the disgusting fluids in my hair.
The spider collapses and lets Sharla go, but the pair of bleeding holes in her chest and abdomen tells me she’s not going to survive long without a proper treatment. Snake you Firuk! First, you apologize, and now you’re sending me here?! Did mother dearest tell you to send us into this death trap?!
“Above us!” Jerro calls out, horrified. The ceiling is crowded with gigantic white spiders, exactly like the one I’ve just killed.
As if they understood that we’ve noticed their presence, they all hang from the ceiling on thick white cords. They drift down with screeches that drown the noise of the undead, white hairy legs clawing at empty air, and pairs of long white fangs, marred with dripping venom.
These things are alive, they should fear fire! “Folo fotyr!” <flying fire> I call out, exhaling as I draw mana from my necklace. I breathe out a cone of angry flames. The spider above me screeches as it touches my fire. I move out of its path and let it roll on the floor in agony as it burns.
I see Lezere with her back to the wall, keeping a gigantic spider’s fangs from touching her skin to my left. While Salik defends Berthold behind him from a pair of white spiders to my right, at the opposite side of the hall. Salik hacks at the first spider’s legs, while Berthold knocks three arrows in the creature’s numerous eyes.
Loyal keeps kicking around in the middle, scaring the three spiders around him. And Jerro crouches right below my horse, holding onto Sharla’s shoulders and dragging her below the horse. This man knows exactly where the safest spot is.
Kolag retreats from his spot. With spiders behind him, he probably thinks holding up the undead is pointless compared to the spiders. “Hold your position Kolag! Don’t worry about your back, leave the spiders to me!” I call out in a panic. Three of these nine spiders are already dead or disabled. We can deal with six overgrown spiders, but if the undead joined them…
I turn without waiting to see if Kolag listened to my orders and rush to Lezere’s spider. I press my hand to its abdominal sack, and again. “Myrsha ritsa!” <gravity repulse!> *Thooomp...* *Pluck!* This time I close my eyes in time, then wipe my face clean. Being covered in green blood again isn’t pleasant.
“Thanks, chief!”
“Go help Salik! I’ll deal with the three around Loyal!” I order her while heading toward my surrounded horse.
“You got it, chief!”
As if they understood what I’ve said; the three spiders turn around to face me, and their eight gleaming red eyes focus on me. Are these things intelligent?!
They rush toward me. Lezere throws her axe at the face of the first and it drops, rolling on the ground with its white hairy legs pointing upward. The other two ignore it and keep on charging.
“Myrsha samir!” <gravity protects> my red bubble slows the pair of eight-eyed arachnoid faces. I place my hands on their shaggy faces drawing mana from my necklace to weave a duplicated ‘Kinetic Burst’. “Myrsha ritsa!” *Thooomp* *pluck* *pluck* with twin splashes of green gore, a pair of headless spiders drop to the ground. By now time Berthold also manages to kill one of the spiders with his arrows.
Lezere picks up her axe from her dead target and hacks at the last spider from behind. Joined by Salik’s axe, and Berthold’s arrows from the front, the creature soon drops as well. And finally, Kolag dismember the last of the undead. He turns with a smooth motion and nails a small wrinkled fox to the ground with his claymore.
The unbearable screeching stops and a blessed silence falls upon the ruins.
The only thing left is the shriveled corpses and the dead spiders. “I think… I think that’s it” Kolag says, panting and leaning on his large claymore.
Lezere let out a grunt and takes out something that looks like a wolf’s fang out of her shoulder, leaving a bleeding wound behind at the edge of the sleeveless brown leathers she wears. She chuckles and pockets the sharp tooth, ignoring the thin trail of blood on her muscular exposed arm. “That was a fight to remember!”
“Not something I want to go through again…” Berthold adds. He pats his bloodied gambeson and looks down, checking for potential wounds. “I’ve never fought so many magical beasts at once before. I’ve read about plenty of weird spiders, but nothing like this. What are these things?”
“Vampiric spiders,” Salik comments quietly, fixing a buckle in his brigandine armor. “We’ve entered their nest. They’re quite deadly.”
“Ha! I can tell!” Lezere pats the mercenary’s back. “You’re good with that axe. We should spar sometimes.”
“Everyone alright?” I ask. I feel worn out as well, I’ve used up all of my gravity mana, resulting to drain some of the mana in my necklace, which is down to about seventy gems. My fire and wind mana are spent up as well. Only my water, earth, wood, and light mana pools are still full. But I don’t know any earth or wood cantrips anyway.
“You need to help her!” Jerro shouts at me. He holds Sharla’s unconscious head. With the ugly wounds in her torso, I know she won’t last very long. I take out a healing potion and pass it to him. This is the last one I have, now I regret I didn’t take or prepare more.
My leave had been too sudden… I couldn’t think of everything…
I guess I should try and learn some healing spell as soon as possible… or at least the alchemical recipe for a healing potion…
Jerro feeds the potion to Sharla, cradling her head. She lets out a few painful cries and an astonishing change occurs in the unconscious woman.
The chubby red-haired girl from my home islands turns slender. Her curly ginger hair elongates into smooth long black hair with a blue tinge. Her freckled rosy face turns pale, with a sharp and wild look to it. Her clothes disappear, replaced by an odd skin-tight dress sewed from red autumn leaves.
I recognize the sharp features. She is fae, not human. One with the ability to change her looks, a shapeshifter.
A spy… now it makes sense… she didn’t come from the soundless islands, did she… she just made sure to appear as if she did, to create some common ground… venom… even her accent was real… just how much thought did she put into it?
Most importantly, what is the real Sharla like? Do I even know the real person? Wait, is Sharla even her name?! Probably not…
What am I going to do with her? Do I still consider her a friend? Do I want her as a friend? Or merely a pawn? I’ll have to get to know the real her, then I’ll decide…
The rattling legs from the outside wake me up from my daze. This isn’t the time for this. There is a small army of white spiders approaching the doorway, and behind them is a gigantic white spider at the height of this room’s ceiling.
“Come on. We need to find a small room and barricade ourselves inside! Lezere. Help Jerro with Sharla! Salik. Berthold. Find us a good room. Hurry! Kolag. You and I are rear guard. Let’s go!” I shout, trying to suppress the panic in my voice.
We climb the stairs at the edge of this hall, Kolag and I stay at the bottom of the staircase. I wait for the spiders to get closer, but they do not. They stand at the entrance of the large hall right behind the barricade, watching us with intelligent red eyes. What are you looking at?! “Fotyr folo!” <fire fly!> The fiery arrow leaves the tip of my finger, hurling in their direction. A path opens, and the spiders move out of the way of my flaming arrow in an orderly fashion.
The fire streaks and hits the gigantic leg of the massive spider behind them, but it doesn’t seem to bother it much. The group of spiders goes back to their previous formation, watching with their beady red eyes.
“Let’s go.” Kolag echoes. We climb the stairs and join the rest of the group. A few minutes later, we barricade ourselves in a room with small windows, too small for the spiders to crawl through. But the intelligent spiders know that we’d run out of food eventually, and they only need to wait…
*~*~*
On duplication spells.
A duplicated spell required extra mana for the alteration pattern + double the cost.
A cantrip requires 1 alteration pattern. While a first level spell will require 2.
A duplicated “kinetic burst” will cost 20 gravity mana. 8x2+4. And 9 mana patterns.
This does not apply to cantrips that require a 1 or 2 patterns to begin with. Such as ‘Minor Telekinesis’ or ‘FireFly’ Since there are no mana complexities to duplicate with those. The caster can simply repeat the same pattern and weave it as a single spell.
*~*~*
Effrat’s Lesser Fire Breath
Names: Effrat’s Lesser Fire breath, Lesser Fire Breath, Cone of Flames.
Element: fire
Sub element: fire
Level: 0
Words: folo fotyr
Translation: flying fire
Quicken: X
Patterns: 2
Gestures: exhale
Offering: X
Requirement: a caster with a breath, temperature above 0c.
Range: 3 meters
Target: 45 degree cone.
Duration: 1 second after channel has ended.
Effect: a cone of flames erupts from the caster’s mouth. It’ll last as long as mana is channeled into it, and as long as the caster can exhale. Weaker lung capacity or breath may result in a weaker spell. Larger lung capacity may result in a stronger spell.
Cost: 4 fire gems for initial cast, 2 fire gems per five seconds to maintain.
Bound cost: X
Altered cost: 3 fire gems for each alteration pattern.
*~*~*
Power level: 3rd stage apprentice.
Mana pools status:
Crown-knot: Affinity 10: formed: 1 gem replenished per five minutes.
Neck-Bridge: Affinity 6: formed: max amount of gems drained per day: 66
Abdomen-storage: Affinity 5: formed: 6 gems. Conversion ratio: 6:1
Air: Affinity 4: formed: 18 gems
Fire: Affinity 2: formed: 9 gems
Light: Affinity 3: formed: 14 gems
Water: Affinity 6: formed: 27 gems
Earth: Affinity 1: formed: 4 gems
Wood: Affinity 2: formed: 9 gems
Gravity: Affinity 9: formed: 40/41 gems
Cantrip known:
Air: Shavi’s Breeze, Shavi’s Sword. Shavi’s Hair Dryer, Aria’s Enhanced Hearing.
Fire: Nuriss’ Flame. Effrat’s Firefly, Effrat’s Fire Breath. Sorladika's Lesser Heating.
Light: Noxi’s Light, Lako’s Blinding Light.
Water: Water Evocation, Water to Ice, Ice to Water, Water to Vapor, Vapor to Water, Mayan’s Icy Spike, Ayla’s Water Jet.
Earth:
Wood:
Gravity: Lumina’s Kinetic Burst. Tukado’s Repulse. Tukado’s lesser shield. Imari’s Minor Telekinesis. Imari’s Jump. Leo’s Pull. Leo’s Grounding. Alino’s Light Body. Alino’s Heavy Body.
Spells known:
Gravity: Alino’s weightless bodyb.
Focus capability: 11 patterns
Social status: Inara, Daughter of Mysteries. Apprentice to the Maven of Mysteries.
Wealth: 1854 gems. 1421 golden peas, 7 silver scales, 37 copper bits.
Items:
Magical necklace. Contain a 100 gems of general mana, can be drained like a mana pool. It’ll recharge by itself at the rate of five gems an hour.
1 simple healing potions.
1 potion of lightning body.
1 potion of mana, medium grade.
An enchanted belt with eight pouches, the enchantment keep the pouches’ content fresh.
Fresh rose petals, 25g
10 empty soul bottles. Glass with a diamond stopper, put in scaled leather wrapping.
Companions:
Kolag of house Befar.
Lezere of the black fang tribe.
Salik.
Berthold.
Jerro.
Sharla?
Loyal
Languages:
Toml’a <People’s tongue> Fluent
Sinteo <Speech> Fluent
Myrsha <Gravity> 6/10
Felul <Wind> 1/10
Injuries and scars:
