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Arcane Apocalypse ~ 77
🕑 Added 2025-01-17 17:00:18 +0000 UTC**************************************************************************************************************************************************
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i0nf4gRn15nV0aMXv4b71eDMWtbJU4QRWQ-LV7vJUNs/edit?usp=sharing
*****
Sparkle was bored. He wished the girl wouldn’t be so lazy and summoned him again so he could play some more.
Well, she wasn’t summoning him specifically, but it was easy enough to kick a few muscle brained elementals on the bum to make sure it was him, Sparkle, who got to go out and play.
He regretted letting one of those simpletons take the last summoning, but he’d been enjoying the bath far too much at the time to bother getting out just yet.
Swimming in a little puddle of pure arcane mana, just the right intensity to make it zappy but not so much as so it’d hurt a Sprite like Sparkle was a relaxing way to spend the time between summonings, but he was getting bored with it. So very, very bored.
There were just far too few fun things left to do for a small Sprite like him, Sparkle, to do in the vast Astral Sea. Sure, it was safer for an Arcane Sprite with a Bloodline as significant as his, but he was still one Elemental Storm or wandering idiot away from being wiped out of existence.
He had to stay put in one small pocket of stable space or another if he wanted to stay alive. Which, as stated above, was soul crushingly boring.
He flicked a little bit of the ‘water’ to the side, aiming it to land atop the head of a dumb elemental. They were crowding around his bath, wanting to drink it. Stupid things.
They should have known better than to try and drink the bath of one such as him, Sparkle. What good would it do to them? They would at best split in two from the overwhelming arcane power instead of evolving. Dumb elementals.
Sparkle stiffened, feeling an all too familiar feeling wash over him. He was being watched, observed. He scrunched up his tiny, pink face so much it turned purple.
“I told you to leave me alone!” Sparkle shouted, slapping his tiny fists into the pool of arcane energy with a petulant frown. “I’m not doing it! Leave me alone!”
Of course, like every single time he’d said those words before, he was ignored. The presence coalesced and as the elementals scattered in fright, the form of a man condensed before Sparkle’s eyes.
“Aedan,” the man greeted, long tufts of ethereal pink hair floating behind him as if he was underwater as his pair of azure eyes glowing with power stared at Sparkle with a smile. “How go-“
“Sparkle! Sparkle! My name is Sparkle,” Sparkle, not Aedan, shouted with a petulant indignation only Sprites could manage.
“Sparkle,” the man smiled, walking over to sit beside the pond Sparkle swam in as clothes materialised around him. “You chose a Chosen Name for yourself? I’m proud of you.”
“Humpf,” Sparkle turned his nose up, fluttering his twin pair of wings a little to fly out of the pond and stand before his Sire. He was resolved not to show even a hint of the joy he felt at those words, but his wings happily fluttering behind him even once he landed probably betrayed his feelings. “I did so. So I am Sparkle.”
“That you are,” the man said, gently smiling all the while. “How goes your … repeated escapades into the Cosmic Realm?”
“Not telling!” Sparkle said, turning on his heels to have his back facing this annoyingly clingy and nosy Sire of his.
The man had thousands of offspring, Sprites, like him the most of them and a dozen more True Children. He should just learn to leave Sparkle well alone and let him enjoy his adventures. Soon enough, Sparkle wouldn’t be the youngest of them anyway. He didn’t need this nagging oversight.
“Won’t you please?” His Sire asked, and annoyingly, Sparkle knew from his tone that he was genuinely interested. Not just for whatever ulterior motive — His Sire always had one of those, if not two or more — but because he truly cared for how Sparkle fared.
Sparkle had been a part of him at one point after all, Sprites were just shed off chunks of arcane mana and spiritual power. Sparkle had been born of the man’s adventuring spirit specifically, so he should have known better than to bother him this much.
“Father is interested too,” the man said, and Sparkle froze up like he’d just been thrown into the Everfrost. All his wandering thoughts stumbled over their feet, crashing into a pile of horror and confusion. “His curiosity has risen for the first time in millennia, won’t you please allow me at least some snippets?”
“G-gra-,” Sparkle started, then realised calling Him grandfather would be extremely disrespectful for a Sprite. He gulped, not that he had either saliva or a throat, but he still did. He cleared his throat. “I- I’m sure, I’m yes, sure, that His Majesty could just take a look himself. Nothing as flimsy as the System’s Obfuscation Barrier could stop him from doing so if he really was curious.”
Sparkle looked up at his Sire with a mix of confusion and terror. The Spirit King was interested in something he, Sparkle, was doing?
“No need for fear, Sparkle,” the man before him smiled gently. With the man being the oldest of the Great Spirit King’s Offspring, Sparkle took some comfort in his words. “Father wishes not to interfere overly much, but he does want to make sure your … have you formed a Bond yet?”
“Noooooo?” Sparkle said, frowning and raising a very suspicious eyebrow at his Sire. “You said I should at least spend a year or two of time with any prospective Bond and to make sure they were Sorcerers too before I made any decisions with permanent consequences.”
The girl he’d been muscling his way in to get summoned by fulfilled neither. Sure, she had an extremely tasty and pure type of arcane mana for a Rank 0 and also had a comfy Bloodline by what little Sparkle got to feel through the temporary Bond he’d shared with her … but that wasn’t that unusual. Or was it?
Sparkle wasn’t sure, the first time the girl summoned him was only his fifth summoning overall. Sparkle was young. Very young. Which was the only reason he could be summoned by even a Rank 0 amateur Arcanist.
Well, Sparkle did most of the work there, but that was neither here nor there. If he was even a level higher, the poor girl’s Spirit would have been sore only after having him as her Bond for a few hours.
The Bond being temporary dampened that, but still.
“There are exceptions,” his Sire said and Sparkle, once again, felt it prudent to take his word for it. The man was ancient and the First Seat of the Astral Court’s Council. He should know what he was talking about. “Like if your summoner has the Mortal version of the same Bloodline as you do.”
If Sparkle was shocked by his illustrious Grandfather’s interest in his play-dates in the Cosmic Realm, he was utterly floored now.
Same Bloodline. That meant …
“H-h-how?” Sparkle squeaked, the tiny, faerie-like form he took to lately dilating, slowly turning to misty wisps of energy from his chaotic mental state.
“She is a descendant of Princess Serielle.”
“The lost Princess?” Sparkle said with dawning horror that quickly turned into jubilation. He had the ‘blood’ of the Astral Court flowing through him, it was in his nature to be happy for a lost Royal being found. “Is she alive-?”
“We do not know,” his Sire said, sighing mournfully. “We suspect the worst, as the Nullification Field the Cosmic Realm had been under for the last hundred years prior to its Integration would have been less than kind to any Fae. Still, we know the girl you’ve been summoned by is her great-granddaughter.”
“So that’s why she felt so comfy … “ Sparkle murmured thoughtfully, nodding to himself.
“Indeed,” the man said, letting out a soft chuckle. He opened his mouth to continue, but was cut off by the same sensation Sparkle had been waiting for hours.
The man’s gaze narrowed and turned to the tiny rip in the fabric of reality that the lesser elementals around were rushing towards. With a wave of his hand, the lesser creatures got swatted away and out of the small island of stable space Sparkle has taken over for himself.
“It seems you are being called,” the man said, his gaze undoubtedly taking the opportunity to peer into the Cosmic Realm through the tear and take a look at the young Halvyr for himself. “Keep her safe, the King would be heartbroken if she died. Do not fail him, Sparkle. Do not fail us all.”
“Like I need you to tell me that!” Sparkle shouted indignantly as he shot off towards the rip, his wings tearing through the distance between him and his target. “And get off my island!”
Barely hearing his Sire’s final chuckle, Sparkle was through the tiny portal and found himself back in that feline construct.
With an inner huff, he twisted the spell form a bit, optimised it to last a bit longer and made the Bond that formed as seamless as he could. Like always. Mana Familiar was a spell meant for summoning simple creatures like Elementals so he had to make the spell fit for a Sprite like him.
Once he was done, he stretched out his cat-like body and looked up at the girl, the young Halvyr. He never paid much attention to her looks, those always changed so quickly for mortals there was no use bothering to remember them, and squinted.
Hmmmm. Yep. There are similarities. Even with Father. That, by itself, wouldn’t be saying much. The glistening, gem-like azure eyes were much more unique though, unlike the pink hair that was a regular among anyone with a Major or higher Affinity for the Arcane. Those eyes. How had I missed them? … okay, I really didn’t care, that’s how.
“Okay, so I’ve been almost killed by some weird stealthy goblins,” the girl said, eying Sparkle questioningly as he panicked inwardly. Damnit, he really shouldn’t have let one of those dumb elementals take the last summoning. “I want you to stay close to me and keep any other ones from stabbing me and my friends. Can you do that?”
Sparkle wanted to curse, maybe punch an elemental in the face — they were very good punching dummies — this was bad. With the spell Mana Familiar being as rudimentary as it was, he couldn’t use his Spirit Sense. He had to rely entirely on the extremely inferior auditory and visual senses this arcane construct had.
If the stealthy gobs were any better than utter trash, they were going to be trouble. He never thought he’d regret not specialising in divination and scrying. Well, he’d have to do his damnest because he was not allowing the girl to die in this dump of a Rift.
Still, lying was bad. So he was honest and gave an uncertain feeling through the temporary Bond.
“Oh well,” the girl said, sighing in disappointment that made Sparkle feel horrible. “Just do your best. I should be able to at least dodge a stab if I’m awake and focused. Just make sure they can’t follow up on it.”
Sparkle nodded hurriedly. That, he could do. Once the dumb monsters revealed themselves, he was going to tear them to shreds.
“Alright!” The girl smiled, then plucked Sparkle off the floor and dropped him on her shoulder. “Let’s do this. I want to get out of this damned dungeon and take a long bath.”
Sparkle sent a surge of glee through the Bond, he loved baths too and while his Spirit Sense wasn’t working in here, he could feel the revolting broken mana all around him, nonetheless.
A bath sounded purrfect.
*****
This was, officially, the third worst day of Mia’s life. First two went firmly to the two days she lost a member of her family, her father and her brother, respectively. It was hard to measure up to that, but this day was trying really damned hard.
With a groan bordering on a growl, she twisted her body sideways and just barely managed to move out of the way of a dagger thrust at her kidneys.
Her newly summoned Familiar was only a touch too slow. Its senses were apparently much worse than Mia’s own, almost less reliable than human senses would be.
The angry pink cat only barrelled into the face of the newest ambushing Goblin once it would have been far too late had Mia not evaded the attack.
Glancing over, Mia saw Carmilla with her claws through the throats of a pair of goblins, Helene and Lina — the apparent other targets of the ambushes — stood pale behind her.
The reality of the situation was, as much as Mia hated it, that she and Carmilla had to be on the opposite sides of the formation to protect the others from the blasted goblin assassins as they made their way down into the dark cavern.
Only the two of them ever managed to react before they were shanked, saving the group from spending even more Elixirs on healing themselves up before the quickly approaching big fight.
Plus, Mia had double Lesser Wards on her along with her Kinetic Energy Assimilation Skill which she managed to make work above the Wards and not only after they both went down.
Helene was beside herself with worry and vibrated around Mia with an anxious look on her face even before the latest Goblin Assassin’s corpse — a Gloomstalker this time, at level 10, according to the Combat Logs — touched the ground.
She only sighed in relief once she’d made sure the dagger thrust really hadn’t touched, or even brushed against, Mia’s skin. The woman liked the current set of circumstances, and the formation they’d forced the team to take up even less than Mia herself did. Sure, the young Halvyr would have loved to have Carmilla next to her, ready to protect her from whatever tried to shank her, but she could see the practicality of having her and the vampire on the opposing ends of the formation.
Helene didn’t particularly seem to care about that, just worried Mia was putting herself in danger, which was fair since she was putting herself in danger.
“I’m fine,” Mia said, patting herself down and smiling at her mother. “See? No injuries.”
The ‘this time’ at the end was silent. It took Mia nearly getting her intestines poked out two times for her body to react almost instinctively to the flare of wrongness that signified a new goblin assassin pouncing out of the shadows.
These were much easier to sense than the Unique Monster had been, and didn’t talk either, which was a blessing at least. A silver lining. Mia could feel them as far as three metres away from herself, and vaguely feel their presences being somewhere near her from five.
They couldn’t entirely disappear, but their wrongness blended in annoyingly well with the ambient mist of the repulsive sensation spread throughout the Rift. Had her Sensitivity and Cognity been higher, she could have sensed them from further away and while she would never mention it to her mother … it was also pretty worthwhile for herself, even beyond just training her body to react to ambushes instinctively.
With how hyper-focused she’d been on her Spirit Sense, her Sensitivity and Cognity had been pushed to the limit, and the System just loved that by the looks of it.
[Base Cognity: 7 -> 8]
[Base Sensitivity: 9 -> 10]
[Hidden Quest: Unleashed Potential (1)] COMPLETED!
Objective:
Raise a Base Attribute to 10! COMPLETED
Rewards: One Level’s worth of Free Attribute Points according to the Rarity of your Class. (Free Attribute Points: 3)
[Free Attribute Points: 0 -> 3]
Mia forced herself not to grin. That would have set her mother’s worry off something fierce, likely turning it into anger in short order at Mia making light of the danger she was in. She wasn’t. She knew the danger she was in and had made sure it was minimised as much as possible.
Two Layers of Lesser Wards, her Secondary Skill, her Familiar and one of her Elixirs sitting in Carmilla’s back pocket were enough preparations in Mia’s mind. It also helped that the goblins, the sadistic little shits that they were, never went for a killing stab. Kidneys, guts, stomach, thigh arteries were their targets, never throats, hearts and lungs. They wanted their victims to both suffer and die.
Unfortunately for them, that greed was what allowed Mia’s team to feed an Elixir to anyone who fell victim to the little beasts, and what gave Mia the assurance that she wouldn’t die even if she messed up. It was only painful as hell, but she could handle pain for her friends. So far, aside from Mia and Carmilla only Lina had fallen victim to a stab.
The poor girl was still massaging the spot under the bloody tear in her shirt at her midriff. But Lina was still Lina, and instead of being terrified and trembling like Mia had been after her first ambush, the blonde Air mage looked more determined than ever before.
Mia envied that. Still, she had made a resolution of her own, that she wasn’t going to let anyone else fall victim to the goblins assassins, and thankfully, she had the power now to make her success all but assured.
“Mom,” Mia said, grabbing Helene’s upper arm and squeezing it tightly as she continued to keep herself on full alert. The goblins might have been mostly dumb, but they had a malevolent cunning to them. They would take advantage of her distraction if they could. “I. Can. Handle. This. So please focus on yourself and the delve itself, okay? Please?”
Helene’s lips trembled as she looked at Mia, her eyes going misty as she gave a small nod. Mia gave her a very quick, brief hug before pulling back. Being immobile like that was a weakness, with goblins stalking them.
“Thank Yo- “ Mia started, then moved to twist out of the way as she felt another goblin assassin closing in. She felt it just a bit farther away than before though, more than four metres away and had just enough time to realise that evading meant her mother would get the dagger in her gut.
Feeling her flare of indecision and worry through the Bond, the Familiar reacted, somehow deducing the likeliest direction the attack would be coming from and crashed right into the monster with fangs and claws bared.
Shaking off her surprise, Mia sent an appreciative feeling through the Bond and turned back to pat her mother on the shoulder reassuringly. “See? I got this. Please, let me do my part in this delve.”
“Sorry,” Helene said, sounding pitiful even to Mia’s ears, as she no doubt realised that her worried fussing put Mia in even more danger than she’d already been in. “Sorry, I’ll do that. Just-”
“I know Mom,” Mia interrupted with a soft smile. “I love you.”
“Me too, sweetheart,” Helene said with a brittle smile and moved back into the formation.
Mia glared at them, mainly Brent for letting her mother break formation and Aiden who was looking at Helene like she was stupid. The glares had two entirely different meanings behind them, but she glared all the same with all the heat she could manage. They were both idiots, for one reason or another.
“Let’s move,” Brent said, his mouth twitching almost imperceptibly into a wince. “The end of this Rift can’t be far. Be alert.”
The cave was a dump. Its mouth opened up in the keep, taking up the entire floor of the building’s insides and extended down into the belly of the earth. The cave looked to be like those mining tunnels, but with the ceiling five times as high as it should have been. Wooden pillars held up the ceiling, but also served as supports for rope bridges going between the walls, and the little burrows buried into them.
Smaller tunnels, little burrows, opened up on both sides, both leading downwards and further up, in them laid some shoddy parody of furniture thrown around with little care. Only the dim glow of the few torches hanging on the walls and the small bead of fire above Aiden’s hand illuminated the dreary place with a flickering light, but that was enough for Mia to see more of how goblins lived than she ever wanted to.
They walked onwards, feet squelching in the muddy ground as the damp air stuck to their skin uncomfortably. Mia hated the place more and more with every step she took, but she forged on with a steely face.
Carmilla took out two more goblins on the other side of the formation, feeling them the moment they stepped within her perception and Mia did the same with another five with the help of her Familiar and her increased Sensitivity and Cognity.
Those two points she got didn’t seem like much, but they were. They were both Base Attribute points, and that meant they were worth much more than Gained ones. Her cognitive speed was now fully into the superhuman, her relative time almost twenty percent faster than the real one and her Spirit Sense’s maximum range increased to 120 metres at the minimum.
With that all focusing on just sensing these accursed sneaky goblins, she could reliably feel their approach at seven metres now and pinpoint their exact location at four. With their speed, that might not have been enough, but it seemed her Familiar was strangely receptive to more complex mental orders and could act upon the vague impressions of direction she pushed at it.
And while the Gloomstalkers and Shadestalkers were both fast, they were not tough. Hell, Mia’s flimsy four points of real Strength were able to hold it off for a few seconds. So they were easy prey for her Familiar once they were found.
They followed the main tunnel, growing increasingly jumpy as the ceiling was higher and higher up with every metre they walked along the gently sloping path. The side walls also grew farther apart, the burrows more numerous, and twenty minutes after leaving the surface, they found the end.
A large cavern opened up from the underground ravine the tunnel had grown into. It was enormous, largely circular in shape, and was filled from wall to wall with shoddy wooden bungalows that had goblins milling about in them. Up the walls snaked a mass of green vines with what looked to be orbs of light hanging from them like fruits, which cast a dim glow over the underground city.
In the centre of the city were four lakes of some oily sludge, like petroleum with bubbles of some underground gas bursting through the still surface of the dark liquid every few seconds. In the middle, nestled between the four lakes was an island, connected to the rest of the city by four thin strips of dry ground and on it laid the largest goblin Mia had ever seen.
It was sleeping, nestled up in a fetal pose with its arms under its head as pillows. The fact that Mia could tell that much, despite being a good hundred metres away at the mouth of the ravine, spoke volumes of the enormous stature of the monster.
“That’s a big one,” Mark murmured, and Mia heard his mace’s handle creak under the white knuckled grip the dwarf had on it.
The rest stayed mostly silent, or gave sounds of agreement tinged with fear.
Mia’s ears twitched, and she saw Christine stiffen at the same time. Shouts, cackles and sounds of glee spread over the goblin settlement spreading out before them and a bustle rose across it as they streamed out of their houses like a green mass, their evil little eyes glowing in the dim light.
Guess these latest Shadowstalkers weren’t stupid and self-sabotaging enough not to notify the rest of their kin when they failed to kill us themselves.
“Ready for battle!” Brent said grimly, his sword gripped tightly in his hand. “Mark, I want this opening to be as thin as possible by the time they get here. The rest of you, prepare however you can. There are at least twice as many of them in here than there were up on the surface.”
Mia did so, spreading a new round of Lesser Wards over everyone as she switched her active spell over to Arcane Blast after summoning her Spectral Blade — just to be sure. Her eyes kept flickering back to the large monster, the one that continued to sleep in the middle of the cavernous space and the one that was undoubtedly the Guardian of this Rift.
At least it wasn’t coming at them along with its lesser kin.
Comments
Stephanie Washburn
Nice development of capability there - and I liked the interaction with Helene.
