Chapter XX#
Can I Pet That Dog?#
oh sure he doesn't bite
Warning
Chapter illustrations currently WIP.
After a few hours travel, we pitched our camp by a nice picturesque stream through the plains, hidden by the tall grass. Arodorros pitched a few tents while Bia used her scythe to clear out space for a fire. It wasn’t strictly necessary as we didn’t need heat at our rank, but it was nice to have.
Lloyd and I went out into the fields to get some firewood. We used to camp out in the woods sometimes, back in Javenshard. Not too far in – we weren’t t-seven at the time. Smoke fish over the fire. Burn our fingers on it. Bia came along sometimes as well, but inevitably got tired and craved her bed.
She’d head back into town and come back the next day when we were packing back up. There wasn’t much reason to why we kept doing this. It was just nice to sleep under the stars every so often. Most of the time we didn’t even bring tents. A blanket was easy to set up and the trees cover enough. Warding rituals kept the monsters away. Lloyd usually took Bia’s side on my propensity to stay in low level Javenshard, but even he had to admit it made our trips easier.
Arodorros was teaching Bia how to make a smoke concealing ritual, carving out lines in the ground and sprinkling reagent into them.
“Will that hold the aura?” Bia asked. “Looks a little… eh, fragile. Disorganized. Messy.”
“The word is bad,” I said.
“This is metasteel powder,” Arodorros rebuked patiently. “Every physisphere flake is an impassable wall in the metasphere. It’s very common in Dawne, though my understanding is that you do not have much of it here.”
“That would be right,” Lloyd said, peering at Arodorros’ handful of powder. I could practically see the salivation through his eyes. “Quick and dirty as on the go rituals always are, but I assume it works better than the aura guiding reagents we have.”
He chuckled.
The lines around the fire consisted of two concentric rings, three spokes passing from the centre to the edges. The end of each spoke led into an identical geometric symbol – something like an outwards facing triangle with the outward side open, along with a bunch of flowy lines. The innermost circle contained sets of what looked like grasping hands.
Arodorro continued dusting the lines. “It’s very important which channels you activate first,” he said. “Activate the channels in the wrong order and you could create unintended effects. If perhaps, I were to activate the inner circle and outer circle but not the release mechanism, a ring of smoke would cycle through the outer circle constantly and accumulate.”
“Rituals are modular, then?” Bia asked.
“In a sense,” he shrugged. “The links between those modules are not. It is not an organized system – though Dawne has been trying to develop a portable modular ritual conducting device.”
“I need to see that,” Lloyd’s eyes glistened.’’
Lloyd and I left Bia to her doomed studies and headed off to cut down some food for the night. A short walk towards the nearest monster pack took us a few kilometres away from camp.
“How many?” Lloyd peered at my tablet.
“Around a hundred.”
“Excuse me, wha – ”
“You know what nilfor are, right?”
“Oh, totally,” he said, and looked suspiciously into the air in glassy-eyed Governance reading stare.
Creature: [Nilfor] (Beast)
Average Tier: VIII
Summary:
Fire based rodent monsters that can spew fire in various shapes. Nilfor also possess minor space manipulation powers (e.g. dodging via space manipulation)
“Oh, that sounds tricky.”
“Devilish little things,” I said. “Comes pre-cooked, though,” with a grin.
He snorted. “How far?”
“Right now,” I smirked and a very large fiery rat comedically lunged out of the grass.
Lloyd, reflexes fast as t-seven could muster, was just about able to dodge the thing as I sped to the side. His sword smote the thing a hundred metres away despite it being a tier above him. Swarm type monsters almost always came weaker than individualist ones.
Lloyd would have a rather difficult time fighting these monsters. His power set was built around stacking damage against harder enemies – with forty weaker enemies, he could never stack up damage and would be forced to focus more on staying alive while picking off the monsters.
I, on the other hand, was very much built for this.
High mobility, high damage, and a bunch of weak but numerous disposables. I mostly held off to let Lloyd practice.
It didn’t really go well. Lloyd was in no danger really, with his high mobility, but was unable to efficiently destroy monsters without his damage escalation. I took the opportunity to analyze and help him out when he was done.
All in all, it took long enough for him to finish the monsters I decided to step in so we’d be back before sundown. It was a good lot of cooked meat though. We began walking back an hour to sunset.
A small stream crossed our path to camp and Lloyd took the picturesque scene to sit on a convenient log. I sat opposite him by the stream, dipping my fingers into the cold, rushing water.
“The problem with the fight,” I said.
“Is that I’m just not built for those situations,” he sighed.
“Correct,” I tried to smother a snicker. Lloyd’s presence always seems to bring out the worst in me. I should look into that.
“So why not help earlier?”
“So you get practice. Any competent adventurer should be able to operate adequately outside of their specialization or comfort zone.”
He snorted. “This coming from Ms. I Never Leave Javenshard?”
“Branching out in a controlled environment is acceptable. A small tier hop like seven to eight is a controlled environment. And there is no need for such expansion if your environment is already understood – which this place, this situation is not. We’re going to need to be stronger to brave the things coming at us. I want to be able to fight Grim without my crutches. I want you all to be able to do that too.”
He looked at me strangely. “Do you really think we’ll get there?”
I washed my hands some more. “Necessity incurs effort incurs results. We will do our best.”
“Right,” he sat back. “Ari, I don’t get you. One day you’re all ‘don’t go to the t-thirteen woods’ and ‘that’s a bad idea, think about it first’. But then others, you’re determined. Why?”
“Determination is…” I paused, thinking about it. What was it, really? Was it good for me, bad for me? Was I using it wrong or right? I went with my gut. “Determination is how you look forward, but it’s a foolish, wild, reinless thing. Hoping to fight Grim is foolish. But there’s not much else we can do, so it becomes a need, a need far away from where we stand now. I need determination to get there.”
“You are babbling nonsense,” he stared. “Determination should be let to run wild. There’s always more to go, more to get, more to become, you can’t just stop at some point and act like you’re satisfied – ”
“I’m not satisfied,” I snarled. His words had triggered something, an instinctual reaction, and it was already out of its cage. I let it leave. “I will never be satisfied. I will always look towards that more to go more to get more to become and know that I will never get there not because I haven’t tried but that I can’t, that we tiny little things will never reach that height.”
“Then why try to fight Gri – ”
“Because we have to! You think I want to fight that thing? I’d much rather cut down another pack of crienbeast and sell another hundred haelcoin monster meats. We’re doomed, Lloyd. We can’t beat Grim, we’ll just have to keep failing and running until we can find someone else to. That’s Dawne. But before the next sunrise we have to brave the night. Somehow.”
He sighed. “Surely you can’t trust them so much. I know you.”
“I have to trust them, don’t I? Nobody else can fight Grim. There is no other hope.”
“I have to trust them, don’t I? Nobody else can fight Grim. There is no other hope.”
“I have to trust them, don’t I? Nobody else can fight Grim. There is no other hope.”
“We are that hope, are we not? You and Bia. You two can fend Grim off. Maybe actually be on its level too. You can’t just rely on Dawne all the way like this.”
He stopped.
“Sorry,” he sighed. “This is supposed to be a sunset moment. Under the pretty sky by the pretty water with the pretty talk with the pretty – goddamn it. Nevermind. Let’s just keep moving.”
I never really understood Lloyd. Bia was simple. She wanted to help people and be friends with people. Lloyd was complex and multifaceted and couldn’t seem to settle on any single facet, had to have them all, but they would collide and refract and become twisted and mangled. Me, I suppose I wanted to help people too. Just these few.
“Lloyd, is something on your mind?”
“What?” surprise.
“Is something troubling you.”
“Nothing.”
“Something is.”
“Fate of the world.”
“You never had a problem with that.”
“It’s nothing, okay? I’m fine,” he rose and began walking back towards camp. I stood still as he walked past, turning to watch.
“If there is an issue, it’s pertinent we know what it is so we can solve it.”
“If there is an issue and I haven’t mentioned it, then I can solve it myself.”
His fingers agitated.
“Lloyd,” I grabbed him by the shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“You – ”
“Are you okay?”
“N – ”
A Presence settled over the field.
It blotted out the sun. It painted the sky blood. It shattered the brain and triggered instincts and we ran.
A second Presence settled over the field. It was quieter. More subdued. But no less hungry, yet the growls of its stomach did not blast into eardrums but slithered into senses and minds, sharp slivers of malevolence embedding themselves into souls and twisting and carving.
The first Presence landed in front of us. I raised a hand to cast, but it only folded its arms and stood triumphant.
“Ari!” Grim sang. “Welcome back. To me. Stop sending me into the sky, you little shit.”
The second landed next to the dysphorium, a creature seemingly made of black stone, stone so dark that its form was entirely obscured even in light. Only an ominous silhouette of wings and claws remained.
Being: [Unknown] (Dysphorium (Alt. 1242))
[Obfuscated]
Entity does not have a root in Governance system
Entity shares foreign magic system equivalent of your title [Dormant]
“Wanna pet my dog?” Grim waved.
The new arrival made a noise felt against my soul, absent to my ears.
“Be careful,” Grim smiled. “It’s very cranky.”
The shadow turned at Lloyd.
“Shi – ”
In a blitz of movement, the thing snapped forwards, a blur of sharp black things made themelves suddenly apparent against golden hair and Lloyd was in the air, held up by the face, crushed between claws.
I snarled. “Let him down.”
“Nope,” it winked half its eyes. “You know our terms.”
I tried not to panic, and it did not come easy. Lloyd was in danger, but as long as he was hostage and I kept the hourglass, Grim would not kill him.
Slowly, I levelled my blade at Grim.
“Let him go,” I attempted an even voice.
“I don’t think I wi – ”
Fingers in casting position, lightblades flaring out now wreathed in red. Grim’s eyes widen as it spins back and the other creature is too slow, hit and stumbling. Lloyd takes the opportunity – but his arm is still clutched. A shower of blood as forearm severs from elbow and bones crack and crunch and my brain ticks over as panic overruns. He dropped, rolling into a sprint. I followed.
“Are you okay?!!” I shout.
“You asked that already!”
“No, you idiot, the fucking MISSING LIMB – ”
Grim and its friend have worn their shock out, bounding forwards at a mocking speed. Cackling is underscored by a dim, shivering drone.
We sprint and sprint and break through the camp perimetre.
“Oh hi Ari – ”
“RUN!”
“Wha – ”
Preemptive red-wreathed lightblades shot Grim off its trajectory at Bia’s face. Her eyes snapped open as Arodorros dragged her by the ear and we all slam down the fields towards somewhere, anywhere else.
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