by R J Triveri
“No. I am not working with them,” she said firmly. “Reds would stab me as soon as look at me.” Then, added coolly. “I’d do the same to them.”
Dante and River continued their trek out of the temple in silence. The walk didn’t take long, but the exit doors were closed.
“Can we get these open?” River asked, turning to one of the armored guards of the temple.
It turned to face her and said nothing, but the doors responded all the same. Slowly, very slowly, the doors began to separate from what looked like a perfect slab into two slabs that retracted into the walls.
As the door opened, something nagged at the back of her head. Weren’t the doors opened last time?
As if on cue, her question was answered as the world opened before them and the wall of noise made from hundreds of voices assaulted what had once been normal city life. One in particular squealed out beyond all others near the top of the temple steps as the doors finished opening.
“They’re back!”
She recognized that cry from the arena and shivered. Of course they found them.
The first cry was followed by a round of applause and cheering as the normally busy square had gathered quite a crowd of onlookers. Apparently, the only thing that spread faster than gossip was when a pair made their way past the guards to speak with a god.
A crowd equal to the stadium had gathered with more suddenly turning their heads to view the sight. Atop the steps of the temple, the pair only had a moment before the crowds began to move in around them like water after a stone has been thrown.
“What was it like?”
“What did it say?”
“Why hasn’t Unum spoken to us?”
“Is it really a woman?”
River looked around and tried to speak as Dante took the initiative from her to try and keep some kind of order. “Shut up! We can’t even hear who’s asking what!”
The questions kept coming. One after another, no one waited for the pair to answer. The voices were maddening, and the crowd just kept closing in around them to shout more questions! It was worse than the crowd at the arena. How long had they been in the temple? So many words assaulted the pair that only a single thought came to mind as River took Dante’s hand.
(Party) River Hexi: Dante, jump to Dellis!
(Party) Dante Rior: The usual spot?
River simply nodded, pulled a jump disk from her inventory and triggered it.
Where would you like to go?
River quickly, quietly answered the disk. “Dellis, Dark Quarter.”
Location accepted! Ready to transport?
“Go!” she almost screamed as the fanatical crowd pressed in around them.
A moment later, she, followed quickly by Dante, were gone from the city of Graywall in a shower of pixels, light, and angered citizens of Incipere.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Dellis
As welcoming and bright as Graywall may have been, their new location was not nearly as accommodating. Within the deep rolling fogs and storm clouds of the new location, Dellis sat waiting, expectant as the tell-tale flicker of an incoming jump began to materialize and the fog parted with a soft puff of air to clear their arrival. As the pair recompiled in the new location of the Dellis Dark Quarter, River was the first to spring to attention and used her time to gather her bearings. Thankfully, the nausea passed quickly this time as she spun on her heel and stared down her co-conspirator.
“Really?” River said in annoyance at Dante as she kicked a clod of dirt from its appointed resting place and took in the sight of things.
Dante joined her a moment later with a heavy sigh as he looked for the usual buildings of the city center. None of which were familiar. Instead of the quarter’s center, the pair had been taken to the fountain near what was once the market district even farther from the center than last time. “The warp point changed, again?”
River nodded with just a hint of exhaustion. “Of course it did. When was it ever easy here?”
In an attempt to get his bearings, Dante hopped up on the edge of the fountain and tried to look for their last arrival point with no avail. “Can’t even see the bakery,” he commented as he materialized his book to make a note. Turning to the entry he’d made on Dellis, he updated the map with a new mark. “We’re not going to be able to come here much longer.”
As he got down from his spot, River nodded. “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
For all the grief their trips to Dellis came with, that was the reason they loved the darkened city that sat quiet and rotting on the most northern borders of Ciber, sitting squarely on the edge of the Ranar Mountains. Being so far from the main drags made Delis the perfect escape. It was one of the only places they knew that lower-ranked Inciperians wouldn’t or couldn’t follow for a simple, logical reason.
Dellis was a dead city, and that came with its own inherent dangers.
Like on any world, not every city had the strength to survive. Like any other world, a fallen city on Incipere meant ruin. Dark houses and other buildings wore only the dark stains of decay as paint and holes where the integrity of the ceiling, windows, or doors gave way and signaled that the rest may soon follow. As if showing off its status of abandoned and dead, a haze of fog and storm clouds perpetually hung around the city. Occasionally, a bolt of lightning would strike and fragment another building back into code, or the fog’s dampness rotted away enough to send a building falling into itself and do the same. Unlike any other work, ruins and decay meant a dungeon could form at any moment. Thankfully, unlike Tenebrae, Dellis didn’t have a raid lord lying in wait. At least, not yet.
Quietly, peacefully, the city simply sat alone and forgotten in the silence of nature as it awaited its final fate. Either Incipere would take back what belonged to it, or the world would gain another dungeon.
“At least it’s still safe,” he joked, knowing how easily things could have changed in the month since their last visit. Expanding the ring on his map, he closed the book and returned it to his waiting inventory.
After running her eyes across the low rolling fog, River nodded in a tense agreement. “As safe as a time bomb can be.”
“No, where we were was a time bomb. Did you see their eyes?” Taking a seat on the edge of the fountain, Dante materialized the incubation chamber and continued to monitor it. “Speaking of time bombs, mine will be ready in ten minutes.”
A ping of regret crossed River’s heart at his words, and she took a seat next to him. “I’m sorry, Dante. I didn’t mean to ruin your partner.”
“You didn’t,” came the quick answer. “I mean, it won’t be a dragon, but there’s still one I can get that will be helpful. Well, more helpful than the next anyways.”
“Oh?”
He opened the incubator’s inventory and nodded. “Yeah. Not nearly as cool, but functional enough.”
“What will it be?”
Adding his spare focus to the inventory as it ticked down a minute on the display, Dante shrugged. “A level-three caster pet,” he said simply. “It’ll be an animal with an elemental alignment. Since I’ve been feeding it draconic components, it’ll more likely be a small carnivore. Hopefully, a scaled pocket goat.”
“A... scaled pocket goat,” River said tentatively. “A small enough to fit in your pocket goat…”
He could hear the hesitation and the confusion in her voice, and a quick look confirmed it, but all the same, he smiled. “Yep.”
Sadly, her disbelief ran deeper than a simple yep. “You want a goat as a partner, Dante? Goats aren’t even carnivores! How does that even make sense?!”
“First, for the integrity, recovery, and spell reduction bonuses of it, yes. Yes, I want a goat,” Dante confirmed with a soft thud as he took a seat next to the incubator. “And second, haven’t you gotten past questioning how things work here? It’s been a while now.”
With a sigh, River decided not to continue the argument. Instead, she opened up her windows and stared at the
new status she had achieved as a champion of Unum. Rank 20 with all of her skills unlocked, but not any of the experience she needed to use them properly. Carefully, she began to examine each of her new ten skills. At first, River wasn’t the most impressed with her skills. Without training, the moves were strictly power-based. None of them had the flair of defense like her others. What good was a Blade Rush when it left her open on all sides or a sword throw when she would be left defenseless? She didn’t dare argue with the power she had been given, so she was going to have to rely on the skill mutations to make them into something more to her style.
Her eyes stopped on the final skills that had been separated from the rest in the unaligned pane of her skills window: Unum’s Will and Unum’s Sight. Clicking the skills in the window, she was greeted with two short messages on their functions.
Unum’s Will
Divine Skill - Unum
Cost of 5% Integrity per use
Cooldown: None
On Use: Unum’s Will focuses the user’s will to guarantee a critical hit and grants a modified “Core Collection” bonus for the next attack. Core Collection will materialize and transfer the defeated target’s core data into the user’s inventory as a key item, formatting the data into core stone. Use of this skill will not trigger an alignment shift.
Unum’s Sight
Divine Skill - Unum
No Cost
Cooldown: None
Duration: Ten minutes
Use: Unum’s Sight will outline users in an aura based on their alignment for ten minutes or until removed. Green indicates a citizen that has not transgressed Unum’s law. Red indicates someone who has committed an offense that warrants their removal from the world. Gray is a neutral party neither good nor evil. While active, Unum’s Sight grants a four times critical bonus chance against Red alignments, a double bonus against Gray alignments, and will not allow the destruction of a Green alignment for its duration. While activated, Unum’s Sight also grants bonus damage to Unum’s Will.
Well, that’s nice, River thought to herself as she considered their usefulness. At least I don’t need to find a necroforge to get his data. Athos should be at least a gray, so that bonus will come in handy.
A moment later, the soft thunk of something disturbed the incubator and her growing thoughts and plans. The blur of movement that was Dante as he checked the incubator only paled in comparison to the smoky-gray blur that darted off into the tall grasses.
“Hey, Dante?” River called over as he looked from his window to the incubator.
A worried look passed over his face as he saw the creature skitter off into the deeper brush. “Shit!”
“What happened?”
For some reason unknown to River, her partner switched over to the party’s chat channel.
(Party) Dante Rior: That bastard… it just tripped the timer! It’s taking in data to finish its compilation early. Don’t say anything else!
(Party) River Hexi: Why?
Her question was answered quickly as a soft tone began to hum from the incubator. It was a beautiful, melodic, soft tone that rose and fell as the pair watched transfixed by the music.
(Party) River Hexi: Is it singing?
A small creature skittered around in the darkness, and a pair of eyes peeked up above the tall grasses beyond the fountain. Dante watched helplessly as the creature crept closer and closer to the incubator again. A small gray fox, the same that had knocked it only a moment ago, was being drawn to the siren’s song of the soon-to-hatch familiar.
(Party) Dante Rior: River, can you scare it off?
A grin crossed her face. What better time was there to test her new skills? Forgetting Dante’s request for silence, River pulled her sword from its sheath and added a new tone to create a melodic discourse. “Unum’s Sight.”
(Party) Dante Rior: River!
(Party) River Hexi: Sorry! I had to trigger the ability.
Accepting her excuse, Dante nodded, and the singing grew louder as River shrugged off his anger. As the ability resolved, her vision was suddenly warped into monochromatic tones of black and white without regard for the light levels of the area. Looking to Dante, her friend now had turned a soft green aura flickering around his outline. With a smile, she turned to the creeping, gray-outlined fox as it reached out a paw to tap on the singing glass.
It was a small, curious-looking thing, but it was a Wild One. River wasn’t quite ready to waste integrity on the paired attack, so she just let the blade come down and cleave the creature in half with an audible slice of parting air. A critical hit landed and little more than a soft whine followed the attack as the creature’s data was sent back into the world.
With her job complete and a smug grin on her face, she turned to her friend and sighed.
(Party) River Hexi: Mission complete, boss.
Dante’s face grew angry as he turned back to the incubator and let loose a few choice words to himself. Frustration vented, he turned back to River. “I said scare it away, not kill it!”
Thinking it was okay to talk now, River shrugged. “Well, it’s gone now. Isn’t it? What’s the harm?”
As if to punctuate her words, the singing of the incubator stopped, and the egg began to glow white.
“No,” Dante said simply as the white glow grew stronger.
The egg wobbled inside the incubator violently.
“What?”
A second wobble came, and a harsh cracking sound broke through the air.
“I told you it was trying to finish its compilation. It was taking in everything around it to fill in the missing components,” Dante said, his voice painted with frustration.
A third wobble knocked the front off of the incubator and the sound of porcelain breaking rang out through the dead city. A flash followed a final cracking, and the eggshell shattered in all directions. When the noise died down, a light fog lingered around the newly born familiar, and Dante was given the much awaited, much dreaded, message.
Congratulations, Dante Rior! Your familiar has been born!
For the Seeker, the message flashed in his update window, and once his eyes cleared, he looked down at where the incubator once remained to see the fog clear to reveal…
Please give a name to your cloud kit (Female: Rank One - Child: Variant).
A small, white, fluff-of-a fox that stood in place of the machine and egg. The child-level familiar was almost adorable enough to outright forgive River, what with its tail larger than its body and eyes like the noon sky on a clear day. The realization of the work he was about to deal with soon overwrote that thought though. Putting his head in his hands, he groaned to himself. He didn’t want to have to raise it! That’s why he followed the wiki!
Please give a name to your cloud kit (Female: Rank One - Child: Variant).
It couldn’t be helped though. Looking at his little girl as she looked back at him, Dante sighed in defeat. Cuteness won the day. “Sedai.”
Name Accepted! Your cloud kit is now named Sedai.
Sedai’s status window is now available under your own.
Sedai is hungry. Please feed her.
Unsure of her actions with the young fox, River held her emotions in check as she regarded the familiar carefully before speaking. “I’m sorry.”
He looked up to her and sighed. “You should have listened.” His voice wasn’t angry anymore, just disappointed by all the unexpected work he was in for. “I just wanted you to scare it off.” Taking a small piece of honey bread from his inventory, Dante held it out to the cloud kit. Sedai approached carefully, almost purring as she examined the piece and barked at him in disappointment. Sedai didn’t reject the meal as she wrapped her mouth around the bread and carried it into her new caretaker’s lap.
“At least she’s cute,” River pointed out, “and foxes are supposed to be smart. I’m sure it’ll grow into a good familiar.”
Sedai looked up from her meal and yelped her approval as she returned to eating the honey bread nibble
by nibble.
The girl couldn’t help but grin at the small creature. Something inside of her just wouldn’t allow anything else as she spoke again. “See! She already knows I’m right.”
Dante sighed but smiled just a bit as the gloom lifted in light of the cuteness. His hand left his folded knees and affectionately rubbed her ears. Much to her delight it seemed, as Sedai pushed her head into his hands and continue to munch between scratches. “She is cute, isn’t she?”
Take a seat next to her friend, River smiled in agreement, at least for now, anyways. She was sure that Sedai was a bit too small to take revenge on her if she did remember being sliced in half. “Now, I think we have some important business to attend to. Don’t we?”
Dante nodded as Sedai finished the chunk of bread and curled up into his lap with a vulpine yawn to take a nap. “Where do you want to start?”
Part Three: Party Lines
SIFS Entry: Divine Quest
A divine quest is one gifted to an individual or a group that has come in contact with unique circumstances. Unlike a regular quest, a divine intervention is required to trigger this event. The four deities – Unum, Ella, Rani, and Priam – must individually offer the quest from their seats of power.
As of now, there has been a single divine quest that is on record and little is known about it except that it involves the Inciperian parties, River Hexi and Dante Rior, and that they are gathering a party for something. Though unsubstantiated, these quests are rumored to have far-reaching implications for the relations between the gods, their people, and the progress of Incipere as a world.
Created by: SIFS System Administrator
Last Updated by SIFS user: Joe_01
Chapter Twenty-Six: Allies in Shadow
Days passed as the pair spent their time tracking down any and every lead that could end in a few more party members. Each lead was more promising than the last, but they all ended up the same way: disappointing. Self-granted titles, paid-for placements, forcefully updated wikis, and faked fights were amassing like ransomware as attachments were actively sent to the woman and her partner. Despite everything they did and the filters they set into their inboxes, privacy was not a thing that they had anymore. Their business was everyone’s business when it concerned the world at large. But despite everything, a common thread began to form as an aside to the stories. Within a growing number of the stories, two names emerged. Two names repeated themselves again and again at the sides of so many stories that at first it seemed like coincidence, but by the fourth day’s worth of attachments, they couldn’t be ignored anymore.
