Crystalise: The Exaltation System: ASCENDANT

by F. R. Brooks

  “So… I wonder if there are more than eight transmutable states of lucidium?”

  “It’s very possible. Time will tell.”

  11 | Airborne

  The second of three corridors beyond the evigilari statue sloped into a gallery hall with a dim, golden glow. Paintings of angels lined the walls. Liam recognized the soft melody of some melancholy opera preserved from the old world. Long-lost languages he’d heard only in those preserved melodies.

  “You think she made this trial expecting there to be three of us here?” James asked.

  “It’s possible,” Liam replied. “Either that, or she simply enjoys doing things in threes.”

  “Doing things in threes, huh?” James said with a chuckle. “I can’t say I’d blame her. I love doing things in threes, too.”

  With a tired sigh, Liam opted to ignore his brother’s quip. Any other time, he might have laughed. These days, however, he found it difficult to even chuckle.

  Jove should have been there with them.

  Liam swallowed the dull ache in his throat. He had done nowhere near enough grieving. Their trajectory from Jove’s funeral to Novus Lucus had happened so fast. Time had not felt normal to Liam in weeks.

  A sealed door at the end of the corridor awaited them. Scrawled upon it in white paint marker was another message.

  “Remember why they want you,” James read the message out loud. “Hm. Why do they want me?”

  “Who are they? Chrysid?” Liam said.

  “Who knows, who cares…”

  A large, open chamber lay beyond that door as their next designated battleground. Neon hues of lucidium pulsed through vein-like circuitry along the walls.

  “Nym, scan the area for any potential enemies.”

  “Running a scan. Getting a read on an air-innate mob somewhere in here. My mapping module’s scrambled in this tower, though.”

  “Set visor mode to spectral imaging,” Liam said. “Scan the room for invisible gasses.”

  “On it.” As Nym spoke, Liam’s view of the room filtered into darkness with only their silhouettes shining stark and white against the shadows around them.

  “Oh, I hate this view,” James griped as his visor shifted into spectral imaging mode. “I can’t see shit.”

  “Just watch for any target alerts on your heads-up display.”

  James conjured a frosty spear of ice and gave it a small flourish as he eyed the room’s dark corners. “Not seeing anything, Professor.”

  “Don’t let your guard down, it’s just waiting for us to have our backs turned.” Liam conjured a lightweight chain whip.

  James glanced upward. “What the hell—?”

  Liam looked up in time to glimpse a bold shadow descending upon him. Several unseen tendrils gripped his body and yanked him off his feet.

  “Liam!” James shouted. He attempted to stop the beast with a slew of ice, but even the tallest pillars he conjured were too short for the room’s highest reaches.

  The aerial mob squeezed the breath from Liam’s lungs as he struggled. He held the chain whip tight and manipulated the metal links to split off into a web of thinner cords.

  “Liam! I can’t… I can’t reach you!” James shouted.

  Liam’s body jerked as the creature whipped and writhed. As the metal cords tangled around the mob, Liam fixed his sights on the floor. A drop of at least twelve meters left him reeling. He wrestled one arm free and pointed his palm toward the ground.

  “Hook!” Liam shouted to James.

  Lucidium erupted from his palm and launched a hooked metal cord. With practiced accuracy, James caught the hook inside a column of ice. The fleeing, aerial mob came to an abrupt, jerked halt as the cords around its body tangled and pulled taut.

  Liam focused on directing all conjured metal to one singular point at the hook. The creature flailed and thrashed in the air as the cords retracted toward the ice pillar. He wrestled not to crush himself along with the mob in the tangled fray.

  Aiming again, Liam shouted, “…hook!”

  A second hooked cord lashed out for James to catch within ice.

  Finally, the creature’s resistance gave. Both Liam and the mob plummeted to the floor.

  “Shit—wait, I got you, I got you, I got you!” James rushed over, summoning a frozen wave of ice.

  “Wait—James, wait—!”

  Although the ice hill halved Liam’s descent, the impact left him seeing stars.

  “Oh, man. I’m so glad I caught you,” James’s voice came over the comms. “I thought for sure I was going to miss. Are you okay?”

  Liam rolled out from under the stilled creature and stumbled slightly. “You couldn’t have padded that with some snow?”

  The creature hissed again and snapped back to life. It lunged for Liam and another drop followed, straight for the cold, marble floor. Metal tendrils rose from the ground and curled around the shadowed creature.

  Ice pillars jutted up as James approached, working to pin down the creature with an ice lance. The mob caught his weapon in three heavy arms and then darted for the ceiling once more.

  James released his weapon and landed on his back with a grunt.

  “You just gave it a weapon!” Liam yelled.

  “What?”

  The two looked up in time to see the creature wind back its arms to throw the javelin back at them. The brothers screamed and scattered as they dodged the incoming projectile. It shattered on the floor just inches from Liam’s shoulder.

  Liam snapped his chain whip at the beast and hooked it. Liam slid across the floor as he wrestled against its attempts to escape. With the creature’s trajectory slowed, James unleashed one final avalanche, creating a wave that froze everything in its path. The tension on Liam’s cords released, finally, as the creature froze and dropped.

  When the frigid powder cleared, all that remained of the creature was a heavy, frozen carcass.

  Liam dropped back into the ice beneath him, exhausted.

  “These things were much easier to take out when we had Jove,” James muttered.

  Liam’s memory flit back to the Trial of the Fifth Pillar—a challenge designed to test them against air-innate mobs. It had taken them too long to even figure out how to spot them—air-innates had been a blind spot in Liam’s combat strategy.

  By luck alone, Liam thought to try spectral imaging. If that filter on their visors could detect invisible gasses, it made sense to him that they may see an air-innate mob transmuting lucidium into some gas state for levitation.

  Liam crossed over to the frozen creature and searched for any sign of an orb trapped inside. Sure enough, he could make out a faint pulse of a light source hidden within its belly.

  Liam turned off the spectral imaging filter as the creature’s form faded into plain sight. It was every bit as pallid and haggard as he expected. Large, clear eyes stared wide and lifeless toward the ceiling. Within a large, slack and parted maw, Liam saw hundreds of little teeth.

  After a few moments, the carcass shriveled and crumbled into feathery flakes of lucidium, leaving only a red orb behind. On that orb, Liam recognized the alchemical symbol for salt.

  * * *

  EXP: +27,000 EXP EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: WILLIAM STERLING || LV.82 → LV. 83 || EXP: 1064029 || stats ATK - 189 → 193 [+4] DEF - 232 → 234 [+2] AGI - 176 → 179 [+3] LUK - 118 → 121 [+3] EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: JAMES STERLING || LV.81 → LV. 82 || EXP: 985321 || stats ATK - 228 → 229 [+1] DEF - 173 → 174 [+1] AGI - 226 → 229 [+3] LUK - 239 → 240 [+1]

  * * *

  LCR—Lucidium Conversion Reserve. SAI—Sentisuit Armor Integrity.

  LCR is the measure of how much lucidium remains within an exalt’s sentisuit. When exalts conjure their elements, they are converting the stored lucidium within the suit through their suit’s alchemical conversion system. This naturally depletes the amount of stored LCR. Some suits have modifications that allow for regeneration—“regen”—of LCR in small increments over time by drawing trace amounts of atmospheric
lucidium from the exalt’s surroundings.

  SAI is the measure of a sentisuit’s durability. The more damage a sentisuit takes, the lower this estimated percentage drops. At zero percent, a sentisuit is rendered highly vulnerable to extreme elements such as fire, electricity, or impalements & structural damages from elements like metal.

  “You know, basically your LCR’s like your MP and your SAI is like your HP!”

  “I don’t remember programming you to have role-playing game knowledge,” Liam replied.

  “I get bored and wander around social networks sometimes during your longer fights.”

  “You’re on social… wait, you’re doing all this in the middle of battles?”

  “Relax, I can multitask.”

  “Nym…”

  “What? Do you want a friend request?”

  12 | Mirrors

  With another orb in hand, Liam and James made their way back to the evigilari statue.

  “What do you think these symbols are for, anyway?” James asked.

  “Not sure. She chose them for a reason, though. All I know is that in alchemy, these symbols represent the three primes.” Liam placed the new orb into the second indentation and then pointed to the carved symbols in the statue’s marble base.

  “Quicksilver represents the mind. Salt represents the body. Sulfur represents the soul,” Liam explained.

  “Remember why you’re here,” said the first message.

  A symbol of the quicksilver to an alchemist… but a symbol of mutable modality to an astrologer. Mutable… represents adaptability. Mental faculty.

  “Remember why they want you,” the second message had said.

  The symbol for salt. Salt to represent the body.

  Exalts are just bodies to Chrysid.

  Liam looked to the symbol for sulfur above an empty indentation.

  Sulfur, soul. Cardinal modality… impulse, action, and beginning.

  What are you trying to say?

  James seemed not to care much for over-analyzing those symbols. He had already left Liam behind again. The third and final hall lay ahead, as dark as it was unwelcoming. No soothing aquarium, no pleasant art gallery. Only darkness until their visors adjusted to the ambient lighting.

  “Shit…!” James jerked away from the shadow beside him.

  A breath caught in Liam’s chest before he realized that this corridor’s walls were mirrors.

  “It’s just your reflection,” Liam said.

  “Right. I just… wasn’t expecting that.”

  As they walked in silence, they reached a door not unlike the previous two. Liam noticed freshly painted lettering scrawled across a nearby mirror. Another message from the Chevalier.

  Remember your reflection.

  Another vast chamber waited beyond the third door. Mirrors plated every wall and gave the room a blinding bloom of light. Liam squinted at the hazy halos and harsh glow while adjusting his visor.

  “So… what next, Chevalier?” James called, walking out into the center of the room. “You want us to pretty-up or something?”

  “I’m picking up an enemy presence—an obscuran mob—the coordinate data’s not cooperating, though,” Nym said.

  “Maps still scrambled?”

  “Somewhat. I’m able to generate maps of the immediate area, but that doesn’t help much when the mob’s appearing in several places at once.”

  “What?” James turned back to Liam. “How many are there?”

  “That’s the thing,” Nym replied, “I’m detecting only one aetheric resonance pattern. There’s only one other life form in this room that’s not in our party. But… it’s in multiple places at once. I’m telling you, it’s an obscuran mob. Location spoofing isn’t out of their natural ability.”

  “Great.” James regarded their reflections in the mirror panes with annoyance.

  James conjured an ice lance and gave it an impatient twirl as he walked alongside his reflection.

  “So, I’m willing to bet… one of these guys.”

  Liam flinched as James smashed a mirror. The sound echoed through the chamber, and James eyed their surroundings with amusement on his face. “No? Alright. Next!”

  Another smash followed. Nothing changed in their surroundings.

  “Nym, are you tracking any changes?”

  “He’s definitely on to something. The reflections are showing up on my scans as potential threats—but there’s still only one detectable entity and it’s not taking damage yet.”

  James smashed a third mirror. “Just break ‘em all! We’ll flush it out, eventually!”

  Liam approached a mirror and searched the face of his reflection for anything out of the ordinary. All around them, their reflections masked one impostor. Any one of the figures looking back at them could be the obscuran mob, replicating their human form down to the armor. He smashed through two mirrors before he stopped at the third.

  A crack bolted across the surface, pooled with rippling liquid chrome.

  This again…?

  Across the smooth surface of the glass, a single drop of the metallic fluid streaked down. Liam wondered if there were any other cracks like this on James’s side of the chamber.

  If there were, he doubted James would notice. James whistled a cheerful tune as he smashed two more mirrors across the chamber. He seemed to not notice any minor details.

  A bead of liquid chrome floated upward like a bubble rising toward the ocean’s surface. It dissolved not far above Liam’s head.

  What the hell is this?

  What looks like quicksilver but floats as if it’s lighter than air?

  When Liam turned his gaze back on the cracked mirror, he froze. His reflection stared straight back at him, unblinking, with his shoulders shifted ever so slightly another way. Out of sync.

  Is this it? The obscuran mob?

  Liam stilled as he waited for the replica in the mirror to move. Liam hadn’t noticed certain small details in his reflection before. A slightly weathered look to his reflection’s face. Tired, cloudy eyes. A fidgeting, repetitive tap in the fingertips of his left hand.

  “You drum your fingers when you’re nervous,” Lo had once pointed out to him. “What are you so nervous about?”

  “Nym… you’re only identifying one other presence in the vicinity, right?” Liam asked. “Obscuran innate, for sure?”

  “Roger.”

  “Huh. Interesting.”

  His reflection’s gaze turned to James, who whistled obliviously across the chamber. Liam considered taking that moment to create a metal spear and then run it through the mirror.

  A scream ripped through the silence.

  Liam turned just in time to glimpse James disappearing through a mirror’s wavering surface.

  “James!?” Liam rushed over to the rippling mirror. It was solid by the time his fists pounded upon its surface. Liam called out his brother’s name again and tried to shoulder through. The surface was as solid as every other glass pane.

  Through the comms, Liam could hear scrambled, glitched audio. James’s voice, screaming.

  “James! Where are you!?”

  No response.

  “Where is he!? Where the hell is he!?” Liam demanded, bolting back to the mirror with the suspicious reflection.

  His reflected replica had retreated, leaving only his actual reflection behind. The crack in the glass was no longer filled with metal liquid. It was gone and the mirror’s surface smooth and unbroken.

  What the…?

  Cold, heavy weight crashed into his side. His own brother was on top of him in the blink of an eye. James pinned him to the ground and his hands went straight for Liam’s throat. Frigid layers of ice crushed down on his chest and throat as ice encased him.

  Liam struggled back against the pressure. He conjured a blunt, metal beam and extended it straight into James’s torso. It was enough force to knock James off him. Liam struggled through the ice and split the metal beam into spidering tendrils to break the ice up.
<
br />   Before James could lunge back upon him, Liam climbed free of the ice. The ice was nowhere near frigid enough to be from James.

  “Liam!” Nym chimed. “Wait, that’s not James!”

  “I had a sneaking suspicion,” Liam said, dodging blows from his brother’s replica. “Where is he?”

  “Uh… still working on that. Just hang tight and don’t die!”

  Liam dodged more blows before he managed to grab the replica by the throat. He slammed the mob against the nearest mirror hard enough to shatter the glass. The replica’s visor cracked and warped.

  An obscuran mob could certainly replicate any element—but they were fragile replicas. This mob’s replica of their sentisuits could never withstand what real polymerized lucidium could. Obscura was as much of a wildcard as it was a fragile illusion.

  Liam conjured his meteor hammer again and kicked it straight at the replica. The heavy, spiked, metal orb smashed into a mirror behind it. Liam snapped the orb back and took aim again, kicking the orb straight for the mob’s chest. A direct impact left another deep chasm in the mob’s imitation sentisuit.

  The replica ducked another shot and glass exploded from the orb’s impact.

  It’s goading me into smashing the mirrors. I don’t even know where the hell James is or whether those mirrors are his ticket back.

  Liam snapped the orb back on its chain. When it was at his side once more, he transmuted it into his backup weapon—a chain sword with bladed discs along the whip.

  Icicle barriers spiked up between them as the mob attempted to distance itself. Liam cut through the ice easily and then snapped the chain sword back to hook the creature’s leg. It howled an inhuman cry as the sharp discs cut through armor and flesh.

  Before Liam could go for a killing blow, the creature made a strange wave of its gloved hand. More screaming filled the chamber as the mirror next to Liam ejected James. With the velocity of a great fall, James and Liam went flying across the chamber until they hit the mirrors on the other side.

  “Oh, shit… holy shit…” James panted, having finally stopped screaming.