by Kyle Johnson
“I will speak with Dorn’ar’el when we return,” Geltheriel added. “Surely, the Keepers will have more information, and we will no longer need to guess.”
As they traveled, Aranos saw more and more signs of the Shadowborn’s passage. As something unusual in a clearing caught his eye, he stopped and crouched to examine it more closely. “Some Travelers fought the amaroks, here,” he noted slowly. “And it looks like they lost.”
“Are you certain it was Travelers, Liberator?” Rhys asked doubtfully. “I would not doubt you, but all I can see is the signs of a battle between armored warriors and amaroks. There is much blood, and the amaroks departed heading away from the Stronghold. Could it not have been the Keepers routing the creatures?”
Aranos shook his head. “The humanoid tracks only lead into the clearing, not out,” he explained. “So, the Shadowborn won. There are no bodies, though, and the amaroks didn’t drag them off; I’d see that. So, they fought with Travelers, the Travelers lost, and their bodies vanished.” He glanced up at the trees, and his eyes narrowed.
“The amaroks had help, too,” he said softly, pointing up at a scorch mark on a nearby tree. “Looks like the Travelers have learned that balayangs are flammable.”
“I have not heard of balayangs and amaroks hunting together, Redeemer,” Saphielle observed. “Were it anyone else making such a statement, I would surely laugh with derision. Even so, I must ask if you are certain. Could the Travelers not have simply misfired with a Spell?”
“No, there were definitely balayangs,” Aranos shook his head. “They stayed high, but I can see signs of their passage in the trees. Bits of fur, broken twigs, that sort of thing. It looks like they just hovered overhead, probably hitting the Travelers with their sonic attack to make the amaroks’ work easier.”
He rose to his feet, frowning. “There’s something going on here, guys. We’ve already seen the impisas and the charklas behaving strangely, and now the amaroks and balayangs are, too.” He glanced at each party member as he spoke. “We need to make sure the Stronghold knows about this. Geltheriel, you’re already planning to speak to Dorn’ar’el, right? Saphielle, you’ll want to tell Lady Wynathra, and Rhys…I don’t even remember your Elder’s name, sorry.”
“Grandmaster Kylantha,” the Druid chuckled. “And yes, I will speak to her of this. One would imagine that between them, those three will have some idea of what might be happening.”
Of that, Aranos was certain, but he was equally certain of one more thing: this was the start of a new questline. It had all the earmarks of one: animals suddenly acting strangely, players being attacked for no reason, and the local authorities needing to be alerted. The thing was, he wasn’t interested in picking up that Quest; the Ascendants were heading to Antas, and he wasn’t about to be distracted from that. Fortunately, he had a feeling that there were about twenty other players who would snap this Quest right up.
The gate guards bowed low as the party approached. “Lord Evenshade,” one of them said respectfully. “You are always welcome in the Stronghold. Please, enter.” That was definitely a change; not too long ago, those same guards had eyed him with suspicion and significant distrust. Now, they were almost subservient. Despite how realistic it seemed, every so often, something like this would remind Aranos that Singularity Online was still a game and operated on a set of rules. His Reputation with Eredain was maxed out; that meant that citizens would treat him almost like royalty.
A few Houses had a bad opinion of him, of course – the fallen House Exxidor figured prominently among those, and he assumed that House’s former allies would probably have a strong dislike of him, as well – but even those would treat him well. His effective Reputation with any one individual was the sum of his Reputation for every Faction that person belonged to, and his max Reputation with Eredain apparently wiped out the negative reputation modifiers he might have had with those Houses. So, former members of House Exxidor from other cities would despise him, but those here in Eredain would still love him.
The party stepped onto the teleport pad that led into the Stronghold, which was apparently the only way into the city as far as Aranos could tell. That kind of sucked, because he didn’t teleport well. Geltheriel insisted it was a matter of low End, but his End Stat was effectively at 41 with his bonuses, and while Saphielle and Geltheriel certainly had higher scores there than he did, he figured that Rhys’ was probably at about the same level or even lower. The Druid never seemed to suffer the overwhelming nausea and motion sickness Aranos did when he used the teleport pad; the Sorcerer wasn’t sure if that meant it was an issue for Travelers that NPCs just didn’t share, or if it was specific to him. He hadn’t asked the other Travelers about it, honestly, because if it was just him, he didn’t want to admit that entering the city made him puke.
After he spent a minute or so emptying out his stomach off to the side, out of the way of anyone else wanting to enter or leave the city, Aranos parted with his companions. Rather than head to the manor, he set off for the House of Stars, since he decided that the Wizards needed to know what was happening in the Forest and Blightlands, too. The entrance to what he still thought of as the elves’ version of a Wizards’ Guild was a small, nondescript building that was connected to the main House through a portal of some kind. Aranos still had no idea exactly where that main building was, and he had a feeling that was by design: if no one knew where the physical location of the House was, that made it much harder to launch a direct assault on it, after all.
Fortunately, traveling through the portal into the House of Stars didn’t disorient him the way entering Eredain did, and he was greeted warmly upon his entrance by the Doorwarden. He held up his left hand, displaying the green tattoo of six stars that marked him as an Expert-ranked member of the House, and he was allowed to pass without needing a guide. He found a spot not too far away from the giant, tree-shaped crystal that radiated unaspected mana – other, smaller crystals in the Atrium radiated specific elemental mana types, but this one gave him the most benefit – and settled to the floor in a crossed-leg position.
Most of the elven Wizards had to make appointments and wait their turns to use the mana crystals, since only a limited number of them could fit around each crystal at the proper distance to channel with it. Fortunately, Aranos’ Mana Vampire Perk meant that he could channel mana effectively from a much greater distance. Closing his eyes, he concentrated and reached out to the crystal with a hollow, tubelike tendril of mana. When he felt it connect with the crystal’s surface, he extended a second tendril to the crystalline tree and began to drawn mana into himself through his first tendril. The mana cycled through his spirals and raced down the second tendril to rejoin the crystal. Satisfied that the mana was flowing freely, Aranos descended into his mindscape.
He settled into his chair and let his mind drift over to the prismatic pool that symbolized his SP. As the energy flowed through his mana system, his mind danced along it, as well, checking for irregularities in the flow patterns. He found a few places where his channels had widened too much, creating choke points just beyond and causing tiny eddies in the energy flow. Those weren’t that big of a deal, but when he was casting a Spell, they’d cause slight inefficiencies that would slow his casting and increase his SP cost. He flattened those areas out, removing the choke points and restoring a normal flow, then stepped back to examine his patterns as a whole.
His mana was contained in thirteen sets of double hourglasses, each containing a series of smaller, nested hourglasses within. One of each pair of hourglasses channeled his elemental mana, while the other pair – angled at 90 degrees to the first – held his energetic mana. That left a third orientation for Enhanced mana, once he discovered it, although now that he knew it stemmed from a totally different source than Primary mana, he wasn’t sure if it would separate the way that he’d hoped it might.
Upon mastering the Primary Aspects, he’d figured out that life mana was basically the place where all other mana type
s met, and he’d intuited that there were more energy types contained within life mana than he’d suspected. The natural assumption had been that these were undoubtedly the Enhanced Aspects he sought, although he now knew better.
The issue was, even now that he knew where these Enhanced aspects came from, he still didn’t know how to recognize them. He’d honestly hoped that he’d be able to sense the Mind Aspect, at least – after all, he’d gotten a rough feel for it during his investigation into the deaths of the elven elders – but it was obvious that a half-remembered sense wasn’t going to be enough. He needed a source of that mana to use for comparison, which meant that he’d either need a crystal of that aspect or a natural source of it. He’d never heard of an Enhanced mana crystal, and considering what he’d learned about those aspects, he wasn’t sure such a thing could exist. After all, if Enhanced mana was a fundamental part of the existence of living things, it didn’t seem that it would be something that could be captured and radiated by a crystal.
There was now one new option available to him, though, and with a smile he tapped into it. Taking a deep breath, preparing himself mentally for the idea that this might not work, he shifted his focus to a part of him that he’d never examined in his mindscape before: his new Soul Point reservoir.
With an effort of will, Aranos summoned a silvery orb of glowing Soul Point energy and suspended it like a tiny moon over the clearing of his mindscape. The ball of power was no bigger than his fist and had an ephemeral, wispy quality to it, as if it were constantly on the verge of flickering and fading out. The ball itself was stationary, with no movement or rotation to it, but the energy within shifted and swirled chaotically, constantly flickering and dancing about within the orb as if it wanted to escape.
Let’s see how this works, he mused, keeping his focus on the ball of Soul Energy while casting a Composite Bullet. He siphoned off five Soul Points to empower the Spell – not enough to actually strengthen the Spell, but enough to hopefully see how it worked – and observed as several wisps of the silver energy vanished from the ball. He shifted his thoughts to his spirals, feeling a sudden surge of aspected mana rush into the hourglasses, exactly matching the energy he’d drawn to fuel the Spell and pushing more of those same mana types out into the Spell.
“Well, that’s interesting,” he murmured thoughtfully as the conjured bullet screamed off to strike one of his distant archery targets and burst in a flash of colors. “So, the Soul Points turn directly into the aspected mana the Spell needs, but instead of adding into the Spell directly, it gets pumped into my mana spirals. But how does it shift from one type of energy to another?”
He returned his focus to the orb of Soul Energy and began forging a second Composite Bullet. This time, as he cast the Spell, he tried to follow the strands of energy as they disappeared, hoping to track their transmutation from Soul Points to Spell Points. That proved to be basically impossible, though, since there was seemingly no way to predict which strands would vanish when he empowered the Spell. The odds that he’d be watching the correct strand at any given moment were practically zero.
Okay, so there’s a more fundamental issue I’ve got to address, first, if I want to figure this out, he realized. The Soul Point Energy is like my mana was at first; it’s so chaotic that I can’t track it. If I want to make any headway, here, I’m going to have to try and organize it the way I did my mana.
That proved somewhat more difficult than he’d hoped it would, considering his previous experience with organizing his mana. The Soul energy simply didn’t want to move. Unlike his mana, which had been sluggish at first but was fairly easy for him to grasp, the strands of his Soul Points were so ephemeral that he could barely even touch them, much less move them. He tried different methods of shifting the energy – pulling, pushing, trying to rotate the entire globe at once, even drawing on it in the hope of creating a vacuum that would generate some movement – but every attempt was equally fruitless.
Frustrated, he almost abandoned his efforts, starting to withdraw his consciousness from the strange energy, but his stubbornness reared its head. “Nope, not giving up on this,” he muttered, setting his jaw pugnaciously and descending into the orb once more.
This time, instead of fighting to control the flows of energy, he relaxed his thoughts and allowed himself to drift among the silver threads. He simply observed, taking in the seemingly random flickers of energy, just trying to process how they interacted with one another. Although the individual strands seemed chaotic at first, his subconscious mind sensed there was a deeper pattern to the fluctuations. Just as he had when first mastering his mana, Aranos allowed his mind to instinctively sense out that pattern.
He kept his thoughts unfocused for some time – how long, he wasn’t sure, since he wasn’t good at tracking the minutes in that mental state – when the beginnings of some semblance of an order began to tease the edges of his mind. All at once, something seemed to click, and instantly, the flows crystallized in his perception. He could see the overall pattern and noted how the chaotic movements contributed to a greater organization…but one that wasn’t sufficient for his needs
Once his grasp of the flows of Soul Energy solidified, he found it much simpler to guide the energies and realized what he’d been doing wrong before. The silvery strands, unlike his mana, refused to mix and intermingle freely. Each thread of energy seemed to repel all the other strands nearby, so when he was attempting to manipulate it earlier, it had been like trying to push water against an existing flow.
Rather than attempting to push or pull the wisps of energy, Aranos focused on shifting them around into a better alignment, nudging the strands until they were lined up like force lines in a magnetic field. Once he had the system in a more organized configuration, a simple nudge of his will set the entire system flowing once more, but this time, the globe swirled in a simple spiral pattern, with energy cycling from the top of the globe down to the base along the surface and then spiraling back up the inside to the top, almost like a fountain.
With the pattern set, Aranos released his focus on the globe and glanced at the time. To his dismay, thirty minutes had passed, far more time than he had imagined. As much as he wanted to pursue how his Soul Points were converted to Spell Points – and possibly use that knowledge to reverse the process, allowing him to cast magic that would affect a soul – there were just too many things that needed to be done for him to focus exclusively on that.
Instead, he spent the remainder of the time training his existing Spells. That was something he didn’t do enough of, and as both Lythienne and Grandmaster Ruehnar, the Head Librarian of the House of Stars had told him, the best spellcasters were the ones who knew their Spells intimately and could use them in creative ways.
Thirty minutes later, he rose from his mindscape, noting that he hadn’t gotten any Stat gains from the training. That was fine; technically, he’d gotten half a point each for his Int and Wis, and that would carry over for tomorrow’s training, giving him two points in each of those the next time he exercised them. If he hadn’t trained today, he’d only get a single point tomorrow, so it was worth the time he’d spent, at least. There was a blinking notification, though, which he pulled up curiously:
Skill Enhanced: Soulmending has become Enhanced Soulmending*
Rank: Student 6
Enhanced: You are more efficient at drawing and using Soul energy. You gain a bonus equal to [Skill Level]% to all Soul Points gained and can use [Skill Level]% fewer Soul Points to power Abilities, Enchantments, or Spells.
Wis +1
Apparently, his efforts to structure and organize the ball of soul energy within him had some benefit, after all. The bonus for the Enhanced Skill wasn’t much – he’d gain an extra Soul Point for every six he got normally, and he’d only have to spend 13 instead of 15 to empower a Spell or Ability – but small gains like that would add up if he used the Skill frequently – which he absolutely intended to.
He stood, stretching and g
roaning. He still had two more errands here today; he might as well get the one he’d been putting off the longest done first. He looked down at his tattoo and thought about the House Store. Immediately, the star closest to his middle finger warmed, guiding him forward into the building. That tattoo was why outsiders needed a guide through the House of Stars. Not only would it lead him through the twisting halls of the House, it would also open several warded doors he had to pass through and protect him from dozens of magical traps wound throughout the building. He hadn’t known that the first time he’d been here and had been lucky enough not to trip any of them, probably because he’d only been in the Novice areas. Had he been in the Library or Expert rooms when he’d gone off on his own, he probably would have ended up going to respawn.
The House Store wasn’t exactly what he’d imagined. He thought it would be like the Great Square, with merchants, displays, and shelves stocked with scrolls and other goods. Instead, the Store was a single, long counter with a handful of elves standing behind it. Dozens of elves lined up at various spots in front of the counter, while others stood around wide, rune-carved columns spread evenly throughout the space. Aranos curiously walked over to one of the columns and watched; the elves before it seemed to be standing in some kind of trance, as if they were meditating, but his Sense Mana Skill didn’t show flows of energy moving through them as it did when they were cycling mana with a crystal.
“Is this your first time at the House Store, Expert?” a voice spoke behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder at a young elf in relatively plain robes. The man had shoulder-length, blonde hair, and when he held up his left hand, Aranos saw an orange tattoo emblazoned there.
