Acrion- Cascade

by Scott Seier

  Gleer was now just blatantly reading the glowing spellbook that she had been trying to keep a secret this whole time. Every few minutes her eyes would glow blue and she would smile. They were all doing their own things. I need to find my own thing...I agree, this is getting boring. I flinched. Vigil hadn't talked to me for at least an hour, maybe more, because I hadn't needed his help at all. Honestly I almost forgot he existed for a while.

  I asked the imp with more actual interest in his opinion than I expected. Vigil mulled it over for a minute or two. Will's snores were now echoing lightly off the walls. I suppose the Lycan would be unwilling to turn you. Vigil said matter of factly. The idea made me shudder. I didn't like the idea of being out of control like that. Other than that, I would say you need more spells. A summoner, before anything is a summoner. Currently you have one companion and two supplementary spells? It is simply not effective at this point in your progression. We need to either create an arsenal of magic that would strengthen us and weaken our foes, or make it possible for you to summon another entity.

  My mental ears perked up at the sound of both of those options, remembering that Vigil had been the one to tech me my binding spell. I asked excitedly. No. Came the instant reply. Those were special circumstances. I don't believe the mage will share her treasure trove of spells with us any time soon either. Not to mention that you lack the intelligence to learn the useful ones in any case. Glancing at Gleer as her eyes flared blue once again, I began to think that every time it happened she was learning a completely new spell. I was almost insulted at Vigil's words when I remembered he was referring to my low intelligence stat, rather than my actual mental abilities. Although maybe he wasn't... Let me think on this for a time. I'll let you know if I come upon an idea that may prove effective at advancing your abilities. That ended that, the imp stopped talking to me and the rest of my team were in their own worlds. I suddenly felt strangely alone.

  Lyst

  Human

  Level 12

  Summoner (Veil)

  Attributes available: 11

  98

  Strength-str

  Increases damage done with weapons and abilities that scale off of strength.

  Increases the amount of weight that you can carry before becoming encumbered.

  10

  Agility-agi

  Increases damage done with weapons and abilities that scale off of agility

  Increases your maximum movement speed and attack speed

  10

  Intelligence-int

  Increases damage done with weapons and abilities that scale off of intellect

  Increases your mana pool

  Allows the learning of spells (magical Abilities)

  10

  Spirit

  Increases the rate at which you regenerate health and mana

  Certain skills and abilities scale off of Spirit

  24+(2)

  Constitution-con

  Increases your health pool and resistance to status effects.

  10

  Stamina-stam

  Increases your stamina pool

  Increases the regeneration of STAM

  Increases how much physical activity you can do before exhaustion

  12

  Focus

  Increases your chance for a critical effect to occur

  Increases the precision of attacks and actions

  10

  Charisma

  Increases your persuasiveness and the rate in which NPCs (non player Characters) gain reputation and attitude.

  10

  I must have dozed off...the cuffs on my wrists were getting sooo uncomfortable. I slid them into a better position and drifted back off. Wait...

  I pushed against the blanket of fatigue that was holding me in a warm blissful unconscious state. Panic surged through me as I was nudged back down, deeper and deeper. It was so comfortable, so warm. I felt my spirit react slightly to my panic even as it was fading into resigned acceptance. My spirit flared weakly as I slipped back down into the nice blackness. Immediately I was able to open my eyes, my breathing deepening and my heart rate increasing. Chains jangled as I sat upright.

  What the hell... I squinted around, rubbing the grogginess from my eyes and stoked the tiny ember of spirit while I had the presence of mind to do so. I saw that I was alone in a large stone room. the chains connected to my cuffs looped through a simple iron ring on the floor at the center of the room. The chain made it so that I had plenty of length to move around if I wanted to, but even if the door was wide open, which it wasn't, I would run out of slack right on the threshold. "What the hell!?" I said, noting the slight slurring of my own words. I thought maybe saying it out loud would help, but it didn't. My drunken words didn't even echo, highlighting the fact of my confinement. was getting drugged even possible in Acrion? There was no response, snarky or otherwise.

  Minutes passed. I took time to focus on my spirit and try and clear out whatever was still in my system. My natural regeneration seemed to be the only thing to help with the impairment. I even used one of the health potions that Broxly had given me, but it didn't do anything. If anything it made the lethargy and sluggish thinking worse.

  An hour passed, I think, before my brain was back to normal working speeds, but the questions kept piling up with no answers coming to my now working mind. The last thing I remembered was looking at my character sheet and trying to figure out what to do with my points. After that there was just a hole in my memory. "Hello?" I called out. If Will or any of the others were nearby they would be able to break these chains in a heartbeat. Then they could get me. That was the plan at least, but the more I called out, the louder I got with no response, the more the hope died out. Maybe they left me? Maybe we got ambushed and they had to move, but couldn't afford to take me with them. I was the weakest link, I couldn't blame Hael for making the decision, but I desperately hoped I was wrong. If they weren't being held nearby then I was well and truly screwed.

  A loud clang from outside my door shocked me out of my despair. A few seconds later a shadow blocked out the small window at face height in the door. A few rattles and bumps later and the door opened smoothly on well maintained hinges. A spider walked in confidently. When I say spider, I'm using the term loosely. This...person, walked on two legs and had two arms. Their face was off somehow, but I couldn't put a finger on it until the spider person knelt next to where I was sitting and opened their mouth. it had human-like teeth, but from the inside of it's cheeks extended four slender articulated fangs. They bent and twitched like fingers and before I would recoil, or react at all to be honest, the creature bobbed it's head forward with exceptional speed, piercing my throat with its creepy fang-fingers. For a split second I stared into the things eyes, it had eight pupils in each eye... so weird. I felt the venom as it was injected into my body. The feeling of warm euphoria once again crashed into my mind. This thing was roofying me...again! It pulled away from me and immediately turned, walked out and locked the door.

  The venom was flooding me with numbing bliss, but my mind was raging at the thought of being put under against my will. The feeling of helplessness was drowning me as much as the venom was. I was fading, fast. My will was broken by this drug-like state. I didn't want to resist. As the light in the room began to fade I noticed a twinkle reflect off of my ring. Abundant...soul. Spirit...boost. As my consciousness faded I did the only thing I could think of. I clapped my hands together like I was praying and put every bit of focus that I could muster into finding and boosting my spirit. The ring of abundant soul grew warm on my thumb and a mini explosion of clarity erupted in my chest. The result was an instant halting of the venoms progress, but also my stamina hitting rock bottom and me blacking out anyway.

  "Ugh. Why is it that every
time I wake up in this god forsaken game it's the most unpleasant experience of my life." I mumbled to myself as I pushed myself upright for the second time in this stupid room. I didn't know how long it had been, but my mind was much clearer than it had even been when the spider person came calling. I rubbed my face, only to find a crust of some substance that had pooled in the corners of my eyes. Pulling my hand away, I saw a pale blue substance on my fingers. It glowed ever so slightly. Arachkidar venom? Rubbing away the rest of it from my eyes I noticed a rancid taste in my mouth. I spit and saw that my saliva was also laced with the spider venom. My body had expelled it, interesting. Maybe spirit had more uses than I thought...

  I checked my mana levels and threw a large amount of what I had at the Summon: Veil Imp spell. Nothing happened. The spell was grayed out as long as I didn't have a veil shard to use as a reagent. "Bullshit." I whispered to myself. I couldn't be sure, but I was fairly certain that my yelling for help is what brought the spider guy in here to administer my dose of anesthesia. If I was going to talk out loud, it was going to be quietly. For a moment I wondered if it was normal to talk to ones self at all, but dismissed the thought. Everyone talked to themselves, obviously.

  Staring at my imp spell I tried to come up with a way to get Vigil back. He could help me break the chains and get out of here. Or at the very least keep me company in this prison. If I needed a core then I didn't think there was any hope at all. My Veil Siphon spell was supposed to be what ultimately produced cores for me to use in summons, but I had stupidly never even thought to use it in a fight, at least with a mob. I didn't think that the siphon ability produces a core when used on players. Thinking about how badly I wanted a core made me think about the shard that I'd sealed Vigil into to sneak him into town. I even checked my bags hopefully, wishing that I would see a little shard with 'imp' in the name, but no such luck.

  It felt like hours passed. I didn't make a sound, I didn't even rattle my chains. I just sat and thought about how to get out. I laid out my current resources. I had four spells, none of which would break the chains or open the door. At this point I had already tried casting Astral Tag and Veil Siphon on the inanimate objects, but it seemed that both spells needed a living entity to be their targets. The other spell was a seal, and I was worried that it would juts make the chains stronger, and lastly, my inert imp summon. The only other thing I had was a skill, Binding Art. I had picked it up when Vigil taught me Fade Seal. For the first time I took a moment to focus on the skill and read what it was about.

  Binding Art

  Skill - rank 1

  Allows the alteration of sealing or binding, spells or rituals.

  Binding Art can be used to alter the required leverage when performing a binding or sealing.

  This skill can be used to transfer spells into ritual form and back again.

  This skill can be used to alter the primary parameters of a sealing or binding spell if

  the structure of a ritual allows it

  I'm sure the overall gist of that was meant to mean was that it allowed the transfer or sealing spells into ritual form, but I was choosing to ignore that. I added my Binding Art to the quick access slots that were afforded me. I focused on the skill and then linked it to my Summon: Veil Imp spell. Immediately an overlay appeared in my vision. 'Ritual Customization' A simple circle was the only option, so I selected it and saw the chains and cuffs that bound me glow slightly. The ground also gave off a subtle, much dimmer glow. I guess this was the viability of the rituals location? Like what substance was better to house the circle?

  I chose the cuff on my left wrist. A small blue circle appeared, blinking on the cuff. It existed in potential, but the prompt was clear. "Draw circle here" using my ring of abundant soul I scratched a very rough circle into the area that the Binding Art skill was indicating. The blue glow, which instantly swapped to a deep purple when I thought about how I preferred purple, sank into the scratched-on circle. Focusing on the shoddy ritual sigil a small prompt popped up

  Summon: Veil Imp

  Ritual - Circle (poor)

  Status - inactive

  0/100 mana

  Activation at 100 mana

  Deactivation at 25 mana

  One hundred mana! I only had ten as a maximum. Even with my high spirit it will take forever! I heard a distant metallic clang from beyond my room. Right. Trapped, time wasn't really the limiting factor, was it?

  Getting down to business I started channeling mana into the metal cuff that bound me. Ironically the cuff was slowly being changed into a tool for my freedom. Hopefully.

  Ten minutes. Twenty. Thirty. I spent every second peacefully meditating on the singular idea. More mana please. It had been a long time since I had taken a moment and just relaxed. In the real world my job as an analyst had made it a necessity to learn meditation. Not the new age foo foo meditation, but a hardened, hyper focused goal oriented meditation. It helped me keep my thoughts organized, but the Cascade had completely dropped me on my head. It felt good to have a tangible goal for once. One hundred mana. No problem. More mana, more mana. A constant request sent to my center, my spirit. I was hesitant to use a spirit boost again. The result had cleared the venom, that was for sure, and I had no doubt it would help to generate a large amount of mana quickly, but I was still suffering from lack of stamina, even more than an hour later I had only reached the half way point. Some unseen stamina regeneration debuff was definitely in effect. And it was not working towards my benefit.

  I couldn't immediately tell if my meditation was helping, but after I reached the eighty mana mark in the ritual, I did some number crunching and saw that I was definitely producing more than was normal, even with enhanced spirit. The tiny increase wasn't game-breaking, but it made me feel like I was accomplishing something. It didn't seem like it took that long to reach the one hundred mark after that. I happily inspected the cuff.

  Summon: Veil Imp

  Ritual - Circle (poor)

  Status - inactive

  100/100 mana

  Activation at 100 mana

  Deactivation at 25 mana

  With that completed I tapped the circle and activated the ritual. Time to get my friend back! The instant the mana was released my body was frozen and my mind was taken away.

  You have discovered a new location

  @$*^%$

  You are the first to discover this location

  Reward for discovery Deferred

  I was floating in a nebula of colors and shapes. Sparks of all sizes and hues moved around me. Some moving at a languorous pace, while others appeared and disappeared, moving so fast that I couldn't track them. Several of the ones nearby moved towards me, happily offering me their service, many words, or tiny phrases, popping into my head, trying to convince me that they were the best for whatever job I needed. These things were conscious! They were spirits or something, was I in the Veil right now? Had Vigil been one of these things before I summoned him into an imp's body? He had always talked like that body wasn't his own. I swept away the hovering points of light and looked around at the thousands of visible star-like beings. How was I supposed to find him in all this mess? I called into the beautiful nebula. I felt my call travel out, rebounding off the beautiful cloud-like structures that towered around me. Dozens of lights froze...and then swarmed me.

  Well this is not what I was hoping for... I swept the lights away after scanning through them for the familiar feel of Vigil's mind. This time the few dozen lights were harder to push away. I willed myself to move, but seemed to be stuck in a single point in space. Not ideal... I didn't have much of a choice did I? I had already put so much time into making Vigil my friend, I didn't want another snarky, sarcastic, tag-along that wouldn't try to help me escape. I wanted someone who would care if I got out or not. I screamed into whatever dimension I was in. This time it wasn't a couple dozen lights that answered the call. It was a couple hundred. The words of so many minds battered against my own. I folded myself in
to a ball and clenched my head in my hands. "Not....ideal..." I spat out through gritted teeth. I roared into the cosmos. More lights sped to me, I was at the center of thousands, a maelstrom of minds, pelting me with their wants and needs, like a hail storm. I was losing my grip. I could feel my strength fading by the second, but I held onto the sensation of this place. It was like a rope, dangling in front of me, keeping me anchored. I held onto the rope with everything I had. It felt like the press of lights was burning off my skin while pulling my mind apart. I screamed at the lights. Trying to push them like I had before. Many were moved, but it was like trying to dig through sand, more tumbled into the void left behind. I heaved against the hoard once again this time pushing my will out in a ball, with myself in the center of the effort. I created a void in the center of the hurricane of color. My nose was bleeding and my skin was steaming, but I looked around wildly for the one I was looking for.

  It was a matter of principle at this point. Clenching my teeth, I slammed my hands together, like I had when I boosted my spirit. I felt a faint connection to my real body, a power welling up in my chest. I forced every drop of that power into my mental voice.