Acrion- Cascade

by Scott Seier

  I just looked at her without saying anything. I had exactly two casts of the spell to my name. Before this last one that is. And the second cast had been the one where I changed its location. So one cast? "I think I cast the spell once, before being able to choose where it would fall." I answered finally.

  Kara blinked at me. "Surely you're joking..." she set her cup down completely then and stood up, walking towards me quickly. "Lyst, please be honest with me. How long did it take you to bend that spell?" I scratched my ear nervously. "Umm. Once, like I said. The second time I summoned the gate is when I used it to take down a minion of the Dark that was attacking me. Last night."

  Kara turned white and scurried to her large chest, which was in a completely different spot than it had been a moment before. She rummaged around for a while, but eventually pulled out a large brass amulet.

  She slipped it over her head and then held onto it tightly and closed her eyes. She was muttering under her breath as she walked around the entire perimeter of the grove. She did this for five circuits around the place before pulling the amulet off and tossing it back into her trunk, which, once again, was about ten feet away from where it had been when she pulled the weird piece of Jewelry out of it. Weird.

  "You should have told me immediately that the Dark had targeted you with an attack. This place is warded from its influence now, at least for a short time."

  I looked at Vigil curiously. Vigil uncoiled himself from my arm and orbited around me pensively. It would seem so. The single enemy wasn't outside of our ability to overcome, but I wonder if we would have the same luck if two of those beasts were sent after us. Or five. Or a thousand.

  "Sorry about that Kara.." She waved off my apology and pulled a book from within her blue robes. "It really doesn't matter at this point. It means I have less time to train you if I want to keep you as a student. Which is perfect because apparently you have some form of natural aptitude with spell crafting. If we set to work now there's a good chance that we can get you ready to face the threat of the Dark by nightfall." Kara seemed confident in her words, but her eyes were flying over the words of the book under her nose. There was a small sliver of fear in those eyes that made me nervous.

  Turns out that nightfall was a little bit of an exaggerated time frame. Kara was relentless. Demanding that I trained with every spell, ability, and skill that I had, bending them to their limits before moving on to the next, going from basic, to complex. I slept in the little patch of grass that Kara had, the summoness herself disappearing completely for the night. The grass wasn't enough to get me a well rested bonus, but it served its purpose. I didn't die in the night at least. Soon after I woke up Kara appeared with some bread and sausage. Then it was back to the grind stone.

  "No. Stop the mana flow." Kara stood up as I struggled, sweat dripping into my eyes. "Lyst. Cut the flow of mana off immediately! You're tearing open a breach into the veil!" I grunted and dropped to a knee. "Got that, trying..." I mumbled as I pushed with everything I had to cut off the mana that was being sucked from me.

  I could feel it. My Summon: Veil Imp spell bent in the wrong direction beginning to bore a tiny hole into the Veil dimension. It was like something had snatched onto the line of power that was extending from me and began tearing it away. I hit the zero mana mark in seconds, but the grasp didn't let up. I would regenerate a point, and the breach would devour it.

  I struggled, but quickly found that there was no way I could break this connection on my own. "Help...Please..." I growled out as my health suddenly began to drain away at a prodigious rate. Blood burst from my nose and ears like a bomb had gone off next to my head, but still the drain continued. I was beginning to loose consciousness, a handful of random debuffs destroying any cohesive thoughts that I tried to piece together. That's when Kara finished whatever spell she had been casting.

  The space around the minuscule breach was forcibly crushed back inward, like a massive vice twisting reality back together. For a single instant, there was a time where my mana had just been taken, in the moment just before another point would be regenerated, when the breach was crushed shut. That was it. The connection was still there, if another drop of mana left me the pin prick of a breach would surely reopen, but it wasn't forcing me now. I slammed the door on the connection with everything I had, falling onto my back and panting weakly.

  Kara joined me, panting herself. "Well, that one was obviously a dud. Never thought I would need to actually summon an astral constrictor. Nasty creatures." I turned my head to look at her through the tall amber grass we were laying in. "A dud? I didn't even push that hard that time and got a result like that? It would have killed me!"

  Kara wiped her shiny face with one of her long sleeves, sitting up and looking at me. "That's true, but you adventurers always pop back up, so no great loss there, is there?" she pushed on before I could respond. "It's only been a day and we've made some incredible progress. I think with that last wrong turn you have a pretty good idea about how far you can push something before it pushes back. Am I right?" I just nodded. It was easier to just agree.

  The overall concept was like the tiny ball of reality that my new Heraldic blood linked me to. Expand a little bit at a time. Too much too fast will result in some serious backlash. I had to ease small changes out of each spell. Even with what Kara described as an astounding ability to ignore the normal conventions of spellcrafting, it was a rough time to get what you wanted. I understood now how the best in Acrion stayed on top. Each of them had probably tapped into some sort of personalized spell or ability that would make them gods to a normal player. Milenta was a perfect example. She just bent reality to her will. Now I had a taste of how much work she must of put in to achieve an ability like that.

  "Now, all you have to do is take what you've learned, and form the idea of what you want. A spell of your own. Build it up slowly. Bit by bit. Bend pure mana into form first, then give it a job. That's all a spell is. The initial creation of it will be the hardest part, but after that don't let it settle until you've fully integrated it into the specialty that you're interested in. What you're doing is exercising a skill that very few adventurers ever attempt to learn, or knows exists at all."

  Nodding, I kept laying on my back until my stamina and health self regulated themselves. Thinking. A shape first.

  I decided to stay horizontal for my first attempt. No sense in standing only to have my legs turn to jelly if I burn through my mana too quickly.

  I pushed my mind into the same general state that I used to move into my realm, but instead just held still in my own head. Quieting the nonsense and bringing the full resources of my brain to bear. Shape.

  I pulled on some mana and felt it leave my body and pool around my right hand. Interesting that your mind instinctively transfers your power to your dominant hand. I ignored Vigil, but was surprised that his comment hadn't shaken my concentration in the least.

  I was laying on my back with my eyes closed. Three mana worth of power buzzing around my hand with only one goal in mind. Shape it. Simple enough right? I focused hard and pushed the idea of my own shape at the mana. It was the shape that I knew best, so why not use that?

  The mana didn't agree with that thought. Instantly the energy seemed to surge and struggle in every direction at once before tearing itself apart and dispersing uselessly.

  Attempt number one. Failure.

  I kept at it. As quickly as my excellent mana regeneration would allow. Every time taking a handful of power and trying to enforce a shape on it. I tried everything. After about ten tries the human shape was thrown out completely. I figured it was too complex, or too large. Next I tried simple actual shapes, like circles and rectangles, and had more success in that, but when the invisible strands of power settled into those shapes they felt dead, inert. Like they were useless.

  I don't know how long I was at it, but eventually I figured o
ut how to build up an elemental spell if I wanted to. The mana itself almost wanted to become something like fire. After I thought about the 'shape' of fire, the small amount of mana I was experimenting with almost exploded in an attempt to acquiesce to my thoughts.

  Stamping out the potential disaster taught me a good lesson. Shape didn't actually mean a physical shape. It meant an entire idea. Which made things move faster after that.

  No wonder my attempts at the human shape hadn't bore fruit. I was trying to get a tiny amount of power to actually embody an incredibly complex system. A really hard "shape" to make. I started smaller. Literally.

  My first attempts at making a microscopic organism failed miserably. Apparently I didn't have the correct understanding of that "shape". The idea though, stuck with me. It would take a lot of steps to get there, but I was pretty sure I knew how to do it.

  What shape did I know? One that would also be useful, but not too much for my meager mana pool? A human was too much, but it was something I knew enough about. Evidenced by the fact that the mana actually tried to do something, instead of just doing nothing like a lot of my other attempts did.

  I wracked my brain. Something I knew. I tried making moving geometric shapes, I got pretty close by making a snowflake that actually solidified in the air in front of me, but I snuffed it out when I felt it reach its "limits". It was a weird feeling, but I just knew that a shape like that couldn't be asked to do much. I needed my shape to do stuff. Semi-sentient. An animal shape that I knew maybe?

  I wrote a paper on octopodes (which is the actual correct plural form of octopus) in college... I wonder if that would be enough understanding?

  Turns out it was. Go figure. Writing classes actually did have some real world application. They allowed me to make a magical shape of an octopus in a virtual world that I was trapped in. Exactly what my teachers had been aiming for no doubt.

  I was looking at a very stylized, borderline cute, octopus in my mind's eye. It took a second to realize that I was actually not just meditating on the shape, but I was actually seeing it. A game interface had imposed itself into my perception without me even noticing.

  Interested, I opened my eyes and sat up. The mana in my hand was gone. Unneeded with the new system that I was looking at. I minimized the window for a second to take a look at my notifications.

  New Skill Alert!

  New Skill Learned

  Shaping: Spectral

  This Skill allows its user to shape energy into an animated form of their choosing

  Once a form is chosen, the template for it can be stored in an item

  The item can then be used to project the chosen form quickly

  Its durability will be dictated by the potency of energy used

  Well there you go, simple as that. Interesting that it was a skill and not a spell, but I wasn't complaining. I opened up the Shaping interface and stared at my little octopus shape.

  Little guy needed a name... I glanced over the interface and found the 'shape name' box. It was currently named "Octopus one". Well one was accurate. My first shape, and my first step on my way to an awesome specialization. I highlighted the name and replaced it with "Alpha".

  Looking at Alpha I opened my interface and looked for an item to bind its shape to. A sort of quick cast feature so I didn't need to open this window every time I wanted to summon him. Worked for me.

  Drawing from Kara's display with her huge amulet I chose a random necklace that I had picked up from some Arachkidar or another. It didn't have any stats on it, but it was a strong looking leather cord with what looked like a coin on it.

  I threw it over my head and selected it as the target for my Alpha's template.

  Lyst's Totem

  (Active)

  Alpha

  There you go!

  I minimized all the screens and stood up. Kara glanced at me from her stump. She had another pot of tea brewing on the side and was reading a book. "Any luck?" she asked with a hopeful lilt to her voice.

  Instead of answering her I reached up and grasped the necklace that was now Alpha's totem. It took four mana, but an octopus the size of a large dog appeared in front of me.

  I smiled and Kara clapped exuberantly. "Wow, well done! An odd shape to be sure, but a fully functioning spell form with nothing but a shape. No job yet, but still working. Impressive.

  I had totally forgotten about the job, happy that I had gotten this far, but I now had about a dozen ideas of what I could build into my new Alpha. I smiled again. Alpha raised himself up a little and squinted his eyes. Is that thing smiling? Vigil asked dryly.

  Alpha was a spectral shaping of an octopus, which meant he wasn't actually an octopus. He was a great deal less...squishy. His from was more rigid, and his head was tad smaller than what would be found on a normal specimen. Also his eyes were more forward facing and mammalian looking. Sort of like a dogs eyes. He was identifiable as an octopus, but was what you would see if you imagined how an octopus would evolve to function on dry ground would look. At least that's how I had designed him.

  Basking in my success, I recalled Alpha, happy to find that the four mana that I invested in him was refunded to me upon his dismissal. Neat. The only downside was that as I looked, the icon that denoted the Shaping skill was grayed out and had a timer over it.

  A cooldown? Interesting. But I think an hour is a little long...

  I didn't have much time to complain. An arrow buzzed past my ear and thunked into the stump that Kara was sitting at.

  "Well, damn." Kara said as she calmly took one last sip of her tea. Or at least she tried to. Another arrow streaked by and shattered the cup in her hand, hot tea spilling all over her robes. She just looked down at herself. Tsking over her soiled clothing. "Lyst, it looks like our lessons are going to be cut short today."

  Surging to my feet I turned in time to see a well organized group of players burst out of the tree line. Their hunter or archer already set to send another deadly projectile at my teacher. Why Kara didn't seem to have any impulse to defend herself was beyond me, but I wasn't lacking in that department.

  I barely even hesitated. The archer's head was gone before his team ever noticed. They even kept rushing towards Kara while their friends body hit the ground and then faded into a grave marker. It was only when another arrow wasn't shot in her direction that they looked back.

  Not wanting them to have much time to reset I moved in between the group of players and Kara.

  "I'm not sure you guys want to mess with her today. Maybe come back tomorrow? I'm working on a little something for the time being. I would rather not be interrupted, and I need her alive for now." I said innocently, hoping Kara would get the joke.

  The one to step up and speak first was a tall overly muscular man. He had chainmail equipped, and wielded two large hatchet looking axes. "Yo! You killed our main dps. What's your deal? You didn't even get a mark for it! What the hell!" he was right. I glanced at my forearm and found no new marks that denoted me as a murderer. I guess defending Kara counted as some sort of gray area? Who knows. All I knew is that I could kill them with no punishment, but they would probably get marked if they took me out.

  Unfortunately for me, or maybe for them, they didn't seem to mind getting the murderer mark. The axe guy cursed a bit and then sprinted at me. At the same time another of their group stepped forward and began channeling a large amount of mana, way more than I could put out at one time. I cocked my head to the side. Vigil just grunted in reply, currently moving in the shadows to get a better angle on the invaders. The axe guy got within ten yards of me, about half way across the clearing, right around when their caster let loose his big one-shot move. Unhelpfully, a large solid steel gate fell form the sky and firmly planted itself b
etween me and them. The axe guy was moving too fast to stop and hit the barrier so hard that he bounced off and knocked himself out. Too much strength, not enough agility. Try again next time!

  The caster's spell was a different story. A chunk of plasma struck the gate, harder than anything had hit it before. Instead of just dissipating after impact, the attack kept pushing, outputting a huge amount of energy as it tried to burn its way straight through my falling gate. How much mana did this guy have!? As I stood behind the gate I could still see a pinprick of orange, then red, slowly expanding as the defense failed. I was more impressed than panicked. The mage, I assumed he was a mage, would have been a lot more effective if he had snared or stunned me somehow, in the path of this monster of a spell. As it stood, my gate did its job.

  I simply slid to the side, after making sure Kara was also out of danger, out of the path of the spell as it finally blasted through the other side of the gate, spewing molten metal everywhere and then punching itself through the thick barrier of trees on the opposite side of Kara's clearing. Some say that the spell is still going. Even today.

  For some reason the mage looked surprised I had just stepped out of the way. They'd started with five. The hunter was gone and the axe guy was down, for a little while at least. Counting the mana-less mage as useless meant that they had gone down to two effective players in less than a minute of fighting, or rather, one? Hmm. I thought there were five to begin with... as I looked there was only a burly man with thick armor and a shield standing out in the open with the cowering mage hiding behind him.