by Stone Thomas
“Do it,” she said.
Δ
Skillmeister View of:
Reyna
Base Attrib. / XP to Next / Intended Change / Cost
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10 Constitution / 250 XP to Next /10 –> 12 / Total XP Cost: 0 [Leveled Playing Field Activated]
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20 Vivacity / 500 XP to Next /20 –> 24 / Total XP Cost: 2,150
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17 Strength / 425 XP to Next /none / Total XP Cost: 0
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18 Hardiness / 450 XP to Next /18 –> 24 / Total XP Cost: 3,075
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20 Focus / 500 XP to Next / 20 –> 36 / Total XP Cost: 11,000
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11 Resolve / 275 XP to Next / 11 –> 18 / Total XP Cost: 2,450
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TOTAL BASE ATTRIBUTE XP COST: 18,675
Stats Affected by Change
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[Constitution] Health Points (HP): 1000/1000 –> 1200/1200
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[Vivacity] Action Points (AP): 321/400 –> 401/480
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[Strength] Phys. Damage Inflict Range: 170-207
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[Hardiness] Phys. Damage Block Range: 97-137 –> 130-182
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[Focus] Mag. Damage Inflict Range: 200-244 –> 360-439
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[Resolve] Mag. Damage Block Range: 59-84 –> 97-137
Skills For Weapon Class: None [expand]
Skills for Special Class: Soul Warden
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Encapsoulate 10. Bind a soul inside an ether shell, spending 22 AP for every level of Resolve the target has in excess of your level of Focus. [22 AP to cast] [Requires: Resolve 10, Focus 20].
Improve to Encapsoulate 11 to decrease AP cost. [20 AP to cast] [Requires: Resolve 11, Focus 22] [4,125 XP to improve].
…
Improve to Encapsoulate 18 to decrease AP cost. [4 AP to cast] [Requires: Resolve 18, Focus 36] [6,750 XP to improve].
Improve to Encapsoulate 19 to decrease AP cost. [2 AP to cast] [Requires: Resolve 19, Focus 38] [7,125 XP to improve].
Improve to Encapsoulate 20 to master skill and reduce casting cost to 0.2 AP per point difference. [0.2 AP to cast] [Requires: Resolve 20, Focus 40] [7,500 XP to improve].
Intended Change: 10 –> 18
Cost Subtotal: 43,500
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Locked. Hell Bent 1. [Skiller Instinct Preview]. Imbue a soul with a burning mark that tethers it to the world of folding stillness. Mark duration: 1 year. [25 AP to cast] [Requires: Vivacity 24, Hardiness 24] [375 XP to unlock].
Improve to Hell Bent 2 to increase mark duration to 5 years. [50 AP to cast] [Requires: Vivacity 28, Hardiness 28] [750 XP to improve].
Intended Change: 0 –> 1
Cost Subtotal: 375
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TOTAL SOUL WARDEN SKILL XP COST: 43,875
Summary
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Available XP: 58,175
Cost of Intended Changes: 62,550
Precision Training Discount (7%): 4,379
Total Adjusted Cost: 58,171
Total Projected Remaining: 4
Confirm?: Yes / No
∇
I confirmed Reyna’s changes but I didn’t turn back to watch her progress. Instead, I saw a massive blood-red monster made up of slimy tentacles with triangular suckers on the ends. It moved in a sickening, blobbing kind of way as it reached for the rift that Reyna left behind.
“Varkind,” Savange whispered into my ear. “A hometown favorite. Much more inspiring than the mucker-mites you kicked at earlier.”
“Rey—,” I said, watching the slimy red fiend coil half of its dense tendrils underneath its body to propel the other half toward the rift. I wanted her attention, but I didn’t want to rattle her again with a name she seemed to hate.
Over my shoulder, I saw her force the lumentor back into a smooth, round ball. Its surface solidified, trapping the ramkin’s rage-damaged soul almost effortlessly now. Then she leapt into the sky and raced against the varkind. She grabbed one of its slimy red tentacles and wrestled it away from the rift. Another thick, sucker-covered arm reached for that opening, but it missed its chance.
The rift sealed shut. The monster slithered back to the ground and rolled off toward the distance.
Reyna landed on her feet next to me, then fell onto her knees. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m still not used to this part of the job.”
“You had more XP stored up than anyone I’ve met so far,” I said.
“Really?” she asked. “Thank you. Oh, you’re right, he wasn’t really complimenting me.” I realized that she must have a swarthling voice whispering into her own ear, just as I now had Savange.
“It’s no insult,” I said. “It means you’ve worked hard, but haven’t been to a skillmeister in a while. Why is that?”
“My mother is dying,” she said. “Is that abrupt? I know it is. It’s abrupt for me too.” She sat on the ground and leaned back, tilting her head toward the sky while her wings tucked in close to her. I still didn’t know how the shadows clothed her body, but I spent a moment staring pretty hard to try and find out as Reyna continued. “Her head priest is dead, her temple in your world has closed off to her, she can’t fight for much longer, and Duul is her only ally.”
“Duul is a friend to no one,” I said, sitting next to Reyna while the negasus grazed at the dry black grass that grew in sparse patches on the ground. Another strange boney finger probed at me through the mud, but I swatted it away. “What about the Great Mother? Can she help?”
“Her? She’s the one that stole my mother’s armor and trapped us here in the first place!” Reyna yelled, sitting upright again. “No, I won’t calm down! The Great Mother is killing Valona bit by bit!” She stared me in the eyes, but it wasn’t me she was talking to.
“This one’s a handful,” Savange said. “Are you sure you want to get so involved with her?”
“Involved?” I asked. Reyna ignored my out-of-place question, folding her arms across her chest.
“You want to run your hands past her wide gray hips,” Savange said, “grab her ample rear and press her body against you. Are you the hair-pulling type, Arden? Her long white locks are begging for it.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said.
“No.” Savange laughed. “Perish the thought.”
“Arden,” Reyna said, “I need to know. Whose side are you on? Duul’s or the Great Mother’s?”
“I’m on the goddess Nola’s side,” I said. “I serve only her. Duul wants her dead, and I plan to defend her with my life. The Great Mother is more complicated.”
“You’re a good head priest then,” Reyna said. “Exactly the kind my mother needs if she’s going to survive. There’s no one here to tend to us anymore, and my mother is starving for souls. Skill my mother, Arden. Make her strong enough to defend against the Great Mother’s rex fulmin.”
“I can’t do that,” I said. “The only way to skill a goddess is to become her head priest. I can’t serve more than one goddess at the same time.”
“Without help she’ll die,” Reyna said. “Duul is the only one offering aid so far. He brought her human women, but my mother can’t feast on their souls because they won’t pledge fealty. Now he’s trying another way. In the end, if he saves her… Yes, I have to tell him. He needs to know.”
“Know what?” I asked.
“Come with me,” she said.
Reyna flew into the air and I climbed aboard my negasus steed. I followed her through the sky, flying over a landscape pocked with strange creatures as a storm cloud came into view on the horizon. A thick bolt of lightning shot from the center of that cloud, striking a dome of swirling dark magic on the ground below it.
“That’s the rex fulmin,” she said. “The Great Mother cursed it with the drive to complete one task: kill my mother.” Another bolt of lightning struck, sending a brilliant pulse of light across the sky. Reyna covered her eyes and turned her head.
I was glad
that she looked away. I couldn’t see what the rex fulmin was since it was shrouded in a swirling storm, but I could steal another glance at Reyna’s body. There was a reason I couldn’t get my first vision of her out of my head. Her features were striking, and if it weren’t for the shadows that wrapped around her body in overlapping bands, I’d see every last gray inch of her.
“Winning the first god war wasn’t enough for the Great Mother,” Reyna said. “She appointed her first head priest as emperor of her new holy empire and told him to stop at nothing to ensure everlasting peace. He enlisted adventurers, mercenaries, and vigilantes to hunt down anyone that helped Duul in any way. They combed all the lands and executed anyone even suspected of sympathizing with the god of war, including innocent people.
“My mother, Valona, is the goddess of life after life. When the emperor died, my mother accepted his soul at the nexus and held a reckoning, the same as she would do for any soul fresh from the overworld. It didn’t take long to sense his history of torture and death and decide he belonged here, in the world of folding stillness, the netherworld realm most people just call ‘hell.’
“The Great Mother demanded that her emperor go to the world of bliss and vigor. Heaven. It’s a realm of light and beauty that my mother reserves as a reward for the valiant and pure. Valona refused, so the Great Mother begged her to conduct a second reckoning in this very realm, and to allow the Great Mother to argue on the emperor’s behalf for the salvation of his soul.
“Valona knew the Great Mother would not suffer to lose this fight, but she agreed anyway. It was the first and only time Valona conducted a second reckoning for a soul already assigned its place. The Great Mother fought hard, but failed to convince Valona that a cold-blooded mass murderer should spend eternity alongside the just and pure. She kept him here and that was that.
“It was out of the Great Mother’s hands at that point. She lacked the ability to send her beloved head priest to a realm of peace and light, but she considered my mother’s decision a breach of the divine order. She punished her by changing the rules that govern the realms. She forbade anyone alive with deific blood from traveling between them.
“We haven’t left since. Valona isn’t strong enough to break through the holy law sealing the realms.”
“So this is your punishment?” I asked. “Valona wouldn’t open heaven’s gate, so the Great Mother locked you inside hell?”
“Yes,” she said, “but don’t misunderstand the world of folding stillness. For the souls that come here, this barren landscape is punishing, but it’s not a punishment. It’s an ecosystem, complete with plants and animals that rely on the darkness.
“The light of heaven keeps valiant souls healthy, but the cold, still darkness of hell allows rotten souls to burn up the last of their hatred and dissolve into the ether without harming the souls that still have good in them.
“I seal them up so they can’t feed off each other’s energy like cannibals, but when the rifts open it agitates them. They long to escape. With my mother growing weaker each day, we can’t really stop them. She needs to feed on the vibrations of souls moving in living bodies. She needs a head priest to turn that energy into new strength.”
“You said Duul sent human women here to worship your mother,” I said, “but they wouldn’t comply. How did they get here?”
“How did you get here?” she asked. “There are paths here other than death, and you found one of them. No one comes to hell willingly though.
“Duul came to my mother in a vision and told her that Kāya will provide for her. She’s preparing now for a way to feed my mother the energy she needs, but nothing comes free when Duul is involved.”
She extended an arm, summoning thousands of glowing orbs to rise from the ground and cloud over our heads. “These fighters died in the first god war, but their souls burn with a hatred I’ve never seen. For all these years, they’ve waited for Duul to call them to arms. Now, he wants them back.
“If Kāya succeeds in strengthening Valona, Duul wants her to tear apart the barrier between your world and this one, releasing all of his fallen warriors at once and putting them under Kāya’s control.
“He doesn’t care what that would do to the creatures that call hell their home. Left exposed to the elements like that, many who dwell in the shadows would die. I’m not sure which ones would survive, or what they’d do. I am sure that your world would change forever if the darkness overtakes it.”
“And your soul isn’t enough to keep your mother strong?” I asked.
“She’s not going to eat her own daughter’s soul,” Reyna said. “Ew. What kind of a monster do you think she is?”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know that would gross you out… There’s a lot I don’t know.”
“Yuck,” Reyna said. “Anyway, if Valona dies, her gifts will go to a young deity with little experience and strength, one that Duul will attempt to control or kill, and on it goes until the netherworld and its army are his. Valona’s only options are to serve Duul or to die at the Great Mother’s hands. Give her another choice. If you revive her, all of this could be yours.”
Reyna spread her arms and her wings, gesturing toward the barren hellscape she called home.
“That’s a very… generous offer,” I said. “The real estate seems to be in pretty low demand though.”
“It will take time,” Reyna said, “but she could grow strong enough to break through the Great Mother’s barrier and reclaim her throne in the land of bliss and vigor. She could rally the forces of heaven and hell and come to Nola’s side.”
“Oh,” I said. “That sounds pretty good actually.”
“Duul won’t give up,” Reyna said, “and if he comes through on his promise to restore her strength before you can, the afterlife will belong to him. Even if you die, there will be no peace then.
“Now, it’s time to send you home. Part ways with Nola and come back here, to me.” She reached for my hand. My heart went out to her, trapped for ages in a dismal void meant to contain the world’s most rotten souls. No family in sight other than a mother trapped in a storm. No one to care for her except a disembodied voice that lived inside her shadow.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I want to help you, but not that way.”
“Then I was wrong about you,” she said. “If you want to save Nola from the end of the world, you’ll have to give her up. If you can’t make that sacrifice, what good are you to her?”
“I’m not willing to betray her,” I said. The words caught in my mouth. Nola had foreseen her head priest’s betrayal once already. I assumed Brion’s theft of her energems was the end of it. What if…
“Save Valona,” Reyna said. “If you won’t do that, then stay out of Duul’s way. Or I don’t know what he’ll force me to do.” She turned away. “Of course I know, but he’s kind of cute, and it’s going to be such a shame if we have to kill him. No, having his soul here won’t be enough. I can trap his soul, but I couldn’t touch it. Like really touch it.”
She turned back toward me. “Um, pretend you didn’t hear that. I’m not used to censoring those conversations.”
“Her mother took a human lover,” Savange said. “That’s how demis are made. I’m sure you’d have Valona’s blessing to take Reyna and make her yours. Hell’s not such a bad place to make a home and raise children, as long as you don’t let the mucker-mites eat them.”
“Valona,” I said. “She has a temple, right?”
“Had,” Reyna said. “It lies in Mournglory, but it has gone… dark.”
“What if I restored the temple, let people know that your mother is still here and that she needs their support?”
“If you found a way to do that,” Reyna said, “you’d be a hero, but you have to hurry. And wait. Right now, specifically, I need you to wait.”
I waited. She waited. I waited some more. I got a little tired of waiting.
“What are we waiting for exactly?”
“We wait for death,
” she said. “That’s my cue. Someone dies in the land of the living, and they see the calming light of the nexus. They move toward it. Or, you know, they don’t. If they have unfinished business they tend to linger among the living, which is not wise in a world as harsh as yours. Without a physical body to protect the soul, the elements wear it down pretty quickly and their soul energy dissolves into nothingness.
“But for those that do come through, the moment their energy transfers to the nexus, a small tear in the barrier between all realms of reality opens up to allow the soul to move onward. With my mother suffering under the rex fulmin, those small tears are opening into rifts that gape wider and stay open longer.
“Soon I won’t be able to keep these rotten souls from escaping back into a world with energy they can steal for their own. For now though, the next rift is your ticket out of here.
“While we wait,” she continued, “I just have one question. I spend all this time gazing into open rifts, getting momentary views of the living world. The blue sky, the bright flowers… It’s the sun I think about most. It’s warm, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “On a spring afternoon, not a cloud in the sky, there’s nothing better.”
“Enjoy that while you can,” she said. “We don’t get sun. Here, that kindness would kill.”
Another rift opened, not far from where we sat. Reyna leapt to her feet and grabbed my arm, pulling me toward it. “I’ll be watching you,” she said as we ran. “I can’t open rifts, but when the shadows part I can see your world.”
I stopped at the edge of the rift and looked at her one last time. Another crack of lightning lit the sky, burning the image of her further into my mind. “It’s not ugly,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”
