Beastborne- Mark of the Founder

by James T Callum

  For now.

  At least unlocking Beastborne didn’t count towards the healing limit on Level Ups.

  “Hal… what happened to the others?” Ashera asked, gingerly sitting up. She tapped her darkened Guild badge, adding its light to Hal’s.

  Hal looked at the party menu, noticing what she meant. Giel, Elora, and Mira were all faded out. Their HP, MP, and SP were blank.

  “We must be out of range,” he said, remembering the limitations of being in a party. “I didn’t think we went that far….” He must have walked a long way. With the unconscious aid of his extra shadow appendages, Hal hardly noticed the distance.

  “You saved me.” Ashera reached down to a large rent in her armor near her pale abdomen. Her fingers touched the skin that showed no sign of scarring. “How?” Her confused, slightly sad eyes lifted to Hal’s.

  “It turns out I can heal you,” he said, not wanting to elaborate further. “It’s… a bit unorthodox but it works in a pinch.”

  Your Leadership has risen to Level 11.

  +1% Party damage (+11%).

  +2% Leadership efficacy (+22%).

  A tiny smile quirked her lips. She shut her eyes, and Hal recognized the concentration. A moment later Ashera’s HP, MP, and SP flashed to full.

  Ashera’s Sin Keeper reaches Level 12.

  “Are you able to stand?” Hal asked, rising to his feet. Unconsciously he lifted himself with his shadow-limbs and Ashera’s widened, disbelieving stare nearly made him laugh.

  He imagined he looked strange, practically levitating as his legs unfolded under him while he rose. His shadowy limbs would easily blend into the darkness behind him.

  Hal lifted a shadow-limb and motioned to it. “I’ve got a few new tricks.”

  “I’ll say.” Ashera gingerly gained her feet. Watching her, Hal remarked how ungainly it suddenly seemed to him to move without the aid of several shadow-limbs moving about and bracing him without conscious thought.

  The roots that threaded through their chamber rose into a large spacious cavern. With no other goal readily available, the pair followed the roots as they grew in size and number.

  Hal took the time to dedicate his 10 new Attribute Points. Fighting the Shoggoth showed him just how important having enough MP was. Hal stacked all 10 points into MND, safe in the knowledge that he could dole out some more EXP into Beastborne whenever he felt like it if things didn’t seem to work out.

  He could actually test and adjust his stats based on his experiences instead of stumbling ahead blindly.

  With 20 MND at his disposal, his MP jumped from 175 to 225. But of greater note was his regeneration. It leaped from 33.4 to 54 per hour. If he didn’t do much more than cast Bloodrake once an hour, he would never run out of MP.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  And he doubted it ever would be. Having near-limitless MP courtesy of the Manaseed now resting within his soul… was intoxicating.

  Soon they were walking atop a roadway made of intertwined roots as thick as a car. “I always thought the Manatree was stunted,” Ashera remarked after a while. “But look at these roots, they’re massive.”

  Hal could feel the deep wellspring of Elysia within the roots below his feet, courtesy of his connection to the Manaseed. The Murkmire Manatree was stunted. There was… pollution was the only word that came to mind, within its Elysian energy.

  Something that should not have been possible. Whatever was ailing the Manatree went deeper than being stunted. He remarked on this to Ashera.

  “I have no idea what I’m doing,” Hal said aloud as much to Ashera as to himself. He’d been looking over his attunements and found he still couldn’t choose.

  Mostly, he was afraid that choosing one would permanently disfigure him somehow. Amorphous Skin sounded like his skin would slough off and ooze around as the Shoggoth’s had.

  It might make him stronger but it’d also make sure he could never enter another city no matter how high his CHR was.

  Ashera circled Hal’s wrist with her hand, halting their pace. “Want to know a secret?” she asked shyly.

  Hal quirked his brows and leaned in, curious.

  “Nobody knows what they are doing. Even Elora, the fearless Ranger who would sooner die on her own sword than admit she has no clue how all this will play out. Much less how to get the freedom she so deeply desires.

  “Hal, none of us know what we are doing. But all of us are doing our best to figure it out as we go along.” She squeezed his wrist and let go. “There’s no shame in asking for help or not knowing the answer.”

  It was sweet and comforting. Hal should have said something equally kind back to her but his mind stuck on one fact and he blurted it out before he could stop himself, “Elora has no idea what she’s doing?”

  Ashera chuckled and continued on. “Not a clue.”

  That, more than anything else, made Hal feel better.

  They took to the rootway as Hal thought of it in his head. The roots branched over underground ravines and massive black glittering lakes far below at the edge of their light. All the while the rootway grew larger with wilting growths spreading out from weak branches.

  Whenever it was too difficult to traverse, Hal lifted Ashera and used his shadow-limbs to navigate the uneven path of roots. Sometimes they spread as wide as ten feet apart with nothing between but a sheer drop into the darkness below.

  The first few times Hal picked Ashera up, he had no issues. On the fourth attempt his Ethereal Instability kicked in and his hands swiped straight through her. They had to wait several long moments before Hal was solid again.

  It startled Ashera as much as Hal.

  He looked at his ethereal hands, thankful that gravity didn’t pull him straight into the planet’s core when the instability triggered. “When I was brought back… which I realized I never got to properly thank you, so thank you. Seriously. I heard how hard you fought for me.”

  Ashera blushed a little and waved his thanks away. “You already saved my life once. And again now, it would seem. Elora would have done the right thing, Hal. She was just scared. I hope you won’t think less of her. What… exactly did you see, if you do not mind me prying?”

  Shaking his head, Hal explained everything he saw on the other side. From the Reaper that he inadvertently brought over, to hearing Ashera and Elora argue. He ended with the Divergent Quests he received and the Ethereal Instability he was plagued with, asking if she knew anything of it.

  “I am sorry, Hal, but no.” Ashera hugged herself and paced back and forth along the rocky ledge they were about to venture out from. “We… we had to use the Manaseed that Elora was safeguarding. It was bought with no small amount of blood-” Her lips twisted into a grimace at the phrase. “Suffice to say, we did not even know if it would work. But I had hoped that, with you being a Founder, a Manaseed might be able to pull you back from death.”

  Hal vaguely recalled the pain-soaked conversation. At the time it had made nearly no sense to him but in retrospect, he could sort out their words from the agony that had clouded his mind.

  “Does that mean the Manaseed is gone and I can’t make a Sanctum now?”

  Ashera had no answers for him. No matter how desperately he wanted them.

  Solid once more, Hal hefted Ashera into his arms and they continued on their way.

  Passing over one subterranean complex of caves and paths, Hal heard a strange cackling sound from below. Normally, he wouldn’t want anything to do with it.

  But with his newfound powers, he found a part of himself eager to explore and find new monsters. Something inside him craved contact with other monsters.

  He didn’t know how he felt about that.

  Ashera heard it too and paused, cocking her head to the side. She cast him a strange look but only said, “You are going down there, are you not?”

  Hal looked sheepishly at her but couldn’t hold back the grin on his lips. “Just a quick peek.”

  41

  The Reaper had s
hadowed Hal as his strange powers manifested and he saved the Sin Keeper. She knew that one well. The Reaper had collected many souls that had been sent to the beyond by the hands of that unassuming one.

  She grinned at Hal’s apparent dismay over her state. If only he knew, she thought.

  There was a thread tying herself to Hal together. Whatever the boy had done, he had pulled her into the material realm, the land of the living. Mostly living, she corrected. She could feel the legions of undead that infested the world like a sea of putrid stars.

  A silvery cord connected to her navel and pointed her toward the young man but she had no desire to get near him again. How he could see her on this plane, she had no idea, and when he touched her….

  She shivered. He had made her corporeal.

  That was impossible.

  Though it strained against that strange bond she had with the “human,” she turned away and willed herself up through the shaft of tumbling stones.

  “Where was that other one,” she mused aloud, knowing full-well that nobody could hear her speak. Not unless they were near-death or she willed it.

  Neither of which seemed likely as she floated through thick blocks of stone that passed through her body and fell to the pit below. Her Death Sense would have picked up somebody ready to cross over.

  Not that she had any intention of ferrying a soul in her present state.

  “Let another Sister deal with it,” she muttered, scanning the broken ledges of stone as she entered the grisly scene where Hal’s group fought the Shoggoth. Even though it was merely a spore, she was surprised they managed to fell it.

  That was something she’d need to report to her superiors. Shoggoths were incredibly virulent, all-consuming monstrosities. Their creation was banned on every realm she knew of. And her memory was vast and considerable.

  The fact that even a spore had been found was troubling.

  “There you are,” she said, spotting the blonde-haired girl. “Let’s see what you’re up to.”

  * * *

  Elora peered over the edge of her perch once more into the yawning pit that had opened up below their feet. She glanced back at the tunnel where Giel was resting with Mira. Luckily, the blocking goo the Shoggoth used to prevent escape had melted away after its death.

  She had managed to save herself and Giel but had gotten separated from Ashera. The girl had too soft a heart by far. When Ashera noticed the Shoggoth’s acidic blood eating through the stone floor, the Sin Keeper had tried to reach Hal.

  Always worrying about Hal, she thought with a hint of envy that she quickly squashed.

  She tried to get in touch with Hal or Ashera after the floor broke but the only person who responded was Mira. The Dragoon had come leaping out of the pit like some demonic bunny, landing lightly on the sturdy ledge Elora had pulled Giel toward.

  They were separated. Out of range for party communication, the only option they had was to find a way to regroup.

  Elora rejoined Giel and Mira, casting an appraising eye over each of them. The Dragoon was wounded but from the EXP they had recently gotten, she should have no problem healing herself with a Level Up.

  It was a crude tactic. Crude, but effective. A bit like Hal, she thought with a wry grin. That one always had a surprise up his sleeve. Would she even recognize him when they were reunited?

  If we are ever reunited, a tiny dark voice whispered into her mind. They could both be dead. Despite the sacrifices. Nobody could survive that fall. Elora did her best to crush that voice back into the dark box from whence it came.

  “We will continue onward,” she said to Giel and Mira. Her voice was only the tiniest bit unsteady. She wished Yesel was there to speak for her.

  CHR was Elora’s lowest stat, she just didn’t have much use for it. The Rangers didn’t mind her gruff demeanor. Spending days at a time in the woods had its downsides.

  And it showed in the way both Giel and Mira delayed their response. They glanced at each other first as if deciding whether they were going to follow her lead. Her high Leadership skill apparently wasn’t enough to offset her low CHR score.

  “All right,” Mira said, rising from her crouch. “Need a hand big guy?” She held out a deeply tanned arm to Giel.

  The big Warrior took it, his large hand swallowing Mira’s up to the wrist. Despite their size disparity, the lithe elf pulled him to his feet with ease. There was something off about that one.

  Adventurers might have been uncommon in the region she grew up in, but Elora wasn’t entirely ignorant of them and their ways. An adventurer with a Fabled Class like Dragoon would be a hotly contested commodity.

  The fact that she was still by herself at her Level told Elora there was more to the Dragoon’s story than she was letting on.

  It was yet another plate she had to keep spinning.

  Elora had already dropped the majority of her gained EXP into Ranger, pumping it up to Level 15 and getting a second tier of Doubleshot. She took a quick look at her stats, wondering in what direction she should build herself next.

  [Status]

  Elora Orthoril

  Level: 35

  Discordant Stone: 8,700/55,000

  Classes

  Ranger: 15

  Novice: 10

  Paladin: 7

  Thief: 3

  Resources

  HP: 512/512

  SP: 605/605

  MP: 455/455

  Attributes

  STR: 20

  VIT: 22

  DEX: 57

  AGI: 40

  INT: 20

  MND: 20

  CHR: 3

  Regeneration

  HP/hr: 57.7

  SP/hr: 191.8

  MP/hr: 78.4

  Resistances

  Fire: 0

  Ice: 0

  Wind: 0

  Earth: 0

  Lightning: 0

  Water: 0

  Light: 0

  Dark: 0

  Defensive Properties

  DEF: 44

  MDEF: 24

  Insulation: 50

  She wouldn’t have been surprised if her CHR was lower than Hal’s. In a short period of time, he had become surprisingly commanding. It wasn’t easy watching the others turning to him when he spoke.

  Not that she held a grudge. Hal needed to be a good leader if he was going to become the Founder they needed. The liberator her people so desperately yearned for.

  As Elora led the remnants of her party down the winding tunnels, she couldn’t help but remember the argument she had with Ashera.

  It wasn’t that she thought that Hal didn’t deserve to be saved. He had died as a hero. Selflessly running into danger to save somebody. Mira would not have come back to life so easily, no matter what they used on her.

  If she was being honest with herself, she was angry that he had thrown his life away so readily. And despite everything, she still harbored doubts as to the validity of his status as a Founder.

  She had expected so much more of a fight from him. Not only that, but the emergence of his Founder powers was… slow. Surprisingly so. As fast as his other skills seemed to grow, it was almost as if he was intentionally holding back.

  When she reunited with Ashera, that would have to be the first thing they needed to discuss. A spike of worry soured her stomach over the kind-hearted lamora but she was quick to focus on the task at hand.

  She was always quick to focus on what needed to be done.

  And perhaps, she mused, that is why your relationship with Ashera degraded so fast. You left “for the greater good,” but to her, you still left.

  Running ahead, as much to put distance between her thoughts as to scout, Elora came to a fork in the tunnel and pulled up short. She never told anybody about her secret fear that Hal wasn’t a true Founder. The vestiges of that doubt lingered like cobwebs in her mind even after he had torn down Founder Rinbast’s barrier.

  That should have been enough. But it seemed like every time Hal did something to confi
rm his dedication, Elora couldn’t help but raise the bar further. She couldn’t quiet the insistent inner-voice that told her something was wrong. But repeatedly denying fact with “instinct” or a “gut feeling” was the height of idiocy.

  Nobody would take her worries seriously. As well they shouldn’t.

  All the logic in the world couldn’t silence that voice, however. And despite her own conflicted feelings, she really could have used Hal’s strange monster-hearing sense right about now.

  She tapped her Keen Senses, focusing down one path, then the other. No sound, smell, or visual cue differentiated one from the other.

  A series of rolling sensations came to her from behind, though.

  Worry and fear mixed with apprehension. A limp on the left and a faint dragging on the right. Elora let go of her Keen Senses. Why were Mira and Giel still hurt? They should have had more than enough EXP to Level Up.

  Getting 12,500 EXP was a staggering amount, plus an equal amount of sparks… Elora shook her head. It was a small fortune.

  When the three - four if she believed Giel would help the cause - of them reunited, that was nearly a quarter of the cost for the supplies that they lost.

  With the money from the Coffin Contract’s reward… it might be enough. She didn’t feel comfortable asking Hal to give up a potential home for the koblins. Despite their strange ways, she found them quite endearing.

  They didn’t care that she had low CHR.

  “Ya’ll want to flip a chip to decide which way we’ll be moseying on?” Giel rumbled beside Elora.

  “We should go right,” Mira said, pointing with her bloodied spear.

  A pair of red glowing eyes peered out at them from down the rightmost path. Elora couldn’t understand how these things kept eluding her detection. Meanwhile, Hal could hear them a hundred feet off.

  “Did I say right?” Mira added, “I meant left. Definitely left.”