Beastborne- Mark of the Founder

by James T Callum

  Oath of the Brightking Axioms.

  Never intentionally harm an ally.

  Protect an incapacitated ally above all else.

  Do you wish to undertake the Oath of the Brightking?

  That was a lot to parse.

  Two Quests completed, and a new Fabled Class? Despite the weariness of the battle, he was more than happy to accept such an Oath, though. It was one he already held close to his heart. He would have to see if Ashera knew anything about Oathforgers.

  Oath of the Brightking accepted.

  By staying true to your Oath, it will grow in scope and potency. Each Tier will bring new boons to both yourself and your allies but it will also require new axioms.

  A flash of white light rippled out from Hal and bathed Noth, clearly affecting her with the Oath. Her eyes widened suddenly and she looked at him in a new light. “Hal?” Noth asked, awareness returning to her. “What… happened?”

  “What do you remember last?”

  The Reaper’s eyes focused and she scrambled to get out of the pool in a panic, like a cat that just realized it was soaking in water. Noth burst out of the pool and landed awkwardly on the stone in a heap. And very naked.

  Every drip of the water onto the pitted stone beneath her feet revitalized it, bringing a measure of former glory and strength back to the inanimate material. Noth’s armor was gone, revealing creamy, toned skin. No hint of the lifeless blue skin she used to have.

  “What did you do!” Noth bellowed accusingly.

  Hal was taken aback, he struggled to meet her eye and to look away at the same time. “I saved you, did you want to die that badly? Can Reapers even die?”

  She opened her mouth but bit back the retort. “I was dying?” The memory seemed to come back to her. “Before, I would have laughed at how ridiculous that notion was. A Reaper, dying. But since being tethered to you, forced to exist on this….” She motioned vaguely, disdainfully. “I would have said that was impossible too. The truth is, I do not know.”

  Wary of another outburst, Hal went to her side, removing his [Simple Cloak] and draping it across her bare shoulders. She looked curiously at it, then him. Her nudity didn’t seem to register or even bother her.

  Hal tried to give her a comforting smile. But Hal couldn’t get the image of her out of his head, not her beauty but the wounds that should at least left a scar. There was no sign of any damage whatsoever.

  And he realized that he felt likewise.

  Just dipping his hands into the pool to hold Noth had healed him completely. Even the wounds Noth clawed on his face were gone.

  The memory of pain and the sickening sound as his shoulder popped out of the socket made him nauseous.

  He gave a gentle roll of his left shoulder, amazed at how well it moved. As if it was never injured.

  Staying in the proximity of the Manatree’s roots gave him a measure of peace he hadn’t known since his arrival.

  “Are you okay?” Hal asked, noting the new shine to her eyes.

  A few tears gathered and fell down her cheeks. “No, I’m not fine! Look at me! I’m crying, Hal!”

  He furrowed his brow. “You nearly died, that’s not so abnorm-”

  Noth made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat.

  “You don’t get it,” she said. “You bathed me in the Manatree’s waters.” She paused a moment to let that settle in.

  When Hal didn’t make the connection, she threw up her arms in frustration, upsetting the robe and giving Hal an eyeful as it slipped from her shoulders to puddle on the floor around her feet.

  She scowled at him, but it had nothing to do with her recurrent state of undress. “How you can do so many things right without having any idea is beyond frustrating.”

  “Enlighten me,” Hal said with a faint smile, trying to sidle up to her and put the cloak back around her shoulders. He was used to Noth’s bluster but more than that he was happy she was alive. He had finally found a way to give her the peace he had secretly sought.

  He felt bad enough about Giel. But to be so directly linked to Noth’s death would have been a heavy burden he wasn’t ready to bear.

  The Reaper took a steadying breath and shut her eyes. “The Manatree is a thing of this world, by putting me into its waters you healed me.

  “But the Manatree does not distinguish one soul from another. It did not know that I was not of this plane and so when it healed me… the mana that flooded into me bound me to this plane.”

  “Are you saying you’re mortal now?” Hal asked, hopeful.

  The Reaper nodded, her shoulders slumped. “I was hoping that I would be able to find a way to return to my plane of existence. Either you would die and I could take you back or….” She heaved her shoulders in a profound sigh. “Now I have all these emotions running around inside of me. How do you people even think with so many feelings?”

  Willing to risk getting his hand bitten off or worse, Hal placed a comforting hand on Noth’s shoulder. “We get by, but we often make poor decisions because of them. They’re not so bad though, emotions can make you happy too. They can help you to see the brighter side of life.”

  Noth scoffed. “They blind you to the reality that your existence is little more than an eyeblink. Insignificant.”

  “That doesn’t mean our lives aren’t worth living,” Hal countered. “What does it matter how long or short we live? Every day we make a choice to live, to do something with our lives. Even if that choice is as insignificant as bringing a smile to a stranger’s face.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you?” Noth asked. She turned incredulous. “How can you be so sanguine about an utterly useless existence?”

  “Like I said,” Hal said, removing his hand from her shoulder and getting to his feet. He offered that same hand to Noth to help her up. “How long or short we live is irrelevant. If I lived a thousand years but did nothing more than watch the universe dance through its motions, that doesn’t make my life more valuable than somebody who lives ten, twenty, even a hundred years.

  “It is the quality of a life, not the quantity of its years, that makes it worth living. I would rather live a shorter life filled with adventure, friends, and wonder, than an impossibly long dull life.”

  Noth didn’t say anything as she took his hand and let Hal pull her to her feet. She said nothing at all as she worked her jaw and fought hard against the tears shining in her eyes.

  She turned on her heels and went to retrieve her scythe. Noth stood over its dark form, worry plainly etched on her face. Tentatively, she lowered herself down and grasped the weapon. She breathed an audible sigh of relief when it didn’t reject her.

  With a flourish, she lifted the weapon and spun it through the air. “At least it still knows its master,” she said softly. Noth sniffed loudly and turned back to Hal. “My middle hurts.” She rested a hand right over her stomach. “But I see no wound.”

  Hal bit back his first kneejerk reply. “Does it feel like a rumbling, grumbling sort of pain?”

  The Reaper nodded, as wide-eyed and intrigued at this new development as a child.

  “You’re hungry.”

  “Nonsense,” she said with a dismissive gesture. “I do not eat.”

  “You were never mortal before.”

  “Perhaps I will abstain. I have heard mortals die if they do not eat. It cannot be that painful. If I die then my soul will be claimed by one of my sisters. Then I can explain to them what happened and they will restore me to my proper role. Everything will be as it should be.”

  Hal rather doubted it would be anywhere near as simple and straightforward as that but he kept his mouth shut and took out one of his boxes of [Rations]. “Here,” he said, holding it out to her.

  Noth turned her nose up at it. “I do not want it.”

  Hal tried to press it into her hands but she refused to take it. With a grumble, Hal turned back to the Manatree and put it on the stone lip of the pool. “It’s here if you want it.”

 
Safe in the knowledge that Noth was okay, he dismissed her from his thoughts and examined the Manatree. He looked down into the glimmering pool of pristine water that clearly reflected the thickening roots above it.

  With no idea what he was doing, Hal placed his palm against one of the roots.

  Hal shut his eyes and concentrated, calling out to the Manaseed within his soul. While the Manatree looked healthier, he could feel that it was still wounded. He wanted to heal it, to call upon it so it could once again blanket Murkmire in its protection.

  The very act of reaching for it unlocked something deep within Hal’s Manaseed. He felt a connection to the Manatree, strong and pure. Felt its pain as his pain. Festering boils of corruption still feasted on the roots of the Manatree, withering its protection deep in the mountain it once kept free of such abominations.

  He surrendered his own strength to the Manatree. While similar, it wasn’t the same as using Assimilation. The Manatree didn’t take a single point of HP, SP, or MP.

  It took something else, something intangible.

  Hal could feel the Manatree grow and blossom as if it were an extension of himself. It shrugged off the parasites feasting on its roots. It surged with new growth as the countless wounds healed and it drew mana from deep within the mountain at Hal’s command.

  With a burst of azure light, the Manatree’s roots turned pale white and the room was bathed in dancing firefly-sized motes of deep blue.

  A deep peace settled over the room.

  The motes of blue danced in front of the looming, profane gate as it began to calcify. Stone grew over the door, not tumorous black bulging stone, but a light gray stone natural to the mountain of Murkmire.

  A few moments later, all that remained to hint that a gate had even been there were thirty-eight steps leading up to a blank wall of stone.

  Through his connection to the Manatree he could sense it sending out waves of rippling mana. Any monster that the field of growing mana touched turned to glowing motes of light.

  Hundreds of monsters were vaporized in an instant. And something larger… much larger than anything Hal had ever seen before, squatting in the deepest bowels of the mountain was obliterated.

  Fearing for Vorax’s life and those of any other goodly monsters that might exist, he tried to talk to the Manatree, to let it know not to hurt them.

  Its answer was not unlike Vorax’s. A series of feelings and imagery but on a scale far surpassing anything he ever felt before. It was like being hit by a tidal wave, only a few of the impressions stuck in his mind.

  Pure. Goodness. Heart-friends.

  The Manatree - any Manatree it seemed - was a force of good. And any creature from this plane, no matter how monstrous, would suffer no harm if they held the spark of goodness in them.

  It was immensely comforting.

  Your Manatree Skill has risen to Level 1.

  +3% Manatree Spell Potency (+3%).

  You unlock Manashield.

  A remnant of the Manatree’s own power to repel the worst of the Manastorms, this ability affords you a portion of a Manatree’s protections against an oncoming Manastorm. It is not powerful enough to repel monsters but it will weaken them.

  Casting Time: 10 minutes.

  Duration: 8 hours.

  Radius: 20ft.

  Applies Area Effect: Manatree’s Wrath.

  All creatures within the effective radius of the Manashield move 10% slower and have their DEF and MDEF reduced by 10%.

  [Manasapling: Murkmire] gains 97,340 Experience.

  [Manasapling: Murkmire] attains Level 205.

  [Manasapling: Murkmire] evolves into [Manatree: Murkmire].

  [Manatree: Murkmire] has 47 Perk Points awaiting distribution.

  You lack sufficient Manatree Skill to access this information.

  You are not the Guardian of this Manatree.

  An itching sensation brought Hal’s attention to his Founder’s mark. In the center of the middlemost triangle grew an imprint of a blossoming Manatree. It glowed with pale moonlight, in sharp contrast to the bright gold of the mark.

  A smile lit his face. The Manaseed within him glowed with pride.

  90

  “How do you put up with it?” Noth asked, coming up alongside him.

  Hal pulled his eyes from the moonlit mark of the Manatree and looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “That… thumping in your chest. And the way your body is pushing and pulling air and that-” Noth’s voice began to fade and she took a big painful-looking gulp of air that made Hal wince in sympathy. “You always need so much air to talk! Why are your bodies such heaps of trash?”

  Hal leaned against the stone pool and chuckled. “Okay, first of all, that’s your heartbeat. If you stop thinking about it you’ll eventually stop noticing it. Same goes for your breathing. If you stop focusing on it so much it’ll do it on its own.”

  “I don’t like it,” Noth said poutily.

  “Unfortunately, you’re stuck with it.”

  She eyed Hal suspiciously as if he was hiding some secret to being mortal. “It’s so hard to think with all these emotions rattling around. My mind feels fuzzy and murky.

  “I feel better when I’m standing near…” She glanced at him, then immediately shifted her gaze to the Manatree roots when she saw he was watching her. “The Manatree. I used to like the feeling of isolation, now I hate it. It’s cold and lonely.” Noth glared at Hal. “I didn’t get lonely before.”

  Hal doubted that but he kept it to himself. “I’m sorry the transition is so hard for you Noth,” he said sincerely.

  He could only imagine how hard it would be to go from a being that likely never needed to sleep, eat, breathe, or have emotions to being human. Heck, if she hates eating she’ll really hate what happens after she eats or drinks anything.

  The Reaper eyed him, unsure if he was being serious. The emotions on her face were so pure and plain to see that it was almost unfair. Hal could practically read her thoughts.

  “Do Reapers… Level Up?” Hal asked tentatively. He wasn’t even sure how much she knew about Classes and the world at large.

  “I know of Levels, but I am not well versed in their mechanics. Such things are beneath-” She stopped herself, her cheeks blushed. “Such things were beneath me. I suppose I shall have to learn. You’re pretty ignorant about these things, perhaps we can learn together.”

  Hal watched the blush of embarrassment with more than passing curiosity. He remembered when the Reaper’s skin had been so pale, almost corpse-blue. Now that she was alive, she had an actual complexion that wasn’t frozen in time.

  “I’d like that,” Hal said, ignoring the slight. “I’m usually the one that has to keep asking questions and its often frustrating.”

  “Oh, I will not ask questions,” Noth corrected. “You will ask questions for me and I will learn from the answers given.”

  Hal chuckled and began to take off his tattered aketon, sliding it off one shoulder then the next after he unbuckled his belt. She stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I am not sure how I feel about what I am seeing,” she said baldly.

  That brought another chuckle out of him. He held out the red quilted jacket to her. “You can wear this and then tie the cloak around your waist. I’m sorry, but it’s the best I’ve got. With any luck, one of the others will have clothes you can wear.”

  He walked around the stone pool until his back was to Noth. He slid down into a sitting position, resting his head against the cool stones of the pool.

  He pitched his voice so she could hear him on the other side of the pool, “You should check your prompts. Just think about accessing your menu and it should display. Give it a try but you might want to sit first. It can be a little disorienting.”

  Hal brought up his previously withheld notifications. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Noth inch her way toward him. The [Traveler’s Aketon] and the [Simple Cloak] fashioned into a skirt looked a little odd but at least she was clothed. Slo
wly, like a skittish alley cat, she sidled up to him and sat down next to him.

  He could see Noth’s mouth working as she read her prompts under her breath.

  You defeat [Shae’kathoth].

  You gain 15,000 Experience Points.

  You earn 15,000 sparks.

  You absorb 300 Eldritch Essence.

  You absorb an Eldritch Soul: Shae’kathoth.

  Unlocked Soul Absorption.

  Certain unique creatures possess inordinately robust abilities and boast knowledge far beyond their kin. These entities, once defeated, can have their specific essence absorbed, providing unique boons and abilities found only within that creature. Due to the nature of these souls, only one can be set at any given time. And a full day must pass before another soul can be set in its place.

  Eldritch Soul: Shae’kathoth.

  Dominate: +100% Duration, +100% Dominated Targets.

  Beast Magic Spell: Shifting Mask.

  Take on the appearance of another, altering every aspect of your body, including clothes and items.

  School: Beast Magic.

  Type: Magical (Dark).

  Family: Eldritch (Soul of Shae’kathoth).

  MP: 200

  BP: 5

  Strain: 10

  Duration: 1 hour.

  Beast Magic Spell: Soul Drain.

  By touching an opponent, you are capable of draining their resources and stats. The more types you drain the less potent the spell becomes and there is a higher chance for resists. Drained stats and resources are removed from the afflicted and temporarily added to you.

  School: Beast Magic.

  Type: Magical (Dark).

  Family: Eldritch (Soul of Shae’kathoth).

  MP: 120

  BP: 5

  Strain: 7

  Duration: 1 hour.

  Your Beast Magic has risen to Level 11.