First Sorcerer

by Kyle Johnson

  “I cannot tell you how,” she supplied before he could ask the obvious question. “I am constrained in this; I am but a memory and have no place in your world. However, I am permitted to tell you this: if you wish to simply pass the Trial, ignore the edimmu. If you wish to truly win, they should be your next step.” As the woman finished, her body began to fade. Aranos tried to protest, but he felt himself rising from his mindscape, being dragged back to the world above.

  He awoke to a stinging pain across his cheek. “Wake up!” Geltheriel hissed, her hand drawn back for another slap. Aranos flinched and opened his eyes hurriedly.

  “I’m awake, I’m awake,” he protested, raising his arm in defense. “Wow, okay. Why did you hit me?”

  “It has been near three hours,” she snapped. “You asked for two. Now, we must move quickly to the crown or I risk dying of hunger.”

  Aranos sat silently for a moment, looking at the woman. “We could do that,” he said slowly. “We could escape here, I’m sure. However…” He shifted his gaze directly to her eyes. “That wouldn’t be victory, would it? We’d never find out what’s going on here, we’d never get a chance to end this. We’d never get a chance to lock that door so that no one else gets dragged here!”

  “But, we would survive!” she hissed, stepping angrily toward him. “Isn’t survival also victory?”

  “Is it?” he asked simply. “I’m sorry, but, when you were trapped in that cell, was survival victory? You probably could have gotten free by giving in, and you would have survived. Maybe you would have gotten a chance to escape and been back home long ago, but, I mean, would you have called that victory? Because I don’t think you would have.”

  She jerked back as if he had physically struck her, her eyes refusing to meet his. She turned away, and he heard her weeping softly. He moved to comfort her, but he quickly realized she would spurn that offer right now. Instead, he sat quietly and allowed her the release he had gotten in his mindscape. Sometimes, he thought sadly, you’ve just gotta cry it out.

  It took Geltheriel a few minutes to recover her composure, but eventually she straightened and used her rags to dab her eyes. “You are right,” she spoke finally, her voice quiet and tired sounding. “You are right. I am afraid, Aranos, and that makes me ashamed.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she shook her head.

  “I am ashamed, and I am afraid, but fear is not shameful,” she went on, her voice hardening. “It is giving in to fear that is the death of honor, and I almost did that.” She turned and looked at him, her tear-stained face marred by dark lines of Corruption. “The darkness within me? It speaks to me, Aranos. Not with words, but with emotions and desires. I have always been quick to anger, and it feeds that, fanning my rage and hatred. I have always fought against my fears, and it strengthens them, driving me to cowardice.

  “As I said, though,” she finished, holding her head up proudly, “I am still of the Light. I am still a Keeper. I can be afraid, but it will not rule me. I can be angry, but it is not my master. You lead, Aranos, and I will follow. Now, let us depart this place; it has served us well, but we can stay here no longer.”

  Speaking, the woman slipped through the tangle of wood that shielded them, and Aranos scrambled to follow. Her steps were sure and confident as she led him toward the main street and turned toward the Tree Spire. Aranos hurried to her side and stepped up next to her. “Where are you going?” So much for my leading and her following, he thought with a touch of irritation.

  “We must challenge the gasha and descend down the Spire Tree,” she replied with as much excitement as if she were speaking about taking a nap. “This is the shortest route to them.”

  “We don’t have to do that, yet,” he protested. “We can go down from here, sneak back to where they were holding you, and follow their trails back to the food. I’m guessing that, at Hunger 4 you’re probably having a hard time healing right now, right?”

  “That is true,” she admitted. “But I fear we do not have time. It took us hours to move to this place in Stealth, aleen. It will take hours more to return. Do you think we have hours?” After a moment, he shook his head. “Then this is the path we must take. You said that your rest would give you the tools to face the gasha; was that the case?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “At least, I’m pretty sure. I think I have a plan to beat them.”

  “Then we will attempt it,” she said simply. They walked in silence along the broad branch, and Aranos marveled at how much faster they were moving now that they weren’t in Stealth. Well, now that I’m not, at least, he admitted silently. She could probably have gone a lot faster if it weren’t for me.

  Moving at a swift pace, it took them about 20 minutes to near the Tree, where Aranos insisted they slow down their approach. “We can’t get too close,” he murmured to her as they crept forward, not in Stealth but moving cautiously. “This will only work if we hit them before they can sense us.”

  When she looked at him strangely, he explained, “I’m pretty sure that they can sense anything around them, but only out to a certain distance. I was here, before, watching them, and they didn’t move. Same thing for the gasha outside the prison: I hit it before it knew I was there.

  “I’m planning to do the same thing, here,” he told her, quickly outlining the plan.

  She looked dubious but shrugged. “I have never heard of a gasha being defeated,” she admitted, “so I will not argue.” He could tell, though, that she really wanted to.

  They crept up to where the gasha were just visible and stopped, carefully rehashing the plan and ironing out some minor wrinkles. It wasn’t complex, but there were still ways for it to go wrong. They moved cautiously into position, and Aranos carefully formed two Mana Arrows, holding them side-by-side before opening the fight by releasing them, using his Multishot Ability to turn them each into three arrows that screamed into the mound of bone surrounding the vulnerable skull.

  Just as before, the arrows buried themselves in the pile before exploding with a crack, sending bone fragments flying in all directions. Aranos arrived and slammed his palm on the gasha’s skull, yanking on its mana, while Geltheriel danced around the skull, using the ironwood staff to knock back the pieces that were shifting to rejoin. The mana began to flow from the creature much faster this time, without the resistance and slow, trickling start, and he realized that those effects had probably been caused by his own energy flows not being well designed to deal with the reversal of the current.

  Aranos glanced over and saw that the second gasha’s pile was starting to shift as it activated. He had guessed that would happen – it didn’t make sense for the two to be stationed too far apart to sense an attack on the other – but there wasn’t much he could do about it, yet. He did fire off a single Mana Arrow, cloned into three, to smash into the pile, but too many of the bones had started to connect for the strike to be fully effective. All it did was slow the gasha’s formation down a bit, which was really all he needed.

  The mana flow from the first gasha was starting to slow, just as the second gasha’s formation began to accelerate, indicating that it was about to rise and attack, so Aranos concentrated and cast Entangling Web for the first time. He felt the streamers of mana spreading out, reaching to fill a box, 20 feet to a side, with the gasha in the center.

  The flows from the first monster cut off, and Aranos stepped back, allowing Geltheriel to move forward and attack the skull with her staff. She was much more efficient at it than Aranos had been, each strike crushing weakened, brittle bone. She attacked fissures with brutal precision, cracking through them and quickly reducing the skull to a pile of dust.

  As the Keeper worked over the first gasha, Aranos kept an eye on the second one, as well as his SP bar. The Entangling Web Spell was expensive, and it only lasted 20 seconds. He’d need to cast it at least one more time for their plan to work, possibly more if things went wrong. The gasha had risen to its feet and tried to rush at them, but the strands of mana tangling about i
t grabbed the porous bone and held tightly, slowing it to the speed of a fast walk. Still, it was moving steadily closer, despite its movement debuff, and he worried that Geltheriel wouldn’t have time to finish destroying the first skull before the creature arrived.

  His worries were groundless, though: the elf stepped past him and moved to the edge of the mana web a few seconds before the gasha got within range. The creature raised it fist overhead and slammed it down at the woman, and Aranos almost yelled out in panic before she danced nimbly out the way and slammed her staff on its wrist. The gasha followed up by sweeping its arm at the elf, but she dove into the air and flipped over it, landing lightly on her feet with the staff braced for the creature’s next attack.

  Aranos watched, open-mouthed, as the elf moved swiftly and surely, tumbling through the air, slipping past attacks that would have crushed him, and responding with a solid crack from her staff whenever possible. After rolling under a high sweep, she noticed him standing still and tossed a loose chunk of wood at him, striking him in the chest. “Do your part!” she snapped as the impact broke him from his reverie.

  Aranos renewed his Entangling Web – he didn’t have a countdown timer on his Spells in this game, but he was certain it was close to being up – and ran around the outside of the wispy strands of mana until he was facing the side of the monster. He cast his Forge Mana Spell, crafting a smaller version of the saw he had made before and sending it moving slowly toward the gasha. When it was close, he guided it to the creature’s left leg, aiming it right behind the knee. The spinning disc struck with a loud whine, and shards of bone began to spray from the joint.

  The gasha turned quickly toward Aranos, but once its back was to her, Geltheriel struck out with the butt of the staff, smashing into the back of its right knee. Another chip of bone flew off, and the gasha turned back to face its most recent attacker. Aranos kept pressing his mana saw against the knee, until with a loud clang it slid through the joint and out the other side. The gasha tried to catch its weight, but with the lower part of its leg gone, it crashed to the ground…and at the same moment, Aranos’ Entangling Web vanished.

  Geltheriel reacted swiftly, trying to dance back, but without the hindering effects of the mana strands slowing the gasha, she wasn’t quite fast enough. Its bony hand clipped her as she leaped back, the knuckles smashing into her and sending her flying through the air to hit heavily against the trunk of the Spire Tree.

  Panicking, Aranos recast the Entangling Web, but in his haste, he accidentally included himself in the Spell’s area. The energy formed around him, tiny hooks of mana digging into his skin and clothing. He thrashed reflexively, but within a moment or two, he was completely immobilized by his own Spell. The gasha, however, had no such problem, and although it was slowed, it began crawling toward him, dragging itself through the tangling web.

  A spike of fear shot through Aranos when he found himself held so securely, but he shoved it down and concentrated on his mana saw. The creature’s neck wasn’t visible, so he couldn’t aim for the space between two vertebrae; instead, he pressed the disc blindly against the back of the monster’s neck. When he heard the shriek of his mana cutting into the creature, though, he knew he had struck in the middle of a solid chunk of bone, rather than between two pieces where it was weakest. Grimly, he pressed his will against the blade, forcing it against the hardened bone, all the while trying to squeeze more speed out of the disc, more power. All of his focus fell upon that one construct, and he heard the tortured shriek suddenly shift to a softer whine as the blade sunk in. The gasha crept closer as he stood, unmoving and unable to flee, every ounce of his being focused on the blade that he sensed was now cutting deeply into the bone.

  The creature drew within three feet of reaching him when, suddenly, he felt the saw slice through the bone and exit the other side, and the skeleton collapsed into chunks and shards of bone. He let out a deep breath and released his saw, allowing his SP to return while he waited to be released from his Entangling Web. After several seconds, he tumbled backwards, smashing his backside on the ground as the strands of mana finally released their hold on him. He took a deep, shuddering breath and rolled to his feet, running over to the sickly, glowing skull and slamming his hand onto it. His SP had been pretty drained by the battle, but as he sucked the mana from the skull, he watched his bar slowly rising. Whenever it got close to full, he crafted a small mana construct, practicing his Spell and ridding himself of enough SP to keep his hourglass-spirals from overflowing once more.

  At last, the flow of SP dwindled and stopped, and concentrating, Aranos fashioned a sledgehammer made of mana. He slammed it onto the cracked skull with brutal effect: the heavy head crushed bone much more effectively than the lighter staff did. Working methodically, trying not to look at Geltheriel’s crumpled form, he quickly crushed the skull until it collapsed into powder.

  He dismissed the hammer and raced over to the fallen elf, gently rolling her onto her back. She was unconscious, but he could see that her LP, while low, were still hovering around 10%. Still, with her Hunger debuff, that number wasn’t creeping up much at all.

  He dug into his belt pouch and produced a couple of his Exceptional bandages, his Herbalism Skill and Profession instructing him to place one on her forehead and the other on her chest below the hollow of her throat. He started to sift through his herbs when he remembered Geltheriel’s instructions about his Inventory. He pulled up the screen and selected the herbs he needed, quickly forging a bowl and a pestle out of mana to crush them before adding some water from his waterskin. Once the resulting slurry was well mixed, he opened her mouth and poured a small amount in, closing her nose so she would swallow. When she did, he repeated the process until she had taken the entire medicine.

  He sat back and watched her LP bar for a moment. At first, nothing happened, but as his medicines began to take effect, the red bar rose more steadily, until it finally stopped just a shade below its maximum. At last, her eyes fluttered open, and he let out a deep breath he didn’t even know he had been holding. She sat up slowly, her eyes unfocused. Probably checking her notifications, he guessed. After a moment, she turned to him, her gaze angry.

  “So, can you explain what went wrong in that fight?” she said coldly, her face flat. “It should have been a simple matter; the plan, it turned out, was an excellent one. And yet, I was very nearly killed. Please explain how.”

  Aranos sighed. He could have equivocated or made excuses, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t react well to those. “I got distracted,” he admitted after a moment. “I’ve never seen someone move the way you do in a fight, and it caught me by surprise. Then, I lost track of the timer on my Entangling Web, so it vanished before I was ready to cast the next.” No need to tell her how I caught myself with my own Spell, right? “I’m sorry. I won’t let it happen again.”

  Her face softened, and she nodded. “Good,” she replied, rising to her feet. “Then the encounter was not a waste if we learned from it.”

  Aranos blinked. “You’re…you’re not mad?” he asked curiously. “I thought you’d be angry that I let you…”

  She cut him off with a snort. “You ‘let me’ do nothing, aleen,” she told him firmly. “I was foolish and relied upon your Spell, when I should have been assuming the gasha would break free of it. Had I been prepared, I would have dodged that blow, and you would not have had to waste those excellent medicines you must have used to restore me.”

  Her chin rose and her gaze was resolved as she spoke. “Let us be clear,” she insisted. “You are not my minder nor my nursemaid. I am the only one responsible for my actions and choices. I do not apologize for your distraction, even though it was my display of prowess that overwhelmed you, do I? No, for that was your choice, and you wisely accept responsibility for it. I now know how fast the gasha are and how swiftly one will break free should your Spell fade, so next time, I will do better.”

  She rose to her feet, reclaiming the staff and dusting off her shod
dy fur garments. “Besides, I am still somewhat astounded that we defeated one gasha, much less two, in order for there to be a next time,” she admitted. “Despite your assurances, I still believed that all you had done was to disable the gasha, perhaps for an extended time. I doubted you, and I was wrong. You have given me something today, Aranos: I was able to feel my staff crush the skull of a gasha!

  “So, now,” she grinned at him, “I wish to feel it again. You say there are two more gasha across the Spire Tree? Let us use your excellent strategy once more, and this time, we will both do better, correct?”

  Aranos smiled weakly and nodded, gratified and overwhelmed by her shift in attitude. I can’t believe she doesn’t blame me, he thought quietly. I think I’ve been working in an office too long: I was waiting for her to tell me it was all my fault and how much trouble I was in.

  The battle with the next pair of gasha went much more smoothly. Aranos blasted the first pile of bones and began draining the skull while Geltheriel kept as many of the bones as possible at bay. Instead of using the drained SP to form a tiny wall, though, he cast his Entangling Web immediately and set an alarm for 15 seconds in his head, then used normal, uncopied Mana Arrows to slow the second gasha’s formation. Once the first skull was drained, Geltheriel started destroying it, while he renewed his Entangling Web and alarm and used Mana Arrows to soften the second gasha’s knee joints a bit.

  Once Geltheriel was done with the first skull, she started tanking the second gasha, or holding its attention so that Aranos could fashion his mana saw and attack the creature’s knee. He didn’t bother moving to the side this time; he had figured out how to spin the disc with enough speed that he could get through the creature’s kneecap in just a few seconds. He had to renew Entangling Web once more, but once the gasha fell, he and Geltheriel just stood back and let the saw sever its head in relative safety.