Glory to the Brave (Ascend Online Book 4)
Page 85
“S-source, I command you,” I said in the clearest voice that I could manage, a fleeting hope building in my chest as my vision began to dim.
a genderless mental voice replied.
“I-I must know…of the city. Of Illistra,” I stated, the hope I’d felt a second earlier blooming into a mixture of relief, sorrow, and strangely enough, terror. “How…how…does it fare? Do our defenders still resist?”
“Stop,” I ordered weakly, suddenly unable to hear whatever else the voice had to say. “What are the chances…that the defenders will rally and drive them away?”
“A-and we will all be thrown into bondage once again…if not slain outright,” I said, the inner almost alien terror that I felt before having grown with each word that I’d heard. So complete was the emotion that I felt my body begin to tremble, the shaking sending a burst of pain coursing through my body and prompting another round of vicious coughing. Lasting for a nearly a minute, it wasn’t until the ground before me was covered in a large pool of mana-tainted blood that I was able to collect myself, feeling the darkness in the corners of my vision creep inwards with surprising speed. “I…w-we…c-cannot have that happen. N-not…not again.”
Knowing that I had seconds left before the darkness took me, I cleared my throat for what I knew would be one last time, speaking with all the clarity that I had left.
“Source…activate ‘The Star’s Last Lament’ on my authority,” I said, feeling a profound sense of failure as I spoke the words. “If we cannot…stand together in life…then at least in death…we…we will all be…safe.”
Then with a shuddering breath following my final word, I felt the last dregs of energy that I had in me fade away, followed by the darkness swallowing me up in a blanket of nothingness.
He’s the one who destroyed the city, I said, breathing a sigh of relief as the memory’s pain faded from me, leaving me falling through the vast empty night that stretched all around me for a third time. He was so terrified about the Irovians capturing it that he destroyed it and everyone else within. But why? Why did he think that killing everyone would make him—all of them rather—safe? And what was he talking about with that other woman and their ancestors?
Burdened with more questions than I ever thought were possible about the memories that I’d just experienced, let alone what their purpose was, I found myself at a complete loss of what to even think, my mind feeling completely overloaded to the point of bursting. So it was then with complete relief and joy when I suddenly heard Freya’s voice pierce through the veil that surrounded me, grabbing onto it like a drowning man grabbing a life preserver.
“Lyrian!” I heard her shout, at first sounding like it was coming from the distance, gradually growing louder as continued to call out. “Lyrian! Can you hear me?”
I hear you! I tried to think back towards her, feeling the darkness around me suddenly begin to shift, gaining a slight hue of color. My efforts must have also done something for her to see because she immediately replied to me, speaking out for a second time.
“Look, he’s moving!” she said in an excited tone. “He’s finally waking up! Lyrian, keep doing whatever it is you’re doing! It’s working!”
It’s working? What’s working? I queried, feeling a little confused by what she’d said, but still trying to focus on her presence the same way I had before. The effort had the darkness around me continue to gain color until it abruptly vanished, and I found myself sitting upright in my bed with Freya’s face in the center of my vision.
“Lyrian?” she asked as I stared her, it taking a second for my eyes to fully focus on her. “Are you back? Are you okay?”
“Y-yeah, I-I think so,” I replied as I shifted, suddenly feeling how fast my heart was beating in my chest. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. One minute I was waiting for the crystal to activate…then the next—”
Having leaned back while I’d been talking, my thoughts derailed the instant that I clued in that Freya was wearing her armor as she sat on the bed in front of me. But then no sooner did I notice that detail, did I also catch a flash of motion, revealing that Shelia was also here, the woman passing by the sole window that the room had to offer.
The sole window which was currently letting in a bright beam of sunlight into the room.
“Wait…what time is it?” I asked as I stared at the sunbeam, a sense of dread coming over me as I heard a loud horn blare from outside, its note lasting for several seconds before ending.
“It’s a little after ten in the morning, Lyr,” Freya replied in a gentle voice, her head turning to glance out the window as she spoke. “Whatever it is that happened with the crystal happened to you all night.”
“But I’m afraid that’s also not the only thing either,” she added before I could say anything in response. “Because Garr was right yesterday, there is a storm coming. And so are the orcs.”
Chapter 66
“I couldn’t wake you no matter what I tried, so I had to call Shelia,” I heard Freya explain as I dressed as fast as I could while simultaneously stumbling through the empty common area that connected with our private bedroom, slowly making my way towards the door that led outside.
“And I’m afraid I couldn’t do anything for you either,” the other woman said as she easily kept pace with me as I continued to pull my armor free from my inventory and dress. “You were lying what appeared dead asleep when I arrived and then just sat up yourself a few moments ago, your eyes blazing with emerald light. It was shortly afterward, with Freya calling for you, that you awoke.”
“That I did hear,” I replied, pulling a strap on my chest piece tight as I spoke. “But by that point, I think whatever the crystal had to show me was over. It showed me three different dreams…or memories, I think. But they each felt short. Barely more than a few minutes long each.”
“I…see,” Shelia said, sounding somewhat unsure of what to make of my words, but not pressing me on them either. “If that was the case, then, are you feeling well from your experience? Any exhaustion or fatigue?”
“I think so,” I replied, pausing briefly from my hasty attempts to dress myself to consider how I physically felt. “I don’t feel any different than usual, and I’m not particularly tired. Whatever happened with the memories overnight at least let my body rest.”
“Small victories in that case,” Freya commented with a sigh of relief from somewhere behind me, her voice shifting to address the other woman. “Do you think he’ll be okay to fight today?”
“Hm, as if my words would stop him if I didn’t think he wasn’t?” I heard Shelia answer with a polite snort. “But no. Since he is standing and moving—with speed, I might add—I can’t see any reason to be concerned. Beyond the strangeness of whatever magic the artifact used to afflict him overnight, he seems to be fine.”
“And he is also standing right here and listening to you both,” I said in a dry tone as I finished pulling my left glove on, the last and final piece to complete my armor set, and pushed open the door leading to outside. “Okay, I’m ready to—”
An explosion of magic in the air above me cut me off, its volume loud enough to cause me to flinch as I glanced upwards and spotted the remains of a fireball disintegrating high above us, the air around it shimmering brightly.
“Looks like things are finally getting started,” I stated, finding my voice again as I exited our longhouse just in time to s
ee the first fireball be joined by several other smaller ones, each of them impacting on the invisible shroud that was the Disruption Aura surrounding the town and fading away.
“It sure looks like it,” Freya agreed as a series of smaller rapid-fire cracks from the expended magic above us reached our ears, the distant bombardment from above continuing as the orcs began to test our defenses. “You’re completely sure that you’re feeling okay, Lyr?”
“I am,” I affirmed, half turning back to look at the two women as they followed me out of the building. “And even if I weren’t, I’d figure out a way to deal with it. There’s no way I’m going to sit on my hands while we’re all fighting for our lives here. None of us would.”
“That’s true enough,” Freya replied with a sigh before going on to nod at me. “Okay, then. Let’s get a move on towards the others, and I’ll catch you up along on the way.”
“Works for me,” I said, going to shift my attention towards Shelia then back to Freya. “And thank you both for your help. I’m sorry to have worried you both with whatever this crystal did to me.”
“It’s nothing,” the priestess replied with a shake of her head. “I am here to help, after all—both now and during the battle. Just come and find me should you need my services.”
“Hopefully, we won’t need to, but I’ll keep it in mind regardless,” I said, both Freya and I parting ways from the cleric who turned to head back towards the town hall, which had been fortified as both a final holdout and a place to treat our wounded.
“Okay,” Freya said as soon as we were alone. “So I know I promised to update you, but I’m going to need you to fill me in first. What exactly happened in these…memories that kept you out all night?”
“A lot,” I answered with a shake of my head as went onto give the woman a quick outline of my experiences while we walked through the town at a brisk pace, moving towards where I sensed Amaranth already waiting. “…and that’s where I finally heard your voice calling me. I wasn’t sure if the visions were done, but I’m glad you were able to pull me out of them. I’d had more than enough by then.”
“It sure sounds like it,” Freya replied in a compassionate tone. “Dying even once sucks, let alone having to do it three times back to back.”
“You’re not wrong there,” I said, full well recalling how painful each of the deaths I’d experienced had been, or at least in the case of the Nafarrian king’s memory, the moments leading up to his. “But in any case, I’m still struggling to wrap my head around everything I saw. It seems that everything we think we might have known about the Nafarr was way off, especially when it came to these rebels that were helping the Irovians. And I’m not entirely sure what either that woman or the king meant when they referred to the ‘bonds’ that their ancestors placed on them. It almost sounded like they didn’t have free will. Either not all the time or not in the traditional sense that we understand it, at least.”
“Well, to be fair, Lyr, we didn’t really know all that much in the first place,” Freya pointed out. “And from the little I’ve heard Stanton and Donovan talk about, pretty much nothing of the Nafarrian culture survived to be recorded after they fell. Until now, our best knowledge source was the slave-king that we fought in the tower.”
“Which, from what Garr tells me, might have really been some sort of ancestral spirit or something,” I replied with a sigh as I thought back to that particular confrontation. “I think my head is starting to hurt trying to unravel all of this.”
“Then maybe you’ll need to put it aside for the time being, because in a couple minutes we’re going to have a few more immediate concerns,” the woman said, her face suddenly brightening as she gave me an inquisitive look. “Wait, hang on a second. Were the memories the only thing the crystal gave you? Or did you get something else in your notifications too? A quest or something else to add context?”
“Uh, I woke up so fast and panicked the second I saw that it was morning, I didn’t even think to look. One sec,” I replied, finally taking the time to notice that there was indeed an unread alert floating on the edge of my vision, my brain having refused to notice it until now. Mentally opening it, I watched it expand into a small window filled with text and immediately began to read.
You have successfully absorbed the skill crystal: [Legacy of the Nafarr]!
You have learned the long lost Nafarr language!
You can now understand, speak, and write Nafarrian!
You have gained a new trait!
Lost Lore: Nafarr
Description: Gained from the memories you’ve absorbed, your mind is now rife with countless fragments of fallen Nafarrian culture, occasionally granting you a unique insight and knowledge of the long-since-fallen civilization in the form of whispering words or, rarely, complete visions.
Effect: When presented with mystery, query, or an artifact that is Nafarrian in nature, there is a chance that your subconscious mind will be able to provide either contextual knowledge to guide you or on occasion, even show you a memory directly relevant to it.
You have learned the Advanced Tradeskill: Artificing! This tradeskill allows you to harness the power of magic and shape it to your needs through the creation of powerful devices, magical metals, and arcane foci.
You have learned new Artificing recipes!
You have gained a new ability!
Shroud of the Magelord
Type: Stance, Magical
Skill Requirement: Alteration and Abjuration – Level 25
Description: Gained from the memories that you’ve absorbed, you have learned how to shape and strengthen your natural magical aura as the ancient Nafarr once did, creating a subtle shroud around you that blunts both weapons and magic.
Effect: While this stance is active, you gain a +10% damage reduction against physical attacks and +10% spell resistance against all magical effects. You must have mana in order to maintain this stance.
You have learned a new spell!
Unseal
Type: Spell, Nafarrian
Duration: Instant
Casting Time: 1 minute
Arcane Tree: Abjuration
Spell Mastery: Abjuration – Level 30
Mana Cost: 4000
Description: You channel an enormous amount of mana into a complex arcane key, unlocking the Nafarrian seal before you.
Effect: Target seal is dispelled.
Special: Due to the complexity of this spell, it cannot be shared with other adventurers through normal means.
“Whoa, there’s a lot I missed,” I said to Freya, slowing my pace as I read through the floating box’s contents, my eyes widening as I did so. “A lot, a lot.”
“Any of it immediately useful?” the woman queried, sounding a little impatient at my slowdown. “Because my earlier words still stand. We’re really short on time to join up with the others, especially if the orcs are already throwing magic at us from above.”
“Just one new ability in the short term,” I said a little distractedly as I’d immediately turned to page through my newly earned artificing tradeskill recipe list, finding it absolutely full of various things that I could potentially make. From an ætherial transducer to an elemental battle wand to something else called a “grade 5 basic intellect”, the recipe list stretched almost endlessly with Freya’s timely throat-clearing pulling me out from investigating the whole thing all at once. Apologizing for the delay, I quickly gave her an overview of everything that I’d seen. “And then last but not least, there’s this…unseal spell that it gave me, which, given how much mana it needs, is impossible for me to even cast. Not that I’d even know what to cast it on in the first place. We’ve never even seen a seal.”
“Not yet, you mean,” the woman replied in a thoughtful tone before going on to shrug. “But so much for my earlier thought. It looks like we only have more questions to ask.”
“That’s been the story of my night,” I stated as we began to move at a faster pace once again, the sounds of figh
ting starting to reach our ears as we got closer to the palisade. Enough so that I activated my new ability, Shroud of the Magelord, feeling the ancient Nafarrian magic billow out around me in a protective cocoon. Feeling it stabilize around me, I then cast Protective Shielding, which was one of the new spells that I’d learned from Janus and the other spellswords. “I’m wondering if I visit other Nafarrian ruins that these new memories will trigger on something else and give me more context of what happened to them. Then maybe if enough of them do, I’ll be able to piece things together like a puzzle, bit by bit.”
“It sounds like a particularly frustrating puzzle to me,” Freya commented as the wall finally came into view.
“You’re not wrong there, but hopefully, it’ll be one worth figuring out, if only to make sure we aren’t blind anymore,” I replied while glancing up at the palisade and the adventurers on it, all of them in the process of repelling a collection of attacking shadows and spirits either on the wall or the field beyond it. “Anyway, sorry, that took a lot longer than I thought. What’s going on here that I need to know about? Beyond the obvious, that is.”
“That the orcs have been slowly mobilizing over the course of the last two hours or so and are expected to make their assault before the storm arrives,” Freya said as she led me towards a set of stairs that had been built alongside the wall for easy access. “Which according to Garr is supposed to fully arrive from the northwest anywhere in the next two to three hours, though we might start getting wet and windy before that. Apparently, now that it’s closer, Garr can better sense it and where it’s coming from. He is pretty certain that it belongs to a hurricane that’s coming our way off the ocean.”
“A hurricane?” I repeated, feeling my eyes widen at the news. “They can make it this far inland? I thought all the mountains along the coast would stop it.”
“Garr said something similar once he realized where it was coming from,” the woman replied. “But apparently, this storm is strong and large enough that a few mountains aren’t going to stop it before it manages to thoroughly drench us.”