Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1)

by Scott Browder

  “No clues whatsoever,” admitted Zizzy. “And the Wardens tried. By the time they caught me, there was no trace of anyone matching his description at any of the magic academies, and no one has come forward to admit performing a restricted ritual in the middle of the city. I know he’s still alive, through the link we share, but that’s all I know.”

  “You know the rest,” said the grizzled [Sentinel]. “The city petitioned the [Oracle] to find out who the summoner was, but the request was denied, and a suggestion sent back to the Wardens that they might benefit from recruiting someone like Zizzy.” The emphasis he placed on the word implied it was more than mere advice. “And now she’s the longest-serving Warden in the history of Stormbreak.”

  By the time the captain finished speaking, the floating platform had crossed the distance to the Pillar. It came to a stop with a smooth whisper as it slid into its berth on the stone ledge that led into the side of the imposing prison structure. They did not immediately step off the platform, however, as the entrance was guarded by three massive [Obsidian Gatekeeper] golems.

  All three golems had turned to face the platform as it approached, and the captain and Constable Zizzy approached the central golem, badges held ahead of them. Like its brothers, it stood nearly two meters tall, imposing and blocky, rough-hewn from the same rock from which it took its class name. Its head was a smooth plate, vaguely reminiscent of a person’s, and its entire surface was occupied by a smooth crystal oculus. Zizzy stepped down first, holding her badge out as she waited a few heartbeats for the red stone eye of the golems to shift to blue.

  “Right, Lieutenant, we can get this out of the way as well,” said the captain as he presented his own badge, gesturing for the now very nervous guardswoman to approach. Turning back to the golem, his tone became terse and clipped.

  “Command authorization: Danram Krev, Captain. Register new Warden identification.”

  The central golem’s blue eye flickered, and a moment of silence hung in the air as it processed its new command.

  “Command authorization confirmed. Ready to register new Stormbreak Prison Warden. Present badge and state name and rank. ” Its voice held a distinctly mechanical edge, and was as slow and ponderous as its owner.

  The rookie Warden help up her badge, emulating the constable and the captain carefully.

  “Kanessa Merron, Lieutenant,” she stated clearly, and with a touch of pride.

  “Identification registered. Life essence and Mana Signature recorded. You are now known to Stormbreak Prison, Lieutenant. Do not lose your identification. Loss of identification will result in detention until a superior arrives. ”

  With all the visitors now accounted for and identified, the golems retreated to the wall farthest away from the ferry platform and backed into their carved nooks in the stone to clear the way. The captain assumed a kindly teacher-like tone as he continued explaining things to the lieutenant.

  “Postings here at the Pillar are for one year, Lieutenant Kanessa, as you already know. We have three shifts that rotate in and out of the prison itself, staggered so a third of the guards swap out every week. The ferry platform is only active one day a week, barring situations like today, when the lord-commander overrides protocol for emergencies.”

  The younger woman listened raptly while the trio walked. “Will I be allowed to sing without causing trouble, sir?” she asked cautiously. “I’ve levelled some from combat training, but my Songs give me the most benefit to levels.”

  “It’s encouraged, actually,” Zizzy broke in. “There’s very little entertainment here, for guards and inmates alike. Don’t think you have to wait for a riot to break out to sing calming songs.”

  Danram gestured to Zizzy, nodding. “As long as you don’t have other duties, there are several places along the Walk where you can sing. The Walk circles above the central yard that’s hollowed out a few floors deep in the top of the facility. Don’t be surprised if the inmates sing along with you sometimes.”

  As they made their way deeper into the prison, more people began to appear, the captain explaining the meaning of their differently colored uniforms as they passed. A pair of scribes stepped to the side of the passageway after recognizing the captain and the constable, nodding respectfully as the three Wardens passed by.

  “There’s a hospital wing, and a chapel for any staff who are so inclined. You’ll get your own room here, and the kitchens serve three times a day. You won’t be in the same room every rotation, though, so don’t get attached,” the man said with a knowing grin. “Once the storm season passes, there’ll be a lot more pirates working the local island waters, and a lot more bounties getting claimed because of that. If the Pillar receives more guests, we post more guards.”

  “That makes sense,” Kanessa replied. “What about you, Constable? How does it normally—um, work for you here when things go according to schedule?”

  “Once a month feeding visits,” Zizzy replied with clinical detachment. “That keeps me strong enough to perform my duties. The condemned inmates usually make peace with it all before I even meet them. My Kiss is preferable to the noose, by far.” The succubus’s expression turned thoughtful before she resumed speaking. “I am not cruel, Lieutenant. My demonic nature requires me to feed to survive, and the pleasure and satisfaction is undeniable, but I show them all due respect for the Ending of their Stories.”

  “And the woman the captain mentioned?”

  Zizzy’s expression became contemplative, chin dipping, as the detachment bled away from her voice. “Cases like her are…rare, and more difficult for me. The feeding itself is reflexive, but I…feel their emotions in the act.” The succubus’ tail twitched behind her. “Her request alone is a sign she is truly repentant, as if the priests couldn’t determine that with their divinations and spiritual delving.” She shook her head sadly, then continued, “I wish we had more time to try to talk her out of her decision, but The Defiler may be working his horrors upon another victim as we speak here. I need all the power I can get to be sure I’m able to take him down.”

  The three of them approached a T-junction in the corridor. The hallway to the left was the same as the one from which they’d come; to the right, it terminated abruptly in a heavy stone door, sealing runes arrayed across its surface. Zizzy fished her badge from her pocket and tapped it to the center of the array.

  Kanessa made to follow, but the captain placed a hand on her shoulder, stopping her short. “Not that way, Lieutenant. We’ll speak to the woman and…get her ready. Constable, will you not take care of her first?”

  Zizzy shook her head, wings rustling gently behind her. “No,” she said as her eyes began to pulse with a reddish light in time with her inhumanly powerful heartbeat. She continued with a husky rasp to her voice. “I’ll be more in control after these first two, so I can be gentle with her. Let her know her life won’t be spent in vain, despite her accidental crime.” As the seals on the stone door faded and unlocked, the door grated open, sounding like nothing so much as the door to a great tomb.

  The grizzled old captain nodded somberly, and with a gentle touch to the lieutenant’s elbow, turned to the other doorway. Neither of Zizzy’s companions saw her expression finally give way to unbridled lust as she strode through the black stone entrance, and she was silently grateful for that.

  For it was time for Zizzy to feed.

  Chapter 17: Living Runes

  Morgan Mackenzie was having a very frustrating morning. Nearly an entire week had passed since parting ways with her distant ancestor, and every day had managed to be more irritating than the last. The [Skyclad Sorceress] currently sat upon a low stone stool raised from the earth with her magic, bent forward in a grouchy slouch with her elbows on her knees while she looked upon yet another failed enchantment attempt.

  The object of her frustrations floated between her hands; several fragments of stone that had once fit together in the shape of a shallow cup. She had finally learned the [Spatial Expansion Rune] enchan
tment, after dozens of failures at emulating how the needle and thread of Moghren’s spellwork pulled the Mana fabric together. However, her inability to utilize such tools meant she’d been forced to hold the threads of Mana in the woven pattern in her mind, and it was headache-inducing to a surprising degree.

  She could apply the enchantment to the inside of a bowl or cup made with [Earth Sculpt], but her best efforts had yielded nothing more than a slight bending of the space inside. Every attempt she’d made to further twist the volume of the storage area had led to the enchantment destabilizing. The space would snap back to normal size, shattering the stone no matter how much she strengthened it. With a slight push of Mana and a defeated sigh, Morgan tossed the broken shards to the side, where they joined the remains of previous attempts.

  “At least my campsites are improving, Lulu.” She groaned, rubbing her face.

  The puffy lace scrubby merely purbled in response and continued scrubbling around the flat stone ring that Morgan had sculpted around the fire pit. The fire, having been allowed to burn low, now featured a stone spit upon which rested a well-cooked murdersquirrel. It had made the fatal mistake of being too oblivious of its surroundings while Morgan was practicing her [Fade Presence] skill, and had paid the price for its inattention. The cooking process had resulted in spatters of grease and fat around the fire, which Lulu had happily set about cleaning up.

  The campsite itself was a fully enclosed dome with a small opening in the middle of the ceiling for the smoke, and a mat of forest moss lay on a low, stone bed to one side. Compared to Morgan’s first attempt at a temporary abode, it was a significant improvement. The walls were smoother and much more uniform, the stone much stronger.

  And there’s a door, she thought to herself with a grim reminder of her one-time loss and subsequent regrowth of her arm. Won’t be making that particular mistake again!

  “I just don’t get it, Lulu,” she said as she got up to tear another chunk of meat off the roasted squirrel. “I learned the basic enchantment, but it keeps collapsing—like a house without load-bearing walls.”

  Morgan sat back down and continued her breakfast, carefully tearing bite-sized pieces off of the roasted squirrel. She took her time, looking at the stone walls she’d pulled up from the earth the night before. Her skills had improved with her evening construction projects, and a trail of increasingly bigger and better stone hutches marked her travels since leaving First Raven’s Roost. Her current abode was over twice the size of the previous, as the rains that had started the day before had forced her to make camp several hours earlier than usual. The respite from the tough slog through the mud was sorely needed, but it lacked for entertainment; more out of boredom than necessity, she’d spent more time expanding the structure before falling asleep.

  The rains were still falling outside, a constant whispering in the forest she could hear through the hand-sized windows spaced randomly around the little house. The roof was large and dense enough that the falling droplets didn’t make audible noise from the inside. Large enough, in fact, that she’d added vertical support ribs of stone every few feet to support the weight. It was while she looked at these irregular protrusions standing out from the walls, and the now-meatless rib of murdersquirrel in her hands, that realization struck.

  “I’ve been looking at it all wrong, Lulu!” she exclaimed, tossing the rib section back into the coals as she stood back up with excitement. The puffball wurbled in admonishment as the bone hitting the ashes kicked up another mess, but happily set about cleaning it up as its nature dictated it must. “It’s like Engineering class for my Architecture Major at school back on Earth! I can’t make a big room without supporting the structure itself!”

  With renewed enthusiasm, Morgan pulled up another fist-sized ball of Earth from the ground below, returning to her seat and focusing all her attention on her new project. A surge of will and Earth Mana had the raw dirt compressed into a dense, magically infused putty that she warped like taffy into the rough shape of a round jar. Spinning it on three different axes simultaneously allowed her to make the jar almost perfectly spherical, and earned her a bonus in the form of another level in [Earth Sculpt], leaving the skill mastered at last.

  Spatial Magic didn’t seem to have any distinct elemental flavor to the Mana, at least not to Morgan’s Rune-enhanced sight and other senses. It seemed to work with just raw Mana, as best she could tell with her current abilities. She looked inside the jar, instinctively brightening the flame runes inscribed in a ring around the inside of the stone hut in order to better see.

  Drawing the thread-thin traces into the stone with her Earth Mana let her anchor the space-manipulating weaves into the hardened jar, similar to her [Candleflame Rune] enchantments. A single rune for the spatial magic had thus far proven to be too unstable in practice, however. So instead of one single spherical rune, she inscribed seven matching pairs of them on the inside of the jar. “Eight feels like too many,” she mumbled to herself as sweat beaded across her brow. “Six isn’t enough, it doesn’t balance right…”

  Seven tiny circles lined up in a ring along the inner opening of the jar, each with a matching opposite seated in a ring closer to the bottom of the jar, and a spidery thread linking each one to its mate. Holding so much detail fixed in her mind took extreme concentration, and spikes of pain began to develop behind her eyes as she held the traced designs in her thoughts, waiting for the Mana to slowly coalesce into the forms.

  Just before the pain became an agony strong enough to break her concentration, her efforts were rewarded.

  You have learned the enchantment [Spatial Reinforcement Rune]! Reinforce the underlying structure of a localized spatial zone! Practice and experience with different applications will improve this enchantment!

  Between the sudden relief of the disappearing headache and the shock of the notification, Morgan very nearly dropped the floating jar in surprise; she recovered in time to catch it with a light touch of Mana. She levitated it above one hand while cupping her chin with the other, suddenly thoughtful as she inspected her work.

  “The reinforcement should definitely help,” she mused out loud to Lulu. The scrubby was now inspecting the reject pile, glomming one fragment after another and tossing them away with strange puffling motions of its fronds after cleaning them to a shiny gleam.

  After another few bites of squirrel and a brief rest, Morgan set about working the actual spatial enchantment into the jar. Once again, she went with a doubled pattern of seven smaller enchantments, staggered between the reinforcement runes. With multiple anchoring points, the overall effect was extremely stable, and the effort led to her gaining [Spatial Affinity]. Pulling the space inside the jar still felt wrong, but as the affinity skill settled into her mind, it became clearer just exactly how the lattice of hair-thin threads of Mana was actually affecting the space.

  “Ha!” she exclaimed as she inverted the tiny rune circles to reverse the effect. “I was trying to make the space inside bigger , when I should have been trying to put more space…into the, uh…space?” she finished, a puzzled expression crossing her features.

  The inverted spatial runes finally did the trick, and the enchantment snapped into place with another notification.

  You have learned the enchantment [Spatial Compression Rune]! Compress a larger volume of space into a smaller area! Practice and experience with different applications will improve this enchantment!

  The feeling of accomplishment was immensely satisfying; a smug gratification that Morgan felt on a visceral level, radiating out from her chest as she grinned with an exuberance similar to when she’d received the keys to her first car as a teenager. Wait, she thought, it’s coming from the [Soul Anchor]…

  You have increased your understanding of [Runic Enchantment]! Your [Soul Anchor] has gained a level due to your learning new Runes! Living Runes that have been linked to the [Soul Anchor] may now grow to a maximum level of two! You may now link a total of two Living Runes to the [Soul Anch
or]!

  DING!

  You have reached Level 11! Health and Status partially restored!

  Remember, combat is not the only path to advancement. Performing tasks and training skills aligned with your class will often yield surprising benefits.

  Rewarded points doubled by Class Traits!

  10 distributable Stat points awarded.

  Class Template: [Skyclad Sorceress] auto-assigns 3 points(+1 CON, +2 INT), Distributable points reduced to 7.

  10 Skill points awarded. New Skills available for purchase due to meeting prerequisite conditions!

  Morgan hadn’t fought anything tougher than a few murdersquirrels since her near-disastrous encounter with the hydra and the subsequent faux battle upon meeting Moghren. Her thoughts hadn’t been focused on leveling at all, so the sudden notification without a preceding experience gains message had her tumbling backward off the stool, the hardened clay pot bouncing along the floor beside her.

  “Well,” said the [Skyclad Sorceress] as she picked herself up and brushed the dirt off her bottom and back as well as she could. “Moghren did say levelling happened from doing class-related things…”

  Lulu had been startled as well by her sudden fall, and had immediately made its way over to assist in restoring its mistress’ skin to immaculate condition. With the purbling minion contentedly going about its task, Morgan returned her attention to the skill menu she’d been ignoring for the past week. No new options had been available since her class selection, so she hadn’t bothered after an initial check upon gaining the class.

  “I guess if I don’t have enough points, it won’t display things I can’t afford to get…”

  After spending her remaining stat points on INT, Morgan mentally pulled up the skills menu.

  Skill Acquisition Menu

  Leveling Class Abilities may provide unique skills for purchase when conditions are met!

  One unique Class Skill is now available for purchase due to learning the required skills!