Crafting the Seal had left her hand paralyzed for days, and her very Soul raw and ravaged for even longer before it healed. The price of changing fate was a heavy one, indeed. Doing so had cost her predecessor her physical sight for longer and longer periods of time with each Seal she created, until one day, she saw no more. It seemed that Rella’s price would be paralysis, and she wasn’t looking forward to having to make such a sacrifice. But the inevitability of needing to use her powers made her current quest for a Champion all the more important. Using her primary skills as the [Oracle] would leave her helpless for longer and longer periods of time; having a stalwart defender to guard her during those times would be critical. Not all [Oracles] appointed a Champion, but the ones who did had tended to live longer and accomplish more.
Pulled by forces she couldn’t yet comprehend, Rella’s Sight swung to the far northern reaches, where another Worldwalker ran fleetfooted across the tundra, side-by-side with several Wolven Beastmen. She recognized the sigils of his escorts; they belonged to a particularly insular clan of Beastmen, not known for charity or compassion. Clearly, The Hammer had had a rough start, but just as clearly had thrived.
Vainly, she sought The Dreamer next; unfortunately, he was lost to her Sight. What little had been revealed to her on the Purple Night suggested he’d arrived in Deskren-controlled territory, and their rapid mobilization north of the Elemental Desert admitted to the possibility that he’d been collared; the Deskren wouldn’t be so rash without a perceived advantage. Partly, this was due to the logistical effort involved; more importantly, the greater the threat the Deskren posed, the more directly an [Oracle] would be permitted to move against them.
The Shadow currently prowled the rooftops and shadowed streets of Meadowspire, and while Rella saw seeds of greatness in her future, they were just that at the moment: seeds, waiting to germinate. Similar to The Shadow was The Preacher, tending to the wounded, and helping feed children in the wake of the Deskren raid on Possibility. The Christian faith wasn’t foreign to the collective memory of the [Oracle]; previous Worldwalkers had been adherents, but the religion had never found a firm foothold. In The Preacher, though, Rella could sense the possibility of change.
This stood in stark contrast to the works of The Harlot, which—even through the lens of Prophecy—left Rella breathless. The otherworldly prostitute had hit the less reputable underbelly of the city with the grace of a charging bull, while spending most of her time flat on her back or twisted like a pretzel, ruthlessly trading her body and skills with pleasure to gain allies and coin, which she used to further her own ends. Less than a fortnight after arriving on Anfealt, the woman had taken over three entire pleasure guilds, toppled a smuggling and extortion organization, and preemptively secured the services of every assassin and hired killer in the city to quietly silence the rest of her competition. With most of the city guard getting free or reduced cost services from The Harlot’s employed girls, anyone who harmed a pleasure worker in East Harbor quickly found themselves in said harbor.
The Broken continued to astound Rella at every turn, both with her current activities and her possible futures. She could see myriad designs pouring out from the woman’s workshop in the future, and the [Oracle] knew that once she achieved mastery of her Class, she would revolutionize the fields of Golemancy and Engineering. Despite Rella’s no more than budding gifts, she foresaw one certainty as though it were etched in stone: barring those timelines where she met an untimely end, The Broken would bring flying ships to Anfealt. Beyond that titanic event, possibilities branched and branched again, bringing events both terrible and wonderful.
The closer to the Wildlands she tried to see, the more painful and difficult it was to discern things with her Sight. While the Elemental Desert simply seemed empty, gazing into the Wildlands was like looking into a boiling storm of mists and flame. The background intensity of everything that lived in that massive region simply drowned out any chance of making out detail, but she could still discern flashes here and there. Moments where one color or flavor of Soul or Mana energy flared strong enough to drown out the rest of the sea of chaos. And more and more, those flashes were a bright and violent purple. Thus she knew The Burning Woman was still alive, and moving through the Wildlands, even if she’d received no further prophetic revelations or another True Vision since that fateful night.
The wagon rolled along, gently rocking back and forth in the rolling ruts of the old road. Rella soon found her Sight pulled , as though a magnet were drawing her, to a familiar convoy of wagons, horses, and travellers on foot. She’d seen the convoy several times, each instance noting how much the caravan had grown over the course of a few short weeks. The convoy had circled up and dug in, the extent of their fortifications indicating they’d remained in place for some time.
At first it seemed that the roving band of refugees had finally run out of luck; a large group of Deskren slave-soldiers had caught up with them, and battle had been joined. No ragtag mob, the slaves fought as a coordinated entity, higher-ranked slaves providing tactical direction to their underlings. Unlike the control collars Rella had seen on the Purple Night, these were the more common conditioning collars used by the Deskren on their born slaves. Instead of the sickeningly yellow, greasy aura of the control collars, these collars were much simpler, relying on sensory stimulus, reward and punishment, to control their wearers. But when you raised a person from birth with such a device around their necks, the results were as certain as they were with the rarer Soul Collars. Such distinctions mattered little to the victims under attack, and if Rella hadn’t borne the gifts of her Mantle, she would have written the caravan off as lost without a second thought. As it was, however, she Watched and waited.
With her Sight, she saw the refugees slaughtering the attacking force. The General was not on the field of battle, but she watched his wife, the [Hand of Solace], walk with purpose behind the lines. In her wake wounds healed, broken bones reset themselves, exhausted fighters regained Stamina, and drained mages recovered their Mana so rapidly, it was visible to the naked eye as sparks and glowing auras.
While they fought, Rella watched and waited as mystical energies, invisible to all but a select few, swirled and eddied over one particular wagon, then lanced downward to disappear beneath its roof.
So he’s finally Chosen , she thought.
The aura of the wagon changed. Gone were the energies of the System, replaced now with shadow and dread, a near-tangible presence that caused refugee and slave-soldier alike to shy away. Nearby a horse screamed, breaking free of its tether and charging toward the wagon. Eyes wild and mouth frothing, it raced for its master, heedless of those throwing themselves out of its path.
The man himself emerged from the wagon, barking orders to those around him as his mount drew to his side, seeming to swell in all dimensions until it seemed a fitting companion for what the man had become.
When he swung himself into his saddle, Rella felt the world relax, as though something terribly wrong had, at long last, been set right.
Man and mount turned then, and without prompting, streaked away. He reached out and snagged a lance from a weapons rack as he passed, the haft darkening at his touch. Blackness like liquid shadow spread to either end, and it seemed to grow longer and deadlier of its own accord. He hadn’t donned his armor before mounting his steed, yet the shadows wrapped around him and his horse, solidifying into a dark projection that was just as solid as actual steel.
Behind him, as if drawn by naught but his will, riders fell in beside him. In the span of mere moments, the disparate individuals transformed into a single entity, a combined charge roaring with a single voice.
And when the mounted charge barreled into the Deskren offensive, led by the dread man wielding his dread lance, Rella knew the battle was done, her vision pulling itself at last from the field of battle as the cart jerked to a rough stop. She’d been under for several hours while the farmer made his way to the city, although it seemed like o
nly a moment, and like an eternity at the same time.
“We’s almost to the city, lass,” said Hett. “They be searchin’ every wagon goes into the city on ‘count of the Deskren and bandits, so this’ll be as far as I can take ya. Any further, we may’s well just ‘nounce you all ‘fficial-like.”
We are here, as well, came the thought from the [Oracles] past, as the pressure of the Sight faded from her mind. Rella sat with her head in her hands in the back of the wagon for several moments, waiting for the pain to fade away as well. We can give you a few hours unburdened, but remember the costs.
“Thank you, mister Hett. Be sure to take the eastern fork of the old road on your way back; the shorter path to the south has some brigands camping near it.”
The old farmer thanked her for the warning and maneuvered his wagon around, heading back the way he’d brought her. She knew he wouldn’t heed her advice this time, and that there would be one less group of thieves wandering the hills come the next day. Many a band of ruffians met their ends at the hands of old and grumpy classers, and Rella had definitely noticed the well-oiled and meticulously sharpened axe under Hett’s wagon seat. Skills to cleave a stump in twain to clear a farmer’s field also worked impressively well on people, after all.
Shouldering her small travel pack and hooking her waterskin to her belt, Rella made her way through the low scrub near the city’s edge, her precognitive abilities helping her to make better time. When you could know for a fact that nobody was looking at a given spot, you could stroll right through a guarded perimeter. The patrols she had to dodge in order to get into the town itself were only a little bit trickier than the earlier approach.
Meaty impacts, the rattle of steel against steel, and cries of exertion led her as surely as her Sight did as she approached the training barracks and its fenced-in arena. Her potential future Champion was done with his own round of mock combat and stood by a water trough. His shield was propped up against a fence post, and two younger men were helping him out of his armor. The young man’s sisters, The Twins, sat by, tossing orbs of light between themselves while surreptitiously eyeing the various shirtless boys and men beating each other with dulled training weapons in the corral. Rella kept to the shadows under the roof that covered the area encircling the training grounds, listening and watching while she waited for the right time to introduce herself.
“I’m telling you, Jargo, the boy will break, Worldwalker or not,” said a dark-haired man in dirty leathers to a shorter man with distinguished grey in his beard. “He refuses to commit himself; all he does is defend.”
“Defend is all he has to do, really. Once the boy plants his feet, that shield is like a stone wall.” The shorter man was rubbing one hand with the other, and stopped to shake his arm to work the circulation back into it. “I know that personally, Bill. I beat that boy’s shield for over an hour ‘til my arm gave out, and he wasn’t even tired. He won’t break when he stands in a shieldwall.”
“I’m sayin’, if he won’t hit back, he’s a coward, and cowards break and run.”
An elderly man with wispy grey hair had been listening to their banter in silence. This new observer watched as the subject of their conversation stripped the last of his armor off, as well as his shirt, to wash himself in the water trough. Scars crisscrossed the young man’s chest and arms. His face was the charming kind of ugly granted by a nose broken more than once, and a crooked brow that left one eye in a half-squint. Every time his gaze passed over the place where his sisters sat perched on the fence, his expression of intense focus softened to a tender protectiveness.
He knows what it means to get hit, and get hurt, thought Rella to herself, and then a girlish flutter flipped her belly upside-down. But there is still kindness in him too…
The first two men, Jargo and Bill, continued to banter and grumble at each other with good-natured rivalry. “I’m tellin’ you, Jargo, I’ll put a month’s wages down that he breaks on the first charge when he’s in the line.”
“Two months’ says he holds, old coot,” replied the shorter man, placing a gold coin on the fencepost between them.
The much taller and much older veteran broke in at that moment, his quiet, raspy voice cutting through the noises on the training ground. “The boy won’t break, ever,” said the ancient Classer before spitting a wad of tobacco on the ground.
“What makes you say that, Cid?” asked Bill, still not convinced the boy wasn’t a coward at heart.
“I don’t see no scars on his back. The boy ain’t never run, an’ he never will.”
Rella couldn’t help but giggle, catching the attention of the three men. She stepped forward, letting her hood fall back to reveal the silvery glowing eyes of the [Oracle]. “Cid is right,” she said quietly to the three men. “The [Anvil-Heart Guardian] does not run, nor does he know how to yield.”
Recognition of who and what she was struck all three men like a bolt of lightning. Jargo and Bill stood up straight and placed a hand over their hearts before giving a quick and respectful bow. The older Cid took a half-step back to cover the previously spat tobacco with his foot, giving a reverent nod of his head. The Twins’ game of juggled lights came to a halt as they turned to look at Rella as one, the half-dozen colored balls of energy fizzing out as they hit the ground. Their brother, The Fortress, as he had been named by the previous [Oracle], followed their gaze, and Rella felt her heart skip a beat when he finally noticed her.
She stepped forward and rested one hand on the fence, about to speak to introduce herself, when she felt a pull far to the east, ripping her attention away from her current location despite the efforts of the past [Oracles’] gestalt to keep her buffered from such visions. A True Vision could not be prevented. Rella’s mind was pulled away, and she Saw.
She saw The Burning Woman again, standing in the center of an inferno of lightning and molten stone. Beasts of all kinds fled the storm, but few escaped. The woman raised her arms, magma flowing up around her in a maelstrom over a thousand feet tall, before Rella’s vision was kicked back, away from the storm. At the same time she saw, the [Oracle] also spoke.
“She burns! Sparks in the marrow to ignite the Burning Light! Her Life is the Fire and Fire is her Life! She burns !”
And then the vision ended, the [Oracle]’s words trailing into a heavy silence. Rella felt the presence of the dead [Oracles] fade away within the Mantle, even more exhausted than she herself was. She collapsed against the fence, barely able to hold herself up. Dizziness spun her vision in circles for a moment, and just before her knees gave way completely, she looked The Fortress in the eyes.
“Hi. I’m Rella.”
And then she fell unconscious, the blackness rising up to greet her mind with welcoming arms.
Chapter 22: Incineratus
Morgan Mackenzie was very angry. And frustrated. And fatigued, to the point of exhaustion. Her [Flame Affinity] and [Heat Affinity] were getting a serious workout—which was good—but the effort of continuously flash-frying the sinister pollen out of the air was a pain in her bare backside. It used up her Mana when she knew she was heading for a fight against a foe of unknown power, which was bad. Keeping the flames going wasn’t that intense on its own, but her initial outburst of fire had undoubtedly gotten the dungeon’s attention.
The dungeon itself had given up on trying to wrap her up in simple vines and roots. Three times had the tendrils of thorny green shot out from the walls and floor to wrap around her limbs and torso. The first time it happened, Morgan was about to panic before her auto-rejection kicked in. It seemed if she wasn’t the one trying to put something on her body, the reaction affected the offending thing, and not her body. The third time, the vines stayed on her body barely long enough for her to start to laugh before an incandescent flash hurled them away.
Then the monsters came. Crawling [Barbed Creepers] met a fiery end. A [Verdant Slime] proved resistant to her Frost spells, and Morgan had been terrified for her friend for a moment, when Lulu had cha
rged the blorping blob. The effectiveness of the loofah’s exfoliation abilities proved more than a match, however, as the puffball scrubbed its way into the slime and caused it to explode in a disgusting flood of bubbles and green goop.
“Good scrubby…” she murmured as the loofah returned to her shoulder. She didn’t even spare a thought for the pool of nasty ick the scrubby had just been exposed to.
The living walls of the dungeon randomly sprouted various buds, and while most released pollen or dripped acid, some of them spat bolts of greenish-black magic at her. The first one had struck her arm and left it paralyzed for over an hour, while the smell of rot and decay hung in the air after the hit. Lulu’s cleansing abilities had no effect on the magical contamination, but Morgan’s inherent healing had let her power through until the effect wore off.
[Spell Parry] was useless against the worst of the attacks she’d been forced to deal with, however. She’d come across massive rooted balls of vines and greenery that shot thorn-like projectiles at her as fast as arrows. These new foes appeared less often than the others, which was for the better—they were at once dense enough to survive her flame, and devoid of magic to the point where [Spell Parry] couldn’t deflect them. After a half-dozen thorns pierced her left side and thigh while jumping back from the initial volley, she quickly learned to use [Wind Barrier] as a counter and eventually managed to gain [Air Affinity] from it. The plants that shot them burned easily enough, but the spikes were a constant annoyance until the vine-creatures actually died.
She is distracted. We come closer to waking from the dreams. The messages from the creepy, psychic not-spider still felt alien and uncomfortable in Morgan’s mind.
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