by Cale Plamann
After some halfhearted bragging about his “Rare”-quality Blessing, Esther ran off, leaving him alone with his mother for the remainder of breakfast. He did his best to deflect her questions about his future, instead focusing on the need to “train his gift” before he made any long-lasting decisions.
He wasn’t completely lying to her. Deceiving his mom via omission rather than an outright falsehood didn’t do much to ease his conscience, but after his run with the Golden Drakes, Micah wasn’t exactly enthused about the idea of trusting his fate to any outside organization. Even with the Lancers, a fairly honorable organization, Micah suspected that they’d bury him in training and low-risk combat for so long that he’d never get a chance to properly stop the Durgh threat.
As much as he might resist and look for another path, the goddess had provided him with a way forward. Using temporal energy to reach into Elsewhere and summon an army of daemons unseen outside the realm of legends wouldn’t be an easy task, but with the help of the grove’s trees, it wasn’t an impossible one.
Despite everything, something inside Micah resisted his current course of action. He’d spent the previous timeline, isolated and almost friendless, performing the same dark rituals over and over again at the demand of those who’d taken him hostage. If he were to isolate himself in the grove for another two years to finish his task with no one but Telivern to keep him company, the solitude might literally drive him mad.
Of course, it didn’t help that his plans involved engaging in the darkest of magics. As much as he might justify the rituals he planned to perform because they relied on temporal energy rather than literal blood sacrifices, he couldn’t help but think of Mursa’s preface. Tapping into Elsewhere could grant him great power, but the chances of horrifying side effects or outright death were much higher than he’d like to contemplate.
On the other hand, after having breakfast with his mother and Esther, what were Micah’s choices? Neither of them would leave Basil’s Cove, and even if they did, his entire family would be impoverished and at the mercy of the same callous and powerful individuals that had cursed his past life. Even if he had to risk death and sacrifice his sanity in order to enact the rituals needed to protect his home, it was a worthwhile risk. He might not have had the resolve to make this stand in a past life, but after watching the world fall apart and losing all trust in the powers that be, he’d discarded his former naiveté like a snake shedding its skin.
In his room, Micah cut his palm, letting blood drip onto the teleportation rune. It drank the red liquid, glowing dimly as the blood’s essence seeped into it. He shivered slightly when a chill passed through his body and the ritual stole energy from him. Until he’d cast his first teleportation ritual, Micah had always wondered why they weren’t more common. The ability to instantly translocate seemed incredibly useful.
The world flashed into a kaleidoscope of colors as he staggered into the cave, shivering and weak as a kitten. That was why. Quickly, he pulled together some tinder and lit it with shaking hands, starting a small fire. No teleportation could take place without drawing energy from the object transporting itself through Elsewhere. The amount of energy depended upon the distance and the quality of the beacon on the other end. If you tried to go too far… Well, not everyone exited a teleportation ritual safely.
Telivern walked into the cave, alerted by the noise of Micah starting the fire. Snorting, it walked up to him and lay down, curling around Micah. Its soft fur brushed up against his shaking body and warmed him.
Bemusement. Reassurance.
“I’m sure this is really funny for you, buddy.” Micah’s teeth chattered as he rubbed his arms. “Each and every time I hop out here, it’s like running for an hour through a rainstorm after not sleeping the night before. You should be glad I like seeing you this much, because otherwise, I wouldn’t put up with this crap each and every day.”
Laughing accusation. Mirth.
“Okay”—Micah rolled his eyes at the mocking deer—“so I did this daily before I met you too. That doesn’t mean it’s fun. Teleporting is pretty miserable.”
Patronizing reassurance.
“Yeah, yeah.” Micah stood up, his hands tingling as the feeling slowly restored itself to them. “Thank you for the incredibly sincere sympathy. Look, Teli,”
The deer snorted at him, flicking its head.
“Telivern.” Micah raised his hands palm-out in a placating gesture while rolling his eyes. “I need to go back to the grove. Your evolving is an important step, but we’re both going to need to be a lot more capable if we want to achieve our goals. The grove has enough temporal energy for me to experiment. I learned some things in that last dungeon that could really help us in the weeks to come.”
Telivern nuzzled him, burying its snout in his outstretched hand. Micah ran his free hand through its off-white fur, enjoying the thrills of energy that ran through him as small sparks fizzled off the deer in the wake of his fingers.
Acceptance. Reproach.
“I told you that I was sorry for leaving you behind.” Micah smiled, flashes of electricity from Telivern’s fur lighting the dim cave. “I didn’t know how long I was going to be stuck in there or how much danger I was going to face. I would have brought you with, if I could.”
Acceptance.
“It’s been a couple of minutes since the ritual.” Micah reached past Telivern and picked up his spear. “I’m ready to head out to the grove if you are.”
Rather than respond through the strange tactile empathy they shared, Telivern just snorted and began walking out of the cave. Micah smiled as he followed it. Telivern might not be able to speak to him, but since its evolution, its communication had become noticeably clearer and quite a bit more sarcastic.
Following the deer out of the cave, Micah set out after it toward the grove. By now, most of the monsters and animals native to the area around his basecamp avoided him. In the past couple of months, he’d supplanted every predator in the area, slaying them for experience and the energy needed to power his rituals. Between Telivern and him, they’d clearly cemented themselves as the region’s apex predators.
The grove itself hadn’t changed much from yesterday. The bodies of the dryads and bat creatures remained where he’d stacked them at the foot of a nearby tree. The soil was still churned and scarred from the recent battle, most of the grass and bushes ripped up and destroyed from attacks that had missed the rapidly dodging dryads.
Sheepishly, Micah walked past the chaos and began assembling a ritual circle next to one of the six great trees, careful not to let himself sink into their temporal signature a second time. At first, Telivern watched on as Micah studiously carved the runes into the disheveled earth, but eventually, the deer grew bored and wandered off into the nearby woods.
Micah didn’t let his focus slip as he continued his work. Periodically, he would pause from retrieving the rare and varied reagents he’d collected from his previous dungeon excursions to check his notes in the Folio.
Any time he conducted a new ritual, there was a high chance of failure. Given the complexity and power of this ritual, Micah wanted to make sure to double- and triple-check his calculations. Of course, the problem with a new ritual was that he didn’t know yet what was truly important. For example, in a teleportation ritual, the phase of the moon mattered, but if your calculations were off by a day or two, it wouldn’t become a dramatic problem. On the other hand, the number of days to the next solstice was a vital piece of information. The circumference of the crystal-dust circle changed with the passing of each day.
Micah thought he knew what he was doing, but anything from Intermediate Daemon Summoning was a risk. One footstep in the wrong spot or a mispronounced syllable could drain him of his life force or unleash a horror on the world.
Finally, the circle around the tree was complete. Micah cocked his head to the side, as if trying to view it from another angle. The reagents and runes all looked like they were in the right spot. He’d a
ccounted for the position of the sun, phase of the moon, barometric pressure, and the position of every major constellation. All that remained was to hope that the position of a minor constellation, the temperature, or some other unknown variable didn’t throw the ritual into disarray.
The circle was as complete as he’d ever be able to make it. At this point, any further embellishments were just Micah stalling for time and making excuses.
With a deep breath, he cut into his hand, drawing blood once more. Carefully, he stepped over the ritual circle and inscribed the final rune for the temporal transfer portion of the ritual on the tree. He shook his head to clear it of the tree's weight of purpose—the alien memories of leaves and roots, drinking water through the rich soil.
Slipping back over the circle, he squeezed his still-bleeding fist and allowed a dribble of blood to fall on the inscriptions. They began to glow dully, the unearthly light rapidly spreading around the outside of the intricately carved runes.
Micah withdrew the Folio and began the ritual, reciting the words written in its yellowed pages. His cadence and hand motions synchronized with his precise notes. Slowly, the spell built around him. First, he connected with the tree. His voice faltered as memories of growth and light filled him once again. For a second, he thought that he’d doomed himself with the misstep, but the ritual continued unhindered.
Then he felt another link. The ritual breached something invisible, ripping a hole into the very skein of reality. Just out of reach, he felt unlimited potential. A world of power and consequence without any definition or form beyond that created through a force of will. The hole resonated with the tree, drinking in the aged giant’s history and temporal energy. Somehow, Micah knew that this portal was different. That all he needed to do was reach out his arm, and he could have the power of Elsewhere dancing at his fingertips.
He restrained himself—barely. The thirst for the power and the possibilities it represented burned at him, but common sense prevailed. Nothing good came from changing a ritual midway to completion.
The portal stabilized, growing in size. A skeletal claw the size of Micah’s torso reached through, grabbing on to the border of the rip in reality and pulling itself through. Micah felt his Adam’s apple bob as he stared at the creature, sweat dripping down his back. He focused every fiber of his being on ensuring that the transfer of more temporal energy from the tree to the daemon continued unabated.
It stood almost twice his height, a great vulture covered in ragged black feathers everywhere but its scaled head. It fixed its solitary red eye on Micah and squawked. He wasn’t sure if it was a sonic attack, or just what passed for a greeting amongst daemons, but he stumbled, falling to his knees as the words to the ritual continued.
The monster spread its great skeletal arms and stared up at the night sky, breathing in Karell’s air as more temporal energy flowed into it. Micah reached his limit and cut the connection between the daemon and the tree. The portal behind it fizzled, disappearing in a flash of mana and static.
Nothing happened immediately as the monster turned its gaze on Micah. He returned the favor, inspecting the creature with a smile growing on his face.
Despite the odds, he’d succeeded. A Brensen. The second tier of daemons, roughly as powerful as a level 40 adventurer. Unseen on Karell in almost a century, and with enough temporal energy powering its summoning ritual to keep it on this plane for five years. The weakness of summoning had always been the limited duration of the summons. It took too much energy to keep a being of any power on Karell for more than one or two battles.
Temporal energy allowed him to sidestep that problem. He might not be able to summon an entire army of daemons due to the cost in energy of each casting, but the grove would provide him with enough energy to make a very credible defense against the Durgh scourge.
Still, his mind flickered to the promise of power he’d felt when his mind reached through the portal to summon the Brensen. The possibilities were endless. He just needed to find the right ritual.
36
Fateful Encounter
Summoning the second Brensen pushed Micah to his limit, but it turned earning experience to level up into a joke. Each daemon was almost as powerful as Martin, a full Royal Knight, and fully capable of handling most of the dungeons around Basil’s Cove on its own. With the addition of the second, even the Cavern of Rust—the highest-ranked dungeon in the surrounding area—wasn’t a credible challenge.
The dungeons themselves were sorted by the average level of their inhabitants. Some encounters might involve a “mini boss” in the form of a solitary monster more powerful and higher-leveled than the dungeon’s standard denizens. Others might be filled with swarms of weaker and lower-leveled creatures designed to overwhelm adventurers that lacked the capacity to attack a wide area.
Entrance into the low- and mid-level dungeons was strictly regulated, usually in the form of a strict queue only allowing one adventuring team to delve into the dungeon each day. Every guild in Basil’s Cove wanted access to the level 5 through 20 dungeons. Between the attunement, physical rewards, and experience, they were a veritable font of resources for those able to safely and successfully loot them.
Even though higher-powered dungeons, in the level 20 to 30 range, weren’t overflowing with applicants, the guilds would still raid them with some regularity. Considering that the average guild leader was between level 30 and 35, most struggled to put together a full team of the appropriate level to handle such a delve. Conventional wisdom was that a party should be at least two to three levels above the dungeon’s level in order to ensure the survivability of the team. After all, delving adventurers regularly ran into at least ten to twenty-five normal encounters before fighting the boss. Challenging a dungeon at your own level was a great way to run out of resources before the final battle, greatly increasing the risk of lasting injury or death.
The Cavern of Rust was level 38 and posed a serious risk to the entire area. Only the Golden Drakes or a coalition of every other guild leader in Basil’s Cove could credibly challenge it, and even then, only at great risk to themselves. Almost half of the losses amongst Basil’s Cove’s adventurers above level 25 came from the infrequent raids on the Cavern of Rust.
Only by paying a stiff price in attunement could the city ensure that the Cavern was regularly pruned of monsters. Of course, without regular raiding, there would almost certainly be a dungeon break of creatures at a level that Basil’s Cove wasn’t even close to prepared to handle.
Dungeon denizens respawned at least once daily. By some exercise of Ankros’ will, new spawns and the old dungeon residents refused to coexist. Almost immediately upon spawning, they would fight to the death with the victors, gaining experience just like a blessed. If left alone long enough, monsters could gain levels or even evolve. While the increasing difficulty level of a dungeon over time was bad enough on its own, any dungeon-born creature that exceeded the dungeon’s level by five or more would break free of the dungeon’s control and attempt to escape.
In short, Micah rationalized to himself, by raiding the Cavern of Rust, he was almost providing a community service. Really, he was the good guy.
Micah threw himself to the side in an attempt to avoid a stream of metal quills stitching the ground toward his previous position. Digging the butt of his spear into the ground, Micah rolled to his feet, not even bothering to return fire with an offensive spell. Maybe if he were closer, Sonic Bolt would be able to do some damage, but the Cavern’s boss monster, affectionately referred to as “The Decrepit Behemoth,” was so far above Micah’s level that directly attacking it was almost pointless.
The Behemoth glowed red as its internal flames stoked higher. It raised both of its metal-clad fists, swinging them futilely at one of the two Brensens as it swept past. The daemon’s skeletal claws raked across the Behemoth’s metal armor, digging deep and ripping great slivers of steel from them but failing to penetrate. At its feet, the other Brensen dug its claws into
the joints of the armor covering one of the Behemoth’s four knees. This time, the claws punched through the thinned armor, rewarding the Brensen with a fountain of boiling black ichor.
Micah tried to ignore the Behemoth, a monstrous metallic centaur with access to both Fire and Earth magic, as it towered over him. The dull red of its decaying armor appeared ominous in the flickering light emanating from the orb hovering between Telivern’s antlers. It slammed a metal-clad hoof at the Brensen on the ground, but the daemon hopped away with a squawk and a flap of its dark wings.
The ground rocked beneath Micah’s feet, dropping him to one knee and knocking Telivern to the floor entirely. Gritting his teeth against the heat and distractions, Micah mouthed the words to Heal as he routed his mana toward the two Brensen on the front line. Even though the agile monsters had managed to avoid every direct attack from the lumbering Behemoth, the boss was powered by potent Fire magic that raised the temperature around it to levels usually only found in a forge or blast furnace.
Unfortunately, his skill level with Heal wasn’t high enough to fully mend the burns on both of the daemons, but it went a long way toward supplementing their natural regeneration. Silently, he cursed his level. Even with his advanced class, limited mana would restrict him to only casting the spell six to seven times in a row.
Another geyser of blood erupted from the Behemoth as the flying daemon landed on its lower back and began shredding its way through the heavily worn armor. The boss bellowed, trying unsuccessfully to reach behind itself and dislodge the Brensen from its back. Ordinarily, an attack of this nature wouldn’t be possible. A normal human like Micah would ignite if they remained in close contact with the monster. Worse, the heat radiating from the Behemoth would quickly soften and melt any weapon to the point that it couldn’t even scratch the creature’s leathery skin, let alone its armor.