by J. J. Lorden
Virg tore out of the hip in an explosion of ice shards and jerked its left side forward. The elemental bellowed in surprise as its feet were hauled from under its center of gravity and all four arms began flailing wildly. They could all see its previous show of agility would not be repeated.
Val lashed out with her staff again, aiming high. The giant didn’t even see Virginwood coming this time, and it smacked into the creature’s forehead, ricocheting up off the sloping ice and snapping the head back.
The elemental slammed into the frozen earth.
The ground vibrated under their feet from the impact. Momentum carried the blue terror toward them, sliding and rotating, exposing its broadside.
Erramir looked hopefully at the beast for only a second before he dropped his sword and shield and started running. He pulled the massive two-hander off his back and cocked it over his right shoulder like a ballplayer waiting for his pitch. Val ran next to him while Carson lagged behind. While they ran, Val yelled, “Tons of health. My two strikes only took off a fraction of its total.”
“Got it. You go for the head. I’ll hit the legs.” He got there first, sliding into his swing as his steel blade dropped like a guillotine, and Erramir thought, for a split second, that he saw something blue on the edge. Then it struck, high on the elemental’s thigh, and severed the left leg.
Erramir’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t have time to be shocked by the power of the blow.
Ice fragments scattered from the point of amputation, tumbling away in waves, clinking like wind chimes. Pain ripped through the monster’s frozen nervous system, and its head sprang up, crystal blue eyes blazing and mouth open, revealing pointed midnight-black teeth.
Then a soul-wrenching noise erupted from the thing. The sound caused the air to ripple as energy appeared to flow from its mouth like heat waves on a desert horizon, moving out in a cone-shaped attack.
Erramir was just outside the cone, and Val was well behind it, but the noise was a horrific combination of chords that blasted his mind on some base level.
Even outside the area of effect, it caused his body to clench up, his guts to go loose, and his brain to feel as if knitting needles were being driven through his ears.
He nearly fell, but just barely managed to keep his footing as he slid away on the far side.
If an evil witch was mic’d up for a death metal concert and scratched her ragged fingernails across a chalkboard while having her other hand slammed in a car door, it still wouldn’t make his teeth itch like this noise did. If they didn’t find a way to stop it, he was reasonably sure his brain was going to melt.
Val was in mid-swing when the blast hit, and despite the elemental’s head sitting up like a new golf ball on the first tee, she winced, and her muscles jerked the staff slightly off-line from its target. So, instead of catching the elemental squarely on the temple, Virg only glanced off the chin, doing minimal damage. Fortunately, this did slam the mouth shut, cutting off the horrible noise.
Time seemed to grind back to normal as her momentum carried her past the creature a few paces behind Erramir. His sword trailed along behind him, loosely gripped in one hand. They both skidded to a stop quickly on the slick surface, almost as if they weren’t on ice.
He looked at her, visibly relieved. “Did you interrupt it?”
“Yeah,” Val replied. “Whacked it right in the jaw. I was aiming for the temple, but this might be a better result.” She lifted a foot and saw that there was a scaled pattern on the bottom of the boots. “There’s some badass grip-stop on these shoes.”
“I noticed, but never mind that. We need a plan.”
Erramir immediately noticed three things. First and of most significant concern, the monster was sitting up, and the scattered shards of its leg were gathering back toward the point of amputation. They were beginning to slowly knit themselves together at the cut, reforming the pulverized thigh. Second, its jaw was well and truly busted, hanging disturbingly to one side. Third, and most encouragingly, the magical weaves around Carson appeared much more substantial and were starting to look organized.
“It’s fucking healing!” Val called out. “Damn it all, we need to decapitate this thing.”
“I like that. Switch sides. You try to interrupt the healing, and I’ll go for the head.”
Erramir cut in front of Val, sword raised but held lower and off to the side. His muscles tightened as he closed the distance before unleashing the monstrous blade in a horizontal cleave.
The beast was obviously not expecting the pair of attackers to return so quickly, and its attention jerked back to Erramir as he started to swing. The elemental managed to get an arm up in defense.
Erramir again saw something blue gleam on his sword, and this time he also felt something surge in himself. Then he cut cleanly through mid-forearm, lopping off his second limb in the fight. But the sacrifice saved the ice elemental, as it slowed the blade enough to cause it to lodge mid-way through its neck.
The frozen creature tried to open its mouth again, presumably to assail them with another brain-jolting sound storm. The broken mandible shifted slightly to the side, but not even a wheeze or gurgle came out. It was challenging to scream with four inches of steel bisecting one’s neck. I probably cut into its voice box, he realized.
Erramir was thrilled. “Ha!” he barked. “No more of that, you big, blue, eff’d-up, horror show!” Then he jerked on his sword. It didn’t budge. The thing swung at him with its stump. Erramir ducked and leaned his weight on the sword pommel, trying to lever it out, only to get the same result. His blade was stuck.
Looking at where steel met frozen flesh, he saw the problem. The elemental was holding its chin down now, gripping his blade like a vise.
The stump came back up, and he had to release his sword to get clear. He yelled in Val’s direction, “Little help here! It’s trapped my sword!”
Val was there in a second from the other side. Erramir stepped back in and grabbed the hilt.
“Get ready!” she yelled, then her staff cut toward the head.
White wood crashed into the creature’s nose in another eruption of ice shards. Its eyes crossed and head slumped back. Erramir freed his blade. Its three remaining hands clutched a ruined nose as the elemental collapsed, fully prone again.
Erramir cocked his sword for another attack, shuffling from side to side and dodging haphazard swings of the arm stump as he looked for an opening. But the pain of a crushed nose and partially severed neck had the creature focused on defense, and it was doing an excellent job of fending him off.
He tried to stab at the head, but an arm parried the jab and nearly managed to grab his sword. He stepped back and looked for another approach–losing his sword to the beast would be catastrophic for this fight.
He saw his opening. By guarding against any more facial strikes, the monster was leaving the rest of its body undefended. He recalled something critical about elemental creatures; they usually had a core instead of a heart.
As demonstrated by his leg removal and partial decapitation, the thing had no blood. Meaning that their attacks wouldn’t cause it to bleed out. Elementals took less damage from attacks that would be fatal to flesh and blood beasts. The core was a critical weak spot... if you could get to it.
“Val, how’re we doing?” he called out.
She responded instantly. “About half health. It can’t heal like this. Needs to concentrate.”
“Good. I’m gonna check for a heart.”
Valerie was whacking it about the head with both ends of Virg, mixing in random feints with one end then striking with the other. Her blows with the lighter staff were much faster and less predictable than his, and the beast couldn’t get a bead on them to grab the weapon. Unfortunately, its hands were still big enough to effectively fend her off.
“You’re gonna do what?” she asked between blows.
He’d already reversed his grip, and as Erramir brought both hands behind his head, swinging the sword point straight up like
a steel finger accusing the sky, he answered her, “Watch!”
Then he leaped, bringing the four-foot blade down in a stabbing motion. The tip struck dead center and pierced clear through breastbone, heart, and spine–or at least where they would typically be–lodging in the ice below. Three-quarters buried, his sword pinned in to the ground.
That blow got the ice elemental’s attention. It screamed and a warped garble resulted. Erramir turned back just as two giant hands abandoned their defense of its head in favor of dealing with this new, much more severe threat.
They came at Erramir in a blink. He barely managed to raise an arm, then they smashed into him, launching him backward and hammering him down into the space left by the missing leg.
The blow whiplashed his head forward and forcefully evacuated all air from his lungs. When he hit his chin was on his chest, and it rocketed backward, slamming into the frozen turf–the world grew distant.
His body slid away from the fight, limbs bumping and twisting randomly like a ragdoll.
When he stopped sliding, Erramir laid there, dazed and unable to move. He distantly heard Carson’s voice reverberate through the haze. The words that filtered through to his addled brain were nonsensical. “Sand Stack, I mining at the back!”
He’s doing what? Erramir thought. There’s no mining here… He decided Carson must definitely be in trouble if he was mumbling that gibberish. He didn’t remember his friend being hit, but maybe the verbal assault had scrambled his brains?
Either way, he was pretty sure the creature was getting the better of his friends. His sword had proven to be their most effective weapon–he needed to get back in the fight. Erramir focused on regaining control of his body, but it just wouldn’t move.
Distantly, Valerie was shouting, then Carson was yelling back at her. But Erramir couldn’t make out their words–his head was now spinning, and his need for air was growing desperate. So, he ignored them. They were probably both speaking in gibberish anyhow.
Then there was a different noise–it was hideous but somehow familiar. An image floated into his mental cinema: a dark witch with the face of his 2nd-grade teacher sneered at him from center stage of a rock concert. Next to her, there was an old-school Detroit Buick with angular body panels and chrome around the windows. Mrs. Noonan... and a Buick... what the… he thought in confusion. He dismissed that nonsense too.
Someone switched off the horrible noise, his thoughts cleared, and he immediately recognized his first problem: he needed air.
Straightaway, his breath returned, and he gulped in deep lung-fulls. Confidence bolstered; he focused on the spinning issue in his head.
Unfortunately, a new noise caught his attention from the direction of the fight–something popped, once, twice, and then a third time. Everything went silent.
That concerned him; what had the popping noise been? Images of his friends bursting like soap bubbles under massive blue fists crowded in. He loosely noted the math of three pops and two friends didn’t add up but disregarded that as just more nonsense.
If his friends were dead, he would be next. Confusion dissolved under the pressure of a new image. A gigantic blue foot squishing his head like a plump grape, his helmet crumpling as his face distorted like a claymation figure. The vision was even more disturbing nonsense than… than what? Was there another image? It didn’t matter. He had to get up.
Erramir refocused, coaxing his spinning mind fuzz to settle down and give back his cooperative brain. Slowly, his need won out and pushed the confusion away, leaving his mind clear once again.
The world stabilized, and he pulled his elbows in to lift his head. An odd feeling washed through his mental scape, impressing the sense of a hidden bend or dark corner of his soul being illuminated.
The sensation was wonderfully invigorating, and he wanted nothing more than to explore this new internal terrain. But, the needs of the present were more demanding, so Erramir raised himself halfway up to survey the situation.
Surprisingly, he saw both Carson and Valerie were unharmed and running toward him. With a great sigh of relief, he collapsed onto his back once again.
Reassured the danger was past, the weight of impending doom lifted, and a natural smile curved up the corners of his mouth. He closed his eyes and slowed his breath, settling in to wait for the adrenaline and tension to drain out of his body.
A familiar tingling prickled his scalp, a feeling he associated with dropping out of high alert. Then, something completely unexpected happened. His internal awareness lit up like a Christmas tree.
Woahhh. Erramir gaped mentally, then became instantly entranced by the emerging map of his internal nervous system.
The new information rolled from his head down. The cartography of his nerves followed behind a calming wave that served to flip his nervous system signals from high threat to low threat. The surge rippled down his spine and through his body like the arc of a sonar wave.
Grasping for a context, a visual to correlate the world he knew to this experience, Erramir imagined his body as a city of spider webs–hundreds of them of every possible shape and all linked together.
Sparks of energy raced across the webs. They split at intersecting nodes to arc over other webs, then split again at yet other intersections until the entire webbed metropolis was awash in waves of sparks.
The energy was dividing and recombining as the current pulsed out and back from his brain. As it did, the flashes emanating from his brain faded from blue-white to yellow-orange. This imbued the web strands with a subtle buzzing energy. He could feel the new color was connected to his Perception and his Agility, somehow. Maybe Twitch too.
The electrical pulses slowed then, leaving his internal web structure imbued with the warm energy. The transformation felt powerful. Erramir observed it with intense curiosity, knowing this was somehow useful but unclear as to exactly how.
His internal observation was interrupted by a system message that appeared before him in dazzling red script.
Well done Erramir Darkfyre, your capacity to perceive reality has increased, and you have gained a point in the Advanced Attribute, Presence.
Advanced Attribute: Presence 2 –Your awareness of your connection to all things has expanded, illuminating an acute knowledge of your body’s Itical system and the information flow between yourself and your environment. In combination with your powerful gut feelings, this new sensory capacity grants you an instinctual response to threats. Additionally, your soul essence can now be directed to enhance some of your standard attributes or speed recovery from injury.
As this attribute levels, your connection to all things will increase, and new abilities will be unlocked. Advanced attributes can only be leveled with Advanced Attribute points.
Level 1 Effect: Your gut feelings will guide you at decisive moments, ignore them at your own peril.
Level 2 Effect: Your body will react automatically to prevent injury from unseen threats before you are consciously aware of them.
Level 2 Effect: By focusing, you can direct your soul essence to enhance Agility, Twitch, Strength, or Healing. Only one may be boosted at a time and losing focus will cancel the effect.
Advanced Attribute Notes—It is impossible to light the way for those unwilling to open their eyes. For this reason, any discussion of Advanced Attributes with players who have not unlocked them will be met with confusion or disbelief.
A meditation practice is suggested to prepare for future increases in Presence.
Erramir read against his lidded eyes and smiled widely–Presence 2 was powerful. It effectively gave him the capacity to supercharge his Agility, Twitch, or Strength in a fight or speed up his healing from debilitating injuries.
This is how I cleared my mind, he realized. The enhanced healing had allowed him to rapidly recover from what was almost certainly a concussion. This is so great! It’s basically a bottomless, attribute elixir! And without potion bottles!
Those thoughts faded, and Erramir pulled up
and reread the text about the other effect of Presence 2. He started grinning, then reread it just to make sure he wasn’t misunderstanding.
React automatically to prevent injury from unseen threats… Oh, hell yeah, baby. He started to giggle like a dope.
That was how his friends found him: eyes closed, sprawled out, grinning and giggling. They stood over him, blocking the bright sun and darkening his world. Val was breathing heavily, and Carson spoke first.
“Err?” he confusedly said. “What’s going on, man? You okay?” His words were tentative and sounded more than just a little concerned.
Erramir just giggled in response.
“Okayyy,” Carson intoned, and Erramir could imagine his chin rising in his inflection. “Did you, like, find some funky snow shrooms or something?” He addressed Val. “You think he broke himself?”
He heard Val get down on her knees. She also sounded concerned. “Erramir? Are you in there? Can you hear us?”
Erramir responded through closed, smiling lips, “Ummhum.” He couldn’t believe how happy the new ability made him. Maybe he was so giddy because it felt like a childhood dream realized, or perhaps it had something to do with gaining a level in Presence.
Those considerations floated away. He didn’t actually care. Whatever was going on, he liked it... a lot. He was so damn happy he literally couldn’t stop smiling.
Val stood up after a moment, apparently gathering that Erramir was fine. “I don’t think anything is wrong,” she said. “He’s just really, really happy.”
Carson’s patience gave out. “Seriously, bro! What the hell are you smiling at?”
Erramir slowly opened his eyes and regarded them. The image of the two backlit figures standing over him was dramatic. It reminded him of a scene out of an old Western. He could almost hear the dramatic, stringy tones of standoff music; this inspired him to pretend.
He made guns out of his hands and shot his two friends. “Bang, bang.” Then he emptied his finger revolvers into them for emphasis, “Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.” And laughed.