Starbreak (Rise to Omniscience Book 2)

by Aaron Oster

  “Before you can eat, you have to tell me your name.”

  The boy shrugged again.

  “It’s Morgan.”

  What an odd name, Sarah thought as Hint handed him the food. She’d never heard it before. It didn’t even sound remotely like a Northern name. Maybe he was from another kingdom.

  Sarah watched him as he took the food, almost reverently and took a huge bite out of the fresh bread. She heard the crunch of the crusty loaf, but she also heard something else. A groan of satisfaction came from Morgan as he bit in and his eyes widened a bit as he tore the first chunk free and began chewing.

  She saw his lips turn ever so slightly upward, the first sign of emotion she’d seen since his earlier fight.

  “So, Morgan...” Sarah began, not really sure what to talk about.

  She’d never had friends before. What did friends talk about? Wait… was he even her friend? He hadn’t mentioned it.

  “Do you wanna be friends?” she blurted out, face going pink with embarrassment.

  Morgan took a moment to swallow before replying.

  “No,” he said, then bit into the apple, face lighting up as he did.

  “Wait, what?” Sarah exclaimed. “Why not?”

  Morgan shrugged.

  “Why would I need friends?”

  “Well…” Sarah began again, mind racing as she tried to figure something out.

  Morgan continued tearing into the bread, cheese, and apple while she thought; completely ignoring her, in favor of the first good meal he could ever remember eating.

  “Friends look out for each other,” she finally said.

  “I can look out for myself,” he replied through a mouthful of food.

  “It’s rude to talk when your mouth is full!” Sarah snapped at him.

  She was quickly becoming frustrated with Morgan and his complete lack of decorum.

  She had been nothing but nice and he continued to be rude. She had even given him food.

  Her thoughts came to a screeching halt at that and her annoyance melted away.

  “Friends give each other good food,” Sarah said.

  She had to smother a grin as Morgan’s head snapped up at that, and she settled back against the backrest of the bench as the first puppets came onto the stage.

  She now knew how to get him to stay.

  13

  Morgan awoke to a low hissing sound off to his side. Opening his eyes, he looked blearily around the clearing until his eyes alighted on some sort of scaly creature. He squinted until it came into focus, and saw that it had its back to them and was eating something on the ground in the center of the clearing. He was about to dismiss it and go back to sleep, when a tan blur flew into his vision and sank its teeth into the lizard’s neck.

  Morgan was on his feet in a flash. He whipped his head frantically around until his eyes settled on Sarah’s sleeping form. Not even taking the time to wake her, he dove forward and scooped her into his arms, then took to the air; the sound of the two animals fighting following him the entire way.

  Sarah woke with a start and began thrashing so violently that Morgan actually began to fear dropping her.

  “Calm down! It’s me!” he said, narrowly avoiding a fist to the face.

  “What the hell is going on?” Sarah yelled, eyes coming into focus and glaring up at him.

  “If you’ll just calm down and look at the ground, you’ll understand what’s happening,” Morgan replied in an even tone.

  He’d found that the best way to deal with Sarah when she was angry was to stay calm. Her anger always passed quickly, so it wouldn’t do him any good to yell back.

  Sarah glared at him, then looked down to the ground twenty feet below, where a pack of jungle cats were tearing into a giant lizard.

  “Oh,” Sarah said, feeling a bit guilty for the way she’d reacted.

  “No worries,” Morgan distractedly answered.

  Sarah let out a long sigh.

  “We should have learned our lesson about falling asleep in hostile territory without taking some precautions.”

  Morgan shrugged, still looking down at the fight below.

  “Next time,” Sarah continued, “we should set a watch or sleep off the ground.”

  “Uh-huh,” Morgan replied, not even listening to her at all now.

  His eyes were glued on the four creatures below as they tore the lizard limb from limb.

  “Do you think those are beasts?”

  Sarah glared at him, realizing he’d been completely ignoring her. She let out another sigh, already knowing where this conversation was heading.

  “Yes, Morgan; they’re probably beasts,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “You think we can take them all?”

  Yup, there was that note of excitement she’d become used to hearing.

  “I don’t know, Morgan, but I honestly don’t feel like fighting right after I just woke up,” She turned her head and tried to bury it in his chest, but it just bumped against the metal plating of his new armor, making her wince.

  Damn that Katherine and her damn armor, she thought, crossly.

  “Alright, how about I just leave you up in a tree then,” Morgan asked, already floating over to one.

  “You are not leaving me up a tree!” she yelled, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  “So you’ll fight them with me?” he asked with a grin.

  Sarah glared at him for a full ten seconds, before finally relenting.

  “Fine,” she said, “but you’ll owe me!”

  “Deal!” Morgan said excitedly and drifted down to the ground.

  He set Sarah down and assessed the situation, trying to decide how best to take these beasts on.

  The cats were much larger than they’d appeared to be from the air. Each was at least four feet at the shoulder and over eight feet long- and that was without including the tail.

  Their coats were light tan, with small black and brown spots along the sides. A line of bristling black fur stretched from the base of their necks, down their spines and to the tips of their tails.

  “You have any clue what these things are?” Morgan asked in a lowered tone.

  Sarah shook her head in the negative.

  “Do you think it’s wise to attack a pack of beasts of unknown rank?” she asked, making one final effort to try and dissuade him from a fight.

  “We’ll never know if we don’t try,” he said, flashing her a grin.

  “Damn it all to hell!” she hissed. “You’re going to get us killed one day. You know that, don’t you?”

  It wasn’t a real question, but Morgan answered anyway.

  “Probably,” he replied, his grin widening.

  Sarah just rolled her eyes, then turned her gaze back to the feasting cats.

  “So, what’s the plan?” she asked.

  “Simple. I’ll go in and hit them and you support from the rear.”

  “That’s not a plan!” she exclaimed, but it was already too late.

  With a whoop of excitement, Morgan sprinted toward the group of cats, glowing with purple light as his shield flared around him.

  “Why me?” Sarah asked, taking up a fighting stance and preparing for the fight ahead.

  Morgan dashed toward the still distracted group of cats, angling himself to attack the one on the far left. His fists clenched in anticipation of the fight and a wild grin was plastered across his face. The cats must have had good hearing, because they all turned to face him as he approached, just not fast enough.

  Morgan’s fist crashed into the side of the first one’s head with a satisfying crunch. The cat let out an angry yowl as it staggered back from him, but still managed to retain its footing. Morgan ducked, narrowly avoiding a lunging cat from his right, then spun in place and caught the next one around the throat.

  He used heavy impact, locking his arm tight around the cat’s neck, then violently twisted his hips. There was a loud crack as the cat’s spine was severed and it fell limp in his arms.
/>
  One down.

  A loud whoosh escaped his lungs as another one of the cats bowled into him, driving him to the ground and landing on top of him. He grunted as the heavy weight settled onto his chest and the cat’s razor-sharp claws began raking at his shield.

  He twisted his body violently to the right, but the cat went along with the movement, pressing more of its weight down on him. He tried twisting again, but without any success. The cat brought its clawed paw down on him once again and his shield buckled, shattering under the force of the blow.

  The cat let out a victorious roar, then was promptly killed by a barrage of icy spears that slammed into it from the side.

  “Thanks!” Morgan called out, shoving the heavy weight off himself and getting back to his feet.

  That had been way too close for comfort. He would definitely need to be more careful when fighting multiple opponents in the future.

  As he regained his footing, it became apparent as to why it had taken Sarah so long to get the cat off him. A third cat lay dead, punctured by icicle spears and coated in frost.

  That left just one more; the one he’d staggered right at the beginning of the fight.

  Looking around the clearing, the injured cat was nowhere to be seen. He straightened from his fighting stance, eyeing the three cat corpses and turning to look at Sarah.

  “Did you see where the last one went?”

  “No. I was too busy saving your sorry ass,” she replied, pulling a core retrieval rod from the spatial bag.

  “Here,” she said, tossing him the rod. “This was your idea, so you’ll be the one getting your hands dirty.”

  Morgan caught the rod and shrugged.

  He didn’t mind retrieving the cores. In fact, he enjoyed it.

  Bending down near the first cat, he plunged the rod into it and retrieved the core. He quickly opened its status and examined it.

  Name: Soot-spine leopard core

  Rank - 12

  Total available energy - 2,106/2,106

  This core was taken from a soot-spine leopard and has no special properties.

  Morgan heard a loud crunching sound and closed the core’s status to see Sarah pulling a core free. The next second, it crumbled to powder in her hand and she went to retrieve the third one.

  Morgan felt annoyed for a second, then shrugged. She had killed two of them, after all. Concentrating on the core, he quickly absorbed the energy, then checked his status.

  Name: Morgan

  Supermage: Rank - 10

  Energy to next rank - 10,328/20,000

  Ability - Divine Gravity & Air

  RP - 610/610 (Regen - 6.0 per second)

  Strength - 57

  Agility - 68

  Constitution - 60

  Intelligence - 61

  Wisdom - 60

  Skills - Enhanced flight, Heavy impact, Gale force, Condensed wind blade

  Traits - Gravity field, Recovery

  Extra - Gravity storm

  Morgan closed his status.

  He was more than halfway to the next rank, which confused him for a few moments. Hadn’t he had just about 6,000 energy the last time he checked?

  Then it came to him and he felt like smacking himself.

  Of course. The assassins he’d killed last night! It had been so long since he’d killed any actual people, that he’d completely forgotten about getting energy from them.

  He chuckled to himself, glad that he hadn’t asked Sarah.

  She probably would have berated him for being so forgetful.

  His mind then turned back to the task at hand.

  He was getting closer to ranking up again. In fact, he could probably do so right now, since that fall two nights ago had probably ensured he would receive the maximum number of attributes when he did.

  Morgan was reaching to retrieve another core, when a low, rumbling growl shook the entire clearing; and he cursed to himself.

  It felt like every time he was about to rank up, something would prevent him from doing so.

  He debated ignoring the beast, and ranking up anyway, when the growl sounded again; much more menacing this time. Morgan felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle, as he slowly rose from his crouch. His eyes darted around the surrounding trees as he tried to place where the growl had come from. He felt Sarah’s shoulder bump his and was quick to put his back to hers.

  The growl came again, this time from a different direction and Morgan felt his heart rate increase as adrenaline began pumping through his body.

  He still found it odd that the mass of reiki acting as his heart would function in the exact same way as his old one. If he couldn’t sense the core of power there, he wouldn’t have even known the difference.

  “What do you think it is?” Sarah asked in a low voice.

  Her voice was tense and her body rigid as they slowly turned in place, trying to spot the beast that was stalking them.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say that the cat we couldn’t find went to get some backup,” Morgan answered.

  He could feel the beast’s eyes on him, glaring with malicious intent, but he couldn’t actually see it.

  “You just had to pick a fight, didn’t you?” Sarah hissed as the growl came again, this time from the opposite direction.

  “We can always try to escape,” Morgan replied as he felt a grin work itself onto his face.

  Despite the undoubtedly fearsome beast they were about to face, he couldn’t help but be excited.

  A flicker of movement caught Morgan’s attention and his head snapped in that direction. He gave Sarah a sharp nudge in the ribs, eliciting a curse.

  “What was that for? I- ” she began, turning to glare at him. She stopped mid-sentence when her eyes fell on the beast stalking out from between the trees.

  “Oh. Shit. We are so screwed!”

  14

  Despite the elegant way in which Sarah had voiced it, Morgan was forced to admit that she was probably right.

  He’d never even imagined a beast could look so terrifying.

  The cat that was slowly emerging from the trees resembled the ones they’d been fighting, in the same way a housecat resembled a tiger. To begin with, it was nearly twice as long and nearly two feet taller at the shoulder; not to mention that it looked to outweigh the others by at least a ton.

  The difference in appearance was also quite noticeable. The cat was a darker brown in color and the spotted pattern on its sides extended over its entire body, making it difficult to track against the background of the trees. A line of bristling black quills stretched down its back, to the tip of its tail. The quills also covered its shoulders and a section of its underbelly, proving a layer of protection.

  A pair of canines curved downward from its upper jaws, extending down past its chin, and a pair of slitted pupils stared back at them inside gleaming golden eyes. Its paws didn’t make so much as a sound as it padded towards them and a set of wicked looking claws extended from each one, tearing up the soft loam underfoot.

  Morgan’s eyes followed the massive cat as it began to slowly circle them, lunging in every few seconds before pulling back. Every time it did, it would move in a little closer, quills rattling in anticipation.

  This beast was intelligent. Or at least intelligent enough to realize the two of them posed a threat. Despite its terrifying appearance, he was still fairly confident they could win, but it wouldn’t be an easy fight.

  “Any idea what that thing is?” Morgan asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  “If I did, don’t you think I’d have said something?” Sarah growled.

  Morgan shrugged.

  It was worth a try.

  “I’ll try and get its attention. I won’t use any skills until I know what type of beast we’re up against.”

  “Don’t be stupid!” Sarah hissed back. “If you try and hit that thing bare-handed, you’ll skewer yourself!”

  “I’m not planning on hitting it,” Morgan replied, taking a step away from her an
d readying himself. “I just have to figure out if its skills are mage or super based. Then I’ll know what type of wind blade to use. I have a feeling that choosing correctly will make all the difference.”

  Sarah nodded, only now remembering that the type of wind blade he used would determine how much damage he could dish out. And since his new condensed wind blade skill was so expensive to use, he’d only be able to use it once before needing to wait for his RP to regenerate. In a fight like this he would need every point he had.

  Morgan crouched low as the cat feinted again, carefully analyzing its movements and committing them to memory.

  This opponent was extremely dangerous. He and Sarah could always try using their powerful new skills, but if they missed they would both be left defenseless. There was also the possibility that Morgan’s extremely flashy gravity storm would attract unwanted attention.

  He would still use it, but only as a last resort. His shield was still down and would be so for at least another hour. He’d discovered that if a mage shield was broken, it would take some time until it was usable again.

  He did have another line of defense. His supermage trait, gravity field, would decrease all incoming damage by ten percent. He also had the new set of enchanted armor from Katherine. If all else failed, he could always go for an all-out attack and hope he survived long enough for his recovery trait to heal him; but that, like using his gravity storm, would only be a last resort.

  “Hope you’re ready for this,” he said, flashing Sarah a grin. “Try and slow it down, and if you get a clear shot, take it.”

  Sarah nodded, her blue shield coming up around her as she did.

  That, apparently, was a mistake. The second the shield flared to life, the cat’s eyes locked onto her and it let out an earth-shaking roar, then pounced right at her.

  Morgan winced at the sheer volume of it, then used gale force and dashed to intercept it.

  He needed its attention on him. Sarah couldn’t soak up damage the way he could and if she got injured, she wouldn’t be able to heal herself.

  Morgan launched himself at the cat and lashed out with a powerful kick. Catching it mid-leap, the force of the kick was just enough to send the cat off course, but just barely. With an angry yowl, it flew past Sarah, claws missing her by a hair.