Beastborne

by James T Callum

  -10% CP cost.

  Essence Imbuement 1/1

  While others must slay or find their raw materials, you are capable of creating it. This comes with a number of additional features - and drawbacks - with Essence Imbuement. You can specifically aim to create bones of monsters with whom you have at least 100% Monster Affinity.

  Bone Ensorcellment 0/1

  Prerequisites: Essence Imbuement & Bone Purification.

  Transcend typical spellwork by imbuing specially purified bones with a wide variety of magical essence, from simple commands to complex spells, and everything in between. Bone Ensorcellment forms the backbone for the most powerful wands and magical items in existence.

  Ossification Mastery 0/1

  Master the art of working with bone, honoring the creatures the material came from and utilizing it in the most efficient manner possible. In doing so, you not only can work with more materials but can work with all materials faster.

  Unlocks: Draconic Bone.

  +5% High-Quality rate.

  +5% CP.

  Originally, Hal had thought to pick Ossification Mastery. A greater high-quality rate, and a further increase to his CP generation seemed an obvious choice. He wasn’t sure what Draconic Bone being unlocked meant.

  With his command of Bonecrafting, he could create any bone of any creature, provided he had enough affinity with the monster. And as he didn’t have any affinity with dragons - yet - he wasn’t sure how the perk would unlock that for him.

  More than likely, it meant he could work with Draconic Bone. And that made him wonder if there was some essence bone that he couldn’t work with.

  His choice, however, was made for him when he saw Bone Ensorcellment. He had never seen a wand yet, but he could guess well enough what possibilities would open up to him, given the perk’s description.

  Storing spells in armor, or a weapon, only to have it unleashed with a command word or at a set moment was the stuff of legend. Naturally, Hal would want in on that.

  Having a body piece that automatically cast a healing spell on him if his HP dropped below a certain percent seemed fantastic. Or a pair of boots that could be triggered to cast a propulsion spell that would allow him to leap great heights.

  The possibilities were endless. And all it would take was finding the right combination of materials and spells.

  With the time he now had, with a future unfolding into a vast expanse of long years ahead, he would have the time to dedicate to finding just those combinations.

  If each of his friends had armor that would teleport them to a pre-set binding point upon being knocked out or at critical HP, he need never worry about their death. With healers on standby, the injured party member would be whisked away directly where they would have the best chances of survival.

  Unfortunately, Hal couldn’t get Bone Ensorcellment just yet.

  Instead, he picked up Bone Purification to satisfy the last prerequisite for the perk. Once he reached Bonecrafting Level 30 - which didn’t seem quite so far away - he would grab Bone Ensorcellment.

  Until then, he would be satisfied with the creations he made. Running his bare fingers over the layered silken cloak, Hal marveled at his new armor. The [Empyreal Shardite] made the faint patterns in the fabric shimmer when the light hit them just right.

  Hal discovered that, with a thought, the shimmer turned to a faint darkening, making it easier to blend into the deepening gloom all around him.

  They fit in a way that went beyond the magic of Aldim. They felt purpose-made for him. Which, he guessed they were.

  Using his essence had tied them to him in some intrinsic way that he didn’t quite grasp. Considering they were restricted to the Beastborne Fabled Class, he couldn’t even make the garments for anybody else.

  Or so he thought.

  “I wouldn’t say no to a set of that armor,” Besal said.

  Hal started and turned toward Besal. “What do you mean?”

  Besal motioned to himself. Hal didn’t miss that Besal seemed much more substantial than before. Though he was still made of shadow and starlight. Tiny motes of light twinkled within his semi-gaseous form.

  “You’re naked?”

  “Not in the same way you would be,” Besal said, then shrugged his shoulders. “But, yes. In a manner of speaking. As I am part of you, I should not be restricted from wearing Beastborne-specific equipment.”

  “Do you need a weapon?” he asked, thoroughly surprised at the request.

  “I would hardly turn it down.”

  He could make a sword fairly easy, he had made the [Bone Falchion] and already knew the recipe for it.

  Before he could begin, Besal spoke, “I’d prefer a straight sword, if you don’t mind.”

  Hal shot him a curious look.

  Besal rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “What can I say? I have a preference. Two swords would be better than one, but I would prefer to stab, not slice.”

  “Are you planning on joining me?” Hal asked, curious, and a little wary.

  “If you would prefer to venture alone, I can certainly facilitate that. But I figured you would prefer my aid.”

  While he wasn’t looking forward to venturing out alone, he never thought that Besal would actually help him in the flesh. The last time he was given control over Hal’s body, it seemed to tax Besal greatly.

  He should have realized it sooner. “The Communion?” Hal asked. Besal already knew his thoughts, so he understood where the question was coming from.

  “As our Synchronization rises, I’m able to give myself physical form and reside outside of you, for a time. In a way, we’re separate but it is hardly permanent. We are intrinsically tied together in a way that I doubt either of us could sever without destroying a part of ourselves.”

  Hal could feel the truth in his words.

  If Hal focused, he could feel Besal’s mind. He could sense the connection between them. It was more substantial than before. And that strength clearly allowed Besal to aid Hal in ways he couldn’t before, in ways that Hal never would have imagined possible.

  “It’s not going to be very strong or pretty,” Hal warned. “But, if that’s okay with you, I can whip up a sword pretty quickly.”

  “Thank you,” Besal said, touching his hand to his heart.

  125

  The method of making his [Bone Falchion] was well known to Hal by that point. He could have used Blades of Bone to make a very simplistic weapon, but he wanted Besal to have at least a half-decent method of contribution.

  And so Hal spent the last bits of daylight creating a [Bone Longsword]. It wasn’t pretty - as Hal warned - but it was effective. It was comparable to anything the Settlement could have outfitted Besal with.

  Besal took it, studying it for a moment. The gleam of white bone caught the faint light from the cooling embers of the campfire. “Thank you, Hal.”

  Hal studied him for a moment. “Where….”

  Besal raised his shadowy hand to stop him. “It’ll go with me as part of what I am. Since it has your essence - which, in a way, is my essence too - it will allow me to place it within my own inventory of sorts. You needn’t worry about having a sword suddenly poking out from your organs.”

  “That’s all I ask,” Hal said.

  Up until that point, Besal had no items of his own. And it was a little curious how he could actually own items. Hal didn’t really want to understand the particulars.

  So long as Besal’s items did not harm him or interfere with his inventory, he was more than happy to have a properly equipped ally instead of one that needed to use its teeth and claws.

  Even the fact that Besal had asked for a weapon was a marked shift.

  Their Dark Communion was continuing apace, and now that night was beginning to settle over the Shiverglades, Hal was ready to strike out again for their next Communion.

  It only made sense that, as they became more connected, Besal would become more than a voice in the back of Hal’s mind.

 
Feeling the solid strength of his new breastplate, Hal couldn’t help but grin a little. He was finally feeling more like a fighter with armor to match.

  For a long time, he avoided anything resembling plate armor, mostly out of necessity. Metal plate mail was extremely heavy, and without Convergence, his STR wasn’t high enough to move as fluidly as he would like.

  Despite being roughly twice as strong as a fit human, wearing such heavy armor naturally slowed him down. More importantly, it made spellcasting difficult.

  There was a reason that most mages didn’t wear heavy armor into battle.

  By using bone and his own essence suffused into the ruined [Shaper’s Coat], he was able to transform it into something far more defensive. Evidenced by the fact that the newly created [Shadow-Tempered Half Plate] had nearly a third of his total DEF and MDEF.

  “Do you have any idea where we’re going?” Hal asked Besal.

  Besal stood and looked around the darkening clearing. “There.” His arm lifted. It swayed until it pointed toward the west, almost as if his finger was drawn to the direction.

  Of course it’d be farther away from the Settlement, Hal thought.

  Splicing shadow, eldritch, and insect, Hal set out into the dark forest of the Shiverglades. His senses came alive with faint movement from the creatures all around.

  The forest was thick with life. Nocturnal beasts were just waking up, while others were returning to their hollows and warrens to sleep in relative safety.

  It wasn’t often that Hal spliced terrestrial essence, and only now did he truly understand the depth of Besal’s connection to the world around him. How the man - if he was a man - could seem so in tune and aware.

  There wasn’t some secret training technique, nor a racial difference, he was Splicing. And that brought worrying connotations to Hal. He had always known, on some level, that Besal was also a Beastborne.

  But that was only because Besal was Hal, and Hal was Besal. They were two sides belonging to the same coin. With Besal being able to bodily step out on his own… was that still true?

  Was he creating another Beastborne?

  It sounded ridiculous, but did Besal have a Beast of his own to contend with? Rather than dwell on them unnecessarily, he directed those questions toward Besal.

  With so many beasts about, the last thing he needed to do was start talking like he was having a midday stroll. He was loud enough moving through the frigid, often mushy, forest.

  Hearing the words across their mental link, Besal glanced toward Hal as they stalked through the thick underbrush. “We all contend with the darkness inside,” he replied to Hal’s mind. “But no, I only have access to Beastborne as it is part of who I am. And who I am is part of who you are. Perhaps once you might have called me your darkness. Your Mister Hyde, I suppose. We have moved beyond such petty things, don’t you agree?”

  Besal was right. Whatever the reason, or the impetus of it, Besal had grown into something more than just Hal’s inner darkness. He wasn’t a two-dimensional thing to be combated anymore.

  He also wasn’t, at least not wholly, apart from Hal either. They were linked in ways that Hal doubted even Besal fully understood. And as he continued down the path of Beastborne, it became increasingly obvious that the Fabled Class held far more in store for him if he walked this road.

  This Dark Communion was just the first of many such tests that he would need to overcome. Of that, Hal was absolutely certain.

  They walked for a while in silence, Hal’s new armor did more to keep him hidden and quiet than his own skill. He suspected that his presence was quite well known from the lack of skill-ups.

  Naturally, he would have expected Stealth to Level Up some, but the lack of anything for the next hour as the night deepened only confirmed his suspicions.

  Perhaps it was his noisy, ungainly steps through the dark, that drew the series of high-pitched squeaking. Squeaking that should have been out of Hal’s human range of hearing, but wasn’t.

  The keinse!

  Hal looked up, Shadesight picked out a darker bat-shaped form flitting about in the upper canopy of dark blue.

  “It’s Hal! I found the Hal!” cried a keinse, whose name Hal didn’t know.

  “Hal? It is the Hal! Good, now Shimmerscales won’t be mad we lost his new friend!” Steve said, diving down through the canopy. As the leaves broke away, Hal could see the brilliant stardusted sky through that tiny gap.

  Steve the keinse flitted down to a low-hanging branch and perched on it upside down. He regarded Hal with curious dark eyes. “Looking for you we have! Lots of flying. Your friends worry so much. That one that speaks to us like you do, worries most of all! You returning with us, yah? We want to get back to our cave. Lots of flying lately! Too few bugs this time of year.”

  “Dank and humid cave,” chorused one of the keinse somewhere overhead.

  Hal stepped up to the keinse and looked up at him. “Are they okay?” he said, voice pitched low.

  “Oh yeah, friends fine. We make keinse chain, let you talk?”

  “I would appreciate that,” Hal said with a nod.

  The keinse squeaked to each other for a few moments, and Hal let his senses expand to the animals in the region. Most of them were keeping their distance.

  What predators there were, had little interest in Hal or Besal. More than anything, it was the various nocturnal prey that Hal’s stomping through the forest had scared away that kept the predators away.

  With their usual prey in a blind panic from the strange interloper, Hal sensed that the predators were forced to adapt to the change or go hungry for the night.

  “All done, deadly one wants to know if you are malnourished or injusted,” Steve said.

  Hal furrowed his brow. “Injusted?”

  “Oh. Sorry. So sorry. Injured. She says injured. Many keinse sometime get words wrong. Deadly one says many words, all mean the same thing. People are weird.”

  “Tell Noth that I want her to take over the party and if they aren’t already, to head back to the Settlement. One night out in the Shiverglades is enough,” Hal said.

  There was a long pause as Steve squeaked out the message to the next keinse up, and that was repeated over however long the distance was between them. It was like the strangest game of telephone he had ever been part of.

  Finally, Steve spoke up, “Deadly one says, not leaving without you. Where is you? She is very insistent. Her command of our language is not like yours. We not tell where you are, but we tell you where they are if you wish.”

  Hal nodded. “Tell me where they’re at, and I want you to relay something to Noth. I need you to repeat these exact words. Do you understand Steve?”

  “Yeah-yeah, I understand. Repeat words. No make better, smoother, faster. Long, slow, people words.”

  126

  Using the keinse as their go-between, Hal and Noth discussed what they were to do next. While Noth didn’t plead with Hal to return, she did argue with him about his choice long enough for Hal to understand the source of her frustration.

  She could not help him.

  This was not something that she could be part of, and Hal understood that didn’t sit well with her. He regretted it, and told her as much, but whether it soothed Noth’s hurt or not, Hal could not tell.

  The keinse were not terribly good at relaying emotion.

  They had a hard enough time just making sure they repeated the words correctly along their network of flying bats.

  Steve had informed Hal where they were. Thinking that Hal would have made the smart decision and begin heading back toward the Settlement, they were nearly at the gap.

  Which meant that they were farther away than ever. And, had Hal been more interested in returning home than his immediate survival or the Dark Communion Quest, he might have crossed paths with them.

  To hedge their bets, Noth - who had taken command of the party by then - had Angram ranging as far as he dared, looking for any sign of Hal. The keinse, on the other
hand, spread out in search of Hal.

  As it turned out, the explosive exit of the Thesp Leader had left everybody a little rattled. Not even the keinse had been aware of which direction Hal had gone, or where he might have landed.

  Considering how massive the Shiverglades were, Hal was hardly surprised it took them so long to find him. Despite their tether making it easier to find one another, there was something about the Shiverglades that severely blunted its effect the farther away they were. Even that seemed a stroke of luck, as Noth confessed she would have immediately set out again with as many as she could take to search for him.

  It only occurred to Hal then that she would have had no idea if he was dead or alive. For all they knew, he was badly wounded and in need of their help.

  He felt a little guilty for spending most of the day crafting and readying himself for a Quest he knew they could never be a part of.

  Naturally, Hal didn’t fully regale her with everything he did. Not only because it would have taxed the poor keinse, but because it wasn’t necessary. He had explained to Noth that he was wounded and took time to heal back to full, that he was fine, and had a Beastborne Quest to undertake.

  Even though the keinse were horrible at relaying much more than the words they used, he could imagine the soft look Noth’s golden eyes would give him as she told him to be careful and return to her.

  He promised he would, and left her with instructions on how to best prepare the Settlement. What priorities should be focused on, and where to place traps along the gap.

  While he doubted any of those traps would benefit from his Tactician skill, given that the orders to do so were second-hand in nature, it was still good to have plenty of traps laid out for the coming attack.

  Noth assured him that his wishes would be carried out, and with a threat that she would personally come out to drag him back to the Settlement, they said their goodbyes.

  “Some good bugs in the night,” Steve said. “Tasty bugs. Crunchy. Juicy! Hal want us to stay around? Grab a little snacko?”