Beastborne

by James T Callum

  Hal dropped 20 feet and nearly faltered completely as a familiar twist in his guts announced that he had finally crossed the first threshold.

  Strain Affliction Lv.1 (Taxed).

  You have taxed your body beyond normal limitations. Channeling Beast Magic has its costs and each use of the magic warps your body in new and unforeseen ways. Using Beast Magic beyond this point risks more than your health.

  Beast Magic Efficacy +20% | Beast Magic Damage +20%

  MP Cost +10% | Strain Accumulation +15%

  With the magical updrafts keeping him aloft, Hal continued his bombing without reprisal. And at Strain Affliction Level 1, he was outputting even more damage than usual.

  His Bomb Toss usually dealt around 380 damage, provided he wasn’t exploiting a weakness. His eldritch-aspected Bomb Toss was dealing around 610, and that was before he gained the Taxed status from hitting Strain Affliction Level 1.

  He wasn’t sure why it was so high. Did it have something to do with Splice II?

  There wasn’t much time to figure it out. Still, his first level of Strain, he was doing a ridiculous 760 damage per eldritch-aspected Bomb Toss, he hardly needed anybody to clean up the stragglers afterward.

  Monsters were dying by the score, but his MP was falling steadily below 40%. His strain continued to climb, but he needed to buy more time for the workers. His Disara rushed back and forth along the front of the wall, beating back the monsters that came too close.

  Doubling back, Hal watched as the Palebark Treant was now aiming for the burning patches of ground. It chucked boulders the size of small cars with unerring accuracy that the small catapults couldn’t touch.

  Boulders and debris soared in the air beneath Hal, and he couldn’t help but feel like Besal had been right.

  “I told you,” Besal said smugly. “Our power is beyond what they can do. And the most impressive thing? You are hardly in command of a tenth of the power you could have at your fingertips. Your Kol’thil cannot touch the raw power of a Beastborne. Do not forget that.”

  Hal didn’t need to reply. He knew Besal was right, or at the very least, he (mostly) agreed with Besal on that point. Beastborne had eclipsed anything he expected.

  He suspected that using his Spliced essence with Bomb Toss incurred some damage bonus akin to using a spell from that monster family. As with most of his newfound powers, he would have to put them through rigorous testing later.

  Once the Settlement was safe.

  Looking around, Hal was having a hard time believing that the battle was so thoroughly turned around. Monsters funneled into the gap, but they were being killed at a rate that was simply staggering.

  Their bodies lay thick about the gap, forcing their allies to climb over them like miniature hills. Hills that were blasted away moments later by an expert throw by the Palebark Treant, or one of the catapults with a payload of boulders and stone.

  Rangers, spread out along the wall, pelted with unerring precision, taking out any monster that survived the initial salvos of Hal’s Bomb Toss and the thrown boulders.

  The walls were quickly being repaired, and the Rallied Defense buff would be active for the remainder of the assault. The Shiverglades had thrown its best at them, a horde of monsters that would have toppled any other group.

  But the Bravers were ready for the Shiverglades. They were up to the task of defending their home, and they would not be beaten.

  Twisting away from the combat, Hal tossed one final Bomb Toss over his shoulder at a pile of bodies to ignite them. Red-black flames crawled all over the corpses of monsters. Monsters looking for safe passage over the bodies of their fallen companions soon found the bite of those eldritch flames.

  Spreading his wings wide to catch the cold night air, Hal slowly drifted toward the center segment of the wall. He hit the top of the wall awkwardly and would have stumbled over if Durvin wasn’t there to steady him.

  The surly dwarf was in full shining plate mail with his massive greataxe strapped to his back, already stained with black blood. “Aren’t ye a sight fer sore eyes!” Durvin bellowed. “The bards’ll be singing o’ this night for generations! When’d ye learn to fly, boy?”

  Hal folded his wings on his back, feeling his strain near to hitting the next threshold. His MP was drained, but with Besal’s wellspring of mana available to him, he tapped into it with Assimilation bringing himself back to full MP.

  “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve yet,” Hal said, clapping the dwarf companionably on the shoulder. “You’ve held the wall admirably. Whose idea was the catapults? I didn’t even know we had the schematics for them.”

  “Aye, that were the gnome’s bright idea,” Durvin said, putting his hands on his hips. “Brilliant mind, Rondo. Bit strange, but a good enough sort. Fer a gnome.”

  “For a gnome,” Hal echoed with a chuckle.

  Rondo was an odd one. He had been kidnapped by Noth and Mira in a confused attempt to get him to come along with Hal’s exodus from Murkmire. When Hal learned of it and agreed to set him free, suddenly, Rondo wanted to stay.

  The more Hal tried to push him away, to do the right thing, the more the old gnome wanted to come along with them!

  Of course, that was before Hal realized that Rondo knew Thirty-seven, one of Hal’s doppelgangers from Rinbast’s timeline scheme. And though Hal was absolutely sure that Rondo knew more than he let on about Thirty-seven and his relationship to Hal, the gnome never betrayed a hint of suspicion about Hal.

  Shaking his head of the memories, Hal turned back toward the south and the corpse-choked 750-foot wide passage to their home. Back at full MP, Hal wasn’t about to be content to rest on his laurels.

  He reached deep within himself, to the Manaseed that had joined with his soul. There, he could feel the spell he wanted to enact. An orb of light, like a bubble the size of a beachball of swirling green and blue, appeared in Hal’s hand.

  With a thought, Hal cast Manatorpor.

  The sphere of swirling color flew out from his palm. As it did, the spell exponentially doubled. It was far faster than he was used to. Casting it within the confines of the Manaseed’s barrier doubled its strength and range.

  Rather than a bubble with a radius of 30 feet, it increased to 60 feet. From end to end, the sphere of swirling colors eventually expanded to 120 feet. The sphere just barely touched the wall, extending out to its full length.

  Hal’s breathing quickened at the strain of casting the spell. At 208 MP, Manatorpor was his most draining spell. But it was also one of the most powerful.

  By casting it within the influence of the Manaseed he supercharged the spell. Instead of having to reapply it in 100 minutes, it would last 200 minutes. He could go 3 hours in between needing to reapply the spell.

  With his MP regeneration supercharged by a brazier, and by the Founder’s Day buff, he would be able to keep the spells up along the full length of the wall.

  Noth stalked along the wall toward him as the last of the hammers rang out on the Palisade below. A koblin scurried up the ladder as two men grabbed it and pulled it up after the koblin.

  “That was….” Noth said, her golden eyes sparkling despite the hard set to her face. “I want to be mad at you! You scared me and did something very, very stupid!”

  “And yet?” Hal asked, trying to keep the mirth from his voice.

  Noth’s face flushed. “But you flew! And then you just….” She motioned with a black-gauntleted hand toward the gap. The devastation was still clear even from here.

  The gap wasn’t cleared, the battle wasn’t suddenly over just because Hal set fire to everything between the wall and the Shiverglades. But the difference was stark. Few monsters made it to the wall, and those that did hardly were able to damage it before they were overwhelmed.

  He had provided enough of a breather for the fighters to resupply, and to repair the walls.

  “You really weren’t kidding about needing to do your Quest on your own. That’s some power,” she said, falling int
o step alongside him and Durvin.

  Hal stopped, concentrated, and cast another Manatorpor. His goal was to line the walls with the slowing spheres of magic. Any monsters that made it to the wall would find themselves slowed, and their stamina usage increased.

  Meanwhile, his allies - and most importantly, their attacks - would be unaffected. The whole wall would take over 1,200 MP. He would just have enough if he drained [Emissary].

  At least, that was the plan.

  A horn blasted somewhere up above, answered by its twin to the west. Hal turned a questioning gaze to Durvin.

  The fiery-bearded dwarf’s previously pleased expression was gone. “That’s the sound o’ trouble.”

  153

  “What do you mean, ‘trouble’?” Hal asked.

  Durvin directed his gaze with one thick, metal-encased finger to the south. “Me guessing is that.”

  Hal followed Durvin’s direction.

  A dark brume rolled up from the south like a tidal wave. It blocked out the Shiverglades beyond. Wherever it touched, the fires were snuffed, and their visibility dropped to nothing.

  It gained speed and strength at an alarming rate. In an eyeblink, half of the gap was washed in the roiling miasma. Two heartbeats later, the darkness rolled over the Manaseed’s barrier.

  The stars were wiped out from the sky. An impossible, impenetrable gloom descended upon them, unlike anything Hal had ever seen.

  There was no bandlight, no moonlight from any of Aldim’s moons. It was like they were plunged into the Abyss.

  Hal felt the icy grip of fear clench at his chest at the memory of that place. Then it began to ease as he realized it wasn’t the same. His Shadesight allowed him to see into the roiling murk.

  Though it was magically darkened, he could see through it like a foggy twilight. Shapes began to shift and writhe in the dark, something wasn’t quite right but the sound of rushing flames stole his attention. Fires, torches, and various light sources began to spring up along the wall.

  They had prepared for this.

  “Not to worry, lad,” Durvin said, patting him on the arm. “Me lads will sort this all out. There isn’t a dwarf about that fears the dark. I reckon them koblin-folk are the same way. But fer any that need it, we got plenty o’ light to last us until the dawn, don’t ye doubt!”

  Durvin stomped away, barking orders.

  All along the wall, braziers were ignited. Pools of warm light banished the dark, but it seemed to press in on each of them. The light didn’t seem to have as much strength as it should.

  All the while, the sound of monsters came from the south. They could no longer see their enemy. None of them approached the wall, though there should have been more than a score approaching by that point.

  From the dark came unnerving howling and wailing as if something was attacking the monsters.

  It reminded him of the Abyss in other ways. There was something dark and ephemeral about it, alive. Through his connection to the Manaseed, he could feel the miasma push against the barrier around the Settlement.

  Worst of all, Hal could feel the barrier give under all that pressure. It was slight, an inch at most, but it was there. The Manaseed was giving ground to the darkness that had totally smothered them.

  Remembering the Abyss made Hal look to his forearm, where he knew the Golden Kol’thil would be glowing beneath his bracers. He concentrated, clenching his left hand into a fist and tapping into the power of his Kol’thil.

  For the first time that Hal could ever remember, he intentionally summoned the image of the Kol’thil. With conscious effort, he pushed the symbol to the back of his hand and set it to glowing a brilliant gold-and-silver.

  The image of a moonlit Manatree stood out starkly at the center of the Gold Kol’thil symbol. At the same time, as in reaction to Hal’s defiance of the dark around him, the Palebark Treant began to glow.

  Its bark gave off a soft, gentle moonlight that increased in strength and intensity as Hal raised his fist to the darkness.

  Heads swiveled to regard the Palebark Treant, now giving off enough light that it blotted out the braziers nearby that were hungrily burning in their iron pens.

  Those same heads swung around to Hal, as he began to channel his Kol’thil into one of the new Sigils he was gifted to by the very man that had led him out of the Abyss.

  It had to be connected. Somehow, Feril had to know he would need this spell.

  Hal fell within himself, shutting his eyes and thrusting his arm out, palm open and facing the blanketed sky.

  A small bead of light drifted out from his palm. His Kol’thil began to spark, golden lightning lanced from the back of his palm and into the bead of shining light. It blossomed from a bead into a small cue-ball sized orb of blazing brilliance.

  Hal could see it through his closed eyelids as if he were ten feet from the sun itself. His vision was washed in red as the orb continued to expand, growing larger and brighter with each strike of lightning.

  He sent it skyward, trying to piece together how to perform the Sigil properly while he was in the middle of casting it. Kol’thil Sigils were unlike anything else he ever experienced.

  They weren’t spells, not precisely, and yet they had much of the form and function of one. Instead, there were a hundred different ways to enact a Sigil, each way provided a slight alteration that would change the outcome.

  Most of the ways he could alter his Sigils were so minor that they didn’t make much of a difference. This Sigil was different, or perhaps he was different. Hal couldn’t tell which it was, but the end result was the same.

  He could condense the orb, collapse it upon itself to explode outward in a blinding supernova. Alternatively, he could keep increasing its size and set it up in the sky to light the way.

  As much as he wanted to push back the black miasma with a show of power, he felt certain that it would be a temporary measure. And then they would be without its bright light.

  There was no assurance that the Sigil Feril had given him was permanent. Hal hoped it was, he wanted to explore the two Sigils that were so unlike anything he had access to so far. But he had to be responsible and use the gift in the way that would provide the greatest benefit.

  Enacting Iron Kol’thil: Daybreak, Hal expanded the orb into a miniature sun somewhere out in the darkness beyond. He immediately felt a backlash snap against his willpower, pushing it and bending it until he thought it would break.

  Agony lanced through his body like an electric arc. His muscles knotted up, Hal’s teeth shut so fast that he clipped off a bit of his tongue and tasted blood. His HP dropped in half, then halved again until it hovered around 200.

  Somehow, Hal managed to retain control of the Sigil but when he opened his eyes he was on his knees reaching out with one hand toward the tiny sun he had conjured out in the gap.

  The darkness had rolled back. Wherever the intense glare of that sun touched, the miasma evaporated.

  Hal was so taken by the majesty of the sun he had created that he only noticed several moments later what it had done. Not just the way it illuminated all but the mouth of the opening to the Shiverglades, but what it revealed.

  Black threads that Hal recognized belatedly as voidmist clung to the shadows that even the brilliant miniature sun couldn’t blast away. Those black threads of voidmist entered the piles of corpses, reanimating the dead. Changing them into something more monstrous.

  The countless monsters that they had thought destroyed, rose once more. Faint dark glowing lines traced up and down their enlarged bodies. New appendages sprouted at random, and as they did, the creatures howled in pain.

  Spiders were mutated into the shape of a Morbolger. Great worms that chewed through the ground suddenly sprouted grotesque legs that wriggled on the ground, propelling them with alarming speed at the stunned defenders.

  The walls shook with their tremendous blows.

  Hardened protrusions formed over the gaping toothed maws of the worms, and only when the wal
l shook again did Hal realize what they were doing. He pointed at the worms, raising his voice over the sound of the din. “The worms! Take down the worms, they’re battering rams!”

  Morbolgers mutated with spiders skittered up the sides of the sheer walls along the gap, racing toward the occupied defenders. A few broke off and climbed toward the parapets, where most of the attackers wouldn’t expect an assault.

  He never tried to Dominate so many things at such a distance. Reaching out with his left hand, Hal could feel the Soul of Shae’kathoth stir within his breast. It made him feel filthy, oily, but he would gladly suffer much more if it meant his friends were spared.

  Even as he reached out with Dominate, Hal used Assimilation to pull HP from the Disara nearby. The creature let out a strangled snarl of pain as Hal tried to heal himself with its MP, SP, and finally its HP.

  If using Daybreak nearly knocked him out, trying to Dominate so many targets at such a distance might very well kill him. Hal shut his eyes in concentration. A burst of golden lightning spiderwebbed across the air toward the distant walls and the creatures racing to devour his friends.

  154

  Hal heard a voice cry out, he thought it was Noth’s, and then pain and blackness swallowed him whole as the Kol’thil Bleed claimed its due.

  It felt like he had rolled around in rusty razor blades coated with acid. He kept hold of a tenuous thread, though he couldn’t remember why. Only that it was important. He could not let it go. He would not.

  The pain went on for what felt like years.

  When it finally abated, he was still lost in the darkness. Only now, there were dozens of golden threads in the black stretching out into the distance.

  Hal reached out to one thread and touched it. As soon as he did, he found himself staring at a Ranger, he thought it was Yesel, but his vision was messed up.

  It was blurry and fractured with half a dozen different reflections of the same blonde-haired elf from slightly different angles.