by Stone Thomas
“One day, you’ll be too strong to curse,” she said. “And then Duul won’t know what to do.”
“I wonder,” I said. I didn’t bother to put my thought into words. I needed to act. It was a longshot, but I hoped that improving my attributes might improve my resistance to this awful curse.
Δ
Skillmeister View of:
Arden Hochbright
Base Attribute / XP to Next / Intended Change / Total XP Cost
-
10 Constitution / 250 XP to Next / 10 –> 11 / Total XP Cost: 250
-
8 Vivacity / 200 XP to Next / 8 –> 9 / Total XP Cost: 200
-
15 Strength + 6 Bonus / 375 XP to Next / 15 –> 16 / Total XP Cost: 375
-
10 Hardiness + 4 Bonus / 250 XP to Next / 10 –> 11 / Total XP Cost: 250
-
9 Focus / 225 XP to Next / 9 –> 10 / Total XP Cost: 225
-
13 Resolve + 3 Bonus / 325 XP to Next / 13 –> 14 / Total XP Cost: 325
-
TOTAL BASE ATTRIBUTE XP COST: 1,625
Stats Affected by Change
-
[Constitution] Health Points (HP): 623/1000 –> 723/1100
-
[Vivacity] Action Points (AP): 116/160 –> 136/180
-
[Strength] Phys. Damage Inflict Range: 210-256 –> 220-268
-
[Hardiness] Phys. Damage Block Range: 76-106 –> 81-114
-
[Focus] Mag. Damage Inflict Range: 90-110 –> 100-122
-
[Resolve] Mag. Damage Block Range: 86-122 –> 92-129
Skills For Weapon Class: Polearm
-
Piercing Blow 4. Damage multiplier of 2.6. [30 AP to cast] [Requires: Strength 11].
Improve to Piercing Blow 5 to master Piercing Blow. Damage multiplier increases to 5.0. [35 AP to cast] [Requires: Strength 20] [625 XP to improve].
Intended Change: None
Cost Subtotal: 0
-
Spear Cannon 2. When HP is at or below 10%, shoot a beam of light from your spear to damage enemy attackers, with a Strength multiplier of 3.4. [24 AP to cast] [Requires: Strength 10, Hardiness 10].
Improve to Spear Cannon 3 to increase HP threshold to 15% and Strength multiplier to 3.8. [26 AP to cast] [Requires: Strength 12, Hardiness 12] [375 XP to improve].
Intended Change: None
Cost Subtotal: 0
-
Locked. Call to Arms 1. Call your spear to your open arms from distances up to 10 feet away. [20 AP to cast] [Requires: Constitution 12, Focus 6] [125 XP to unlock].
Improve to Call to Arms 2 to increase range to 15 feet. [20 AP to cast] [Requires: Constitution 14, Focus 7] [250 XP to improve].
Intended Change: None
Cost Subtotal: 0
-
TOTAL POLEARM SKILL XP COST: 0
Skills For Special Class: Skillmeister
-
Precision Training 5. Reduce the XP cost of skills and attributes by 5%. [Passive] [Requires: Focus 9, Resolve 13].
Improve to Precision Training 6 for XP cost reduction of 6%. [Passive] [Requires: Focus 10, Resolve 15] [2,250 XP to improve].
Intended Change: None
Cost Subtotal: 0
-
Locked. Leveled Playing Field 1. Increase an attribute by one for any person without spending XP if that attribute is 5 less than their next lowest attribute. [Passive] [Requires: Focus 12, Vivacity 12] [375 XP to unlock].
Improve to Leveled Playing Field 2 to reduce attribute gap to 4 points. [Passive] [Requires: Focus 13, Vivacity 13] [750 XP to improve].
Intended Change: None
Cost Subtotal: 0
-
TOTAL SKILLMEISTER SKILL XP COST: 0
Summary
-
Available XP: 3,456
Cost of Intended Changes: 1,625
Precision Training Discount (5%): 81
Total Adjusted Cost: 1,544
Total Projected Remaining: 1,912
Confirm?: Yes / No
∇
There were other skills I wanted to open, but I couldn’t spend the XP on them, not until I was sure how to fight back Duul’s evil curse.
The second I confirmed my new improvements, a wave of coolness passed through my body. When it was gone, I could still feel a low undercurrent of anger that didn’t belong, but it was lesser now, and its hold on me started slipping away more quickly. I wasn’t sure which attribute had made the difference, or if it was all of them together, but I was grateful for the idea Vix sparked.
“If Duul is experimenting on forest animals, he wants to make the forest more dangerous and travel more difficult,” I said, “which means he wants to give Kāya enough time to work on Meadowdale. We need to hurry. There may still be time to stop her.”
The young twolf yipped by my feet.
“Come on, boy,” I said, bending down to the twolf’s level with the fairyfly in my hand. “We’re not leaving you here alone. You can keep this stoic old girl company while we investigate Meadowdale.”
He whimpered. Even the twolf wasn’t too sure about our little fairyfly.
“Want me to make you stronger?” I asked. “I can skillmeister you.”
The pup just stared at me for a second. He was no more capable of consenting to this than the donkey had been. Then the twolf charged ahead, forcing me to jog to keep up with him.
“It’s dangerous to go alone,” I yelled.
“He’s not running away,” Vix said as she followed us through the trees. “He wants to show us something.”
We ran after the young twolf until he stopped at a perfectly smooth crystal orb sitting on a tuft of grass.
+8
I crouched to pick up the heavy crystal ball when I noticed something shiny a few paces ahead. It was a small locket necklace. Inside was a drawing of a beautiful woman’s face.
“Where did all this stuff come from?” Vix asked, following the twolf further ahead to discover a book lying under a bush.
I was baffled. After that, we found a new item every ten or twenty paces. There was a bronze sword, a metal fork, a small sculpture of a dragon, a roll of parchment, and a wooden chair missing a leg. I felt like some kind of weird scavenger juggling all the random items we had picked up.
It wasn’t until the trees parted and Meadowdale came into view that we realized the source of this stuff. A man was standing at the wooden gates to the village with a massive canvas bag on his back. It bulged with random items, while other things hung from the bag’s sides with rope. He was like a walking yard sale.
“I think you dropped a few things,” I said, setting the wooden chair down first. The twolf pup started barking. Vruff, vruff.
“Thank you, friend!” the man said, taking the items from me and Vix. “I don’t know how that happened, I usually have everything packed up tight. This is really everything?”
I stared back at him. “Yes, friend, it’s everything.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean did you steal anything, I meant how much more is still out there. I’m Carzl.”
Vruff, vruff, grrrrwl.
“Come on, boy,” I said, “cool it. He’s not going to hurt us.” I glanced back at Carzl. “Right?”
“Armed only with a bronze sword that you so kindly retrieved for me? I think not,” he said. “I’m here on business, and I smell the budding of a profitable partnership, my honest friend.”
“Not in Meadowdale you don’t,” Vix said. She gestured toward the dark, quiet village just beyond the front gates. “It’s bad news. You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Even in the best of times,” I said, “I doubt you’d have much of a market for this stuff anyway. We were never rich like the larger cities.”
“You’re a resident, then?” Carzl asked. “Any special insights?”
“Ex-resident,” I said. “And Vix is right. You should
steer clear of this place. The only people who can afford your nicer items are adventurers. And your less nicer items are a little… broken?”
“Oh, well, okay. I guess I can show you,” he said. He picked up the chair with one hand and rubbed his other hand along the wood. In a few moments, a splinter emerged from the chair’s seat, extending downward into the space the missing leg would have occupied until the new piece grew to match the length and shape of the chair’s other three legs. Carzl spun the chair on its new leg, set it upright, and sat in it. “Ta-da!”
“Are you some kind of carpenter?” Vix asked.
“Itemancer,” the man said. “I specialize in fixing broken items. I travel the land, buy up cheap junk, then fix it for profit. I’m a little overloaded at the moment though, so I was hoping to set up a marketplace stall in whatever village this is. The gates are locked though.”
“The village was attacked by the god of war,” I said. “Though what’s going on in there now is anyone’s guess. We’re here to investigate. You know there’s a war on, right?”
“I’ve noticed some rumblings,” he said.
Just then a series of items tumbled from Carzl’s bag and spilled onto the ground behind him. Our pet twolf dived into the pile and dragged an emaciated gi-ant loose. The insect had an apple in its mouth.
“Shoo!” I yelled, poking at the ground with my spear’s handle. The insect started running, the apple still lodged between its greedy mandibles.
Carzl spun around, unable to view the torn bag that still hung from his back. “There’s a gash in the top,” Vix said. “Looks like that gi-ant was rummaging around in there for a while.”
“Bags come and go,” Carzl said, “but I was really looking forward to that apple. Denvillia grows remarkable fruit.”
“You’ve been to Denvillia?” Vix asked. “Recently?”
“I’m fresh from the beastkin lands,” he replied. “A very expensive place to trade.”
“They probably charged you double for everything,” Vix said. “It’s absurd. A lionkin will sell to a lionkin at a fair rate, but raise the price for other types of beastkin by a little. They’ll raise it by a lot for humans and elves though. I doubt you got a fair shake.”
The man’s face lit up, while Vix spoke. He was already onto the next order of “business.” His eyes transfixed on my bottled fairyfly.
“Where did you obtain that marvelous creature?” he asked. “I would buy her from you. I can’t fix her, of course, but I’m sure I could find a ready buyer elsewhere at a small profit.”
“Does she need fixing?” I asked.
“Not yet, no,” he said.
“She’s supposed to be valuable for her tears,” I said, “but she’s not the emotional type. Maybe if you had some onions in your big bag…”
“Oh,” Carzl said, “believe you me. I have other ways of making her cry.”
Vix and I glanced at each other uncomfortably. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked her.
“Yeah,” she said. “That was super awkward.”
“Which means Kāya might be nearby,” I said.
Vix tried the front gates to Meadowdale, but they were locked. She ran a finger over the keyhole, then stepped back to stare at the wall that led from the gates themselves around the entire village.
“The walls aren’t glowing,” Vix said.
“The sky isn’t yellow,” Carzl said. “Oh, I know, the ground is not quaking with lust!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I thought we were playing things-that-are-not,” he replied.
“Oh,” I said. “We aren’t playing things-that-are-not.” Vix just shook her head as a grin crept up my face.
“Wait,” the man said. “If we’re playing things-that-are-not, then your last turn means that we aren’t playing things-that-are-not …”
“Chew on that,” I said.
Carzl paused for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. “I’ve worked it out,” he said. “We’re not playing, are we?”
“No,” I said.
“Then why announce that the walls aren’t glowing?” he asked. “Walls don’t glow.”
“They do when there’s a bastion stone at work,” Vix said. “If Kāya has one, she hasn’t gotten it up and running yet. We might still stop her.”
“We might even claim that stone for ourselves,” I said. “Think how safe Nola would be then.”
The gi-ant we had fended off earlier had snuck back toward us while we weren’t watching. None of us noticed it until Carzl noticed it in a big way. The bug bit him in the leg.
He shook the creature off of him and pointed his bronze sword at the monster’s face. “No more apples for you, fiend!”
I grabbed Carzl’s arm to stop him from stabbing the scrawny gi-ant. Something else was approaching us, something tall, and six-legged, and menacing.
“I wouldn’t hurt him,” the creature said with a lilting, feminine voice. “Unless of course, you’d like to die.”
+9
“Who are you?” I asked. The woman before me had a beautifully angular face. Her chin came to a sharp point, her eyes were large and dark. She looked delicate, like she was sculpted from porcelain.
Porcelain that sat in a rusty outhouse for the last month. Her “skin” was the color of burnt sienna, with darker streaks in haphazard directions. She had two long, thin legs and four equally thin arms. Her body was rippled with rings of hard shell. Her most noticeable feature, however, was her rear end. It was half the size of her body, and bulbous.
“I am the gi-ant queen, Ess,” she said. Her antennae twitched on top of her head. I marveled at how such a pretty face could attach to such a hideous body. She was the opposite of a butterface. She was a facerbutt.
“Tell your buddy here to stop gnawing on Carzl,” I said. “It’s rude.”
“Everything outside your pitiful walls is the wild, human,” she said. “Welcome to my domain. Eat or be eaten!”
“So you’re saying I should eat you?” I asked. “That’s hardly a workable battle cry.”
“No,” she said, “I just mean, if we don’t eat you, we’ll be eaten.”
“That wasn’t clear,” I said, “but what is clear is that your days of eating humans are over. Your children even tried to eat the goddess Nola a few weeks back!”
“And what a rich meal she would have made,” Ess said, “had you not intervened. Then you enslaved two of my children and have the gall to stand on moral high ground?”
“They work for Cindra,” I said. “She’s a negotiatrix, not a slaver. She enlisted the support of two gi-ants, but she treats them well and they want for nothing. They stay because they choose to.”
Ess didn’t seem to like that. “They want to come home to their mother.” She folded her arms. “You feed them?”
“They eat,” I said, “without stealing apples or calf muscles from wandering merchants. But the real question is, how do you know about the gi-ants working our mine?”
“You are noisy. Your vibrations carry through the ground,” she said. “It’s how we’ve tracked you today ever since you left that glorious hill.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I had thought those twolves might leave your bloody carcasses for my children to feast on,” she said, “but they died too soon. We are hungry, humans. The plants we usually dine on have been poisoned by something dark within the land.”
“So Duul is experimenting on more than just animals,” I said. “He’s going to squeeze us on every front. Cutting off food supplies and travel, and luring in powerful allies like Kāya to keep us distracted while he takes over the world city by city.
“Help us defeat Duul,” I said. “We can stop the dark magic that pollutes the ground.”
“I’m to trust you?” she asked. “You are no friend to insect-kind.” She pointed one of her segmented arms toward the bottle I carried under my arm.
“Would you rather take custody of her yourself?”
I asked. “What then?”
“I have no love for those stupid pests,” she said.
“Then help us,” I said. “Help us tunnel into the city and capture a powerful energem before it’s too late.”
“Too late is a matter of perspective,” she said. “I have no time for misadventure. My children are hungry now. We’ll make a meal of you this moment, before our too late arrives.”
Ess wriggled her body and the ground began to rumble. Five gi-ants dug their way to the surface, brushing aside the dirt and grass like it was nothing. They snapped their jaws at us but stood in place, as if waiting for their queen to give further instructions.
I raised my spear and stepped forward, shielding Carzl and Vix from what might turn into a bloodbath. I had fought gi-ants before, but never a queen.
“Uww,” Ess said. I tensed my grip on Razortooth’s handle. I couldn’t know what terrible instruction she was delivering to her gi-ant children, but I wouldn’t become ant food without a fight.
“UWW!” she said again. Her four hands reached for the narrow waist that led to her oversized abdomen.
As Ess moaned, her children remained still. Then something squeezed out of her rear. It was white, and glistening with moisture. Her face lost none of its delicate beauty as her body strained with effort.
Finally, out it plopped. An egg.
“Retrieve your new brother,” Ess said, and one of the gi-ants darted toward her, scooped up the egg, and burrowed back into the earth with it. Then their queen continued to lay another one. “Uwww!”