Ethria- the Pioneer

by Aaron Holloway

  The closest I got to this, was tiny damage tags that appeared above people's heads. I had found that far too distracting, so after a few failed attempts at sparring with Tol’geth with that on, I promptly shut it down.

  “Point is” Ailsa continued. “It's all the same information, just experienced differently by each person,” Tol’geth grunted in agreement.

  “So, no symbol for me?” Tol’geth and Ailsa let out exasperated sighs.

  ---

  Later, downstairs, after giving Ailsa and Tol’geth the chance to examine the sigils, signs, and runes that made up the spell on the mutilated woman's body, we first met briefly with Commander Traser and his uncle the City Lord. Tegans uncle hailed us as we were passing by. We stopped for a few minutes at his behest. After answering a few simple questions that I got the feeling where meant more to confirm what the City Lord had been told by his nephew than to glean any new insight into the threat, we left the pair of nobles to their discussions and went to find Salina and the elves.

  Salina was laying on a matt resting when we found her and the two squads of rangers that had either accompanied her here from the building site, or she had met up with after they had arrived. One of their numbers was missing, hopefully out on some mission rather than lost in the fighting. Li’anin was there though, and she seemed to have taken charge of all of the other elves.

  “You can speak with her, but briefly, she needs her rest,” Li’anin informed me as my group and I approached. “That spell nearly broke her.” She whispered quietly. “When the doorway you described to me earlier was opened she screamed, and collapsed.”

  “We heard it all the way up there, in the middle of the fighting,” I said grimacing in sympathy. “We just need to get a message to some of the other elves, get some help here if possible.”

  “Are you afraid of another attack?” Li’anin said gripping the hilt of one of her sheathed daggers a little more tightly, eyes darting around for unseen enemies.

  “Not immediately” I soothed. “But possibly in the next day or so. I would prefer to go on the offensive if possible. Take the initiative away from the necromancer before she can do something far worse with the material she has just lying around.” I gestured to the dead that still littered the courtyard outside.

  The dead, both human and goblin, were being slowly removed by fishermen worker crews. The bodies where being piled and set alight to prevent them from being used by the enemy. It was something that the manor lord had ordered after his nephew had spoken with him after the incident with the mirror, and my subsequent explanation of the nature of the threat we faced.

  Li’anin nodded solemnly. “ Alright, just a moment. Let me wake her.” Li’anin knelt down and gently shook Salina awake. Salina had dark circles under both eyes, she had lost most of her sunny white complexion and now looked almost gaunt and ghostly pale. She twitched at random times, her head moving slightly in her sleep. “Salina, you must awake, the wizard needs your assistance with something. It will only take a moment.”

  The Ambassador's eyes fluttered open and eventually landed on me. “Ah” she whispered, her voice was cracked and horse. Li’anin put a water skin to her lips and Salina gratefully sipped. When she was done, Salinas words came out clearer, though still weak. “Thank you Li’anin. Wizard Rayid, what do you need? I will not be of much help I fear.” She smiled weakly at me as I knelt down next to her matt.

  “Can you send a message to Lisander and the others? They need to send reinforcements here, and we need a member of the council to coordinate with the Laketown folk. No offense Salina, but I don’t believe you’re in any shape to do that job just now.” I suggested grimacing.

  Salina nodded, tried to pull down her covers, failed, and looked over at Li’anin for help. “I have need of my hand at present.” The elf ranger gently reached over and pulled down the covers enough that Salina could raise a pale, weak hand. Salina summoned a tiny fraction of her mana, and cast a simple spell that took little effort. I felt my ears pop as the air pressure changed slightly in the room “There, it is done. One will come when they can.”

  We left Salina in Li’anin’s capable hands to rest and recuperate and went in search of our own quiet place. I had just the tavern in mind.

  ----

  I woke up and it was still dark outside, but the stars and several of Ethria’s smaller moons were out, casting silvery light on the sleeping town. Guards and militia members patrolled the streets, quietly reassuring the town's inhabitants that all was well, and the enemy had not returned.

  At times their metal and heavy leather boots were joined by the soft chittering of goblin workers who had surrendered and been forced into labor to repair the damage they had done. The lord of Laketown wasn’t a cruel man, and once he understood that these creatures had been stirred up by a hidden necromancer in the region, as explained by his nephew, he allowed the creatures to live on two conditions. That they not cause more trouble, and that they work until the town was better than when they had arrived. To be determined by him of course.

  I looked at my two companions, they were both still sleeping. Tol’geth propped up against the small door into the tavern we and a few others whose homes had been destroyed in the attack were using as temporary sleeping quarters. The owner of the tavern had been kind enough to open it up to us, and much to my surprise at least, it was the same tavern that we had used to plot our plan for the counter-attack.

  The people all around me slept, children nestled between parents, or adults who had taken them in if their parents had been killed in the fighting, old fishermen and their wives holding one another's hands as they slept, and young couples who quietly comforted each other whenever the other would startle awake from nightmares that were plaguing many. I pulled up the literally hundreds of prompts I still had left to deal with. First, where the combat prompts, the only one of any real interest was the one I had earned a spell from. I minimized it and pulled up the two spell entries on my Spell List.

  Force Shield

  School/Type

  Cost

  Casting Time / Duration

  Cool Down

  Type: Force

  30-1,000 mana cost initially, 30 mana / second maintinence

  5 seconds / infinite with mana

  1 min

  Effects:

  Creates a hand-held shield out of mana that grants an armor bonus equal to your Force Magic Skill Score, and alacrity with this spell. Currently, this spell will create a shield as hard as Bronze, with nearly all of its characteristics.

  Fire Trap 1

  School/Type

  Cost

  Casting Time / Durration

  Cool Down

  Type: Fire,

  500 Mana

  1 min / Indefefinite

  5 min

  Effect

  A derivative of the Fireball spell, this spell creates a thin triangular mana construct that will stick to any surface it is affixed to on one side, while the two other once activated by either the casters will or whatever mechanism the caster sets during the casting of the spell, will spew forth fire dealing 1d10 + fire magic skill level damage per second. This will last for 10+fire magic skill level, seconds. Trap does damage objects it is affixed to that are not some form of stone, for 1/2 fire magic skill level durability damage per second.

  Next I reviewed the prompts regarding the foes I had slain. Since the beginning of yesterday, I had not stopped to clear them all out. It took me nearly twenty minutes to check each over and to receive the experience I had gained. I found that I had to actually recognize the prompts in order to get the experience points. I guess if experience is a reward from Ethria itself, that might make sense. You have to open a gift in order to be able to use it. In total I had earned a grand total of 5329 XP. I would whistle, but I might wake people up.

  I leveled up twice, bringing me up to level 9! And I wasn’t very far off from level 10 either. To reach it my counter said I needed 5120 total experience, I currently had 1
493 leftover from leveling up twice, and I had 6 free characteristic points to spend. I did a jig, that bumped Ailsa, and made her groan and roll over, so I stopped, opting instead for throwing my hands up in the air in the darkroom.

  After I was done celebrating, I got back to clearing out my prompts. The next set was more than mildly disturbing. While I was now very much aware of the fact that the overuse of a type of magic could influence my emotional and mental state, the fact that I didn’t know that I had begun to be affected by it because I had auto-minimized the prompts during battle disturbed me.

  I’m going to have to sit down after this and really learn that trick Ailsa keeps trying to teach me. How to allow information to just enter my mind without the need for reading each prompt separately. She had mentioned it and even had tried to teach it to me a time or two in the past. While I had given it little thought until now, it seemed like a very powerful skill. A nearly essential one if I'm going to have to keep going into battle like this.

  Most of the prompts that I found my settings had auto-minimized concerning my mental state where successes, but enough had been close fails to be a problem. If the mechanics of it worked the way I thought they worked, those close fails had been close enough together to cause me real trouble.

  The entire thing seemed like a proportional sliding scale rather than an all or nothing. If you failed small on your emotional stability check? Well, your emotional and mental state where only mildly affected, and where often just an amplification of otherwise healthy and natural responses to events. If you passed spectacularly though, it didn’t seem like there was much benefit to it other then not getting your marbles knocked around upstairs.

  Reading through them it seemed like in most cases, the saves were based on your emotional stability, the immaterial characteristic, though sometimes they relied on intelligence or even luck in a couple of cases. I had originally thought that Emotional Stability was little more than a reskinned term for what old RPG’s use to call Wisdom, but it seemed to be a lot more than that. When I reviewed the definition, I found that it now read slightly different then it had before.

  “Emotional Stability: A person's ability to withstand hardship and maintain a stable, healthy emotional state. Additionally, aids in the protection of your emotional state and state of mind from the effects of magic.”

  I guess that definitions and information in my character sheet reflect a basic understanding and that as I gain more knowledge about myself and Ethria, their definitions will subtly change. Just like how my access to different parts of my character sheet has changed dramatically since I’ve gotten here, I thought.

  The magic that generates the character sheets works at least in some ways like an AI assistant from Earth. It adjusts itself over time based on what its assigned user likes or dislikes. What they find useful and not, and it only displays information that you provide it.

  I looked back at my Characteristics Sheet again, I still had 6 points to spend. With the amount of magic I was throwing around I invested 2 points into emotional stability, knowing it would help me concentrate in battle, stay cool under fire, and keep me sane, while I flung spells like a sprinkler system did water in July. That brought my total score there to 23. I looked my sheet over in total, and realized while I was well stacked in most areas, and now my HP was at 108, I still was sorely lacking in the physicality department.

  I invested one point into constitution, one into strength, and another into dexterity. That should help me overall, I thought satisfied. But I still had one point left to spend. Nothing I had was under 11 now, nothing was giving me a negative modifier which for a generally min-maxed build was pretty good, except I realized, I had kind of abandoned the min-maxing strategy. Yeah sure, I was still very heavily invested in Immaterial Characteristics in general, but it wasn’t technically min-maxing. Eh, whatever the heck I call it, I still have a decent build so far.

  I decided to put the last stat point into Intelligence, which brought that score up to 23, even with my Emotional Stability score. It didn’t actually increase my intelligence, but it did increase my capacity for taking in information and understanding it. Basically, it increased my potential intelligence growth rate by making things easier.

  I also received a few skill bumps, primarily two points in Force Magic, a point in Light Magic, a single point in Mana Manipulation, and three points in Shield: Light. That last skill was listed just under Use Weapon: Sword, which I had also gained a skill point in, though sadly I had lost Sparks in the cleanup. I had told one of the Stewards of the Manor, and he had promised to notify his lord and the people sifting through the rubble. The spindly man had said, “Perhaps we’ll have found it by morning.” I wasn’t very hopeful. Besides, I still had my staff.

  The thing had seen better days, like, two days ago to be exact. But, it was still intact. A few scorch marks, a few black flecks of burnt crystal that floated in the center of the amber yellow storage crystal at its head, things like that. I rubbed at the crystal to remove flecks of hobgoblin brain matter here and there, and it seemed to polish up well enough, though it just seemed, stressed, by the amount of energy I had been pumping through it. When Lisander gets here, I'll have to ask her to take a look at it.

  The sun had begun to rise, the stars hid their faces just minutes ago, and the moons seemed dim companions for the yellow star that bathed Ethria in its warmth. I would have let everyone sleep a little longer, even knowing we were strictly pressed for time needing to find the necromancers hideout, but just then a cryer walked through the streets ringing a loud bell and shouting “Attend all! Attend all! Come to the dock district and public square! Attend all! Attend all! Lord Traser seeks to reward the heroes of the Battle of Laketown!”

  “What fish brained whore monger is ringing that damned bell!” shouted one man from the other side of the taverns main room.

  “What? What's going on?” Another woman asked her husband who could only shrug in response.

  “Lord Traser,” an older man said derisively “Wants us all to show up, so he can prance about like he single handedly slew every goblin is now ash.” This elicited a chorus of grumbling and shouts and threats on the cryers life.

  When the bell ringer finally got to our windows, saw they were open and there were people inside, he thrust his arm in and rang the bell with special fervor. “ATTEND ALL! ATTEND A-ah!” the man's order turned into a shout of consternation as a chair cushion was thrown across the room, through the window and smacked him in the face.

  “Nice throw,” Ailsa said, she stretched to the sky and set her wings to buzzing like the stuttering start of a chainsaw, though not nearly as loud. The man walked away, ringing his bell, the only thing wounded being his pride.

  “Alright, time to go,” I said, getting to my feet. Tol’geth, who had been glaring at the bell ringer hatefully the entire time, turned and followed me out the door he had been guarding.

  ---

  The same Steward from the day before who had promised to do his best to find Sparks, intercepted us as we walked among bleary-eyed and exhausted people. “Lord Traser wanted to extend a personal invitation to attend him.” We followed the man to an improvised stage near to where we came through the portal.

  The scarecrow thin Steward showed us to a small area behind the hastily constructed stage, where he asked us to “wait for his lordship's arrival.” We waited for about ten minutes before I started to get fidgety.

  “We have stuff to do,” I whispered through gritted teeth as I watched the crowd grow larger, and change from mildly annoyed bleary-eyed townsfolk to annoyed townsfolk, and finally into angry townsfolk. I was about to walk away to find something useful to do, like check-in on Salina, or try to find a detailed map of the area around Laketown so we could begin searching for the Necromancer's lair.

  I took my first step to do just that when I heard the clopping of hooves on cobblestone and saw the fishermen make way for their lord on his beautiful white horse wearing his immaculately
clean armor. I was about to start an angry chant, and I had time to think of a few particularly good ones about tardy knights, and lazy lords. Quick tip, don’t piss a wizard off in the morning, especially one who is a morning person with a list as long as his arm of things he needed to see done. When I saw that he wasn’t alone, I relented on the idea.

  Behind him, on beautiful grey mares, and brown rouncies that were each about a hand span shorter than Lord Traser’s warhorse came a procession of elves. Salina at their head, looking better, but still sporting deep shadows around her eyes. Lisander, Li’anin, Terr’a’min, and Sed’min’el all followed closely behind as Salina draw her grey mare up in front of us.

  “You are looking much better Salina,” Tol’geth said with a remarkably gracious bow for someone who would have fit right in amongst pillaging viking raiders. Salina gave the large man a genuine smile, handed him her rains and began dismounting her horse. When Tol’geth saw what she had planned, he reached up and plucked her from her saddle, and put her down as if she weighed no more than a feather.

  “Woh!” Salina let out a surprisingly girlish giggle as her feet touched the earth. The other elves and lords in the procession did follow suit but without Tol’geths aid. Salina turned to her once guard “you know, you are no longer in my direct service protector. You need not see to my care, more than you would others.” She smiled at him so as to take any bite out of the rebuke.

  “Yes, well. There are those you serve out of duty, and those you serve because they have earned your loyalty.” Tol’geth said as he took back up his position behind me. I don’t know why, but he had decided that that was his place to stand whenever there was standing to be done.

  Ailsa stretched her back arms raised above her head and yawned, before shooting up into the air and began lazily looping in circles around all of us to the delight and entertainment of the crowd. “You should really pay her, these people were about to tar and feather your cryer there for waking them up to just stand here and wait for you,” I said looking at Lord Traser. “As it so happens, given the time I came up with a few good chants I was just about to teach the crowd before you showed up.” The man's eyes bulged with indignation before they filled with recognition.