by L. R. Wolf
Congratulations Dreamer! Your Companion has created the Seeking Vines! This spell will summon vines that seek out nearby loot markers in order to deliver them to the caster. This is a channeled spell, as such mana will be continually drained from the caster. Any spell created by a companion will automatically be learned by the Dreamer through the connection they share. 5% mana cost, channeled 1% mana per tick) Duration-2 mins (base)
Congratulations Dreamer! Your Companion has created the Tidy Vines spell! Tidy Vines are a variation of the Seeking Vines spell! These vines, once summoned, will clean the immediate vicinity of anything deemed trash, depositing it within the nearest trash receptacle. Any spell created by a Companion will automatically be learned by the Dreamer through the connection they share. 5% mana cost. Duration-2 mins (base)
Congratulations Dreamer! Your Companion has created the Resupply Vines Spell! Resupply Vines are a variation of the Seeking Vines spell! These vines will keep your friends resupplied with potions and other items they might require. Any spell created by a Companion will automatically be learned by the Dreamer through the connection they share. Duration-2 mins (base)
Congratulations Dreamer! Your Companion has created the Lesser Vine Creature spell! This is a variation of the Seeking Vine spell! This spell will summon forth a Lesser Vine Creature who will perform the function of any vine spell known by the caster. Currently this Creature can entangle enemies, fetch loot, resupply those who are in need and keep the area around the caster looking clean and untouched! Any spell created by a Companion will automatically be learned by the Dreamer through the connection they share. 30% mana. Duration-Indefinite as long as the creature is within 20 feet (base) of caster.
Congratulations Dreamer! You have earned the Creator of Earth accolade! Through experimentation with spells and their formations, you have created a spell within the school of Earth! The effectiveness and range of your Earth Spells will be increased based on the amount of Earth Spells you create by 5% per spell up to a maximum of 50%. Current Bonus=20%
Congratulations Dreamer! You have earned the Creator of Water accolade! Through experimentation with spells and their formations, you have created a spell within the school of Water! The effectiveness and range of your Water Spells will be increased based on the amount of Water Spells you create by 5% per spell up to a maximum of 50%. Current Bonus=5%
Congratulations Dreamer! You have earned the Creator of Air accolade! Through experimentation with spells and their formations, you have created a spell within the school of Air! The effectiveness and range of your Air Spells will be increased based on the amount of Air Spells you create by 5% per spell up to a maximum of 50%. Current Bonus=5%
Congratulations Dreamer! You have earned the Combo Accolade! Through experimentation you have learned how to perform at least one powerful spell combination! The effectiveness of the spells within the Combo’s will be increased by 5% based on the amount of spells within the combo. (IE Lightning + Water=10% more damage for BOTH spells as well as the combo damage bonus)
Congratulations Dreamer! You have earned the Master Becomes the Student Accolade. You have been granted the honor of learning spells from your Companion!
Congratulations Dreamer! You have earned the Student Becomes the Master Accolade. You have created spells and taught them to your Companion! Your bond with your Companion has increased! The range of your Companion aura has been increased by 5 feet, the effectiveness of stats is now x1.5 of the Dreamers Stats.
Aya opened her status page, since it had been awhile since she’d actually looked at it.
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Name: AyaRace: HumanCurrent Skill Level-52 (Fire *Level Locked)
HP 700
Mana 3600
Stamina 720
Stats:Intelligence- 360 (182 from equipment)
Strength-11
Agility-27
Dexterity-14
Endurance-72
Constitution-70
Willpower-120
Charisma-12
Luck-7
[Armor Class (AC)]-61 (from armor)
[Spellpower]- 3510
[Melee Attack Power] -110
[Ranged Attack Power]- 50
Bonus Fire Attack Power-224
[Mana Regeneration]-1200/min
[Dodge]-270
[Resists]-Fire Resist 440 (220 doubled due to set bonus)
[Tradeskills]-None
[Adventuring Skills]-Perception,
[Harvesting Skills]-Herbalism (18),
[Combat Skills]-Fire Magic 52 (Locked), Water Magic 10, Air Magic 13, Earth Magic 15, Healing Magic 7
[Accolades]-Selfless, Friend and Companion, Generous, Marked by Shadow, Nemesis: Undead Slayer 2, Creator of Fire, Creator of Earth, Creator of Water, Creator of Air, Combo, Master Becomes the Student, Student Becomes the Master
[Titles]-None
[Companions]-Elohwa (Shadow Elf)
[Mounts]-None
[Pets]-None
[Creatures]-Lesser Vine Creature (Created by Elohwa)
[Bonuses]- +5 Will, +20 HP, Companion Aura Range 15 feet, 10% Coin Loot, 3% dmg vs Undead, 2% less dmg received vs undead, 10% increased quality and loot on undead, 15% Effect and range of Fire spells, 20% effect and range of Earth spells, 5% Effect and range of Water spells, 6% effect and range of Air spells.
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Congratulations Dreamer! You have discovered a Significant Point of Interest: The Dead Fields! Significant Points of Interest are areas of great historical importance in the world of Infinity.
Congratulations Dreamer! You have discovered a Significant Point of Interest: The Forests of Eventide.
Congratulations Dreamer! You have discovered a Significant Point of Interest: The City of Eventide Falls-Home of the Shadow Elves
Congratulations Dreamer! You have discovered an ancient city ruin. If you find the heart of the city you will be able to claim it as your own and rebuild it how you see fit!
Congratulations Dreamer! You have been offered the Unique quest-The Fallen City of Eventide Falls part I. Eventide Falls was once the heart of the Shadow Elven Empire. This once great Empire was nearly completely wiped out by a mysterious plague. Find the Heart of Eventide somewhere within the city, claim it and rebuild this city! Reward: Eventide Falls
Aya choked on the bite of peach she had been eating when she read the last two notifications, the bite getting stuck in her throat causing her to start coughing in an attempt to dislodge it. A swift and hard hand to the back caused the bite of peach to fly out of her mouth. A water skin appeared in front of her. Still coughing, she grabbed the water skin and drank heavily from it, the cold water soothing her throat where the peach had been lodged. She turned her head to find Elohwa standing there. Aya had been so engrossed in the notifications that she hadn’t seen her approach. “Thanks.” She took another gulp of water before capping it and handing it back to Elohwa.
“Did something happen at home?” Elohwa looked concerned knowing that Aya had been talking to her family.
“I...I think I can claim the city! I could rebuild it!” Aya looked and sounded excited. Plots of land such as this could go for hundreds of thousands of real dollars, but Aya knew at this point there’s no way she would sell it. She wanted to rebuild this city, not only for herself and her family when they were able to come, but for Elohwa and her people.
“Claim the city?” Elohwa echoed, not wanting to believe there was a chance to reclaim and rebuild the ancestral home of her people. “How?” Hope crept into Elohwa’s voice, her violet eyes shimmering briefly.
Aya shared the quest with Elohwa, both of them reading it and rereading it just to make sure that Aya had understood it correctly.
“The Heart of the City?” Elohwa whispered to herself. She had heard vague whispers about the Heart, its location a closely guarded secret, only those within the royal family were pr
ivy to its location, but she had never been interested in knowing the location, until now. She bit her lip in thought. “We need to find my parents, or rather,” She choked back tears, “their ghosts.”
“Ghosts? We are not ghosts, child.” Srev had once again appeared when he had heard Aya struggling to breathe and had remained behind them at the mention of claiming the city. Elohwa and Aya looked at one another at the statement. Srev motioned for them to take a seat before he knelt in front of them a few inches off the ground.
“What are you, if not ghosts?” Aya had examined them when they had arrived, but all the examination had told her was their name and profession. She had just assumed they were the ghosts of those who had lived here.
“Ghosts are the spirits of those who have died. Pure Spirits, such is what we are,” Srev extended his arm out and indicated a group of Spirits that had wandered closer to listen, “are still alive, or rather our bodies are still living.” Elohwa stood quickly in surprise as Aya blinked in confusion. “Our bodies were encased in crystal within the deepest bowels of the mountain. It was the only way to save our people.”
The Shadow Elves had been one of the most powerful races in the world of Marod, for something to have destroyed their capital city and enchant all Shadow Elves into crystal, must have been something beyond reckoning.
“So you are alive?!” Elohwa felt elated at the possibility that her people might actually still be alive. For the longest time she believed she was among very few Shadow Elves left in the world, if not the last.
Srev tilted his ethereal head to the side, “In a sense. We have been in these Spirit forms for so long, we do not really know what would happen if we are released from our crystalline prisons.”
“What happened to Prince Tharas and his guards? Why are they undead instead of being here with his people?” Aya and Elohwa had both been curious about this, but it was Aya who voiced the question first.
Srev sighed heavily and made to pinch the bridge of his non existent nose. “When our people started to fall ill, the royal family did everything within their power to save their people, to save OUR people, but to no avail. One by one, our people fell to the sickness. In the last days, Prince Tharas became desperate. He and his guards struck out to make a deal with a powerful mage that was said to reside in the mountains on the ridge. During the time that Prince Tharas was on his quest, our people congregated within the mountain believing this to be their final days. The prince eventually found the Magician Nagon. Nagon offered to save the night elves, in exchange for the service of the Prince and his bodyguards. Prince Tharas accepted the pact, but rather than save our people from the illness, Nagon trapped our bodies in prisons of crystal. Our spirits were ejected from our bodies. Tharas and his personal guard, though their intent was noble, doomed us to this fate. We bore witness to our great city falling down around us. No longer to taste the delicacies of food, to enjoy the scents of the woods, to feel the gentle rain on our faces or the scent of the flowers. No longer could we touch our loved ones or hold our children.” He paused a moment as both women sobbed quietly into their hands. “Though I suppose, Prince Tharas and his guards suffered a much worse fate when Nagon trapped their pure spirits within his horrific creations, binding them to him forever, never to be able to return here. Though there are those who still hold onto anger towards Prince Tharas for this fate, many of us are just too tired of this life, or unlife, whatever this is, to really care anymore. We just want to be with our families once again, whether it is in this life or the next.”
A quest popped up in the women’s vision.
Congratulations Dreamer! You have been offered the Unique quest-The Fallen City of Eventide Falls part II. Eventide Falls was once the heart of the Shadow Elven Empire. The Shadow Elves within this city lay trapped within Crystal Prisons, their Spirits free from their bodies. They wish for the curse to be broken so that they may rejoin their loved ones, whether that be in this life or the next. Reward ???
Aya hadn’t even finished reading the quest before she accepted the quest. Aya’s heart ached for these people as they were experiencing something incredibly similar to what she was going through, only they had endured this pain for centuries.
“Now, you two should finish your meals and get some rest. When you wake, we can talk some more.” Srev rose to his feet and bowed at the women before he faded back into the shadows of a nearby house. The sun had risen, chasing away the shadows of the city. Both women hadn’t truly realized how exhausted they were. They finished the rations that had been warming on the fire and settled onto their bed rolls. As Aya laid down once again she almost instantly fell asleep, her last thought was wondering about whether it was possible to dream if you were already in the Dreamscape before sleep overtook her.
Chapter 18: Seeking the Heart
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Aya woke a few hours later. She blinked her eyes a few times as she stared up at the cloth of the tent. She sat up slowly, stretching her muscles out when she realized she was incredibly relaxed and felt refreshed. She looked down at the bedroll and patted it gently. “Worked exactly as advertised. I need one of you for the real world.” She knew it was programmed to work like that, but still, that was possibly the best sleep she’d had in a very long time. She quickly checked the real world time that she had placed under the in-game time marker in her interface. Whereas it was just after noon here, it was almost midnight in the real world. Aya reached into her satchel and withdrew another ration, pulling out the meat and placing it on the grill over the still burning magical fire. She could see the light from a few spirits who had withdrawn to the shadows of ruined buildings. Aya looked over to see that Elohwa was up and had already broken down her tent and removed her bedroll.
“Srev?” Aya called out to the nearby shadows where she knew the spirit was lingering. A small mote of light drifted towards her sticking to the shadows as sunlight would diminish the spirit’s strength.
“How can I assist you, Lady Aya?” Srev’s voice seemed weaker now that he was in his wisp form.
“Where’s Elohwa?” Aya had briefly scanned the area and hadn’t seen her Companion in the immediate vicinity, though she had a sneaking suspicion she knew where to find her.
“I believe she is meditating in the temple.” Srev floated towards the entrance to the temple disappearing inside briefly before floating out gently bobbing up and down as if to nod.
Aya decided to give Elohwa some time to herself. She thought back to the previous night to the battles in the Dead Fields and how close she had come to losing her Companion. She quickly opened a message to Brackerd.
Private Message to Brackerd- “So, can Companion’s actually die here?”
Within seconds Aya received a response back from her caseworker.
Private Message to Aya- “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”
Before Aya could lay into him, he clarified his position.
Private Message to Aya- “I would love to be able to tell you some things, but I literally can’t tell you. Certain things like that, spoilers really, are blocked and can’t be talked about by staff until it’s discovered. I hope you understand, even if I could tell you, it would be unintelligible gibberish.”
Aya felt a flash of anger. Who the hell would program in Companions as in depth as Elohwa with the intent of letting them die? What good was a Companion you could send out for materials and other things if they could perish?
Private Message to Brackerd- “WTF kind of BS is that? I mean, what kind of sadistic bastards would program a Companion that could die?!”
Private Message to Aya- “I understand your anger, trust me. I agree with you, but again, I can’t say anything one way or the other.
Private Message to Brackerd- “Grrrr thanks anyhow. I’ll try to keep her out of trouble then.”
Aya seethed a bit. She doubted that a company would go so far as to allow them to die, but she really didn’t want to find out the hard way that they could die permanently. Now sh
e would have to try and keep Elohwa as safe as possible.
Private Message to Brackerd- “Also, what is this level lock stuff?”
Aya had noticed on her last mass of messages that she was level locked with her fire skill. The message she had gotten said it was only temporary, but she wasn’t sure what she had done to trigger it, though she assumed it had something to do with her current condition.
Private Message to Aya- “Ah, yes. I should have warned you. Since Infinity is technically down right now we had to do something to keep you from being immensely overpowered, so a lock was placed on your account to cap your skills. Once the world comes back up and other Dreamers are able to obtain the same levels then the lock will disable.”
Aya grumbled a bit more. To distract herself from those thoughts, she went about rolling up her bedroll and then breaking her tent down, but before she replaced it back within her bag she decided to do part of one of her quests. She took the next fifteen minutes to raise and breakdown the tent another four times in order to finish off the tent part of the task. To the side of her vision she could see the quest finally complete.
How to survive Infinity updated! Set up a Tent 5 of 5 (Complete)
With that done, she opened up the quests relating to the city again attempting to glean some kind of extra information from them that she might have missed. “Heart of the City...heart of the city…” She wondered if they meant it literally or figuratively. Most cities had an area that people considered the heart of the city, usually it was in the middle of the city or the heart. Maybe it was some kind of item though? She had played so many different games through the years she couldn’t be sure what it could possibly mean.
While she was thinking about the various possible permutations of city hearts she noticed that there was a flashing mail icon at the top. This particular icon was linked to her real email so that any email she got in the real world would be redirected here. She had been so distracted by everything that had happened that she’d pretty much ignored anything that didn’t involve her family. With a sigh, she opened the email and was immediately bombarded with messages from her BAD guildmates. The first few were about being in game and congratulations on finding Infinity’s first Companion. Then came the emails and video messages sending condolences, well wishes, anything we can do for you or your family and of course the obligatory how the hell did you manage to put yourself in a coma type of email. With another heavier sigh she pulled up the guild forums. She saw the post that her husband had posted as well as a vast number of replies there. Rather than dig through them all she just started a new topic.