by Dante King
I extended my hand. In it, there appeared a short, curved, minimalist blade which I knew instinctively was called a Tanto. Unlike the swords I was used to seeing in Saxe, this blade had no wrist guard, and it was only about as long as my forearm from end to end. It was a stealth weapon, a fast weapon. The battle weapon of the assassin.
I charged the Tengu, and as I did so I used my left hand to fling two more handfuls of the throwing stars into the heaving mass of enemies. They cut a bloody swath through the packed Tengu, who retreated a little way. I leaped into the gap and set about with the Tanto.
Behind me, I heard smashing and bellowing as the troll tried to free himself from the shrine building. A quick slash to left and right dropped one Tengu and then another to the ground. The blade was incredibly sharp, and it sheared through the flesh of my enemies with barely any effort.
I moved to the left, shouldering the dying Tengu into his fellows, where he fell and got entangled in his comrades’ feet. A glance to my right showed me Cara spinning like a dervish with a blade in each hand. The Tengu were falling like leaves around her. One of them charged me with a great big two-handed hammer raised up above his head. He brought it down to smash me, and again that sense of being guided by the Persona moved me to lift my left hand and then bring it down again sharply toward my belly in a stylized motion. The world shifted.
It was as if I had ceased to exist in one place, and had reappeared in another, five feet to the left of where I had just been. Where I had been standing a moment before, there was a cloud of white mist, humanoid for a moment, but insubstantial as smoke. The Tengu’s hammer stroke smashed through the cloud of mist and thudded into the ground. As the Tengu tried to pull the hammer out of the ground, I leapt at him and cut his throat with a sidestroke of my Tanto blade.
I charged forward, swinging again and again, back and forth with my blade, parrying and dodging blows. I found to my delight that I could move with lightning quickness; it almost seemed as if they couldn't see me, as if I moved too quickly for their eyes. Time and time again I used the remarkable ability to shift myself through space. I would lunge to the right, shift, and appear five feet away, behind the enemies who had been about to attack me.
I had no compunction about attacking them from behind. Back in Saxe a warrior was expected to face his enemy head on. It was not just the fact that these were not honorable men, but some kind of nasty woodland monster; it was also the fact that the stealthy assassin Persona gave me permission to use fighting techniques which otherwise I would have thought were too dishonorable to use.
Cara and I had fought off fully half of the horde of Tengu when the troll finally managed to get free from his entanglement in the shrine building. He didn't exactly free himself; rather, he stopped trying to pull himself loose and instead just hauled the whole remainder of the building’s frame up off the ground. The wooden timbers were smoldering, and floorboards and bits of tiling dangled and fell from him as he rose up with the wrecked building around his neck. He seemed half blinded, and was covered in terrible burns. The whole wooden framing of what had once been the fox spirit’s shrine hung around his neck like some bizarre battle harness.
I almost laughed at the sight, but that was when the Festering began to take hold. The Tengu were fleeing, screeching and backing away from Cara’s fierce face and bloody blades as she and I stood together surrounded by a mound of the enemy dead.
Without warning, the troll transformed. He had been ugly enough to begin with, but now he sprouted tentacles from around his head and shoulders. Spikes burst through the skin of his arms, back, and shoulders, and out from his chest. His head expanded, the jaw lengthening and his few blunt teeth multiplying and becoming razor sharp.
“There must be some kind of lingering influence of the Festering within this glade,” I shouted to Cara. “It’s taken the troll!”
The remaining Tengu turned and fled screaming into the woods as the troll gave a horrible howl of pain and doubled over, dropping his club. His head exploded into a mass of writhing tentacles and he dropped onto all fours. Then, with the tentacles outstretched, he began charging toward us like some huge, deformed dog.
Cara aimed an exploding arrow and fired right into the writhing mass of tentacles where the head had been. Sudden fire engulfed the creature’s tentacles and shoulders, but it did not stop charging. The monster had doubled in size, and now bore almost no resemblance to a troll; instead, it was a mess of spikes and wriggling tentacles, dripping black slime and pouring flame. I did not fancy Cara’s chances against it if it got too close, and it was lumbering forward, closing distance every second.
There was only one thing for it. “Get back,” I shouted to Cara. “I'm going to try something creative.”
“This better work,” I muttered to myself as Cara obeyed my command and got out of the way.
I crouched onto one knee and sprinted toward the charging monster. The fox spirit Persona gave me incredible speed, and I sprinted forward faster than I would ever have thought possible. Right at the last moment, as the tentacles reached out to grab me, I leapt into the air with as much force as I could muster. It was no ordinary jump. I blasted fifteen feet into the air. Time seemed to slow down. From behind me, I heard Cara’s amazed shout as I flew up into the air. As I felt my jump hit its apex, I pulled out my last trick.
I reached for the Persona of Ironside.
Heat flooded me as the massive suit of armor slammed into place around me. I felt my heart racing as the speed of my descent increased with the extra weight. My huge two-handed axe was in my grip and I raised it for a killing blow as I fell. I landed on the creature’s back with incredible momentum, whirling my axe over my head and into the monster’s spine with all the force of my swing and all the weight of the huge armor. The bladed head of the axe slammed into the flesh. The tentacles battered at me, thumping on my armor, and the huge spikes which had burst from the creature’s skin smashed against the chest plate and my gauntlets, but the spikes broke and snapped off as I landed on them. They were no match for the armor of Ironside.
The force of my axe blow was so powerful that it nearly cut the mutant troll in two. I slid from the creature’s back as gouts of blood erupted into the air and splashed steaming on my armor. I was dragging my axe out of the wound and smashing the spikes and tentacles away from me as I fell. Suddenly, the tentacles grabbed me, wrapped me, and drew me toward the place where the face had been. From within the mass of rising tentacles a huge, toothy mouth suddenly exploded, opening wide to receive me. I reached up, dropping my two-handed axe and grabbing my twinned one-handers, slashing from side to side with both hands at the tentacles as they drew me toward that horrible mouth. The tentacles which I hit dropped away, but new ones appeared for every one I cut.
Time for a change of tactic. I reached for my Kitsune Persona and immediately experienced a cool wash of sensation over my body as the enormous Ironside armor shimmered and disappeared, replaced by the tight-fitting garb of the assassin. The tentacles lost their grip for a moment as I changed size, and that was all it took. I shifted through space, leaving the monster holding nothing but a puff of white smoke.
I landed on my feet, and now I rose slowly, looking at the wreck of the monster. Cara came over to stand beside me. The monster was dying. My two-handed axe had nearly destroyed it, severing the spine. It had lost all coordination in its limbs, and it lay in the middle of the green space, flopping and spasming horribly. I stepped toward it, thinking I would have to finish it, but at that moment a cloud of black mist lifted from the carcass of the hideous creature and the mutated troll stopped moving and lay still.
From the black mist there came the voice, the terrible, multitudinous voice of the Festering, ringing through the peaceful dale.
“Soul Binder,” it roared. “Soul Binder! You have conquered this time, but you shall not conquer for much longer. This land is mine, and you will learn it or you will die!”
The black mist was caught by a brisk br
eeze blowing in with the smell of the sea riding on it. With a last cry of pain and thwarted anger, the black mist that was all that remained of the Festering was swept away.
Chapter Seven
I heard Cara cry out with surprise and delight.
“You felt it too,” I said to Cara. “The Renown flowing into us from the battle.”
“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t have anything to spend mine on yet.”
But I did.
With a sudden rush, I realized that I was ready to level up my Persona again. As had happened before, there was a flash of light around me, and a far off boom like the sound of thunder. My power had increased another level.
“Look, Cara,” I said. “Here’s the options for the upgrades.”
We watched in awe as the air shimmered in front of us, images appearing like glinting models of the Personas I had acquired so far.
I reached up to my head. I was still wearing the Shinobi outfit, with the black cloth wrapped around my head and covering all of my face except my eyes. Now, I turned my attention to the headgear. I willed it to be gone, and it was. Now I could concentrate better on what we were about to do.
In front of me, I was presented with an image of the night black assassin’s garb which had come from the Kitsune Persona. That was on the left, and the armor of Ironside was upon the right. Above them both, there was what looked like a thick glass tube, tall and broad. It was filled to the brim with a glimmering light.
With slowly dawning excitement, I realized that the tall glass column and the light within it represented my Renown; it was full, and that was how much Renown I had earned to spend on upgrades.
I explained it to Cara.
“You must be right,” she said excitedly. “Which one will you look at first?”
“The Kitsune Persona,” I said. “Because I’ve already upgraded the Ironside Persona once.”
“I wonder how many upgrades you can get?”
“Let’s find out.”
I reached out and touched the assassin robes first. By moving my hand, I could rotate the image as if it really was a miniature model of the robes. I tapped it, and it expanded and disappeared, revealing three other options. On the left was an image of a black-robed figure running, in the middle two crossed tanto daggers, and on the right was a shuriken star.
I moved my hand back and forth in front of these images, and in the intuitive way which I was becoming used to with the Personas, I knew what each upgrade would do.
“This one,” I said to Cara, indicating the running figure, “represents the power of speed that comes with the Kitsune Persona. Spending my Renown points on this will upgrade my ability to move quickly in battle when I’m wearing this Persona. In the middle, the tanto upgrade will give me not only a better blade, but also the ability to dual wield with a tanto in each hand. On the right...” I trailed off. Looking at the Shuriken, I felt something particularly special.
“What about the Shuriken?” Cara asked eagerly. “What does that upgrade do?”
I hovered my hand over the shuriken star, feeling a slow rush of excitement building in me. “It’s something more. With this one, I feel that I’m being offered the opportunity to add elemental magic to my Shuriken stars.”
“Elemental magic?”
“Yes. I feel that there are three options: fire, ice, and air. The fire is producing a heat sensation, the ice a chill, and the air a tickling on my skin. This is. . . this is incredible, Cara.”
“It certainly is,” she replied. “Can you feel anything else? Do you know what they might do?”
“The magic is very intuitive; I get explanations almost as necessary. Let me see if I can discern their purposes by examining them more closely.”
I took a breath, and examined each in turn. The air option would cause the throwing stars to travel further and faster, and multiply more in-flight. The fire option would cause the stars to burn their target when they hit, and the ice option would freeze low powered enemies where they stood.
Each seemed a worthwhile upgrade.
Cara was watching with interest, and she nodded as I explained it to her. “Which one will you pick?” she asked, once I had finished speaking. “I’d go for fire. Burning shuriken stars would be incredibly powerful, but the air option where the stars multiply even further could be useful too.”
I thought for a moment. “Don’t forget the ice option,” I said. “You already have a powerful fire ability with your potion-treated arrows, and the shuriken’s ability to multiply in midair is already pretty powerful. I’m not sure we need to double-down on abilities we already have access to. If I pick the ice upgrade, it will add something totally new to our combined skill set.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Cara said.
“I think that’s the option I’ll take.”
I reached out and touched my hand to the image of the throwing star. It vanished, to be replaced by three symbols. They were simple images, but it was clear that they represented the three elemental options. I touched the stylized ice image, and immediately I felt the upgrade take effect. It was like a shiver running through the Persona I was wearing. When I reached up to touch the throwing stars held in my shoulder belt, I felt a hint of cold from the metal.
The three elemental images disappeared, to be replaced by the Ironside and the Kitsune Persona options again. On the left, there was the black assassin suit, and on the right, again, the armor of Ironside. This time, however, there were two differences. First, I noticed that the black assassin’s suit had a little ice symbol next to it. Second, I saw that the tall glass column containing my Renown was now half empty, where before it had been full.
“What does it mean?” said Cara, looking on in fascination.
“I think it means that I still have enough Renown to add another upgrade to one of my Personas. I’ve only spent half.”
“Will you upgrade the new Persona again? I wonder what would happen if you added another elemental damage type to your shuriken stars—could you combine the elemental damage types?”
“Maybe,” I said thoughtfully, “but I think I’ll look at what’s available for the Ironside Persona this time. I suspect that we’ll be gaining a lot of upgrades as our quest progresses, and it makes sense to me that I should balance my upgrades between my Personas.”
“I can understand that,” Cara said. “Though I think if it were me I’d be more inclined to specialize in one particular Persona.”
I nodded to that. “Yes, I can see how that’s an appealing prospect. I’m tempted to spend all my upgrades on the new Persona as well. But we don’t know what kind of enemies we’re going to face. If we put all the upgrades into, say, elemental damage, we might be in trouble if we came across an enemy who was resistant to the elements. So far, we’ve had to fight monsters, but we may have to fight men at some point too, or other monsters with abilities which we can’t imagine yet. Since we don’t know what we’re going to face, I’m going to take the approach of spreading my abilities out between the different Personas.”
“The Kitsune Persona and the Ironside Persona are so different,” Cara said. “You’re right; it makes sense to upgrade both equally, and to be able to use both. Go on,” she urged, “let’s find out what’s available for the Ironside Persona then.”
I smiled at her. Her eyes were shining. It was good to know that she was as excited about seeing what upgrades we could get as I was.
In the same way as before, they expanded and disappeared like a bubble popping. It vanished smoothly, to be replaced by three images representing the areas I could upgrade. As I had seen in Saxe when I had first upgraded the Ironside Persona, there was a shield on the left, a bright green gemstone in the middle, and an axe on the right.
I held my hand over all three in turn.
“What do these ones mean?” asked Cara.
For a moment, it wasn’t clear, but as I turned my attention to each one, I understood. I knew that picking the shield, which I had upgra
ded previously, would give me the power to wield a great iron shield in battle, and increased strength to block enemy attacks.
When I held my hand over the axe image, I was again presented with the option of adding elemental damage to my weapon.
Then I held my hand over the gemstone.
“This is interesting,” I said to Cara. “The shield and the axe are straightforward upgrades to parts of my kit, with the option of adding elemental damage to the weapon, but this gemstone... if I understand it correctly, it will allow me to draw extra Renown from enemies that I kill while wearing this Persona.”
“That’s unexpected,” Cara said. “It would be great to have an axe that did fire or ice damage, and blocking powerfully with your shield is useful too, but in the long term being able to gain more Renown could be the most useful of all.”
“In the long term,” I mused. “Yes, I think that’s right. We’re here for the long haul. There’s going to be many options and chances to upgrade the Personas. The quicker we can earn Renown and apply the upgrades to the Personas, the more power and options we will have in battle.”
“And after all,” Cara added, “we should apply the same principle to this choice as you did when choosing an elemental effect for the assassin suit—get the upgrade that gives you something you don’t already have.”
“Yes, I think you’re right. We already have an ice weapon in the throwing stars and a fire weapon in your bow. The increased capacity to draw Renown from conquered enemies is the best choice.”
I held my hand over the gemstone upgrade, then tapped it with my palm. It spun and shone out brightly, and again I felt that pleasant, satisfying shudder as the upgrade took effect.
Light flickered across my body, from my hands, up my arms, then down to my boots. When the image of the gemstone and the other two upgrade options faded, it was replaced by the Ironside suit and the Kitsune robes again. They hovered in front of me, but this time there was another difference.