Hunting him down, even now.
He choked back a whimper as he crept up the road, shadowy buildings and darkened alleys on all sides holding terrible secrets just for him.
He desperately tried to calm his ragged breath, to make not a sound with his bare feet, dressed in little more than rags.
The spiders were coming for him, the only one of his party to survive…
And they would take their due.
"Val!"
Maybe it was instinct, maybe reflex, maybe just a wobbly cobblestone.
Whatever the reason, he felt himself lose balance.
He turned his stumble to a roll, the deadly hiss of steel parting air whistling over his head.
Mocking laughter as his heart began to race. A surge of adrenaline, and he ran for all he was worth.
Only then recognizing the voice behind him.
“Damn, Val. I nearly had you! Then it would have been 3 for 3!”
A jolt of fear as Val looked behind him, seeing only shadow.
Understanding at last who he faced.
Someone who could make the darkness his own.
Dauda.
Just like him.
“You think you’re the only one who can cloak, Val? The only one with mixed bloodlines to cross the veil?” Ramos’s mocking voice washed over him, turning hard and cold. “No, fool. You’re no better than me. No better! All your dreams of gold and glory are just that. The dreams of a pathetic runt no one thought would amount to anything. Why do you think your mother left you behind? No one wanted you, Val! You weren’t even worth the bother of killing.”
The words struck him like a blow. The bitter truth in that statement. His mother had left him behind. At first it was guilt that he was even alive and his mother and siblings were not, that had haunted him.
Then he found out the truth.
He had been deliberately left behind.
"Do you really think it was that simple? She was protecting you, Val. Don’t let this asshole mess with your mind!"
Val blinked, recognizing that voice.
Faith.
How?
He felt it then. Death, slicing through the air.
It was all he could do to dodge-roll aside, Ramos’s hostile snarl snapping at his ears as he darted away.
A cold chill raced down his spine as it all clicked into place. Memories turning clear as Ramos mocked him from the shadows all around.
“You’re no hero, Val. No one special. No one important. No one cares! I’ve mastered the shadows better even than you. I was ghosting before you were born! There is no glory, Val. No path to riches or wealth, no adoring fans or kings eager to serve you. That’s delusion. Madness! It just shows how pathetic you are!”
And Val couldn’t help smiling at Ramos’s bitter words. “What’s wrong, Ramos? Bitter glory didn’t come so easily to you? Upset that you never got to play the hero?”
“Shut up, bastard filth!” Shadows hissed, Val dodging even as the darkness was sliced by a faintly glowing saber whistling over Val’s darting head. “You were a reject. Unwanted. Pathetic! There is no way you could best me, no way you could defeat me! This is a test. A test of my own fears, of my own conviction! I will win, Valor Hunter. I will win, master this level-up, and claim this entire dwarven city and all its treasures as my prize! And then I will kill all your friends.”
Madness smiled from the shadows. “Don’t you remember? I already killed you, Val. You died to my blows, your last mewling sounds just the deluded ramblings of a boy who actually thought he could cast magic. Who actually thought he was special! You’re nothing, Val. Just a ghost in my mind that I will destroy!”
And for a heartbeat, naked and defenseless save for rags, Val felt the first tinges of horrid, awful doubt.
What if Ramos was right? What if...
"Think of where you are!"
Val shivered and dropped, realizing he was being a fool.
Realizing it didn’t matter, as he desperately stumbled back from Ramos’s brilliant killing saber. It didn’t matter in that moment if his past had been as viscerally real as he remembered it, or the most pathetic of delusions.
For Ramos had said one thing that rang with the most absolute of truths.
He and his enemy were struggling for their very souls.
No matter which one of their remembered histories was true, only one of them could survive.
And Val intended for it to be him.
“Run! That’s right, run!” Ramos’s cold words washed over Val as he desperately searched for what he needed.
Seeing it at last, a shadowy alleyway he darted into, needing only a heartbeat of time as he raced through corridors that would have been warrens in any other city, hearing his enemy’s frustrated howls as Val left him behind.
For he knew this city. Delusion or reality, he had mastered it the moment he had claimed it as his own.
“You can’t escape me, Val! You’re finally in your true form! A weak, cowardly, unwanted bastard not even fit for the beggar’s rags you wear. My blade feeds on specters just like you!”
Val let his enemy’s words wash over him, recognizing them for what they were. A distraction. A ruse he would fall for no longer.
He couldn’t deny the truth of what he wore, nor the curious exultation of being awake in the dream.
He wouldn’t be here if he couldn’t level up, if he didn’t have power of his own.
Power he would reclaim this very moment, as his enemy rounded the corners, as deeply buried in the shadows as was he.
“So you remember,” Ramos sneered. “The shadows will do you little good against my blade, Val. Even I can sense the dead end in the darkness.” Mocking laughter echoed along the corridor. “I guess this is the end of the line for you, Val. In more ways than one. Time for you to go, and for me to claim a life finally worth living!”
A blade of crackling moonlight descended for Val’s head.
Dimensional rift successfully accessed!
You have suffered a Medium Wound! Vitality roll made! Your arm is not crippled! How long can you keep this up, memory of Val?
Biting deep into a shield glowing the bronze-gold hue of all dwarven artifacts.
Val hissed as the horrid sting of arcane steel sizzled into his shoulder.
For the deadly saber had cleaved so deeply into the shield it had actually marked his flesh.
Which worked perfectly for Val.
He smiled as Ramos’s eyes widened. “No. Fucking hell, no!” Ramos tried to yank his blade free, to no avail.
Val twisted his shield, ignoring the sharp burst of pain as the tip of the saber tore through his flesh, pinning his foe’s blade and tearing it free of his hands.
You have suffered a Critical Wound! 75 damage and an additional 5 health per second due to bleeding!
Ramos’s cold snarl turned to a bark of laughter as his left hand plunged a dagger into Val’s kidney as fast as thought.
Eyes suddenly widening as blood poured out his mouth, as if registering only at that moment the softly humming dwarven sword that had simultaneously blasted through his breastbone, shock and a ruptured heart freezing Ramos for a wide-eyed moment as he fell off Val’s blade.
For endless moments, frantic eyes blinked into Val’s own. Then he crumbled to dust and was no more.
“Looks like I’m not the unwanted ghost after all, Ramos,” Val said, wounds instantly healing as all his foe’s endless potential flooded his soul.
Along with bitter flashes of memory that made him understand his enemy that much more.
“I’m sorry your real father never claimed you, that your mother was lost to addiction and madness,” Val whispered to the ghostly memory fading to oblivion at that very moment. “You deserved better.”
“He did,” said a soft voice behind him.
Val quickly turned around, somehow not surprised to see Phoebe herself, gazing at Val with her piercing blue eyes, soft pink lips curved in a smile, radiating such happiness that it
shook Val to his core.
But not nearly as much as seeing Ava’s city in all its priceless glory alive and well, automatons trundling merrily by, sweeping and maintaining pristine buildings and beautiful woodland groves as dwarven men whistled while crafting artifacts that would one day rule the skies, young mothers kissing the cheeks of their children babbling happily at the excitement all around them.
“So everything’s okay,” Val said with a relieved smile, blinking back what he refused to call tears.
Phoebe nodded. “Yes, Val. For all that Ramos’s bitter memories cast you in rags you failed to dispel, you were wise enough to understand his truth in the end.”
Val nodded. “He hated me so much for having it within me to accomplish what I have, when dark loneliness and a friendless life were his constant companions.” He sighed. “And he was blind to his own petty vindictiveness, his own bitter sense of entitlement justifying such acts of treachery in his own mind. And the real tragedy of it is that it wasn’t his past that had shaped his miserable life. It was his own angry choices that earned him nothing but grief in the end.”
Phoebe’s brilliant smile was like sunlight on a cloudy day. “Choice is everything, Val. And you chose to give up so much, to risk everything that you are, to give my people not one, but three chances at life and renewal.”
Val was stunned as Phoebe embraced him. For all that she was a goddess, she felt as vital and real as any young woman, holding him tight with a body both soft and powerfully built before stepping away.
Val blinked, his forehead tingling with the memory of Phoebe’s gentle kiss upon his brow.
“Thank you, Valor. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”
Val grinned. “The wonderful thing about quantum states is that almost all things are possible in that wave function. It’s just that, most of the time, all the impossibilities cancel out, until it all boils down to statistical probabilities.”
Phoebe’s bemused grin grew. “So you chose to observe, and pour all your potential into giving life to a version of reality where my people had the forethought to install both cryogenic facilities and arboriums free of all flaws, keeping my people in perfect suspended animation for a millennium. No matter that countless other versions had resulted in bitterest tragedy, having absolutely no idea how close you came to final death, daring to claim Entropy’s prize.”
Val winked. “And it just so happens that that’s exactly what happened to Stridborg when the infinity matrix finally collapsed upon itself, and reality asserted itself once more. Past and present came together in the most fortuitous of ways.”
Phoebe’s throaty laughter sent shivers through his soul. “For past, present, and future are all in flux when a contender dares the Path of Kings.” Her soft hand touched his brow. Val gasped as her potency flooded his soul.
“You brought 100,000 people back from the brink of oblivion, Valor, and danced with your own demise numerous time as you embraced your glorious madness. Now it only remains for us to see how your adventure has shaped you.”
Val blinked as his patron goddess held up two seven-petaled roses of palest ivory. “How do you choose to grow?”
Val smiled. “I would heighten my arcane and psionic potentials for both levels. I came damn close to tapping out and dying myself, pulling Jiu and Eric back from the brink of oblivion.”
Phoebe nodded, two petals upon each flower turning blood red. “You danced perilously close to oblivion bringing them back, Valor. Had they truly been more dead than alive, you would have perished along with them.”
Val grimaced. “I know. And as my Arcane Reaver class increases in power, any healing magic I don’t master will have a growing cost to cast.”
Phoebe nodded, features grave. “That is the price you pay for such power as you now possess, Valor, much to my regret. But all things need balance, even you.”
Val grinned. “But since mastered spells are tied so deeply to the caster, that bypasses the worst of the Reaver’s flaws.”
His patroness nodded solemnly. “It does.”
“Then it’s time to spend some points on mastery. I’ll put one point into mastering Season’s Restoration. Since it’s able to repair both damaged flesh and ruptured synapses, it’s the only spell I know of that can repair a damaged brain and lost memories.”
Phoebe smiled. “A wise choice. And a spell so unorthodox that it skirts the edge of true resurrection, so long as enough of the brain and body remains intact. But be careful,” she warned. “For someone truly close to complete death, the cost will increase drastically. And if your subject is more dead than alive, you risk perishing as well.”
Val nodded. “Not to mention the fact that it’s aging the body at least a season, if not entire years.”
Phoebe nodded. “Fortunately, Jordia’s people can live centuries. Many centuries, if they possess the right technology or magic. But still, it is wise that you so often use your time-based healing magics alongside regeneration potions. Less stress to the body means a longer life lived.”
Val’s eyes widened at those words, wondering if… Phoebe’s smile making it clear that her words had been deliberate. Val couldn’t help grinning back. Perhaps there was something to Gregor’s quest for arcane youth potions, after all! Best of all, it wouldn’t destroy one’s arcane gifts like tech-based rejuvenation matrices would.
“I would also like to increase my Regeneration 1 rank, and my EM Mastery 1 rank. And because it’s proven to be one of my trump cards… I’d like to spend half a point mastering Reaver’s Kiss. I don’t suppose I can master it in such a way it doesn’t interfere with Shadowmind?”
Phoebe gave him a look. “You expect to hide from someone whose life-force you're visibly draining away in a stream of blood leading right to you?”
Val couldn’t help smiling at her expression. “Okay. Maybe not. Let’s make it blindingly fast and easy to cast then, so I can stack it on my opponent even quicker than before. Hopefully quick enough to survive a Highlord’s Psionic assault.”
Phoebe smiled. “I’m surprised you haven’t spent half a point on a certain spell your Terran mate favors.”
Val grimaced. “Yeah. Ten-second casting time, immediately pulling me out of Shadowmind? I’m really not sure that’s the right spell for me. Lightning-fast strikes against a single opponent, or planting my admittedly dwindling explosives where no one spots me before it’s too late seems far more conducive to my survival. And if I’m fighting ungodly horrors or hordes of enemies on my own lands… I already have the best spell I could ask for to handle those abominations, thanks to you.”
Phoebe nodded. “Then we will save it. Half a petal for when you need it most. And the final petal?”
Val frowned thoughtfully. “Though I feel I could put points endlessly into arcane arts, my other skills are beginning to feel almost ephemeral, after a certain level.” He swallowed. “Shadowmind and Psiblade. I can’t seem to advance them further.”
Phoebe nodded. “When you forged yourself out of the quantum flux of this reality, your ability to influence the electromana fields in terms of arcane potential became virtually unlimited. That you were able to advance your two favored skills so far, so quickly, is beyond remarkable, Valor. Though I'm afraid you will need to use them constantly in the most perilous of circumstances to advance your potential any further without spending years in study.”
Val smirked. “In other words, the more times I dodge death in Shadowmind and meet my enemy’s blade with my own, the sooner I will be able to push them up even higher, perhaps even beyond Rank 10.”
Phoebe smiled. “Precisely. And you already approach master rank in one, the other not far behind. Few can surpass you in skill, coupled with your heightened physique.” Her gaze turned hard. “But there are a few. Tread carefully and fight as if your life dependent upon it, Valor. Because death is always and forever a single misstep away.”
Val chuckled ruefully. “Which is why that final point for Level 26 is going into Luck. No
matter how minuscule the effect, it pays, I think, to have the universe even a tiny bit on your side.”
Phoebe grinned in approval as she held up the second rose, still with 5 petals of palest ivory. “And how shall you blossom for this, your most recent level?”
“There are so many ways I’d love to improve myself. To be even faster, stronger, smarter than I am now. But survival is everything, and after spending so many points restoring my dwarven cities… I might need a crap ton of territory points very soon."
Phoebe’s gaze turned solemn. Almost haunted. “If your gamble fails, the cities you strove so hard to save truly will be in peril.”
Val’s eyes flashed with sudden heat. “I’m not going to let that happen.” He caught her gaze. “No matter what it takes, that’s not going to happen.” He pointed to the flower. “EM Mastery Rank 7, Regeneration Rank 4, and 10 more territory points.”
“And what of your final point?”
Val licked dry lips, gazing into Phoebe’s brilliant blue eyes. So like the stormy seas he had gazed upon with wonder, whenever his gaze caught Jordia’s twin, soaring majestically in the nighttime sky. “My final point I will spend on that which would kill me, should I ever dare embrace it.”
Perfectly arched brows furrowed. “Why?”
Val did not flinch from the weight of her gaze. “I have this crazy idea that if I ever need to pull another unorthodox healing spell or ritual out of my ass that I don’t already know, these two spells I’m mastering are powerful enough, all-encompassing enough, to anchor my mind and keep me from getting utterly destroyed by critical failure penalties, or the added mana cost my Arcane Reaver class would otherwise give me for daring to improvise another healing spell.”
Phoebe’s eyes crinkled in a sad smile. “Always finding ways to bend the rules to your will, and slip past the follies that doom so many wizards. So very like how my father once was. But that’s not the real reason, is it?”
Val shook his head. “No, it isn’t.”
His divine patron bowed her head in acceptance of his choices, spending several moments gazing at the flowers in her hand before plunging them without warning into his heart.
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