novelraw Book 3: Chapter 77: Last Minute
Book 3: Chapter 77: Last Minute
Chapter 77: Last Minute
They filed out into the mountain night with concentrated purpose, refusing to let the fear that bubbled within them win. Lanterns bobbed in place along tents and trees throughout the camp. Spells flickered where small circles of enchantment had to be tested and improved on. The Bang Bang, of smiths sang a chorus into the soft air, overlayed with whispers and hushed conversation of the soldiers.
Off in the distance, far below, the valley was a black smear of smoke and ruin. But up there the air was clean and alive.
The many squads spread out to their tasks without a needed command. Some went to a ring of flat stone and practiced formations until their muscles gave way. Meanwhile, Healers bent over the ugly, and the hurt, with filled poultices until the night air's smell gained an added tint of boiled herbs. Artisans bent metal and re-etched runes into talismans. And many more crafters and mages made battle preparation throughout the camp.
Alex walked past the many groups like a shadow until he found a small tent at the edge of the camp where a single table and a stool waited outside. He sat and allowed the quiet to press in on him. The dim lantern light made the leather of his bracer gleam, and he took it off without thinking, his fingers already knowing how the straps came loose after months of repetition. The aether gems inside the bracer sat in their slots, each of them a cold, clear sliver of condensed magical will. He unslotted one and rolled it between a thumb and forefinger, feeling the pulse of the energy in it, the aether vibration that had been the source of so many tiny rescues during his deadly fights.
“Obby,” he said under his breath, the rock somehow felt less like an evil mind leech when he announced things aloud. “It’s the best way to increase my chances, right? It’ll shore up that shitty energy pool situation.”
“For sure,” Obby answered. “But it might not work at all. Never heard of someone trying this. Then again, I never heard of anyone needing to either.”
He glanced at the training ground where the other wolrdstiders were training, at the people who’d trusted him, and then looked back at the gem. It was mortal-grade. Maybe not the most potent thing in the world, but it was solid, and cut for the single purpose to hold aether energy. He set his glyphcraft stylus on the table and exhaled slowly.
His plan, as always, was risky. It was a gamble where the ante was his physical body.
He had already fit two artificial gates into his spine. His first siphon plate lay warm under the skin behind his neck, a few inches below his natural bodygate. The second was a couple inches below that. If he could coax a gem into interfacing cleanly with the gate clustered over his meridian... and if the [Lattice Spiral] and the plate accepted it without blowing up, the enchantments bonded as intended—he could reroute a small but clean channel of aether into the gem.
It wouldn't create energy out of nothing, but the connection might let him siphon and stabilize more of the aether he drew into his body. It also might let him draw on the aethergem much faster than having it slotted into the bracer allowed, saving him precious seconds in a fight.
It was a dangerous plan. Yet, ‘danger’ was also the flavor of every decision Alex had made for the last few months. All his enchantments were the same sort of rushed, ugly, creations which were still somehow effective. All of them done for the purpose of making himself that much stronger, and protecting people he could not stand to lose.
He set the gem in the center of the table and scratched a ring of tiny runes around its edges with his stylus. The ink glowed faint blue, then violet, as the pattern accepted his touch. He reworked the gem’s enchantment by pruning a few stabilizers and threading in a [Lattice Spiral] tether point that matched the siphon plate’s signature. Then he sealed the new glyph with a modified containment formula.
The gem hummed in his hand like a trapped animal, like that of a raging beast, once he was finished.
“Ready for stupid, meatboy?” Obby chuckled.
Alex smiled thinly and pressed the tip of the stylus into the soft skin behind his collar, drawing the same careful lines he’d used when placing the siphon plate there weeks before. He traced the glyphs onto his flesh, feeling the scrape of stylus-etched ink against the scar tissue in his skin. The lines glowed as they were drawn, then they pooled like tiny wells of light that drained further into his skin. He quickly swallowed a potion he’d prepared. It was one part aether bloodbinder, two parts healing tonic, a bitter concoction that made his throat tighten up, and laid the gem against the central knot of the spiral he'd drawn into his body.
It should have been a slow process. It wasn’t.
The moment the gem’s surface touched his marked skin, the world contracted around him. He felt the meridian beneath the aether-plate lash out angrily, reaching up through bone and muscle to meet the intrusion. The gem answered the angry attack, tendrils of energy knotting into eachother, and the connection was like a lock snapping into place.
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Pain seared across his neck, a rippling pressure that rolled through both tendons and sinew. Aether roared in his channels, swirling about his torso and limbs like he'd opened a faucet and let water rush through the pipes. For a breath he could knew nothing but white noise and the taste of his crappy alchemy skill taking its toll on him.
“Hold,” Obby said, surprisingly quietly in his ear. “Brace for it.”
Alex whispered a curse and pushed. He allowed his channels to open further, to take the sudden shock and drink the energy into his body. He didn’t pull the aether in all at once, that would have simply ruined the glyphwork. So he eased it in, letting the [Lattice Spiral] enchantment pull and coax the two together naturally, threading the aethergem glyph into his meridian with the gentle, terrible patience of a surgeon stitching living flesh together.
The gem sank into the aether plate. He felt it slip beneath the dermis of his skin, then become white hot as it matched its aether signature with his own. A prickle of aether traced through the plate and into the gate cluster, and the first change came. The hungry, feral instincts of his aether settled down letting the gem's energy connect to him. Dormant aether channels that had been ignored before now took the flow with a new thirst.
He tasted the sweetness that was success and his legs trembled. His vision doubled at the edges as colors thinned then intensified. Finally the gem’s glow dimmed and the [Glyphcraft] lines dimmed their hot glow.
There were consequences of this dumb plan, of course. The [Lattice Spiral] was put under greater strain, and the bracing that had kept the siphon plate in his body from slipping out of place shifted outward just slightly. A faint ringing pulsed through his ears after the whole ordeal, while his hands shook as though he’d run a whole marathon in a minute flat.
Status? he thought.
A second later Obby beeped and listed his findings. “Connection complete and stable. Energy redirection: improved. Latency in meridian response reduced by roughly twenty to twenty-five percent, but increased strain on adjacent channels has increased by ten percent. If you push past your threshold without rest, the siphon-plate will tear open and produce catastrophic feedback. Your imprints will handle most of that, though not all of it.”
Alex listened and nodded. Catastrophic feedback sounded bad, but more than worth it. He tasted the possible futures from this success. He knew that he could push himself harder now. The additional energy pool the aether gem supplied him meant he'd be less likely to bleed himself dry for a chance at killing the Queen.
He threaded his fingers through his hair and forced a laugh. That sounds like a fun ride, but lets hope it doesn't come to that.
Obby snorted. “You’re pieced together by metal and glyphcraft in more ways than one, fleshsack. But you did well. The lattice enchantment took the gem well enough. It was almost pretty if I do say so.”
Pretty? I didn’t know you could find things pretty.
“Enchantments and [Glyphcraft] work are always pretty, when they are done right. You are still ugly though, don’t get confused.”
Alex could feel the gem like a small gravity well beneath skin. It was a foreign feeling, but not hostile. Yet at the same time, it fit somehow. He’d made a trade, a piece of his safety for a shot at the thing he most wanted; the power to bury his enemy.
He sat back until the stool creaked and let the fatigue wash out over him in a slow, hot wave. Around him the camp continued its work. Somewhere in the distance, he heard as Holly laughed quietly at some instruction that was given, and for a second the noise sounded almost serene. By now, Holly had gotten the healing she needed and gotten her leg back, along with the rest of the team. Allie had come through in that regard. The single high-tier healing potion the Urhara had handled over went straight to her. She had studied it for hours and came up with a plan.
She had a few temporary boosting items, the one she got from the dungeon shop, as well as the liquid light vial she still had from Mother Thessalia back in Terraxum. And a few natural treasures besides that.
She couldn't re-create the potion, as she didn't have the alchemy skills for that. But, they really only needed one potion anyway. She had gathered everyone up in a circle to hold hands, and then did something even Alex would have considered crazy. She drank and absorbed all of the items mentioned above, at the same time. Her light aether attunement hit the roof, and her body was filled almost to bursting with the energy.
Then she used her [Matyr] spell, which she had upgraded by then, thanks to some input and pointers from Alex. Between the huge influx of pure light aether, and the now Novice ranked spell, she took on everyone's injuries for herself before drinking the potion.
It was horrible to watch. Allie's body seemed to wither, her legs, arms, various pieces of her torso and face, were all eaten away like she'd been drenched in acid. But even as she took on the injuries, the potion and her own light aether worked to heal her.
Everytime a hand or leg eroded away, a new one would grow back just as quickly. The look on her face said it was not a painless process either. She basically tortured herself to make it work. Something Alex understood all too well. He'd done the same, and would continue to do the same in the future.Still, it looked different from the outside. In the end, everyone had been healed, and Allie was left whole on the other side. If not mentally scared for her effort.
He finally understood why Holly got so worried about him when he would do things like that. It was horrible to watch. But still, he didn't stop Allie from doing it, and he wouldn't let anyone stop him either.
Alex pulled the bracer back on over his arm. The remaining gems still tucked against the leather hummed faintly, as if acknowledging the fact that their home was temporary, and not to be forgotten. Those gems, too, would eventually find their permanent place implanted into his meridians, eventually.
“Don’t die,” Obby remarked finally, with what could have been the slimmest edge of concern.
“I don’t plan to,” Alex said, and he believed it enough that the lie even worked on him.
He stood then, the night air cold against the sweat on his face. He walked from the tent and back into the stuttering lantern-light of the camp. In the distance he saw his team around a ring of stones training, dodging, casting, and striking. He would join them for a little while to help supervise, maybe help hand out potions, and assist them in testing a few spells. All to pass the time and let his body acclimate to the changes of his new addition.
He had made himself a little more dangerous and a little more fragile at the same time. That balance would have to hold for now.
By now the sky had bled toward dawn, a thin slash of gray meeting yellow on the horizon. Alex looked at the beginnings of the sunrise and breathed it in, feeling the new tune of his body. He felt a thread of energy pulsing under his skin toward the gem in his neck as he cycled his aether, confirming the connection.
Fate would decide if he had done enough. He had only bought an increase in their chances.
***
New Enchantment Unlocked!
Aethergem Implant (Unique);
In order to overcome having no Mage Core and a vastly reduced aether pool as a result, this enchantment supplements the user’s stored energy levels by giving them access to an aethergem in their body. Designed by Alexander Pierce, this enchantments effectiveness is based on one’s [Glyphcraft] skill, intelligence stat, and the quality of aethergem used.