Broken Lands

Chapter 363 – Demense of the Arcane Coatl

Sophia told the Guide to increase her level to twelve and confirmed that she wanted to upgrade her Sphere, rather than take any of the other options. Splitting or deviating her Sphere sounded awful, and initiating a new Sphere wasn’t helpful. She could see how those options would help someone who couldn’t manage to meet the upgrade requirements and needed to pull together a new Sphere, but they’d never been options for her. She’d done things properly.

Mostly, anyway. 

The only thing the Guide presented to her after that was her new Sphere. She’d expected more, somehow; maybe it wasn’t worth a Feat, but surely it would be an occasion where the Wanderer would say something?

There was no message. Either this wasn’t significant enough or the Wanderer was being careful not to alert the Broken Lord. Sophia couldn’t be sure which. While it was now very obvious that the Wanderer had prepared them for the future as much as he could, she doubted they were particularly important to him. He hadn’t asked for anything or pushed them anywhere they wouldn’t have gone on their own, after all.

As far as Sophia could tell, he’d set them up for success as much because it was easy for him as for any other reason. It burned a little to know that she was basically a charity case, but at the same time it wasn’t that different from the advice everyone else had given her to invest in the next generation. In some ways, that was a better analogy anyway; from what Sohia could tell, none of the Patrons except maybe the Broken Lord gave Hallows to people unless they were following the Patron’s ideals in some way and had the potential to reach farther than most. The Wanderer could do more because he was more powerful and knew more, that was all. 

Sophia wasn’t sure she’d earned the Hallow when she got it, but she was pretty sure that stealing the Hilt’s Broken Sword was worth something, and that was when the Wanderer really helped. So perhaps it wasn’t just charity.

Sophia knew that she was just dithering, worried about whether or not she’d broken her Sphere. There was only one way to find out for certain.

Spoiler

Sophia

Arcane Demense Abilities:

Attunements

Hallowed by the Wanderer

 Contraceptive Amulet, 1

 (Hoard of Plumes, Anchor)

 Suras Arcane Hybrid

(Arcane Signifier)

Unbroken Link Bracelet, 1

(Feather Image)

(Plumed Knowledge)

Enchantment: Shared Shield

Body: 30, Buoyant

(Plume of Perception)

Enchantment: Send Mana

Core: 50, Luxuriant

(Translucent Aura)

  (Plume Shift)

Coatl-Scale Reinforced Armor, 1

Shield: 450 (300)

(Prismatic Plume Strike)

Enchantment: Major Repair

 (Aural Plumes)

Enchantment: Major Resilience

Thread: 0

Stunning, Soothing, Focused, Piercing, Binding, Reinforced, Disruptive, Warming, Rending, Corruptive, True Death, Translucent, Prismatic

Enchantment: Sweetfire Purge

  Enchantment: Temperature Control

Spheres

Arcane Coatl Abilities:

Enchantment: Cohesive Defense

Level: 12 - Third Upgrade

(Arcane Scales)

 Anchor: Aura

(Prismatic Wings)

Icicle Wand, Third Upgrade, 1

Signature: Plume

(Latent Lifeweb Link)

 Grand Talent: Demense of the Arcane Coatl

(Child of Death)

Force Splash Wand, Third Upgrade, 1

 (Fleeting Foresight)

 Gestalt Weaver (Linked)

(Arcane Absorption)

Recall Ally Wand, Third Upgrade, 1

Level: 12 - Third Upgrade

    Sweetfire Claw Gloves, 1

Psychic Bastion (Linked)

 Enchantment: Sweetfire Armory Manifestation

Level: 12 - Third Upgrade

    Sweetfire’s Sweets Ring

  Enchantment: Sweetfire Aural Induction

[collapse]

It was not quite what Sophia expected, but it was close enough to be happy. First of all, she’d succeeded; she was at the third upgrade. The others would probably say that Sophia was first, but she knew that both Cliff and Taika had beaten her speed. 

Admittedly, that was because they didn’t have to merge their Abilities; they each selected from a short list, like the previous Upgrade. Sophia wasn’t certain if she envied that or not. It was easy and fast but they were able to affect the outcome far less than Sophia had affected hers. It was a good thing that what they wanted was available as one of the choices for each of them.

Cliff’s new Gestalt Weaver Sphere expanded on something he was already able to do: in addition to the ability to essentially move a template of features from one monster to another, Cliff could now create gestalts of things other than monsters and mix and match their templates. The most obvious use was for setting a scene, like a dungeon would, but that wasn’t the main reason Cliff wanted it. It would let him create gestalts that weren’t technically monsters, like duplicates of Sweetfire’s Happy Fun Balls. It would also let him place equipment on his monsters. While most monsters didn’t gain much from equipment that wasn’t more powerful than they were, there were always exceptions and Cliff was eager to try them out.

Taika’s Sphere choice was more of an expression of his frustration than an imitation of Cliff’s satisfied expansion of capabilities. Taika knew that he was useful, even vital, when they ran into something that attacked their minds or that could be fooled with a visual-only illusion, but the rest of the time there was nothing for him to do. He liked being their shield, but he was convinced there was more he could do. Turning his Bulwark into a Bastion was meant to keep all of his defenses but also add the prospect of an active defense. For now, he thought he’d be able to harm only those who came at them psychically, but he hoped he’d eventually be able to do more. He thought it would probably cost him most of the power in the physical shields he’d been able to produce as a Psychic Bulwark, but he wouldn’t know until he tested.

Sophia’s eyes rose to the top of her Status, to a line that definitely wasn’t what she expected. It was … not wrong, at least. The Suras were the non-winged Asuryan subspecies, and she didn’t have wings without her Ability. Hybrid was true enough, since her mother was human, and the Arcane had to be from her father’s Species just like the Suras was a partial version of it. It would have been true enough even if all it said was Suras; this was just a bit more precise.

How did the Guide even know what a Suras was? Did they exist somewhere? If so, why didn’t it recognize her as one in the first place?

Sophia pushed that off as something she’d probably never know. It was less important than the fact that her Status no longer had the continual irritation of calling her Warped when she wasn’t.

Her Body and Core numbers were correct, but she had no idea what the words next to them were about. She tried to poke at it to see if there was any more information, the way many of the places on the Status would give a description, but there was no response. The words weren’t something anyone had mentioned, so she’d have to ask in a few minutes, after she finished going through the rest of her Status.

Her Shield was just as weird as it always was. If she read it correctly, she and Dav together had a pool of 450 Shield, with 300 from her and 150 from Dav. That was something she’d asked about and unlike in the past, she’d actually gotten a useful answer out of Sweetfire. 150 was the normal amount of Shield for someone at twelfth level, the bottom of the third upgrade. Almost everyone had that much, but a fair number people had Abilities that reduced their Shield in exchange for something else. The most common was trading it away for a different type of defense. Sophia had one of those: Plume Shift.

Extra Shield was usually the province of items, like the Unbroken Link Bracelets Sophia and Dav wore. Sweetfire said there was another way, though it was extremely rare before the third upgrade: people who were entirely defensive in nature often got boosts to Shield. It varied from person to person, but the highest he’d ever seen was double the base Shield amount. Sophia now matched that, though she had no idea why. She wasn’t entirely defensive or even very defensive at all. 

Okay, she did have some defense Abilities and many of them could be used to defend others as well as herself, but they didn’t depend on Shield! She also had quite a few ways to attack things. That was what her Hoard was for, keeping her weapons where they could be used. Beyond that, she did have Prismatic Plume Strike and … well, hopefully she hadn’t lost the functionality of Bond of Plumes. It was extremely useful.

The fact that her only offensive Abilities were Prismatic Plume Strike and maybe the ability to boost others didn’t make her defensive. She was support, not protection! If she were on a team back home, she’d fill one of the offensive roles! Sure, she wasn’t worth much alone, but really, no one was!

Anchor: Aura

You are no longer limited to the body that was once your prison or your home. 

An Anchor is required for the first Upgrade. This may be modified by your Signature once it is discovered.

Signature: Plume

Plumes of both feathers and magic form the outward manifestations of your style.

A Signature is required for the second Upgrade. This may be modified by your Grand Talent once it is discovered.

At least her Anchor and Signature were straightforward. Her Anchor was the same as before, but her Plume had changed in exactly the direction she’d pushed it, the one suggested by Arryn back when he first brought Marcie to Mazehold. She’d expanded it from feathers to plumes of magic. Feathers would still work, but she should be far less limited now. She looked forward to seeing what effect that had on the rest of her Abilities.

Grand Talent: Demense of the Arcane Coatl

An Arcane Coatl creates her lair not in space but in magic. You claim all of the magic that lies within your Aura as your Demense. 

A Grand Talent is required for the third Upgrade. This may be modified by your Cardinal Facet once it is discovered.

Her Grand Talent was clearly based on her old Plumed Domain Sphere, which wasn’t a surprise, but both the fact that it changed spelling to Demense and called her an Arcane Coatl were a surprise. Demense and domain were related words, but Sophia wasn’t certain why the change happened. Wasn’t that basically just the archaic version of the same word?

As for Arcant Coatl, that had to be because she’d pushed it into recognizing her Species. She didn’t know why it used Coatl instead of Dragon, but she guessed it was close enough. While a coatl was actually a serpent, there were quite a few dragons that resembled feathered serpents more than flying lizards; dragons varied a lot. Arcane Dragons were basically feathered flying lizards in appearance, but it was sort of close. It was also her Arena name; Sophia couldn’t discount the possibility that it picked the name it did because it was a name she’d accepted. It wasn’t in her Species name, just her Grand Talent. If she ever established a Domain that someone else was able to sense the way her Grand Talent implied she could, it probably made sense to use her Arena name.

In a lot of ways, her Grand Talent felt like it was simply an expansion of her Anchor. That was a good thing; from what everyone said, the best Grand Talents were closely coupled with either the Anchor or the Signature and synergized well with the other. A Grand Talent that made her Anchor of her Aura into her Demense of magic when her Signature relied on the control of plumes of magic sounded a lot like the sort of tightly coupled setup they recommended.