Broken Lands

Chapter 366 – Equipment

The last third of her Status was attuned items. It was a nice list; the contraceptive amulet and bracelet that let her share the Shield she usually didn’t use with Dav were there, along with her armor. Xin’ri had insisted they buy better enchanted underarmor and enchantments to enhance its natural properties even before Sweetfire got his hands on it and added his own flair. It was some of the best armor in the group now. Sophia wanted to offer it to be turned into better armor for Dav, but she was out of spare dragon scales, and those were the only reason it was as good as it was. There was no good way to increase its size, and Dav was a good bit larger than Sophia.

Sophia snorted as she looked at the wands. The fact that she could attune Third Upgrade wands at the second upgrade and have them take only a single attunement slot was not something they’d shared with any of the equipment manufacturers other than Sweetfire himself, but they were useful additions to her repertoire. 

The Icicle Wand was a straightforward attack; it threw a literal icicle at enemies, point-first. She didn’t use it often, because her Firewater Feathers were usually better; the feathers that came from third upgrade monsters were about cheap enough that it wasn’t worth the wear and tear on the wand. The only real reason she’d had to use the wand was that it made a physical projectile and they’d run into a few monsters that were annoyingly energy-resistant. Her only real options then were Corruption (which was slow) or some sort of solidified magic. Ice and earth generally worked the best for those, at least if she needed to cover a wide area. Water and wind were good, but they were far better when they were pressurized and that meant small areas.

The Force Splash wand was a perfect example of combining two Affinities into a single effect. The enchanter that made it called it a Water wand, but Sophia could recognize the fact that it also had arcane mana twisted into the Affinity that the Guide called Force helping to compress the sheet of water in the right direction. Like the Icicle wand, the name was literal; it “splashed” a wall of water in a particular direction to temporarily push monsters away from the user. Sophia only had it as a backup, but she’d used it more than she ever expected to. It just wasn’t in emergencies; it was fun to use it to push monsters off balance and force them into direct conflict with Dav or Jax.

Recall Ally was the one wand of the three that she hadn’t yet used in a real fight; she’d only used it in practice sessions. It allowed her to teleport someone to her side, as long as they let it happen. Xin’ri and Ci’an also each had one, even though they were incredibly expensive and one of the few pieces of gear that neither Xin’ri nor Sweetfire could make. If they were necessary, they’d be lifesaving. 

The three wands hung from a specifically designed bandolier Xin’ri made for them, along with a number of alchemicals. Xin’ri’s opinion was that if you couldn’t get at your equipment quickly, you wouldn’t use it when you needed it. She had a point; Sophia definitely found herself using some of the alchemicals more often now that they were readily to hand. She still didn’t use them nearly as often as Ci’an did, though.

The Sweetfire Claw Gloves were the reason Sophia no longer carried a weapon openly (well, other than a large knife, but that wasn’t really a weapon; it was useful). They were one of Sweetfire’s personal weapons, but he didn’t use them anymore so he passed them along to her. Sweetfire Armory Manifestation could create semisolid sweetfire in almost any shape Sophia could think of, as long as she could correctly send her Intent to the gloves. The source of its name was the default, which coated her hands and added long fiery claws to her fingers.

Sophia still remembered Alley Sweetfire’s expression when she turned the sweetfire into a knife moments after she donned and attuned the gloves. He’d known it was possible, but only for himself. No one else had sweetfire. The fact that Sophia’s arcane mana could work with any affinity was a complete surprise.

That moment was the reason he handed her his Sweets Ring and told her to figure out if she could use it. For Sweetfire, it enhanced both the heat and the controllability of his sweetfire. He wanted to see if she could use it, the same way she used the gloves.

For Sophia, it did help a little with controlling the gloves, but the primary effect was far more impactful: it allowed her to add a little Sweetfire to everything she used her aura for, which was almost everything. Sweetfire Aural Induction enhanced the stability of mana while also making it burn, even when the mana involved was ice-based. Cold burns weren’t any nicer than hot ones, and sweetfire wasn’t limited to heat, even though that was how Alley Sweetfire usually used it.

It was useful enough that Sweetfire told her to keep it, even though he grumbled about having to make himself a new ring. Sophia was pretty sure he wasn’t actually upset, especially not when the new ring he showed off a couple of weeks later had an empowered primary enchantment and a second enchantment based around cold sweetfire.

“Did it work?” Ci’an’s question greeted Sophia as soon as her eyes opened.

“She wouldn’t have taken so long if it wasn’t going to work,” Sweetfire answered for Sophia. “So, what’s your Grand Talent? Is it everything you hoped for?”

“I think so, but it’s going to take some testing,” Sophia admitted. “Before that, though, why are there words next to my Body and Core?”

“Both of them?” Sweetfire sounded surprised. “I’ve never heard of anyone who got both. I know it doesn’t happen unless you have a really high Body or Core, and it’s always the highest one. I think it has something to do with the fourth upgrade and the Cardinal Facet, but I think you’ve just destroyed my best theory, that it’s about developing either your Body or your Core into that Facet. Whatever it means.”

“Descriptors on both Body and Core has happened before,” Bai noted. “Rarely, though, and usually they appear at a level, not at the third upgrade. They require having a Body or Core of twenty or higher, but are more likely to appear the higher they are. If both are twenty-five or higher or one of them is at or above forty, you will have at least one; it’s possible that receiving them is determined by the combined sum of your Body and Core as well as their individual values but that isn’t clear from the research. They are related to the Cardinal Facet and having both is required, but that’s all I know. People at the fourth upgrade were rare in the Kestii Empire and if they knew more, none of that information was recorded in anything I have access to.”

Sophia noticed that Bai didn’t say it wasn’t known or that it wasn’t somewhere, simply that he didn’t have access to it. “So what do they do?”

Bai shrugged. “Until you manage to turn them into a Cardinal Facet, I’m not sure they do anything.”

Sophia frowned. That seemed odd; nothing else that appeared on her Status was meaningless. Maybe they actually did something and Bai wasn’t aware of it, or maybe knowing what they were was somehow important for developing a Cardinal Facet, whatever that was. 

“It’s not worth putting much thought into,” Sweetfire warned. “You’re not going to be able to gather enough Threads to get close to the fourth upgrade for years; you have plenty of time to figure out where you’re going.”

“I had plenty of time to figure out my third upgrade, too, and not enough information to really do it until the end,” Sophia grumbled. She was happy with the end result, at least so far, but she was very tired of getting by on scraps of information. 

“Tell me about it,” Dav stated with a shake of his head. “But also tell us about your Grand Talent. What is it like?”

The next four months sped by as the rest of Sophia’s team caught up to her. 

Sophia’s solo debut as a third upgrade in the Arena was against a single prismatic Skyeagle, in imitation of the team’s first performance. It was flashy, with both flying opponents unleashing bright, spectacular attacks. 

Sophia was actually a little disappointed in the fight. She absolutely overwhelmed the skyeagle from the beginning; its Abilities were entirely magical, and she could rip them to shreds the moment they entered her aura. It was a nice chance to practice tearing small holes in wide-ranging Abilities, at least, so she spent several minutes doing that. Dav encouraged it; every time she did, the Arena erupted in cheers that she’d escaped “certain death” once again. 

When Sophia finally returned the attacks with feathers from her Hoard, the Arena went wild again. It wasn’t the simple nearly invisible line of her Force Bolt spell, the fiery gout of a released Firewater Feather, or even the colored beam of an elemental feather. She was able to launch entire waves of multicolored light that weaved around each other and split and rejoined as they went. It was spectacular, and only Sophia’s team knew that the spectacle was the result of her trying to weaken her attack enough that it wouldn’t skewer the skyeagle on the first strike. As it was, her diffuse strikes easily destroyed the skyeagle’s Shield, setting it up for whatever came next.

They traded blows for several minutes until Dav told Sophia that it was time to strike; the furor was starting to settle. Sophia did her best to make her final attack spectacular. Tiny strands of bright magic wove excitedly around a central core that Sophia made from four feathers and enhanced to be a Rending plume. It punched into and through the skyeagle, leaving a small entry hole and a far larger exit hole.

The skyeagle flapped its wings once more, then started to fall. Sophia watched it fall regretfully; in the Maze, she’d try to slow the fall so that she could collect all of the feathers. In the Arena, that would detract from the spectacle. The viewers wanted to see it splash. She’d still get whatever feathers survived; that was the deal with the Arena for this fight. They simply wouldn’t be as many or in as good a shape as she wanted.

The Arena fight was a huge success, bringing in more aurichalc than the vast majority of their team Arena matches. It seemed to be a new normal, too, as they added one new third upgrade team member after another.

Ci’an was the first to reach the third upgrade after Sophia. Her Grand Talent was called Nightowl’s Vigilance. It was similar to her second upgrade Sphere, but better in every way. First, Ci’an’s nightowl form was far larger and looked like a different species of owl. Her feathers were generally dark but dappled in a way that broke up her outline and made her easy to miss, even in a well-lit room and her wingspan was actually wider than any of them were tall. Her additional size would help her fight, but it wasn’t the focus of the change; instead, she could make herself almost impossible to notice and even move through solid objects if she chose to. It wasn’t easy and it quickly drained her mana, but she could do it.

The second notable change was that she could manifest a slightly weaker version of her Nightowl vision-based Abilities even in her human form. It sounded minor, since she usually fought in her Nightowl form anyway, but Ci’an was very happy to have her archery more reliably available again.