Maikana
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Chapter 23 – Oh Scale
🕑 Added 2025-02-19 04:00:03 +0000 UTCStill observing her surroundings from where she lay after feeling as though the mist spat her out upon the ground. The feeling of being crushed and compressed as she passed through the mists lingering on her scales and in her bones. She notices that the spirits on this side are larger, brighter, and move more energetically as they flit about. Their hues that before were pale and washed out, growing more vibrant and intense as they gather around the braziers. Taking on the depth of colour present in the plumes of rising smoke.
That was rough… No wonder the little spirits dimmed as they passed through the mist, it felt like it was trying to roll me into a ball… It looks like they recovered quickly enough on this side though, so hopefully I will too…
Kori takes her time, slowly rising to a seated position and giving herself a few moments to recover from what just happened. She watches the various spirits and eyes the braziers with curiosity as she recuperates. As her heart settles and mind slows down from the fear and pain of her experience she recalls something that happened just before she made to pierce the mists. The little blinking light still awaiting her attention just beyond her range of vision.
<<Skill proficiency improved. Spiritual Sense level 1 -> 2 >>
That was quick… I think… How long has it been since I got the skill actually? I’m kinda hungry, is it time for breakfast yet? Or am I on to dinner? Oh well, time to eat regardless.
Her meal distracts, though its contents still bland and substance lacking, and aids in her recovery from the lingering effects remaining throughout her body, eventually feeling up to moving about to observe more closely.
She stands and begins to approach the nearest brazier. Its plume a deep lazuli blue in shade and projecting a feeling of bone crushing pressure and icy cold. As she approaches, she feels a similar weight as when she drew the little spirits from the totems, except this time instead of fighting to pull the little motes away, she must fight for every stride closer. The depth of the chill permeating her scales the closer she draws. A great weight pressing down upon her shoulders as though she were holding the mountains up above her, growing with each stride forward.
The resistance to her approach increasing with each shuffled step until she feels like she cannot continue forward both physically and for the fear of being reduced to but a smear of scale and flesh as the pressure mounts. Giving up on her attempt, retreating feels as though she’s being propelled by a great gust as she moves back, nearly tripping as the resistance turns to expelling force, propelling her from the brazier’s presence and the crushing pressure lessons every step she takes.
Knowing that the slow and steady approach, one of observation and deduction, thought and planning, led to her previous success, she decides to follow in her prior methodology. Gathering the facts as best she can before proceeding. Walking the outskirts of the rising mists in a small band between it and the braziers, where the spirits freely fly about as they had within the inner circle.
She watches the spirit motes as they circle about, seeking an escape from these new confines, slowly making their own way about and testing the approach to the braziers to find a match and be allowed to gather.
Walking about the circle, she observes each of the braziers in turn as she passes, each emitting their own unique plume, each giving an impression of something beyond simple smoke. The one she attempted to approach earlier, feeling of immense weight pressing down as it seems to cascade downwards in a flow of chilling cold, all while the plume rises upwards. The next a brilliant moonstone white with the barest tint of blue, projecting a chill beyond freezing, something that strives to crush all warmth beneath its blanket of ice, flakes of ice dancing in the column as it rises.
The next a jade green plume giving the impression of climbing vines and thriving jungle and the dangerous life that hides beneath its boughs. The orange red of sunstone rising like a column of flames fanned by blowing winds, an impression of great heights somehow imparted. On she goes around the circle, each feeling of great power held within the seemingly ever burning coals. The yellowed earthen tone of topaz, eternal and unyielding. The pale golden brown of citrine feeling of soil and growth, of a golden harvest offering its bounty to all. The deep black of onyx shadows, unseen terrors hiding within its confines ready to prey on the unaware.
The more she observes, the more she realizes she recognizes these aspects arrayed before her. That these are more than just smoke. But she is unable to place that recognition, unable to bridge the gap between recognition and knowing.
Two thirds of the way through her trip round the dais, what she sees stops her dead in her tracks. This brazier is different, from a glance it is no more unique than any other, a column of blackened smoke failing to hide the swirling red of flames within, embers drifting through as it rises through and beyond the ceiling above. But all the same it stands apart in comparison to those that came before it. Where others billow with unwelcoming power, denying her approach. This one beckons. This one resonates with something deep within as though it would embrace her, if only she were to step forward.
Her attention enraptured, nothing else exists but her, the brazier, and the echo of its power billowing out above it. The smoke evoking emotions through her being that are not hers, but feel as though they should be. The tyranny of flame, reducing all to smoke and ember. With no intent or deliberation, her feet move on their own and she steps forward. Where before there was a feeling of an outside force rejecting her movement, it is now turned. Now drawing her onward. A light and welcoming guidance from behind as she continues her approach, the meters between her and it close quickly until she stands before the glowing coals of the brazier.
Black smoke wafts around her in an embrace, glowing with motes of blazing ember. Each their own little spirit joining with the smoke, dancing across her form and alighting upon her scales. As she stares into the depths of the coals, she sees that they are not the simple chunks of mineral or roots turned fuel, though those are present in a ring along the outskirts. No, the brazier contains something else, something she could never forget having seen once before. A scale. A single perfect scale of crystalline garnet red.
The tyranny of flame, the Garnet Tyrant… Emberscale… Why is one of his scales here.
Her thoughts drift to the other braziers she’d passed, the recognition she felt finally drawing forth memories and names.
The others, Tidetalon, The Lord of the Lapis Abyss. Rimetail, The Frigid Moonstone Maiden. Verdantfang, The Monarch of the Jade Cycle. Pyrewing, The Sunstone Flamelord. Stonehorn, The Topaz King. Loamwalker, The Citrine Matron. Shadespine, The Onyx Terror. All of them, the Great Dragons, they’re all here.
She continues her list, as she turns her head and completes the circuit of braziers with her eyes until her gaze returns to where she began. Barely needing to look upon the remaining braziers to call to mind their names from the matron’s lessons, each name a Great Dragon, each name a clan of her Kobold cousins out in the world. The effervescent yellow green billowing in violent clouds, Galetalon, The Unending Peridot Wind. The shining faceted purple, flashing with bursts of light that leave spots dancing in her eyes, Fulgorstrike, The Amethyst Coruscation. The clear and bright illusion of faceted smoke, barely visible but at the same time unmissable, Brightspine, The Diamond Illusion. The sanguine striations, crimson upon the rust of dried blood, Crimsonscale, The Bloodstone Monarch.
If her suspicions proved true, each brazier would too contain a scale from one of the twelve. Each brazier invoking some fraction of their power and spirit to protect the Clan.
Something deep within her stirs as her gaze is drawn back to the garnet scale before her, as she’s embraced by the swirling fumes and embers. A sense of solidarity bubbles from within as like accepts like. Moments or months, she cannot be sure how long her attention remains fixed, her body still and her mind racing, all focus locked upon the object before her. Breathing in the rising essence before her and basking in its glow. Thoughts of flames consuming all, reducing it until not even ash remains, only brightly glowing embers slowly blackening as they drift in the winds fill her mind.
Like all good things since she began this trial, the appearance of a blinking light beyond her sight interrupts her thoughts, drawing them away from images of blazing skies and desolate grounds.
<<Your Bloodline Stirs>>
<< Daily allotment of Racial Experience permanently increased >>
With the moment broken, the visions of flames recede from her thoughts. she takes in her surroundings once more and her mind turns to the newest revelation from the System.
Bloodline? What’s that supposed to mean? And a permanent increase? Aren’t those like unbelievably rare?
Where once she saw the braziers and their plumes as an impediment to her task, now she sees their marvel. She sees the twelve Great Dragons and the twelve Great Clans working side by side. The flitting spirits that filter through the mists attuning themselves with one of the Dragon’s individual natures and moving on, towards the next step in the path from the center of the dais.
And like the motes of spirits, she too moves on, her own attunement to the nature of the Garnet Tyrant bolstered. The moment passed and her task still lay before her, she proceeds beyond the brazier. The path before her open and unimpeded. The scale blocking passage of only those unlike itself, those unable to become like itself. And of all things, Kori was not that.
“Spiritcaller, what in the Scale just happened? It took her days to breach the waters, and now she just waltzes up to the Emberscale brazier like she’s warming her hands?” Lowy’s disbelief leaves her agog at Kori’s act, what should have taken her hours or days to slowly approach and meditate one step at a time as she brought herself in line with the Clan’s progenitor instead took a bare few hours.
“I find myself equally at a loss Lowy. I had hoped her acquisition of [Meditation] would allow her to proceed swiftly once she recognized the task, but this beggars belief for her to have spent more time recovering from the previous trial than upon the one at hand…” His gaze split between the unmoving form within the center of the circle and where he observed the youngling’s progress.
“I dare say she’s caught up with expectations for her completion though. All that remains is to entice a guide from the bound spirits and she’ll be finished in short order.” While still unable to reconcile how she managed the latest feat, even he could not simply walk up to the emanations of the brazier under the same conditions, his confidence in his young apprentice stands firm.
“Hah, I bet she’ll get tricked by some bitter old fool of an ancestral spirit or one of those nasty little dark spirits before she ever manages to find a true guide.” Lowy’s cackle punctuating her sentence. “Or maybe one of those tricksy wind spirits that just wants her to let them roam about endlessly.”
“I suppose we will see, won’t we Lowy.”
