Jjhutto_Son of Flame
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B3. Ch. 19 Strands of Fate
🕑 Added 2024-07-15 19:22:29 +0000 UTCTilly was up before the sun rose the next day feeling refreshed and more than a little nervous about the day’s plans. The tray of food had magically appeared as it always did, but he left it where it was, deciding to only take a little water before heading out. His stomach was in knots and he decided he would come back for it if he was hungry later. Instead, he set out into the predawn light and jogged down the slightly less busy streets, heading toward the wall.
When he arrived at the staging camp, he realized that he had established no way to contact Julius and Marq to notify them of another test. He looked around the camp, wondering how he should go about finding them. Even at this earlier hour, a patrol was preparing to head out over the wall, and the shouts from the mouth of the valley heralded the return of the last group.
The new army had been ranging father and father afeild into the dead lands systematically clearing them of the now ferrel Strigoi, and gaining experience as a mobile force. But they still staged every patrol here at the wall. Sturdy stone and timber buildings were already replacing the temporary structures that had served them all through the siege and a few of them even showed evidence of industry, pushing out smoke through clay chimneys and ringing with the clanging of metal.
One particular building, set far to the side of the others, released a large woofing boom, before ejecting an impressive amount of thick smoke. Tilly started moving in that direction without even thinking about it, but a voice called out to him from nearby, halting his automatic Firefighter response.
“See boy. I told you he would be here with the sun. Trust me, I know the type.” Julius’ rough voice snarked, as the Bastion emerged from behind a tent, having clearly been walking in Tilly’s direction.
“What was that? Do they need help?” Tilly asked the Bastion, tearing his eyes away from the new soot-stained building.
“Naw, the only help they need is space to be left alone and work,” Julius replied drily with Marq emerging from the same corridor between tents, wincing over at the building, but adding nothing to the bastion's statement.
“Alright then… Are you guys ready to head out? And maybe more importantly, does the Commander on duty know there might be some strangeness in our area this morning.”
“Taken care of Champion. Are we requisitioning anyone else today?”
“...I don’t think so.” TIlly answered hesitantly before leaning forward and lowering his voice, “I'm going to test wisdom today, and I don't think the results will be that explosive… but I want you guys there, just in case. I have a guess about what sort of Title will come with each remaining stat. Except for Wisdom, I have no clue how the System is going to reward such a min-max build, but I am hoping it will help me solve a block I have been hitting recently.”
“Copy that, lead on then.” The Bastion answered in a board-sounding voice, not at all cowed by the unknown variables of the task.
Tilly nodded gratefully, happy to have access to such a competent resource for these tests. Soon enough they were over the wall and moving past the unnatural cliff face that ringed the valley on this side. In the distance they could just barely see the next patrol ranging out, moving at what would have been a full sprint back on earth, but only served as double time for their soldiers.
Marq couldn’t keep that pace yet, so they moved at a jog until they were well out of sight of the wall.
“What do you think?” Tilly said, turning to the pair.
Julius shrugged, “Your call, are you going to use this boost to cast something explosive?”
“I don’t think so… It honestly depends on what Title shows up when I activate the items. I won’t have a lot of time to make the call, so I’m going to move a good distance from you before I give it a try. Julius, take care of Marq if things get out of hand. And Marq, handle me if I blow myself to bits or something.”
Julius nodded with a flat smile, while the Acolyte paled for a moment, looking between his two superiors. Trying to decide if they were joking or not.
Keeping his face deadpan, Tilly followed up with “I'll signal before activating, be ready.” Then he turned and took off, quickly moving a few hundred yards away, and settling into his meditative pose. He shot off a quick wave toward the pair and then began to breathe deeply, falling into the pattern that now felt more like home than his bed.
Moving slowly, he reached into his new hidden pocket and brought out the gem fragment, laying it in his open hands, and settling into his center, reaching for as much calm and focus as he could. He had debated trying for intelligence in this next test. He was more confident that the boost and associated Title would pair with [All or Nothing] creating a ridiculously overpowered magical attack. But his failed attempts yesterday to put heat into the fragment had led him to conclude that this was not a power problem.
He was confident that the fragment was in fact a piece of what had once been the egg he had first received as a quest reward, but he had no clue how to restore it to that state.
No matter what he had tried, the fragment hadn’t been able to take in any of his Mana and he suspected that it was still missing something essential to its structure. He was still bonded to it, and he knew this was the key to bringing back Kindle, but until he solved whatever problem was keeping the gem from forming into a fully realized egg, he doubted he would be able to catalyze the emergence of the Phoenix again. That left him with the Wisdom boost.
On the surface, it would give him access to much more Mana for ten seconds, which he could use to push many times more energy into the fragment than he had yesterday. But if that was all he was interested in, he would have just gone straight for the Intelligence test.
No, something in his gut told him that boosting Wisdom that much would result in more than just a straight power or Regen increase. He took a final deep breath, sinking deep into the flame ablaze at his core, and sent a flicker of Will into his Celestial items.
You are about to activate Celestial Bracelets of Substitutional Might. Select one of your following Stats to exchange values with your highest. This effect will last ten breaths.
>Strength
>Intelegence
>Wisdom
>Dexterity
>Constitution
His awareness hovered over his metaphysical network of Mana Pathways and his Well, watching to glean some insight into the workings of the Celestial items and hopefully some hint at how to restore his friend. He took one more deep breath and then selected his chosen stat.
>Wisdom
As soon as he selected it, both jewels inset into the bracelets began to glow. The blue gem pulled deeply on his soul, stripping him of whatever invisible interconnected structures undergirded his body on a cellular level. Tilly’s internal senses were not sharp enough to catch most of what was happening, even while meditating, but he did feel the familiar weakening of his physical form as the incredible sturdiness of his body was radically reduced.
Simultaneously, the green jewel burned against his opposite wrist, flooding his Mana Pathways with incredible energy, expanding them by an order of magnitude. He immediately became viscerally aware of the Mana-drenched world around him, his Mana Pathways began acting like a vacuum, pulling in the surrounding energy at an incredible rate, and attempted to jam more Mana into his already full Well.
This all happened before he had begun taking his first breath, and he was careful to maintain his breathing discipline as he pulled up his newest notification.
Warning, you no longer fulfill the requirements for the Title: [Resolute]. The title has been revoked but can be regained if the requirements are met again in the future.
Congratulations! You have earned the Title: [Fate Drinker]
[Fate Drinker]: Your Wisdom Stat is higher than all of your other Stats combined. As long as this remains true, you may empower a single Ability with the very essence of the substance underpinning reality itself, resulting in powerful, yet unpredictable outcomes.
Tilly considered this new Title, giving himself several seconds and another whole breath to process, even as his third-tier Wisdom stat continually funneled an extreme amount of mana into his system. Unable to enter his core, it was ejected into the air around him, creating an invisible vortex of potential energy, swirling with him at its center.
The feeling of unused power filled him to the point that he felt like he was going to pop, and he grit his teeth against the uncomfortable sensation. He slowly forced out another breath, clinging to his meditative pattern as he focused in on the gem fragment, and activated his new Title.
His internal awareness suddenly snapped, throwing his perspective into an entirely new dimension. One filled with screaming color, intricately woven into complex patterns of sound and light. Tilly instantly lost his connection to space and time as his sense of self frayed to the point of nonexistence, by his new, elevated perspective. His mind was adrift in a sea of dazzling complexity and he was left without anything to anchor him to what he had once thought was reality.
Moments bled into months as his perspective itself was pulled through the intricate pattern undergirding all creation. At some point during this journey, a small, significant thing glittered, calling his attention back from the vast sea to a deep blue point hovering just in front of his core.
That point did something to him, pulling him back from the edge and helping him to find himself in the context of the cosmos. Tilly felt it as an awareness of his soul bloomed in his consciousness, a revelation of self. Tilly watched in awe as it took in the dizzying array of shifting patterns that surrounded it and wove them into a knot that seemed to beat like a heart. It sent out and received energy with every “beat” and Tilly could not help but be drawn to the faint, but significant present orbiting the complex mechanism that was him.
It seemed to beat in sync with him, and the sight of the small sapphire star set off a deep thrumming in the depths of his soul. Light and energy, woven into a pattern of desire, shot out from his core, and wrapped around the blue point, in a gentle embrace and began to form a complex network of interwoven points that seemed to crystalize around the star in real-time.
This brought him a deep feeling of satisfaction even though he could not remember why. As he watched as the metaphysical structure was built, his heightened awareness started to fade, and the dimensional sea he had found himself in began fuzzing out of focus in his peripheries. Relief washed through him as he felt himself returning to his body, but that piece of his core that had reached out to the small star shined brightly in defiance, not yet finished with its work. Even as the rest of the scene faded, the connection his soul had formed, vibrantly radiated its clear intention in rejection of the slow fuzzing of its surroundings.
Even in his addled state, Tilly’s awareness identified deeply with his soul’s desire, and he flung himself at the working, lending as much of his Will and self to the crystalized network that had almost finished its genesis. The heart-achingly beautiful vista of deep reality was slowly covered by a thin layer of space-time, removing it from Tilly’s awareness. But Tilly clung stubbornly to the working that his soul had almost completed, protecting it from fuzzing out as it urgently wove stunningly complex layers of meaning and purpose around the small sapphire star.
His soul, a galaxy of belief and desire interconnected by strands of memory and longing, beat thunderously like a sprinter’s heart, as it funneled as much of the surrounding pattern into the network it was helping form as possible. Yet it wasn’t enough, even in the fading light of his elevated awareness, Tilly could sense its lack and roared as he reached for more.
Probability bent, time slowed, and even the power radiating off the Plane’s sun was funneled through Tilly’s strained soul and used in the working. Tilly’s awareness screamed in effort and pain as something finally snapped in his metaphysical structure, and his ability to hold on to the effort slipped from his mental grasp.
The Weave was replaced by an encroaching darkness, as unconsciousness closed in all around him, bringing with it a grim promise of relief. As the last of the Mana flooding his system was thrust into the miniature sun shining in the palm of his hand, Tilly’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he collapsed backward, finished.
…
Voices floated above him, swimming over the surface of his consciousness as he took refuge deep in the waters below.
“What is that thing?”
“What, you haven’t seen him with it before?”
Then a small sharp tap hit his forehead, somehow reverberating into the depths of his psyche.
Cheep?
Comments
Joshua Hutto
deffinitley. Please do
Zachary Koffink
Thank you for the chapter. I noticed a few typos and I was wondering if you were open to them being pointed out?
