Nate smiled at Kiri through his weariness, his sister keeping an arm around him as they stumbled back to camp. Even with the healing restoring his body, his Feather of Renewal feeding on a constant stream of mana, the repairs didn’t change the fact that he was bone-tired. Both physically and emotionally. Coralie’s betrayal weighed on him, not because he cared much for the Ice Mage. In retrospect he’d had very little to do with her. But he knew it would be tormenting Kiri and that did concern him.

  Then there were the Unseen twins. He wondered if he was being too soft, keeping them alive. The unusual presence of soul energy that permeated them after he had shattered their veils had been interesting, but he wondered if it was worth the risk of leaving such slippery individuals alive. Even now he was second-guessing that decision, because he didn’t know what he wanted, and that meant he would likely be influenced by what other people wanted. What would Flash want, if he had survived? Would the Edgedancer try to save Celeste, or would he feel as betrayed as Kiri felt? What would Aisling and Kiri want? What would Morgane want? With a frustrated sigh he turned his mind away from those questions. They would be answered soon enough.

  Walking through the camp revealed the true cost of the attack against them. The night was lit up by fires, many burning out of control as tents fluttered in the breeze and supplies littered the ground. There were bodies everywhere, made eerie by the lack of other sounds beyond the coursing wind and crackle of fires. Casting his farsight sphere of awareness forward he found the remnants of the nobility's side of the camp. Based on the numbers he judged that only a few Houses remained, alongside some of the Swords and a notably smaller group of members of the Guild. It seemed to him that the rest of the nobility, those who didn’t number among the dead, had turned tail and run, fleeing into the night.

  A quick shift of his farsight sphere of awareness let him sense that the Conscripts’ camp was no better. A fraction of the people remained, wandering aimlessly or sitting dejectedly around their own small campfires. Those who were too injured to leave and those who refused to leave them. The ties of friendship, he thought with a smile, as he considered another painting. He acknowledged that his previous painting of war had shown his opinion of it. A wasteful circus was how he had displayed it, using a rainbow of colour to contrast the seriousness of war. But, even if he hated the violence and loss of life, and how the weak were dragged into it to serve the purposes of the powerful, he saw something else that night through his Farsight of the Runic Artist: camaraderie and love. People who likely saw the futility of their decisions but refused to leave their friends behind, even if it cost them their own lives. There was beauty in that, in the ties that bound humanity together.

  He wanted to dwell on those feelings more, to hide the rest of his disgust at the waste of life, but he had two more concerns to deal with. Extracting his anti-scrying ward from his Runic Gallery he activated it, sealing Kiri and himself in. He ignored the curious looks from Aisling and Morgane as he created his Illusion rune to disguise the movements of their lips, powering it with the dregs of mana he had managed to restore since the end of their battle.

  “I felt it again…when I saw the Princess cast her Spell. That feeling of being more real,” he whispered, keeping his voice low even with the anti-scrying ward in play.

  “I did too, when I burned both my Soul Twins to be reborn. But…” replied Kiri, though her tone sounded uncertain.

  “But?” Nate pressed.

  “But, they weren’t the same!” answered Kiri, her eyes narrowed in annoyance tinged with confusion. “When it happened on the Plains, the feeling was almost beyond words. Everything felt right. Like I was more real than anything else. It was the same when I fought the assassin. But when it caught me unawares…it felt less…”

  She paused for a moment at Nate’s annoyed look before answering his displeasure.

  “I know, I know, it was dumb. But I had to know if what I was feeling from Coralie was real. If she really had betrayed me. I’m sorry though. It was reckless and I shouldn’t have put you through that.”

  “It’s fine,” Nate mumbled. “Just, maybe be a bit more careful? Don’t put yourself between any more assassins and their targets, yeah?”

  Kiri, mouth twisted and looking suitably chastened, before she smiled slightly, “Deal, unless it’s you they’re targeting.”

  Nate smiled slightly and relaxed.

  Kiri took his reaction as permission to continue, “Anyway, the feeling of ‘realness’ or whatever you want to call it…it wasn’t the same. It was there, sure. I felt connected to everything, but it was so much less than the feeling on the plains. How would you put it…umm…a pale imitation.”

  Nate tried not to laugh as she turned to teasing him.

  “I do not sound that verbose,” he groused.

  Kiri’s raised eyebrow at his phrasing made them both laugh.

  “Okay, maybe I can be a tad formal,” he admitted, intentionally bumping Kiri with his shoulder before grumbling at the impact. “What in the Nine Hells have you been eating? It’s like bumping into a rock.”

  “Monsters. I’ve been eating monsters,” Kiri replied with a big grin. “And you are that ‘verbose’. I just figure it’s part of you being an artist, you know? You don’t just paint a tree to look like a tree. You add your own…”

  She paused for a second, clearly searching for a word and Nate took a second to enjoy the smile on her face. It was the first he had seen on her since Coralie’s betrayal.

  “Flair,” he interjected after a moment.

  “Sure. Flair, that works. I just figure you do the same with the way you talk and describe things. Maybe it’s just because that’s how you see the world. Doesn’t mean I won’t tease you about it though.”

  “Love you too, sister,” he grumbled.

  Kiri grinned for a moment and nodded, “Love you too, little brother.”

  Nate raised an eyebrow and Kiri smirked at him, “What? I’m older.”

  Rolling his eyes he guided their discussion back to the original topic, “So, it felt the same, but less? Like a cup half-full?”

  Kiri nodded, “Something like that. What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I have felt the same. Variations in the strength of the feeling,” Nate acknowledged. “There is something going on there.”

  Kiri looked at him, her blue eyes deadly serious as she waited for him to expand on his thoughts.

  “I am wondering,” Nate admitted. “If we can direct it. To me, it feels like there is an energy that is suffusing my entire being. Not just my body. But everything that makes me…me. It fades quickly though, draining away, like nothing I can do can hold onto it. But I haven’t tried to direct it. That’s what I want to try next.”

  “Direct it at what?” Kiri asked. Her facial expression told him she already had some ideas and just wanted to hear him say it.

  “My Skills or runes.”

  Kiri nodded, “I’ll try the same. We can compare our experiences.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Time to deal with notifications?”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Yep,” Kiri agreed.

  Continuing to walk together, he dropped the anti-scrying ward and illusion rune so he could hear what was going on around him more clearly, turning his attention to the notifications that waited for him. Opening his first he looked over the level gains. Eight dead Golds on the lower end had only netted him two levels, though he felt he was over halfway to his next one.

  Accrued Mana applied to Secondary Class.

  Level up…

  Level up…

  Stats adjusted: +2 Magic Power, +8 Magic Control, +4 Channelling Speed, +4 Mana Reserve, +2 Mana Absorption, +10 Free Stats

  Nate found he was neither pleased nor displeased with the Stat growth. He knew he would need more Magic Control to effectively use a Class like Lord of Life, his planned Tertiary Class. That said, he was also a bit annoyed at the lack of growth in his Intellect Stat. With that in mind, he put his ten Free Stats into Intellect. Moving to the next notification, he went over his Skill growth.

  Conceptual Insight 53 > 54

  Conceptual Material Shaping 38 > 40

  Farsight of the Runic Artist 54 > 55

  Conceptual Runic Mastery 52 > 54

  Conceptual Spatial Manipulation 45 > 48

  Conceptual Amplified Magic 44 > 47

  Conceptual Automated Existence 27 > 33

  Conceptual Spatial Authority 27 > 32

  Conceptual Material Shaping was on the verge of evolution and he had a pretty good idea what way it would go. He had been pushing it for months towards being able to let him work on multiple materials simultaneously. The result should be an exponential increase in his output, along with his mana consumption, but he was fine with that. There was no point keeping the horde of mana he was accumulating lying around. Outside of battles like he had fought that night, the rate at which he accumulated mana was far outstripping the rate at which he could spend it.

  Conceptual Automated Existence and Conceptual Spatial Authority would require some attention soon to make sure they were moving in the right direction and he had ideas for both. For Conceptual Automated Existence, his current problem was how singular the Constructs were. One Epic-tier material produced one Conceptual Construct. What he wanted to try was to see if he could split them, turning one substrate into multiple Constructs. Even if they were weaker, or didn’t last as long, the ability to overwhelm his opponents with numbers seemed like a good way to grow the Skill. As for Conceptual Spatial Authority, he wanted to add an obfuscating effect to the Skill, similar to the one he had turned down for Farsight of the Runic Artist so long ago. He had the tools to be sneaky, and making himself harder to target in a fight also granted him the freedom to better control the flow of battle or support Kiri.

  However, the two Skills he really needed to focus on were Farsight of the Runic Artist and Conceptual Runic Mastery. Both Skills were approaching their level sixty evolutions and he needed to make sure he was pushing them in the right direction. The problem he had with them was the problem he felt with all of his Skills. They were all Mythic. He had even gotten an Achievement for getting them all to Mythic; an Achievement Kiri was now attempting to mirror, though he didn’t think she had much of a chance of doing so before they hit level sixty. Not having a Tertiary Class seemed like a prerequisite for that particular Achievement. But, with his Skills all at Mythic, he was mostly at a loss for how to push them to the next tier.

  He had his ideas with the strange feeling or energy that would come upon them, but beyond that he had no ideas. Was there even a tier beyond Mythic? Or were beings like Arikanvil just Mythic Class and Skill holders who had levels counted in the hundreds? He didn’t know what he didn’t know and all he could do was experiment, he supposed. For Farsight of the Runic Artist he was attempting to force the Skill to return to its roots in a way. It was the only Skill that lacked the ‘Conceptual’ moniker and his idea was to try and shift it back towards his improved sight that the Skill had originally granted. Specifically, he wanted it to let him see the affinities of mana, revealing the Concepts of the universe and how they interacted. If he could manage it, there might be an Achievement involved, but even without that it would assist with his Embodiment so it was a no-brainer.

  As for Conceptual Runic Mastery, with the latest Skill levels, the mana cost reduction for creating runic structures from mana had finally capped out. Now, as long as there was ambient mana, he didn’t need to spend any of his own mana to create runes. He did still have to expend mana to power them, but that wasn’t surprising. The idea of using ambient mana to power his runes was ludicrous, at least within the world of Galle. Maybe some of the higher-tier Dungeons could manage it to an extent. He could try to push the Skill in that direction, but he didn’t see a lot of value in it. The Mana Aspecting part of the Skill was also almost at a hundred percent. It was effectively applying an affinity to the mana within the rune, which meant he could do more for less, similar to how a Spell functioned when cast by someone with the associated affinity. As for his Intents, he had long since reached a point where he had so many to use and guide a dynamically created rune that it didn’t matter. There was an argument for having more Imbued Intents; with twenty-nine, he could create some complicated workings, but whether that would be enough for something like multiversal travel was yet to be seen. Additional Subconcepts were also useful, but again, he had quite a few Sigils to work with. It meant making bigger runes to handle them, and it was that idea that he latched onto. It might not be as important for battle, but being able to make his runes smaller had huge implications for his crafting. Pushing Conceptual Runic Mastery to allow him to miniaturise his runes would be his focus. With his decisions on his development made he let the part of his mind that had gone over everything focus back on the here and now.

  The area that had once housed Princess Morgane’s tent was filled with milling individuals, divided into three groups. The Swords, looking bloodied and beaten, but with over eleven still standing, including Second Sword Valis. Near them were a group of Nobles and their guards. Those truly loyal to Morgane, he guessed, among them Baroness Olithia . They too looked like they had been in the thick of it, with torn clothes, battered armour and bloody wounds. The final group was the Guild members. Of the fifty or so Guild members who had joined Princess Morgane’s army, only thirty remained and they all looked like they had been part of the battle.

  It was towards them that Nate, Kiri and Aisling walked, to head off the rising problem.

  “Step away from her!” yelled Flash, daggers in hand as the Edgedancer squared up against a monstrously-sized Frick.

  “Make me,” taunted the gigantic blue goblin and Nate sighed, preparing to deal with one of the issues from this night: the Unseen, and their odd souls.

  *************

  Kiri went over her own improvements quickly, reading through her notifications.

  Accrued Mana applied to Secondary Class.

  Level up…

  Level up…

  Stats adjusted: +2 Dexterity, +6 Agility, +4 Willpower, +2 Perception, +4 Magic Control, +2 Mana Reserve, +10 Free Stats

  The next notifications informed her that two of her Skills had reached evolutions. The two evolutions added to her growing power, though both Skills were already Mythic. Soul Rebirth’s evolution increased the amount of Stats she could absorb by an additional third. It seemed the best choice to her since she was heavily focused on passive improvements to her physical capabilities. The second Skill was Tethered Soul Weapons. She had chosen the evolution that doubled the range of her tethered arms, allowing her to fight at a distance that should leave her out of range of most conventional melee combatants. A Skill which she wished she’d had against the assassin. She knew she was distracting herself from Coralie’s betrayal and for once was thankful she hadn’t reached one-hundred-and-fifty Intellect so she couldn’t split her focus. She knew if she could, one part of her mind would be going over that sore point like a tongue flicking over a cut in her mouth. Worrying at it, even if there was nothing that could be done about it.

  Approaching the remains of the Princess’s tent, she saw Flash preparing to fight Frick and her mouth twisted at the reminder of Coralie even as she prepared to subdue the Edgedancer. Those Unseen couldn’t be allowed to wander free. Glancing at the two unconscious women she frowned. Her Soul Sense roamed over them, their veils demolished by Nate, and what she saw gave her pause. Something was wrong with their souls…like an infection. Maybe, she acknowledged, Nate had been right to spare them. They’d know soon enough if it was the correct decision. With a huff she marched forward with her brother and Aisling. This mess wasn’t going to clean itself up and she was happy doing anything that would distract her from her other thoughts and feelings.

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