Aliandra

  The plex weave of Ali’s domain mana sparkled and rippled in her mana sight as she flew this way and that over the jumbled and shattered bone of the lowest level of the ruined library, iing her work. It leaked out of the ivy and jasmine growing up the walls and pilrs and spilled from the many pnters she had structed to hold her mushrooms and grass.

  Are Insight is so much stronger now. The power increase was so much more obvious with skills like Are Bolt, even just leveling up, let alone when she gained something like her Multishot adva. When she learned a new minion or her barrier gained magical potency, her immediate bat ability drastically improved. Are Insight was a far more subtle magic – a magic of perception, always allowio see – and therefore uand – magic all around her. And knowledge is power. When she had first lear, her domain had appeared as a bright, oversaturated bloom of light, blurry and indistinct, and even a little painful to her senses. Now she could resolve the fine, detailed structure, clearly seeing how the sparkling gold of her are mana wound around the viridian green of her nature mana, supp, enhang, pulsing with energy aail.

  Ali hadn’t spent a whole lot of time on the lowest floor of the library – a shattered pce of bone-covered wreckage. Even before the disaster, she had not had the clearao visit this level – for her own safety, mind you. She had only just extended her domain down here in preparation for their exploration – but the entire area was beginning to look more like a greenhouse than a library, and there was no sign of the ridiagical tomes that might have actally cimed the life of the unwarded and uncssed. If she had possessed Are Insight back then, this level would likely have appeared more intehan a mana storm.

  “So, where is the door?” Mato asked, looking around.

  “It should be over here,” she said, pointing to the heavily encrusted wall. Now that the others were pletely healed, and the dangerous Ruins of Dal’mohra dungeon had beeroyed, it was time to open the doors and explore whatever had bee of the Dal’mohran city’s underground farms.

  The iy of the Dal’mohran mage-engineers had harhe incalcuble power of two full mana densers – a plex blend of light and nature affinities – turning the underground cavern below the suspended city into a breadbasket of verdant growth, easily capable of feeding the ey, aablishing Dal’mohra as an eic powerhouse, exp the surplus to feed all the nearby kingdoms.

  By the clear light of ’s floating magical orb, the full extent of the damage to the library was shown in stark relief. Whereas the upper floors had shapes resembling bookshelves, desks, and walls, preserved uhe encrusting bohis floor looked devastated, like a bomb had turned everything into rubble. The dungeon had filled every nook and y, covered every boulder and rock with thick yers of bone, in a haphazard frozen bst of spines and ridges that jutted out from the walls and the floor. It wasn’t just the door that was obscured – Ali couldn’t evehe stone prising the walls or the floor anywhere.

  Now that it was her domain, rather than the domain of the former duhat permeated this space, she turned her attention to her Domain Mastery skill. Her mind roamed outward, carried by her mana weaving into and through the dense boill she could sehe walls of stone behind them. She twisted it in her mind, transmuting the structure of the bone from solid to disected granules, and aire wall of bone fa?ade colpsed into powder and dust. Malika coughed, waving her hands at the billowing cloud. The empty stone shelves revealed behind the bone seemed unnaturally as if they had been frozen in time behind the encrustation, preserved through the ages. What books were revealed seemed brittle and crumbling, and all signs of the momentous magic that had once imbued them were obviously long gone – stripped by the duhat had id cim to the ruins or by the ages without proper care and maintenance.

  “Not here,” Ali muttered. She had beeain the door was behind that se, but it was hard to get her bearings in this ruined and encased version of the library she had loved so much. She shifted to the right, repeatirick, and another entire se of bone colpsed with a hissing sigh, f rge piles of bone sand on the ground, and kig up more clouds of fine dust.

  Again, she missed, catg Mato this time in the clouds of dust. He coughed and backed up and Ali flew in to destrue of the drifts and piles of bone dust. Using her Domain Mastery skill on such a scale burned lots of mana. She dismissed the prompt for her Grimoire to learn the bone impri again and frowned as she scrutihe walls.

  “How about here?” suggested.

  Dubiously, Ali approached the se indicated, but, this time, as she approached, she felt the door. The subtle way her domain ma as it wove through the bone encrustation and the supp stone walls hi the shape of the a hinges and giant stone arch impressed into the eng bone. She shifted her target a little, c the full doorway, and unleashed her magic. As the cloud of new dust slowly settled, a pair of giant stone doors emerged, set into a great archway of stone.

  “There it is,” Mato said, stepping forward through the dust to reach for the a stone doors.

  “That’s a pretty quick way to ,” agreed. “I vote Ali for town sewage ma and garbage disposal.”

  Mato chuckled, “She’d be a raid-level boss of ing, right?”

  Malika startled, and then nudged him in the ribs with an elbow.

  Ali protested, “You’re so mean!”

  Mato shifted and leaned against the doors, applying all his weight and brute strength. A few moments of growling ensued, followed by a loud crack. The grinding of a hinges echoed through the library as the enormous doors creaked ponderously outward with the reluillennia.

  Beyond the stone doorway, sod and grass tore as the stone sb cut a wide arc through heavy rowth. A burst of hot, humid air gusted into the library, sending bone dust billowing out into the ter of the atrium, setting Ali and her friends to fits of coughing and spluttering again. The moist, damp air carried with it the thick st of post, trees, and growth. With the gusting breeze came a flurry of golden glowing butterflies and luminous green nature wisps like a cloud ht shining fetti into the dusty, dry darkness of the library. A tiny green frog hopped onto the freshly exposed fgstones of the library with a croaking call, and then turned a back through the open doorway, vanishing from Ali’s sight.

  But it was the cloying and oppressive dense surge of mana that demanded her attention, tearing through the archway in a riot of chaotic vortices and gusts, never settling for even a moment as it spilled forth from the open door into the library. It pressed on her senses, crawling along her skin, and buffeting her body like tangible waves in the o.

  “What is this?” Malika asked, her eyes narrowing at the sensations she couldn’t see.

  “It’s not a domain…” Ali answered. She had never seen anything like it. Two distinct affinities of mana – nature, and what had to be light affinity – mingled chaotically, like oil and water. Separate until the ing vortices frothed it into tiny bubbles that seemingly blended into a foam for a while. But the affinities repelled each other, naturally separating out once again and bursting apart in a dispy of violent opposition.

  “Wild mana zone, high density,” said, sounding like he was reading something from his notification list.

  “Explorer?” Ali asked. His scouting skill had proved to be very effective at extrag obscure information about the pces they found themselves in.

  “Yes…” he said, his eyes sing rapidly beyond the doorway.

  Ali ripped her gaze from the vista of twisting, writhing mana, staring out past Mato’s bad into the space beyond. Brightly lit, seemingly by the glowing of the very air itself, she found herself staring at enormous a oak trees, gnarled boughs weighed down by the heavy rowth of vines, creepers, and dense moss. Darting among the branches and dense rowth were tless is, wisps, butterflies, and innumerable things flitting about far too quickly for Ali to identify, all zipping and floating around in a chaotic dispy of energy and life. From deep within the dense jungle came the roars, screeches, and howls of battle, and the hunting of monsters, sending a shiver of primal fear through her, a fear of ravenous teeth and ripping cws, of hungry monsters chasing the small and weak – entirely uhe fear of death and unlife from the duhat had been above.

  “Yeah, this doesn’t look like farmnd,” Mato said, now ba his Beastkin form, staring out through the open doors.

  I may be small, but I’m no longer weak, Ali told herself firmly, casting her gaze across her assembled minions and her powerful friends. I don’t o be so afraid.

  “I don’t see any of that bone crud here,” Malika observed as she stepped forward to join Mato in the doorway.

  “Probably because whatever is in here is strohan that dungeon was,” Mato suggested with a grin on his face.

  “Monster. Ining…” called out, his boearing in his hand.

  Emerging from the rowth among the trees up ahead was a shape so familiar that Ali gasped, transfixed in surprise. The ground shivered as it took a slow step with one of its thick front legs of dense wood and bark. Its gigantic body pressed up against one of the low-hanging limbs of the oak, and with a splintering crack, the branch was torn off, falling to the side entirely unnoticed by the hulking being.

  Forest Guardian – Wood Elemental – level 43 (Nature)

  Ali gasped. Dad…

  Some of Ali’s fo childhood memories included her father summoning Forest Guardians, which she would ride, whooping in glee aement as they charged around the forest. The sudden gush of happy memories about her father and his magic collided with a fresh burst of grief, leaving her body trembling as the ued sight swept her away on a torrent of flig emotions. In a fused daze, she stepped forward into the forest, stretg a hand toward the familiar monster as its low-slung armored head turard her with glowing green, deep-set eyes. Reag as if toug it might make her memories real, might banish the grief in her heart, returnio happier times.

  “Ali?” Malika’s geou her shoulder snapped her back to reality as the monster let out a deeply grating, ground-shaking roar that sent the flitting clouds of is darting away for safety. The monster charged. Ali stumbled bad the ground bucked under her feet as the rushing monster plowed through trees, making them snap like kindling.

  Still reeling from surprise and the emotional whipsh, Ali mao throw up a barrier – a pitifully small glowing wall of golden magic that seemed ie in the face of the fury of the force of nature bearing down ohe ground quaked and her body trembled uhe shuddering vibrations of its powerful, grating, low-pitched roar. She stared, all but frozen, as the fuing creature of her childhood turned into a monster of gigantic proportions, ripping down trees in its haste to kill her.

  From the left, a blur of reddish-brown fur, cws, ah charged in, r loudly. A great grinding crash rang out as brawn and flesh strut bark and wood in a csh that sent sod and grass flying. The Forest Guardian loomed over Mato’s normally enormous form, driving him back several meters with a titanic strike. Four furrows ripped through the damp earth as Matled to hold his ground and a spsh of blood spttered across Ali’s barrier, making her flinch.

  Mato roared again, answering the challenge of the much rger wood elemental, imbuing his cws with the flickering viridian green of his mana as he shed out. A loud thump and a grinding tear apanied a rain of bark and splinters of wood that cttered across Ali’s barrier as she stared aghast at the enormous, t morying to tear her friend asunder.

  Ali’s only warning was an abrupt surge of nature mana that erupted from the monster engaged in a furious battle with Mato, bsting out in a powerful aura that suddenly enpassed her, her friends, and all her minioending out te of at least teers in all dires. Ag entirely on instinct, she snapped her barrier into a sphere, fully eng herself as the dirt below her feet began to writhe and , roots and viing in explosive burgeoning germination of de growth, reag to grasp awine. Even the nearby already-srees sprouted brahat twisted a, reag to ensnare and spear anything within reach.

  Even as powerful as her barrier had grown, it began creaking ominously uhe pressure of the thiarled roots growing rapidly around it. Beside her, both of her Kobold Acolytes burst into pilrs of holy light as they used their emergency healing enha spell to pit their holy magic against the crushi of verdant pnt growth. Of all her minions and friends, only had escaped the crushing grasp, using his wings of pure light to hover above it, quickly withdrawing from the area and alighting on the ground beyond the range of the attack.

  Not just . She reached out to her Scalding Slimes – the only monsters entirely unbothered by the grasping twisting vines – and made them attack the rapidly growiation around her barrier. They twisted their bodies, easily slipping out of the grasp of the crushing roots, shootis of potent steam that would have cooked her, but for her golden barrier. She tugged on it with her mind, and as her slimes severed the vines and roots, her bubble of magic suddenly shot up into the air, carrying her within. Quickly she shot across the chaotic battlefield, beyond the reag grasp of the vines, nding beside .

  “We o free them,” said.

  “I’ll get the healers first,” Ali agreed. Dropping her personal prote, she snapped a bubble of barrier magic around one of her Acolytes and tugged against the grasping roots. With a few quick jets of steam, she freed the Kobold and flew it to safety while it tinued -casting its healing magi-stop.

  “Ining Glimmer Shards,” told her, pointing out the dire.

  Glimmer Shard – Elemental – level 14-21 (Light) Swarm x23.

  As if the Forest Guardian and its rampant pnt growth weren’t enough, the flight of more thay glimmer shards was arg a curving path as their formatiooward their fight at high speed.

  Ali’s mages were all bound i growth, alive only because of the furious casting of her Acolytes uheir powerful enha magid entirely uo use anything but their quick firebolts. She would need her mages freed before she could take on the flying shards, but that would leave her sed healer mired in the Forest Guardian’s devastating growth spell.

  Healer, she decided quickly, throwing out her barrier to protect it, without having enough time to fully sider the full implications. Her Scalding Slimes made short work of the roots, and in seds, they cut her sed Acolyte free. Just as she got it out of the pnts, the glowing formation of light magic shard elementals wheeled one more time and unleashed their characteristiized attack, leaving blurred streaks of afterimages both in her vision and her mana sight. Ali memorized the view of their magi a for ter as the shards indiscriminately speared everything in sight, before simply slig through the roots on their way bato the sky.

  Ali ighe attack, distributing mana potions to her overworked Acolytes, relying oo patch up everyone while she extracted a Kobold Fire Mage. As soon as her slimes freed the mage, she pointed his fireball magic at the skies.

  “Something else is ing,” called out. While his voice sounded calm, Ali caught the hint en his posture, and her heart began to race as she scoured the skies where he was looking.

  Ali was still in the middle of resg her st Fire Mage, and simultaneously direg fireballs into the sky, trying to time their attacks and the high-speed glimmer shards. It was not nearly as easy as she had believed from her first experieh them. I must have got lucky st time, she thought, sing the sky for whatever hing had spied.

  The new arrivals appeared to be twe floating disks of glowing translut yellow that unduted gently in the air. Dowire length of the monster was an e spihat ended in a glowing circur mouth at the front end and a long trailing tail at the back.

  Corust Ray – Elemental – level 32-33 (Light) x2.

  “They’re too far for my mages to hit,” Ali said.

  “I hit them.” As said it, the rays both rotated, lining themselves up with the battlefield below. A bright e-red glow of mana fred to life along the creatures’ spines, intensifying dramatically.

  “Magic attack,” Ali said, quickly summoning a protective barrier in front of herself, studying the attack with her mana sight. It was clearly some form of light magic, but the formation was like nothing she had seen before.

  Suddenly, the glow reached its peak, and twin beams e-red light fired down at the batants struggling below, beams of sutensity that Ali winced in pain at the sight of it. One of the beams tore through several of Ali’s still-trapped minions and sliced into the Forest Guardian, elig a furious pained roar from the mohe sed beam burned a deep glowing furrow through the ground as it sliced directly toward Ali.

  She rotated her barrier and crouched down behind it, barely in time to block the intense beam. But the beam passed through her barrier like light passing through a window, slig through her ribs and into her chest with a sizzle of instantly cauterized flesh. A shadow crossed her vision as the world went dark.

  Ali came to with mud and grass pressed up against her face. The awful stench of burnt flesh filled her nose. Her dizziness and disorientation faded rapidly as the holy magic pulsed within her body, rapidly repairing her wound and banishing her pain. She sat up, to see the battle still raging around her, as ’s intense glow slowly faded.

  “Are you ok?”

  “I think so,” Ali asked, running her hand across the burnt hole in her clothing, examining the unmarked skin below. “What happeo the rays?”

  “I got them.”

  That was stupid. They’re beams of light… Ali frowned. Beams of light magic would pass through her mostly transparent barrier magic; she could see through them after all. Lying crumpled on the ground in front of her barrier was the corpse of one of her mages, a still-smoking hole burnt through his chest from where he must have jumped between her and the beam from the Corust Ray at the st possible moment.

  She sent a silent thank-you to her minion and got up to survey the battlefield. I have two Acolytes, two mages, and two slimes. Everything else she had brought to the battle had died in the crush of aggressive pnt growth or been sliced to pieces by the devastating beam attacks. This is not going well.

  In the ter of the battle, Mato and Malika fought side-by-side while Ali’s two Scalding Slimes jetted superheated steam at the Forest Guardian.

  It doesn’t seem damaged? The monster seemed eoo healthy. Certainly, she and had been distracted by the added light elemental attackers, but her slimes and Malika should have been able to at least do some visible damage. A fsh of steam jetted out, ripping ks of wood and bark from the fnk of the huge elemental, and then she saw it. The soft glow of nature magic suffused the monster, slowly growing the jagged rip in its side closed.

  “Is it regeing?” she asked. Shit, I khat. While she had never really been in bat as a child and hadn’t seen the Forest Guardians in a, her dad had certainly mentioheir regeion magic.

  “Yes, and fast!” Malika shouted.

  “, do you think we should fight it ihe stone should limit its pnt magic.” Ali hadn’t had her mana sight when she had her pnt growth trip, so she couldn’t say for certain, but it sure looked a lot like her old magic skill, except vastly more potent.

  “Good idea. Hey Mato, you try bringing it into the library?”

  Mato shifted slowly, roots and vines snapping uhe sheer brute force of his strength. The giant elemental followed him, and Ali began to back up also. A few moments ter, she made her Scalding Slimes help untrap Mato instead of unleashing futile attacks at the guardian who was just going tee it anyway.

  It was excruciatingly slow, moving within the area of rampant growth, but as soon as Mato crossed the threshold and into the stone-floored library, Ali’s suspi was firmed. The growth e the doorway, and within the library, they were all suddenly free from enta.

  “It’s fully healed again,” Malika said.

  But within the fines of the library, they had much more freedom to move. Even though the monster was still healing itself, and its heavy attacks repeatedly smmed Mato into the walls, dislodging ks of bone from each crashing impact, Ali felt a lot safer.

  Ali summoned her magic to do damage for the first time in the fight, sending all her barrier magi slig sweeping bde attacks, and firing three simultaneous Are Bolt streams. She no longer had ao be defensive, so she didn’t hold back.

  But after a few minutes, it became abundantly clear that they were not making much headway. How much healing does this thing have?

  Ali focused on her mana sight for a few moments, trying to uand what was going on. It took her a few moments to untahe plex interpy of magic. The growth spell was still in effect, suffusing an area of about teers around the monster with nature magily it presumably found nothing in rao grow. But below that, there were two ic effects. One which looked remarkably like Mateion aura, and ahat fred occasionally in respoo heavy damage.

  “I think it has a healing spell and a regeion aura,” Ali said thoughtfully. She didn’t have mupare it to, other than her holy Acolytes and Mato’s skills, but her clusion had to be close.

  “It seems vulnerable to fire,” Malika said. “Yes are doing much more damage than us. you make more?”

  Ali looked again, this time at the attacks. Her are magic seemed to be doing damage just as quickly as her Scalding Slimes, but Malika may have identified something important. The firebolts were leaving smoking holes in the Forest Guardian’s tough armor of bark and wood, the sm edges aed strikes seeming to slowly overwhelm the tinuous, powerful regeion. Of course, she realized that this was one of Mato’s key skills and what made him so hugely effective as a tank – but being oher side of it was more than annoying.

  She shook aersistent memory of her father’s interpy with these Elementals. Everything had ged. She had friends to keep safe, she o focus.

  It makes sehat fire would work on it. Deg that they were going to be here long enough anyway, she put dowtacks and opened her Grimoire. Summoning took a while, so she had never really had much opportunity to use it mid-bat, but this situation called for more damage than their entire group could manage. She didn’t care that the Fire Mage was below average in level, she simply put him to work shooting firebolts and began summoning another.

  It took five, and nearly fifteen minutes of tinuous summoning, before Malika annouhat they were beginning to make progress, and by then was handing his mana potions to the Acolytes. Ali summoned one more mage and theuro her attacks, adding her Are Bolts and the little extra from her barrier shards.

  Eventually, the Forest Guardian colpsed oone floor of the library amid a deluge of fractured bone pieces and dust dislodged from the walls by the force of the impact.

  Yroup has defeated Glimmer Shard – Elemental – level 14-19 (Light) Swarm x23Yroup has defeated Corust Ray – Elemental – level 32-33 (Light) x2Yroup has defeated Forest Guardian – Wood Elemental – level 43 (Nature)

  “Ali, are you ok?” Malika came over to che her as soon as the notification sounded.

  “I was stupid,” Ali said, feeling a sense of burning embarrassment as she recalled hiding behiransparent barrier expeg prote from a light beam. “My barrier is transparent, and the monster shoots light magic.”

  “I meant that thing,” Malika said, pointing at the enormous corpse of wood and bark. “You seemed shaken by it.”

  “Oh.” Ali looked up at it, t above her even ih, feeling the mencholy of her nostalgia once again. “This was my father’s most powerful summon. He used to let me ride them when I was a kid.”

  “I’m sorry, Ali,” Malika said. “That must have been a harsh surprise.”

  Ali nodded, not trusting herself to speak right then.

  “If it was your dad’s minion, you should learn it,” Mato said, ing up to join them beside the corpse. “Then you remember him every time you use it to fight.”

  Ali’s head snapped around in annoya his joking, but she drew up short of actually saying something at the sight of his sincere face.

  Is he serious? But as soon as she sidered who Mato was, she realized he had meant it as a geribute. Mato was defihe sort of person who would sider battle to be a suitable tribute, and she could see him carrying a good friend’s on or armor into battle to honor their memory.

  Besides, it’s all I have left of him. She reached out and touched the rough wooden corpse of the monster, feeling the tears well up in her eyes. She blihem away and decided she liked Mato’s idea. If it was all she had, she would treasure having her father’s favorite summon in her Grimoire. All she needed was to find a couple more. Mom’s golden magic, Dad’s Elementals. This is so very hard.

  Sighing, she eled her destru until the giant corpse vanished in a huge cloud of sparkling mana.

  Three glowing green crystals dropped from the ter of the cloud, king against the stone as they bounced.

  Living Essenature) x3

  What is that? But Ali immediately reized the crystals suffused with inteure affinity mana. It had been one of the magical reagents Eliyen had ground up when she was making the Elixir of Vitality Rejuvenation, except these were quite a bit rger, and the mana denser.

  “Oh, wow,” Malika excimed, bending to pie up and exami. “These are worth some real money.”

  “ we sell that to Eliyen? She make more of those elixirs for people who hem.”

  “I’m not sure we ,” Malika said, pursing her lips as she collected the other two. “They’re valuable enough that we probably need a erce lise.”

  “That seems unfair. What use are they if we ’t sell them?”

  “That’s what the guild mert position is for,” Malika answered. “Weldin’s lise is unlimited when it es to anything sold by a registered adventurer. We literally sell him anything – as long as he wants to buy it – and the town’s mert guilds ’t do anything about it. I talk to him – we make sure the essences are offered to Eliyen for a det price.”

  “Oh, I see. That’s a little plicated.” A sudden thought occurred to her, so she asked, “Am I going to o worry about that when I sell Eliyen mana-purified water too?”

  “Mmm… probably. I talk to Weldin about that too, we’ll figure it out.”

  timewalk