timewalk

  Mato

  Ba his Beastkin body, Mato rotated his shoulders with a groan, before stretg his legs and arms o a time. He had been fighting nonstop for more than two hours and he felt amazing. Well, sore, but amazing. The stant rush of charging through buildings, smashing his skills against the armor of the undead, and dragging them up to the fireballs only to begin again was a rush he couldn’t begin to expin. Even the frustration of flying monsters getting away could not take away hoy he felt.

  He was a little tired, though. He had not been able to take a break the eime, and even with Battle Trance, his stamina was beginning to run low. He walked dowairs to the ground floor of the st building they had cleared as they searched for a secure spot to rest.

  As he reached the bottom and finally sank to the cold, unyielding stone, he was surprised by a sudden chime. I didn’t just level up, did I? he thought bringing up the notifications.

  Requirements met for skill adva.

  Swipe has reached level 2th has reached 135.Simultaneously hit five monsters with a single Swipe.Kill a monster irike with Swipe.

  Swipe gains Damage Specialist.(Specialized for damage output as a shapeshifter, your base Swipe damage in shapeshifted form is increased by + [skill + strength] %)

  Ooh! A damage upgrade! This is good. Wait, there’s another?

  Requirements met for skill adva.

  Swipe has reached level 2th has reached 130.Wisdom has reached 50.Tanked more thay flying monsters with Swipe.Tanked a raid-level flying threat with Swipe.

  Swipe gains Battle Master.(Stamina: A master at battlefield trol, you take advantage of your enemy’s distra. Whenever you are in range of a creature and it attacks someone else, or tries to leave ye, you instantaneously retaliate for on damage + [skill + strength x 2] %. +20% ce to do critical damage. 100% ce to cast level [skill] Grasping Roots on hit. ditional Trigger.)

  Choose up to one adva.

  He carefully read through the two advas offered. They both look so good. The Damage Specialist appealed to his sensibilities – simple and reliable. Swipe damage already scaled by skill level and strength – at his current abilities it was worth +155%. Damage Specialist would push that up to +310%, doubling it. A fine upgrade indeed. Given how frequently he used Swipe, that would be very wele.

  Battle Master looked a lot more plex, although he was at least half certain it was strong. The damage multiplier was very high – sg off of double his strength – and he would get a bonus to critical damage. The downside seemed to be that he couldn’t use it whenever he wanted.

  What’s the deal with the Grasping Roots? It was just the kind of skill would love to dissect. Didn’t Ali have that before? Now I’m being offered the same thing?

  “Hey, I got a skill advance, I o choose between two options,” he said, getting a cascade of ied curiosity on the previously weary faces of his friends. He quickly shared it with them.

  “Well, there’s your ao fliers,” said instantly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Battle Master. Look at the requirements to unlock it – two of them talk about flying creatures. My guess is this skill is a tank’s ao anything with an escape skill like flying. Once I ground a wyvern or bat, you will trigger that every time it tries to take off. If you hit, it ’t fly away because you just rooted it to the ground.”

  “Oh!” All the pieces were there, and once had put it all together for him, he suddenly saw just how strong the skill really was. He had been thinking about it all wrong. “It’s a trol skill!”

  “The Damage Specialist is strong,” Malika suggested, “but for tanking, I’ve never heard of anything as good as that Battle Master. Instaaliation with a damage boost and a way to trol monsters – not just the flying ones – trying to leave. I think that’s your best option.”

  “I’ve been reading a bunch about bat in the Adventurer’s Guide,” Ali said. “Isn’t one of the biggest problems for tanks that se enemies ighem and resist Taunts with high wisdom?”

  Mato nodded, and then it suddenly dawned on him what Ali was getting at. “Oh, you mean that even a smart enemy will have to clude that he has to attack me because attag someone else will get him punished?”

  “That’s a really good point,” said, nodding his head approvingly at Ali.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Mato said, seleg the advance.

  Swipe – level 20Stamina: A sshing attack that hits all enemies directly in front of you for on damage +155% [skill + strength].Stamina: A master at battlefield trol, you take advantage of your enemy’s distra. Whenever you are in range of a creature and it attacks someone else, or tries to leave ye, you instantaneously retaliate for on damage +290% [skill + strength x 2]. +20% ce to do critical damage. 100% ce to cast level 20 [skill] Grasping Roots on hit. ditional Trigger.Physical, Melee, Area, Strength

  Aliandra

  Ali sat on the arble flrateful to take a moment for a breather. She had been fighting nonstop sihe m, and within the error of her underground time se was now probably somewhere a little past midday. There were minions to resummon, notifications to check, and a bre of chores, but she simply ig all for a while and zoned out.

  From the outside, looking at the ruined and boered building, it had been hard to be certain, but the arble she was sitting on made it clear she was inside one of the city vaults. One of the smaller oo be sure – the main one had been to the north – missing now, along with a rge se of the city, casualties of some unfathomably immep of destructive magic.

  Their relentless charge through the ercial core of Dal’mohra – now ruined and serving as strongholds for the undead – had certainly been effit. They had made enormous progress. But many of her skills required focus and tration – and keeping that up for hours on end without a break took a toll ohat couldn’t be attributed to mere physical tiredness. She was beginning to agree that Martial Insight was one of her stro skills, however, it was also the ohat required her to split her tration and focus the most, and if she were zy, she squahe opportunity to grow her skill, and substantially reduced the effectiveness of her minions in bat.

  Eventually, her mind turo her notifications, and the familiar pressure behind her brow that informed her in no uain terms that her Grimoire was awaiting a decision.

  Imprint: Zombie pleted.Imprint: Skeleton pleted.Variant: Death’s Acolyte added to Imprint: Kobold.Imprint: Poison Wyvern pleted.Imprint: Giant Bat pleted.

  Four new ones? Ali’s Grimoire was almost full, with only a single chapter avaible. She sidered the rest of her imprints carefully, but even though her elemental imprint was basically useless, she still wao study it – especially the strange Glimmer Shards. There was no way she was giving up her book imprint after all it had cost to get it. She still held out hope that she might eventually be able to use it.

  She sat up straighter, shaking her head to clear her mind a little. The zombies were disgusting, and she simirly had little desire to summoons. But at least there had been a couple of skeletal mages with an ice affinity which seemed iing. I won’t be able to summohough, will I? It was a simple extrapotion from her experieh the elementals. What little she knew of neancy told her that the undead were animated by death affinity mana, and she didn’t have that.

  I could try it though, she thought. She did have a bit of an intellectual curiosity, so she pulled out her Grimoire and chose the imprint for undead skeletons.

  As soon as it finished inscribing the imprint, she sed through the variants. Oh, I did get it, she thought, pausing at the imprint for a skeletal Ice Mage. But as she had guessed, she summoned an intact skeleton that briefly stood about as tall as Malika before it colpsed in a pile of distinctly non-animate bones. She got a few unusual looks from her friends, but she ighem for now, trying out all the other variants, verifying that none of them would actually work. Ohing that was rather surprising though, was that the imprint included the Skeletal Wyvern – with a poison mana affinity. However, it too seemed to require death mana to animate it, and she destructed the massive pile of bones she had created after her unsuccessful attempt.

  “New imprint?” asked curiously.

  “Yes, but I don’t think my mana is patible with undead,” Ali firmed. Her panions exged strange ghat she almost ented on, but decided not to. Of course she hated undead! Couldn’t they see that?

  Discarding the skeleton imprint, she repced it with the one for zombies. To her surprise, a couple of Kobold skeletal variants remained, shifting to attach to the Kobold imprint. But the ge seemed etiot allowio support them with her magic. The zombies also summoned dead, rather than undead – appearing as rotted corpses. She hastily destructed her experiments as soon as the putrid stench of her creation hit her nostrils.

  “I learn the Giant Bat or the Poison Wyvern,” Ali said. “Which do you think seems better?”

  “Too bad you ’t get both,” Mato said.

  “I think the bats are pretty agile, and the stun attack is seriously scary,” said. “They will probably work better on the uhan poison.”

  “Yup, that’s true,” Mato agreed. “The skeletons seem immune.”

  “The wyvern seems like the better long-term choice,” Malika tered. “Poison is a good damage type, and we won’t always be fighting undead.”

  “The wyvern is pretty,” Ali said. It really was a magnifit beast. Even though she had been terrified at the time, seeing the wyvern flying right beside her as she tried to rescue had been a sight that left a powerful impression on her.

  “Seriously? That’s what you’re basing your decision on?” Mato said, chug as he shook his head.

  “I don’t see why not. They seem about equal, otherwise.”

  “There’s one additional factor,” Malika said. “The wyvern scales are valuable as materials for leather or scale crafting.”

  “See, that’s a respectable reason. You could make good money with them,” Mato said.

  “Good thing that’s the pretty ohen,” Ali retorted to the sound of Mato’s ughter. It was a det reason and a way to differentiate betweewo choices, but she was gd that it came out in favor of the wyvern.

  She discarded the Giant Bat imprint and itted the Poison Wyvern trimoire.

  Eager to see her new monster, she summoned one.

  Poison Wyvern – Dragon – level 30 (Poison)

  Your reserved mana has increased by +225.

  Wow! It was a geous creature. Ali admired the long, sleek, dangerous reptiliaor, perched on its two powerful cwed legs and stretg its broad wings. Its reptilian face turoward Ali and two sets of eyelids blinked across its intelligent-looking glittering green eyes as it watched her.

  “Now that’s something,” Mato said with a low whistle of approval.

  Ali reached out her hand and ran her fingers along the gleaming emerald scales, feeling the warm smoothness under her fiips.

  I make dragons!

  While she knew wyverns were not true dragons, g the front limbs of their brethren, and generally being smaller and nimbler, they were still apex predators and her new minion looked like she k. Even her Kobolds k, most of them stopping and staring, some even makiures of respect towards the wyvern, and her for creating it.

  “Shall we tinue?” Mato seemed excited to get back to the fighting, but Ali felt relut to give up her rest quite so soon.

  “I think we should explore this building a little more. I’m pretty sure it was one of the city vaults,” she said. “There should be a secure room somewhere.” It was uhat anything of value had survived for so long, and probably the dungeon had ed everything ages ago, but each time she reized a building or a street, Ali felt the sharp e to her past, tinged with sadness for what it had bee.

  “I’ll go check it out,” said, springing to his feet, and vanishing into the darkness for a few minutes while Ali tried a few of her breathing exercises hoping to find a little more mental alertness in the familiar patterns of rexation.

  “There’s a doorway leading down from the stairwell, but… it’s locked,” paused, seeming a little awkward before tinuing. “Um… Malika, would you mind trying to unlock it? I’d like to see what’s down there...”

  “Sure,” she agreed, much more readily than Ali expected.

  “I could bash it,” Mato suggested.

  “No, I think I’ve got it,” Malika deed, with an eye roll that had Mato chug and pretending to flex his biceps.

  Ali scrambled to her feet, curiosity winning out over her tiredness – or perhaps her exercises really had helped – and followed as he led the way to an imposing heavy stone door set into the wall at the base of the stairwell. It was covered in dust which he had already brushed out of a recessed handle and keyhole.

  I could probably destruct that, she thought. However, Malika had already produced a professional-looking lockpig kit – a sleek bck leather case with several implements bearing subtle entments inscribed on them.

  “I thought you didn’t like that skill?” Ali asked.

  “I don’t like that I was forced to learn it,” Malika said, grimag and frowning at the same time. “People should be able to choose their path, and pig locks is not normally the behavior of det folk.” She paused for a moment. “But it did save me and on the Kel’darran caravan. I figured if I have the skill I may as well do it properly. Relying on a dead guard with a bloody hairpin isn’t pleasant or smart. Provided I don’t do anything illegal with it, I think it’s ok.” While she was talking, she ied the bed steel tools into the lod moved them around with deft and plex gestures while a subtle interpy of mana flowed into the lo respoo the lock-pig tools’ entments and her skill.

  Her response made it sound like she was trying to rationalize it to herself, but it still surprised Ali. Malika had been so morally opposed to anything to do with crime and thievery when she had first met her, a here she was showing clear evidehat she had spent her hard-earned gold on what looked like an expe of lockpicks. It seemed obvious to Ali that the skill should be ok, provided she didn’t do anything bad with it, but then again, she had no experieh being forced into taking an unwanted skill by criminals threatening violend perma harm.

  A few moments ter there was a muffled click, and Malika withdrew her tools. She stepped back allowing Mato to use his strength to open the heavy door. There was a grinding noise of stone-on-stone and a squeal as a hinges protested loudly, but Mato mao lever the door open wide with some overdone manly grunting and showers of fine bck powder.

  A set of stoairs desded into the darkness, covered with a thick carpet of dust, undisturbed for turies. Ali summoned a small circur barrier for prote. Just in case. It didn’t look like anything living – or even dead – had passed this way sihe fall of Dal’mohra, but she wasn’t taking any ces. ’s light floated dowairs, bobbing and weavily and they all trooped down with Mato in the lead. Ali told her Kobold and Goblin minions to follow her, leaving the rger wyvern behind. It wouldn’t fit through the narrow passage anyway.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Ali found an expansive room, its features slowly revealed as the bobbing light moved away toward the ter. The thick yer of dust made it hard to tell, but the floor seemed to be made of a polished stone. Several marble stone pilrs gleamed green in the light of ’s magic – even a few lying broken on the ground. Whatever had once been in here had long decayed away, undisturbed for thousands of years. A cobwebs drooped, hanging heavily from the pilrs and ceiling, but the ubiquitous bone from the surrounding dungeon was spicuously absent. Clearly, this room had been sealed before the dungeon and its monsters had eveed.

  “Over here,” said, drawitention to a vault door set into the marble wall, and then coughing as his movement disturbed the dust. The giant circur door was i into the stone and covered with hundreds of protective runes, most of them dark and devoid of mana, but a few of them still glowed in her Are Insight.

  “This looks more plicated,” Malika said, moving up to examihe lock.

  “Some of the protective runes are still active,” Ali warned. She wasn’t quite certain what they would do, damaged and aged as they were, but there might still be potene of the defenses.

  “I’d still like to try.”

  “Ok, if you’re careful,” Ali nodded, summoning a barrier between Malika’s head and chest and the door, just in case, leaving space for her to access the lock itself. Everyoook a few steps backward and Malika began her deft lockpig, a look of plete focus in her eyes.

  Clibsp;The runes on the doorway fred, releasing their mana in an explosion, more deafening for being fio a stone room. Ali’s barrier shattered into a thousand shards and the powerful bst knocked her to the ground even from halfway across the room. As she tumbled, Malika’s body, unched by the close proximity to the bst, flew clear over her head to crash up against the wall on the far side of the room.

  Horrified, Ali turned, but she found Malika gracefully nding on her feet, brushing debris from her clothing.

  “Thanks for the barrier, Ali, it should be open now,” she said, ag as if nothing remarkable had happened.

  That would have finished me easily. Actually, she had taken some bst damage despite the distance. She brushed at some of the bck scorch marks on the front of her clothing.

  “rick,” Mato said.

  The vault chamber was surprisingly spacious, taining many stoables, alcoves, and stands. However, the passage of time had not been kind to anything that wasn’t stohere were piles of decayed and tattered remnants littered everywhere. Ali levitated to a dispy of something that looked like it may once have been a book, but it crumbled at the slightest touch. Several stone and ceramic figurines had survived, but Malika said they had value only as collectors’ items and probably weren’t even worth carrying back to town.

  At an alcove set into the wall, Ali found a small chest, the metal bindings heavily corroded. As she reached over to open it, it too crumbled into dust, the wood having not survived aging in the vault. A pile of gold s spilled out onto the stone surface making a cascade of king as the s bounced and rolled oone, unnaturally loud in the fines of the vault.

  “I found something,” Ali announced, but her annou was not o get their attention – they were all already staring in her dire.

  “That’s a lot of gold s,” observed.

  “Exactly five hundred.” The ck of hesitation and the precision and fidenalika’s assessment took Ali by surprise, and she just stared at her friend for a moment.

  “Appraise,” Malika expined, shrugging her ao Ali’s unasked question. “They’re a s too, so they will be difficult to use unless we find a money ger or a collector.”

  “What should we do with them?” asked.

  “How about a hundred each, and one hundred froup fund?” Ali suggested. The group fund idea had just e to her as a fsh of inspiration, mainly as a way of easing her friends’ ay about who owed whom money. Some of their group had skills that made their adventuring inexpensive or even profitable, like herself. Others, like , stantly had to spend money on ables just to fun. Yet they all relied on each other, and much of what they’d earned so far was a group effort. Also, with a group fund, Ali could tribute money she made using her Grimoire whe ran low without her friends needing to pay her back.

  “That sounds fair,” Malika said. “We could also pay back the potions we used from the group fund.”

  “I vote for Malika to mahe group funds,” Ali said.

  “Why me?” Malika began.

  “I agree,” said.

  “Obviously,” Mato snorted like it was a fone clusion.

  “But…” Malika began to object but fell silent, clearly floored by the instant agreement from everyone.

  “You have the best skills fotiating and evaluating gear,” Ali expined. It went without saying that the most important reason was everyone implicitly trusted Malika to be fair.

  “Ok.” Malika relented, quickly dividing up the s and giving each person their share.

  They explored the rest of the vault, searg for anything valuable or of use, but aside from a few small stone kniacks, little had survived the passage of time.

  This is beautiful, Ali thought, brushing the dust off a brokeion of one of the marble pilrs while the others finished up expl. The se she had exposed gleamed a geous greehrough with a delicate tracery of white veins. Surreptitiously, she ran her mana through her fiips.

  Variant: Green Marble added to Imprint: Stone

  Maybe I make some sculptures, she thought, smiling as the pretty stone ignited her imagination.

  timewalk