Aster Fall 4: Night of Lightning (Patreon)

Everyone else was sleeping as Sam kept watch. It was near the middle of the night now, and except for the lightning, everything else was silent. The elemental storm was showing no sign of its force decreasing, which meant they might be here for a while, perhaps for a day or two.

The storms were the main reason that the plains saw few visitors and had almost no settlers.

They had been part of the plains for as long as anyone knew. There were ones for most elements, although some were rarer than others. They came from the intense elemental mana that accumulated here, part of the rivers of mana that he'd seen pouring down from the mountains and across the land.

They could be avoided if you found the right type of shelter, and if you knew the signs that they were approaching. Most were diffuse and not too dangerous, but if you were caught in them unprepared, they could be deadly.

An Earth storm could create boulders the size of a man, and a Fire storm could create a true inferno if the mana was intense enough, but it was rare. They were usually just a rain of pebbles or of hot sparks that scorched things, leaving behind blackened grasses that recovered in a few days.

The Storm Plains did not burn easily. Everything here was saturated with mana, which gave it a natural resistance.

The most dangerous type of storm was Wood, since even the minor ones caused the grasses to grow and whip around. Grass was everywhere on the plains and it could strangle a traveler caught outside, like a thousand arms reaching up to grab at you, particularly since the storms were most intense right above the ground.

To survive, you needed a cave in the earth, to be on top of a stone mountain, or to be in a forest. Any type of forest would help, since the trees absorbed most of the mana, but you still wanted to find a clearing without too many grasses.

Failing that, you could try to climb a tree and hope that it was strong enough to absorb the excess mana around it...and that there weren't any vines nearby.

There were also mixed elemental storms, but they were infrequent. Lightning and Ice, or Fire and Wind, for example. Those were particularly deadly. Those could form into whirling blades of Fire that cut across the ground. Sometimes, not even the forests survived that.

The night passed on until the middle of Sam's watch, when a distant roar echoed through the trees. His attention turned toward it, his ears tilting. After a moment it came again.

It didn’t sound like a roar this time, but clashing steel. There was a strange wave of mana with it that shook the lightning in the canopy, making it dance.

The sound of clashing blades came again. Then there was a wailing howl and the sound of a voice shouting indistinctly.

There was something demanding in it.

He was the only one awake, so he couldn’t go leave to investigate, but it sounded like it was coming closer. He walked to the edge of the clearing and looked into the distance, trying to see between the trees.

Violet sparks of lightning were dancing all across the forest floor and throughout the canopy. The trees were tall with wide gaps between, which let him see a good distance. With all of the lightning, there were only a few shadows, strange ones squiggling here and there as they crawled between the trunks and hid beneath stones.

All he could make out was a swirling mass of sparks and the shadows. It was an eerie sight, one transposing over the other in alternating light and dark, like something from a dream.

The canopy above his head rustled in the breeze and the leaves parted, revealing the light of the three moons. As with the sun, there was a strange energy to the moonlight that gleamed in his eyes, which fell through leaves to mix with the lightning sparks.

Everything was still.

There was energy in nearly everything he saw now, particularly in sunlight and the clouds, but also the trees and elements. It was everywhere. He’d tried to reclaim some types of it already, but it didn’t respond, so he’d started to ignore it. He still couldn’t help wondering if it was what his class description spoke about.

The Battlefield Reclaimer is an ancient enchanter and smith who uses aura and essences from the elements, including rare ones like the sunset, aurora, or ocean light, to imbue items with rare and inexplicable properties.

Perhaps he wasn’t skilled enough to gather it, or perhaps he was missing something. If he could pull an aura from the moonlight, and weave that into an enchantment, he wondered what the result would be.

Maybe he should try something simpler first, and figure it out from there.

When monsters came through a Flaw, they consumed part of the world, which turned into an aura that he could reclaim. That damaged Aster Fall in some way. Even if he could do it himself, he was sure the World Law wouldn’t tolerate it.

They were already on ambiguous terms. Pushing it like that would be foolish.

Since he had the class, however, which was approved by the World Law, there had to be some other way to do what it said in the description, another way to harness “aura and essences” for enchantments.

Krana’s words about the ruins at Highfold were on his mind, including the enchantments there. He’d never heard of them before, but he wanted to know what they were. Hopefully, they would help him understand his class better and advance his skills.

Essence Control might give him an advantage. It allowed him to look into enchantments and to see their structure.

It was something he didn't plan to tell the guilds about, since it would only cause trouble. Regular Enchanters had to study the runes from the outside and estimate the enchantment patterns from that.

Perhaps the enchantments there would be too strange or incomplete, but he wouldn’t know until he saw them.

His talons tapped along the trunk of a tree as he watched the sparks flow through the forest. He wasn’t sure where the sound had come from, but it seemed like this direction. Echoes were warped inside the storm, so it was hard to tell.

After a few minutes, a swirl of movement beneath the trees caught his attention as the storm sparks there intensified, outlining two forms flickering in and out of view. They were hard to see at first, just indistinct blurs of light and shadow, but they became clearer as he looked.

Crystal Focus spread out as far as he could, trying to see better, but the images were beyond his range. The first thing he noticed was that neither of them was human and that they were fighting.

The clang of metal came again, the mana in it shaking the lightning sparks all around like a swirl of snow.

One figure was a brutish, humanoid figure with bulging muscles and bony ridges covering its skull and arms, almost like innate armor. It had two long horns on its head, much bigger than Sam’s. Its eyes were red slit-pupils.

Almost as if it felt him watching, the figure turned toward him and a snarl ripped out of its mouth, with long fangs flashing as a pointed tongue flickered into the air.

There was a weight of power in its eyes that trapped his gaze. He felt a pressure against his mind, like an echo that reached for his soul. Then it was gone, thrown backwards as the other figure advanced on it.

This one was something tall and thin that looked like a blur of liquid silver, as if it were made of metal. Its body was as narrow as a sapling, with six limbs like spider legs that lashed out at its enemy. Its eyes were violet slashes, and the light throughout the forest reflected from its surface.

Whatever it was, it looked dangerous, like an array of swords had come to life. He could feel a similar pressure from it, something that felt like the storm here.

There was a clash of metal against bone as the figures met, their blow landing on each other. The silver figure advanced as the demon retreated, its limbs stabbing forward. As it crossed in front of Sam, its thin head turned to look at him.

He felt a pressure scraping against his soul again, but this time it was like the storm, a wild chaos of power that felt like Aster Fall. For just a moment, he glimpsed the lightning runes, their forms striking like bolts of thunder.

Then both of the figures shattered into sparks and floated away, blurring back into the forest like ghosts without leaving anything behind. The runes dissipated as well, flowing away like smoke before he could comprehend them.

Silence returned to the forest, followed a moment later by the crash of lightning. Sam frowned as he looked after the figures, searching for anything remaining, but there was only the storm. Slowly, he shook his head.

There were legends about the Storm Plains. Some said they had been formed by a battle between gods, the same one that created the Broken Lands, but nothing he’d heard explained what he’d just seen. Perhaps those two figures had been foot soldiers. An echo of long ago.

The rest of his watch passed without interest, accompanied only by the storm.

---

It took more than two days for the storm to end. The party spent the time studying, and Aemilia started to write in the books that she had, gaining experience in her Historian class.

When Sam asked what she was writing, she told him it was an account of her life, since that was the easiest thing to start with.

She also continued working with Krana to advance her Seer abilities, and she started a second book to record what she could see on their journey. It would be an account of their travels, which would also work.

The main focus of the Historian class was recording and transferring information. She’d tried writing on stone and clay before, but it had never worked for her, perhaps because she hadn’t seen it the right way. Class requirements were sometimes in the mind as much as in reality.

It was possible that she’d never seen those materials with the right perspective to make them work. The books were already designed to be read and transferred to others.

The lightning hadn’t formed any other images after that first one, at least not that Sam had seen. Instead of worrying about that, he focused on enchanting and completed a shielding amulet for Altey based on the other monster core he had.

He’d been struck by some inspiration from the storm, so he’d used lightning runes for it, as well as some of the silver ore. The result was a small, palm-sized disk of silver with a bulge in the center where the monster core was embedded.

The front of the amulet was engraved with two concentric circles that surrounded double runes for lightning and shield. The supporting pattern around it was filled with smaller lightning runes as a way of distributing the energy, as well as storage runes.

Amulet of Lightning Shield (Advanced).

[Enchantment: Lightning Absorption.

Effect: Creates an absorptive shield of variable size and duration, depending on the number of charges used. Effect can be activated passively by an incoming attack. Charges: 25. Duration: Permanent.]

The pattern would help to absorb incoming attacks, surrounding her in a crackle of lightning if anything tried to bother her. It should have a visual effect as well, to intimidate the enemy.

On the back, there were charge and mana runes, so that Altey could infuse her mana into it. Originally, he’d planned to make an Earth shield for her, but the lightning sparks in the forest had given him the idea when he watched them gather and spread apart.

They also gave him an idea on how to train Crystal Focus, to get it past the Basic tier. He could already feel that the ability was starting to advance. Aura of Crystal Flame was at the Expert tier and part of everything he did. Raising it ahead of the others helped to lay the foundation for their advancement.

The camp was broken down and packed away into dimensional bags by the time he was finished. Altey was running around by the horses, trying to feed them bits of grass that she’d pulled up, and laughing as they stole it from her hands.

The sky had cleared, but the storm had left the forest glowing. The lightning oaks were covered in a silver mist that sent zipping bolts through your skin if you touched it, and the leaves were covered in sparks that were three times more intense than usual.

It was harmless, but it made the forest look like the domain of gods and elementals. Every branch was outlined with shimmering light.

“You need to wear this all the time,” he said as he hung the amulet around Altey’s neck and showed her how to activate it. Then he handed her the wand as well, showing her where the runes were to use it.

“With these, you’ll be able to defend yourself a bit. Make sure to practice with them while we’re traveling. I’ll recharge them for you if they get too low.” Sam grinned as he ruffled her hair.

It was the first thing he could really do for his sister, besides spending time with her. Everything else was just a part of life, but enchanting...that was his. It was something he could do better than anyone else.

“If you practice really hard, maybe you’ll get a special class or subclass.”

“I’ll be the best battle Wizard ever!” Altey declared as she looked at the wand with wide eyes. Then she hugged him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I’ll never let anyone find out that you look like a demon. If they try, I’ll beat them up.”

“Don’t use that on anyone that you don’t want to kill,” Jeric warned sternly, as he came over and crouched down next to Altey. “That's a weapon, not a toy.” 

He didn’t take the wand away. Instead, he curled her hand around it and looked into her eyes.

“Your brother made these for you, and I want you to make me a promise now,” he said. “That you’ll use these on someone if your life is in danger, or if you’re really afraid of them and they’re about to attack you. Spells are like swords and arrows. They’re to be used against enemies.”

"I know," Altey promised, with a seriousness that was wiser than her years. "I'll use it if it's important."

Then a glint came into her eyes. "Like on Nelgen."

“Maybe on him,” Jeric said with a laugh. “He’s a snake, but only use that on him if he’s attacking you or one of us. Or a monster. Those, you can attack.

"The World Law will give you a prompt to tell you if it’s a monster.” Jeric continued. “With bandits, it’s harder to tell. They’re civilized races, so you have to judge by their actions instead.”

“Alright,” Altey promised slowly, but she didn’t let go of the wand. Her hand was gripped around it as if she would never let it go. “I’ll only use it on monsters and enemies.”

“Good,” Jeric approved as he ruffled her hair. “Now, let’s get back on the road. Highfold is a long way from here.”

Sam picked Altey up and set her on the saddle, and then he swung up behind her. When they were ready to go, he reached down and took her hand, showing her how to activate the amulet.

With a tap, a shimmer of lightning covered her body, spreading outwards into a shield that faded away in the air. To Sam’s eyes, faint tendrils of energy crackled back toward the amulet and then circulated out again, creating a passive sphere around her.

Since he was next to her, the shield also spread out around him. He interlaced it with a second layer of Essence Shield, a passive form that was ready to spring to life. He raised his eyes again, looking out at the world around them, and then toward the road to Highfold.

The last three days had been peaceful enough, but most of that was thanks to the storm. Before long, Altey might need to rely on the amulet to survive.

Nothing in Aster Fall stayed peaceful for long.