Aster Fall, Ch 10: Ascending the Western Reaches (Patreon)

Highfold was still two weeks away on their travels, but the Western Reaches were already looming large above them, their towering forms stretching higher into the sky ahead. The city was nestled on the shoulder of a high peak above one of the rare passes through the mountains.

For the human inhabitants, it was a difficult place to live without a strong Constitution, since the wind and the cold were fierce. It was said that on a clear night, the wind there could cut through your skin like a blade, leaving only a skeleton beneath the morning sun.

It was not a place to visit unprotected.

Humans were not the primary races that inhabited Highfold. It was predominantly settled by mountain dwarves and elemental races, like Wind Sylphs and Ice Sylphs, who delighted in the environment.

It was particularly pleasant for the Ice Sylphs, who were the most at home in such a place.

“The dwarves who live there are a particular sort,” Krana added, as they continued to ride up through the switchbacks that cut across the foothills. “They’ve lived there for so long that some folks call them Ice Dwarves, and their classes and natures are certainly more attuned to that element than to others, although they still have a strong connection to the Earth.”

She paused, raising a hand to shield her eyes as she scanned the peaks rising above them. There was a distant look in her eyes as she thought of their future plans and how she could help.

“I have a couple of connections there that we might be able to meet with for advice,” she added. “Friends of my family.”

“Ice Sylphs...” Aemilia murmured, as she listened to Krana’s suggestion. An old memory occurred to her as she heard the name, one she hadn’t thought about in many years. It brought with it a faint memory.

“You know, I haven’t thought of it in ages, but an old friend of my family used to live here, I think. I wonder if she still does. It’s been so long that I barely remember, but she used to come and visit me as a child.”

“She was an Ice Sylph?” Altey asked immediately, looking over at her mother. “What are they like? Are they blue?”

Sam was riding along, runes flickering across his talons and through his aura as he continued to practice shaping the ones from the simple column. He gave his sister a grin, shaking his head.

“No, they’re not blue,” Aemilia laughed as she answered. “Ice Sylphs are an elemental race. They look somewhat like humans, but they are thinner, more magical, and live much longer. She did have blue eyes though...and long white-blue hair that looked like ice.”

Aemilia’s gaze turned inward through the years as she tried to recall the figure she remembered.

“My side of the family lived in Ten Rivers,” she added slowly, bringing up a topic that she usually avoided, given the way her family had treated her and cast her aside as a teenager. “Her name was Siwaha...and even then, she seemed ancient. She was kind to me. She was an Herbalist and there was always something about her that was magical.
“She came there to gather herbs from the river valleys, and my family was one of the merchants she dealt with. She used to tell me stories as a child of ice drakes and the wind that lives in caves, high up in the mountains.” She gave Altey and Sam both a smile. “I told you both some of those stories when you were small. Do you remember them?”

Sam hummed thoughtfully to himself as he thought back to the legends he’d heard as a child, and slowly nodded. It was true that many of them were stories of ice and high mountain peaks. His mother had loved those stories, but he’d never heard where they’d come from before.

There were only a handful of large cities in the Western Province, so it wasn’t strange that she had a connection of some type to Highfold. It was just a surprise that she hadn’t remembered it until now. It must have been a very distant childhood memory.

Aemilia looked ahead toward the sharp peaks again, her eyes thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of her in years...but Krana’s words reminded me. I wonder if she is still here.”

“Ice Sylphs live for hundreds of years,” Krana reassured her. “It’s very likely that she still does, unless she’s encountered some calamity since then. When we arrive, we can ask for Siwaha the Herbalist and see if anyone knows of her. If she was powerful enough to travel to the Ten Rivers to gather herbs, she is probably well known.”

“It would be wonderful to see her again,” Aemilia said with a smile, before something darker passed across her eyes. “Even if I don’t speak to my family any longer, I don’t think she would hold that against me. She was like a grandmother to me, and always full of stories. I think she liked children.”

“Will she tell me stories? What are the Ice Sylphs and the Ice Dwarves like?” Altey asked at that moment, demanding more details. Her eagerness made the rest of the party laugh.

“You’ll see when we get there, soon enough,” Jeric said with a grin as he teased her. “Why so eager? It’ll just spoil the surprise.”

“Daaaad!” Altey complained, starting to pout. “Tell me....”

“Haha,” Jeric laughed again as he looked over at her.

Then, giving in, everyone began to tell her what they knew about both races.

“Ice Dwarves are a lot like other dwarves,” Krana said helpfully. “Their skin color is a bit lighter and their eyes tend toward blue as well. Some of the most interesting craftsmen have abilities to mold ice and stone together into intricate sculptures, and they specialize in enchantments for the same type of thing.

“I understand that Highfold’s city walls and all of the major buildings are built with their skills. I’ve heard that it’s an impressive sight and I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t been there before either.”

“Ice Sylphs...” Aemilia added, “they’re hard to describe. I can only tell you a little bit about them. Think of a tall, willowy human with bright blue eyes and ice-white hair. Their complexion tends towards ivory with a light shade of blue. They have an innate grasp of Ice magic, and like all Sylphs, they are in tune with the elements.”

“They love the cold and the heights,” Krana added. “They’re most comfortable there. Their magics are what make the city habitable for humans, too, keeping the worst of the storms at bay, but it’s still cold there. You’ll need to wear warm clothes.”

As the explanation continued, Sam began to nod as plans flickered through his mind. He was perhaps even more interested in the information than Altey, but for a different reason.

He wanted to know what he could sell to the people there, and what enchantments he could make for the visitors to the city.

The Festival of Three Crowns was coming up, and they would have about a month to set up shop. Travelers would arrive before that, and he wanted to have some things prepared already.

They would need money and a place to stay, and he felt the weight of that responsibility on his shoulders.

He would also need to fashion some type of heating enchantment for his mother and sister, whose Constitutions were not high enough yet to endure the cold.

Fortunately, the simple runes from the amulet were already pointing him in the right direction for that.

---

As they traveled up through the foothills, Sam continued to work on understanding the runes.

The first layer of the amulet was designed for ease of life, with runes related to sound, appearance, vision, and personal comfort, including ones for temperature control, like the air and heat runes he’d learned already.

So far, barrier was the only rune that pertained to blocking Analyze, but he could tell that it wasn’t the rune’s main purpose here. Instead, it was necessary to give the wearer a way to moderate body temperature and block out the sound of voices for privacy.

The varied, complex use of the amulet was a window into what was expected of high-level enchantments. It was also a useful discovery, even if it didn’t help with Analyze, since it gave him access to a number of runes he could use immediately and fashion into enchantments to sell.

Sound barriers for private conversations, temperature barriers to keep the cold or heat away, illusions to change the color of your clothes or eyes...and a lot more. His mother and sister needed a warming enchantment, and the Ice Sylphs in the city might be just as interested in a cooling enchantment.

For practice, he started to create a number of small and useful enchantments as the initial concept pieces. Since they were for his family, as well as for Krana and Lesat, he put far more work into them than he intended to for the ones he sold.

He started with the python hide and asked Lesat to make him a selection of sturdy belts. Each was able to function as either a weapon belt or just a belt for pouches and dimensional bags.

The ones for his sister and mother were a bit thinner than the others, which suited them better.

Then, he had Lesat inlay them with silver, making them look more elaborate.

Across the silver and leather, he engraved a series of runes to block the cold, cool and heat the wearer, to add durability, and to give the belt the capacity for self-repair.

For the last step, he embedded a small beast core near the buckle, where it wouldn’t be in the way. When he was finished, the pleasant chime of a notification rang in his mind, along with a surge of bubbling experience.

An elegant leather belt worked with a silver inlay rested in his hands.

Belt of Gentle Climes.

[Enchantment: Gentle Breezes. The wearer of this enchantment will find a comfortable breeze flowing over their body, keeping them at a constant, pleasant temperature. The enchantment can be set for hotter or colder preferences.

Adds +2 Constitution to the wearer.

Duration: Permanent.]

When it was finished, he gave it a satisfied nod. The belt would be useful for everyone.

The added Constitution was a bonus that came from the durability runes on the belt, which lent some of their strength to the wearer.

Over the next couple of days, he made a belt for everyone. The sizes and the styles of the silver inlays varied, but the enchantment was the same. By the time he was done, he felt more comfortable with the idea of his family living in Highfold.

The added Constitution even applied to Altey, despite the fact that she hadn’t had her Class Day, which gave him some ideas for how to help protect her more.

“Is there a limit to how many attribute-boosting enchantments someone can wear?” he asked suddenly, turning to Krana, who was riding alongside him again.

“Usually about 40% of their base attribute,” the Seer replied, shaking her head. She could already see where he was heading with the idea. “Altey will need to grow up a bit more before she can make the most of them. The belt should be about right for her Constitution, but you could make other ones for her. A bit of extra mana wouldn’t hurt her, for example, if you can figure out how to make her a mana storage enchantment, but those are notoriously unstable.”

Sam rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he turned the idea around in his mind. That might be possible if he used the right sort of storage rune...but it would be safer to make her something else like the wand, which just had charged mana for her to use.

He didn’t want anything blowing up on her.

The beast cores for the belts came from a series of small fights they had along the way, particularly from a herd of Pinefrost Beetles that decided to attack them as they camped in a redfrost pine grove.

He’d worried that his supply of cores would run out soon, but as it turned out, the local wildlife was hostile and quick to volunteer to be enchanting materials.

The result was more than a dozen cores for Sam to use, and by the time he finished making the belts he still had half of them left over, which would be enough for a second project.

The differences between beasts and monsters was on his mind as he turned one of the small, bluish-green cores over in his hands, examining it.

Beast cores and monster cores were basically identical, as far as he could tell. He pulled out a Flamecaller Devil core and held it up in his hand, comparing the feeling of the reddish-orange core with the bluish-green one. Besides the elemental differences, there wasn’t much else to distinguish them.

The core from the Pinefrost Beetles was an Aura of Frosted Pine. In the same way, the core from the Flamecaller Devils had the Aura of Compressed Flame inside. Both of them were fragments and not complete enough to reclaim.

Many people used the terms beasts and monsters interchangeably, but he was beginning to see that it wasn’t very accurate. The real difference between a monster and a beast was their origin. Monsters also tended to be more vicious and smarter.

Based on everything he’d seen so far, beasts were natural to Aster Fall, the true wild inhabitants of the world. They generated a core as they grew and became more in tune with the world, and so the aura in their core had an affinity for a natural element.

Monsters were different. They came into the world as Outsiders and as they arrived through a Flaw, they consumed part of Aster Fall, usually the part closest to their own natures, as if it called to them. That bit became the aura they carried, which he could reclaim.

When the Outsiders were killed, the World Core recreated them as monsters, which transformed the essence energy in them into experience. They were born into the world with the stolen aura still a part of them, and it helped them to form a core in the same way as a beast.

When they were killed, the aura was released back into the world, where it returned to Aster Fall, completing the process that the World Core had created to deal with the invasions.

At that point, equilibrium returned to the world.

The core was all that was left behind, which functioned in the same way as any other beast core.

Monsters could be reborn sometimes, and he was pretty sure that was because their auras were too difficult for the World Core to reclaim in a single attempt. They would be reborn in a new form, die, and then be reborn again, with each cycle grinding away a bit of the Outsider influence until the aura in them could be reclaimed.

The only thing that interrupted that process was him, since his class let him reclaim the aura before it returned to the world and gave him the ability to use it for his enchantments. When he used it up, it also returned to the world, completing the process in a different way.

He shook his head as he turned his thoughts back to studying the runes in his mind. He still had a lot of other things he needed to make before they reached Highfold.

---

Over the next week, more beasts and monsters attacked them on the road as they continued to climb through the foothills, but there was nothing that was significant enough to threaten them.

The danger would increase as they got higher in the Western Reaches, where it was more likely that a stray wyvern or ice drake would become hungry and fly down from the heights.

Wyverns were monsters and had a very unpleasant disposition. Even young ones were in their 40s or 50s, and the older they got, the meaner they were. By the time they were fully grown, they could reach their First Evolution.

Ice drakes were natural beasts, but no less dangerous for that. They were extremely fierce and territorial. Wyverns were sheep in comparison.

An ice drake could fly, blend in with the snow and ice to become nearly invisible, and use both magical and physical attacks. They started out around Level 80 and they were not something you wanted to deal with until at least your First Evolution.

For now, both of those threats were distant, and they were only harassed by things in their 30s and low 40s. Things lower than that ran away when they sensed their auras.

The attacks began to come with an increasing frequency as the elevation rose, making it clear why there were few lone travelers on the road. The only other people they saw now were in heavily guarded merchant wagons and small bands of adventurers.

Those groups were happy enough to keep their distance.

As a result of the attacks, Sam’s collection of cores continued to grow and he was able to gather a few auras as well, which boded well for their settlement in Highfold.

If the monsters around this area were an example, the hunting around Highfold would be exactly what he needed to grow stronger.

The more materials he could acquire now, the better. If nothing else, he could sell some of them and the other materials they’d gathered for an initial starting sum to set up a shop.

The monsters rarely came in groups larger than three or four, but experience from the fights trickled in. Over the course of a week, everyone gained nearly 400,000 experience. It brought Sam to Level 47.

He glanced at his status sheet to see the results.

Class Experience: 3,755,040 / 3,912,500

His father, Lesat, and Krana all reached Level 40 and broke into the Expert tier, which significantly boosted their fighting strength. They’d been on the edge for a while.

As for his mother, she had reached General Level 32 due to helping in the battles. Now, she was working on getting past the First Cliff. Her Class Level wasn’t as quick to level, but it rose to 14 as a result of her constant work in writing down their travels and the story of her life.

In many ways, this trip to Highfold was a forging experience for them all. It let them experiment with their abilities, fight, and grow.

Over that time, and with the help of some spare ore, Lesat’s armor and shield also slowly repaired themselves, and Sam paid careful attention to how the self-repair runes functioned, looking for ways to optimize the process.

The chunks that were missing from where the devils had bitten it slowly fused back together as the runic lines gleamed with light. It was like watching water flow into the cracks where the holes had been, and the chunk of ore that Lesat held to it slowly dwindled away.

The main function of a repair rune was to remember the structure of the enchantment around it and the material it was affixed to. It was a type of memory rune.

The result looked exactly the same as the original, even down to the hammer blows that had forged it and the inscriptions that Sam had engraved into the steel.

At the same time, Sam’s work on the message amulets and the other small enchantments he’d come up continued to progress.

Near the end of that week, he was focused on infusing a blank disk of gem silver when Crystal Focus began to surge around him with a feeling like it was boiling outwards.

He’d just finished forging the disk and was working to purify it when he felt it happen, and he looked up instantly, his senses sweeping outward in alarm.

He’d never felt anything like it before. It felt like his perception of the world, which had become so much a part of his unconscious awareness, was suddenly warping and flowing outward, as if it couldn’t contain the pressure inside of it.

Flickers of intense sensory input ran through his mind, colors and auras of the dirt, earth, flowers, redfrost pines, beetles sleeping in the bark of the trees, and the current of the winds slipping through the grove.

It was an intense, incredible overload of his senses.

Then it suddenly stopped as he felt Crystal Focus surge outward on a wave, its usual 40-foot distance doubling as it reached 80 feet and halted. The pressure began to fade away.

The intense feeling of the world was still there, but he could feel his mind and senses adjusting, bringing it back down to a manageable level.

A shimmering, silver chime rang out brightly in his mind.

Crystal Focus has reached the Advanced tier.

The pine and ice-flavored world around him slowly returned to calm.