Aster Fall, Ch 20: Guardian of Aster Fall (Patreon)

When they returned to the inn, they spoke to Henar briefly about the supplies in the cave, so he could send his merchant friends after them. His eyes widened when he heard the amount.

“I’ll round up a few to go and look,” he said, his voice gruff. “You’ve done a good thing here.”

With that, Henar turned away, calling to Rusel. “Grab the cart, lad! Then go tell Old Eapar, Jinel, and the others.”

“We’ll head for Highfold,” Jeric said a moment later, after Henar stomped out. Krana was standing beside him and his expression was worried as he looked between his wife and children.

“We’ll try to be back tonight, but tomorrow is more likely. Make sure to stay safe here.”

It would take them an hour or two to get there, and then they needed to find the right people. Hopefully, the guards would listen about the wyverns and the Outsider that was targeting the festival.

“I’ll add more enchantments to the rooms,” Sam told him, sharing a solemn gaze with his father. “We’ll be prepared if anything comes by.”

“Hurry back,” Aemilia said as she hugged her husband. There was worry in her eyes, but also determination. “I'll keep an eye on you from a distance, and at least we can talk to each other now.”

Jeric gave her a nod and then, with a final look around the room, he and Krana headed out.

Lesat took up a guard position by the door, where he sat down and continued to repair his armor. Even while he worked, his attention was fixed on the entrance.

At the table in the center of the room, Aemilia sighed as she looked around, and then she sorted out some work to keep herself occupied.

She started to write in her journals for class experience, while Altey studied a handful of runes that Sam had taught her, drawing them out in a pile of sand.

When that was settled, Sam spent about an hour adding a more intensive shield enchantment to the runes on the wall.

For this one, he took one of the weaker cores in his collection and embedded it directly in the center of the pattern, so that it bulged out of the wall.

Then he revised the enchantment lines to fit, circling around the core as a central focus to the defense. It was a quick and brutal enchantment, but it would hold for a little while.

With the core, it could be recharged easily, even if it wasn’t very efficient. It made sure that if anything attacked the room, the core would shatter before it broke through the enchantment.

After that, he set up his work table just below where he’d inscribed the enchantment and pulled out several items, arranging them in front of him.

From the sorcerer, there was the white pill, the scorched mithril bracer, two rings, and an amulet. Next to that, he set the mithril bars and tools from the gemsmith box.

On another section of the table, there were materials from the wyvern, including some scales, a chunk of bone, the ice-aligned blood, and its core. Past that, he arranged some other crafting materials and cores that he had.

Then he looked down at the collection, his talons tapping on the edge of the table as thoughts began to race through his mind.

There was a lot that he needed to do.

The defenses he’d just worked on would hold for now, but he needed a better weapon and defensive artifacts, to master more of the amulet runes, to figure out this essence pill, to study the ruins that were probably a death trap....

The number of things on his list of essential work was only increasing the more he learned.

They could leave Highfold and let the people here deal with the Outsider and the festival, but it didn’t feel right.

It would be abandoning everyone else who lived here, people like Henar and Rusel, who had no good defense.

The idea of the ruins teaching him something about his class was still the best path he had, and now that an Outsider was involved, this was also part of his mission from the Guardian.

He just needed to make sure that his family would be safe here, so that he could take care of things.

He felt the weight of responsibility pressing down on him as he looked at the key items on the table. These would be the beginning of his response.

Plans formed like stars in his mind as he began to arrange his ideas into a constellation, from the quickest and most practical, to the ones that were a long path. When he had it all in place, he nodded.

First things first.

He reached out to pick up the essence pill, turning it from side to side. More than anything, he needed to know more about the Outsider.

It was his natural enemy. As soon as the two of them got close enough to one another, the essence in them would resonate, pulling them toward battle.

He had no idea how intelligent the thing was, but the bandits had been protected by its wyvern. That implied some level of communication.

There might be other elements in play that he hadn’t discovered, but he would have to wait until they appeared.

All he could do was prepare and make sure that if they faced each other, the Outsider would be the one to die.

His senses surrounded the pill, crystal flame tracing every part of the surface.

“Now, what are you...” he muttered to himself as he examined it. His aura poured through the pill gently, like a flicker of passing heat, as he analyzed the layers that made it up.

There was a core of essence in it, almost like a drop of blood, and he carefully skirted around the edges of that. He could sense the freezing volatility inside.

If he touched that, it would probably explode on him.

The make-up of the pill was interesting, condensed layers of herbs with high levels of mana and an affinity for ice, and he memorized the ingredients as he went.

When he didn’t know the name for something, he remembered its flavor instead.

It was different from a healing pill, but not that different. The major thing was just the essence at the center.

Two ideas came to him as he finished his analysis.

One was to consume it himself. Not by swallowing it the way the sorcerer had, but more directly, the way he’d ripped the essence from the Outsider spiders before.

He could feel the energy there, and he might be able to claim it for his own.

The other idea....

“Wake up,” he muttered as he glared at the Guardian Seal on the back of his right hand, which was also holding the pill. “If you’re going to be useful at all, now would be the time.”

He felt a bit like an idiot as he tried talking to it, but the Guardian had told him once that it would give him information.

He was hoping that the presence of essence in the pill would alert it somehow, and that it would give him more information about what he was facing.

There was no response from the star, but he could feel the energy burning inside.

His left hand brushed across the back of it and the recorded conversation that he’d had with the Guardian rushed into his mind again, filling his thoughts with every detail of what had happened.

He ignored that part, since there was nothing new there. He’d read it many times.

If the star was going to be useful, he needed it to do more than that. The Astral Guardian had given it to him as a communication tool, but it hadn't done much since then.

He’d said it was for information, and for...what? There had been things he hadn’t had time to say.

It had to be able to do something more than alert him when Flaws were around. The World Law already did that.

When it had spoken to him once before, it had almost sounded intelligent, like a miniature version of the World Law, but ever since then it had been quiet.

He wasn’t even sure what it really was.

If he pushed it in the right way, maybe it could help him find the Flaw here and figure out what the Outsider was doing.

“Study this!” he tried, as he touched the essence pill to the back of the star. At the same time, he poured his will into it. “Tell me what it’s from. What type of Outsider?”

When nothing happened, he reached out to it again, pushing his aura of crystal flame into it. He’d tried examining the star many times before, every way he could think of, so he wasn’t surprised when there was still no response.

“How about this...?” he directed his thoughts to it as he began explaining exactly what was going on. “There’s an Outsider invasion somewhere in the mountains here, a breakthrough point in the Seal. There’s a Flaw that hasn’t been identified and some humans and monsters are working for it.... I need you to tell me where it is.”

He muttered the words under his breath as he spoke to the star. As he did, he felt something, a little bit of a response.

On certain words, it felt like the star was flickering, just like when he got a warning from it: Outsider, invasion, breakthrough, Flaw, monsters...

He repeated them over to it again, getting the same response, but beyond that, nothing happened.

That was all, until he finally became irritated with it and decided that he was wasting his time.

If the Guardian had wanted the star to work for him, he would have made it easy.

“Guardian,” he finally growled at it. His mind flickered through everything that the Guardian had told him. “Stop being useless. You said you’d give me information.”

The Guardian had given him a lot of information in a very short time, but there was one thing that he’d told Sam repeatedly.

In fact, it was the entire reason Sam had gotten in trouble in the first place. Finally, he shouted that at the star.

“There’s a threat to the Seal!”

As he shouted at it, he poured all of his awareness of the outsider and the essence in the snow into the star.

This time, a flare of energy poured through his hand as the Guardian Star began to glow, growing warmer on his skin.

At the same time, he felt a drawing sensation as the star pulled a bit of energy from him.

It grew brighter, until it was a sparkling, nine-pointed star shining in the air above his hand.

It looked white usually, but as the energy in it intensified, it began to gather other colors to it, from a bright silver to a rainbow swirl.

A voice echoed out in his mind. It was similar to the all-pervasive voice of the World Law, but not as deep.

There was a bright vibration to it that thrummed through his bones.

Scanning for threats to the Seal...

He felt a pulse of energy flare outward from the star, sweeping through the area around him and then out farther in every direction, past where he could sense.

After a moment, the pulse of energy returned and the energy in the star dimmed slightly. The voice spoke again.

No active threats detected within a five-mile sphere.

The star hung there, waiting expectantly as if it wanted him to do something. He could feel the energy in it fading away slowly, like a fragile bubble.

Whatever power the Guardian Star had, it was not unlimited. The search had taken a lot of energy from it. Perhaps that was why it didn’t interact with him much.

Sam wasn’t sure what to do, so he repeated everything he’d told it before, when it hadn’t been listening.

He didn’t know if the star was a miniature version of the World Law or just a communication channel to the Astral Guardian, but at least he’d gotten a reaction from it.

The star flickered, the energy in it pulsing outward again as it began to build to a higher level. After a moment, it stopped and the voice spoke again.

Infuse more energy to support an advanced search.

Sam didn't hesitate as he poured his essence into the star, one point after another.

A stream of crystal flame flowed along his arm, feeding directly into the heart of the star, which turned a brighter blue shade as it absorbed it.

Five points, ten...twenty....

Point by point, he sent more essence into the star.

Fifty points later, it flickered, brightening again as it burned above his hand with a bright silver-blue flame. Its light was steadier now, pulsing strongly.

Advanced search commencing.

The nine points brightened, energy from each of them blasting outward into the surrounding area in a pulse that was many times stronger than the previous one.

A wave of information flowed into Sam’s mind, as he felt his consciousness traveling along with the energy from the star.

The land blurred past him, faster than he could see, as the valley stretched out all around.

He could see it from every direction, as if his mind had expanded to encompass it in a sphere, but it moved by so quickly that he couldn’t gather many details.

He saw crops, trees, grass, mountainsides, the walls of the city...and then the scan was carrying him farther, up into the mountains as he felt the valley receding.

Shards of information came, bringing back the impression of broken walls, fragments of unfamiliar runes carved on stone, and shattered veins of metal and crystal.

Those had to be the ruins above the city.

Somewhere in that area, he felt a ripple of a response, like a saw grating across metal with a grinding sound.

It echoed unpleasantly in his bones, a vibrating irritation that was out of place.

Then he was moving back, his mind flashing across the valley as his awareness slammed back into the room where he was sitting.

His vision doubled and wavered as a feeling of exhaustion hit him.

The star dimmed and then it brightened slowly, pulsing nine times as the energy from its scan seemed to return to it.

Dimensional ripples are present thirty four miles from this point.

Evidence suggests a concealed Flaw in that location.

Age of Flaw: Estimated at 1.3 local years.

Guardian of Aster Fall, your duty is to protect the Seal.

Eliminate the threat.

A warning flare pulsed through the star, tugging his attention in that direction as the star dimmed again, fading as it returned to his hand.

The light from it died down, as if it had never been there.

The only thing left behind was the awareness of the Flaw, as the star continued to point him toward it.

It was like a thread in his mind that was tugging him in that direction.

He focused on it, and the feeling grew stronger. He could feel a resonating danger and the sense of the world crumbling away.

Other than that, the star was silent again. Sam frowned at it, puzzling over what it had just done as he put it all together.

The Guardian Star hadn’t given him all the information he wanted, but it seemed like it had detected the Flaw.

It wasn't entirely useless. He'd just had to activate it on his own.

The location was key information, since he doubted the Outsider would go very far from that point.

At the same time, the World Law had not spoken up when the Flaw was detected...which meant that the Guardian Star wasn't sharing information with it, at least not as far as he could tell.

They were two separate things.

It looked like he’d figured out a way to use the Guardian Star.

It was a type of scanning artifact, one that was unique to him.

If he could use it to find Flaws, it had just become an excellent hunting tool.

It had also called him “Guardian of Aster Fall.”

Sam’s eyes turned toward the horizon as he followed the thread of warning in the star that was pulling his attention in that direction, his gaze passing across the distance as he looked toward the Flaw.

After a moment, he looked back to where his mother and Altey were studying. Their attention was still fixed on their work, which meant that only he had seen the star activate.

The meaning of the title the star had given him resonated in his mind, echoing as he looked at his family...but he had a long way to go if he wanted to live up to the meaning in it.

His gaze moved back to the table in front of him and the items that were laid across it, especially the mithril and the wyvern's core.

Then he held up the white essence pill as he studied it.

The essence in it felt like it was boiling, trying to escape from his grasp. He held it in place with a sphere of crystal flame as he felt the essence stars in his blood singing.

It was time to see what he could do with this.

Without hesitating any longer, he reached into the center of the pill with his will and ripped at the essence inside.