Aster Fall, Ch 38: An Old Formation (Patreon)

The currents of multicolored energy in the void spun around Sam as he turned in place. It barely felt like he was moving and it was hard to get a grasp of up or down. The only markers here were the strands of energy.

Moonlight? The thought flickered through his mind as the colors registered. They matched with the three moons: Silvas for the light green like a spring leaf, Caelus for the distant blue like the horizon, and Amaris for the dusky purple of passion and secrets.

The moons themselves weren’t visible. There were only the curling patterns similar to the enchantments on the ruins. The strands didn’t feel like mana or essence...they were closer to pure aura.

It was as if he had entered the enchantment and these were the strands of moonlight coming from the sky. But there was nothing else. It also reminded him unpleasantly of the last time he’d been teleported to a void.

The light felt timeless at first, but as he watched, the curls of moonlight seemed to notice him and began to twist in his direction. They formed into cutting blades, broad expanses of shearing force as their presence sharpened and they spun through the darkness like ribbons turned to sawmills.

A trap.

He didn’t know what had happened, but they must have run into some sort of defensive formation in the ruins. That green light from inside the temple and the lack of monsters had made him uneasy, but he’d reacted too late to warn them.

Idiot adventurers.

He muttered to himself as his senses spun through the void, trying to find something to use to defend or to move out of the way. He couldn’t let the moonlight hit him. The ruins were far more powerful than he was and this trap was hardly normal. There was no telling what would happen if it did.

He felt a surge of panic as he wondered if his father was in the same sort of place, and then he shoved it aside, forcing himself to remain focused.

His search turned up nothing useful. The only thing here was the moonlight itself. He could feel his essence, but he wasn’t able to open his spatial bags. The twisting streams of light came closer, cutting toward him with a sense of impending doom.

He had no other options, so he studied the moonlight as it approached, trying to get a feel for what it was. It was distant at first and hard to sense, but as it came closer, so did the intensity.

The green light was filled with an aura that reminded him of redfrost pines, the grasses of the Storm Plains, and the smell of fresh fields in bloom. The blue light was the cold of Winter’s Peak, lightning sparks, wind and storm, flame, and explosive stone.

The purple was...wild chaos. Overwhelming emotions ripped through his senses. First, the explosive wrath of blind anger, soft love on a moonlit night, and then whiplash, manic laughter that rocked his mind.

He froze under the unexpected assault, convulsing as he pushed at the aura and tried to shove it away from him. Surprisingly, it responded, rushing away like a river parting. It only left the memory of its touch behind.

When his senses stabilized, the purple blade of moonlight loomed large in his vision, broader than he was tall.

He summoned up a pulse of crystal flame to try and evade, but the energy twisted from his control. Half of it dissolved into nothing that dissipated into the void.

Half.

The thought hit him in an instant as he tried again, reaching out with the part of the energy that was still there. The half that had disappeared was mana, but the aura was still there.

It had been a while since he’d used aura alone, but a formless pulse burst from his hand, turning into crystal flame as he pushed himself to the side.

The void rotated around him as he spun wildly, streamers of light flashing in his senses, until he managed to stabilize himself with another pulse of aura-based flame. The ribbon of purple moonlight that was closest to him spun away, slicing off through the void as he let out a breath that he wasn’t sure was there.

It seemed like mana couldn’t exist here, but aura alone did.

He let out another pulse of aura as he pushed himself to the side, moving away before a green blade cut through the space where he had been. A few minutes later, he had to do it again as the tail of that ribbon swept past.

His essence was down by about a quarter and there was a strange pressure in his meridians from the imbalance of too much mana compared to aura. With a flick of his hand, he released it, letting it twist away into the void until the pressure balanced.

He tried to activate the essence constellation, but as soon as its power touched the void around him, it was absorbed. Elemental Manipulation also failed, since there were no elements around him to reach.

The same pattern of evasion repeated again as he dodged one strand of moonlight after another as he slowly lost track of time. The only marker was his diminishing essence, which continued to fall until he only had a couple of points left.

The world around him was still filled with moonlight moving in endless spirals, cutting abstractly across the void.

He reached into his storage to combust as an aura, but as soon as an Aura of Reclusive Tide appeared in his hand, it exploded outward, sending him hurtling away. The remains hung in the area like a watery fog before fading away to nothing.

The void didn’t seem to allow other auras besides the moonlight to exist in it. He drifted there for a while as he watched the next strand of moonlight approach, his thoughts reflective. With a sigh, he pushed out the last of his essence and evaded it, waiting for the next one.

The pain of having drained all of his energy hit him, but it was meaningless here in the dark. His meridians were empty, as was his essence pool. There was a growing sense of dissolution all around, a relaxing nothingness as he felt himself fading into the void.

Last chance.... The thought came slowly, as he felt the emptiness echoing like the gong of a solemn temple bell. Even at the last, he was unwilling to give up, and he tried to meditate again, to draw in energy from the void around him.

He’d tried before, but every time he did, it felt like his energy was draining out faster than anything was pouring in. Now that he had reached equilibrium with the universe around him, he felt the void more clearly than before.

The energy of the three moons crashed into his senses, startling him out of the daze that he’d fallen into. Each of them was a sharp spike of meaning, bringing a sense of life and the familiar feeling of Aster Fall that woke him up.

These were the moons that had risen every night of his life, observing the world from on high.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been here, but a flash of memory came to him as he remembered something the World Law had said when he had learned Shatter Aura.

It had warned him not to break the natural auras of Aster Fall.

The moons were part of the world and normally he shouldn’t have tried to damage them, but what did that matter now? If he didn’t do something, he was going to die here.

The only problem was that he didn’t have any essence left.

He frowned as he studied the approaching moonlight and then looked to see how many auras were left in his storage. Perhaps he could use the explosion from them to propel himself away...and even grab some of the energy in them before they dissipated, if he tried to collect the aura and not the mana.

Or perhaps he could beat the void to the punch and shatter one...and then divide it up, pushing away the mana and keeping the aura for himself.

Before he tried that, he let himself just drift in the void, absorbing the feeling of the moons as it sank into his awareness. Now that his essence was empty, the void felt far more amenable to his existence, as if it no longer wished to kill him.

Time passed as he floated there, and it seemed as if the blades of moonlight drifted aimlessly now, no longer seeking him out. Perhaps if he allowed it, he could just float here forever... He gave himself a mental shake as he jerked back to awareness again.

He had too much to do to allow himself to dissolve into nothing here. He wasn’t going to let an ancient trap be the end of him. He needed to understand the mechanics of this place and escape.

He focused on the moonlight, letting it resonate with the emptiness in his body as he took the opportunity to study it. As he did, some barrier was passed and the moonlight surged into his meridians.

The auras and the raging emotions and elements of each of them filtered through him as the strands wove around the emptiness inside. Echoes of each moon engraved itself on his soul, cutting a path as it tried to make him a part of the void and leaving a swirling pattern behind.

Time stretched out in a blur of moonlight colors until they finished their work and moved on.

Sam let out a silent gasp as he choked for air and then took a breath of the nothingness all around. Looking inside, he could see the ribbons of moonlight swirling around the essence constellation, like streams of astral light surrounding a nebula.

Nothing else seemed to happen, and so after he studied it for a while, he pushed it out of his mind and went over his plan.

When he was ready, he reached into his storage and pulled out another Aura of Reclusive Tide, pausing just before he pulled it through the dimension that separated it from the void. He sank into a state similar to meditation, reaching out to the aura around him.

Right now, there was nothing there except for the moonlight, and that was far too complex for him to directly gather.

He yanked the aura out of the storage with as much speed as he could and tried to combust it before the void could reach it. As soon as it left the storage, however, it erupted, blasting his hand back as a pulse of energy exploded from the center and shattered it.

He pulled as hard as he could on the cloud that it had become, drawing the aura toward him. It was like trying to pull water through a sieve while a whirlpool pulled on it from the otherside, but specks of the remaining energy flowed into his meridians, one after the other.

Then it was gone, as the void consumed everything that was left.

A slight smile curled his lips as he checked his energy reserves. He’d gained three points of aura.

Now that he was no longer out of energy, he felt the trap’s attention fix on him and the moonlight blades began to spin closer. As quickly as he could, he combusted another aura, and then several more. The blasts from each aura sent him spinning through the void, and he did his best to move away from the blades that were coming closer.

It took seven auras before he felt like he had enough to try Shatter Aura.

21 points.

He’d never used the ability before, but the World Law had given him some basic knowledge. The simplest method was to reach out with his own aura and drive it like a spike through whatever he wanted to break. Breaking one beam of moonlight might not be enough, but perhaps it would destabilize something.

He had to try.

The next strand of moonlight heading his way was blue, which was somehow fitting. Caelus was the elements, the one closest to his own magic. As it grew closer, he waited for it, ready to evade.

The blade cut closer to him and he pulsed out a tiny amount of aura, drifting off just to the side of where it was heading. It was as thin as a ribbon, translucent, and as dangerous as the scythe of a death god.

As the light swept past, he gathered his will and drove a spike of aura straight into the side of it.

It was like plunging into a swirling tempest, the winds tearing him in every direction, but it was also fragile.

As soon as he touched it, it was also clear that this was not the real moon, but just some of its light. It was strong, but it was also as fragile as glass.

SscrrraaaCCcckkk.

A shattering sound echoed in his mind as the energy in the moonlight splintered like fractured crystal. An explosion of energy blasted outward from the blade as it turned into swirling winds and chaos, spiraling outward in a disk.

Sam grabbed at the energy, trying to pull it into himself, and this time Elemental Manipulation came to the fore, helping him to pull the strands of the element to him. A torrent of aura blasted his meridians, and he absorbed a dozen points of it in an instant, and then more, until it felt like his body was straining under the force.

What he gained was only a fraction of the whole, and he couldn’t stop the energy from spreading outward, which it did in an instant. The wave of aura blasted out through the void, hurling him backwards.

He went tumbling uncontrollably, heading directly for a blade of green moonlight that bent in its trajectory to intercept him.

Another spike of aura formed in his hand and as he got closer, he pushed himself to the side with a small blast of aura and drove it into the edge of the ribbon.

This attempt was less successful. The spike tore through the edge of the aura like the edge of a leaf and then ricocheted away, catching nothing. He spun through the void in a tumble, eventually righting himself again with tiny pulses of aura.

There were at least a dozen strands of moonlight in sight and he frowned as he looked at them, looking for the best bet. After a moment, he found it.

There were three strands gathered near each other, one of each type, which seemed to hang in the center of everything. His aura was about half full and he pulsed toward them as soon as he found a path.

They grew gradually larger in his vision. Now that his attention was fixed on them, it was clear they weren’t moving like others, but it was a long way there. As he got closer, he could see the three strands of moonlight twisting together into a spiral.

He oriented himself to it, spinning around until it was vertical in his sight. Now the void had a top and a bottom. He gave a grim smile, since there was no one to disagree.

When he got close enough, he didn’t hesitate. He reached out with a spike of aura and drove it into the closest blue strand.

The strand split apart like water, tougher than the last one, and he reached out to the edge of the gap he’d just made and drove another spike of aura into that, tearing at it. Then he pulled at the edges with Elemental Manipulation, pouring all of his energy into ripping apart the elements that made it up.

The strand slowly began to unravel, its substance tearing, and the void around him trembled as a shudder ran through it. With a whisper like a ghost escaping from a stone, the strand frayed, its edges pulling away from one another until it finally snapped.

An explosion of blue moonlight and chaotic elements exploded outwards, engulfing him before he could move away as the strand fractured, changing into a disk. An instant later, a storm of cutting leaves and pulses of wild rage and love joined it, as it became larger and larger.

Sam was dwarfed by the size of the exploding storm, engulfed in it as it expanded out past him. A vibration like a mountain collapsing shook his bones as a thousand tiny leaves sliced through his skin and a torrent of raining emotions crushed his chest. At the same time, aura flooded his meridians, far more than he could contain.

He couldn’t breathe or see, all he could do was try and pull in the aura to create a shield and endure. He was tossed left and right, up and down, until there was no way to keep his bearings.

And then the void shattered with a soundless explosion and the world around him changed.

He flew through the air in a tumble, spinning wildly as he pushed out his remaining aura into a shield and then he struck something, his head and shoulders slamming into it first as he felt the shield absorbing most of the impact.

Snow compressed beneath him, stabilizing him as vertigo struck.

When he came to, all he could see was white. His senses spun out around him as Crystal Focus became useful again, and he found that he was half buried in the snow.

He pulled two auras from his storage and combusted them. Crystal flame poured out around him as he pulled himself out of the snow. The world came into view, but it wasn’t the same spot he remembered.

This was...

A tower of green stone stretched in front of him, one layer after another reaching high into the heavens. It was at least sixty feet high and fifteen wide, a monolith standing above the snow. It was engraved with a thousand patterns, each of them a shifting sigil that burned with silver-green light.

One of those sigils was dark now, directly in his line of sight.

Behind the pillar, there was a ruined hall that must have once been a massive structure, with walls even taller than this pillar and evidence of arches that must have once been a roof.

Above, the three moons hung in the night sky, marking out that it was just past evening. Below him, the icy slopes of Sun’s Rest spread out, their edges dark as moonlight played across the snow.

Far below, he could see the ruins extending in layer after layer, and past that, the city of Highfold at the edge of the valley. It looked very small from here.

As he looked around again, it was obvious that there was no more of the mountain above him. He was on a plateau of some type, at the very top of Sun’s Rest.

One that had once been dominated by this ruined hall and pillar.