Moonlight Relic, Ch 22: Final Repair (Patreon)

The sound of subdued thanks was still ringing in his ears as Garild left the three girls at Ice Drake Academy. It was named for the beasts who ruled the peaks, in the hope that the students there would soar as high. The ice drakes were allied with the Ice Sylphs and generally well-disposed toward civilized races, and many admired them.

Unfortunately, they were the only three from their party to return. Escorting them had given him a chance to look good, and he’d done his best to increase morale by hailing them as the lucky survivors, but the mood at the academy was bleak. Nearly a quarter of the students had been on that trip, most of them from two different year groups, along with half of the low and intermediate class instructors.

He’d scouted the academy’s camp on his way back, and it had not been a sight for young eyes. A field of low-level monsters and the rest of the instructors and students had been reduced to nothing more than corrupted corpses by the moth. His fingernails bit into his palms as he tried to let the image dissolve into the past, but it was one that was going to stay with him for a while.

The image of the Horned Hunter slaying the moth was also one that would endure. It was accompanied by a combination of wonder and terror. The Hunter had captured the beast and then ripped it limb from limb. He’d never thought he would see something like that happen to a Terror.

He’d never thought he would encounter a Terror.

Anyone sane knew to run in the other direction when one appeared, unless you were forced to fight it by the edict of the World Law. More than one Defiant had been created by those who refused, even though it only appointed those it thought capable.

Garild’s form faded away into a storm cloud as he breezed through Highfold, finally reappearing in his office. He poured himself a stiff drink of whiskey before he walked out onto the balcony and stared up at the peaks where the Three Crowns were still bright.

The city below was still celebrating Moonrise, dressed in a variety of bizarre outfits and masks, and drinking some local brew that the dwarves sold for the festival, but he didn’t pay much attention to it except to frown at the noise. He flicked his hand and shaped a wall of air to block it out. Commoners would always find a reason to celebrate. They needed something to elevate their dull existence.

His contribution against the Terror had been minimal, but the World Law had rewarded him anyway. He’d received the Trait: Purity, a Class level, and a Mark. The Trait was an example of even more powerful things. It was basically a cross-class ability and that type of thing was incredibly rare. Now, he didn’t need to worry about small diseases or having to carry curative pills around.

As for Marks, this was only the second one he’d ever earned. If he got more...then perhaps at his Second Evolution, an unexpected option might be presented to him. The World Law rewarded those who helped it, and Marks were a way of keeping track. The church had the best record of them, but if you had enough, they could be used to upgrade abilities, to gain Traits, and sometimes even other things. With enough, you could even deepen your knowledge of your Class and see the potential paths in front of you, including how to get an even better Class.

He could only imagine what the Hunter had earned. A pulse of desire ran through him as he thought about it. That golden figure was walking power. Power that could turn a man into a god.

That was what the World Law could grant, and even if he wasn’t a World Spirit, that was what the Hunter had. That was the real reason the church worshipped it. All their talk of defending the world was a good game to delude the masses, but the real result was that those in charge grew stronger.

It might even be better this way, if the Hunter wasn’t a World Spirit. Those were distant, ethereal figures, or rare encounters that followed strict rules, and they didn’t interact with people lightly. Maybe the Hunter was a strange race or some legendary construct designed to hunt the World Law’s enemies. He wasn’t sure, but he knew an opportunity when he saw it.

If the Hunter wanted to visit the city, he would throw the doors open for him. He didn’t have full authority to do something like that on his own, but the Dwarven Council shouldn’t refuse once he explained it to them. They were hidebound by tradition and would welcome an elite force appointed by the World Law.

His fingers tightened on the crystal glass. He would make sure that the Hunter’s welcome was warm and that he felt like staying. Associating with him for a single night had already resulted in a greater gain than Garild had expected for a year. The question was how to promote that connection and turn it even more to his advantage.

Trying to force the Hunter wasn’t going to work. The image of the Terror falling in two pieces was enough to tell him that. He would be a bad figure to cross. But Garild was used to that. He knew how to be polite and play up to those who were stronger than him. In his forty years of life, he’d done it more than once. It was the only way to survive in the capital.

As for why the Hunter was interested in enchanters, he didn’t know, but since the Hunter had let it slip that he planned to rebuild the ruins, it must have something to do with that. The enchanters here were useless, but if they could be pushed into assisting the Hunter and establishing goodwill, then he would encourage them to do so.

As for the commoners, they had seen the Hunter on the peak and were already starting to make up stories about him. They would believe whatever Garild fed them. He would let the word spread that the Horned Hunter had come to protect them, that he was an Envoy of the World Law, and that he had claimed the peak.

Most importantly, he would make it clear that he was friends with him and that they had fought together to destroy a Terror. He would hire bards to sing the songs and aggrandize the event. The Death of the Terror of the Night and the brave Governor fighting side by side with the Horned Hunter. It would let him borrow some of the Hunter’s mystique for himself and increase his influence in the city.Maybe the dwarves would even start to listen to him.

Plans unfurled in his mind until the memory of the academy and the Terror had nearly been wiped out. He would make sure that everything was ready, and in two days, he would meet him again. He set the empty glass on the railing with a clink, barely aware that he had already finished it as his eyes stayed fixed on Sun’s Rest.

After that, who knew what the result would be?

---

By the time the sun broke the horizon, Sam managed to catch a couple of hours of sleep on the peak and he was waiting by the final transfer line. This last one was at the back of a shallow cave on the side of the cliff where an attack had broken through the surface. If he had the chance to study greenstone later, it was one of the prime areas that he would focus on restoring.

The moonlight had healed his aura at about 1% an hour over the course of the night, and the drumbeats had come with impressive frequency, helping his aura recover to 56%. He was in decent shape for this repair, but there was one significant issue. The complexity wasn’t a problem, since it was no worse than the other ones he’d already done and he’d studied the necessary details before the sun rose.

The problem was time.

How long is there between moonfall and moonrise currently? His thought was directed to the Guardian Star.

The moons will not fall until two hours past dawn. They will rise again ten hours and twenty seven minutes later. They are very close to Aster Fall and their orbits are shorter than usual.

He grimaced as the star confirmed the issue. He’d estimated that it would take him fourteen hours to complete the work, but the length of the day was closer to twelve, and the moons would appear in even less than that. He knew what would happen if he failed to finish in time. Being blasted off the mountain once was enough.

The last time, he’d been nearly finished when the moons rose and it had worked out, but he couldn’t count on that happening again. He looked up at the sky, taking in the pale forms of the moons as the sun washed them out as he waited for them to drop below the horizon. They were scattered across the horizon in a half circle, with Silvas to the south and Caelus two hand widths to the north of it, at almost due west. Amaris was offset, hovering in the north at a slightly higher elevation.

As he waited, he focused his attention on Transfer Aura and the glowing lines of the relic’s energy that were scattered in front of him, preparing the best he could. He would have to be faster than ever. As the last sliver of the moons receded below the horizon, he felt the relic shudder.

A sweeping silence fell over the mountain as the humming enchantments, the runes hanging in the sky, and the elemental pools all went dark. The pillars that had been stretching toward the heavens receded, drawing back into the shattered remains of the buildings below. The transfer lines went dim as their aura subsided, leaving only a faint presence behind. There was an echoing emptiness and then everything was still.

Without wasting an instant, Sam plunged his hands into the stone as he drove his aura into the lines, searching for the broken threads. Whether it was due to his increasing experience with the relic or, more likely, his new race, he could see the aura more clearly than ever and it came more quickly to his call. Nearly all of his attention was focused on gathering the aura, but there was room for thoughts that sprang up on their own and floated across his mind.

There was clearly a connection between his race and the relic. The silver aura here was some type of condensed moonlight energy, or maybe he should call it astral energy, since it was clearly related to his race. It washed over his hands with sparkling pulses of familiarity, and he could feel his aura responding to it.

It was different than it had been before his race changed. It was almost the same as the moonlight that filled his body. Touching it was like meeting an old lover you hadn’t seen in a long time, an unmistakable part of him. Perhaps this was what had pushed him onto the new racial path, even more than the World Core’s decision.

The World Core had called him “Voidborn,” as if he were a blank slate. The relic’s energy had filled that void, just like aura filled the lines of an enchantment as it activated it. There was probably more to it, but it felt right. It also raised the question of what else he could have been.

If a more demonic energy like Blood had activated that pattern and rearranged his physique to suit it, perhaps he would have become something entirely different. A Blood Hunter, or some new form of the Demon of Sundered Blood?

He shook his head as he pushed the idea away. He might be taller and more ferocious than before, but at least he wasn’t a monster. His arms ached as he pushed himself onward, and above, the sun began to slowly rise toward noon.

Transfer Aura was a vast draw on his essence, draining it as fast as he could restore it. That was one reason the repairs took so long. Since he didn’t have much time for this last one, he was going to have to try something to speed it up.

Ideas flickered through his mind as he studied the flow of energy and worked to pull the aura together. He focused on the interaction between his energy and the relic, examining the flow of astral energy as he compared the two. If this was the energy his race used, he needed to become more familiar with it.

The first thing he found was that the relic’s aura wasn’t just one torrent of power. He could see variety in it, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he felt differences where it had all been one thing before. There were gradations to the energy, areas where it was focused on one thing or another. Some parts of it felt sharp and others dull. The damaged areas were like hissing stars, sparking without purpose as their energy faded away into the greenstone. The more complete areas were rivers, flowing with a rippling current that bubbled past his awareness with a relaxing melody.

As he continued to pull the fractured aura toward him, he focused on that feeling, looking for where the aura was most active, the most likely to want to move. There were also parts where it was stuck, places it would be difficult to draw it from, due to the presence of a stronger current nearby or some snarl that it had become tangled in.

He didn’t need all of the aura here, just enough to form the new line, so he started to change his method, reaching for the energy that was most likely to jump into his hands, the sparks that were the most eager to move. After a little while, he could feel the pressure of the aura building as it began to flow toward him faster. The broken parts were leaning his way, trying to reach him and join with the others.

He pulled on them, guiding them into the channel he had carved. It was like building a binding pattern around an enchantment, the slow, repeated looping of one rune after another that tied it all together, and one by one, the sparks moved. But a look at the sun told him that still wasn’t enough.

He growled as he changed his tactic, jumping to a new idea. He had other abilities that he hadn’t used much on the relic, and now that he had a better sense for its energy, it was time to try them, namely Intensify Aura and Shatter Aura. He’d been warned to not shatter the natural auras of Aster Fall, but for this...hopefully it was permitted.

He reached out toward one of the snarls of astral energy, where the line had shattered into a dense web of crisscrossing lines, and drove a spike of aura deep into it, crossing through half a dozen of the intersections. It was something he’d never have dared to try before his race change, but now he wasn’t as worried about a backlash.

The lines were fragile, since they’d never been intended to take this form. As soon as the spike disrupted them, the web collapsed and astral energy tore through the entry point, slamming into his hands. A wash of silver energy blasted out from the wall like a moon was shining from the cliffside, and his body rocked back from the force of it. At the same time, he felt it energizing him as the loose energy flooded into his meridians.

He’d drawn on the relic’s energy before, and this time was no different. He drew on the power flowing from the loosened knot and focused it back into a thread with Intensify Aura as he shoved it toward the new transfer line. Most of the aura he’d been drawing on was diffuse and difficult to gather, but the energy that had been tangled up poured out of the knot like a flood had been released.

The new transfer line began to slowly brighten as the energy poured into it. Before, it had just been a large hollow line carved in the stone that flickered with the occasional silver spark. But as the freed aura poured into it, it was half filled with shimmers as it began to emit a light of its own. A few moments later, the aura from the knot fizzled out as the energy dissipated, but he didn’t stop there.

His body was humming with the freed energy he’d absorbed as he turned to the next tangle and drove a new spike of Shatter Aura into it. A moment later, another flood of released aura poured through him and he Intensified it into a focused stream as he sent it into the transfer line. With each additional spark that entered it, the channel carved itself a bit more deeply into the greenstone.

Above, the sun was heading toward late afternoon and he forced himself to ignore it as he kept working. He felt the shudders as the aura around the area began to react, bending toward the line he was reinforcing in the same way that it bent toward other major currents. There was a pull to it that resonated through the greenstone.

Two hours remain until moonrise. The star’s words rippled across his attention, warning him to hurry.

Sam growled as he sank deeper into the greenstone, reaching for the deeper tangles that had been difficult to access before. His efforts had already cleared part of the path and the energy closer to him was orderly as it flowed toward the transfer line.

As he broke through the tangles, the energy became more concentrated and he could feel it burning in his meridians, bringing to mind the slow revolution of the moon and stars. He could feel its nature, that bright silver light that pierced the void, and he called it to himself. His feet were planted in the shallow cave like the roots of a mountain sinking deep into the earth as his hands searched the firmament for stars.

Unconsciously, his battle aura activated and his body grew taller and his shoulders broader, as his hands sank deeper into the greenstone. A flood of silver sparks and broken aura swirled around him, flaring away from his hands as more energy rushed toward the transfer line.

It was working, but he kept pulling more. He couldn’t stop until it was done. As he worked, the excess energy continued to build up around him, flaring until it looked like he was standing at the heart of a silver sun. At the center of it, his hands were twisting and molding the energy, pulling it from one area as he sent it to another.

Slivers of the moons were beginning to edge across the horizon, but Sam barely noticed them as the new line finally snapped into place. A thunderous, bright crystal chime rang through the air as a freed ocean of astral energy poured through the line, burning from one end to the next. The chime echoed down through the ruins, building into an avalanche of resonant sound as it descended through the layers, intensifying as it went.

A wall of snow and ice formed in its wake as the ambient mana on the mountain answered. A hard gust slammed against the greenstone cliff, whistling like a drake’s roar as it continued to grow stronger.

Moments later, a sudden blizzard was born across the slopes of Sun’s Rest. Wind and snow slammed into the stones, swirling faster and faster as they hammered the adventurers and monsters that were fighting there, bringing a halt to everything.

And then, slowly, like mountains torn free from the earth, the moons rose, bringing an ocean of swelling power with them.