Astral Threads, Ch 2: Silver Threads (Patreon)

Jeric and Aemilia stepped through the condensed moonlight that made up the portal and the world flowed away in a river of colors. When their vision resolved again, there was a stone plateau that stretched forward endlessly in front of them, its far edge blending into the horizon.

Jeric’s hand tightened on his wife’s as he looked around, taking it all in. The sky was a dark, still void marked only by streaks of moonlight that cut across it, but the area was as bright as day.

The plateau beneath their feet were weathered, as if wind and rain had eroded the surface until only the truth at the heart of the stone was left behind. There were silver streaks in it, but it wasn’t the same greenstone as the relic. This was something else, a dark grey polished by time, with lighter patches where the underlying truth hadn’t yet been revealed.

For a moment, there was only stone and dark, until bands of moonlight streaked through the air and ran across the plateau like liquid rivers. The streams of light in the void poured downward, transforming into two paths that led across the plateau into the distance. One was bright blue and the other was dusky purple. A third road was there as well, in a soft green off to the left, but it was only half present, more a memory than reality.

Follow the Path of Trials.

The resonant voice filled his mind, chiming with a hint of moonlight and silver like sparkling ice. It was similar to the World Law but not. He’d been expecting it. First the blue path lit up and then the purple one as the relic spoke again.

Caelus will test your will to defend the elements. Amaris will test your heart.

Jeric squeezed Aemilia’s hand as he looked into the distance, trying to make out what was on the other side of the plateau. The distance seemed limitless, stretching far beyond what he could see, and it was hidden by a haze of moonlight, but he thought he could see a forest and mountains on the far side. He just wasn’t sure if they were real or a mirage.

“I see a city,” Aemilia murmured as she looked in the same direction, “or maybe a village. It keeps changing. People are meeting...talking to each other. Maybe it’s a market or part of the relic that used to exist?”

“Mountains for me,” Jeric murmured thoughtfully, shaking his head. “We’re each seeing something of our own. I wonder if this place is real or just in our imagination.”

The Trial awaits. Walk the path if you wish to seize the future. Since you have come here on the threshold of Evolution, depending on your choices, a unique opportunity may be presented to you. The paths in front of them brightened, stretching to just in front of their feet as the relic spoke again. If you succeed, you will be part of the High Council and able to determine one third of the Moonlight Path. You will also be responsible for the local area and the health and safety of those who live here.

“Let’s see what the future holds.” Aemilia smiled as she looked at her husband, and she squeezed his hand back before she turned to the purple path. “What a story this will make.”

“A little different from the shop I was working on,” Jeric rumbled in agreement before he let out a chuckle. “But sometimes you just have to keep moving.”

He looked into his wife’s blue eyes and smiled as he squeezed her hand again and took a deep breath, letting the steady pressure remind him why he was here. Then they stepped forward onto the paths.

---

Sam stood at the edge of the sylvan village, looking back at the house where he’d just left Altey. Raelia and Danir, along with the rest of the hunting team had offered to look after her for the next few days, since she still needed the help of the sylphs to control her mana. After spending so many months with them and learning from Siwaha, she knew them even better than he did.

Things had been relatively quiet over the last few months, so he’d been able to spend quite a bit of time with her and his parents when he wasn’t working on smithing or another craft, which had been a welcome break from the intensity of the alignment.

Not far away, Siwaha’s small house was visible. Inside, Siwasir was still asleep, recovering from the battle with the Blood Elemental. He was improving, but it would still be months before he woke unless something changed.

It was hard to believe that almost a year had passed since he and his father had gone to explore that old ruin. In another couple of months, he would turn 19, although it felt like he was much older. Images of the relic’s history and the timeless periods of meditation while crafting made it feel like decades had passed. The weight of responsibility was heavy on his shoulders as he looked back to the rest of the ground that was standing nearby.

They’d found a home here, but now they had to build it up. That meant speeding up the repairs if he wanted it to be in working order anytime soon, especially on the much larger lower layers where the farms and teleportation platforms were. Otherwise, it would take over a thousand years for the relic to repair the basic enchantments on its own. It could do it, but it wouldn’t be quick. Hope and the sharp edge of necessity shaped the world in distinct lines, showing him what needed to be done.

Fortunately, for right now, there was still time.

“She’ll be all right with us.” Danir spoke up as he followed Sam’s gaze. The sylvan ranger was standing off to the side, next to Krana. Lenei and Lesat were there as well, holding a low conversation. “You know we’ll keep a good eye on her. She’s one of our own. You can work with your heart at peace.”

“I know.” Sam gave the sylph a grateful nod as he looked at the house one last time and then he turned to his allies, looking over the three of them as his mood turned up. “It looks like it’s time. Are you ready?”

Like his parents, the three of them had been preparing to Evolve over the past few weeks and they were planning to do it tonight. His parents had held off in case the Trial of the Moon gave them a title and better options, but the others had only waited out of solidarity and a desire to push their abilities as high as possible before they took the plunge.

There was an interesting phenomenon as well that stood out to his eyes. He could see thin but intense shrouds of mana gathering around them as their bodies rejected most of the energy they gained, now that they were so close to Evolving. If he focused, he could almost make out the lines of their meridians where the mana flowed more vibrantly. Perhaps that was what he had looked like to Asenya during his Evolution, but in more detail.

“Let’s go find a few monsters.” Lesat said with a dry chuckle. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“The church says the doors of the world open up at the First Evolution,” Lenei agreed with a grin as her spear appeared in her hand. She’d switched back to it recently to keep in practice. She leaned against it as she looked out into the night. “We should be able to find something strong enough outside the valley, even if they’re getting sparse. If we want to keep advancing, we’ll need to go farther afield soon”

“I received word from the Dwarven Council as well,” Krana added. “They have a request for you, but they won’t tell me what it is. They’ve invited you to come see them as soon as you have time. It sounds like there’s some trouble they want you to deal with, now that people are calling you a World Spirit or a Champion.”

Sam rubbed his chin as he nodded in response. Then he turned to look into the distance, studying the night sky and the silver threads. He wasn’t surprised that the rumors of him being a World Spirit had spread, since the repairs to the relic had drawn a great deal of attention.

The fame of the Horned Hunter of the Moons was enough to keep most people away from the peak unless they were looking for him, but a few had sought him out over the past months, some in search of healing and others because of difficulties they faced. He had become something of a symbol of hope to villagers in the valley, especially once Siwaha had spoken for him, and an icon of mystery to those in the city. Between the two, he preferred the villagers.

Their needs were simpler and their requests more honest. It was no great difficulty to give them a healing scroll or forge a blade to set a warrior on his path, and he had done that more than once already. It was also a way of creating stronger connections with the villagers and giving something back to the valley where he was building his home. The stronger the valley, and the more they supported him, the safer his family would be.

There was already a small trade in moonlight candles in some of the shops scattered through the villages here. They had been a feature of the festival for a long time, but now they were being sold out of season to those in search of him. Garild must have leaked that information, since they somehow knew to wait at the stairs to the third layer and to light a candle.

The ripples of mana surging across the mountain peaks and into the distance pulled his attention back to the present.

“I’ll follow you,” he said, turning back to the three of them. His fangs flashed for a moment as he smiled. “When everyone is back, we’ll have to celebrate. Are you ready?”

A round of agreement followed and a few moments later, they had left the village far behind as they raced across the mountain slope. The edge of the valley was a dozen miles away. To find a high-level monster, they would need to go into the desolate area between the peaks, where the cold and wind cut like steel blades.

He was looking forward to it.

He needed to spend more time in intense elements, wherever he could find them, since it was both part of his racial path and the foundation for his Elemental Smithing ability. Many auras were also based in the elements of the world. The better he understood them, the more skilled he would be.

The others were a thousand feet ahead, just at the edge of Crystal Focus, and he flexed his hands as he ran, feeling the flow of muscle and bone. The cold wind wrapped around him like the inverse heat of a blacksmith’s forge, calling him to forge it into something new, and in the sky beyond, the astral threads wove together, marking out the edge of something greater, like a vast silver web.

---

It took half the night, but eventually Krana located a pair of Greyback Mountain Crawlers. They were giant, insatiable monsters with eight elongated limbs that hung to the walls of cliffs waiting for prey to pass below. They had no bones and their skin was nearly the same color as the stone, a mottled grey with white patches like frost. Instead of claws, they had jagged, icy spikes at the end of their tentacles that lashed outward to capture their target. When they weren’t moving, they resembled icicles hanging from a stone shelf.

The monsters primarily lived on blood and each tendril had its own mouth to suck their prey dry. Once they captured something, they would wrap around it like a shroud and drain it. Then they would fade back into a crevice in the stone until they’d digested the meal. Eliminating them was difficult, since they were rarely seen, and if they were hungry enough, they would creep along a cliffside looking for prey in the night.

They were the cause of more than one adventuring party disappearing, with only their tents left abandoned behind them, which made them one of the darker and more feared monsters of the peak. Eliminating them was a public service.

Once they were spotted, fortunately, most of their advantage was gone. They were slow to move when they were surprised, and it didn’t take the three long to tear them off the cliff while Sam watched from a quarter mile away. It was close enough that he could teleport in to help if needed, but far enough away that he wouldn’t interfere with their experience gain.

As soon as the monsters were dead and he saw the silver shields of Evolution surround the trio, a flare of crystal flame surrounded him a sapphire halo and he flashed toward them. It took two jumps, since his limit was a thousand feet, but with all the practice he’d gained recently, it was nearly seamless. Each cast took just under 10 essence now instead of 12, with the 20% reduction at Advanced.

The corpses of the crawlers were scattered to the sides, their long tentacle-like limbs broken across the ground. They had been Levels 105 and 103, but it hadn’t taken the three much trouble to deal with them. Most of their advantage was in stealth and Krana had prevented them from taking advantage of it.

The three were encapsulated in the silver bubbles as runes flickered across the surface in a swirl of energy that was so subtle it was almost imperceptible. It was the first time he’d seen an Evolution from the outside and he paid careful attention. He could just barely make out the shape of a rune here and there and he had to struggle to hold onto their shapes. He felt a twinge of pain in his mind as they tried to erase themselves from his memory. He wasn’t sure what the shields were made from, but it was a glimpse into the workings of the World Core and he wasn’t willing to let it go without a fight.

The backlash forced him to abandon most of the runes, so instead he focused his attention on a single one that spoke to him more than the others, doing his best to study its shape and the energy that infused it. It felt similar to the spatial threads all around him and it resonated with the astral energy in his body. The Evolution shouldn’t take longer than an hour at most, and it could be quicker, so he didn’t have too much time to study the process.

Since he was also supposed to be guarding the area, he channeled some essence into his Lunar Bracer as he drew a handful of crystalline runes into the air. Three dozen gemstones flared out from the artifact and fused into the runes, which flared as they expanded into a protective enchantment that stretched for a hundred feet around the area. Each of the gems was a sparkling node in the spell, reinforcing it as they created a double-layered defense.

With that done, he turned his attention fully back to the shield in front of him, his senses roving over it as he studied the effect and tried to assemble the true shape of the rune. It was a rare opportunity and he didn’t want it to go to waste. Something about the shield reminded him of astral energy and of essence, although he could tell it wasn’t entirely made of that. Whatever the World Core was doing, it was a complex blend of energies that was devoted to protecting the person inside until they completed their Evolution.

At the same time, it wasn’t that simple. During his Evolution, he’d been somewhere else, and he was pretty sure the same was true for the three of them. He couldn’t sense anything inside the shields with Crystal Focus. They were just a blank spot in his awareness. His theory was that the shields weren’t just protecting people. They were also something like a teleportation bubble. He just didn’t know the details of how it worked. Perhaps it was transporting them closer to the World Core or even outside of Aster Fall, into one of the neighboring dimensions where time passed differently.

The runes weren’t the only reason he was interested. He had met Asenya, the World Forger, and he knew that she had been responsible for protecting and repairing the World Core. He had to follow in her footsteps if he wanted to repair the Seal, and that meant grasping at every opportunity. Hopefully, bit by bit, he would discover the trail.

The swirl of runes faded in and out of his sight as he tried to isolate the one he wanted, accompanied by a stabbing headache, and he held up his hand to the side of the closest shield, slowly bringing it closer as he sensed the energies inside. When his palm was a few inches from the shield, it began to shine more brightly as the colors darkened. A force pushed him backward, preventing him from touching it, and he pulled his hand away again.

It didn’t seem to be threatening, but it was definitely not going to let him interfere. It raised an interesting question of what would happen if you chose to evolve in the middle of a battle. You would disappear while your enemies were all around you, which might give you a breather for a moment, but as soon as you came back, they’d still be there.

The World Core wasn’t going to fight anyone’s battles for them. You’d have to make sure to eliminate your enemies before you evolved, or hope that whatever you gained was enough to ensure your victory.

The rune blurred away from his sight again, leaving only a stab of energy behind, and he growled as tried to follow it. His eyes tracked up across the top of the shield to where it had disappeared, but when he reached the top, it wasn’t the rune that he saw.

It was the silver threads beyond the shield. They were everywhere. Their presence was the strongest in the sky, where it looked like they were connecting the stars to the earth, but they were also all around him, running from the mountainside to the valleys below and from one peak to another, in both straight lines and curves that seemed to tangle in on themselves. Some of them were strong and others were weak and faint, barely noticeable amongst the others. The stronger the thread, the more material it seemed to be connected to, and the smallest ones stretched between tiny shards of stone and lichen on the cliff walls.

He’d seen them for months, so much that the smaller ones barely drew his attention any longer, but with the silver shield of the Evolution focusing his mind, he suddenly saw them in a different light. The rune he’d been chasing flared at the corner of his attention before it appeared again, not on the shield, but along the strand of a nearly invisible silver thread.

Suddenly, the rune flamed in his mind as it engraved itself into his memory in an arc of sapphire flame. Unlike most of the runes he’d learned, this one burned with the silver light of astral energy, just like the threads, and he suddenly understood.

Void.

The rune represented the space between things.

That was why it had felt so familiar in the shield. He’d been seeing it for months, slowly coming to terms with it, especially when he used Crystal Passage and moved through the void. Every line of it resonated with astral energy as the shape of reality warped around it.

Time blurred as his eyes were fixed on the space between things, until he felt the silver shields crackling in front of him.  Then they faded away, leaving Krana, Lenei, and Lesat standing there. They were covered in a shroud of dense energy that rose off their skin in wisps as it dissipated, making them seem like three divine beings who had just walked from the mists of time.

Sam blinked as he turned toward them, his mind settling back into the flow of the present as he took in their changed classes. Each of them had started with a handful of Marks to use and it looked like it had helped.

Krana Runekeld. Level 100. Earthen Prophet of War-Dwarven Smith.

Lesat of Osera. Level 100. Runic Vanguard-Arcane Leatherworker.

Lenei Orison. Level 100. Paladin Avenger-Blade of Life.

As he saw what they had become, he turned his attention from the new rune in his mind and focused on them instead. Battle was waiting and there was the rune to study, but for now, it was time to celebrate an accomplishment that only came once. They deserved his full attention.

“Congratulations!” He laughed as he welcomed them back, giving them the traditional saying. “May your Paths be bright and your footsteps resound in the halls of your ancestors!”

He didn’t notice, but all around him, the streams of silver energy in the area bent a little, shifting closer as they responded to his unconscious will and the rune in his mind.