Path of Stars, Ch 34: Descent (Patreon)

Alora’s world was called Verdant. It approached swiftly, growing larger moment by moment as the Ice Drake descended. Their speed slowed at the same time as they prepared to enter the denser atmosphere.

From here, Sam could see some of the cities below, although to most eyes they would have still been indistinct. The homes of Alora’s people were interwoven through the forests and plains, their structures nearly invisible as they blended with their environment.

He had spent the hours-long trip regenerating his essence and channeling the excess into his cloak and bracers. The artifacts’ passive regeneration wasn’t enough. Even at his best speed, however, it would take about 26 hours to completely refill each one. The 250,000 essence charge on his astral bracer and cloak, and the 200,000 on his lunar bracer, was a lot to replace.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the days it would take, so the bit he could refill would have to be enough. Each of them was heading toward the 20,000 mark, which would be sufficient for a short and difficult fight. That thought made him chuckle for a moment, since each of the items was already holding twice his own essence pool.

Make that a very difficult fight.

As for the loot that the nagas had brought him, he’d only had time to study a couple of the pieces. He recognized quite a few runes from the spatial trap, but it would take a while to really understand them.

“The presence of the grove is growing stronger,” Alora said intently from where she was standing beside him, “but there is something disturbing it. It feels distorted, like a shadow is rippling across it, and there’s a scent of something metallic, like blood. Something has definitely happened.”

“It has to be related to the commander,” Sam agreed. “The Bloodsigils have some connection to blood as an element. Besides their race, that Runemaster was called a Lieutenant of Blood. The commander is probably that or something higher, but I don’t know what it means.”

He felt like it was connected to the Demon of Blood, but that could be the legends of Aster Fall influencing him. Perhaps the Demon of Blood was just something like a Bloodsigil and a Lieutenant of Blood himself. The Runemaster had been Level 410, and that was enough to cause devastation across his world. A legend could have been born from that, especially if it happened more than once.

The moons above Aster Fall had been enchanted as wards against the Demons of Sundered Blood, Shattered Skies, and Demented Passion, but it could be that multiple Outsiders had created the legend over time. Maybe the three demons were actually categories of powerful invaders who used Blood, Elements, and some form of illusion or mental magic as their primary abilities.

The thought made him rub his chin, but it wasn’t quite satisfying. Eventually, he shook his head. No, there had to be more to that story, especially with the three demons who’d come through the Nexus in the beginning. At the very least, they fit the legend. The moons were also a Fifth Evolution enchantment, if not a Sixth Evolution one. These Bloodsigils weren’t enough to challenge them.

“A Lieutenant of Blood?” Alora thought for a moment, her expression puzzled. “Some monsters and people who gain a great familiarity with a particular concept or element can gain a title for it, but I’m not sure what the blood element one means. These Outsiders are different than what I’ve seen before, although you’ve explained the basics.”
“I saw a Lord of Magma in the Chaos Wild,” Sam agreed. “A lizard that was at the Fifth Evolution. It was powerful.” The thing had nearly eaten him in one bite, but he didn’t mention that.

“Beings like that are natural calamities,” Alora said darkly. “Where they go, death and disaster follow. They can be devastating to the settled worlds and are one reason the Chaos Wild is so dangerous, even to high level people. If that Lieutenant of Blood is anything like them, then there must be a Lord or Lady of Blood somewhere who is probably at the Fifth Evolution, but maybe it’s possible at the Fourth for this commander, if he’s knowledgeable enough.”

“Is there a hierarchy to the titles?” Sam asked, puzzled. It was one thing that he hadn’t figured out yet, but it seemed like there should be.

“I’ve heard that a lower title can be granted to underlings,” Alora agreed. “If you have a noble title, it comes with the ability to appoint a certain number of followers, which are probably what these Lieutenants are. It should enhance their strength or their ability with the concept. I’m sure you’ll gain something like that yourself, if you haven’t already.”

“If it grants access to a concept, it sounds like a type of blessing,” Sam said thoughtfully. If something like that did happen for him, it would take a deeper understanding of his personal path. He didn’t feel qualified to induct others into astral energy or flame, for example.

“I’ve heard it comes with some limitations,” Alora said with a shake of her head. “A blessing is much better. That’s a true gift that becomes part of you. A subordinate title supposedly prevents you from surpassing the one who grants it in the same concept. It’s never really your own.”

“It sounds like something the Outsiders would do then,” Sam said as he looked below them to where the ship was heading. It reminded him of the Lord of Wind and Water on Aster Fall that the bellisagi chieftain had talked about. He had to wonder if the same thing applied there, or if that fellow was claiming a title he hadn’t earned.

Silence fell across the deck as the world below them grew larger in their vision and Alora’s hands tightened on the rail as she looked ahead. As they entered the atmosphere, the Ice Drake vibrated slightly as its enchantments shifted to handle the different air pressure.

He followed Alora’s gaze to the main continent, which was a pattern of light and dark greens interrupted by blue lakes and two sharply rippled mountain ranges near the coasts. The area she was studying sprang into focus. It was nestled at the foot of the mountains near the western coast, where the elements from the sea, air, earth, forests, and sun all merged together.

“It’s there,” she said as she noticed his attention, her hand rising to point to a spot near the base of the mountains. There was a flicker of energy in the area like a rainbow sun there that reminded him of the Wild Leaf she had.

Sam studied the world and their approach, but no spells or new traps were obvious. It looked like a clear path to descend. “Head straight for it,” he ordered Sleset.

A moment later, the ship shifted its angle and pointed the prow directly for the grove. Some thin clouds were in the way of the continent, hanging above the surface in a scattered mosaic that left misty patches on top of the blue and green. When they were still about a dozen miles away, there was a slight blur in the clouds that pulled his attention. His eyes narrowed as he studied it.

Just then, there was a crackling sensation of essence flaring up in his spatial cloak. He reached in and grabbed the item that was reacting, and then he looked down at it.

It was the soul wraith’s hand. The white bones were glowing as they released a misty red light, which looked like it was trying to escape. The enchantment he’d added across the surface was flaring with silver light, suppressing the red aura. When the two energies interacted, the hand crackled as if it were being burned.

He glanced up from the hand to the clouds in front of him, sensing the energies all around, and then he quickly added another sealing rune to the hand. “It looks like there is another defense besides the fortresses,” he growled as he tossed it back into his cloak.

“Prepare to fight,” his words rang out all across the deck of the ship. “There’s an ambush ahead of us. We’re going through it.”

The command was followed by the roaring hisses of the nagas as they surged toward the railings and drew their weapons. Auras of different elements surged around them as they eagerly stared ahead. With a wave of his hand, Sam summoned his five golems out from his cloak and arranged them beside him on the deck.

Now that the hand had alerted him, he knew where to focus his attention. In just a few moments, his visions pierced through the illusion in the clouds that was hiding the force waiting in ambush. There were dozens of translucent and bony figures floating among the clouds, their bodies almost hidden in the mist.

The one that drew his attention, however, was the Crimson Soul Wraith that he’d met before. It was Level 391 now, a level higher than it had been before, but its hand was still missing. It looked like it had returned home after trying to chase down Alora the last time they’d met. He’d planned to find it in the future, but it was even simpler now. It would save him having to chase it down.

“We have unfinished business, you and I,” he said to it across the distance. It was staring upward, its red eyes gleaming as it tracked the approaching ship. “This time will be different than the last.”

The soul wraith was the strongest of the opponents, but it wasn’t alone. His attention scanned over the followers with it, analyzing them all. There were three dozen wraiths in all, most of them around Level 200 to 250, and a handful in the lower 300s. There were different types, but he singled out a few as the primary examples.

Acid Wing Wraith. Outsider. Level 244.

Ice Claw Wraith. Outsider. Level 292.

Frozen Blood Wraith. Outsider. Level 312.

“Sleset, deploy the Silver Army to eliminate the enemies below,” he commanded as he pointed to the clouds. “The golems will go with you. We’ll pierce through their formation and head to the grove.”

As he spoke, a streak of silver light flew away from his hand, heading for the target. Runes flickered in it, as well as a bit of Shatter Aura. When it arrived, the spell flared outward like a broad but thin blade and sliced into the concealing mist that was layered between the clouds.

The illusion spell hiding the wraiths shattered like glass, dissipating into fragments of mist. A moment later, half of the cloud layer disappeared, revealing all of the enemies lying in wait. As the ship closed into range, Sleset and the nagas leapt overboard, flying straight for them. Their armor gleamed with enchantments as they flew in the air. It was something he hadn’t considered until that moment, but it looked like whoever had made their equipment had designed it pretty well.

At Sam’s gesture, his eagle golems followed, disappearing in a streak of icy light. Just behind them, the two armor golems stomped to the edge of the deck, ready to deal with anything that came toward them.

As the army closed in, the wraiths surged upward, their faces a rictus of hatred as their wings and claws spread wide. Their features were skeletal with barely enough flesh to cover their thin tendons. They looked halfway between emaciated bats and demons. Acid covered the sickly green claws and sharp wings of some and jagged layers of ice surrounded others.

Of all the Outsiders he’d seen, wraiths were some of the most inhuman. They didn’t seem to have the same personality or mind that regular Outsiders did, even the animals. They were more like angry ghosts barely hanging on to a vestige of life. It made him wonder where they really came from and what the difference between the different types of Outsiders was. Perhaps these things were only used as guards or servants.

Despite the wraiths’ appearance, the nagas closed in fearlessly. Their warcries were sharp hisses and resonant thrums from deep in their chests, which were far broader and longer than a human’s to support their four arms. The thrums were almost like a rattle, but much deeper, and they came in waves that layered on one another.

It was like a drum being struck at a pace so fast that the beats blurred together into a driving staccato tide that washed away from them and drowned their enemy. Their hisses carried above it like the howl of a storm, rising and falling from low to high with a sound that felt like it would cut bone. If the wraiths had been alive, there was no way they would have been unmoved in the face of it.

When the two forces crashed together, there was an explosion of bone, streaks of acid, and the flaring light of elemental shields and envenomed blades. The wraiths took the brunt of it, their formation disintegrating as they were pushed back in a wave. Only a few of them had the levels to compete with the nagas. They collapsed one after the other as they were torn apart, opening a swiftly widening hole at the center of their group.

Just above, Sam’s attention was fixed on the soul wraith. The Outsider was off to the side of the main group. As soon as it began to move toward the fight to help the others, he disappeared from the deck of the ship in a flash of silver flames. A moment later, he reappeared directly in its path.

“Your opponent is me,” he said as he reached out and grabbed it by the neck with one giant golden hand. Its momentum slammed to a halt against his grip, causing him to rock back slightly. “Or have you forgotten who took your hand?”

The soul wraith was smaller than he remembered, barely ten feet tall from the upper arc of its bony wings to its feet. It thrashed in his hand, its wings curving around to head for his neck and chest. They were covered by an arc of the same blood-red blades that had shattered his armor in the past, gleaming with a deadly light.

This time, however, he was at the Second Star and far stronger than he’d been back then. Sam tightened his grip on the creature’s neck as a bright silver aura radiated from his body. The wings crashed into the aura and the bloody arcs on them shattered to fragments that spun past him before they dissolved into wisps that blew away on the wind.

The stench of blood was thick on the creature. It was making no attempt this time to hide its true appearance. All the vestiges of humanity in it had disappeared. With a growl of retribution, Sam’s hand flared with the bright silver aura of Astral Strike and his grip tightened.

The wraith’s neck and head exploded. Bone fragments went flying outward, tearing through the clouds with whistling speed that left streaks of shattered vapor behind them. That wasn’t all, however, as the wraith’s body shook for an instant, trembling violently as it began to fall away from Sam’s hand. A flare of caution made him leapt backward, distancing himself.

The wraith’s chest ruptured, splitting apart as a cloud of blood red mist roared out, tearing through its ribs and wings. The force of the energy was so great it left a massive hole in its ribcage. The explosion was followed by a corrosive hissing sound as the blood mist began to dissolve the bones and skin it touched. With each part that was dissolved, the blood mist expanded outward, converting the wraith’s body into itself.

The remains of the creature hung in the air, suspended by the mist that was tearing it apart. Sam frowned as he watched it. He wasn’t sure if it was an attempt to take its enemy with it to the grave or something else. The energy in the mist was strange  and it gave him an unsettled feeling as it continued to grow.

Crimson tendrils were already beginning to reach out from the cloud, seeking haphazardly through the air as if they were grasping for things. At the center of the cloud, where the wraith’s heart would have been, there was a dense sphere that was beginning to spin. A vague shadow of a small winged figure slowly became visible in it. At the same time, there was no experience from the wraith yet, which was what gave him the final clue.

It seemed to be a combination of an attack and a reconstitution ability. The mist was dissolving the wraith’s body and regathering the material from it. At the same time, it was trying to gather more from any enemies that were nearby. If it continued, the wraith might be able to reform, but he had no intention of allowing that.

He raised his hand as a sphere of silver flame condensed in his hand and then he threw it forward. It sank into the center of the mist like a miniature sun before it flared to life and exploded outward in a brilliant, expanding ring.

The ring reached almost a hundred feet away before it stopped and a flare of flame swirled along the edge. Then it shrank down again, sucking the mist in with it as it condensed back toward the center. The mist traveled with it, pulled against its will by the force of the miniature Nexus spell.

Then the sphere exploded outward, turning the entire area where the blood mist had been into a pool of silver flame. A roaring wave of heat filled the air, purifying everything that had been there as it consumed the remains of the wraith. As soon as it did, a rush of experience and essence appeared.

Sam nodded as he studied the area where the wraith had been, and then he swept out his hand, gathering up the energy left behind. To his right, the nagas were tearing through the remains of the other wraiths. Only a few of them were left now, but they were still struggling fiercely, their claws striking as fast as they could toward the nagas.

“Finish them off,” he ordered as he sent a mental command to his eagle golems to circle around the wraiths from behind. “We can’t spend any longer here.”

Behind him, the Ice Drake was coming up now with Alora and Laimar guiding it. He looked back at it and then he waved his hand, collecting all of the essence from the wraiths in front of him. They were weaker than the soul wraith, but it was still a decent amount. As for the experience, he felt a trickle from his golems’ contribution to the battle, but it was little compared to what the soul wraith had given him.

As the last of the wraiths was torn to pieces and the nagas gathered back on the ship, he landed on the prow of the Ice Drake and glanced at the result. The soul wraith was worth about 90k essence and the rest were another 95k together. The essence expanded outward from him in a blur as he channeled it into the Wild Leaf in his spirit.

All around him, the world echoed in response as howling elements on the winds rushed past his cheeks in a thousand different varieties of elemental life. There were curling flames, brushing leaves, raindrops on stone, the rough surface of metallic ores, and the misty cool breath of the sea. More quickly than it had ever happened before, perhaps because he was on a world already so attuned to to the balanced elements, the essence was pulled apart and reconstituted as it flowed back into his body.

Essence Constellation (Second Star): 436,508 / 5,000,000.

It was enough to raise his Intelligence and Aura by 463 points, which took him to 10,010 in each. As soon as he felt those two attributes pass 10,000, a wave of clarity flowed through his mind and spirit, bringing with it a sense of calm focus, as if everything was as clear as day and easy to understand.

It felt like his spells were simple now and the new construct for Astral Strike that he’d thought was more complex presented no difficulty at all. He blinked a few times as he adjusted to the change. It was definitely a milestone, but he didn’t intend to dwell on it. His attention was on the commander that was hiding somewhere below.

His other attributes rose by a few hundred points as well, but he ignored the rest of the changes as he glanced at the experience from the battle. It was worth three levels. The notification rang in his mind.

Congratulations! You are now a Level 290 Astral Artificer.

He quickly assigned the 36 free points to Charisma, and then he looked over to where the nagas were gathering on the deck. His eagle golems were with them, barely scratched by the battle. A moment later, the nagas were ready, their fangs gleaming as they stared toward him with eager grins, waiting for what was next.

“Let’s take the ship in,” he told Laimar, “as fast as we can. That should be the last line of defense they had, except for the commander himself.”

“He’s down there,” Alora announced suddenly as her emerald eyes focused on a specific point near the mountains. “I can sense him clearly now, but something is changing. The sense of blood is growing and the energy in the grove is rising in response. I don’t know what he’s doing, but we have to stop it. I can feel the Wild Tree’s terror.”

“We will.” Laimar gripped the wheel on the Ice Drake and twisted it fiercely, his tendons taut against his skin. The ship pitched downward at a steep slant, diving through the clouds as it headed for the grove. He held it in place with one hand as he reached back over his shoulder, gripping his spear with the other.

The two Wild Spirits were surrounded by a fluctuating aura of wild energy as the winds suddenly gathered around them. Their forms shone with a rainbow of multicolored auras as their silver-blue hair streamed back, making them shine like divine beings, and a sense of natural pressure emanated outward, resonating with the spirit of all the elements. The world itself was responding to the sense of crisis they felt as they headed for their homeland.

It was the first time Sam had really seen Alora in her own element, and at that moment he was struck by the sense of rightness, as if this was the perfect place for her, the home where she belonged more than any other. The determination on her features and the sense of bare vulnerability as she faced the unknown made him more determined than ever to ensure that she and her family survived.

He stood on the deck beside her, once again at his human height, and rested his hands on the rail as runes gathered around him. They spun through his aura like stars in a nebula, gleaming with subtle flickers of concepts that were woven into the fabric of the Void. Behind him, his Silver Army stood in ranks, waiting for their order to deploy.

The Wild Grove loomed in his vision as the Ice Drake closed in. Ribbons of icy energy trailed from the decks, leaving a path of glittering crystals and snowflakes in her wake.