Chapter 86 (Patreon)

Chapter 86

The storm had died down to a low drizzle, but was still flashing lightning overhead when Riven stepped foot outside.

The bone garden was open to the air on the wide tower rooftop and heavily guarded.  A door from the large staircase with an arch made of bone led into it, where over a dozen armed warriors and an equal number of robed mages stood watch.  There was even one bone giant, standing three times the height of Riven who wielded an absolutely gargantuan bow with arrows the size of Riven’s thighs, and another ghoul man with a sniper rifle of all things peering out a scope while looking down onto the city below.

The garden itself was… beautiful, for lack of better words.  It wasn’t the type of beauty one would expect out of a normal garden, but Riven could see why they called it that.  Intricate ornamental bone structures hovered and floated about the air in a palpable wave of death mana and little orbs of light that slowly churned around a central spire.  The spire itself was very tall, very thick and made mostly from cords of interwoven spines or vertebrae; but there were also various skulls and sinewy strings of flesh to create the bone garden’s spire.

The palpable of black and teal death mana was cool to the touch and felt a little bit like a swimming pool when Riven followed his sister into the dense mist; and the droplets of rainwater falling from the heavens slowed down to a crawl whenever they entered the sphere of power.  The tiny lights in the area bounced, laughed or even sung while they danced about in the air - and many of them brushed by Riven’s skin or even went through his body to give him sensations or flashes of memories or emotions that were never his.  The general feel he got from these glowing lights was that they were actually spirits, and they seemed… happy.  Happy to be here, from what he could tell from the thoughts they transferred on contact.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Mara said while smiling at a pair of souls chasing one another around her legs.  She giggled when they brushed by her to impart another set of emotions, and she rolled her eyes at what was certainly a thought that’d been shared with her.

Of the dozens of rotating bone structures softly orbiting the pillar, they were in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  Riven could feel the connections of mana between them though, and upon focusing further - he could almost see the intricate webbing where each floating piece of carved bone held meaning and purpose in this setup.  Some of them were star-shaped, others were rectangular and could fit into the palm of your hand, yet others were odd shapes that didn’t really fit the norm - yet they all had tiny runic sigils on each of them that glowed a soft teal color.

“It is beautiful…” Riven said quietly, almost a whisper while he reached out and touched another passing soul - getting a brief sense of happiness from its passing before it joined its brothers and sisters in the slowly churning vortex of power around them.

Allie absentmindedly pushed one of the larger bone structures rotating directly into where she stood, watching it float away into the dense mana and through hundreds of slowed raindrops with a small smile.  Then she turned with crimson eyes to stare upon her brother.  She let out a sigh, and came over to hug him again.  “I’m glad you’re ok.  So… what do you think about all this?”

Riven blinked as she let go to the sound of rumbling thunder, and gave an approving nod.  “I think I’m very impressed.”

He didn’t mention his misgivings about how she was handling some of the humans in the city, because honestly after his talks with Mara and Allie he wasn’t sure if conflict was avoidable at this point.  And who knew, if he’d seen Jose get killed like that in front of his own eyes maybe he’d have been thrown into a rage too.  In fact, he certainly would have gone into a rage.

His features fell, and he let out a sigh.  “Where’s he buried?”

Allie’s smile faded, and her eyes hit the ground.  She then gestured over to the edge of the rooftop where the wet, glistening bone giant stood watch, then pointed to the horizon along the southern city’s edge.  “Under an oak tree on the outskirts of the city.  It seemed appropriate at the time, there wasn’t really anywhere else…”

“I see.  Do you mind taking me to it sometime?”

“Of course I can.”

Riven nodded in appreciation and set the butt of his staff down onto the rooftop to better support himself, and his shoulders silently slumped.

Allie however had been giving his staff curious glances every now and then, and it was here that she decided to address it.  Likely to take Riven’s mind off their dead friend.  “I know you said you went to hell and came back, is that where you got that staff?  It’s very neat.  Crystalized blood spikes with flesh and flowing blood, set into black wood.  Even the name, ‘Vampire’s Escort’, is pretty neat.  Suitable, considering what we are.”

[Vampire’s Escort (Vampiric)(Unique Soul-Fused Weapon, Sorcerer’s Staff): 104 average damage on strike with each physical strike dealing minor shadow-explosion knockback.  Mana regeneration is increased by 102%.  All Shadow and Blood spells cost 9% less mana while dealing 22% additional damage.  This item has an abnormally high endurance and is hard to destroy.  Requires Vampiric Heritage to wield.

• Sacrificial Kill:  Killing strong opponents has a chance to imbue this weapon with additional attributes, stats, or bonuses.
• Scorpion’s Sting: The blade at the tip of this staff can extend through flesh molding to cut down enemies.  Enemies hit with the blade portion of this weapon do not experience shadow-explosion knockback like the rest of this staff, rather the blade portion of this weapon will imbue stacking bleeding damage to all biological enemies.
• Black Lightning: This staff can passively build up charges of black lightning.  Power of black lightning depends on the amount of charge emitted.
• Portal Master: This weapon can sync to any stabilized portal you permission to use by the maker and master.  Current locations available for access:  Dungeon Negrada.]

“I got the pieces in Hell, then put them together here on Panu.”  Riven stood stalk still and shifted the status information he’d already acquired to Allie so she could take a look.  Then he went back to taking in the view of the city from such a high vantage point.  It was pretty from so high up, and somewhat breathtaking.  This was the highest point in the city and the surrounding area until reaching the mountain range to the west.

“You created this then?” Allie said with surprise.  “How is that possible?”

Riven nodded, still staring out across the landscape while rainwater dripped off his hood.  “A surge of inspiration.  The blood subpillar… it almost speaks to me sometimes.  It’s even my specialty pillar now, after I had an epiphany of some kind with the dao.”

Allie nodded then dismissed the information screen he’d pushed to her.  “Ah.  I’ve had some insights, but only two and they’ve both been related to the Death subpillar.  Question… Do you think mom and dad knew?”

“Knew about what?”

“Knew that we were vampires?  Do you think they were vampires like us?”

This was the first time many of the guards had ever seen Riven, but upon her words some of them outright stared.  They hadn’t known who Riven was, but to see that their leader’s brother was now amongst them made some of them all the more curious.

Riven shrugged.  “I have no idea.  But if we both have it, there’s a good chance they did too.  I wish they were here.”

There was a long pause.

“Yeah, me too.”  Allie fidgeted uncomfortably, then cleared her throat and asked the question she’d been wanting to ask since she’d brought him here.  “So what now?  Do I get to meet your demons without them killing me?  Athela and Azmoth both seem very nice from the stories you’ve told me, and that Athela is very fast by the way!  I was impressed with her fighting capabilities.  When are you going to move in?  I have a spare room next to mine down below, and I can get you furniture!  Oh I could even decorate for you!  The girls here will be all over you by the way, be careful who you pick to date.  There are some very pretty ghouls here.  Hey, Mara is single!”

Mara slapped a hand over her face in embarrassment and she outwardly cringed.

Riven’s red eyes met Allie’s own, and a chuckle escaped his lips.  “Yes you’ll meet my minions soon enough.  However, I have a problem I need to take care of first before I move in.”

“Problem?” Allie repeated with narrowed eyes.  “What kind of problem?”

Riven gestured over to the hospital on the western edge of Brightsville, only barely visible due to the rain.  “Remember how I told you about the elves and those people in the basement?”

Allie frowned and reached out to touch Riven’s arm.  “They’ll just try to kill you in the end.  Just leave them, stay here - with me.”

Riven shook his head, tapping a finger on the wand at her waist and then the bone soul-woven armor she currently wore.  “I’ll come back, but unlike you I still seem to have some of my humanity remaining.”

He gave her a sour grin, and the comment obviously stung.  She looked at her soul-woven pieces of equipment and grimaced, knowing he was commenting on what he deemed to be unethical decision making, but she didn’t give any snappy reply.  He hadn’t been there to see what she’d been through, and she knew that he knew this as well.

So instead she merely accepted his decision while ignoring the jab.  “I have to stay to run things.  Though honestly after fighting you I don’t feel as worried about your odds of survival like I once did.  We’re probably some of the most powerful people in this city.  When you get back… are you going to help us with the war?”

The question was hesitant, and Riven’s response was even more-so.  But he gave a solemn, slow nod.  “Yeah.  I’ll help, but I don’t want to mindlessly slaughter everyone.  I hope you haven’t done that already, Allie.  If you have, I forgive you, but it’s not something I’ll just stand by and tolerate either now that I’m here.”

Allie pursed her lips, looking back down at the city beneath them.  “Ok.”

Riven noticed how she hadn’t denied or confirmed anything concerning the open-ended question, and he inwardly grimaced.  Honestly though, she could have murdered a whole damned continent and he’d still love her - because he knew who she was on the inside.  She might have changed somewhat due to recent circumstances, but she was still the kind person she’d always been.  Perhaps it may take a bit for her to get back to where she’d been earlier after the trials and loss she’d experienced since the system took hold, but she wasn’t evil.

She was still Allie.

“How long do you think you’ll be?” Allie asked, gesturing over to Mara who came over to stand beside them.

“Hopefully just long enough to deal with the remaining dream creatures, and I need to figure out what to do with the survivors…”  Riven rubbed his forehead and could feel a headache coming on.  “God damn it, and I need to escort those elves home too.  They’re sick and injured, and I can’t have them just laying around by themselves.  Azmoth is there now, but I need them out of my hands.”

“I’m surprised you’re helping them at all.” Mara stated flatly.  “Most elves would kill you for being a vampire back in my old world.  They’re high elves, right?  That’s the most common type.”

“How do you tell?”

“What color is their skin?”

“White.”

“Well they’re either blood elves or high elves then.  What about their eyes and hair?”

“Blonde hair and green eyes, silver hair and blue eyes.”

Mara nodded in conformation and began to dig around in a bag at her waist.  “They’re high elves.  They were terrified of you when they first saw you, weren’t they?  You’re going to be attacked by their kin on sight if they see you hauling two unconscious or sick elves around.”

Riven outwardly groaned and began to rub his forehead more furiously.  “Grreeaaaattttt.”

Mara and Allie both chuckled, with Mara pulling out a bauble made of obsidian.  “Here, take this.  It’ll allow us to communicate with you while you’re gone.  Allie and I both have one, as do Nin and Vin… Where are they by the way?”

Allie shrugged as Riven took the bauble.  “Probably downstairs somewhere working on their mad scientist projects.”

The women both laughed, obviously having some kind of inside joke about the two skresh.

Meanwhile, Riven examined the bauble in his hands and pulled up a status screen.

[Communication Orb: This orb is part of a 15-orb set, and has an effective communication radius of 203 miles.  After that range, you will be able to sense location but not actively communicate with other holders of these linked orbs.]

“Interesting.”  Riven pocketed the bauble and gave a nod of thanks.  “That makes things a lot easier.”

“You could always turn them into thralls instead.”  Mara stated with a shrug.  “It’d make things easier, for you and them.  It’d heal them, and would give you two sources of sustained feeding to use.”

Riven’s lip curled in disgust, but then he thought about it.  Perhaps that wasn’t a bad idea, in terms of obtaining a thrall, but he wouldn’t do it to someone who was unwilling.  “I only intend to create thralls from people who want that done to them.”

Allie snorted.  “Good luck.”

“Do you have any thralls?” Riven asked curiously, turning his gaze on her amidst the drizzle.

“Uhm…”  Allie’s face flushed slightly and she shrugged.

Riven’s eyebrows rose.  “Really?”

“That’s a complicated story…” Mara eventually said in the awkward silence that followed, receiving an appreciative glance from Allie while she fidgeted with her wand.  “One that will likely take time to explain.  Either way, thralls are an easy solution to what is otherwise a life of hunting down victims to eat.  Right?”

Riven gave them both skeptical looks, but eventually shook his head.  “Alright, this is a conversation for another time.  I’m off for now.  Allie, I love you.  Be safe.  Mara, it was nice meeting you.”

He extended a hand to Mara, who declined it and instead bowed to him while taking a knee.  Riven was a bit surprised by the act of submission but didn’t comment on it and withdrew his hand, before Allie came over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Be careful.  I love you too.”  Allie replied with a wide smile.  “And don’t get into any fights that are serious while you’re away.  Just run if you need to.  I feel safer knowing you have the same bloodline I do, and we might be superhuman in some ways, but still… we’re not immortal.   I’ve almost died more than once, even with my regeneration.”

“Yeah, me too.”  He roughed up her hair and got a scowl, to which he laughed and waved.  “Alright, bye now.”

Allie gave him a confused stare when he stepped towards the edge.  “What are you doing?”

Coming up to the precipice, he took one last look back at his sister and the ghoul Mara who was now getting to her feet.  He grinned, then let himself begin to fall.  “Taking the shortcut!”

*WHOOSH*

Seeing the shocked faces of the two women become smaller while he fell, he waved to them amidst the flapping of his tattered cloak and laughed.  Whirling around in the air to face downwards he cast two wretched snares from either hand, reinforced them, and then gripped each one before slinging them at the side of the tower three-fourths of the way down.  Then he yanked.  Angling his body to use momentum properly, he swung himself around and launched at another office building two streets away.  Hurling through the drizzle and crashing through a glass window like a comment, he rolled across the floor - through a wooden door and into an adjacent hallway with a cackle.  Brushing himself off and standing up, he wondered just what kind of impression he’d given Mara with that kind of stunt.

Then he started walking.  It couldn’t be all fun and games, and he had a few responsibilities to attend to.

***

Night turned into day.

Their first stop was a clothes department store wedged between a heavily looted shopping center and a four-way intersection.  It was called Annabelle’s, and Athela had seen it while exploring the city on the first day after the merging of worlds.  It was a red-brick building with the white and yellow sign overhead, and the glass windows that’d been set up to display wares were shattered.  The sliding doors to the front had largely been ignored in favor of the broken windows as there was no electricity anymore, and even now there were a couple of looters going in and out even now.

As Riven and Athela approached, many gave them wary glances and a woman pushing a stroller even screamed and turned around to rush away with her baby when she’d seen one of Athela’s arachnoid legs loop around to scratch an itch.

“Why didn’t you let me meet her!?” Athela said with a groan, posing the question yet again for the tenth time that morning.  “I had so much I wanted to say!  So much I wanted to ask!  Like… what kind of BLACKMAIL she has on you!  All the nitty gritty secrets she knows - oh I can’t wait!”

Riven rolled his eyes and ignored the screaming woman, stepping over the ledge and shattered glass to make his way inside.  “I told you, I wanted you to heal up completely before calling you back.  You’re important, and I want you to be healthy while you’re here.  You’ll have all the time in the world to talk to Allie about the dark secrets of my mysterious past!”

He let out a snort of amusement when Athela playfully shoved him with a grin.

One middle-aged man wearing a scarf around his face and a leather jacket looked up from where he was trying to hush his two little boys.  His eyes went wide upon seeing Riven’s system description, and he slowly backed away against the wall while holding the children’s hands.  “I don’t want any trouble.”

Riven glanced over and smiled, gesturing to the tattered garments he wore.  “Don’t worry about us.  We’re just here for some new clothes.”

There were a couple other people inside as it was a rather large store – almost a warehouse of sorts with thousands of racks and about half of them still being loaded with clothes.  Piles of discarded garments that people had been rifting through also littered the floors, and skylights illuminated the building at intervals.

They went through the isles of turned-over shelves and racks, picking out various articles of clothing each of them wanted.  Surprisingly enough Athela was even open to the idea of wearing clothes from time to time now, though she made it very clear that she’d only do so in special circumstances.  What she meant by ‘special circumstances’ was still up in the air for debate though.

There was a large variety of stuff, and the two of them avoided other people just as much as those other people avoided them.  Within minutes the other small groups of friends and families in the room continued their looting with minimal fear, seeing that the newcomers weren’t hostile despite the oddity of their appearances or system descriptions.  By now everyone had seen varieties of monsters and how their city had been meshed into a new landscape, they’d seen the messages that the administrator had sent to the entire populace of the three merged worlds, so this particular group of people just chalked it up to one of the other oddities and kept hands on their weapons if they had any.

Riven bent down, picked up a black trench coat, and grinned Athela’s way – throwing it into a nearby cart he’d scavenged before taking his demon’s growing pile of clothes and putting it in the cart as well.  “This must be like a dream come true for you – being able to finally shop to your heart’s content.  Be sure to pick some stuff for formal wear too, and not just… whatever this is.”

Riven held up some pink lingerie with a quizzical side-eye.

“Don’t you question my choices!”  Athela humphed, folding her arms with a glaring expression and posing defiantly with her pitch-black legs planted firmly apart.  “You said you wanted me to wear clothes, so I’m wearing clothes.  Deal with the choices I make, plebian!”

“I’m just sayin-”

“Nope!  Enough!”  She smacked him upside the back of his head, and abruptly turned into a spider in a whoosh of motion.

Riven startled in surprise and stepped back, but then laughed when he saw it was her original form.  “You’ve mastered the shapeshifting now!?  Very cool.”

Athela’s black and red spider body turned abruptly and pointed a quivering spider foot up at his face, eyes narrowed.  “Anymore of that backtalk and I stay in this body forever!  Got it!?”

Riven’s grin only widened.  “That’s your choice, Athela.  I like you just the way you are, no matter what body you take.”

“Shut it!  I don’t need your sarcasm!”  Athela dramatically rolled over onto her back, covered up her mandibles and arachnid face with a couple of legs and got another chuckle from her master.

Another scream from a little girl nearby caused Athela to quickly shape-shift back into her humanoid form though, and she gave the kid a scathing glare.  “Oh come on!  I’m not THAT scary!”

“You’re pretty damn scary looking, Athela.”

“Shut it, twirp!  Unless you want more mustaches drawn on your face when you sleep!”

That’s when Athela’s bright, red eyes lit up in excitement as she picked up a long, white dress and spun around – keeping it close to her body to mimic what it’d look like.  “What do you think about the dress!?”

Riven’s eyes softened, and he put his hands on his hips.  “You’d look beautiful in it.”

Athela blushed, rolled up the dress, then walked up to him and gave him a firm hug.  “Thanks Riven.  You know, you’re not a bad master to have for a demon.”

She gut punched him and peeled off with a smile while avoiding a retaliatory kick, then stuck her black tongue out with a wink and continued surfing the wares.

Riven thoughtfully stood there under the skylights of the spacious, dim room for a long, long time, waiting for her to be done.  All of this was fascinating to Athela, who’d never been outside the nether realms until she’d met him, and the demonic entity was a whole lot less demonic in scenarios like this one.  She was smiling a lot, spunky, full of energy and enthusiasm, and was basically having the time of her life on this new adventure.  It’d only been a few months, but he’d grown a very strong bond with her in that short amount of time.  He was very glad that when given the choice in Chalgathi’s trials, it was her that he’d chosen.

He wished that he’d been able to introduce her to Jose too, but that was something that would now never come to pass.  His heart sank at the thought, they’d have liked each other.  And he knew that she’d get along with Allie.

His thoughts on the matter came to an abrupt halt when the voice of that teenage kid Jake rang clear through his mind.  It had been completely unexpected, and Riven had no clue the kid could pull off that kind of skill - but the feel and the sound were both on point with the mapper he’d barely come to know.  “Riven, can you hear me?  This is Jake, the blonde curly-haired guy you met at the hospital.  I’m using a telepathy skill I have, it’s complicated and came from my tutorial.  Can you hear me?  Ok, good.  Anyways… you may want to come back to the hospital.  We’ve had some problems in your absence.”