Sophia winced again. Having mana pulled out of her control stung. It didn’t get worse each time, but it didn’t get better either. Dav’s expression said that it didn’t feel any better for him. “This sucks.”

  “Yeah,” Dav agreed. He closed his eyes and tried to smooth his expression, but Sophia could still tell when mana was pulled out of him by the tiny winces. Sophia was pretty certain she was being shocked more often than Dav was, but she also thought she was getting additional mana from somewhere. They’d left Cliff out of their plans, but it seemed like he wasn’t content to not participate.

  It felt like hours before the soundless colorful lightning began to diminish. Amy and Taika finished first, to no one’s surprise. They’d split the pieces as best they could, but four pieces wasn’t easy to split between five people, so Dav and Sophia were handling the second-largest piece, the main portion of the blade, while Amy and Taika each had a small piece and Los’en had the piece they thought would be the worst, the hilt.

  Weirdly, it wasn’t all that much later when the fragment Sophia and Dav held became inert. Dav was completely out of mana, but Sophia still had a decent amount left. They sat there for a long moment trying to get used to not being shocked every few seconds.

  Sophia still felt a little off balance when the lightning from Los’en’s piece began to diminish. She stood just in time to have whatever she was about to say knocked out of her head by the appearance of a message.

  Patron Task Completed!

  For completing a Task assigned by your Patron, you have earned the reward: Teleportation to a safe location.

  Additional rewards may be granted based on performance.

  (feather image)

  Your Patron greets you!

  Well, you've once again managed to surprise me. This wasn't what I planned. You were supposed to hand the Broken Sword over to Los'en, not try to cleanse it yourself. You're lucky to have survived, even injured.

  You never have been very good at keeping yourself safe. I shouldn't be surprised; I wasn't either.

  Your isolation barrier, whatever it is, was extremely interesting. It's too bad it didn't survive the cleansing. Or perhaps that's good; I don't think there's enough left for someone else to copy it. That means that the Broken Lord, and therefore his Hilt, know where you are right now and are on their way to you. You have a little time, but not too much.

  The Transcendent will handle the teleportation, but he's waiting until I'm done with the three of you so that the Broken Lord will lose sight of you. It's the direct Task reward, so it's the only one he won't be able to see.

  Since this was a matter of Patrons and people, the Guide gives no rewards of its own, the same way you cannot gain Wisps by fighting people. Even so, this was a large enough action that I can give you a large reward that I believe will please you.

  The Broken Lord will not be able to bind more people to himself and those he has already bound will be unable to advance until they replace the Broken Sword. Even beyond the power and Wisps the Broken Lord had stored in the Broken Sword, that fact is immensely useful. I do not choose to deal with the politics of settled cities, but I am confident that the Templars' weakness will be exploited, and I am not fond of the Broken Lord.

  For your first reward, I am repurposing the metal of the Broken Sword's blade into a pair of bracelets. They are intended for you and Dav, but I do not care if you decide to do something else with them. Once they are bound, the people who bound them will be able to share their Shield and send each other mana. This comes with obvious risks, but the benefits should be equally obvious. It will only work between people at the same Upgrade and will not work between someone inside a Challenge and someone outside, so don't try to get too clever!

  Dav will be unable to bind it until he reaches the first Upgrade, because of his armor, but that takes us to the second reward. If you agree, I will use some of the Wisps that were in the Broken Sword to elevate you and your Abilities - all of them - to the first Upgrade, at Level Four, and trigger the Upgrade. You have enough Abilities that I do not think this will harm you in any way.

  I will also leave you with as many Wisps as you can safely hold, but you MUST NOT use them for at least a month. There is a reason for the Wisp limit, and this is the only way I have to get around it, even partially.

  The last reward comes not from me but from the Transcendent. If you agree, he will give Summon Echo to Cliff, who will be able to improve it. He will be able to summon and control your Echoes as well as his own; I believe it will become a core Ability for him, likely a Signature and possibly even a Grand Ability.

  --The Wanderer

  Sophia blinked at the wall of text, then read through it carefully. The pair of bracelets sounded extremely useful, with Sophia’s higher than normal Shield and the fact that she was likely to stay in the back while Dav was next to the monsters. She didn’t think they’d use the mana sharing much, since Dav’s Abilities weren’t mana-hungry, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have it.

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  The offer of taking her to the first Upgrade sounded good; she had to balance it against the fact that she’d have to pay more for Abilities she gained later, but it was pretty clear that if she didn’t, she’d miss out on all of those Wisps, since there was apparently a limit on how many she could hold. It wasn’t entirely clear what the right choice was, but she didn’t have much time to decide if the Templars were on their way.

  The Wanderer had only been helpful. He also seemed to know more than the people around her. If he said it was the right choice, Sophia was willing to go with it.

  Giving Summon Echo to Cliff was a little painful; Sophia liked the two tiny dragons she could summon. At least Cliff would still be able to summon them.

  Well, one of them. She wasn’t sure if he’d be able to summon the Eldritch Overcharged variant or not. Maybe that would go along with the Summon? She certainly had no use for it if she didn’t have the Summon anymore.

  She wasn’t sure what the Wanderer meant by “as well as his own,” but the first thing that came to mind was that Cliff might be able to summon the various monsters he’d collected. That was a very dungeon sort of an Ability.

  She did have to wonder, though. If Cliff could control his Echoes, why couldn’t Sophia? Sure, they did what she wanted, but she wasn’t in control. Not really. Maybe Cliff was always controlling them? That might make sense.

  “Yes, I agree.” Sophia paused, then added, “To both of them.”

  She heard Dav muttering something similar. Taika was far louder; his “Yes yes yes oh yes definitely!” was loud enough that Sophia wasn’t certain if Amy said anything or not.

  Good.

  Although you may not think so shortly. Spending this many Wisps at once is likely to be highly uncomfortable, and with your mana pathways already stressed, you are not going to like the side effects. Sorry about that, but there's not much I can do. I'm not allowed to heal you; that's not within my aegis as a Patron. What I can tell you is what I've already told Dav: Healing will help. I don't know which Upgrade he's going to choose, but all of them should have some form of physical healing.

  Speaking of which, I'd like for you to choose your Upgrade before you start feeling ill. I normally curate them a little, once I know what people are likely to want, but that still means a dozen or so options with the chance to look at lower ones if none of them seem right. That usually takes a while, and we don't have time for it, unfortunately.

  I've picked the top three options that I think will fit you based on what you've chosen so far. ALL of your options have feathers or plumes in them; after what you did in that Challenge, those are the only choices you're going to get. If you really don't like the options, tell me what you're looking for and I'll try to find it.

  Cliff has already chosen his Hallow Upgrade. The one he chose is broad enough that I am not significantly limited in what I can offer you, but whatever you choose will affect the functionality of his Hallow.

  Featherstorm Mage

  This is the classic bladestorm mage, except that you use feathers instead of blades. Like the bladestorm mage, you can add a sharp mana edge to your feathers to strike hard and pierce defenses. It's not my favorite, but it's clearly one you've been looking at and it is an extremely capable combatant. It sacrifices utility for additional striking power.

  Plumed Dynamo

  This is another attack Sphere, but it is not as simple and easy to use. Instead of throwing sharpened, enhanced feathers at your enemies, you can charge your feathers to have different effects. One of those effects is to cast spells, which is how I expect it to be used, most of the time, but they can also be used for other purposes, such as traps. This Sphere requires more mana than Featherstorm Mage and will require effort and planning to reach or surpass Featherstorm Mage, but it can be done.

  Plumed Domain

  This is sort of the opposite of Featherstorm Mage; it is primarily a support spellcaster. It is the only one of the three that both preserves and enhances your current aura-based Abilities. It is the most flexible, though it sacrifices the sheer striking power of the Featherstorm Mage and the 'saved charge' functionality of the Plumed Dynamo. The primary attack Ability is the same as that of the Plumed Dynamo, spells cast from feathers under your control.

  --The Wanderer

  “Why didn’t you give descriptions the first time I had to choose?” Sophia grumbled, annoyed. These were actually useful descriptions, far more so than anything the Guide ever gave.

  The Wanderer didn’t reply. Sophia was sure that if he had answered, he’d probably have said something about limitations or maybe everything being provided by the Guide the first time. Too many options to quickly write descriptions for also seemed like a plausible explanation, but it didn’t really make Sophia feel much better. She’d made her first choice nearly blind, and she was lucky it hadn’t turned out worse than it had.

  “At least the options are good this time,” Sophia muttered. Whatever else she could say about the Wanderer, he’d picked three choices that were all things she could see doing. Back home, she’d probably have picked one, then gone back for the other two. It was too bad that wasn’t an option here; she had to actually choose.

  As useful as Featherstorm Mage looked, it was a little bit too much of a one trick pony for Sophia. She liked having a broad range of choices, and it looked like Featherstorm Mage’s choices were “do I poke them with the quill or slash them with the barbs.” She figured it would probably let her add a mana type as well, but that was still not enough.

  No, the real choice was between Plumed Dynamo and Plumed Domain. They both had the same attack strategy, which was her preferred strategy anyway: bombard the enemy with lots of magic. Dav could hit them with a sword; she was going to use spells. She could think of all sorts of ways the other features of both Spheres could be useful; maybe she could preload spells with Plumed Dynamo and come into a battle with a much bigger attack than she could normally manage, or maybe she could use her feathers to fully deflect attacks with Plumed Domain.

  Did she want to have more tricks or did she want to control the area around her?

  When she put it that way, the answer was obvious.

  Hopefully, all three of these Upgrades look viable to you; that’s certainly the goal. I wanted this to be a legitimate choice where any of the options was valid, not something where there’s a clear winner and two meh choices.