Land at last!

  Okay, maybe I was not technically on land yet, but surely the dock could count today. Right?

  It had all been so frightening, and exciting. That was until I tripped over nothing, just that one stumble causing me to lose my lead and then it was over. Or it could have been had it not been for the timely chunk of ice smashing into the h-dragon’s ugly face.

  I had managed to climb and make space afterward and then my escape was further helped along as the archers on the city wall decided to finally join in.

  That was when I had the mostly funny idea to use my only true trump card and dropped an earth elemental right on top of it. I honestly had not planned to use Rocky at first, but then I realized that it might be better to have a smarter elemental rock aiming for the creature and not wasting the small amount of mana I had to spare for summoning something that would miss.

  “Ahem.” Coughed a familiar squeaky voice in my mind.

  “Okay, fine.” I replied, giving up. It was mostly Corvin’s idea, I had even used the rocks he had secured in my Soul Vault as the base for summoning the elemental. I had no idea where he snagged those chunks of rock, but I was happy he had.

  I was also curious as to why he had not dropped more of them onto the snake-like creature before now but could understand that we were not thinking at our clearest when this had happened.

  “Are you going to lie there all night?” came the voice of the female mage on the docks with me, she looked somewhat familiar though it was difficult to be certain in this rain; it was really starting to come down in earnest.

  It was then that I realized that I may have been getting lost in my own thoughts a bit too much; again. I got my feet under me and stood up slowly checking for cuts and scrapes and maybe I spent a few exceedingly small moments fixing my hair before looking back up.

  It seems that I may have been wrong at my first estimates of age, thinking she was much older. The girl was really just a girl, much younger than me. I would put her at an earth-standard fifteen. Sure, that was an adult hear on Kalydren, but I still saw her with a bright and shiny kid label for now. Maybe I was wrong though, as her ears did have a very minor bump near the top as if she may have some Elven heritage.

  Her eyes were a strange mix of varied colors, almost hazel though I could see glint of shiny red at the center of her eyes like small pinpricks of light in a forest of green and brown. Her hair was tied back in a braid of some sort, it was extraordinarily long as presumably the standard for women in this region; gods forbid a woman cut her hair short. The skin I could see was as pale as wind-driven snow, contrasting mightily with her dark romance-era dress. It flowed down in modest waves of a deep, ruddy red with black and green beads sewn in to fasten the modest outer bustier.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure if that was a design choice or one made to emphasize something that was otherwise lacking, but who was I to cast aspersion; she was probably still far from her peak.

  Her sleeves ended at the wrist, and I could easily make out the small bulge on her right arm that could be a hiccup of the tailor, but I was betting she had at least a small dagger on her person. Who walked around unarmed in any world at night?

  I had just begun taking in the soft round features of her face when I noticed the frown appearing on her red, cupid-bow lips.

  I was apparently staring, and it had become obvious.

  “I had planned to sleep for a while.” I answered partially joking even while I probably could have fallen asleep right here, in the rain. My spells were still actively keeping most of the water from hitting me and my clothes were barely damp, having benefitted from some of the magic as well. They really did have a lot of versatility.

  “Right. Well, you may as well take that rest then.” She pointed out at the water in the direction of all the loud noises and thrashing sounds, “This should all be over soon.”

  I looked out over the lake; I saw the myriad number of ripples caused by the falling rain drops making it look like a slowly boiling pot of blue-black liquid. I also saw the monstrous beast nipping and swatting at the older man as he leaped to and fro, stabbing his small knife into the beast every time he landed upon a new section of the creature’s flesh.

  The wounds would begin closing slowly as he withdrew his blade, only for him to slice open a new wound on its body. The speed and power in each strike as he sliced through flesh and the occasional scale of liquid black was something to truly behold.

  The fight dragged on as the beast would drop into the water and then lunge up and out hoping to leave the man behind, like a dog rinsing away fleas. It didn’t work. The man would just be holding onto one of its many appendages as he resurfaced, his blade working like a sewing machine, sharp in and out stabs penetrating deep into the massive body. He would move again when the monster would attempt to bite down upon him, always watching or feeling it somehow with some odd battle sense; I was betting there was a skill involved.

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  “He’s showing off.” Said the girl.

  “Huh?” I asked dumbly, not sure what she meant. He was obviously fighting like a demon, was he holding back?

  “No magic.” She said simply, “He hasn’t use any of his magic, aside from a low rank flight spell.”

  “Flight spell?” I asked, somewhat distracted, was there more magic for flying than Wind Walk? What would that look like if I were to learn both spells, I was sure it had been done before how could it not; I mean, flying was awesome.

  I caught a bit of a shoulder sag and maybe an eyeroll at my questioning statement and decided to just wait and watch, surely there would be more time to look into the other flight spells later.

  It was only a second later when I heard the girl mutter the word “Yrl.”

  At her words I felt the magic stir around me and then I tripped over nothing and fell on my arse.

  The girl laughed, a mocking laugh that held mirth and judgement but lacked that level of purposeful scorn that would have been present had she intended for me to fall. She just could not help but laugh as I struggled back to my feet, noticing that while I did so my body felt much lighter, and I did not feel the wood or stone of the docks below me.

  I lifted my foot up ever so slightly before stomping down again and noticed that after contacting the dock briefly and feeling the jar of my foot make contact that my foot stopped making contact. There was a thin layer of air between me and the dock now, very thin. I could almost feel the grains of wood under foot, but it lacked the weight of full contact. I was rather sure right then that the effects would be less noticeable had I not already been using two other travel-related spells that had their own passives.

  “Is this the flight spell?” I asked simply.

  She nodded slowly as she watched the older man lunge back and forth between the monsters upper and lower body, carving deeper wounds as time passed by. I could see that some of the cuts were now persisting for longer periods of time.

  “It was.” She said, a small smile remaining from her earlier lapse into laughter. “Rank two, even. I don’t really need it being what I am, though it serves as a prerequisite for some rather wonderful spells I wish to learn.”

  “What you are?” I asked, catching onto the more important tidbit of information.

  “Yes.” She said simply.

  Okay, I’m not going to get an answer there. Might be best to ignore that entirely and just focus on helping out with my problem if the man needed a hand.

  “Desilla Brah!” shouted the girl raising her hand, though it sounded like she had something else my mind was having trouble parsing the language for some reason. It was less than a moment after that the air in front of us was ripped apart as a crackling bolt of blue-white lightning ripper forth and struck the beast.

  It spasmed for a brief moment as it was impacted, the smell of ozone and charred flesh clashing on the breeze. I even saw the man look up sharply, he must have felt that himself as he had buried his dagger into the monster’s flesh only an instant earlier.

  I had to laugh as I saw some of the limited hairs on his head sticking straight up, which caused the girl to look at the sight and then burst into laughter herself.

  “You told me to use more lightning!” she called out over the sound of fighting; between the howl of the wind and the roars of the monster I wasn’t sure he would be able to hear her.

  The scowl on his face as he gripped his larger sword and began chopping into the beast told me that he may have heard everything; even the laughter, or especially that.

  The blade struck fast, its wide blade swinging down to bury itself in flesh even as a black glow radiated from the pommel. Where metal met meat, I could see a thick oily smoke pouring out, almost like fog from the wound. The smoke dissipated like dew before the sun even as more took its place.

  The beast roared again, shooting for the sky as it attempted to flee and free itself from the bothersome tick that had somehow moved up in threat level. The man just pulled his blade along the monster’s body as he climbed its length, showing no concerns as his feet continued to find purchase on the scales and slick hide of the creature.

  Where his blade sliced skin separated and wept, blood flowing freely from wounds that would no longer close. A flash of red illuminated the air around him as once more I felt the pull of magic in the area, and I saw a green-purple stream of energy leave the bleeding holes to enter into the mans chest causing the small wounds he had taken to close up. They were small cuts only, probably more from the thrashing scales and luck of the monster that he had taken any damage at all. It all seemed so casual as the man tore the monster apart, methodical even.

  “Yep, showing off.” The girl said again, shaking her head.

  “What level is he?” I asked, forgetting that it might be rude to ask strangers such a personal question.

  The girl did not hesitate before saying, “Meh, I don’t know what level exactly but he’s around his third rank.”

  I did the math, remembering the numbers for rank three being around twenty-five all the way until someone reached level thirty-seven when they would be rank four, or expert.

  “He fights rather well for someone of such a low level.” I mused. If he had this level of skill at that rank, I wondered what Dougan could do if he were not holding back or fighting monsters that obviously required no finesse.

  She chuckled at that for some reason before adding, “Oh, no. I mean to say he is near the third rank as a devotee.”

  I glanced at her to see her looking back at me, as if waiting to see some specific response. She did not seem to see what she had thought she would see.

  “Devotee?” I asked, hoping to clue her in to me having no idea what that meant.

  “Really? An Elf that doesn’t know that term?” She huffed, “Never mind that, he’s nearly done.” She turned back to watch as the man was clearly wrapping up the fight with a frown on her face.

  Don’t blame me for not knowing everything about the world… sheesh.

  And so I turned my attention slightly skyward as the man was riding the creatures body down toward the lake at speed, his blade held aloft for a moment as he brought it back down into the monsters skull, slicing through many nightmarish tentacles as it descended and cut through skin and bone before what must have also been the brain of my fell tormentor.

  I saw the notification flash by my eyes even as the man jumped free of the falling corpse to land beside us with a flourish of steel as he swished his knives through the air, which did amazingly remove the blood and viscera from them before he sheathed the two weapons.

  My eyes took a moment to process the method he had used to cover the distance before I noticed the small purple rip in space closing above him, he had obviously used the same skill or spell to return to our side afterward. I thought it was quite the neat trick in that it had nearly fooled me into believing he had simply moved that fast and I had almost not noticed the magic involved.

  “So. Does anyone happen to know what a Fiend of Apathy is?” His words were almost casual, but his eyes seemed to pierce through my mind as the glowed a faint but fiery red.