sorrywrites

V2Ch40 - Swamp Trek

By the time my first scout checked in, Alexis had killed five more alligators.

“They’re coming more quickly now,” Shiro noted after stomping a sixth’s skull in. “They’re not dangerous, but…”

This had been the first one since we’d started moving to  the location reported by my scout, which all but confirmed to me that  they were targeting us and we hadn’t simply been intruding on their  territory.

Sarah grunted in assent. “Must be the dung...

V2Ch39 - The First Trial

We’d been looking over the dragon’s corpse, searching for a  hint that might take us in the right direction, when I heard a snap and  a crash, and Shiro yelling in shock.

I turned to check on what had happened, but before I could  see anything, a System screen appeared, blocking off most of my vision.

Trial One

Task: Return the Argent Spear to its rightful place.

Task description: An artif...

2021-12-24 12:20:34 +0000 UTC View Post

V2Ch38 - Arrival

As soon as I stepped into the darkness, my vision failed me—and the rest of my senses followed shortly after.

The kids should have followed—would have followed—but there was no trace of them now. I turned, expecting to see the light beyond the entrance, but there was nothing. On every side, darkness surrounded me.

The ground was gone as well. It wasn’t like walking through sand or snow, but more like both solid and not at the same time. I couldn’t hear my steps,...

V2Ch37 - Departure

I sat behind my desk with my clasped hands in front of me. On the other side sat Etin, who wore an air of uncertainty around him.

It felt wrong to send him out on his own, given his relative youth and inexperience, but the more I thought about it, the more reasonable of a decision my brain believed it to be. Looking in hindsight, I inwardly cringed at how I’d nearly taken Etin into the dungeon—unlike myself and the Heroes, he did not have a connection to the System, and despite the ...

V2Ch36 - At the Gate

Foreword:
First of all, I need to apologize for dropping off the face of the earth as I did. I should have given a heads up or taken a proper hiatus, but I didn't, and I'm sorry.

What happened?  Well, in short, I crashed and burned. I had known I was getting burnt out at my day job, but I wanted to keep going until I passed an arbitrary milestone I'd decided on, and it ended up doing my mental health in completely. My motivation to do anything productive at all disappeared, and ...

V2Ch35 - Goals

What was I to do?

My head swam with the evening’s revelations, and Miranavisr’s question still echoed within. A pertinent question — with all the new information, it made sense that I could stop floundering through the dark for once and finally think of the steps in front of me. So far, I’d been chasing this vague goal of getting revenge on the gods, but I hadn’t made any concrete steps towards it. I was beginning to realize that I’d never actually had any plan from...

V2Ch34 - The Moment of Truth

Soothing Presence — A mother knows best, and may her brood never forget that.

Class Skill — Active (Status: Off) — Level 20

An aura surrounds you, easing the burdens of all friendly creatures in its area. You may control its radius and intensity. Maximum radius and intensity scale with skill level.

The floating box — blue, slightly translucent and faintly glossy — was exactly as I’d remembered it. Yet not once i...

V2Ch33 - Miranavisr

Al’vathazen led us down a series of corridors, each ever so slightly narrower than the last. For me and the children, it made little difference, but the same couldn’t be said about our guide. By the end of it, the azure dragon’s posture had become hunched, his head bowed as he struggled to pass through the cramped tunnels.

It made me wonder if there was some meaning to this display. Some sort of show of deference before the dragon monarch? A way for her to force her supplicants to...

V2Ch32 - Squee!

A glorious dragon led a group of humans — along with a bear and a strange-looking skeleton — through the rocky outcrops of the Dragon’s Eye.

At nearly twenty feet of height, he dwarfed even the tallest of his charge, a single one of his steps requiring four of their own to keep up. The dragon’s scales were the purest blue of the mid-day sky, and his eyes shone with the wisdom of the twin moons. A proud specimen of his species…

If only he could keep his excitement in chec...

V2Ch31 - A Pride of Dragons

Days passed, and Etin and Winnie surely and steadily integrated themselves with the group. Etin more so than Winnie, who had decided that lazing in the sun — preferably alongside Sarah — was the height of life and refused to spend too much time with the rowdy kids.

Etin had found himself right at home with the five Revenants, however, and absorbed everything they told him like a sponge. I left them to their own devices, knowing that Etin would prefer their company to my own. I knew ...

V2Ch30 - How the Turntables

If Sarah and Cam had been confusing enough, meeting the rest of the gang was a terrifying experience for Etin.

Sarah had loudly called the group together, thrusting Etin into the spotlight with no care for his opinions. Inwardly, he was overwhelmed — it was just too many new things happening at once! And he still couldn’t quite understand their words. His rudimentary sendings weren’t nearly enough to make himself fully understood, and when the kids all talked at once it was hard f...

V2Ch29 - Sibling Rivalry

The most troublesome part about parenting a newborn artificial mind was that I was blundering alone into uncharted territory—

No, that wasn’t quite right. I’d had my fair share of blunders in uncharted territory, and it wasn’t necessarily troublesome, as a general rule. But they had rarely involved someone else paying the price for my mistakes.

The problem here was that the former Wight — former, as I could no longer lump him with those simple automatons — was an actua...

V2Ch28 - Parenthood

I had shooed Sarah and Cameron out of the hold as I prepared to attempt the same processes Winnie had gone through on the other Wights, with promises to Sarah that I would not mistreat her beloved bear. Too much.

From what I could piece together, Winnie had taken strike of concentrated Fate mana straight to his mind. What the original spell had been meant to do — or if it had been meant to do anything at all — I could not tell. Little remained of it, its mana having merged with the ...

V2Ch27 - The Fate of Bears

That misbegotten arrogant buffoon just had to have the last word!

I seethed quietly after Renaris left — for all I knew, he could still have been spying on me through the figurine. It sat on the ground, gray wisps of smoke rising from the small crystal — a robin, once again.

Despite his misgivings, I had no doubt Renaris was truly one of the gods, old or otherwise. His attitude spoke for itself — he was either very powerful, or very foolish, and someone foo...

V2Ch26 - Renaris

A makeshift magical circle had been set on the floor, down in the hold. It was a spell I had never used before — a mix of Fate and Dimension, with a framework drawn in chalk and mana, creating a barrier to keep whatever was inside contained. A precaution against whatever controlled the necklace. I had learned of the spell during my time at the Academy, even though I had never been able to cast it, given my deficiency with Dimension. But one that was a staple for any kind of magical research...

V2Ch25 - Mistakes and Consequences

A crowd was gathered in the Temple Square, though the name was a misnomer. There were six temples, not simply one — arranged in a semicircle, facing the so-called Temple Square. It was a gathering place for religious rites, a place where the people can spill out from the temples if they couldn’t fit in the Temple proper during certain festivities. In theory, at least. In practice, the people of Alasvir rarely observed the rites, and those who did were usually the recent migrants.

It...

V2Ch24 - Dark Crusade

Alexis ran — not for her life, but for other people’s. Probably not her team’s, they could handle themselves. But they were going to do something really stupid, and she didn’t want to be the one who could have stopped it, but didn’t.

So she ran. She practically flew over the cobblestone streets, her feet barely touching the ground as her strides took her farther than any athlete on Earth could have hoped for. Because she was on a timer, and she needed to get to Julian...

V2Ch23 - Reunion

Gods.

Yain, Saira, Oleth, Thelth were just a few of the dozen or so deities that ruled our world. The best known ones, at least — the last to ascend.

I’d had many talks with the children of Earth on the nature of the divine. Cameron, especially, had been baffled at the way gods were worshiped in our world. According to him, gods were supposed be gods of something, to have an aspect that defined them and over which they ruled, and that surely our gods had them...

V2Ch22 - Class Dismissed

The first punch caught him in the eye before he even realized the fight had started.

Shiro cursed under his breath. He’d forgotten just how fast David could move. And worst of all… his eye barely hurt.

That was the downside of Shiro’s skill. He was incredibly strong when he was in pain, but his pain resistance made him immune to all but the most painful of wounds. Instead, he’d grown used to relying on Sarah’s aura or letting himself take hits to ramp up his damage.

V2Ch21 - Class Is in Session

The day had started normal enough. The mages had gone to the library, because of course they did, while the girls had gone out shopping, because that was what girls did, right? At least, that’s what Shiro thought they did. He hadn’t had much experience with girls before meeting Sarah, but they did that in TV shows, so clearly it had some basis in reality.

That left David and Shiro. They’d stood awkwardly in the inn after the others had left, none willing to break the silence betwe...

V2Ch20 - Caged Bird

The silence stretched endlessly between the two girls. Sarah’s glare was boring holes in Alexis’s neck, and Alexis wasn’t sure if the heavy atmosphere was Sarah’s doing or merely her own imagination.

At long last, after what had felt like decades (but was, in fact, closer to a couple of hours), Alexis spoke. “I might have made a mistake.”

Sarah gave her an incredulous snort. “You think?”

“I thought we could trust them!” Alexis said as she threw her hands ...

V2Ch19 - Historical Accuracy

In the city of Alasvir, there was a library.

It wasn’t any grander than all the other libraries across the globe. As looks went, it was just about the same. And yet, it differed from its kin in a way that made it invaluable.

History is written by the winners, so it is told. But sometimes, there is no winner. And sometimes, those who come later decide that what has been written is dangerous, and needs to be removed. And sometimes, the winners decide that they don’t wan...

V2Ch18 - Third Time's the Charm

Sarah rushed through the rows upon rows of stalls that made up the Floating City’s Grand Bazaar, with Alexis following just half a step behind her. Sarah stopped, taking a long look around her, and kicked a stray rock in frustration, earning herself some glares from the crowds.

“I could have sworn I saw something like steel glinting around here,” she said with a huff, turning around to give her surroundings a better look.

Alexis looked unconvinced. “I don’t know...

V2Ch17 - Emergency Meeting

Alasvir, or the Floating City as it was popularly known, did not believe in the superiority of one person above all others. Or rather, that was what its staunchest supporters would say. The reality was a bit simpler than that — and much less idealistic.

The truth was, the Floating City was a pot with too many fingers in it. There was nobody powerful enough, politically or otherwise, to call themselves its lord and master. Were anyone to try, the other major powers would simply form a ...

V2Ch16 - The Cranky Kraken

“Aves has nothing on this,” Cameron said as he stared wide-eyed at the buildings rising around us.

We were walking along one of the bigger avenues, on our way to find lodgings for our stay. Even though none of us needed to sleep anymore, we were still in search of information, and there were few places better suited for information-gathering than an inn.

“Of course it doesn’t. Aves may be a big city — one of the oldest, even, but that’s only by continental standards. T...

V2Ch15 - Bureaucratic Nightmare

“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we cannot allow you to leave your boat until the port authority gives their say-so,” the guardsman said mechanically — and to his credit, he hid his annoyance well. This would have been the twentieth time in the last two hours that he’d had to repeat his line.

Not that his annoyance was of any concern to me. No, and it should have been the other way around. Forbidding an Archmage from setting foot in your city because of some measly port regul...

V2Ch14 - Land Ahoy

A few hours later, we were back on the ship along with a sizable haul of ironwood and assorted gems — the mana-filled kind, too. I already had some ideas on how to enchant them. Sarah had been less than pleased to have her bear used at a pack mule, but even she had been forced to admit that its wide rump was perfect for the task.

And now we sailed further into the Cradle of the Gods, towards the one place in this monster infested Archipelago that hadn’t been brought to its knees. 2021-05-26 06:43:48 +0000 UTC View Post

V2Ch13 - Roll for Intelligence

“So, that was pretty anti-climatic,” Alexis said once we’d made our way through the shattered window. Sarah had run ahead to check on her bear, while the rest of us remained a good distance away from the smoldering tree.

The flames crackled as they greedily devoured the wood, and some of the tendrils still fumbled about, trying to put themselves out — to no success, alas. Magical fire was not so easily extinguished.

A bad move on their side. Or rather, its side? They were ...

V2Ch12 - Classroom of the Dead

Of all things David had expected of his first real dungeon dive, boredom was not one of them.

He had to admit, using the bear to make the elementals charge single-file into traps was an effective tactic, but to David it felt… cheap. Cheating, even. And even as they downed their third group this way, he was almost certain he wasn’t feeling this just because he was confined to sitting on the sidelines while Alexis, Cam, and Julian had all the fun.

Well, that would have been a li...

V2Ch11 - Wind Farm

Doors flew open, slamming against the walls with a thunderous echo as the bear charged through the hall, unmindful of the storm that brewed in his wake. Both as a metaphor, and in a more literal sense — from behind each open door a flurry of wind and office paraphernalia emerged, enraged at their disturbed slumber and seeking to end the one who had interrupted their rest.

Or perhaps not. With barely a mind to guide them, they had no need of rest and little in the way of emotions. More...