Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1) Read online

  “No,” the crystal Morgan replied. “Merely potential choices that may come to pass, allowed a voice to impart the knowledge to help you decide.”

  “Ah…so how does the whole crystal thing happen? What are you?”

  “I am the [Crystal Mistress],” this new Morgan replied flatly. “If you choose me as your class, you embrace the changes wrought in your bones when you consumed the Fruit of the Tree of Life and Magic, and then endured the [Mana Cascade]. It will allow you to control all crystalline structures and minerals, from the smallest grains, to massive spires. Creatures you wound with sharpened shards or otherwise pierce with your crystalkinesis will absorb your crystals into their blood, allowing you to absorb their essence and life to increase your power, copying their forms in crystal for you to control. As you can see, clothing is no longer an issue.”

  Morgan flat out stared with morbid fascination as the woman made a gesture akin to a sales girl waving her hand in front of a product, only the crystal version of herself lowered her hand past her face, and the crystals coating her skin retreated to the sides in a rippling wave of molecularly fine edges and jagged lethality. As the crystal spines and scales stood up against the skin, they retreated into the flesh, and Morgan shuddered at the obvious agony the cruelly serrated edges caused the potential future her. Especially when the crystals dug back into her breasts and between her legs; the woman flinched, and blood seeped out from a thousand, thousand cuts all over her body.

  “There is a price for power,” the woman gasped. “And the price for my power is pain. You will lose your resistances to it in exchange, for there are few things in this world that can counter me. I am limited only by how much Mana I can drain from my enemies, and how much pain I can bring myself to endure, and nothing else. With enough Mana to drain, I could freeze the seas and shatter the land of this world, if only I could bear the pain of it. If you choose the Path of Crystal, take my hand.”

  At that the woman ceased all movement, even the blood running down her skin freezing in place as she held out one hand upturned. Morgan did not hesitate, turning away and pacing toward the next figure clockwise around the circle. She’d almost choked at the thought of enduring such pain, especially without her resistances.

  She strode to the next statue, slowing to take in every detail of the next version of herself. This one was terrifying in its own right, for an entirely different host of reasons than the [Crystal Mistress] had been. Where Morgan had nearly story-book pale skin, this possible future woman had a dark reddish complexion, marred by cracks that spiderwebbed her body from head to toe. They didn’t quite form patterns around her features, but gave the impression that they almost did so, fading to finer marks around the woman’s eyes and extremities, or broadening around her breasts and below her belly to almost obscure her most female of features. Sooty grey powder seemed to suddenly be pushed out of the cracks as the statue shifted its posture to look Morgan in the eyes, the ashen dust further covering the slender, naked form.

  “I am the [Magmastride Banshee],” she said. The voice was a rasp, like dragging a half-charred log out of a dying campfire, and as she continued to speak, her eyes went from black coals to fiercely shining embers. “I am walking ruin, empowered by the Mana that even now smolders in your bones, and by your practiced affinities with Earth, Heat, and Flame. My scorching screams sear life from the very land, and I feed upon the ashen remains of my fallen foes.”

  Morgan retreated a step, for with every word, the woman’s eyes glowed brighter, and the sooty cracks along her body were overtaken by a creeping, liquid glow. The heat around the banshee intensified until it rippled the air around her, and tears of magma seeped from her eyes and the cracks in her body, and even from her sex, to drip sizzling and smoking upon the stone pedestal. The voice came again, much louder and with a resonance like a roaring furnace or a jet engine, although still with a feminine pitch. “At the end of all that is, everything shall BURN! Mine is the Scorching Path!”

  The woman’s heat-frizzled hair seemed to rise on the updrafts of the inferno as she spoke, before itself igniting into vibrant flame. The [Magmastride Banshee] then rose up a hand’s width off the stone pedestal as the veined quartz platform began to melt, simmering anger and barely restrained rage turning the crystal into a seething mass of crimson-yellow liquid flame that hissed and spat like a thing possessed. The voice boomed out like the guttural snarl of a volcano one last time. “The price of my power is obvious! If you would walk the Scorching Path, take my hand and burn eternal!”

  “Nope! Nope! NOPE!” Morgan chuffed as she quickly turned away from the heat. Just because there was power in burning the Mana she had in her bones didn’t mean Morgan could embrace it, as the Banshee seemed to enjoy.

  The next pedestal she gave a wide berth as she skipped it to approach the one after. That Morgan didn’t look even close to human. An overly-large mouth gaped wide, baring bestial teeth and vicious fangs. Bulging muscles outlined the scarred figure, and only the swell of breasts and lack of equipment between its legs gave evidence that it was even female. “Nope,” she spoke aloud. “Don’t even wanna know.”

  The statue she now approached looked far more promising. A peaceful and serene appearing version of herself gazed slightly up into the distance. What at first looked like tattoos of green vines or roots were revealed, upon closer inspection, to be actual vines and roots covering the woman’s body. They traced beautiful concentric spiral patterns around her breasts, and grew in delicate looping chains around her torso. From the waist, the vines draped down the front and back like a natural skirt, but one that left the outer hips and legs bare. Her feet were stained a dirty green, and tiny purple flowers grew along lines down her arms and legs that accentuated the figure’s beauty. As Morgan approached, the vine-wreathed figure turned its head to regard her, the wreath of blue and yellow blossoms that crowned her head rustling with the movement.

  The statue spoke in a voice like the whisper of falling leaves in an autumn breeze. “For your service in awakening the Ancient Tree, by Right of your Title, I am here. I am the [Leafless Druid], and my path is that of the Guardians of Nature. You have consumed the Fruit of the Tree of Life and Mana, and by the power of thy blood may claim kinship with the Tree and its surrounding forest. I am friend to all of the Living Wildlands, servant of the cycles of life and death, predator and prey.”

  As the woman spoke, the roots around her writhed and grew tendrils downward, flowing around the stone into the surrounding earth. Up from where the roots touched dirt sprang dense, tangled clumps that grew larger and larger, until the pedestal was surrounded by a dozen roughly humanoid shapes barely waist high to the watching Morgan. They had broad, humped backs with no heads, and proportionately massive arms tipped with vicious, sharpened stakes for fingers as their hands. The blackened wooden tips oozed a viscous green, toxic goop from within grooves along the spikes. Around the elevated druidic figure, more spears of living wood had sprung up around her, covered in giant, barbed thorns. “I command all that grows from the sun and the soil, calling Treants, and even the Mighty Sentinel Trees to my defense, or that of the Forest. From the Eastern Waters to the Western Mountains, and from the Frozen Northern Peaks to the Southern Jungle’s edge, all of the Wildlands is my domain, and feeds my power over Life and Earth.”

  As the last sentence still lay in the air, the ground rumbled under Morgan’s feet, and a massive behemoth of moss-covered stone heaved itself up on the opposite side of the druid from where she stood. The [Leafless Druid] held out her hand. “If you choose this path, all my power is yours without any restrictions, save one. You must return to the Tree, and there remain all thy days. My power grows weaker further away from the tree. Three days wandering, perhaps four are the limits you may wander, else facing death as thy power drains away.”

  Morgan backed away from the outstretched hand, shaking her head in rejection. Getting away from the tree was the whole point, and being trapped in the Wildlands, or in any si
ngle place anywhere, was definitely not on her agenda.

  She padded her barefoot self over to the next pedestal, but it, too had restrictions or costs she simply couldn’t bring herself to pay, even for what seemed like extraordinary forms of power.

  The [Shadowclad Rune-Witch] offered mastery of enchantment runes and simply ridiculous abilities with the Shadow Element, but came with an allergy to sunlight similar to vampires of Earth legends, along with the magic not working in the day.

  Another flat refusal went to the [Flame Raiment Elementalist]. That one offered the ability to shift into Morgan-shaped elementals made of Living Mana of the respective elements—to become Flame, Stone, or Lightning instead of merely wielding them—but the cost was to never return to her flesh and blood form. Morgan didn’t even wait for that one to finish holding out its hand.

  Morgan avoided several others that looked like the Class simply included physical changes that were far too extreme or grotesque. She had no desire to become some sort of mutant beast that only dimly remembered humanity, even if the [Stormclaw Were-Tigress] looked like the most badass comic book superhero she could ever have imagined. The poofy tip of her tail was adorable! But the rest, she thought to herself. The neon purple fur was just too much, even as much as I love purple.

  She was actually beginning to grow concerned after the ten or so Classes she had to reject. She’d travelled almost halfway around the circular arena, and absolutely nothing had felt right to her, nor had any of them caused any twinge of instinctual pressure. Nothing except for the nopes, and Morgan was in full agreement with her inner self there. The [Wildlands Beastrider] offered the ability to tame and bond with powerful creatures to help her fight or carry her around, and that sounded awesome at first. But she would’ve had to give up her Elemental magics and spells, and neither Morgan nor her now-quiet inner self would have liked that. Even without the required Class Quest to make amends with the Packmother, it was another nope.

  Morgan was about to approach the next statue when movement in the distance caught her attention. One of the statues five pedestals further down was moving without her having to approach. Curiosity broke through the tedium of onstantly rejecting the previously offered classes, and she broke into a jog toward the distant moving figure.

  As she padded closer, the moving figure resolved into familiar motion patterns. Still a few dozen yards away, she couldn’t help blurting out, “Are you doing YOGA!?!?”

  “Yep! Took you long enough to make your way over! I can’t leave the pedestal without you, but I got bored just standin’ here,” came the unusually chipper and happy response in a confident tone of voice. A voice that lacked the exaggeratedly ominous effects the other contending Classes she’d spoken with. This new future-Morgan unfolded herself from a pose that now-Morgan didn’t think she could manage even with enhanced Agility. Scattered across the pedestal were what looked like discarded food wrappings made from folded leaves tied with string, and even a simple stone jug that had been tossed aside to break upon the quartz disk once it was emptied.

  “Yeah, I got hungry, too. Had to eat something. You really took your time!”

  Morgan could only stare up at this striking possible future version of herself while her heart beat triple-time in her chest. Instincts stirred nervously in her belly, equal parts anticipation and fear. “I don’t even…” she said as the future-Morgan seemed to preen under her gaze. The woman tossed her lustrous hair behind her back with a shake of her head and spread her arms and feet wide, showing everything off.

  “You like it?” she quipped down at Morgan with a grin. Her body was utterly striking. A tattoo of a knotted Celtic braid crossed her eyes from temple to temple, vanishing into those raven-black locks of hair. It was a cobalt blue ink that gleamed reflective in the odd ambient light, as were the other tattoos that wreathed the figure standing on the pedestal. Geometric shapes laid in interlocking patterns across her shoulders, reminiscent of fractal patterns Morgan had only ever seen in computer generated estimations of paradoxical structures. The inked blue forms on each shoulder worked inward along her collarbones to spiral down to the center of her chest in finer and finer lines that neared, but never touched, until they both reached a simple, coin-sized circle above the woman’s sternum. Her breasts were as bare as Morgan’s own, but below that, her ribs were traced with rows of tiny triangles outlining very tiny, yet extremely detailed, runes in a linked chain that followed each rib around her torso.

  Below the woman’s sternum, toned six-pack abs were outlined by shaded depictions, as if some sort of scale armor had been drawn on her belly. The shiny glimmer of the lines of the tattooed armor descended to a narrow point less than a finger’s width above her most tender bits before arching back up and out over her hip bones in the image of a thin, woven, braid-like belt. Cobalt threads traced lightning patterns up her sides to connect the armor image to the belt, and the belt itself had circled runes inscribed into it. Those patterns seemed to morph and change to Morgan’s eyes as the woman twisted slightly back and forth at the waist to show them off.

  Solid bands an inch wide wrapped around the woman’s thighs just below her bare vulva, then gave way to patterns of interlocked triangles, Norse runes, and Celtic swirls that extended down past her knees. Her shins were layered with nested chevron patterns that pointed down toward feet that seemed to have sandals tattooed around them. As the future-Morgan lifted her feet to turn, the now-Morgan saw the soles of her feet were also covered in tiny patterns, like the soles of running shoes she had seen on earth.

  “Holy shit, I want these tattoos!” blurted now-Morgan as the future-Morgan turned her back and stretched her arms above her head, holding her hair out of the way. The tattoo belt that had arched up and out from below the front of the woman’s pelvis had wrapped around her hips and arched back down to a point just above her tailbone.

  From there it rose upward along her spine, images of interlocking plates that bracketed the ridges of the bones all the way to her shoulders, where it joined the geometric shapes Morgan had seen from the front. And directly on the woman’s finely muscled shoulder blades gleamed two feathered wing tattoos. These ones were different, in the deepest black Morgan had ever laid eyes on. The wings were of a distinctly different style than the cobalt blue and purple lightning tattoos, as if etched by a different hand.

  “Are all your tats…” Morgan trailed off, not even sure how to ask.

  “Enchantment Runes?” the other woman asked as she turned to face Morgan with a grin. “Yep. Whole body [Living Runic Enchantment]. And if you choose me, you get to learn the first one to set you on the path!”

  “You—I can’t even right now!” stammered Morgan. “How are you so different from the others? They’re all like doom and gloom robots, or some shit.”

  “I am the [Skyclad Sorceress],” the other replied. “And I’m only here because you challenged the System!”

  “How did I do that?”

  “Oh, I dunno, maybe by teaming up with your own inner self and declaring that you would find the most powerful magic you possibly could, and take me for your own, no matter what the System had to say about it!” The woman beamed down at her, and Morgan felt her instinctive excitement begin to faintly sway toward fear. “Or by asking what would happen if you went all in with the nudism aspect. Coulda been either. That’s all I know, other than that these others in the circle ain’t worth your time.”

  “So what makes you different?”

  “I’m different because I’m all or nothing. I get rid of your naked aspect, because it gets rolled into the class. I don’t demand you give anything up you haven’t already been doing without. I don’t restrict you from learning any magic, because I AM magic. Not just magic. I am Sorcery . I don’t need all that frivolous bullshit like magic wands and arcane powders like a weak-ass MAGE!”

  She spat the last word with such contempt that Morgan flinched back. The woman’s voice didn’t seem to grow in volume or power, yet as she spoke, t
he skies darkened and the clouds crept lower, while the bright arcs of lightning intensified. “Wizards. Mages. Shamans. Druids. Priests. Warlocks and Necromancers. Fools, every single one. They miss the point entirely.”

  As the [Skyclad Sorceress] gazed down at Morgan with glowing flecks of violet-hued Mana in her eyes, the tattoos began to light up with vicious pulses of power she could feel from a dozen feet away. “Before the first Wizard wrote his notes in the Book that became the Grimoire, there was Sorcery. Before Mages built the first Tower, there was Sorcery. Before the first Druid humped a tree and gave it a name, there was Sorcery. Priests pray to Gods for power, but those Gods ascended because of Sorcery.”

  The woman’s voice stayed perfectly calm, but every time she spoke the word sorcery , her tattooed runes flashed and thunder rumbled closer. Lightning began to blast craters in the featureless terrain in the distance, the sound merely muffled thumps Morgan could feel with her bare feet through the ground rather than her ears. “Shamans make bargains with spirits and elementals without even knowing they draw upon Sorcery! And Warlocks and Necromancers? Pulling demons from the Hells, or ripping souls back from the other side of the Veil? They blaspheme against Sorcery itself!”

  The last words were a scream, and fire erupted from the skies to fall upon the other statues one by one in brilliant, white bolts that left no rubble, only sparkling molten quartz puddles where each had been before.

  “You can feel my power, and I know you must ask the price. There are two. That pesky aspect will be gone. You choose now to commit to the Path of Sorcery and walk with me, and that’s it. No more clothes, no more equipment, no tools. Nothing but your body, your mind, your will, and your power. There will be no penalties for equipping items, for it will be impossible for equipment to affect your body. Sorcery already flows in your blood and lays in your bones as crystal cinders. But there is another price.”