Skyclad (Fate's Anvil Book 1) Read online

  The Sorceress pushed her hand forward, and just above the edge of her stone pedestal, a shimmering barrier appeared against her hand. While the skin of her palm and fingers smoked and sizzled, the woman looked down and spoke once more. “Your inner self told you some, and I can tell you just a little more. You challenged the System, and in return, I am its challenge and its offer to you, but you must understand. It is not good nor evil, it doesn’t know right or wrong, and it doesn’t care who lives or who dies.”

  She pushed harder against the barrier, runes dancing with cobalt fire up and down her body. The barrier flared into a complete translucent gold cylinder surrounding the pedestal, tightening closer in response to the Sorceress’ attempts to step down uninvited. Morgan couldn’t breathe, and stood there watching, slack jawed. She’d felt the power in the very earth and in the sky, crashing down upon the other pillars. A single one of those terrible skyborne flashes had contained more Mana than Morgan guessed she’d expended the night she ate the churple and burned in the tree. She continued to stare almost helpless as, within the confines of the barrier, the [Skyclad Sorceress] spread her wings.

  They rose up behind the woman’s back slowly, twice again higher than the midnight mane of hair. At first the wings seemed pinned in tightly, squeezed by the shimmering golden light. And then the Sorceress’s body erupted in liquid lightning that flowed upward into and underneath the feathers, and those wings flexed .

  The barrier shattered as the wings snapped open in a burst of palpable power. The pedestal of quartz was reduced to flying rubble, and Morgan instinctively brought up her own [Wind Barrier] to protect herself as the [Skyclad Sorceress] flapped her wings a few times to hover, almost as if stretching herself after a nap. Then the woman dropped to the ground in front of Morgan. The wings were night made manifest, an expression of purest darkness that held an actual weight upon the eyes which looked into it. They stretched out over thirty feet to either side of the Sorceress, and the edges rippled gently in the stillness around the two women.

  “The system only cares about one thing, Morgan. Stories. Your story. Lulu’s story. Every single living thing on this planet has a story. Everything with a soul, anyway, so even the elementals and the sentient beasts and some of the plants that can move around and think for themselves have a story. And stories are built piece by piece by the choices you make. The System doesn’t care what choices you make, only that you make them, and live your story until the end.”

  “I think I understand,” responded Morgan. “About stories and choices, I mean, that part makes sense. But what does the System want from me in exchange for your Class?”

  “Sometimes people or things try to remove a soul’s choice. I don’t mean like torture, or threatening to kill someone, or using extortion or blackmail. Those victims, as sad as the truth is, still have choices they can make, even if all their options have been reduced to shitty ones. They can still choose to comply, defy, ignore, or whatever they can think of. No, sometimes people like Warlocks or Necromancers go all the way bad. And they start messing with Souls. To directly compel a Soul is a total abrogation of free will and making choices. To the System, there is no greater sin. In fact, it’s the only sin.”

  “So I would have to fight those kinds of people?”

  “When you come across them. Your story is still yours; the challenge and the bargain, though, is when you’re faced with such sins, you don’t turn away. Don’t do nothing as so many have before. Embrace your Aspect, embrace this one rule of the system, and I will set you on the path. You’ll receive the [Living Rune Enchantment] skill so you can start learning your tattoos. You will choose your own, most likely, and end up looking different than mine. You will lose that pesky naked aspect and become the [Skyclad Sorceress]. It even comes with stronger bonuses and benefits because you simply won’t be able to equip items, even if you try. So…”

  The winged woman finally held out her hand. “If you choose this Class, simply take my hand, and we can move on to the last thing and get this over with.”

  Morgan didn’t hesitate. In full agreement with her inner self, heart pounding with excitement, she took the woman’s offered hand.

  “And one last thing,” she told Morgan as they clasped hands and the beautiful wings of night vanished with a snapping absence. “You’ll have to find the wings yourself: they aren’t part of the package…”

  “WHAT!?!?”

  First InterLulude: Defend!

  Lulu the valiant scrubby shuffled back and forth, doing its best to ignore the things nearby that seemed to call out to be cleaned. Cleaning was admittedly one of the greater parts of Lulu’s existence, and was something of a joy to accomplish, but right now even the act of cleaning was downranked to secondary importance, if not something even lower.

  As a slime variant, Lulu had no eyes, but somehow it was still able to perceive the world around it. A clever observer might even be able to tell by its shifting, boneless posture the direction that held Lulu’s current item of interest. Right now, Morgan’s little friend was shifting about at a rapid rate, attention darting this way and that in search of danger.

  Morgan herself was present, in a way. The flickering, purple arcs of Mana dancing across its mistress’ naked body were a strange indication of life, but one that was stronger than the faint but just detectable heartbeat. Lulu gurgled as noisily as it dared, puffling up against a bare ankle, and upon receiving no response yet again, the cleansing scrubby seemed to deflate slightly in sadness.

  Something scuttled in the depths of nearby plants, and the purple scrubby gave a tiny, nervous purble. It had never before had to act on its own. True, it had recently made the valiant leap into the gaping maw of the [Wildlands Shadowlynx], but Morgan had been there to help extricate the scrubby in the confusing aftermath. On the whole, that had been a less than pleasant experience. Stomach acid was frightfully harsh on poor Lulu, and it had mentally filed the whole ordeal away somewhere under the region of learning firsthand what it was like to be angrily scrubbed.

  Morgan was here, but not here. Lulu was here, in the fullest of senses, and would defend its larger friend to the best of the young scrubby’s capabilities.

  From behind Lulu’s current sphere of attention, something else came dashing across the terrain. Something not too large, but moving at frantic speeds. Lulu made an odd movement, less whirling around in alarm as a shifting of the body posture, and came face to face with a [Chittering Murdersquirrel].

  It would have been waist high to its standing mistress, and though it was smaller than Morgan, it was decidedly larger than poor little Lulu. Its poofed brown- and grey-striped tail was as large as the rest of its body, and whipped back and forth in rapid curls of anticipation. If slimes and their variants had teeth? Lulu’s would be gritting. If they had shoulders, its would be set back in order to present a stronger posture. If they had legs, Lulu would be poised at the ready, able to dart in any direction that proved necessary.

  The little purple puffball had none of these things. It merely watched, and waited, and tried to set aside its fears.

  The [Chittering Murdersquirrel] continued to close in with sure and steady steps, and seemed likely to be undeterred by anything. With a quick glance to Morgan to confirm that it was do or die time, Lulu gave an ululating warble and launched itself off from the ground in the strongest, fastest leap it could muster.

  Instinctively it had aimed for the shoulder. Morgan’s shoulder was a warm place, and a comfortable seat during travel at regular speeds. It was also a relatively flat surface to land upon on any given creature that happened to have limbs. Unfortunately Lulu hadn’t accounted for shoulder spikes hidden in what seemed to be deceptively soft fur.

  TORN LACE! PAIN! BAD! The scrubby loofah squirmed slightly in discomfort as it sensed its green good feeling essence—Lulu had no better thoughts to describe it—diminish slightly.

  A paw suddenly swept toward the scrubby, ripping the lacy body off of its own fuzzy shoulder. Witho
ut so much as a backward glance, the [Chittering Murdersquirrel] flicked its nails and tossed Lulu violently onto the ground, where it landed with a painful splat.

  Pulling itself back into its usual round, fluffy stance, and thinking back on the events that had just transpired, an idea sprang to mind. Dashing as fast as it could, Lulu slipped back into the space between the [Chittering Murdersquirrel] and Morgan. Then, taking careful aim, the valiant scrubby took another swift leap.

  Now Lulu had no eyes of its own, but through observation of the world, it had come across the concept of eyeballs, and more importantly, the importance of said eyeballs. Mentally shifting from exuding its movement-assisting moisturizers to producing the sticky coating for its lace that it used to hold onto Morgan in her speedier moments, the puffball landed with a resounding thwack on the [Chittering Murdersquirrel]’s left eye.

  With this first step accomplished, Lulu set to work, flattening itself down, around, and into the ocular cavity as much as possible in order to evade another angry swipe from swift, clawed paws. Its strongest skill by far was [Exfoliate], and though the scrubby was not in the least expecting the relative fragility of an eye, it was delighted to discover that the combination of this skill and this target allowed for swift penetration into the head cavity.

  The [Chittering Murdersquirrel] roared in agony and flailed at its own head, but Lulu paid it little mind. There was a certain reluctance for a being to reach inside its own skull, and the lacy puffball instinctively knew this. The situation was, perhaps, a little unpleasant, but the scrubby had found a way in to potential victory, and for the sake of Morgan’s continued safety, it was going to use it.

  As a slime variant, Lulu was practically made to be flexible, and as only the core bead in the center of its body was solid and unshiftable, it was this core alone that needed to pass through a potential opening. The rest of the scrubby’s body could fold, squish, and slide through the space as easily as liquid through a straw. It was a surprisingly simple matter to [Exfoliate] the small gap in the skull through which the ocular nerve passed, enlarging it to allow most of Lulu passage inside the head. The passage inward wasn’t quite large enough yet to let its solid core through, but the scrubby gave a soft, triumphant warble in knowing that it was more than deep enough within.

  Eyes were important parts of the body, but brains—the squishy, unseen masses that usually lurked within the head—were even more important. Lulu squirmed, and writhed, and [Exfoliated] everything within reach, eventually managing to slip all the way inside the [Chittering Murdersquirrel]’s skull. There, it spun, jumped, and wreaked exfoliating havoc until it felt the world shake with a THUMP . The little scrubby paused for a moment, but when nothing further seemed to be happening, it peered out from the empty eye socket.

  As Lulu cautiously emerged, observing the world from a position decidedly lower to the ground than before entering the eye, messages it couldn’t read and wouldn’t have cared about if it could flashed before its tiny consciousness before fading away. What it did care about was the surge of Mana in its center, and the increased size it gained after a short pulse of glowing, golden light. It couldn’t help but give a purbling trill of triumph at the simple feeling of becoming more .

  With a happy wriggle, the lacy puffball skittered over to Morgan. Lulu’s frills danced in the sunlight as it tried to show off its new, upgraded self. The wriggle turned quickly to a sag as the human had still not budged an inch. The sagging itself shifted to a quiver of fear as Lulu spotted more things, larger still than the [Chittering Murdersquirrel], skulking around nearby.

  Lulu pressed itself against Morgan’s ankle again, releasing a quick burst of soothing, fragrant suds. Never you fear, Morgan , it seemed to be saying. Lulu is on patrol .

  Then the churple-stained scrubby leaped once more into battle with a purbling war cry.

  Chapter 11: Storm Break

  Zizzy was startled awake by a notification as the dim, predawn light began to brighten the single small window of her tiny apartment. As groggy and grumpy as she was, she simply dismissed the notification without even bothering to check as the peals of the temple bells announced the arrival of dawn. The sleepy fugue state persisted, as she flopped herself out of her bed and stumbled her way over to the washbasin in the chill morning air. Stormbreak Isle might have been located closer to the warm tropics than not, but the northern trade winds kept the harbor city and capital of the island province much cooler than most would have expected. Her small domicile also happened to be located on the windward face of the high terraced cliffs that made up Stormbreak’s Upper District.

  The cold winds had chilled her apartment, infiltrating with greater effect once her fire had finally died. She hurriedly broke the ice in the basin to wash herself as quickly as she could. The brisk wash was certainly effective, and by the time the rising sun finally began to peek over the bay, she was fully awake. “Cheap or not,” she admitted out loud as she gazed out the window, “you can’t beat the view, not for a king’s ransom.”

  Doffing her warm woolen nightgown, she finished her morning ablutions with a haste driven by the chilled air, proceeding to quickly don the utilitarian uniform which was her standard attire for most days. Plain, high quality undergarments were followed by the perfectly creased grey trousers, and then a simple linen shirt. A matching grey tunic slid over her shirt, and over this she buckled a utilitarian leather belt filled with tools befitting her rank as a Constable under the aegis of the Stormbreak Wardens.

  After lacing up her well-worn, lovingly maintained and polished boots and tucking her braided golden hair under the shallow-billed hat, she finally donned the oiled leather coat hanging on the hook next to her apartment’s door. With a reverence that showed in her every mannerism, she plucked her badge and personal seal of office from the small desk next to her bed. The personalized enchantment, attuned to recognize her own Mana-signature upon touch, pulsed with a gentle thrum as she gently pressed the badge to the left breast panel of her tunic. She felt the entire uniform settle around her as the enchanted set was completed. Low-level standardized enchantments made specifically for the Wardens and their auxiliary police units they may be, yet Zizzy was immensely proud to have earned the right to wear them.

  She checked herself over in the small mirror above her washstand one last time, satisfied with what she saw. Then she turned and opened her narrow apartment door, and Constable Zizzy of Stormbreak City stepped out onto the street. The sunlight glittered across the bay in the newborn morning, illuminating a sprawling coastal city that wound around the edge of the water. Lowtown was the largest district of the city by far, stretching for miles around the steeper shores, with docks and floating pavilions stretching out into the water to a massive shipping port that sat directly in the waters. The Merchant’s District rose up on magically hewn stone pillars and arches to facilitate ships with deeper keels, the larger vessels unable to dock directly to the city’s arching stretch of piers. Access to the district itself was a stone bridge wide enough for five or six wagons abreast to trundle across it, but high enough that smaller vessels could pass under its arches in all but the highest of tides.

  The port city never slept, of course, and Zizzy could just make out the methodical rise and fall of the massive wooden gantries and their stone counterweights as they worked steadily to load and unload the ponderous merchant vessels. Fishing sloops and other, smaller craft were able to bully their way closer to shore, vying for the better docking positions closer to the markets and Lowtown’s warehouses.

  As she looked out at the distant ocean entrance to Stormbreak Bay, she was treated to the somewhat rare sight of a Swiftwater Guild courier vessel racing into the harbor on approach from the sea. Its path curved into the bay in a smooth arc as its Mana-powered nacelles shifted on their outriggers to keep the craft steady at speed. The Swiftwater Guild was notoriously secretive about its ships’ designs, but the power of the enchantments was evident. Foamy plumes of seawater kicked up behind it a
s the Wavecutter skimmed into the harbor with the natural arrogance of the rare and exotic.

  Zizzy didn’t bother with the Mana-Lift elevator station on her apartment’s terraced level, instead continuing past the lift station to one of the many steep stairways cut deep into the stone cliffside. For a few silver, the lift could have taken her all the way down to Lowtown, or any of several stops in between, but she wasn’t going that far on this Sabenday morning. The last day of the week was a day of reflection at the temple, and the traditions of the City Watch allowed their members to observe such things, as long as no pressing matters required their attentions.

  She took the stairs down to the next tier, the smells of baked goods and hot beverages leading her onwards. One of the smaller upper markets sat in a naturally occurring gap in the cliffs, not directly facing the tradewinds that made her tiny apartment just barely affordable on her modest pay. Everything was more expensive the higher you went in Stormbreak City, even the street vendors’ goods. But her routine on this day of the week was well known, and a familiar shopkeeper paused from arranging her trays as Zizzy approached.

  “Don’t even reach fer that coin pouch, Const’ble,” quipped the young woman as she placed two steaming breakfast pastries on waxed parchment and folded them with a practiced motion of her hands. “Ma never accepted your coin before, an’ if she heard I did, she’d thrash me proper with that rollin’ pin, an’ you know it!”

  “Every week I try to pay, and every week you refuse, just like your mother always did when she ran the shop.” Zizzy grinned as she put her coins away. “I’m glad to hear she can still swing that rolling pin. You tell her I asked about her, Kellen.” Zizzy scooped up the wrapped pastries and tucked them into a pocket to keep the drizzling mist that was constant at this elevation from getting to them. Departing the baker’s stand with a wave, she threaded her way through the avenue that was slowly getting more and more busy as the daylight warmed the stone-paved streets.