Chapter 28: DD2 Chapter 022 – Sister

In many ways Rhelea was much the same as they had left it. The city still stood tall against its imposing backdrop of the mighty Dragonspines to its distant west and the gently sloping hills to its east, which first transitioned into farmland before devolving into a dense woodland. Split into distinct sections by the river that ran through it, and then by two branches of the ancient Old Roads, Rhelea had to be large, even if it was just so that it could ford the wide expanses of rushing water and paved stone that divided up the city into conveniently separated districts.

For days after they had left Rhelea, choking plumes of smoke could be seen emanating from outside the city walls along with the horrid stench of the cremated dead. Now that they had finally returned, there were no signs of that past disturbance, only the crisp, clean air that was so characteristic of the wintery months. It was as if the heavy snowfall had buried all evidence of the bloody clash that had occured between the city’s slum dwellers and Lord Traylan’s newly minted soldiers.

From her vantage point along the western bank of the Pollum river, it seemed that the scenes of violence that they had witnessed when they left through Rhelea’s northern gates had managed to be contained to outside of the city’s well-fortified walls. Arilla’s fears that the discontent would grow to consume the settlement appeared to have been overblown, which strangely enough did not placate the troubled warrior, who was if anything in a worse mood upon realising that the slums had been cleared, and nobody had raised so much as a retaliatory finger in anger.

There wasn’t much left of outer Rhelea; while a few poorly constructed dwellings remained in the shadows of bustling new construction projects, the residents were nowhere to be seen. Hopefully they had been taken inside of the now expanded inner walls where they were receiving either charity or a job. The twin forces of a Terythian Lord growing a new army and a well-funded church’s outreach had potentially solved the problem with the slums that had plagued Rhelea for almost a century. At least, that was what Typh chose to believe, the corpse-fires had lasted for days after all, and the alternative, that the desperate poor who had once lived outside of the safety of the city’s fortifications had all been killed, was unpalatable even to her.

She decided that it was better not to think too much about it; the last thing she wanted was to get overly involved in Rhelea’s political situation. However, that didn’t stop her from staring. As a young dragon, Typh had never seen the great lairs amongst the Dragonspines being built. They had all been constructed long before her time, and the events themselves—magnificent though they may have been—had not been deemed significant enough by her ancestors to be included in the memories she had inherited. Witnessing a city, even a human one, transform itself so quickly was fascinating to her. If it wasn’t for the likely possibility of pursuit then she could have gladly watched from afar for days while the predominantly pewter levelled labourers erected great walls and fortifications in mere hours.

The scale of what Lord Traylan had planned was beyond vast. The old noble clearly intended to at least triple the size of Rhelea if the scaffolding she could see in the distance was an accurate indication of his intentions. The sheer speed at which this dream was coming to fruition was even enough to make her question if the glory days of humanity truly were long behind them. There was even what looked like a large statue of a man being sculpted out of the stone. A figure with hauntingly familiar facial features was growing in definition, perched around the gatehouse leading into northern Rhelea.

Nobles.

Typh wanted to crack a joke, to say something disparaging about the fragile egos of humans in power, and how their need to overcompensate with large structures bearing their name often stemmed from their more intimate inadequacies. Arilla’s influence had obviously rubbed off on her as it was her first thought to lighten the mood, but before she could begin to formulate a suitable slur she remembered that floating proudly above her head to any who cared to look were those traitorous five letters, Noble.

Typh was one of them now, or atleast, there was no hiding that she always had been. Her much beloved Mage class had transitioned into what she knew she needed to become. A Sovereign. Noble, Lord, Ruler, Liege, Queen, Empress, they were all pretty words that meant the same thing, that her days of playing at being less than what she was were soon coming to an end, which reminded her that she still had one more thing to do.

*You have one unassigned class skill.

Choose once from the listed abilities below…

Sovereign Magus’s Bestowal - This skill allows you to temporarily transfer your physical stat points with physical touch to any willing subject with a Knight-tagged class. The sum total of stats donated cannot exceed this skill’s level.

Sovereign Magus’s Insight - This skill allows you to divine the approximate direction, distance and disposition of all subjects within range. The range of this skill is limited to 10 feet per skill level.

Sovereign Magus’s Levy - This skill allows you to siphon mana from a willing subject with an efficiency of 0.1 mana per skill level received for every 10 mana donated. The range of this skill is limited to touch. Efficiency cannot exceed 10 mana received for every 10 donated.

Thinking through her choices, Typh realised that [Sovereign’s Bestowal] could immediately be ruled out for the simple fact that she had no Knights under her banner. She had a lot of creatures who could benefit from that skill if they qualified, but Arilla was the only one likely to be offered a Knight class any time soon and given recent events she was… unlikely to further strengthen their bond.

[Sovereign’s Insight] was less than useless at its current level, and while it would no doubt rank up into something formidable the use of the word ‘disposition’ warned her away from it. She had finally accepted this class because she was coming to believe that conflict with Monsters was not something she could run from, not if she wanted to hold her head high. Taking a skill to better sound out her subjects’ moods just felt petty, especially when so much was at stake.

That left [Sovereign’s Levy] which boasted a terrible efficiency, but delightfully terrifying implications even at its rank 0 stage. In both of her forms, Typh’s spellcraft was her greatest strength and gaining the ability to make better use of her lessers’ mana was something she couldn’t wait to experiment with. She accepted the skill and checked her newly improved status.

Name: Typh

Species: Human

Age: 19

HP: 500/500

SP: 498/500

MP: 5320/5320

Strength: 50

Dexterity: 50

Vitality: 50

Intelligence: 172

Willpower: 145

Charisma: 110

Class: Sovereign Magus - Level 50

Artillerist’s Abjurations - Level 49

Artillerist’s Empowerment - Level 49

Artillerist’s Guidance - Level 49

Artillerist’s Reservoir - Level 49

Sovereign Magus’s Levy - Level 1

“Are you done?” Arilla asked.

“Yes. Just choosing a new skill. I’m surprised you haven’t ranked up yet,” Typh replied.

“There’s no rush, so I’m taking my time. Unlike you, it will likely be my last rank-up for a good long while, and I don’t want to regret my choices.”

“I see...” Typh said, trying not to think about just what that meant. The allure of Arilla not being entirely done with her was an appealing fantasy, one that was reinforced by the fleeting pulses of warmth that were occasionally sent through the tether of power that connected their two classes.

It was almost enough to let her ignore the waves of horror and disgust that were there the rest of the time.

“I’m—” Typh began before thinking better of it. The word ‘sorry’ dying on her lips when she realised that she wasn’t. She’d kill those soldiers again even knowing Arilla’s reaction. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about human lives, it’s just that there were often far more important things, namely her life and Arilla’s. “We should get going. It’s a lovely view, but we are wasting time.”

“It is, it really is,” the warrior responded wistfully. Staring out at the snow-covered cityscape until she reluctantly pulled her gaze away, her hazel eyes lingered on Typh for several painful seconds before they moved on to focus on the flowing water in front of them. “We only stopped because you said you needed a minute. Where are we going, anyway? You haven’t actually explained how we’re going to get into Rhelea without showing anyone our badges.”

“Oh that. Well, it’s simple, although we’re probably going to get a little wet,” Typh said, gesturing at the wide river in front of them.

***

The Pollum had not frozen over, which was a small blessing, if only because it spared her the trifling amount of mana that it would have cost her to melt through the ice. Instead Typh conjured a large bubble of force that encapsulated both her and Arilla, the boundary visible as a translucent golden sphere. With that spell held firmly in her mind, Typh and Arilla walked into the rapidly flowing current, the Noble confidently and the Warrior with a little more trepidation. At first the weight of the water pushed hard against her spell and threatened to send them both speeding downstream, shining like a beacon atop the river’s surface. With a little will, and her significant mental stats, the dragon forced the water to first part around and then over them, as underneath a glowing golden dome of hardened light, the two of them walked along the river's bed.

Like most of Typh’s magic, it was hardly a sophisticated use of mana. What was impressive about it was the scale; a thin barrier of arcane force that held back the might of the Pollum while they traversed its bottom. The currents were less intense at the deepest parts of the river which allowed them to navigate freely without being pushed about, although the sunlight, weakened by all the snow clouds that covered the sky, could not penetrate so far down, and it was only by the light of the spell itself that they could see.

The air inside was warm and unpleasantly humid, which was a welcome change if anything from the crisp, cold air of the surface. Neither of them could stand more than a few meters apart without running into the boundaries of the spell, which enforced a physical proximity that would have been more awkward if Typh wasn’t so used to Arilla’s disapproval. If it wasn’t for the prodigious amount of trash that littered the riverbed, and her growing belief that they were well and truly done, then this leg of the journey could have been pleasant.

There was a surprisingly large number of ancient shipwrecks that lined the riverbed, cast in a golden light that pushed back the cloying darkness of the deep. It was a challenge not to remember some of the scarier horror stories that Arilla had recounted about ghost ships rising from the depths. She was fairly confident that incorporeal undead could not arise without a necromancer present, but it didn’t stop her from blasting large holes through any wrecks that got in her way, rather than trying to navigate through the open rooms and dark hulls of the ruined ships.

Even with the golden light from her spell Typh couldn’t see very far, at least not by her usual standards, and so she focused on [Sovereign’s Perception] to search through the rotten walls of the wrecks for any signs of danger and to further empower her vision. She could tell that Arilla wanted to go off and explore, that there was a childish part of her that had yet to learn the lesson she should have learned first on their dungeon dive and then again in Erebus’s palace. That human curiosity, to know things they didn’t need to know, drove the warrior to risk her life time and again. Idly, Typh wondered if that curiosity was what the other enlightened races lacked, the reason why even after millenia of effort no one had yet to match even a fraction of the arcane mastery that the humans of old once possessed.

A part of her yearned to give Arilla what she wanted, to send her off to find some hidden treasure long forgotten by the people on the surface, but if humans had an abundance of curiosity, they lacked the commensurate amounts of caution. No human, or dragon for that matter, had tread the ground they were walking on in a very long time, and the possibility that there could be some kind of creature down here was far too great. For there was one thing she had noticed as she stretched [Sovereign’s Perception] to its limit. It was the lack of corpses.

There.

It was fast, hanging around just outside the edge of her perception field, somehow able to detect the limits of her skill, but for just a moment she had caught a glimpse of it, and it was big.

Very big.

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Dragons did not make a habit of venturing beneath the ocean that surrounded Astresia, not because they lacked the ability, but because there were things that lived deep underwater that gave them pause. This was not one of those creatures, but it was close.

At a hundred-and-fifty feet long it was noticeably larger than Typh in her draconic form. The four large fins, two pectoral at the chest, one on its back and another at the tail allowed it to glide through the water effortlessly. Its movement was no doubt enhanced by its prodigious physical stats and what looked like some kind of mana manipulation ability. It had a blunt, brick-like head with a bifurcated jaw that split open into four distinct sections, each one layered in rows of serrated teeth that were larger than a dagger. Rather than scales it had a thick, rubbery hide that was striped in alternating lines of black and blueish grey, that danced hypnotically along its body, making it hard to focus on. Where it swam it left the water slightly discoloured, with a spreading wake of potent acid that soon began to test Typh’s dome of golden light, while the ruined ships visibly wilted before her eyes.

[Greyblood Orca level 327].

Arilla smoothly drew her zweihander as it suddenly turned and swam close enough for both of them to see it and it’s tag. The large predator circled them high above the masts of the ruined ships, occasionally dipping low enough to brush against Typh’s barrier with the edge of a fin. An action that caused the dragon to wince as the Orca was not gentle with its probing touch.

“Put the sword away, it’s just curious,” she hissed.

“I can’t see its level! Tell me you can kill that thing!” the warrior barked back, ignoring Typh’s instructions while her eyes nervously tracked the Orca as it continued to circle them.

“Of course I can, but this is it’s territory we’re intruding on. It would be impolite to kill it out of hand,” she said, technically only half-lying. “Now put the sword away; it won’t help, at best you’ll just piss it off!”

“Why aren’t you telling me it’s level?!” Arilla asked with a nervous edge to her voice as she frustratingly picked up on the dodged question.

“...327,” Typh confessed moments before the whale dipped even lower, pressing hard against her dome which flexed dramatically around it’s touch. Pain lanced through her temples, and she fell to her knees when she felt a good chunk of her mana disappear and something else piggyback along her connection to her spell and psychically assault her mind. The imperfect shape of her deformed protective dome was further assaulted by the increasingly acidic water and the weight of the river which all combined to make her scream out in pain.

Arilla paled, quickly slinging her sword over her back before she then plucked Typh up in a princess carry and began to run along the riverbed, downstream towards Rhelea. The wet mud sucked at her feet while she raced across it, and when shipwrecks got in their way the warrior raised a hand to the sword at her back and barged through. Arilla momentarily thrummed with skill-empowered strength as she carried the dragon in one hand and smashed the golden dome of light that travelled with her through the weakened hulls, costing Typh far less mana than even a gentle touch from the Orca.

*Congratulations, Artillerist's Abjuration has reached level 50. You must rank up this skill to progress it further*

“Typh, what do we do?”

“Just keep running, I'm thinking! It doesn’t seem hostile so we have time,” she said, dismissing the prompts from her newly levelled up skill.

“I’m running as fast as I can!” Arilla yelled back, before she leapt over a relatively fresh shipwreck. Typh’s dome of light transitioned into a bubble once again as together they left the riverbed, soaring high through the water where they were momentarily carried by the current only for them to be abruptly swatted to the side by the Orca which swooped down low through the water to meet them.

The walls of Typh’s spell whined audibly, cracking in places as they were violently smashed back into the riverbed, her golden dome decimating the detritus that littered the river floor and kicking up all kinds of mud and silt which was soon swept downriver.

“I—I think it’s playing with us,” Typh said through clenched teeth, clutching onto Arilla’s chest. “I think it’s attracted to the light.”

“Great, so get rid of it,” the warrior responded, climbing back to her feet and resuming her desperate sprint while the whale followed them from above.

“We’ll drown, assuming the acid doesn’t melt us first.”

“There’s acid?!”

“Well yes, why do you think the shipwrecks are melting?”

“...I didn’t notice,” she muttered. The warrior then brought her hand back to the hilt of her sword and grunted. Typh felt the skill pulse through Arilla’s chest, moments before they lurched forwards, leaving the ground and smashing through an old river barge that practically disintegrated on impact. “I have other things on my mind right now.”

“Hang on, let me try something.”

Typh split her concentration between maintaining her dome of light and creating several more illusory duplicates. It would have been easy if she dared to pull her focus away from their golden shield, but despite the strain it soon became apparent that her ploy worked. The Orca paused in its pursuit and instead chased after the large orbs of light that Typh had created for it to play with while theirs drew ever further away. Each orb that remained shone brightly and even changed colour rather than disappearing when it brought its massive bulk against them. With the distraction in place, Arilla ran, and agonisingly slowly they escaped the beast.

***

Typh’s nerve was wearing thin by the time that Arilla had finally carried her to the harbour. While they did not find anything nearly so highly levelled on the rest of their long journey downstream, once they escaped the Orca’s territory, the river’s depths quickly populated itself with third and fourth tier beasts that had to be avoided lest they be drawn into an underwater battle that ran the risk of drawing the fifth-tier predator’s attention from upstream.

The water by the city’s docks was far shallower, and littered with even more refuse than the riverbed, if that was possible. The mud was so deep that it was quite challenging to walk up to the sides of the river bank where ladders extended down into the water. They had travelled so far and somehow managed to stay dry despite everything, and the prospect of dismissing her spell only so that they could swim to the surface through the now much filthier water held little appeal.

And so Arilla jumped.

With stamina fueling her System granted skills she leapt from the depths of the Pollum and out into the air above where Typh promptly dropped her spell, abandoning her shield of golden light as they were both suddenly confronted with the stark contrast of Rhelea’s wintery air. The sun was setting over the Dragonspines, and given the time of year the dockyards were relatively empty. So when Arilla’s boots landed on solid ground, she only startled awake a solitary drunk who had collapsed in the snow by the waterfront. Their arrival had likely saved him from freezing to death in the process, but it appeared that they were able to otherwise avoid any unwanted attention, even if the man swore loudly at having been so rudely awoken.

“We are not doing that again,” Arilla commented dryly.

“Agreed,” Typh said, hopping out of the warrior’s arms.

Travelling through Rhelea’s streets was noticeably different now. While they walked back to Arilla’s home, Typh couldn’t help but notice that there was a definite tension in the air, subdued perhaps, but unmistakably present. Looks of anger quickly rose to the surface whenever a passerby got close enough to Typh to see the Noble tag floating above her head, before they quickly quashed it, usually when one of the regular guard patrols turned a corner, or Arilla’s hand strayed towards her sword. The threat of violence was everywhere, and Typh found herself constantly evaluating everyone they passed. It was like the whole city was holding its breath, ready to boil over into a fight at the slightest excuse.

Old posters denouncing Lord Traylan as a tyrant could be seen wherever squads of soldiers in the noble dynasties livery were not. The newly enlisted—or perhaps conscripted now, judging only from the grumbling that she couldn’t help but overhear—patrolled the city streets with weapons at the ready. On the relatively short journey through Rhelea, they witnessed soldiers disperse multiple gatherings, forcefully arrest street preachers, and tear down countless posters. The propaganda war between the printers had been firmly settled against Lord Traylan during their absence from the city.

If nothing changed, Rhelea would burn before the spring thaws, of that Typh was certain. Fortunately it wasn’t her problem, she just needed to collect Tamlin and leave. If Arilla wanted to devote her life to trying to save this place from itself then that was her decision. As much as she liked the creature comforts that humans produced, she had no desire to stick her neck out for them in particular, especially not when they were actively hunting her.

Of course, her attitude towards humanity was a large part of the reason why Arilla would never choose her over Rhelea.

...Or perhaps it was the man she had recently eaten in front of her.

Soon enough they had arrived back to the building Arilla owned, and were climbing the steps together while Typh mulled over her recent comprehension of their fundamental incompatibilities. She wished that it wasn’t so, but she was unwilling to change who she was to better fit Arilla’s sensibilities, and likewise she knew that Arilla wouldn’t be half as fascinating to her if she didn’t care about people with the same dedication that she did.

The door to Arilla’s flat was ajar. The security wards had been expertly defused, and upon seeing this, the warrior once again drew her sword. Hopefully there would be no tier five beasts inside the apartment. Wordlessly, she looked to Typh, who sighed in response and took a few steps backwards before following Arilla inside after layering a few protective spells around them both.

What she saw inside was far less than welcome.

“Sister, what are you doing in my flat?” Arilla asked upon finding the aged-nun snoozing in Typh’s favourite armchair.

The nun startled awake and took a moment to look suitably embarrassed about her relaxed state before she sat up in the armchair and addressed them both.

“Thank the gods you are back safe. I have been coming by every day to see if you have finally returned,” Sister Hortensia said, not choosing to disclose how or why she had broken into Arilla’s home.

“Sister, h―”

“I have always said that you are a gift, Arilla,” the nun continued. “I know I was hard on you when you were a girl, but just look at you now. All those times that I bent you over my knee when you were younger, and what a woman you have become. Pewter, on the cusp of bronze. Now in our time of need you have been blessed with the strength we’ll need to right this terrible wrong.”

“Sister, what ‘terrible wrong’ are you speaking about?”

“It’s the boy, Tamlin, he's missing.”

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