Chapter 69: Ch.64: Interlude: Enlightenment

Uncountable millennia passed, a thousand? A thousand thousand? It is not known. But then again, it might as well have been a blink for the seven.  One Great, four subordinate to the First and two who had yet to grow into their domains. Then there were two more. One was radiant, cheery the brightest essence in the void. The other was subdued, but nonetheless, formidable in his own way. He was the most elusive as he shied away from his overly enthusiastic sister. Of the four godlings, she was the purest of hearts, perhaps second only to her great Benevolence. Claritas and Vesper were their names.  Claritas the Bright and Vesper the Tenebrous. Unlike their elder sisters, these two’s essences were of a Form whose essences were stark contrasts of one another. But nevertheless, where there was one, the other was sure to follow.

 Excerpt from The Book of Realms: The Age of Elder Gods, Church of Thea.

---

Numen; the sum total of essences and imprints of memories anchored in an object, a phenomenon or a place. Elementals were similar, sylvani hearth spirits, water spirits and tree spirits were another. Wraiths and banshees were a distant association. 

When Asaharu Konigi, under the alias of Ascal Cornieva set out to create the magier core, he was not doing it just for its sake. He had a grander goal in mind and his stumbling upon it had been a stroke of luck. His focus had hitherto been in so many things that, without realising it, he’d spread himself thin and consequently deadlocked himself. 

However, it was his lowest moment that he met Volemhir Winterheart, an [Arbour Elder] with secrets almost as realmshaking as his. Be it luck or fate, from there onwards,  everything fell into place for Asaharu. Likewise, Volemhir thought he had found a kindred spirit who would help him further his own ends.

So when he was propositioned to help create the sylvani longships and given ancient knowledge even the Xzerion Magocracy of Myndis would have jumped at he was only too glad to accept.

 As a consequence, his association with Volemhir had exposed him to the existence of hearth spirits. 

On the other hand, he had also been studying the hypothesis that mana was alive with only slimes to prove it. Slimes were a coagulation of mana and the scientist in Asaharu had studied them and branded them as silicon based lifeforms. He had therefore theorised he could create artificial life, or better yet, arcane lifeforms.

 Given his profession as a robo physicist,  he had already come across golems and studied them too but found them too rigid in their workings for what he wanted. They were a step down from robotics. Fortunately, it had only been a matter of time when the pieces of the puzzle fell into place thanks to inspiration from an unconventional concept. A living ship.

  Naturally, anchoring a spirit required a sustained concentration of mana in one place, the same conditions that birthed slimes whose sparks, or anima were easily bound like summons and familiars.  Thus to create a living, mobile spirit that could theoretically fly a sylvani aership, he made the magier core using the secrets of sygnumeracy from the dwarves and ancient secrets of the Illvari that Volemhir provided. 

 To Volemhir, he had described the types of material he’d wanted, objects imbued with mana over centuries. Dungeon shards were convenient for the task. 

Thereafter, the first project started with his own golem-like constructs; the automata.  He called it the Zodiac project. Twelve iterations were created. But why the humanoid shape? Someone close to him was dying of Neurodegenerative Muscle Atrophy as it evolved into ALS. 

Their time had been running out, and their last wish had been to see the ocean. Then Eryth happened, then magic and second chances.

For Asaharu, magic was a miracle and his miracle was the Sakura project. Ironic because the sakura was synonymous with the fleeting nature of life; a cherry blossom’s life was transient, blooming and dying before the spring was over. 

Looking from it another way though, it was also the symbol of renewal. It was also said, on the third day of the Trinaiad, when Yrcinthe, goddess of Justice, Redemption and New Beginnings cast her light, alongside  Ceralisa, goddess of Love, Hearth and Fecundity and Oonaris, goddess of Fortune, Fate and Wisdom, great workings of the arcane could happen. Even Witches and Wizards could tell you that. Perhaps after a fashion, Asaharu had been a [Mad Wizard] because the culmination of his efforts had borne fruit.

---

A tattered spirit and nascent consciousness ; two ingredients—two entities that would scarcely meet. But oh, they did. It was not because Eryth was tilted a little to the side, or because the three moons happened to be in syzygy. 

 All it took were the meeting of dissimilar entities was a thousandth of a thousandth of a chance. Abysmal and infinitesimal perhaps, but chance was still chance. Who better to weigh the scales of fate than Oonaris’ herself? But even she could not account for every occurrence in reality; some things took more than a coin toss.

And that was how a new race was born from the amalgamation of a trapped spirit and a budding sentience. Both were almost the same age. However, only one of them was mature. Yet it was the less mature of the two that held all the reins. Unfortunately nothing got done because the spirit was so degraded, only two thirds of it remained.

It was an incomplete template, the body would not morph correctly. The left shoulder, left side of the torso and the left leg were all gone, lost to the ravages of the nether. Even now, motes of spirit tried in vain to cling to the main body, but slowly the spirit was decohering. Its tether to creation was decaying

If something was not done, then they would cease to exist. And without the spirit the body would not be. For the younger entity had no name, the older designated it as [Spirit-Body].

But who better to make such a critical analysis of such a situation than an ancient mind construct hosting a wealth of knowledge? To the second entity, it knew nothing but fulfilling its objectives for self-preservation. That was the mission it had gleaned from its newborn memory matrices. This was the genesis of [Host-Mind]’s existence. [Host-Mind] was a Numen and knew their tasks.

And so it was that [Host-Mind] took the forefront of the resuscitation process. The ancient construct, made from pieces of what would have been one of the guardian protectors of a forgotten legacy, delved deep into its memory matrices and searched for solutions.

 In a thousandth of a heartbeat, which was slower than it could optimally perform, it had found the answer—Gestalt; unity. For an entity that thought in discrete terms, there was no hesitation; not when the burden of evidence was too stark. And surely not, when its computational and logic matrices were in agreement. Thus [Gestalt Conduit] was executed.

A new template was mapped and new parts were transposed over the missing ends of the mutilated spirit. The process required a level of energy, material and focus which skirted the boundaries of absurdity. The former was already abundant because the magic was in the air, the former two; not so much. But [Host-Mind] found a way to make things work with what was available. It had been gathering things, sequestering away materials for the day that would be and slowly withdrawing the tendrils under its domain of influence loath as it was to do so.

There was no hesitation; assimilation was instictively hard etched into its memory matrices and therefore everything was game, both magical and mundane provided it was inorganic. Organic matter was too unstable.

Crystals by the barrel, ingots of pure metal, mage stone, something from another world were all force teleported into the [Locusphere], a bubble of space isolated from the outside world. Reagents and materials were stripped down, reconstituted and transmuted for its use away from prying eyes of course.

Finally when the quartz was nigh, on the night of the Trinaiad, mana was drawn from the within itself and from the air; it was the densest concentration available. Only [Gestalt Conduit] would have made such a process possible because a tether existed linking the nexus construct of [Host Mind] to [Spirit Body].

However [Host-Mind] came to a deadlock. Its computational matrix weighed the probabilities of completing the process there and then. Its extrapolations were grim.  Its conclusion; force-merging of the two entities was a hazardous undertaking. Continued use of [Gestalt Conduit]  would  result in errors, body dysmorphia of the spirit body and its own degradation. Therefore, [Host-Mind] took an alternative route.

The process would have to be distributed over a duration until such a time, it deemed it viable to relinquish all bodily and cognitive functions to [Spirit-Body]. But for now, its job was done; it was time to hibernate, reverting to its nascent state of existence. Only its surface consciousness remained to oversee the remainder of its task. And while  [Host-Mind] slept, [Spirit-Body] awoke.

[ Unknown Level 2 !]

[ Skill-Materia Transmutation acquired!]

[Skill- Augeo Assimilation Acquired]

Eyes, with blue irises ringed gold snapped open. It might have been central heterochromia,  or it might have been an inherited trait of a magical bloodline but that was not the point. The point was,  it was dark and claustrophobic. [Spirit-Body], for she had no recollection of her name , hyperventilated realising she was trapped for the second time. 

It came to her. The flashback from the liminal space when she was all but a formless spirit, the existential dread of drowning in the weight of her own existence threatened to crush her mind. She screamed but viscous and almost metallic fluid wormed into her mouth, her eyes and orifices as she choked and gurgled.  Her hand jerked to the cord inserted into the base of her spine and pulled as she cried out in pain, suffocation long forgotten.

The cord came off with a sickening sound and she involuntarily arched her back gritting her teeth against the pain. Pain, at least, was no stranger to her.  For a moment, she waited for the burning agony to course through her nerves; it did not come. Despite her frantic state of mind, she realised there was something different about herself.

One was that she was supposed to be drowning but wasn’t, two was that she could move her muscles without muscle spasms and three, she was intuitively aware of a part of her consciousness that she never realised she could use. It was both inside and outside of herself at the same time. She could feel the impressions of connections in her body, which was not her body, even though it should have been. It felt like a shirt that was way too big. And then she knew.

‘Majutsu,’ she gulped. Then gagged as the liquid in her mouth tasted like battery acid.  Her eyes had been scrunched closed fearing the same fate but she instinctively knew that it would not harm her. 

Oddly, she had the vaguest feeling she should have been debilitated; echoes and phantoms of  a time when she was in constant pain and unable to move but she banished it to the back of her mind. 

What took the fore was the excitement bubbling up from her chest because she could move. Though her limbs responded to her like an ill-fitting glove, she could move.

 And when she finally opened her eyes again, she  realised it was dark, with the smallest of shimmers . Flashes of light lit up and faded away from her sight as she groped away in the metallic tasting liquid. It was a thick viscous gel that prickled her skin like a woolen sweater as she cautiously extended her arms to explore her vicinity. Her palm made contact with the boundaries of her confines.

‘Glass?’ she thought curiously. Like instinct, she prodded the budding impressions of her conscious. [Arcane Oculus] faded into view. The disorientation that hit her senses was too much for her mind to parse. Her head whiplashed as she gasped , choking on more of the fluid through her mouth and nostrils. 

She contended with a disorienting view of seeing her world through the lens of aether, and simultaneously in first person and third person as if through another’s eyes. It dazed her for a while until she made sense of what was happening. 

When she turned her eyes to her front her vision was  swimming with wisps that seemed to twist on themselves like a psychedelic trip before they snapped into place. The additional perspective was also jarring, like being inside and outside of her own body at the same time, a third person perspective that could see what was all around her.  She suddenly jerked  away from her own body when she saw the trace-like veins of blue-green pulsating under her skin and her glowing eyes.

When reality seemed as though it had settled for being solid and not the turmoil of an oil painting she surveyed her surroundings with new eyes. The first thing she realised was that she was in a glass vat,  twice as large as her body in all dimensions. The liquid, she was now breathing in, had more of those wisps though not as chaotic looking as what was outside her vat. 

A pedestal descended from where her vat stood into stairs that encircled it. Three steps down, an esoteric  collection of artifices surrounded her in a semi-circle glowing with a variety of gem foci. Glowing cords ran along the floor and ended up somewhere above her vat. 

Instinctively flinching, her hand went back to the base of her spine. There was no wound, only a sting and  a scar in the shape of a five pointed star. The view further on seemed to disorient her and she felt it all taxing on her mind . She  managed to ferret out the details before she shut her eyes and willed the dizzying ability away; she could now recall where everything was with crystal clarity regardless of how she moved.

 It should have taken her aback at how abnormal that should have but she didn’t look like she had the foresight to care.Rather, she let her shoulder muscles untense, not realising how high strung she’d been. 

There were no tremors in her hands, no involuntary muscle spasms. She frowned at how eerily she could recall what her body used to be but nothing else; even her name was lost to her. 

Eager to get out to seek out such answers, she drew back her hand, splaying out her palm and intonated in her head.  For a moment, the electric feeling of the liquid prickling on her skin diminished .She felt her palm grow warmer relative to the rest of her body as a revolving construct lit up in her consciousness.

 It was like a sieve that was made up of triangles that repeated on themselves in three dimensions and hurt her head just trying to parse it. Its intent was clear enough though.

‘[ Materia Transmutation]!’ She empowered the construct with her intent. The sensation of something moving inside of her registered as the liquid in her containment churned and bubbled, drawn to her hand. She felt the pressure build up as something happened to it. There was the barest feeling of hardness and then it flexed.  As sudden as a moment, she found herself expelled outwards with a croaking yelp as something popped open.

Liquid gushed out, pouring her onto the floor where she curled in on herself and hacked globs of it from her airways. Tears and fluid poured from her nose as she wheezed in reflexive gasps.

She wiped the sticky fluid from her face and squinted through her daze just to catch blue trace lights fading from her palms and the tips of her fingers. Despite her confusion, the girl did not dwell on it overlong. Among other issues clamouring for her attention were a throbbing head and the feeling that there was another presence in there with her. 

“Otou-San?!” she called out.  Her hand suddenly went to her throat.Although she had no memories of the last time she talked, her voice sounded unfamiliar . Nonetheless, there was no answer, nor a response from the perceived entity. 

“Dad?” she cried out. Groping around in the dark, she found the edge of a table and pulled herself up with prodigious strength. Her lower limbs failed her, sending her sprawling  back to the ground. It had all been too easy to forget that her body was different because she was eager to walk on her own power. Her legs felt the kind of numb that one got from sitting too long. The flare of muscle cramps made itself known as she shifted her upper body. 

‘My wheelchair,’ She thought, wondering where her conveyance was. She was leery of using [Arcane Oculus] again as it needed all her focus to shut out unnecessary feedback; it was taxing on her mind and there was still getting some used to. 

“ Someone please, anyone?” she cried out.  She didn’t know who she was calling out to . Did the person or people who put her in a vat have good intentions? Could coming back from the brink of neurodegenerative muscular atrophy count as good intentions? Her moral quandaries were put away for later as she groped around for her wheelchair.  

What she’d failed to account for was that the room was spatially incongruous to how it appeared. Mumbling under her breath, she braced herself as [Arcane Oculus] coloured her vision. This time, the feedback floored her literally. The glass vat had blunted some of whatever that prickly electric feeling in the air had been.

More than just liquid and snot came out her throat and nose. Acid and solid sprayed out in a steaming mess as she hacked on the floor. Something felt lodged in her throat and amidst tears in her eyes, she plunged her fingers into her mouth, fighting against her gorge reflex. It scraped against the flesh of her throat as she coughed it out. It went tinkling on the floor with a metallic sound as it slipped from her fingers.

Heedless of her upchuck, she reached for the dull grey sliver even as her vision stabilised.

“ What is this?” she rasped, asking no one in particular. What was amazing was her throat did not feel raw at all. There was no blood accompanying the scraping sensation of the metallic object as it was ejected from her mouth. 

However, there was a feeling of wrongness about it. She was sure that it should not not have been coming out of her body. Morbid curiosity  made her want to see and so gritting her teeth, she prodded her  newfound ability  even further.

She braced for more visual assault but this time, it did not come. As she turned her attention to the object, she recoiled as a familiar pane popped into her vision. 

『 [Qirin Soc] — U̵̫͔͙̕͝͝n̸̨̖̊̊͂d̴̖͕̼̈́͐̈́ḙ̷̮̼͑̏f̷̡̜̊̉̑̓i̵͉̯͍̜͑̂͝n̵̦͖̼̄̅̾ȃ̵̺́̄b̴̫̎̔ĺ̸̖̌̎͗é̵̛̟

System On a Chip Motherboard.

—U̵̫͔͙̕͝͝n̸̨̖̊̊͂d̴̖͕̼̈́͐̈́ḙ̷̮̼͑̏f̷̡̜̊̉̑̓i̵͉̯͍̜͑̂͝n̵̦͖̼̄̅̾ȃ̵̺́̄b̴̫̎̔ĺ̸̖̌̎͗é̵̛̟』

“Motherboard,” she mouthed the word as she waved a hand in front of her eyes. It seemed that the script’s perception was only extrasensory. Blinking her eyes didn’t banish it until she willed it away and then curious, she recalled it.

Naturally, she was frustrated  about the glitched script. She had a hunch that there was more to it than met the eye. Staring at the obfuscated script made her head hurt as though it was several sizes too small. 

With a stubborn will and a naivety that belied her current circumstance, she prodded and pushed  in spite of a blooming migraine that went on the longer she stared at the eldritch text. 

The pane wobbled as the script fuzzed. She thought that something was going her way but her premature elation was answered by a sudden spike of pain as the ethereal display decohered.  The agony like a pike was being driven through her brain and presence she had forgotten about manifested, pressing against the walls of her psyche as she gasped.

[Numen Protocol]!  

You are reading story Eryth: Strange Skies at novel35.com

[Parsing…]

[Parse… Success!]

[Gestalt Conduit….Success!]

The pressure of something pressing against her skull mounted, she cried out in shock as a deluge of impressions hit her mind, sending her prone.

 Foreign glimpses of memories, faces, places flitted through her consciousness at the speed of thought as her eyes fluttered as though in REM sleep. They overwhelmed her mind, driving her back to curling in on herself as she wailed. An excruciating spike of pain made her claw at her head.

“No no no, make it stop, make it stop!” she screamed

Things, experiences and perceptions from eyes that were not her own continued slipping past her mental defences.  She saw hapless daredevils and their last expressions of shock as  atomized into dust  with what she knew to be a [Disintegrate Ray] leaving empty armour and magical artefacts behind. 

 25 years of morbid scenes, of people both large and small turned into ash curved into her brain as she watched lucid but too paralyzed to do a thing. And when she thought  it was over. Another man made their appearance and the flavour of the memory changed.

Still images, moving visuals, conversations, music… and one face that kept repeating in her mind, then came a name.  She was too traumatised to  regard the person and her first  instinct was to cry out for a father whose face she could not remember no matter what.

“Tou-san? I'm scared…where are you? ” she wailed as the last of his impressions roiled through her psyche. Unawares, ripples of psychic energy bled over from her mind, spreading out all around her. They hit objects and walls—still she kept mumbling.

“ Where are you?!” her voice trailed off into the aether . She clung onto vestiges of her sanity as one face that kept replaying over and over in her mind. Her intent was made manifest,  instigating a psychic cascade of effects. Then she blacked out. But her cry echoed long after—

---

Meanwhile, in the skies above the Aldmoor, a vessel glided by in a Cloak of Obsfuscation. There was a trick to it, of layering it subtly such that scrying spells were only refracted, not reflected. Scrying worked by bouncing off psychic energy in the thaumosphere and reflecting back what was seen. 

Psychic pulses not only detected what was in the way but with the right class like [Scrying Mage] or the right artefact, one could decipher the impression of something. Blocking psychic pulses  only served to tell the other end that there was something in the way which meant more attention on one’s location, and then someone would be sent, or a few ballistas, swivel bows  and artillery lances would be pointed their way.

 Aldmoor did not lack for them, a fact that the [Skipper] of the Tempestnaut knew too well as they watched over the revelling town pass them by. They were coasting on windsails  and a Cloak of Obfuscation alone.  The Aer mana in the aerofloats was also too close in concentration to the ambient mana for all but the sharpest Scrying Mages to find them.  

For that reason, the sloop was also lighter and operating on a skeleton crew, taxing their Skills to the utmost. The chromastones were thankfully unneeded as the moon was in full view that night. The only things running hot were the steam cauldrons ready to power steamvanes and  steam cannons at a moment’s notice.

 It was well worth the fat pouch of gold he’d be seeing after this jaunt. Half was already paid upfront and funded by a mysterious patron who knew of his special talents. The rest would come after their objective was achieved.  Registering three new presences on their  sloop, the [Skipper] turned their  eyes to the faring stone, one half of the translocation array for the orbs of teleport that the three new entrants were now toting.

‘Can’t do much about that disturbance in the mana,’ they clucked under their breath.

“ Hail and well met my dear abetters in arms,”  they saluted with a wave of their feathered wide brimmed hat. “[Helm]! The wheel if you will ”  they  prompted to their second.

“ Oh no, here they come lads,” the [Helm] bellowed to his fellows.

“ Ah, I simply am wound,” the [Skipper] said in mock outrage. 

“ So unwind I shall!” he swirled his cape with a flourish.

The three entrants looked askance in confusion as the seven or so sailors atop decks each plugged their ears with wads of cloth.  Then [Skipper]  was swinging out their lute, plucking the strings as they walked down from the helm-house, in a pitching falsetto.  

Their velvet half cape fluttered in the wind, a rapier glinted by the side of their poofy trouser, and pointed calf length boots made from  bauchraptor skin beat a staccato on wooden heels that would have belonged to riding shoes.

“ Tis’ a gay night my breth’n,”

They strung the first note.

“Fate’s hand hath make’n,”

And another,

“ To treasure’s trove we treadeth

And then away we wendeth

Faerie’s  winds our ‘purchase.

So, hearken, glance~

mine audience…”

They paused, and then hit the couplet of their metrical line with a grin.

“For Felnought’s the ‘quaintance,”

They ended their composition with a flourish.

“ What in the Nethers was that?” Scar gawked, picking at his ear as though they were ringing.

“ Aye, yer give bards a bad name,” Whisper said, cancelling the [Muffle] skill he’d cast on himself. The other third of their group had already retreated somewhere on the ship. He’d never be found or his name was not Shadow.

“ [Troubadour] not Bard my dear boor.  My my, such dour fellows, “ Felnought mock gasped as he cupped his cheek. “ But trouble loves such a company hmm?. Hasn’t it truly been a buoyant night. Meeting other Names out here is truly fortuitous.”

“ Wait, you’re Trouble Nought the Troubadour?,” Scar remarked in realisation. “ The [Swift Skipper] and [Bard] who attracts as much trouble as they can escape from it?” 

“ Ah,” Felnought’s face and voice fell as they slung the lute over their  shoulder. “ The name hounds me for yet another decade. Alas, I fear It shan’t let my shame rest till the worms turn in my grave.”

“ Shall we get a move on? I thought you’d be ready to leave when we sent the [Cipher] spell,” Whisper grumbled fiddling with a small magical item. Something clicked, a wound chroniker counting down the heartbeats.

“ Ah, why didn’t you say so? Then away we shall my laddies. [Helm] ease her nice and slow,  forty and five moments astern.  the wind be fickle like Fate’s Madame. We shall be atop our quarry in a few pars.”

“ Aye Aye  [Skipper] Ser !” the [Helm] called out, a bit too enthusiastic on the latter half. Felnought suppressed a wince.   Scar was suddenly interested in the finery the crew and the Troubadour-Skipper were wearing. Ostentatious seemed to fit them to a tee; you could not tell them apart from a travelling theatre anywhere if you met them.

They all had the same two colours under a similar leather jerkin; a red stripped tunic and black trousers. A kerchief with a black and red side was also either wrapped around the head or the neck with one side facing out. Only the [Skipper] seemed to stand out  because of his get up and well oiled side whiskers―and the bauchraptor leather boots. Those must have cost a fortune.

“ An eye for the finer stuff perchance?” Felnought asked. They  showed off the Primroc feather on their hat. It was  iridescent metallic blue at the shaft that gave away to vermillion bleeding through the vane like a flame.

Scar gave the effeminate  man. Or was it a muscular maiden? Awry look. To his face, it might as well have been a grimace.  Felnought had style and flourishz he’d give them that.

 But even he could tell such finery would be wasted on him. He decided to shift the conversation towards something he was familiar with as the ticking of the chroniker continued in the background.

“ 30 heartbeats left,” Whisper said. “ Best be coming on that manor now.”

“ Aye laddies, load the steam cannons. Remember, we only have five shots, three if we get lucky and then the rest of the gold is ours. Tenebrinth cannon balls ain't cheap yer know,”

“Hoh? Did I hear our  Skipper is a miser; what shall we do with an impostor ye lads?” someone shouted jokingly.

“ Who’s th’ bellydragger that said that? I’ll gut yer where yer stand coward. Real men say that to my face!” the [Skipper] said drawing his rapier. But it was all in jest as the crew got to working.  The steam cannons picked from the task were two from an armament of sixteen plus the two swivelbow that fired harpoons. 

The munitions  were cast from tenebrinth, shield breakers.  The material could dispel a ship’s cloak of aegis  and punch through hulls if put on a sharper missile like witchbane arrows for example.

The munitions ridiculously expensive, about a hundred crowns a piece on the lower end; and  then you had to find them at auctions because only a particularly anonymous dwarven [Weaponsmith] could craft them. They were hard to find as a result but they were even harder to  transport because of their tendency to unravel nearby enchantments and magic.

 The only thing that could fire them were steam cannons—alchemical and arcane carronades were out of the question. Mind you, what they were doing had been done by others before but every time, a [ Disintegrate Ray] would make short work of targets before they got closer. Or the wards would just deflect the cannon balls by behaving in anomalous ways.

 So many were the failures that Aldmoor had outright banned aerships from having a go at the manor. Then again, it was justified.  Tenebrith cannon balls had a tendency to disintegrate as their materials had the hardness of obsidian. Tenebrinth shrapnel littering a battlefield fouled the mana making it so magic would never work.

“ Twenty heartbeats left!” Whisper said, keeping well clear of the cannon balls. He needed the chroniker to send out a psychic pulse that would trigger the pyromite after all.  If it worked, he considered getting some of those things for himself as they made his job easier. 

“ So a [Breaker], a [Bruiser], a Troublesome Bard and a [Butcher] walk into a manor. What tale shall be told I wonder.”  

Whisper had to pause and goggle at his friend to make sure he hadn’t been swapped for someone else, or some thrall worm hadn't infected him. Felnought choked a giggle that came out as a hissing laugh like a boiling kettle.

“ What?” Scar glared.

“ I see, tis not the appearance of the barrel hat matters, but what is contained within,”  Felnought said strutting across the deck. Their heels clicked, tap, tap, each sound equidistant. Then they stood in the middle of the foredeck right behind the two Cannoneers and raised their rapier in salute; like a conductor’s baton holding  a refrain.

“  Twelve heartbeats ―” the cloud cover broke. The Cornierva manor appeared , wards shimmering like a gossamer soap bubble. Felnought looked to their silent companion who’d come down from the crows nest without so much as a sound. The fourth member of the impromptu quartet of Names signed in handspeak. 

Felnought nodded and called almost in a whisper, “ Canoneers, [Unerring Aim], thirty moments to port, sixty rising pitch.”

  The Cannoneers swivelled their armaments accordingly.

“  Seven, six, five, four,”  Whisper called out. Felnought slowly lowered their rapier.

“ Three, two, one,”

There was a loud report as the cannons fired in unison. The shieldbreakers streaked through the night, homing in on the area of the wards that was not perfect. In all respects, it remained at par with some wards in high tier Sepulchre type dungeons, but for all that, it never really reached the pinnacle of Antecian magitech. 

On the other hand, Shadow was a [Rune Breaker], a type hybrid of Mage and Rogue who specialised in intercepting and breaking [Cipher] spells, wards and shields. He had been studying the manor for a long time and it just so happened, something strange changed the recasting rate of the wards over the manor. 

It was intensive mana use which of course he had no idea of. Regardless, the reason for the weakening panes in the wards was inconsequential. What mattered is that, as explosions rocked Aldmoor’s Sojourners Quarter, the wards broke like fragile glass and never went up again.

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