Book 5: Chapter 19 — Flame Daughter |
Aurelia’s soul was a garden. A beautiful sprawling thing surrounded by a simple stone wall. Sunlight always shone from above and the heat of her inner fire nurtured everything in its reach.
She was regularly surprised by how people reacted to her description of her inner world. She thought that she gave off a pretty stable impression of the sort of person she was—calm on the surface, with an endless furnace of rage constantly boiling underneath. But for some reason, people seemed to expect that she was either a fully enraged monster of destruction and fire, or the calm little support caster who couldn’t quite bring herself to hurt anyone.
The reality was, her inner world was as much of a contradiction as Aurelia herself.
The hillside where Aurelia had trained with her father and her inner world bore more than a passing resemblance. The real meadow had contained a pond and several ducks, while in her inner world the pond was made of lava, but that did nothing to disturb the sense of calm and peace that suffused the entire meadow.
Aurelia breathed deep and looked out across the sunlit grasses, reveling in the vibrance and life on display. Her inner world was always a little bit different, just as nature itself was, and today the flowers were large and golden. The grasses were low and thick, providing a beautiful backdrop to the more vibrant, flute-like vines that wrapped around the handful of stumps scattered throughout the meadow.
The ducks had been replaced this time with a cluster of miniature wyverns, several of which came up to her feet and squeaked at her as if begging for crumbs. They reminded her of her beloved bondmate, Vyxirax, who had been left behind when they departed Drakonias.
One of the tiny creatures was particularly forward and, as Aurelia walked slowly through the meadow, followed at her heel with the insistence of something that would not take no for an answer.
She knew how this worked. Each of the stumps was a rejected path, any of which she could forcefully revive if she chose. But if she went far enough, that was where she would find the new options. Indeed, the farther she walked, the thinner the grasses and flowers became, until she reached a flat section where only a handful of seedlings grew. She took her time wandering among them, letting her hand brush across each of their slender trunks.
The first several were simple upgrades of her existing paths, the standard advancement options that could be found in any path manual. Berserker Monk would escalate into a variety of options related to channelling her inner rage, Flametouched could become any number of elemental warrior archetypes based around fire.
As tempting as it would be to choose a reliable, known, trusted route to advance along, Aurelia’s heart had been set a long time ago. She’d already taken enough detours along the way. She turned back from the new saplings and back to the heart of her inner world.
Her initial path stood in the center of the glade, Berserker Monk, stronger and taller than those around it, but still malleable enough to sway in the breeze. Its branches vaguely resembled fists, all pointing out in every direction, draped with willowy trails of leaves.
Her second path, Flametouched, grew beside it in the least organic tree in the place, looking more like a carved stalagmite veined with magma trying to pretend to be a tree rather than anything organic.
She had been trying to figure out how to coax the two into growing together—how to properly fuse them—but only after months of research into horticulture did she gain any real sense of how grafting might work. And something told her that the process would be very different inside her soul.
Aurelia was done letting her paths continue on their own, however. Each of the new options she disregarded in favor of the path fusion she had been chasing for as long as she could remember.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, as she stepped up to the pair of trees and pressed a hand against the trunks. To truly fuse them into one another would require more force than she was used to exerting in this place, but B-Rank was already higher than she’d ever have expected to reach at so young an age. She couldn’t keep waiting. Now or never.
She melted away the bark, leaving each of her paths bare and vulnerable. She felt the tremors through herself as she did so, the representative actions more drastic than anything she’d undertaken before.
She forced the trunks together, bound them tightly to one another with their own flexible branches as ties. Once the base was immutably bound, she continued up the trunks from the bottom, twisting the trunks around each other, bare wood to bare wood and then tying them in place.
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The process felt endless, each step a complex strain, but she fell into a sort of meditation as she continued. By fusing two paths, she was forfeiting half her unlocked abilities. Part of the process was choosing which branches to strengthen and which to use as material for ensuring the overall strength of the fusion.
There was nothing active or conscious about the process, no words appearing as others had spoken of, only the feeling of unsettledness that slowly coalesced back into a feeling of herself.
Then she finished, and the sudden gaping emptiness in her core bore witness to the fusion’s success. Two paths become one, leaving her with an empty slot to fill.
The wyvern on her head chirped demandingly, then when she looked up in surprise, it flapped over to one of the smallest saplings and landed on it with a vaguely smug pose.
“Someone’s got an opinion, I see.” Aurelia laughed at the little creature, but left it to its antics for now. She still had another upgrade to finish before she chose her new replacement path.
Cinderborn was represented by a young ash tree. Several branches bore clusters of pale buds, ready to burst into flower at any moment. Aurelia stepped up to the tree, first placed her hand and forehead against its central trunk in appreciation, then started testing each of the options.
Fire and empowerment lingered at the heart of Cinderborn regardless of the direction she took it, but the embodiment looked very different.
Images flickered in her mind as she lingered over each budding branch, a dream of what she could become. One focused on the application of heat for mobility, a song of molten wind that lifted her through the skies and cut apart incoming attacks. Another blended earth into her repertoire, melting and molding it into weapons, obstacles, and golems. A third turned her fire green and caustic, able to corrode even non-flammable items with impunity.
But it was the last that called to her, that felt right as soon as she touched it.
Her fused class already dealt with firepower and pure attack strength, so her other paths didn’t need to duplicate the same effects. They should build on its strengths with stacking synergies or cover its weaknesses in other areas.
This one was high utility, with a combination of mobility, debuff, and aura effects that should complement her newest path nicely.
“Alright,” she said, turning to the still-chirping miniature wyvern from atop the new-path sapling it’d chosen. “Let’s see what you’re so excited about.”
—
Noah’s body stopped struggling and fell still. The only thing he did was activate Wyrm’s Feast each time the Phasecoil Venom ticked up another level to negate the toxin, since that one would actually kill him if he left it unattended.
Metamorphosis time remaining: 44 seconds.
His debuffs were locked in at rank 20—apparently they wouldn’t increase any farther, only perpetually refresh to that level. Though that was pretty sad as far as silver linings went.
"Well done, Vera," Korgan said, dismounting from his mantis. He walked toward Noah with casual confidence, drawing a blade that crackled with captured lightning. “Let him talk.”
Vera nodded and gave a soft hiss of command. Her snake loosened its hold on Noah, releasing him from its bite. It relaxed until he was only held within its coils from the neck down, freeing his face.
Korgan raised his blade to point at Noah."Now. Empty your storage and I'll let you live. Your girlfriend too. We're not monsters, just practical. You’ve had your fun, proved you’re not a pushover. You fight well for a B-ranker. Better than most A-ranks, honestly. But this was always going to end one way."
Noah didn’t move. For once, the paralysis debuff was working to his advantage, forcing his body to reveal no sign of concern or hint of anger. His shallow automatic breathing was all the response Korgan received.
“His resistances are pathetic,” Vera told her boss. “He’ll be like that for hours.”
“Can’t you negate it? How’s he supposed to cooperate if he can’t even move?”
Vera scoffed. “You saw how he is. You let him up and he’ll be at your throat in three seconds.”
So much for that plan. He’d fought too hard for them to underestimate him again.
“You planning to go get Rodden, then?” Korgan demanded, clearly unhappy with his second-in-command. “How do you expect us to interrogate him like this?”
Vera chuckled and shook her head. “You’re thinking about this all wrong. He’s not going to break whatever we do to him.”
They were distracted by their argument, not paying attention to him as much as they should.
Behind him, in the chamber, golden light still pulsed. Aurelia was still advancing. Still vulnerable. Still trusting him to protect her.
He couldn't give up. Even if it meant—
The warmth intensified, peaked, and then light exploded from the chamber. Golden-white radiance poured through the doorway, so bright that even Noah's Dragon's Eyes had to adjust. Heatless illumination, pure and absolute, drove shadows from every corner of the tunnel.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the light faded.
Silence.
Then Aurelia stepped out of the inner chamber, gauntlets and armbands lit up in a white-hot glow. Her hair had turned several shades paler, the brown threaded through with strands of yellow that glinted like sunlight even in deep shadow.
Aurelia Fauster
Sunlight Warrior (Legendary) - Level 301
Emberheart Huntress (Epic) - Level 301
Wyrmblood Neophyte (Rare) - Level 18
Health: 100%
Mana: 100%