Broken Lands

Dav groaned. “That was unpleasant.”

“Do you need anything?” Sophia wasn’t sure what to offer. She just didn’t know enough.

Dav shook his head. “I’m sore, but it’s not physical. It’s not really a headache either, I’m not sure how to describe it.”

“Aah.” Sophia had a guess about what Dav was feeling. “Yeah, that’s never fun. If you try to reach out and use your aura, does it feel better or worse?”

Dav frowned at Sophia for a moment, then winced. “Both. It was better for a moment, then it felt almost like I’d hurt something. Now it’s back to the same, more or less.”

Sophia nodded. That confirmed it. “Aural strain. Not much to be done about it; there aren’t many that can heal it, which makes it a good thing that it doesn’t happen often. Time is all I can offer; I can barely use my aura, I’m not skilled enough to heal with it.”

“Figures.” Dav gave a long sigh. “Story of my life, really, everything takes work and work means pain. As long as this only lasts a few days, it’s not too bad.”

Dav didn’t ask if a healing beacon would help or not; he’d probably already figured out that Sophia didn’t know. He simply summoned one. This one looked more like some sort of weird green flower than the towers that had appeared before.

Sophia didn’t expect it to help, but she also didn’t think it would hurt.

“I should have waited until we were in our room.” Dav scolded himself, then picked up the flower. “I’m going to go see what I can do with the armor now. Would you like to join me?”

Sophia wasn’t about to say no.

The first thing Dav tried was to see if he could dismiss the armor. He couldn’t; in fact, he needed Sophia’s help to undo the hidden buckles and straps to take it off. As she did, she noticed that while the black material at the joints looked like cloth, it didn’t move like cloth. It was surprisingly heavy, almost like there was something inside the cloth. All she could say for certain was that it wasn’t chainmail; it didn’t have the characteristic repetitive bumpiness.

The cloth, whatever it was, ran under all of the armor, almost like a second layer of armor. Once the outer plates were off, Sophia took a moment to admire how clearly it showed Dav’s musculature before she helped him remove it. “That looks like it’s going to be really warm. Does it breathe at all?”

“Armor is always warm,” Dav agreed with a frown. “This seemed less uncomfortable than most. It was probably just the relief of not having the stone plating.”

Removing the black cloth was a matter of peeling it off Dav. Sophia was pretty sure that getting into it wouldn’t be easy; it would be hard to get the cloth to lie flat enough for the remarkably close-fitting and actually clearly fitted armor plates.

Once it was all off, Dav stared at the pile. “I’m not sure I want to go through that again immediately if the armor’s quick donning does actually work.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Sophia countered. “The inner layer was a bit tight, but the rest was pretty normal. I’m more worried about getting it right when putting it on.”

“Mmh.” Dav didn’t sound thrilled at the thought. “Yeah, that will be worse, won’t it? I wonder … oh, hey. It’s on the main Status page now.”

Dav

Summons:

Unaffiliated Abilities:

Chaos-Warped Human

(Bastion of Health, 1, 1)

Innate Communication (Bonus, Free)

(Eye Image)

(Eye Image)

Body: 8

Attunements:

Species Abilities:

Core: 2

Contraceptive Amulet, 3

(Bonded Armor, 1, 1)

Shield: 10

Eldritch Armor, 7 (Growth)

Eldritch Summoner Abilities:

Level: 1

(Eldritch Reinforcement, 1, 1)

Wisps: 1

Perfect Fit: Dav

Rapid Assembly

Spheres

Eldritch Summoner (Hallow)

Level:1

Sophia glanced over Dav’s page. Perfect Fit seemed like it replaced the size-changing enchantment; Rapid Assembly had to be the way it was donned quickly. If there were any other enchantments on the armor, they weren’t shown. There might well be, since it sounded like that was what “Growth” really meant.

She hadn’t checked her Status yet, but what she saw on Dav’s told her that she probably also had a new Attunements section. Hers would only have the Contraceptive Amulet. She felt a little envious, but at the same time there was really no reason to envy Dav. Her armor also fit her well and while it didn’t have the Rapid Assembly feature, it wasn’t that hard to put on. It did have an upkeep enchantment to handle minor repairs, while Dav’s didn’t, and it didn’t require “attunement.” Her armor was probably better than his, at least at the moment.

Her eyes wandered over to the right of the screen. “It looks like keeping your Species slot open paid off for you.”

“It did?” Dav clearly hadn’t noticed. “Bonded Armor. Huh. It says that the process of forcibly bonding with the armor has permanently connected it to me, like a Summons, and that all of its magical ability now draws from my mana. It also says that continued use and empowerment may awaken or create additional abilities. That sounds good, I think.”

“It does,” Sophia agreed. She suspected that Dav wouldn’t get to pick the abilities. “You know, I bet Perfect Fit is why we had to peel you out of the armor and Rapid Assembly probably means you can put it on automatically. I bet it’ll take mana, though.”

“Yeah. I feel like I should test that, but it can wait until morning. What can’t wait until morning is getting a cloak or something to hide the armor.” Dav shifted the armor so that it wasn’t on his sleeping bag anymore, then brushed his loose shirt, as if he expected it to be badly out of place after removing the armor. There were a few wrinkles, but that was all. The wrinkles mostly weren’t new.

“A cloak?” Sophia glanced at the armor then back at Dav. “I don’t think it looks so expensive that you’d need to hide it to prevent people from trying to steal it off your back or something. It just looks like it’s enameled.”

Dav chuckled. “That’s not the problem. The problem is that it makes me look like I want to eat babies or send undead to ravage a city or something.”

“I’ve never seen a necromancer wear anything like that,” Sophia countered seriously. “Most prefer ordinary clothing, robes, or bone armor. I admit I don’t get the bone armor; even with their magic supporting it, it’s usually not as good as enchanted armor and it weighs more.”

Dav chuckled, then seemed to realize she was serious. “Wait, you’ve actually met necromancers?”

“Yeah.” What was so surprising about that? “You just have to know where to go; they tend to congregate, just like any other type of mage. The best place to learn is from other people who do the same thing, after all. Necromancers and death mages often gather in places just for themselves, since a lot of people really don’t like the idea, but in places where they’re accepted you can meet them anywhere. Having someone around who can ask the dead questions can be very useful, too.”

Dav didn’t seem to know how to respond to that; he stared at Sophia and blinked a couple of times before he came up with anything. “Huh. Well, okay. I still don’t want people to think I’m something evil when I’m not.”

“Necromancers aren’t evil. I mean, some are, but not all.” Sophia glanced over at the armor. “And anyway, the armor doesn’t make you look evil. It’s way too shiny.”

Dav burst out laughing. “I can’t tell if you meant that or not, but I don’t think shininess rules how evil something looks.”

Sophia hadn’t been entirely serious. She grinned at Dav. “Neither does purple, but if you want a cloak to cover it, we should find Arryn before dinner.”

The next two days passed all too quickly. Sophia enjoyed her time with Dav, both in bed and out. He seemed to do the same. In a way, it was sort of like a honeymoon; they didn’t have anything they had to do, so they were able to spend as much time doing what they wanted to do as they chose to.

They still held their daily sparring and practice sessions. Both of them enjoyed the competition; just as importantly, both of them knew that keeping their skills sharp and even learning new ones was going to be important. This wasn’t a world where they could sit back and be taken care of; they had to earn their way and with their skill sets, that meant fighting.

Not that either of them minded. Fighting monsters was fun. It wasn’t for everyone or even most people, but both Sophia and Dav were clearly in the group of insane people known as delvers. Sophia, at least, was looking forward to getting somewhere that they could do more of it; this area was pretty sparse. There would be more if they went towards the destroyed city center, but Sophia believed Aymini when she said it was too dangerous there.

Revina, on the other hand, was clearly not cut out of the same cloth as Sophia and Dav. While she showed up for one of the spars early on, she quit early in the session. She also seemed to have no interest in Sophia’s lessons on aura control, even though Sophia made certain to tell her that they would help when it came time to learn Sophia’s spellcasting style. It wasn’t something Vramt did, so Revina didn’t think it was important for her Vocation.

On the fourth day after Arryn arrived at Fallen Kestii, all four of them left. It should have been quick, but all of Fallen Kestii seemed to turn out to see Revina off. There were people Sophia hadn’t even known existed in the crowd; they all seemed to know Revina and she seemed to know them. For the moment, at least, Revina was everyone’s child, headed off to the big city.

Arryn seemed to have expected it. He’d announced they were leaving but hadn’t harnessed Peaches to the wagon; instead, Peaches was still asleep. Sophia figured there was a good chance that Peaches was shamming, but she wasn’t about to disturb him to find out. He was going to be pulling the wagon; there was no reason not to let him have as much sleep as he could manage.

Aymini and Vramt spent the entire time near their daughter. Sophia was convinced that Aymini saw Revina that way, even if she’d never say it; she hovered just like Sophia’s mother had when she went off to college. The fact that she could easily come home whenever she wanted didn’t seem to change that at all.

They finally left more than an hour after the announced departure time, but Arryn seemed pleased anyway. Sophia waited until they were out of hearing distance of the collection of buildings known as Fallen Kestii before she turned to Arryn where he sat on the wagon. “You expected that, didn’t you?”

“Expected that?” Arryn thought for a moment, then nodded. “Oh, the long goodbye? Yeah. Aymini is essentially the leader of Fallen Kestii, so of course a lot of people turned out to say goodbye when Revina left. We’re actually on the road a little earlier than I expected.”

“She isn’t the leader,” Revina objected. “There isn’t a leader. Everyone just does what has to be done.”

“That’ll never happen,” Dav objected. “There’s never been a society as large as Fallen Kestii where everyone just does what needs to be done. That doesn’t mean there’s always a formal leader, but there’s always someone people look towards. Sometimes that’s a handful of elders that know what happened in the past, but they’re still leaders. Aymini doesn’t make all the decisions, but she’s the one people turn to when there’s a dispute.”

“She also tries to plan things out,” Sophia added. “Even when maybe she shouldn’t.” Sophia still resented the way Aymini shoved Revina at her and Dav. A gentler approach would still almost certainly have gotten them to agree. If anything, Sophia thought that the way Aymini had approached the situation had made them less likely to help Revina instead of more likely.

“She was the person who created Fallen Kestii,” Arryn said as if it were the final word on the topic. “Yes, a lot of others helped, but it was her idea and her enthusiasm that got it started in the first place. It’s good that people look to her.”