Icarus Awakens

The raw killing power of the greater skink was noticeably fading. Despite losing the majority of its blood, enough in fact to interrupt circulation, it was able to continue. Survivability became less strictly bound by biology at this level, even in beasts who played by the normal rules. Still, the skink was going to die. It was merely a question of what harm it could do before it did.

Hunter had evaded it every time it caught up. Anything less than a perfect dodge would invite death, but the skink was having trouble anticipating the combination of powers. It was unable to adapt as quickly to what its instincts told it was something out of the ordinary. That edge would only last as long as Hunter’s mana did. The skink had been mindful of Tak and had forced Hunter away, delaying his assistance. By the same token, it had discounted Evalyn and Khare. They’d both been keeping to a safe distance until Evalyn had decided it was time for a change in pace.

As Daniel had stopped trying to reach the melee, there were only two on approach. A beast, and a beauty. Tak had fully transformed, losing his mind but not himself in the process. The slopes of the dunes were nothing to his outstretched talons. Though his form abandoned aspects of the ringcat his totem let him borrow, he was no less suited to tearing through the countryside.

From his left, Evalyn danced. There was no other word for it as the movements themselves were timed to a song only she could and did hear. Her current ultimate expression of power took the wide reach of her normal abilities and focused them to a razor point. The movement was not of grace but passion to Tak’s fury, purpose to his rampage. Her face bore the look of concentration as if she was directing her own orchestra.

Daniel would have yelled out for her to stop if the sight wasn’t so breathtaking. He was convinced, utterly, that she knew what she was doing. How many teleports do you have left? he asked Hunter as the giant lizard approached once more. You’ve got more help coming.

One. He is different.

Focus on yourself!

Like before.

What? But you- Daniel shook his head. How many times have you seen this?

Once.

Daniel judged the distances, lacking in preciseness but gaining from Quick Mind. The relative factors balanced and gave him a maybe. It’ll have to do. Could you try using Cross Strike towards Tak instead?

No. It will not work. Daniel didn’t question the surety in Hunter’s thoughts having found a new appreciation for the intrinsic sense others had of their powers. Something he was improving upon, but hadn’t reached proficiency with.

Dodge or Jump? Your call.

Both.

What?

Use both.

I can’t use two at once. Oh, wait. Oh! Daniel made his thoughts private for a moment to remark on how even Hunter could outsmart him sometimes before returning to the link. I’ll get you closer to Tak since it looks like Evalyn would reach you first. Daniel checked his reserve and found it healthier, though only slightly. Viewing through Hunter and taking him over had additive mana costs that had eaten into it.

This time, he’d be using more than normal. Hunter wanted him to Dodge Roll first, step out, and then Jump during Flash Jaunt. With unlimited mana, Hunter could escape the skink entirely as they chained the various evasive powers. The reason they hadn’t done that yet was the same reason Hunter hadn’t just Flash Jaunted back to the village they were staying in. However, if this was the last time Hunter could use the ability, it was important to get the most distance out of it they could.

There wasn’t any indication that he was in an alien body when he took over Hunter, discounting the obvious. When Hunter borrowed his body there was a skin-tight suit feel to the other presence which was absent for him on the other side. He was just a panting, four-legged beast in heavy armor. Will I ever get used to this? Daniel idly thought, before forcibly triggering his Dodge Roll.

The vertigo from switching back to his body lasted only a moment. In the rough sitting position he’d planted himself in to not fall over when otherwise occupied, Daniel witnessed the last blurring of Hunter’s form as the skink tried to pounce on him. Growing used to the abilities, it was keeping its main mass over the illusion in anticipation of when Hunter would reemerge. Daniel steeled himself and crossed back over.

Technically, Hunter didn’t exist in this moment as he was displaced from the real world. Daniel could still reach out to him and inhabit the body, though it felt like whenever he used Moment of Clarity with an additive blindness. Though it didn’t make sense at the moment, he was able to trigger Jump and alter Hunter’s trajectory before leaving his body. That caught the beast off-guard, granting Hunter another momentary reprieve.

At that point, Tak and Evalyn finally met with the threat. Strong but for the life fading from it, the beast had not fully grasped the nature of those approaching. Evalyn would have drawn no second glances if you ignored her beauty. For Tak, the skink paused in consternation. Another? In its pain and ebbing consciousness, the skink did not know what to make of thing of talons and feathers approaching murderously. That was enough to distract it.

Should I help? Hunter asked Daniel after he landed a good way away, panting from the effort of staying alive.

Daniel inspected the battle quickly, noting that the red aura of the monster was beginning to fade while Gadriel’s green moved as a ribbon around it. No, I think they’re going to get it and we’re both running low on mana. Man, this is a lot of work just to kill one monster.

…

Evalyn had briefly seen Tak’s new form during the fight at the lake. After fully exiting Khare she’d found the avianoid shrunken back to his normal form. Strangely, his clothes and armor still fit perfectly despite the change. A quirk of the magic?

That aside, witnessing this version of him fight was something else entirely. Tak leaped the last of the distance to land on the monster’s neck, burrowing his beak savagely into its side. A massive arm came up to swipe him off, only to be deflected once more by Gadriel. Not to be outdone, another slashed out and there was nothing to stop it.

Her heart stopped for a moment, the effect of her ability nullified, when she saw a gash halfway through Tak’s abdomen open up as he fell away. To have not been torn in half entirely was a surprise that was overshadowed by his refusal to die. As Tak picked himself back, the wound he’d taken was already closing. Regeneration didn’t work that quickly at his level, did it?

The next step jolted her, forcing both her and her heart back into rhythm. It was the blessing and the curse of this power. Evalyn currently embodied her music, having taken it into herself. Normally, this ability was less potent as Bards were perpetually less affected by their songs than others. Practice made perfect, but practice also made dull. Daniel’s phone offered a treasure of music she didn’t have to compose, only mimic, and that gave her a reservoir of material to pull out. She reserved a few songs he’d shared for her personal use, for a time just like this.

The song that played in her head had lyrics and instruments she didn’t understand, this coming from what Daniel called the metal genre of his world’s music. That didn’t matter, what mattered was she could feel the emotion within it driving her forward. Strides in sync with the beat, and attacks as well. Against an enemy this large, she couldn’t miss.

Heeding the lessons of the Thormundz well, Evalyn targeted the head. Any monster that had something reminiscent of biology had a weakness there. With Gadriel practically shredding the exterior of the monster, there wasn’t anywhere else she could do more damage. She’d only get one Songbolt too, as it would interrupt her active ability. Other than that, she just had a dagger.

The monster was stationary now that it had nothing to chase, focusing its attacks on Tak who took and ignored them for the most part. To Evalyn, everything flowed with the beat. Time wasn’t altered in any way, just her perception of it. This offered clarity and simplicity in the way transitioning from a real-time to a turn-based world would, but this was also the main weakness of the ability. Anything faster than her tempo could strike in the blink between beats. Neither could she choose music that was too fast, or her mind couldn’t keep up with it. Gadriel was an example, defying the pace of the song as he flitted across the monster.

Weakened and bloodless, the skink could not offer such speed. It twisted a limb out to her as an afterthought which she dodged, easily slipping her golden dagger across its flesh as she did. Each beat offered a moment for her to prepare, but only a moment. She made to run up one of the limbs supporting the creature’s weight, dodging and slashing as she ran, only to be thrown off. Something grabbed her on the way down and maneuvered her to land on her feet. The natural antipathy between Heroes and Bards wasn’t at play now.

She saw then that Tak was boring into another patch of flesh while bearing wounds that would have incapacitated her. Evalyn hesitated for a beat. Should I keep fighting if Gadriel and Tak have this? No. That was not the way of a hunter. That was not her way, not when death was only a possibility instead of a certainty.

She could not Jump like Tak could, nor move with defiance of gravity like Gadriel. Evalyn had to do things the hard way and, after failing the first time, the smart way. Her temporal viewpoint allowed her to do more than dodge. The perspective, she realized, helped discern patterns in her enemy. Only if they were simplistic and brought to the point of responding to a similarly limited opponent, as was the case with the skink and Tak. Roughly every tenth stanza, or forty beats, the skink would strike at Tak with the front two legs on whichever side the avianoid was on. That gave her enough time for what she needed to do, so long as she knew which side he was on.

Some amount of survival instinct must have returned to Tak at this point, as he leaped off the skink rather than come under threat of the second set of claws that rushed towards him. Blood trailed from various wounds that cut too deep, yet the avianoid kept going. This level of survivability was absurd. Only a Berserker could hope to come close to it with their trances. Sure, the two classes had come from the same root, but people said the same thing about Bards and Heroes.

There! Tak leaped once more onto the face, tearing up the flesh with his claws in a dash toward one of the skink’s eyes. That left Evalyn with a problem. Tak was on the front part of the face, the gentle slope that led from the flat nostril to the forehead. He was still primarily on the left side, but would the skink reach up with both arms on the left, or the front two? Or the front four? Gadriel would intervene on the first, and she shouldn’t get in the way there. Evalyn had to choose.

…

“Tak!” Daniel cried out, coming to his feet as the Totem Warrior was almost cut in half.

He is fine.

He was just, what? Daniel blinked as Tak continued his assault as if nothing had happened.

Happened last time. He was nearly dead, yet he still fought. Healed quickly.

His leg was almost torn off!

It was worse.

You’re not worried!?

Hunter thought on that for a second. I am. But he will not die. That didn’t sound as certain as Hunter would have liked it to, Daniel guessed. Either way, there was no point stressing about it. Neither he nor Hunter could wade in now, drawing attention to how many injuries Tak was enduring would only worry them further.

I didn’t know Evalyn could fight like that, Daniel commented, watching the Bard duck under claws while slashing out with the dagger he made. She’s just stuck back and played her songs up until now. I guess she is the one with the most hunting experience if we don’t count Gadriel.

Tak is, Hunter insisted.

No, it is her. The equivalent of a blank look was transmitted from Hunter. We talked about this when setting up the training teams. You were less you at that point so you might not remember. Tak’s done some hunting, sure, but he also advanced from however Totem Warriors advance besides fighting. I forget that part but, look, the point is Evalyn’s got almost all her advancement from fighting and only some from… you know. The mental conversation grew less strained as it became clear that Tak could take whatever the skink could throw at him. Somehow.

Tak is still better.

You don’t have to defend him. Daniel didn’t laugh, but he did smile. Gadriel’s doing enough of that. How he’s kept all that up I have no idea. Yeah, Tak is probably better at fighting up close, but I wouldn’t say Evalyn is hopeless. If Murdon had given her Tactician instead of me that one time, I think we would have been just as well off.

Hmm, Hunter mentally grumbled. Going for the kill.

What? Daniel got a bit nauseous as he saw what the feral avianoid was doing. He’s not going to try to burrow into its skull, is he?

Maybe. From across the hundreds of meters of sand and dunes, Hunter tilted his head in a challenge. Would Evalyn do that?

Probably not, Daniel conceded. She’s just been stabbing its legs so far. There was that one time she tried to climb. Wait, she’s doing it again! Evalyn was moving across one of the upper limbs of the giant lizard, although not climbing it as she’d tried before. The almost absentminded swipes at her were easily avoided as she moved. No, it was more than that. Hunter, she’s dancing.

Dancing?

The realization struck Daniel. He’d observed the way she’d been moving when Evalyn first activated the ability, but the pattern changed when she got in range of the monster. The fluidity of her motion hadn’t changed, but it had taken Daniel this long to realize that the grace of her dodges and slashes kept a similar tempo, if not rhythm. Just like a dancer switching styles to the same accompaniment.

There was an undeniable parallel between her movements and Gadriel’s now. Both were dancing in their own way, a slow waltz to a tango comparatively. How the Hero was maintaining the insane pace of strikes and movements Daniel couldn’t guess. He looked like he was flying, aided by the angelic wings Gadriel still wore. Daniel had become mesmerized by the twin displays, only realizing just after it happened what Evalyn had done.

For most of her part, Evalyn had been a distraction at best to the skink. Initially, she hadn’t even been that, the monster insensitive to her music and unknowing of the benefits it had been providing. When she’d closed in it had paid little attention until she’d tried to climb it. Hanging onto one of its foreclaws was annoying, but there was a howling thing trying to pierce the skink’s eye that demanded more of a response. Unthinking, the skink brought its limbs up to swipe at Tak and brought Evalyn into range.

She didn’t have many direct combat abilities, nor charm powers that would work on monsters. Not that she would have used them even if she did. What Evalyn did have was Songbolt and a fair amount of time stored from Investiture of Song. It was technically accurate to say the damage of the strike was scaled to the time spent playing a bardic song. The whole truth was the ability relied on the mana spent on those abilities, siphoning a small percent of the flow into a pool that grew with time. The amount reserved for Evalyn’s attack power had deepened considerably.

Evalyn flipped over the face of the creature Tak was brutalizing like an Olympic diver. The energy that gathered around her was initially discolored in Daniel’s view by her aura but was released as a sky-true blue directed into the other eye of the skink. The monster was nimble, quick even for its size. Or at least, it had been. The shimmering air almost as large as the fleshy orb hit just left of the iris it tore apart with the impact. The viscous material of the eye ruptured like a pond hit with a stone. Part of the bone making up the orbit cracked.

Daniel gaped as Evalyn recovered from the maneuver with a roll, somehow conjuring and stowing her instrument in the process. She didn’t stand at the end like a gymnast would but came out running, nearly depleted of mana and fearing reprisal from the skink. It was in no state to pursue, however. Tak, given another moment to act in feral frenzy, had dug past the point where the skink could reach. It still tried, digging into its other eye with claws that only did more damage to the broken orb. A short time later, the monster died and Daniel’s phone dinged with a notification. Advancement, the sign that the battle was truly over.

The racing Hero came to a stop as it became clear his enemy was dead, settling down with a look of true exhaustion on his face. Sure, he’d leveled up since his fight with Heldren, but he looked like he’d just gone through that duel five successive times. “You,” He breathed heavily as Evalyn glanced at him, eyebrow raised. “Were you copying me?”

Evalyn was quickly scandalized, shouting, “Seriously!?” The Hero stood for a moment longer, long hair and cape flowing in the wind. Then he collapsed to the sand.

…

In the end, the group was left with the bodies of the shank stompers and greater skink, the unconscious Gadriel, and the heavily injured Tak. Whatever effect had overtaken him persisted just long enough for the Totem Warrior to drag himself clear of the body and then collapse, feathers sticky with whatever substances he’d encountered on the way. Only Hunter got close to him.

Tak awoke a minute later as the group converged, grimacing as he looked at one of his legs, which had sustained an injury that persisted past the incredible healing rate he’d shown in the fight. “Oh. Not again.”

Evalyn covertly sighed in relief at hearing his normal voice. “I don’t think it’s as bad as last time at least. Do you think you’ll be able to walk back?”

He looked at himself, raising an arm experimentally, before nodding. “Yes, I think so. What happened?”

We should tell him, Hunter thought to Daniel, who was close enough to have heard the question.

Yeah. Back at the lake we thought it was a one-time thing and hoped whatever it was wouldn’t happen again. It didn’t at the village, but I guess there’s no escaping it. Not here though. Back at the oasis maybe? Evalyn glanced at him as Daniel got close to the three and he shook his head.

“Let’s get out of here, then we’ll talk about it,” Evalyn replied. Hunter gave a mental assent to Daniel and the decision was made. That wasn’t the only thing they had to decide, however.

“Loot?” Khare asked. There was a disheartened tint to the word as they sized up the body of the skink. Khare had used all of their ranged weapons on the thing and not every shot had hit. Not every weapon that had struck had stayed in either. A large area of the desert was now the dream of everyone with a metal detector.

“Well, I’m scanning it at least,” Daniel replied, taking out his phone thoughtfully. “It’s just a giant lizard though. Not like how a dragon is but like if you took a normal newt and just scaled it up. What kind of formulae will I get from that?”

“You think you will?” Evalyn asked. “It’s just one monster.”

“Yeah, but it’s a big monster,” Daniel said unhelpfully. “I mean, take the sparkbats against the shank stompers. You could reasonably expect to fight more sparkbats than you would shank stompers, so theoretically, every shank stomper I scan gives me more progress toward a new unlock. For something this big, I’d think you’d only come up against one at a time. And it’s a higher level.”

Only Evalyn was following this. Khare had taken it as a go-ahead to retrieve what they could, while Hunter and Tak conversed mentally. Gadriel was passed out, but he didn’t seem to be dying so he was left to the sand for the time being. “I’m not going to pretend to understand a power I don’t have, but something tells me you’re just guessing.”

Daniel shrugged. “My Encyclopedia doesn’t tell me absolutely everything about my powers. It took me a while to figure that out, but there are caveats and edge cases, not including all the places where stuff is worded vaguely. This is a guess, but if I’m right it would work like something similar from my world.” My world. Wait, Gadriel is asleep, right?

“Well go ahead and try it. Should be simple enough to disprove.”

“Yeah.” Daniel was about to use his function when he had a flash of inspiration. “Oh, wait. Wait! Tak, can you get me some of the skin off this thing?”

The Totem Warrior passed an assessing glance over the body of the skink. This was one of his areas of expertise and there was a glimmer of confidence in the pained expression. “Oooh,” he trilled disappointedly. “It would be good leather. But torn. Gadriel cut it for a long time, I think.”

“Do you think there’s enough for two sections about this big?” Daniel asked, indicating a space about the size of his shoulder. There was fervor in motions. He had an idea. It was something he’d seen before but hadn’t thought to exploit until this moment.

Tak unsteadily got to his feet, placing a hand on Hunter’s back for support. “Maybe. It is big, there should be some places with only small cuts. Why?”

Evalyn was looking at him too, now with curiosity. Should I tell them? If this doesn’t work I would look like an idiot. But if it does I’ll look like a genius. “There were a couple of formulae I didn’t get from the sparkbats, but I kind of did,” Daniel explained poorly, making his decision. “I made a couple of things with parts of sparkbats way back, but the formulae were pretty bad. One almost made me fall to death, and the other nearly killed Hunter.”

“Bad,” Hunter agreed. There was no mark left on his side from that day, not one that was visible at least.

“But when I scanned the sparkbats, I got improved versions. Again, nothing in my Encyclopedia that says that’s how it works, but,” Daniel gestured to the dead lizard. “Even if there’s not a lot of skin to work with if I can just make something, then I can use whatever I want later so long as I unlock the improved formulae for it.”

“You’re definitely guessing,” Evalyn said with a challenging smile. Tak, knife in hand, was slowly moving across the body in search of suitable material. It didn’t take long. When Tak returned, it was with two neatly cut and rolled sections of the primarily red skin. There wasn’t even gunk or disquieting fluid trailing off. Touching the dead skin was a prospect that still grossed Daniel out, but not as much as he would have thought.

“Thanks, Tak! That was fast.”

“It was easy. Monster Scavenger, new feature. Useful.”

“It is,” Evalyn agreed. “If you’re not too hurt, do you think you could gather more? Even if Daniel can’t fumble something together, we could probably try selling the skin to a Craftsman.”

“What about getting back?” Hunter asked, noting both Tak’s heavy breathing and the midday sun. “Would need to camp if we wait much longer.”

“And there is Gadriel,” Daniel pointed out, finally drawing attention to the collapsed Hero. “He should be fine, right?”

“I can carry him. If I must,” Hunter added after Daniel shot the ringcat a betrayed look. “Or drag.”

“Not to use you as a pack animal, but that is a good idea,” Evalyn said, taking the pressure off of Daniel who had a similar thought. “If Tak could cut off some of those claws, we might have a good bounty. Whether that’s for you to enchant with, or to sell. Or both.” There was a thoughtful tone in Evalyn’s voice. “Daniel, since you don’t need time to advance, what do you think about regularly enchanting during the team’s downtime? We wouldn’t necessarily need to evenly split the profits, but-”

“No, it’s a good idea,” Daniel nodded. “All of you helped keep Hunter alive here, and beyond that, we’re a team. It makes sense.” He held up one of the leather rolls taken from Tak. “I couldn’t cut this stuff off nearly as well and I wouldn’t want to anyway.” Putting the other one down, he unrolled the rough square and thought for a moment. “Well, here goes. Bulwark.” Like the shade he’d repaired some days ago, the flexible material turned stiff. The group waited for something else to happen, but that was it.

“Is that it?” Tak asked.

“This,” Daniel held out the piece and tried to speak with as much conviction as he could, “Is a shield!”

“That is a square,” Tak replied, unconvinced. Experimentally, the Totem Warrior tried to grip it like one but failed. It was tossed to the prone Hero who might have managed to do something with it, were he not still unconscious.

“And it’s a shield. I mean, technically. It’s a shield,” Daniel repeated.

“You think your power works like that?” Evalyn asked skeptically.

“I took random monster bits and made a functional, if impractical, shield,” Daniel defended like a toddler discovered mid-wall art. “It’s a shield!”

“A square shield?”

“Y-yeah, sure. A square shield,” Daniel took the lifeline tossed by Tak. Evalyn didn’t look convinced.

“That looked nothing like how you enchanted the heliorite,” she pointed out.

“I just stuck a lightning spine on a crossbow bolt for the other one. This time, I used a power. A whole power!” Daniel exclaimed, trying to convince himself more than anyone. “It’s a square leather shield.”

“It’s a stiff piece of leather.”

“Just hold on.” Daniel pulled out his phone and searched through the formulae section. He didn’t see it at first, but when he did, he beamed. “Oh, ok. This is OP.”

“It worked!?” Evalyn exclaimed, only slightly outraged and more playing into the moment.

Scalebound Shield (Formulae: Enchanting, Shield, Domain: Enchantment, Quality: Shoddy, Level: 0)

A wearable shield made from material sourced from Type: Lizard, Type: Draconic, Type: Aquatic, or other appropriate Creatures of sufficient size to produce material to construct the shield from one piece.

Creation of this item requires the crafter possess Ability: Construct Shield.

Daniel looked at the second piece of leather on the ground, gears turning. “Anyone have some thread?”

In the end, Daniel only made one more shoddy item. ‘Prototype’, as he began calling it under increasing scrutiny. Evalyn’s opposition to what he was doing was only playful. Well, mostly playful. She didn’t have any horse in this race, and as far as Daniel knew there weren’t any horses in this world. There was just the sense that Daniel was trying to cheat whatever rules the Octyrrum set to govern enchanting, made more grating by the fact that it was working.

“That is not a bag of holding,” she said flatly.

“Is it a bag?” he asked cheekily. She just stared at him, anticipating where the question was leading. Tak was back to harvesting while Hunter had been recruited to help Khare find their weapons. Gadriel was still unconscious, and really by this point someone should have been worried about him. No one was. “Come on, is it a bag?”

Evalyn glanced at the leather thing that had been roughly sewn to the point that it could maybe contain an apple without spilling its contents out. Sand was out of the question, that would flow freely through several holes. “Yes,” she answered reluctantly.

“And bags hold stuff right?” Daniel received a half-withering stare in response. “So, this is a bag of holding!”

“No, it’s-”

Bag of Holding - Lesser (Formulae: Enchanting, Construct, Domain: Enchantment, Quality: Shoddy, Level: 0)

A container constructed from leather confers a very minor Dimensional property, allowing for storage of more mass than the volume of the item would suggest.

Creation of this item requires no Mana or significant time beyond assembly.

“It’s a bag of holding,” Daniel reported, tossing it to Evalyn. She gave up incredulity and returned to curiosity.

“It doesn’t look much bigger on the inside.”

“Well, yeah, it sucks,” Daniel admitted. “That’s not the point. This is.” He pointed his phone towards the greater skink, closed his eyes, and prayed.

You have scanned a Monster, listed below. You have met the requirements to unlock multiple Encyclopedia entries, listed below.

Scanned Targets:

- Greater Skink, Deceased (Damaged) - 1

Encyclopedia Entries:

- Monster: Greater Skink, Detailed

- Affix: Leathercut

-

Analysis of Greater Skink has improved Formulae: Scalebound Shield to Quality: Standard and Formulae: Bag of Holding - Lesser to Formulae: Bag of Holding.

“Well?” Evalyn asked, eyebrow raised. Daniel smiled.

“We happy.” On the ground, ignored by both, Gadriel coughed weakly.