Mage Tank

Varrin trotted up to the scene, still lacing up his pants and looking over the damage.

“What happened?” he asked. His ice-blue eyes were puffy from sleep.

“I got my jaw punched through some buildings,” I said, following his gaze to the wrecked bakery and then to the smashed up haberdashery. “Then, the guy left.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I!” I shouted. I took a breath and tried to calm down. Several onlookers were beginning to come out of hiding, and a few flinched when I raised my voice. “Hold on, we need to make sure Shog isn’t dying.”

We entered the Closet to find Shog dragging himself by his mangled hands towards the portal. Xim swore, then ran over to check on him.

“Do not fear, demoness,” he choked out, “that mouse was a mighty foe, but it will take more than a light dismemberment to fell me.”

“I’m still not a demon, Shog,” she said, kneeling and beginning to cast Cleanse and Heal on the c’thon. She looked surprised for a moment. “Too bad you’re not immune to bleeding.”

“His strikes were sharp and the force of his blows ruptured many lesser organs. But… the loss of such mundane fluids does not… impede me.”

She paused as Shog’s head began to droop and patted him on one of his intact tentacles.

“Sure, Shog. Sure.”

My summon laid his head onto the ground, then passed out.

Xim stood and wiped her hand on her shirt, leaving a dark stain of c’thonic blood behind. She judged that Shog would live, then took a quick spin over the injured hounds. They were already recovering on their own, however, drinking in the rich ambient mana of the Delve.

“Just walk it back,” she said to me once she’d finished. “Tell us from the beginning.”

I relayed the basic events. The cleric’s expression grew ever darker as I did so, while Varrin listened attentively. When I finished, the big guy grunted and his eyes flicked up to look at his interface.

“You’re only missing about a third of your health.”

“‘Only’ you say? Half of that damage was dealt directly to my face, ya’ know.”

“You fought a level seventeen,” said Varrin. “You should be dead. Instead, you hardly look injured.”

I started to argue with him, but reached up and ran a hand along my face. It was tender, but there was no blood or gashes.

“Do I have a black eye at least?”

“Nope,” said Xim. “If it weren’t for the party screen and your clothes being all torn up, I wouldn’t even know you’d been in a fight.”

“Guess immune to Bleeding means… I don’t bleed? At all? Even internally?”

“How did you think it worked?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.

“Look, this magic shit isn’t very intuitive sometimes. I wasn’t going to make any assumptions.” I poked inside my mouth with a finger, feeling out the holes in my gums. “It’s like I gah bead up and don’d haff anything to show wor it. I’n nissing teeth though, see?” I opened my mouth to show her and rather than recoiling like any reasonable person might, Xim peered into my mouth curiously.

“Regardless,” said Varrin, the word dripping with the tone of a man speaking to an idiot, “we’ll need to report this to Central. They won’t be happy about a rogue Littan Delver causing mayhem in Hiward.”

“Oh, he wasn’t rogue,” I said, dropping my hand and letting the anger creep back into my voice. “He said he was here at the request of a fucking duchess.”

Varrin’s jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed.

“Then it’s even more imperative that we do so. This may have political implications.”

Xim arched a brow.

“Why would a Littan duchess send a guy to beat you up and leave?” she asked.

“I think he improvised that second part,” I said. “His questions about Sayil sounded scripted. Once he was satisfied with my answers, he started swinging.”

“So he came to interrogate you and then… just felt like having a brawl?”

I gave her an exasperated shrug.

“I’ll have my family look into Tavio,” said Varrin. “Gharifon as well. Littans at that level are uncommon, so we should be able to find out a good deal of information.”

“I’ll eagerly await their home addresses,” I said, briefly fantasizing over some mobster-grade payback. I dispelled the thought as soon as it came, then sighed. “Not that I’d be able to do anything with it.”

My mood began to cloud, and I turned my eyes toward the ground. I’d confronted some harsh odds since arriving in Arzia, but I’d never been so profoundly outclassed. Any time I’d gone up against something this far beyond me, I’d had my allies to back me up. If my experience with Tavio had taught me anything, it was that I was much more vulnerable on my own than I realized.

Varrin marched forward and loomed over me. I looked up to find him peering down, looking disappointed.

“You speak as though you were defeated,” he said.

“I… was, though? The guy kicked my ass, roasted it, cut it up into thin slices, then served it back to me on a knuckle sandwich.”

“Is that so?” he said. “What I saw was a level seventeen being explosively jettisoned from your Closet and crashing through some unlucky baker’s pie shop.”

“I hit him with that spell after he’d already given up. It was petty. How could you tell it was a pie shop?”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Give up?”

“I- No, but it’s not like I argued with him when he wanted to call it quits.”

“When you and I duel,” he said, “how do we determine the winner?”

“Uh, we ask which one of us is named Varrin?” He didn’t find the comment humorous. “Whoever yields, loses,” I finally said.

“Tavio yielded, and so you won.”

I gave him a classic steely squint.

“Wrap it up however you want, slap a bow on it, and call it victory. It’s still a box full of ‘Arlo lost’.”

“Don’t get too upset about it,” said Xim. “None of us would have stood a chance.”

I focused for a few seconds and closed the entrance to the Closet to keep any more eager ears from listening to what I was about to say. I waved a hand and hidden glowstones gave the chamber a low level of illumination so we weren’t standing in the pitch dark.

“Look,” I said, “we can stand here all day and pretend to be level six, but we aren’t. You guys are all up to level eleven by your stats, and with my Carryovers and the bonuses I get from Dumping, my effective level is fucking fourteen! I just… don’t feel like it should have been so one-sided!”

“How many times have I told you,” said Varrin, “that stats aren’t everything? You may have the same number of points as a level fourteen, but your distribution of those points is extremely broad. The same goes for all of us. Many of those points are ones we earned from your training ability, and are stats that we don’t use to their full effect. My Wisdom is a ten, for example, but I don’t have a single mana-consuming ability. Beyond that, you’ve invested much of what you’ve earned into Fortitude, which does little for you offensively beyond giving you stamina. Tavio’s stats are likely heavily concentrated on offensive physical attributes.

“Further,” he continued, “your intrinsic skill levels are worse than what I would expect from a level six platinum Delver. Our delving spree has yielded tremendous growth, but intrinsics take work, dedication, and time. Time that you haven’t had, due to how you came into this world. Tavio has, at minimum, a decade’s worth of experience over you, likely much more. I wouldn’t be surprised if his total intrinsic skill level is triple what you have, or higher.”

I listened to Varrin’s speech, recognizing the logic in his words, but my emotions ignored them. I was frustrated, especially after kicking so much ass through the Delves we’d been running, and I knew myself well enough to realize that it would take a few days for ‘reasonable thoughts’ to wrangle all the buzzing irritation.

“My build is all over the place,” I said, interrupting Varrin, who had continued to lecture.

“You’ve focused on having a wide skill set,” he said. “To respond to a variety of situations.”

“Situations that involve the party, inside of Delves,” I said. “My aura is best for group recovery and it’s not helpful in a brawl like the one I just had. My Bonded Familiar passive is,” I took a breath and shouted into the Delve around us, “pretty much useless right now!” I waited for any response from Grotto, but none came. “Archmage gives me a little boost to damage, but it’s mainly a buff to my mana pool and regen.”

“You have a fourth passive open,” said Varrin. “You may be best served by choosing something that helps you fight more effectively on your own.”

“My active skills are focused on utility and one’s a buff I can’t use on myself. I only have two direct offensive skills, Oblivion Orb and Explosion!. Explosion! has a massive cooldown, and I couldn’t land an Oblivion Orb on Tavio. Even if I had, I doubt it would have been a game changer. His Dimensional resistance is probably pretty good, especially with how high his Fortitude had to be.”

“What about Homing Weapon?” asked Xim.

“That’s mostly a delivery vehicle for Oblivion Orb. My throwing hammers can wreck low level shit without being buffed by the spell, but at the end of the day my Strength and Blunt aren’t high enough to be a threat to anything with serious physical resistances. That’s doubly true for my melee hammer attacks, which,” I gestured at the non-existent exit portal, “I can’t even make right now because my fucking warhammer got destroyed.”

“Then pivot,” said Varrin. “You’re already durable enough for a high-Strength Delver to punch you halfway across a village and then walk it off. You have the Shields and Heavy Armor intrinsics, which will continue to grow your defenses, so you can start spending more stats on Intelligence.”

“That all makes sense,” I said. “But, and hear me out,” I spread my hands in the air before me, “Fortitude.”

“I think you have an addiction, Arlo,” said Xim.

“The next evolution’s at seventy! That’s just four platinum Delves away! I’d be untouchable!”

“And your attacks will fall like heavy leaves upon the backs of your foes,” she said with an air of sagely wisdom.

“An effective tank doesn’t only take hits,” said Varrin. “They still need to be deadly, and we’re reaching the point where your head start won’t keep up with your aggressive investment in Fortitude.”

“It was good while it lasted,” I mumbled.

“Cheer up,” said Xim. “What’s dead can’t hurt you. If you think about it, offensive stats are defensive stats.”

“You sound like my old football coach.”

“It’s a traditional military tactic,” said Varrin. “Occupy the enemy with aggressive action and they won’t be able to mount a counterattack.”

“Huh,” I grunted. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”

“Don’t worry about your hammer, either,” said Xim. “Arbitros wasn’t a good fit for you anyway. It’s designed for a fire user, since it doesn’t melt. Other than that, it’s just a heavy lump of metal with basic magic properties. Besides, dad’s been asking about what he should give you as a tribal greeting.”

“Tribal greeting?”

“Welcome gift,” she said.

“Your dad’s gonna give me a new hammer?”

“My father,” she said, placing a hand on her chest and straightening, “patriarch of the grand Xor’Drel tribe, will allow you the honor of selecting one of our finest artisans to work with in crafting an item of your choice.” She relaxed her posture. “If you want that to be a hammer then go for it.”

“Will it have some sort of hellish nature?” I asked. “Oh! Will it talk to me and try to convince me to commit grave sins?”

“You already have Grotto and Shog for that,” said Xim. “Besides, living weapons are more hassle than they’re worth.”

“They exist?!”

“I feel like I shouldn’t answer that question,” she said. “You like collecting nightmarish entities a little too much.”

“Hey, that reminds me,” I said. “You were screaming about Gharifon haunting your nightmares when you ran up. What happened to you guys? Where are Etja and Nuralie?”

“They’re still asleep,” said Varrin, “but safe. Gharifon cast some form of illusion that prevented us from hearing the commotion of your fight. We were already sleeping, so none of us noticed your health dropping on the interface. Xim was the one who awoke and alerted me.”

“There was a shadow man in my dreams,” she said. “So I woke myself up and started tearing my room apart. I found that asshole Gharifon out in the hall muttering to himself.”

“You don’t usually get shadow man dreams?” I asked. “And you can just… wake yourself up whenever you want?”

“It would seem that Xim has never had a nightmare at all,” said Varrin.

“What?” I said. “No nightmares?”

“It’s impossible,” said Xim. “When I dream, I connect to a realm created by Sam’lia that’s shared by those who worship her. The only way something stressful would happen is if there’s magic interfering.”

“What if Sam’lia wanted to give you a vision or something?”

“She’s pretty gentle,” said Xim. “To her worshipers. She’s vicious toward her enemies. When she wants me to know something it’s usually a relaxing experience.”

“That’s pretty cool,” I said. “Also, what was the deal with Gharifon when you cast Judgment on him? Tavio as well. The spell did weird things.”

“Weird?” said Xim. “With Tavio, he took normal fire damage since Sam’lia didn’t find anything worthy of judging him for.” She frowned. “It doesn’t do nearly as much damage.”

“It’s the same thing that happened to you, Arlo,” said Varrin, “when Xim cast Judgment on you and the mimic.”

“Really?” I said. “I just knew burning and fire. Wasn’t paying attention to the color. But, Gharifon burned crimson, so Sam’lia thought that the guy who was kicking my ass wasn’t worth judging, but the guy who showed up, apologized, and was generally very polite, he was worth judging?”

“Must be,” Xim said with a shrug. “It’s not like I get a report when I cast the spell.”

“Could you ask her about it?”

“Why? You’ve never cared about what something was being judged for before.”

“That’s true,” I admitted. “There was the thing with Gharifon’s eyes, though.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“While he was burning, his eyes were endless pits. It gave me an impression like the one I get from looking at Orexis.”

Both Xim and Varrin tensed at those words.

“Could you… be more specific?” asked Varrin.

“Not really,” I said. “It was just a glimpse, and when he dispelled the fire it was gone. I’m curious if Sam’lia can give us any insight into it.”

Xim stepped up to me and placed a hand on my arm.

“Arlo, I know you aren’t the religious type, you’ve told me plenty of times, but I didn’t see anything like what you’re talking about. Seeing things that others don’t is part of The Eye’s revelation. If you caught a glimpse of Orexis in the Dark Mother’s holy flames, then you should be the one to ask her about it. If that’s not a sign that she wants to talk, then I don’t know what is.”

I considered Xim’s words. It was true that I wasn’t a religious guy, not since I had a falling out with my Baptist upbringing as a young teenager. I didn’t have any problem with the concept of religion, but I did have strong feelings about the way some people wielded it as a weapon to get what they wanted, and when the beliefs themselves involved oppressive ideologies. Shitty people did shitty things with the tools in front of them, whether or not the tools themselves were good, bad, or anything in between.

I’d also never resonated with any religious belief structure I encountered. Miracles, visions, apocryphal tales of supernatural events. I didn’t buy most of it, so I’d just tried to live my life as a good enough person and stopped thinking about it. But religion here on Arzia was a different animal. I didn’t need to have faith, I’d met these so-called deities. I was Fortune’s lockpick, Orexis’ chew toy, and Sam’lia’s adopted son. The gods of Arzia were very different from the concept of ‘God’ that I’d been raised believing in, but they still resonated with the way gods were viewed in Earth antiquity.

Still, the idea of praying to something made me feel icky. I couldn’t explain it.

“What if you talked with her about it?” I said.

Xim let go of my arm and looked irritated.

“I commune with Sam’lia every week. The evocations have never involved Orexis, much less Gharifon. This sign isn’t for me, it’s for you.”

I groaned and rubbed at my eyes.

“Fine. If I wanted to ask Sam’lia about it myself, how would I do that?”

“If you want to have a real chat,” she said, “not just send her your regards and ask forgiveness for being a turd toward her, then we’ll need to go to the Third Layer.”

“Oh? How come?”

“Sam’lia doesn’t reside in the First Layer,” she said. “She’s blind to it in some ways, since The Eye only beholds the Third. Without a strong connection like the one I’ve cultivated, you’ll have to be in closer proximity to her to get anything concrete.”

“I see.” I stretched my arms and let out a yawn. The adrenaline of the fight was wearing off, and my fatigue was asserting itself. “So, we need to go to the Third Layer for my orientation, to get myself a new and more badass hammer, and so that I can ask Sam’lia some questions about Gharifon and Orexis.”

“It might also be good,” said Varrin, “to ask her about the System phase rollout as well.”

“You think so? Would she have any insight into that?”

“She’s a goddess, Arlo,” said Xim. “She’s existed since time immemorial. If these phases are something that’s been going on for eons, she’d know about it. Better than any mortal would.”

“Say no more. I need no further convincing. We were all planning on taking a break from Delving once we hit level six, so I suppose that Xim and I will spend our time sojourning in the Third Layer. What about you, Varrin?”

“I’ll look into Tavio and Gharifon, while doing my own research into the phase rollouts. I’ll also keep my ear to the ground for anything concerning Orexis and focus on training in between.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a vacation,” I said.

“I like what I do,” was his only response.

“I reckon that Nuralie and Etja will travel the countryside like they’ve been talking about, and-”

[And I will join you on your visit to the Third Layer,] came Grotto’s voice in our minds. [Drel’gethed is a powerful individual with whom you must further ingratiate yourself, Arlo. It will be important that my presence be known, such that we both might impress upon him our talents.]

[You’re leaving the Closet?]

[Yes. I believe that you will soon know enough about the rollout that my life is no longer at risk of termination by the System.]

[Wait. That was a possibility? And you were dealing with that on your own, without telling anyone?]

[Indeed.]

[Grotto, you can talk to us, man. If you need space because of some System-derived bullshit, you can always ask.]

There was a beat of pause before Grotto replied.

[There were other considerations. To even mention it would be…] Another few seconds of mental silence passed. [Very well, I understand.]

[I’m glad. If you want to talk about it during our trip, I’m here to listen.]

[I will be sure to enlighten you beyond the bounds of comprehension capable by your fleshy confines.]