Rising Kite - A story from the world of HWFWM

As Kite started traversing a bridge over a hundred meters long consisting of separate floating stones, he found himself glad that the alien environment inside the jade-sky gate had no winds. While he walked, he took the time to check on Glint through their bond, as she had been injured during the wild charge toward the gate as they had been ambushed.

Fortunately, none of the injuries had been serious and she was bound to recover with some rest. Kite was happy to provide that for her, still doubting his decision of allowing her to join him on this venture. He had explained the dangers to her as best as he could, stressing the part about failure meaning death for them both. Still, the carp had been adamant about not leaving him and Kite had backed down in the end as he realized he would be hard-pressed to stop her except maybe through the actual gate itself.

Vowing to do his utmost to see her safe through this challenge, he strode onward as he patted the flask at his side. “Rest easy now, Glint. I wouldn’t even have reached this place if it wasn’t for you.” While they had not been bonded for long, it was still a wondrous thing to have such a close connection to another being.

There was only one road leading from the platform with the portal, and Kite got a distinct feeling of vertigo as he glimpsed the sea of clouds far beneath him in the slight gaps between each stone. Ahead of him was a rather sizable floating platform which seemed to house a displaced block from some kind of city.

Unlike the often colorful wooden houses of his homeland, with their murals and curved roofs, these buildings were made of mostly gray stone blocks with hard angles and rusted iron fences. The houses were rather tall, which made them imposing monoliths that he could imagine tower above him. As he stood before the threshold of the stone platform and the narrow street, he took a deep breath. Said breath came easy, as something in the air here felt richer and more condensed than in the wilds of the autumn lands.

Kite began walking down the narrow street, stone cobbles clacking beneath his armored feet. Almost immediately, he could feel the environment react to his presence as three iron-rank auras were unleashed as they approached his position from above. He looked up to see three streamers of light flying through the air from the sky, diving into the cobbled street and stone walls. The points where they had vanished started crackling and bucking outward as stone and dirt came alive to form three vaguely humanoid figures consisting of the materials close to where they had merged with the environment.

The forms were quite like a humanoid warrior with an elongated part at the end of one arm not dissimilar to a blunt sword or club. Beneath the cracks and gaps of the material which made up their bodies, the slightly glowing white streamers could be glimpsed as they seemed to have spread to form a network which held the frames together. One of the stone soldiers had even used a part of a wall with a window which had been directly grafted onto the stone shell. Through there Kite could see the white threads of varying sizes, forming a network not unlike the mycelium of a mushroom.

Before the three humanoid monsters had even formed they had begun a slow but steady walk toward Kite as they started to fire a barrage of stones toward him. The projectiles were fast blurs as they shot straight at Kite, who brought up his barrier as he charged to meet them. Kite had never read about any monster like these creatures in the living document of the magic society, but from their appearance he suspected them to be slow but also tough and strong.

He did notice something else as well when he was hit by one of the rocks which ricocheted for a lucky hit against his calf. While the weakened impact did no damage, the stone attempted to transfer some kind of hampering magic into him which would slightly lower his speed. On its own it would not be much, and Kite’s ability to negate effects to hinder his movement allowed him to resist, but he could imagine the slow and strong monsters would be very troublesome indeed if he would be gradually slowed down as well.

Thanking Fortune under his breath for the fortunate matchup, he activated his belt to close the distance further as he kept his barrier up under the rapid-fire barrage. His first swing with his greatsword, plucked from the void as he was upon his enemies, broke through the arm and part of the torso of the leftmost creature as he ran past it close to the wall of the nearby building. His sundering special attack, Void-Sunders-Firmament, boosted by his racial gift and the negative karma built up as they attacked his barrier through Spiritual reprisal was enough for the heavy weapon to inflict serious damage.

As he had hoped, the enemies started to ponderously turn as Kite had moved past them. To further give himself some breathing room, Kite mumbled a quick “wall” which caused a wall of force to spring up along the middle of the street, separating the two undamaged stone soldiers from Kite and his target. The heavy blows on the wall quickly started cracking it, but Kite was already continuing his assault. He swung once more with the greatsword to crack more of the sundered torso, pleasantly surprised to see that his Disrupting Strike caused parts of the stone shell to fall away as the white threads lost their hold.

Kite took a quick jump backwards to dodge a sweeping stone club as his greatsword disappeared, replaced by his wicked bone spear as he reversed his momentum to lunge forward after the swing and drive the tip of the spear into the gap he had created in the creature's armor. Spatial tears erupted from the tip, apparently sundering enough of whatever animated the stone as Kite could see the white threads sever and wink out.

With one opponent down, Kite turned to the other two and backed off a couple of steps. As a couple more heavy blows broke his conjured wall, a throwing star rippling with dispelling force hit the closest of the two, even as the pane of force was still in the process of shattering around the newly made hole. The light weapon did minimal physical damage, but the two special attacks it carried caused sizeable holes to form in the gray stone shells as blue cracks of drained mana spread inward. The weapon then proceeded to deliver the same treatment to the second as it unerringly ricocheted between the two before returning to Kite’s hand.

Kite repeated the process a couple of times, slowly stepping backward along the streets as he held his barrier from Heaven-and-Void Warding steady, only dropping it occasionally to throw his weapon again if the angle required it. Each time he attacked, he took some hits of his own but most were deflected or absorbed by his armor as their main purpose was to stack up the slowing magical effect that Kite continued to shrug off.

The pair had steadily gained on Kite’s measured pace, and after a few repetitions of the tactic he deemed them softened up enough to once more advance on them. He charged in for an overhead swing with the greatsword which crushed part of the head formed by the monster’s stony exterior as he once more circled his opponent slightly to keep its bulk between Kite and the third to hamper its attacks.

Raising the heavy sword for another heavy strike, he brought out his barrier to deflect yet another attack while a mental command had Sage hover down from his usual spot between Kite’s shoulders to fire a white beam of resonating force. The battle had not gone on for too long and it wasn’t the massive lance of energy he could call upon to finish a fight, but it was enough to punch clean through the knee on the closest construct as the resonating force easily carved through the stone.

As it fell down, unbalance by the fact that half of its leg was no longer connected to the rest of its body, Kite’s sword was already descending once more is it cleaved down through the skull and into the chest of the third opponent, the space between them no longer wholly occupied by its comrade. The greatsword strike, boosted by the sundering rifts of the void, was enough to finish the creature while the downed stone soldier tried its best to fire rocks up at Kite and hammer his legs.

Backing off from the painful strikes which would have threatened to topple Kite had he not possessed the steadying power of Unyielding, Kite brought out his spear and started to disassemble the last foe with jabs from the relatively safe distance the weapons reach allowed him, ignoring the small stream of stones fired at him until they stopped coming not long after.

The battle had been quick and quite intense as Kite had been outnumbered by the iron-rank monsters. When processing how the battle would have been without him resisting their slowing effects, he shuddered while he keenly felt the temporary loss of his companions.

After a few seconds, Kite felt two more auras approach and then another two as the stones of the town along the narrow street in front of him started shuddering. He steeled his resolve, before charging ahead, doing his utmost to channel the unrelenting way of mistress Dew. One of the new foes had barely formed as he scattered the emerging body parts with multiple swings of a heavy sword. As the other three finished, Kite decided to try out yet another part of his arsenal.

“Dissolve the patterns of power”

The rippling dispel did not have the spectacular effect Kite would have hoped for on his enemies as they did not immediately lose coherency. It did seem to affect them somewhat though, as all three of them seemed to freeze for a few important seconds, needing to focus on keeping their shells intact. Kite could brutally disassemble one more during those critical seconds with his special attacks and had time to send his throwing star shooting towards the remaining duo once before their own barrage resumed.

Even through his increased mana regeneration, he could still feel his reserves draining in the intense combat. Kite realized that he would need to find a way to control the pace of future encounters at least somewhat, but he had to drop such a line of thought at the moment as an opportunity revealed itself in his mind. Feeling an unseen reserve reaching a threshold, he once more raised his blade over his head as it was encased in the darkness which was more akin to a hole in reality. As he released the stored energy, the void blade grew as he quickly took a step to the side in order to line up his opponents. A sword rose and a cleaving nothingness descended as the boosted special attack bisected both his opponents from top to bottom and scored a straight groove in the cobblestones, Potential of Stolen power allowing Kite to deal decisive death.

The attack had barely dissipated as Kite quickly retracted his aura as much as possible before he dashed into a thin, cramped alleyway between two houses. He held his breath and listened, letting it out slowly as he heard no more steps of stone feet. As one minute turned into three, he allowed himself to slump down against the gray stone wall.

His wooden armor was cracked in many places, his flesh bruised underneath. Even though the fighting had been rather intense, he had managed to avoid anything more than superficial injuries. The spiritual reserve in the form of his mana was a bit more depleted, although not to concerning levels as of yet. He still took the time to two pills into his mouth in order to hasten the recovery of both stamina and mana, as he had no illusions that this would be as bad as it would get.

During all this time, the orb of the officiator had floated some distance away, close enough to see everything yet far enough away as to not be in the way. While waiting for his armor’s rather impressive self-repair to work, he turned to the orb.

“You did mention an elemental theme. Shall I assume that this is part of an earthen domain?”

Only silence in response. Kite thought back to the enthusiasm that the voice had shown earlier during its apparent slip up, which gave Kite an idea as he was very sure that the orb wasn’t just a mere automaton.

“I must say, those stone soldiers were pretty well designed. Almost as if someone had thought them through, unlike many of the monsters out there. That slowing effect to force an opponent into their pace while they retain an advantage in strength and toughness would be rather brutal against many paths. It would be a shame for the creator of this place not to receive and feedback on the matter, as I am-”

“They were pretty impressive, weren’t they? It’s a shame that you are only of iron rank. You should see how they really come together at silver, but you have to work with what you got even if it is restrictive and boring.” The words came out as if a dam had broken inside the orb, its tone once again both casual and excited. “Oh it will be so exciting to see how you deal with-” it continued before cutting itself off as it once more realized what it was doing.

Kite sighed. “While loneliness is a nest for thoughts, it sounds like you’ve been alone with yours for a while. I understand if there are rules as you seem to remember yourself before warning me of what is to come. Couldn’t you at least tell me some more about what I have already experienced? I for one wouldn’t mind some company.” he prompted, trying to sound hopeful while not putting too much pressure on the orb which, even though it was a featureless construct, had the feeling of a scared animal ready to bolt.

Silence reigned for a while more, and Kite started to slip into meditation. A minute later, he was interrupted.

“Oh alright. It’s not like the mistress has been back to evaluate my work for quite the while. But you must promise not to ask me about things that you have not already encountered.” the orb said, still the casual voice but with quite a bit of trepidation.

Kite smiled at the orb, even if he was unsure if or how it could actually see. “You are quite the wondrous creation, and I would be a fool to reject such company. Do you have a name?”

“You can call me Third. And I am glad to finally have someone appreciate what I have done here. Most others just complain and die.” the orb commented cheerfully.

“Then greetings, Third. I would assume that you have been waiting here for a long time?” Kite said, simply avoiding mentioning the casual way the orb had spoken about his deceased predecessors.

“Oh, no. Not really. Decades aren’t that long, really. But the change of pace is nice, I must admit. I do hope that you will go far in here. There is so much for you to experience in here!”

“I… don’t doubt it.” Kite said, thinking about the one and only fight he’d been in inside the space. More of that would certainly be an experience, albeit not the pleasant kind. This trial would indeed be quite the tribulation.

Kite took a deep breath as the final of the three stone soldiers crumbled before him. It was the fourth such group he had faced as he had navigated what was about the equivalent of a city block.

“Experience purchased with suffering teaches wisdom.” he muttered, as the following fights after the first had let him get the measure of his enemies. Knowing what to expect, it had been easier to handle even the unexpected encounter of one manifesting by each exit of a narrow alley. He had triumphed by delaying one long enough by layering his summoned wall in one of the directions. As the alleyway was only one and a half meters apart, he had been able to put up six separate walls for it to mow through, which had given him plenty of time to finish the other one through judicious use of violence.

“I must say, this is quite enlightening. Your path is quite different from those I recall from the memories of my progenitor. And believe me, there are a lot. It gives me so many ideas for future challenges.” Third commented cheerfully.

“It’s always nice that my travails can be of use to someone else.” Kite commented, his sarcasm probably lost in the swirling enthusiasm of the spherical construct. “This should be it though for this platform.” he finished, looking over the small, square plaza where he was currently standing. At one of its sides, the buildings and streets simply fell away as the platform ended. One of the bigger buildings facing the small plaza, almost looking like a grim temple from its size, was even cut in half as Kite imagined its insides open to the emptiness. Next to it, a bridge led through the empty space toward yet another platform which seemed to house similar architecture.

He had begun walking toward the bridge as he noticed a slight halt from Third. It was not much and the orb immediately resumed its even pace after him, but it was enough for Kite to stop and look about again. He tried taking in his surroundings via a meditative technique uncle Walker had taught him, further helped along by his Gaze of Adamance which gave him a wide field of view.

After a moment, he realized something which stood out in his surroundings. So far, none of the buildings had any doors. Some had the arches where Kite felt one would be placed, but there had only been empty walls to be found. The windows had been the same, as their wide, narrow glass hid only a shallow indentation in the wall before ending in gray stone.

The large building, however, had a big pair of reinforced wooden doors. One even hung slightly askew, leaving them slightly open.

Kite made a point of not looking straight at Third as he began to move toward the large building, but he thought he could see a slight trembling in the construct. Reaching out with his senses, he carefully pushed open one of the doors. This building did indeed have an inside, as a large hall stretched out before him. It had a polished stone floor and stone benches in rows facing what Kite assumed to be an altar, unsurprisingly made out of stone albeit one that looked more natural and less worked, as if in worship to the stone itself.

The room's majesty was a bit marred as about a third of it was carved away along its length, leaving only empty space and a view of other far-away floating platforms. There was another feature which caused Kite concern as well. Behind the altar stood a rather sizable stone plinth which housed a statue depicting a winged beast. It had a wide, muscular body with long arms and an eerily smooth face with only a single carved eye. The wings, if organic, would have been leathery and tough, with membrane rather than feathers allowing them to catch the wind and fly.

His concern was well founded as a rather strong iron-rank aura started to surface from within the statue, spreading out over the room to stop against Kite’s own. It was not the dynamic aura of a living being, but flat and polished like the stone which made up the statue. Even less surprising was that the statue started moving with a crunching sound as long-locked joints became mobile.

“Blessed be the curious-” Kite had the chance to start muttering before he was interrupted by a definite and pressing need to dodge. The statue had, in one surprisingly quick motion, taken a long leap boosted by a flap of stone wings. While it seemed incapable of flight, it still crossed the whole room in an arc.

Kite leapt to the side as stone fists hammered down where he had stood, a visible shockwave spreading out from the impact. He could feel it tug at him in an attempt to knock him even further, but it was denied as Unyielding instead caused more cracks in the stone floor where the force was dispersed.

Instead of his intended counterattack, he had to snap a barrier in place to block a wing which lashed out against him even before the construct had fully risen from the last strike. The impact was heavy, but Kite’s well-timed barrier deflected it as he brought down his heavy sword toward the extended wing, the weapon freshly produced from his void sheath and subsumed in the nothingness of Void-Sunders-Firmament. It cleaved through the wing about a third of its length from the tip, before lodging itself into the ground as Kite activated the blade’s boosting abilities.

By this time, his foe had begun to turn and a fist lashed out toward Kite. Seeing that a quick backstep would take him out of its reach, he got a nasty surprise as the fist produced a shockwave through the air even without striking the ground. While Kite was unmoved, the force still caused cracks in his armor and would have shredded exposed skin. Cursing himself for misjudging, Kite did not stop as he instead lashed out with his spear covered in dispelling ripples.

The thrust itself and the adjoining disruptive force did little damage as there was no magic affecting the construct which it was able to dispel. This foe seemed to be a more holistic construct while the earlier stone soldiers were more like entities covering themselves in a shell. Kite was not entirely dismayed however as there was still the blue, mana-draining cracks and slight glow of transcendent damage as compensation.

All of these observations made Kite decide on a more measured approach, drawing upon his lessons with master Stone. His personal barrier got a thorough workout as he started trading blows with the stone creation, deflecting heavy blows and countering as his sundering special attack was available. He sent another thought of gratitude to Dragonfly’s master for the gifted awakening stone, as its resonating force damage allowed his spear to carve through even the tough animated statue.

Kite could mostly sustain the pace of the battle as his foe did little else than come at him with fists and wings. He could see that he was, once again, saved from a lot of danger by his resistance to hostile effects which tried to move him. All these shockwaves next to the drop from the platform could spell a swift demise otherwise. There were some moments when things almost got out of hand however, as his foe did a leaping dive-bomb attack when it thought Kite to be unbalanced. He had taken the first such attack straight onto his personal barrier, which left him with a shattered barrier and an aching, bruised body. Even through his resistance, he was sent several steps back as the surface of the polished floor had shattered in spectacular fashion.

Fortunately for Kite, his foe’s iron-rank gave him some margin of error of taking such a hit and surviving to learn from it. The combatants had a few more exchanges, where Kite had to admit feeling a bit of pride as he managed to time a swing of his spear enough to use his Pattern-shattering counter which split the conical shockwave down the middle before it dissipated.

The end of the battle came when the statue attempted another diving attack. Kite, while judicious enough with his footing to ensure that his back was never to the precipice, still did not feel like taking another of the attacks head on. This time, instead of his usual barrier, he chose a more powerful response.

“Void!”

As the statue arced down toward him, it instead found itself on a collision course with a gaping gate of nothingness. When a creature came into contact with the gate, it suffered quite a lot of damage before being forcibly rejected by the dark aperture. Normally the duration of such contact was very short, but this time it was a very heavy creature charging into it at full speed.

While Kite did not see the impact, he heard a shrieking, grinding noise for two seconds, followed by a short silence ending in a deafening crash of stone upon stone. As the dark screen vanished, he could see his foe which had been flung away and into a nearby wall. It was missing most of one of its arms, legs and shoulder, as well as some other areas of its surface. The affected areas looked to have been ground down on a level smaller than Kite could hope to perceive, leaving only perfectly flat, blank stone.

The stone creature tried moving, but seemed to be losing functionality. It could not put up much of a struggle as a final thrust of a void-tipped spear finished it, its head and torso ground down by a torrent of spatial tears.

Kite leaned against his spear, aching all over but couldn’t help his wide smile as his victory was confirmed. He gave a thought to Dragonfly, whose battle-mania seemed to have rubbed off on him quite a bit.

The silence was broken by Third, who came hovering up to him where he stood. “That was a marvelous battle! And I’m so happy you noticed this place. I thought you were going to miss it at first, which would have been a true shame. How did you feel about this area? And the foe? Quite imposing, if I may say so myself.” The orb continued to bombard him with questions and observations, but Kite forestalled it with a gesture.

“Just-” he hissed as speaking brought a sharp pain. “Please hold on for just a moment.” Kite continued more softly. “I think it broke one of my ribs, so I will need to recover a bit. Then you may ask me anything you like.”

“Oh, splendid!” Third cheered as he followed Kite toward the fore of the building, where the young man sat down on one of the intact stone benches. He ate one pill for each of his three drained reserves, health, stamina and mana and sat down to meditate as the battles of the last hours flashed before his mind.

During his battles on this platform, Kite had gotten a better appreciation of the growth of many of his abilities. There was a considerable difference to the effect of all of them compared to when he had just awakened them. An example was the disruptive force added by his dispelling attack. At the beginning it had been more of an afterthought, especially when not boosted by dispelled effects. Nowadays, the added damage actually impacted the battle in a noticeable way unless his enemies were particularly resistant. The same was true for the rest of his skills, as the spatial tears were larger and more numerous, the mana drained more significant and all his barriers more resilient.

He knew he was not near bronze rank just yet, but such obvious progress did give him the most satisfying feeling of having grown on a fundamental level. As he manifested Sage to let him look about the large room, he even thought his familiar slightly changed with crisper lines and having grown just a bit larger.

As his cracked rib had healed enough, he spent the rest of his recovery talking with a most enthusiastic Third, sharing some thoughts about the challenges so far. Kite did make sure to highlight how impressed he was a bit extra, as he felt that the lonely construct seemed to need the praise. He could not fathom the work of constructing a realm such as this.

Feeling restored, Kite rose from his seated position to take a closer look at something that had caught his eyes. On the altar, in an offering bowl made of pristine white stone, lay a pile of what Kite assumed to be quintessence. Most seemed to be of the stone variety, but a large part was of a type unknown to him, the uneven crystals having almost blurry outlines which made Kite’s brain buzz to look at. At the top of the pile lay an essence, distinct with its cubical shape. From the rugged surface and solid feeling, Kite assumed it to be some kind of stone or earth essence.

WWJS:

[Item] Earth quintessence

Iron rank

[Item] Dimension quintessence

Iron rank

[Item] Solid Essence

Unranked - Uncommon

“Is this the treasure you spoke about?” he asked Third while pointing to the bowl.

“Indeed it is! You have earned your spoils, trial-taker.” the orb answered cheerfully. “A place such as this has plentiful manifestations, and I took what felt like just rewards and spread it out for the cunning or ambitious to find.”

Kite collected the treasure into one of his new dimensional bags before turning to the orb. “Speaking of treasure…” he began, trailing off as he focused. The rainbow light of a manifestation appeared in front of him, leading to the clanging of metal as the result of Something from Nothing revealed itself.

It was a dagger-like weapon with a short, wide triangular blade. Its handle was not the usual straight variety but instead split off to each side at a straight angle. The whole weapon seemed to be made of a gray stone with stark-white marbling. Kite recognized the weapon to be a katar, or punching dagger, meant to be grasped with the blade pointing straight out from his knuckles. It was a rather exotic weapon he had only seen pictures of so far in his life. Fortunately, its basic use was straight-forward enough.

With his manifestations came a vague knowledge of the weapon’s properties, and Kite smiled as he grasped the hilt of his newest acquisition. He had long held a feeling that the power had started giving results that were slightly less random and leaning a bit more towards what he might need at the moment. It was still a far cry from having his pick of properties and shapes, as it could still produce more outlandish results such as a whip which only interacted with water-based attacks. But it gave a hint of things to come, and for his current challenge this particular result was something he thought would complement his arsenal very well.

WWJS:

[Item] Tectonic Tension

Punching dagger

Iron rank - epic

[Effect] Greatly increased piercing ability and damage versus crystalline materials, such as stone, glass and certain metals.

[Effect] Slightly increases all resonating force damage dealt by the wielder. May pay an additional mana cost to convert any disruptive force damage from an attack to resonating force damage. Cost increases with amount of damage converted.

[Effect] Activate to have the point of the weapon release a shockwave of resonating force damage. Cost: Moderate mana. Cooldown: 15 s.

As Kite had currently been missing a lighter weapon for closer quarters, the katar fit the bill. That it just so happened to be an excellent choice against tougher, harder opponents was a true boon to his current situation as well. He made some jabs and punches with the blade extended, nodding to himself.

Third had been watching him during the whole process. “How interesting.” it mused. “I could sense that you gathered remnants from the enemies you defeated, but to use it in such a way. How is one to produce a challenge to account for such versatility?” it finished, sounding almost a bit peeved.

“If it is any consolation, this was a most fortunate result of this particular power of mine.” Kite tried, placatingly. “Besides, isn’t the challenge meant to be a test of one’s path regardless of which path it is? Shouldn’t such versatility be a sign of strength?” he added with a raised eyebrow.

His response was some vague mutterings about power above the curve and lack of balance, but the orb ultimately seemed to concede the point as it lapsed into silence.

Kite finished his meditation, taking his time to restore himself thoroughly. He felt that this chapel would be a good point to use as a base camp for now, as it was at least somewhat enclosed and had a defensible doorway barring him being chased by something capable of flight. But he was not done yet, not for today at least. Another platform had loomed at the other side of that bridge, promising more challenge. But Kite felt more confident taking it on now. While dangerous, so far the trial had been surmountable. With every step, he felt more confident in the strength of his path.

Outside the gate, a small camp had been set up next to the empty circular artifact. Initiate Rise had tried pursuing Kite into it several times, as if hoping that his anger would be enough for the ancient gate to let him through. Once he had even tried venting his frustrations on the gate itself, but all his efforts had left not the slightest mark on it, neither damage nor blemish. While it hadn’t retaliated in any meaningful way, they had all felt the faintest pulse of warning in response to the initiate’s attacks. It had been an echo of a power so much greater than them, as if one of the sun’s had opened a sleepy eye at them but chose to ignore them for their utter insignificance.

This had led to Rise splitting his times between pacing in front of the thing and simply just standing and staring. Initiate Providence could sense a growing frustration and a hint of unease from him the longer the wait stretched on. While it could simply mean that Kite had died, his corpse ever remaining inside, it could also mean that he was still alive. And alive meant succeeding, if the few vague stories about the trials of the jade-sky gate would be believed. Most recorded survivors had been very vague, if forthcoming at all, about what they had gone through. The few that were willing to share had usually been sworn to secrecy by their sect or family, the secret staying within the organization to not risk it helping their competitors.

The other four initiates split their time between relaxing, playing games of chance and strategy or training. Initiate Providence mostly did the latter, feeling like every minute spent here was time wasted on something that simply wasn’t worthwhile, even risking to become perilous. He had gotten no response to his message, but he had not expected one either. Those dice had been cast, and he could only hope that the result would at least slightly alleviate the bad karma he could almost feel the group constantly accruing, as they waited for a man who had not initiated any hostility against them to punish him for the failings of one of their own.

Brilliant Bloom of Providence sighed, brushing a strand of his reddish-black hair out of his face. In the stories, this was always the typical precursor to a reckoning of some sorts. He hoped he could at least snatch a role as a fool worthy of redemption.