Thirteen Days Ago

USAF Weather Monitoring Station

250 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska

Anya stood outside in a light snowstorm in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. The snow at her feet melted whenever she took a step, and the falling flakes turned to lukewarm water before they touched her skin. Her skin itself felt as though she had a powerful fever, according to Samaira, but nothing that actually burned on contact.

Anya relaxed her control on her Sun’s Heart for a moment, and the snow several feet around her melted at once. Thick clouds of steam billowed out of her mouth and nose. Her veins glowed and made her skin give off a dull, fiery warmth.

She focused on reining in the ambient heat she was giving off and the snow around her returned. The light within her faded and Anya let out a mostly normal amount of vapor when she breathed this time. It wasn’t hard to keep the upgraded Sun’s Heart under control when she was awake, but when she fell asleep, it was an issue.

It had only been one day since she and Samaira had respecced themselves, but they’d both passed out from the agony of it. Anya had woken to find herself just outside her quonset hut in the middle of a snowstorm, but untouched by the snow. A pair of wary airmen had been stationed to watch over her when she woke and filled her in on what happened.

She had turned the inside of the quonset hut into a sauna, which was impressive given the size of the building and how relatively empty it was. They were worried about her starting a fire or Samaira suffering heatstroke, and had first tried putting her in the walk-in refrigerator near the mess hall, but she’d overheated that and put the food at risk of spoiling. So they had just dumped her outside and set guards on her to make sure she wasn’t in danger of freezing to death.

Now, Anya knew she could curtail her heat output easily enough while awake. She figured it was like snoring: she could control her breathing quite easily while conscious, but when she was asleep, she tended to snore (a fact Samaira had pointed out with some amusement since they had been sharing the hut). Her new skill levels balanced this out however, and she now knew how to passively contain her overwhelming aura of heat even while resting: breathing exercises before bed, meditation, coaxing her Sun’s Heart into a rhythm of cooling down prior to sleep, and so on. Even though she technically knew what to do, it was still a new habit she would require adjustment.

Her Sun’s Heart wasn’t the only thing that required getting used to, though. Singularity’s Grasp, the enhancement bestowed upon those who took Gravity Dominion, had made reaching for things easier. Sort of. Whenever she reached for anything, it flew into her hand. But sometimes, if she was close enough to something, it came to her regardless.

She’d been in the mess hall with Samaira after both of them had recovered and were sipping coffee. Anya realized she’d forgotten the creamer, saw it on the counter some 20 feet away, and then it had soared toward her and whapped an airman in the head. He had been covered in the cream and Anya had kept apologizing as she helped him clean his uniform.

Much like her Sun’s Heart let her sense other heat sources and draw upon them, Singularity’s Grasp had made her keenly aware of the gravitational pull of the Earth, the moon, and the sun. It wasn’t a bad feeling, just something she noticed more readily now. It was the physical equivalent of white noise, comforting in its way.

The Crown of the Firmament, Light Dominion’s enhancement, was another matter. Anya had woken with a literal crown of light hovering around her head: a circlet of glowing radiance that illuminated everything around her in gentle rays. It took her a few minutes to “turn it off,” but Samaira told her it still made her eyes look brighter, though that might have been the Sun’s Heart, or both.

She didn’t just sense actual literal light in the way she had expected. Instead she sensed life, positivity, growing power. Her awareness spiked whenever one of the men or women on base laughed, or when they were doing PT and chanting while running and psyching themselves up. She had a tingle of it from Chandrali whenever the big cat saw her, and a much bigger tingle whenever the cat saw Samaira. She couldn't detect all positive emotions, just the really loud ones. She sensed an absence of potential on the surface of the frozen ground outside, but not far beneath,there was a little growing.

She sensed it the most from above, beyond the cloud cover, from the distant sun. It wasn’t the heat she was sensing (her Sun’s Heart told her as much) but its power, its radiance. Even on overcast wintry days like this, she could sense it. It was a more invasive sensation than heat or gravity, but it wasn’t bad per se. She just needed to adjust to it.

Samaira’s adjustment was going much better. The Ichor of the Ocean, Water Dominion’s enhancement, seemed to make Samaira more flexible (which paired extremely well with her alien dance skill), but that appeared to be all. Except of course for her ability to now effortlessly control water. She was on the other end of the base, giggling and making waves of snow she rode around pillars of ice.

“Hey, uh, Barker?” Anya asked a nearby airman who had been tasked with keeping an eye on her whenever she left the quonset hut. He was short, but so were most people compared to her these days. He had his coppery red hair shorn to stubble, and his freckles stood out against his pale skin. His nose was redder than his hair or his freckles, and was running so much that Airman Barker hadn’t stopped sniffling since he’d been outside.

“Uh, what? Ma’am?” Barker asked.

“I’m gonna shoot the dirt over there. Nothing big. Don’t freak out,” Anya said and pointed to a small mound of frozen dirt on the far end of the compound. Nothing was around it save for some large pieces of garbage: broken radar equipment, an old refrigerator, and a stack of battered and worn out tires.

“I think I have to ask the XO,” Barker said.

“Okay, you go ask while I shoot,” Anya said and pointed her finger at the mound of dirt. She’d just do fire first.

“Well, I meant you need to——” Barker started to say. Anya pushed a fraction of her energy into her finger tip. It glowed orange, yellow, white, and then a beam of fire burst from the tip and detonated into the dirt mound like a satchel of grenades. There was a roar of flames and an echoing Thump! as the dirt exploded.

“Huh,” Anya said and looked at her smoking finger tip. She’d maintained the heat and control of the fire blast across a significant distance with no additional energy loss or strain. Furthermore, it had happened in a snowstorm, on an overcast day, in Alaska. She’d had more difficulty doing less in warmer climates on sunny days before her respec.

“Holy geez!” Barker said. Anya pointed her finger again and this time summoned the light within her.

A dazzling beam of radiant white light shot from her finger and struck the dirt mound. It wasn’t just like shining a flashlight, and it didn’t radiate any heat. It was light given physical weight and force.

It didn’t have nearly the power of her fire blast. The tiny blast of heat had been like several grenades. The light beam was bigger, but only did about as much damage as a large caliber bullet. Felix had said it wasn’t just about attack though.

“Gotta put ‘em together,” Anya muttered.

“Do what now?” Barker asked. Anya pointed at the dirt again and this time drew on both of the dominions at once.

She tried to keep it small, as small as she could, focusing on just a tiny surface area near her finger. It didn’t just glow white, it lit up like a lighthouse. Anya squinted and released the energy and gasped.

The fire was white, laced through with sparks and flames of glittering gold. It struck the dirt mound and blew it apart entirely, and the refrigerator, and the tires, and the old radar equipment, and sent all of them soaring into the air, consumed by the white-gold flames.

Barker cried out and was thrown back off his feet. Anya swore and immediately used Singularity’s Grasp to freeze all the flying debris, and Barker, in the air.

“You okay?” Anya asked the airman. Barker floated several feet off the ground and gave her a slow nod. Anya set him down gently and then restacked all the junk where it had been with a few gestures.

“What the hell was that?” Barker asked as he stood up.

“One hell of an upgrade,” Anya said. She had only taken a fraction’s fraction from her Heart and the Crown, but the latter had magnified the former far beyond what she was expecting. Hell, she might not even need that Battle Aura skill at all if this was what a drop of Light Dominion could do. Although, a Battle Aura double-boosted by Light Dominion would be a hell of a thing.

When Anya had first gotten Flame Dominion, the idea of making a flaming sword or something had flitted through her mind. But upon trying it, it was more hassle than it was worth. She was essentially just holding a sword-shaped flame that demanded constant energy input and didn’t actually cut anything. It looked cool, but was otherwise a waste of effort.

But if Light Dominion’s whole thing was about creation, and making things stronger and more substantial…

Anya held out her hand and once again summoned fire and light, fusing them together into a new construct. This time it wasn’t just a beam attack, but gold-and-orange flame in the shape of a scimitar.

The fiery weapon appeared in Anya’s hand.

And it stayed.

When she had tried this before, she’d had to keep putting energy into the “sword,” to have it maintain its shape. Now, it stayed put without her having to focus on it. Anya dropped the sword into the snow and it still maintained its form. Her first attempt at a flaming sword hadn’t even been a sword as it lacked any cutting edge. It had effectively just been a sword-shaped torch. This scimitar had a keen, honed edge of gleaming light on one side, just as she had envisioned it.

“Whoa,” Anya said. Like any heat source, she could sense it, draw it to her, push it back, play with it as she wished. She willed the flaming weapon to her and it spun into her hand. She tossed it from one hand to the other and chuckled.

Anya made another sword out of thin air so she held one in each hand. She released them, but used her Flame Dominion to control their movement and kept them aloft. She thought of the fan alien in Manhattan and made the scimitars spin around her in a deadly ring of vibrant orange light.

“Hey! Careful!” Barker said. He was over a dozen yards away, not in any danger, but he still leapt backwards. Anya smirked at him, but stopped spinning her weapons. She made them vanish, and then did the same experiment with spears, shields, tiny daggers, maces, and other melee weapons. Making flame guns seemed a bit superfluous since she could already shoot lasers and fire blasts just fine on her own, and the whole point of her new build was to draw the enemy in.

Light Dominion wasn’t just magnifying her fire powers either. Her whole body felt strengthened beyond what her stat increases would indicate. There was a solidness to her bones and muscles that hadn’t been there before as well as a certain level of clarity to her thinking. Her use of Gravity Dominion to catch Barker and the debris earlier had been almost instantaneous, though whether this was a fringe benefit of Light Dominion or Cognition Acceleration was still up for debate.

She tried making literal light armor over her body next, and while it worked and was strong enough to deflect the few bullets Anya convinced Barker to fire at her, she didn't think it would do much in a fight with an alien. When she applied the light to her plain t-shirt, however, it felt much stronger. She grinned as she imagined applying the same idea to a suit of armor that Gary could upgrade.

Her following experiments with Gravity Dominion were simple and direct. She could float, fly, act as a powerful gravity well, crush most objects to some degree, and lift pretty much anything. Barker became a bit panicked when she started to lift her own quonset hut, and she decided to let it be for the frazzled airman’s sake.

Gravity supported by her inner light was even more powerful, but most interesting was a limited ability to bend light itself. Anya was able to make herself partially invisible (more what she started to think of as “dim,” or hazy like a low-rent Immonen) by bending light around and away from herself. She was also able to do the opposite, and draw more ambient light to her and make herself brighter. The more light she drew in, the stronger her inner light became, and the more she was able to manipulate in its raw form and strengthen her fire attacks.

She actually squealed with delight as she also figured out she could alter the prismatic range of light she bent. It took a significant amount of concentration, but she was actually able to make a passable duplicate illusion of herself. Barker and several other airmen came over to the illusory Anya and passed their hands through it.

The more detail the illusion required, the more energy and focus it took to maintain it, and that was without making the illusion move. She could form a basic glowing outline of herself and make it copy her movements with relative ease, however.

Testing her heightened regeneration next proved to be a chore. None of the knives or even small arms on the base could penetrate her skin. Any flame-based weapons she could make she’d just absorb. Being a weather monitoring station, there wasn’t much in the way of big guns to use, so Anya had asked Samaira to hit her hand with something.

“Are you sure about this?” Samaira asked. She had built a large ice fort that the airmen were all admiring and taking pictures of. Chandrali was also basking in their attention.

“Yeah just shoot my hand with something tiny,” Anya said. “I already convinced Barker to shoot me, but his pistol didn’t even give me a bruise.”

“Please don’t ask me to shoot you again,” Barker pleaded.

“All right, if you really want me too,” Samaira said. “I need to test my own offensive strength out anyway.”

“Perfect!” Anya said and took several long strides away from Samaira, then held her hand out to her side, fingers and thumb spread. “Just right in the middle of the palm.”

Samaira raised one of her own hands and a long, crystalline spike of ice formed out of the air. There was a pause, and then the spike gleamed blue and took on a faint inner glow.

“This isn’t gonna feel so great,” Samaira said.

“Yeah but I gotta do my tests so, c’mon,” Anya said and blew out a breath. Samaira nodded and then Anya saw her finger twitch.

Even with her Cognition Acceleration, even knowing the attack was coming, Anya couldn’t see the ice spike actually move. It floated above Samaira’s hand one moment, and then the next her hand jerked back and the spike was impaled through her palm.

“Oh my god!” Samaira screamed. “I’m so sorry! I just thought it would scratch you!”

“Holy shit,” Barker said and put a hand over his mouth as his cheeks bulged out.

“Whoa…and ow. Ow ow ow…fucking ow,” Anya said as the pain hit her. She ignited her hand in a halo of fire that would have melted steel, but the ice spike remained.

“It’s enchanted,” Samaira said. “I can get it——”

Anya applied her inner light to the fire and once again it turned white-gold. The ice spike cracked and evaporated almost at once.

“Ooookay, nevermind,” Samaira said. She and Anya and Barker (his eyes wide and his face sickly) were all looking at the golf-ball sized hole in her palm. Anya focused her inner light and fire to fuel her regeneration and blood, bone, muscle, and skin sealed her hand back up in seconds.

“That’s disgusting,” Baker said and retched before running for the nearest bathroom.

“That’s the fastest I’ve seen you heal,” Samaira said.

“Outside of the time Immonen was there, yeah,” Anya agreed.

“It’s more than just fast!” Felix piped up in her ear.

“Felix? C’mon out,” Anya said and the rose-headed AI appeared before her. “What do you mean it’s more than just fast?”

“I mean, you just made some progress in a regeneration specialization!” Felix said.

“I did what?” Anya asked.

“It’s like how your English skill has a specialization for obscenity. Because you swear all the time,” Felix said. “Some skills have specializations that get stronger the more you use them. Usually this happens by using them in combination with other skills or developing your own style, techniques, etcetera.”

“So using Light Dominion to boost Regeneration did…what, exactly?” Anya said and Felix brought up her menu.

OTHER SKILL: Regeneration-30

Specialization added: Adaptive Regeneration

“Adaptive Regeneration?” Anya asked.

“The more you are injured by one type of damage, the better your body becomes at repairing from that type,” Felix said.

“So if I kept shooting magic ice spikes at Anya, she would no longer be hurt by them? Eventually, I mean,” Samaira said.

“Not quite,” Felix said. “According to the menu data, it’s just about regenerating damage, not preventing it. So you could still hurt Anya with your magic ice spikes, but she’d just keep recovering faster and faster, and require less energy to do so. She could still theoretically be killed by ice spikes, it would just take more effort from you. Also she’d have to get hit by a LOT of ice spikes to start building up significant adaptation.”

“Please don’t get any ideas about shooting me up with shards okay?” Anya said. “It still really fucking hurts.”

“No problem,” Samaira said and gave a weak laugh as she studied Anya’s palm. "What if I just kinda scratched you a little with it? Would that do anything?"

"Not really. Minimal damage means minimal, if any, progress. Maximum damage means maximum progress!" Felix said. Anya winced and shook her head at what "Maximum damage" would look and feel like.

“It’s cool and all, but the aliens have all had diverse damage types. The puppet just hit things and shot acid, the fridge had electricity, that damn toilet had anti-matter beams according to Gary, the fan had wind and incredibly sharp blades, and so on,” Anya said.

“Well you could just spend all day subjecting yourself to multiple forms of serious injury endlessly to build up your adaptation,” Felix said with a grin.

“Torture myself day and night with physical agony, yeah what fun. I’ll pass, thanks. If the fights with the aliens have taught me anything it’s that I’ll be getting hurt plenty in the natural course of things. In the meantime, if there’s some way to train this specialization up that isn’t literal constant torture, let me know.”

“Will do!” Felix said and saluted.

Anya had one last Other skill she needed to test.

Battle Aura.

“I should probably step out of the base for this one,” Anya said, and waited for Barker to finish his impromptu visit to the toilet before she walked out into the frozen plains to try out her final new skill.

“You know I get in trouble if you blow anything up, right?” Barker asked some time later.

“I’m just gonna try something, Barker. Chill out. It’s why we’re outside the base. I even asked your XO, he said it was fine, so long as we’re back in a half hour. And look, the base is just right there,” Anya said and pointed. The snowstorm had picked up, and the weather station was little more than a collection of boxy gray smudges with a few halos of dim yellow light around them. Barker had driven them the short distance, barely a mile, at the XO’s request.

Barker scowled at her from behind his scarf and backed away toward the road and the jeep.

“Whatever. Okay Felix, you ready?” Anya asked.

“I’m always ready! I’m making special note of your general power input and output from all your dominions, brain waves, heart rate, blood pressure, and so on. Hit the Battle Aura when you’re ready!”

“Okay,” Anya said and shook her hands and feet, rolled her neck and shoulders, and shook her arms and legs out. “Just gotta…do it.”

She only had a single point in her Battle Aura skill. It was barely enough to be cognizant of how to make use of it. The menu described it as a “last resort,” developed by some monks on a distant planet, often used in conjunction with a suicidal charge at an enemy. It magnified the user’s natural abilities exponentially with enough training, but was formidable even at lower levels of expertise.

Anya had flashed back to her first experimentation with Flame Dominion and almost blowing up her apartment. Having otherworldly powers at lower levels was dangerous. But she needed to know if it was worth it, and what she was most concerned about was the “crash,” that took place after.

Assuming the user survived their all-out attack, the menu described a crash period immediately after, where the user’s body shut down and took days, weeks, or sometimes years to recover. Anya knew her regeneration skill would help with the recovery, but wanted to know if it would also lessen the immediate effects of the crash, and if they could be further mitigated with the use of heat absorption. She had purchased a single Star’s Breath crystal from the RAC store for the purpose of this test. If it worked, great. If it didn’t, she could afford more of the crystals easily enough, and she was only out a single skill point.

Anya closed her eyes and searched for what she had begun to think of as the Battle Aura’s “switch.” It was difficult to locate, but she had decided that whatever it was was between her human heart and her Sun’s Heart. She didn’t know if it was an actual organ or just a mental trick required of the technique in order to activate. She took one more deep breath and flicked the internal “switch.”

Light and heat burst out of her and up into the sky. The ground under her feet dented down and cracked all around her as she became a tiny gravity well. Her muscles bulged, her thoughts quickened, and she gasped at the feeling. After every level up, she always had a few hours to marvel at the dramatic power shift, how amazing it felt. It was nothing compared to this. This is what something beyond level 100 must feel like.

She could rip a mountain right out of the ground and throw it at the moon if she wanted. She certainly felt confident enough to try it at least. She could probably take on both of those big aliens at once and win, and then mop up the rest in a few——

The fire and light around her was snuffed out at once. Anya fell forward into the cracked ground face-first with a thud. She noticed the ground all around her was void of snow and completely dry, as well as being very, very hot.

“Uhhhhhhh,” she groaned. Anya tried to imagine going to the gym and working out all day, then binge drinking and waking up the next day sore, hungover, and with the flu. The crash after Battle Aura was worse than that by orders of magnitude.

She could see why this technique was used as a suicidal charge. Nobody should have to live through this feeling.

“Hey! Ma’am? Are you alive? Are you gonna set me on fire if I get close?” Barker yelled over the wind. His voice was a distant irritant compared to the misery Anya felt.

“Huuhhhhh,” she said and tried to wave one of her arms. It flopped to the side and all of the muscles and bones inside of it screamed in protest.

“Feeeliiicckkks,” Anya drawled. Drool seeped out of her mouth.

“Hello!” Felix said as they appeared. “That was really amazing! You lit up like the sun! I bet you could see that from space!”

“Whuushh happun?” Anya asked.

“Are you alive?” Barker asked again as he edged closer.

“She’s alive!” Felix called out.

“Oh. The computer thingy. Hello again,” Barker said. Felix waved cheerily with both arms.

“You crashed is what happened,” the AI said as he floated down beside Anya’s smooshed face.

“Ahm nuh healin,” Anya said. Her regeneration wasn’t turning on or knitting her back together or even easing the pain in any of her muscles. She also noticed that for the first time since she’d been shot by the toilet alien, she felt the cold.

“Airman Barker! Can you please put that crystal there in Anya’s hand?” Felix asked Barker and pointed at the Star’s Breath crystal that had fallen out of Anya’s hand and rolled to one side.

“I guess,” Barker said and picked the crystal up. “Huh. It’s warm.”

“’Urry!” Anya said and winced at the pain raising her voice caused her throat and mouth.

“All right, geez,” Barker said and put the crystal in Anya’s palm. She tried to draw on the heat deep within the Star’s Breath, but she only got a trickle of energy from it.

“Is it working?” Felix asked.

“Sloooow,” Anya moaned. “Cold.”

“Well no wonder! You’re out in below freezing weather during a snow storm in beach clothes,” Barker said. “It’s a miracle you haven’t gotten frostbite yet. Get in the car and I’ll drive you back to base.”

“Can’ moof,” Anya said. She was still drawing the trickle of energy from the Star’s Breath. She felt marginally better, but at the current rate, she’d probably freeze before she could get enough energy back.

“Well no offense ma’am, but there’s no way I can move you on my own without it getting awkward. You’re just too uh…well, big. I’m gonna call for some help,” Barker said and pulled out his radio. Anya grumbled as she laid on the ground and snow began to pile up and around her. Barker covered her with his jacket until a second jeep arrived and a pair of airmen got out.

Barker grabbed Anya by the feet and the other two airmen each grabbed an arm, and they hoisted her up into the jeep with much grunting and huffing. Anya felt herself blushing the entire time. Felix told her that her higher Brawn had increased her muscle density somewhat. She must weigh upwards of 350 pounds or more by now given her height and new density.

Barker drove her back to the weather station and she was carried into her bed in the quonset hut. Samaira glanced up as they entered from her reading corner where a number of books floated around her and she scratched notes of arcane runes into paper. She was in an oversized University of Chicago sweater and baggy flannel pants and Anya smirked to herself despite the pain at how cute she looked.

“Oh my god! What happened? Is it an alien?” Samaira asked as she sprang up from her desk.

“Nope! Just Anya trying out her new powers!” Felix said as he floated along beside her.

“And with that, my shift is over,” Barker said. “See you tomorrow ma’am. Velasquez will be waiting outside until 2000 hours if you need anything.”

“What did you do?” Samaira asked as she pulled a chair over and sat beside Anya.

“Mmmmff,” Anya groaned. It hurt too much to talk. Samaira’s hands glowed blue as she placed them on Anya and began to heal her. Anya didn’t feel much at first, but then her muscles began to unwind. The Star’s Breath still in her hand began to release more of its energy as well, and after a solid ten minutes of Samaira’s healing and drawing at the powerful crystal, Anya finally began to feel a little better.

“Son of a bitch,” Anya said and winced. “That sucked ass.”

“Coming around?” Samaira asked. Anya tried moving her arm and hissed.

“Sorta. At least I can talk now,” Anya said.

“How’s the healing?”

“Good. Great actually. Did you learn a new spell or something?”

“I’m trying to integrate the Water Dominion with my magic. Turns out it’s beneficial for healing for anything that has as much water in their bodies as we do,” Samaira said.

“Handy,” Anya said and closed her eyes. She still felt like shit, but it was getting better. And the better she felt, the more she could draw energy from the Star’s Breath and fuel her regeneration. She drew upon the faint shimmer that was her inner light and used what little there was to further speed up her recovery.

“What did you just do?” Samaira asked. “You feel really good.”

“Huh?” Anya asked. Samaira widened her eyes and pulled her hands back for a moment.

“I meant your healing process felt like it got better! I wasn’t actually groping you,” Samaira stammered a bit.

“Relax, Sam. I got it,” Anya smirked and explained how she’d just accessed her inner light.

“That sounds really handy. Makes me wonder about the Shadow Dominion.”

“Yeah. Probably caters pretty well to debuffs and destruction,” Anya said and glanced at Felix. “Hey Felix, did the healing just now build up my Adaptive Regeneration?”

“It did!” Felix confirmed.

“So if I keep using it to recover from the crash of Battle Aura, I’ll be able to recover more quickly?”

“Theoretically yes. You can see that both your Adaptive Regeneration and Battle Aura skills have gone up slightly,” Felix said and showed her the menu. They had gone up, but Felix had to zoom in on the progress bars to show the fraction of a percent they had both raised.

“Ugh,” Anya said. “It’s not like I can just spam the aura constantly either. If I tried it now it would probably kill me.”

“Oh, it would definitely kill you,” Felix said.

“Thanks buddy.”

“My pleasure!”

“Maybe wait until you fully recover,” Samaira said. “If it only takes a few hours, it might be worth it. My healing and Water Dominion skills will go up if I keep tending to you.”

“Got nothing else to do,” Anya shrugged.

“You might as well go over all your class bonuses and RAC store freebies while you wait,” Samaira added. Anya nodded and had Felix bring up her bonuses she got from picking her classes.

PHOENIX KNIGHT STORE BONUSES

+5 Free Consumable Tokens (Host Choice)(1,000 RAC limit per token, can be combined)

+1 Free Weapon/Upgrade Token (Host Choice) (25,000 RAC limit)

+1 Free Armor Tokens/Upgrades (Host Choice)(25,000 RAC limit)

+1 Free Companion Token (Host Choice)(100,000 RAC limit)(REQUIREMENT: Level 40 any Phoenix Knight Skill)

ELEMENTAL BRAWLER STORE BONUSES

+5 Free Consumable Tokens (Host Choice)(1,000 RAC limit per token, can be combined)

+3 Free Elemental Tokens (Host Choice) (20,000 RAC limit per token, can be combined)(REQUIREMENT: Must match chosen elemental skills)

+2 Free Armor Tokens/Upgrades (Host Choice)(25,000 RAC limit, can be combined)

COSMIC WARDEN STORE BONUSES

Double any defense and elemental related tokens

+5 additional tokens for any category (15,000 RAC limit per token, can be combined)

+1 Space-faring Vessel token (-RESTRICTION STILL IN PLACE- Non-FTL vessels only) (250,000 RAC limit)

Anya had talked with Gary about her weapons and armor after the fight in Manhattan. He’d told her to order whatever she wanted off the store with her free tokens, and then he’d see about upgrading it. She had a good idea of what sort of consumables she wanted already: more Star’s Breath, Hellfire Grenades, maybe some sticky goo bombs, and any kind of emergency healing device or spell she could use on others.

The “Elemental Tokens,” from Elemental Brawler were pretty vague, but Felix told her that meant they could be applied to pretty much anything as long as it lined up with her existing Dominion skills.

The bonuses that really caught her eye were the companion and space vessel tokens. She’d thought about the companion token off-and-on since she’d seen it, but had been too busy focusing on staying alive to just peruse the menu. Now she had her Flame Dominion skill up to 45, which exceeded the class requirement. The space vessel token was new to her, but intriguing. Still, with all the aliens currently on Earth, she didn't want to spend that particular token right away.

Samaira was right: while she was recovering, she might as well study the RAC store. Lifting her arms and moving her fingers still hurt too much, so she quietly told Felix to take her on a guided tour of the Companions sub-menu while Samaira healed her.