Cold shivers ran down my limbs and my skin prickled, even as I felt like I was being boiled from within. I think I screamed, but the shrieks were consumed by a deep hum that reverberated through my skull and drowned out everything else. All awareness of anything but the pain fled as my vision descended into a fog of white and red.

As the pain went on it didn’t lessen, but I slowly began to regain clarity as a feeling of strength filled me. Energy poured through me with the intensity of a pump forcing hot water through cold veins, reinvigorating, and giving life to what I hadn’t recognized as dead.

“What …?” I blinked my eyes open, unable to comprehend the shapes around me. “Where am I?”

“Quiet,” said Telvy. “You’re ruining my concentration. Do you think mana surgery is easy? You wouldn’t want me to mess it up my first time, would you?” She tisked and mumbled to herself, but I could only make out pieces of it … “Could ruin my confidence for years.”

“First ti…”

I gasped in pain, unable to finish the sentence. Instead, I found myself retching as I clutched at my stomach.

“Shhh,” she said, “The pain will pass faster if you don’t fight it. Here, drink this.”

She rolled me over onto my back and I felt something bitter and acrid poured down my throat. It tasted vile, but I immediately began to feel better. The sky and the scaly face looking down at me were the first things to come into focus.

When had I collapsed?

My muscles felt twitchy and restless like they needed to be used or else they might burst. I needed to run, to let my muscles stretch, and yet I couldn’t even figure out how to stand. My mind was still trying to determine where it was, let alone minor details like how to walk.

“What did you give me?”

My lips felt numb and the words were hard to form. In fact, everything was becoming harder to focus on. Telvy’s face seemed to glow as faint traces of color danced along the scales that lined her jawline.

“Just a concoction to speed things up,” she said. “Give in, your body will know what to do.”

“My … what?”

I tried to push myself up with my arms when a spasm ran through my entire body. I hardly made it a few inches off the deck before the pain drove back. My head was spinning, and focusing on what was happening became impossible as if each thought was drowned out by uncountable memories and ideas greedily competing with and consuming each other. The last thing I remember was a faint, pulsing aura. And then I saw black.

***

Calibrating…. System Initializing. Basic Stats… Adjusting….

Lines of text scrolled past my eyes. The words came fast, and I barely had time to pick out a few of them as they disappeared beneath my field of vision. I noticed the first signs that my skills were returning when the blue glow of mana became visible as swirling lines coiling around my fingertips.

I could feel and see the mana around and within me. The blueish energy stood in sharp contrast to the deep black tinged with flickering red that represented the skeletal lines of eldritch energy that I had built like scaffolding within me.

The air was almost empty of both types of energy, but Telvy was a beacon. The Peacekeeper mage was a raging inferno of blue and green flames that spun around her like a wild storm. It was a beautiful sight, but humbling. Every spell I had ever cast would not equal a tenth of the energy the woman held within her.

More notifications began to appear, but I set them aside for a moment to open my status screen. As the translucent screen appeared before me, I let out a breath.

It was back. I was back.

Augustus Finn

Class: Hierophant

Level: 3/11

Stamina (r/ per second): 36/36 (0.30)

Mana (r/ per minute): 94/94 (3.133)

Might: 14

Agility: 9

Reaction: 12

Intellect: 38

Perception: 27

Focus: 22

Phys. Resist: 7

Mag. Resist: 6

Men. Resist: 5

My stats were exactly as I remembered them, and I could feel the vitality and strength running through my limbs.

If anything, I felt stronger than before. Perhaps living without the system had done me some good. I was starting to think that in many ways the system was a crutch I needed to learn to walk without. It was certainly true that having it kicked out from under me had left me helpless.

My body, my real muscles and flesh, hadn’t gotten stronger as I fought and struggled over the previous weeks. It hadn’t had to; something else was doing the work. The only thing that had grown stronger had been the benefits of the system. Only by being completely cut off from that crutch had I been able to grow. Despite that, any ‘human’ gains were capped and would come much more slowly than the stats granted by the system.

If I wanted to survive I knew I would need any edge I could find — crutch or not.

The momentary feelings of resentment towards the system quickly fled as I remember the sense of emptiness and longing that had accompanied its absence. I quieted my shaking hands by balling them into tight fists and turned my attention back to the notifications.

My imprisonment represented many lost opportunities for growth, but there had been some benefits besides insights into my reliance on the system. I had even gained new skills — Physical Fitness and Meditation, proving that hours spent doing calisthenics and staring at empty walls had not been entirely wasted.

Physical Fitness was almost self-explanatory and decreased my stamina consumption when performing athletics; useful and easily understood. Meditation was slightly more interesting, though I was hard-pressed to figure out the best way to utilize it.

Meditation (2/10) © - You have delved the mysteries of your own mind and learned to grasp at the secrets that reside within. While meditating you have learned to block outside distractions, thereby increasing the efficiency of your mental stats and increasing your rate of mana regeneration. Cannot be used in combat.

I could see the potential for training my spells and skills that benefitted from focus, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed. The “Cannot be used in combat” immediately soured me to the skill. It felt as if the world would never give me a peaceful moment to train, and I had squandered what few opportunities I had been given.

I had also gained two levels in Eldritch Mimicry, perhaps due to my small successes in gathering and shaping the energy without the visual aids granted to me by the system.

I found that I had gained a deeper sense of how the energy moved and reacted. I had also learned that not all eldritch energy was the same; each seemed to have its own ‘flavor’ that was tied to some powerful emotion or desire.

I suspected the variations were due to different sources. The black and red energy I was used to seeing in the world represented madness and sought corruption and chaos. It warped and changed everything it touched, but it did not destroy.

This was different from the loathing and rage I had sensed from the heart, or dungeon core, that Sebbit had shown me. That energy existed only to destroy and inflict pain. It cried out for revenge and would drag down anything it came into contact with.

I could sense that there was some deep secret hidden in that knowledge, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out what it was. I wasn’t sure how long I had been laying on the deck getting lost in my own thoughts when I was brought back to reality by a deep, feminine voice.

“Finn, did I break you?” said Telvy. “We’ve got work to do, and I’m going to need you ready to go.”

“Yeah, no problem. I’m fine … just a little overwhelmed. Whatever you did seemed to work, though.”

I sat up and pushed my knuckles together with a loud crack before pushing my chest forward and stretching my elbows behind me, creating an audible pop.

“Ahhh, that felt good. I’m tired of being cramped up, I’m ready to do some work. I feel like I could take on an army. What do you need me to do?”

“Good.”

The tall archmage reached out with a single clawed finger and ran it along the edge of my jaw. As the finger stopped under my chin she tilted my head up until our eyes met.

“Look around, do you see the dome above us?” She tilted my eyes up further until I was looking straight up.

“Umm, yes. I see —”

“Good, that dome is being controlled and it must have something supplying it with energy at multiple points. A common penta-hybrid formation based on the theories of High Mage Malak is possible, but I’d bet my teeth we’re looking at a seventeen-point formation with an oscillating origination point.”

“I thought you spoke English,” I said. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”

“Backwater mages,” she sighed as she shook her head. “Just find the areas with the largest concentrations of eldritch energy and prioritize areas with unusual amounts of movement or fluctuation. Tell me if you see anything strange.”

I looked out at the dome. It was so dense with energy that I had been able to see it in the physical spectrum even without my skills and class — now, it was ablaze with color and patterns. Snaking chains of symbols lit up the sky, with the black and red energy serving as a backdrop.

The symbols seemed to be flowing around the dome in a spiral pattern that led upwards towards the apex of the barrier. As these symbols reached their end they would swirl in tightening circles before being consumed by an incredibly dense spot at the very top of the dome.

As I turned around, I could see several other areas where the energy was concentrated almost as thickly.

Each of these areas were evenly spaced from each other, and from the Yorktown. They seemed to be the origination point for the glowing chains of symbols. The energy in these areas seemed more volatile than the rest; constantly expanding and contracting and even changing in color and speed.

“There,” I shouted as I pointed straight up. “All the energy is being fed there.”

“Can you see where the energy is being fed from?”

“Sure, umm … there are eight points. And I think another eight smaller points as well, but it’s hard to tell. The closest is right there,” I pointed directly in front of me at a spot roughly half a mile away.

“Good, we strike immediately. Ladies, form up and prepare for evac.”

The three looming Peacekeepers that had been flanking Telvy stood up taller and holstered their rifles behind them. They then each crossed their arms in front of their chests and waited while standing perfectly still.

It had the grace and precision of a well-practiced routine.

“Don’t worry about how you stand,” Telvy turned to look at me, “just don’t struggle. Got it?”

“Don’t struggle against what …”

Before I could finish, Telvy was lifted into the air as the chains that were wrapped around her torso began to unravel and twirl beneath her like a tornado of clanking steel. Long red hair spun out behind her like a flag that was struggling against a heavy wind.

I could sense mana wrapping around me as I began to feel lighter and my toes lifted up from the ground. Small pebbles floated up from cracks in the concrete deck below my feet, and the air filled with the haze of dust and debris.

“What’s going on? I'm really not —”

A chain shot out from the tornado of metal that surrounded Telvy. It spun around me, wrapping around my waist and chest. The three Peacekeepers in black armor were quickly bound in the same manner.

“Telvy,” I protested. “You’re not doing what I think —”

The chain binding me to the mage tightened and my words were drowned out by the rush of wind. She cut through the sky like a falling meteor, twirling steel spinning out behind her like the severed bonds of a mad god.

My stomach lurched and I tasted bile as Telvy sped up, dragging me with her as she dove straight towards the earth.