The magics introduced by the System all had distinctive natures that could affect the characters of their users over time. Fire tends to make its casters more aggressive and easily provoked, while ice tends to make its casters cold and unfeeling, and void tends to make its casters lust ever more for power while simultaneously degrading their mind.

Giada Marino - Scholar - Intricacies of the System

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Raven’s eyes flitted between Silas and Olivia, and she bared her teeth, recalling her own tale following her departure from his group.

Originally, she had coaxed Silas and Faris to join her in hunting the trolls as she had wanted to see whether they were worthy of becoming her thralls. They were both attractive men, stimulating in their own rights, and she had freely imagined having her way with them. It had been unfortunate that the Order had knocked all of them out before she managed to do so, but that had just been a minor hiccup in her plan. At least, so she had naively thought until meeting Kore.

Handsome, playful, and best of all, overtly attracted to her, she had been hooked immediately on their first meeting, left wanting for more of his attention. On her return to Lyfort, she had gotten just that as the satyr mayor had smothered her with his love. Sure, he had asked odd and banal questions about human society, but that was hardly worth noting when in his company. It had been a blissful period, only drawing to an end with the coming of the dim-witted ogre.

She snarled at the very thought of the ugly, hulking beast. Whatever it had said to Kore, it had made the mayor turn on her with frightening decisiveness. She had been cast out of Lyfort minutes later, Kore personally giving the command with cruel eyes. When she had begged for a reason why, he had instead threatened to riddle her with holes and leave her ragged corpse out for the scavengers to eat if she didn’t leave with haste.

After this, she had set back on her original targets, using Meera’s tracking ability to hunt down Silas. She recalled how her pet had lied about the duration of her ability to Silas and Faris: it appeared even after her mind had been consumed, she still retained the capabilities to serve in her mistress’s interests.

Now that Silas was in front of her, Raven felt her desire for the Duellist grow: she simply needed him at her beck and call. And it seemed the best way to proceed was by playing around his haggard companion.

“Why don’t we all just calm down?” Silas called out, raising his spear somewhat into a less threatening position. “I don’t see why we have to fight.”

“So you say, but you just as easily abandoned me in Lyfort for this washed out whore,” Raven replied.

His eyes widened, and he gawked in exasperation. “You left by yourself! I don’t see what this has to do with anything.”

“Then prove it,” she said haughtily.

“Prove what?”

“Your love for me.” A wicked smile curled itself around her lips. Her voidling scuttled forward. “If you love me more than her, don’t move. If you do…” She stabbed her finger at Olivia in the shape of a gun, “Bang!”

Bewildered by the development, Silas recalled Josh stating how weird Raven was, and it appeared he had been right as she had seemingly made up a fantasy with Silas in her mind. More troubling, his intuition told him that if he listened to her commands, he would quickly end up a mindless zombie like Meera. He didn’t know how she had done it, but it was likely through an ability, which meant the voidling was now advancing to disable him. He couldn’t let that happen, but at the same time, he couldn’t move in fear of Olivia getting shot.

Suddenly, he backpedalled on his thoughts. So what if Meera fired? Perhaps he could cut the arrow midair, and if not that, he could just heal up Olivia afterwards, right? The Huntress couldn’t get more than two or three shots before he reached her, so what were the chances she would hit a critical region, anyway? He admitted it was a risk, but it appeared to be one he would have to make. Steeling himself, Silas was about to dash in when he saw a fearsome shadow swooping silently behind Meera.

“Finally,” he said, grinning in spite of the situation. He sprinted forward and used the momentum as he thrust his spear in between the voidling’s mandibles. It spluttered and tumbled back, but his attack failed to damage its glossy shell.

“Fire!” Raven screeched. “Fire, baby, fire!”

Her answer came not in the form of a piercing arrow but as a shrill scream. She cocked her head up and gaped as she spotted Meera being carried off by a giant owl. The Huntress struggled and thrashed but was helpless all the same against the raptor’s grip.

Silas attacked in a flurry of feeble blows. His full-power strike had failed to even crack its shell, so now he instead aimed to stack as many Harrying Blows as he could, draining the voidling with every hit. Seeing how it wobbled and tottered drunkenly on its feet, he knew he had done enough and so made for its master with haste.

Raven drew back on seeing his rush and tried to run, but he caught up in a matter of seconds. The image of Grace’s death flashed in his mind, but he advanced nonetheless and drove his point into the Voidcaller’s back. She gasped and turned to him with a frightful, teary expression, and he struck again. Going for one final blow, he silenced her and stood over her corpse, exhaling deeply like an enraged bull.

Glancing about, he saw the voidling shrivelling up with a weak but dreadful screech, clawing at the ground until it shrunk into a sizzling chunk of burnt flesh. From above, Bandit drifted down with its wide wings stretched out, dropping Meera harshly. She was unconscious with blood trickling down from where it had grasped her. Bandit cocked its beak down at her head, electric eyes waiting for affirmation.

“Wait,” Silas yelled, coming closer. Bandit furrowed its brow in confusion, and he scratched its crest to its soft purrs. Crouching down, he turned Meera over and looked at her resting face. It was strained - likely in pain from Bandit’s cuts, he figured - and he had no idea how long it would take her to wake.

Rising, he sighed. “I think there’s a chance she was being controlled until now, but I guess we can’t be sure until she wakes up.” He turned to Bandit and immediately noted the owl had grown further, its crest now coming up to his chest. Although it maintained the same royal plumage of rich gold and velvety ebony, he sensed from its aura it had gotten stronger as well. “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you in, what, four, five days.”

It bobbed its head, then began hooting and hissing and calling. Befuddled, Silas stared mutely until he realised the System was now actually partially translating Bandit’s speech. Despite this, its grammar was truly horrendous, and he was soon rubbing his temples from putting together its drivel like a complex puzzle. From what he gleaned, it was something about a hawk, or maybe a family of hawks, who had arrogantly invaded its territory. For this crime, Bandit had chased down the hawk/hawks several hundreds of miles and killed it/them.

Silas thought this was a slight overreaction, but then again, he knew nothing of avian culture so he kept his opinions to himself. Either way, after ridding them, Bandit had returned to New Derby, which it referred to as Silas’s nest and Olivia as his nestling. After failing to find him there, it had hunted him down by scanning over numerous fields worth of ground.

Rubbing his brow, Silas shook his head in bewilderment at the story when he spotted Olivia peeping from the distance, hiding inside the cave. “Hey, Olivia, come over. This is Bandit, a, uh, friend.” Yeah, that sounded about right. “And Bandit, this is Olivia, a fully grown adult and not a nestling, alright?” Olivia walked towards them with faltering steps, trembling softly as she neared the great raptor.

Bandit hooted a greeting, which made her jump back, then turned back to Silas and demanded a story from him on his capers until now.

“Well,” Silas started, “…

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In the same way many of our own religions survived the Apocalypse through adapting to make sense of our new circumstances, so did many of the other races’ religions. For example, the Order of Tyr considered Tyr an illuminator to be praised and Themir a fiend to be cursed. Their reasons for the latter were to do with how devastating Themir’s blessings could be to those he touched.

Even after they arrived on Idroa and learnt that this was simply the nature of void magic as the System prescribed and had little to do with the whims of a supposed evil overlord, they altered their tale to fit around the new narrative and continued to associate the two together, shunning those who used it. However, there were a select number of exceptions, the prime being the later-crowned Avatar of Foltrus,…

Suko Ryo - Interspeciel Expert - Humanity and the Other Races