Trail 46: Nightmares Enchanting

--- Jon ---

(He exhaled, watching his breath mist despite the fact that it was the middle of July, before shaking his head as he steadied his nerves and watched the Corrupted making their way towards the camp.

It was a trick he picked up a couple of weeks in, given how the things wanted the campers they would always be moving in that direction. Meaning it was relatively easy to set up kill fields in places that they had to pass through when other options were locked off by one means or another. Such as the effigies Miss Edna had given him that were capable of repelling the darkness of the Corrupted for a couple of hours.

She may not have liked him coming out but she respected his decision enough to try and give him the tools to defend himself, just so long as he could get her enough materials to work her literal magic.

He waited until they were about halfway through the field before kicking a nearby log, sending it rolling down the hill where it collided with the group of Corrupted and sent them all crashing to the ground as it broke their bones.

Sliding down he began quickly stabbing and stomping the Corrupted, as he did everything in his power to ignore the fact that they all looked like tortured humans.

Once this was done he began laying down a series of bottles that had been rigged to explode should they become heated enough. A task he knew he had to be quick with given how instead of continuing their approach on the camp the simple minded Corrupted would swarm anywhere that others of their number had died.

With all of the traps set he started up the hill before climbing a tree and once more waiting for the (hunt) to continue.

After a few minutes more of the Corrupted Corpses began to crawl out of the bush work with the occasional Mad Wolf lingering alongside the edges.

Still he waited, knowing that -according to Quartermaster Rogers- the Corrupted tended to collect their dead to bring them back to attack again and again, meaning that they would get closer to his traps just so long as he waited for them to tire of their search.

The Wolves sniffed for a scent and the Corpses overturned everything they could find, but after a half-hour of searching for some trace of the one to kill their comrades they began to once more gather around their dead.

At which point he pulled out a molotov and slid his bow off of his shoulders.

When the Corpses began to pick up the ones on the ground, he lit the molotov and threw it. And as the glass broke open spreading its contents the flames quickly spread to the incendiary traps he’d set up, detonating each in a small explosion of flame and gasoline that quickly consumed the Corrupted.

Instead of panicking at the fact that they were on fire they all quickly began to turn towards him even as the weaker amongst their numbers began to collapse as the Black Blood in their veins ignited to the flames.

Blatantly ignoring the scent of burning flesh and rot filling the air he began picking off the few Corrupted who hadn’t been caught in the fire. Most of which were the snarling Mad Wolves, something he normally had trouble shooting thanks to their erratic movements but were significantly easier to hit when they were running straight at him while he had the high ground.

The remaining skirmish was relatively easy and with the near unlimited number of arrows he could stuff in the quiver Miss Edna had given him, there was little need for him to get any closer to the Corrupted than the tree branch he sat upon.

Once the last of the Corrupted had fallen, he made his way down the tree before pulling out a small trinket Miss Edna had given him and walking towards the still raging fire.

He snapped the trinket in two, and a wave of cold air washed out from it, quickly spreading out and putting out the flames before they could spread to the rest of the forest.

With all of the threats taken care of, he pulled out his phone and checked the time. Finding that it was just minutes to midnight, he began dragging the arrow ridden Corrupted together so that he could burn them in a more controlled fire.

The breaking of tree branches caused his head to snap up just in time to watch a massive beast crash through the trees, cratering the ground as a bundled black sphere shifted in the darkness, a slight gloss glistening where the moonlight cut through the trees.

Knowing that the time for stealth was over he lit the lantern the quartermaster had given him and raised it towards the monster as his heart began to pound, fully aware of the threat mere steps away from him.

A single bloodshot eye peeked out from within the mass before the shifting sphere began to growl.

Slowly he slipped his hand into his pack to pull out his axe.

The sphere exploded with an ear splitting screech-) His eyes shot open as something scraped against his window, and he was already halfway across his room with a knife in hand by the time it stopped.

Opening the glass pane and looking out from his window seal he saw something large disappearing over the roof ledge across the alleyway.

The Beast in his head told him to grab his bag and chase after it, but the alarm clock beginning to blare on his night stand warned him that his Ma would be checking on him any minute for their morning training.

Forcing himself to close the window his eyes locked onto the roof’s edge as he came to a very dangerous decision.

Scene Consequences

-Due to remembering the past gained 1XP to Archery and Trapmaking

--Currently: Archery Lv. 7 (13/16) and Trapmaking Lv. 9 (7/20)

---

“What exactly is it you’re working on here?” Ying asked him as he continued to flit between his notes and two seperate Enchanting Circuits.

“Enchanting.” He answered absentmindedly as he drew a few symbols to adjust the less than familiar concept of [Light] so that it didn’t just result in a glow in the dark axe. An enchantment he wasn’t entirely sure he’d have time to remove if he wanted to take care of the thing tonight.

“Quite.” Ying told him dryly. “But I meant what exactly are you enchanting, and why did you need me to meet you here so urgently?”

“Right, so with everything going on, and the fact that I’m probably going to be dragged into it, I’m working on a couple of enchantments to hopefully make my axe more useful against the Creeps invading on Halloween.” He explained in an almost rambling manner. “More specifically I’m trying to borrow a pair of affinities from you and Pix since your concepts should prove more useful. Now doing this for Pix is easy, given how I pulled something similar with that magic regen Script last month. You however,” he pointed at Ying, “are going to be much trickier to pull off given how I haven’t actually figured out how to use two concepts at once, and thus need to siphon a single affinity from two that are inherently connected due to you being an Incarnate.”

“I see.” The other teen nodded ever so slowly. “You are very lucky one of my other friends tends to go on rants from time to time or I wouldn’t have gotten any of that.”

“It’s a useful skill.” He agreed, before taking a step back to double check his math and penmanship.

With everything seeming to be in order he turned to Pix lazing about on Brutus who he’d taken out with him to the park. “Alright, you’re up first. Same as with that spell script.” He told the little fairy as he pointed to a small circle for her to push her magic into. “And remember to focus on your light magic for this.”

Pix gave him a chirp of understanding as they both put their hands on their respective circles, and pushed their magic into the circuit causing the familiar lightning to crackle and dance through the air before surging into the axe he’d set in the middle of the circle with a flash of light.

After a few moments to let the energy die down he picked up the axe and gave it a few swings, noticing that while there was a faint glow to it the glow was nowhere near as bad as he’d been worried about.

“Okay, looking good, let’s just test the heavier strikes.” He said, gripping the axe with both hands before swinging it with all of his might causing a blinding flash of light that left him blinking spots out of his eyes for a few seconds.

“You alright?” Ying asked as he pawed at his eyes.

“Yeah, just going to have to be careful when it flashes like that.” He frowned before giving the blade a considering look. “Still should work as a nasty surprise for anyone who doesn’t see it coming.”

“I’m sure.” Ying nodded, before glancing at Brutus. “Surprised your dog is so calm after the light show though.”

“Meh, Brutus was a military dog and has done a couple tours himself.” He explained with a shrug as he bent down to pet the old dog. “It’s going to take more than a few sparks to scare you, isn’t it boy?”

Brutus merely wagged his tail before giving a bark in the affirmative.

“Sounds about right for your dog.” Ying smirked.

“Technically he’s Ma’s dog,” he corrected, “but given how he used to babysit me sometimes he still likes to follow and keep me out of trouble.”

“Well someone has to, and honestly I quite like the trouble you stir up.” Ying admitted with a fanged grin.

“I’m sure you do, but if you’re sticking around for trouble, then you might want to move over there.” He suggested, pointing at the other spell circuit he’d spent the afternoon setting up. “Specifically the little circle on the side opposite of Pix’s circuit.”

“And what exactly is it you want me to do over here?” Ying asked crouching in front of the circle in question.

“Put your hands on it and try to push your magic into the circuit, specifically the bits involving your dragon transformations.” He told her, setting his axe in the new circle. “The circuit should do the more complicated bits and filter out anything that doesn’t have to do with your [Dragon] concept.”

Admittedly finding anything useful involving said concept had been a nightmare and a half, with his only success involving a bit of cross referencing between Miss Edna and DeSade’s notes. Namely by taking the ones Miss Edna had given in case Ying wanted him to teach her magic involving enchanting or something similar, and working backwards from a few random notes where DeSade had been hypothesizing on how Ying’s [Dragon] affinity had taken formation in conjunction with her [Storm] affinity due to her corruption. (He’d just barely understood those.)

It took her a few more tries after that initial explanation, but eventually Ying got the hang of it as a few sparks of magic began to dance along the circuit only to die out as they hit the safety limiters Miss Edna had taught him to keep the circuits from (violently) exploding.

With this done they eventually got into a groove of pushing their magic into the circuit to empower it. Something he hadn’t realized the actual difficulty of thanks to his Contract with Pix making it significantly easier to work with the little fairy.

Still after a few moments electricity began to dance along the circuit just as it had with Pix’s circuit, only this time it seemed to grow in size into one massive bolt that began to rise into the air.

“Uh, Jon, is it supposed to be doing this?”

“Eh, maybe?” He offered a little unsurely as the bolt seemed to take on the shape of a serpent of sorts. (Or maybe a dragon.)

The dragon-shaped magic seemed to roar with a crack of thunder before diving into the axe with a massive flash of light, leaving behind nothing but the faintly sparking axe.

“Okay, that was weird…” He admitted before taking a closer look at the axe.

“Did it work?” Ying asked, not getting any closer than she already stood.

The beast in the back of his head seemed to growl at the axe as if it itself was a living animal.

“It did something, just not sure what…” He answered, reaching down to pick up the axe.

As soon as his fingers touched the weapon he just knew it was more alive than it had been a few moments prior, and even if that feeling wasn’t all that strong it was there. (Which is concerning…)

He gave the axe a couple test swings and found that it seemed to lurch with much more force than he was used to, almost as if the axe itself was eager to fight.

(Very concerning…)

Scene Consequences

-Spent 4 MP Enchanting Axe with:

--Blade of Light (Rank E): Axe now deals an additional 2 points of Light Damage on attacks and applies stacks of [Blind] on Crits.

---Blind- Decrease a unit’s Reflex Stat by 1 for every Stack of this Debuff.

--Dragon’s Fury (Rank E): Every attack against the same unit increases base damage against that unit by 1 up to a maximum of (E=2), resetting when another unit is attacked. Additionally increase base damage by 1 up to a maximum of (E=2) for each unit defeated in this combat, resetting when combat ends.

--(Existed but updated) Owner’s Recall (E Rank General Enchantment): Allows the axe to return to the owner’s hand as long as they remain within 10 Meters of it. If an enemy is on the path between them applying half of weapon damage after a Skilless Accuracy check.

--Current Enchanting Capacity: (6/11)

-Gained 2XP to Enchanting.

--Currently: Lv. 4 (8/10)

-For channeling Enchantments through allies for the first time gained 1XP to Occult.

--For channeling an Enchantment through a Corrupted Incarnate gained 1XP to Occult.

---Currently: Lv. 7 (12/16)

-Pix has leveled up Magical Assistant to Lv. 7.

---

He knew that it wasn’t necessarily a good idea to go out with a freshly enchanted weapon without giving it a bit of testing practice, but at the same time if there was a Creep lurking in his neighborhood he wanted to take it out before it could hurt any of the kids in his apartment building.

Which is why he found himself sitting on the roof of his building at three A.M. on a school night with his Witch’s Compass in hand and hoping his ‘desire’ to find this possible monster was enough for the compass to point him in the right direction.

For several minutes he sat there just staring at the little needle spinning around in circles, while pushing the images from Sanctuaries dossiers to the forefront of his mind. And just as he was beginning to feel a headache beginning, the needle went from spinning in slow circles to shifting back and forth along a roughly thirty degree angle.

He gave the compass a nod before turning to the little fairy on his shoulder.

“Alright, Pix, it looks like we have our heading.”