Pet?

Looking at the Anchor's messages on his bed, Gabriel asked himself, What is this? That thing was somebody's pet? Oh shit, it wasn't somebody's Spirit, was it? He was still reviewing his Anchor messages.

"I'm too tired for this shit… let's just place the points and go to sleep."

Gabriel evened out Energy and Spirit to 10, as he had promised to Liz, not before she gave him a stare, though.

He did not argue with her, though the thought of placing the points all into Energy to speed out his own leveling did indeed pass his mind. However, the lizard was still shaken from her, close to death experience; and he didn't want to be tactless toward her.

After all, he too was still dealing with the reaction of panic he had had for her supposed death; she was a companion, after all, a weird kind of companion, but he had only "known" her for barely three days, not long enough to form that sort of connection.

I wonder what she felt… I hope it wasn't too scary.

Congratulations, Gabriel Walker.

Your natural Affinity has increased by 1 through training.

You can still increase your Affinity freely by 15.

Oh, hey! That's good to know! Free points, kinda.

After the good news, he finished investing his points, putting his into Power and his Spirit's point into Resilience; he didn't like her to be too squishy.

Liz protested, she wanted more Power, but Gabriel was adamant about it.

"Look at yourself," he said, "You just grew a little bit more, first for your level, then for the Affinity, somehow, and now thanks to that single point we put into Resilience. You are a bit more than an inch longer now. You were, like, what? Four inches before, now you are almost eight inches long, and you look sturdier, probably your weight increased as well. Increasing Power doesn't help you much for now. We'll go that route when you are a little sturdier, counting your speed doesn't diminish too much, or we'd need to increase your Alacrity as well, but maybe leveling up Burst Attack will be enough."

Liz whipped her tail from left to right for a bit before settling down; it looked like she was thinking about it, but she acknowledged it in the end. Resting in a coil on the other pillow.

Man, she can be so difficult.

As he thought that, the lizard whipped her tail on the pillow. The attack was endowed with an instance of the Skill, so the tail managed to leave a dent on it, a dent that quickly disappeared. What surprised Gabriel, making him jump a little, had been the sound it had made, that of a little whip.

Alright, alright, damn, mind-reader!

Now, let's check the new Page.

Gabriel Walker

Race

Human

Level

3 (57%)

Class

Striker

Class Level

3 (45.4%)

Spirit

Spirit of The Lizard

Spirit Level

3 (36.9%)

Pools

Life

Energy

Mana

Spirit

5/5

10/10

5/5

10/10

Attributes

Body

Spirit

Final

Affinity

4

0

4

Alacrity

4

2

6

Power

4

2

6

Recovery

2.4 (2)

2

4.4

Resilience

2

1

3

Stamina

5

1

6

Tethers

Bond

Enhancement

Boost

Lizard

None

Alacrity +2

Power +1

Recovery +2

Stamina +1

Skills

Skill

Effect

Element

Slot

Type

Tier

Burst Attack

Increase your Power and Alacrity by 75%. Permanently increases your Recovery by 20%.

None

Power

Basic Skill - First Spirit Skill

2 (98.1%)

"Well, I think it's looking nice?" He said as the text burned itself in the air in front of him, only for his eyes to see.

I wonder if that visual effect is standard, or is it something related to my perception of it?

…

Oh, who cares.

Gabriel placed his head on the pillow and turned off the lights from the cabinet's switch.

Yet, sleep was not coming to him easily; images of his struggle and flashes of a phantasm pain attacked him as soon as he closed his eyes.

Even in the days of the heaviest workload, he had been one to not easily fall asleep, yet those flashes of his day's adventure were a first for him.

Might have gotten through a traumatic event… that's not good news. As if the accident wasn't enough.

It took him a good deal of time to fall asleep.

***

It was barely an hour into his much-needed rest when something shook him awake.

In front of him, a weirdly dressed Olive stood, pale-faced.

She had her nightshirt still on, and her leather pants under it; on her shoulders was the backpack.

And she clearly had no bra.

"Gabriel! We need to get out! Now! What the hell is taking you so long to wake up for!" She said as she kept launching glances toward the window.

Weird light flashes seemed to come from below and a little tremor as well, but that was yet of any concern to the much asleep young man.

"Olive…" he said tentatively, drowsy as humanly possible. "I can't tonight, let's make it tomorrow night… I mean I'm tired as fuck, and…" he yawned, "and an oversized cat had almost ripped me apart just a few hours ago, I doubt I'm gonna of much help for… your needs."

"What are you- Oh, come on!" She said, slapping him awake, his head bouncing on the pillow once.

"That didn't hurt as much as it should have," he said, much more awake now.

"People are coming for you, somebody has spilled the beans, they want you to come out, but they don't look like the Waterfronts; they are dangerous. Commodo and Garena are holding them off, but we need to leave!" Olivia said.

"W-what? Who are they holding off? For What?" He asked as Lizzy climbed on his shoulder and started whipping her tongue in his face.

"Gabriel! They are coming for you! They know you are a Herald! You'll lose your freedom forever if they get their hands on you! You'll be like a lab rat!"

Fuck.

"Let's get out of here!"

"Yes, now you understand. Take as little as…" Olive started saying as he practically got up from the bed, still dressed in his daily clothes, the only thing he had, trashed and cut everywhere, put on his boots and took his already prepared bag. "Well, I guess that's what you call 'being prepared for everything'," said Olivia.

"No, that's more what I call, 'being poor as fuck’, now let's go," answered Gabriel, grabbing the lizard from the bed, as she had jumped from his shoulder when he got up.

"Over here!" She said; her speed was difficult to match for his legs; he had to go on a full-on run to manage to maintain her walking pace.

They descended all the ramps, then turned for a place he had yet to notice.

I thought I had been here; where did those stairs come from? He thought as they reached the ground floor.

"Wait, let me check, they shouldn't know about this place, but they might have found it as Com unlocked it for us."

The descending ramp was dark, a dim dancing light came from below, but it wasn't even remotely enough to illuminate them; they would need to descend them almost blind.

From the other side of the hall, through the door to the main hall, came shouting and fracas; explosions could be heard, phrases from a language he did not know were being shouted with a voice whose power made the hair on his arms stand on end.

In front of him, Olive was drawing those symbols- Runes. -on the side of the stairs; before long, she used what was probably a Skill, and a concentric circle appeared on the wall. It was small but had two other circles inside of it. Line patterns making shapes both regular and irregular were drawn at its center, while sets of runes were written inside of the concentric circles; it glowed in a blue tending on violet light.

Kind of eerie? Why?

As the circle dissolved, the door to the main hall burst open. The thick door, heavy as a tree, flew through the corridor.

Gabriel could see it pass barely inches from his body; he did not even have the chance to react to it.

Someone dressed entirely in midnight leather had just kicked it out of the way.

He took a moment to take in the situation.

"Gabriel Walker? You need to come wit-" Brill appeared out of nowhere, dropped on his head, his skin switching in patches from blue to violet, with a watery glow; it looked like a LED TV commercial.

Brill slipped the end of his tail inside the man's mouth, the man bit through it before taking him and slamming him in the wall, a crack appeared on the beautiful wooden wall.

That was when Olive used something; there was nothing visual, but the man's eyes widened as he fell on his knees, foaming at the mouth.

Poison! Gabriel realized, a bit disturbed at the sudden exchange, and his almost too close and ugly death.

"Come!" She said.

"But Brill!" Said Gabriel turning to look for him, yet Brill was nowhere to be found.

Olive smiled, as on the side of the dark stairs, a blue light dancing like a shiny pool of water appeared, adding much-needed light to the environment.

"Oh, he's fine. Let's go," she said.

Bewildered, Gabriel followed suit.

"Why are they looking for me exactly? What's the big deal?" He asked, raising his voice. The sounds were getting higher after they had gotten down the first flight of stairs and then switched for one going up.

"You really don't get it, do you?" she said, stopping. "Do you have any idea what it means to not die under the Anchor's rules?"

"No, as a matter of fact, I don't! I don't even get what the fuck this Anchor is supposed to be!"

"Damn, Gabriel, they could 'kill you' over and over again, for Rituals that can do all kinds of things. You are a 'wealth and power generator'. In the hands of those monsters, you are nothing more than a tool!" Only with those words, full of fervor. Gabriel started to have an inkling of the possible dangers he could face.

"I bet you don't even faint at 0 Energy, or you don't black-out at 0 Spirit, or don't get crippling headaches and organ failure at 0 Mana."

Organ failure? Oh shit!

"No… I mean, I do get dizzy for Energy loss, but I never fainted… though when I have 0 Spirit, it does feel weird, but Mana headaches? Organ failure even, no… that's never happened," he said, shaking his head, Liz doing the same.

"I bet… People would kill for that, some of those aspects can be trained, resisted with time, and much, much training, but death for reaching 0 Life, which is inevitable, is inescapable, and you are not even remotely fazed by it! Since the last true Herald, descended in the Den, it's been millennia. There is science now. People will want to study you, people will cut you apart, and do all kinds of things to you and on you. Do you understand now why we're running?"

Gabriel stood silent for a second or two. The darkness around them revealed only in part the secret which the place held, calming water patterns shifting continuously on Brill's 4 feet sized body, the only thing shielding them from the void.

"Let's get the fuck away from here. Please. Fast... faster!"

With Olive's blowing an amused puff of air, they got back into running.

The stairs she had decided they embark on were those from which the original dancing light source came from. But doubts started emerging in Gabriel's mind as they started hearing the same kind of battle sound that they had been hearing coming from the main hall.

"Why do I feel we're going toward danger?" He asked.

"Well, because we are, we're getting to the main hall. The only way out is at its center," she answered.

"What? The center? Doors aren't usually placed at the center of a fucking hall!" he shouted, alarmed. Liz's shifting on her little feet in worry as well.

"Yeah? You'd want to get out of the entrance? Do tell me about it."

"Where else would you get away from?" he insisted.

"Surely not from the same place in which the enemies are coming from, what do you think?" she answered without even turning or stopping.

"You might have a good enough point… But why didn't we simply get into the main hall before? I mean, it was right there, we didn't even need to knock on the door anymore, literally," he continued.

"Oh, I don't know, let me think. Mmh, well, maybe because from there to the Hearth is like forty meters or so? I lost more than half of my Life points to incapacitate that black leathered bastard. What did you think we could do if we got right on their faces?"

"Offer them a beer?" He tried, scratching his head at the same time as Liz did, though she did it with her hind leg. Meters, eh? I wonder where she comes from.

"Yeah, though I bet they'd prefer a piece of you, or actually, quite literally, your blood."

"Anyway, what does the Hearth have to do with this? Now that I think about it, the Hearth is right at the center of the hall."

They had reached the light, on top of their heads, a thin quadrangular shaped fissure, let in dancing lights which reminded him of fire; they were near the Hearth.

"About that, now listen closely to me; this is not Diagon Alley mind… but the Hearth… that's the exit." Said Olive, an apologetic look on her face.

"Wait, what? You mean we are going to… jump into the fire?" Gabriel's brows arched.

"Yeah, that's exactly it," Gaia nodded.

"So, it's for sure torture and capture for the rest of my life against probable death in fire… mmh, that's a surprisingly tough choice. I mean, I could get used to torture and experiment. Maybe if I collaborate, they might even let me have some girls for stress relief or cut me some slack… who knows? I can be a good boy, if I want, what do you say, Liz?" Said Gabriel, an index on his lips as he thought.

Liz's jaw fell open in shock.

"Are you- are you really considering that?" Asked a befuddled Olive.

"Nah, I was fucking with you, let's go. If I die though, it's on you, my soul will torment you for the rest of my… death?" She said, trying to make a grin.

"You are weird…" She shook her head, "Now listen, cause this is the plan." Olive took a deep breath.

"So, I'll unlock the trap-door," She pointed up toward their heads, "you just prepare to run as fast as you can; the Hearth will be right in front of you, we are past the fence, so you don't have to jump; but you do need to be fast, those bastards are looking just for you, everybody else is just in the way of their business."

Gabriel nodded as she kept explaining, Liz copying him.

"Once the door is open, I'll launch a water explosion; you bolt the moment it's released, and we'll follow soon after; don't dwell, don't look, don't back down, and most importantly, don't stop. If you get hit, do not care, keep going forward, jump in the damn Hearth whatever happens," she was firm as she said it, unwavering.

Gabriel nodded, starting to feel a knot in his throat, realizing the absurdity of what he was about to do.

And as he stood there, Olive manifested a magic circle on the trap-door; he remembered the shield Greta had cast on the air to defend from the Behemoth's attacks.

Yet she kept talking to him, feeling his tension.

"You know, the Hearth was built by Commodo himself, on a project made by his father. He told me that he used a machine exactly like that to escape from the war raging between the Core and the Glade, then he built it here with his own hands; it's thanks to that if his establishment is so renowned. Though just a few know about it, and the Waterfronts are not among them, it's more an underworld thing."

"I bet… or they would have already detonated it," Gabriel added.

"Exactly. It's a marvel of magiceenering. It would be a terrible waste, but I bet he'd be able to build it back from scratch."

Gabriel thought at how full of surprises that congenial dwarf actually was.

He thought about a lot of other things too, as time slowed down for him, adrenaline kicking in, but then he heard it.

The sound of a waterfall exploding on rocky shores; it was the signal, echoing in the background, were the shouts of Olive hurrying him to go.

So he bolted.

As darkness gave out, light barged in on his sight.

The gentle light coming from the sides was the one peculiar to the hall, while in front of him shone the powerful blaze of the Hearth.

It stood just a few feet from him, but within his slowed-down version of the world, Gabriel, with the tail of his eye, could take in a few details of what was happening around him.

The hall had been mostly destroyed; there even was a new gash in the side of the building; it seemed to go up a few floors.

On the pavement were rubbles and what looked like pieces of what were once the memorabilia that adorned its splendid walls, but most eerily, there were bodies.

It was not a first for him, yet it made him cringe, especially when amid them he could see an orc and a dwarf; thankfully though, they were of the wrong sexes.

What he could see with the most clarity though, was a panther, a huge ass matte black panther, it could have been as tall as two meters, battling a violet lightning streak which moved about, the peculiar colors of brown and burgundy of the staff from the Traveling Hearth, danced in the air with it.

Then came a voice.

"Walker, stop right there; we mean no harm!"

And another followed, this one not unknown like the first, but very much known.

"Lassie! What are ye-"

It interrupted as he jumped into the Hearth; he had done it without any second thought; he could not spare the time for it.

Then everything abruptly changed, with simply a flash of heat and a spin of the world.