Yea, I shall return with the tide.

Pre-Fall author

Finding the pathway down marked the formal end of the salvage expedition. And what an expedition it had been, Johanna thought. Artifacts. Parchments of Power. Packs so full, they even ended up throwing some of the food that they would not need, given the short stay at the ruins.

“You’re sure you don’t want…?” she asked.

“Told you. No way he’d leave Zahl. And Adria,” Petra said from behind.

Mark had rejected Johanna’s offer to join them on their expedition to the east coast, and far faster than she anticipated. The man had attempted to explain about duty, but Petra had teased him about his on-off girlfriend as the real reason.

“You can set your calendar by them. Every three months, they start dating again, and every three months, they fall apart, and I see him back at Timothy’s. For two years, I’ve followed it.”

“It’s not like that…”

“Well, I’m sure your father would appreciate your settling down at some point. Even with her.”

As they started getting down, she looked at the figure of the Zahl guardsman walking in front of her, bow still at the ready. By now, they knew what he was now capable of.

A pack of Canids had been prowling not too far from the ruins when they came out. They’d unloaded on them as soon as they spotted them, the nine beasts having tried to ambush them, almost successfully. Petra hadn’t used Tremor, not yet, but the reflexive use of Jagged Stone when one of the beasts almost caught her from the side had been a massive surprise.

A pair of huge rock spikes had sprung from her arms and reached a foot over her hands, making sword-like armguards that had a wicked edge over a black, almost matte finish. The beast almost impaled itself and trying to dodge had let her freeze it for Johanna to finish.

Of course, the spikes had also sliced open her sleeves, barely sparing her gloves, and she had grumbled much. They’d tied her damaged jacket, and they would fix it later at camp, probably once they were out of the mana zone.

After the last beast had fallen, Mark had contemplated the carnage and his bow.

“It was as if I couldn’t miss. As if the arrows aligned themselves, and I could just pick the arrow, aim, shoot, and move to the next, and it flew true.”

“An arrow flies slightly faster than my fireballs,” Johanna admitted.

“And you almost can’t take them out of the corpses,” Peter added.

“Is that what it feels to be a… capital-H Hero?”

“You tell me. You’re one, after all,” the diminutive Improviser replied. “When I hit them, my hand shifts in the right place,” Peter whispered a moment later.

A shake of the head had been the only answer.

One last surprise had come out of the fight. While Johanna hadn’t spotted anything, Mark had seen something play out on the largest Canid, and while they were dispatching the horde, brief flashes of the same non-light on Tom and Peter.

Johanna was now certain that the distinction between Heroes and Sorcerers – a category in which she put Saints as well now – was real. Mana Sight let her spot magic being used, and she was certain that Gauge Stamina was letting Mark see non-magical Talents play out. Like her, he had a limit on what he could see. He couldn’t follow Tom’s run or Peter starting his distraction. But lesser actions were noticeable, even if he could not know what was being done, just like with her or Petra.

No trace of the Bosid was visible, and rather than skirt the mana zone as they did initially, this time they cut diagonally, heading straight toward the city. They made camp three miles out, next to a pair of scraggly trees.

After they’d put up the tents in the cleared space, Petra had an idea.

“We never had time to test what Tremor does, exactly,” she told Johanna. “You said an earthquake, but what does that mean? Beyond the earth moving.”

“Don’t do it close. If that’s truly Quaking Earth, it has a range, and I’m betting you won’t have the 25 yards reported.”

“How far, then?”

Johanna thought.

“Our range seems to be around 40 yards or so for distant abilities. I’d say use that distance to be safe. If your Tremor goes for hundreds of yards, it might not be a combat ability, maybe a war one. But I doubt it will be something like three times the 25 yards reported. A Fire Shaper like me is better than normal fire-oriented sorcerers, but not that much, so you shouldn’t be if Earth Shaper follows the same rule.”

Petra moved away, marking carefully the pace, estimating the distance. Once she stood around about 40 yards away from the rest of the group, she turned, looked around, and yelled, “Here goes nothing.”

The initial sound made Johanna think of kernels popping in a hearth.

Then they realized they were probably a bit too close when the ground started swinging. Peter swayed and stepped back, and Tom almost fell as well.

But inside Tremor, rocks jumped up, and bushes swayed. Snow puffs came in the air. A second later, a pair of hares almost flew out of a hole, landing haphazardly on the vibrating ground, trying and failing to stand up.

In the middle, Petra swayed, yelling “fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Let it go,” Johanna yelled.

“I did. I can’t! It keeps going!” she yelled back, as she stumbled.

“Fuck, how do we get her out?” Johanna said.

Tom looked at her, turned toward the Earth Shaper, and started sprinting at his incredible speed.

He made it to the middle of the distance before shocks on his feet threw him off and he crashed hard to the ground.

“TOM!”

“Nothing broken. Yet,” Laura announced. “No, feels like a bruise coming.”

Petra still swayed, barely staying up, as the ground vibrated, rising and falling. A dozen of animals, thrown out of burrows, tried to escape the insanity that had befallen them.

Then abruptly, the ground stilled, and the critters ran as fast as they could.

It had lasted less than twenty seconds. Tom rolled on his back and started to rise, as Johanna ran.

“Stupid,” she said as she hugged and kissed him.

“Thought I could shake her out of it.”

“Not the best idea.”

“No,” he laughed lightly.

Petra was reaching them, looking.

“Dunno what you wanted to do, but thanks.”

She looked at Johanna.

“I’m not doing that again, like ever again. Unless there are maybe thirty of those Canids running at me.”

They looked at the field. Even if the earth was quiet now, the devastation was clearly visible. An almost perfect circle, where the ground had been churned, rocks popped out of the ground, and some bushes bent, some half-broken, most with bits of twigs and leaves dumped everywhere.

“The reference says it shakes the ground ‘significantly’ and causes things to fall,” Johanna commented.

“No kidding. I almost lost my footing, many times. I don’t know how I stayed up.”

“Sorcerers are supposed to be more or less immune, or at least resistant to their own magics.”

“It did not feel like I was resisting that.”

“I think it’s safe to say this is a kind of last resort stuff. And don’t use it in ruins.”

“That sounds like a potential disaster.”

“Disaster walking. Good name,” Peter said behind them.

Petra turned and threw a dark look at the small man.

Well, that’s not what I expected, Moore noted.

On the surface, it did look like an earthquake, or rather, like the idea of an earthquake. The only one he’d ever experienced was a tiny, distant rumbling, back from when he was still in high school. Without the big news about it later that evening, he wouldn’t even have guessed it had been one.

The drum-like shaking that Veldhuis had unleashed was another thing. It had lasted for about 17 seconds, which seemed to match the cost – not that this bullshit system documented it – in Agility. And he wondered how the border and range applied to the shaking. Earth should have been ripped at the edges or something.

A quick peek at Veldhuis’s descriptor as she thanked Tom for trying to rescue her from self-inflicted catastrophe had let him verify that, with 6335 XP, she was still some distance from leveling. Not that he could help her. The Dexterity-based skill he wanted for her build – Popping Rock, which was one of those weird, almost humorous names – required both Authority 18, Dexterity 16, and Level 6, and just the skill tier had made it outside of the reach of the eastern European church books anyway.

And after the near miss of the Strength scroll, he needed to figure out a better way to communicate build plans.

Johanna huddled around the small, dim embers, as she stood watch. Petra had decided to stay up too, despite not having a watch that night. As keeping watch was always boring, Johanna welcomed the company, although she doubted her fellow sorceress would stay up during the entire length of it.

“Do you think it is… was like that for the Burning Walker. A walking disaster. Just from the description that you read…”

“Remember, it’s mostly novels. They tend to exaggerate things. But yea, I suppose he was, well, a Fire Shaper.”

“Like you.”

“I obviously don’t have the burning aura he had.”

“No. You shuck balls of fire, light swords on fire, and breathe deadly smoke.”

“Steam. I think.”

She looked at the former bartender.

“Besides, the Burning Walker had a single ability. Same for Elena.”

“And we’re Grand Sorceresses.”

Johanna didn’t think her eyebrows raising would be visible in the almost darkness of the camp, but Petra laughed.

“You said we needed a name.”

“I… didn’t expect one.”

“It will do then. Unless your plans – or rather your patron’s plans – bear fruit and there are dozens, nay, hundreds of great sorceresses and sorcerers.”

“Shapers.”

“Weird name.”

“But the parchments use it,” Johanna said, waving to her tent where the store of unused parchments lay.

“You said that Countess had just Shaper on hers.”

“Yea. She was obviously specialized in metal sorcery, yet.”

“Ever read of the four elements?”

Johanna startled.

“Like the stories,” she realized.

“Air, Water, Earth… Fire.”

She realized what Petra was implying.

“Earth and Fire Shaper… but no Metal Shaper.”

“Or Mind Shaper. Maybe that’s why Laura is labeled a form of Fixer. Shaper sorcery is about elemental magic,” Petra speculated.