“Elonia, check this out! I did it! I fucking did it! Now any Runic Chant I infuse with the essence of Wrath, Fire, or Dominion, or the Elements of Fire, Wind, or Wood will work better than ever! And if I infuse it with my own potency…”

Yet before Eric could say another word, he found himself frozen, speechless before his sister’s hard-eyed glare. So very like their mother the Winter Queen, the odd thought escaped Eric’s wildly racing mind as life suddenly returned to his frozen bones, a hard-eyed Elonia gently squeezing his shoulder.

A shoulder so cold he felt the bones crack.

“Eric? Please listen to me, alright? This is very, very important. Right now, you’re Runic Lore Node talent is a whirling ball of potential in your mind’s eye, right?” Eric wordlessly nodded. “Good. Keep it that way. Trust me, brother. You want to keep it that way.”

Eric blinked, stunned more by the urgency in his sister’s voice than the horrific freezing strength of her grip. He dipped his head, eyes entirely on his ever more fascinating sister. How did he not realize she was this strong?

“Good.” She flashed a relieved smile. “Now before we go any further… I need to make sure.”

She bit her lip, gazing upwards thoughtfully. “I want to make sure that I’m doing right by you. I don’t want to shape your path, Eric. Merely show you the way to achieve your goal… assuming your path is what I think you want it to be.”

Eric slowly nodded. “Okay, sure. Suggest away.”

She smiled. “Okay, ignoring the fact that I have my flaws, my obvious imperfections, what did you think of my tornado the other day? Honestly.”

“Utterly blew me away,” Eric said, unreservedly. “I saw that massive roaring monster, sucking all the air towards it from far farther then a mile out. I knew right then and there that you’re power could pretty much suck any white tier contender who dared invade your lands. That it was only because the goblins and orcs somehow sensed the threat you were blossoming into, sensed it and threw countless billions using every cannon and blaster rifle they could get their hands on, not to mention stretching so many administrator-approved, ha ha, guidelines to grab another 60 cannon and 15,000 troops and a fuck ton of assassins over level 30, the fuckers, that they were able to freeze you cold, stopping you just before you could blossom into the glorious tornado mistress that you are.”

He flashed a hard smile. “But those assholes forgot to factor in the even bigger asshole that is me. And now I’m up over 15,000 troops, and you have a chance to lock in your latest epic ritual as a Mastered Spell, from what I overheard mom and you talking about.”

His sister nodded solemnly. “Correct. My question is this. Do you also want to cast spells? Even if you can never learn the tactical territory-spanning rituals that I’ve taken it upon myself to master, would you like to be able to cast your runes in just a fraction of the time you are now?”

Eric gazed at his sister for long moments, flashing a fierce grin. “You’re damn right I am. It’s key to my class, sis. The better I can master Runic Lore that’s perfectly in tune with all of my Essence and Elemental affinities, the closer I’ll come to a path forward that’s absolutely without limit! Seriously, Elonia, I’m fusing Mana and Qi into an arcane alphabet based on transcendent forms! How fucking awesome is that? You’d better believe I want to see just how far I can push this lexicon!”

Elonia flashed a relieved smile. “So you were planning on following a spell casting path anyway. Is that what you were saying?”

“If I could find a good fit, yes. And I was certain that mastering my runes was the first step to some cool new perks manifesting.”

His sister squeezed his shoulder, her eyes crinkling in a heartwarming smile.

Eric gasped with wonder at her touch, feeling his sense of fatigue and exhaustion instantly wash away, all his reserves charging back to full in just a handful of seconds.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to hear, brother. Because we’ve been spending ages in here forging you into someone who can do just that.”

Eric blinked in confusion, furrowing his brow. “Wait, what...” then his words were cut off by the lilac colored message now blinking inside his head.

Your twin sister (and better half!) has suggested an Advanced Tier 3 Interface Node Perk for you!

This perk embraces all 5! Of your runic essences and elemental affinities (double fire essence) which you’ve taken great care to master over the weeks you were locked away in an Enhanced Arcane Training Pod!

“What?”

But before an alarmed Eric could voice anything else, he was frozen with wonder at the continuous stream of messages blinking before his mind’s eye.

You have achieved Adept Tier in Runic Lore!

You’ve mastered the basic connections between all runes in your lexicon!

You have gained intimate familiarity with all essence runes in your lexicon!

You’ve gained intimate familiarity with all cultivation elemental affinity runes in your lexicon!

Arcane Potential has gone up an additional 4 points with diligent training and stat point allocation!

Soul Reserves have gone up an additional 4 points with diligent training and stat point allocation!

Do you wish to invest in the node power: Runic Spell Casting? This will allow you to link 1 or more runic chants into spells catalyzed by individual trigger words!

Each spell so forged becomes it’s own skill! A skill check will be needed to successfully trigger runic spells! The more complex the spells, the greater the difficulty! The higher the skill rank, the more efficient and powerful your spell will be!

This Node choice requires 1 (unclaimed) Runic Lore Perk.

This Node choice will use your third node! (No further nodes available until level 40 is reached.)

Your nodes will continue to be in Perfect Harmony! There is no known limit as to how far you can progress!

“Yes! Elonia! It worked! God bless you, this crazy study chamber, cultivation chamber? Actually worked!”

Eric’s eyes blazed with awe and wonder. He trembled with sheer unadulterated bliss, savoring strength beyond anything he could deliver with muscle and leverage alone, as countless arcane insights suddenly became his own, delving with his minds eye into the hidden world of meanings and connections that could reshape the very nature and fabric of reality.

“I feel it! How everything works, how it’s interconnected. Right now? I feel everything!”

Eric laughed with mad glee. “I feel how it’s all put together, all of it! Finally it makes sense. Finally, I see the bigger picture. Finally, I understand how it all works!”

Eric frown when his euphoric bubble was popped by the anxious look his sister was giving him, her hands squeezing his wrist so hard he was sure it would have hurt… if his flesh had still been anything like his mortal origins.

“That’s wonderful, Eric. Wonderful! Now, quickly, shape it! Shape it into spell formulae, just as wondrous as you can.”

Her eyes took on a steely glint. “Now, brother. As many as you can! For these will serve as the framework, the template, from which you will one day develop countless other spells, when this epiphany leaves you, and you forget how you forged these wonders at all!”

Eric shivered at the winter draft forming goosebumps against his naked skin as the glorious sunny forest he found himself turned heavy with autumn’s bounty. It was for him to shape as many wild insights into concrete arcane formulae as fast and thoroughly as he could, before the rich colorful bounties of insight, even now dropping from a thousand leaves, became mulch on the forest floor as the cold barren forests of his all too mortal mind became his domain once more.

“Elonia, I only have two points left. That’s it!”

His sister gave him a pained smile. “I know, Eric. Three levels worth of power, and hard fought every step of the way, nurturing your tiny sprout of arcane wonder into a grand forest of potential. But we did it. You and me, we did it!” Her eyes glimmered with sudden intensity, two fiery peach blossoms miraculously in her hand.

“So take the flowers of endless potential that are those final two points and shape them into a pair of spells that taps into all your potential, all your essences! So long as the spells are harmonious, so long as they tie into a singular paradigm, I don’t think there’s any limit to what you can forge. But you must do so now!”

Compelled by the urgency of her voice, Eric reached out and grasped those pristine blossoms, the scents of spirit peaches suddenly flooding his senses as he found himself lost in the wonder of his own miraculous forging. The divine spirit fruit that had led to his own ascension.

A perfect harmony of Fire, Wood, and Wind.

And for all that it would be easy, indescribably easy at that point to forge a spell that would instantly knock his foe’s off their feet, that was a spell that even his winter mind, half dormant of all its potential, could forge just fine all on it’s own. Right now, in this miraculous moment, the glorious brilliant autumn of his transcendent breakthrough, he was capable of more.

So much more.

He had but to gaze at the mithril blade at his hip to recall the first rule of any warrior mage.

It wasn’t about forging spells to do direct damage, but hindering his foes, and enhancing his own attacks. It was about forging spells to protect himself, cripple his enemy, and make his foes ever more vulnerable to his favored attacks.

With that in mind, he could think of no better magic than one that strung together so many of his Essence and Elemental affinities… a spell that would make his greatest strengths his foe’s direst bane.

You are attempting to forge a Runic Spell!

Spell complexity transcends degree of complexity allowed to Novice Tier Runic Spell forging!

Tier 1 Training Pod (and potency point expenditure) supersedes standard limits.

“Debilito dicio, ignis herbam ventus plures dies!” Eric whispered as the forest itself shuddered with the truth of those words. A spell to weaken all others under the weight of his Dominion. Leaving them helpless before the searing heat of fire, defenseless before the prick of thorns, and powerless before mighty clubs of wood that would shatter their bones like glass. Even the howling wind would have the power to knock his hapless targets off their feet… or rip the flesh from their bones, as Eric dared to bind the terrible weight of multiple Runic words of power tied both to his essences and his elemental affinities.

It was, he thought with an exhausted smile as he coughed a great big gob of smoking blood that smelled of chestnuts and death, his greatest singular forging as the gentle sprinkle of leaves raining down upon his head became a storm.

And the only thing preventing him from collapsing then and there was his sister’s fist cracking against his jaw.

“Wake up, Eric! You still have one more spell to forge. One more chance at greatness!”

But it wasn’t his sister’s tiny fist that snapped him back into desperate focus, all his senses suddenly blazing in terrible alarm.

It was the beady little eyes, twisted floppy ears, and shark-toothed grin of the nightmare apparition finally revealing itself from its hiding place in the trunk of the trees overhead.

Eric knew it was impossible. After the purge and the alterations even Eric had sensed coming over Queensland, there was no way in hell that any goblin assassin should have been able to access to his sister’s territory without a thousand alarms being rung, let alone be able to sneak into her hyper-secure pod, or be any position to enter the matrix-like dream itself in order to point its crossbow at Elonia’s chest.

Yet Eric’s Tier 2 Danger Sense screaming sudden warning made it clear that their foes had most definitely breached any and all security protocols, as inhuman Perception spotted Bronze tier poisons that were once more being used by their enemies with absolute impunity.

The hideous floppy eared goblin assassin cackled with glee, savoring Eric and Elonia’s shocked disbelief, filling the air with his spite-filled words.

“Did you stupid Roundear brats truly think we wouldn’t find a way? Our seers are beyond your comprehension! Our assassins are beyond your pathetic senses, and our victory is beyond your ability to stop! We will have our vengeance! The Snicklit Tribe, the true spear of commerce that drains all of Bloodtear Syndicate’s enemies dry of resources, lives, and hope, will not fall to the likes of you!” The creature chortled.

Eric’s gut screamed desperate warning as his mind raced at superhuman speeds.

A poleaxed Elonia blinked in wide-eyed disbelief. “No. You can’t be in here. I didn’t summon you.” She forced an anxious chuckle. “Interrupting us now, of all times? No. I think you’re just a distraction. In fact, I don’t really think you’re here at all!”

The creature’s grin widened. “Of course I let your tragic little farce play out to the last scene. A free boon of potency for me, with every tear of despair I can ring from your eyes! I grow in might even as I learn all of your clan’s secrets, as I sup upon all the sweet dregs of power that would have been your own!” The creature cackled with pure malice, before flashing his dreadful weapon in their faces once more. A weapon glittering with hideous essences Eric had last encountered a world away. Reminding him of poisons that could stop even his heart, in the blink of an eye.

“Look at the tip of my quarrels, half-blood whore! Can you not taste the black power of a greater seer?” The goblin’s hooting cackle grew when Elonia’s eyes widened and she let out a horrified yelp, landing butt first on the ground.

Eric’s dazed mind screamed desperate warning, only now sensing how utterly exhausted he was, in mind and body both.

There was no way he could reach Elonia’s side before that monster unleashed not one but three deadly quarrels into his sister’s flesh, his Unified Perception check making it clear that all of them were tipped with black magics related to inevitable singularities in addition to forbidden toxins, through arts that were utterly beyond him.

But there were other arts that were not beyond his ken as he crushed the final rose in his hand, embracing the rapture of exquisite scents released as he destroyed it for all time.

Beauty in destruction.

Insight in death.

Evolution in its purest, most pristine form.

Evolution of the body and mind, pushed to the brink of destruction, and beyond.

Eric wanted to scream with the fires ripping through his soul as he brought his final masterwork to life.

“Mollet roboro iram herbam ignis plures dies!”

But all that slipped free of his tortured lips were an incomprehensible stream of sounds that earned a mocking smirk from the goblin sniper as he chortled and mocked their final moments.

“Something in your throat, boy? There will be soon enough! Ha ha! Don’t worry, fools. Administrator Snorkle will be sure to send your mother a whole dozen black roses when her brats pop out of their training pods stone cold dead of shared aneurysms! Together in death, as they had been in life. How fitting!”

“Hell Vines,” Eric finally whispered with a bloody smile when the sneering goblin finally pulled the trigger of his crossbow. A paralyzed Eric helpless to dodge or dart away. His heart screaming and twisting in his chest, horrified to see the goblin chortling over him. Over him and Elonia both.

“Fools. Did you really think trying to dodge would do any good? Our link to your souls is now tighter than your mother’s drooping breasts! We’ve been gathering every trace of hair, skin, and waste you idiots stupidly left behind for the past six months! Because the Snicklit Tribe never forgets a slight, nor an insult!”

He snarled and spat in Eric’s wheezing face. “You, who dared to claim a bank charter you had no right to! You, who dared to worm your allies free of contracts that should have spelled their doom, will pay a price in pain without end!”

The creature’s eyes glittered with unfathomable hate, as Eric endured the awful pressure of a seed bursting open in multiple worlds.

Until finally, with the dying beats of Eric’s heart… his final fiery gift came to glorious life as the goblin assassin ripped open his sister’s shrieking face, ignoring her brother, who had already gone as still as a corpse.

“Your pain has just begun, Sylvan Whore! Your death, and the death of all your filthy kin, was assured the moment your mother first dared to cross our faction, a thousand years ago!”

Eric felt his heart spasm and stop… held in the grip of chortling shamans that sure as hell were over level 30, countless territories away. Their mocking laughter a perfect echo to the goblin now mutilating his shrieking sister’s face, tearing out her jade green eyes and popping them in his mouth with a bloody smile.

Before the creature squealed in abrupt surprise when a massive vine covered in bitter black thorns and white hot flame abruptly snapped about its neck.

Beady eyes bulged in horrified disbelief as the would-be assassin was whipped off his feet, the crossbow slipping out of the shrieking monster’s hands as it burst into flame before fading into the ether, and the killing tool was gone as if it had never been.

Even as Eric’s tortured heart skittered in his chest, he found bitter comfort in the sound of a certain goblin assassin’s tormented shrieks. Shrieks that were now echoed by half a dozen surprised shamans countless miles away.

For just a heartbeat, Eric was each and every one of those vines wrapping itself tightly around the writhing flesh of countless goblin shamans as bitter sharp thorns drunk deep of ancient goblin flesh, no matter how his captives howled and screamed.

Somehow, he could perfectly sense the desperately chants of his enemies, literally dying to escape. Right before he cut them off, howls turning to gurgling grunts the moment his vines plunged hungrily into sharp-fanged mouths, oversized nostrils, and wax-filled ears. All their wards ruptured within seconds, all resistance turning to ash before his impossible heat. So many twisted demonic faces were locked in masks of hideous agony as Eric forced them to taste just the tiniest fraction of the fires that had once blazed through his soul in an orcish hell pit. A hellscape he had leaped into for the sake of his sister, granting him eternal scars to both body and soul.

Memories he’d happily share with all the shrieking goblinoid bastards now trapped within his vines.

Burning for all time.

Blazing with fires so hot and bright that not even the one free shaman able to shriek counter-spells within that chamber could do anything but whimper in horror when goblin curses just made the Hell Vines and Eric’s furious hate blaze all the brighter.

Before the desperate figure grabbed an obsidian jewel in panicked hands and slammed it toward the ritual circle Eric only now sensed crackling with eldritch green light covering the entire floor of the domed chamber.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the connection was broken.

The crushing ache in Eric’s chest was gone.

You have successfully forged the spell: Inevitable Doom. For a base cost to cast of 140 Mana & Qi, you can render your foe especially vulnerable to Fire, Wind, and Wood. Note. Vulnerability is heightened by the Essence of Dominion! Vulnerability is heightened by the Essence of Flame. Vulnerability is heightened by Elemental affinities to Wind, Wood, and Flame! (This vulnerability may be further heightened by use of Soul Reserves.) Duration – Until the setting or rising of the sun.

Inevitable Doom skill level has reached Rank 5! Apprentice Tier achieved. You are no longer at risk of Critical Failure!

You have successfully forged the spell: Hell Vines! For a base cost of 140 Mana and Qi, you can summon massive sentient vines that will sprout from the earth and attempt to pin and throttle up to a dozen of your foes! These vines are covered in razor sharp thorns further enhanced by the rune of Resilience. These vines are covered in white-hot flame that cause the vines themselves no damage at all! Note. Strength of Vines and damage from piercing thorns, constriction, and heat have been further modified by caster’s Essences and Elemental affinities!

Hell Vines has reached Rank 5! Apprentice Tier Achieved. You are no longer at risk of Critical Failure!

You have fully invested all available Character Points.

You have successfully trapped 1 Spirit Goblin & 6 Spirit Shamans in Hell Vines!

Spirit Assassin and Spirit Shamans have suffered Catastrophic Damage!

You have slain multiple foes 20 or more levels beyond your highest class!

Experience Earned!!

Surviving Spirit Shamans have broken Spirit Link between you and your foes!

Eric froze upon spotting that final message, heart skipping in a way that had nothing to do with shaman spells, and everything to do with what it signified.

This hadn’t been a final horribly life-like training mirage summoned by his sister, that a part of him had so desperately hoped it was.

The assault upon their souls had really happened.

And Elonia, who lacked both Eric’s Vitality and his Unified Restoration, might not have survived the assault unscathed… or at all.

“Elonia!” Eric screamed, shaking away the messages as his frantic eyes darted across what was now a winter white landscape with nothing but leafless trees as far as he could see… save for a bright pinpoint of light his infravision could just make out, buried in howling winter snows.