Broken Lands

The Black Bird cried tears of its dark blood as it flew. Home was still hidden from it, and the tear it bled from ached more and more. It had not hunted since it slammed into the purple light, and it would not. It would find Home or it would die.

Hints of Home appeared once more, and once more it flew towards them. It would not try to follow if they disappeared, it had learnt that lesson, but so long as the hints of home were there, it would follow them.

This time, they did not vanish. The Black Bird flew onwards, following Home as it moved away. It was not as far away as the first day, yet Home was moving steadily away from the Black Bird. It could fly no faster than it did and it gained only slowly.

It caught up slowly. It was faster when Home stopped. This was the longest Home had been unhidden. This time it knew for sure it could catch up!

Nothing changed when Home was finally close enough. Home was below it. The Black Bird dove; it was going Home!

Sophia sang along with Revina as they walked. So far, all she’d managed to learn was the repeated chorus; the music was fast and surprisingly difficult. “Promises broken and promises kept, fam’ly forsaken and mother who wept, the Lord of the-”

Something slammed into Sophia from behind. She fell to her knees as the world whirled around her. All of the colors smeared into one another for a moment, followed by small fragments of her vision clearing but none of it made sense. A pebble filled her vision, followed by a hand. Was that her hand? No, it had to be Dav’s. It was huge. A voice spoke, but the words “Hawk kill hit a it black her monster!” made no sense.

Cliff shouted something in the back of her mind. The words made no sense, but somehow the feeling came through: as she was hit, Cliff felt a connection he thought was lost, but it was wrong. Twisted.

She had just enough time to realize that something was very, very wrong before something wet wrapped around her from behind and left her momentarily without vision or hearing. She could still feel her body, and that meant she could feel as her necklace warmed.

That meant it was working and that definitely meant something was very wrong. It should have already worked by now, shouldn’t it? It was fast when it worked.

Sophia knew what to do. She fed some of her own mana into the necklace. It was hungry, but even with everything she could send to the necklace, it was nowhere near its capacity. Just what had her mother paid for this thing? It was far more than something she should need for any dungeons of her Tier if she couldn’t supply it with more mana than it could take. It felt like large parts of the enchantment weren’t being used, but that made sense; it could detect and at least partially protect from a lot more than whatever this was.

A moment later, Sophia’s sight and hearing cleared suddenly and she realized there was a weight on her back. She convulsively jumped and the weight seemed to fly away from her. Sophia spun and saw the strangest thing: a giant black hawk that seemed to float in midair for a moment. Something black dripped slowly from its talons, beak, and feathers.

Cliff’s horror in the back of Sophia’s mind told her that he knew exactly what he saw, but he didn’t have to say anything for her to know what it was. This was one of the hawks from the top of the cliff. Or, rather, it had once been one of Cliff’s hawks.

Moments later, Dav’s sword crashed through the bird. He’d clearly been afraid to hit it while it was on her, but he had no compunctions once it was off her. A distortion in the air said Revina was doing her best, as well.

Sophia didn’t take the time to do anything fancy. She wasn’t maintaining the Imbuements on her or Dav’s blades; she’d assumed it was unnecessary. That meant she had only one real option. She yanked her knife from its sheath and hopped forward just far enough to reach the bird where it landed after Dav’s blow. Perhaps it was already dead, but she did not care. Her slice cleanly hit the bird’s neck just below the skull. It didn’t remove the head completely, but it did slash through it.

Sophia darted backwards in case the hawk was going to try to attack again, but instead of attacking it seemed to slump in place. A moment later, it wasn’t just slumped; it was smaller than it had been. It shrank and shrank, melting into a pile of black goo that quickly evaporated.

Sophia glanced down at her armor and saw a layer of similar dissipating black liquid. Before she could say anything, the Guide set a notice directly in her vision.

Feat Completed!

For your Feat of defeating a Remnant Shadow of your Linked Sphere, you have been granted a reward!

Reward: Hawk of the Black Blood as been added to the list of possible Summons for your Linked Sphere (Collector).

Unlike other Collected Summons, Hawk of the Black Blood may be upgraded to a maximum of the Collector's Level, rather than the Level of the monster it was Collected from.

No open Summon Ability Slots are available at this time. An additional Sphere or Sphere modification may be required to obtain Summon Ability Slots.

(Feather Image)

Your Patron greets you!

You are around others, so I cannot stay or do more than pass along a short warning: the Hawk of the Black Blood is not the only thing I see that came with you from wherever you came from. I do not sense many others, but you will likely encounter them.

I do not know if they will be friendly or hostile. I would have guessed that the Hawk was friendly, because it felt a sense of longing for Cliff. I do not think I can safely predict the others.

Good luck, Sophia and Cliff. I wish you and Dav well.

Perhaps someday I will be able to say more.

--The Wanderer

Sophia waved the notice away after she read it. She’d talk to Dav about the message from the Wanderer that evening, in her tent; if she powered the correct enchantments, it could prevent her from being overheard. The rest of it she could mention. “Did anyone else get a Feat for that?”

“No,” Arryn stated. “That wasn’t powerful enough to grant a Feat to a group. What did you gain, a recognition of the fact that you resisted whatever it did to you?”

“An Ability I don’t have a slot for,” Sophia answered, annoyed. “It’s of a type I can’t even Dedicate Wisps for. Why didn’t it give me something I could use?”

Arryn barked a laugh. “Keep it in mind when you have the chance to gain a new Sphere or alter the one you have. The Guide does that sometimes; it likes to grant appropriate abilities for Feats but does not care if you use them or not. Granting an Ability Slot as well requires a much larger Feat; I’ve only heard of it for Grand Feats, and most people do not manage even one of those while most people, Professional or Called, will manage a few Feats in their lifetime. Take a Sphere that will allow you to use it only if it’s a Sphere you otherwise want. Taking a Sphere for a single Ability is a waste.”

“Why is your shirt glowing?” Revina pointed at Sophia’s chest. “It was brighter earlier.”

Sophia looked down and sighed. Her necklace was still glowing enough to be visible beneath her armor.

She fished it out just in time to hear Arryn scold Revina, “Don’t ask about others’ magic or items. It’s rude.”

“It’s fine, this time,” Sophia said. “It’s a necklace my mother gave me; It protected me from whatever the hawk did.” She held it up so the others could see the purple stones set in a stylized shield pattern in a silver-colored metal. It wasn’t quite perfectly symmetrical, but it was close. She had no idea how expensive it was, but it was horribly gaudy, too gaudy to wear in the open.

“I don’t care about that,” Dav said. “How’s your back where the bird hit you?”

Sophia blinked at that. “I don’t feel anything bad?” She pulled up her Status and found that the hawk’s impact had wiped out her entire Shield. “It never got a second hit in, so I think my shield blocked everything.”

“Hmf.” Dav stepped behind Sophia. “I can see your armor through a tear in your shirt, so it looks like your armor worked. I’m still going to set up a healing beacon and you’re going to stay inside it, okay?”

Sophia smiled at Dav. If that would keep him happy, it was a small price to pay. It wasn’t like she intended to separate from the group anyway. “Can you set it on the wagon so it can travel with us?”

That was all it took to get them moving again. For the next several hours, there was no more singing and they all kept an eye on the sky, but nothing else happened that day.

Dav was especially attentive that evening after they camped, but Sophi still managed to find time to talk to him about the Wanderer’s message. He didn’t know what to think about it any more than she did, but it was good to have both of them aware of the situation even though there was nothing they could do right now.

She also had a chance to check with Cliff and found out that he now had Hawk of the Black Blood on his Collected Monsters list and three new Martial Abilities. Sophia remembered Black Blood Strike, which used the power of Black Blood to disorient an opponent. She was fairly certain that she’d also been hit by Engulfing Black Blood, which used Black Blood to deprive an opponent of their senses. The last one, Black Blood Flight, she hadn’t seen except for that moment where the bird seemed to hover in place.

The first two Martial Techniques seemed pretty useless to her. She didn’t have Black Blood and she was fairly certain she didn’t want to, either. Even if Black Blood wasn’t a requirement, they both required coming in close to an opponent, which was not the direction she wanted to develop her abilities. She wanted actual spells, dammit!

Black Blood Flight seemed very useful. If it didn’t specify that it worked by covering all feathers with a layer of Black Blood, she knew she’d have tried it out even with the risk of whatever Black Blood was. As it was, she couldn’t. She didn’t have feathers. There was no point; it simply wouldn’t work for her.

Sophia took a while to get to sleep that evening. She was seriously grumpy; she’d always wanted to be able to fly, and this was just one more hope that was dashed. It took her quite a while to calm down about it.

Another day’s travel brought them around the side of the mountain to a path that led to a tunnel that had clearly been carved into the cliff at some point in the past, then reinforced with stone. It was a narrow, rough trackway, but it was the only way forward unless they wanted to descend the steep slope to the valley floor and its seemingly thin river.