Rising Kite - A story from the world of HWFWM

Kite stood in the middle of the small plaza, on the second lowest of the four cliff plateaus which housed the village. The last rays of sun had vanished from the horizon as the blue of the heaven gradually faded to the black of night. He stood with a straight posture, brows creased in focus as he projected his aura prominently outwards. Most observers of the same rank would think him alone, too distracted by his projection to notice a figure crouching on a nearby roof.

He had held the same pose for about a quarter of an hour now. At first, it was easy to imagine himself as a vigilant warrior stoically awaiting his enemies. As the time passed, however, that feeling gradually receded, being replaced with slight embarrassment.

“Brave warrior, keep thine vigil with a proud heart. I assure you that you look very imposing.” came a wind-like whisper accompanied by a slight giggle.

Kite gave a flat look toward Serene, needing a few seconds to properly focus on her, and resumed his wait. Fortunately he did not have to wait much longer.

The windy voice of Serene returned, this time carrying no mirth.

“They are coming.”

After a few seconds more Kite felt it as well. Four auras were approaching them, each carrying a paradoxical feeling of the stillness of death combined with an aggravated and raw sorrow. Unlike the complex nuances exuded by the feelings of a mortal, the sorrow the auras emitted were flat and singular in purpose.

A scant moment later, Kite saw the first mourning revenant as it appeared from between two houses. It seemed to be made of a greyish vapor, lit from within with a slowly flickering light. It had a central, rounder mass where the vapor was more condensed in the shape of a huge, unnerving eye. Around the eye reached a myriad of tendrils which constantly formed, faded and reformed. They were about one and a half meters long, and according to Iris they were the medium through which the spirits delivered their necrotic touch.

One more appeared from behind another house, then two more following them. The spirits moved like a fish through waters, their movement overall smooth but with small, sudden jerks here and there. The constant pace and gliding, inorganic movement made it harder to gauge their true speed and they had closed in on Kite in short order.

As they closed in, Kite raised his barrier in front of him with a short whispered “Ward”. He knew this probably wouldn’t be a pleasant experience.

The first of the ghostly figures was about five minutes away as its central eye flashed, causing a wave of grayish mist to roll over Kite as it expanded outwards. He suddenly felt like his mind was swimming through a thick soup, each thought drastically slowed and an ache of sorrow in his chest. It tried affecting his muscles as well, but thanks to Implacable motion, the iron-rank effect couldn’t get a hold of him. This allowed him to start backing off, walking backwards as quickly as he could while keeping his barrier raised.

The spirit pursued, the other three joining it in a rough half circle around Kite as more waves of sluggishness splashed over him. His aura was faltering and his eyes were tearing up as the sense of loss began overwhelming his conscious mind. The backwards motion became more stumbling and almost halting as his feet, while unhindered by the magic, still lost their guiding purpose.

“Why am I even doing this?” he thought as a sob escaped his lips. “There had to be a meaning to it. But what? Does it matter? I think it did. Or used to.” He cast down his gaze as the spirits were closing in, tentacles swaying like ravenous seaweed as they snaked closer. As his gaze landed on the stones beneath, small tufts of grass sticking up between them, his addled mind noted the curving white lines at his feet. Was that… salt Lines of salt?

As he looked at the lines at his feet, a huge diagram taking up most of the plaza, the tendrils were almost upon him as a pulse suddenly passed through the whole salt formation. Kite was almost at its center, with the four spirits well inside its boundaries and focused on their victim. This allowed a certain trembling magic society ritualist to carefully sneak up on the edge of the formation, kneel down and energize the whole thing with a touch of her hand.

The spirits let out wails of confusion, the first sound made from them so far, as the aura senses of every creature inside the large diagram was blocked. At the same time, two others sprang into motion.

Serene’s song erupted over the area as a wellspring in a desert as her auras unfolded and she sang a spell:

“Let the song of thine soul purge the disharmony.”

As her words were carried by the wind to Kite, he suddenly felt his mind clear and his gaze sharpened with purpose as he took in the four, flailing spirits. He raised his halberd as his retreat shifted into an implacable advance at the same time as Dragonfly, who had been crouching on a nearby roof, brought a cleaving descent down on one of the mourners.

The trap had been sprung. Iris had spent nearly five hours drawing out the huge diagram, a multi-layered variety of the same ones used to shield the houses from aura senses. Every creature inside would have its aura sense properly scrambled. While only slightly confusing to the adventurers, they could easily navigate by ordinary senses. The mourners could not, which meant they had just temporarily lost their one sense to interact with their environment in any meaningful way.

Kite had been the bait, as his projected aura had helped mask even Dragonfly as she lay in wait, her aura as retracted as she could make it. He was the only one of them who wouldn’t be as hindered by the mourners' mental attacks as he resisted part of the effect, and the one most likely to survive if things went wrong. Now, his mind cleansed by Serene’s song, he and Dragonfly had to make the most of the opportunity to hurt the disoriented spirits before too much of the salt formation was ruined by the chaotic movement of battle.

Dragonfly’s descending axe scattered a big part of the central body of her target, and she noted to her surprise that she felt a bit of resistance as it disrupted the mourner’s form while the flames of her axe snuffed out the vaporous substance. She suffered multiple grazing hits from the flailing tendrils, each one a slight tingling followed by cold numbness as her flesh blackened. But each such hit still stoked the fire of her soul, and as Serene’s song restored the color to her flesh, she fought on with greater intensity.

Meanwhile, Kite had closed in on his target. His footwork as careful as he could make it, he initiated a deliberate disassembling of the spiritual form of his foe. He let the tendrils flail against his still active barrier as he thrust into the vaporous body with the halberd, a small dispelling pulse scattering its substance surprisingly easy as the disrupting force of his special attack tore through the type of foe it was most effective against. He alternated between it and tearing at the mourner with the spatial rifts of Void-Sunders-Firmament, always imploding its mana as often as Chakra implosion was available.

Even though Dragonfly refrained from using her waves of flame to increase the duration of the salt formation, it was quickly breaking down as movement and rippling air caused by special attacks scattered and blurred the white lines beneath.

Kite had just finished his first target, his foe dissolving before him as he noticed that the two unengaged spirits seemed to be regaining their bearing. He took a snap decision and used the charging power of his belt to rush at the one engaging Dragonfly. She had just taken a step back due to the backswing from one of her attacks as Kite flashed up behind the mourner, halberd pulsing with disrupting force as he finished it, thereby freeing them both up to engage one each as the magic of the formation finally gave up entirely. None of them wanted a mourner to be freed up in case it would go seek an easier prey elsewhere, such as the now retreating Iris.

Five hours of work for about thirty seconds of active formation might have seemed like an ineffective use of time, but it had allowed the adventurers to halve the enemy numbers before the mourners could mount an effective counterattack. None present regretted the effort spent as the battle began anew.

The mourning revenants became quite the challenge to fight when they weren’t hampered and effectively blind. Tendrils which had been flailing aimlessly before now lashed out in a relentless stream towards their chosen target. Kite threw out barriers on both himself and Dragonfly as often as he could while trying to fight past the dangerous appendages, and it didn’t take long for him to realize that he would be hard pressed to keep up that pace for too long. He had to limit himself to a more measured offense, prioritizing his attack dealing disruptive force damage as the higher cost of the spatial tears wasn’t worth the reduced damage they did to the incorporeal foe.

Even through Kite’s intensive warding, attacks still slipped through. They even seemed to partially ignore Kite’s armor, as he felt the stinging tingle and cold numbness spread through his body.

As if it weren’t enough, the spirits pulsed out their waves of sorrow quite often. Serene did an admirable job keeping her companions as cleansed as possible, but it still stacked up enough that she had to use her wind magic to pull Dragonfly out of engagement for a short while in order to get the time for a more directed healing spell while the mourner pursued.

The fight was one of impeccable attrition, as the mourners moved with singular purpose. There was no footwork, feints or unnecessary deviations in direction. They simply advanced, relentless in pursuit and attacks both. Kite was once again the one who first managed to bring down his opponent, his disrupting force attacks giving him a clear advantage. However, by that time Dragonfly had gotten enough time and attacks to really ramp up her pure physical parameters, and Kite didn’t have time to close the distance to assist her the second time as the last mourner fell, devoured by a fiery swing.

Only grayish, glittering residue was left behind on the ground, some mixing with the scattered salt in the evening breeze. The trio of adventurers were all quite spent as mana and endurance ran low.

“It’s done.” Kite called out to the hiding villagers as he sat down by the lone tree on the plaza, quickly joined by a slumping Dragonfly and prim Serene. He handed them each a pair of pills, and Dragonfly let out a loud sigh of pleasure as her mana and stamina started recovering.

“Kite, if I ever meet that alchemist auntie of yours, I might just kiss her.” Dragonfly said dreamily, still a bit lost in the pleasant warmth of restoration.

“My other auntie, her bronze-rank wife, might object.” Kite remarked with an amused smile.

“Eh, I can kiss her too. Bronze-rankers are hot.” she retorted, her smirk turning to laughter as she saw Kite’s incredulous glare.

An hour later, the trio of adventurers, along with elder Sprout and defender Scythe, stood looking over the shoulder of journeyman Iris as she knelt on the ground. She was drawing another ritual diagram, albeit much smaller than the plaza-spanning one used in the battle. Apparently she was a bit more unfamiliar with this one, as she was constantly referencing the book which lay open at the ground to her right. In the middle of the diagram lay a small pile of dust. It was a bit of the remnants left behind from the mourners. The rest had been swept up and stored in glass jars, as Iris had told them it was a fairly valuable magical reagent.

This particular pile had been repurposed to something other than sale however, as she finished by laying down a small, smooth stone on top of the pile.

“That should be it. Mind you, this is the first time I’ve done this ritual so we might need to try again” she said as she surveyed her work, sprinkling some powdered monster core over it to see how it held up to the ambient magic..

Kite, who had been looking over her shoulder, took in the pattern with his widened field of view.

“You’ve done well so far, journeyman, so it should be fine.” he said, clapping the ritualist on the shoulder in encouragement.

She sighed. “Well, may the heavens witness us.” she mumbled as she activated the completed ritual.

As the diagram grew, the pile of mourner dust started dissolving as it seemed to enter the stone without the stone itself increasing in size. A few heartbeats later, only the stone remained as the diagram went inert. Iris picked it up, and after holding it a short while nodded in satisfaction before giving the stone to Serene.

“It seems like it worked!” she exclaimed. “One affinity-divining stone, as promised. It should give off pulses if you come near an area with a similar affinity as the material it was infused with, as long as it isn’t hidden by magical means.. The shorter the interval, the closer you are.”

“Which should be death affinity.” Kite noted. “Splendid work, Iris. We can search the area and see if we can find the origin of these spirits. So we can report it back to the adventure society, if nothing else.”

Iris blushed slightly as she was praised, but collected herself and nodded.

“Indeed. The enchantment should hold for a week at least. And we can always repeat it again if the need arises. But it would be a shame to waste more precious materials, so let’s hope that the one will be enough.”

After the battle, as they rested against the tree, the trio had unanimously decided that they still weren’t done with this contract. The numbers and aggression of the spirits had been unusual enough, and the thought of leaving behind an area with a death affinity did not sit well with either of them. Such places were dangerous if they were allowed to remain, as the undead monsters that manifested there tended to be quite dangerous for their rank.

That was why the trio set out immediately, braving the dark of night to see if they could find the source of the trouble which had beset Verdant steps.