B3 C60: POP

Hartha, like most sentient beings, was aware of the passage of time.

And like most beings aware of the passage of time, she was also aware that things changed during that time. For better or for worse, that was a given. As such, she’d been well aware that the Emer’Thalis she would be returning to likely wouldn’t be the same one she remembered leaving.

Still, to say that she was slightly surprised at those changes would have been an understatement.

Initially, everything did feel just as she’d left it. Having at last declared Hartha’s apprenticeship over and after a heartfelt thanks and a somewhat awkwardly stiff goodbye, Aarris had deposited her directly into the woods of Emer’Thalis, as requested. The familiar trees with their inky black veins that looked strikingly similar to hers. The lush, loamy soil, a far cry from the dusty earth prior to the advent of the forest. The familiar scents of life in all its forms -- a welcome change of pace after being surrounded by nothing but endless light and a flock of pigeons for so long.

Except, as the initial wave of nostalgia passed, she noticed the parts that felt off, too. Everywhere she looked, she saw the signs of passage. Rarely, those signs were obvious, the likely result of the clumsy, plodding journey of an adventurer or builder, but much more often, she saw the careful woodcraft of her own people.

Only, there were far more tracks than she’d expected. Were more shadows living here now? They’d been planning on leaving, last she recalled.

And those familiar scents. Mixed in with all the rest of them, was that… smoke? Perception wasn’t her highest stat, but she swore she could hear the faint echoes of shouting in the distance too.

Hartha briefly entertained the notion that she’d come back during some sort of festival or that Aarris had forewarned her people of her return, but the stronger the smell grew, the more certain she was that it came from no minor bonfire.

Strange, but not particularly alarming. She trusted that if anything were wrong with the forest, Elphaea would fix it. Speaking of which, it’s curious she has not noticed my arrival. While not omniscient, the dryad was usually fairly sensitive to new arrivals in her domain.

Hartha merely shrugged. She had nothing against walking, and in fact, she’d had far too few opportunities to truly stretch her legs as of late. Her Forest’s Dark Heart class was intrinsically linked with the dryad who had blessed her, giving her a rough sense Elphaea’s current location. With nothing more pressing to attend to, Hartha set off towards her.

Rarely she would chance upon something during her journey that would surprise her -- a clearing filled with all manner of edible plants and herbs, or a new species of tree that she could have sworn only grew nearby lakes -- and the entire way, the smell of the smoke grew ever stronger. Otherwise, however, the journey was largely uneventful.

That was, up until she ran into someone else.

Slinking through the woods in an exaggerated way that did nothing to conceal his tracks, a disheveled and gangly human man clamped down onto a spear with an overly stiff grip. Despite his head flitting from side to side as he scanned his surroundings, Hartha noticed him first, and she barely thought before she called out to him.

A person. People! The very first non-pigeon, non-goddess creature she’d seen in who knows how long. She could have kissed him right at that moment.

“Hello! Are you one of the people from Ftheran?” He looked as much, although Hartha had never seen him before.

For whatever reason, he didn’t seem as happy to see her as vice versa. In a poorly practiced manner, he swung about, nearly losing his spear to a tree branch as he leveled it towards her.

“Eh? You one of the sick ones? Was wondering why I couldn’t find any of you forest fuckers out here.”

Not… not the welcome I was looking forward to. She supposed she could loosely understand the part about being sick, though. Her dark veins didn’t immediately paint her as the picture of health, likely doubly so for those who couldn’t sense the mana within them.

Rather than correct his misunderstanding or call him out for his colorful choice of language, she forged ahead.

“Do you know what’s happening? I’m smelling smoke up ahead.” Not that she wouldn’t find out soon enough on her own, but she figured she’d ask while she had the chance.

The aggressive man looked nothing so much as baffled up until he scowled. “We’re burning your creepy-ass forest down. What are you, deaf? Daft? Too busy fucking a tree to pay attention to the king’s declaration? We’re at war, lady. Now get down on the ground and we can do this the easy way.”

Hartha stood like a statue, her only movement being to blink away her surprise.

War? How? Why? With whom? Ftheran? Nothing was adding up.

“Just to be clear,” she replied, slowly pointing a green finger from him to herself, “you are at war with me. We are on different sides?”

She was fairly certain he was threatening her life, which only made it stranger to see how exasperated he became in response to her questioning.

“Gods. I can see why they left you behind. I was hoping you could tell me where the others are all hiding, but now I’m not even sure you know your left from your right. Once again, down on the ground, lady.”

While not technically answering her question, his words left where he stood rather clear.

Although, is this how war works? Hartha knew extremely little about how humans tended to fight their battles, but solitary soldiers wandering through the forest didn’t seem like a solid battle strategy.

“Are you alone? I thought people fought wars in… lines? Formations maybe?” While most of her training under Rock had focused on more hit-and-run tactics suited for forest ambushes, they’d covered basic formations as well. Perhaps humans liked to fight individually though?

Rather than get annoyed, the man perked up, for once happy to answer. “Well you’re probably too dumb to know it, but that’s because you’re looking at a genius right here. This is probably the only time in my life I’ll be allowed to grab this much experience at once, but all your really strong people are fighting at the edge of the forest right now, right? Figured if I could sneak around, I could level up nice and high without all the risk.”

The gears turned uncomprehendingly in Hartha’s head until at last she caught up to what he was saying.

He’s looking for the noncombatants. To… level off of.

She nearly cast Binding Roots right then and there, pausing only to see what sort of rotten soul sat within his chest. Aarris had taught her how to get a vague sense of one’s character from their soul, and Hartha berated herself for not checking earlier.

In her defense, she was used to examining raw souls. Especially from a distance, it required a touch more effort to see through the man’s flesh and into the soul that lay within. Still, it was well within her abilities, and a moment later, his soul lit up to her senses.

Upon seeing it, however, her first reaction didn’t concern his character at all. True, his soul really didn’t make him out to be the most savory character, but more pressingly-

So small. And somehow, it is… fuzzy? Soft? At least when it came to sentients, the souls Aarris had given Hartha to train with had been solid. The first time she’d practiced with them, just moving them around had strained her.

In comparison, this one just looked sad.

The soldier was yelling something at her and swinging his spear around menacingly, but she ignored him, probing his soul a bit deeper.

Level… nine, it looks like? And with some sort of basic soldier class? Even that looked wrong, like the soul was allergic to its class. Perhaps this was what happened when one grabbed a class with the Scepter of Assignation instead of waiting until level ten? Or maybe he just needed time. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he’d been a regular classless citizen recently before getting conscripted and assigned a class.

No matter the cause, though, his soul felt remarkably light and poorly anchored on top of that. Even the pigeon’s souls had felt more tightly moored. She knew she should probably be reacting to all that waving around and yelling he was doing right now, but she was enrapt with the man’s bizarre soul.

Unfortunately, the soldier was not the type to put up with being ignored.

With a final choice few words, he rushed at Hartha, pulling his arms back in preparation to run her through. Given their difference in stats, Hartha could have easily avoided the attack, but she felt like this was important. Like she was close to something. Tunnel-visioned, she focused completely on that strangely fuzzy soul as she mumbled to herself.

“I wonder if I try to bring it just a tiiiiny bit closer, and then I could-”

POP

You have defeated an enemy soldier! +13xp

Soul Magic has reached level 41!

As though a puppet with his strings cut, the soldier collapsed to the ground mid-charge. The space where he’d stood only moments before was now empty, or at least it was physically.

Suspended there, completely untethered from its body, was one pitifully small and fuzzy soul. Obediently, it floated over to Hartha, coming to rest in her outstretched hand.

She examined both it and the body at her feet with wide eyes.

How interesting.

Almost reflexively, she tugged on the soul’s coating, stripping away the man’s soldier class. It was a poor fit, and he hadn’t been planning on doing anything good with the class regardless. With how weak it was, his soul didn’t even put up a fight.

Hartha briefly considered what to do with the man’s soul now that she held it. If she let it go, it would dissipate. She could even speed that process up by crushing it right now. For the time being, however, she couldn’t decide, and all at once, the object of their previous conversation struck her.

A war. Hardly the time for me to be spending time on such things.

Finding it second nature at this point, she carried the soul with her as she moved away from the soldier’s limp body.

I still do not fully understand what’s happening, but Elphaea will.

Thus thought, Hartha once more set off to find the dryad, this time with much greater urgency.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Where…

As though slowly bobbing above and below water, Rock swam in and out of consciousness. On rare occasions, he managed to remember -- to figure out where he was before inevitably passing out once more. Mostly, though, he remained oblivious to his surroundings.

With each new cycle, however, he regained another fragment of his senses, drifted a bit closer to full wakefulness, until at last, it struck him.

The war.

All at once, Rock opened his eyes and tried to throw himself upwards, eager to help or to do something. While he succeeded at opening his eyes, his attempts to move earned him only some painful protestations from every atrophied muscle in his body.

“Do not move, young one. Despite my proficiency in life magic, this is a rather trying endeavor.”

Not even able to tilt his head properly, Rock had to settle for catching Elphaea out of the corner of his eye. She sat unnaturally still as a wellspring of life mana flowed from her and into the ground where all sorts of greenery had erupted. Said greenery was practically encasing him, serving as both a bed and a cocoon of sorts as the life mana within rushed into him.

Gods. If it’s taking this much to keep me alive, how many times over would I have died by now without it?

It was a harrowing thought, made even worse by a more pressing realization.

And even with this much being spent on me, it’s not enough, is it?

On an average day, that thought would have filled him with a complicated mixture of mortification and dread, the first at forcing the dryad to waste so much energy on a lost cause, the second at… well, his death.

Today, however, was slightly different.

She can’t be doing this right now. He couldn’t even move, but his nose and his ears worked just fine. The smoke. The shouting. Distant clashes of metal on metal. There was a battle going on -- a battle where he was certain a dryad with a full reserve of mana would be invaluable.

Instead, he found himself trapped in his worst nightmare. Rather than rallying his people to victory, he was actively dragging them down.

It was a position that went against everything he stood for.

And as such, Rock knew exactly what he had to do. In a twisted sense, perhaps it was better this way. It would have taken him far longer to build up the resolve in any other setting. With his people at stake, however, he worked up the courage immediately.

Let me die. He tried to speak the words into existence, but his lips failed him. Stop healing me! Go save everyone else!

As he worked himself up, his strength fled him. Rather than managing to speak, his consciousness slipped away from him once more. When he came to, he had no idea how much time had passed, but he thought he had the energy for at least a sentence now.

He was resolved, but that didn’t mean he was happy. Or without fear. Quickly crushing the small part of himself that was holding onto hope, he opened both his eyes and his mouth.

“Let me d-”

“Rock. You do not look well.”

Had the ex-commander had the energy to blink, he would have. After all, the familiar but dark-veined face hanging above him was the very last person he expected to see right now, to the point where he questioned if she was a hallucination. But there she stood, her darkness a warped mirror for the cracks of light which ran through him.

He tried to finish his earlier words only to find that his surprise had robbed the last of his energy from him, rendering him mute once more. Oblivious to his struggles, Hartha knelt down on the opposite side from Elphaea.

“One moment. I will fix this. Please stay still. If you do, I am fairly certain you will not explode.”

The likelihood of her being a hallucination jumped by double digits at that, and he would have laughed had his body let him.

Fix this. Rich. As if this is something that can be fixed. Just my own mind taunting me one final time.

But then Hartha closed her eyes and he began to feel… something? He wasn’t sure what. As best he could describe it, it was like being aligned. Not physically, but in some other way. Having some intangible part of him that he hadn’t known about shifted back into its proper place.

The process was slow. Slow enough that he could almost feel himself sinking back to sleep. He managed to hang on, however, and he was glad that he did.

Slow, slow, slow, and then all at once, some piece of him clicked into place.

Like a dam burst open, the energy flooded through him.

It was as though Elphaea’s life magic had been bouncing off of him with nowhere to go before now, and to make up for lost time, it sank into every cell in his body. His gray, papery flesh reknit itself, its previous vibrancy returning. His thin, impotent musculature swelled up, replacing a portion of the strength he’d thought lost forever. Most visibly noticeably, the very same jagged cracks of light which had come with this illness pulsed, growing brighter and brighter with each passing second until he thought he might go blind.

And somehow, none of the physical changes were the most important part.

Rock did not count himself as an emotional man, but when the messages finally popped up, he nearly wept.

You have recovered from extensive soul damage!

Note, certain system features may have malfunctioned or been unavailable while your soul was damaged. All functionality should now be restored.

Filled with many times more energy than he’d had for months, Rock leapt to his feet, two relieved faces soon joining his own as Elphaea and Hartha stood beside him. Elphaea, he would also thank profusely and for as long as he lived, but for Hartha who wasn’t even supposed to be here, he didn’t even know what to say.

“When- How-” With his mind trying and failing to understand what had just happened to him, he opted to say something much simpler instead. “Hartha. Thank you.” He bowed far lower than he almost ever did, staying like that until she addressed him.

Seeming uncomfortable, Hartha motioned for him to rise. “I need no thanks for healing someone. And besides, you are not fully healed. Your soul seems to be rejecting your class. Perhaps a byproduct of the updated race.”

Updated race? Not sure what she was talking about, Rock pulled up his character sheet, overjoyed to find his normal details there instead of the error-filled garbage he’d been stuck with for so long. Just about everything looked like he remembered it, save for one important detail.

Race: Consecrated Vampire (Forest Shadow variant)

He stared at the line so long, it expanded even without his conscious input.

Consecrated Vampire

Your soul has been shredded and nearly consumed by an advanced blood ritual with vampiric roots, forever marking it with the aspect of blood. Stitched back together and greatly empowered with the deific essence of light, you have been transformed into a rare hybrid. Blessed with the powers and physique of a vampire, your consecrated nature negates many of the disadvantages of your race, rendering you capable of walking in the sunlight with impunity.

He had questions. Tons of them. For now though, more important than the details that had changed were the details that had stayed the same. His eyes hovered to the line he’d been longing to see for so long.

Class: Commander of the Forest

Even as he watched, the line flickered in and out. It didn’t matter. He could feel his class skills once again. He could call on their power once more.

And he would. Not in some distant future, but right now.

As if sensing his thoughts, Elphaea took hold of both him and Hartha, pulling them towards a nearby tree.

“Come. I am afraid that I am somewhat drained, but I believe there is something for all three of us to attend to.” The bark of the tree rippled as she dragged them with her, but Rock couldn’t even appreciate the novelty of traveling with a dryad through a tree.

Instead his mind raced through all of the shadows, hoping against hope that everyone was safe, demanding it of himself that he would protect all of them that he could. One by one, the faces of everyone he’d trained ran through his head, each one bolstering his spirits, strengthening his resolve.

And at the very end, one face stood out from the rest. His latest student. The bartender.

As the liquid wood closed in around him, he spared one final thought before he readied his mind for battle.

I hope that one is okay. But if she does find battle, may her training do her well.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tucked away in an enchanted vacation home and wrapped up in a blanket that cost more than her entire worldly belongings, Nadja poured herself another glass of wine.

And then another.

And after a good deal of gulping, once again.

After all, there was a war going on. Who knew what could happen? Her bar could burn down. She could be forced back to Emer’Thalis. Hells, she might even die.

If that’s not a good reason to get a little toasty, then what is?