She held this near equilibrium for several long moments, both health bars crawling downward. She looked at Declan, but he shook his head. No more potions. One more cast of Flesh Mend bought them another few seconds before her mana bottomed out once more. Both of their health bars were deep in the red, and her entire body felt like it was on fire. The pathways where the mana flowed through her felt like they were full of magma, stretched and raw.
Then, Lulu’s health bar stopped dropping. For a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, it held steady, barely above zero. Under her hands, the raging, wild swirl of mana within Lulu calmed, settled, and found a new shape.
Lulu relaxed, and the spasms stopped. She dropped limply to the charred, blackened mattress. For a moment, Char thought she’d lost, that Lulu was gone. Her throat tightened around a helpless wail, but she choked it off. Lulu’s health bar was still there. It wasn’t dropping anymore. New notifications flashed for attention at the edge of Char’s vision, bypassing her settings. Flames still licked across Lulu’s fur, but they didn’t burn her anymore. Char still didn’t relax, couldn’t relax until she saw Lulu’s health bar moving upward again. Then, she nearly collapsed with relief.
Declan put a hand on her shoulder. “Char?” That one word carried a universe of worry and uncertainty. “Are you… Is she… What can I do to help?”
Char shook her head. Her throat was raw, her head pounded, and her stomach roiled from drinking four… no, five potions one after the other. She croaked, “We’re OK. I think. Gimmie a minute.” Declan nodded and backed off to sit on the other mattress.
She pulled up the flashing notifications.
Due to consuming a powerful Natural Treasure,
your pet [Lucifer the Pit Bull] has evolved.
[Lucifer the Pit Bull] has become
[Lucifer, Hound of the Inferno].
As an evolved creature, [Lucifer, Hound of the Inferno]
cannot be a pet. Your pet bond has been broken.
Char’s heart broke. A fist of ice clenched around her gut. There was more to read, though, and she tried to stay hopeful as she flicked to the next notification. Lulu was still alive. That was the important part.
As an evolved creature, [Lucifer, Hound of the Inferno]
may choose to form a Companion Bond. Would you like
to offer a Companion Bond to [Lucifer, Hound of the Inferno]?
Y/N
Char immediately wanted to select ‘Yes,’ but she hesitated. She’d pulled Lulu into danger after danger. She’d clung to the dog as an emotional crutch. Did she have any right to bind her tighter? She read back over the prompt. The word ‘choose’ let her make up her mind. If Lulu could refuse the Bond, then there was no harm in offering it… right? She chose ‘Yes.’
Nothing happened. She glanced over and saw that Lulu was asleep. Char mentally pounded her impatience into a corner and subdued it with guilt. Lulu had just gone through something awful; she deserved a little rest. The question of a bond could wait.
There was one more notification, but Char let it sit while she looked the sleeping dog over. It was obvious that Lulu had changed. She was larger, now. She’d always been large for a pit bull, but now she was half again as large as she had been--closer to a mastiff. There was a heavier feeling to her now, not like a physical weight, though she was certainly depressing the mattress more than she had when she was smaller—no, this was a metaphysical weight, something Char felt with her new mana senses. It was like Lulu had become somehow more real.
Her coloring had changed as well. She’d had a brindled pattern of darker, almost black stripes on a tawny coat. That pattern had been reversed. Her fur had become jet black, and her brindle stripes were an almost luminous orange, like hidden embers beneath charred wood. Or glowing lava glimpsed through the cracks in a crust of black stone. As she watched, the orange pattern seemed to coruscate, shifting from bright to dim in waves as though an inner fire shone through them. She twitched in her sleep, and a line of flame ran down her back.
Char tentatively reached out a hand to Lulu’s head. She was hot, but not so hot that it burned to touch her. Pulling her hand back, she checked her last notification:
New Title Earned.
Limit Breaker (Silver)
You hit your limits and kept pushing
to accomplish your goal. With a strong enough Will
nothing can hold you back.
+10 Willpower
+5 Endurance
+5% effectiveness of Willpower, Endurance, and Resilience
Another title was nice, but under the circumstances, she couldn’t get excited about it. She wanted to wake Lulu up, to make sure she was still the same Lulu she’d always been underneath the changes, so she moved to the other mattress to sit next to Declan, removing herself from the temptation.
Every part of her ached. Her health bar was creeping upward, but it was still only a little over 20%. It had been down in the single digits by the time the firestorm inside Lulu had calmed. She’d been sure they were both about to die. Her hands started to shake. She told herself it was just the adrenaline crash, but she knew better.
Declan watched her quietly, giving her time. She scooted back and leaned against the wall, thumping her head back to stare at the ceiling. Declan leaned forward and grabbed a bottle of water from the pile of supplies she’d pulled from her inventory. He broke the seal and handed it to her.
She nodded her thanks. A long pull on the bottle made her throat feel less like it was packed with broken glass, and her stomach settled a bit. “Thanks.” She caught his eyes, “The potions, the water, the help. Just being here. Thanks.” She put her head back against the wall again, breaking eye contact. “I need a vacation.”
“Maybe the next section will be a beach.”
Char snorted, “Yeah. With sea monsters.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Oh… Oh, god… what if there are krakens now?” He shuddered. “OK, maybe not a beach, then.” He paused for a beat, then asked what he really wanted to know. “Lulu?”
“System says she evolved. She’s now Lucifer, Hound of the Inferno.”
“Lucifer? Why would it name her that?” His eyes went wide.
“That’s her name. It’s what Lulu is short for. No, I didn’t name her that.” Char took another sip of water while she got her thoughts in order, and she launched into the story. She told him about Steve, the change, the Dire Opossum Matron, all of it, even falling into the glowing vat of mutagen in the dungeon.
“Glowing? Like something out of a Ninja Turtles cartoon? Seriously?” His eyes were wide again, but this time with skepticism rather than alarm.
Char nodded, “Seriously. I think the Aldevari were sloppy with their research when they designed this whole… whatever it is. The whole system’s a mess. It’s like they just slapped it together with duct tape and called it good enough. It throws around terms like ‘apprentice’ and ‘professional’ like it pulled them out of a hat. That dungeon? Straight out of a game. Mutagen vats and everything. And the power scaling? I could sneeze and get a new title with a 5% stat boost.”
She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Is it supposed to be a game, or a boot camp? Or some half-assed alien experiment? Where did the mana come from? Why do they call it Aetheris in one place and XP everywhere else? Can’t they even keep their terminology straight? And we’re all so busy trying not to die that there’s no time to figure it all out, which is probably the point.” She sighed and thumped her head against the wall. “I don’t even know what I’m fighting, Dec. Half the time I’m just reacting. Running. Surviving. If I had a second to breathe, maybe I could figure things out, come up with a plan, but it just never stops.”
“Then we learn about it.” He held up a hand to ward off her next tirade. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. I think this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve got like, a bazillion questions, too. Asking them is the first step. That’s what I was learning in my science classes, anyway. Just because magic is a real thing now, it doesn’t invalidate the scientific method.”
“OK, professor, how do we do that, then?”
“The first step is gathering data. We need to find some way to learn more about all of this, about mana and… what did you call it? Ether?”
“Aetheris.” She spelled it for him. “It was in the error messages after I fell in the vat.”
“Aetheris.” He rolled the world around like he was trying it on for size. “OK, so we know there’s two different new… energies? I guess. Mana and Aetheris. So, we need to figure out what they are and where they come from. We need to figure out how this system works, like, how is it in our heads, how does it keep track of us? And, we need to learn all we can about the Aldevari.” He snorted. “We need a whole research team, some spies, and Delta Force.”
“We’ve got us. And Lulu.”
“Yeah… you’ve got a hellhound named Lucifer. You know that makes you an evil overlord, right?”
Char smiled, “Well, then I guess it’s a good thing I’ve got a reliable henchman.” She poked his shoulder.
“I prefer Grand Vizier.”
Char lifted an eyebrow in mock suspicion, “Plotting to take my throne, are you?”
“OK, maybe not Grand Vizier… how about sidekick?”
Char tilted her head to the side, “Yeah. Superheroes have sidekicks. I like the idea of being a superhero.”
“But you have a hellhound named Lucifer. Not very heroic.”
“It is if I say it is.” Char crossed her arms.
Declan rolled his eyes. “There it is, I knew there was an evil tyrant lurking in there.”
The banter helped; her hands stopped shaking. She checked on Lulu, but she was still sleeping. It was a peaceful sleep. Char felt like she could breathe again. She thought about something Declan had asked about earlier. “Meditation. You need to learn it.”
“OK. Why?”
“I don’t know why it works, but it lets you recover health and mana faster.” She waved a hand, “Another question for the pile. Still, it works. So, get comfortable. I’m about to lay some wisdom on you.”
Declan gave her a skeptical look, but did as she said. She walked him through the basic technique that she’d learned from her dad years ago. It took him a while to get the hang of it, and he kept asking questions that she didn’t have all the answers for, but he took the exercise seriously. “It’s not easy, and it takes practice, but you will get it,” she assured him. “If I can settle this junk heap I’ve got for a brain, you can do it, too.”
When he settled in to practice, she was tempted to slip into her own inner sanctuary, but there was something she wanted to look at first. It had been a while since she’d gone over her status sheet. She was so much faster and stronger now. It was time she paid a little attention to the details.
Charlotte Adair
Level 22 Health: 759 Stamina: 663 Mana: 656
Echoform Core (Legendary) - Tier 1
Base Stat Bonus Modified Stat
Body (E)
Strength 42 35% 57
Speed 46 55% 71
Dexterity 43 10% 47
Endurance 55 38% 76
Mind (E)
Intelligence 40 20% 48
Willpower 64 25% 80
Perception 49 23% 60
Soul (E)
Recovery 49 30% 64
Resilience 49 13% 55
Spirit 57 15% 66
Bloodlines Bloodline Gifts
Nahual 11% Primal Grace
Thunderbird 19% Child of the Storm
Vanir 13% Lesser Foresight
Tuatha 6% Lesser Truesight
Domain Affinities:
Flesh - Tier 1 (Progress to next tier: 7%)
Spells:
Mend Flesh (Beginner)
Lightning - Tier 1 (Progress to next tier: 12%)
Spells:
Arc (Beginner)
Char was blown away by the difference. She remembered her stats being mostly a bunch of tens, give or take a point or two. Now, though… She needed to test herself, to see how those numbers translated to real-world measurements. She tried to remember what the world record was for the bench-press, or running a mile. She thought it was around 700 pounds and 4 minutes, respectively, but she wasn’t sure, and she couldn’t remember if those were the all-time records or the women’s records. It didn’t matter for now, anyway. They had no way to measure out a mile, no way to time a run, and nothing heavy to lift.
It bothered her that she didn’t know what was making her stronger. It didn’t hurt like that first big stat dump, but she could still feel it when she assigned her free points or got points from a title; a buzz of energy that was hot and cold at the same time. It wasn’t mana, it was something else, something denser. It settled into her bones and muscles and nerves and made her… more. The way Lulu now felt like she was something more. More what, Char wasn’t sure. Again, the only words she could find to describe the feeling were ‘metaphysical weight.’
She also wondered about the bloodline gifts. Primal Grace seemed to be a stronger connection with her instincts and a better sense of her body and how it moved. Lesser Foresight gave her the tiniest warning when something was about to hit her. Lesser Truesight, she wasn’t sure about. It might have helped in the fight with the Corrupted Dryad, letting her see through the hallucinations to keep fighting, but she didn’t have a baseline to compare to. Child of the Storm was a complete mystery. Maybe it was making her Arc spells stronger, or easier to cast, or maybe it was the reason her Lightning affinity was growing faster than the Flesh affinity… she just didn’t have enough information.
As training aids went, this system sucked.
Frustrated, she swiped away her stat sheet with a sigh. She pulled a thread of Lightning mana to her right hand, but she didn’t form a spell shape with it. Tiny sparks, like static electricity on a dry winter morning, jumped from finger to finger as she let the mana pool. She held her left hand an inch from her right and felt it when the mana leapt to it, like a circuit being completed. The sparks jumped from hand to hand. Her hair started to float away from her head, and the hair on her arms stood on end. She stopped the flow and let the power go, not wanting to reignite her headache by bottoming out her mana pool again.
Suddenly restless, she pushed to her feet. She went to the window and stared out. Declan opened his eyes and watched her, but he went back to practicing his meditation without speaking. She appreciated that. The kid seemed to have a sixth sense for when she needed space.
The world outside the building was fading to darkness. The last violet and indigo fingers of the dying day clung to the sky, the final clutch of a losing battle. She watched as the light faded and the stars came out. They were the same stars as always, the one thing they got to keep from their old world.
When Declan uncrossed his legs and stretched, she said, “Get some sleep. I’ll keep watch. I won’t be able to sleep, anyway.”
He nodded, yawning. “Wake me when it’s my turn. You need sleep, too.”
She knew he was right. She also knew that she wouldn’t wake him. Sleep wasn’t going to happen for her tonight. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw flames licking across Lulu’s fur and heard the sound of flesh sizzling. Maybe she could sleep when Lulu woke, when she could look into her eyes and see the same love and trust in them. But not yet, not while the air still smelled like smoke and her fingers remembered the feel of scorched fur.
Behind her, Lulu shifted in her sleep and let out a low huff of breath. Char turned just enough to glance back and saw a flicker of ember-colored light pulse through her stripes. Whatever Lulu had become, she was still here, still breathing. That was something, at least.
Her gaze flicked across Declan as he pulled a blanket up and settled in to sleep. There were too many questions, and not enough answers, but she didn’t have to face them alone. That would have to be enough for now.