Nico stood at the shoreline and pulled a reed to estimate the depth of the murky water, thick with wild grass and roots. His ears angled toward the source of the rumble rolling across the marsh. The wetlands rippled with their approach, the water’s surface breaking as gas bubbled up from the agitated soil.
The horizon burned grey as riftborn were forming out of blur and smog. Behind them, the storm of ash ate whatever light stood in its path as it crawled closer. The cloud advanced slower than the riftborn, but its creep was steady, bringing with it burning embers and ozone as it disintegrated everything it touched in a slow, erasing sweep. The rift had given them a time limit.
Nico’s ears tilted low against the hum. Kai would’ve called this “good cinematics,” since he was always one to find something remarkable in distortion.
His ears perked back up to the sound of approaching, waterlogged footsteps.
“You can’t portray Arcanite Sages like this,” Zhou said as he stepped beside him, arms folded, contempt obvious. “A think piece written with just half of Aster’s sins would be called fake for being too one-dimensionally evil.”
Zhou gestured his chin toward the horizon.
The sage’s familiars’ bodies ran like wax, their skin half-melted over blackened bone. From the wreck of their torsos, gems jutted like stakes—emerald, sapphire, amber—driven through ribs, shoulders, and skulls. Each rode a scaled beast, forms slick with black mana.
The crocodilian Riftborn moved through the wetlands in a crawl-and-swim rhythm, heavy tails slicing the water behind them. Their hides leaked black water. Strips of flesh slid off and smoked where they landed, only for mana tendrils to writhe and stitch them together again.
Nico gave the sage a small nod. “He’s quite exceptional.”
His eyes focused to the center of the formation as a final, brooding form came into view out of the ash. One half still looked vaguely human, if the imagination filled in the missing flesh, while the rest sagged into a swamp of tar and muscle. Its massive, half-formed body was mounted on its own reptilian beast that tore hungrily through the marsh.
Zhou scoffed through his teeth. “And yet that piece of shit always manages to be worse than I imagined.”
“I’m glad you don’t have that kind of imagination.”
The comment earned a short, amused sound from the sage before his tone shifted. “How much do you know about Aster and his familiars?”
“Our guild logs detailed the corrosive power of his skill, but not the mechanics behind it,” Nico reported. “They noted that focusing mana at the point of contact could suspend the Ashmark, but double the mana was needed to dispel it.” His tail flicked once, uneasy. “Anything already corroded to ash was unrecoverable.”
“Sure.” Zhou’s gaze stayed forward. “Aster’s skills rely on mana injection through direct touch. I know of two: Ashveil corrodes on impact but doesn’t spread; Ashbrand infects until dispelled or the target’s drained to ash.”
They both began pulling items from their inventories, checking and optimizing equipment.
“It’s the familiars that use Ashmark, which follows the same infliction mechanic,” Zhou continued, “but the infection rate is slower, and it dispels on its own over time. The real issue is that the marks act as receivers. When Aster’s within range, he can surge his own mana to detonate them remotely.”
“Any idea on duration or range?”
Zhou hummed. “You’ll have to think about what fairness means to the System. It’s enough to be overwhelming, but not enough to be unbeatable.”
Nico nodded. So the System still considered balance when granting rule-breaking skills.
“…I can nullify at a 1:1 mana ratio,” Zhou said after a pause. “Half, if I catch it mid-cast.”
“And it’s 2:1 for me to block,” Nico confirmed.
“Yeah, but playing mana chicken with a Sage is a losing game…” Zhou trailed off as he tracked the riftborn in the distance.
Nico filled in the gap for him. “And you have a reduced mana capacity, for a Sage.”
Zhou let the comment sit, keeping his attention forward.
“…Yeah, even with the core mana boost, my capacity is likely similar to yours.”
“Noted.”
“The rift will probably end the battle when the guardian goes down.”
“I’ll keep the familiars away from you, then.”
“Mn.” Zhou fiddled with the circlets glowing faint violet on his forearms. “Aster’s a fire affinity. The one with emerald horns is water-wind aligned. I don’t recognize the other two, so they might’ve died before our time.” He paused before adding, “Well, emerald horns has died since, too.”
Nico logged the affinities while discerning the gem horns in the distance. Centuries of difference worked in their favor; not to assume the rift would stay entirely true to reality.
“…Are these all the riftborn?” the fox asked.
“The system probably scaled it back for us.” Zhou’s gaze stayed facing the horizon, his back to the city.
“It has a strange attachment to fairness.”
“Yeah,” the Sage said.
***
|| Skill Activated || [? Zephyr Veil | "wind sword & shield" ]
Blades of wind cut through surging muck. The first cleaved the wave clean in half, allowing the other blades a clear offensive trajectory.
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The emerald-horned caster sharply pulled the reins of his crocodile, successfully dodging the gusts as it kicked up in the air. Two more riders flanked Nico from both sides, sapphire to his left and amber to his right. Their crocodiles skidded through the swamp shallows in mirrored slides, sending water fanning behind them.
Purple light flared behind Nico. The two alchemists lifted abruptly, just above the water line. Water spilled off the platform of compressed clay underfoot, separating their boots from the swamp’s surface.
Nico dropped to a knee, slamming his palms into the water, sparks jumping across his fingers.
|| Skill Activated || [Thunderburst | “lightning aoe" ]
A web of lightning burst outward from the edge of their raised footing, racing over the flooded ground in a broad half-circle. The current jumped across the water, seizing everything still touching it—the crocodiles first, their riders next—flashing a harsh white glare around their outlines as the air filled with ozone.
Moving before the surge grounded through the swamp, Zhou stomped violet mana into the earth, erecting another platform in front of him to step into. Each impact of his stride forced clay downward, transferring the mana into the swamp bed to bring up the next slab of compacted earth. His sprint caught a clean rhythm. He chained his motion forward from plate to plate, keeping clear of the water.
Nico kept the current alive, mindful of its mana-intensive drain. Electricity illuminated the field in dancing arcs until his mana faltered and cut abruptly. Five seconds—long enough.
By then the sage closed the gap, sprinting past the emerald rider as its mount seized and stilled. As the sparks died off, the rider lurched upright in a quick recovery. Black mana clawed up the riftborn’s arm as it jerked upward, dragging jagged ridges of muck up with its rising motion—that splashed pathetically back into the swamp.Violet light had carved through the skill and nullified it mid-cast.
Behind the rider, Zhou had pivoted from his dash, one arm still extended, the last shimmer of violet still leaving his fingertips. He dropped down, driving his palms into his earthen footing, surging violet in a sharp horizontal line before him. A long wall of compressed clay erupted from the marsh bed, tall enough to cut him from sight and deter pursuit.
The emerald rider lunged forward to shatter it—
|| Skill Activated || [Thermal Jet ? 火 | "superheated shot" ]
—interrupted as a narrow burst of wind slammed into its back, collecting at the point of contact. A surge of heat detonated the air, blasting through its armor, scattering flaming shards of mana into the murk.
The resulting shockwave rolled toward Nico as a roaring wave of water.. As it drove at him, a second wave dense with detritus surged fast and heavy across the marsh toward his left flank. A second after, the sapphire rider showed up in his periphery, having timed its cast carefully with the surge.
Before he could process a reaction, amber horns flashed through the haze on his right. Standing on its mount, the second rider blasted wind from its heels, propelling itself at him and obliterating its rotting crocodile in the recoil. Tendrils of black mana splayed from the amber riftborn’s mouth as it shot forward, each one whipping through the air in sharp cracks.
Nico threw up his arms in reflex. One tendril slashed straight across his forearm, splitting flesh, as he forced gold mana into his step.
|| Skill Activated || [? Gale Step | "wind jump" ]
The mana-imbued wind fed directly into the clay platform beneath him, where Zhou had etched an inscription. The glyphs and battery hidden at his feet caught the activation energy eagerly as Nico launched away in a clean arc.
With a sharp flare, a deep suction tore through the marsh. The packed earth inverted on itself, collapsing into a sudden hollow that drew everything nearby down in a spiraling rush.
The sapphire and amber familiars didn’t have time to disengage, caught in their casts of water and wind, as the ground beneath them fell away. Sapphire gemstones shattered from the familiar’s ribs as its mount flailed its limbs in violent desperation to resist the suction. Meanwhile, tendrils of mana thrashed against amber horns as they landed in the churning mud and ash.
|| Skill Activated || [? Gale Step | "wind jump" ]
Nico triggered another gale midair in another sideways vault to stay clear of the draw. He caught a tree at the marsh’s edge, anchoring himself to it as the collapse easily dismantled the earthen wall Zhou had raised, swallowing it greedily alongside the riftborn familiars all the same. With a final heavy churn that swirled through the swamp, the sinkhole sealed itself off with its fill of air and muck. Only ripples of silt and steam remained.
Still braced against the trunk, Nico looked toward the horizon that the wall had hidden.
Bursts of red and violet flashed across the field, still managing to be seen through the thick haze of ash and debris. Each one struck like lightning: a column of red fire lancing skyward, erased an instant later by a violet snap that reduced it to nothing. The rhythm turned the greyed ashen noon into a stuttering dusk that stained the sky red. Heat spiked with each burst, vanishing the moment nullification hit.
Nico slumped back against the tree, breath coming in rough pulls. Gold static sparked sporadically along his trembling arms as he finally addressed the window hovering before him.
|| Status Affliction : Ashmark ||
[5% Mana Drain]
His sleeve hung in tatters, the gash beneath it presented as a deep grey seam in his flesh, veined in dull purple. The surrounding skin rapidly turned paler as ash lifted from the wound instead of blood.
Mana flared along his arm, injecting gold into the wound.
|| Status Affliction Update ||
[Ashmark has been Dispelled]
Color flushed back into the flesh as the dead layer sloughed off in a long, thick strip of gray. It separated into ash before it could even hit the ground. Fucking gross.
Gagging, he dug through his inventory UI and pulled out an antiseptic solution, rinsing the wound of leftover ash. To his relief, it started to bleed. With more inventory digging, he pulled out an emergency wound closure, applied the transparent barrier over the gash, then pulled the adhesive tabs running down its length together with his free hand and teeth to draw the flesh back into place.
He pressed his hand over the wound, applying pressure with slow exhales, then looked again toward the horizon. The red and violet glares finally eased.
A section of the marsh had been flipped upright; a wall of earth stood perpendicular to the water. A cypress tree hung sideways from it, roots still tangled in the mud, its canopy disintegrating into a drifting ash cloud that further dimmed the sun. The remaining branches suspended rigidly, the thinner ones breaking off in chunks as Ashbrand ate into the trunk, petrifying the wood. Surrounding it, stalagmites erected from the swamp bed writhed with pierced mana tendrils.
A sharp shatter echoed through the marsh, its blast strong enough to disperse the haze and return some visibility to the field. Brilliant red sunstone scattered as the riftborn’s body slumped and slid down the stalagmite that had pierced its chest. The gem stakes that once jutted from its back were broken now, their fragments sinking into the muddy water. In their place, smaller spikes of earth and petrified root jutted at wild angles, some impaled cleanly through the torso, others lodged shallowly as if flung there by impact. Mana spilled from the wounds, thick and sluggish, oozing from the empty sockets where limbs had been and sloughing off in clumps at the torso.
A few meters back, Zhou steadied his breath in heavy gasps before stepping off the overturned parcel of clay. He waded through the shallow water toward the bleeding form, which was already breaking apart into loose threads of light by the time he stopped before it.
The sage reached down and grabbed one of its broken sunstone horns at the base, lifting the head until its fading eyes met his in a fleeting moment. Violet light gathered along his hands as his own horns glowed amethyst. A stalagmite ripped upward from the swamp, lancing through the riftborn’s neck, severing it cleanly.
Nico flinched at the movement, his ears tensing upright. But as he continued to watch, his ears slowly fell into a droop, tail lowering. Zhou simply stood there unmoving.
A pulse of amethyst resonated through the swamp. The field of jutting stone withdrew one by one, retreating beneath the water. As the last stalagmite slid out the riftborn’s chest, the body fell with it in a hollow splash. Ripples spread as it sank unevenly, settling when only fragments of the torso drifted on the surface.
Zhou stayed where he was, still holding the severed head as it disintegrated from the jaw upward. With a final look, he let go of the broken horn, allowing the head to fall plainly into the water.
I was once tasked to create an 'American' character and the ref was clipart of a fat monopoly man smoking a cigar with money stuffed in his pockets.
I thought, "lol hey, you can't portray capitalists like that!" as I drew it for my salary