CHAPTER 8 - [ CLASS: AETHERIAL CRAFTER ] [ CONFIRM? ]
Dust.
Fire.
Stone.
Levan stumbled through the cracked stone bricks of the temple, coughing into his fist, eyes squeezed shut from the stinging smoke.
He forced them open, and Levan beheld a city under siege.
His breath escaped him in a harsh exhalation of wonder and terror.
The city beneath him sprawled in a grandiose feat of early antiquity, only seen in recreations in history textbooks and on history museum exhibit pictures. Even in the dark, he could see the sea of sandstone neighborhoods, square and trapezoidal homes pressed together like knucklebones on a giant’s hand. Throughout the city were strange structures that felt like a blind spot in his history—as though the giant sandstone hexagons should be as familiar as the pyramids in Egypt, or the Parthenon of Greece—a culture that he, through a fluke, had never learned about.
But it was more alien still:
The tiny red shapes of soldiers swarmed one structure, a massive “Y” shape, almost like a tuning fork, with a sphere of static electricity the size of one of the sandstone houses licking at the prongs. They threw ropes and chains over the prongs, and the entire structure glowed electric blue briefly before the soldier engineers broke one of the prongs, pulling the whole tuning fork over. The sphere of electricity between the prongs broke, a million tendrils of lightning reaching for the city like the hands of a heartbroken mother, before fading.
“I have to get out of here,” Levan thought, seizing on the thought like it was the last rope thrown to a man at the bottom of a burning pit.
[ Ability Core: Predator | Confirm? ]
“Stop trying to make ‘Predator’ happen—it’s not going to happen,” Levan grumbled.
The soldiers chasing him were nowhere to be seen, although he caught the occasional forearm or sword scabbard trapped beneath the rocks around him.
It was so damn hard to see.
Something glittered on the ground. Brass. A tiny thing, the button from a uniform, maybe, or—
Levan bent down, pulled it lightly from the stones.
It was the chin of the mask.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
[ Item Acquired: Mask of Zansk | ??? | ??? | ??? ]
He lifted it from the rubble and turned.
Levan looked around for the owner. Was one of the limbs sticking from the boulder chunks his? Had he survived?
How did I survive?
An unsettling feeling crept in.
“I’m leaving your mask on the big rock,” Levan called.
[ Item Lost: Mask of Zansk | ??? | ??? | ??? ]
“A kindness,” a voice said.
Levan spun.
It came from one of the pillars behind him. One of the last pillars left after the trebuchet boulder came.
The marble had been humbled, cut like a stalk of vegetables. The speaker was the wounded man who leaned against the pillar. Except…he’d seen that man die, hadn’t he?
I know I did.
The priest’s eyes shone with a sick, pale emerald light. Not just his irises—his eyes in totality, shone like he’d seen something beyond what mortal eyes were ever meant to see.
Maybe he has.
“A kindness undeserved,” the man said, and Levan noticed that the man’s chest wasn’t rising and falling with breath. His fingertips didn’t twitch, and his body was totally still.
No, Levan realized. It’s not that this priest has seen beyond mortal reckoning—I think he is the thing beyond mortal reckoning.
Levan could only stare back, though, unable to pull himself away from the glowing gaze of the acolyte. The finger stirred, and he pointed up above Levan’s head.
Levan glanced up.
His stomach dropped.
There, hovering in the air above him, was half of the temple wall. It hung in the air with a trimming of green light that matched the acolyte’s eyes. It would have fallen right on him.
Levan staggered backward, tripping and landing hard on the ground. The acolyte’s eyes faded back to lifelessness, and when the corpse sagged against the broken pillar, the temple wall finally fell, thundering to his ear and sending a new wave of dust across the ruins of the temple.
Like before, the dust settled, his ears adjusted, and his senses returned.
There was never an unbroken second of sound not filled with a human scream.
What are my options?
What are my options?!
[ Codex > Chosen Soul Arrival Boons ]
[ Chosen Soul Elemental Affinity: Aether ]
[ Codex > Chosen Soul Arrival Boons > Ability Core ]
[ An Ability Core has not been chosen ]
Levan gritted his teeth.
“You were saying something about gathering sticks?” he asked, scanning the city street, looking for a hopefully safe place. The soldiers were conquering the city from the base, so continuing up in elevation seemed like a good plan. At least it would keep him from the soldiers, for a little while, until he got his bearings.
He scanned the alleyways. He thought he could trace the way to a larger street leading him upward. Then the cluster of what looked like a reassuring wall of stone houses was blown apart, and he decided that “safe” might be an unrealistic goal.
“Okay, give me the info.”
[ Ability Core: Crafter ]
[ Suggested Task: Gather Sticks, 0/10 ]
Surely you have more pressing needs, he told himself. Surely there are better-fitting ability cores. You want to live, don’t you?
But something about it…Crafter.
He’d always been somewhat interested in professional classes in video games and always liked crafting and enchanting his own gear, growing power through his creations. But this was real life now, and what did video game preferences mean to a real-world situation?
Was he going to throw away such a potential advantage—maybe the only advantage that would allow him to survive, simply because he liked the idea of gathering sticks?
There must be a deeper reason, Levan decided. There must be.
But, sometimes, all a man wants to do is [ Gather Sticks, 0/10 ].
Then he made what he was already hoping wouldn’t be the last choice he ever made.
[ Ability Core: Crafter ]
[ Elemental Affinity: Aether ]
[ Class: Aetherial Crafter ]
[ Confirm? ]
Yes.
