A magical journey into the abyss (corrupted uniform)

A young brown-haired woman opened the door to her apartment. She hurried inside, shut the door again and leaned against it. Slowly she slid to the ground, an exhausted sigh escaping her lips and a medium-sized box between her hands resting in her lap.

Her name was Lisa Elpis and she was done with the day. Utterly done. It was midnight and she had been up since dawn, and yet she had just finished her job half an hour ago. She had been busy for the entire day and the entire night but was finally home. But it was worth it! This box might contain the answers to her questions. She looked at it and grinned in glee.

Lisa got up again and shambled to her wardrobe in the bedroom, still full of anticipation.

The wardrobe was a beautiful five-door model, easily large enough to fit the clothes of two. In front of it was enough space to comfortably model whatever outfit she would choose. It was a bit flashy, though she managed to somewhat fill it. But she didn’t really need it.

At least not for her clothes.

Lisa lifted her right hand and snapped her fingers. Immediately the wardrobe started to shine in pure white light. As always, Lisa had to close her eyes as the light consumed her bedroom. After a solid three seconds, it dimmed down into nothing as fast as it had appeared. The entire wardrobe had changed. No longer of simple wood, it was now made out of marble and gold, jewels adorned the handles and it had accents out of pure platinum. Only the mirror was the same.

A novice to magic would assume that it should radiate power, but that was completely opposite to its actual purpose. This wardrobe functioned as a vault and a charging station. It concealed its own power and everything inside it. The brunette was very thankful for that. Without it, she, as well as all her colleagues, would be a sitting duck for her enemies. And that it kept equipment inside charged with magic meant that she wouldn’t need to use her own power to use it.

For Lisa Elpis was a Warden, a warrior using her inborn magic to protect the world. And her enemies were all sorts of monsters and twisted beings powered by abyssal magic.

And frankly, she was more than a Warden. While she was considered only average in terms of power and combat skill, Lisa was studious and enjoyed analyzing and manipulating magic.

From the moment that she had discovered her powers, she only wished to explore them and magic in general to its fullest. However, protecting the people took up nearly all her time. So. progress was slow. She wasn’t one to complain about that aspect, though. People were appreciative and doing good was kind of its own reward, corny as it sounded.

No, what bothered her was the incredibly nosy oversight a Warden was subjected to. Central, as the Warden authority was called, was big on paper trails. Everything needed to be approved and most things by more than one authority. The only thing Wardens were supposed to tinker with was their gear.

And Lisa had, never one to be idle, already improved her vault’s ability to conceal magic. Now it also blanketed her apartment and the equipment inside it would also remain camouflaged to some magic when used outside. It would stay that way as long as there remained something of the vault’s energy in the gear.

On that note, she traced her three personal security sigils on the mirror, leaving no smudge on it, and opened it. Inside was her combat suit. It was mainly white, with green highlights and consisted of an armoured, tight-fitting bodysuit, sturdy boots and gloves and a Hardcase helmet. It would cover her from head to toe and look like a high-tech, armoured spy suit. Not much was made with technology, however. The entire thing had been made by skilled sorcerer-craftsmen.

However, the higher-ups had learned plenty from the improving technology. Better materials, more ergonomics and creative improvements were thanks to modern humanity. She couldn’t imagine going into battle in a metal harness like her predecessors had done for centuries. That stuff barely held magic and did nothing more than protect the warden. Not to mention the wings that they used for flight back then had been made out of literal feathers! The stories Lisa had heard about Wardens plummeting to their deaths after the wings had been ripped apart were gruesome. And having to rely entirely on your own senses would make fighting much more dangerous.

Nowadays, the suit was made of complex fibre and plastics, reinforced by spells. Flight was achieved by levitation and propulsion enchantments in the boots and the back, and the helmet had gotten a full HUD straight out of science fiction only two years before she had been recruited. That meant that she was faster, stronger and tougher with her suit and it also meant that her enemies were tracked by something like a magical version of radar, on top of her own eyes and ears. And creating magical weapons on demand with projectors in her gloves was much better than swinging a bloody sword around as they did in training.

While Lisa reminisced, the strongbox in her hands shook and she felt a light jolt. Seemed like her protection spells were slowly reaching their limit. Quickly she placed her hand next to her suit on a panel and pushed her power inside. Below a drawer opened. Immediately she dropped what she held inside it. Eight black organic spheres now lay there. Tiny wriggling tentacles emerged on their surface, searching for something to latch onto, making it obvious that they were alive. Needing to clear her mind, she closed the drawer, sealing the creepy things behind wards.

Lisa had caught them after her last battle less than an hour ago. She didn’t know exactly what they were, she had never heard or read about them until three weeks ago. She had first seen these black things when she saw one latch onto a human, turning him into one of the monsters she fought.

Back then she had been alone and had no time to ask questions. The fight had been fierce, because Lisa had held back, wondering whether the transformation could be undone. Since then she had tried several ways of purification: From old-fashioned spell circles to enchanted gadgets, to saturating the area in purification particles, to good old-fashioned ‘beating it out of them’. None worked. The creatures attacked until killed. No wonder they were told to ‘engage with **** prejudice’.

When she had subtly asked around, her peers either had known nothing or had been evasive. Lisa was on her own, but she would find out what these things could do. More importantly, she would find out a way to turn that knowledge on her enemies.

With that done, she glimpsed at two other secure holdings to the left and right of her combat suit. Both were actually designed to house spare or special-purpose suits. She had used them for something else. If the three strange corruptive spheres would get her in trouble, then the things she had stored there would probably get her thrown out of the Wardens.

The eight tiny spheres were officially ‘unknown’, so having them wasn’t expressly forbidden. But the holdings contained two outfits that looked more or less harmless, but it was a punishable offence to not destroy them. These outfits were leftovers from fights with humans wielding abyssal magic. Rarely, when destroyed, a piece of clothing would remain, giving off a strange and disturbing aura. They looked nothing like the strange and revealing uniforms her enemies had worn, but every warden was supposed to destroy them on sight and report it.

Suffice it to say, Lisa had not done that. And not just once or twice. Both outfits were more or less cobbled together from many encounters. And while it was embarrassing to admit, Lisa knew that she had done her best to gather matching pieces that might look good together. Her vanity had gotten the better of her in that regard.

Just looking at the opaque compartments made her want to check on them, but she fought the urge. Lisa didn’t collect the items there out of boredom, but to find out more about the Warden’s enemy.

These things made her skin crawl, but they had helped her in her research on abyssal magic. Having time to properly analyse them, had allowed her to adjust her spells and weapons to deal with monsters much easier. She was now also quite adept at tracking traces of abyssal energy. Which in turn allowed her to find her enemies before they struck. That might have gotten her a promotion, but Lisa had mainly used it to find more clothing and to finally get her hands on these organic spheres.

And wearing them wasn’t uncomfortable, they fit Lisa perfectly, too perfect in fact. They adjusted their size to fit her, that much was obvious. They also had a subtle connection to each other. Just like the parts of her own combat suit had.

It was the first piece of evidence that she had that there was some system to her enemies. There had always been rumours but Central always claimed that their enemies were a chaotic result of abyssal energy seeping into their dimension. And Lisa no longer believed that. She believed that out there was a counterpart to Central. And those corrupted humans might well be some sort of abyssal version of Wardens.

And yet, except for learning how to better fight and track monsters, and the strange connection between everything, she wasn’t getting ahead. But now, Lisa had these spheres and that would certainly help her find out more.

That had to wait for another day, though. She was tired and had two free days to tinker around with her new discovery. She closed her vault and turned it back into her wardrobe. Soon, she was ready for bed and sound asleep.