Adept's Home

As Princess Emerald famously says in Oblivion Cave Poem “There is no place like home”, but “home” is not always an address.

Near to every front line in ever large conflict occurring in the 1000 islands of Puzzle Archipelago you will find a gathering place for adepts. Sitting there, in disputed territory. Full of mercenaries, walking around, talking, sharing stories and jokes. Waiting for envoys from one side of the other to offer them a good contract.

No one attacks anyone for past issues here, or political disagreements. Serious vengeances are left out those camps, vengeance does not enter those places. However, people sometimes kill each other still, over a failed attempt of pickpocketing or cheating in the cards.

The physical location can be the ruins of some ancient temple, from the days before High Magic dominate the fate of humanity, when this region was a relatively important place. Before it fell from grace, and became wasteland, to be revitalized when High Magic exploded in the fact of humanity. Destroying all cities and killing almost everybody. It can be a large cave, or rock formation open to the water roads between the islands. Or and abandoned peasant village, from where everybody escaped when the conflict claimed the region. Sometimes is just a hill where every band of adepts raises a tent, the most experienced and respected organize the collective effort to improvise some trenches. Possibly raise a wall, and place some sentinels, and maybe also a trading post where merchants can concentrate themselves for general convenience.

Since I can remember those places are what I can call “home”.

Those places always have prostitutes, for snobs with full pockets. They are pretty and well spoken women, with intense personalities. Must be, since warzones are also full of ****-women. Warriors do take spoils, and women from the defeated side are among the most obvious option available for taking. To sell feminine company in a place where sex can be taken from slaves at low cost, or no cost, you must differentiate yourself somehow.

My mother was one of those “adept nuns”, as free women who are not adepts are called in in those camps. Until four years before I was born. She joined my father then, about one year before my brother was born, abandoning the life of follow wars for a cozy house in a fortified port. My father was a snob, that’s for sure. Heir of a fancy ancient name and no coin, but exceptionally competent in combat.

Also, exceptionally lucky. And adept can count himself lucky if he generates 1 children in a dozen who has the potential for Power. My brother, my sister and I have it, and as far as I know we are his only attempts of fatherhood.

I cannot complain, really. He was severe, but fair, and taught us as much as each of us could learn.

Mother never accepted the fact that he gave Mirce the same training the rest of us got. If she had her way her daughter would stay away from combat. Perhaps learn a step of two of life or ****, more additional self-healing and vitality, but never enter the “Adept Church”. So to speak.

I suppose there was wisdom in her position. Women are in disadvantage as adepts, and in a war there is no kindness. Any weakness is exploited.

Still, Mirce holds her ground well enough. Once you get used to the fellowship shared by adepts in a mercenary band, is hard to think about leave it behind. Few ever do that, unless they have ****.

My father reached step 3 in life, 2 in ****. That’s a solid power base, way better than what most adepts can boast. He was also a superb swordsman, and more competent with a bow than most bowmen soldiers. Not a man for large scale strategies, but one of the best tacticians in his generation. He added 3 steps in shapeshifting, making himself immensely fast and virtually impossible to take by surprise. And 2 in aura, to became almost impossible to hit with crossbows and bows. The 2 specialisations of Life and one of **** are rare thing, like all specializations they can only be learned from a mentor and those who know that sort of thing don’t teach what they know without ask for significant compensation. With all that, and a reputation of honour his word, he build a small legend for himself.

I don’t think many people liked his company, as I mentioned before he was very snob. Certain of his superiority in most subjects, moral ones in particular. Didn’t invested as much effort in hide that conviction as I think he should have.

His first son inherited his talent for swordfight and improved on it. Few swordsmen could say they have a chance in a fight against Ellon, if no adept Power is used.

He also was born with a Gift for Life, a thing that is even rarer, and something our father didn’t had. Since he was a toddler Ellon can feel the vital energy of everybody around him. And as soon as he started learning Life he proved to be able to project the self-healing into others. That’s a very rare gift, and those who are not born with it have little hope to learn. He could have made a life for himself away from battle, if he wanted.

This talent allowed him to reach step 4 in Life, before his 20. What made him a legend in the Mazze.

He didn’t passed **** 1, but got 2 levels in its curse specialization and 4 in blessing, to make his sword and armour more efficient. With other 5 levels in healing, that he is able to share with his allies, my brother is in the process of elevate himself from adept mercenary to castle lord and war master.

To me, the best thing about him is that he did not inherited our father’s self-righteousness. His sense of humour and his kindness are closer to the surface. His treatment to those who betray his trust is also way more cruel and graphic than what father would have approved. What comes from the fact that, unlike our father, my elder brother has a mind for long term strategy.

Sis doesn’t have our brother gift for life, or swordfight, but she is at least as competent as he is in planning strategy.

Step 2 in life, 3 in ****. Healing 3, Aura 2 and curse 4. Curse being that amazing power of **** that allows adepts to attack from distance. Compared to father and brother Mirce is no powerhouse. Outside that comparison, no one would deny she is way above the level of most adepts twice older than her. Even when you take under consideration the fact that she is a woman, and therefore has less physical strength than most adepts when she runs out of Power.

With 7 effective levels in curse, she almost never has to worry about run out of Power. Specially considering how good my sister is in think ahead.

That’s family.

We used to travel and train together when I was a child. Ever now and then we would take a couple months to rest, and visit mother in “our house”. That was a very comfortable house on a stone wall above and behind the fortified port. Surrounded by gardens by all sides, connected by stone stairs and rope bridges to other fancy houses of rich merchants, bastard nobles, and successful mercenaries. Not the most practical location, at first view, but one very hard for an enemy invasion to reach. With secret scape-routs through tunnels inside the hill.

Mother taught us how to reach her warehouse in the port bellow, or an exit hidden in the woods above. However, those tunnels where full of traps, and no place to play. To be used only in the worse circumstances.

Most the time, was just the 4 of us, father, my siblings and me, travelling the roads of land and water. From a table field to another.

Father hatting every young adept who would take interest in Mirce, brother becoming friend of most of them. She teaching me the flute and explaining to me how I could seduce free women of high status, if I decided that I was too good to settle for beating war spoils into submission. My sister was of the opinion that I should join a adept nun, like our mother. Instead of a ‘priestess’, like herself.

Because she was the exception, but most female adepts are “bossy, selfish, bitches”. While I was too kind of heart for them.

Sis always knew what she was talking about, to be fair.

Besides, while the rest of our family was above average in regard to Power and martial talent, I was somewhat bellow the normal line.

I managed to reach Life 1, only, in my 12, and I was already 16 when I achieved step 1 in healing. Most adepts by this point have conquered Life 1, **** 1. They may never pass the 2 in one of those, and stay in step 1 in the other. However, most of them start adult life with at least step 1 in both Powers.

I was practically at the level of a common soldier. Instead of in the level of an adept.

By this time father died in a very large battle against an infestation of monsters from the abyss. I was captured, and carried away to be kept as a **** and eventually devoured by the abyssal monster who was evicted from his fortress and **** to flee the island where we fought her.

What then, as a **** prisoner, that I learned about the existence of a third Power. In the abyss they know it better than Life and have almost no experience with ****, but in this world we practically only hear about it in legends. Darkness. It is the power to manipulate shadows, and control minds.

I also realized that like my brother Ellon I was born with a Gift. It just isn’t a gift for Life, but for Darkness. Thanks to that, I am still alive, and no longer a ****.

My captor was Ixgralla Zihay. She saw in me a pretty boy, and mostly used me as her sexual toy, and decoration. My gift for the Power of Darkness makes me way more resistant to mind-control, opaque to mind-reading. It erases the influence of chains of darkness in my mind. Allows me to understand the Power intuitively. I finally started to understand my elder brother a little.

If I was proud and bold, an extroverted adept with lots of self-confidence, my doom would be inevitable. I would be discovered in no time, and killed immediately, Or, possibly, tortured until my mind brake, despite its uncommon resistance.

Since I am shy, and was used to be the weakling who obeys commands from older people, my clear mind and self-awareness was less obvious. Easy to dismiss as a false impression or product of paranoia. Zihay has more than a little of that quality, and enough self-knowledge to admit that about herself.

She’s a monster from the abyss, but humanoid in her normal shape. A very beautiful female monster. To say that my time as her prisoner was entirely unpleasant would be a lie.

However, more than anything it was useful. Because I was in a privileged position to watch and learn the Power of Darkness. Along with the History of how High Magic ended.

It is common knowledge that an accident caused the invasion of all teleportation portals by monsters and energies from the Abyss. The last High Mages sacrificed themselves to lock those invading forces inside urban areas, saving the rest of the world for those who where in rural areas. High Magic was completely lost, only the minor variant of adept Powers remained. That’s what about all adepts know, possibly the commoners know even less about our collective past.

What I learned as a sexual ****, and living decoration, was that from the point of view of those in the Abyss there was no “invasion”.

What they believe that happened is that our High Magic portals entered in harmony, by blind chance, with something from the deeper layers. The region of Abyss know and studied by humanity since Ancient Times is very “close” to our world, metaphysically speaking. Those gigantic monsters “fished” by our High Magic are about as alien to the inhabitants of this neighbour Abyssal Region as they are to us.

When they passed through our world, the **** of that displacement brought along with them many people like my captor. Some of them as powerful as archemages and gods from ancient myths, others the equivalent to common peasants in our world. The Ixgralla are somewhere in between, but closer to the second.

Those monsters saw themselves imprisoned in our cities, to be devoured by the giants from deeper layers.

There was only a few temporary fractures in their prison. Those allowed the smaller and less powerful a chance to escape, if they where lucky enough to find them. And sneaky enough to survive long enough to reach them. That’s how my captor entered our world.

Her homeland was different in some ways. For starts, they do not age like we do, they only die from violent causes apparently. Also, cannibalism is much more common in there.

There is no sun. Some wild life exists that is able to take energy from the environment in some ways. Those beasts and plants, if we can call them that, can be hunted and eaten. However, that’s not nearly enough. For people to survive, and specially for them to grow in strength and Power, the only way is to kill and devour other people. For that their elites have a particular specialization of life power, learned only by mixing it with Darkness, only available for those who learn the Secret Path.

Fortunately to me, my captor had learned it. So, I got a chance to see the power of vampirism being used many times.

I remained in that position for 2 years. Moving from boats to ruins, from villages to castles. From one island to the next.

A secret society exists dedicated to hunt the monsters from the abyss, fight the shadows and eliminate those who use the Power of Darkness. They are adepts, who know Darkness themselves but mostly dedicated themselves to use it in defensive way. The “Gray Shadow” is the name of this secrete society of **** zealots dedicated to protect humanity against monsters. My captor found out about their existence during our attack against her fortress, and she dedicated most her energy to stay one step ahead of them for the year that followed.

Finally, she managed to change identity, and they lost track.

Then she was able to return to a less defensive role, manipulating warlords and merchants, to build a power base for herself.

She now knew that she needed to be discreet. Remain behind the curtains, employ the Powers of Darkness discreetly and as little as possible. Collect more information about the Grey Shadows than what they had about her.

By this point I had understood and tested some of my own powers. Without being noticed, I had stepped the first and second steps of Darkness, added 4 steps of mind-shield to my innate Gift for it, and had learned the first step of vampirism. When my captor started hunting Gray Shadow agents I found my chance to start testing my newly discovered capacities on her.

Physically her inhuman body was too powerful for me, even with my basic domain over Life, if I attacked when she was drained of all Power. Exhausted by some fight. My father could have killed her, probably, my brother certainly, my sister possibly. I had no hope to do that.

Well, they all would more likely fail, thanks to her domain over Darkness. And vampirism.

Hidden by my mind-shield I begun stealing my captor’s energy. Weakening her defences against me, in particular, when she was concentrated in fight and drain Gray Shadows for her own benefit.

She showed me how to drain Power and alter memories, and I started doing those things with the shadows and mind-slaves who served her will. Slowly, I used her own art of web-making to prepare a trap for her. She could have killed me at any moment, is she had noticed the self-awareness in my mind. And imagined it was more than the fake personalities she implanted in her mind-puppets.

Some days I didn’t knew myself, if I was building a trap for her, or if I was still a puppet directed to think I was acting by myself. Just to please one more of her masochist fantasies.

My chance to undo that doubt came when Zihay’s path crossed the plans of another Mistress of Darkness. This one was human, but an adept about as powerful as my captor.

Their schemes ended in a fight, hand to hand, in Zihay’s chambers. They fought to exhaustion, until their Powers disappear from complete exhaustion. Then my captor revealed her outwardly nature, and knocked the other adept **** with her abyssal strength.

Zihay was too tired. She stepped on her defeated enemy face. Taking breath and waiting for the first spark of Power to come back. The spark that would allow her the connection she needed to drain the other vampire dry of all power and will.

Then she noticed, and turned back. Searching all directions, trying to find out the source of that growing weakness.

Someone was draining her. She kicked the defeated vampire just to be sure.

There was no one there. Or was there?

She realized what was happening, and I understood that was too late to escape if I failed.

In an explosion of furry Zihay, the monster from the abyss, run in my direction. To smash my head against the stone wall. Or between her hands.

She was too tired to move fast enough, and I escaped in the last instant. Her first opened a hole in the wall, but I was not in reach.

She turned, trying to find me, but her mind was confuse and her anger was fading along with the sense of urgency. I embraced her from behind, holding her throat with one hand, and pressing my shaved head against her face. Zihay hesitated, still holding her ground in a last standing, her body started to change. Claws, fangs, tentacles of darkness materializing in the air to attack me.

Then she lost.

I drained her mind and powers. Like she had done with mine. However, I knew her now, while she had been dealing with a stranger at the time. I knew what to look for, and she didn’t had the same Gift that had saved me.

Unlike what I expected I didn’t gained all her powers. In retrospective, that should have been obvious. If was that easy all those who have the specialization of vampirism would be deities. Masters of all 7 steps, in all Powers and specialization. Nothing like that is true. Still, the influx of energy and information from such a powerful prey made me a lot more powerful than I was. I advanced two steps in vampirism, in one instant.

Some of that vitality of a native from the Abyss also came with that victory.

I looked around, when it was done, and could not find the other Mistress of Darkness.

She had awaken, and dragged herself from the room.

I was exploding with energy, and the furry my prey had directed towards me became impulse to hunt that other adept.

She had escaped from the house, but her Power had not returned to her yet. Whatever spark she had, she used to self-healing. If the could catch a cat or a vagrant sleeping on the streets, any living thing in reach, she could try to steal it’s vitality to recover Power faster.

I would have been no match against her, she was an equal to the monster from the abyss is Power and skill. I had just faced my first challenge.

However, she had not walked much, and she had just found the first preys in an ally. A bunch of rats, eating the corpse of a dead dog.

She stablished the connection, and then noticed my steps in her direction. Turning to face me, uncertain about it. Should she try to run, fight, cry for help? She assumed, of course, that was my captor who was hunting she. The situation in the chamber was not clear in her mind, she practically didn’t saw me. Her surprise for awake, still alive and with her will apparently intact, was replaced by fear and the notion that she needed to put distance between herself and that enemy.

The human vampire interrupted her feast and decided to run. Still only half aware of the fact that she was running from the wrong enemy. Who was behind her was not the monster lady she had faced before.

A moment later I carried her sleeping body back to the house.

The improvement in my Power was less noticeable this time, but it was significant. To consume the Power of other adepts in that way is the shortcut to advance amazingly fast. That’s why vampires surpass all other adepts in Power.

Steal vital energy also helps a lot during fights with other enemies.

After they recover, the girls could no longer use any Power. They were now defenceless, and ready to be tamed by mind-control techniques. I would learn to give them back some of their former powers, temporarily, when convenient to me. Before doing that, I would make myself sure that I was not making the same mistake my captor made when dealing with me.

Unfortunately that could not be done in the tranquility of that house. Because all the noise and confusion caused by the two Mistresses of Darkness in their fight had attracted too much attention already. I was not inclined to stay until morning, and risk to have Grey Shadows following me. Fortunately, Lady Zihay always kept a few scape plans ready for emergencies.

I exchanged the two women’s clothes for **** clothes, accommodated then in proper cages inside a wagon, along with the most valuable items that I had time to take. Started a fire to consume the house and make more difficult the task of anyone who decided to try search for clues about what happened in the house.

Last thing I did before escape was free the other slaves in the house. How where not mind-slaves, since my former captor was trying to limit her used of mind-control to important things. Those were just common, legally bond, slaves. With no knowledge about the outwardly nature of their mistress.

By sunrise we where on a small ship, leaving that island by river, and entering the Water Roads of Mazze Archipelago.

Where no one could follow use.

Lady Zihay had other plans, safehouses waiting for her. Sleeping agents she intended to contact to start again her plots of manipulation and empire building. The other Darkness Mistress was named Kalzina, and had her own contacts and resources, that I would be exploring in good time. I had been lost for too long, living the life of a **** pet.

After a couple of weeks travelling by water, through wild lands. Experimenting on my captives, exploring their memories for knowledge and chaining their minds for safety. I decided that was time to go back home.

First, I had to go to the village where I grew up. To visit mother and find out how she was getting by after my father die.

She was way better than I expected, actually. Turn out that my gift for the Power of Darkness didn’t came from mysterious roots, forgotten. Neither I am not a product of conjugal infidelity, voluntary or otherwise.