Dark Viewing

Aeolia took a few heavy steps towards one of the upturned desks once John had moved to another part of the base and slid down to the floor, her wings and back propped up against the cold wood and her glaive clattering to the floor when she relaxed her grip. For several moments, all she did was breathe, her thoughts focused solely on that task.

Once her breathing had settled, Aeolia **** herself to confront the issue at hand.

‘You are a warrior,’ Aeolia scolded herself. ‘This is how the Abyss is. Do or Die. Everyone made that choice. Don’t spit on their dedication.’

Her thoughts drifted to happier times: training with Selnth, listening to Grandfather Wuth’s stories with Zeph, idly watching Thomas tinker with the security golem while Sandra lightly chided him. Tears freely fell from her eyes as she let those memories wash over her, burning each one further into her mind to ensure she would never forget them.

There were countless memories Aeolia could lose herself in, to run from the horrors of reality, but she **** them away, clenched fists driving her nails into her palms. She glared at the ruined room, burning its destroyed state into her memory, joining the still and bloodied forms of her friends in that desolate Barrier they had been lured to.

“I will avenge you,” she swore to the broken furniture, the shattered and upturned desks and bookcases standing in for the people who once used them. “I don’t care how long it will take, or what I’ll need to do, but I swear, I won’t let your souls rest in torment.”

Her oath said, Aeolia **** herself to her feet, glaive again acting as a makeshift walking stick. She took a deep breath, feeling her Mana flow from her core, and began to expand her form. Thankfully, after nearly two hours of relative rest, the transition to her enlarged state was a painless and smooth one. With her size now closer to her ally’s, Aeolia left the guild’s main work area, intent on joining the search.

John walked back towards the entrance, his face drawn into a frown.

‘Man, I really need to up my Charisma,’ John thought, shaking his head. ‘At least Aeolia got what I was trying to say, but I hate not being able to say the right things.’

John’s steps brought him to the knocked open door, where he stopped and pressed his hand into the large dent in the metal.

“This looks like a punch,” John muttered, recalling an incident in High School where a jock had punched a locker after a gym class altercation that didn’t go his way. He cast Observe on the door, hoping that the skill would reveal some clue, but all that was displayed was that it was a steel door reinforced with a little magic and that it had a massive dent in it.

“Well, that didn’t give me anything useful,” John griped as he dismissed the pop-up. He cast his gaze around for anything else to Observe and nearly jumped when he noticed a stony face staring up at him, partially obscured by a dark spot in the entryway.

“Fucking hell,” John cursed, jolting back from the rocky visage. It remained unmoving and John saw that it wasn’t only a head; a large hulking frame lay not far from the head, a large part of its torso reduced to rubble, its dislocated arm next to what had once been its right shoulder. John drew closer and peered at its chest. Sticking up from the rough stonework was a shattered black gem, its edges jagged.

“Is this the golem Aeolia warned me about?” John wondered, casting Observe.

John dismissed the display and looked at the jagged crystal, bending closer to examine it in more detail, and pulled out his phone to shine its light upon it. Under the illumination he could make out numerous lines of tiny symbols criss-crossing the black surface.

“Guess that’s the command core,” John commented, casting an Observe at it to check. To his chagrin, he only got the display for the golem itself and not the core. “Guess if I tried to Observe some guy's arm, I’d get the whole person and not the arm’s life story.”

John sighed, looking at the broken security golem. “I haven’t seen anything that looks like a security camera, and whoever ransacked this place probably would have taken or destroyed it. If only you could talk, Clay. You're the only witness.”

His last words were meant as a joke, but as he spoke them, an idea began to turn in his head.

‘Could that work?’ John wondered, pulling his knife from his Inventory. A quick cast of Observe showed that it had regenerated 2 Mana since he tapped it to cast Hex.

“When I used Dark Mana for Hex, it transferred the effects it cancelled out to me,” John said, eyeing the knife, “so what’ll happen if I use Dark Mana for Observe?”

With nothing to lose, John decided to try. He drew in the 2 points of Dark Mana from the knife, the cool sensation, less intense than before, washing through him. He took hold of that bit of Mana and channelled it as he activated Observe. He felt his regular pool of mana shift, then everything went black.

The sound of piano, clarinet and horns played softly in Clay’s head as he stood resolute near the entrance of the Barrier. He was happy. Or as happy as a construct like him could be. He enjoyed the music that played when the Master tinkered with his core, each modification letting him recall more and more of the events occurring around him.

Suddenly, the sound of groaning metal drowned out Clay’s inner record and the steel door was knocked open. Passing through the doorway was a hulking figure that matched the golem’s large and bulky frame, followed by a tall woman. Clay waited for the code word to be said, a timer triggered by the appearance of someone in the doorway.

3. 2. 1.

When no word reached what amounted to his ears in that short span of time, Clay lurched into motion, his stone frame fluidly moving as he rushed towards the intruders. His thunderous steps drowned out whatever words the pair exchanged, the male drawing back to allow the woman to take the front. She held something in her left hand, long and thin, then quickly snapped her right arm out to the side before just as quickly returning.

Clay stopped suddenly, his body no longer responding to his directive. The woman walked towards him.

“Well, that’s interesting,” she said, her voice carrying a cruel musical quality to it, “these guys managed to pull off some effective MacGyvering on this guy. That slash should have cleanly cut through it.”

“Is it offline?” the other asked, his voice a deep bass.

“No,” the woman replied after examining Clay for a second. “The damage only took out its mobility. Its ‘brain’ is still ticking.”

“Then should I deal with it, or do you want to flex a bit more?”

The woman let out a dismissive sigh and turned to walk into the base. “No. I’m done. Knock yourself out and let the boys know it's safe to come in.”

“You think this guy’s the only security?”

“By now, if there were any more golems or the like,” the woman said, “they’d be here. Plus, our recently deceased friends put a lot of effort into this guy to make him resist magic attacks. I’d put money that it was an all or nothing type of investment.”

“All right,” the dull bass voice replied, his bulging arm cocked back as he took aim at Clay’s chest. In an instant, the fist rocketed forward in an arc, striking Clay at a downward angle. An explosion of stone rocked from the point of impact and the muscled man drove the unmoving golem to the ground, further increasing the amount of shattered stone.

John found himself suddenly jerk back, his balance failing him as he returned to his body.

-1HP

He sat on the ground, wrapping his mind around what he saw.

“That were his final minutes,” John said as he played back the memories that weren’t his own. “He saw some of the attackers.”

John tried to recall the details of the man and woman, but all he could conjure was their outlines. No defining features beyond that, no face to put to their voices. John pulled himself to his feet, and examined Clay again, a heavy weight falling upon his chest. His eyes drifted to where he thought the woman’s slashing attack had hit, just below the neck.

The second attack had destroyed any sign of the cut, but John noticed something below, on the still intact stone.

“What is this?” he queried, crouching down next to the golem to press an inquisitive finger onto a spot of red that stood out against the grey stone. The spot was mostly dry with a rough texture, though as he poked at it, the outer layer flayed off revealing a small bit that was still tacky.

“It’s blood,” John said as he withdrew his stained finger to confirm his tactile report. “Guess that muscle guy cut himself when he punched you.”

John wiped his finger off on his pant leg and frowned in thought.

“I wonder how far back I could look with Observe,” he said, pulling up the skill’s info sheet.

Like with Hex before, John clicked the final section of Observe’s sheet.

Effect Mods - Unlocked when any amount of a single type of Elemental Mana is used in conjunction with regular mana (1 Elemental Mana+9 regular mana).

Dark: Relive a recent, significant event of the target. Each point of Dark Mana spent allows for one minute of recall.

John closed the sheet and looked at his knife. “So if I had a full charge on this, I could see 15 minutes of something’s past, if I had the Mana to mix with it. Can’t use it for another hour though. I wonder if there’s a way for me to generate Dark Mana on my own?”

With a shake of his head, John shelved that question for later. He began to stand when he heard a clicking sound echoing from behind him. He spun around, raising his knife in front of him.

“At least your reflexes are good,” Aeolia said in a joking tone, her voice still rough, “but your stance is pretty sloppy. We’ll have to work on that.”

“Aeolia,” John said, lowering his knife, “you’re, um, big again.”

“It’s not like I lost my ability,” Aeolia retorted, “just needed some time to recover my Mana. You find any clues?”

‘Guess we’re not going to talk about what happened back there,’ John thought. ‘That might be for the best. Aeolia really doesn’t seem like someone who’s good with feelings, and I’m definitely not good at talking about them.’

John cleared his throat. “Well, I thought that starting at the entrance was a good idea and I checked the golem….”

“Good idea,” Aeolia interrupted him, drawing closer to Clay’s remains, her wings forcing John to step away. “What did that skill of your’s say?”

“Well,” John started, a little off-balanced by Aeolia’s aggressive stance and tone, “Observe didn’t give me much at first, but when I used it with Dark Mana, I sort of saw what he did. Lived his last couple of minutes.”

Before he could elaborate, Aeolia turned her piercing gaze to him, her yellow eyes alight with fire.

“You saw who attacked us,” she said, her voice carrying a hopeful tone.

“Well, sort of,” John said. “I don’t know if it was because of Observe or this guy’s eyes, but there wasn’t much detail. I saw a dude with massive muscles and a woman break down the door. The woman used some kind of slashing attack that left him paralysed and the muscle guy punched him down and broke him. Beyond that, all I know is that they had a group of people with them, but they didn’t come in until after Clay was taken out.”

Aeolia’s eyes moved from John to Clay, a nostalgic melancholy dimming the fire they held.

“Thomas never could figure out how to refine this thing's vision,” Aeolia said with a sad voice.

“Was he your Guild’s leader?” John asked softly, recalling that Clay’s Observe had mentioned him.

“Yeah, he was,” Aeolia responded wistfully. “He was a hopeless tinkerer, always trying to improve anything that ran on Mana. We were lucky that Clay was still functioning once he got going.”

She cleared her throat. “Think you can use that ability on something else? See what they did after.”

“I could,” John said, “but we’ll need to wait for my knife to charge up. It’ll take about an hour before I can use it, and that’ll only give me one use and only let me see a minute of the past.”

Aeolia frowned, and John awkwardly chewed on his lip while he waited for her to respond. Slowly, her eyes widened and she abruptly turned, snatching John’s left wrist and pulled him along with surprising strength.

“Wha…” John started to speak but Aeolia cut him off.

“I think there’s something with Dark Mana in my brother’s stuff,” she said, speeding up to a run, taloned feet beating a sharp staccato upon the concrete floor. “Hang on!”

Before John could ask, Aeolia began to flap her wings and kicked off the hard ground. In an instant, John felt himself pulled up, pain beginning to lance through his shoulder as they soared through the hall nearly a foot above the floor, quickly passing by the doors and rooms John had passed earlier.

“Aeolia,” John said through grit teeth, “I don’t think I’m equipped to fly!”

“Just hold on a second,” Aeolia replied, her hand tightening on his wrist. John felt a sudden jolt run down his arm, not painful like an electric shock, but more like his arm had been dipped in cool water. And then the scenery around him began to grow.