Archery Week 1 Part 1

John blinked and was teleported into his final class of the day, Archery. He opened his eyes and everything was white. He stood in a clearing in a forest sapped of all color. He blinked rapidly in surprise, trying to clear his vision. Slowly, his vision adjusted and he realized not everything was white. Shadows still allowed him to perceive depth, light filtered through the white foliage above him and almost none reached the floor uninterrupted. He knelt down and brushed aside ferns, his hand touching what was clearly dirt by texture but just white powder by looks. He cast Observe.

Tier 2 Mana Enriched Soil
Fertile soil that has spent more than 10 but less than 100 years absorbing ambient mana. Nurtures Mana Enriched Flora and Fauna.

Arching an eyebrow, John cast Observe on the plants surrounding him in the clearing, getting an assorted selection of Tiers 1-3 Mana Enriched Ferns, Trees, and, most concerningly, Bones. Observe wouldn’t identify what creature the bones once belonged to, but before John could wonder too much about it, a rustling came from the trees to his left. A pair of pure white wolves stepped calmly out of the foliage, their fur blending alarmingly well into their surroundings. John, in his still fully colored Firesmith uniform, must have been incredibly easy to spot. The wolves’ eyes, as well as their noses, were pitch black.

Trusting that this was the class he was supposed to be in, John stood his ground and patiently waited for his professor to show up as one of the wolves sat at attention next to him. The other wolf circled the clearing leisurely.

“Is it Thursday already?” a voice startled John, coming from directly behind him. He turned and faced a young woman wearing a plain white coat with the hood up, accompanied by a third wolf. Her coat was unzipped in the front, revealing an equally plain white dress underneath that reached to right above her knees. Her skin was of a healthy tanned complexion, and in her hands she hefted a large sniper rifle. It, like nearly everything else, was pure white from silencer to scope to stock. A carrying strap sat slack on her shoulder, not currently supporting the weight of the firearm. Her eyes were an intense silvery white, as was her hair which reached to her mid chest; it was pulled forward, likely so it wouldn’t sit uncomfortably in the hood of her coat. She wore high top sneakers, that kept to the pure white theme and weren’t a brand that John recognized. There was a pure white adhesive bandage on her left shin.

The wolf sitting next to John nipped at his fingers playfully, startling John out of his descriptive reverie.

“Uhh,” was his eloquent response. The young lady snorted, then started laughing, letting her rifle hang loose by its strap.

“You’re my new student, right? Archery with Professor Diana?”

“Y-yeah, I’m John Newman.”

“Alright, perfect. Sorry for the bit of a wait, time is hard to tell in here and I don’t have many classes to attend to.”

“No problem,” he assured her sheepishly. A beat of silence passed, then he asked, “Why do you have a gun if this is supposed to be Archery? Shouldn’t you have a bow?”

Diana sighed, “I’ve been trying to set the record straight with the administration for ages. I teach Marksmanship, but they think that’s too broad of a subject for one person to teach, so they tell the students it’s Archery. It’s annoying, really.”

John nodded. Another beat of silence passed. The wolf that had been circling the clearing snuggled up to Diana for head scratches, and she obliged. John cleared his throat. “So, uh, where do we start?”

“Hm?” Diana seemed confused by his question.

“The class is only two hours long, right? Did you have anything specific planned for my first lesson?”

“Not really, I expected you to have some sort of ranged weapon you needed help with or an interest in a specific weapon to start learning. Time dilation in this barrier works the same as all the barriers connected to the Beast Tower, you should be familiar with it now, yeah?”

“Okay, yeah, I get it. But, um, I don’t really have any experience with bows or guns or anything like that.”

Unless you count Call of Honor or Warfield, in which case I’d say I’m a pretty decent shot with Snipers and SMGs.

“A blank slate, huh? We can work with that. Follow me.” Diana walked past John into the direction the pair of wolves had first come from. Her steps were utterly silent, not a whisper of leaves left in her wake.

John practically trampled through the underbrush in comparison to his companion’s silence.

That explains how she snuck up on me earlier. I thought it might have been a teleport, but she’s just silent as hell.

They walked along a thin game path, the wolf trio circling them playfully. John gave them pats and scratches whenever they offered their heads close to his hands. Noticeably, only one of the wolves was silent like Diana, the other two rustled the foliage with their playful pouncing. John took the time to Observe the wolves.

Level 50 Tier 3 Mana Enriched Fauna (Dire Wolf)
Creature that has spent over 100 but less than 1000 years absorbing ambient mana. Has transcended the need to hunt physical prey, subsists on minimal ambient mana.

Level 100 Tier 4 Mana Enriched Fauna (Dire Wolf)
Creature that has spent over 1000 but less than 10000 years absorbing ambient mana. Has transcended the need to subsist on ambient mana, is now a source of ambient mana.

John raised his eyebrows at the information presented to him.

These wolves are over a hundred years old… The silent one is over a thousand years old. How old is Firesmith, where did they get all these powerful people and creatures? What exactly did I step into here?

These thoughts and many similar ones twirled and tumbled in John’s mind as they walked for what felt like hours. He was interrupted in his meditative speculation by Diana announcing they had arrived.

A fiery mane of red curls was pulled back into a ponytail on the young Warden of the Golden Rose’s head. She wore a chainmail shirt that reached to her mid thigh over a white t-shirt and padded leather pants. The shield pendant that held her sacred armaments lay on her chest, held by a silvery chain and always in reach. She was relaxed, without any duties to attend to for the next few hours. To pass the time, she read the latest report filed by Tricia.

Operation Z-538
Time - 7:30 a.m.
Lower East Side, sector Z-30.
Drones Present - Archimedes Series 12, units 1-20; Achilles Series 4, units 6-15; Odysseus Series 2, unit 1.
Operatives Present - Knights Haytham, Powell, Adams, Berkley; Arcane Knight Gorbachev.

Objective: Follow up on readings of immense Flamma magic use in the area.

The first line of the report gave Moira pause; surely a rogue mage couldn’t have made it so deep into Order territory unhindered. Especially not one specialized in flame magic. There had been no recent reports of mages entering the Order controlled sectors of Springfield. Granted, the Order only “controlled” the southern half. It could be that the mage slipped past patrols from the north. Even so, the Order had done the utmost to keep tabs on any fire mages in the state ever since the incident. She sighed and continued reading.

Findings: At first glance what was found was a Natural Barrier filled with agitated Dryads. More research is being done on the readings that led to this conclusion. The Barrier in question is much too far removed from Springfield’s leylines to have been a natural occurrence. Regardless, the remains of many Dryads and lesser forest beings were scattered across the barrier. Abyssal creatures killed in an artificially produced barrier disperse into ambient mana and do not leave behind mortal remains. This also leads to the conclusion that the barrier in question was a Natural Barrier. The laws of Abyssal physics, while lax and not entirely understood, have not yet been documented as -

Moira groaned in exasperation. Tricia’s penchant for filling her reports with academic jargon made them increasingly bothersome to read. Moira skipped the “Findings” section, all eighteen pages of it, and started to read the “Conclusions” section.

Conclusions: A fire mage of middling power and immense potential infiltrated the Order’s borders along with a water mage and an earth mage of minor power yet also immense potential. They entered a pre-existing barrier of intricate and hitherto unheard of design, agitated the Dryad population within, and left considerably more powerful than when they entered. Their whereabouts are still unknown due to the circumstances in which the Operation ended.

Before Moira began to read the “Suggested Actions” section, she was **** to skim enough of the “Findings” section to know what exactly happened at the end of the Operation. After much grumbling and muddling through Tricia’s smart-ass gibberish, Moira understood the situation.

Suggested Actions: Hire a team of Fateweavers to investigate Barrier B-538. Hire a team of Rider-Waites personnel to investigate Persons of Interest F-1337, W-0124, and E-0011 (preferably a separate team for each Person of Interest). Increase Knight patrols in Sector Z-30. Supplement northern border patrols with Maybel Detection Drones (suggested Orion series 30 or newer). Increase frequency and intensity of long-range Maybel Detection Scans (suggested Alexandria series 2, not 1).

Moira read the list of suggested actions knowing full well that Tricia was not one to overreact. Her lips formed a grim line as she read the “Findings” section carefully and methodologically this time.

Diana led John into what he could only really describe as a glorified tool shed. A simple white slanted aluminum roof held up by white wooden walls. The glorification came more from size than decoration, as it was easily the size of a house, with a firing range extending from the left side. The inside had nothing that John would have associated with a tool shed, however. Rows upon rows of pure white weapon racks filled with different guns lined the wall to their right as they entered. **** rifles, sniper rifles, submachine guns, light machine guns, heavy machine guns, shotguns, and pistols all sat in orderly rows under bright fluorescent lights that made their white metal gleam tantalizingly. There were more guns John couldn’t identify than ones he could, even with his extensive knowledge of Call of Honor and Warfield weaponry.

Diana reached for a black switch on a console in the center of what John would now refer to as the Warehouse. She flipped it, and the floor underneath all the weapon racks hissed with compressed air and slowly lowered, taking all the guns with it. A new set of racks rose in their place, holding an incredible assortment of bows and crossbows. John had no idea there were so many different kinds of bows, and the more he thought of it, the more he was sure most of them had to be magical in some way.

“So, John, we’re going to start you off with some bows. I know the guns are cool and shiny but they’re much more difficult to channel magic through. Bullets might be effective against the little street gangs the Headmistress allows to run around, but they won’t do much against barrier monsters or Abyssals of meaningful strength. I get the feeling you’ll be facing those threats a lot sooner than you should.”

She was silent for a few moments, as John processed what she had said.

“Anyways, pick up a bow and try to pull the string back. If you can’t pull it at all, put it back where you got it from. Got it?”

“Yeah,” John answered as he walked towards the racks and started to Observe each of the bows.