Redemption Arc

As they walked through the gallery of the clerestory, Lucian couldn’t help but peer through the windows to see the ocean pressing down on them from beyond. Now that the potion had worn off and he could see no further than a few feet, he began to sympathize with Helen’s fear of the ocean.

“It feels like we’re in one of the hells,” Helen said, seeing the outside the same as him.

“Not much farther to the observatory,” Lucian said to calm her fears.

He wasn’t lying. Before long, they passed through a set of double doors that were about ten feet tall. Within was one of the most formidable structures that Lucian had seen. It was a dome-shaped room. On the walls all around them were bookshelves, each filled to the brim with books. But in the center of the room was the beginnings of a gigantic telescope that stretched upward to the ceiling, peering out into the ocean.

Most ominously of all, the retractable dome had been left opened. The dome had been built to allow those within to get a better picture of the stars, but now that this place had sunk it seemed as though the weight of the ocean was being held up with nothing more than a faint envelope of magic. Helen, as she’d been in the War of Four, was utterly terrified.

“I’m not going in there,” Helen decided quickly.

Rowan stayed and tried to talk her into it, but Lucian didn’t waste any time trying to persuade her. Part of it was the simple fact that he didn’t want any of the others to get their hands on the Vitaegis. He walked right up to the telescope and peered within—he’d always been curious what he’d see, but the player never had the option to use it. He was disappointed. It was nothing more than a constantly moving swirl of blue.

Once his curiosity was satisfied, he moved on to satiate his pragmatism. The Vitaegis was behind the telescope. On a small port on the bottom of the telescope, a beam of purest light fell onto the ring. Some sort of apparatus in the telescope seemed to be concentrating light onto the ring. Some chairs had been placed around it alongside a paper that had something written on it in bold.

EXPERIMENT IN PROGRESS! DO NOT TOUCH!

“That’s rather ominous,” Miriam said, walking up to him. She crossed her arms. “It does make me want to touch it very badly.”

“It’s dangerous,” Lucian said. “Not the ring itself, but… it’ll bring danger,” he informed her.

Lucian, in order to avoid having to explain himself, walked up to a nearby book that looked different from all the others on the shelves. He leaned his spetum against the wall and picked it up. It was the experiment log of the person who’d placed that ring there. Lucian skimmed through a lot of the text until he found the bit that he’d been looking for.

Provided this ring has received enough direct exposure to concentrated light, it should be able to enhance holy magic considerably. One will be able to tell by the radiant gold color in the central gem.

Lucian looked toward the ring, and just as it had been promised, it was glowing with a radiance far unlike anything he’d seen in common jewelry. It was quite stylish, by his estimation. The book was vague about what it did, probably because the author didn’t even know, but Lucian knew all too well.

“Hey, everyone,” Lucian called out. “Get over here.”

With the exception of Helen, who seemed tormented by the huge mound of water above them, everyone came to see what Lucian was talking about. He pointed at the ring.

“You see that?”

“You want me to buy that for you, sweetheart? It goes with your eyes,” Rowan joked.

“My intuition tells me that taking that is going to bring some danger,” Lucian said. “Specifically… some things are going to come down from above.”

“What things?” Olivia followed up.

Lucian looked at her. “Do you think I know the exact future ahead of us, down to every last enemy we’re fighting?” He looked back at the ring, hoping it didn’t look like that. “Danger aside, according to this journal, that ring improves holy magic. I think I want it.”

Rowan paced around for a bit. “Should we really be picking fights when we don’t need to?”

“Considering they’re monsters… maybe,” Miriam said. “No time like the present to figure out how to kill things better.”

Lucian gestured. “Why don’t all of you go way over there with Helen, and then I’ll take the ring on my own? If it’s bad, I’m confident in my ability to get away, and all of you will be in an advantageous defensive position.”

“You’d trap yourself in the middle of an ambush?” Olivia said scornfully.

Lucian looked her in the eyes. “I think I’ve proven I can hold my own in the middle of a horde.”

All of them grudgingly accepted Lucian’s proposal, especially once he assured them that the danger didn’t feel like something they couldn’t overcome. He moved aside some of the chairs as they got into position, and then stared at the Vitaegis. He reached his hand out tentatively for the ring. When he plucked it from its altar, the concentrated beam of light faded away. Its absence seemed to trigger something, because there was a shifting above.

Lucian slid the ring on. Above, he saw ripples pass on the surface of the water before myriad creatures swarmed into the observatory. Lucian grabbed his spetum calmly. They were familiar figures—Merspawn Knights, sixteen of them. They had more varied weapons than a bow. Compared to the archer he’d faced in that first mission, these ones were a fair bit tougher. But then, so were they.

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Lucian took his spetum in hand, producing a vial. He poured it on the blade of his polearm. Then, he held his hand to the blade and said a new incantation. The special ability of the Inquisitor’s Spetum was simple—it could be imbued with a single holy spell, up to a three-word incantation in power.

“Cæl Væl,” Lucian said, feeling his magic surge. Now that he’d breached 20 MAG, he could use two-word incantations. The weapon in his hand readily accepted the spell, and the spear’s runes began to glow. He stood, facing one of the Merspawn Knights. It wielded a bident, walking toward him cautiously.

As the others threw themselves into combat, Lucian was more cautious. He waited, waited… and then it lunged at him, stabbing. He dodged, then darted in as fast as he could. It also made to stab him, perhaps hoping to trade blows. Lucian hefted the spear, swiping upward. The tip of the spear slashed its shell-like body. And then… the magic happened.

The build that Lucian had prepared wasn’t complex, but simplicity didn’t mean inefficiency. The first step—lower the defense. That potion he’d poured on the blade was the same one he’d used back at the bandit camp. Morningblight Brew: Weakness to Holy Damage. That spell he’d imbued into the blade, Heavenly Blade, had a passive ability. Used on weapons like the Inquisitor’s Spetum, it increased the damage.

Lower the enemy’s resistance, increase the damage… simple, but effective.

Heavenly Blade erupted out of Lucian’s weapon, cleaving into the Merspawn’s flesh. The results were immediate and devastating. With one blow, he cut the creature that had once troubled him so greatly in half. As his spear carried onward, its body began to disintegrate into ash in midair, dispersing. But that wasn’t the end of this build of his.

Holy magic spells transferred some damage back into healing. Under ordinary circumstances, that would only be important if Lucian had sustained some wounds. But with the Vitaegis, things changed. The Vitaegis allowed any HP that would’ve been restored to come to the player in the form of an overheal—temporary hit points. In terms of defense, there was no better bulwark than simply having more health.

The main restriction was that it wouldn’t stack. Once he got the temporary hit points, the Vitaegis would activate, storing the overheal. Until the player lost all they had, any further magic wouldn’t raise the value. It was imperative, then, that he do as much damage as possible with one spell to get as much overheal as he could. The combination of Heavenly Blade’s increased damage, the Inquisitor’s Spetum innate holy damage, and the weakness potion was as potent a hit as he could land.

Two of the Merspawn Knights came to confront Lucian after their comrade had fallen. There were a lot of them, but there was no build better suited for survivability in big crowds.

“Cæl Væl,” Lucian said once more, reinvigorating his spetum.

Feeling the new sense of boundless vitality welling up from the ring on his hand, Lucian advanced somewhat arrogantly. He swung out with his spear, but the knight dodged backward. He tried to follow up with a thrust, but it sidestepped. The other knight took the opportunity to dart in and pierce him in the side with its sword. It was a very solid blow… but Lucian felt no pain. The moment the sword was pulled free of his flesh, the wound had already healed, and Lucian was already stabbing out with his weapon.

The creature blocked the hit with its shield, but the spell still shot out and punched through its shield to stab it in the chest. It didn’t kill it, but it staggered backward long enough for Lucian to bring his weapon around and slam it into its neck. It began to disintegrate into ash as Lucian faced the other. It had a long sword, but no shield.

Lucian circled it for a bit. He lashed out with his spetum, but it swatted each hit aside. It dashed in and sliced quickly, and though Lucian tried to dodge, the blade struck him in the face. He expected a flood of pain, but instead, it cut through painlessly until the very last moment, when Lucian’s overheal ran out. That huge blow left naught more than a tiny cut on Lucian’s cheek.

Lucian bashed the Merspawn Knight with his shoulder, sending it back. It watched him once again, and Lucian focused on remembering his lessons. When it thrusted, Lucian whipped up the polearm. He caught it in the spikes beneath the spearhead, hooking its blade. As his instructor had taught him, he twisted and turned, using leverage to pull the weapon from his foe’s grip. Then, he lashed out to cut its leg, and when it fell to the ground, pierced its head.

“Hah,” Lucian exhaled triumphantly. He muttered to himself, “Learned a thing or two.”

He looked around, looking for someone to help. All he saw was Olivia wiping her rapier down, all the enemies gone. They weren’t so much as breathing heavily.

“Finally done?” Miriam said, watching him.

“I’ll admit, I was skeptical… but I think you made a good call recommending Miriam. She must have taken down six of them,” Rowan praised. Miriam looked pleased with her handiwork, but she said nothing as she looked around. That was the power of lightning versus things very weak to lightning.

Lucian thought he had cause for pride after his performance, but… everyone else seemed to have done far better than he did.

“Freaks…” he muttered beneath his breath, walking onward.

“What was that?” Olivia asked.

“I said, let’s look around,” Lucian said louder.

***

There were small tidbits of lore regarding the Inquisition, but most of it just expanded on facts that they already knew. Lucian sat in one wing of the observatory, pretending like he was reading while he was actually reviewing his Evercodex. The others were all similarly searching. He just had to pretend he was looking until they decided to go on to the Scriptorium.

But as he sat there, reading in private, Olivia walked in. She shut the door behind her, then turned to look at him. Her red eyes looked conflicted.

“Since you don’t want to discuss your father, Lucian…” Olivia began, and he held her gaze. “…perhaps we can discuss mine.”

Tension immediately set in. Lucian shut his book.

“Is this the time for daddy issues?” Lucian asked.

Olivia walked before him. “I’ve been holding my tongue as long as I can, but I feel like I’m going to pull out my hair if I do that any longer. You saved my life, and that means I can forgive you… but I can’t forget what happened in the past, either.”

Lucian stared, waiting.

“When I petitioned the Concord to clear my father’s name, you wrote an open letter declaring my father a ‘depraved degenerate demon summoner who should remain dead and disgraced.’” She walked closer. “I never forgot those words, Lucian. I want to know why you did that.”

How the hell should I know? he thought.

But looking at Olivia—the conflicted expression, verging on confusion, anger, and sadness all, he didn’t think that’d fly. And so, Lucian asked himself why. And as it’d been with Helen, memories rose to his head unbidden. Not his own memories—Lucian’s.