Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick stood before his bed, under the protections of his [Prismatic Ward], while he had strung ample [Alarm Ward]s throughout the space and also outside, while Ophiels provided the bulk of the early-warning system. The Ophiels inside were quiet, but the ones outside brought a bit of birdsong to an otherwise silent land. He gazed down at the bed and hoped he would actually be able to sleep. Though he had taken another bath to calm down, and that had been rather successful, he was still rather high-strung at the moment, what with everything that had happened, and that promised to happen.

Erick breathed deep, and sat on the bed. The covers went up and over, and Erick’s head hit the pillow. Three half-thoughts later, he was asleep and snoring.

He woke to the actions of nothing in particular. He jolted upward. For a moment, he panicked, activating [Greater Lightwalk] on the bottom of his bare feet, under the covers. There was nothing in his room except for him. The dense air was still there, too.

And now that he was not running on fumes and desperation, and everything seemed a mite calmer, his new Perception seemed to help him see the density in the air a lot clearer than before. He was almost tempted to try some meditative techniques to see if he could gain a Mana Sense, like how Teressa had gained while they were at Oceanside.

Erick’s mind started whirring as he fully woke, and old memories came to him like sudden waves of nostalgia. Things he had forgotten from his childhood. Events he had cherished, then abandoned somewhere along the way, for reasons he could not recall. His mother’s smile. His dad’s hugs. Remembering those was like opening a forgotten gift left under the Christmas Tree.

For a long moment, Erick sat in bed, and remembered his parents. He had a small cry, which turned to laughter when he remembered the better times. Like Sunday dinners at grandma's, or when mom used to cook. He remembered watching Saturday cartoons with his father and laughing with him. That thought invariably led to remembering trying to watch Saturday cartoons with his own daughter, but the tradition of Saturday cartoons was gone, off the airwaves, by the time Jane was interested in such things. They did have a small tradition of fantasy movies every Saturday when she was small. That lasted two wonderful years, until Jane had gotten old enough that she wanted to spend her weekends with her friends and not with her father.

He smiled at that. Jane certainly grew up fast. It seemed like one moment he was feeding her formula, and the next she was slaying imaginary bad guys, and then she was fighting real bad guys on Veird, and actually slaying them. Erick had mixed feelings about all that, but he left those to the side. It was daddy’s turn to kill the bad guys now, or at least ensure that they burned to their own evil. It was time to make the world a better place for Jane, like he had always tried to do, but only ever succeeded some of the time.

Erick got up, and turned on [Lodestar]. Keeping his sunform to his back, and ready to deploy at any moment, he went and got ready for the day. Or was it night? Hard to tell. Rainbow auroras hung in the sky outside the windows and there were no clocks in this roo—

There was a clock in the living room.

Erick sent an Ophiel to check on the time. There were two clocks out there. Erick had missed the second one. Apparently, it was 8:10 PM, outside-time, but inside Ar’Kendrithyst’s wonky Feast Time, it was a few hours into the third day. Erick had slept more than ten hours. He must have been more tired than he had thought.

Presentations of Power was supposed to begin today. Each Shade was supposed to prepare something that proved their worth to the Clergy and to Melemizargo. Erick was supposed to present something, too, but these people had been spying on him for a long time. He’d likely be ‘asked’ (forced) to give some sort of presentation on what everyone already knew.

Well fuck that!

For one bright, shining moment, Erick considered blowing off the rest of Shadow’s Feast. Of stepping off into some other part of Ar’Kendrithyst and telling them all to go fuck themselves. But then he discarded that notion. He had well and goodly decided not to kill any more Shades unless the perfect opportunity presented itself, but Tania was going to kill more. If Erick wasn’t here to see that happen, to see the winds of change coming, he would be caught unaware by the coming storm, and that was unacceptable.

Sometime soon, the news of the Clergy’s demise would run through Ar’Kendrithyst and everything would start happening, very, very fast.

So, again, Erick considered running and hiding. But where would he even hide, though?

Oh. Now there’s an idea. If Ar’Kendrithyst was truly sealed… Was it sealed against Shades looking to escape, too? If everything came tumbling down and all the Shades started murdering each other in one great, grand blood bath of magic, would it be contained to Ar’Kendrithyst, for the duration of the Feast?

Erick was glad that he had managed to sleep when he could. He was going to need those ten hours.

And yet, despite all the danger, there was something entertaining about experiencing history first hand, and having a part to play in that history. Erick briefly imagined himself in the fall of Rome; wearing a toga, and drinking wine, while the city burned, civil war raged, and all his enemies fell to the swords of his other enemies… Or however it was that the fall of Rome went down. Erick was never a history buff.

He was certainly remembering all of his studies of physics that he had ever looked upon, though. He was remembering a lot. That thought led to another:

Intelligence was not going to stay like this. None of these new Stats were going to remain. Erick felt too strong. He felt too secure. Even discarding the mental changes, which was enough to get Intelligence nerfed to oblivion, there were the simple numerical changes to mana costs.

Erick began a small test, there in his temporary bedroom. He had to rearrange the [Prismatic Ward], and create an empty space for himself to cast, but that was easy enough for an Ophiel to do. The two spells he chose were [Ward], because it provided solid results in a confined space, and [Hermetic Shredder], for much the same reasons.

Ophiel cast the [Hermetic Shredder] for 1200 mana, stringing the spell into five separated lines, and then another 195 lines pushed to the side. Erick did it this way for Ophiel had no spell cost reductions, and what Ophiel cast was what Ophiel got. According to the blue box, those 200 lines each had 200 points of ‘damage capability’ before they broke.

Erick cast the [Ward], spending only 10 mana for a small defensive [Ward].

He dismissed his own [Personal Ward], and reached out to touch the first molecular wire. It broke against his skin; the [Defensive Ward] taking a major hit to its stability. Erick had no way to check the viability of the remaining [Ward], but it certainly looked thinner. Checking his Health, he saw no change.

He touched the second wire, popping the [Ward], and popping the wire. There was not a single blemish upon his finger. He checked his Health, anyway. He was down 2 points. Those two missing points replenished themselves in a regenerating second.

Ah. He recognized a problem. He recognized several problems. Mainly, though, his Constitution was preventing damage, too.

He could probably still figure out something from all of this, though. He just needed more samples, more casts, and more tests.

Half an hour later, he had come up with some rough estimations of the power of Intelligence, and Constitution. Like he had initially theorized, both were wildly overpowered.

That 10 mana he spent on a small defensive [Ward] produced over 300 points of damage soaking. Erick’s [Ward]s only cost 3% of the original costs, meaning that 1 of those initial ten mana was used to create the [Ward] in the first place, but the remaining 9 of those mana went through a (roughly) 33.3 multiplier.

But that much wasn’t too surprising.

Clarity dropped the initial cost of each [Ward] down to 50% costs, and with Favoring [Ward] that cost dropped another 25% off, but then there was also the Class Ability for a 10% Spell Cost Reduction. Force Savant also dropped the cost of [Ward] another few percentage points, for a final cost, before Intelligence, of 12% of the initial costs. So while 81 Intelligence dropping [Ward] down to 3% of the initial costs seemed rather screwy, and piss-poor of what 81 Intelligence should get you…

Practically all of Erick’s spells were down to 3% or 5% of their initial costs. [Hermetic Shredder] very easily demonstrated the raw power of Intelligence, because Erick could just count the wires and calculate his bonus that way.