"No, shut up. Just listen to me. Who wouldn't want to take these absolutely beautiful creatures and make them even more badass through the sheer awesomeness that is the science of magic? It's just not fantasy without fire-breathing dragons, and my God, if I have to gene-splice my way into giving a Tyrannosaurus rex napalm-breath, I'm gonna Weyland-Yutani my way into giving this goddamn T-Rex some goddamn napalm breath."
Ai glided over the sand as [Stormold]'s voice rang in her ears.It was frayed with a sense of urgency that was utterly unlike [Stormold]'s usual bravado, but it was undeniably his voice, if stretched thin by exhaustion."Ai… God, I hope you're listening" the voice crackled with static, "It's been a long while, but I don't have much time to explain. Things went sideways after we won. Those of us who were still logged in... we're here for real. This isn't a game anymore, Ai. The magic, the people... all of it. We made it work for a few years there but… Well, let's just say that our big gamer strat worked a bit too well, and that human beings are gonna be human beings wherever they are. The devs - if it's even the devs anymore - found a way to fuck us anyway."A foot of empty space separated her from the grit and heat of the desert floor, a simple weave of [Smooth-Glass]-[Momentum] smoothing the sand into a state of near-perfect, frictionless momentum as a separate spell propelled her forwards.As a spell, it was simple but delicate. Sand could be heated to make glass, and glass could be associated with smoothness, both visually and by touch. But tying the concepts in this way would make the spell brittle; glass could also shatter. The symbolic link's delicate nature made it terrible to rely on during combat. But fueled by the constant, relentless heat of the desert sun, it was perfect for the simple A-to-B transit of one woman and her lizard-dog across the desert.Aru, for his part, was nestled in the voluminous folds of her cloak, his head resting on her shoulder and his fuzzy white paws hooked over her collarbones. His occasional sleepy snuffles were a comforting presence as she propelled herself along the dunes."The players who were offline at the time… their bodies just dropped. They're here, technically, but they're empty. You too. Just so you know, you're the only logged-out player from our guild, you lazybones. And you're heavier than you look."Did he just call her fat?The static flared, swallowing his next words. "...Fenoc. Ai. [Fenocian] fucked us. Sold us out to... I don't even know anymore. Too much has happened."A memory of [Fenocian]'s unreadable expressions during their final battle flashed in Ai's mind, suddenly cast in a sinister new light."Listen," Stormold's voice grew ragged. "I'm...ing out of time. ...terrifying, but you knew that. When you get here... if you get here... you're gonna love it...always about two steps from...dying a horr...horrible death, but... there's so much to... wouldn't trade it for the world..."The static hissed, a long, drawn-out breath."Gods walk among us," he whispered, the words barely audible. A beat of silence. Then, a ghost of his old, familiar grin returned to his voice. "But now? So do you."[Eye of the Storm] fell silent as [Stormold]'s message ended.She was late to the guild afterparty, it seemed.Ai took a deep, steadying breath.She was going to find [Stormold], and if she couldn't, learn what had happened to him and the rest of Karravar [kava]. She was going to track down Fenoc, no matter how many centuries it had been, and drag out some answers. And, well. [Stormold] knew her too well. Of course she wouldn't be able to resist cryptic phrasing like that.Gods walk among us, indeed.The first thing she needed to do was to find a way back to Karravaran, the Karravar [kava] guild hall.There was too much ground to cover in Varrah itself - the landmass was about half the size of North America in real life. If it had truly been centuries after the World Quest had been completed, and if their plan for the continent-spanning Ve'un network had indeed worked as planned, then the NPCs that had populated the disparate settlements of Varrah could have potentially formed an entirely new civilization.Too much could have changed. No, she needed to eliminate or follow up on potential threads one by one, and it made sense to get to Karravaran as quickly as she could. That would be her plan until new information came up.But the only way to access Karravaran was through the Glassway."Our own fast travel, with blackjack and hookers," she murmured to herself, a faint smile touching her lips.The Glassway had been a high-speed travel network she and her guild had painstakingly built above the clouds, a masterpiece of magical engineering that stitched the continent together.Skimming over the sand with an off-the-cuff weave hadn't been her first choice. Accessing the Glassway had been the first thing she tried after leaving the tomb, but try as she might she couldn't sense any of its familiar magic in the skies.She extended her Semblance into the sky again, just to be sure."...yeah, no such luck."If Ai couldn't sense the threads of the Glassway's magic overhead, that meant that it had fallen into disrepair. Assuming that the Glassway's underlying structure remained intact, that meant reactivating it, and that meant going to the floating coral city of Ikkasir to initialize its reactivation protocol.She was going to throttle [Hadrian's_Fyre] the next time she saw him. The mischievous fool had been the one to suggest encoding the activation protocol as a scavenger hunt that took them across a few randomized locations on the map, starting at their allied city-state of Ikkasir.Ai growled in frustration. Why had she approved such a stupid design? Because it's funny, Hadrian would have said, laughing as he roped Stormold into the silly joke. Their laughter rung in Ai's ears. Aru, seemingly sensing her distress, licked her cheek to comfort her.For now, she would head west, towards the sea.Ikkasir was an island made of coral somewhere in the Tranquil Sea. Somewhere being the operating word, as it moved around and never, ever stayed put. The Ikkas were a very private people even at the best of times, and part of Karravar [kava]'s dealings with them had been to make the island magically impervious to remote detection.In other words, you couldn't find it unless you already knew where it was, and if you used magic to try to force the issue, they'd have advance warning to prepare countermeasures. It went without saying that Ai's guild had developed those countermeasures as well.So, she had to find the city the good old fashioned way, and that meant getting to the coast, finding a port, and then getting on a ship that was headed there.But she had [Eye of the Storm] and its Ve'un now. She'd be fine against any threats to her safety while she traveled. The trouble was in the more mundane requirements of survival: food and water.The last thing she had eaten was a packet of frozen noodles that she'd hurriedly reheated in her microwave oven, just before the final battle of the World Quest. She'd scarfed them down while she and her guild were running their final preparations, so Ai was loathe to call it an actual meal, not that processed protein and synthetic carbs were ever filling.Ai needed to eat, sooner rather than later.Her stomach grumbled.
Ai had been traveling for several hours when she caught a glint of something metallic shining in the distance. She mimed the extension of a looking glass, putting her hands to her right eye to weave a spell of [Horizon]-[Eye-Image].Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website."[Farsight]." She vocalized. Her vision magnified wildly before resolving into a clear picture.In a rocky canyon about a kilometer ahead of her, was a caravan, and it looked like they were being attacked by mounted raiders. Ai canceled her telescope weave. Her leisurely transit snapped into a controlled forward burst.The sand-skimming spell was a simple one, ultimately just a sustained push against the world. But with how malleable reality had become for her, could she treat it like a variable-thrust engine? She rewove the parameters of her spell to add [Vector-Control] and [Sky-Height].She pushed, and the ground fell away. Ten feet. Twenty. Fifty. More - the desert floor flattened into a smear of ochre and rust.She poured her focus into achieving maximum velocity. Aru yelped awake at her sudden acceleration, and the landscape blurred behind her. The part of her that had spent years coordinating raids and managing battlefields felt a grim, familiar surge of dopamine.She had a new objective.The caravan was nearly a kilometer away, but her newly tweaked movement spell rocketed her forward at breakneck speed. It took her all of twenty seconds until she was almost upon them—The scene resolved itself with brutal clarity as she closed the distance. Ai killed the spell's horizontal thrust, electing to hover overhead to get a better picture of the attack.The caravan was a train of ten carriages, accompanied by a complement of guardsmen on foot wielding polearms. At the head of the caravan was a tall figure wearing white and crimson robes, casting some sort of kinetic barrier - she could feel their weave as they prepared their spell. Another, smaller figure in similar robes with azure trimmings instead of red, was desperately running towards the taller one.[Absorb]-[Redirect]-[Force].Immediately, Ai saw that the spell wouldn't be enough. The larger mage's Semblance was formidable, but he either hadn't had the time or ability to weave together a longer chain of concepts, not if he wanted to repel a charge of that magnitude.A phalanx of ten riders were forming up to charge at them, mounted on bipedal beasts with bone-domed skulls built like battering rams - Domga, Ai's mind supplied. The riders' fists were raised as one in a clearly practiced motion as they chanted in guttural tones.[United-Charge]-[Force-Wall].A shimmering, yellow-white distortion in the air coalesced around them as they charged.The individual forms of beast and rider began to blur, their outlines bleeding into one another until they were a single unstoppable wall of force, a living battering ram of flesh and kinetic magic hurtling at impossible speed down the narrow pass. Every second they charged forward seemed to reinforce the spell's power, kicking up dust and debris in a massive cloud as they ran.The riders punched their fists forward in unison, roaring as one.[Honed-Point].They planned to crack the robed mage's kinetic barrier with what amounted to an oversized ice pick, their combined momentum focused onto a single point of impact. The mage wouldn't stand a chance.Ai re-engaged the horizontal thrust of her spell, this time killing the vertical vector to let gravity pull her towards the front of the caravan. The wind whistled through her hair as she landed, her sandals hitting the packed earth as she erupted into a dead run.The robed figure—a haggard-looking man with a long braid and a neatly trimmed beard—whirled around."Wha—"Ai ignored him, picking a pebble up off of the canyon floor, before dashing towards the bandits as she re-engaged her new flight spell, kicking off of the ground with a burst of speed.Ai's Semblance imposed its immense might on the world as she wove her spell, letting its pattern realign reality.She flicked the pebble at the charging Domga at supersonic speed—The world went silent.There was a sudden, violent stop as the consolidated mass of Domga and rider, dozens of tons of flesh moving at terrifying speed, halted instantly as if they had slammed into a mountain that simply wasn't there. The magic of their battering ram shattered into a million glittering shards of light, and the Domga, their momentum utterly annihilated, collapsed in a heap of stunned flesh. Their riders were thrown clear, tumbling through the dust.Idly, Ai commanded the sand to restrain man and beast, pulling them into the ground until only their heads remained visible.The battle wasn't over yet. There was an earth-shaking roar from behind them, a deep, predatory bellow that vibrated the very atmosphere.A pincer attack, perhaps? The Domga riders would create an anvil from the front, while a second threat circled around to hammer them from the rear.Ai spun around. Not a hundred meters away, emerging from a cleft in the canyon wall that she had missed, was what had to be the leader of the bandits. She appeared every part the ferocious ne'er-do-well, clad in battered but clearly well-maintained armor that was a cut above that of her comrades. But it was the beast that she rode that commanded Ai's attention.An Orgawyr. A one-beast army, a massive bipedal wyrm that towered over all. Its crushing maw was full of dagger-teeth that could tear any man in two with contemptuous ease and it could even spit liquid fire to immolate its victims. Flames licked at the edges of its snarling mouth, and a crest of iridescent display feathers flared from its skull like a crown of living fire.It was nothing short of a magically engineered T-Rex. Ai blurred into motion, accelerating towards the beast.In the next instant, the Orgawyr and its rider barreled into the caravan with the force of a freight train, making a ravenous beeline for the nearest carriage. Its attention was fixed on the beast of burden pulling it: a duck-billed herbivore called a Golga.The Golga bellowed and shrieked in terror, even as it attempted to shield its handler with its bulk—but to no avail. There was a sickeningly wet crunch of shattered bone and tearing flesh as the Orgawyr slammed its jaws shut around its neck.The Golga went down with an agonized, gurgled squawk and a spray of bloody sand.Ai put on another burst of speed as the Orgawyr noticed her approach.Orgawyr were indomitable creatures of war, developed during the Titanomachy by the lovable crazies over in BioSculpt [rodin] and used to devastating effect. Magically and genetically enhanced through the guild's magic, the lineage had quickly outcompeted the natural Tyrannosaur population of Varrah once some experiments had gotten loose as they so often seemed to do - evidently, they were still being put to use.But even beasts like the Orgawyr couldn't defend against kinetic force directly imparted into the brain - it just required more conceptual oomph than a simple application of kinetic energy.Ai wove the narrative of the fight itself into the spell. The first event was the Domga charge. The second was the ferocious emergence of the Orgawyr. Now, she would conjure a third kinetic event - a final beat in a three-part rhythm that would resonate in the minds of everyone present, reinforced by the human expectation of the Rule of Threes.[Focused-Force]-[Repetition]-[Trinity].The Orgawyr lunged towards Ai, opening its bloodied mouth for a flame-filled bite—Ai smacked it with the back of her hand in a concussive blast of force that sounded like nothing else but a thunderclap.The Orgawyr's eyes rolled back in its head. Its roar died in its throat, replaced by a soft, bewildered grunt. The beast, a ten-ton monster of muscle and fury, simply crashed to the ground in an earth-shaking heap, the fall throwing its rider from her saddle and into the canyon wall with a sickening crunch.Ai let the sand restrain the bandit leader and the Orgawyr as well, before floating over to where the mages were. She landed on the ground with a soft plop.She was about to ask if they were alright when her stomach growled again. The mages stared at her, dumbfounded. Ai grinned sheepishly."...Do you have anything to eat?"