Sunday Midnight August 2nd, 2240 ATE. Dune-Island of The Greater Glorian Archipelago. Six and a half hours until Wraith Night Event-Test is Completed. Current projected House Champion: Ursula Legrand, Legacy of The Nine…..
Even though Claude almost just lost his team, lost his Island-Lord position and was currently last place on the leaderboard as he ran through a set of islands at war, he'd never felt better.
Just running up sanded hills and sliding down dead valleys like one of the surfers on an off day.
[Dryadic Essence Vigor-Boost Active]
[50….52…. 56…. 59% HP Remaining.]
[All Physical Stats +2 while (Natural Assimilation/Forestry Transformation) is active…]
[Stat Boost and Regeneration Rate Increase the longer you allow yourself to assimilate with your element.]
He could feel his stamina slowly entering a state of infinence as his regenerating physical form grew even with his growing exhaustion.
At least in one way.
[30% MP Remaining]
"I don't have enough mana to maintain this ability in any capacity beyond a few fights. Which is a problem since this transformation gets stronger the longer I maintain it. If I was a mage, this would be a dangerous ability. Still, I can make this work. A few mana potions, some focused leveling. Yea—"
As Claude and Ursula slid down a massive sand dune on bark surf boards, six shapes slithered in the sands around them. They moved like sharks on the hunt as their green and red scaled back fins split the old midnight sands.
Claude took the offensive.
"Save your mana, tree boy." Ursula reminded him.
Claude adjusted his plans and whistled into the night.
His Island-Dogs ran down the closest lizard-man swimming beneath the sand. They bit down on its fin and pulled the creature to the surface, gnawing on its arms and legs before moving on.
Ren had taken on his desert-Hunter form— as Claude had begun calling it. Just like before, he was taller and lengthier. The green eyes had turned golden. He lost his species appropriate abundance of bodyfat to survive the heat. Two camel-like humps sat at his back. Water conservation.
Not that he needed it, considering the way he ripped a lizard-man out of the sand and bit down on its neck.
It was then that Claude learned Ren now sported two pairs of vampiric fangs. He sucked the creature dry mid-stride and kept moving.
The Island-dogs continued ripping more and more lizard-men out of the sand dune.
At the same time, Ursula froze them with focused blasts of frigid winds. The ones she couldn't reach, Claude skewered, shield bashed and clawed apart in his assimilated nature form.
When they reached the bottom of the hill, a trail of bodies was left in their wake.
Claude held a black scaled lizard-man on his root-rapier arm. It was bigger than the rest. More densely muscled and spiked at the elbows and knees.
That wasn't what Claude was looking at, though.
He pried open its jaws with his hands and pulled at the fabric stuck to its tongue.
"What are you doing?" Ursula asked from beside him.
"I smelled someone familiar…." Claude pulled the rest of the fabric out of its mouth. It was a piece of the university uniform.
Claude looked to Ursula.
"Students can die to the monsters in here. Especially if they're alone—"
"But this belongs to Burp." Claude said.
"And he's defintely not alone."
"We can find him before he sneaks in and saves Samuel or Tai from getting stomped, though."
"We'll have to be quick." Claude said. "But I don't think either of them need saving from us anymore. Especially Samuel if he just killed a Wraith."
"You still want to track him?" Ursula asked.
"I do."
"Why?"
"We know Burp's play style. Enslavement and backstabbing. Meaning if he's near a Wraith, he allowed students to be captured or worse. And if I can find them—"
"We can also find Samuel." Ursula finished, "If he doesn't find us first. Man, a lot of this plan hinges on maybes."
Claude nodded, "Any better ideas?"
"We could rejoin our team….." Ursula provided, "But you don't want to, do you?"
Claude stayed silent for a moment as he dropped the lizard-man, "Sapien was talking a lot of nonsense."
"But." Ursula adjusted her frozen wood and leather armor.
"But there was one thing he said that stung. He said, I can't be what I want to be and Island-Lord. I can't be a hero and win this. Or complete a Tangent safely. He said a king can't be a hero. If I make the sacrifice play and put my life on the line for others, then I'm leaving everyone with me at risk. Without the helm. I have the plans and the power and the urge to take the risk. It's a bad mix…. Isn't it?"
The more Claude thought about it, the more convincing it seemed. Sapien played him.
He let Stella take the blame as Serpentmancer and that wasn't for no reason. As a fellow beast-tamer, Claude had more intel and reason to believe it wasn't her. Sapien knew Claude would know it wasn't her. Maybe he saw her room and knew how unlikely it was to be her, but also knew only Claude could've known due to his extensive animal knowledge.
From there it would be Claude and Stella against the island.
Then he brought the Wraith, knowing Claude would stick to Stella even as the ocean came to swallow her whole.
With the two beast-tamers gone, it was easier to sneak up on everyone else and steal their life force, making him the….. super-Sapien he'd become for a moment in time.
"So we're abandoning our friends?" Ursula asked.
"I'm a target." Claude said.
"But you brought me."
"You're a good bodyguard." Claude said.
Ursula smiled. Her freckled cheeks flushed in the night, "Your best friends are supposed to be your best bodyguards."
"Glad we're on the same page."
"In the same fucked up book."
The two shook up once before Claude tossed Burp's torn uniform remains to the dogs. They sniffed it once and took off.
***
They ran for an hour. In that time frame, three different brands of storms hit the islands and a tangent opened above water, causing a horde of laughing-spiders to take over the jungles.
Claude killed three and emptied their websacks, using the incredibly powerful sticking string to tie down the places his armor was cracked. Ursula plastered it over her wounds and froze it down solid.
They were improvising. Slowly readying themselves for what was to come.
And it came.
Claude finally stopped. More so because Ursula was breathing like a wounded animal.
Two islands away a foul silence brewed like poison.
It stood out because skirmishes and hunts took place everywhere else all around it. The small portions of students and enemy creatures were too caught up in their own battles to notice. To smell.
The Island-Dogs whined, reacting to some new scent that got their hair standing on end.
Ren looked up at the thin drizzle of rain, shutting his eyes casually.
At Claude's hip, he shifted.
His hair took on an oily luster and lengthened. His feet became webbed and larger. His tail tripled in length. He looked like he just hybridized with an Island-Dog.
They all looked back to Ursula.
"I'm ready."
Claude took off.
They swam short distances thanks to the abundance of floating logs and clumps of earth sprinkled between the islands like step stones.
Upon entering a sign welcomed them stapled to a tree. One of few. But all were massive.
"Welcome to Stonehenge Island."
He'd seen the island in passing a couple times, but never so up close.
It was lonely. Archaic. The stones stood like knights at attention. Stiff, streamlined and in formation. Around them, settlements of stone and moss covered dirt stood.
"Looks like some earth-element users got inspired." Ursula said as they walked past the stone pillars surrounding a dirty gem rock floor. The moonlight above reflected off the stones, making it look like spiritual apparitions of snowfall surrounded them. Fitting the silent cold of the place.
"Sleeping on stone floors doesn't seem very c—" Claude was instantly knocked off his feet and thrown back a dozen feet.
He hit the stone pillars they passed so hard, they shattered against his armored back. It felt like being hit everywhere at once with a hammer. Not to mention his brain was bouncing in his skull with every six inch thick stone he flew through.
Three fell before he hit the ground with seventy percent of his health remaining.
He got up to a world in flux.
"Mmm… fish…" Claude slurred in memory of his last concussion.
Thanks to his connection to the green, he recovered faster. Fast enough to see Ursula facing off against a shadow.
No, that wasn't right.
Most of it was shadow. Swaying a flowing in drifting tatters like smoke in the wind. But it had a white mask. An emotionless porcelain human visage. As it danced around Ursula, stumbling and flipping in erratic bursts of wind, its twin transparent blades moved like water. They held a glow like they were dipped in gasoline and starlight.
Just from the speed and iconic mask with no armor he knew who it was.
"Wraith-Swift."
"I'm too tired to get angry! Hurry up and punch me!" Ursula roared as she threw and ice javelin at the nimble dark-dancer. It dodged and jumped over the island dogs and Ren like a child playing tag.
"You're Ursula? Ursula Legrand? I see the….ERCK—relation now." Wraith-swift said in a horrifyingly young and human voice. But it sounded off. Like the mask was twisting and interrupting the creatures voice beneath.
"You know what? That was better than any punch." Ursula ate a kick to the stomach and grabbed its leg. She lifted the thin monster up over her head and slammed it to the floor.
The mask shattered and the wraith exploded into the smoke. Within the airy spirals, runes glowed and struggled to maintain form.
"Wait…. Why does a monster know about The Nine?" Claude thought as he began moving just as the portions of shattered mask in the smoke came back together. Wraith-Swift rematerialized behind Ursula.
The wraith kicked her, sending her into a stone den a few feet ahead.
Before it could take off, the wraith cringed and keeled over, seemingly just as injured as Ursula.
"N—NO!….. no nonononononono!" The voice was different. Older and accented.
Claude didn't stop to consider and lunged with his root-rapier appendage.
As soon as the pointed end hit, the braided roots unfurled and moved around the creature like two same sided magnets. No matter how hard he pushed or moved they wouldn't touch.
His hairs stood on end.
"Oh….. Claude Grey, Hex-Clubs current big-bad. Not really. You're not that strong, you've just been getting—-EECK! Lucky!" Wraith-Swift, once again sounding like a young student spun around and moved with a burst of wind.
In a flash he was up against another stone pillar as the wraith held him by the throat in a grip so strong it cracked off half of his helmet, revealing his terrified face beneath.
As he stared into the glazed over black eyes behind the mask, his ears twitched as he picked up the sounds of people. Other people. Like he was hearing conversations in another distant room behind a thin door.
Then the wraith twitched and his hair stood on end again.
"N-nnn….."
"W-what?"
The wraith reached up with thin spindly fingers and touched his mask. Immediately a foreign magic washed over him and the helmet peeled open completely, revealing his whole head.
The wraith gasped.
"No!….. chi—….no child. No…."
"Split personality? That's not a common trait in any monster species other than Gnolls and cat-folk when they absorb their litter mates in embryo. This is neither…. But… it's…. It doesn't want to kill me. It's fighting the other."
Wraith-Swift shook. "This— gods damned ERCK— vessel….. fire whoever did the rune-writing on this one. My connection is all over the place."
Ursula and the hounds recovered. They moved to charge but Claude put a hand up to stop them.
Wraith-Swift looked to Claude, raising a hand that turned to spinning winds. A cyclone to skewer him with.
"Your first place was a hoax, fifth-waver."
Claude cleared his throat, "I'm a child."
The wraith shook again.
"NO CHILDREN! Please….. please…" The Wraith dropped their head.
Claude lifted it by the chin. From there he pulled away the mask, revealing the creature— the horror beneath.
Wraith-Swift was an elf. Fit with perfect spotless pale skin, a bald head and pointed ears. It's black eyes were glazed over with tears as it held Claude's gaze. Horrifically deep and poorly healed stitch marks ran around the entire top half of its head like gruesome tattoos. The number "4618" was branded between its eyes.
From beneath its skin something burned and sizzled. He fought off a gag, realizing he was hearing its brain sizzle inside its skull.
"...please. Kill me."