Rising Kite - A story from the world of HWFWM

A series of sharp slashes carved glowing rents into the surface of Kite’s barrier, Heaven-and-Void warding holding firm as the green figure passed him in a blur of motion. Pivoting on the spot, Carmine Sunrise appeared in Kite’s hand, its magical sheath keeping it locked in place. For an instant, it felt as if the moment would last forever, with Kite’s opponent already having readied its own ‘weapon’ to attack again.

Kite was surrounded by green on all sides, as if the color had enveloped his whole field of vision. The area where he currently found himself was sprouting kilometers of forest consisting mostly from the weird kind of plant which Kite had learned was called bamboo, the green segmented stalks of the plant forming veritable walls around him, the foliage above blotting out the sky.

His foe was currently blending very smoothly into said landscape; a six-legged creature which looked something akin to a green-furred monkey crossed with a spider due to the way its multiple legs spread out beneath its torso. Its oblong face sported small, beady eyes and mean fangs, but the bamboo spear it was wielding had proven to be its main weapon as its slanted point turned out to strike with surprising power.

The frozen moment seemed to fade, and both combatants acted simultaneously. The monster sprang forward in a lunging thrust which would have made Will proud. And Kite? Kite drew.

A moment later, the ripple of Kite’s intent manifested just where the monkey-monster reached the apex of its shallow arc, a rippling streak of dark void crossing its midsection. Void-Sunders-Firmament carved a bloody gash into the beast’s flesh, and a moment after the cut seemed to detonate from within as the enchantment of Carmine Sunrise made itself known. The bronze-ranked monster fell into two pieces, bisected by the rending damage, and as Kite felt its surprisingly disciplined aura fade, he too relaxed.

As soon as the rainbow smoke had eventually faded, the monsters decomposing much faster inside the trial than the world outside, he half waded through the green mass of underbrush to see what this kind of beast would leave behind.

“Quintessence of monkey, plant and adept,” the officiator confirmed as he held up the handfuls of each kind that the monster left behind.

“That was more quintessence than from most other monsters I have found so far,” Kite noted, more to himself than to anyone in particular. Still, the officiator answered his statement as if it had been a question.

“There is a positive correlation between the strength of a manifestation and the quantity of dropped quintessence.”

“And this one was potent for a bronze-ranked one, and solitary. We will see if Glint will find more of them.”

He could feel Glint a few hundred meters away, floating among the foliage of the bamboo stalks to scout ahead, her small form nimble enough to get out of most dangers. As she still had some area to cover, Kite sat down atop a relatively flat rock which he found nearby, taking some time to empty out his gathered quintessence so far.

Over thirty different kinds of magic made manifest soon dotted the stone, but each pile rarely held more than ten pieces. This was by design though, as Kite was not yet properly taking on the trial. He was scouting out his options.

“With the addition of adept and monkey, that leaves me with thirty four different kinds so far,” he mumbled to himself. “And while monkey and plant should not be of much interest, the presence of adept quintessence should be worth more consideration.”

It was his third day inside the jade-sky gate, and Kite had already taken to speaking aloud quite a lot. Most often, the officiator globe was silent, but his musings would occasionally prompt it to share a tidbit or two about the trial.

A flickering movement behind him caused Kite to look over in order to give the returning Glint a welcoming wave.

“Oh, you found another one? That is a good sign, as I might want to return to take down more of these in the future,” Kite noted while he started to gather up the different piles of quintessence. “But as for now, we have plenty of other zones to sample. If I am to make a decision here, I need to know my options.”

A series of sensations came to him through their familiar bond, causing Kite to chuckle. “I am sorry, little beauty, but I simply do not think that the water and fish quintessence will mesh well with the rest of my path… Yes, you are a part of it, as are all of the bonds I forge, but that means that you are climbing alongside me and that our paths will have to complement and strengthen one another, not diverge for the other’s sake… Yes, you are indeed very pretty… No, I cannot in good conscience say that you are prettier than Dragonfly. You both have different kinds of charms, that’s all.”

While Glint did not seem entirely satisfied with the explanation, she still seemed to find a modicum of acceptance as she did a twirl to catch the light upon her glittering scales while he got the feeling that she was quite aware of her charms, before she started growing to her larger form. With the officiator hovering silently behind him, Kite hopped up onto Glint’s back.

“I believe it might be prudent to visit the mountain north of here next,” he said, sending a mental image of the direction to share with Glint, and then they were off.

As the minutes ticked by and the mountain in the distance continued to draw closer, Kite started to re-evaluate his first assessment as a distinct blackish blue tint started to become more pronounced.

“Is that… ice?”

His thoughts were confirmed when they, half an hour later, came close enough to feel a distinct chill in the air which seemed to roil down the mountain’s slopes. It was indeed made of solid ice, but the cracked and uneven surface looked similar enough to stone unless the light hit at the right angle. And as he could make out more details, Kite could also see a plethora of cracks and crevasses which should be wide enough for him to easily pass through.

The trip had been mostly uneventful, with the exception of an enterprising trio of insectoid monsters which had come swooping in to intercept Glint’s flight, their butterfly wings covered with shifting patterns of color. But unlike the aerial ambush just after Kite entered the challenge, he saw these ones coming, and their star-like magical motes which they fired at him were easy enough to block or even occasionally dispel through Pattern-shattering counter.

But seeing the cracks acting like tunnels leading into the icy mountain, Kite realized that the confines going forward were likely to be a lot more cramped.

“I suppose that this might be what they call a glacier?” Kite mused as he laid a gauntleted hand against the ice, Glint and Sage hovering next to him. The carp was experimenting with shooting streams of water towards the cold wall and watching them freeze, while the astral gather mostly seemed transfixed by its own distorted reflection. “We will of course go in there, but retreat will be a lot harder. Let us keep our wits about ourselves and our minds cool…” He trailed off, almost expecting a reproachful look from his familiars for the bad pun, but they were both lost in their own little worlds.

“Might have been for the better,” Kite murmured, but he then got a response from an unexpected source.

“Trial-taker, it would seem like keeping one’s mind cool would be most inadvisable, as organics do not tend to react well to shifts in their internal temperatures, especially not in the regions called the head. As a bronze-ranker, it would be ill advised to challenge your weak anatomy like that,” the officiator stated. Kite almost jumped in surprise, as the orb rarely spoke up, especially when his musings did not regard the trial itself.

“I… It is a figure of speech. A metaphor for keeping calm and focused,” he clarified, a bit hesitant.

“Seems most illogical. Why not just state that instead?”

“I… think that symbolism helps us better grasp more abstract concepts?” Kite ventured. “Allows us to better imagine abstract phenomena while linking them to something physical or more tangible.”

The orb was silent for a while, but eventually replied. “Still, most illogical. No doubt there is a deficiency in your organic perspective.”

“I… see.”

Apparently done with that line of query, the officiator remained silent once more. Kite couldn’t help but regard the orb for a while, imagining what lay beneath the neutral facade. Or if what he saw would really be what he got in this case.

After that little exchange, there was nothing more to do for Kite than to lead his familiars into one of the closest crevasses. It did seem like his guess had been correct, as the great cracks in the glacier formed makeshift corridors and tunnels. While the pathways weren’t so narrow that he had to squeeze through, it still lent a claustrophobic feeling to the whole experience, with dull groans and creaks occasionally echoing through the ice.

While the walk was a tense one, it did not remain a silent one for long. Kite had only made it a couple of minutes into the glacier when he heard a rustling rumble from up ahead where the glacial ravine curved slightly. Not long after, a great mass of snow came surging from around the bend, heading straight for Kite. While it at first looked like an avalanche, maws, claws and other means of tearing and rending started manifesting along its surface; snowy appendages capped with sharp ice. That the thing’s aura was bronze-rank was the only reason for Kite to even entertain the thought of standing his ground.

“My path will not be shifted by the world, but learn from it,” he murmured as he waited for the mass to come closer. Judging the distance to be a good place to start, Kite decided to further limit his foe’s movement.

“Wall.”

Force walls started springing up in front of him, even though the panes of force did not entirely close off all of the crevasse. Instead, Kite spaced them out with a few meters between them and left gaps in them which were wide enough for him to sidestep through.

“Time to test the waters, chilly as they may be,” he thought, staff already appearing in a downwards swing to adjust for the confines. Void-Sunders-Firmament was projected, the strike unable to miss the roiling mass coming toward him. Still, Kite noted that the spatial tears of the attack weren’t overly effective versus the amorphous thing. It reached his first little roadblock, and while it had no trouble in squeezing through, Kite at least found some satisfaction in that it did need to slow down.

“Attrition it is, then,” he thought, beginning a steady retreat back through the glacial crack while sending as steady a stream of attacks as possible into the avalanche-like monster clawing its way towards him. Calling it a running battle would be a bit too generous, as Kite could keep a steady walking pace backwards.

He quickly learned that while resonating force did not help much, disrupting force seemed better at affecting the thing. Disrupting strike, contrary to its name however, did not deal that much disruptive force damage unless Kite was actively shutting down magical effects, which the thing chasing him showed little sign of using. But Sage, on the other hand, definitely did.

Just as Kite had backed through the final little roadblock of his, he felt that the different charges were now all in place.

“Sage, if you please?” he asked, the astral gatherer silently hovering up above him. The first charge from the familiar became a blue beam of disrupting force damage, which carved through the mass of living snow with good effect. But it was the second charge, empowered by Potential of Stolen power, which truly made an impact.

In such close confines and against a foe of such volume, the chain-explosion of the scattered motes was devastating, and the battle was over in a rippling flash of blue. Even as he felt the aura fade, Kite still kept backing up, but it proved insufficient as the mass of rainbow smoke spread out in all directions. Even if most went upward, Kite still got his fair share of the most foul-smelling of substances, and needed almost a full minute afterwards to clear his head of the emotional damage the stench had inflicted.

“Good… job,” he eventually managed to wheeze, Sage remaining entirely unbothered by both smell and praise.

“Let us see what that thing left us then,” Kite mused once he actually dared to start forward again. It turned out that Fortune smiled upon him twofold; the disruptive force explosions had not damaged the icy walls enough to cause them to start collapsing, and it seemed like the lone monster was considered decently powerful, even though Kite did not get the chance to feel its capabilities up close, due to what if left behind.

“Quintessence of vastness, cold, ice and hunger,” the officiator confirmed as Kite categorized his haul.

Kite looked further down the corridor, imagining having to fight through scores of these things.

“Let us hope that I decide on other concepts for my path’s future, as I do not relish that thought in the slightest.”

Depositing the last of his camping supplies into his pack, Kite hastily left for the exit to the weird complex of buildings, their walls still exhibiting the odd changing of angles and the uncomfortable lack of causality in how many right turns one could reasonably take and still end up somewhere new.

“This only proves that roof over one’s head while resting is most overrated,” he grumbled, the limp of his partially mangled leg becoming less and less pronounced with each step as the healing pill and Kite’s own recovery attribute went to work. But his spirit attribute worked against him, his traitorous memory still remembering the tentacled thing with an impossible number of eyes which had suddenly appeared to yank him out from his bedroll by his right leg, the concealing formation apparently doing little to nothing against the monster.

“The queen, in her wisdom, wanted to challenge every aspect of oneself and one’s judgment.,” the officiator said sagely. “But your organic need for sleep is a most debilitating deficiency.”

Kite did not deign to reply to the statement, thoroughly feeling that the samples of quintessence of vision, eye, corruption and tentacle was so not worth the experience.

Even as the rain came down in sheets around the small bubble of protection from his enchanted hat, Kite still felt exhilaration as he cleaved through another of the slow-moving ominous dark projectiles, Pattern-Shattering counter dispelling yet another of the magical blasts. His foe, a lumbering effigy which looked like a series of ritualistic altars and other such implements strung together and animated into something akin to a slowly moving totem pole, continued producing new projectiles.

Kite suspected that for most other adventurers, the vicinity would soon be filled with rotating spheres of darkness to a degree which easily left one boxed in through sheer numbers. But against Kite, who could frequently remove one or more of said projectiles, that particular monster instead became something else; practice.

He strode back and forth among the scattered projectiles, blocking the occasional heavy swing with the barrier of heaven-and-void-warding while lashing out with a hand or a weapon as soon as an opportunity arose to strike and dispel a swirling dark orb.

“Trial-taker, it is most obvious that you will prevail here. Why do you not finish the clash?” the officiator at his side asked, uncaring for the violence around it.

“You have to strike while the iron is hot. An opportunity for me to practice like this is not too common.”

“I see neither iron nor forge. Is this another of those linguistic inefficiencies?”

By now, Kite knew better than to get into such a debate with the orb, instead only throwing it a slight grin before he continued, pressuring himself to try and clear all of the projectiles before the construct ahead of him could find the time or opportunity to make more. However, he did not quite succeed before the thing eventually fell as it was worn down by his counterattacks.

“Not this time either,” Kite muttered. “To realize my path, one would need to grow a pair of extra arms or two. Or just practice enough so that the number no longer matters.”

The officiator just watched him, silent as drops of rain slid down its smooth surface while barely leaving a trace.

“Fortunepleasekeepmeinyourfavor!” Kite blurted as he leapt, doing his best to ignore the vicious heat of the lava beneath him as he sailed out over the river of molten stone which had definitely not been there just a minute ago. The enchantments of his boots were already active, and the wind vortex of his fan swirling around him for all the speed and momentum he could muster.

“Ward!”

The barrier of Heaven-and-Void Warding appeared behind him just in time as the pursuing stream of lava, thick as Kite’s arm, impacted the barrier with eerie precision. Part of the heat still circumvented the shield, searing Kite’s back and neck, but he ignored it to instead focus on the landing. The shore of the lava river was steadily expanding, and the way it was progressing, Kite would not make it.

“Glint!”

His shout was accompanied by a mental image of what he hoped for the carp to do, and a split second later a glittering head stuck out of her bottle even if the mental sensation she sent back in return told him what she felt about the heat and dryness in the air.

Still, her magic surged as a ball of water was conjured a bit in front of Kite, splashing down over the edge of the lava river with a hissing and crackling sound. A split second later, Kite crashed down into the slab of fresh lava stone. Fortunately, the heated, molten rock had been shallow enough that it had been more like extending the shore rather than creating an actual platform, and he could easily let the momentum carry him forward and onto the rocky shores on the other side.

His expanded vision had shown him two more attempts at shooting the accurate streams of lava towards his back, but they had both fallen short as Kite was apparently now out of range of his assailant.

As the monster did not look as if it meant to give chase, Kite turned around to get a better look at it. It was something akin to a toad, but the size of a small cabin. Its skin looked as if it was wrought from the same lava stone as its surroundings, with molten cracks running along its back. Both of its bulbous, glowing eyes regarded Kite where he stood, but its bulky body seemed to neither be able to move swift nor easily, even for its silver rank.

“Fortune be praised,” Kite mumbled as he staggered away, leaving the lava frog behind and dispelling the remnants of a cage of force walls, which had held the foe for a few seconds after it had surprised Kite with its presence. He had truly thought it just another heated rock in the flaming landscape, but a molten, fiery tongue lashing out to injure Glint and the lava river it had conjured had quickly proved otherwise.

As he quickly moved to leave the geothermically active region, Kite could see that the monster, the ruler of that domain, once more laid itself down and became inactive.

“Still not quite there,” he thought, adding this encounter to the handful of others where he had happened upon the silver-ranked rulers of the regions. While some of his retreats had been made in good order, this was one that, like the ruler of the sky that very first day, had come close.

“You said that there were twelve rulers of this challenge?” Kite asked the officiator at his side. “I believe that there are quite a bit more different regions than that though?”

“That is correct. The rulers mesh several concepts. As such, not every region has one,” the officiator orb stated with its customary neutrality.

Kite nodded in response, thoughtful. The last week had been a blur of traveling and scouting, fighting most monsters he came across while fleeing from any of the silver-rankers. He had even found three essences, lightning, magic and harmonic, all hidden to various degrees. While Sage might have triggered more, Kite held off on having the familiar triggering more manifestations for the time being, as he would not be comfortable with the off chance that the astral gatherer would mistakenly give rise to yet another silver-ranker.

But with this region sampled, Kite thought that he should have most of what he needed to make an actual plan on how to go forward.

“Let us rest up, Glint, and then we’re making our way back to the outskirts between the forest and the lake. It’s time to truly take stock and make some decisions.”

“Well, someone seems to be enjoying themselves while others have lived in a burrow for the past week. How is that even fair~?”

“Welcome, Wander,” Braid responded from where he sat comfortably at a low desk, engrossed in a manual depicting different enchantments, ignoring the complaints of the small rat who had snuck onto the table next to him. A perk of working with her so long had inured him to most forms of surprise or being startled. But he had not sat entirely idle.

“How abo- oof!” Wander began, her form starting towards a tray of biscuits at the table only to run into a tangle of invisible threads. They gave off a slight blue shine upon contact, and Wander’s little body was quickly wrapped up in the magical mesh.

“Well- Braid. You- are- improving-,” the little rat squealed as she grunted in consternation while attempting to disentangle herself from the trap. Finally giving up, she relaxed, suspended a few centimeters above the table. “You totally weren’t that fast with your threads before. I could have sworn they weren’t here a moment ago~.”

“It's a new type I have been working with, so I am happy for the chance to test it out,” the threads’ controller said, the smile obvious in his voice.

“Oh, they’re not conjured ones?”

“No, so I have to have them on hand. But as you see, they are very responsive to me, reacting almost before my conscious mind has a chance to.”

“Well, they still won’t save one of those biscuits from me~!”

“Really, are you sure? You seem quite stuck,” Braid retorted, a note of pride in his voice.

“Yes, because if you don’t release me soon, I will just blow this body into a nice, messy puddle of gore all over your nice room~,” the rat said, her squeak veritably dripping in sweet victory.

True to her boast, the threads retracted after only a second of hesitation. Wander’s rat body landed on its feets and crossed the distance to the platter in the blink of an eye, soon happily munching away on a biscuit half the size of itself.

“So, how are things at the estates?” Braid asked sourly, the pride in his voice replaced by defeat.

“Oh, boring. Just people being people. Formal dinners and flaunting riches. One of the local silver rankers is having a sordid affair with an elder of a nearby crafting family, which would be quite the scandal if it went public. And the Pristine’s have apparently managed to rope in a poor sect disciple to serve them for a while in order to gain access to the gate. Poor sap. He seems like a decent enough kid, for a sect disciple at least~.”

“Which rank? Will he be trouble to Kite?”

“Meh, from the way the family elders are talking, they’ll let him ‘prove himself’ for at least a year. So unless Kite is really slow, things should be fine~.” Wander said dismissively.

“Assuming he makes it, exfiltration is the weakest part of our little plan,” Braid noted. “We’ll have to be prepared to assist at a moment’s notice.”

“Says the guy living a few kilometers away in comfort~.”

“I thought you said you liked burrows?”

“Well- I… Be silent, Braid~!”

Kite looked over the list in his hands again, comparing it to the many small piles of quintessence around him. Glint was floating next to the handful of smoke quintessence, interested in the swirling little chunks seemingly made of solid smoke somehow still able to move and churn slowly. Sage, on the other hand, seemed to dismiss the quintessence entirely, much more interested in a big leaf nearby with a gradual shift in coloration from blue to green to a clear white.

In his mind, Kite had started calling his current location ‘the mottled forest’, as most of the huge singular leaves growing there were shifting through myriad colors. Each leaf sat on a single stalk at least two decimeters thick, almost a tree in its own right. The small region was the borderlands between the edge of the lake in which he and Glint had made their hurried descent and a nearby lush forest of more unison green. It was mostly free of monsters, with the few he had seen being rather inattentive and thus unlikely to notice him inside his concealing formation.

This made the place the best candidate for some kind of base camp to Kite, with most other regions either too crowded with monsters or their environment too volatile in its own right. And it was here that Kite was making thorough plans.

“Well, if I ever happen to meet the vaunted queen, I will make sure to convey my utmost respect. That her creations have been able to assume control of the realm like this is surely a marvel. Any scholar of the right discipline would probably be able to lose themselves forever in understanding this place,” Kite told Glint, the carp’s response being only mild interest.

“And with such a treasure of quintessence, it would no doubt make many want to fill their coffers to the brim,” he continued, turning to the officiator. “This realm is much larger than the last I visited. Is that the gate’s doing?”

“The gate can only work with what the astral provides, hence my autonomy in creating a suitable challenge and adjusting it after the levels of magic available. Disclosing more is against protocol,” the orb answered.

“Still, the large variety of concepts available is most impressive,” Kite said, eyes sweeping over the different types of magic made manifest. From the simple elements of fire and air to more abstract concepts such as vast and harmonic. He had even found quintessence which the officiator identified as sin quintessence, which Kite thought sounded a bit too ominous for his taste. “And it is from these, and whatever else I can find out there, that I may choose?”

“Assuming you survive to claim them, yes. Have you come to a decision?”

“I think so,” Kite confirmed. “Or at least in part. There are many options, but I think I know the direction I hope to go. But I will have to make sure to strengthen myself more before taking on any of the rulers if I can help it. Every accidental encounter with one so far has left me humbled.”

He had spent much time reflecting on himself and his path during the past week, both in times of action and during moments of meditation. And while he did not need to fully commit yet, gathering the amount he would need of specific quintessence would require a lot more directed effort than just him meandering about the various regions. Glint did help him travel with some expediency, but as he suspected that the whole astral space was over a hundred kilometers across, a lack of direction would leave Kite in there for a long time.

And while he wasn’t in a specific hurry, the world outside beckoned too. He had many things he yet wanted to accomplish out there, and another suspicion that staying for too long might also not be too beneficial.

“What would happen if I were to reach silver rank while still inside the challenge?” Kite asked the officiator.

“The subsequent challenges would be adjusted, but the rewards would not. Only entering with a silver token will give appropriate rewards, should you succeed.”

“With adjusted, do you mean that gold-ranked entities would appear?”

“Yes, although the ambient magic would not allow for any great number. Parameters would have to be adjusted.”

“Another reason for me not to delay for too long, then,” Kite said, shuddering at the thought. He had never even seen a gold-ranked being, and suspected that even the weakest of them would be far, far above him.

Rising to his feet, he once more collected his little piles of treasure. If all went well, many, many more would line his pockets before he was done. Although one of the concepts he had in mind filled him with a bit of trepidation at the thought of gathering the amount needed.

“What is a challenge without properly testing yourself though?” he thought in an attempt to bolster his spirit.

Then Kite set out, ready to truly start taking on the challenge of the Jade-Sky gate. Knowing that his choices in the upcoming days and weeks might have a profound impact on his path was in part terrifying, the possibilities of mistakes many. But Kite tried his best to channel the concept gifted to him by his aunties, hoping that their faith in his spirit would hold up this time as well.

So when he left on Glint’s back, he did so with determination. Resolute.