Rising Kite - A story from the world of HWFWM

Kite felt the humming increase in his bracers even as he exchanged more blows with his semi-simian opponent, his staff meeting the savage, swift jabs of the bamboo spear. While the monster, the six-legged monkey creature he had faced before during his scouting, fought with furious abandon it was surprisingly measured in its strikes and motions.

This was further driven home as Kite touched his charged bracers together, only for the simian warrior to sense the danger and dodge deftly to the side. Kite only had the time to adjust briefly, making the powerful detonation only mangle two of the monster’s six legs instead of hitting it squarely in the torso as he had intended.

Sensing a warning from Glint, he saw that the second of the monsters had just started to break free from the carp’s watery confinement. The mostly wasted expense of mana stung a bit, but Kite was not deterred.

“One at a time, if you please?” he quipped, the walls of leyline warding appearing around himself and his target to give them a little bit more privacy. The monster did not seem to appreciate the isolation, coming at Kite again with barely any loss of speed from the two broken legs. Its thrust met the barrier of Heaven-and-Void Warding, recoiling as Kite had already begun a swing of his own.

The rings atop Immutable Echo chimed gently even as the staff violently impacted the midsection of the monster, the creature leaping backwards only to take a projected sword slash. It managed to partially block the strike, but the subsequent rending damage caused both the bamboo spear and part of its shoulder to be forcefully torn apart.

While the second monster howled, now tearing into Kite’s force walls with abandon from the outside, the bronze-ranker moved in to finish the wounded beast only to be forced to jerk swiftly to one side as the simian warrior deftly threw one half of the broken spear at him in a fluid motion. The surprisingly sharp bamboo spear left a fine line of broken skin across Kite’s cheek, but Kite used the sidestep to pivot and launch yet another attack with his staff, with a beam from Sage finishing off the staggering monster.

“At least it could not break out to harvest another weapon,” he mused as he took a second to center himself. It was a bit annoying that the monsters, apparently very much in tune with their environment, did not conjure their spears but instead harvested them from their surroundings. Their innate magic let them handle the simple weapon with surprising ease and lethality, and as it was not something which Kite could affect with his dispels he was left fighting them the old-fashioned way of clashing armaments.

Getting a mental confirmation from Glint, Kite struck out just as the many-legged monkey was enveloped in another sphere of restraining water. His staff impacted the wall, sending resonating waves outwards as the barrier shattered, and it remained simple work to finish of the remaining monster, restrained as it was.

“Splendidly done, little beauty,” Kite said as Glint came floating over to him proudly after the second monster fell still. “I just might have to forego your assistance in the future at times, or I might just stagnate as the might of your water turn each and every enemy into a trifle.”

Glint preened at the praise, but her budding realization of the meaning of his words was interrupted by the sudden burst of rainbow smoke from the two corpses. Both Kite and his familiar fled at top speed from the malodorous discharge, and only closed in again once the clouds had well and truly scattered.

As he bent down to collect the quintessence, one in particular he took extra care to gather and stow in a separate pouch.

“Trial-taker, I have noticed that you have continuously separated the adept quintessence from the rest of the gatherings here,” the officiator noted. “Is that something which you intend to choose for your path?”

“I believe so,” Kite confirmed, finishing collecting the last handfuls of the small shards of magic.

“Please elaborate.”

The statement had a kind of severity to it which caught Kite a bit by surprise. It had been delivered in the same neutral tone in which the construct always seemed to speak, yet had an up until now unheard gravitas.

Seeing no reason to deny it, Kite answered. “My path so far seems to remain one of judgment, at least in part. To know when and how to deploy both power and positioning, when to intervene and when to trust my surroundings. When to be a relentless negating force and when to become a reactive bulwark. And after many of my mentors giving me similar counsel; that silver rank will see even more of this as everything just becomes more complex and potent, I thought that I would want to lean into the concept of mastery even further.

While adding simplicity and straight-forwardness would be useful, in the end I do not believe that is what will give me the best foundation for the future, but instead to see just how far my , hopefully, growing skills can take me and those whose paths align with mine.”

The orb hovered in place, unspeaking but giving the impression of watching and listening very intently. As Kite finished, the officiator remained silent for a handful more seconds before replying.

“Your statement has been recorded.”

As the wind vortex from his enchanted fan faded, Kite landed and slid a bit through the sand, his feet leaving a pair of grooves. Even though he had visited what he assumed was a desert domain several times, so much sand gathered in one place still seemed so foreign to Kite. And the golden dunes were almost nothing like the small banks that sometimes formed in crooks of streams up in the autumn lands. It was an exotic place that definitely had its own kind of beauty, but Kite felt mostly consternation as he looked to one of the bigger dunes and remembered his retreat from what waited beyond.

“It's not even one of the rulers, yet my path is currently lacking,” he grumbled sourly.

Glint, who hovered next to him, sent a consoling feeling through their bond, and Kite idly reached out to stroke her scales while looking back with a thoughtful expression even as the numerous small rents and bites across his body were gradually healing. At least the poison had been cleansed, his enchanted cloak left behind as a growing clutch of fungi as a distraction.

“This is your second attempt in as many days, trial-taker,” the officiator noted. “Are you intending to change your goals?”

“No, not yet,” Kite said, with a shake of his head. “While I had hoped that my earlier techniques for this kind of situation would hold firm, the heavens have seen fit to prove that I need to be ready for even more kinds of tribulations than I previously thought. And I believe that I have at least two more ways to go; one more costly and the other more risky.”

“Which one will you attempt next, then?”

In response, Kite couldn’t help but smile a bit wistfully. “The one which would make many of my loved ones chastise me greatly. But it will have to wait until my cloak has grown back, as I would very much like its assistance this time around as well.”

He opened his hand and looked down to the thing which he had swiped from the ground during his retreat; a collection of tiny shards shimmering through every hue imaginable. The small fragments had a strange quality, looking as if they were a multitude of separate objects, yet Kite could not separate any of them from the others even as they flowed and shifted around one another.

“I still need more of these, after all,” he finished, putting the myriad quintessence into its designated pouch.

“Dragonfly, are you sure?” Will asked softly as the pair made their way back towards the small encampment the group had set up before. “To me, they look like most other adventurers working together which I have seen. They are both competent and seem to get along well, but I don’t think that I have seen anything… improper… between them.”

“Are you sure that you haven’t blinded yourself on one of your own spears, lately?” Dragonfly retorted. “I mean, just look at them!”

A bit further ahead, the group’s camp had come into view. Serene was calmly seated atop a nearby boulder, meditating, while Worth Transcending Gold was busy arranging a series of large logs into a seating area close to the heating lamp. They did not seem to speak, but both Will and Dragonfly could hear Serene’s humming song, joined by a smooth basso voice.

“They… seem to be doing quite ordinary things,” Will noted, still confused. “And isn’t it great that Serene has found someone who can at least partially keep up with her songs? Now that she can do that thing where she splits her voice, adding a third to it just makes camp more pleasant, no?”

“You’re- I- Will, you are completely missing the point,” Dragonfly said, exasperated.

“Which point? Gold has been nothing but stoic and professional during the outings where he has joined us so far. And those armor techniques of his are quite impressive. I still can’t believe that he managed to deflect some of my thrusts during sparring. We shou-”

“I just realized who I am talking to,” Dragonfly grumbled, interrupting the spearman before he could go off on another musing about technique and other martial topics. “You wouldn’t know matters of the heart even if they leapt up and stabbed you in the face.”

“Why, Dragonfly, you wound me!” Will protested. “Give me hints of a proper courting of high standing any day. But this-” he said, gesturing towards the unchanging scene before them,” - is clearly something that is either too base for me to comprehend or something which might just be exactly what it looks like; two adventurers of differing paths getting along.”

Dragonfly was somewhat chastised by her friend’s protests, but she still looked at the camp ahead with suspicion. “You might be right… But it's- it's just that they’re so harmonious. You can almost feel it when you’re close to them. Or apparently not,” she finished at Will’s questioning look.

“I miss Kite,” Dragonfly grumbled. “Some straightforward earnestness would be a nice change of pace by now.”

“It is time, little beauty. Please stay inside your bottle unless I call for you. I am afraid that there is less that you can do to help me in this, and what I am about to do is best endured by me alone.”

Glint gave Kite a worried little wobble in response, but still swam inside her bottle as was the plan. Kite gave the bottle a reassuring squeeze before he steeled himself, taking the final few steps to crest one of the bigger sand dunes. The white and somewhat dispersed light from above lit up the exotic landscape in all its golden glory, with dunes of sand looking like a wavy sea frozen in time.

But beneath the dune, further off in the distance, there was a dark stain on the golden surface. And as Kite flared his aura in challenge, the stain started to move towards him. Even from over a hundred meters away, Kite could hear the rustling as multitudes of small legs propelled a swarm of diminutive bodies forward in scuttling movement and small leaps.

He did not know what they were called, but each of the tiny, bronze-ranked insects had long, serrated back legs and a pair of venomous mandibles. They moved as a swarm, each one weak but the collective was quite a different thing. While Eternal Quartz, one of Kite’s newest additions to his arsenal, was made to help him combat multiple foes, its hail of shards was better suited by far to deal with opponents that were at least larger than Kite’s hand.

“Heavens preserve me,” Kite thought as a weapon appeared in his hand, most of its chain looped around his left arm while he let the heavy head dangle from his right. The round head of the meteor hammer had ridges interspersed around it, and was now decorated with miniscule pieces of glittering metal forming abstract shapes which made the mind imagine the swirling winds of a sandstorm.

As the swarm closed in, he started to swing the head in lazy circles, gradually speeding up as the chittering mass started climbing the dune on which he was standing. From previous experience, Kite knew that he would have to time this just right to ensure that his hard work was not undone in short order. And he also knew that this would be unpleasant.

“Ward!”

Without stopping his preparations, the barrier of Heaven-and-Void Warding appeared before him, dilated to its maximum diameter. A moment later, the first leaping insect crashed into it before skittering off, followed by many more. With the vanguard blocked, the swarm quickly started flowing around it instead.

And unlike earlier attempts, Kite remained standing where he was even as the first painful bites started finding their way in through chinks or weaker parts of his armor. He activated the damage reduction of Unyielding, and kept channeling mana into it to extend its duration to lessen the damage.

“Just a little bit more. Come in close, all of you,” he thought, mind straining not to start panicking as the swarm made its way up his torso and he felt the numerous tiny bites and rents also leaving behind their toxin.

Kite’s first attempt at taking on the swarm had left him with the brutal lesson that was the insectoid monsters’ nature; unless he killed all of them swiftly, their mere presence would cause others to swiftly start manifesting out of the sand as their tiny bodies regenerated. He had cut them, crushed them and even had Glint drown them. Sage’s empowered barrage had been effective, but not effective enough as the swarming collective was great at sensing the incoming danger and scattering.

“Sometimes, pain is what paves the path to success,” Kite groaned between clenched teeth, focusing to keep his breathing calm in his combat meditation.

Finally, just as he felt skittering movement closing in on his throat, his expanded vision relayed that the swarm had properly closed in on him, not a single insectoid monster further away than five meters.

“Wall!”

Even while the walls of force coalesced around them, boxing in Kite and the swarm in a cube around seven meters to each side, he activated his boots to spring forward, the sudden motion throwing off many of the small insectoids climbing his body. Kite’s boot had barely touched down as he pivoted and swung downwards, giving a bit more chain to the spinning meteor hammer.

And as the head of the weapon impacted the ground square in the center of the cube, it showed its true nature and the reason for its name.

WWJS:

[Item] Fulminating Sirocco

Meteor Hammer

Bronze rank - epic

[Effect] Pay a cost of extreme mana to charge the head of this hammer with unstable energies to release the contained storm within. This will detonate the head, creating an area of swirling sand and arcing lightning which deals high ongoing physical and lightning damage within the area for a moderate duration. The head will reform after this effect is done and can be reattached to the chain. Cooldown: 6 hours

[Effect] The one carrying the chain of this weapon will have the sand fragments of the storm avoid them, and suffer greatly reduced damage from the lightning of said storm.

Like Kite’s bracers, the enchantments of Fulminating Sirocco had been condensed into very few effects, driven to new heights by the addition of a steep cost. But from his earlier uses of the weapon, Kite knew it to have been worth it, even if this would be the first time he properly tested out the second part of its effects.

The head of the hammer detonated outward, scattering fragments which soon broke down into small specks of sand which immediately started swirling as if caught in a harsh sandstorm. Half a breath later, a web of crackling lightning started spreading from the fulminating orb of energy left at the point of impact, the glowing flashes chaining between the flying motes of sand and everything else in its vicinity. This turned the shredding sand to glowing specks of glass, a maelstrom of searing pinpricks with new cascades of lightning arcing between them every other heartbeat.

From a distance, the effects had been transfixing. And from within, they were terrifying. Kite and the swarm was kept neatly boxed up next to the small shredding storm which he had voluntarily unleashed, and even though the chain still wrapped around his arm protected him from the worst of it, he still felt the uncomfortable tingling of as some of the lightning damage kept breaking through the resistance provided. But the swarm undoubtedly had it worse.

As soon as the detonating had occurred, the survival-minded creatures had attempted to scatter, to no avail as they kept bouncing off the walls of force while their small bodies were torn asunder by molten glass or seared by coruscating lightning. The damage to the force walls was mounting as well, but from the looks of things so far, Kite’s plan had worked.

It did not take long for the swarm to die, maybe a dozen seconds. The storm would keep going for a dozen more, and as the last of the insect monsters perished, Kite let his walls drop and staggered out himself. His limbs were twitching and he felt quite sore, but looking back at the charred husks of the swarm behind him, he also felt triumphant. Had even one of them escaped, he might have been forced to wait for another attempt.

“Not the most finesseful approach, but it is hard to argue with results,” Kite mused to himself as he finally walked back to the scene of carnage when the head of Fulminating Sirocco had once more snapped back together. The sand beneath was molten and scorched, with surprisingly beautiful branching patterns left behind. And more importantly, quintessence was scattered across the dune as well; insect and myriad in satisfyingly great amounts.

Glint exited her bottle after a while, helping the rather singed Kite to gather up the treasures through a glob of water which kept absorbing shard after shard before levitating it over to him.

“Thank you, little beauty,” he said, letting his cloak absorb the last of the poison in his system before falling to the ground to grow another mushroom colony fed by the afflictions of his enemies. Kite straightened and relaxed as the unpleasant numb tingling of the poison subsided, and looked out over the dunes.

“And soon, I will have to do it all over again…”

That very same night, Kite sat meditating, his body sore and his spirit soaring. He had managed to take down another swarm, netting himself even more of the vaunted myriad quintessence.

“Trial-taker, is it the myriad quintessence which you aim to use to further your path?”

He opened his eyes, feeling the attention of the officiator upon him as if the orb had read his mind.

“It is,” Kite confirmed, otherwise remaining seated in his meditative position.

“Please elaborate.”

There it was again; the same gravitas and severity hinted in the orb’s tone. Once more, Kite acquiesced.

“If it is one thing my path has lacked, it has been the option to handle many things at a time, be it foes or tasks. It often feels like I need to do many things at once, or to be in many places at once, and I believe that the concept of myriad would give me a chance to both shore up that weakness and further the potential of the meditative trance I have already touched upon. To always have a hand to spare, or an intervention ready. All around me, in many ways at once.”

Once more, there was a brief silence before the officiator seemed to have digested his words.

“Your statement has been recorded.”

As the orb seemed to be satisfied, Kite fell back into meditation. He had felt something budding inside him for a while now, and he was aiming to help it break through the metaphorical surface. And as he sat there beneath the great mottled leaf, something within him broke through an unseen barrier.

Bronze light welled out from him, with just a little more hint of silver mixed into it. Smiling, Kite let his eyes remain closed as he mumbled;

“The same order as last time.”

WWJS:

Congratulations!

Your ability [Something from Nothing] has reached Silver 0.

[Something from Nothing] has received additional effects.

- Something from Nothing -

Special ability. Cost: None Cooldown: None Current rank: Silver 0

Effect - Iron: Every time you defeat an enemy, a fragment of their essence is kept in a personal metaphysical space. When enough fragments have been gathered, they will manifest into a semi-random item. The item will be influenced by the fragments which have constituted it and the amount of fragments needed will vary.

Effect - bronze: Ability can produce bronze rank items, and results are more in line with subconscious wishes. Gathering more fragments after the threshold for manifestation has been reached will increase the chance of higher rarity items, up to a certain limit.

Effect - silver: Ability can produce silver rank items. Gathered fragments may now instead be infused to grant a temporary boost to a piece of equipment, raising its power for a time depending on the amount of fragments consumed.

As he focused his senses on the new development, Kite had to admit that he was a bit surprised. Something from Nothing had shown a rather predictable trajectory judging by its bronze rank effect, but not that he was complaining. Upon ascending to silver, it seemed to have even more potential in a way he had not expected. Being able to use the gathered fragments for a burst of potential in the moment might often seem less preferable than to wait for potential long-term gains, but Kite had been in enough desperate or unexpected situations to know that just having this option could be decisive.

He had actually been of a mind to manifest something as soon as the power was capped out, but as of reaching the next rank, the space where the remnants of his foes’ magic were stored had grown as well, now having the potential to manifest something of silver rank. Therefore, he chose to wait.

“Patience in exchange for quality, either in sudden power or permanent manifestation. A choice that has to be weighed well,” Kite mused, opening his eyes to look out over the forest of giant leaves and the unchanging light filtering down from above. “This might also be something which takes me a significant step closer to taking down one of the rulers of this trial.”

Imagining his path before his mind’s eye, the road towards the unseen heavens felt just a little bit more solid and tangible.

“One brick at a time.”

A flick of Kite’s wrist made his staff connect with the afterimage of the scythed arm, Pattern-Shattering counter dispersing the phantom limb even as Kite blocked another with a barrier.

His foe, a hulking, bear-like bipedal thing with scythed arms and glossy, gray skin roared and Kite could see its mana flare as not one but five new translucent afterimages formed, the claws all slashing towards him through different angles. Instead of meeting them all head on, he decided that a slight retreat would be more prudent.

At Kite’s back was one of the seemingly petrified trees which littered the cave system in which he had found himself, their stone branches melding into the cave’s ceiling above. The glowstone floating above Kite was the only source of light in the caverns which he had traveled through, casting stark, eerie shadows all around them.

The monster before him must have thought Kite cornered as it stepped aggressively towards him with the attack, but it soon learned otherwise. As his back connected with the pillar, Kite let some mana leave him, Implacable motion making him crash through the pillar-like tree as if it was made of brittle plaster. Chunks of stone rained down as the monster half stumbled forward, but Kite was already in motion again.

His staff lashed out, sending a projected strike carrying Void-Sunders-Firmament up into the pillar above, the spatial tears instantly sundering a great length of the still suspended trunk of the stone pillar. It crashed down onto the head and shoulders of the monster, bearing the beast to the ground. While the weight lacked the intent and inherent magic to inflict full damage, mass was still mass, and the impact left the monster stunned and shambling on the ground.

More afterimages of its flailing limbs blurred around it as it thrashed, and Kite did not take his chances with wading back into melee. Instead, he kept his distance and closed out the fight through projected attacks and a beam of force from Sage, and was soon able to claim his prize in dark, echo, bear and claw quintessence.

“From your actions, you seem to be singling out more quintessence from here, trial-taker. Have you decided on another concept which you hope to add to your path?”

“I-” Kite began, on his way to answering the officiator when he noticed something. Interrupting himself, he instead went over to see if it was his eyes playing tricks on him, but no, there was indeed something odd among the remnants of the stone tree he had crashed through there at the end. Because, it turned out that the ‘trunk’ was hollow. Amongst the rubble and scattered chunks of stone, a gaping hole had been revealed, about one meter across. It led almost entirely straight downward. And further down, Kite thought that he noticed a faint green-tinted light breaking the darkness.

Looking upward, he saw nothing but darkness in the hollow trunk, so he turned his attention back down. The officiator had not commented, and Kite got the feeling that it would not divulge anything more on the matter. His curiosity piqued, he then did the only sensible thing in a situation such as this; he fastened a rope to a nearby stone tree and started descending. While he had plenty of means with which to slow his fall, it would still be foolish not to leave a more simple way of getting back up.

Fortunately, the descent into the depths beneath the caverns was not very long, as the tunnels were quite claustrophobic. Once Kite had sent Glint ahead of him to check that it was not simply another hazard waiting for him, he eventually touched down on the floor of another cavern.

It was a lot smaller than the one above, around ten meters across, but it also broke the monotony of the caverns above in another regard; the giant knot of roots which seemed to cradle something within their midst. The green glow seemed to emanate from within that knot, but was further added to by the green barrier which waited like an emerald haze around it.

“Well, what is this then?” Kite mused as he went closer, trying to take in the whole room at once. The officiator remained silent, so his musings remained a monologue. “There was the mention of additional treasures for the perceptive, and I am curious if this might be one of them.”

He took a while to inspect the room more thoroughly before continuing. “From the glow of some of the roots, they might in some way be related to this barrier.” This was only pure conjecture on his part, but as the hue of the energies matched and he thought himself able to detect a little more flow of magic within them, he was happy to use it as an initial theory. “If I can locate where they emerge above, maybe I can find a way to affect this?”

“That would indeed be a reasonable hypothetical scenario,” the officiator stated, surprising Kite by breaking its earlier silent treatment.

“Then we shall see how it finds this solution,” Kite thought to himself, turning to the orb and speaking aloud. “Then, before I go, I will at least want to test my path against the obstacle, as I am sure you can understand.”

“That is not nece-” the orb began, but Kite was already turning. A dagger shaped a lot like a sharp seed appeared in his hand, and he stabbed it into the barrier in one swift motion, where it soon sprouted a beautiful blue flower, roots and vines hungrily spreading across the barrier’s surface.

Kite watched the flower grow, keeping a confident smile on his lips while he was inwardly wondering just how big the Boundary-devouring Lotus could become. He knew from his own trials and his discussions with his mentors that it should be unable to take care of an actively powered defense or something powered by high ambient magic. And while the trial was indeed potent, there were a lot of different things inside which the magic had to fuel, and Kite was hoping that this particular barrier was not deemed important enough.

Over the next half an hour, his lotus had kept growing to a hitherto unseen size. Kite had actually had to back up a few meters, the barrier barely visible beneath the growing plants.

“Maybe I overestimated the lotus a bit?” he thought to himself, but a few minutes later there was a sudden shift. Part of the mass of the lotus fell inward, and its tendrils started to flail about in search of new sustenance. As he made his way forward, Kite noticed that the glow on some of the roots he had previously seen had now dimmed to nothing, and as he got closer, he saw that the barrier was indeed gone.

“Sometimes one’s path triumphs unexpectedly in the face of adversity,” he said, unable to help a bit of smugness leaking into his voice as he reached into the tangle of roots, his questing hand finding something within.

As he withdrew his hand, he found what looked like a solid, perfect drop of amber in his palm. It was the size of a pinecone, and radiated a potent sense of life caught in stasis, as if it was frozen in time.

Throughout all this, Kite had gotten a steadily growing sense of judgmental consternation from the officiator, but the orb did apparently not deign to comment on his solution of the situation. But when he held the amber drop out with a questioning look, it did speak up.

“Well, trial-taker, a prize claimed will have to be a prize earned. That is called Amber of the Frozen Moment. It is on par with one of the treasures you will have to claim from the rulers of this land, and carries the concepts of life, resolution and time.”

“So this could be used instead of defeating one of the rulers?” Kite asked.

“No, but up to two such treasures may be used in addition to the three required from the rulers of the challenge.”

“Wait, more can be added? Why did you not tell me earlier?”

“Some pieces of information must be earned through deeds, trial-taker. I have given you the essentials, as well as some helpful hints, but some things you will have to discover for yourself.”

In response to this, Kite couldn’t help it as a groan escaped his lips, as he realized that he would not be able to just ignore this new piece of information going forward. If this was here, what other additional treasures might he find if he looked more thoroughly?

“This… This challenge will probably take longer than expected.”