[Severed Divinity] 76. Accelerated Plans

[ Sorry guys, it's been a month! I have been busy (I'm getting married in less than 2 weeks... ahhh) and I have also been workshopping this next section, rewriting parts of it with my editor's feedback. I'm finally happy with it, and I'm planning on releasing a chapter a day for the next seven days, to avoid evil cliff hangers. Thanks for being so patient! And I know you're all here for Menocht -- it isn't dropped, it's just hard to finish a series. You've all heard it before, but it's true, and I genuinely truly will finish it. It's disgustingly, pathetically close to completion!

Anyway, without further ado, here's the chap!]

Last time:
Welco reveals that he wants to take Isen as a direct disciple, and gives him a lesson to showcase the benefits of having Welco as a mentor. He goes over shadow techniques and general skill evolution.

Welco let Isen keep the wand to practice with. Denser shadows would make evolving a technique easier, but Isen would still need to largely figure the process out on his own. When Isen had pointed out that clan members could purchase manuals from the store with evolution pathways, the mage had just laughed and told him not to bother.

Apparently, it was better to come up with your own technique evolutions than to learn ones invented by others. It put a damper on Isen’s dreams of buying—or otherwise finding ways to acquire—every technique he could get his hands on.

Part of him wondered if the Legacy system might be able to help, though. The key issue Welco cited was difficulty mastering and upgrading techniques created by others. Simple techniques, like the basic clan offerings, were apparently quite difficult to make. They had to be basic enough that they could work for anyone, and serve as a baseline for people to evolve.

But the voice of Legacy had implied that there existed some kind of way for it to help evolve skills, just that Isen didn’t currently have access to it. He’d have to see when he returned to the Compass of Legacy.

After the session with Welco, Isen returned to the cultivation cave to top himself up after casting successive shadow steps the past hour. As he flew through the hall, he only dodged a sideward ambush at the last second, pivoting around.

“Freyan?” he asked. “Did you just try to attack me?”

“What?” she said. “No!” She crossed her arms. “I— I— I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh.”

She stared at the wall. “I’m just... confused. How are you so strong?” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “I’ve been trying so hard, my entire life. So why do I feel like such a failure?” By the end, her voice was trembling. “Never mind.”

She bolted.

Isen just stared after her, unsure what to do or say. Ultimately, it sounded like she had problems she needed to work through on her own.

When he emerged from the cultivation cave, it was dark. He returned to his room and paged through the alchemy book some more, though he respected Jorin’s request for him to hold off on any practical applications for now.

Then, he felt it. A subtle urging for him to go.

It was time to sneak out of the sect again.

It was easier to leave than to enter. Isen approached the wall—made out of the ubiquitous white rock that was resistant to shadow step phasing—and donned his mask, cowl, and gloves. He also changed out of his sect robes, exchanging them for the clothes he’d stolen from the safehouse. He stashed the uniform by the wall, concealed within a bag in a tree hollow. He patted his belt, making sure his weapons and the pouch holding the healing pills were all hidden.

He activated shadow cloak and scaled the wall. The clan was out in full force tonight, like yesterday, so Isen patiently waited for just the right moment before swooping over the edge and falling outside. Like before, he carefully controlled the ambient energy around himself to not set off any alarms, since he didn’t have the secondary clan pin worn by adults.

He followed the same rough path as the previous night, descending to the primary level.

Then he waited.

Fifteen minutes later, Lumina’s mind touched his own.

“Isen, do you have news?”

“I want to renegotiate,” he said. “Before, I said I’d acquire the cosmovault and bring it to you in exchange for a personal favor and one of your prototypes that I can use.”

“What would you like instead?”

“Not instead,” Isen said. “In addition.”

“... What?” He sensed annoyance in her tone.

“Your legacy... but a version that would work for a tier three mage.”

“I’m not dim,” she replied. “You intend to bribe Welco.”

“Is that not allowed?”

She didn’t have an immediate response. “I don’t have a working version for tier three mages,” she replied begrudgingly. “I suspect that’s the real reason why Shor Mei has been so disinterested.”

“What about in the future?”

“If my research makes what Welco seeks possible, and he provides me the materials himself, then I will help him. But I wonder if he can truly be trusted. He is an opportunist, loyal to no one but himself. You witnessed yourself how quickly he betrayed his ally.”

“Do we have another choice?” Isen asked. “If you don’t need what he seized from Celavee...”

“All alternatives are worse,” she replied harshly.

Isen frowned. “Why not just tell Shor Mei that you’re still alive?” Isen said. “They should selfishly want you to finish your research, and should have at least one tier four to send, right?” Isen assumed so since Shor Mei was the largest city in the Elven Lands.

“Because I’m not fully alive,” the queen replied. “Not yet. If there was a way to contact a Shor Mei tier four directly, I would do so and request aid. There isn’t. I would need to use public channels, exposing myself. My greatest defense at the present is that everyone thinks I’m dead.”

“Are you worried that Welco would expose your existence?”

“Not particularly. I can’t see how it would be in his self-interest, since I need to be alive to complete my research. He might assume that I’m lying, and have a prototype that will work on him... but he has no way to be sure. The safest way to ensure he gets what he desires is to support me.”

“What about saving the city?” Isen wondered. “If you get what you need from Welco, what happens to Eldrassin City?”

“That isn’t your concern.”

Isen prickled at the answer. How was it not his concern? Still, he’d gotten what he wanted: permission to barter with Welco, a strategy that he guessed would have a much higher rate of success than trying to steal from him.

Isen returned to the clan in haste and made straight for Welco’s mansion after putting his clan uniform back on. The hour was late, but Welco should be awake, or so Isen figured.

He knocked on the door.

No response.

He knocked again, and still nothing. He felt for the door knob, invisible from all the shadow energy, and turned it.

Locked.

Gods damn it.

***

For the third time in a full day’s cycle, Isen found himself outside the sect in the primary level.

Lumina contacted him faster this time. “What is it?”

“Welco’s gone,” Isen replied. “I think he’s acting tonight.”

“I’ll make Allezin aware. You should return to the clan before people notice your absence.”

“They won’t notice,” Isen insisted. “I want to help.”

“You cannot.”

“I can! If you’re going after Welco, I can talk to him. He wants to take me as a direct disciple,” Isen blurted. “And he promised Allezin that he’d keep me safe. He won’t kill me.”

“... He wants to take you as a direct disciple? You’re a cultivator.”

“That’s what he said.”

Lumina was quiet for a solid thirty seconds. “Allezin will collect you. Where you’re going, I won’t be able to sustain contact. Listen to everything he tells you.”

“I will,” Isen promised.

Lumina’s mind faded. Isen waited, his body pressed to a rooftop.

Suddenly, he sensed the arrival of another. He turned his head and beheld Allezin’s imperious form, black metal in the dark, limned in silver moonlight. His helmet was on, shielding his expression.

“Didn’t think I’d see you tonight,” Allezin said, his voice low.

“Likewise.”

The warrior gestured to his shoulders. “You know the drill.”

Isen groaned internally, but walked behind Allezin and hopped up, wrapping his arms around the warrior’s neck.

The elf shot off like a missile, bounding over the rooftops. After a few minutes, he set Isen down. Now that the world wasn’t a blur, Isen could properly see the surroundings.

Before them stretched a beautiful palace shorn from the white rock. It was its own island, separate from the other tiers of the city. A small footbridge led over a precipitous drop.

Was this the queen’s residence?

“You’ve been in Clan Femera a few days now,” Allezin said, speaking in a hushed tone. “Can you use any of their techniques?”

“Shadow fist, shadow cloak—”

“That’s the one. Show me it now.”

Isen cloaked himself in shadows. After working with the wand, he’d gotten a better sense of what a more intense shade should look like. He’d realized that his main issue was stability—sometimes his shadows were deep and nearly impenetrable, and other times translucent, like a thin veil.

Still, in the depths of the night, unless someone was a tier three or using an optical enhancement technique that worked in the dark, even his relatively shoddy shadow cloak was effective.

“Stop. That’s good enough.” He pointed at the palace. “We’re going in there through a secret entrance. Once we’re inside, we’ll need to move covertly. You should channel shadow cloak while riding on my back. And if you ever see any of Welco’s shadows, tell me immediately.”

Isen performed a cursory glance then—nothing. “How long will I need to hold shadow cloak?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

Isen blanched. “I can’t hold it that long.”

“Can you hold it for five?”

Even two days ago, he would’ve considered it impossible, but he’d improved a lot with Jorin and Welco’s help. It would be a stretch, but if he wasn’t moving, and could fully focus on holding the technique... “Yes.”

The warrior nodded. “It’ll have to do.” Suddenly, the man’s armor disappeared. Isen could only see Allezin because the energy parted around him.

It didn’t seem like a technique, but a feature built into the metal. Isen hadn’t known an active ability like that was possible. Enchantments moved further up on his list of things to look into when he had more time.

Isen jumped onto his back.

“You could at least act like you had trouble seeing through a tier three enchantment...” Allezin muttered.

Isen smiled and cast shadow cloak.

Then they were off.