Chapter 72 - The Cursed Effigy IV

A dozen dead turtles later, Claire emerged from the tunnel to find herself standing atop a cliff. The scene before her was an endless expanse of water, a sparkling archipelago, a shallow sea dotted with a thousand tiny isles, each home to no more than a score of broad-leafed tropical trees. They were palms, the bizarre beach trees that she so often saw in paintings of the sea. Roughly level with the clifftop were three distinct floating territories, arranged in a triangular formation with one in front and two to the rear. If not for the thick stone chains tethering them down to the ground—and each other— they likely would have taken off and risen beyond the clear blue skies.

Each airborne district featured its distinct biome. The closest was a flattened savannah, an orange field that reminded her of fresh hay, ready for harvest. Countless monsters wandered the landscape. Mammals, reptiles, and even one-legged, hopping birds. All tiny details when compared to the massive, long-necked deer towering over the plains. Each of the twenty meter tall cervids sported a crown of life, a pair of antlers whose tips blossomed into large leafy branches. Creatures of all shapes and sizes flocked to the half-mammalian plants, seeking to eat the fruits that hung from their horns.

Log Entry 1798
Catgirl Detector V. 0.32 has reached level 6.

Thanks Box, I really needed to know that those weird deer tree things are 17% catgirl.

By contrast, the island on the left had not a flat piece of land in sight. The treeless stone forest was less lively, inhabited by only a select few creatures. The vast majority of its occupants, four-winged eagles, hovered around the tips of the large spiky rocks. Grasses and shrubs bloomed in the spaces between the igneous protrusions, but there seemed not a trace of wildlife among them. And for good reason. The vegetation was shrouded in an ominous purple mist that not even the birds of prey dared approach.

The smallest chained domain—the citadel—was one of few natural features. It looked as would a ruined fortress or an ancient castle town, half destroyed by its enemies and left to rot. Though large enough to contain a city, the once-great structure had been reduced to piles of rubble with only a few livable spaces remaining. Defiled by streaks of rust and grime, the walls carried only the slightest hint of the white that they were once dyed, while vines and other plants had reclaimed nearly every other man-made structure in Primrose’s name. They were flourishing, their flowers bright and ever present, potentially a result of an elven influence.

“Woah, Al wasn’t kidding. This place is tiny!” said Sylvia.

Though intending to object at first, Claire changed her mind upon considering the fox’s perspective. The peninsula was to the swamp-forest what a cup was to a pitcher. She could practically see the end of the ocean; the horizon was much closer, not nearly as infinitely far away as the marsh’s distant border. Not even the vertical space provided much in the name of expansion. There were only three islands, and the second upside down biome was missing altogether. The floating rocks covered about twice the area of the mountain she had climbed, and the archipelago itself was hardly any larger.

Having taken the sights in, the bloodthief shook the water out of her hair and made for the chain attached to the cliff.

“Wait wait wait! You can’t do that! The chains are off limits!”

“Why?”

“You’ll set off one of the lords if you step on them!”

“The lord of the chasm?”

“Not that one, a different one! Every floor’s got at least three.” The fox raised her tail and split its end into a trio of distinct fluffballs. “And one of them is the lord of the chains. It’s a super strong bird thingy and you really don’t want to fight it!”

“Then how do we get to the citadel?” Claire turned her eyes to the floating fortress as she continued. “I can’t fly.”

“Uhhh… you can’t? That’s gonna make things a bit awkward,” admitted the fox. “Hmmm… Then I dunno how you’re supposed to get there.”

“I thought you said you had a map.”

“I do! But it has routes I’m not supposed to show the torches, and I don’t know which ones are which!”

“Useless fox,” grumbled the lyrkress.

“I’m not useless! I can’t just let you cheat!” said Sylvia.

Ignoring the vixen, the half-snake walked over to the cliff’s edge and sat down as she considered her options. Catgirl Detector seemed to be telling her that the centaurs she rescued were hanging around the run-down castle. Given that neither of them were of the winged variety, their presence suggested that there was at least one viable way up, but looking around the floating island’s base failed to provide any clues. There weren’t any elevators or teleporters anywhere in its immediate vicinity, not that the halfbreed would have wanted to use either. Teleporting was a convenient but risky affair. Seeing through portals was impossible; there was no telling who or what would be waiting on the other side. And any warp gates were sure to be guarded if the citadel’s management was anything beyond utterly incompetent.

Though not against visiting, Claire had no intention of announcing her presence. She was well aware that her appearance was eye-catching. In high society, her looks had proven themselves a merit, but that was only because she was untouchable. In Cadria, there was no way for her to be captured without the duke’s knowledge. But Llystletein was not under cervitaurian rule, nor was it without its fair share of unsavoury characters. When out of space, Cadrian prisons would often send their inmates to the library on the grounds of offering them an opportunity to earn their freedom. And her fatherland was only one of many countries that enforced the practice. Even assuming an unequal survival rate, criminals would by far outnumber any more virtuous groups.

Her status as a noble lady, specifically the lady of House Augustus, only made matters worse. Her father had no shortage of enemies, the vast majority of which were foreign soldiers with deep-rooted grudges borne of the flames of war. And like death row inmates, dishonoured veterans with little left to live for were also known to conduct the ritual. She couldn’t help but suspect that she would be thrown into some sort of convoluted revenge plot upon being identified by a military man affiliated with an enemy state. And that was by far the last thing she wanted.

Even if she could escape, the halfbreed was well aware that confrontation remained suboptimal. She had no doubt that a chase sequence was unlikely to end, just because she managed to get away on one occasion. There was nothing stopping a potential foe from pursuing her to the library’s furthest ends. And that was precisely why her plan of attack was to sneak in, speak to Sylvia’s father, and get out without alerting any of the locals to her presence. That reminds me… I still need to deal with that huskar…

“Do you remember how you were making platforms and stepping on them?” asked Claire, as she dangled her feet over the cliff’s edge.

“You mean with magic? Yeah, what about it?”

“Can they support my weight?”

“Ummm… I think so. Wait, are you trying to get me to make you a big staircase or something?”

Claire nodded. “Something like that.”

“I dunno if I can. That also kinda sounds like it’s cheating. I’m just supposed to give you advice and show you around, not help you do stuff.”

“What if I spend the next few hours fishing and give you all the fish?”

“Errk… that’s a really tempting offer, but I can’t,” said the fox, with her ears and tail drooping. “Bringing you to my dad is kind of already skirting the edge.”

“Fine.”

Claire tried crossing her arms, but lowered them upon encountering the usual obstacle. With a click of the tongue, she lowered her gaze onto the beach below, only to freeze as she noticed a palm reduced to a tiny stump—a muse that provided her with a sudden burst of inspiration. If the fox wasn’t going to help her navigate the sky, then she was just going to have to do it herself.

Getting to her feet, she fired seven shards of ice into the rocky ground beside her, each approximately the size of a leg. They were the biggest spikes that Icebolt could produce, and though imperfect, they at least seemed decent enough to suit her purposes. Confirming that they measured out about as expected, she took a deep breath, spread her fingers wide, and tried her hand at manipulation. She centered her consciousness on the mana, the essence that made up the seven spells in front of her, and pulled it all together into a single large glob, a sphere with a dozen jagged edges.

“Uhhhh… Claire? What are you doing?” asked Sylvia.

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.”

Once the resulting spell was stable and no longer at risk of exploding into a faceful shrapnel, the mage went for a second round of alteration. She flattened its form and turned it into a large plank roughly the same length and width as her lower half.

Log Entry 1799
Ice Manipulation has reached level 5.

Moving it closer to the door, and away from the cliff’s edge, the halfbreed climbed on top of the freshly formed board and pulled on it with both her feet, slowly raising it—and her—into the air. The inanimate steed was fueled entirely by force magic, just like the stump she had ridden through the veabers’ encampment. Fiddling with the strength of the vector allowed the mage to adjust her height. Once somewhat adjusted to the sensation, she pulled as hard as she could to test her maximum acceleration, only to find herself moving in the wrong direction. Her face was planted straight into the ground as the vehicle capsized and flipped on its head. She had hardly suffered any damage, but the plank had broken in half, snapped by the violent crash landing.

Not discouraged, Claire magicked the two halves of the board back together and tried again. Attempt number two came with four sources of propulsion, both her legs and both her flippers. It was her first time channeling force magic through the tiny rear limbs, but the process remained just as simple and intuitive as usual.

“Uhmmmm… Claire? You do know tha—”

“Shut up. I’m trying to focus.”

The most difficult part of staying aloft was keeping the four forces in sync. The board would start to tilt whenever she got too careless, and getting distracted was as easy as spotting a distant bird out of the corner of her eye. She fell on more than just a few occasions and wound up suffering a nosebleed and a good number of scrapes, but adjusted in due time. Mastering the art of hovering in place took her just a few minutes.

Moving, on the other hand, proved itself an incredible challenge. There weren’t any ceilings for her to exploit; she couldn’t simply pull herself around by grabbing whatever happened to be overhead. Force magic was going to have to fuel the process, but she wasn’t sure how she was meant to apply it. Pushing the board with her hands was impossible, given her position on top of it, and all her lower limbs were already occupied. Wait a second…

Flicking her tail behind the plank, she pointed it at the icy object and tried to activate Apply Force. To her surprise, it worked. The spell moved her forward without sending her back down to earth. Pushing too hard would cause the plank to start slipping out from underneath her, but a series of gentle prods provided a brand new method of locomotion.

Moving her tail around and pushing the platform from different angles even allowed her to turn. She soon found herself steering through the air, moving more or less exactly where she pleased, albeit at a snail’s pace. The rogue would have preferred the ability to maintain her speed, but slow flight was still better than no flight at all. Lackluster tempo aside, the only issue was the plank’s durability. She had to refreeze it on more than one occasion; the hot summer day that accompanied the beachside environment melted it at an alarming pace.

Finally satisfied, after a few too many minutes of playing around, the force mage moved back to the cliff where Sylvia was waiting. The fox had been surprisingly quiet during the whole affair, speaking up only twice in the half an hour or so it had taken Claire to get the gist of taking to the air. That might be a new record.

“What were you trying to say, earlier?” asked the half-snake.

“Right uuhhhhmm… you’re a Llystletein force mage, right? Not a regular one?”

Claire nodded.

“So you’re probably not gonna like hearing this, after all that effort, but it’s kinda your own fault for cutting me off so much,” said Sylvia. “You know you can do that without the board thingy, right?”

“I can?”

“At least I think you can. The moving yourself thing is supposed to be part of why the Llystletein variant is so good. That, and the spirit guardians.”

After blinking a few times, Claire popped open the class’ description and confirmed that it explicitly mentioned that she would be able to affect her own body with her spells. She almost couldn’t believe that she had failed to recall or otherwise naturally stumble across the feature, but thinking back led to the conclusion that it had come as a function of apply force’s precision. The spell would operate on whatever she decided to target and nothing else; accidentally moving the wrong thing was outright impossible.

Making a mental note to inspect all her other classes and abilities at a later time, the mage pointed her tail at her back and prepared to cast. She figured that she was a lot heavier than most things, so she set the spell to its maximum output and gave herself a big old push. Almost naturally, her body flew forward at full speed, moving as quickly as she would at a full gallop.

Log Entry 1800
Force Manipulation has reached level 15.

Log Entry 1801
You have leveled up. Your health and mana have been restored and all harmful status effects have been cleansed.

Your secondary class, Llystletein Force Mage, has reached level 42.

You have gained 6 ability points.

A pair of notifications played out in Claire’s head, but she was too busy spiralling out of the sky to pay them any attention. The sudden burst of speed had thrown her completely off balance, and getting her tail underneath her was next to impossible with her body whirling about. Overwhelmed and dizzy enough to vomit, the halfbreed plummeted straight into the beach and left a distinctly lyrkrian imprint right along the shoreline.

“Wow, that was a really big fall!” Sylvia landed next to the snake horse after a brief delay. Unlike her companion, the half-fox stuck the landing despite spending a good three quarters of her trip at terminal velocity. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Spitting out a mouthful of wet sand, Claire peeled herself off the beachfront and placed a hand on her head. She was almost tempted to make another plank and pretend that she had never realised she could affect herself with force magic, but stopped as she recalled the alternative procedure’s lack of speed. It was certainly much easier and more intuitive, but had far less potential.

Taking the future in consideration, she concluded that learning to magically manipulate her own body would reap nothing but rewards, even if it was shaping up to be an incredibly painful and embarrassing process.