Freezing about twenty feet away from the homestead, I hold my breath in order to quiet things as much as possible as I strain to listen. After a count of thirty, I release my breath. No noises whatsoever from the direction of the cabin. Plenty from the woods behind me, but nothing concerning.
I look back in the direction of the path and see Serafina and Garrick moving up in unison with her just behind him and opposite the side of his sword arm. It's a standard tactic for Vigil knights to allow more martially inclined knights to protect magically inclined ones without disrupting either swing arcs or lines of sight.
They both peer around and spot me so I make the gesture for "Silence" as I approach the door, crouching low under a shoulder-height paneless window as I do. I press myself to the door frame and see that whatever ripped the door out had sizable claws and managed to more or less shatter the wider frame pushing in or out.
There's no sound coming from inside, so I peer sidelong into the building and see that it's entirely trashed. Destroyed bookshelves, a table crushed into splinters, one cabinet knocked over and apparently stomped on, and a collapsed bed frame.
No signs of the perpetrator though. As such I sign "Empty" at the others and step inside after slipping a single knife into its sheath to afford myself one free hand for digging around.
The entire space is devoid of any personal effects. Which leads me to believe whoever left here probably left voluntarily and the damage came afterwards. All of the damage is more or less "in place", not seeming to have been dug through like someone searching for belongings might have.
Carefully, I keep my eyes spinning around my helmet to look for signs of the cause while digging around with my foot. I find nothing other than detritus for most of my digging until I make it to the remnants of the bed. There, I hit something solid with my boot. After some more shoving things around — a task made trivial by my own strength and that of the armor — I see disrupted boards, like they've been knocked out of place.
Curiosity piqued, I reach down with my free hand to pull up the boards.
A shimmer. Behind me and to the left. I focus on that section of my helmet without turning, trying to spot it again, but see nothing no matter how hard I look or focus.
Play of the moonlight, I suppose.
I pull up the boards, to reveal a hidden chest. An actual "rounded top, wood with metal banding" treasure chest. I stare at it for a few moments. Trying to imagine why there would be a literal treasure chest beneath the floorboards of a house in the middle of nowhere. It's not like anyone would have come out this way to warrant hiding it… A thought that is immediately proven wrong by my being here.
I scan the room one more time before setting down my dagger and lowering myself onto my belly to reach down to pull the chest out. It might have something we can use to identify whoever lived here.
As soon as I start to haul the shockingly heavy chest up I hear Serafina's voice, "Nyss-," The room momentarily lights as a ray spears in through the door to blast a hole in the ceiling. Not even a fraction of a second later a heavy weight comes down on my back, like someone just dropped an invisible boulder on me. It hurts. Sustained weight is hard for the armor to deal with, and I feel the weight spiking in the center of my back, like something is trying to stomp down as hard as it can, but on a very focused, nearly pinpoint, spot on my back. I see a slight shimmer flashing in time with the stomps.
Actually having a target makes this easier. I call and release [Puff] inbetween a stomp to shunt myself to the side and blast whatever it is off my back and crashing into the far wall — directly in line of sight from the door. As soon as it's visible from outside, another radiant bolt streaks in and catches the creature in what I assume is its center mass.
The ray simply disappears as it strikes the shimmer, reflecting inwards and inwards until it disappears, like the light and energy fell into a vortex of mirrors. I release another [Puff] to push myself of the ground and to my feet in one motion. I focus on the shimmer as I slip my other dagger free, only to see lights flickering in the things center mass erratically.
The moment I begin to move, a pair of rays, obviously empowered, lash out of the shimmer. I twist slightly, only getting the barest instant to react as the light fires at me. It hits my leading shoulder and sends me spinning. The amount of power behind it is staggering and it sends me backwards to collide with a wall with a gasp.
At the same time that I'm struck a ray fires out the door and hits someone, surely Serafina, dead on and I hear the sound of armor crumpling to the ground after a barrier explodes, sending multicolored essence motes out in a burst. I can't see the outcome, but it sounded bad. Thinking about this thing hurting Serafina makes me mad more or less instantly. The only reason it didn't punch through my armor was because of my turning to make it a glancing blow and the fact that I'm armored far more heavily than her.
I can't delay, I throw myself at the shimmer as I see another light spinning around in its center mass, readying to fire another ray or two.
Lowering my shoulder, I aim for the middle of the shimmer where the light is coalescing and slam into it. I hit it with the sound of a mirror shattering and an inhuman screech that blows through my helmet to make my head spin. The shimmering effect ends, though. Revealing the true nature of my enemy.
A crystalid.
I call Ignia while it reels and manifest [A Fire Inside] to bolster my strength as far as possible. My dagger slips from my hand in the same motion that I throw as heavy of a punch as I can muster. I plant my lead foot and put everything into it through the splitting pain in my head.
When I connect, it feels like punching a solid rock, but it gives and my hand spears into the monsters torso. It swings blade limbs at my sides, but they have no chance of getting through my armor, so I grab one with my right hand and crush its middle joint with a downward elbow strike, destroying the crystalline limb at the same time I line up another punch at the creatures head.
It lands with another stone-shattering crack and my armor releases a displeased chime with a rune indicating blunt damage to my gauntlets. It knows best, so I switch my tactic as it reels. I kick at its forelimb — a long, slender, crystal spine with one too many joints to be comfortable to see in motion — at its highest joint, shattering it and causing the thing to drop lower. At which point I silence its awful screeches forever by grabbing it by the head and jumping slightly into a knee strike that I pull its head into with every bit of force I can muster.
Its head explodes into discorporating essence and crystal fragments that bury themselves in the wall of the cabin behind it, leaving me standing there breathing heavy as I spin around for other threats.
Crystalids are solitary creatures, but I've suffered too many "anomalies" lately to take a chance. But my more concentrated scan of the area reveals nothing. There's not really room enough for two of them in here anyways.
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I turn and look out the door and see Garrick picking Serafina up from the ground with a rend in her armor that has a lot of blood around the edges.
I feel cold inside all of the sudden, but I see her shift a bit to look at me in concern.
Wasting no time, I stride out of the cabin to inspect the wound alongside Garrick.
"Damned thing reflected and amplified my spell. I put a lot of oomph into it, too." Serafina coughs a little wetly. "I dropped my bag back a ways, Nyssa, be a doll and grab it for me — I'd rather not bleed out today."
It takes considerable effort to look away from the wound pooling with blood as an earlier conversation with Serafina runs around in tight little circles in my head.
None of the Blackthorns use any lifegiving compound essences.
Garrick says my name tersely, snapping me out of it and setting me in motion to grab the bag. When I move back, I start digging, presuming she'll be asking for a healing phial or something similar and find a pouch with room for eight, with four inside. I pull them out as I approach both of them again.
"I found your healing phials, is that what you wanted, Serafina?" I drop to a kneel next to her as Garrick applies pressure to the wound while pushing Terra into her torso to harden those blood vessels to restrict some blood flow. It's something I've seen him do for himself countless times.
Serafina lifts her neck to look at me with her eyes looking a little glazed over.. "Good girl, splash two on the wound and then give me the other two orally." She's maintaining an outright impressive calm, considering how bad the wound is and how much blood she's already lost, but I waste no time following her instruction.
Each phial is higher quality than anything I've ever seen before, containing a multitude of essence colors inside. Actually countless, so it's likely highly specialized to specifically her and her unique essence levels.
I dash two on the gaping and pooling wound and marvel. The rainbows of essence seem to collect the blood and siphon it back into exposed veins, leaving behind contaminating essences to drift away on the air. As I watch I see flesh and veins being reknit out of the essence mixture. It's not fast, though, so I reach over and gently place one at a time in Serafina's mouth and she bites down on each, swallowing quickly.
After a few seconds she relaxes visibly and her breathing evens out, going bodily limp as the phials do their work. "I'm just going to lie here until the pain stops. You both do what you need to. I'll be fine." Serafina's words sound almost slurred, indicating that this healing might have some other side effects than normal. The healing is damn near miraculous by any metric I've ever personally experienced, though. I've only ever heard of similar degrees of healing from life-essence-imbued creatures. It makes me wonder if May can do that kind of thing nowadays now that she's gotten so much more training from the Vendala's.
I really just wish she were here. This is her specialty — battlefield injuries. One of her specialties at least. It gives me a pang of remembered hurt as I watch, knowing there's little I can do in situations like this and hating it.
Just like I told May years ago.
"I couldn’t have done the same. If the tables were turned, I could have killed the thing that killed you, but that would be it. I wasn’t fast, strong, or prepared enough, and you almost died correcting that. I’m going to get better, that I promise to you. But if I’m going to, I need someone with me who can keep me going. Sometimes I struggle to do it by myself.
It hasn't changed. I'm better at killing things. And killing them fast. But speed wasn't enough here.
Pulling me from my thoughts, I feel a colossal hand on my shoulder — the side that didn't eat the ray — and look up to see Garrick. "She'll be fine, Nyss. Just going to need to rest. Situation played out about as well as we could have hoped. Quick thinking, too. I moved to cover Dame Serafina after that ray struck, but I saw how quickly you shifted gears after getting an actual look at the thing."
The words are appreciated, but feel more than a little hollow. "I got distracted and we both got hurt bec…" I trail off as I see Garrick purse his lips. "Right. Not my fault, sorry."
"You got blind sided by a creature that can hide its essence and turn practically invisible. Frankly, I'm not even sure how Dame Serafina saw the thing before it moved: I couldn't sense anything and I was literally looking at it." He sighs as he stands, sounding tired, though if its with or of me, I'm not sure. "It's the nature of things. This is why most groups operate with five to ten people. People like you and I are different in that regard. And while Dame Serafina is very capable and powerful, as befits her station and role, she's still effectively a noncombatant by our standards." He pauses for a while. "In the morning, I want you to take Dame Serafina and head back to the keep."
"But, Garrick, if the calamity is still active out here then-"
"Then I will have to fight worrying about protecting two people who aren't ready or able to fight something that might have access to a gate." He cuts me off and states it factually. "I can keep myself safe effectively indefinitely. If I have to fight distracted to protect someone like Dame Serafina, then I will be substantially worse off than if I was alone."
I try to come up with a rebuttal, but before I can form one, Serafina weakly adds, "Even if he's saying it a bit coldly, he's right. I really don't belong out here, and I would appreciate you escorting me back. You both are plenty capable, but I'm dead weight in this kind of situation unless you want some inexperienced backline artillery." She keeps her eyes closed, but her mouth splits into a warm smile that I'm growing accustomed to seeing.
"Alright." I don't want to leave Garrick, but I'm more confident about his abilities than I am about Serafina right now. And… I have to admit that he's right. "We'll leave in the morning if Serafina is feeling up to it."
"I'm going to check out that cave. If nothing is down there, it'll be a better place to set up for the night."
"I'll move Serafina into the cabin in the meantime and keep watch." Garrick signs an assent and hefts Bane to his shoulder before striking out to the nearby cave.
Meanwhile, I reach down and very gently scoop Serafina into a princess carry. Seemingly dazedly, she rests her head against my chestplate and smiles. "Sorry for making a bad call and getting you hurt, Nyssa. I panicked when I realized there was a monster in there with you."
I look up and away. She's not even looking at me, but I feel embarrassed to the point of needing to. "It-It's not your fault, Serafina. All those reasons Garrick gave me apply doubly to you."
"Even so," As I move to lay her down, her voice trails off, seeming to fall asleep by the end of the sentiment. "I'm just glad you're okay."
I swallow hard as I set her down as gently as I can, retrieve my knives and then post up in the battered door frame to wait for Garrick, trying desperately to look anywhere but at Serafina sleepily smiling and mostly — entirely — failing.
In order to more effectively distract myself, I go and heft the box out of the cubby it's hidden in, and even with my armor-enhanced strength, I have to try. It is absurdly heavy, like I'm trying to lift this entire cabin. Evidently someone used this box to store adamant ingots alongside gravity essence cores or something.
I try to set it down as quietly as possible before creaking it open to reveal that it's an extra-dimensional storage chest. And one that looks like a bomb went off inside.
It answers the question of where all of the personal effects are that belonged here. They just all are jumbled up. Sheets are floating around in the storage space, wrapped around everything at random, items just float around with no organization, and the weight leads me to believe this must be a very, very, early version of spatial storage, before the weight problem was solved. Which would make the box at least a few hundred or so years old. People figured out how to compress a small space long before they figured out how to make it not weigh a ton.
At a glance there's an entire house worth of stuff floating around, but notably, a lot of books. Those definitely interest me, they could be journals or similar, so when I reach inside and grab a few at random — with great difficulty because of the disorderly nature of the storage — I realize they're the sort of things I would normally read. Texts on magic theory, practical guides to first aid, but one in particular stands out.
On the Nature of Elementals and Elementally Touched Races: Volume 17, Draconic Bloodlines
It catches my eye because the front displays a picture of what Garrick described as dragons looking like. I opt to take it with me, it's been left behind and as far as I can tell it's a standardized text rather than some personal record, so it's replaceable, but it could be directly useful for what we're potentially up against.
I'm not going to ransack the box though, so I move to return everything else before an idea strikes me.
Worst-case scenario, the person or people who lived here are dead. I should at least bring any personal journals to help identify them, I'll just leave a note explaining where they'll be able to be found later — the Vigil keep at Kharbon — and the reason I took them.
I do all of the above, gathering up anything personal-looking, and tucking it away into one pouch of my carryall to keep it all together.
That settled, I return to the doorway and listen to Serafina quietly breathing in the otherwise silent night. The only other sound is the occasional tap at my codex as I update it for my encounter with the Crystalid and start running the fight through my head to analyze it.