Glade 1, 122
The subsequent initiations of the art of Reaving are not as formal as the first.
Imogen understood the magical theory reasonably well, for all that one would hardly call her a scholar. When first the Cardinal Rune of Reaving was inscribed, it catalyzed a reaction between the living aether of the witch being initiated and the slow, silent aether of the weapon with which they assume a pact, but it also tore open the aetheric barrier between weapon and wielder. Uncompleted, the Rune was an open pit between soul and sword, and the inexperienced warrior had to literally fight her own magic to keep the reaction moving in the right direction.
The second Pact was technically the same reaction as the first, but the Rune of Reaving was complete now, bright upon her breast with the sword it had assimilated resting inside her aether. If the initiation went poorly, it could still do a great deal of damage, but the Rune would no longer permit her entire soul to drain away.
Still, it would suck. She bet it would be no fun at all.
As she sat in the hidden Sanctuary at the foot of the mountains, Imogen tried not to think about that, and instead focus on the weapon she intended to take into herself, a partisan. When she’d shown it to her father, he’d simply laughed:
“Is that because of Gerhard? You shouldn’t make a choice like this so carelessly, Immy.”
”Absolutely not.” she had lied, knowing full well that neither of them would believe it, ”There are many tactical advantages to a second style, especially if I am going to begin to practice with two weapons. That’s all it is.”
The polearm in question was quite well-tailored to her specifications, larger than the old master’s, with a great length of wood and a large, flared head with no decoration. It looked very menacing, but it was plainly worthless if an enemy was either too close or too far. You could hardly throw the damn thing and hope to hit the broadside of a castle. So why would one want to carry it around inside their soul forever?
”Because-” Imogen whispered to herself, running her index and pointer fingers down the length of the shaft, feeling the smooth grain of the wood as she closed her eyes, ”I’m gonna make it fly.”
She sat there in the dark, mind focused on the partisan, for quite some time. Even in her religious training, Imogen had never really taken to meditation, but the process of Pact-bonding was… absorbing. Literally, as her mind filtered slowly through the spear, her aether more a trickle than a flood. She didn’t want to initiate the Pact until she was entirely certain she understood the weapon in her hands. It could have been hours- thankfully, her sparring partner would be patient. He’d probably been there before.
”Okay.” Imogen said, mostly to herself, ”I’ve done this before. I definitely remember how to do this. It’s no problem at all.”
When she felt comfortable enough, Imogen closed her eyes and reached out to the power in her chest. It was practically muscle memory to retrieve her sword from the mass of fire within herself, but exercise sometimes involved… stretches you’re not used to. Before she could begin to dwell on this metaphor, the young Sunsinger carefully lifted her left hand and placed it next to her right upon the spear.
With the gateway in her mind open, Imogen could sense… something, the barest impression of the aether of the weapon. It was cold, and dark, the texture of living stone and dead wood subsumed into the imago of a weapon, the ideal superimposed upon the real. It was, for all intents and purposes, done changing, the apex and the nadir of its shape all at once. Intellectually, Imogen knew that eventually the tip would rust and the haft would rot, but in the moment it felt like stasis.
And this is what the actual witchcraft was for. Imogen slowly ran her index and pointer fingers across the length of the weapon, eyes still closed. She didn’t need to look at the spear to envision the patina of golden light slowly following her fingers, a streamer of the part of her soul which Master Gerhard had once called the place which was “righteous as the stars.”
As she quickened the aether of the spear, Imogen felt her own soul begin to move, faster and faster. This was much more a controlled stream than a flood, as it had been all those years earlier, but some amount of discomfort was inevitable when one was attempting to absorb alien aether, especially when it was more matter than energy.
But these were all academic considerations, and Reaving was not an academic art. To break down the barriers between weapon and soul, there was only one ritual which would suit. The oldest, most terrible of all spells- getting beaten to shit.
With that in mind, she gathered her wits and stood, making for the chamber door. This meditation chamber was built for the purpose of Pact-making, and it led directly out into the audience hall where she had begun her initiation all those long years ago.
There were no Masters congregating there this time, but her partner for the evening was waiting patiently in a chair on the dias where they had once stood. Tilman looked rather older than he once had, with a more precise cut to his hair, odd white strands coloring the sides.
Tilman did not smile as he looked up, nor did he greet her- she didn’t blame him. He wasn’t a rude man, by anyone’s reckoning, but Pact duels were serious affairs, and it was quite likely that both of them would come out of it with some injuries. Without absolute focus, even a master couldn’t hope to both achieve the intensity needed to merge weapon and soul and avoid crippling wounds.
”I’m ready to begin.” Imogen said, her voice raspy, hoarse from the effort of the time she had spent in contemplation of the spear in her hand. In her initiation, her sword had drunk greedily of her body and soul- now, it required an effort of constant will to keep the trickle of power flowing into the spear.
Tilman nodded, then extended his right hand, focusing his will. With a small flash, a blazing knife appeared in that hand, which he twirled confidently. It was a heavy dagger, just over a foot in length, with a hilt fashioned of some lightweight metal rather than wood or bone. A throwing knife.
In some ways, a terrible choice of weapon for fighting a heavy spear, except that she was unarmored and couldn’t throw her own weapon. It seemed Tilman remembered her first duel with him and intended to take advantage of his superior agility to simply tear her down from the middle range, throwing and recalling the knife, staying comfortably away from her glowing spear.
Unless he instead-
Tilman gave Imogen a mischievous look and hurled the knife at her, backing away immediately. She cursed as she batted the knife away with her spear, only for it to describe a clean arc and rebound again. Of course, he was simply going to dance with the damn knife. It could stab her again and again while Tilman himself remained at the other end of the hall, waiting for any opening without offering any in turn. Well. That wasn’t ideal.
Imogen took the polearm in both hands, holding it like a staff to maximize her ability to parry the zippy knife. She batted it away twice more, careful to keep herself in a position where she could see Tilman, who was in the process of calling forth a saber- just one, this time- with which he could skewer her.
Well. What could she do here?
First, she recognized that the dancing knife was, in effect, a bluff. Tilman was a senior initiate and he was trying to distract and panic her, but she had studied Reaving long enough to know that fighting at a distance took just as much energy from the caster as physical use of the weapon. Furthermore, she suspected he couldn’t use it very well at greater range as yet.
Second, it wasn’t as big a threat as he probably hoped. She was unarmored, but she was still Orkhan- a glancing hit or slice would be lucky to draw blood through her scales. He needed a clean thrust if he wanted to do any real damage.
Third, while she couldn’t throw her partisan while the ritual continued, she was no longer a complete novice as a Sunsinger. Tilman could move the knife through the air at speed, but how much force could he actually exert? That was the key to the pl-
”Augh! Fuck off!”
Imogen cursed as she flubbed a swing with her polearm, allowing the knife to sink itself into her right arm, drawing a long, shallow cut and burning her flesh as it went. It didn’t penetrate far, but the the nova-fire was hot. Apparently Tilman’s soul was very righteous, because it hurt like hell.
”Yeah, that has to go.” Imogen declared. Thankfully, she’d had time enough to figure out the solution to this little puzzle, and it was- she fancied- rather elegant. As the knife slowed in the air and aimed itself at her again, Imogen released the spear with her left hand and flipped the pole to grasp the butt backwards. When the dagger began its return towards her, she eyed the trajectory with care, and then completely removed her spear from its path.
And swung downward with her greatsword, suddenly grasped in her other hand.
The heavy blade cracked down on the knife, sending it towards the floor, but followed it into the stone before it could bounce and skitter away. Imogen dropped the hilt as the blade crashed down on the throwing dagger, and she willed it to press itself against the floor, restraining the smaller weapon. The dagger pulled and scratched feebly against the stone floor, Tilman’s will unable to overcome the much heavier blade’s weight (and Imogen’s own annoyance).
Unfortunately, Tilman did not simply stand back and watch that display with a goofy look of shock on his face. Instead he advanced immediately with his saber, scoring a blow to her shoulder as she tried to twist out of the way. Ideally, she could have backed off and let her now-superior range carry her, but all Tilman needed to do was kick her sword off his trapped dagger and her cunning plan would be undone.
But what Tilman apparently did not know is that she wasn’t the one on the back-foot this time. His flaming saber was a threat, sure, but it was also designed for slashing at the soft tissues. In the heat of the moment, Imogen’s boiling blood had sent scales proliferating across her body- even the cut across her arm had stopped bleeding as the skin over her arms had thickened and separated into tiny iridescent plates.
Thus, Imogen did not back far away, standing over her fallen sword and switching her grip on the partisan again. When Tilman went for another slice, she simply took his swing on the side of her scaled torso; it hurt, but the blade hardly sunk into her flesh at all. Instead of trying to spear the awkwardly-positioned Tilman, Imogen snapped the butt of her spear around into his face, causing him to curse as he staggered off to her side.
Breathing heavily through her teeth and tusks, Imogen advanced on Tilman, leading with her left foot, prepared to pin him with-
Tilman struck again. In the moment, Imogen had not noticed that his dagger had ceased to pull at her sword lying on the ground, and instead, he transferred his consciousness to the saber. It left his hands as he staggered away; though she doubted he could see straight yet, his senses entered the floating saber and dealt her a harder blow across the side, this time penetrating her scales and drawing a line of agony on her flesh.
That quick-thinking son of a bitch. Still, swapping his attention and energy like that must be draining. If she could get past his dancing saber, one more blow ought to put him out for the count. Unfortunately, between the three good hits he’d gotten and the effort it was taking to continually draw the aether of her spear and soul closer together, there also wasn’t much left in her own tank. Worse yet, while this was an ideal situation to throw a spear at Tilman, she couldn’t do it without forfeiting the trial.
Well, there was one weakness to Tilman’s strategy here, but she had to act quickly to exploit it. She advanced again, and his saber interposed itself, tip oriented towards her right breast.
The ability to dance with a weapon, especially with multiple weapons, was perhaps the single most deadly power in a Sunsinger’s arsenal. On the face of it, the power seemed useful, but only moderately- it allowed the Reaver to effectively use another weapon at a greater range, so an idle watcher might estimate that it made him twice as deadly.
But this misunderstood the fact that it also robbed the opponent of effective counterplay. When Tilman held his saber, he had to balance his offense and his defense, to seek openings without giving her any in turn. Remove Tilman from the equation, and the weapon was free to press her relentlessly, and eventually it would find the holes in her defense. This fact meant that a Sunsinger who had mastered dancing could take on many opponents, aggressively hitting with moves which would be either impossible or inadvisable for an ordinary fighter while they used their own weapon.
But dancing had its own weakness, which most people were in no position to exploit. Imogen was. She whipped her left hand backwards, wincing at the pain from the wound at her side, and recalled her sword. It lifted into the air and sailed smoothly back into her hands before Tilman could figure out what was happening, and she brought the sword down on the saber, groaning with exertion.
Though the saber was heavier than the dagger, Tilman’s will remained insufficient to contest the massive greatsword’s weight, and the saber went to ground. Realizing he was about to see his weapon trapped again, Tilman shifted his mind and senses to the now-free dagger, sending it hurtling towards Imogen… as she’d expected. She interposed her spear, but this time did not try to bat the dagger off, allowing it to impale the shaft (that was going to hurt, later). As the dagger began to free itself, Imogen dropped the greatsword onto the now-lifeless saber and grabbed the hilt of the throwing knife with her free hand, hissing at the sensation of Tilman’s nova-fire.
Tilman, still a dozen feet from the fight, hissed in frustration, realizing that Imogen had taken control of both weapons from him. This was the moment of truth- if he had a third Pact weapon to reveal, then this entire maneuver would be wasted. But if he didn’t…
“Ugh. You’ve got me,” Tilman said, his voice surprisingly steady for someone facing quite a lot of spiritual pain, “I yield.” In response, the golden aura surrounding Imogen’s spear burst into flame, and she felt a horrendous, burning sensation in the Rune on her breast as it slowly re-worked itself to account for the new component.
Well. Imogen thought to herself, Still. That was a lot easier than the last one.
That sentiment lasted right up until she realized that she was going to have to dematerialize her much-battered weaponry. Then the curses began in earnest.
The subsequent initiations of the art of Reaving are not as formal as the first.
Imogen understood the magical theory reasonably well, for all that one would hardly call her a scholar. When first the Cardinal Rune of Reaving was inscribed, it catalyzed a reaction between the living aether of the witch being initiated and the slow, silent aether of the weapon with which they assume a pact, but it also tore open the aetheric barrier between weapon and wielder. Uncompleted, the Rune was an open pit between soul and sword, and the inexperienced warrior had to literally fight her own magic to keep the reaction moving in the right direction.
The second Pact was technically the same reaction as the first, but the Rune of Reaving was complete now, bright upon her breast with the sword it had assimilated resting inside her aether. If the initiation went poorly, it could still do a great deal of damage, but the Rune would no longer permit her entire soul to drain away.
Still, it would suck. She bet it would be no fun at all.
As she sat in the hidden Sanctuary at the foot of the mountains, Imogen tried not to think about that, and instead focus on the weapon she intended to take into herself, a partisan. When she’d shown it to her father, he’d simply laughed:
“Is that because of Gerhard? You shouldn’t make a choice like this so carelessly, Immy.”
”Absolutely not.” she had lied, knowing full well that neither of them would believe it, ”There are many tactical advantages to a second style, especially if I am going to begin to practice with two weapons. That’s all it is.”
The polearm in question was quite well-tailored to her specifications, larger than the old master’s, with a great length of wood and a large, flared head with no decoration. It looked very menacing, but it was plainly worthless if an enemy was either too close or too far. You could hardly throw the damn thing and hope to hit the broadside of a castle. So why would one want to carry it around inside their soul forever?
”Because-” Imogen whispered to herself, running her index and pointer fingers down the length of the shaft, feeling the smooth grain of the wood as she closed her eyes, ”I’m gonna make it fly.”
She sat there in the dark, mind focused on the partisan, for quite some time. Even in her religious training, Imogen had never really taken to meditation, but the process of Pact-bonding was… absorbing. Literally, as her mind filtered slowly through the spear, her aether more a trickle than a flood. She didn’t want to initiate the Pact until she was entirely certain she understood the weapon in her hands. It could have been hours- thankfully, her sparring partner would be patient. He’d probably been there before.
”Okay.” Imogen said, mostly to herself, ”I’ve done this before. I definitely remember how to do this. It’s no problem at all.”
When she felt comfortable enough, Imogen closed her eyes and reached out to the power in her chest. It was practically muscle memory to retrieve her sword from the mass of fire within herself, but exercise sometimes involved… stretches you’re not used to. Before she could begin to dwell on this metaphor, the young Sunsinger carefully lifted her left hand and placed it next to her right upon the spear.
With the gateway in her mind open, Imogen could sense… something, the barest impression of the aether of the weapon. It was cold, and dark, the texture of living stone and dead wood subsumed into the imago of a weapon, the ideal superimposed upon the real. It was, for all intents and purposes, done changing, the apex and the nadir of its shape all at once. Intellectually, Imogen knew that eventually the tip would rust and the haft would rot, but in the moment it felt like stasis.
And this is what the actual witchcraft was for. Imogen slowly ran her index and pointer fingers across the length of the weapon, eyes still closed. She didn’t need to look at the spear to envision the patina of golden light slowly following her fingers, a streamer of the part of her soul which Master Gerhard had once called the place which was “righteous as the stars.”
As she quickened the aether of the spear, Imogen felt her own soul begin to move, faster and faster. This was much more a controlled stream than a flood, as it had been all those years earlier, but some amount of discomfort was inevitable when one was attempting to absorb alien aether, especially when it was more matter than energy.
But these were all academic considerations, and Reaving was not an academic art. To break down the barriers between weapon and soul, there was only one ritual which would suit. The oldest, most terrible of all spells- getting beaten to shit.
With that in mind, she gathered her wits and stood, making for the chamber door. This meditation chamber was built for the purpose of Pact-making, and it led directly out into the audience hall where she had begun her initiation all those long years ago.
There were no Masters congregating there this time, but her partner for the evening was waiting patiently in a chair on the dias where they had once stood. Tilman looked rather older than he once had, with a more precise cut to his hair, odd white strands coloring the sides.
Tilman did not smile as he looked up, nor did he greet her- she didn’t blame him. He wasn’t a rude man, by anyone’s reckoning, but Pact duels were serious affairs, and it was quite likely that both of them would come out of it with some injuries. Without absolute focus, even a master couldn’t hope to both achieve the intensity needed to merge weapon and soul and avoid crippling wounds.
”I’m ready to begin.” Imogen said, her voice raspy, hoarse from the effort of the time she had spent in contemplation of the spear in her hand. In her initiation, her sword had drunk greedily of her body and soul- now, it required an effort of constant will to keep the trickle of power flowing into the spear.
Tilman nodded, then extended his right hand, focusing his will. With a small flash, a blazing knife appeared in that hand, which he twirled confidently. It was a heavy dagger, just over a foot in length, with a hilt fashioned of some lightweight metal rather than wood or bone. A throwing knife.
In some ways, a terrible choice of weapon for fighting a heavy spear, except that she was unarmored and couldn’t throw her own weapon. It seemed Tilman remembered her first duel with him and intended to take advantage of his superior agility to simply tear her down from the middle range, throwing and recalling the knife, staying comfortably away from her glowing spear.
Unless he instead-
Tilman gave Imogen a mischievous look and hurled the knife at her, backing away immediately. She cursed as she batted the knife away with her spear, only for it to describe a clean arc and rebound again. Of course, he was simply going to dance with the damn knife. It could stab her again and again while Tilman himself remained at the other end of the hall, waiting for any opening without offering any in turn. Well. That wasn’t ideal.
Imogen took the polearm in both hands, holding it like a staff to maximize her ability to parry the zippy knife. She batted it away twice more, careful to keep herself in a position where she could see Tilman, who was in the process of calling forth a saber- just one, this time- with which he could skewer her.
Well. What could she do here?
First, she recognized that the dancing knife was, in effect, a bluff. Tilman was a senior initiate and he was trying to distract and panic her, but she had studied Reaving long enough to know that fighting at a distance took just as much energy from the caster as physical use of the weapon. Furthermore, she suspected he couldn’t use it very well at greater range as yet.
Second, it wasn’t as big a threat as he probably hoped. She was unarmored, but she was still Orkhan- a glancing hit or slice would be lucky to draw blood through her scales. He needed a clean thrust if he wanted to do any real damage.
Third, while she couldn’t throw her partisan while the ritual continued, she was no longer a complete novice as a Sunsinger. Tilman could move the knife through the air at speed, but how much force could he actually exert? That was the key to the pl-
”Augh! Fuck off!”
Imogen cursed as she flubbed a swing with her polearm, allowing the knife to sink itself into her right arm, drawing a long, shallow cut and burning her flesh as it went. It didn’t penetrate far, but the the nova-fire was hot. Apparently Tilman’s soul was very righteous, because it hurt like hell.
”Yeah, that has to go.” Imogen declared. Thankfully, she’d had time enough to figure out the solution to this little puzzle, and it was- she fancied- rather elegant. As the knife slowed in the air and aimed itself at her again, Imogen released the spear with her left hand and flipped the pole to grasp the butt backwards. When the dagger began its return towards her, she eyed the trajectory with care, and then completely removed her spear from its path.
And swung downward with her greatsword, suddenly grasped in her other hand.
The heavy blade cracked down on the knife, sending it towards the floor, but followed it into the stone before it could bounce and skitter away. Imogen dropped the hilt as the blade crashed down on the throwing dagger, and she willed it to press itself against the floor, restraining the smaller weapon. The dagger pulled and scratched feebly against the stone floor, Tilman’s will unable to overcome the much heavier blade’s weight (and Imogen’s own annoyance).
Unfortunately, Tilman did not simply stand back and watch that display with a goofy look of shock on his face. Instead he advanced immediately with his saber, scoring a blow to her shoulder as she tried to twist out of the way. Ideally, she could have backed off and let her now-superior range carry her, but all Tilman needed to do was kick her sword off his trapped dagger and her cunning plan would be undone.
But what Tilman apparently did not know is that she wasn’t the one on the back-foot this time. His flaming saber was a threat, sure, but it was also designed for slashing at the soft tissues. In the heat of the moment, Imogen’s boiling blood had sent scales proliferating across her body- even the cut across her arm had stopped bleeding as the skin over her arms had thickened and separated into tiny iridescent plates.
Thus, Imogen did not back far away, standing over her fallen sword and switching her grip on the partisan again. When Tilman went for another slice, she simply took his swing on the side of her scaled torso; it hurt, but the blade hardly sunk into her flesh at all. Instead of trying to spear the awkwardly-positioned Tilman, Imogen snapped the butt of her spear around into his face, causing him to curse as he staggered off to her side.
Breathing heavily through her teeth and tusks, Imogen advanced on Tilman, leading with her left foot, prepared to pin him with-
Tilman struck again. In the moment, Imogen had not noticed that his dagger had ceased to pull at her sword lying on the ground, and instead, he transferred his consciousness to the saber. It left his hands as he staggered away; though she doubted he could see straight yet, his senses entered the floating saber and dealt her a harder blow across the side, this time penetrating her scales and drawing a line of agony on her flesh.
That quick-thinking son of a bitch. Still, swapping his attention and energy like that must be draining. If she could get past his dancing saber, one more blow ought to put him out for the count. Unfortunately, between the three good hits he’d gotten and the effort it was taking to continually draw the aether of her spear and soul closer together, there also wasn’t much left in her own tank. Worse yet, while this was an ideal situation to throw a spear at Tilman, she couldn’t do it without forfeiting the trial.
Well, there was one weakness to Tilman’s strategy here, but she had to act quickly to exploit it. She advanced again, and his saber interposed itself, tip oriented towards her right breast.
The ability to dance with a weapon, especially with multiple weapons, was perhaps the single most deadly power in a Sunsinger’s arsenal. On the face of it, the power seemed useful, but only moderately- it allowed the Reaver to effectively use another weapon at a greater range, so an idle watcher might estimate that it made him twice as deadly.
But this misunderstood the fact that it also robbed the opponent of effective counterplay. When Tilman held his saber, he had to balance his offense and his defense, to seek openings without giving her any in turn. Remove Tilman from the equation, and the weapon was free to press her relentlessly, and eventually it would find the holes in her defense. This fact meant that a Sunsinger who had mastered dancing could take on many opponents, aggressively hitting with moves which would be either impossible or inadvisable for an ordinary fighter while they used their own weapon.
But dancing had its own weakness, which most people were in no position to exploit. Imogen was. She whipped her left hand backwards, wincing at the pain from the wound at her side, and recalled her sword. It lifted into the air and sailed smoothly back into her hands before Tilman could figure out what was happening, and she brought the sword down on the saber, groaning with exertion.
Though the saber was heavier than the dagger, Tilman’s will remained insufficient to contest the massive greatsword’s weight, and the saber went to ground. Realizing he was about to see his weapon trapped again, Tilman shifted his mind and senses to the now-free dagger, sending it hurtling towards Imogen… as she’d expected. She interposed her spear, but this time did not try to bat the dagger off, allowing it to impale the shaft (that was going to hurt, later). As the dagger began to free itself, Imogen dropped the greatsword onto the now-lifeless saber and grabbed the hilt of the throwing knife with her free hand, hissing at the sensation of Tilman’s nova-fire.
Tilman, still a dozen feet from the fight, hissed in frustration, realizing that Imogen had taken control of both weapons from him. This was the moment of truth- if he had a third Pact weapon to reveal, then this entire maneuver would be wasted. But if he didn’t…
“Ugh. You’ve got me,” Tilman said, his voice surprisingly steady for someone facing quite a lot of spiritual pain, “I yield.” In response, the golden aura surrounding Imogen’s spear burst into flame, and she felt a horrendous, burning sensation in the Rune on her breast as it slowly re-worked itself to account for the new component.
Well. Imogen thought to herself, Still. That was a lot easier than the last one.
That sentiment lasted right up until she realized that she was going to have to dematerialize her much-battered weaponry. Then the curses began in earnest.
.