Fell Champions

Otter found herself alone in the training room she’d converted into her private meditation chamber. Not that she really needed to meditate a lot, because that wasn’t usually her jam, but her life seemed to require it a lot lately. 

She pulled out the soul crystal from her pocket once more, balancing the clear gem on her palm. Fifty attribute points. That was a lot of power. Just getting fifty Will had been a big deal, a game changer. It allowed her to freely use her Thread of Sanctuary every day without fear of depleting a massive chunk of her primary resource. She didn’t have to count every Thread of the Scourge she summoned, or count every minute until noon or midnight hit to refresh her Will. 

Getting another fifty points in another attribute could be a similar boon. What if she could tank and survive a surprise strike from that little weasel, Il-Su? It’d probably lessen some of the anxiety she was carrying on her shoulders.

But she really missed having actual magic. This Pact stuff was good, but… fireballs.

She really, really missed having the ability to throw fireballs.

That was assuming her Essence Spark was attuned to fire. Most starter Essence Sparks were attuned to one element, maybe three tops. And while some magic systems stuck with a standard four or five element system, Immortalized decided to go overcomplicated and had nine. 

Best case scenario, she’d roll with three elements, and that roughly left her with a one in three chance of getting her beloved fireballs.

Well, she’d already wasted three days Mythwalking this stupid magic system into existence. If she didn’t get Fireweaving, she’d just have to grind her Essence Spark and force an evolution. 

She put the soul crystal away, and then began to lay out some supplies she’d put together a day ago. It wasn’t much. Rua’s house, big as it was, was surprisingly bereft of stuff to loot for pagan rituals. 

In a circle around her in the middle of the room, she laid out her offerings. A peeled banana on a plate, a shot glass of some kind of strong alcohol, a bit of bread, a good smelling candle, and a music box.

Not exactly premium offerings, but the banana was the key one. It was common in her world, but for now, extremely rare here. 

Otter moved to the centre of her offerings and sat down, holding the soul crystal in front of her. She concentrated on it, trying to peer into its core, and then began to hum. 

She imagined the crystal vibrating in tune to it. Imagined that the crystal tasted like the banana, burned like the alcohol, had the texture of the bread – the crusty shell, and soft, doughy centre both – the scent of the candle, and could play the same tones of the music box if you just tapped it the right way.

This was part of the reason why so many people sucked at magic in Immortalized. It involved a lot of visualization, and imagination. If you were one of those people incapable of picturing things in your head, you were screwed right from the onset. And if you weren’t creative enough to be able to really flow with it, you wouldn’t be able to pull off any of the really great feats later on. 

But most of all, you needed to be able to focus. That had always been Otter’s problem. But that was why they invented Adderall.

Too bad they didn’t have any of that stuff in Fell Champions. 

It was fine. Otter had been off her meds plenty of times. She was used to it. She just needed to remember what was on the line. 

This wasn’t just some cool powerup she was getting, or a return to something more familiar. She needed this. She needed it to help Rua. 

She channeled her thoughts, imagining how the Essence Spark would look. They were kind of like fairies in Immortalized. If fairies also looked like geometric patterns that were genderless little assholes that you had to contest your own willpower against any time you wanted them to do something. 

A contract with an Essence Spark was usually a two-way deal. You fed them power, they gave you magic to make things go boom. Or let you heal. Or whatever.

God she hoped she didn’t get support magic. 

No, focus. 

Okay. She could do this. Just imagine some dumb geometric pattern that would float around and sometimes give you some light sass. She could do that. The more complicated the pattern, the more powerful it was. Most people just started with cubes, or spheres, and worried about adding more detail later as it leveled up. Nice and easy. 

Otter never went the easy route. 

Luckily, this would be pretty easy for her. Her last Essence Spark had been a rhombicosidodecahedron. But not a regular one. One that exploded outwards at odd but repeated angles. Basically a giant, three dimensional snowflake. She’d painstakingly created that thing in a graphics editing program over the course of a week, and then had taken the time to memorize every vertex and line of it.

It’d been a few years, with a lot of pot-smoking in between. And some low end hallucinogens. And a lot of sleepless nights memorizing other stuff for Gallant Stand II. And some super Parkinson’s. 

But she totally had this.

Her design was probably a little too complicated for what was going to be a low level, starter Essence Spark. But screw it, she’d figure it out later.

She played the shape in her head. Not just now it looked, but how it felt. How sharp the edges were, how delicate and brittle. 

An image was starting to appear before her, hovering over the soul crystal. It flickered a little bit.

She was doing this to save Rua. From her stupid, beautiful, really hot sister with an amazing pair of knockers and an ass that was almost as good as Otter’s own. And once she figured this whole thing out…

The Essence Spark flickered again. And began to shift.

“Huh?”

Focus, she had to focus.

But that Essence Spark wasn’t looking exactly geometric. If anything, it was beginning to look human. Tiny, the size of Otter’s hand maybe, but definitely human.

That wasn’t how that was supposed to work. She mentioned Essence Sparks were geometric little pricks in her story, right?

Right?

She scrambled at her memory, and realized she might’ve missed that part. She’d been telling a story for three days. It only made sense she’d missed something. Or maybe that was just the result of trying to Mythwalk a magic system into existence. It was taking a life of its own, shaping itself how the Dreamer saw it, not how it worked in Immortalized.

What else had she forgotten? What else had changed all on its own?

She tried to reassert her control, tried to slam that thought of her overcomplicated snowflake into what she was creating. But it was too late. She could see the features of a tiny person. Hair, eyes, arms, legs. Breasts. Hips. Ass.

Godammit, this was all her fault. Or rather, the fault of her hormones.

She really should’ve rubbed one out before trying this. But how was she supposed to know her own sexual frustration would interfere with this? 

Those curves really did kind of look like Kir’s. 

The Essence Spark became more solid. Still made of light, of energy, not really physical, more of a spirit. But it seemed more real with that one errant thought.

“Fuck it,” Otter muttered.

Okay, so, this was going to be weird. And would take some explaining to a few people. But if this was what was going to work, who was she to argue?

So, she imagined her ideal woman, a pastiche of the most beautiful women she’d ever known. Kir’s figure, Sami’s long, glossy hair and her warrior’s pose, Rua’s abs and arms – and her gorgeous eyes, heterochromatic and with epicanthic folds – and so much more. A sly, easy smile, as if the Essence Spark knew a joke everyone else didn’t. Lines of light running up her legs and across her body and arms like ivy. And since she was the size of a fairy, screw it, she got fairy wings. 

The Essence Spark settled down, landing on Otter’s palm, and curling around the soul crystal, as if pulling an infant to her breast as she slept. There was barely any weight to her, like a feather had landed on Otter’s hand. 

There was a flash of light, and the soul crystal vanished. The weight didn’t change in Otter’s hand as the Essence Spark fused with what gave it birth. 

Something from her menu flickered, and she opened it, giving it a quick glance. There was a notification on her World Quests tab, as well as a whole new tab that hadn’t been there before.

World Quests revealed a simple message.

Create an Essence Spark

+1 to All Stats

The new tab itself was labeled ‘Essence Spark.’ Otter eagerly opened up the page for information on what she’d obtained.

D-Grade Essence Spark

Name: ?

Attuned Elements: Water, Wood

Her excitement wavered. And then vanished. 

“Son of a bitch!”

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