caerulex

[Severed Divinity] 82. Void Lightning

Isen was lightheaded as he walked down the final twist of corridor. What had the queen been thinking, making her palace like this? Allezin mentioned a magic experiment as the reason, but Isen couldn’t fathom what experiment would take up so much space. The palace must have cut deep into the rock of the basin, extending who knows how far.

Unless she didn’t make the labyrinth at all. What if she found it like this, before she founded the city?

He wondered if there were ...

[Severed Divinity] 81. No Path Forward

Isen sat down in a dangerously comfortable chair next to the row of pill furnaces. It was a testament to how far ahead Lumina Eldrassin was that nothing there called to him. It was all worthless at his current skill level, probably in part because he was a cultivator and Lumina a mage.

He was tempted to nab one of the pill furnaces anyway, but they were all large and bulky. Inconvenient and unnecessary, plus they were all likely more valuable than he could hold onto. There was a reason ...

[Severed Divinity] 80. The Prototypes

“Allezin, do you know where the prototypes are?” Isen asked.

Both men did a double take. “Don’t you know?” Allezin asked.

Isen shrugged. “I’m just walking.”

“Then keep walking,” the warrior said, his voice incredulous.

“How about you, Welco? Did you scout the way?”

“My scouting efforts are still ongoing,” Welco replied evasively.

Isen looked between the two of them. “What would you do without me?” He shook his head and set of...

[Severed Divinity] 79. Impossible

Isen stared at Welco’s shadow puppet, which hadn’t noticed them exit the third floor lift. He reflexively activated shadow cloak and hoped that Allezin would trigger his own invisibility.

To his relief, Allezin caught on. Isen saw two tiny blue flares peeking out from within the invisible helmet. Allezin must have activated a technique to see Welco’s shadows.

Now that they knew the shadow mage was on this floor, catching up to him was only a matter of time, and there were a ...

[Severed Divinity] 78. Phantom

Yura Corasin didn’t fully understand the level of control Lumina had over the city. The queen could clearly see things happening by tapping into some grand spell that covered all of Eldrassin. Probably part of the system leveraged by the police.

Lumina had always been a paragon of magic and scholarship, someone who delegated administrating the city to lower tiered experts. Yura had never seen this side of Lumina before, one directly involved in the city’s affairs, and ...

[Severed Divinity] 77. The Queen’s Palace

Isen had expected Allezin’s secret entrance to be more mundane, like a servant’s tunnel. The reality defied expectation.

Allezin ran around the palace, stopping before a random tree that Isen couldn’t have distinguished from any other. The palace yards were filled with well-manicured trees, all of them identical in any way that mattered.

Allezin pressed his foot on a rock near the trunk and the dirt hollowed out, revealing a passage. Allezin jumped into it with...

[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, ...

[Severed Divinity] 75. Welco’s Lesson

Welco’s teeth flashed in the firelight. “That’s reserved for tier threes.”

“Usually?”

“Usually.” He frowned. “What do you know about aura?”

Isen shrugged. “I’ve seen it a few times from tier threes. Never from a monster, though.”

“That’s because aura intent requires sapinas,” Welco said.

“What...?” Isen didn’t recognize the word.

“Intelligence. The ability to think and reason.”

Sapience....

[Severed Divinity] 74. Disciple

Learning that he qualified as a B-rank cultivator only made Isen want to work harder. There were so many places he lagged behind, and there wasn’t enough time in the day to address them all.

After finishing with Jorin and Meridia, he cycled in the cultivation cave. One of his main shortfalls was the strength of his meridians, which he largely attributed to the number of rings in his hollow core. From what he understood, having D-rank meridian strength with less than ten rings was anom...

[Severed Divinity] 73. Rankings Update (2)

It was rather beautiful, watching how the ambient energy curled like smoke around his limbs as he moved through the sequences. The most difficult part in the beginning had just been remembering what to do, but he’d flowed through them at least a hundred times at this point. All of fourth clade could probably do the sequences in their sleep, and he wasn’t close to that point. Still, the natural flexibility and power of a tier two cultivator allowed him to move through them without tiring, ...

[Severed Divinity] 72. Rankings Update (I)

Tomnas brought Isen to a separate, mostly empty part of the weapons yard dominated by immobile practice dummies. Half elves visibly younger than fourth clade drilled strikes against them. Isen saw the Femera sequences’ influence in their movements, though it was subtle.

The others at the dummies were all adults. Rather than swinging frequently and repetitively, they tried out specific sequences of movements and more complex bladework. Isen suspected that the moves they tried were mean...

[Severed Divinity] 71. The Morning After

As he departed Welco’s mansion, Jorin felt like he’d been hit by an Eldrassin subwyrm, even after taking a peak tier two meridian cleansing pill. He left alone since Kelsina needed more time to recover after serving as the primary invoker of shadow call, a technique they could only cast at full strength. She’d overtaxed herself using it after fighting the other tier twos. Jorin had offered his energy to assist in powering the technique, but that never worked well for cultivation techniq...

[Severed Divinity] 70. Spoils

Isen stood on renewed feet and tugged the cushion to the room’s center, leaving it the way he found it. He returned to the main chamber and his eyes fell over everything, considering where to start.

First, he went back to the pill box. Isen wasn’t completely selfish—he knew the coming storm would turn Eldrassin upside down, and that the city’s peacekeepers—the police—would be responsible for mitigating as much chaos and destruction as they could.

He found it distastefu...

[Severed Divinity] 69. Safe House

Paling, Isen pulled his boots back on and walked into the open. He left the sword, stolen bow, and unused arrows next to the Aranite woman he’d killed.

He crouched down next to her, just staring at her blood-smeared mask, almost curious enough to lift it. She was probably human, too.

Isen had killed drayavin and monsters, but those were bestial, barely aware of themselves. The only real murder he’d partaken in before tonight was Erasmus the divine bear, and he’d gone into th...

[Severed Divinity] 68. Cosmovault

Isen only had one blade on him—the Shard of Erasmus.

Not yet, he thought. Not for this.

As he appeared behind the nearest assassin, he used the momentum from the rapid dash to empower a jab, throwing all his weight into the movement. At the same time, he grabbed the arrow nocked to the string and stabbed it into the woman’s hand, barely managing to penetrate. But the arrow had been energized with a nasty green glow, and that now seeped into its creator.<...

[Severed Divinity] 67. The Aranites

She was unmistakably a drayavin—and given her calm, deadly demeanor and obvious intelligence, Isen guessed she was a tier three.

Isen couldn’t hear from so far away. He hesitated for a moment, then proceeded closer. He considered invoking shadow cloak, but wasn’t sure if it would actually shield him. Maybe the monster woman could perceive energy like the monsters of the depths.

“Isen,” a voice suddenly sounded in his head, as familiar as it was unexpected. ...

[Severed Divinity] 66. Shadowed Agents

Isen stayed for hours, long after Julra left. Most of the practice was dedicated to his breathing and instilling the muscle memory of shooting. The time for dinner came and went, but Isen felt no desire to go.

He didn’t want to see Freyan and Arthum. He didn’t want to be around other people at all—he wanted to keep pushing himself. An almost manic energy coursed through him, an unquenchable need to prepare himself as much as possible for the coming storm. The targets were so riddl...

[Severed Divinity] 65. Steady Gains

Classes remained engaging, though sometimes Isen found his attention drifting to more important matters than his well-rounded, elven education.

Freyan and Arthum had walked on metaphorical eggshells around him the entire day. When they all walked over to the cultivation lesson, Isen decided to apologize. “I’m sorry if I worried you both, but it really wasn’t a big deal.”

“We tore into your room and saw you half-collapsed and covered in blood,” Arthum stated, crossing h...

[Severed Divinity] 64. Alchemical Hunger

By the time Isen left the Welco’s mansion late in the evening, he felt exhausted but fulfilled. His main objective had been to attract the patriarch’s interest, and there was no doubt that he’d succeeded.

Isen was most happy about the pointers Welco had given him on his shadow cloak. Before, he’d been tired after a few seconds of channeling it. Now, he’d more than doubled the length of time he could hold it. Welco assured him that the more he practiced, the more efficient he�...

[Severed Divinity] 63. Fate Has No Master

Isen finished with Julra at half past seventh bell, as promised.

He was exhausted. His arms and shoulder ached the worst, though his neck and core also protested as he returned to the path with his bow and quiver strapped to his back, his hand resting lightly on the Shard of Erasmus’s hilt.

His tempered body didn’t sweat, and the muscle tears would repair quickly, but damn. He felt like sleeping.

Still, he had an appointment to keep—the most...

[Severed Divinity] 62. Archery

Isen couldn’t find Freyan and Arthum when he left the cultivation cave after fifth evening bell, so he entered the dining area alone. He noticed the others in fourth clade gathering around a table. They must have arrived only a minute or two earlier.

He approached the group hesitantly, unsure what to say. Two facing his direction noticed him.

“Oh, Isen,” a slight half elf girl said. Isen recalled her name was Lona. “Hi.”

“Hi. Can I...?”

The half elves loo...

[Severed Divinity] 61. Sudden Summons

Isen tried to keep his breathing steady.

“—perfectly normal to feel lightheaded. Keep breathing. You picked the skill up very quickly, Isen. Your master prepared you well.”

“Thank you, Jorin,” Isen ground out. “I think I need… to rest.”

Jorin’s expression was impossible to read. “I’ll walk you back. You shouldn’t have lingering exhaustion from a single invocation. If you’re still fatigued in a few hours, come find me.”

For the ...

[Severed Divinity] 60. Shadow Aspect

Isen sat down on the white sediment and closed his eyes. He drew in the energy of the world and focused on how it flowed through his rings and into the meridians in his shoulders. The technique wasn’t actually very complicated. It seemed like all he needed to do was expel the energy with a sort of... spin on it, so it would wrap around him.

The main point that eluded him was how this was supposed to generate a shadow cloak, rather than just… producing som...

[Severed Divinity] 59. First Technique

Jorin handed the glass slate over, his eyes fixed on Isen the entire time.

“Don’t you need to see it first?” Isen asked.

“It’s for your eyes only, unless you choose to share it with me.”

Isen ran his thumb over the edge and inspected the tablet. The elven sigils were carved into the glass with neat strokes. More magic at work. One thing that kept sticking out to Isen was the sheer variety of magic effects and enchantments, from the appraisal kit in Shevenar to Co...

[Severed Divinity] 57-58

Chapter 57. Not Behind in Everything

The last time Isen had seen something so… mystical was in the Compass of Legacy, when he’d seen the story of the Sentinel of the Abyss and Legacy. Even after Teacher Conrin’s manifestation ended, he stared transfixed at the spot it had occupied.

He wondered what Ros would think about the story. He was reminded of what the beast had told him about the advancement of monsters. At the peak of each tier, a monst...

[Severed Divinity] 56. Nascent Soul

The class schedule had simply stated that they met an hour after first bell. Isen was up well before then. He washed up, dressed, and polished the Shard of Erasmus. Isen held his fingers up to the shiny, pearlescent surface. Side by side, he more clearly saw the sheen over his nails that made them sharp. Tempered.

He walked to the mirror in his small bathroom corner and cycled, eyes open. He looked normal—no glowing eye.

He was too jittery to properly cultivate, so he grabbed th...

[Severed Divinity] 55. Kelsina Femera

Isen let the world fall away. He let everything fall away. In his mind, he was back in the depths, back with Ros. The two of them were cycling together, reaching ever closer to eternity.

Then, suddenly, it was gone. He was falling. His body twisted and he caught himself on his hands, pushing himself to his feet as his eyes snapped open. The sudden drop in ambient energy was like a gut punch.

Someone had tossed him out of the cultivation chamber.

T...

[Severed Divinity] 54. Cultivation Cave

“On three,” Arthum announced. “One, two… three!”

Isen didn’t move. Neither did his opponent.

“Since you’re new, you get the first move,” Freyan said. “Let’s see what you got!”

Isen stalked forward, unsure what would work on an opponent with superior speed and on-par reflexes. He figured using external energy manipulation, while perhaps impressive, wouldn’t be in the spirit of the spar.

He cycled energy through his meridians and dashed forward....

[Severed Divinity] 51-53

Chapter 51. New Recruit

[ Jorin. Even middle aged half elves look hot. Combo of elven genes and tier 2. ]

At the early hour, the streets were relatively clear, though some elves milled about. The lack of congestion allowed the horse to display some of its speed and maneuverability. Whenever Jorin so much as twitched the reins, the horse responded, shifting directions.

Eve...

[Severed Divinity] Chapters 47-50

Chapter 47. Welco the Haunt

Allezin moved with sure steps through the crowd. His pin was missing or at least hidden—an intentional decision. Isen didn’t know how long the tier three could go without exposing the pin before some alarm sounded. Probably not long.

It was also possible Lumina Eldrassin had tampered with his pin, but Isen wasn’t sure if she had the appropriate skillset to do so.

Isen was surprised by how active Eldrassin City was after dark...