The following day, Registry Master Ermine had the group join a group that was preparing to challenge the Castles in the Sky Mass Challenge. Most of the people preparing for the Challenge ignored the trio and their pet; only the other group that was headed for the Grand Tree paid any attention to them once Ermine said why they were there. That group welcomed them; it meant they didn’t have to hire additional people to guard them while their spearman, Aric, attempted to learn On Wings of Air.
Aric was older than Sophia or Amy; it was hard to tell if he was older than Dav or not. Other than his age, he seemed fairly unremarkable to Sophia; his brown hair and brown eyes were bland compared to Fav’s black hair and purple eyes. The only truly notable thing about him was that other than his small Registry brooch, the only jewelry he wore was a damaged silvery cross that hung from a decorative button.
The decisions on roles were quickly made. Aric and Amy would attempt to learn On Wings of Air while everyone else defended them. If either of them succeeded, someone else on their team would be allowed to try. None of Sophia’s group brought up the fact that they could probably all succeed; instead, they decided their internal order.
Amy would be first, since the Ability was helpful for reaching Night Owl, even if it wasn’t required. Dav would be second, since he was the fastest and didn’t have any method of flying or even floating (which was a better description of what On Wings of Air allowed for creatures without wings than true flight). They had more trouble choosing between Sophia and Taika, since Sophia was fast but Taika didn’t have the ability to fly. Eventually, Taika muttered something about shapeshifting and yielded to Sophia.
Sophia couldn’t help but be intrigued by Taika’s mutter; she’d only ever seen Taika as a colorful chinchilla and a twin-tailed fox. Taika didn’t seem to want to share, so she didn’t push too far, but she hoped she’d someday get to see what else Taika could do.
It was certain to be cute. Both the chinchilla and the fox were.
The next two days were supposed to be training together to prepare for the Mass Challenge, but the people headed up the Great Tree were exempted; all they had to do was deal with Apple Monkeys and climbing a tree.
Apple Monkeys were more or less what they sounded like: monkeys that threw apples. They had surprisingly large human-like arms and hands to throw the apples and feet that looked more like hands, but other than that Sophia couldn’t find much to say about the drawings.
They were monkeys with apples. The apples didn’t even do anything special; they just hurt when they hit you and could knock you off your perch if you weren’t anchored well. The reason they were a threat was that they could and would aim for the person trying to learn On Wings of Air. It was difficult to build a proper visualization while being pelted with apples. Sophia figured Dav could probably do it, since he didn’t actually have to build much of a visualization, but even a spellform would be difficult.
Fortunately, you only had to hit them once or twice to get them to run. The records were clear on that. You didn’t even have to disable their shields. They were also clear that the monkeys could climb faster than humans and would happily lead anyone who followed them into a trap with monsters far worse than monkeys, though the records weren’t entirely clear on what the monster was. Sophia suspected it was deliberately left out to make the monsters seem more dangerous.
The evening before the Challenge, Aric invited Sophia to join him for dinner. She insisted on bringing Dav, which made Aric a little uncomfortable but he still agreed. Sophia wanted to make it clear that she was not interested in dating Aric, but she didn’t see any reason to turn down a chance to get to know him better.
It wasn’t until they arrived and saw that every second or third person had a pin, brooch, patch, or even tattoo shaped like a broken sword that they realized they were definitely on the wrong side of town. That was also when Sophia realized that the broken cross Aric wore wasn’t a broken cross at all; it was a broken sword.
Nothing happened, but the entire dinner was a little more tense than it should have been. Sophia wasn’t sure if Aric noticed or not, but she was hyper-aware that she was not among friends. She couldn’t forget the Wanderer’s warning that the Hallowed who survived the Fall of Kestii were secretly systematically killed by the Broken Lord’s followers.
The Challenge itself was surprisingly easy. Aric’s team had ropes, but none of them were experienced climbers. The Great Tree was easy enough to climb, even for the inexperienced, but Sophia’s climbing gear made it far safer. They reached the top of the tree with nothing worse than a few bruises where the Apple Monkeys’ apples hit.
They weren’t stopped by the Guide’s shield. Sophia assumed that was because the apples weren’t deadly, but they still hurt. Dav’s healing beacon was welcome.
Sophia’s floating knives, Dav’s Thorn Emitter, and the other team’s archer were enough to mostly discourage the monkeys as they climbed; the other team’s Windcaller only acted when there were a lot of monkeys.
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When they reached the top, Taika piped up and asked the archer to stop shooting the monkeys while he set up an illusion. The other group seemed shocked Taika could talk, even though they’d heard him before.
Twenty minutes later, when it was completely clear that the monkeys had lost interest in them and weren’t going to return unless Taika let his illusion lapse, they decided that one more person from each team could try to gain the Ability. That left two people watching other than Taika; if the monkeys returned, they could pull the additional people away from their study.
Six hours after that when the Challenge faded away because the Castle assault failed, only Dav, Amy, Aric, and Taika had managed to learn the On Wings of Air Ability. Sophia knew she’d cast the spell correctly, she’d felt herself float for a moment, but the Guide simply didn’t credit her with learning a new spell. The only reason she could come up with was that her Winged Flight Ability was too close to On Wings of Air.
On the other team, only Aric succeeded.
The next day, Aric asked Sophia to join him for dinner again. This time, she turned him down. She didn’t want to get any more involved with him than she already was; while he seemed nice enough, Sophia didn’t feel like trying to make a friend when she’d have to convince to change his religious views if she wanted to reveal her own secrets. It simply wasn’t worth the effort.
Not that she told him that. She told him that she wanted to have dinner with Dav and Amy. Naturally, that ended up with Aric visiting the Registry restaurant shortly after they sat down and inviting himself to their table.
It was a very awkward dinner.
The next few days were spent in the Registry Library. Aric showed up several times; he seemed to be researching his own Spheres. Sophia couldn’t fault him for that, but somehow he always seemed to end up sitting near her, usually at the next table. Whenever she looked up, he was watching her more than his books.
By the fourth day, Sophia was convinced it wasn’t a coincidence that Aric kept showing up; the only question in her mind was if he was stalking her because he wanted to date her or if he was watching them for the Broken Temple. She couldn’t tell; she also couldn’t say which was more worrying. In some ways, the only good part of the situation was that she knew where he was.
On the fifth day after the apple monkeys, they finally found records of a Summoner Sphere that sort of matched Dav’s. It wasn’t Eldritch; instead, the Verdant Summoner summoned plants. It was a very rare Sphere that usually appeared as a first upgrade option to a plant-based spellcaster, but there were records of a few before the first upgrade.
There were a number of upgrade options, far more than for Psychic Bulwark even though Psychic Bulwarks were more common. Sophia got the impression from reading them that there were probably a number of Psychic Bulwark options that weren’t recorded for some reason; she could think of several options that she wouldn’t put in a publicly accessible repository either. That problem didn’t seem to apply to Verdant Summoner.
On top of that, they’d ignored the options that led away from Psychic Bulwark because Taika was happy with the ones that stayed within the overall concept. Dav was unhappy with his current Sphere, so they looked at everything.
The most common was focused on enhancing the summoned creatures, making them stronger, sharper, poisonous, or clingy. Most Verdant Summoners focused on one or two of the summon improvements, often something that would weaken or harm enemies with a secondary focus in restraining them in some manner. Dav kind of hated the idea.
The second most common approach was to focus on Abilities like Embody Summon that allowed the summoner to fight like they specialized in combat on their own. Dav liked the idea, but he didn’t like any of the specific upgrades that were known. His biggest problem with it, oddly enough, was that all of the known upgrades gave up all of the spellcasting and any ability to summon a creature without Embodying it. They weren’t certain if he’d lose his Species spellcasting, but he didn’t want to risk it.
The third approach was more or less what Dav was already doing, to try to stay well-rounded without limiting himself. There were no known upgrades for that approach other than staying as a Verdant Summoner, which for Dav would be Eldritch Summoner. Dav didn’t like that either; while being well-rounded was nice, he already felt like his summons were mostly useless.
There was a fourth option, but the moment Dav realized what it was he refused to even consider it. He could permanently bond with one of his summons, improving its abilities while changing his own shape. It was noted as being almost a Warp; it looked and acted a lot like being Warped, but it didn’t usually breed true. Dav didn’t care.
Sophia noted that that option usually involved also taking a secondary Sphere for martial combat to fold into the main Sphere at the time of the upgrade. She didn’t bother to mention it, but she noted it because it meant that the upgrade process was messier than it seemed. Even without that, it already seemed very poorly designed.
The fifth option for Verdant Summoners was to try to expand their summons by incorporating animals as well as plants. It was difficult to reach, with a list of requirements that was easily three times as long as the list for Night Owl. There was an easier alternative, taking a second pre-upgrade Sphere and merging it with the original to expand the summon pool, but it was riskier. They had no idea if either would work for Dav or not, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t interested.
The sixth option was to try to split the Sphere in two, which would drop both Spheres down to Level One and allow them to be leveled again. The most common split was into two spellcasting classes with different focuses, but that wasn’t the only possible split. It didn’t have any requirements other than reaching Level Four and the first upgrade, and the problem with it was built in: you’d have to spend the Wisps to level your Spheres again. On top of that, you needed to use the split Spheres to gain the right spells to go in the direction you wanted. In many ways, it was a way to spend a lot more Wisps to get some more flexibility.
There just weren’t any good options.
Sophia glanced to the side. Aric was still there. There was no way she was going to talk about this out loud with him here, so she sent the words telepathically instead. “I think we’re looking at your Sphere the wrong way.”
Getting a decent picture of a monkey with an apple was a lot harder than I expected. The first decent one I got had a giant apple in the monkey’s right hand and a tiny one in the left, which just didn’t work. Then I went through a whole range of monkeys that looked … just … wrong. It wasn’t even the extra fingers and toes, the faces were bad. This one’s perhaps a bit more human-like than I wanted, but “a bit more human-like” works well for the situation and is much better than the others.