152 - Night and Day

When we parted, she asked me if I had an unfulfilled wish, a grand quest I wanted to send her on in exchange for my help. She seemed distraught when I assured her I had left this sliver of my soul behind for my own enjoyment only.

Carvings excavated from the tomb of Leander the Veil Sealer.

It took three days for Alexandra to isolate the three components of the curse of the fading mark. At this point, even she was starting to think she was pushing the duration of her stay underground a little too long, and that it wasn’t nice to her friends who were probably looking for her on the surface.

That said, the opportunity to train with Leander was too hard to pass up. Besides, the ghost wouldn’t tell her where the exit was until his time was over.

Despite his claims that he knew little about curses, the old hero had been key in her identifying the components of the curse. In the end, mana was mana, no matter the form it took and the technique used to manipulate it. There would always be similarities.

She sat on the floor in front of the Kesh sarcophagus with Leander hovering above her. Meanwhile, Speck had gone hunting for more rocks somewhere else in the tomb.

Out of the three components of the curse, she discarded the nausea and the semi-translucent body, keeping only the mana diffusion.

That’s where the difficulty and Leander’s expertise came into play. Mana diffusion was only held together by the other two components. With the ghost’s help, she found a workaround, forcing everything into her hair.

It was arguably worse than when they were simply gray or white.

Now, after light blue, they'd gone a strange, static-charged white. Mana pulsed in slow, uneven waves. Strands caught the diffusion at random, so that at any given moment her hair looked like it was smoldering with cold fire.

"Your looks will make heads turn," Leander said, circling her. "But they’ll think skill, not divine class. I guess some might link it to a bloodline, but that’s among the more accepted demonic dealings."

"That's the idea." Alexandra held still, watching her own mana signature as it fed steadily into her hair instead of bleeding out across her whole body. "The core keeps generating like normal. The curse doesn't touch the source. It just redirects the flow the second it leaves my core."

Leander drifted down to the sarcophagus, arms crossed, studying her. "So. Did the system register it?"

Alexandra opened her journal.

You are suffering from the curse of controlled diffusion.

“Controlled diffusion,” she said.

“Not a very curse-like name.”

She nodded. “Next step is to make it permanent.”

“A significant step. Do you have an idea?”

“A few. Let me work on it.”

Alexandra turned her focus inward. She stared at the curse running inside her core. So far, she’d managed to weave an unstable loop of solar mana that circulated her mana through her hair.

The instability of her work was obvious to her eyes. The threads were unknitting themselves with every loop.

She just wasn’t sure how to stop it.

She’d checked the contribution point shop, and there were no skills related to sickness in the common section. Worse, the few curse skills she’d noted were not necessarily better than her combination of Curse Unraveling and Solar Manipulation.

She could feel every point in the loop where the threads came loose, tiny gaps opening and closing as the mana passed through, faster than she could track them individually but obvious as a pattern.

If it kept coming apart, the fix was simple. Make it tighter.

She fed more Solar mana into the weave, pulling the threads. The gaps closed. The pulse in her hair, which she felt more than saw at this point, evened out.

For a moment she thought she'd solved it.

Then the flow started stuttering.

The mana that had been moving through the loop at a steady pace now had to push through threads packed too close together, and she felt it slow down. She sensed a few points of pressure on her weave. She kept going, tightening a little more. She was trying to see if the mana would just find a way through once the weave settled.

It didn't. The pressure kept climbing. She pushed a bit more mana into the loop, trying to force it through by sheer volume.

That was the wrong move.

A thread snapped. Then another, and another until the entire weave came apart. Her hair went slack, the pulse of cold fire dying out.

She sat there a second, catching her breath, then reached for her journal.

Curse Unraveling 14 -> 15

“You fucker. That’s the moment you choose to level up…”

“Stop complaining about getting levels, will you?” Leander chuckled. “If a normal person could hear you, they’d rightly think you’re insane.”

“My idea didn’t work.”

“That’s fine. You're progressing fast. A few more days should do it.”

“Leander, I don’t have a few more days. My friends outside must be worried sick.”

“Friends?” Speck asked, sneaking back into the room, hugging a smooth rock that had to come from the riverbed.

“Is my favorite student jealous? Don’t worry, I taught you how to follow her out.”

Alexandra ignored the jab. “How is it going to survive outside?”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“You can explain, Speck.”

“Hide. In. Darkness. Of. Your. Heart.”

She blinked. “What is that supposed to mean? I’m the nicest person you’ll meet.”

Silence.

She coughed. “I mean. I’m not that bad.”

“Oh, don’t take it badly. Speck meant it in a very literal sense. Your insides are dark. He’ll hide there.”

“I was worried for a second there,” Alexandra said, putting a hand over her chest.

“You should be. Emotional darkness is part of Speck’s conceptual truth. He’ll get to it eventually,” Leander said. “It’s taking him a bit longer since he spent all his life alone until he met you.”

“Fuck.” Alexandra raised her head to the ceiling.

Speck extended a limb before her. “Look. Rock. Smooth.”

“Very nice find.” She smiled, turning to look at its source. “Won’t you get bored if you stay inside of my body?”

“Can. Go. Out. At. Night.”

“Yes,” Leander continued. “Speck will get used to moonlight. It’s not the most comfortable, but darkness elementals can deal with a bit of luminosity.”

Alexandra wasn’t listening. Her eyes went wide with excitement, and she snapped her fingers.

“Speck, you’re a genius.”

“Yes.”

“How so?” Leander asked.

Alexandra ignored them and focused back on her core.

The sun wasn’t static. The world orbited around it, or, for her purpose, the sun orbited around the world. It was an endless turning wheel. Presence, then absence. Both equally important for those who lived under the cycle.

She thought of the sun rising and setting, as a mechanism. Two states, endlessly trading places, one relieving the other at the end of their course.

She started with the day.

Alexandra pulled a thread of Solar mana from her core and brought it to her hair, but instead of holding it there, she let it fall back where it came from.

It went slack immediately.

She frowned. That wasn’t quite what she wanted.

She went at it again, this time holding the thread at the top of its arc for a fraction longer before releasing it, timing it against her own heartbeat. One count up, one count down. On the first count, the mana spread into her hair the way it had with her original curse. On the second count, she stopped feeding it and let the built-up thread drain straight back into her core instead of trying to hold the shape.

The strain she'd fought all day wasn't there. There was nothing to hold in place while it drained. The curse was just off for a pulse, and back on for the next.

She did it again. Up, hold, down, empty. Up, hold, down, empty.

She kept the rhythm going, counting under her breath now, one-two, one-two. It still wasn’t quite what she wanted. A pulse like this would call even more attention to her than the cold fire in her hair, and it would leave her vulnerable half the time.

Besides, the tricky part was the switch itself. When she let the thread drop, for a moment it had nowhere to go. The mana would go wasted, and the curse would die out. The thread needed to call up the next pulse before going down.

That was night.

She pulled a second thread and tied it to both ends of the day thread, then, like a jumping rope, she sent the weave spinning.

Day fed into Night. Night caught the tail of Day. An endless cycle, both sides never meeting each other. Both sides supporting each other when the other was down.

She looked at it go. There was no strain because the heat of the day was smoothed out by the cold of the night. There was no pulse because the night was not lesser than the day.

The static-charged white of her hair had settled into a slow, hypnotic tide. Strands of bright, solar gold surged, only to fade into deep indigo at the tips before cycling back to gold.

She looked at her journal.

You are suffering from the sickness of the false sun.

Alexandra smiled. “Guess I’m stuck with weird hair again.”

“This is not worse than the blue dye you were using,” Leander said. “How is it?”

“I did it. Sickness of the false sun.”

“Another conceptual truth. You’re not much worse than Speck, after all.”

“Can I be your favorite?”

He scoffed. “Dream on. Look at how cute this being of darkness is.” He pointed at Speck, who’d gone back to play with his rocks.

“Fair,” she said. “Hold on, I got a few skill levels out of it.”

“I bet you did.”

Alexandra focused back on her journal, her eyes going wide as she read the list of her rewards.

Solar Affinity 3 -> 4

Curse Unraveling, Sewing, Solar Concentration, and Solar Manipulation have merged into Solar Core Control.

A Face Among Many has evolved into One Among Many.

Daily quests summary: Three Quests Completed -> +30 exp, +1 STR, +1 CON, +1 PER

Daily Quest Streak: 115 -> 118

She whistled. “I should curse myself more often.”

“Please don’t say things like that.”

“You’d sing a different tune if you could see my new skills.”

Solar Core Control – Rare:

Your mana is your own. Your core is your own.

Each level increases your control over solar mana.

Each level increases your awareness of what is happening inside your core.

Each level increases the density of your mana.

Each level increases your precision with mana threads.

One Among Many – Uncommon:

Makes everything about you more difficult to notice.

Each level improves your inconspicuousness.

Alexandra grinned. Then, for her own satisfaction, turned the page to see her entire status.

Name: Alexandra Ward

Class: Heroine of Quests

Rank: Bronze

Level: 7 (130/350)

Strength (STR):92

Dexterity (DEX):88

Constitution (CON):94

Intelligence (INT):94

Perception (PER):97

Bloodline: Blood of the Verdant Lord

Class Art:

• [Quest Journal] – A living record bound to its bearer. Generates daily quests tailored to the surrounding environment. Completing quests yields experience, rewards, and contributes to an ongoing streak. The longer the streak, the greater the bounty.

Current Streak: 118.

Class Perks:

• [Quest Ledger] (Bronze)

• [Adventuring Contract] (Bronze)

• [Streak Enhancement] (Iron)

• [Contribution Points] (Iron)

General Skills:

• [Giant Slayer] (Rare) - 7

• [Solar Core Control] (Rare) - 1

• [Inflict Weakness] (Uncommon) - 15

• [Dark Bolt] (Uncommon) - 13

• [Life Curse] (Uncommon) - 13

• [Drain Life] (Uncommon) - 8

• [Aggressive Assimilation] (Uncommon) - 7

• [Manyfold Style] (Uncommon) - 14

• [Mana Persuasion] (Uncommon) - 3

• [Rays Of The Sun] (Uncommon) - 4

• [One Among Many] (Uncommon) - 1

• [Sure Footing] (Common) - 10

• [Running] (Common) - 10

• [Reading] (Common) - 10

• [Basic Hygiene] (Common) - 6

• [Basic Herbology] (Common) - 4

• [Basic Enchantment] (Common) - 10

• [Tracking] (Common) - 5

• [Solar Blast] (Common) - 6

• [Solar Affinity] (Common) - 4

• [Cleaning] (Common) - 1

• [Diving] (Common) - 1

• [Swimming] (Common) - 2

• [Familiar Contract] (Common) - 4

Achievements: Defiance III, Insistent Quester IV, Insurrection III, Uprising II, Rebellion II, Bronze