NBB2: Epilogue

Sumil listened to the loud thudding and shuffling of her pursuers as she crept stealthily from shadow to shadow. Her gaze was fixed on the jagged opening of the box canyon she was hiding in, her skeletal body coiled and ready to spring up and flee. There was no sign of the telltale glow that usually emanated from her bones, which were now a dull, steely blue. She was actively suppressing the light, a skill she had gained from Domain, unbeknownst to the other.

At times like this, she was glad that she wasn't prey to an overabundance of emotion. It enabled her to keep a cool head and calmly calculate the odds of slipping out of the box canyon without being spotted.

The sheer canyon walls to her left and right were unscalable, and doubling back was out of the question. The only path left open to her was forward.

After sneaking to the end of the canyon, she peeked around the corner. A dozen tall three-legged Kaots were scouring the larger corridor that lay beyond her refuge. They used their massive front leg to hop small distances, which had been causing the loud thudding that she had been hearing.

Leapers. Eleven of them, she thought, and the minute anxiety she had felt dissipated. She quickly plotted a course from one of the undead to the next, finding the quickest path. When she was ready, she took another quick look to make sure that they were still standing in roughly the same places.

That's fine, she thought, and she rushed forward, her bones flaring up with a bright blue light. The first of the Kaots saw her and let loose a rough garbled trumpeting sound. It leaped clumsily toward her.

A stream of blue fire burst from the tips of her fingers, striking the Kaot mid-leap with enough force to hurl it back and slam into the canyon wall. The others, alerted by the first Kaot, turned and rushed toward her, their massive front legs propelling them forward in leaps as their smaller legs stabilized them upon landing. They would be on her within moments.

Each of the Kaot's four red eyes began to glow, the light coalescing in front of their pug-like faces until it became blinding. With a final pulse, a beam of burning red light shot directly at Sumil.

So predictable, she thought as she deftly dodged the beams, letting them slam harmlessly into the canyon wall behind her. She shot another flurry of blue energy bolts at the Kaots, scoring a lucky hit that blinded one and knocked the others back. She continued sidestepping their attacks and retreating out of their reach, all the while picking them off one by one with well-placed bursts of energy bolts.

A few moments later, the remaining seven Kaots, realizing that they had bitten off more than they could chew, fled. Sumil ignored them. They wouldn't be back anytime soon. Instead, she moved between those that remained and were weakly struggling to get away. She dispatched them one at a time with massive bursts of blue fire from her hand before she harvested their orbs.

Staring at them, she sighed.

I can't believe they just absorb them like this! Disgusting! As she held the tainted orbs in her hands, she scanned the mountainous landscape. Two cyclopean peaks lay to her right, reaching toward the dim sky like jagged and broken fangs. She could also just make out the cancerous and monstrous shapes of the Kaot Lords roaming along the slopes of the mountain. Between her vantage point and the mountains was a chaotic labyrinth of small passages, gullies, and ravines.

You had better not be dead, Domain. I need you to get home, she thought, shivering. Although she had little experience with emotion, the memory of how he had stolen her form, forcing her to do his bidding like some grotesque puppet, kept replaying in her mind. These thoughts vanished just as fast as they had come, but they left behind a deeply disturbing and unpleasant sensation that she had come to loathe.

I want to be the one to end you, she thought, savoring the righteous anger she felt before it vanished. Then she turned and ran down the slope and into one of the ravines. She paused every few moments to check if there was any sound or movement, but aside from the constant howling of the wind, all was still.

A dozen ravines and gullies later, she found herself moving toward a crack that was barely wide enough for her. Ignoring the stone scraping against her ribs, she forced herself through the tight opening for a dozen yards before she popped out into a small cavern. A pale and sickly light flowed in through dozens of cracks in the massive stone plate that had fallen atop the canyon, creating a small covered area. This was the only safe place that she had been able to find so far, and in the last few days, it had become home.

In the corner stood a flat stone that glowed with blue intersecting lines similar to those inscribed on her mana-field. Three mana-orbs lay on top of it, glittering brightly.

Finally ready, she thought, before calculating how long it had taken her to obtain this fourth batch. Two days and nine hours, she thought. That meant it was more efficient to cleanse multiple orbs at the same time.

She took the three cleansed mana-orbs from the cleansing stone and she replaced them with the four tainted ones. The blue lines began glowing dimly. Not enough to be seen from outside, she had made sure of that, but enough to light up the small cavern with something other than the diseased red light from outside. Almost like the light that came from the devourer, she thought. As she carried the cleansed orbs to the back wall of the cavern, where a small crack gave a good view of the canyon, she thought of the moment when Solus had freed her from that horrific thing's grip.

Why hasn't he come to save me from Domain? She had always been a loyal follower, helping Solus and Drys to keep Skulltown moving forward. It was possible that he wasn't able to find the rift that Domain had taken her through. Or, perhaps, he didn't know what Domain had done.

Domain. The thought brought a flash of anger with it. The anger had become increasingly frequent, and she remembered what Solus had told her about his emotional awakening. She really hoped that wasn't what was happening to her, because it sounded like a fantastic way to get oneself ended.

She waited for a moment to see if more emotional distractions would occur, but her mind remained calm, so she focused on what she had stolen. That wretched AI had thought it could just take her body and push her mind into a corner while he did as he wanted. It had no idea that she had been taking things from it.

"Status," she muttered, still amazed as the large blue screen appeared in front of her. It was far bigger than the small one Drys had given her, and it had surprised her the first time she had summoned it.

Name: Sumil

Age: 12

Sex: female-ERROR

Race: Skeleton

Type: mutation

Class: Energy Igniter

Strength: 10/12

Constitution: 8/10

Dexterity: 6/14

Endurance: -

Intelligence: 16/18

Wisdom: 17/20

Charisma: 4/4

Mana-field: 812/1400

Physical density: 1091/1200

Skills: 1

Inscriptions: 1/7

Mana generation: 7

Examining the various values, she nodded to herself. There was a great synergy between raising the values by hunting the Kaots, who then provided orbs that increased her mana-field. If she continued on at her current progression rate, she would soon have raised all of the values she needed for her next evolution. It would be her last real qualitative evolution. Anything outside of some simple sub-race or sub-classes would require a mana-core. For now, though, she had narrowed her next evolution down to two options.

But first, she needed to see if her estimates were correct.

Holding one of the mana-orbs, she began to drain it while staring at the values depicted on the status window. A stream of clear and clean mana flowed from the orb through her hand and into her mana-field. Her status window flashed as it began updating her statistics. The mana-field value increased steadily, and when the orb finally crumbled to dust, it had increased by forty-one points.

Still this discrepancy, she thought as she grabbed another orb. Draining that increased the mana-field by fifty-four. That settles it, she thought as she shook her head. It had to have something to do with the power levels of the undead she was hunting. The best mana-orb she had found so far had only given her eighty-three mana, while the worst had given merely twelve. Those numbers matched her rough estimations of their power.

She switched to the class list and scrolled through it again. It was immensely long, but many of the options were greyed out and unreadable. She had tried to find the evolutions that Solus might have used, but none in her list dealt with stone shaping. Instead, almost all of them dealt with throwing or shooting energy and fire. She had decided that it had to do with her base evolution. Solus had once told her that his base evolution had been different from hers. That, and there were probably some other inherent differences.

Scrolling along, she found no newly unlocked entries.

I need to find a more efficient way to push those numbers up, she thought as she closed the status window. It would be a while before the other four orbs were ready to absorb, and she decided to stay here and increase the only stats she knew how to. She concentrated, and a board appeared in front of her mind's eye, one of the skills she had stolen from Domain.

The board was split into four quadrants, and with effort, she placed a number in each one. The image wavered for a moment before solidifying again, and she held it until she was sure it was stable. Then she split the quadrants into four, resulting in sixteen new partitions. The lines were blurry, and every time she focused on one area, the others slowly became unfocused. It took effort and a good while to stabilize the sixteen quadrants, and when they finally did, she felt a minute elation at her accomplishment. After that, the board evaporated almost immediately.

Progress, she thought. She had never managed to get the lines this crisp. She wondered if she could keep adding to the board and focused once more. The board appeared, and once again, she began splitting it into quadrants and picturing numbers in them. The numbers took shape for a brief moment, indistinct and in constant flux, then the mental image collapsed in on itself.

Close, but not good enough, she thought as she called up the status window again. Her intelligence had increased to seventeen, and she nodded. It was a chore to check her status window every time to see if her efforts had borne fruit. Perhaps she should turn the notification sounds back on, but the constant pinging had quickly become an irritating distraction.

Taking a quick look at the mana-orbs, she saw that glittering spots were slowly beginning to appear on their tainted surfaces. She nodded in satisfaction. They were being purified, something she hadn't known could be done until she found the little nugget of information hidden away in the recesses of Domain's massive mind. She could already imagine the shock on Drys's face when she would tell him, and how happy Solus would be.

If she could find a way back to them.

The portal was far away now, and hovering a few dozen feet in the air. She had yet to find any class pattern that would grant her flight or perhaps some way to leap high in the air, nor had she found anything that would allow her to shape the earth as Solus could. Her plans to build a tower had quickly proven to be impossible due to the large number of Kaot Lords that roamed the area around the portal.

No. She would have to become stronger, and hopefully, a useful pattern would unlock and present itself. If need be, she would find a way to end one of the Kaot Lords and take its mana-core. There had to be a pattern that would allow her to reach the rift!

Her determination didn't waver, and she focused on the mental image again.

I will return to Skulltown. I will go home.

--

Far away from where Sumil was making her silent vow, a small rift hung in the air above a deep pit. A lone Kaot was scouting around the edge of the crumbling ridge, hiding behind stones while sniffing the ground with an elongated, fanged snout.

A shape was ejected from the rift, hanging in midair for a split second before plummeting down into the deep pit.

"What the-"

The figure turned into a blue lightning beam that shot to the ground before reforming into a simple, white skeleton.

"Seriously?" Galg spat, his disembodied voice floating around his head, filled with distaste. He glared up at the hovering portal, his eye sockets flaring up for a moment.

"Damnit, Drys! Sending me out to scout for these stupid Rifts is one thing, but actually hurling me in here on some fool mission to find Sumil? Without even waiting to hear if I was willing to go? That's low, even for you!"

Galg looked around and noticed the Kaot that was staring at him. It was twice as long as him, bent low to the ground, and vaguely resembled a shadow stalker.

"What are you looking at, ugly?"

His words acted like a catalyst, and the Kaot sprang forward, growling softly as it pounded toward the much smaller skeleton.

"What's this? Haven't heard of Galg the Mighty, eh? Well, come on then, and see if you can get a piece!" Galg laughed, and when the Kaot launched itself at him, he turned into a blue bolt of lightning that shot through the leaping shape. A black, scorched, and smoking hole appeared in the middle of the Kaot's chest. It slammed into the ground, unmoving.

Galg appeared behind it and once looked at the still shape with an expression of disgust before scanning the horizon.

"Great, bloody great. And how, pray tell, oh mighty Drys, lord of Skulltown and all the lands around it, should I go about finding our long-lost Sumil in this nasty place?"

Galg let out an exasperated hiss.

"' I can't find Sig, Galg'. 'I can't find Sumil, Galg'. 'I can't find Solus, Galg'. Bah! Fine. I'll just take a quick look around. Perhaps I can pick up a mana-core while I'm here. Let's see if they can bully me around if I come back with a fancy new evolution!"

Taking one a last look at the portal, he disappeared into a blue lightning bolt that shot off into the distance.