Chapter 20
<span ss="bold">[<span ss="italic">The Basics of Prophecy: Written by Oralmius Mephator, third sage of the White Tower]
Oralmius? Weird name. A little bit on the grander side of things. Though just reading through the man’s writing over the course of the next while, Riven could tell he was a pompous asshat and the name fit him quite well. He obviously had a thing against peasants to boot.
<span ss="italic">As an introduction, let me first say that most of you peasants will never be able to fully grasp even the basics of this ancient art. Most of those who do have a gift simply acknowledge it as déjà vu and carry on with their lives not knowing their potential. Most who seek potential do not find it. Most of you looking this book over probably can’t even read and are as intelligent as the sheep and goats we feed on.
<span ss="italic">You fucking peasants usually smell just as bad, too.
<span ss="italic">The first thing to note about prophecy is that the lines of fate either choose you or they don’t. You will be able to use prophecy, to mold it, or you can’t at all. There is no helping it, no changing it, no rhyme or reason as to why you may or may not have the gift. For one out of every ten thousand that do have a minor grasp of this art, I apud you and highly suggest you keep reading. Having this gift is a great boon that will reward you for the rest of your life, and developing the skill of crafting prophecies and fate to fit your own desires is a worthwhile goal for very obvious reasons.
<span ss="italic">The art of creating prophecy is just that—an art, one that you can bend and shape to your liking at varying and limited extents. It means you can asionally see and therefore slightly change the future, but only if you have a strong grasp on fate. It is certainly not foolproof, though—even the greatest of prophets cannot read into everything. For those that don’t have the gift, </a>there is no way to change this, and you might as well stop immediately after finding out.
<span ss="italic">In order to find out the easy way whether or not you have the gift, I suggest you find a crystal ball. They can be created by various types of mages and enchanters, so hire one if you need to—but otherwise just buy one from a guild. Many high-ranking guilds employ prophets to tag along on their expeditions, and you could perhaps even use one of theirs for a fee. Crystal balls are a method of channeling, a conduit, for both scrying and prophecy. By just touching one, if it reacts to you—you will know that you have some form of the gift. So before reading any more: go find a crystal ball. I say again! If the crystal ball doesn’t react by lighting up, there is no need to read any farther, as there is no changing your potential and you should go back to humping donkeys or whatever it is you filthy peasants choose to do in your spare time.
Was this guy serious? Riven scowled at the book with distaste, but then nced back at the crystal ball on the desk. Shrugging, he reached out and ced a hand on the ss orb and waited.
And waited some more.
And then he waited even more.
He even tapped the ss a couple times with his finger, and then he tried squeezing it, but nothing happened.
Riven sighed and shook his head. Taking the author on his word, he put the book down with a thud. “Guess it just isn’t meant to be.”
A little disappointed and with a sour frown, he turned to the next in line and made his way over to the smithing table—though he had no intention of being a smith at any point. He just thought he’d get a general idea of what each book had to offer him.
What he failed to see as he walked away, immediately upon averting his gaze, was the umtion of the deep crimson cloud within the orb after he’d left. Simultaneously Riven’s Blood subpir, the one attached to his soul, began to radiate small pulses that gave Riven momentary pause with a sincere confusion. He looked down at his hands, which had both begun to tremble. He wasn’t sure what that tingling sensation was, but it certainly felt…energizing.
Even beyond this new, unknown sensation and at that very same moment: in Riven’s bag, the ceramic vase he’d been unable to open or identify began to shudder ever so slightly.
The crimson power grew within the ss orb. It umted seconds only after he turned his back, being not quite what one would expect of a bright light that the reading described. That crimson coloring stayed there for just a few seconds longer, marinating in Unholy magics, and even caused the orb to crack </a>slightly. The sound of chipping ss caused Riven to cast another nce back over his shoulder from where he now stood at the furnace, but as if sensing his gaze, the Unholy power immediately faded away before he could catch even a sparse nce of the crimson hue.
There was a long pause.
“Everything okay?” Hakim called out curiously, scratching his chin and frowning at Riven’s wide-eyed expression.
Riven stared at the crystal ball, stepping closer toward it and seeing that the ss ball now had a splintered chip in the base. He picked up the small piece of splintered ss, spared a quick nce Hakim’s way, then turned back to the crystal ball with growing concern and leaned over the item with furrowed brows. “Yeah…I just had a very strange feeling. Don’t mind me; it’s nothing important.”
Hakim blinked twice and shrugged, returning to his meal.
Meanwhile Riven continued to re down at the orb in the flickering light cast by torches on the cave walls and stars from the skylights overhead. He turned his back to the others, steeled himself, and hesitantly reached out to touch the crystal ball one more time.
His mind erupted with blinding pain, his vision shed red, and an internal shrill scream so high-pitched that he thought his head would explode pierced his thoughts. His pupils immediately dted, and a feeling of dread overtook him amid a rapid-fire spike of his heart rate. Crimson light red in the ss and ripped through his arm, sending jolts of silent electric currents through his fingertips that set his very skin apart to split open his hands and expose his bone.
He wanted to yell, he wanted to shriek out in horror and call for help, but he couldn’t move a muscle and stood lock-jawed with pupils expanding out to be so wide he didn’t even look human.
<span ss="italic">“You are not ready. Not yet.”
The voice was a ghostly whisper he could barely make out, so far away from him but simultaneously able to touch his consciousness with ease. It left a sense of intent, of foreboding, a warning not to try to touch the orb again. The electric currents rapidly dissipated, his hand rapidly regenerated to soak up all the blood and fleshy bits that’d ripped off moments before, and he found himself gasping for air over the table. He watched in real time as the crystal ball repaired itself, as the crimson light faded away, and sweat began pouring down off his chin to stter onto the wooden table beneath him.
Rapidly he backed up, breathing heavily and staring at the crystal ball with an unexinable fear. He didn’t know what the fuck had just happened, but even looking at the ss orb gave him an impending sense of doom.
The same could be said for the book on prophecy, and despite all logic telling him he should go open it up again to scour its pages and discover if there were any clues, there was some kind of mental block that absolutely refused to let </a>him do so. A mental block that told him exploring this avenue of power would cripple him should he try to master it too soon.
He internally battled with himself, one part fighting to go and reach out again. To touch the crystal ball one more time and learn more of why it’d reacted that way. To read the words written on those pages and perhaps piece together whether or not what’d just happened was normal, but he instinctively knew it was not. It was anything but normal; even in this new world of fantasy it was not normal, and the other half of him absolutely screamed for him to just walk away and not turn back.
Riven wiped the sweat off his face and hands, realizing he was drenching the already bloodstained outfit he wore, and took in a shaky breath. Letting out a long exhale and straightening himself, he gave the ss orb a final long look before reluctantly gritting his teeth and turning away. Whatever or whoever that voice in his head had been, it hadn’t been hostile. That much he could ascertain just by the way his consciousness connected with it in a brief moment of time. It was concerned for his well-being, and he wasn’t going to y Russian roulette with powers he didn’t understand. Hell, it’d even started to rip his goddamn arm off! The voice had also said he wasn’t ready <span ss="italic">yet, so theoretically he’d broach this matter again in the future. And as much as his curiosity nagged at him, he put the matter aside with a tinge of regret to carry on—not saying a word to any of the others about what’d happened in order not to concern them. He was already concerned enough as it was and didn’t need other people flipping shit about ghostly voices in his mind or ominous powers surrounding his situation.
After a few minutes to calm himself down, and another small snack of freshly baked bread for stress-eating purposes, he settled on checking out the other stations in the cave.
Riven learned a little bit more about each of them as he passed them by. Smithing was a bit obvious, though Elysium’s mechanics had very different avenues and a wide variety at that. Crafts grew by tiers, rather than levels, that signified immense differences at each step above the previous tier. Each tier title somebody acquired made huge leaps and bounds in what perks they could offer, and if someone was good enough, they were even offered a nobat ss title concerning the craft that would expand those horizons even farther. Crafting sses were definitely an option; they often added in different unique stats and leveled up through progressing on that given ss—but they wouldpletely rece anybat ss someone had. Thus if Riven wished to pursue a craft, he’d want to acquire as many crafting tier titles as possible but absolutely refuse any potential sses he might acquire options for on potential ss evolutions.
Smiths could upgrade weapons based on what type of ore they had, build mana veins for enchanting items with the cooperation of an enchanter, have unique signatures that would employ special bonuses specifically based on what </a>attributes their soul had, and could utilize various environmental ores that weren’t ever present on Earth. Those who practiced smithing apparently couldn’t utilize many of these special elements without massive drawbacks. Examples the book included were Lava-Forged Battle-Axe and Scimitar of Windsong. The Lava-Forged Battle-Axe could be created using an element called Molten Ubsrid, which was apparently a very rare material found at the bottom of volcanoes. The Scimitar of Windsong could be created using crystallized fairy dust intermixed with steel. The book even mentioned extremely talented smiths creating varieties of living weapons, though these were often the rarest and very hard toe by.
The cook, baker, or chef sses were rather unique as well. Most of it was based on a support role, where they were able to create foods that could give buffs, blessings, and resistances to those who ate them. Some foods could be created to keep a person from going hungry for weeks, and other, more valuable foods could even amplify one’s health and vitality by threefold over the course of an hour. The better and rarer ingredients were often sold for massive amounts of money, too. The book was quick to state that nobody could even utilize the cooking skill for these bonuses at all without having the ss—meaning that in order to even begin to create such extravagant meals, you absolutely had to take up the cook ss. Which was unlike most other crafting sses that could take onbat sses and do the craft on the side with lesser bonuses than one would get with the actual sses oriented to the craft, and it made those who chose the cooking sses a fairly appreciated bunch.