Crystalise: The Exaltation System: ASCENDANT F.R. Brooks (the snowy day read aloud .TXT) 📖

happen if he tried to pry out the creature’s thorns gnawed at him.

Those thorns… I wonder…

“Liam! What are you doing!?” James struggled against tightening vines.

One quick pull and the obsidian thorn came free. Blood spilled from the beast’s punctured body. It howled in agony and jerked against its confines. The sound made some sick sensation wrench in Liam’s chest.

“Liam!” James cried.

The vine attached to the obsidian thorn shifted color and paled. The obsidian thorn in Liam’s hand crumbled and slipped through his fingers as seilliancrist dust.

A chain reaction followed the vine’s tangled path around the beast. More wounds opened in the creature as the vines began to go slack. Liam reached for more obsidian thorns and pulled them out, one by one. Pulling them gave the same chain reaction. He freed the creature from bloody, crumbling binds. Instead of lunging at him, however, the mob’s weak body slumped into the pool of blood and clovers beneath it.

Liam stepped back as the beast’s mewls faded into silence.

Nearby, James wriggled free of the tangle and disintegrating vines.

“Is it dead?”

Liam nodded as the mob’s corpse shriveled and flaked away into dull lucidium dust. Only a messy, scarlet orb remained, nestled in smashed clovers and coagulated blood. Liam picked it up and made his way out of the chamber.

James followed. “The hell was all that? Why didn’t you just cut the orb out?”

“I don’t know. A hunch, I guess,” Liam explained. “Just cutting out the orb felt too easy. Pulling out the thorns, though… the creature would bleed out anyway, leaving the orb behind. It felt more like a result that wouldn’t come with a trap.”

“What if you’d made the wrong choice?”

Wearily, Liam simply answered, “I… don’t know.”

James sighed and shrugged. “Whatever, Liam.”

Liam turned to the statue and the round indentations at the base. He turned the orb in his hand and smeared blood away with his thumb. The glyph on the orb was the alchemical symbol for quicksilver. Liam found a match and fixed the orb into the marble base.

Across the room, the corresponding symbol on the wall lit up. Seeing the symbol shine a playful neon blue triggered something in his memory from Euclid. The warmth of nostalgia blanketed his memories.

A sheet of notebook paper with a handful of alchemical symbols scrawled in electric blue ink. At least, symbols that he recognized as alchemical.

To the girl doodling them, however, they had different meanings.

“What… what’s with the creepy smile?” James asked.

“These symbols. They’re not just alchemical symbols, they’re glyphs for astrological modalities.” Liam pointed to the symbols marked in the indentations. “Cardinal. Mutable. Fixed.”

James quirked one brow.

“Lo showed me them,” Liam explained.

“Astrological…? I thought the Professor wasn’t into horoscopes.”

“I’m not. I was just reminded of something. I suspect there’s a message behind it. But… I’m not sure that I know enough about the subject to decipher it.”

“A message?”

Liam nodded. “When I look at these symbols, I think of metals and elements. Old alchemy stuff. When Lo looks at them, she sees language based on astrological mythos. She’d probably know how to interpret it. I’m drawing blanks, though. I wonder what Lucienne intends by choosing these symbols.”

“Huh. Well. Let’s just get this over with. Her horoscope won’t matter when she’s dead.”

Liam’s smile faded.

“One down, two to go,” James said.

* * *

EXP:+27,000 EXPEXALT ADJUSTMENTS: WILLIAM STERLING || LV.81 → LV. 82|| EXP: 1037029|| statsATK - 189 → 193 [+4]DEF - 232 → 234 [+2]AGI - 176 → 179 [+3]LUK - 118 → 121 [+3]EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: JAMES STERLING || LV.80 → LV. 81|| EXP: 1012321|| statsATK - 226 → 228 [+2]DEF - 171 → 173 [+2]AGI - 224 → 226 [+2]LUK - 238 → 239 [+1]

* * *

The armor worn by exalts to make use of lucidium for both combat and practical use. Every sentisuit binds to the natural aetheric resonance within the wearer and converts lucidium accordingly. On the back of every sentisuit is an alchemical conversion system—it is through this system that lucidium is converted into the wearer’s innate element for manifestation. No matter what sentisuit one wears, the innate element will always be the same one drawn from their personal aetheric resonance.

“Liam, do you think aetheric resonance is like a soul or something?” Nym asked.

“Not sure… but it’s probably as close as we’re going to get to quantifying the energy that makes up a human soul. With our current technology, anyway.”

“But then again, what about people who put suits on and can’t make any element? Why doesn’t their aetheric resonance react to lucidium?”

“It just seems incompatible with the system we currently have. You know, when the alchemical conversion system was first developed, we were only able to transmute lucidium into four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. If we had been born 400 years ago, James and I wouldn’t be able to take part in Exaltation. They didn’t have technology to transmute lucidium to metal or ice. Metal, ice, electricity, and obscura are all fairly recent additions to the system.”

“So… I wonder if there are more than eight transmutable states of lucidium?”

“It’s very possible. Time will tell.”

11 | Airborne

The second of three corridors beyond the evigilari statue sloped into a gallery hall with a dim, golden glow. Paintings of angels lined the walls. Liam recognized the soft melody of some melancholy opera preserved from the old world. Long-lost languages he’d heard only in those preserved melodies.

“You think she made this trial expecting there to be three of us here?” James asked.

“It’s possible,” Liam replied. “Either that, or she simply enjoys doing things in threes.”

“Doing things in threes, huh?” James said with a chuckle. “I can’t say I’d blame her. I love doing things in threes, too.”

With a tired sigh, Liam opted to ignore his brother’s quip. Any other time, he might have laughed. These days, however, he found it difficult to even chuckle.

Jove should have been