The Seven Aspects of Magic

  -excerpt from the Seven Keys online FAQ

  In Seven Keys, every player gains a magical Aspect of their choice upon entering the Gem Baths, which can be done as early as level 10. Aspects inform which spells the players can cast, and what gestures they must use to cast them. These are the seven Aspects currently available to players, as well as the elemental type associated with the majority of spells in that Aspect:

  INFERNAL

  Attack boosting and direct elemental damage.

  Elements used: Fire, Lightning, Stone

  SWAYED

  Character/NPC/mob manipulation.

  Elements used: Psychic, Nature, Wind

  VESCENT

  Environmental manipulation.

  Elements used: Psychic, Stone, Void

  LUMINOUS

  Health and mana regeneration or depletion. Includes both poison and healing spells.

  Elements used: Nature, Water, Fire

  DIVINE

  Access to all Depth spells and faster Depth charging.

  Elements used: All

  ONEIRIC

  Illusion and the conjuring of objects.

  Elements used: Light, Void, Water

  ASTRAL

  Teleportation and invisibility.

  Elements used: Light, Lightning, Wind

  #

  Steam rolled over me, hot and choking. I backed away from the edge, drawing my shield and crouching, just in case the golem surged back up out of the water. The pool might also spawn a boiling naga mob, if I was especially unlucky.

  But nothing else stirred in the murky silt-tossed water. The final stone chunks of the golem had dissolved into slop, and a loot icon appeared above the pool. After a glance to my HUD to ensure Bridget wasn’t about to jump me, I did a basic loot action, which opened a screen to show me what the golem had on its person.

  Pocket Sand Club (Green Grade)

  5 Acid Conversion Orbs

  1 Golem Clay

  76 gold

  I grinned at the sight of the Pocket Sand Club. That must be the item the Developers promised me in exchange for not taking on more Conscripts.

  I took all the items, and equipped the club after checking to see what it did. Apparently, it halved an enemy’s chance to dodge, escape, or lessen a blow, and had a 10% chance to give the Blind status, which prevented the enemy from casting spells. It also gave +12 to damage.

  But it required 35 Strength to wield it. I gritted my teeth. The Conduit really were trying to hamstring Remnant, weren’t they? They couldn’t even fulfill a deal properly.

  It could dismantle into something nice, at least. Or sell well, if I end up needing the gold.

  When my equipment screen cleared, I checked my experience bar, the one that was hardest to see on my HUD. It had turned black, meaning I had leveled up again and gone back to zero XP.

  “Hey. That guy was worth a lot of experience,” I said. I looked up at the retreating figure of the second golem. “And Bridget hasn’t shown up yet….”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Dave screeched. He was so animated that he made the lantern swing on his perch. “That one almost had your guts for bruschetta on toast!”

  I shook water and stone dust from my hands. “Yeah, but I can re-aggro that one whenever I want. I can set a trap for it. Free experience.”

  I felt my face darken as I rose. “Besides, I ought to set an example. If you dare to set a trap for me, you’ll only make me stronger.”

  If I had the reputation I thought I had, then I could expect traps galore. No one was going to want to face me on even ground.

  Unfortunately, traps would be much harder to anticipate than face-to-face fights. If I could discourage traps, I might stay alive longer.

  Dave groaned. “Or, it could encourage people to make bigger, better traps.”

  He was right, but I grinned anyway. “That just means bigger, better experience points for me, then, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re crazy as a two-penny fish-pumper, you know that?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. I didn’t want to know what a fish-pumper was.

  I shrugged. “Fine. If I need to convince you, then think about the ratings. Think about the fan boxes and sponsorships you say I’ll need so badly.”

  Dave fell quiet. In the end, Trash Planet was some kind of intergalactic television show. Meaning it thrived on ratings, and ratings came from entertainment.

  If people kept bringing the entertainment to me, then I wouldn’t even have to try to stay popular. I’d stay a front-runner just by going about my business.

  “You’re going to get me killed,” Dave muttered.

  I switched to a Whisper:

  Remnant: No I’m not. Remember the Developer’s deal? If I die, you and FATE get to live.

  Remnant: Still not sure why they thought the real Remnant would care about that….

  Dave scoffed.

  Fuck You Dave: Trust me, he wouldn’t. But they threw in the offer, thinking that Remmy had a heart. Some Hunters do, you know.

  Something about this explanation didn’t sit right with me, but the golem was getting away slowly, and I had myself an idea for how to kill it. I’d just spotted a beam from the collapsed pavilion down on the rubble slope. Ten feet long, shorn at one end with a bit of flooring still nailed to the other. I climbed down the rubble and hauled it free.

  It came too easily, and I hefted it. It was still heavy to me, but heavy the way a kayak might be heavy. A hollow heaviness. My Strength stat was still my highest.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  With a gesture, I slid the beam into my inventory. It vanished in a blink, like I’d pocketed a twig. Still felt uncanny to me.

  I wonder what the size limit is? The water tower had needed an oversized storage orb, but a beam and a gargoyle are no problem.

  The pear-struck golem had turned along the zigzag path, and was now mindlessly wandering past the yellow pool below. Left alone, it would keep shuffling until it reached wherever it had spawned. I had to get ahead of it to lay my little trap.

  I climbed the rest of the way down—the rubble had decimated the smooth rock face, so it wasn’t nearly so steep now—and I got ahead of the golem. I darted up the path and away from it, keeping a safe distance, even as it continued to walk toward me. It could see me, but that didn’t trigger anything in whatever program the Conduit had inserted into its mind… if it even had a mind. I kept forgetting that this was a twisted kind of real life. Was there a person inside that golem? Or did the Conduit have the power to animate a pile of rocks?

  Either way, I just had to stay out of its aggro range for right now. It was triggered by distance, not sight. This went against most of my instincts, but I was adjusting.

  My gaze flicked to my HUD map about once every minute. Once, I thought I saw a flash of red at the periphery of the map, but then it was gone.

  “I think Bridget slipped past us,” I said. Dave heard me, even though he was twenty feet up, riding the breeze.

  “She knows I’ll see her coming,” he said. “Most Hunters don’t have Game Guides that can play lookout for them. So she’s going to try to level-up in a better area while you’re tied down here.”

  “Or she’ll set another trap for me.”

  “Well, duh. I thought that was a given.”

  By this time, I had crossed the slim path to the cliff’s edge. I opened my inventory, sorted by value, and scrolled to the very end. The rat meat and torches were just as worthless as usual, and I pulled some of each out.

  I jammed the rat meat onto a rock and lit it with the torches. Smoke curled, greasy and sizzling, but the smell was less foul than I expected. It might be weaker than Bridget’s lure, but it should still work to distract the golem. The smell of burning meat had attracted them, and if I could recreate it, then the game had to follow its own rules… I think.

  The golem was close now, so I darted farther up the road, past the golden pool that would imbue a user with Vescent magic. I slowed for a moment, wondering if I should jump in alongside the two NPCs. Once again, the man was shirtless, and the woman was only in a skimpy swim top; but in this case, the woman was overweight and the man looked like he spent most of his time switching television channels from his favorite armchair. They were hardly the lure-you-to-your-destiny type.

  Seems the Conduit haven’t matched people up really well with the NPCs they’re meant to play, I thought. I wasn’t sure about which magic I meant to choose anyway. Vescent was the magic of environmental manipulation, but one level down was the magic of healing. I was leaning towards that, because if I could upgrade my Bleeder skill high enough, being able to heal myself without potions and items would make the ability even stronger.

  For now, I would pass. Dave would kill me if I chose without talking to him first. Besides, this wouldn’t take long.

  I tucked myself behind a nearby boulder, slowing my breath. Sneaking was an upgradeable skill now. Might as well level it up.

  I checked my HUD again, and noticed the blinking of FATE’s icon.

  “FATE? What is it?” I asked.

  I have figured out the issue with the objects you assigned to me. Is now a good time?

  By my guess, the golem was about half a minute from the lure. “If you make it snappy,” I whispered.

  She dove right in, talking fast, as I’d said to. In Trash Planet, the Conduit repurpose existing material on the host world to make the game. They claim to completely transform the planet, to break it down into its base elements and remake them.

  “Everyone knows that,” Dave said. Even he was quiet, and he was speaking from the air. “That’s why it’s called Trash Planet. We’re trashing the planet.”

  The term the Conduit use is “recycle” or “repurpose,” FATE replied, and I sensed that the difference mattered a lot. However, during my analysis of the gargoyle, I found that it was made of 87% organic material. Don’t ask how I was able to scan it.

  “What?” Dave gasped. “It’s organic?”

  “I don’t follow,” I said, opening my inventory to use another health potion.

  “Qubins aren’t organic. They’re quantum,” Dave explained.

  “I stand by my earlier statement.”

  Dave is right, FATE jutted in. Qubins, the particles the Conduit use to implement their will on your world and others, are inorganic. Why, then, is the gargoyle 87% organic? I checked the water tower, too, and it also has organic elements.

  This has led me to guess that some of the original material of your world—in the case of the gargoyle, something entirely organic—has essentially been pasted over by a sort of skin of qubins. The skin makes it look like a gargoyle, but in truth, the Conduit have not actually recycled anything. They’ve just re-skinned it.

  “You mean… under the outer shell of the gargoyle, there’s something else?”

  Yes. And you saw it because the qubins around it temporarily malfunctioned.

  I glanced back at the yellow pool. “Malfunctioned? Why?”

  It could be caused by some sort of bug in the Conduit’s software. Or possibly there is an interaction with something else, maybe even something on your person, that is making the qubins temporarily invisible or nonexistent. Hard to tell which it is, but regardless, it appears to be random.

  I felt suddenly like I’d called IT support for an issue, only to have the problem vanish once the tech reached my desk. “So… I need to figure out how to replicate it?”

  If you can, yes.

  “Great. Okay.” The golem was almost upon me. “You’re dismissed.”

  FATE’s icon dimmed just as the golem’s head swiveled toward the sizzling rat meat. The stuff was so greasy that it was still burning. The creature lumbered closer to it, bent down with ponderous slowness, and reached for it.

  Gotcha.

  I pulled the pavilion beam from my inventory, muscles straining with its sudden weight. I ran at the golem’s back while the thing was still facing away from me, and I swung hard, using all the momentum and fury I could muster. One good strike, and I could knock the thing straight into the gorge. The fall damage ought to take a fair chunk of it—

  The impact of wood on stone ratcheted up my arm, making me cry out from the sheer vibration. It was so bad that I dropped the beam.

  The golem didn’t budge.

  I stepped back, my eyes widening, as the golem turned its head toward me. I held my hands out.

  “Oops. Sorry. My bad—”

  The golem rose, and I took off running down the path, but I didn’t make it twenty steps before the ground jerked up underneath me, sending me sprawling. I landed on my chest and slid forward, and then, much more slowly, I began to slide back.

  I flipped over to see the golem had done another stomp attack, destroying the ground behind me. I kicked and scrabbled at the rolling scree, but it was no use. The stone was about to consume me, and in moments, I’d be underneath another pile of rubble.

  I had to get ahead of it. I leaned perilously forward and pushed against the scree with everything I had. The move sent me soaring out into open space, but a little bit of fall damage was better than having half a mountain come down on me.

  I hit the ground hard, something snapping in my legs, my breath torn from my lungs. Everything went black, and for a dangeorous moment, I thought I’d died again.

  Then the world came back in jagged flashes—stone against my ribs, the taste of blood in my mouth. My HUD screamed at me that my HP was in critical range. I tried to move, but my legs weren’t functioning properly. I crawled forward, trying to see through the dust, to get my wits back.

  “I told you this was stupid!” Dave said, but his voice seemed to be coming from the bottom of a well. “I’m going to pull out a health potion and—CAW!”

  His words cut off sharply, and something green hit the ground next to me and flipped over a few times. Dave came to a rest with blood leaking from his beak. He was all feathers, no movement. He looked boneless.

  “Dave? Dave!”

  He didn’t respond. I still couldn’t see his damn health bar, but surely if he was dead, the game would tell me?

  I managed to rise up on one arm and turn back. The golem was sliding down the rubble. He would be upon me in seconds. Worse, there was an object a few feet from me, one I recognized.

  It was the Well-Aimed Rock.

  My gaze jumped to my HUD, and there she was, the red dot. Apparently, the Rock wasn’t one-time use. She’d picked it up, brought it here, and had used it to stun Dave. Was she out of arrows, though? Or too far to hit us with anything else?

  Either way, we were sitting ducks to not one but two enemies. Why had I thought I was immortal? I couldn’t die here, not like this.

  I can’t die anywhere. Not like anything. Not until I know Lore is safe.

  My health bar drained in ugly red chunks, every tick dragging me closer to the grave only for the Belt of Bullshittery to undo the damage, jamming fresh slivers of life back into me. My health bar shivered back and forth, hovering just above zero. Green glowed at the edge of my vision—the pool of Luminous healing magic. I started to crawl toward it.

  The golem had come to a stop. Its chest cracked open, a seam splitting across the stone, glowing green from within. Acid boiled out, frothing and spitting as the cavity widened.

  It was charging something big. Something final.

  And I couldn’t even stand.

  My hand fell against the wet stone at the edge of the Luminous pool. The NPC woman was closest to me, and this time, she was lovely. Dark, luscious hair, sun-kissed skin, and vacant hazel eyes over an equally vacant smile.

  She beckoned to me, as they all did. “Come, traveler,” she purred. “Take on the blessings of Esternon the Lover, god of life force, to be both taken and given.”

  If I accepted, I would become immortal as long as I stayed in the pool.

  I looked back.

  Above the approaching golem’s head, I could see a glittering shroud of golden water dripping down the scree. I remembered what FATE had just told me.

  The original material of your world has been pasted over by qubins….

  The Vescent pool had been destroyed, but if I could still touch the water….

  I had a pear in my hand. I threw it. It almost missed—almost. But the golem was close.

  The light in its chest dimmed as the tension went out of it. I pulled health potions from my inventory and knocked them back fast.

  My legs cracked back into alignment. I stood. I ran to Dave, scooped him up, and put a Basic Health Vial to his beak as I bent myself over him to protect him from arrows. Red liquid sloshed into his face, most of it missing its target, but he stirred.

  As soon as he seemed to be conscious, I threw him into the Luminous pool. He landed with a splash and a splutter of green feathers.

  “Hey! What’s the big idea!”

  “The pool will hide you! Stay out of sight!”

  Dave spluttered in disgust, his voice next to my ear even as I climbed up the rock face, trying to reach the drizzle of golden water.

  “Green on green, is it? I see how it is. You’re being so racist right now.”

  “Just stay down!”

  A shape appeared in my peripherals, and I stopped climbing to look at it.

  A woman stood at the far end of the green-lit Luminous path, so far that the bow she was holding must be out of range. Bloodstained white feathers sprouted from her head, and she had a beak like a plague doctor. Her arms were also feathered, but her legs reminded me of velociraptors, all scale and talon.

  We regarded each other silently. Then I kept climbing.

  Arrows zipped past me, all of them missing, clanging off the rocks and ricocheting back toward Dave. Bridget would be running, getting closer, and I couldn’t use the pear on her. It was only for mobs. Behind me, the golem roared as one of her arrows struck it, then another.

  The arrows stopped coming at me. She was aiming for the golem now, a much larger target. The ground around me began to glow green as it regained aggro and returned to its acid attack.

  Bridget was too far away for the golem to target her. He would target me.

  I reached my hand into the ribbon of glittering yellow water. A golden shower, if you will.

  “Huh,” Dave said. “I didn’t know you were into that.”

  A menu popped up in front of my eyes as the sparkling liquid ran down my arm.

  Choose Vescent as your Aspect? Yes/No

  I tapped yes—and the golem struck.