The next morning, I awoke to find Mal studying a book in his bed. Everyone else was still asleep judging by the snoring competition going on.

“Whatcha reading, mate?”

“The Book of Devotion,” Mal said, looking over to me. “We might get home in a few weeks, or we might be stuck here a while. If we’re here a while, I want magic. and the gods give you magic. If I had magic, Daz might still be alive now. Even if it was only enough to cleanse everyone it might have been enough.”

“Having the backup we paid for could have done that,” I said bitterly. “But you’re right. We need to stay alive and getting stronger can only help.”

“Devotion looks good, so I’m thinking of becoming an Aspirant.”

“Not a clue what that even means Mal. You want to cover bad smells, perhaps?”

“Not funny Clive. What I want is to keep us alive.”

“I know mate, me too.”

“Here, check this out,” he said coming over to my bed, thrusting the book in front of me. It showed a progression tree of sorts.

Aspirant

Acolyte

Cleric

Priest/ess

Paladin

Mother/Father

First

“Check out the powers for the Cleric/Paladin path.”

I scanned down the page past Acolyte to Cleric

Path of the Cleric.

A Cleric or Martial Acolyte must continue to develop their understanding of Devotion, offer healing where they are able, and protection to the faithful and those who walk in the light. As a Cleric, you will attain +10 Power of Devotion (PD) points per Level of Devotion

Cleric:

(Level Two): Hands of Devotion:

Restore +10 HP per Level of Devotion

(Level Three): Shield of the Devoted:

Use available PD to cast a protective shield against incoming Ethereal attacks. Providing a 5% reduction to damage taken per Level of Devotion.

(Level Four): Flames of Devotion:

Cast a ball of pure Devotion power at target. Per 1 DP infused into attack.

Dark aligned targets receive 1point of damage

Neutral aligned targets receive 0.5 points damage

Light aligned targets receive 0.1 point of damage

From there I’d take the Paladin Class, obviously.

Path of the Paladin:

(Level Five): Aura of Devotion:

Increases damage and defense by 5% for five seconds per Level of Devotion. For all allies in a twenty-yard radius.

Aura at base-level 25% increase to Dmg and Def for 25 seconds.

“That’s all it tells you, but come on those skills are awesome!” Mal said excitedly.

“Hey,” I said thoughtfully. “What skills does the path of the Acolyte have?”

“Shit mainly,” he leafed a few pages back and showed me.

Path of the Cleric.

An Acolyte must continue to develop their understanding of Devotion, offer healing care and knowledge to the faithful of Devotion. As an Acolyte, you will attain +10 Power of Devotion (PD) points per Level of Devotion

Acolyte:

(Level Two): Hands of Devotion:

Restore +10HP per Level of Devotion

(Level Three): Call of the Devoted.

Commune with the Spirt Sphere in your chosen temple. Clarity and strength of connection increases with level. Ability to commune with the spirit Sphere’s of other temples.

(Level Four): Light of the Devoted:

Allows casting of a holy light upon another to sense alignment. Improves with level to sense intent and sincerity.

“So Elsbeth must have followed the path of the Cleric, then,” I mused. “Because those were clearly Flames of Devotion she was using.”

“Yeah,” Mal replied. “Well, that’s even better, because she’s going to train me as a Cleric on our travels.”

“If she’s willing then, go for it. Like you say, we need power quickly, and that’s as good an idea as any other I can think of right now. After meeting those two dipshits in Laurel, I’d most likely follow a god myself, but I don’t think any of them would have me. Neither light nor dark. I suppose I could look into being a Druid. Dug can grow limbs back with nature magic and Remus can shoot fire balls.”

“Yeah, could be worth a try. Do you think nature is a God?”

“No idea. We’ll have to ask him. He said he made nature his bitch. If it were a god or goddess, I don’t think they’d be too happy about that.”

We both chuckled before Mal’s face took a serious turn. “What the hell is it with your alignment anyway. How can you be all three?”

I shrugged. “You know me. I’ve always been a greedy indecisive bastard.”

“Very true. Which leads me to my next question. Obviously with everything that happened yesterday...”

“You mean one of our best friends being brutally crushed to death by a giant monster that shouldn’t have even been on the apparently safe roads?”

“I’m trying not to think about it,” Mal said holding his forehead. “I’m afraid I’ll just give up if I go to deeply into it. Like seriously. What chance have we got of surviving when shit like that can happen.”

“I get you man. What were you gonna ask?”

“How the fuck did you jump to level 12?” His eyes were boring into me so hard I thought lasers were going to come out of them.

“I just got lucky. Did you see my nut shot?”

“I did, but the Saleel was only worth 360xp. I got 35xp from it, plus the 280xp from it being so much higher leveled than us. So I can’t figure it out where the hell all your points came from.”

“Ah, I got an Epic achievement bonus. Hero for the Ages. 1000xp! For killing an opponent over twenty five levels above me.”

“You lucky bastard! So you got 30 Stat points? What did you put it them in? I’m assuming mainly Internal connection?”

I looked at him sheepishly. “Nah mate, all the physical stats. No good in being able to fight this curse if any passing monster can just pop my fucking head off for a laugh,” I said, cringing as the scene replayed yet again.

Mal patted me on the back. “I get you, mate. And just think. With all that extra ability, you should be able to level up faster and improve your chances anyway.”

“Thanks man, I regretted the choice as soon as I did it, but a small part of me insists it was the right decision. I was thinking we three need to have a sit down, when we get wherever we’re going tonight, and plan out our points. I had to allocate on the fly, as did both you and Joel. That’s not ideal, if we want the best builds possible.

“Agreed,” Mal nodded, his eyes flicking briefly to his book.

“On that note, I better go and starve the curse. I only worked on it twice yesterday and that’s not nearly enough.” I looked down at my arm. The blackness still hadn’t spread further up, but the skin of the area it had already infected was now starting to thicken noticeably, growing uneven in some areas. “Enjoy learning how to become a Paladin.”

Mal nodded, before eagerly diving back into the book, as I lay back and slipped into a meditative state.

The familiar Chaos rose up to greet me almost mockingly, in its denial of my control. The previous evening I’d only quickly gone through the motions, because I was so exhausted, I’d found it so much harder than usual. Now I was fresh, I realized I’d been wrong. It really was harder to pull my Neuma, away from the curse, because the golden tendril that went into my arm was noticeably thicker than before.

This new development was seriously worrying. It appeared the curse had found a way to draw more of the Neuma energy toward it. I wrestled with it perpetually trying to thin out the flow and give myself more time.

After a great deal of effort and concentration, I managed to reduce it to almost the same thickness as it had been before. But this took a lot out of me, and I wouldn’t always have this amount of time and peace to do so.

Damn you, Clive! Why didn’t you invest in Internal Connection. I yelled at myself. I’d just have to hope that I leveled soon to make this right.

As I came back to the world of the living, everyone was now awake and appeared ready to travel. I could never really tell how long I spent inside myself, but it always felt a much shorter time than it was.

“I hope you haven’t had breakfast yet. I’m bloody starving!”

“We haven’t,” Mal replied, “but we’re waiting for it to arrive. An acolyte has already been along asking for our order. Bacon and eggs all around,”

“Sounds good to me,” I said getting from my bed and stretching out. I was instantly surprised by how much further my stretches went. I was still no gymnast, but damn if I wasn’t moving much better. In fact, apart from the strange sensation of the cursed arm. I felt physically better than I’d ever felt in my entire life. Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said of my mental health.

After breakfast, the Acolyte who’d led the servants in to clear the dishes, reported that Elsbeth would be in the great hall in ten minutes, but to make our way down at our leisure.

I was obviously keen to get to our destination as soon as possible and Mal wanted to grill Elsbeth over becoming a member of the church of Devotion. So we went down immediately.

For some reason, Elsbeth was already there waiting when we arrived. Displaying none of the vulnerability or uncertainty of the previous evening.

“We have two options for travel today, gentlemen. We can walk the slightly longer distance to Meve, around twenty-five miles. Or we can travel around fifteen miles to Pontis depending on what you feel capable of? I must warn you now, while travelling the Pontis route is also the safer, as it is further away from the Craster mountains, it will increase our journey's length by a two full days overall.

Pontis was clearly offered as an option because of how weak we were. So I rejected that out of hand without the need to confer. “Meve will be fine. As long as no one is brutally killed on our way,” I replied with casual sarcasm. The looks I received from everyone made me wish I hadn’t bothered.

Except maybe Joel who nodded seriously. “Seconded.”

“Very well. I have taken the liberty of having supplies prepared for this leg of the journey. All that is left is for you, is to fill your canteens and we may depart. I’m sure you would rather be at Meve sooner rather than later.”

I had to admit to being impressed by her confidence and directness, despite all that had happened yesterday. Gone was the haughtiness she displayed leaving Laurel to be replaced with a seemingly eager and able guide for our journey.