Author: Andrew Rowe
Date: 2018-05-14 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Lgbt; Young Adult; Fiction; Fantasy; Magic; High Fantasy; Epic Fantasy; Queer; Adventure
Description: Corin Cadence finally has a firm reason to believe his brother, Tristan, is still alive. Unfortunately, finding more information isn’t going to be easy. Tristan appears to be entangled with a clandestine organization that calls themselves Whispers. And Corin’s last brush with the Whispers didn’t exactly end well. As much as he wants to follow that lead, Corin has more pressing problems to deal with. Sera is still suffering from a mysterious malady that has stolen her voice and her magic. Corin knows that a portion of that is his fault, and he’s determined to fix it. His mother is still off in
Publisher: Independently published

On the Shoulders of Titans

By Andrew Rowe

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional.

Copyright © 2018 Andrew Rowe

All rights reserved.

Cover artwork by Daniel Kamarudin (https://thedurrrrian.deviantart.com/)

Cover design and typography by Shawn T. King/STK Kreations. (https://www.artstation.com/stk_kreations)

Map of Kaldwyn by Karl Vesterberg (http://www.traditionalmaps.com/)

ISBN: (n/a for Kindle edition)

ISBN-13: (n/a for Kindle edition)

Dedication

This book is dedicated to every person who has had to live in fear of persecution due to their sexual preferences, gender identity, ethnicity, disabilities, religion, or any other element of who they are.

This is also dedicated to anyone who has suffered because of their lack of characteristics that others have tried to impose upon them, such as sexual preferences, gender, or religious beliefs.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Table of Contents

Recap – Attunements

Recap – Sufficiently Advanced Magic

Chapter I – Well, That Was Unexpected

Chapter II – Special Training

Chapter III – Mismatch

Chapter IV – Restricted Attunements

Chapter V – Options

Chapter VI – Two Heads are Better than One

Chapter VII – Overdoing It Just a Tad

Chapter VIII – Sorcery Scars

Chapter IX – Rest and Recovery

Chapter X – Difficult Questions

Chapter XI – A Persistent Hatred for Colored Square Puzzles

Chapter XII – Lessons Learned

Chapter XIII – Third Time is the Charm

Chapter XIV –These Tests Are Never Fair

Chapter XV – Replacements

Chapter XVI – And Then Everything Was On Fire

Chapter XVII – Shots Fired

Chapter XVIII – Everything That Could Possibly Go Wrong

Chapter XIX – Emergency Preparedness

Chapter XX – Ballroom Dancing

Chapter XXI – Deep Wounds

Chapter XXII – Unlikely Companions

Chapter XXIII – Climber

Chapter XXIV – Scales of the Serpent

Epilogue – Another Step Forward

Appendix I – Attunement Mark Levels

Appendix II – Attunement Mark Variations

Appendix III – Characters and Terms

Acknlowedgmenets

Similar Works

A Note From the Author

Six Sacred Swords Preview Chapter – Legends Lost

About the Author

Other Books by Andrew Rowe

Map of Kaldwyn

The map above shows the continent of Kaldwyn, where this novel takes place. It is divided into four major nations — Valia, Edria, Caelford, and Dalenos. Each major nation has one or more of the Soaring Spires; these are also shown on the map.

Sufficiently Advanced Magic took place entirely within the nation of Valia.

The Serpent Spire and Lorian Heights Academy are both located in Beaufort, in the eastern nation of the nation of Valia.

Corin’s home is located in Hathridge, a city south of Beaufort.

Recap – Attunements

From Keras Selyrian’s Research Notes (Prior to Sufficiently Advanced Magic)

On this continent, no one is born with magical abilities. Instead, when humans reach a certain age — which varies from nation to nation — they’re eligible to visit their local “Soaring Spire” for something called a Judgment.

The spires are huge towers filled with monsters and treasure. They’re also basically giant death traps. Their goddess must have a sick sense of humor.

That seems to be an unfortunate trend among the gods I’ve encountered in general.

Yeah, so, survive a Judgment and you get an “attunement”. Attunements are marks, seemingly similar to the dominion marks from back home, more complex. I have some theories on how they work, but I’ll get into that later.

You don’t get to pick which attunement you get after you finish your Judgment, as far as I can tell. And the place the attunement shows up on your body impacts how your magic works. It seems like people can train to work around that, but the location of the mark determines what is easiest for you.

These are the attunements for the kingdom of Valia, where I’m visiting soon.

- Diviner: Standard information gathering attunement. They can also make memory crystals and store memories inside.

- Mana Types: Mental (Primary), Enhancement (Secondary)

- Guardian: Guardians are capable of focusing mana into specific parts of their bodies, imparting vastly enhanced physical combat capabilities. Also capable of discharging their mana through contact, enabling them to harm creatures impervious to conventional force.

- Mana Types: Enhancement (Primary), Life (Secondary)

- Elementalist: Ranged combat experts with fire, air, and lightning magic.

- Mana Types: Fire (Primary), Air (Secondary)

- Enchanter: Capable of imbuing items with permanent enchantments, similar to Dominion Marks back at home. It’s strange to see so many items with runes around here.

- Mana Types: Transference (Primary), Mental (Secondary)

- Mender: Healers. Enough said.

- Mana Types: Life (Primary), Earth (Secondary)

- Shadow: Concealment specialists. They can also use shadow magic to suppress other forms of magic, and have some physical enhancements.

- Mana Types: Umbral (Primary), Enhancement (Secondary)

- Shaper: Able to conjure and manipulate mana constructs, including simulacra. Extremely flexible. Reportedly excellent duelists.

- Mana Types: Earth (Primary), Enhancement (Secondary)

- Summoner: Form contracts with monsters to exchange their own mana for some of the monster’s power, similar to Soulblades up in Dalenos. I’d love to learn more about how these work.

- Mana Types: Air (Primary), Transference (Secondary)

Attunements get stronger as you use them. As your attunement gets stronger, the color of your aura changes.

Locally, they refer to attunement levels by gemstone names. Some of the other nations use other styles.

The colors of their auras follow the color of the rainbow.

They are as follows:

- Quartz: Clear aura. This is the level where people start when they first get an attunement.

- Carnelian: Red aura. At this point, people develop an aura that protects them from attacks called a “shroud”. Sounds useful. Wish I had one.

- Sunstone: Orange aura. At this level, generally learn to manipulate their shroud, including suppressing their attunement abilities to avoid detection.

- Citrine: Yellow aura. I always get this confused with Carnelian. At this level, they gain access to another type of magic.

- Emerald: Green aura. This level supposedly lets them manipulate ambient mana.

- Sapphire: Blue aura. They claim these don’t actually exist, but I’m pretty sure they do.

Notably, some of the attunements don’t give out abilities in exactly the same sequence. For example, Guardians get their shroud immediately at Quartz, and I’ve seen some attunements that can suppress their shrouds as soon as they get one.

I’ll write down more notes when I’m done with this visit. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long one.

Recap – Sufficiently Advanced Magic

Okay, Keras.

In case you don’t remember me, I’m Corin Cadence. We never really were properly introduced. I’m a student at Lorian Heights Academy right now, but we met a little before that.

I suppose that’s a good place to start.

I’m sure you remember being in that weird crystal prison.

Well, when I found you, I was supposed to be taking my Judgment. That’s a test that someone can take when they come of age in Valia, assuming they can afford the entrance fee.

There were two main reasons I wanted to take a Judgment.

One, because surviving one means you get an attunement. Each attunement comes with magical powers. And everyone wants magical powers, right? Right.

The other reason is a bit more personal. My brother, Tristan, disappeared when he took his Judgment five years ago.

Everyone told me that meant that Tristan was dead. I wasn’t convinced that was the only possibility. But even if he was dead, I also knew that if I managed to get strong enough to climb all the way to the top of the spire, I could ask the goddess for a boon. Bringing my brother back to life seemed like a reasonable thing to ask for.

Of course, climbing all the way to the top of the spire would be much harder than just finishing a Judgment, but I needed to start somewhere.

Our local Judgments are held inside the Serpent Spire, one of the six Soaring Spires. I assume you went in through the Climber’s Gate, which is a different entrance meant for groups of veterans who are trying to climb to the top of the spire.

Yeah, thought so.

Anyway, I found a book early on in the test. “Trials of Judgment.”

When I opened said book, it started to give me advice. No, not verbally. That would have been even stranger, but possibly more hilarious.

Text started to appear on the pages. It wrote me “helpful” comments about each of the rooms I was going through, like, “This is the Room of Eternal Death. It’s like the Room of Normal Death, but somewhat more repetitive.”

That sort of thing.

For reasons beyond my recollection, I followed some of the book’s advice. And I found a secret passage.

That led me to your prison.

You and two others — Echion and Vera — were in different jail cells. At the time, I didn’t know if that was a part of the test or if it was real.

It did seem a little bit weird for me to find just enough keys on the way to open two cells, but not the third.

I opened the other two cells, and then you cut your way out with your ridiculous swordsmanship. Apparently you were waiting until the other two were free because cutting yourself out earlier would have triggered traps that would have incinerated the other two.

You started leading the way out.

Unfortunately, we were interrupted by one of the visages of the goddess — Katashi — and he wasn’t very happy to see us.

It was strange to see Katashi in the Serpent Spire, since that’s the territory of his brother, Tenjin. But we were a little too preoccupied to worry about that.

The rest of us ran like cowards while you fought him.

Good work on surviving that, by the way. Not sure how you managed that one, considering visages can wipe out cities with an angry glare.

Maybe he thought you were cute?

Okay, maybe that wasn’t it.

Right. Anyway, Vera stabbed me in the back just a little and ran off with Echion. As you might imagine, I was pretty disappointed by that.

I managed to make my way out with some more “advice” from the book, and I even picked up a magic sword along the way. That was nice. I’m glad the goddess seems to like leaving one-of-a-kind legendary artifacts lying around in towers.

Oh, and I even managed to get an attunement, like I’d entered the spire for in the first place.

The problem? I got the Enchanter one. No one likes the Enchanter attunement.

Least of all my father, Magnus Cadence.

I got a mild case of verbal lacerations when I got home.

Also, the girl who had been raised to be my retainer — Sera — got promoted to “family member that is presumably your sister”. This was probably because she got a much better attunement than I did, a Summoner mark.

It might have also been because of my father’s general disappointment in me, though. Or maybe it was just some kind of contrived plan to get Sera and me to compete with each other and excel.

My father underestimated us. After all, competing would have required actually talking to each other about the situation.

We were far too clever to talk out our differences and concerns ahead of time.

Infinite social skills. That’s me.

Right. So, after that, Sera and I got sent off to Lorian Heights to spend two years training there before our years of military service.

We were assigned to divisions, which weren’t really important, except for the fact that we’re eventually supposed to figure out who the members of Spider Division are. Spider Division has members infiltrating the other divisions, and probably sabotaging them.

I still haven’t worked on that, because I’ve had higher priorities, like not dying. I’ll probably work on it eventually.

At the academy, I learned all sorts of things about Enchanting. Like how to blow off my own hands by experimenting without asking the right questions first.

No, I didn’t literally blow off my own hands.

After that, Professor Vellum — who didn’t want to spend the money on buying me new hands — decided to teach me some things about enchanting in non-combustible ways.

So, yeah, we took some tests, I learned magic, that sort of thing.

Even made some friends, I guess. Or, reconnected with a old friend, in Patrick’s case.

Aside from Patrick, there was Marissa, a Guardian with impressive punching abilities. I suspect you’d like her.

Oh, almost everyone calls Marissa “Mara”. I’m terrible with nicknames, though, so I forget sometimes.

Aside from that, there was Jin. I made him a bunch of items. He helped me out with a few things, too. We got close.

He asked me to the winter ball.

That didn’t work out for reasons that will be clear later.

Anyway, during one of my tests, part of the school kind of exploded.

Turns out that Mizuchi, one of the children of the God Serpent, was on a rampage. And that rampage was because Katashi, the visage we’d run into earlier, was somewhat upset.

Long story short, his brother — the Visage Tenjin — was missing. Considering how much I wanted to get my own brother back, I could sympathize.

I talked to Katashi. Surprisingly, this sort of worked. Emphasis on the “sort of”. He put a weird brand on my hand that would supposedly explode if I didn’t find the person he wanted.

I don’t know why I have a pattern of running into hand-destroying situations, but that seems to be my lot in life.

Maybe I need to figure out how to make magical prosthetics.

I should research that later.

Hm? Do I have a list of things I need to get back to?

Nah. Why’d I need that? I have a great memory.

Anyway, where was I?

Um, something about the spire. I think.

Oh, Katashi. Thank you.

Anyway, I needed to find Vera.

I talked to Professor Orden, and she instructed me to put together a team. She also explained that she was a Whisper — a member of a secret organization dedicated to one of the visages.

I worked on putting together a team as she’d instructed.

Sera was an easy choice.

I would have brought Marissa and Patrick, but Marissa was recovering from a gift of power given to her by Katashi, and Patrick lost at a coin flip to Jin.

In retrospect, I should never have allowed Patrick to flip a coin against someone with illusion magic.

I was expecting to bring our dueling teacher, Lord Teft, but Orden overruled me and brought Derek Hartigan instead. Derek was one of the most powerful swordsmen on the continent, so the choice made sense, but I was suspicious of Derek because of his connections.

Anyway, we went and found Vera.

That wasn’t the hard part.

The hard part was that we had to go back into the spire, and for reasons that I will never understand, Katashi didn’t give us any sort of way to just tell him when we’d arrived. So we had to go look for him, and that meant trying to backtrack to where I’d seen him last.

Because my life can never be simple, it turned out that Professor Orden had manipulated us into going to a place where she could kidnap Vera for her own purposes. Mostly to help her with finishing a project related to artificial attunements.

Vera was apparently a big part of researching a new type of artificial attunements, designed to make humans as powerful as god beasts. Echion was one of the first test subjects.

Orden wanted to expedite the process of making more of these powerful artificial attuned in order to use them as weapons for Valia. That’s the nation we’re in right now, if you’re not familiar. I know you’re not from around here.

Oh, and Orden had been involved with kidnapping Tenjin, so there was that.

I also found out some of the people she’d worked with on that. One was a powerful Summoner named Elora Theas, and an Emerald-level swordsman.

Orden actually wanted me to work with her group. I was a little conflicted, of course, since she was one of my professors, but I couldn’t agree with her plans. Both for ethical reasons and because I didn’t think her plans would actually work. She was not only provoking a war, she was risking our nation’s survival on a tremendous number of variables, and I couldn’t agree to that. It just...wasn’t strategically sound.

So, I decided to fight.

Now, there were five other people there. So, fighting Orden should have been easy, right? Five on one?

Except she’d tricked Derek into putting on a ring earlier. A ring that made him follow her every command.

Which was bad, because Derek was an Emerald-level attuned. Which, if you’re not familiar, is as powerful as it gets. At least as far as we know.

So, with Derek and Orden against us, we promptly ran away. We ran like a lot.

Ultimately, we got caught, though, and had to fight. I gave Sera a magic potion that I’d been saving — one that I thought would make whoever drank it more powerful.

This may have been a slight miscalculation.

It did make her more powerful. Enough to turn the tide in the fight, at least.

We knocked Orden and Derek out cold.

Unfortunately, that potion didn’t work exactly the way I’d hoped, and now Sera’s attunement appears to be broken and she can’t talk.

Oops.

So, yeah, that was all bad.

And then it got worse.

Jin decided to shoot Vera in the back. Like, repeatedly.

This was an immediate strain on our nascent love life.

I tackled him.

We did some wrestling of the decidedly non-romantic variety, until I exploited a weakness in one of the magical items I’d made him earlier and made it explode.

Which, you guessed it, blew up my hand.

Not entirely. Just enough to put some nice shards of metal into it.

It hurt Jin a lot more, though.

They say the shortest way to a man’s heart is through his sternum, after all.

Hm?

Is that not an expression?

I feel like I’ve been lied to.

Anyway, he still probably would have beaten me if Vanniv hadn’t punched him in the face.

Oh, Vanniv? Yeah, you’ll like him. He’s a summoned monster. And he’s adorable.

Anyway, yeah. I cobbled a healing item together with a rock. Not the most conventional form of enchanted item, but I work with what I’ve got.

Magic Rock is the best. Don’t you dare make fun of it.

I used that to get Vera back into stable condition, found some of Katashi’s blood — I imagine that was your work, thanks for that — and then used a thing called the Jaden Box to summon Katashi to our location.

Katashi took Vera and healed me up, but he wasn’t able to heal Sera.

So, he gave me a crazy artifact sword, Ceris, to give her instead. Which is nice, I guess?

I’m still not sure what to think about that.

He sent me to you after that. Then you defeated me in battle with a chicken leg before I had a chance to introduce myself.

I am not ashamed by this. I am exhausted, and absolutely done with fighting people.

So, that’s why I’m here.

Sorry for rambling. I’m tired, I just barely survived someone that I trusted, and I’m not sure if my sister is going to be able to use her attunement again.

It hasn’t been the best day for me.

How have you been, Keras?

***

A bit after explaining that whole story to Keras, I found my way back to Lorian Heights.

Derek offered us all a place to stay for a while, and we accepted.

I had something I needed to do in private after I’d made sure everyone was safe and stable.

I opened Trials of Judgment, my magic book.

And I saw a message inside that wasn’t exactly what I’d been expecting.

Chapter I – Well, That Was Unexpected

I stared blankly at the open book in front of me, rereading the final lines.

And I’ll be especially interested in seeing your next move, little brother.

Survive, and you’ll soon see mine.

-Tristan Cadence

I’d spent the last five years of my life wondering about Tristan’s fate. Had he somehow survived failing the tests? If he had died, could I bargain with the goddess to resurrect him if I reached the top of the tower?

I had my answer now.

Tristan not only survived, he spent the last five years practicing how to sound like the villain from a stage play.

I allowed myself a weak chuckle. But I didn’t feel like my joke was particularly funny.

The situation didn’t feel funny, either. Nor did it feel as joyous as it should have. This wasn’t how our reunion was supposed to happen.

I felt sick.

I let my disbelief influence me for a moment while I wrote a reply.

Dear Voice of the Tower,

If you are Tristan Cadence, I would appreciate some proof.

-Corin

There was no immediate reply, just as I’d expected. I wasn’t even sure the book was capable of sending me additional messages while I was in Derek Hartigan’s manor. I knew the place was supposed to be heavily warded. I didn’t know enough about the specific runes to know if they would block whatever form of enchantment made this book function.

I frowned as I contemplated that. How does this book work?

I hadn’t seen obvious runes within it like on traditional enchanted items. It did glow while I looked at it with my attunement active, however.

I spent a moment searching the book using my attunement, realizing that the part that glowed the most intensely was the inside of the spine, where the pages were attached.

That implied that the runes were underneath the paper. If that was true, I’d have to remove the pages in order to see the runes. Not a bad way of concealing them, since taking out the paper could potentially render the book’s magic inert.

Maybe I could find a Diviner with a spell for seeing through material? That would probably work, but then I’d have to be willing to show the book to someone else...

Or I could make an item with that function. That’d be better, both due to my distrust for others and because I could see an item with that spell being useful for other applications.

I’d succeeded at distracting myself briefly with that line of thought, but Tristan’s declaration snapped me out of my reverie when the moment of interest wore off.

I’d asked the book for proof, but I didn’t need much of it. Katashi had already told me directly that Tristan had been involved with the disappearance of Visage Tenjin. The writing in the book was consistent with that.

Resh.

What do I do?

If Tristan really was one of the people organizing this, was I willing to work against him?

He hadn’t been bothered that we’d successfully defeated Orden and turned her over to Katashi, so he clearly had his own angle on this affair. What was it?

Was he the one currently overseeing the production of artificial attuned? Or perhaps the one watching over the visage they held as a prisoner?

Both were possible. Both would put him in immediate danger now that Katashi knew that he was involved.

Vera had described a tall, Emerald-level swordsman who had attacked Visage Tenjin directly. I’d assumed that was Derek, but my brother was the same age and a similar build. Now that I knew Derek wasn’t connected to this whole mess, it was possible that Tristan had been the attacker.

How can I look into this further?

Tristan had clearly been observing me through the book, as well as sending messages to manipulate me into the course of action he wanted me to take. I’d learned that he was a Whisper — one of the secret servants of the visages — and that meant he had the necessary trust to make changes to the tower itself.

That was presumably how he’d managed to place the book somewhere I would find it. It was also probably how he made sure I had a key to open a cell door, and why the cell doors had locks that were meant to be opened by someone taking the test.

The dead teenager I’d found in front of the bars implied that it was possible I hadn’t been Tristan’s first choice.

I didn’t know how deep his abilities to influence the tower went. Was he able to shift the layout of the rooms themselves to make sure I followed a path to that prison?

I had no idea.

One thing I would have to learn more about was how the Whispers worked and their level of influence. That might help me narrow down whether or not Tristan was currently inside the spire, and if so, how much freedom he had to move around and confound any search.

Another thing I’d have to look into was how the book worked. If Tristan had been using it to spy on me, could I find a way to reverse that process? Was he just writing in a similar book of his own to send me messages, or did he have another method of sending writing to it? How was he viewing me from a distance?

If I could view Tristan from a distance, I’d gain a major advantage in finding him and learning what he was truly up to.

Third, I’d need to look into what Elora Theas was up to. How deeply involved had she been?

Fourth, I’d seen my mother working with Elora Theas in the city council chamber when I’d viewed the contents of a memory crystal. It was the first I’d seen of my mother in years, and I’d discovered that she’d somehow managed to secure an important government position.

Did that imply that mother was working with Elora on this whole affair? Did that further imply that my mother was aware of Tristan’s situation and had chosen not to tell me?

If so, she had a great deal to answer for.

That last line of thought made me realize that I was neglecting something important while I was fixating on solving this newly-arisen puzzle.

I’d been terrible about sharing what I knew with my family.

Telling my mother about this was questionable; it would be a sign of trust, and if she wasn’t involved, I’d be doing her a great kindness.

But if she was involved, telling her I knew about Tristan was playing my hand openly.

...Then again, if she was working directly with Tristan, he could just tell her that himself.

So, I’d tell my mother. Maybe not immediately; it’d be safer to do it in person.

I wrote her a quick letter, one that I’d hand off to a courier in the morning after I’d had a chance to acquire a seal for it.

Dear Mother,

I didn’t heed your warnings, as I’m sure you expected.

Fortunately, I am alive and relatively intact.

I have a considerable amount of information that I believe you would be interested in. In specific, I am aware of Keras Selyrian’s current whereabouts. I also have conclusive evidence that he was not involved in Visage Tenjin’s current situation.

Due to the sensitive nature of this information, I would like to share it with you in person in an area that is warded against observation. I understand that this letter may take some time to reach you, and that you have other responsibilities, but I would like to meet at your earliest convenience.

I hope you are well.

-Corin

She’d last told me that she had urgent business in Dalenos. That was months ago, however, and I hoped she was back from her journey. If I didn’t receive a reply within a week or so, I’d see if I could find a Wayfarer who could send her a message with magic. I wanted to avoid that route for now because it would require giving that Wayfarer all of the information in the letter, which wasn’t a great idea.

For the moment, though, I had other family members to attend to.

My father? Given how he’d treated me, I didn’t feel the world’s strongest urge to be kind to him.

But I couldn’t justify hiding this knowledge forever just because of how he’d treated me.

I planned to tell him as soon as I could safely travel to his estate and figure out what I wanted to say. That would probably be sometime after I finished my first year of classes.

I had another family member that was closer, though, and one who deserved answers as much as I did.

I left my room, taking the book with me, and knocked softly on the door to the guest bedroom where Sera was staying. Fortunately, the Hartigan manor was large enough that she had a room to herself.

“It’s Corin,” I added after a moment.

I heard some shuffling within the room. About thirty seconds passed before she opened the door, her eyes narrowed and her hair hilariously askew. She’d been sleeping.

Honestly, seeing her like that reminded me of how similar we looked when she hadn’t gone through her morning hair-wrestling and general beautification rituals. Her hair was a little longer than mine, but it was the same black with a bit of wave to it, and we had a similar athletic sort of build. Neither of us was as skinny as Marissa, but we were both in good shape.

I grinned at her disheveled appearance. “Can I come in?”

She waved me inside and closed the door behind us. She went to sit on her bed.

I pulled over a chair from the nearby writing desk. “We need to talk.”

She tilted her head to the side, narrowed her eyes, and pointed at her throat.

I coughed in apology. It was too easy to forget that she couldn’t talk. She still hadn’t recovered from the damage she’d sustained drinking the potion I’d given her in the tower.

I’ll have to figure out a way to help her. It’s my fault she’s in this bad of shape.

I shifted the book to show it to her. “Poor choice of words. I mean I need to tell you something? Or, really, to show you something.”

I handed the book to her. She raised an eyebrow.

“Look at the last few pages that have writing.”

She nodded, flipping through the pages until she reached the end, then going back a bit. I waited patiently while she read.

Her eyes visibly widened when she read the part I’d expected, then she slammed the book shut and handed it back to me.

“Yeah, I’m...”

She raised a hand to quiet me, then moved over to the writing desk and retrieved a pencil and paper. We were lucky that Derek had a pencil and an eraser available; pens were far more common in Valia.

She scribbled a quick message on the paper. “What are the odds that it’s really Tristan?”

I winced. “Unfortunately, rather high. Right before we left the tower, Katashi said something about Tristan being involved with Tenjin’s disappearance. I found that book right when I walked into the tower for my Judgment, and I’ve seen evidence that it can be used as a tracking device.”

I hesitated for a moment before continuing. It was difficult to admit my conclusions out loud. “I think Tristan has been keeping an eye on me and manipulating me this entire time.”

Her next reply was simply writing, “Resh.”

I sighed in assent. “Yeah.”

There was a part of me that was relieved that she didn’t react with joy at hearing that Tristan was alive. On some level, I’d felt like I was fundamentally broken for failing to be happy about the revelation. I was supposed to be overjoyed that he was alive, wasn’t I?

Sera scratched another message on the page. “Don’t do anything drastic. We’ll figure this out.”

I gave her my best effort at a smile in response. It wasn’t a very good one, a half-smile at best, but I tried. “Thanks.”

She put a hand on mine. I tensed at the physical contact, but I didn’t pull away. Sera was trying to comfort me, and maybe she needed a bit of comfort herself.

We hadn’t really talked about how Tristan’s disappearance had affected her in any depth. We were all close as children, but the little bit that she’d told me recently gave me the impression he wasn’t always nice to her.

A part of me wanted to ask her about it, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer. I didn’t think I could handle my opinion of Tristan sinking any further.

I’d idolized him for too long.

I’d fought so hard to try to find a way to bring him back home. To try to fix the bonds that had broken in his absence.

Was that all just childish idealism?

I sighed, closing my eyes. “Thanks, Sera. You’re right. We’ll get this sorted out together.”

I gave her a quick hug, the most contact I could tolerate. She relaxed a little, seeming grateful for the contact.

We were very different in that regard.

Then I took the book and headed back to my room to try to rid my doubts.

That, of course, only made me think about them even more.

***

A few hours later, I heard a knock at my door. Before I could respond, a voice said, “It’s Patrick! Can I come in?”

I groaned and closed my book. “Yeah, sure.”

Patrick opened the door and stepped in, closing the door behind him. He gave me a conspiratorial “whisper” which was just about as loud as his normal voice. “I heard the news about Tristan! You must be so excited.”

My initial reaction was a combination of horror and frustration that Sera had told him

How could she be the one to break the news to others? Tristan was my brother, after all, not her—

Oh, right.

Even once I’d processed the fact that she probably did have an equal claim to any information about Tristan, I still felt irritated.

I would have waited longer.

Taken some time to verify his identity, figure out a plan.

She could have at least asked me before telling anyone else.

And then it occurred to me that I’d more or less done the same thing to her when I’d made Patrick my retainer without even bothering to consult her about it.

I was still irritated, even knowing that. But at least I knew I was being unfair.

“I’m not sure it’s him,” I replied instinctively.

Patrick nodded, grabbing a chair and sitting down. “Sure, but it sounds like it is! And why would someone bother going to all the trouble to pretend to be your brother? It’s not like either of you is that important.”

I don’t think Patrick realized how insulting that last part sounded.

But I ignored that, processing the answer. “It could be that whoever I’ve been communicating with has figured out who I am and done research to figure out the easiest way to manipulate me.”

“Communicating?” Patrick frowned. “I thought you just heard about Tristan from Katashi.”

I realized I’d made a misstep by assuming Sera had told Patrick everything. “I have a magical item that sends and receives messages from someone in the spire. I found it in my Judgment. The person I’m talking to claims to be Tristan.”

“Wow.” Patrick blinked. “You must be thrilled. I’ve never heard anything about something like that happening before.”

“Yeah. That’s part of why I’m skeptical. It seems too good to be true.”

Patrick leaned closer to me, looking concerned. “Are you feeling okay? I thought you’d be ecstatic, but you look awful. I mean, worse than usual.”

I waved a hand dismissively, trying not to feel insulted. “My injuries are healing fine. My back was pretty beaten up, but—”

“That’s not what I mean, Corin. You look upset.”

I sighed. “I don’t know. I... This is what I wanted, isn’t it?”

Patrick nodded. “Since the moment he disappeared. You never gave up on him. You always believed he was alive, somewhere.”

I shook my head. “I wanted to believe that when he vanished, but the reality sunk in pretty quickly thereafter. I didn’t believe there was a high chance he’d survived. There are a few stories of people escaping the spire years later, like Meredith Hawkins, but...”

“Yeah, that was probably just a con artist with the Shapeshifter attunement. And there was that one you always talked about with Johannes Edington, but he’d stayed in the spire deliberately to try to form long-lasting memories of a Judgment. But he’d told people he was going to do that in advance and packed supplies for it, and even he came out after a couple months.”

I sighed. “Exactly. So, I’d more or less assumed he was probably dead, or otherwise trapped in the spire. I still figured I could fix it, though. Or, rather, the goddess could fix it if I actually made it to the top of the spire. I’ve never understood why more people don’t try to climb the spire for that kind of boon.”

“I think most people find it easier to accept death and move on then to spend their entire lives working toward a goal they might never accomplish. And I think a part of it is that you’re not, uh, quite as devout as most people, Corin.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but you always tried to avoid saying the prayers in school when we were younger. I get the impression you don’t have a lot of faith in the goddess.”

I shrugged. “I believe she exists. I just don’t particularly believe in praying to someone who sets up a system that kills thousands of teenagers every year.”

Patrick visibly winced. “That’s...not really fair. She’s testing people for the qualities that are—”

I waved a hand. “I’ve read the scriptures, Patrick. I know the doctrine. ‘The goddess blesses those who demonstrate the courage to risk themselves, the strength to defend others, and the insight to know their own weaknesses.’ I’d think that would encourage more people to take the risks to try to climb the spire and resurrect someone they care about, if anything.”

“That’s just the thing, Corin. You see people dying in the spire as a tragedy...and it is, in a way. But dying also sends their spirits to the goddess’ kingdom, where they will be rewarded, and in time, reborn.”

Ah. That.

I’d never seen that as anything other than an empty platitude for people mourning the dead. A way for people to feel a little less horrible about the awfulness of losing someone they cared about.

But if people were taking it literally, that did go a long way toward explaining why most people weren’t quite as obsessed with bringing back their deceased family members as I was.

Was there something wrong with me?

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe that the goddess existed. I’d seen the spires, earned an attunement, and even met one of her visages in person.

I just couldn’t square the idea of the same entity that makes spires with murderous traps and monsters also being benevolent enough to care for the spirits of the dead in some kind of utopian afterlife.

If Selys was capable of making a utopian kingdom at all, why not extend that to all of us?

I’d read the scriptures for their answers, of course. The idea of adversity testing our resolve and building us into better people. Some verses even indicated that the trials that one underwent in life would help to dictate the specific roles of spirits in the goddess’ kingdom, or even in subsequent lives.

But none of that addressed the inherent unfairness of the mortal world.

A goddess with Selys’ obvious power could be doing more.

I remember reading in the scriptures about the early days when the goddess wrought miracles. Turned rivers aside and made whole lands fertile. She walked the lands in person, healing the injured and curing the diseased.

Then she raised the spires, and the miracles stopped. She'd done her good deeds and turned to playing games with human lives.

Even if the spires had some sort of value for strengthening the spirit, I sincerely doubted that there was any spiritual benefit for the children who died from famine or disease.

If there was any truth to the legends of her miracles, she had the power to stop those tragedies from occurring.

From that, I concluded that she either had chosen to stop helping us, or that she’d never truly had that power at all.

The most charitable interpretation I could devise was that she’d used up some of her power making the spires. That seemed like a good deal of effort, even for a deity.

If the spires had purely served as a way to give out magic to humanity, I might have even called that a benevolent decision. But with tens of thousands of people that entered the spire disappearing each year, I had a hard time believing yet.

And even if the spires were purely meant to help us... Maybe she could have set up a way to give those of us who’d lost someone some real closure.

There were common answers for all that, too. That it was up to humanity to solve our own problems. To prove ourselves and grow as a species.

It had always come across to me like a king telling a pauper that he just needed to try harder.

In other words, complete nonsense.

“Corin? You okay?”

I’d gotten distracted with my own introspection again. “Sorry. I’m just...processing.”

“I understand. It has to be a lot to take in. But you were right this whole time, Corin. Your brother is out there. You should feel vindicated by that.”

I didn’t like other people telling me how I should feel, but I knew Patrick was only trying to cheer me up, and I was grateful for that. I took a breath. “It’s...he’s not like what I expected.”

Patrick gave me a sympathetic look. “Of course he’s changed. It’s been five years, and who knows what he’s been through in there?”

“Yeah. I just... I guess I wasn’t expecting things to go this way. I think I’ll be okay, I just need to adjust my plans a bit.” My words sounded hollow, but I tried to believe them.

“Okay, good. Just let me know if you need anything, okay? If you need to rescue Tristan from the spire, I’ll be glad to help!”

I gave a little laugh at that. “Thanks, Patrick.” I paused for a minute, then added, “You’re a good friend. I don’t deserve you.”

Patrick scoffed. “That’s silly. You always used to stick up for me when we were little. Friends help each other out. That’s what we’re here for.”

“Thanks.” I took a breath. “I think I need a little time to myself, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course. If you need me, though, you know where to find me.”

I nodded and waved. Patrick left the room.

The conversation should have helped. It was nice to know that Patrick was there to help me if I needed it.

But he was right — I wasn’t happy about what I’d learned about Tristan.

It wasn’t just that things hadn’t gone the way I’d expected, although I had to admit that was a part of it.

It was the sinking feeling that the person I’d been talking to was Tristan, but that he was so far from the brother I’d lost that I wouldn’t recognize him.

It was the nagging worry that whatever Tristan had become after five years away was not the type of person that I could trust.

And, perhaps, that he might even end up being my enemy.

Questions, frustrations, and scenarios wouldn’t stop running through my mind. Morning light was pouring in my window before I finally slept.

***

I woke to the sound of clashing steel.

I literally rolled out of my bed, drawing Selys-Lyann in a single motion.

If Orden had seen that the first time she’d tested me with that midnight ambush, she might have been impressed.

There were no intruders in my room. The sound of metal was coming from above me.

I rushed out the door still wearing my night clothes. I had my phoenix sigil pinned to my pants, so I wasn’t completely defenseless if we were under attack.

I found a stairwell leading up, terminating at a hatch. The sounds of clashing metal were closer now. I opened it cautiously, keeping my sword in my off-hand.

A blur of motion crossed over the open hatch, too fast for me to follow. I stepped back instinctively, taking a parrying posture, but nothing followed me down.

A glance told me that the hatch led up to the rooftop, which was a flat design of solid stone. This mansion was built less like a standard house and more like a small fortress.

I pulled myself up onto the rooftop, taking a defensive pose.

A black-garbed man flashed past me, swinging his sword in a broad arc. A shockwave ripped out of his blade, arcing toward his opponent. As he twitched his left hand a moment later, the shockwave split apart into six separate projectiles.

On the opposite side of the roof, Derek calmly swiveled on his heel, cutting apart the projectiles with a sword in either hand. He had a smirk on his face. “That the best you can do?”

His attacker, Keras Selyrian, raised a hand to his chin. “No, but I’m not sure if you could handle anything more. After all, you’re unarmed.”

Derek’s twin swords — ordinary training swords, not magical ones — fell to pieces.

To my left side, I heard Patrick and Marissa laugh. They were sitting with plates on their laps and a bottle of liquid between them.

Sera was standing a few feet away, watching the exchange with folded arms, but her eyes were curious.

Patrick turned to me almost immediately. “Hey, you’re awake! Come sit, they’re just getting started.”

I groaned as I realized what I was witnessing.

Yesterday, Keras had made a remark about taking Derek up to the roof.

Apparently, that hadn’t been a joke.

I was half-tempted to just go back downstairs and pull a pillow over my eyes, but my stomach grumbled at the sight of the plates in front of Patrick and Marissa. “...Is there extra food?”

Patrick waved me over. “I’ll share and we can get more downstairs later.” He patted the rooftop next to him. “C’mon.”

Keras and Derek paused their exchange to allow me to get close enough to sit down next to Patrick. I hadn’t brought the scabbard for Selys-Lyann, so I just put it on the ground next to me and kept an eye on it to make sure no one stepped on it.

Patrick offered me an apple, and Marissa handed me a block of cheese. I nodded gratefully to both of them.

Sufficient.

I sat and ate while the two swordsmen repositioned themselves.

The roof was huge, probably fifty feet long and maybe thirty feet in width. Normally, it would have been more than enough room to spar safely, even with us innocent bystanders sitting and watching.

But these were hardly normal combatants.

I sincerely hoped they were paying enough attention to avoid collateral damage. The barrier from my phoenix sigil wouldn’t do much against a direct hit from either of them.

“You need me to fix those?” Keras waved at the broken swords that Derek was holding.

“No need.” Derek held up the two hilts and concentrated. Blades of fire extended from the shattered metal, flickering in the wind but retaining a near-solid state. “I think you’ll find this somewhat harder to cut.”

Keras took a step forward, taking a medium fencing stance with his sword blade extended. “You might be surprised.”

Derek rushed forward, crossing the rooftop at a sprint. He swept the flaming blades downward. Keras raised his own weapon to parry, but the fire swords went right through it without resistance.

They were fire, not steel, after all.

Keras stepped back, avoiding the cuts a moment before they landed.

Then the flaming blades separated into pieces and dispersed.

Derek stared downward at the hilts, then looked back up toward Keras. “I’m going to be honest, I’m pretty sure that shouldn’t be possible. Fire doesn’t work like that.”

Keras grinned. “Anything can be cut. At least if you’re me.”

Derek narrowed his eyes. “I suppose I’ll need to put in a hint of effort, then.”

I’d never seen Derek look this stymied before — but he didn’t seem angry. From his expression, he looked like he was finally starting to take this sparring match seriously.

That could be bad for us mere bystanders.

Derek took a step backward, lifting the hilts again. Instead of flames, the blades that grew from the hilts were new metal — a shining white material that I didn’t recognize. His aura flared bright yellow and extended over the weapons, visible even without my attunement active.

He was wrapping the swords in his shroud, protecting them from being broken. Not a bad strategy, but I couldn’t do it myself. I’d need to be at least Sunstone-level to do something like that.

Derek rushed forward again, keeping his left arm down in a blocking position while he swung with his right. His sword met Keras’ — and this time it held.

Barely.

The aura around Derek’s sword flickered and cracked as their swords pressed together.

Keras smirked and pushed his blade down.

Derek stepped back, breaking the push, and swung his off-hand at Keras’ mid-section. A golden wave of force followed the cut. Keras cut that in half, but it was a distraction.

Derek stomped his foot.

Spikes ripped free from the rooftop and flew upward. Keras, mid-swing from cutting the last attack apart, barely managed to dance backward to dodge the rock projectiles.

That wasn’t the real attack, either.

When Keras landed, his feet immediately began to sink into the rooftop. A section of stone had liquefied.

Derek snapped his fingers.

Keras’ feet were embedded in stone. He spared a glance downward, looking introspective, and then raised his blade into a defensive stance. “Not bad. Planning ahead, I see. What’s next?”

“Well, since you can’t dodge...” Derek raised his open hand and pointed it at Keras. A sphere of flame manifested in his palm. “Let’s see how much damage you can handle, shall we?”

Derek hurled the sphere. It detonated a few feet in front of Keras, the explosion obscuring the area. I had to raise a hand to shield my eyes from both the brightness and the debris.

Then Derek hurled another fireball — and another, and another. He shoved his blade into the rooftop and hurled them faster, using both hands.

A good thirty seconds passed before I could see Keras clearly again. Smoke was rising from his skin, but he showed no sign of injury. He shook his head. “Has throwing a barrage of weak attacks ever worked for anyone?” Keras sighed. “You’re not taking this seriously.”

The translucent aura around Keras flickered silver for just an instant.

In that instant, the section of floor beneath Keras vanished, removing the stone that had encased his feet. The gap beneath him was a smooth, round section, like an invisible sphere had cut into it.

There was no trace of the missing stone; not even dust.

I stared, evaluating what I was seeing. It was a subtle thing, nothing as flashy as the blasts of flame that Derek had been hurling — but the implications were far more terrifying. He’d annihilated that area without even blinking. I’d never seen anything like it.

Then Keras was gone. His sword remained behind, jammed into the rooftop like Derek’s.

I shifted my head, and there he was again. Behind Derek.

He flicked a finger into Derek’s back.

Crack.

A shockwave of force blasted Derek off his feet, sending him forward several feet. He landed, skidded across the ground, and spun to hurl a jet of flame as a counter-attack.

Keras wasn’t there, though. I couldn’t follow his movement at all — he looked like he was teleporting, but his running stance when he reappeared told me otherwise. He was just moving too fast for me to see.

Derek started to swing a fist — and then he flew backward again. Keras stood with his right hand extended with an open palm. He smirked.

When Derek landed, his aura flared Emerald.

I managed to follow the blur of Keras’ movement the next time, and I saw him reappear.

Derek had caught Keras’ hand. Their fingers were interlocked.

For a moment, the two fighters paused. Sparks crackled in the air as their shrouds met and pushed against each other.

Keras shoved his hand forward. Derek frowned, forced back a step by the motion, and threw a kick with his forward leg. Keras raised his opposite leg to block and threw a punch with his free hand, but Derek moved his head to the side and avoided it.

Derek stomped the floor again. Keras jumped to avoid the spikes that formed — but Derek maintained his grip and yanked Keras back down.

Keras answered by kicking both legs into Derek’s chest as he descended, breaking the link between their hands and hurling the combatants apart.

Keras was moving again the instant he landed, but four walls of stone leapt out of the ground around Derek. Keras punched through the closest wall repeatedly, digging fist-sized holes with each strike. A blast of lightning shot out through the largest hole and hit Keras dead-on, knocking him back.

Keras shivered briefly, his expression showing a flicker of pain.

Interesting, I think that’s the first attack Derek has managed to land that had any real effect.

Keras blurred again, reappearing next to the wall. The aura around his hand flickered brighter.

The wall collapsed into a dozen perfectly-symmetrical pieces.

Derek had electricity dancing along his fingers when he appeared amidst the rubble. He punched Keras in the face with an electrically-charged fist.

Keras recoiled from the blow, but it didn’t slow him much. He raised his own hand, but Derek moved quicker this time, shoving both hands toward Keras’ chest. A blinding column of lightning sent Keras staggering back — and flowed continuously into him without abating.

Keras’ aura brightened, shining silver.

Then a section of lightning was just gone. It was just like what had happened with the stone — as soon as the lightning was getting within range of a spherical aura around Keras, it simply vanished into nothingness.

The floor beneath Keras disintegrated at the same time, and he dropped down an inch before his aura normalized.

Derek pressed the attack, but the moment to recover was all Keras needed. He raised a hand of his own, palm-outward, and shoved it into the oncoming lightning. The voltaic stream split apart, jutting out to Keras’ sides without touching him.

He waved his hand upward and a crescent blade of energy shot through the lightning stream toward Derek, cleaving through the electrical column with ease.

Derek side-stepped the cutting wave, but that forced him to abandon the lightning attack. Keras vanished, reappearing next to Derek and sweeping his hand downward in a cutting motion.

I saw Derek’s Emerald aura tear as Keras’ hand passed through it.

Keras fingers passed within inches of Derek’s neck.

A bloody line appeared on Derek’s skin in the hand’s wake.

I felt a surge of panic, standing up out of instinct, but when Derek raised his own hand and wiped the blood away it was clearly nothing more than a scratch.

That wasn’t because of Derek’s aura protecting him, though, or his own reaction. That perfect of a cut, leaving nothing but a reminder — that was deliberate. It was masterful.

Derek knew it, too. Many fighters would have responded with anger or fear, but Derek’s grin only widened.

That was a far more dangerous response.

“That’s...” Derek looked at the thin layer of blood on his hand. “You’re not even an attuned at all, are you?”

Keras took a step back and cracked his neck. “You’re not wrong.”

The rest of us were dead silent as we watched, still transfixed with the exchange.

Derek’s eyes brightened as he stepped back and assumed a defensive stance. “What are you, truly, then?”

Keras put his hands together and cracked his knuckles. “Wouldn’t it be more interesting if you figured it out on your own?”

Yes, but I’d really rather you tell us anyway, I mused.

Derek disagreed, apparently. “Oh, I’ve got some ideas. Both about what you are — and about your weaknesses.”

Keras put his hands behind his head, stretching again. “That’d be interesting. I wasn’t aware I had weaknesses.”

“Weaknesses are relative. And relative to me, everyone has weaknesses.” Derek snapped his fingers. “Tavare, awaken.”

I saw Derek’s true weapons lying against a nearby wall. A column of golden light enveloped one of the weapons as it began to float of its own accord.

With the sound of a chime, Tavare appeared. They were a perfectly-sculpted golden figure, human save for the metallic scales that covered every inch of exposed skin aside from their face. Even their face was metallic in color, but the scales reflected with greater luster.

Tavare rushed forward, a luminous blur, and took a defensive position in front of their master.

Something was amiss, however.

Tavare was trembling.

“Master, you must withdraw. Radiance will engage this foe while you escape.” The golden scales flashed brighter, as if with determination.

Derek blinked. “That won’t be necessary, Tavare. We’ll fight him together.”

Tavare’s eyes narrowed skeptically, but remained focused on Keras. “You must not fight this creature, Master. You must defend the others who are weaker than you. Radiance will defend for as long as it can. It has been an honor to serve you.”

Keras tilted his head to the side, looking intrigued. He raised a hand and a blade-like distortion appeared around it.

Tavare tensed as the weapon appeared, taking a step forward. “Go.”

Derek put a hand on Tavare’s shoulder. “That was a...humbling speech you gave, Tavare, but this is just a sparring match. There’s no need to be concerned.”

Tavare shuddered again. “You do not understand what you face, Master.” The golden-skinned creature stepped forward, raising their blade toward Keras. “Radiance will not allow you to harm these mortals, monster.”

Keras sighed. “Your master speaks truly, cousin. I do not mean these people harm.”

Tavare continued to advance on Keras, blade outstretched, until their golden blade was pressed directly up against his chest. “Then withdraw. Radiance will not—”

Tavare’s blade was no longer in their hand. It embedded itself into the stone nearby.

Derek surged forward, but he wasn’t fast enough.

Keras’ hand was at the elemental’s neck, the blade-like aura still glimmering in place.

Tavare fell to their knees. “Radiance begs forgiveness for daring to raise a blade against you, Great One. They offer their life for the offense, but implores you to spare these humans. The humans are young and have great potential.”

Keras shook his head sadly, lowering his blade-hand and putting his other hand on the top of Tavare’s head.

A red-bladed sword appeared in Derek’s hand. “If you mean to hurt Tavere, I will stop you.”

Keras sighed and rustled Tavare’s short metallic hair. “You’re a loyal one. I meant it when I said I don’t mean these people any harm. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Tavare raised their head just an inch. “Truly?”

The blade-like aura around Keras’ right hand faded. “I have no interest in harming anyone if I can avoid it.”

Tavare’s expression twisted into a frown. “But such is your essence, Great One. How can you...not harm?”

Keras pulled his other hand away, then knelt down and looked straight into Tavare’s eyes.

For a moment, even at a distance, I could see silver in his gaze.

“With great effort,” he said. “And a considerable degree of outside help.”

Tavare turned their head to the side, looking perplexed. “Radiance does not understand. But... Radiance is grateful.”

Keras offered a soft smile. “Maybe you will someday.”

Tavare lowered their head again. “Will you teach me, Great One?”

Keras offered Tavare a hand. “I can try.”

“Try.” Tavere nodded. “Yes. Radiance will also try.” The golden creature accepted Keras’ offered hand, and Keras pulled Tavare back to its feet.

Keras turned toward Derek. “I think we’re done for today.”

Derek lowered his sword. “Agreed. Thank you for the match.” He bowed formally at the waist. “Can I trust you will not harm my friend with whatever ‘lessons’ you have planned?”

Keras returned the bow and then raised both hands in a defensive gesture. “We’re just going to talk.”

Derek leaned his sword against his shoulder. “I’d be very interested in hearing about what you discuss.”

Keras shook his head. “I’m afraid any conversation that I’m having with Tavare is going to need to be private, at least for now. It will be simpler that way. I’m sure you understand.”

“Well, that can wait until I’ve had more time to think about all this, then. Tavere, return.”

The golden-skinned figure lowered their head. “Radiance obeys.” Tavere shifted into mist, the golden sword clattering to the ground.

Keras folded his arms. “That wasn’t necessary.”

“I think it was. You’ve given me a great deal to think about today, and I appreciate it. But until I understand more about what you are, I’d rather avoid taking more risks.”

Keras raised a hand, and his own true weapon — a greatsword in a white scabbard with a spherical metal pommel — flew to it. “Fine. But you’re putting your suspicions over the potential for your friend to learn and grow.”

Derek shrugged. “I’m certain we can make some sort of arrangement eventually.”

Keras reattached his scabbard to his belt, which looked rather awkward, since the weapon was so large that it nearly dragged against the ground. Then he turned to walk toward the hatch to exit the roof. “Your friend can make their own choices.”

Derek let Keras leave without saying another word, then wiped his forehead with his free hand. “So...who wants to help me fix the roof?”

***

“That was so amazing.” Patrick was so excited that he was practically vibrating. “I’ve never seen a fight like that before!”

I was less interested in how impressive the fight was and more curious about what Tavare had been talking about.

It had called Keras “Great One”. What did that mean?

Derek had assessed that Keras wasn’t an attuned at all, and when I’d seen Keras fight my mother, she’d made a remark about his shroud not working properly.

What was he?

He could fight against a visage, at least for the short period of time I’d seen him dueling with Katashi. If he was a visage himself, that would explain how broad and unusual his abilities were.

He claimed to be from a faraway land, but was that a ruse? Or were the visages themselves foreigners, perhaps?

If he wasn’t a visage, a child of the Tyrant in Gold was another strong possibility. If Tavare had some way of sensing that, it certainly would have explained why it had been so fearful. Would it call a demigod like that “Great One”, though? That sounded like a title of respect.

What would a summoned monster respect? A visage?

A god beast, perhaps?

That was a worrying notion. Perhaps even more than the idea of a child of the Tyrant in Gold, a humanoid god beast...

That was similar to what Echion was being pushed toward, too, wasn’t it? Could Keras have been an earlier experiment, or something similar?

I had too many questions.

I felt some sympathy for Derek. I was pretty sure he was trying to find out the same things, and using that sparring session to draw out details.

I didn’t respond to Patrick in a timely fashion, I was too lost in thought. Fortunately, I didn’t need to. Someone else shared his enthusiasm.

“I couldn’t believe it! Remember when Keras was like...” Marissa made a swipe at the air with an open palm.

“And then Derek was like...” Patrick brought his own hand toward Marissa’s, catching it.

I smiled at the reenactment, but I had other things on my mind.

Like food, for example. I’d eaten the couple things they’d handed me on the rooftop, but I was still starving.

I made my way down the stairs to the kitchen, barely aware of the conversation happening around me.

Eventually, Patrick wandered off to go play a game of Valor with Sera. Marissa stayed to get herself more food, but she picked a spot at the other side of the table rather than sitting next to me. She looked introspective, so I didn’t bother her.

I made it into the middle of breakfast before Derek arrived downstairs and sat down at the table across from me. “How’s your recovery coming along?

I’d barely been thinking about that. I still had a throbbing pain in my back from where I’d nearly been crushed by a giant spider, but the ring of regeneration was working to repair that damage. Most of my other injuries had healed.

I still had some half-healed cuts on my hand from when I’d detonated Jin’s phoenix sigil, nearly killing him. I tried not to think too much about that.

My worst symptoms were a killer headache and a perpetual burning sensation in the new attunement on my right hand. I still hadn’t figured out what it was. “I’m intact. Better than I could be, considering what we just went through.”

Derek nodded in understanding. “I should mention that I appreciate your help in freeing me from that ring.” He shuddered. “I don’t like to think about what I’d be doing if you hadn’t.”

“You’re welcome. I know it wasn’t you that was attacking us back there. And thanks for letting us stay at your house.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s just practical at this point. I usually house my climber team here before and after we head into the tower. Since we just went in the tower together, I consider you a part of my team.”

I took the compliment for what it was and smiled. “Appreciated. Hope we won’t have to go back in there any time soon, though.”

He shifted to a more serious expression. “Agreed. You should sit this out for a while, at least until you recover. I can take care of things from here.”

I set my food down. “That’s not quite what I meant. If you’re going back in there, I should be going with you. I’m too deep in this to back out now.”

“The only reason I agreed to bring a Quartz into the tower in the first place was because Katashi had specifically marked you, Corin. Even then, it was a terrible idea, and I shouldn’t have let Orden convince me. I know you still want to help, but you can do that without putting yourself in more danger.”

“I think we just established that you would still be under Orden’s control if not for my help.”

Derek sighed. “With the way things happened in there, yeah. But if I’d had my way, I would have brought a team of Citrines and Emeralds to escort Vera. Orden wouldn’t have been able to seize control of all of us at once, and some of them might have even been able to break me out faster if I’d been wearing the ring.”

He paused, putting his palm to his forehead. “I don’t like to admit this, but Orden played all of us. That group was composed of people that Orden thought she could handle. She obviously underestimated you and Sera. I don’t think anyone could have predicted Sera would demonstrate that kind of power as a first-year student. But Sera isn’t in fighting shape now and you’re still a Quartz.”

I raised my right hand, then flicked on my attunement for just an instant to confirm a suspicion. “Actually, I’m not.”

Derek blinked. He obviously couldn’t see the crimson aura that I’d just seen around my own body for the first time, but he put the implication together. “Your new attunement is stronger, I take it?”

“Carnelian. I still don’t know exactly what it does, but I’ve used my right hand for dueling so much that I must have already had enough mana for my second attunement to be Carnelian as soon as I got it.”

He folded his hands back together, giving me a thoughtful look. “That’s unusual. Your right hand was stronger than your actual attuned location? I’m not sure I’ve seen that before.”

He shook his head, as if to dismiss that line of thought. “Anyway, congratulations. It’s a significant milestone to reach Carnelian, especially as a first-year student. And having two attunements is admittedly useful. But you still shouldn’t be coming with me into the tower until you’re vastly stronger.”

I shrugged at that. From a logical standpoint, I didn’t really disagree with him. Even if I’d managed to help in the tower before, that didn’t mean he could rely on me to be similarly useful in the future, and he was right that a Citrine or Emerald ally would probably contribute more to his success in a climb.

Presuming there were a sufficient number of people he could trust, that is.

I changed the subject just a bit. “I’m not sure the next thing we need to look into is even in the tower. Assuming you’re still trying to track down Orden’s operation, our best lead is Elora Theas.”

Derek winced when I said the name. Derek and Elora had been romantically involved, and they’d had a falling out after he discovered what she was up to.

So, I wasn’t surprised that Derek looked decidedly unhappy when he replied. “You’re not wrong. There were other members of the group that went with her and Vera, but I believe they’re either still in the tower or in hiding elsewhere. Perhaps working on the artificial attunements that Orden described.”

“Do you know why Elora isn’t with them?”

He glanced away from me. “Yeah. She came to me for help. She knew they’d gotten into danger after they kidnapped Tenjin and they needed more allies. She... expected me to agree to help her. I threw her out of my house.”

Awkward.

I’d done worse to Jin in a similar situation, though, so I could sympathize. “You did the right thing. Do you think she’s still trying to gather more support?”

Derek nodded. “Definitely. She’s charismatic, and House Theas has powerful friends everywhere — even outside of this continent, if rumors are to be believed. I suspect she’s been gathering people and sending them to wherever Orden had been holding the kidnapped visage.”

“And you don’t have any idea where that place is?”

He shook his head. “I’ve tried following her directly, but I don’t think she’s actually been going to that location. I think she’s just giving information to people, then they’re probably meeting with other intermediaries to learn the rendezvous point. In truth, you were one of the people I was watching. I suspected that even if you weren’t directly involved, you might know something.”

I sighed, taking a drink of water before replying. “You might have been close to the mark, in truth.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Are you saying you were involved?”

I shook my head. “Not directly or intentionally. But,” I tensed, then steeled myself to continue, “Katashi mentioned that my brother was involved.”

Derek didn’t look even slightly surprised. “Right. That’s why I was investigating you.”

I blinked. “You knew?”

Derek shrugged. “Sure. When Elora first tried to get me involved, she told me that Tristan was one of the people leading the operation. Tristan, Elora, and I were friends in school, before we’d earned our attunements. She thought that telling me he was involved would help convince me.”

“And it didn’t?”

“Quite the opposite, actually. I’d assumed Tristan was dead for years. And now he’s alive and engaging in clandestine operations involving kidnapping visages? That’s nothing if not suspicious.”

Derek paused, looking contemplative. “I considered agreeing to help just to learn more about what they were up to. It would have been the wise move, in truth. But Elora has always been able to see right through my attempts at guile. I think that would have led to a far worse confrontation.”

I turned my head down, staring blankly at my food. “I wish you’d have at least told me he was alive.”

“You didn’t know?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Not until Katashi told me that Tristan was one of the kidnappers.”

Derek gave me an apologetic look. “Uh, sorry about that. As I said, I thought you might be working with him, or otherwise aware of his movements.”

It was a logical assumption.

Trust within a family sounded so reasonable on the surface.

I set my jaw and tried to regain my focus on the conversation. “All right. I don’t blame you. For the moment, let’s focus on moving forward. If you’ve already turned Elora down, and she’s looking for allies, do you think I could convince her to let me in on her plans?”

He raised a hand to his chin, seeming to consider that. “Doubtful. Your connection to Tristan would be a good opening, but she has ways to determine if someone is telling the truth. Beyond that, Orden probably has been keeping her apprised of the situation, including your role. It would probably just get you captured.”

“Okay. What about one of the others, then? Would Orden have told her about Patrick or Marissa?”

“Maybe not, but they’re not significant enough for Elora to pay attention.”

Marissa turned toward us, looking a little hurt. “...Are we really that unimportant?”

I hadn’t realized she’d even been listening.

Derek waved a placating hand at her. “Not that you’re not amazing, Marissa. I’m just saying she’d probably only be interested in someone with a great deal of power — magically or politically.”

Marissa frowned. “I s’pose that’s how most nobles think, ain’t it?”

Derek gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry, sorry.” He turned back to me. “Anyway, I don’t know if we have anyone who would be able to infiltrate her operation.”

I considered that. “Keras? He’s obviously powerful.”

Derek shook his head again. “Definitely not a good idea. I doubt she’d work with him, and if she did, I’d be worried that she’d convince him to stay on their side.”

I got the implication and felt mildly offended on Keras’ behalf. He didn’t seem to be the type to be easily tricked into changing his allegiances. But, then again, I didn’t really know Keras. And Derek was right about the possible risks. “Okay. Weird question, but do you know if my mother is connected with them?”

Derek frowned. “I was hoping you could tell me that. I know she’s on the Council of Lords with Elora, and that she tends to push for bolstering our military, but I don’t know if she’d agree with using artificial attuned for that purpose.”

Mother was something of a traditionalist, which made me think that she’d oppose making artificial attuned. But if the idea of gaining more military power for the country conflicted with her sense of traditionalism, I didn’t know which would win out. “I’ll see if I can contact her and find out if she’s involved.”

“Good. Just be discrete. I suppose I’ll see if I can talk some sense into Elora, but don’t get your hopes too high.”

I nodded absently, my mind already shifting into other topics. I’d figure out how to extract what Elora knew later. “Do you think I need to be worried about reprisals for taking action against Orden, or based on how much I know?”

“Yes, but I don’t think anyone will act immediately. I spoke to Lord Teft and Vice Chancellor Bennet while you were asleep and filled them in on the situation. We agreed that you and the others should continue attending your classes normally, but I’d advise you to continue to stay here at night.”

I folded my arms. “I wish you would have talked to me before discussing anything with Teft. He was clearly involved with Orden on...some level, if not with this plan.”

Derek chuckled. “I suppose his situation isn’t much different from mine, in a way. I don’t think Orden ever let him in on any of the details, though. Teft would never have approved of attacking Tenjin. He might not look like it, but he’s fiercely devoted to the goddess.”

Teft? Religious?

Huh. Wouldn’t have expected that.

I mean, virtually everyone worshipped the goddess to some degree, but I didn’t take Teft for the type to be particularly dedicated to anyone other than himself.

...That was kind of a mean line of thinking, though, and it wasn’t exactly fair. He’d pushed himself to near unconsciousness keeping us safe from Mizuchi, and in spite of his antics in class, he was extraordinarily careful to make certain his students were taking proper safety measures.

I’d been judging him largely based on our first meeting, which was admittedly a terrible first impression. But in fairness, the teacher who had seemed nice was the one who was actually masterminding a scheme on a national scale, so maybe I just needed to stop judging people on appearances.

“I understand your reasoning, but I’m still not sure I can trust him.” I tightened my jaw. “Then again, I’m not sure I can trust anyone right now.”

“That brings me to another point, actually.” Derek shook his head. “I didn’t tell Teft or the vice chancellor about Jin. I wanted to get your take on it first.”

I winced. “Do you know what happened to him?”

Derek shook his head. “No. I just know what you told me and Keras, and I haven’t followed up. Do you think he’s a threat?”

I thought back to what Jin had said when we’d fought. He’d made it clear that he wasn’t a spy for another government...he was just trying to protect his own homeland.

That was no excuse for what he did, but I didn’t expect him to take other immediate steps to cause harm. “I don’t think I can make an accurate assessment of that. I clearly misjudged him before.” I hesitated, then added, “But for what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s probably a threat to either of us. And I don’t see him doing anything to directly sabotage Valia, either. His action was opportunistic. Now that Vera is out of his reach, I don’t see him doing anything drastic.”

Derek nodded, considering. “Sounds about right.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to hire someone to keep any eye on him for a while, just to see if he does anything suspicious. But I won’t turn him in to the vice chancellor, not yet. Treason charges aren’t the kind of thing you walk away from, and I get the impression he doesn’t deserve that kind of punishment.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you’re being that charitable.”

Derek shrugged. “I’ve seen the kinds of things being an outsider can do to someone. And, for what it’s worth, I’m not convinced Vera didn’t deserve what she got.”

I blinked. “I thought you liked her.”

“I did. Doesn’t mean she was a good person. I’ve done a lot of digging into those artificial attunements over the years, and the picture isn’t pretty.” Derek shook his head. “That’s a topic for another time, though. For the moment, I have a present for you.”

He took out a stick.

I put a hand over my heart. “Such a touching gift! You shouldn’t have.”

The swordsman shoved the piece of wood in my direction. I accepted it with more curiosity than cynicism, turning it over in my hands. No obvious runes.

I turned my attunement on.

The glow was very subtle, but it was there. Just a hint of a colorless translucent field, like around a Quartz-level attuned, but fainter. If I wasn’t looking for it in specific, I was confident I wouldn’t have noticed it. Even looking straight at it I was half-convinced it was just in my mind.

I frowned, turning my attunement back off.

“That,” Derek gestured, “Is perhaps the world’s most advanced magical object.”

My eyes shifted down, then back to him. “Yeah, no, not believing that.”

He laughed. “Okay, fine, it’s a stick. But it is a magical item — and, as I’m sure you noticed, not a typical one.”

“No runes.” I ran my fingers across the surface. “Not even invisible ones.” I paused, considering. “Wait. Is this one of your Soulblade items?”

“Oh, no, I don’t like you that much. It’s just an unusual enchanting style.”

I turned it over in my hands. “Where are the runes?”

“That’s between me and the Enchanter who made it.” He grinned. “And that gives you an advantage. No one knows to look for it.”

Hrm. Maybe he carved runes on an inner rod and glued this bark onto it?

Or maybe there aren’t any runes, and it’s alchemically treated somehow?

I turned the stick over in my hands, pondering.

“So, what’s it actually do?”

“If you crack it in half, it sends a signal to a linked item in my possession. My item will make a sound and begin to glow. Once I notice it, I can activate my item to see a visible trail to the location of your stick.”

I raised a hand to my chin, thinking. “It’s an emergency signal. That’s good, but wouldn’t something like a return bell be better?”

Derek grinned. “Sure, but those are expensive. Sticks are cheap.”

“Thanks, Derek. Your generosity is overwhelming.” I set the stick down on the table. “If I get my bell back at some point, could I set it to teleport here?”

“Nope. Anti-teleportation field around the whole house. You’d need a key to circumvent it — and I’m not letting you make one of those. Besides, standard return bells only work if you’re in the spire. They draw on the tower’s mana or something. You can make ones that work anywhere, but they’re more expensive and have a shorter range. We usually call those jump bells.”

Huh. I guess that’s why the ones we used during the fake tower tests worked a little bit differently?

I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future.

I nodded. “Okay. Do you have more magic sticks, at least? Sera, Marissa, and Patrick could probably use them.”

“I can handle making those. Might take a few days, but I’ll get one for each of them.”

“Okay, thanks.” My mind was starting to wander onto the next steps in my plan. I should figure out how to make one of those more advanced return bells. I think Derek called them jump bells? They’re probably too powerful for me to assemble on my own right now, but I could start working toward it.

Derek raised a single finger. “One more thing. That new attunement you’ve got? I’m pretty sure it’s either an ascended attunement or a restricted attunement.”

I tilted my head to the side. “What are those?”

I’d heard of ascended attunements briefly, but I had no idea what restricted attunements were.

“Ascended attunements are attunements that have progressed to the point of changing into something new. They can generally do everything a normal attunement can, but some new things.”

“So, they’re just more powerful than normal attunements?” I asked.

Derek shook his head. “It’s not a matter of power, like progressing from Quartz to Carnelian would be. Ascended attunements just have new things they can do, like giving you additional types of mana or new abilities. Before you ask, I don’t know how to get one, and I don’t know much about how they work. Believe me, I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while.”

I nodded.

Derek continued. “I think it’s more likely you’ve got a restricted attunement. There are a handful of attunements you can’t get out of a standard Judgment. The only known people with them are the ones that the visages hand them to. No pun intended there. It’s possible they normally come from Judgments in the Spider Spire, but since no one knows where that is, it’s impossible to say.”

Now that was interesting. “Isn’t there some kind of seventh tower in the middle of the Unclaimed Lands, too?”

“Oh, that?” Derek laughed again. “It’s real, but it’s useless, as far as I can tell. I’ve been there. It looks like a Soaring Spire — maybe even bigger, actually. It’s cylindrical, and it’s the only one that’s perfectly smooth. There’s only one set of gates, and it’s locked tight. Couldn’t put a scratch on them.”

“...You tried to blast your way into a spire?”

Derek shrugged. “I was bored, alone, and hundreds of miles from home. I didn’t want to waste the whole trip out there. So, yeah. I tried to break into the tower...a lot. I tried climbing it, too. Summoned my pact-bound friends. Nothing we tried worked.”

Huh. “Okay. Well, it’s probably not related to this.”

He raised a hand to his chin. “Unless you can get in there through the other towers. If there’s a way to teleport from another tower, it’d be a perfect safe hiding place for the people who captured Tenjin... Presuming the place is set up like the other spires, of course, and that there are safe spots. Which there might not be.”

“I’ll try to do some research on that, too, if I can find the time.”

“Don’t worry about that spire. You were right — it’s probably not related. If you really want to be involved with this, I definitely think talking to your mother should be the priority. Aside from that, let’s get you and your friends strong enough that I’ll be comfortable taking you with me to the tower if I need to.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a good plan. Does that mean you’re going to offer us some kind of special training? Teach us the secrets of how you reached Emerald at such a young age, maybe?”

“Goddess, no. I don’t have time for that.” Derek grinned. “But you know? Keras might.”

I thought back to Derek’s Emerald-level summoned monster panicking at the idea of even sparring with Keras.

This was a terrible idea.

Marissa and I stood up at the same time, then glanced meaningfully at each other.

Well, at least I’m not the only crazy one.

Chapter II – Special Training

We found Keras back on the roof. I don’t know when or how he slipped past us to get back up there, but it didn’t really matter.

He was sitting with his legs folded in front of him in an unusual style, his sword laid across his lap. His eyes were closed.

On a hunch, I flicked my attunement on.

The aura around the unsheathed blade of his sword was a silvery hue under my attuned vision, thicker than the flickers of argent I’d seen in his personal shroud during moments of intensity.

No question that it was the same color, though.

I still didn’t have the faintest idea what that meant. There was no level of attunement that corresponded to a silver glow. Even if I extrapolated through the colors of the rainbow beyond green and imagined hypothetical ranks above Emerald or Sapphire, silver wasn’t one of those colors. And this definitely wasn’t just a strange shade of blue; it looked like a haze of metal, complete with a lustrous reflection.

Do foreigners have different aura colors because their magic works differently? Maybe a copper-silver-gold scale or something?

...If that follows and he’s only silver, I’d hate to see how powerful gold would be.

While I was distracted with the epiphany that “Tyrant in Gold” could refer to an aura color, Marissa stepped forward.

“M’lord Keras, forgive me for botherin’ ya while yer meditating. Can ye spare a moment?”

Keras opened a single eye. “Well, if you’re being that polite, how can I refuse?” He closed his eyes again, cracked his neck, and then his sword was sheathed at his side.

With my attunement still active, I could see that a silvery aura lingered in the air where his blade had been, but just for a moment. The weapon itself was no longer emitting an aura now that it was sheathed; instead, I could see a faint blue aura around the scabbard.

Now that’s interesting.

Blue meant Sapphire. That was absurdly potent — we’d been told in class that Sapphire Mages were purely hypothetical — but at least it was something our system could properly identify.

And that was just the scabbard. Why did it need an aura like that? What did it do?

Keras reopened his eyes and stood, glancing to Marissa, to me, and back to Marissa. “What can I help you with?”

Marissa bowed deeply. “Please teach me how you fight.”

I raised a hand to rub behind my head. “Uh, me too, I guess?”

Keras folded his arms. “Why would you want me to teach you?”

That can’t be a serious question.

I frowned. “I can’t speak for Mara, but I’m going to go with ‘because you survived fighting a visage and an Emerald-level elemental is terrified of you.’”

He turned his head away from me, his jaw tightening.

That...wasn’t a good response.

Was he angry?

Maybe? But, if I was reading his eyes right, it looked more like shame.

Fortunately, Marissa jumped in before Keras had a chance to flatten me for my insolence or anything.

“Uh, m’lord, I was mostly thinking that you had a unique fightin’ style, with shaping your shroud into blades and such, ‘specially when you hit everything around you at once.”

He turned his head to her immediately. “What do you mean by that last part?”

“When ye were stuck in the stone, sir. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel when your shroud shifted. And it didn’t feel like burning — it felt like cutting, the same as when you cut through m’lord Hartigan’s shroud. Never seen anyone do something like that with their shroud before, m’lord. Not even our teachers can change their shroud into blades.”

Keras’ eyes narrowed. “No. I doubt anyone else could.” He sighed, looking away. “If that’s what you want to learn, I can’t teach you. You wouldn’t have the right type of...mana, for lack of a better way of putting it.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, m’lord. Maybe I couldn’t do precisely what you do, but...” She pressed her hands together in front of her, closing her eyes for a heartbeat, and then brought them back apart.

Her crimson shroud stretched out four inches in front of her hands, in blade-like points. “It isn’t much, m’lord, but...”

Keras closed the distance between them in a moment, striding forward with fervor. Marissa didn’t retreat.

If I’d been faster, I probably would have stepped between them in alarm, but Keras moved too quickly.

He reached upward — and brushed his hand against the blade-like shroud.

I saw silvery sparks when his fingers made contact.

“Remarkable. You managed this after only seeing me once?”

Marissa nodded. “It isn’t anything like your technique, sir. I know that. It’s just a standard shroud, shaped like—”

Keras tilted his head to the side, examining the shroud. “You’re not the first person I’ve seen who can produce a similar blade, but at Carnelian level? Having just seen something like it for the first time?” He paused for a moment, taking a step back and looking straight into her eyes. “It’s beautiful.”

Marissa blushed almost as bright red as her aura.

Keras was turning away a moment later, raising a hand to his lip in thought. He looked totally oblivious to the reaction he’d just triggered. “Yes, I believe I can teach you a bit. I will make no promises of anything specific. I am not much of a teacher.”

While he wasn’t focusing on me, I tried pushing on my own newly-formed Carnelian aura, trying to get it to move into a blade shape. Predictably, it didn’t respond in the slightest.

I’d only had a shroud at all for about a day, and I had no idea how to use it properly.

Marissa had been using a shroud since she’d earned her attunement — she was a Guardian, and shroud manipulation was their specialty. It made sense that she’d be able to pick up on a shroud-based technique more quickly than I could.

Still, I was a little disappointed. I always seemed to be one step behind.

More like five steps, if I compared myself to Derek or Tristan. Those comparisons were even less fair, but that didn’t stop my miserable brain from making them.

But just because I couldn’t learn the same thing that Marissa could as quickly didn’t mean that I had nothing to learn from Keras. “If you’re willing to consider me a student as well, Keras, I’d like to learn more about how your magic works.”

He turned his head toward me and blinked, seemingly just remembering that I was present.

“Oh, Corin. Hrm. I can tell you some theory, I suppose, but I don’t think you’d be able to cast anything. Same problem as I mentioned to Marissa — you don’t have the right types of mana. But if she can come up with a way to do something similar with her own mana, I suppose you might be able to apply some of my theory as well?” He shrugged. “I’ll give it a try. It’s worthwhile if it helps you protect yourself. I can’t be with you all the time.”

I found the implications of that a little demeaning, but I knew what he meant. “I’d appreciate anything you’d be willing to teach.”

Marissa was staring at Keras in wordless...admiration, maybe?...so I continued. “When do you think you might be able to start?”

“Let’s plan to discuss things a bit more tomorrow. Today’s sparring...left me in poor spirits. Talking to you both has helped a bit, but I need some time to myself to clear my mind. I’ll also need to think about what lessons might be useful to you. I’ll see if I can think of anything that would be applicable to both of you, but I may need to train you each separately, at least on some things.”

We both nodded. “Thanks, Keras. I appreciate the help.”

Marissa bowed again, still looking a little awkward. “Aye, uh, thanks...” And then she disappeared back into the house.

Keras frowned. “What a strange girl. Quite talented, but strange.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t know if she’s the strange one, Keras.”

He looked at me and tilted his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“When you walk up close to someone and tell them that they’re beautiful — or I suppose, that their sword-hand aura is beautiful,” I rolled my eyes for emphasis, “They might take that as a bit...flirtatious?”

“Oh.” He put a hand to his forehead. “Oh, dear. I, uh, isn’t she a bit young to be thinking of me in that way?”

I pointed a finger at him. “You’re the one who called her beautiful, not me. You can sort it out.”

He turned his head skyward. “I think I’m just going to leave the matter alone and hope she forgets about it. She probably understands I was just complimenting her martial prowess.”

I was definitely not the world’s leading expert on relationships. Until recently, I had always assumed that my lack of desire for sex meant I’d never be interested in anything romantic at all.

I was just starting to figure out that sexual and romantic interests could be distinct...and then I’d blown up my love interest.

Oops.

So, my qualifications for this kind of thing? Not outstanding. I was D-ranked Quartz in romantic understanding at best. Even then, I could tell that Keras was being hilariously naïve about this.

Maybe it was mean of me, but I was tickled by seeing an unstoppable force of nature acting completely befuddled about how to deal with a teenaged girl.

I chuckled too and headed back toward the house. “Good luck with that.”

***

I was still grinning when I pulled up a chair next to the table where Sera and Patrick were playing Valor.

Sera was winning, of course. She had already taken seven of his pieces off the board, and he’d only managed to take three of hers.

Patrick was smiling, though, so at least he was having a good time.

Of course, he knew Sera was amazing at Valor.

He also knew she was probably upset about her inability to speak — especially since that directly impacted her ability to use magic.

The more I thought about it, the more I was certain that he’d picked this activity deliberately to let her feel better.

Patrick was an amazing retainer.

He glanced at me as I sat down. “You look pleased about something.”

I chuckled again. “Oh, I think Keras accidentally gave Marissa a bit of a crush, is all.”

Sera turned toward me, raising an eyebrow and using a ‘come hither’ gesture to indicate she wanted more information.

“Nothing scandalous, he just complimented her on being able to shape her aura into a blade after watching him do it once. If you saw her blushing, though—”

Sera narrowed her eyes at me.

I raised my hands defensively. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tease her about it. Probably.”

She glared harder.

“Okay, definitely. Fine, fine. I can even make sure she knows he’s like... probably super old? I’m honestly not sure.”

“I’d guess about twenty-five,” Patrick offered.

I shrugged. “Could be twenty-five thousand for all we know. I don’t think he’s human.”

Sera nodded vehemently at that. Interesting. Did she pick up on something I hadn’t?

As a Summoner, she probably had more insight into how monsters worked. I’d have to ask her... Oh, right. Well, she could write something down.

Patrick glanced back at Sera. “Alas, a forbidden love. Like my love for you, Sera.”

Sera snorted, then made a vaguely heart-shaped gesture in her hands...and broke it apart.

Patrick laughed and moved his piece on the board, taking one of hers. “That’s for breaking my second-best heart!”

She brought her hand up to her mouth, and I heard the faintest wheeze coming through her lips. Apparently, that was all she could manage for a laugh right now.

That worried me a bit, but at least they both were smiling. I’d worried a bit that they’d lose their friendship after Sera had shot Patrick down about going to the winter ball, but they seemed as close as ever.

Good.

I stood back up. “Good luck to you both. Maybe I’ll play the winner later.”

Patrick groaned. “Don’t wander off too far, then. At this rate, that won’t take very long.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “You can play her best three out of four first. I’ve got some work to do.”

***

I got dressed in my uniform. It wasn’t in the best of shape after all the insanity in the tower, but I didn’t have a full change of clothes here. I’d need to go back to my dorm room for that.

I packed my gear and belted on Selys-Lyann.

The new stick went in my side-pouch, just in case.

I borrowed a glove for my right hand from Derek, since my own had been shredded during the fight with Jin. The metallic part was perfectly intact, I just needed to replace the leather portion.

Then I headed out of the mansion.

My first stop was the Climber’s Court, since it was just a few blocks away.

Lars looked me up and down as soon as I walked into the store. “Goddess above, lad. You look like Mizuchi chewed you up and spat you out.”

I cracked my knuckles. “Oh, no, we managed to avoid the room she was in.”

He blinked. “You saw her?”

I nodded. “Sure did. But that wasn’t even the scary part.”

He leaned back against a nearby table. “Sounds like you finally have a story to tell me for a change.”

I smiled. “You know what? I think I do.” I paused, considering. “But I’m going to have to leave a few parts out. I’m not supposed to be talking about them.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “You don’t have to tell me that, Corin. You just fill those parts in with something more exciting. The story is more entertaining that way.”

“Well,” I pulled up a chair and sat down. “It all started when Visage Katashi asked me to do him a favor...”

***

It took me a better part of an hour to tell him a heavily edited version of my tale. I talked mostly about the tower rooms themselves — and completely left out the fighting against Orden, Derek, and Jin.

He listened intently the whole time, hints of concern mixed in with peals of uproarious laughter.

“...And now I’m here, alive, thanks to the magic cloak you loaned me.”

Lars folded his arms, nodding with a grim expression. “And your sister, she still can’t speak?”

I took a deep breath, feeling a pang of guilt at my role in that. “Too much scarring. She’s using that regenerating rock I made, but I don’t think it’s helping much.”

“I still can’t believe you enchanted a rock. How’d you do it so quickly? I thought enchanting something on that scale took hours. And isn’t doing something that far above your attunement level a tremendous risk?”

I nodded. “It was a risk, but moving mana felt so easy in the tower. I felt like my attunement was enhanced while I was in there. I’ve never been able to manipulate mana in the air outside, for example.”

“I always felt stronger in the tower, too, but I could never sense the mana like you did.”

I tapped my right hand. “I think this might have had something to do with it, too. Even before Katashi changed it into an attunement, it felt easier to channel mana through my hand. I couldn’t actively draw mana out of the brand, but I think it might have been helping me.”

Lars shook his head. “I still can’t believe you have a gift from Katashi himself. You’ve impressed me, boy.”

“Thanks, Lars.” I smiled. “Couldn’t have done it without your help.”

“Aye. So, now you can start working on repaying me.”

I laughed. “I’ll get right on it. To start with, do you have any more powerful healing items for sale? Something stronger than a ring of regeneration?”

“For your sister, I take it? Nothing like that, I’m afraid. I’d see about talking to a Mender. Even if Katashi couldn’t have helped her right then, sometimes Menders can help with long-term treatment to accelerate natural recovery. Aside from that, there’s always taking a trip to Caelford, but I wouldn’t put your hopes on that.”

“Why not?”

“Ferras only takes on projects that interest her. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people petition her for help with something each year. And that’s if you even get a chance to talk to her — you’d have to find her first.”

I nodded. “I can try other routes first. But I’ll find a way to help Sera, regardless of how much effort it takes.”

“That’s a good spirit to have, lad. Now, can I interest you in something a bit less... divine in cost?”

“Sure, let me take a look around.”

***

In the end, I didn’t buy anything right then, but I put a few items on my list for the future.

He didn’t have a jump bell for sale, but he did have a single-use teleportation stone that interested me. That was only fifteen silver sigils, so it was reasonable, but I still didn’t have that much money on me.

I was also interested in getting an enchanted dueling tunic. My shield sigil and phoenix sigil both provided a good layer of defense against magical attacks, but I was extremely vulnerable to standard physical attacks.

If Derek had hit me with a clean sword swing, I’d have been dead. I couldn’t keep taking risks like that.

I considered more old fashioned armor — he had some of that as well — but I wanted something that wouldn’t hinder my mobility significantly.

My preference would have been to get a dueling tunic.

Dueling tunics were essentially just cloth, but they were made from rare and valuable materials that provided a high degree of defense, both against traditional weapons and spells. The two most common types were Ironweave and Steelweave.

Neither was actually metallic; they were simply called that because they were difficult to cut. I’d heard that the silk used to make them was from monstrous spiders.

Some dueling tunics were also enchanted for additional protection, like the one that Orden wore.

I considered just enchanting my own shirt and coat, but I couldn’t manage anything particularly potent yet. The runes for hardening a material were the key to making cloth provide any extra protection, and those required stone and enhancement mana — two types I couldn’t generate myself.

Getting a dueling tunic would have been somewhat more plausible. Unfortunately, even the most basic enchanted dueling tunics were about two hundred and fifty silver sigils, more than I’d ever owned. Lars’ most expensive one was seven hundred, and Lars told me he’d heard of ones that sold for thousands.

So, yeah, that was going to take me a while.

Aside from those, I also still wanted a long-distance communication item, but he didn’t have any. I’d have to look into other shops or make one myself.

With my shopping out of the way, I headed to the next place on my agenda — the Divinatory.

I still had a key to the restricted archives. Professor Orden had given it to me when I’d still been working with her. I figured I had at least a few days before someone else remembered that and tried to take it away.

I made it into the restricted section without incident.

I wasn’t the only one in there, though.

An elemental creature floated in the center of the room, her shining blue skin contrasting with her current outfit — a tailored suit in the academy’s white.

She was about a foot above a raised platform etched with a complex pattern of runes. It was some sort of combination of a containment device and power source, but I didn’t know exactly how it worked. Either way, it was definitely what kept her in the room.

She was doing stretching exercises when she saw me enter. She gave me a cheerful wave. “Hello again, Corin Cadence. I am Researcher 437-C. I have an answer to your previous question!”

I blinked, not remembering what she was talking about. “Oh? What’s the answer?”

“You may refer to me as a summon.”

Oh, that. She didn’t like being called a summoned monster. Because it had monster in it.

Makes sense. I wouldn’t want to be called a monster, either. Probably would have gone with summoned elemental in her case? Her choice, though.

“Summon it is, then.”

She visibly brightened. And I mean that in the literal sense — she glowed a little brighter, even without my attunement active. I hoped that meant she was happy? “Thank you, Corin Cadence. How may I assist you today?”

I removed the glove on my right hand and showing her my new attunement rune. “Any idea what this is?”

Her eyes widened to comical proportions, then she knelt down and lowered her head. “I am honored to serve in your presence, Arbiter.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Arbiter? Is that the title for this attunement?”

Researcher replied without raising her head. “It is.”

I waved a hand upward, uncomfortable with her reaction. “No need to be so formal. You can stand, er, float, back up?”

Researcher raised her head, then stood and floated back above her pedestal as before. “If I would better serve you in that way, Arbiter.”

I’d been raised in a noble household, so I understood the kind of behavior she was demonstrating, but it still felt wrong. Unearned. “Can you explain to me what this attunement does, and why you’re reacting the way that you are?”

“Certainly, Arbiter. Your attunement is only granted to one who has successfully completed a diplomatic task for one of the visages. Typically, it involves assisting in a political matter between visages and human cultures. Arbiters have demonstrated that they can be trusted with delicate matters, and thus, they are often employed by visages for additional assignments.”

Researcher paused, gesturing to herself with both hands. “As a spire elemental, I am bound to assist an Arbiter in any way possible, since their tasks are often of great importance to the visages.”

Well, that’s good and bad. It means I might be able to ask other elementals for help, but it also means Katashi or other visages might come calling for more help in the future. And I certainly can’t say “no” to one of their requests.

I considered that for a moment, raising a hand to my chin. I didn’t scratch it. I was trying to cut back on that habit. “Okay, but you’re a summoned elemental, right? What happens if I ask you to do something that conflicts with your Summoner’s instructions?”

“I cannot directly go against my Summoner’s commands, even at an Arbiter’s request.” She grinned, showing a hint of mischief glimmering in her eyes. “But...if it wasn’t directly against my Summoner’s orders...”

Huh, she’s got a mischievous streak. Wouldn’t have guessed that.

“Got it.” I smiled in return. “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you. Do you know exactly what I can do with this? I mean, like, what abilities does the attunement confer?”

She nodded once. “Ah, yes. The Arbiter attunement specializes in transferring mana into others. Its primary mana generation type is transference. Its secondary type is life.”

I blinked. “Wait, transferring mana into others? Isn’t that extremely dangerous?”

“Humans typically are unable to transfer mana into other humans because of impurities. The Arbiter attunement purifies mana that is sent through that specific attunement, allowing for safe transfer into other humans. This is its core function. It can be used to both restore lost mana and to temporarily increase the power of an ally over their normal maximum limits.”

My eyes widened as I considered the possibilities this created.

“Temporarily? Is there any permanent benefit to using the attunement on someone?”

She held up two fingers in a sign for “little”. “A slight one. Anything that pushes an attuned’s mana beyond their capacity has the potential to increase that capacity permanently — but usually just a bit, and doing it too frequently or with too high of a volume of mana all at once can cause damage. For example, an Emerald-level attuned pushing as much mana as possible into a Quartz-level attuned could potentially cause them permanent harm.”

I processed that.

There was a lot of potential in this new attunement.

Could I use the purification function as a way to create enhancement elixirs without distilling them?

Or maybe just transfer enough energy into someone to permanently increase their power a little bit, gradually over time?

Could I combine this with my other attunement to put enchantments on people?

...Maybe that’s how artificial attunements are made?

I had some more direct questions to ask, too.

“Could I use this on myself to enhance my Enchanter attunement?”

Researcher frowned at that. “It isn’t meant to be used like that...but I suppose it might work? I haven’t heard of any cases of it being used in that way, but the restricted attunements are obscure, even by my standards. I don’t have a lot of data to work with.”

I’d have to save that as a last resort, then. I would have been more tempted if my other attunement had a direct combat application, but trying to enhance my own Enchanter attunement was a great deal of risk for the potential of a minimal benefit.

I was getting a little bit better about using my mental mana without the watch, but the idea of flooding my brain with enough mana that it could potentially cause scars was...

I shuddered a little bit just thinking about it, quickly changing the trajectory of my thoughts to something more palatable.

“If I gave someone enough mana to push them over the threshold to the next attunement level, would their attunement’s level increase?”

Researcher nodded. “That is a standard way of using the attunement, however, it would be temporary. They would gain the benefits of the higher attunement level, but only until that additional mana is used, after which the attunement would most likely revert to its previous state.”

“Most likely?”

“As I noted previously, there is a small permanent benefit from receiving an infusion of mana. It’s possible that your ability could be used as the catalyst for a permanent change, but only if they were already at the cusp of reaching the next attunement level on their own.”

“What kind of scale of permanent benefit are we talking about?”

She made a ‘hmm’ noise. “I would expect it to translate to being able to stretch the person’s capacity to about two percent higher than their previous maximum, provided you supplied them with mana equal to their current maximum safe value. I would never give someone more extra mana than their current maximum value, nor would I advise using this on the same person more than once per week.”

That was interesting, particularly because it implied that whatever had happened to Sera when she drank the potion I’d given her wasn’t the same as transferring mana into her directly. She’d checked in the morning and her mark still hadn’t returned to its previous appearance, in spite of her maximum mana apparently decreasing, rather than increasing.

It was possible that her attunement would have reverted if not for the scarring, but I suspected something else was at work. I hadn’t just been giving her pure mana, after all — that potion was some sort of catalyst for attunements.

I’d procrastinated long enough on analyzing the potion. I planned to do that within the next few days.

Beyond that, knowing some of the safety limits of my attunement was extremely useful. I’d need to know everyone’s safe mana levels, then I could transfer an equal amount into them...provided I had enough mana to do that. Marissa already had more mana than I did, but maybe I could use this as a tool to help Patrick catch up to us. And if I only needed to infuse him once a week, I could safely do the same thing for a few other people, too.

“Can I give people mana more than once per week if it’s in smaller amounts?”

“The more important part is that you don’t want them to exceed their maximum more than once per week. You can safely recharge their mana as many times as you need to.”

Good to know. That’s probably enough on that subject for now.

I took out a drawing of Sera’s new attunement and showed it to the researcher. “Have you ever seen a rune like this before?”

“How fascinating.” The researcher stared at the image. “This is unfamiliar to me. I can check with the central archive, but that will take some time.”

“Central archive?”

The elemental turned her head toward the east...toward the spire, maybe? “My true self remains there, alongside many others of my kind. We gather, maintain, catalogue, and distribute data. Tenjin has kindly allowed this variant of me to remain here.”

Well, that means this elemental isn’t some kind of violation of divine laws, at least. That’s good — I don’t want to deal with any more visage-related complications right now. I have enough of them.

“What are the odds that mark is a restricted attunement?”

Researcher shook her head. “It’s not. I’d have recognized it if it was.”

“What about an ascended attunement?”

Her eyes widened slightly. “That’s...possible, I suppose. I’ve never actually seen one.”

That was interesting. “Do you know how those are obtained, or how they work?”

“No, but I’d like to! If you find out anything about them, I’d love to hear it.”

I nodded. “Okay, another question. If someone had lost the ability to use their attunement properly due to scarring, could I use this transfer ability from my new attunement to help them?”

Researcher shook her head sadly. “It would be unlikely to have any benefit. Mana scars inhibit the proper passage of mana through the body. Attempting to flood a scarred area with mana might do more harm than good.”

Maybe I could get Sera a second attunement, then, and help her get stronger at using that?

No, that’s working around the problem. I’ll do that if I have to, but I’d rather get her voice back.

“Do you know any means of healing mana scars?”

“Not easy ones. In Caelford, they are performing research on full organ replacements, with some signs of success. Our own research has been focused on restoring the body to a previous state, using a combination of local Menders and other body-related attuned from other nations. There have been some successes with both approaches, but each has significant risks.”

Researcher waved a hand toward the section of the library on her left. “The most reliable approach, unfortunately, remains the most difficult. In row 4-D, you can find a section called ‘Goddess-Touched Locales’. We currently have three books covering a location called Vanreach Peak. In this location, rare medicinal herbs can sometimes be found during the winter season. These herbs serve as the foundation for the Vanreach Elixir, which is reported to be an effective treatment for virtually any physical injury, including mana scarring.”

I perked up at that. “How does this elixir work?”

“The herb itself is the most powerful known alchemical component for healing purposes. Elixirs created using the herbs, which are known as Goddess’ Tears, trigger a potent regeneration effect on the body that can repair long-term damage on the body. Some claim the elixir is even potent enough to reverse the effects of aging.”

That sounded pretty amazing. “If this herb is so potent, why aren’t we growing it on farms or in laboratories?”

“Attempts have been made, of course.” Researcher smiled. “But it isn’t a naturally occurring herb — and all attempts to breed it have failed. We have a poor understanding of the conditions under which it grows. At one point, the Valian government placed the entire mountain under observation for the winter. No herbs were found that entire season. According to local legends, the herbs only grow when the goddess visits the mountain to mourn a friend. Thus the name.”

I nodded at that. “And I presume that, given the value of the herbs, there’s a great deal of competition for them?”

“Oh, yes. And the Vanreach Mountains are infested with monsters.”

Of course they are. Everywhere interesting seems to be.

“I’ll take a look at the books when I get a chance, thank you.”

“It is my honor to be of service, Arbiter.”

I twisted my lips in response to her words. “You don’t need to be so formal. I’m not that important.”

Researcher put a hand over her chest and closed her eyes. “Oh, thank the goddess. It was so hard doing that. It’s been ages since I’ve had to be all... ‘It is my honor to serve you’ and such.”

I laughed. “I’ve never been much for titles and formalities.”

“That’s a relief. Now, what else do you need?” She folded her hands in front of her, rolling back and forth on her heels with obvious energy.

“I think that’s most of it for today, actually. Let me think for a minute.”

What else did I need to know?

A whole lot of things, actually.

But what could she help me with immediately?

Probably more questions related to my new attunement? Or maybe something about the Whispers, that organization that Tristan supposedly belonged to?

Maybe not that last part. Asking her about the Whispers could be suspicious. She’s being extremely helpful, but I’m not her Summoner, and I still don’t know who her Summoner is. She wouldn’t tell me last time...

...Meaning that might be a good question.

“Do I have sufficient authority now for you to tell me who summoned you?”

She shook her head. “Nope! That’s one of the things I’ve been expressly ordered not to share.”

I considered that. “If I asked you the name of a Summoner, could you tell me if they’re not the one you’re contracted with?

“I suppose I could answer that.”

Who seems likely? Hrm. “Is it Elora Theas?”

“Not her!”

I didn’t actually know that many other Summoners. I listed a few more names of students, but none of them came up. “Professor Orden, maybe?” She told me she wasn’t a Summoner, but she’d deceived me about plenty of other things, and I knew she worked in here.

“Nope!”

I nodded absently. “Okay...Do you have a list of all Summoners working at the university?”

“Not in a single location. You could look at the general faculty lists and cross-reference them with the individual profiles for each faculty member, though.”

I waved a hand dismissively. “Too much work. It’s not that important.”

“If you say so!”

I rubbed my chin. “I think that’s all I have to ask for the moment, but I’m sure I’ll be back here soon. Thanks for all the help.”

“It’s been my pleasure, Arbiter.” She bowed at the waist. “I had fun, too! You should come by more often.”

It struck me that she sounded lonely — and that made sense, given that she was standing around, sentient and conscious, doing...virtually nothing all day? Maybe she was scanning through the books somehow. I didn’t really know.

“I’ll try to do that.”

I meant it, both for her sake and mine.

I went and grabbed the books about the Vanreach Mountains she’d told me about, packed them in my backpack, and headed out.

It was time to risk visiting my dorm.

***

I strongly considered going to Jin’s room first.

It was just above mine.

It would have been easy to check on him, just to see if he was there.

To see if he was even alive.

But what would I say?

Oh, hey, Jin. How’s that shrapnel in your chest doing?

My hands had balled into fists without my conscious knowledge.

No, I wasn’t ready to look for Jin just yet.

I told myself it was because Sera was my priority right now, but I was aware I was deflecting. That was fine, though. The lie was sweeter than the truth, but the truth was sufficient reason to stay away in itself.

We’d nearly killed each other. The next time I saw him, I knew he might try to finish what he’d started.

I doubted it, but that doubt itched at the back of my mind, and I knew it would continue to until I found a way to expunge it. That was, like dealing with any fear, a substantial task: and one I wasn’t particularly adept at.

I made it to my own door without being ambushed by assassins.

I admit it was kind of a let-down. I would have felt vindicated if there had been assassins, and maybe it would have distracted me from thinking about Jin.

Probably not. In retrospect, assassins reminded me of the first time he’d saved me.

Resh.

Okay, clearing mind, focusing on work.

I opened my door.

I didn’t have a perfect memory, and it had been a while since I’d been back to my room, but I was pretty certain it was not how I’d left it.

It didn’t look like someone had sacked the room.

But there were little things that were out of place.

The books on my desk were on the left side, not the upper right hand corner where I usually put them.

My clothes were folded too well. Honestly, I was awful at folding.

I activated my attunement, scanning the area for magic. I found something faint, glowing subtly under the carpet.

I couldn’t ignore that. I’d just have pay for the damages. I cut away a square of the carpet, finding a set of runes that I most certainly hadn’t put there.

Let’s see...

That’s very similar to the activation rune on my return bell, but with a higher level of sensitivity. Betting it’s for detecting if anyone steps on the area above.

That’s the function rune. It has something having to do with air mana, and it’s tied to the next rune...

Which is something that stores a specific sound.

That’s a targeting rune for setting a destination for a spell effect.

The rest of them are just runes for capacity and recharging the enchantments automatically.

After a moment of consideration, I determined they were a simple signaling enchantment. Something that activated another set of enchantments elsewhere when it detected someone present in the area.

From the level of the range rune, the targeted location could be anywhere in the city. And, unfortunately, I didn’t have any way of tracing where it was going.

Not immediately, at least.

I was reasonably confident that Jin didn’t have a high level Enchanter available, so it probably wasn’t him.

I patched up the carpet, took my school books, and left.

I abandoned the clothes. I didn’t trust that they didn’t have kind of detection enchantments built into them. They weren’t glowing, so it wasn’t likely, but I wasn’t going to take the risk.

School books wouldn’t have the enchantment capacity to handle any serious enchantments. Trials of Judgment had to be made of some kind of special material to be able to handle the magic it was capable of, and I was reasonably confident these books were the same ones I’d left behind. I checked each book with my attunement before packing it away, though, just to be safe.

I also took my few other enchanting supplies: an extra etching rod, clamps for holding the object steady, pens, parchment, and that sort of thing.

After a bit of consideration, I changed my mind about the etching rod and left that one behind. Any enchanted item had a risk of being modified. While I didn’t see any new runes on the rod, the stick that Derek had given me proved that there were ways of hiding enchantments.

After that, I locked my room and headed back to Derek’s place.

I dropped my stuff off there.

“Someone broke into my dorm,” I explained to the others. “Bring me with you if you plan to go back to your own rooms. I’ll check for enchantments.”

Derek looked concerned when he heard the news. “I’ll double-check the security of the mansion. We’re well-protected here, but I’ll take some extra precautions.”

I was glad for that. I also spent a bit of time checking the mansion for anything suspicious myself.

Each room had a standardized set of runes etched into a wall. In a couple specific places, like Derek’s room, there were redundancies for extra protection.

That’s a Citrine-level anti-Divination rune. A pretty standard precaution, and a powerful one.

Hm, I think that’s a teleportation rune linked to a shielding rune.

That would work a little differently from the anti-teleportation runes I use, since it doesn’t block teleportation from being used inside the manor. It just prevents teleportation spells that originate from outside the house from getting in. That makes a lot of sense, since it still allows people inside to escape via teleportation, but it prevents attackers from being able to teleport straight in.

I’ll write this combination down. Might need to use it myself eventually.

This last one is a reinforcement rune for protecting the walls. Kind of easy to forget these are here, since Keras and Derek always end up wrecking the rooftop anyway.

After that, there were sets of capacity and recharge runes for each of the mana types. Nothing out of the ordinary.

All of those enchantments seemed like reasonable precautions, and I didn’t find any rooms that had any extra runes that were out of place.

Considering how powerful some of those enchantments were, as well as the sheer number of them, Derek must have spent a fortune on defending his home. I’d sleep a little easier knowing that.

Who could have broken into my room?

The most likely option was someone connected to Orden and the Whispers. If that was the case, I didn’t think I’d be able to track them.

I looked up the set of runes I’d found on the floor and formulated a plan. I couldn’t act on it immediately, but I had some ideas.

I considered hiring a more powerful Enchanter or Diviner to look into it on my behalf, but I couldn’t afford it.

I also thought about reporting the incident to the school, but after what had happened to Orden, I didn’t really trust the academy’s administrators. Moreover, I didn’t really want to bring anyone else into this whole mess if I could avoid it.

For the moment, I’d just have to watch my back while I looked into other things.

The next major item on my agenda was to visit Professor Vellum. She was the closest thing I had to an Enchanting mentor, as eccentric as she was, and I needed her advice. But first, it was finally time to go back to class.

Chapter III – Mismatch

If I’d wanted to take it slowly, I probably could have skipped a few days of class without a tremendous risk to my grades.

My next class on the schedule happened to be one of Lord Teft’s: dueling class. That would have made it even easier to skip, since he knew about my situation.

But I wasn’t interested in a vacation. I’d seen how far behind I was in terms of raw power in the tower, and I needed all the fighting practice I could get.

More importantly, I needed every point I could earn.

Not only was I still worried about graduating, I also knew that with the growing chaos in my life, it was likely that my second year would be even harder.

The points I earned this year impacted my placement for the second year, if I graduated. That meant that getting as high of a score as physically possible was a priority, because I wanted to have a safety net for the second year.

Finishing my second year with a high score was also a must, because I wanted to be able to choose to be assigned to be a climber. The knowledge that Tristan was alive hadn’t changed that in the slightest.

If he’d already been stuck in the spire for five years, clearly there was something keeping him from leaving. Being assigned to a climber role would give me the best chance of figuring that out and getting him home.

I’d obviously get him out sooner if I could, but I couldn’t count on that.

Finally, I had one more reason to go to the class: I wanted to see how my new attunement worked in action.

That wasn’t going to be ideal, however, since today’s dueling class was dedicated to something we rarely seemed to discuss—

Dueling.

We were actually fighting duels.

That...still wasn’t exactly my area of strength, but I did have a much better chance than when I’d first started the semester.

Knowing Teft, there’d be some kind of spin on it, but I didn’t know exactly what that was going to be when I walked in.

Teft leaned up against the lectern, addressing the class. “While most classes will have final exams in the last two weeks of the school year, I’ve found that I get far better results when my students aren’t prepared. And thus, today, we begin the first stage of your final exams.”

He waved a hand. “Follow me to the dueling arena, class.”

I winced. I wasn’t ready for a final exam, but that wasn’t my primary concern.

Sera was sitting right next to me. She still couldn’t use her attunement.

But Teft knew that, didn’t he? Would he pair her with someone who wasn’t a good duelist, or maybe let her skip the test until she recovered?

We exchanged doubtful looks as we stood and followed Teft out of our usual open-air lecture area toward... I wasn’t really sure. I thought that classroom was considered the dueling arena, although we’d used different rooms for a few training exercises.

I should have known better than to expect a normal dueling arena out of Teft.

True, the location he led us toward was a sports arena — one used for vaban, a popular ball game designed for attuned. The vaban court itself, however, had been modified for our activity.

The arena floor was gray stone, about a hundred feet across and roughly fifty feet wide. Normally, the only marks would be dividing lines every ten feet to mark increments of distance.

Today, the court had been covered in square tiles etched with runes.

With a snap of Teft’s fingers, the squares began to glow a variety of colors—

In specific: red, orange, yellow, and green.

I noted that a handful of squares remained unchanged as well.

I did not like where this was going.

I hated colored tile puzzles.

From the groans of the students around me, I could tell that many of the other students agreed.

Teft gestured to the battlefield. “Today, you will be fighting in team matches on the field below. Rather than traditional dueling, this challenge combines the difficulties of dueling with the risks of a standard format for tower chambers — tiles with different magical effects.”

He glanced around to the class. “For the moment, divide yourself into teams of four.”

I breathed a sigh of relief at that, since I already had three people with me.

“Where’s Roland?” Patrick asked, glancing around.

I frowned, both because adding Roland into the formula would disrupt my perfect team of four and because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him.

Where was Roland?

He wasn’t in class, certainly.

“Don’t see him,” I replied, “But we’ve got a solid team of four right here.” I was talking about Patrick, Marissa, and Sera, of course.

“Might not be so wise, m’lord Corin. I’m still not in the best of fightin’ shape, nor is Sera. Maybe we could get a pass, given that we’re still recovering?”

It was savvy of Marissa to phrase it that way, since it didn’t put the entire burden on Sera. And, in fairness, Marissa was probably still recovering from that burst of extra mana that Katashi had given her. It had only been a few days since then, even if it felt like weeks.

...Wait; did Katashi use the Arbiter attunement to give her that power increase? Was his ability the same one that I have?

It seemed functionally similar, even if Katashi had the extra flashiness of drawing on the extra line of the rune for her next attunement level. He’d given her more than twice her previous maximum in mana, too, which I wasn’t supposed to do...

...But maybe that was the reason it was taking her so long to recover. It was possible Katashi had risked her health by giving her so much power at once, and it was also possible that he knew better than the Researcher did exactly how much power was safe to transfer at once.

Maybe there were other, more complex factors in play — for example, the Guardian attunement was defensive in nature, and that might have allowed Marissa to tolerate more mana safely. I didn’t know, but it seemed like it was worth researching eventually, or just asking Katashi about it if I saw him and didn’t have anything more important to discuss.

“I’ll go ask Teft if we can get you two excused from this, or maybe all four of us.” Patrick offered, jarring me out of my introspection. I nodded as Patrick headed in Teft’s direction.

I turned to Sera in the meantime. “Have you been feeling any better?”

Sera shrugged.

“I went to the Divinatory to do some research earlier. I found a few options we can investigate. I’ll tell you more after class.”

She gave me the weakest smile I’d ever seen, then turned her head away.

Patrick came back with Teft a few moments later.

Teft walked straight over to Sera. “Miss Cadence, I was aware that you were injured in the tower, but not the degree of severity. That said, there will be many times in life when you are forced to fight at a disadvantage.”

He folded his arms. “Given your circumstances, it is within reason for you to skip this week’s test to recover. If you choose to do so, I will give you a below average, but passing grade for the exam. Due to the structure, it would not be possible to take the test at a later time. Would you like to take that option? This is not a trick question.”

Sera glanced to the rest of us, her lips twisted into a frown.

Patrick put a hand on her shoulder. “We can handle this as a team, Sera! The four of us can handle whatever Teft throws at us.”

Sera turned her head to Patrick, her eyes meeting his. Then she nodded, and with new resolve, she turned back to Teft and curtly shook her head.

“Good.” Teft nodded in return, then turned his head to Patrick. “And because you’ve chosen to influence her, Master Wayland, you can be on her team. Your opponents,” my heart sank has he gestured, “Will be Master Cadence and Miss Callahan.”

I knew there would be a twist to this, I just hadn’t expected...

Resh.

“Your team will be up second.” Teft turned his back to us and walked away to split up the other teams.

“Well,” I glanced from side to side, “This is awkward.”

Patrick was full of resolve. “Sorry, Sera. Didn’t think he’d do that, but this is better in some ways. Uh, go easy on us, Mara?”

Sera stepped in between the two of them, put her hands up in a warding gesture, and shook her head vehemently.

I turned to Patrick. “Yeah, if you think Sera wants us to go easy, you haven’t been paying enough attention. She’ll murder me if she realizes I’m going easy on her.”

Sera raised a finger and made a throat-slitting gesture, her expression serious.

I said that, but the key part was “if she realizes”.

It was working, so I decided to add to the effect. “And, in truth, I’m not sure you’ll need it. Sera is vastly better with things like tile puzzles than I am. Don’t know about you, Mara.”

“I’m nae any good at them. Much better at punching things.”

Seems fair.

“Not sure how much that’ll help.” Patrick sounded dejected. “We don’t even know what they do yet.”

“I think that’s part of the point.” I jerked a thumb at Teft. “He’ll probably give us some basic rules in a few minutes, after he’s done splitting up the other teams, then we’ll have to figure out how the tiles work once we’re in there.”

We chatted for a couple more minutes. Teft did another round of walking to every group, checking on the status of our shield sigils, then headed back to the front of the class to address everyone.

“You will not always be able to choose who your allies — and who your enemies — are. For today’s test, you face a scenario every soldier dreads: a battle against some of your closest allies. Or, in the case of some of you,” he scanned the crowd, “merely the people you thought would make the most efficient team.

“In either case, you very likely know something of the abilities of your opponents, and vice versa. This will be a test of both your combat abilities and your knowledge of how to counter the tactics of your rivals.”

I caught Sera’s eyes. The tip of her mouth curled up just slightly.

She’d always dominated me at games of strategy. Valor, Crowns...it didn’t matter which.

“This test,” Teft waved at the arena, “will be a simple one, but not an easy one. Each colored square has a different effect. Some are beneficial, some are detrimental. Both the layout and the effects of each square vary between matches, and thus, fighting later will not offer you an information advantage.”

I heard a few groans at that, but I didn’t agree with Teft’s assessment. Not entirely. If there was a discrete list of possible effects, we could learn those from early matches and have an idea of what some of the squares might be, even if the specifics were different.

I also suspected Teft knew that, and that he was expecting a few of us to pick up on it.

“A few rules, of course. First, you will be given an attachment called a sigil monitor to put over your shield sigil before the match starts. When your shield sigil is depleted, the monitor will immediately detect this and teleport you out of the arena to the Mender unit.”

He pointed to a nearby door on the side of the arena. “When you’re teleported out, you’re done. The Menders will see to any injuries you sustained in the fight, then you can return to the stands to watch the remainder of the battle. You may not return to the fight, even if you can recharge your sigil.”

Well, that’s one idea down right away.

Was Teft looking straight at me when he said that? Probably just my imagination.

“Second, the match has a time limit of ten minutes. If neither team has eliminated the other in ten minutes, it will be considered a draw. Since eliminating opponents is the primary way to earn points for the exam, a draw will not be advantageous to you. While you may feel obligated to allow a draw if you are fighting against your friends, I assure you that this will not be the way to earn the highest amount of points.”

But it’s not expressly disallowed. Interesting.

Sera shook her head at me as soon as I looked back to her.

Fine, fine.

Teft continued. “You may not leave the arena during the match to maneuver. If you leave the arena, you will lose immediately.” He glanced at Kyra Dyson’s team, one of the few teams I considered almost as likely as my own to try to find a loophole in the rules.

Kyra was one of the few people with the Shadow attunement in the class, and while she wasn’t as good of a straight fighter as someone like Marissa, she was one of the most proficient at finding and exploiting weaknesses in her opponents. I liked her style.

“And you also may not interfere in matches other than your own.” He glanced at Patrick when he said that. Apparently, he hadn’t forgiven us for when Patrick jumped in on my “duel” against him on the first day of class. I brought a hand to my mouth to unsuccessfully attempt to stifle a laugh.

“Finally, you will only be fighting with dueling canes. Other magical items will be permitted, but for safety reasons, I will not be permitting other enchanted weapons.”

Another advantage gone. It was a sensible rule, however. Selys-Lyann and similar weapons could cause a lot of damage in a test like this.

“I will be watching your performance carefully. Today’s match will determine which of you are prepared for the second half of this class.”

That was an intimidating implication. Was he going to be failing some of us outright?

That was not an acceptable outcome.

From the looks on the faces of my friends, I could tell they felt the same way.

“Teams One and Two, come with me.”

Team One was Kyra’s team, consisting of her and an Elementalist named Loria Marshall. Team Two was Rupert Kent — another Elementalist and a constant subject of Marissa’s ire — and Desmond Vyers, a Shaper.

I could see why they’d assembled their team of four the way they had. Two Elementalists and a Shaper would have given them tremendous long-ranged firepower, and Kyra could have handled virtually anything else. I would have given them good odds against our own team, at least in our current state. If Sera had her Summoner abilities...

I shook my head. Hypothetical matches didn’t matter. I had a real one to watch.

Just one, presumably. We were Teams Three and Four.

We headed to the stadium seats, getting as close as possible to get a good look at the action. Teft led the two teams to the steps into the arena, where he knelt down to open a box. He retrieved four discs from within — the sigil monitors. It was hard to see at a distance, but they had some kind of prongs on them to attach to the shield sigils.

Could I disable mine to stay in the fight longer?

Probably, but it’s not worth the risk. The chance for being hurt is too significant, and it might even get me disqualified.

Fortunately, my phoenix sigil’s barrier is the outside layer — it’ll take damage before the normal shield sigil does.

And I’m a Carnelian now. My shroud will mostly be inside the barriers, so it won’t do much to help my shield last longer, but it will definitely help prevent injuries from slowing me down.

That was all good, but our opponents had phoenix sigils, too. I’d made them myself.

I didn’t regret it for a moment.

I couldn’t hear what Teft was telling the other students at this distance, but they headed to opposite sides of the arena. The tiles were just large enough for a single person to stand on them comfortably and there were a lot of them.

I also wanted to know why some of the squares had remained white, their normal color. If the other squares represented the advanced stages of an attunement, were these “white” squares supposed to be Quartz?

And, if that was the case, did that mean they had no effect?

It seemed so, since the students were stepping on the white squares on their way to the opposite sides of the arena — and there were two white squares for each team on the far sides.

There seemed to be no traps on those initial squares, but I couldn’t be confident that all white squares were the same. Teft often liked to subvert expectations.

“Bow to your opponents.”

The teams bowed respectfully.

“Begin!”

A dome-shaped barrier flickered into life around the arena as soon as Teft spoke.

The combatants surged into motion.

Kyra whispered a word, then vanished in a torrent of swirling shadows.

Instinctively, I activated my attunement to see where she’d gone — and the answer was nowhere. She was still standing in the center of the shadow cloud, reaching out with her hands.

The shadows began to spread.

Rupert and Loria turned toward each other, but Loria was a hair faster. She hurled a bolt of lightning at him. It got within inches before a glowing shield appeared in front of Rupert and deflected the blast.

That was a Shaper spell, but I hadn’t seen Desmond move. There was a good reason for that, and it wasn’t because he was too fast to perceive like Keras. He’d stuck his hands in his jacket pockets so his opponents couldn’t predict his spells based on his gestures. Simple, but effective.

A hail of glowing swords appeared in the air above Loria, descending in a glimmering flash. She dodged to the side, but that meant jumping onto a colored square. A bolt of light erupted when she landed on it, and I saw cracks flicker across her shield.

The glowing sword-storm struck the tiles where she’d been standing a moment before, sinking into the stone several inches before vanishing.

The tiles themselves aren’t shielded, I realized. I might be able to work with that.

Rupert was still gathering energy in his hands. A swirling ball began to manifest, glimmering with heat while he whispered. His Elementalist mark was on his left hand, so he didn’t strictly need to use incantations, but it looked like he’d learned to use his lungs to augment his spells further.

From the intensity of the glow, I’d say it was paying off.

The globe seemed to solidify over the following seconds. Loria hurled another blast of lightning, this time at Desmond, but another phantasmal shield appeared in the way.

This time, the lightning shifted in mid-air to arc around the shield, blasting Desmond back a step and leaving a crack in his barrier. He landed on a green square. Vines burst from the ground beneath him, wrapping around his legs in a moment. His expression was more perplexed than furious.

Near me, Patrick whistled appreciatively. Controlling lightning mid-flight like that was impressive.

So, however, was the ball of flame that was gradually solidifying in Rupert’s hands.

Kyra’s shadows were still spreading — they now encompassed a half-dozen squares, almost reaching where Loria was standing. Assuming she could see within her own shadows, it seemed like a valid strategy — her opponents wouldn’t know where to attack.

Desmond ducked down, forming a phantasmal blade to cut away at the vines that were binding him, while Loria hurled another lightning blast. Rupert took this hit head-on, but he managed to retain his focus on the spell he was gathering.

And, without any further delay, he hurled the sphere in Loria’s direction.

Kyra’s shadows shot out and covered Loria’s square, then seemed to thicken as the fireball approached.

The flames diminished as they entered the enclosure of shade, and not just visually. With my attunement active, I could see the intensity decrease as it crossed inside. An unexpected effect; I hadn’t known that shadow magic could diminish the power of other spells.

But it wasn’t enough.

The fireball detonated with tremendous force, burning away a section of shadow and crashing into Loria. The impact hurled her backward, shattering her barrier. Then she vanished.

It wasn’t one of Kyra’s tricks this time. Loria’s barrier was gone, and she’d been eliminated from the match.

Kyra dropped to the ground when the fireball detonated, and it left her mostly unscathed. Her shadows began to spread again immediately afterward, but it didn’t seem like a sustainable tactic.

Desmond was almost free of his vines, and Rupert was already preparing another ball of fire.

I was expecting Kyra to do something sneaky. Maybe create a bunch of illusions, or manipulate the shadows into attacking from a direction opposite from her own location.

Instead, she braced herself, took a breath, and jumped.

The remaining shadows jerked inward, pulled as if connected by strings, and condensed until they were pressed against her skin.

Kyra’s features vanished as the shadows stretched across her entire body, covering her like paint.

I’d seen that kind of spell before, though; it was more than a cosmetic change. The shadows would enhance her physical capabilities further, and protect her like a suit of armor.

The leap didn’t take her far, but it did draw her opponents’ attention upward. That meant that her opponents didn’t see that she’d left something behind when she jumped — a tiny metal rod.

She landed on another white square, just a few feet away from where she’d started, and began to slowly advance. Nothing happened, seemingly confirming that the white squares were safe.

Desmond was free now, and he conjured another hail of glittering blades in the air above Kyra. They descended, jamming into the writhing shadows around her — and vanished without a trace.

The shadows seemed to diminish for a moment after the attack, but Kyra exhaled a breath, and they solidified again.

Kyra advanced, hopping from white square to white square.

Rupert turned to his partner, still focusing on conjuring a ball of flame, and yelled, “Slow her down!”

Desmond gave a nod and a reply, then closed his eyes and focused.

A glowing wall appeared in Kyra’s path.

She punched it. The wall rippled as umbral mana met with gray, tearing a fist-shaped hole.

Seeming satisfied, she struck the wall again and again, widening it until there was almost enough room to jump through.

The wall vanished just in time for Rupert’s fireball to pass through where it had been a moment before. It hit Kyra straight in the chest.

The shadows rippled on contact, sizzling and burning away as the fireball drilled through. Kyra reached into a pouch at her side, twitching her hand just as Rupert waved his.

The fireball exploded at Rupert’s command, but Kyra had already vanished.

She was right back where she’d started, standing near the metallic rod on the white square.

I hadn’t heard the chime, but I understood what she’d done —

She had a jump bell in her bag.

And now, with Rupert’s fireball detonated harmlessly, she charged.

The lingering shadows around her must have augmented her physical abilities. She was too fast to be running — and then jumping, to clear a section without white tiles — based on muscle alone. I knew Shadows had access to enhancement mana as their secondary type, but I hadn’t seen it in action before.

As she ran, more shadows began to collect around her. Rupert tried to start to gather another fireball, but he was panting with exhaustion, and his forehead was dripping with sweat.

And Kyra was too fast.

Desmond conjured another wave of weapons, but Kyra avoided them entirely this time, dodging and weaving through the flurry of glowing blades.

Then she was nearly on top of Rupert, hurling a knife from her belt. It hit his barrier and made a crack just before she landed in front of him, widening that crack with a solid punch.

Rupert stumbled backward, landing on an orange square. The blast of energy that surged upward enveloped him, shattering the last of his barrier.

Then there were two left on the field.

Desmond gestured upward, and glowing wires rose from the square below Kyra, similar to the vines that had enveloped him earlier. She jumped over them, but Desmond gestured again, and a glowing shield appeared and flew forward, slamming into Kyra’s midsection.

The force knocked her back, forcing her to land on a yellow square.

A warm glow emanated upward, and as I watched, it began to slowly repair some of the damage to Kyra’s shield. She grinned, stretched, and made a “come hither” gesture to her opponent.

Desmond waved a hand again. “Finally, you’re visible and standing still.”

A glowing metal box appeared around Kyra’s entire square.

I blinked.

The box shook a moment later, no doubt due to Kyra’s attempts to break it from the inside. She couldn’t use the jump bell again so soon without recharging it.

Desmond shook his head, then made another gesture. Another box appeared around the first box.

Then another. And another.

Then he closed his fist — and the boxes began to collapse inward, as if crushed by an invisible hand.

I could hear the sounds of vibrations from inside the box for a few more seconds before Teft stood up.

“That’s enough.” He clapped his hands. The light from the squares vanished, as did the boxes.

Kyra was still there, breathless, huddled into a ball on the ground. It must have been the only place she could find the space to breathe.

“Master Desmond wins by incapacitation. You may both exit the arena and rest.”

And that, I considered, is why I should never fight a Shaper in a duel.

***

My own match was, unfortunately, only a few minutes later.

On the plus side, I’d figured out a few little things from that first one.

On the minus side, it was safe to assume that Sera had noticed the same things, and she was probably already a step ahead of me on formulating a strategy.

We made our way to the arena, clipped on the sigil monitors, and headed to our sides of the ring. We only had moments to prepare before the match started.

I saw Sera on the other side of the arena bending down and pointing at the tile beneath her, making a sweeping gesture with her hands, and Patrick nodding in assent, then whispered something I couldn’t hear.

Then Sera turned toward us, pointing her dueling cane at me and smirking as she made a mock salute. She couldn’t cast spells, but she could still use a dueling cane with deadly efficiency.

I turned to Marissa and leaned close to whisper to her. “I need you to cover me for a minute. I’m going to try to do something with the squares.”

“Can’t be makin’ promises, but I’ll do what I can. Not at my best right now. Ye sure we shouldn’t just charge?”

I nodded. “We’d win that fight if we could get close, but Sera will be ready for that. Not sure what they’re doing, but they’re up to something.”

“Bow to your opponents.”

We bowed.

“Begin!”

We had no more time to plan. I ducked down to look at the nearest tile, an orange one.

Marissa apparently took my instructions to mean “literally stand in the same square as me”, which didn’t give us a lot of space, but it did allow her to deflect the first couple of shots from Sera and Patrick’s opening barrage.

And barrage was definitely the right word for what they were doing. They were firing fast — and Marissa still too sick to move as quickly as usual. The distance was giving her time to batter blasts out of the air with her fists and the occasional kick, but she was struggling with it.

I had to help.

I looked at the tile, and by the goddess, it was complicated.

There were seven sets of runes on it. Not seven runes, seven sets.

At a glance, I could tell that five of them corresponded to different functions — presumably for white, red, orange, yellow, and green. They each had a different function rune, as well as mana storage and regeneration runes.

The sixth was the most important part - the ones that controlled which set of functions currently in use. I wasn’t able to identify all of these, but I guessed one of them tied the tile into some kind of central organization system, and at least one of them was a rune that responded to voice commands. Presumably Teft’s.

The eighth set involved a trigger rune for pressure, very similar to the one used for activating a return bell. It had another rune adjacent to it that I didn’t recognize, but that gave me something to work with.

I realized that not only was this whole situation absurdly complex, but that the floor of this arena was probably worth more than everything I owned by multiple orders of magnitude. Even if the enchantments were weak — and they almost certainly were — this was a crazy investment for just a couple tests.

Maybe they get some of the enchanting classes to build things like this as class projects? Wouldn’t take long if they’ve got hundreds of students...

A blast that just missed my head brought me back to focusing on my work.

Fight now, research later.

I turned on my attunement, observing the paths of mana flowing in the runes in front of me. As I suspected, only one of the five initial sections of runes was currently active. I couldn’t tell exactly what it did, but it had something to do with earth magic.

I grimaced, thinking about how much easier this would be if I could read all the runes.

Behind me, Marissa took a hit and staggered, nearly knocking me off my tile. She managed to steady herself quickly, though, and I braced my hands on the ground to prevent myself from falling.

I had to work fast.

I looked at the function tiles as a set.

First one is earth related.

Second one recharges shields.

Some kind of energy blast from this one. Maybe the one that was orange last time?

Not sure about this one. It uses enhancement mana, though, so it may be good.

Last one...disables all functions, maybe?

That was good enough information for now.

I pulled my engraving rod out of my bag. We weren’t allowed to have magic weapons, but Teft hadn’t said anything about tools.

I started carving a new rune. The tile already had a system for changing functions — I just needed to add a new way of doing that. One I could control.

It was a decent idea up until the point where an energy blast knocked the engraving rod out of my hand, sending it flying three tiles away.

I looked up.

Patrick and Sera were advancing, firing while they walked. Marissa was struggling even harder now, taking a hit to her left leg while I watched. As Patrick and Sera got closer, it was getting easier and easier for them to fire accurately.

“Corin, little help ‘ere?” Marissa had switched into a sideways stance that exposed less of her own body to attacks, but that meant that more of me was exposed.

“Almost got it.” That was almost true.

I glanced at one more tile — a green one right next to me — and identified that rune as the beam blast one.

I stood up, thinking while I pulled the dueling cane off my belt and finally began to return fire.

Patrick and Sera scattered as I fired, stepping on colored squares.

Nothing happened.

I blinked.

Our opponents advanced.

I didn’t have any idea how they were managing that, nor did I have time to think about it. Patrick hurled a bolt of lightning that split into three.

Marissa managed to jump and smash one of the branches of the bolt, which was pretty impressive, but the other two smashed into me and left deep cracks in the barrier. I felt the mana in my phoenix sigil sink to just over half.

Panic got my mind working.

If I was right that earth magic meant vines, that meant orange and green had been directly swapped.

I dodged Sera’s next attack directly onto a red tile.

Slowly, gray mana began to trickle upward and recharge my shield.

Now we’re talking.

I aimed at Sera and fired three shots in rapid succession. She dodged easily, still ignoring the color of the squares below her entirely.

I leaned closer to Marissa, who was still standing on our starting tile. “Red is helpful, so you can dodge to those. Think green is the energy blast one, don’t get hit by that.”

I knew yellow was probably beneficial, too, but red seemed like a better bet until I could identify the function.

“Got it.” She nodded, immediately scanning the ground for red squares. Patrick tried to take advantage of her distraction to hit her with a lightning blast, but she just swatted it out of the air without even looking.

Marissa hopped to a red tile, and I saw the same kind of energy wash over her.

We were both recharging now, which was good. The problem was that it was slow, and we weren’t doing any damage in return.

When I turned to fire at Patrick, he was more sluggish in his response than Sera, but he still managed to blast my own attack out of the air with one of his.

I hopped to another red square to dodge Patrick’s return fire, but Sera anticipated my movement and hit me with a shot from her cane as soon as I landed.

Their teamwork was better than ours, too. They’d been practicing together for months at this school alone — and known each other for years before that.

We needed to even the odds.

But I was taking too long, so Marissa was the one who acted.

She ducked a pair of shots, plunging a fist into the ground. A fist that was, as it turned out, surrounded by a cutting aura like I’d seen her demonstrate for Keras.

In a moment, I understood. I jumped closer to Marissa, deflecting two shots from Patrick and returning an ineffective barrage of my own.

It only took a few more moments for Marissa to cut the green square out of the floor, then pull it up by the edges. It fired a harmless blast into the air.

Sera must have seen what she was doing, too. I couldn’t parry her attacks fast enough, but I stepped into the way and took two hits. This was worth the cost.

Marissa flipped the square to face Patrick and shook it.

A blast of energy flared out, too fast to dodge. It slammed into Patrick, knocking him back and damaging his shield.

The attack carried him back several meters, but he never triggered any tiles. And I finally saw why—

He was floating. Both Sera and Patrick were. They were only an inch off the ground, so it was almost impossible to tell.

As an Elementalist, Patrick had access to air and fire mana. He usually mixed them for lightning attacks — but that didn’t mean he couldn’t use them on their own.

Marissa shook the square some more. Nothing happened.

“Probably needs time to recharge. Let’s get to safer squares.”

Together, we fell back.

Sera opened fire directly at the square that Marissa was carrying. She managed to get it out of the way, but the effort knocked her off balance. I stepped in and caught Marissa before she could fall on a more dangerous square.

Marissa looked chagrined. “Sorry, not fightin’ at my best.”

“You’re doing great. Better than I am. Just keep firing that thing as it recharges and we should wear them down.”

Patrick and Sera were backing off, too, which surprised me. I saw why in a moment. Sera ducked down with her dueling cane, produced the bladed portion, and began to cut out a square of her own.

That’s bad.

Fortunately, the blade on the dueling cane wasn’t meant for cutting stone, even when empowered with mana. It was taking her much longer than Marissa had.

I raised my cane and fired at her, but Patrick was right there in front of her a moment later, batting my attacks to the side with practiced ease.

This isn’t working.

“Hand me that. I’ll use it, you’re better at melee range. Close in and smash them before they can finish copying you. Yellow squares are probably safe, but I don’t know what they do.”

I hooked my cane on my belt. Marissa handed me the square and charged.

Patrick settled into a fighting stance.

Normally, he wouldn’t have had a chance in a physical fight with Marissa. But she was still sick, and Patrick was the kind of friend who paid close attention to everything about the people he cared about.

Including, it seemed, how to fight us.

Marissa was nearly in striking distance when Patrick threw his dueling cane at her.

She ducked it, closing in further, and threw a punch at him.

She hadn’t noticed that in the moment he’d thrown the cane, he’d charged his shroud with lightning.

Patrick blocked with his left arm, shuddering at the force of the blow, but the effect on Marissa was far worse. The electrical charge jumped into her, bypassing her barrier entirely because she’d been the one to make physical contact.

Her shroud might have absorbed a fraction of it, but from the way she shuddered and staggered backward, I could tell it hadn’t done much.

“I am so sorry about this.” Patrick stepped forward and shoved an open palm into her chest.

Marissa convulsed again as the electricity surged through her, and she fell to a knee.

I stepped to the side to get a better angle and shook the square in Patrick’s direction, but nothing happened. Connecting with the mana in the square told me that it was critically low. It did have a mana recharging function built in, but it seemed like it wasn’t meant to be triggered several times in rapid succession. Maybe it would have recharged faster if it was still connected with the other squares — I saw some transference runes I didn’t recognize.

I couldn’t count on it to recharge on its own fast enough to be useful. Fortunately, I didn’t have to.

I found the right rune and shoved my own mana into it.

Marissa tried to stand.

Patrick raised a fist before she could, but he never had a chance to swing it. The blast of energy from the tile caught him in the side and tossed him twenty feet out of the way.

Sera raised her own tile, triumphant, just in time for Marissa to smash it in half with a fist.

I advanced while Patrick picked himself off the floor.

Sera tossed her shattered pieces of the tile to the side, ducking one of Marissa’s swings and picking up her discarded dueling cane from the floor.

Marissa was moving a lot slower than usual now, the lightning clearly having taken a toll. That made her slow enough to let Sera blast a sphere into Marissa’s chest at point-blank range.

Marissa hadn’t lost any of her resilience, though.

She smacked the dueling cane right out of Sera’s hand right after that, then grabbed her and shoved her at the closest green square. The levitation spell apparently wasn’t strong enough to resist the kind of force Marissa could use.

The blast erupting from the floor cracked Sera’s shield, but it wasn’t enough to take her out of the match. She backed off rapidly, circling to try to flank Marissa alongside a recovering Patrick.

I couldn’t let that happen. My hand was burning — recharging the tile had taken a lot out of me — but I recharged it again.

I fired at Patrick again.

This time, he was ready.

The blast was too fast for any of us to dodge, save maybe Marissa at full strength. Instead, he snapped his fingers, and a wall of lightning appeared in between us. The blast of light crashed into it and deflected to the side, impacting harmlessly on the barrier outside of the arena.

He winced and grabbed his left hand with his right. He was starting to feel the cost of all his spells, too.

Slowly, I advanced. The burning in my right hand had changed to throbbing, which wasn’t a good sign. I was probably too low to safely recharge the square again without causing myself permanent harm.

My opponents didn’t need to know that, though.

I moved closer to Patrick, stepping on red squares as much as possible, feeling my phoenix sigil recharging just a bit with each step. I kept the square leveled at him, hoping to keep him too worried about it to focus on Marissa.

It didn’t work.

Sera had managed to reclaim her dueling cane from the floor, and now she was falling back and firing at Marissa from a distance. With Marissa’s injuries, she was moving slow enough that Sera was landing hits almost half the time.

Patrick ran for his own abandoned cane.

I couldn’t run effectively while carrying the tile. It wasn’t heavy - it was probably only a few inches thick — but it was large enough to stand on, and that made it cumbersome.

I threw it to the side, but I still didn’t run.

I stepped on a yellow square, planning to duck down and figure out what it did — but I didn’t need to.

The dueling cane on my belt started to glow as soon as I hit the tile, and I understood.

I pulled my cane back off my belt and fired — straight at Patrick’s cane.

The orb that emerged from my weapon was three times the normal size, more like one from a war cane, but without the loss of speed.

I didn’t hit the cane, though. Patrick was just quick enough to get in the way, and he slammed an electrically-charged fist into the super-charged sphere.

There was a flash of white and the sphere shot back in my direction.

I had not expected that.

I threw myself out of the way too fast to pay any attention to where I was landing.

My shroud did precious little to absorb the pain of impacting with a stone floor.

That wasn’t the real problem, though. When I tried to push myself up, I discovered that there were vines wrapped around my chest.

Oh, and I’d lost the grip on my cane, and it was a couple feet from my hand. So there was that.

Glancing up, I could see that Patrick was in bad shape, but he’d managed to get his cane. He was now running full-speed away from Marissa, while Sera was firing orbs at Marissa’s back. She was only occasionally connecting now that Marissa was moving, but Marissa wasn’t gaining any ground. She was injured, sick, and had to avoid half the squares that the other team didn’t.

She wouldn’t win this on her own.

I pushed upward, but the vines below me were too strong.

If I wiggled, I could just barely reach the function runes.

I didn’t have a tool to carve a whole new rune and change the function, but maybe...

I concentrated on the energy in the active runes, identifying the earth mana. It wouldn’t work to activate the other runes, of course, since they were designed to use other types of mana.

But what would happen if I mixed in some of the wrong type of mana?

I had a pretty good idea, and I knew it was going to hurt.

I shoved transference mana into the rune.

The tile beneath me exploded.

Fortunately, my chest was far enough off the ground that my shroud actually did its job.

Unfortunately, it was still enough concussive force to throw me a good ten feet into the air.

...And I landed on an identical tile only a few feet away.

This time, I had the presence of mind to roll immediately, and the vines only managed to entrap my leg.

I coughed, producing a mixture of blood and phlegm that would have worried me a great deal more if I wasn’t still wearing a ring of regeneration.

I tried to stagger to my feet, but I barely managed to get to a knee. Marissa blazed by, ducking and slashing through the vines with the aura around her hand.

“Tha—,” was all I managed before I collapsed into a coughing heap. That was definitely not a good sign.

I wiped myself, pushed myself to my feet, and decided I needed to end this fast.

I staggered back to pick up my cane, while a visibly exhausted Marissa continued to do her best to pursue Patrick.

Patrick was slowing down, too. And I knew that if Marissa could catch him, she stood a good chance of winning that fight, even with his electrical aura.

I decided to help with that, and I had a better idea of how the tiles worked now.

I dodged a quick shot from Sera, shooting her a dirty look in reply.

She gave me a mock bow, stepped back, and fired at Marissa again.

I shot Sera’s attack out of the air, then turned to Patrick and Marissa’s chase, watching closely before I fired.

I hit a tile right in front of his path.

Patrick jumped back, anticipating the tile triggering from my attack.

Which it didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t — the activation runes didn’t work on gray mana intake — but I also knew that Patrick wouldn’t know that.

And his hop took him back just far enough for Marissa to close the distance.

She hammered him with a haymaker before he had a chance to recover. His electrical aura was still active, but she was ready now. She braced for it, charging her fists with her own aura and slamming them into his chest again and again.

Patrick fell backward, managed to duck a punch, and waved his hands outward — blasting Marissa back with a gust of wind.

She hit a green square, the column of energy cracking her shield.

That just made her angrier.

So, for just one punch, she turned on the bracer I gave her — and she hit Patrick hard.

Patrick vanished as his phoenix sigil and shield sigil barriers collapsed in one strike.

And then it was two of us against Sera alone.

By the time I’d turned back to Sera, she was already running.

It’s probably what I would have done in her situation, too, thinking that getting some distance and running out the clock would be a good way to force a draw.

But Patrick was the one who had been powering the levitation spell. She only managed to make it a couple squares before the spell faded and dropped her.

But maybe she’d anticipated that, too, because she landed on a yellow tile, and she still had her cane.

She fired at Marissa first, now shooting super-charged orbs empowered by the square. But even exhausted, Marissa had little difficulty defending when it was only against a single opponent. She punched and kicked the spheres out of the air with practiced precision, while I found a flanking position and returned fire on Sera from a yellow square of my own.

Sera matched me shot-for-shot, perfectly knocking each attack out of the air.

But every second she turned her focus toward me, Marissa inched a little closer.

Sera glanced back and forth, firing lazy attacks at each of us, probing.

We both deflected her attacks and advanced.

Marissa was only a few squares away when Sera charged.

Toward me.

I raised my cane and fired at her, but Sera ducked the shot and jumped between squares with surprising speed and ferocity. She only had the same safe spots we did now, but she was still outpacing the injured and exhausted Marissa. I assumed she wanted to isolate us, fight us one at a time.

I was almost right.

I managed to hit Sera just once with an empowered shot before she was right in front of me. I expected a close-range fight with dueling canes.

I didn’t expect her to jump on top of me.

I stumbled backward, half because of her weight and half because of my usual aversion to touch, and landed right on a green square.

Sera tried to sweep my feet, and I understood too late that she was trying to pin me on a square that would damage me continuously.

Her sweep didn’t quite work, though — I grabbed onto her as I toppled backward, and we tumbled onto the square together.

The square triggered a second time, engulfing us both in light. Then a third.

And then I was somewhere else.

***

I blinked, finding myself in a sitting positon in a medium-sized stone room on a bed.

Sera appeared a moment after me.

Patrick, of course, was already inside, sitting on another nearby bed. An older Phoenix Division student had a hand on Patrick’s forehead and an irritated expression.

Patrick grinned at us. “Ooh! Did you two manage a double-KO?”

I nodded. “Sure did. Sera managed to tackle me onto one of the green squares. That was a clever move. I didn’t expect it at all.”

Sera winced, shaking her head.

I could understand why — Marissa still wasn’t in here.

Which meant we’d won the match.

I let out another cough, and another Phoenix Division student approached me a moment later. “Any injuries?”

I pointed to my chest. “Coughing blood. Might be my lungs.”

“That’s not good. Hold on.” The student put a hand on my forehead, closing his eyes and concentrating, then let out a sigh. “Your lungs are fine. You just bit your tongue.”

I laughed, letting out a sigh of relief. “Thanks. You might want to check on Marissa when—”

Marissa appeared unceremoniously on a nearby bed.

“...She gets here.” I pointed. “Patrick gave her a couple electrical shocks.”

“I’ll check.”

It took a few more minutes for each of us to get a thorough check, as well as a few healing spells. The Menders were perplexed when they got to Sera.

“Miss, you seem to have quite a bit of mana scarring...”

“She knows,” I answered for her. “We’re looking into solutions.”

“I’m honestly not sure this is treatable,” the student replied.

He definitely needed to work on knowing what not to say to people. Sera’s expression had already been sour, but now it was quickly turning toward depressed.

“Don’t worry, we’ve got some leads on how to take care of it.” I turned to Sera. “I looked some things up, and I’m going to be doing more research later. I’ll tell you at home, okay?”

Sera nodded silently, but she didn’t turn to look at me.

Marissa stood up, walking over to put a hand on Sera’s shoulder. “Can we head on out?”

“Just wait a few more minutes, the professor will want to tell you how you scored.”

We’re getting scored immediately? That’s unusual.

True to their word, Teft appeared a few minutes later.

“Well, that was a unique match, at least.” Teft folded his arms. “Marissa and Corin’s team won, as I’m sure everyone expected. You shouldn’t feel particularly proud, however. That was quite a debacle right at the beginning of the match, Master Cadence. You almost managed to turn a nearly insurmountable advantage into a defeat by taking so long playing with your toys.”

“I—”

“I’m not finished. Do not interrupt. Regardless of what you almost did, the result was that you learned how the tiles worked. Against most opponents, that would have given you an even greater chance at victory, and may have been worth the investment. But I fear you underestimated Miss Shard.”

Sera looked up, blinking.

“She took every bit of information that you gained and learned it by watching you. If she was in fighting shape, you would have been defeated soundly, and most likely without contest.”

I started to open my mouth again.

He raised a hand. “I said, do not interrupt. I am lecturing. You will listen. My greatest commendation must go to Miss Callahan, both for her individual combat abilities, which remain in the top of our class, and the ingenuity to cut out a tile and use it as a weapon. This was an excellent example of teamwork, as was the use of levitation, which I suspect was Miss Cadence’s idea and Master Wayland’s implementation.”

“In light of all these factors, Miss Callahan receives a grade of ‘A’ on this test. Master Cadence, you contributed to your team’s success, but leaned heavily on Miss Callahan. You would have failed without a team member as skilled as her. I begrudgingly offer you a ‘B’ for managing to discern and properly utilize the functions of the tiles.”

He turned to the other two. “Master Wayland, you carried much of your team’s weight, but you also failed to eliminate either member of the opposing team. Your general combat prowess was above average, but you were not able to apply it in a way that neutralized your enemies. You receive a ‘C-’. “

“Miss Cadence, you might have rivaled Miss Callahan if you were able to fight properly. You made a choice to fight in spite of your disadvantages — and it was the wrong choice. You were not ready. You will also receive a ‘D’, which is lower than what I would have given you if you had chosen to withdraw from the test. This is not low enough to expel you from the class, but one more of them would be. We will conclude the final exams with a second battle of this type next week. I will offer you a similar choice. I hope that next time, you will make the correct decision for your circumstances.”

“That is all. I have more teams to observe, so there will be no questions today. You may come with questions next week, before your second matches. Your next opponents will be better prepared. You should ensure that you are as well.”

And with that, Teft spun on his heels and left the room.

Sera managed to make it home before she cried.

Chapter IV – Restricted Attunements

After Sera rushed up to her room, the rest of us sat down in the main living area.

Derek was reading a book when we arrived. “Huh, she’s in a hurry. Something happen?”

We explained the situation.

“I could punch Teft for her?” Derek offered, helpful as usual.

“No, Derek, I suspect that would only complicate things further.” I shook my head. “And she doesn’t blame him, anyway. She blames herself — probably mostly for dragging Patrick’s score down.”

“Aw, it’s not that big of a deal.” Patrick waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll just do better next week.”

“She won’t see it that way.”

Patrick shrugged. “She’s a great student, though. Always has been. Even if we get kicked out of this class, we can still graduate. It’s an elective.”

“Just graduating would never be good enough. And if she caused someone else to fail a class, I don’t think she’d ever forgive herself.”

Patrick laughed. “She did fine. You guys just did better.” He stretched his arm. “Mara, you’ve got a mean punch.”

“At least you had a shield to help with that. That lightning aura went right through me.” She shivered. “Maybe less of that for sparrin’ in the future?”

He blinked. “Oh, sure. Didn’t realize it would hurt that much.”

Derek leaned over. “New lesson, Patrick. Lightning hurts people. Considerably.”

Patrick scratched behind his head sheepishly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Was a good trick, though. Almost had me.” Marissa grinned.

“Uh, thanks?” Patrick blushed a little. “Right, uh, back to Sera, though. Corin, you should go talk to her.”

I pointed at myself. “Me?”

“Uh, yeah? Obviously? You’re her brother.”

“Sure, but I also was on the team that just beat her.”

“All the more reason you should talk to her,” Derek offered. “If you’re right about how she thinks, seeing Patrick again will probably just make her feel worse.”

Maybe, or maybe it would help if Patrick told her he didn’t care. Eh.

Either way, I was overruled, so I stood up. “Fine, fine. I’ll go talk to her.”

I headed up to Sera’s room. The door was closed, so I knocked.

She didn’t answer, but I could hear her quietly sobbing inside. And coughing a little, too.

“Sera, it’s Corin. Can I come in?”

I knew she couldn’t verbally tell me to go away, so I was making things a little awkward. Eventually, she opened the door, still wiping her eyes.

I offered her a handkerchief, which she accepted and used to wipe her face and nose more effectively. Then she put on a stronger face, folded her arms, and stared at me expectantly.

“Can I come in?”

She stared a little harder. She wasn’t going to make this easy.

“Sorry, Sera. I’m no good at this. I’ve never been good with...emotional stuff in general.” I paused for a moment. “Not really sure what to say. You fought fine back there. Would have beaten us hard if you had your spells, and it’s not your fault you lost them. You saved our lives back in that tower. No question. We’d be dead if you hadn’t summoned Seiryu.”

Sera turned her head away, letting out a sigh.

“I mean it. And I know you’re suffering right now, but it’s not your fault, and we will find a way to fix this. It doesn’t sound easy, but I’ve already been doing some research, like I said earlier.”

That got her to turn her head back toward me, tilting her head up to meet my eyes. Then she twisted her lips, turned, and gestured for me to come into her room.

“Thanks.”

I came in and sat down on a chair next to her bed. “You want to hear about what I’ve found?”

Sera sat down on her bed, wiping her nose again.

“Okay. I’ll fill you in.”

I summarized everything the Researcher had told me about her situation.

“So, I’ll read the book about the mountain. If I think I can handle it, we’ll go ourselves. If it sounds too dangerous, I can ask Keras or Derek to handle it. If the flower doesn’t work, we can look into some of the other treatments she mentioned. Since my new attunement involves life mana, I might even be able to learn healing magic myself eventually and treat it directly. I’ll start looking into that.”

She listened patiently, but got up when I’d finished and grabbed a sheet of paper to write a reply.

Flower will take too long. We fight other teams in a week, and they won’t go easy on me like you did. I can’t keep dragging Patrick down, or whoever else they pair me with.

“I didn’t go easy on you.”

She tilted her head downward to glare at me.

“No, seriously. I was focusing my effort on figuring out how the runes worked. That not only helped me figure out the safe tiles for this time, but now I have a better idea of how they work in general. I can probably figure out the functions at a glance next week. Or for any other similar tests we take — I doubt they made that arena just for this.”

She wrote again.

Fine. If you really spent all that time on purpose, I won’t argue. But most enemies won’t give me that much time to maneuver before they start fighting, and I have no advantages right now. I can’t even use the sword Katashi gave me. Not that I know how to use it, anyway.

“Okay, so you need something quicker. That’s fine. I’ll dig into alternate options. But Patrick doesn’t blame you one bit — he said so earlier. You need to stop worrying about this. You’re injured, we’ll heal you. Plain and simple.”

She gave me a grudging nod, then hesitated before writing one final word.

Promise?

I didn’t like the idea of making promises without all the relevant information, but it seemed like an achievable goal.

And I needed one of those. Maybe more than she did.

“I can’t promise I’ll find a perfect solution. I don’t know enough about it yet, and it wouldn’t be fair to you to make a promise I don’t know if I can keep. But I’ll do more research, and from everything I’ve heard so far, it sounds like a solvable problem. And I promise I’ll try to help you solve it.”

Maybe it wasn’t the traditional platitude that she’d been looking for, but it was what I could offer her. And looking at her expression after that? I think it helped.

I hadn’t given her false hope. From the expression she gave me afterward, I’d given her something a little different.

Resolve.

We’d beat this together.

I even gave her a hug. It was easier to have physical contact without panicking if I initiated it.

So, now that the hard part is over, I just have the easy part of figuring out how to heal nearly incurable damage in a week.

I started with the most logical place I could think of, but that had some dangers of its own.

***

“I have questions.” I set the wineskin, filled with the last remnants of the water from the attunement font, down on the table in front of Professor Vellum.

Vellum didn’t look away from the apparatus she was working with — some kind of distilling tool. Maybe an elixir still? I’d seen one before, and this looked subtly different — it had a larger chamber on top, and the collection chamber was metal instead of glass — but it was potentially a variant design. “And I have answers for thee, if only ye answer me these questions three.”

I rolled my eyes. “Ask away, oh-ancient-one.”

She cackled. “Why are you bothering me in the middle of an experiment, child?”

“Well, I have a rather unique potion here, and I think you might be interested...”

“Potions are not unique, Corin. There are merely ones you haven’t grown familiar with yet. Now, be silent and watch, and I will inspect your precious ‘unique’ potion when I’m finished.”

As it turned out, she wasn’t merely monitoring the still. She reached over to an empty crystal container on the left side, opened her palm, and a sliver of solid crystal dropped into it.

Then she grabbed the flask, added a tube connecting it to the larger apparatus, placed a metallic holder below it, and opened her palm again.

A flame, near identical to the ones I’d seen from alchemical burners, emerged from her hand.

“Is that an Elementalist spell, or are you—”

“Quiet.”

I shut up.

I watched the glass. The crystal within shimmered...and changed.

I’d been guessing she was trying to evaporate it from a semi-solid state, like ice. I was wrong; the crystal changed, but not into vapor. It turned orange, glimmering brighter, and began to smoke.

“The compound that I’m brewing is colloquially referred to as dragon’s breath. This is nonsense, of course, because dragons are nonexistent. But it does burn quite impressively.”

I desperately wanted to ask more, but I waited patiently. After a few moments, she pulled her hand away, slipped a metal insert between the crystal chamber and the rest of the still, and then disconnected the flask from the rest of the apparatus.

With that, she whispered a word, and the metal insert wrapped around the top of the bottle, creating a complete seal. “The smoke is not terribly dangerous on its own, but it is best not to take the risk of breathing much of it. The smoke I released into the chamber now makes its way into the condensation chamber,” she motioned to a globe on the top of the apparatus, “where it mixes with other components, takes on a liquid state, and gradually drizzles into the destination flask.” She pointed at the metallic container I’d seen before.

“Mixing fire essence directly into the compound causes the herbs to combust, but the smoke, trapped within a primer of enhancement essence, can be slowly introduced into the rest of the compound without adverse effects. Except, of course, if it is exposed to air.”

I couldn’t help myself. “And if it is?”

“It combusts, naturally. There are a number of explosive alchemical compounds, but this is among my favorites. Can you guess why?”

Without knowing the other materials, I didn’t have a lot to go on... Except the name and her own personality. “It’s really, extraordinarily impressive looking?”

Vellum chuckled. “Quite so. I am using it as the basis for developing new fireworks for the winter ball.”

The ball. Vellum was going to the ball?

Vellum must have caught my expression. She set the flask down, waving a hand dismissively. “I’m not too old to dance, child. Nor am I too old to collect a tidy profit from selling the patent for this particular formula to Eldritch Engineering.” She paused deliberately, “Your best bet in mana products, guaranteed.”

I stood frozen for a moment before doubling over with laughter.

“Okay, Vellum. You win. That was good.”

“Of course it was. I’m bloody brilliant. Now,” she waved at this flask. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

I waved at the apparatus. “Are you already done with that?”

“Not by a long stretch, but I can’t add the next ingredient for another hour. Now, answer my question.”

“Oh, right, questions three from ancient thee. Yeah, I found that in the tower. During my judgment. Just before getting my attunement.” I waved at it. “Because drinking that type of liquid is how I got my attunement.”

She shook her head once. “No, it’s not.”

I blinked. “Pretty sure it was.”

“Allow me to educate you.” She walked around the table, lifting up the potion. She glanced at the runes on the side. “Preservation glyphs? At least you have some sense, limited as it may be.”

That was the nicest thing she’d ever said to me.

“I do try to be somewhat prepared, at least.”

“Oh, yes, I know. Never quite in the right ways, but you certainly try.” She unstoppered the potion, sniffing at it, then swishing it around. “Not much left. I’ll run a simple test to confirm my suspicions, but it will only take a few drops.”

Her tone brooked no argument, so I just nodded.

She handed me the potion, then went and retrieved two tubes filled with clear liquids and set them up next to each other in a rack. Then, she retrieved a potions syringe — a needle-and-chamber tool specifically designed for extracting bits of potions — and drew a bit of liquid out of my potion.

She distributed one droplet into each of tubes on the rack, frowning as she observed.

Nothing happened.

After a few moments, I raised a tentative eyebrow, but nothing changed.

Vellum nodded to herself, lifted a hand, and a tiny spark of flame brushed up against one of the vials.

The liquid inside shimmered and turned crimson.

“Mm.” She moved her hand to the other vial, focused, and the glass began to freeze.

The water within shifted to a deep cerulean hue.

Vellum lifted one of the vials, inspecting it more closely. “It is, of course, what I expected.”

“Meaning...?”

She slipped the vial back into the rack. “Meaning what you have is an attunement primer solution.”

“And that is...?”

Vellum sighed. “Something you shouldn’t have. But, since you somehow managed to stumble upon it, now it’s merely something you shouldn’t use. An attunement primer is used to ready the body to receive an attunement. It does not carry an attunement itself — no potion does.”

“But then how—”

“Magic.” She waved at the vials. “Specifically, the primer reacts to magic. It’s the catalyst for a reaction that, when a proper spell is used, forms an attunement in the body.”

Vellum pointed at the crimson vial. “Expose the primer to flame, and the gray mana in the solution becomes flame mana, saturating your body. A proper attunement-granting spell contains the specific domi—, or, mana types necessary to form that particular attunement, as well as instructions for the mana to take the proper shape.”

She paused, mumbling, “More of a ritual, really, given the complexity and material components necessary...”

I folded my arms. “Wait. You’re saying someone casts a spell to create an attunement? I understand that artificial attunements might work that way, but...”

I don’t remember anyone casting a spell.

I remember drinking the fluid, then a vision...

Was that a hallucination?

Or did someone — or something — cast a spell on me?

The Voice...Tristan...had some kind of entity that was talking to me. Did he cast something on me? Or was it some kind of enchantment on the basin?

When he put that rusted sword in there, he pulled Selys-Lyann out. Maybe the sword was repaired by the water, or maybe he withdrew a completely different weapon — either way, the basin itself was enchanted. Could that be what the true source of my attunement was?

Vellum shrugged her shoulders. “I know everyone wants to believe the goddess just gives them to us, but even goddesses have methods. That method happens to be infusing us with liquid, then activating the liquid with a complex spell that creates an attunement.”

I waved at the vials. “And what happened there? I take it you didn’t attune the water.

“No, just basic spells to test the liquid’s reactivity. I’m afraid I can’t attune a liquid, though that would be quite a good trick. A large part of what forms an attunement is the mana already within your body, it’s simply being reshaped by the primer and the spell.”

I frowned. “And if you happened to drink some if you already had an attunement...?”

“Let’s see, shall we?” She found the syringe again and withdrew another droplet. I mourned the loss of a little more of my potion, but it was worth it to see the results of the experiment.

Vellum dropped a single droplet into each vial.

Again, nothing happened.

Until she flicked an electrical spark toward the crimson vial...

...And it burst apart, sparking liquid dripping flowing across the table.

“The primer remains isolated until it is exposed to any spell effect, at which point it changes to the appropriate type...often with unpleasant results.”

I stepped back to avoid the flow of liquid. “And if the spell effect isn’t the right type to create an attunement?”

“It would simply flood the body with that much mana of the types used in the spell.”

“How do people earn second attunements, then?”

“Very carefully.” Vellum chuckled. “Whoever — or whatever — force in the tower grants the attunements would have to strip all active spell effects off the person to prevent them from triggering the primer, then isolate their existing attunement somehow to prevent that mana from flowing into the primer and triggering it.”

“And...hypothetically...if someone didn’t go through that exhaustive process?”

She pointed at the broken vial in the puddle of liquid.

Oh, Sera. I’m so sorry.

I frowned. But that still doesn’t exactly match with what happened to you. You didn’t...explode.

“What are you thinking about, boy? You did something, didn’t you?” She folded her arms and glared at me.

“I, uh... It was an emergency?”

“Speak.”

“My sister, Sera, may have drank some of the fluid. But it didn’t explode — her attunement changed.”

Vellum’s brow creased. “Changed?”

I showed her the drawing.

“Oh, dear. What attunement did she have before?...no, don’t tell me. Summoner, yes?”

“How did you know? Is that some sort of advanced Summoner attunement?”

Vellum shook her head. “No, it’s just that Summoner is the only local attunement that involves persistent spell effects inside the user’s body. That would be what triggered your potion — her contracts. The primer reacted to a contract spell, fusing it with her existing attunement. The primer contains tremendous mana. It’s enough to remodel how the entire body functions, when guided by the proper type of spell.”

I winced. “And somehow the contract fused with her attunement?”

“An apt explanation for a foolish act. You could have killed her. If she hadn’t been a Summoner, and someone had hit her with an offensive spell next, the primer would have enhanced that spell.”

I shuddered at the image that followed. “...It was a risk, but we needed the power. It worked. For a time, at least.”

“Oh? And now?”

“Now she can’t speak, and her safe mana capacity registers as zero.”

“Quite fascinating. Well, I hope you’ve learned a valuable lesson from destroying your sister’s life. Off you go!”

I stoppered the potion again and tucked it away. “You’re not going to ask about—”

“I don’t get involved in the foolish endeavors of youth. If you say you needed that kind of power, fine. You can believe that. Next time you find a mysterious potion of great power, ask an expert before anyone drinks it.”

Well, consider me sufficiently rebuked.

I nodded. “I will. But, would you happen to know any way I can help with my sister’s situation now that I’ve made my mistake?”

Vellum sighed. “I can’t change an attunement once it has been made. I doubt anyone can, at least not yet. Believe me, I’ve tried, and so have many others. A Mender may be able to help her with the side effects, and she may be able to earn a second attunement if she can regain enough use of the first to survive a Judgment in another tower.”

She paused, considering. “If the spell that changed her mark is a contract, you should determine what type of contract that was — that may give you a way to address the problem. Perhaps if it was a tie to a specific entity, that being would still be able to transfer mana into her. Or, alternatively, breaking the contract might restore the attunement to something resembling normalcy. It may require breaking all of her contracts, given that it’s possible they all activated the primer at once.”

I furrowed my brow in consideration. “How can she break a contract without using mana?”

Vellum shrugged. “Ask a Summoner.”

“Thank you, Professor. I’m sure she’ll appreciate your insight.”

“She’d better. And you’d better, too.” She waved at the broken vial. “You can start by cleaning that up. Then, you’re going to mix me a replacement potion...”

I sighed and got to work.

***

I didn’t go back to tell Sera what I’d learned. Not immediately, at least.

I hit the library first, and then the archives in the Divinatory again.

On the way in, I saw someone leaving the restricted archives that I didn’t recognize. She looked to be in her twenties and wore an all-white business suit. More interestingly, she had purple hair that trailed all the way down her back.

Hair dyes weren’t that uncommon, but I did admire the particularly spectacular shade that she’d chosen.

She glanced at me as she passed, raised a single eyebrow, then kept walking.

I waited until she was out of the hall before entering the restricted archive.

I didn’t find any books specifically on mana scarring, but there were plenty of books on general human anatomy and healing magic.

I asked Researcher during my visit, but she didn’t have any books available on my new attunement. There were some general books on attunements that had sections on restricted attunements, though, and I grabbed a couple of those.

It’ll be interesting to see what information they have on other restricted attunements, and it’s far past time I get familiar with the whole list of foreign ones.

I didn’t plan to memorize every attunement out there right now, but I wanted to find any other ones that looked like they had a good chance of being able to help fix Sera’s condition.

I also asked Researcher for more details on the types of attunements that were being used for studying how to heal mana scars here in Valia. She didn’t know, but she gave me the name of the researcher she’d heard about: Sheridan Theas.

That name sounded like all sorts of problems. There was basically no chance Sheridan wasn’t related to Elora Theas in some way, and Elora remained at the top of my list of potentially deadly enemies.

Then again, if this gave me an excuse to visit with members of House Theas, maybe I could finally get some information.

I liked that idea.

Once I had all the books I wanted, I brought them back to Derek’s manor. I went to give Sera the news, but she wasn’t there, so I checked with Derek.

“Patrick convinced her to go take a visit to the campus hospital.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I doubt it will help, but she seemed to want to do something, so I don’t blame them for trying.”

Derek was probably right. If Katashi couldn’t heal the problem outright, a random Mender at a hospital probably couldn’t either.

Then again, Katashi had thought Ferras had a better chance of fixing the problem. That implied that the visages had different skill sets.

Our legends said that the visages had the abilities of every attunement, but that didn’t mean they were equally powerful with each of them. And even if they were equally powerful, maybe Katashi just wasn’t as knowledgeable about every subject. This could be an issue of finesse and creativity, rather than raw magical ability.

Since Katashi represented concepts like justice, and if his skills matched, I expected he was probably better versed in attunements geared toward enforcing law and maintaining order. Ferras was the Visage of Creation, so it was logical for her to be more specialized in things like manufacture and repair. I figured healing fell into that latter category.

I took a seat nearby. “I agree that it’s unlikely a Mender would help. I did do some research on people who are working to treat mana scars locally, however.”

“Oh?” Derek raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, and I came upon a name I wanted to ask you about. Sheridan Theas?”

Derek recoiled as if struck.

That was not a good sign.

“Sheridan...Theas, you say.” His frown was deep enough that I could have used it to tunnel to the other side of the planet.

“I take it you know her? Or him?”

“Either or neither,” he waved dismissively. “Usually neither.” He shook his head. “Deni takes after their patron.”

I knew what that meant. “You’re saying that Sheridan is a follower of Wydd?”

“Follower would be too light a term. More like disciple.” He sighed, putting a hand to his head. “And yes, Deni would be a good candidate to talk to about mana scars, under normal circumstances.”

I took a few mental notes there.

First, apparently Sheridan had a nickname, “Deni”.

Second, if Sheridan was usually genderless, I’d have to try to remember to call them by neutral pronouns like “they” unless they asked me to use a gender. That was the polite thing to do.

Third, based on Derek’s last point, I had to brace myself for being told that Sheridan was working with Tristan and Elora. I asked for clarification anyway. “What’s the problem?”

“Deni and I have had a somewhat...sordid history.”

I folded my arms. “More sordid than your history with Elora? And I take it they’re related?”

He sighed. “Siblings. I’ve known them both since childhood and, well, things happen.”

I had to cover my eyes with my hand for a moment. Derek was just too ridiculous. “Okay. So, you’ve had some issues with both Theas siblings. Would that be a problem for getting Sheridan to talk to Sera?”

“No...” He sounded hesitant. “But you may want to worry for other reasons.”

“Oh?”

“Deni is like you in a sense. Attuned directly by one of the visages, with a restricted attunement.”

That sounded great, actually. It just gave me another reason to want to meet them. “Why would that be a problem?”

“They’re a Necromancer.”

I blinked. “You’re joking. Those are a myth.”

He shook his head. “Not a myth. Forbidden knowledge. And, with Wydd being the Visage of Forbidden Knowledge, they occasionally give chosen disciples access to it. Doesn’t work like you’re thinking, though. No raising skeletons to run around and butcher the innocent. It’s mostly interacting with spirits.”

I contemplated that. “Huh. That’s a little strange, I’ll admit, but it doesn’t sound like a problem.”

“It’s a serious problem. Necromancy is, more than likely, how Deni could help your sister. But what necromancy can do, and how it works, is forbidden knowledge.”

“Meaning that Sheridan wouldn’t be allowed to use it to help?”

“Meaning that, knowing Deni, they’d only offer to help under specific conditions. One would probably involve Sheridan taking Sera somewhere alone, depriving her of her senses, and trying to fix her under conditions Deni controls. You don’t want that.”

I considered that. “No, you’re right, but it’s not my decision. It’s Sera’s.”

“Wouldn’t be wise right now. Deni and Elora don’t always get along, but if Elora asked Deni to grab Sera and take her somewhere to make you cooperative...”

I nodded. “I was going to ask if you thought they were working together.”

“Deni was the first person I investigated. I doubt they’re directly involved. But I do think that if you put Sera in Deni’s hands, she’d be in potential danger.”

I scratched my chin. “Do you think Deni would agree to other terms? Maybe erasing our memories later?”

“Doubt it. Memory erasure is unreliable at best.”

“I could mention that I have Katashi’s favor?”

“Might help, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to convince them on its own. Too much risk for just a nebulous favor that might or might not be applicable.”

I considered that. “How much trouble would they get into if Wydd figures out Deni used Necromancy in front of us?”

“No idea, especially since you have a restricted attunement yourself.” He sighed. “I’ll make the arrangements for Deni to come visit, but it’s going to be up to you to figure out something of sufficient value to offer. And I’m not talking about gold. It’ll have to be something unique enough to be compelling.”

Unique, eh?

Something came to mind immediately, but it wasn’t an option I liked.

Was I willing to give up the Jaden Box — my best chance of being able to have a physical meeting with Tristan — for a chance to heal Sera?

“Give me a day or two to talk to Sera about it and we’ll come up with something.”

Derek grimaced. “All right. I’d better go write them a letter now, before I lose my nerve.”

“Thanks, Derek.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Least I can do. If you hadn’t gotten that ring off my hand...” Derek shook his head. “I still don’t like to think about what might have happened.”

“Appreciate the help regardless.”

He headed toward the stairs. “Don’t thank me yet. Deni is one of the most dangerous people I’ve ever met. There’s a good chance you’re going to regret this.”

***

When Patrick and Sera got back from the hospital, Derek and I filled them in on what I’d learned.

I considered not telling Patrick about the whole Necromancer thing. He didn’t really need to know. But I was tired of keeping secrets from my friends. Nothing good came of it.

When I told Sera about what Vellum had explained to me, she seemed interested. She wrote me a quick note in reply.

I don’t know how to release my contracts without using incantations, but I’ll read up on it. Maybe we can check with a Diviner to confirm Vellum’s hypothesis, too.

That sounded like a good plan. I asked her about what they’d learned at the hospital.

As we’d suspected, the Menders at the hospital couldn’t heal the damage. The doctors mentioned that Sera could seek out an Emerald-level healer of some kind and see if they had more knowledge, but they didn’t know of any.

There was some mention of surgery, but Sera wasn’t willing to take the risk of making the problem worse.

The one new piece of information that came out of a more complete investigation was the extent of the damage. Sera’s lungs weren’t the only thing that was scarred - she had scarring all the way up her esophagus and throat.

That, not the mana scars on her lungs, was what was keeping her from talking.

That meant we had two different problems to solve, but it seemed to make Sera feel a little better. The esophageal and throat scarring was still going to be difficult to treat, but it was somewhat easier to handle with healing magic than lung damage.

The doctors still didn’t have the expertise to treat that on the campus, but they gave Sera a list of names of doctors that she could see about that type of surgery. While that was safer, Sera still wanted to find a different approach if possible, since the recovery time would apparently be weeks or months even with magical aid.

Also, throat surgery sounded pretty terrifying to all of us.

“You really mean it? They’re a real Necromancer?” Patrick was positively gleeful. I doubted he’d have been any happier if I’d given him a magic sword.

...Which I still intended to do. Eventually.

Patrick’s enthusiasm made me smile in spite of my nervousness about the whole situation. “Yep, sure are.” I turned to Derek. “Did you get a reply?”

“Of course. Deni said they’d come by in two days. You’ve got until then to come up with a really good story, and most likely an even better gift. Deni collects sources of forbidden knowledge, so that might be a good angle to consider. If you can teach them something they don’t already know, or give them an item made with forgotten techniques...”

“Forbidden knowledge, eh?”

I knew exactly who to talk to.

***

I found Keras playing a game of Crowns...apparently against himself.

I’d grown up playing Valor, rather than Crowns, but I was familiar with the game. It wasn’t as popular as Valor, but some people enjoyed the fact that each player chose a different set of pieces. The asymmetrical nature made it more engaging for the comparatively small number of players, but it was much harder to learn, and the unbalanced teams made it less suitable for tournament play.

At the moment, Keras was sitting on the left side of the table, holding the Katashi piece. He looked to be debating using it to take one of the tyrant’s sons off the opposite side of the table.

I didn’t know for sure, but at a glance, it looked like the tyrant’s side of the board was winning.

He looked up as I approached and set Katashi back down on the board, presumably in the same place he’d been before. “Corin! Care for a game?”

I considered that. “I’d like that, but maybe you could help me with something first?”

The swordsman nodded. “Sure, probably. What do you need?”

“Oh, not much. I was just hoping you could teach me Pre-Attunement Era sorcery.”

He blinked. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

I wasn’t sure if he was being evasive or honestly didn’t know. “You haven’t told me about how exactly your magic works, but when I mentioned Wrynn Jaden, you said you knew her. She’s what we call a Pre-Attunement Era sorcerer, meaning she used magic in the days before the goddess gave out attunements. That kind of magic isn’t supposed to work anymore, but I think it’s what you’re doing, and why you’re so powerful.”

Keras shook his head. “I’m not like Wrynn. Not exactly, anyway.”

“What are you, then? I think Patrick’s guess was ‘ancient wizard king more ancient than time’.”

“Did he really say ‘ancient’ twice in there?”

I laughed. “He did. Is that seriously your only objection?”

“Obviously not. Wizard king is far too lowly a title for one such as me. He could have at least used ‘god emperor’.” Keras rolled his eyes. “But no, I’m not anything like that. Sorcerer is a good word, though. That’s what we call magic users where I come from.”

Now I was getting somewhere. “And can you teach me?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “I did say I’d teach you a few things, but I was thinking more in terms of fighting techniques. I don’t think teaching you sorcerous theory would do a lot of good.”

I took a seat opposite from him. “Can I politely disagree? Being able to use magic of any kind without an attunement would be...tremendous.”

“That’s just the problem. I don’t think you can. I could explain all the rules of sorcery, as they were explained to me, and I doubt anything will come of it.” He paused. “Why do your people think this ‘Pre-Attunement Era Sorcery’ disappeared?”

I knew how to answer this one. It was something I’d studied before taking my Judgment, hoping to find a way to gain power without an attunement.

Like many of the things I’d researched, it had amounted to nothing useful. At least until now. “There are a few prevailing theories, if they could be called that. Really, the first one is more of a legend. Some people say that before the exodus to Kaldwyn, the Tyrant in Gold stole magic from humanity as a way of securing his eternal rule.”

Keras nodded. “And other theories?”

“Others believe we just lost the secrets of how to use it, or that perhaps it was tied to the land we were on before the exodus, and it can’t be used here. Another theory is that our bodies have changed over time for any number of reasons, and we no longer produce enough mana to cast spells on our own.”

I took a breath, thinking before I continued. “A popular theory in Edria is that the goddess altered us deliberately, so that only the worthy could use magic. Thus, magical power would be a sign of greatness and the goddess’ affection. I’ve always suspected it’s more like Hadrix described, however.”

“Hadrix?”

“In his treatises on ancient magic, Hadrix noted that older works often refer to external places of power that we may no longer be able to access.”

Keras tapped his fingers on the table in what might have been an affirmative. “Dominions. I suspect that’s part of the problem. Might be fragments of other truths in some of the other ideas, too.”

“Might be? Meaning you don’t actually know?”

He shook his head sadly. “My sorcery, or magic as you’d call it, works just fine. And yes, some of the abilities I use draw from what we call dominions back at home. From what I’ve gathered from talking to others, I’m confident that your bodies are different from people where I come from — and that’s probably why you can’t use that kind of magic. I don’t know what caused that difference, though.”

“That’s still something we can work with. If our bodies are different, is there some kind of magic that could force a change that would let me use these dominions?”

“Probably, but that’s not the kind of magic that I use. Even if I knew how, though, it would be dangerous, and probably come with disadvantages. My people don’t use attunements. I’m not sure if they could use attunements. I’ve seen things that are similar back at home, but they’re nowhere near as complex, and they don’t seem to alter mana composition to the same extent as an attunement does.”

That made me lean toward the explanation that our body changes were deliberate, at least at first. But then I realized it was also possible that attunements were developed as a reaction to people losing their magic.

That did lead to an important question, though. “How common is your type of magic where you come from?”

“If you mean dominion sorcery in general, not uncommon. I haven’t exactly taken a census. If I had to guess, maybe one in twenty people knows a bit of magic. More in cities with universities. Virtually anyone can learn it, but people tend to have talents for different types.”

“Types?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorcerers draw from different dominions. There are a lot of them. They correspond to mana types, as well as what you’d consider to be combinations of mana types. So, things like flame or lightning. Most people only learn one or two, mostly because those are the ones they have enough natural energy in their body to get started with. It’s possible to learn more, but it’s harder for ones you’re not predisposed toward.”

That sounded really intriguing. If people where he was from could use magic from birth, without any sort of arbitrary tests, that sounded far better...

...Except for the people with no magical talent, I supposed. Maybe there was something to that Edrian theory that the goddess changed us so magic could be earned?

“How do you use your magic? What makes your body different from mine?”

He waved a hand. “I’m not a good example for a lot of reasons. But let’s talk about a typical sorcerer. Our world is saturated with energy from other dominions. It’s all around us, just impossible to perceive without the right kinds of sorcery.”

He paused, seeming to think about his words. “Let’s say we’re talking about a flame sorcerer. His body is connected with the dominion of flame, and it’s like a stream that he can reach into. He can pull out fire with his hands, shape it, and throw it — but a little bit of his own fire gets used up in the process. And that flame is what keeps him warm, so when he uses flame sorcery, he gets colder.”

I blinked. “How much of this is literal and how much is figurative?”

“Figurative stream, figurative reaching in. Literal cost. Using flame sorcery actually costs body heat.”

“Huh. That’s...not appealing.”

“That’s one of the easy ones. You really don’t want to use life sorcery. Anyway, that’s the basic idea. As the sorcerer uses the stream more, he gets more skilled. Learns to grab more fire at a time, making him more powerful. When the flame in his body recovers, it comes back stronger, too, so he can use more and more as he acclimates. Unless he uses too much. It’s just like exercise — if you do too much, you hurt yourself.”

“Attunements work similarly,” I added.

“Similar in that regard, yes. But your magic is very different in other ways.” He scratched at some stubble on his neck. “If being a sorcerer is like using your hands to gather water, an attuned is more like someone who has a bucket in the middle of the stream. The bucket is always filling up. When it gets too full, it overflows a bit, and then you’ve got a shroud. An attuned can reach into the bucket, but not into the stream.”

That analogy made sense, but it did pose a question. “If we didn’t have any mana to start with, I could see why we couldn’t use the stream the same way you could. We couldn’t pay the cost. But let’s say I’m getting mana from my attunement, and it’s flame mana. Why can’t I reach into the flame stream?”

“Maybe it’s because the attunement isolates that mana from the rest of your body, so you can’t use it the same way? Honestly, your guess is as good as mine on that. I’m not an expert on how attunements work. I will say this, though — I think the monsters around here use magic the same way that I do.”

Now that got my attention. It answered some questions, and it raised a whole lot more. “Okay. What if I had mana floating around in my body that wasn’t in an attunement, because, say, I drank a potion I definitely shouldn’t have?”

Keras frowned, considering. “Are you talking about Sera?”

I nodded. “I don’t know what exactly happened to her, but her attunement isn’t working properly. If it’s leaking mana, could she use some of that mana through your type of sorcery?”

“Might be worth trying. I’d be willing to give her some lessons and see if we can make it work. It’d be tricky, though. Most people first learn how to use sorcery through speech. There are other methods, but they’re more advanced.”

“I’d appreciate your help regardless. And I’d like to observe the lessons, too. My new attunement gives me a degree of ability to transfer mana into others, so maybe there’s something we could do with that?”

“Might be worth a try. One important thing I need you to think about, though.”

“Hm?”

“If this type of magic was deliberately taken away by your goddess, she might not be happy if it starts showing up again.”

That...was a good point. “I’ll be discrete. But I do want your permission to tell this to one more person.”

“As long as it’s just one of the people here, I’d be fine with that.”

I shook my head. “Not them. Derek just arranged for someone to visit us that might be able to help Sera. But I need something to trade.”

“And you were thinking information? Not a bad idea, but I’d rather you find another option if you can. If it is possible for your people to re-learn sorcery somehow, it could be the type of thing that has an impact on your society as a whole. I’m not sure you want to tell that to just some random person.”

“They’re not exactly random. But, considering who it is, you’re probably right that I should be careful.”

“Who are we talking about here?”

“Their name is Sheridan Theas.”

“Oh, lovely, another Theas.” He shook his head. “Thought I’d left them all back at home.”

I paused for a moment. “There’s a House Theas where you come from?”

“Yeah. They’re pretty prominent there, too. So is House Hartigan, for that matter.”

I knew House Theas and House Hartigan were ancient, but I didn’t realize they still had branches on the mainland. That was...strange. Most stories involved whole families being shepherded to Kaldwyn by the goddess, never to return.

Had some people been left behind, or just gone back at some point?

That was something else I’d need to add to my ever-growing research list.

At least I was finally making progress on one of my other research items.

“Okay, Sheridan Theas.” Keras considered that. “What’s he like?”

“They,” I corrected instinctively.

“They?” Keras looked quizzical.

“Sheridan is a follower of Wydd, and takes after them.”

“I’ve heard of Wydd, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I paused, momentarily stymied. It was hard to remember sometimes that, much like I didn’t know much about Keras’ culture, he didn’t seem to know much about ours, either.

This was the kind of thing our culture usually explained to children. I had to think about how to explain it in a way that didn’t sound like I was talking down to him. “Okay, so Wydd is one of our visages. The Visage of Forbidden Knowledge.”

“Sure, I’ve heard that much.”

“Wydd is legendary for constantly changing. Sometimes they’re old, sometimes they’re young, sometimes they’re male, sometimes they’re female.”

Keras seemed to consider that. “Like some sort of trickster god? We have legends like that back at home.”

“I...think most people would find that comparison unflattering. In part because of the whole heresy of talking about other gods thing, and in part because this isn’t about trickery. Wydd isn’t changing shapes to trick anyone. They’re changing because they feel differently at different times, so they change their form to adapt to their self-image.”

Keras shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. That’s just...very different from what I’m used to. So, this Sheridan is, what, a shapeshifter?”

“No, no, I don’t mean that Sheridan changes their form in an anatomical sense. Although I’m sure many people who take after Wydd would love to, though. And there are a couple attunements that can do that sort of thing. This is more about identity. For someone like Sheridan, they prefer to be male sometimes, female other times, and neither at other times.”

I paused. “It’s also probably worth knowing that there are people in Valia who consider themselves male and appear female, or vice versa. Or just don’t think of themselves as being one or the other.”

Keras seemed to ponder that. “Neither? Like...an elemental, or something?”

“Might be a good comparison, I don’t know. I’m not really sure about how elementals view themselves. I imagine it varies.”

“It does,” Keras replied with a surprising degree of certainty. “Okay, so physical appearance is largely irrelevant here. That’s sort of refreshing, actually.”

“I....wouldn’t necessarily go that far.” I winced. “Racism, for example, is still alive and well. We’re just not too picky about whether or not people are male, female, or neither. Men can inherit just as easily as women in Valia, for example, but Edria is somewhat more complicated in that regard.”

“Fascinating. I appreciate the lesson, and I certainly wouldn’t want to offend this Sheridan, or anyone else like that. And, now that I think about it, I suspect I’ve met a few others that are similar.”

“I’m sure you have. Taking after Wydd, or one of the other visages, is pretty common here. We’re predominantly Aspectist, meaning that the visages are considered aspects of the goddess by most people here, and that means a lot of people worship the visages directly.”

Keras cracked his fingers. “I’d figured that part out. It’s a little strange to me, having met some of the visages personally...but I’ve always had a strange relationship with religion in general.”

“I’d be interested in hearing about that at some point. This might be an inappropriate question, but are you related to the Tyrant in Gold somehow? Or another foreign god? Our legends say they were all wiped out, but...”

Keras sighed. “That’s complicated. Suffice to say that I’m not one of the Tyrant’s children, or otherwise related to him like that. If anything, I’d be considered one of his enemies. As for relationships with other gods, I’m afraid that’s not something I’m comfortable getting into with you just yet. Nothing personal, but it’s the kind of information that could get me in trouble. And, as you know, I’ve already got plenty of that.”

I nodded. “Okay, that’s fine. But can I ask you another, slightly sillier question?”

Keras raised an eyebrow. “Sure?”

“What’s with the mask you wear whenever you’re outside?”

Keras laughed. “Oh, that? Magic item.”

I’d suspected that, but I didn’t sense an aura on it. That didn’t mean much, though. Keras’ magic clearly didn’t operate in the same way as ours in general. “What sort of magic item?”

“Concealment. It makes it harder for people to recognize me unless they already know who is under the mask. It also makes it harder for divination spells to find me, which is the main reason I wear it when I’m out.”

“Why aren’t you wearing it right now, then?”

“The wards on Derek’s house serve the same function. I’m no expert at divination, so I don’t know if the house’s protection is as strong as the mask’s...but honestly, wearing that thing all the time is kind of irritating. Hard to eat with it on.”

That was a little more mundane than I’d expected, but it did raise other questions. “Why bother with something like that? Is there a reason you need to be in disguise?”

Keras sighed. “It’s related to your earlier question. I’m not working with the Tyrant, but he does have agents here. And I would really rather not run into them if I can avoid it.”

I blinked. “Why? I imagine some random Tyrant-worshipping cultists wouldn’t be a threat to you.”

“I’m not talking about Tyrant cultists, although the Faithful of the Golden Sovereign could be a real problem if they continue to spread the way that they have been. I’m talking about the Children of the Tyrant and their direct servants.”

“...Are you implying that some of the Tyrant in Gold’s children are here? On Kaldwyn?”

“I’m not implying it, Corin. I’ve had the misfortune of running into a couple of them. They are the primary reason I wear the mask.”

I did not like the sound of that. “Are they as powerful as the legends say?”

“I’ve read some of your legends. You’ve heard the one about Aayara stealing a bow and arrow from one of the visages?”

“Sure, but I wouldn’t call that one a legend. That’s from a fiction series.”

Keras waved a hand dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. The point is that the book ended with a battle between Aayara and Kerivas, with Aayara fleeing into the night.”

“Been a while since I read it, but I’ll take your word.”

“I’ve met Aayara, and I’ve fought one of your visages. It wasn’t Kerivas, and the visages aren’t all going to be the same level as fighters, but Katashi wasn’t exactly a noncombatant. My assessment? If Aayara chose to fight one of the visages seriously, that visage would be dead. No question.”

I felt a chill run down my spine. “...Okay. Good to know.”

“Not all of the Children of the Tyrant are as powerful as Aayara, of course. She’s one of the two strongest, so it may not be a fair comparison. But there are many Children of the Tyrant, and I wouldn’t put the least of them below an Emerald. If you see one, you run the other way as fast as you can.”

“What about you? How would you fare against one of them?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Depends on which it is. I wouldn’t take the risk of engaging any of them without a dire need. Killing one would risk bringing more children here, or drawing the attention of the Tyrant himself.”

“Is there any way for me to know if I’ve even seen one of them? Don’t they just look human?”

“They do. I haven’t found any trick to it.” He paused, considering. “They do tend to have false names that follow a couple specific patterns, though. People who work for Aayara tend to adopt names that start with ‘ess’. ‘Sterling’, ‘Silver’, that sort of thing. Ones who work for the Blackstone use gem names.”

I nodded at that.

Keras reached up and pointed at his back. “Their servants often have an enchanted tattoo on the back of their right shoulder. I’d keep an eye out for those. And run the other way if you see those, too. Anyone who is a prominent enough servant to have a mark like that is probably going to be Citrine or Emerald level, too.”

“What do you mean by an enchanted tattoo? Do they have something like an attunement?”

“A Dominion Mark. It’s the equivalent on the continent I come from. I’m not familiar with any other marks that are quite as complex as your attunements, though.”

Hrm. Does that imply that they have some kind of artificial attunements over there?

Or does the Tyrant give out attunements in the same way that the Goddess does?

That’s...all sorts of terrifying if he can.

“I’d be very interested in hearing more about those.”

“Maybe at some point. Not today, though. And it would be connected to learning more about dominion sorcery in general. You’d want a strong foundation before you start thinking about marks too much.”

“Fair. Okay. Can I ask you to start some sorcery lessons with Sera and myself tomorrow? We can try a few experiments and see if she can manage anything.”

“Sure, but I wouldn’t get your hopes too high. Even for a normal student back at home, it usually takes months before you can cast a single spell. You’re not going to learn overnight.”

I nodded. “If nothing else, it’d be interesting to lean the theory behind it, and maybe some training exercises?”

“We can try that.”

“Great, thank you. Any other ideas on what I could offer Sheridan if you’d rather not have me tell them about how your sorcery works?”

He considered that. “I have a few magical items in a safe place I might be willing to part with, since it’s for a good cause. But it’d take me some time to get back there and retrieve anything. The things I have on me would be too dangerous to give away.”

I wasn’t even going to question that. If Keras said his items were dangerous, I’d take him at his word on that. “Okay, what’s ‘some time’ mean?”

“A couple weeks, at least? They’re in another country.”

I grunted. “We’re meeting with Sheridan in two days.”

“I don’t have anything on-hand, then. I could get something if Sheridan is willing to help Sera in exchange for payment at a later time, though.”

“Okay. I’ll make the offer. Hm.” I thought about the Jaden Box again. “Do you know anything about enchanting with your type of sorcery?”

“A little bit, but I’m no expert. Why?”

“I was thinking about the Jaden Box, and—”

He leaned forward abruptly. “Do not give away the Jaden Box.”

I raised my hands defensively. “Okay, okay. I won’t. But could we make a copy of it?”

He shook his head. “No, you’d need an expert for that, and types of sorcery I don’t have. Travel, stability... Nothing I’m skilled at.”

“Hrm. Could you help me enchant something else with...what did you call it, dominion sorcery?”

“I’m not particularly well-versed in enchanting theory, unfortunately. But I suppose if you have an Enchanter attunement... Combining our types of sorcery might be possible, yes. It’s dangerous, though. When I’ve tried to combine my sorcery with local magic before it’s usually backfired.”

He winced, seeming to remember something. “We’d need to be extremely careful. And this isn’t something you’d want to rush. We can try to get something done in a couple days, but I doubt it will work that fast.”

“Okay, I can accept that. We can talk about alternate plans if we can’t finish anything in time.” I took a breath. “You’re doing a lot for me and my sister, and I appreciate that. Is there anything I can do in exchange?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “You did help me break out of a prison once. But, if you’d like to keep filling me in on things about your culture so I avoid any more heresy trials, I’d appreciate that.”

“Deal.” I grinned and offered him a hand.

He clasped me on the wrist, a little hard, and made some kind of twisting motion.

I laughed. “Lesson one — that’s not how we shake hands here.”

Keras pulled his wrist away, looking mildly scandalized. “...it’s not?”

***

I had several ideas on what I could offer Sheridan. The problem was that I didn’t particularly like any of them.

The Jaden Box sounded like the best idea, but Keras clearly didn’t want me to give it up. I knew he wanted to use it himself when it was finished recharging, so that made sense. I had my own reasons for wanting to keep it.

Selys-Lyann might have been worth Sheridan’s attention, assuming it really was what Lars thought it was. Tristan had given it to me, though, and in spite of my conflicted feelings about Tristan, I didn’t want to get rid of it.

Sera still had Ceris, the Song of Harmony, but that wasn’t mine to give. I brought it up as an option to her, but her scribbled reply was clear enough.

Not giving this away for a chance at a partial cure. We’ll come up with something else. Also, let me know if you figure out how this sword works. I’ve been reading up about it, but it’s all just legends. No details on the functions.

I agreed with her logic, and I agreed to let her know if I found out more about how Ceris functioned. Keras seemed to recognize it, so I’d ask him later.

I still had the ring of regeneration…and the rock of regeneration…but I doubted either would interest Sheridan. The ring would be valuable, but it was still a standard magical item. The rock was unusual, but inferior to the ring in almost every regard. True, I could activate it on someone who was unconscious, but it was nowhere near as powerful. I’d charged it with the life mana crystals I had on-hand, and those were strong enough to make the runes function, but not enough to make it as potent as the original ring.

So, that left me with either making a new item as I’d discussed with Keras, or maybe providing forbidden knowledge or a service that Sheridan needed.

I wanted to have options in all three areas.

I decided to do a little research next. I sat down next to the stack of books I’d picked up from the library and the Divinatory and got to reading.

I had a lot of things I wanted to research, but restricted attunements were first on the list. I both wanted to know more about my own attunement, and perhaps more importantly, I needed to see what I could find about Necromancers.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Derek.

It was more, well, that I didn’t trust anyone completely. After what had happened with Orden, I was going to be a little more careful about taking the first thing that anyone told me on a subject as reliable information.

This didn’t mean I was planning to spend hundreds of hours verifying every little thing that they were teaching in classes, of course. But knowing if a Necromancer actually had the ability to deal with scarring, or if Necromancers even existed?

That was pretty relevant.

Derek didn’t have a lot of motivation to mislead us on this subject that I was aware of, but I knew painfully little about him in general. That was something that I could remedy over time.

But for now? Books. Lots of books.

I read through the few sections I could find on restricted attunements first.

It is commonly believed that there are eight restricted attunements. These may or may not be the same attunements as those housed in the theoretical Spider Spire, which is assumed to exist, but has never been found. Or, at a minimum, never publicly disclosed.

Below, we discuss what little we know about these unusual attunements. Due to their rarity, we cannot promise that the information below is reliable or complete.

The best known restricted attunement is the Hierophant. The Hierophant attunement is generally only bestowed upon the current leader of the priesthood for each of the visages.

Hierophants are known for their ability to effortlessly extend their shroud over a large area, while imbuing it with a spell effect. This is generally referred to as an imbued shroud. For example, a Hierophant could imbue their shroud with healing magic, passively healing everyone in their proximity.

Paladins are the next most common of the restricted attunements. Holy champions of the goddess, Paladins have the unique ability to draw additional power from their patron visage during times of great need. These abilities are referred to as divine invocations.

The exact nature and effect of these invocations vary from visage to visage, but in all publicly known appearances of this ability, the effects have been tremendous. For example, Tevan Ellis, a Paladin of Melkyr, used an invocation during the Battle of Kevan’s Crossing in the Quelling War.

Witnesses claimed that Tevan was surrounded by a golden aura that temporarily rendered him completely immune to both physical and magical harm. In the aftermath of the battle, Tevan lost consciousness for several days, implying that this power has a tremendous cost on the body.

The Abjurer is an attunement focused on breaking existing spells. The most powerful of their abilities is banishment — the ability to send a summoned creature back to their place of origin and prevent them from returning for some time. In the case of true elementals, this will send them to their home plane and force them to remain there. Creatures summoned by Summoners will be forced back to their spire, and cannot be resummoned until the banishment is broken.

The Arbiter attunement is given to those who perform services to a visage, often completing legendary quests or averting catastrophes. The Arbiter attunement allows a mage to imbue other attuned with a fraction of their power.

It is sometimes speculated that there is a Necromancer attunement, but is unlikely. Raising the dead has been proven to be impossible on numerous occasions.

The last known restricted attunement is the Sovereign. It is believed to be able to control or draw power from other attunements. Some claim that it also allowed for the absorption of spells and enchantments to increase the power of the Sovereign. Once, it was given to the leaders of nations, but humanity has not been blessed with a Sovereign in many centuries.

I frowned as I looked over the passage about the Arbiter attunement again. I hadn’t been expecting much, but it was still disappointing.

The description of the Paladin attunement described a golden aura that granted invulnerability. That was very interesting, since the color gold was usually associated with the Tyrant in Gold, not the goddess.

Maybe I was reading too much into the color. After all, the yellow aura from Citrine attunements also could be described as “gold”. Still, I wanted to learn more about it at some point.

The Sovereign attunement sounded very interesting. I was curious what controlling and drawing power from other attunements entailed — was it like the opposite of my own attunement?

Could it be used to steal an entire attunement permanently? That would be fascinating if it really existed. Also, sort of terrifying.

I picked up the other book that listed restricted attunements and checked through there as well, but that one didn’t even talk about Necromancers. It did have a slightly lengthier section on the Arbiter attunement, though, including one particular tidbit that interested me a great deal.

Warren Constantine, a famous Arbiter in Caelford, was integral in the process of constructing the first generation of artificial attunements. He is listed as a principal contributor in the earliest papers published on new attunement development, until he abruptly disappeared from the public scene in 402 AF.

While Caelford does have a handful of other Arbiters, it is believed that the Arbiter attunement is not actually a necessary part of the process. Instead, modern approaches to crafting artificial attunements rely primarily on Biomancers, a local attunement that allows for manipulation of a subject’s mana. While the details of the process have not been publicly published, it is believed that creating an artificial attunement requires work on the parts of both Biomancers and Enchanters.

It is possible that earlier-generation artificial attunements were performed by Arbiters rather than — or in addition to — Biomancers. This may have been abandoned due to dangers in that process, or due to the comparative scarcity of Arbiters. Unfortunately, the exact details of the process are currently considered military secrets, and thus not yet available for public consummation or discussion.

I had a lot of questions related to that. I definitely needed to do some follow-up research on artificial attunements, as well as the remarkably suspicious disappearance of Warren Constantine.

I devoured the rest of the section on the Arbiter attunement. It was only about ten pages, since sources on how it worked were pretty scarce. Most of it was the same as what Researcher had told me, with a few minor differences, and a few shreds of new information.

The most important part was that it actually described the process of imbuing other people with mana, which was something I hadn’t gotten around to asking. It was exactly what I expected, though. I just needed to channel mana through my right hand and the attunement would do all the rest of the work.

Notably, the writer believed that the purification process was occurring in my body all the time, not just at the time that I sent the mana out. That wasn’t something I could rely on without research, but it meant I might be able to safely transfer mana through my other hand in a desperate situation.

I’ll have to test that in a lab environment before I actually try it on a person.

I was definitely going to try transferring mana through the Arbiter attunement itself soon, though. Probably to Derek or Patrick, since neither of them recently had their mana overcharged by anything else.

Derek was probably the best option to start with, since he had experience working with an elemental who had a similar mana recharging ability, and he was probably powerful enough to shrug it off if I did something terribly wrong.

I didn’t think I’d be able to give Derek any significant long-term benefit. I didn’t have enough mana for that.

In fact, I didn’t even know exactly how much mana I had at that moment.

Thinking on that, I got out my mana watch to check.

I pressed the device to my forehead, and it registered 50/50. I’d gotten a couple points of mana in the aftermath of the visit to the spire, which was great progress by my standards.

My right hand was far more impressive, registering at 82/82. It had measured at 58 right before I’d taken the second fake spire exam, which felt like weeks ago, but it had only been a few days. I’d strained my hand considerably during all the fighting and enchanting in the spire, which was probably part of the reason it had grown so much. Katashi transforming the brand into a fully-functional attunement was probably a big part of it, too.

The minimum for hitting Carnelian was 60 mana, which meant that I’d passed it handily with my hand, but I wasn’t quite there with my Enchanter attunement yet.

Sunstone was six times that, or 360. That...was going to take a while.

I didn’t even want to think about getting the more than two thousand necessary for Citrine.

So, no, I definitely couldn’t give Derek any substantial long-term benefit yet. But if Patrick was at a similar level to my Enchanter attunement with his Elementalist one, and I could give him a two percent increase per week... That was about one extra mana a week, which wasn’t bad at all.

I’d started out only getting about one mana a week in total, then more like two mana per week when I started eating lavris fruit. Now, I was probably getting closer to five a week, depending on how much I exercised.

Could I push that to ten mana and get my Enchanter attunement to Carnelian in a week?

It was worth trying. I was tired of feeling weak, and having two Carnelian shrouds would make me a lot safer. They still wouldn’t equate to a single Sunstone shroud, but I’d take any extra defense I could get.

Thinking about exercising, it had been a while since I had worked on making any mana crystals.

I still had a couple practice molds, so I worked on filling one up with mana from my right hand.

The process only took me about ten seconds.

I stared at the finished product in disbelief, carefully cracking open the mold...and there it was, a pure crystal of gray mana. The density of the mana was so low that it wouldn’t be of much use, just like the ones I’d crafted before, but I’d made it fast.

Just a week ago, the process would have taken me several minutes. My power increase wasn’t sufficient to justify that degree of change. That meant there was another explanation.

I made another one, this time drawing from my Enchanter attunement as a mana source, but still channeling it through my right hand.

It still only took about fifteen seconds.

It took me a few more minutes of testing to feel comfortable with my conclusion. I tried transferring mana from my other hand next, then transferring mana from my hand into my phoenix sigil.

After that, I dug through my bags until I found something I hadn’t enchanted at all yet. All I found was an extra metal disc like what I’d used to make the phoenix sigils, but that was fine. I’d just make another phoenix sigil with it.

I cut the runes, then tested filling them with my mana.

In all cases, I was transferring mana several times faster than before. Probably around ten to twenty times faster, if I had to guess.

As much as I obsessed over my mana watch, I still didn’t have a regular watch.

But I’d learned what I needed to learn from the tests, and it was important.

My new attunement was letting me transfer mana faster. Either that was an inherent property of the Arbiter attunement, or perhaps it was having a synergistic effect with my Enchanter attunement. They both were primarily focused on transferring mana in different ways, so a compounding effect was definitely possible.

This helped support one of my other suspicions, too — the “brand” I had before was probably a nascent Arbiter attunement even before Katashi activated it. That might have been part of why I’d found it so easy to perform enchantments in the spire. The spire’s own properties contributed, too, but my unfinished attunement was likely already working to a limited degree.

If I’d known how the brand worked at the time, would I have done anything differently?

Maybe I could have transferred mana into Sera directly, instead of giving her the potion, and saved her from these scars...but no, that wouldn’t have been enough power.

We needed Seiryu, and even if I’d managed to push her to Carnelian, she probably couldn’t have handled summoning her.

Moreover, I don’t know if the attunement’s purification function was active at that point, even if it was already making it easier for me to enchant.

With some effort, I brushed those thoughts aside and got back to work.

I had something to attempt that I’d been failing at for weeks.

I put my hands together, closed my eyes, and focused.

It took me the better part of two hours before I opened my hands and gazed at the crystal within.

I’d made it without a mold.

I grinned, tossed the crystal on a nearby table, and continued to work.

I had a world of new options now, and it was time to start exploiting them.

Chapter V – Options

I got uncharacteristically overzealous about my new enchanting prospects, making crystal after crystal until my hand was throbbing and my temples were searing.

When I was done, I checked my mana with my mana watch. My hand registered at 14/82 and my Enchanting attunement was down to 18/50. That was much lower than I was used to going, even while focusing on deliberately exercising. The excitement helped me push past my fear, at least to a point.

My reward was a table littered with crystals. Mostly gray, but some transference mana and some mental mana.

They weren’t worth much, but I was getting better in two ways. First, I was getting used to making them without the shells. Second, I’d been focusing on making the new ones at progressively higher levels of density. My original crystals weren’t even a full point of mana, but my latest ones each held about three mana each.

That still was less than a Class 1 mana gem, but I was getting there. And I was confident I could get even further with practice.

Not bad at all for a day of work.

As excited as I was, though, I still didn’t have anything to give as a suitable gift. I went downstairs to talk to everyone, which was the point when I realized that it was the middle of the night.

Oops.

I wasn’t quite alone, though.

I found a familiar figure sitting next to the fireplace, reading a book. He looked up as I approached. “Ah, Master Cadence. I was wondering if you would bother to make an appearance this evening.”

I blinked. “Lord...Teft? What are you doing here?”

He waved to offer me a chair across from his. “Playing the role of your guardian for the evening, it would seem.”

I frowned, taking a seat and folding my arms. “I seem to have acquired quite a few of those recently.”

“You have made yourself a figure of some significance, but lack the power necessary to defend yourself adequately.” Teft raised a hand to silence any objections.

“I did not say that you lack skill. You are young yet, and your magic will grow over time. But the circumstances you have found yourself in are dangerous — that can no longer be in any doubt. I do not expect that anyone would be foolish enough to strike at you in the heart of Master Hartigan’s home, but it is wise to be prepared.”

I sighed. I couldn’t entirely disagree. “Preparations are fine, but I suspect that Derek and Keras are quite enough for any threats that might emerge.”

“Ah, is that who the man in the masquerade mask was? I suspected from your prior description, but I was uncertain. Nay, the pair of them left somewhat earlier, and will not be returning this eve. Thus, I am here. Much to our mutual dismay, I’m certain.”

I was a bit surprised by that. “Gone? Where? To the tower?”

“I would prefer that in some senses, even if I would disapprove of going with only two people. Nay, it is far worse. They have gone to a place of ill repute.”

I blinked. “What?... Like a brothel?”

He shook his head and waved a hand dismissively. “No, no. Although I have little doubt such services are offered, such would be positively mundane compared to the depths of depravity where they have gone. It is a place representing the worst of our society. Dark dealings, gambling, and all forms of excess.” After a brief pause, he clasped his hands dramatically, “A casino.”

I’d heard of casinos, but I’d never been to one. They sounded rather entertaining. I had a number of questions, but the first one was simple enough. “Why?”

“It would seem that Master Hartigan has gotten it into his head that reputable sources of information are insufficient for his investigations. And thus, he turns to those who would sell anything for the right price, information being one service of many.” Teft lowered his head. He looked tired, as well as disapproving.

“You look like a casino just killed your favorite dog. What’s the problem? Those two can take care of themselves, if you’re worried about them.”

Teft sighed. “In body, I am certain they can fend for themselves. Derek is a master swordsman, and if the one accompanying him is Keras Selyrian, I am certain that even the cutthroats in that place would give him a wide berth. I am more concerned for their health in other respects. In mind, and of spirit.”

Spirit? Derek had mentioned that Teft was devout, but I didn’t see what the problem with this place was. “In what way? I thought the goddess approved of gambling. Isn’t going into the spire essentially gambling in itself?”

Teft shook his head. “I would not compare the spire to mere secular gambling, but it is true that the goddess favors games of both chance and skill. No, the distinction is that the goddess is fair. The casino is designed to be unfair. Therein, Derek and Keras will be tempted, and when they are at their weakest, exploited. It is dishonesty in business form.”

That sounded kind of fun. I mean, Teft clearly thought the whole concept was awful, but I liked the idea of testing myself against their rigged games. The intoxication and other forms of temptation I could do without.

I raised a hand to my chin. “So, I take it you don’t want to head over there, then?”

Teft stared me in the eyes. “I know you’re jesting, but no. I most certainly do not.”

I chuckled. “Fine, fine. I’ll let them have the fun this time. But that still doesn’t tell me why you are here.”

Teft’s jaw tensed into an uncharacteristic look. Frustration? Dismay, maybe? “I have made mistakes. I consider this the first of many steps to make amends for them.”

“You mean like making Sera fight when she clearly was still injured?”

He shook his head. “I make no apologies for that. I offered her a fair choice. That is more than she would be given on the battlefield.”

“But we’re not on a battlefield, and surely you’re aware it came across as a false choice.”

“Only because there are too many fools who do not realize that retreat is a valid option. At times, it is the best option. I do not fault Miss Cadence for fighting, of course. I respect her tenacity, and she performed better than I expected, given her disadvantages. But she was not ‘better’ by a sufficient margin to overcome her disadvantage, and thus, she failed.”

“It still wasn’t very kind of you.”

“If you think that training for battle should be about kindness, you are more of a fool than I realized.”

I pushed myself up from the chair, glaring down at Teft. “Really? Turning to insults? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given that attacking students seems to be the only thing you’re good at. It’s fortunate that we haven’t actually been attacked tonight, because you’re certainly not capable of defending them.”

Teft stood as well, returning my stare. “Perhaps you are right. I deserve your ridicule for allowing you into that battle outside the tower, and more so for allowing Derek to take my place in the aftermath. But if I seem harsh, Master Cadence, that is because I am seeking to prepare you for what is coming. And in war, there will be no one to coddle you, or any other child.”

“Oh, I believe you. I’ve heard the same thing from my father for years. You two are quite a lot alike.”

Teft actually winced when I said that. I hadn’t expected to hit a nerve with that, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain.

And, given that he was startled enough that he didn’t reply immediately, I took that as a chance to make my dramatic exit, and headed back toward my room to sleep.

***

When I woke up in the morning, I could hear a group gathered downstairs. I hadn’t slept well, mostly as a consequence of the pain from overworking both of my attunements.

Fortunately, Derek was wealthy enough that his washrooms had bathtubs that generated their own hot and cold water. We’d had just one of them at home, so I knew how to activate the runes to change the temperature. I settled on hot, which helped chase away some of the lingering pain.

I inspected the runes on the side of the tub as I bathed, but I wasn’t awake enough to remember them very well.

After I finished bathing and getting dressed, I checked my mana. It registered at 84/84 for my Arbiter attunement and 52/52 for my Enchanter attunement.

So, two points for each.

That was fantastic progress for one day of work, comparable to what I’d gotten after the fight outside of the tower. Unfortunately, it had taken most of the day, and I was still exhausted from the effort. I planned to keep pushing myself to increase in strength quickly, but I’d have to figure out a way to make it more efficient.

Transferring my mana into runes is much faster than trying to form crystals, so that would reduce the time it takes to drain my mana reserves — and it would give me more time to recover. Presumably, using my Arbiter attunement to transfer mana directly into someone will work similarly... I should test that out soon.

It was Kyrsday, so I only had two classes: Understanding Attunements and Physical Combat.

The latter was less exciting than it sounded, since it ended up being more about exercise and general weapon familiarity than direct combat. We practiced dueling cane usage, basic sword strokes, and footwork more than anything else. Occasionally, we had a class dedicated to another weapon, such as bows or spears — mostly with the goal of learning how to counter them.

The Valian military used a mixture of firearms and dueling canes, with sabers as side arms for close combat engagements. Up to that point, we’d only been given a single lesson with firearms — we’d focus on them more the following year.

Physical Combat was one of the few classes where I was toward the top in performance. I couldn’t hope to match up against Guardians, but my years of training with my father had gotten me into excellent shape.

I can skip both classes today if I need more time to work on a gift for Sheridan, but I need to be careful.

I can’t miss my classes often. My grades are fine, but graduating is still extremely important. I can’t afford to get set back a year or sent off to some obscure military assignment.

I’ll see how the morning goes and hit Understanding Attunements in the afternoon if I have time.

With that in mind, I headed downstairs.

Everyone was gathered for breakfast, minus Teft. I didn’t know if he’d left or if he was just sleeping somewhere, given how late he’d been up.

Patrick waved excitedly at me as I headed into the dining room. “Corin! You’re awake!”

I waved sleepily in return. “For certain values of ‘awake’, yeah. Strange seeing everyone here at once. What’s the event?”

Patrick waved for me to take a seat next to him. I obliged. “We were waiting for you. Not too long, don’t worry. Derek has news!”

Taking the opening, Derek leaned forward across his spot at the table. “I think Orden’s conspiracy made their next move. Or moves, as the case may be.”

“What do you mean?”

Sera passed an empty plate to Marissa, who passed it on to me. I accepted it and began to load the plate from the dishes on the dining table — eggs cooked with bacon, a couple sausages, cooked carrots, and a muffin.

I wasn’t sure who cooked all of it, but at the moment, I was too famished to care. I tore into the breakfast with abandon while I listened to Derek.

“I’d been hearing some dark rumors about happenings in other countries, and I decided to look into it further. Last night, Keras and I went to The Golden Run to meet with a few old friends of mine. We learned a few things that are, well, concerning.”

“Such as?” I asked, while Patrick poured me a drink and handed it over. I nodded to him gratefully.

Derek’s expression took a turn for the serious, which was never a good sign. “Only hours after we left the Shifting Spire, someone detonated an explosive device in the Grand Cathedral in Dalenos. Dozens were killed, and hundreds injured.”

I had to put my fork down to pause and process that. “The Grand Cathedral? Isn’t that one of their biggest centers of worship?”

“It is. Or, rather, it was. The place was devastated. There’s talk that Katashi’s Hierophant may have been killed in the explosion, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.”

I winced. “That can’t be good. With Tenjin missing, Katashi was already inches from leveling Valia.” I paused, processing that. “Which was probably deliberate. You think someone is trying to force Katashi’s hand?”

“Definitely. Could be the same group that Orden was working with, could be someone else being opportunistic. Either way, the longer Tenjin is missing, the more this situation has a chance to escalate. I was hoping that with Orden captured, Katashi would have enough information to find his brother and resolve this himself...”

I understood where Derek was going. “But if someone just attacked a major temple in Katashi’s home region, he’s probably going to need to deal with that.”

“Right. And there’s more to it. Two more temples have been attacked in the last few days, and three other government buildings. There have been a few people arrested, but the attacks haven’t stopped. They most likely have organized leadership, and I suspect this is just an opening move.”

Patrick had a thoughtful expression. “For what goal?”

Derek grimaced. “A few possibilities there. Orden mentioned protecting Valia as a goal. By drawing Katashi’s attention back to Dalenos, the people who were working with her might minimize the damage to our country. There are all sorts of other longer-term goals that could be behind this, though. Weakening specific countries to allow for an invasion from another force, such as Edria or Caelford, for example.”

I had another hypothesis, but I didn’t say it aloud. It was pure speculation at this point, and I didn’t want to raise any more alarms.

“So many people,” Marissa mumbled. “It’s terrible.”

I hadn’t even been thinking about that, in truth. I agreed with her, of course, but my mind was elsewhere.

Tristan, what are you planning?

Derek was right. If Tristan and his organization were behind this, they’d have a longer-term plan of some kind.

I glanced at Sera, saw her calculating expression, and knew she was contemplating possibilities like I was.

Keras turned his head toward Marissa. He’d been silent up to this point, his expression neutral. “It’s unconscionable. And we intend to put a stop to it, but for that, we need to find the source.”

Derek nodded. “Right. And we were planning to do just that, so Keras and I headed straight to the spire after we were done at the casino.”

That drew a series of blank stares. Marissa was the one who spoke up. “Just yerselves?”

“Either one of us could handle the first twenty or so floors on our own without much difficulty, and we were only planning to check the first few floors for clues. The plan was to try to find the spot where Tenjin was captured, and see if we could find any blood or other clues. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the problem. Someone has sealed the spire entirely. It’s impossible to get in or out.”

Several pairs of eyes turned toward me. I opened my hands in a gesture of surrender. “You think Tristan sealed the spire somehow?”

Derek shook his head. “Not exactly. I think Tristan is one of the people involved, though, and he might be the easiest to find to get some answers. The other possibility is that Katashi sealed the spire himself to prevent any further interference to his own investigation. We don’t have a good way to contact him to ask, however, nor would he necessarily respond even if we did.”

“Do you have a way of finding Tristan?”

I had the book, but that was just a way of sending messages. I’d considered the possibility that it might be used to trace his location in the same way he seemed to be tracking me, but I didn’t know how to do it.

And I hadn’t told everyone about the book yet. I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to.

“If you’d be willing to give us a sample of your blood, I think we could use it to locate Tristan.”

I folded my arms. “The spire blocks most forms of divination, even for people inside. That was one of the first things we checked when Tristan disappeared. People try to locate lost loved ones in the spire all the time, it doesn’t work.”

“True, under normal circumstances. But certain people are given the ability to circumvent that in order to do their jobs properly. Using it for personal gain is, of course, strictly forbidden.”

My eyes narrowed. “You’re talking about Whispers.”

“Yes, or other groups in the service of the visages. I believe that given the dire nature of the situation, we could find someone who would agree to help us.”

I wonder if there’s any chance Arbiters are on the list of people that can use detection magic inside the spires? It would make a degree of sense, since it’s an attunement that the visages give out directly, and we’re supposed to be some kind of assistants to the visages.

I can’t count on it, but I can try to learn an information gathering spell or two and test them next time I’m inside the spire.

In the meantime, I’ll need to look into other options.

I took a drink, pondering. “Orden was a Whisper. Tristan was, or is, a Whisper. How would we know if any given member of their organization is working with Tristan?”

“I don’t think we could decisively prove someone’s allegiance, but I have a few ideas for people Tristan and Orden might not have been willing to work with. Either due to ideological differences or personal ones.”

I turned toward Keras. “What about your magic? Would the tower block it?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never learned any dominion sorcery for information gathering. If my friends were here...” He shook his head. “But they’re not. And I’m honestly not sure it would work, either way. Whoever made these towers was familiar with my style of magic, they may have taken precautions.”

That was an interesting statement, but before I got a chance to follow it up with more questions, Derek spoke again. “I think I know someone who could do it, but I’d need Corin to agree to help first, and it could take a while for me to track them down. Probably a few months, at least. They were in Caelford, last I checked.”

I glanced to my right.

Sera gave me a curt nod.

I turned back to Derek. “I’ll do it. But under one condition.”

Derek grinned. “You want to come with us when we enter the spire, I assume?”

I twisted my lips into a frown. “Am I really that predictable?”

I tried not to wince at the chorus of chuckles that followed.

“I’ve talked to Keras about it, and it would be dangerous, but there are enough advantages that we’re willing to take you along. Even if we can get a divination spell to work from outside of the spire, it’s not going to give us enough to find Tristan, especially if he’s moving. If you’re with us, we can have the diviner cast the spell any time to get his current location. And if we do find Tristan, you’re the most likely to be able to talk him into cooperating.” He paused. “It’s also possible you could talk Katashi down if he gets angry at us for investigating this on our own.”

I wasn’t exactly sure that was true, but I wasn’t going to disagree with arguments that supported taking me along. “Okay, but you just said the spire was sealed. How are we getting in?”

Derek shook his head. “We’ll probably have to wait. Keras thinks he might know an alternate way in, but he’s going to have to get in contact with a friend. Use this time to prepare as heavily as you can, but be ready to go any day. If that spire opens up, I want to be able to jump in there within hours. I’ll be working to have a full team ready to go.”

“Okay. As for a team, I’d like to take—”

Derek waved a hand. “No other novices.” He raised both hands defensively to ward off the ensuing glares from my classmates. “It’s nothing personal, but even bringing one Carnelian along for something like this is a tremendous risk. We’re effectively losing two slots to bring Corin, because someone is going to have to protect him full-time. We’re going to take a balanced team of veterans, all Citrine or higher. This is not negotiable.”

Sera looked like she wanted to argue, but when she opened up her mouth, no words escaped. She settled with a frown.

Patrick spoke where she couldn’t, though. “Isn’t it more important to bring people you can trust in there? You don’t know who might be working with the bad guys.”

Derek shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve been climbing for years, Patrick. I know a lot of other climbers better than I know any of you. I can put a good group together. If it’s any consolation, I’ll probably be bringing Teft, and you know him.”

There was a round of confused blinking.

Patrick replied first. “Teft? Seriously? You think that makes us more comfortable? That guy is a jerk.”

I turned to Patrick. “No, it makes sense. I might not like his personality, but he’s already involved, and we can be reasonably confident he’s wasn’t working with Orden. If he was, she would have brought him into the spire with us. He’s Citrine-level, and he’s got an excellent attunement for fighting.” I paused. “Moreover, someone needs to sign the paperwork for me to be able to get back in the spire.”

“I hadn’t even considered that,” Derek admitted. “You’re right, a student isn’t getting in there without a teacher to escort them. Even then, going in with a full group of climbers is going to look a little strange, but we can probably make it work.”

I nodded. “So, that’s you, me, maybe Teft... I assume Keras?”

“I’ll be there. I intend to see this through, and I’m supposed to be watching over you.” Keras gestured at his eyes, then at me. If that was supposed to feel reassuring, it certainly didn’t.

“I will most likely ask Sheridan, but it depends on how they behave during the meeting tomorrow. I’m reasonably confident they weren’t working with Elora when I investigated months ago, but that could have changed. I’ll pry a bit, see if I can pull any secrets loose.”

“You could ask Professor Meltlake instead of Teft!” Patrick grinned at his own idea. “She’d be amazing!”

Derek rolled his eyes. “No, I will not be bringing Aunt Meltlake with me into the tower. Powerful or not, I’d never be able to stand her lecturing.”

“Aunt Meltlake?” Patrick sounded as confused as I felt.

“She’s my mother’s half-sister, and a Hartigan by birth. And she’s just as irritating as any member of my mother’s family, I assure you.”

Huh. I suppose that made a degree of sense, given House Hartigan’s reputation for powerful offensive magic in general.

Maybe I’d change my own name at some point, if I did something as amazing as evaporating a lake in a duel.

“Regardless,” Derek continued, “Aunt Meltlake is well past her prime. I’d prefer to bring people who have been in the tower recently. I have a list of names to check with. I expect to have a team assembled within a week or two, just to be on standby. The real problem is getting a Diviner with spells that can track people inside the spire, but I’ll get that sorted out eventually.” He turned to me. “Depending on how high Tristan is in there, we could be inside for weeks. You should start putting together equipment with that in mind.”

I nodded. “I don’t suppose you have extra magical items you could loan me for the trip, given how dangerous this could be?”

Derek seemed to consider that. “I’ll see what I can put together. My resources aren’t what they once were. You might have better luck with Keras.”

Keras shook his head. “I tend to travel light. Most items don’t work very well for me. I have a cache of equipment I’ve picked up from my various adventures, but it’s in Caelford.”

“Why won’t items work fer you?” Marissa sounded curious, and she was watching Keras intently.

“It has to do with my aura, or I suppose you’d call it a shroud. It’s not gray mana like yours, and it has a tendency to interfere with items. Only powerful ones, like my sword and mask or the Jaden Box...” He paused, blinking. “Hey, Corin. How full was the box when you got it?”

I tilted my head to the side. “Full?”

Keras grinned. “If you’re lucky, we might not have as much of a shortage as I thought. Toss me the box?”

I didn’t have it on me. “Hold on, I’ll go get it.”

I headed upstairs, bringing the box back down. I was hesitant to hand it to Keras — he clearly wanted it for his own reasons — but he could have taken it from me by force at any time if he wanted to.

I handed it to him.

“This should be fun. I need to make some space.”

He went and sat down on the floor in the middle of the room, setting the box down in front of him. “Retrieve: All Items.”

A moment later, Keras was surrounded by...stuff.

All sorts of stuff.

At a glance, I saw dozens of weapons, at least two full suits of armor, several bags of various sizes, and dozens of bottles and vials. There must have been hundreds of pounds of equipment in total.

“Oh, Wrynn, you beautiful thing.” Keras lifted up a potion filled with red fluid and kissed the side of it, then opened the top of the box and put the potion down inside. It didn’t fit, completely, but... “Store Superior Healing Potion.”

The potion vanished.

I broke down in laughter, so hard I nearly cried.

I had taken a magic box filled with items into the tower, and I’d never even tried to get them out. I hadn’t even checked.

True, I probably wouldn’t have known there was a way to simply empty everything out — that wasn’t in the documentation — but checking for a healing potion? That wasn’t out of the question.

I might have been able to save Vera without making a magic rock, or maybe found a better solution to any number of other situations.

I turned to Keras. “That kind of potion wouldn’t help Sera, would it?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s just for wounds. Don’t think it would do anything for the kind of mana scarring she has.”

I nodded. I expected that, but it was good to check. His magic was functionally distinct from what I was used to, so I didn’t want to assume that “healing potion” meant the same thing to him that it did to me.

Keras lifted up a glimmering dagger etched with runes, turning it over in his hands with genuine fondness. “I remember you.” He gingerly put the hilt into the box. “Store: Silverbrand.”

The dagger vanished. He turned his head to me. “Most of this is mundane,” he gestured at a full backpack that had appeared at his side, “But there are a few things that might interest you. And moreover, it’s a good way to keep a whole bunch of non-magical supplies without having to worry about the weight.”

Another thing I hadn’t considered. “What’s the maximum capacity?”

“Not sure, exactly. It’ll just stop storing when it gets there, though, so you don’t have to worry about it too much.”

Keras patted a hand on the ground next to him. “Come help me organize this when you’re done eating, and we’ll see what we can find.”

It wasn’t long before all of us, even Derek, were sitting on the floor and shifting around mysterious items with legitimate excitement.

Sera, who had already brought paper downstairs to aid in her communication, started working on a catalogue of everything we found in the box and the words we were using to store them. It would be a useful reference, because Wrynn had stored a lot of stuff.

I dug through piles of equipment, searching for anything that interested me. There were coins, flasks, potion bottles... even a few entire bars of metal.

She also had a surprising number of flowers. Either she was the sentimental type or an alchemist. Possibly both. Based on the fact that most of them were either bound in bundles or inside labeled vials, I was guessing the latter.

Perhaps more interesting, the labels on those vials were in a foreign language. It looked almost like one of the two lettering systems they used in Dalenos, but not quite. I showed a vial to Keras. “Can you read his?”

He lifted it. “Hm? Oh, sure. It’s in Liadran. Just says ‘aldenleaf, five units’.”

“Huh.” I put the vial down. I hadn’t heard of that language. Maybe I could ask him more about it later, but I had a higher priority for the moment.

I shifted on my attunement, searching through the piles for anything that glowed with magic. I found a handful of items that glowed, but it was hard to tell how powerful they were. Much like Keras, many of them had auras that didn’t seem to fit into the standard color framework.

A hand-mirror glowed purple. A necklace had a turquoise glow that rippled like waves.

I considered the possibility that purple was simply higher on the color scale than even Sapphire. While that was possible, I suspected these items simply had auras that didn’t work the same way. It wasn’t impossible; Keras was one precedent for it, and I’d also seen elemental auras that glowed with the color of the element, rather than a representation of the item’s power.

Maybe that was what was going on here?

A couple rings and what looked like a hairpin had more conventional yellow auras, but I still couldn’t be sure they were Citrine items. They had some runes etched into them, but I wasn’t familiar with any of the ones that I saw.

There were three more daggers that had magical glows — apparently, Wrynn Jaden liked daggers. One had a lime green aura, the second was crimson, and the third one glowed black. I didn’t even want to touch that one. I didn’t know what a black aura meant, but it didn’t sound good.

I warned the others, of course.

The last glowing item I found was an earring that glowed with a soft white hue, almost transparent. Keras gasped aloud when he saw it.

“Let me see that.” He gestured, and I handed the earring over. Keras turned it over in his fingers reverently. “I should have asked you to open the box sooner.”

I tilted my head to the side. “I take it that thing is powerful?”

“No. Probably the weakest item in the bunch in terms of raw power. But it’s the most important, at least to me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Sentimental value?”

“No, practical. Did you see a second one?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Good. This is part of a matched set. They’re designed to allow communication with each other.” He raised it to an eye, then hovered it next to his ear. “But I don’t think it’s active.”

Marissa leaned over. “Yer lady friend leave that for you, then?”

He nodded. “Not for me, necessarily, but I’d be one of the ones to know how to use it. I thought it was unusual that Wrynn left the box behind. It’s useful, as I’m sure you can see, and she rarely parts with it. This might help explain what she was up to.”

I frowned at that. “Seems too circuitous. How’d she know you, or whoever she wanted to get the box, would end up with it?”

“Sorry, I phrased that poorly. I don’t think she abandoned the box so that someone would find the earring. That wouldn’t work.”

Keras paused, seemingly considering how to explain. “I think she left the box for some other reason, and if I can get this to work, it might help tell me why. It uses sound magic. Maybe she kept the other earring, or maybe she even stored a message inside. Problem is, one of our other friends made this, not me. And she made lots of them — with different passwords.”

“As interesting as that is,” Derek cut in, “Is it useful to us right now? We have a short time to come up with a gift for Deni, and I’m seeing some prime candidates here, assuming any of it is useful.”

Keras closed his hand around the earring. “This is personally valuable to me, but it would have no use as a gift. There are plenty of communication items in your magic shops. As for the other items, none of them belong to you. They belong to Wrynn.”

Derek shrugged. “Provided she’s still alive. Death would be the simplest explanation for why she doesn’t have the box, yes?”

Keras gave Derek a sharp look. “Simplest, but not the most likely. When last we met, Wrynn was about my equal in a fight, and vastly more flexible. I’d give her better than even odds against one of your visages. It would take a great many enemies to threaten her.”

“Or the rigors of age.” Derek started to lean down toward one of the daggers. Marissa smacked his hand away.

“Yer bein’ a jerk, m’lord.”

I tensed for a moment — I didn’t know if Derek was going to take being insulted in his own home well — but fortunately, he just laughed.

“Oh, Keras knows I’m just teasing.”

Keras continued to glare.

Derek made a forced smile. “Well, regardless of Wrynn Jaden’s status, I think a bit of pragmatism might be appropriate here. She abandoned this years ago. Clearly she couldn’t need the contents that badly.”

I turned my head to Keras. “Derek has a point. We probably need these items a great deal more than she does right now. Not even necessarily for gifts. If we’re going to the tower and these might be useful...”

Keras closed his eyes, then shook his head a moment later. “Very well. I recognize most of these, and I can tell you what those do. For the ones I don’t recognize, we’ll need someone to identify them.”

“I can arrange for a Diviner to visit,” Derek chimed in happily.

“Once we’ve determined the functions, I will loan some of these items out, with the understanding that they all belong to Wrynn. If we end up trading something as a gift to this Sheridan to heal Sera,” he turned his head toward Sera. “Sera will owe me something comparable to pay Wrynn back.”

Sera gave a curt nod.

“Good.” He turned to Derek. “Similarly, if any loaned items are broken or go missing, I’ll expect them to be replaced.”

“That’s quite acceptable. And, for what it’s worth, I have quite a trove of items myself from my climbing days. They’re not all here, of course, but I have a few things lying about that might interest you. Perhaps we can arrange for some trades?”

“I will consider it. I have some idea of which items Wrynn would be more willing to part with, but I don’t wish to presume too much on her behalf.”

“Fine, fine. For now, tell us what you know?”

Keras nodded and sat down next to the magic items pile.

He picked up one of the daggers first. It had a wavy blade, the kind I’d always associated with dark rituals in old stage plays. “Couple of Wrynn’s backup weapons here. This is a nasty one. Makes its own poison.”

Keras set it back down, picking up the second one. “Don’t recognize this one. I can sense a connection with the Dominion of Flame, though.”

“How does that work?” I considered my question, then added, “I mean, your sense. I didn’t think you could see auras.”

“I can’t.” Keras put the dagger down. “But I can feel some of them, especially for types of mana I’m familiar with. The sensation varies based on the specific type of mana. I can feel warmth from the dagger, even when I’m not touching it, and I know it’s not physically that hot. My aura is sensing the flame inside and sending me a signal, which feels like heat.”

“That’s not all that different from how I can sense auras,” Derek added. “Many attuned with hand or leg attunements eventually develop a sense like that. But we can’t sense the mana from anything unless it’s inside our shrouds.”

Patrick moved over to sit next to Keras. “Uh, I don’t want to presume, but if that’s a fire dagger, is there any chance I might be able to borrow it? You know, just for a little while?”

“You’re an Elementalist, correct?”

Patrick nodded in reply.

“No, not this, then. None of the daggers.”

Patrick looked like Keras had just thrown those daggers at a puppy. “...Oh, okay. Sorry, I guess.”

“You don’t want a dagger as an Elementalist, unless it’s a last resort. Don’t want you thinking about one of these as an option. In a real fight, if someone gets that close, they’re more likely to use it against you than you are to use it to your advantage. You want something with range. Either a true ranged weapon, like a bow, or something with physical reach.”

Patrick looked back up. “...But we don’t have anything like that, do we?”

“Not in Wrynn’s pile, no. But these spires seem to have magic weapons all over the place.”

“Yeah, I guess. Just not sure I’ll make it far enough in the year to get back in there.”

Keras frowned. “Is this academy that difficult?”

Marissa jumped in. “Quite a difficult one, m’lord Keras. Very few make it to the second year, and fewer still graduate.”

That was...a bit of an exaggeration, but it wasn’t going to make me look any worse, so I didn’t correct it.

Keras nodded thoughtfully. “All right, so you need an edge. I have some extra weapons, but they’re not in Valia. Maybe I could bring you one before the end of the year, if there’s time.”

I thought about that. “Keras, we were talking about trying to enchant something for Deni together before. Maybe we could practice by trying to enchant a weapon for Patrick?”

Keras turned to look at me, then to Patrick, taking in Patrick’s wide-eyed look of hope. “Sure, sure. I can see this means a lot to you.”

I considered options. “I have a saber I enchanted with some basic transference sorcery that we could work on improving?”

“I have a tougher time working with things that are already enchanted. Too much of a risk that I’d damage them. But I’ve got another idea. Sera, pass me the silver bar next to you.”

Sera found a silvery-looking bar in the stack of metal bars and passed it over. I’d just...assumed that it was made out of something more mundane, like a type of steel. A silver bar was worth a relative fortune.

Another glance told me that there weren’t any bars of gold, sadly.

Keras turned the bar over in his hands, feeling the weight. “This should do.” He glanced over at me. “Corin, you wanted to see some of my type of sorcery. Watch and learn.”

As I watched, I realized he wasn’t just flipping the bar over.

He was rolling it between his hands. Reshaping it, like flour dough.

The metal rippled in his hands, never fully turning to liquid, but shimmering enough that it looked almost gelatinous.

Marissa’s jaw dropped wide open as she processed the same thing that I was.

He moved his hands again, laying the bar on the floor, and took two fingers to draw a portion of it downward.

He plunged his fingers into the metal, piercing it without resistance, and pulled sections to the side.

He was making a hilt.

Derek leaned closer. “Silver? Pretty, but isn’t that a bit impractical for a weapon? It’ll break almost as easily as you’re molding it.”

“This is only the first part.” Keras continued to weave the metal between his fingers, beginning to roll the bottom section of the bar into a cylindrical shape between his hands. “When I’m finished, it won’t be silver. It won’t be steel, either. It will be something greater.”

His hands moved the material easily, but the work continued for minutes. It was probably close to an hour before he finished. Not one of us looked away.

I knew of metal magic. The God Beast of Dalenos was associated with the metal element, and I’d heard of a Forgemaster attunement that could use metal magic.

I’d never heard of anything like this. I’d never dreamed of anyone working metal with such ease.

Keras had the basic shape of a hilt in minutes, but he worked with diligence, hardening some sections while he made others pliable. When the pommel was complete, he traced runes in the air, which burned into the metal. Each letter was only the thickness of a fingernail, and he fit dozens upon the surface.

It was when Keras was sculpting the crossguard that a look of recognition crossed Patrick’s face and he uttered a word in wonder. “Dawnbringer.”

Keras turned to Patrick with an expression of surprise. “You recognize her?”

Patrick nodded reverently. “I’ve read about the Six Sacred Swords since I was a child. I know this isn’t the real thing, but even seeing something that looks like one of them...it’s beautiful.”

Keras grinned. “I’m not done yet. Pass me three of Wrynn’s gold regals — those are the coins with the holes in the center.”

Sera passed the coins over, and Keras turned them over in his hand. “Make that five total. Pass me two more.”

As Sera moved to comply, Keras began to roll the gold coins in his hands. He was making them into round sections like he’d done with the handle, but he made them much thinner.

He’s making wire, I realized. He didn’t wrap the wire around the grip like I’d expected, though. He started pressing it against the silver of the crossguard, then weaving it through the silvery metal like thread.

Keras was drawing letters in a golden script, stretching the writing across the full surface. I couldn’t read a word of it, but it looked like yet another language. Maybe it was another form of runes, but I’d never seen runes interconnected in a cursive format like this writing was.

Either way, the result was beautiful. I’d never been one for the aesthetics of a weapon, but the gold-on-silver was a good look, and there was something ephemerally pleasing about how Keras was weaving it.

It was beautiful, like the echo of something transcendent. Something lost.

Keras turned his head toward the metal pile. “I’ll need another of the silver bars. It’s time to forge the blade. This will take some time, so feel free to rest or eat if you need to. It’s not going to be that interesting.”

We all stayed, of course.

He folded the metal bar in his hands, flattening it, stretching it into the shape of a blade. Then he folded it over, time and time again, in a process I assumed was some sort of analogue to folding steel for a sword blade. I was no expert blacksmith, but I’d heard of the concept. I didn’t think it applied to silver, but he’d mentioned that the metal would no longer be silver when he was done.

Normally, when faced with new magic, I’d have a million questions.

And I did here, too. In my mind. But I couldn’t bring myself to utter them. Keras didn’t seem to have any difficulty concentrating, but it seemed inappropriate to interrupt. Like stopping a brilliant singer to ask about the meaning of a particular line.

So, I waited, and I watched.

I didn’t forget my questions, of course. I was still me. There would be time for magic theory later.

True to his word, Keras worked for hours on forging the blade. Like with the hilt, he wove gold into the blade, tracing a gleaming wave straight through the center, stopping a few inches from the tip. He mirrored it perfectly on the opposite side.

It had a small protrusion in the bottom that he inserted into the hilt, and when the metal met, it rippled and merged. When he was finished, the weapon looked to be forged of a single piece of metal. There were no cracks, no seams.

When the weapon looked finished, Keras closed his eyes, placing two fingers against the sword’s blade just above the hilt. A single rune burned into the surface, glowing gold.

When his eyes opened, the blade was glowing a faint golden hue.

He turned the weapon over, holding it by the blade, and offered it toward me. “Your turn.”

I accepted the sword by the hilt, staring blankly. I’d been so stunned by the whole process that I’d almost forgotten that we were going to try to combine our sorcery. “...right. Can you tell me what your enchantment does?”

“Nothing other than make it glow, so far. I’ve just opened a connection with it. I also changed the way the metal itself works, but I wouldn’t call that an enchantment. It’s not using mana anymore; I altered the properties of the silver and gold. It’ll be stronger than steel and lighter than silver. I need you to put some mana in there so I can actually have something to work with, and you can also add any additional functions you want.”

I nodded. “I can do that. Let me get my tools.”

I sat the sword down reverently, heading upstairs and retrieving my etching rod.

When I got back, people were having food. I didn’t blame them. Keras had been at it for something like six hours now.

After a few moments of deliberation, I joined everyone else in a dinner break. That gave me some time to think about what I wanted, and to talk to Patrick.

“What do you want this sword to do, Patrick?”

He blinked. “I, uh, don’t know. This is just so...it’s amazing. I never thought I’d actually get a sword like this. I mean, I thought you might enchant something for me, and that’s great and all, but...”

I laughed. “Don’t worry. I get it. I’m no Keras — at least not yet. It’s not every day you get a sword forged with ancient magic by...” I glanced at Keras, who was biting into a sandwich. “I still have no idea what you are, Keras.”

“Just me. I hope.” His words could have easily been a joke, but it didn’t sound that way. He sounded...introspective, maybe.

I let the subject drop. He’d tell us more about himself when he was ready.

Besides, he looked ravenous. He was on his third sandwich and showed no sign of slowing down.

I turned back to Patrick. “You said you recognized this as being similar to an existing weapon. Do you want it to be like that?”

“Wow. Uh, yeah, that’d be amazing. If you could do that?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know what it does. I’ve heard of Dawnbringer, but legends often get exaggerated. I sincerely doubt it can burn entire cities with the Dawnfire’s light.”

Keras very nearly choked on his food. “...They say that about Dawn?”

Patrick beamed. “Oh, yeah! Like, there’s this story about how Ishyeal Dawnsglow used it to wipe out an entire legion of monsters that came out of the Tortoise Spire.”

Keras frowned, set his food down, took a drink, and then just stared silently at his plate for a moment.

That was odd.

I tried to pick the conversation back up. “Okay, light powers. I don’t think I can do that. Light mana isn’t something I can use. Keras?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, light. Sure. I can do light mana, but I can’t actually charge a weapon with mana the way you can. I can’t enchant weapons the way you can in general.”

“What’s that rune on the hilt, then?”

“Something different. It lets me sense the blade and channel mana into it — but not in the way an Enchanter would. I can use it to alter the structure of the mana for the weapon, but if there’s no mana inside, I can’t do anything with it. And I can’t make runes that generate mana like you can.”

Patrick looked thoughtful. “So, it’s like what Derek does with his weapons?”

Derek must have heard his own name and taken it as a signal to jump in. “Not really. I contract with creatures then bind them to weapons, magical weapons or otherwise. It sounds like Keras is more or less binding himself to the weapon?”

Keras nodded. “That’s a good way of putting it. Temporarily, in this case, so I can make modifications after Corin does his part.”

“And you needed to make the bond before I did my part?” I asked.

“I didn’t strictly need to, it’s just that my magic has a tendency to be...damaging. If I have a connection in place before you make the enchantments, it should lower the risk of something going wrong.”

I didn’t quite understand what he meant by his magic being damaging, but he sounded like he was being deliberately vague, so I didn’t press the issue. When I’d seen him fight, his magic was clearly specialized for offense, so maybe it had something to do with that.

I finished eating and brought down my books of runes, thinking it over.

I set the first book down and flipped it open. “Okay, I think I know what we need to do. I’ve never actually done this before, but there are instructions in here for ‘priming’ a rune so that someone else can contribute mana to it. That’s how an enchanter normally makes something like, say, a fire sword, even though he doesn’t have fire mana.”

I traced a rune on the page. “Basically, I draw a rune, then I fill it with a ‘container’ of gray mana. Then the other person channels mana into the rune, and when it hits the capacity of the container, theoretically the rune should activate. The important part is to stop channeling more mana into it when the container is full, otherwise you break the container and bad things happen.”

Derek walked over. “It’s not hard, actually. I’ve helped Enchanters on several occasions. Whoever is contributing the mana to the runes should be able to feel the gray mana straining when you’re reaching the capacity. Just don’t push too much mana in there too fast. When the rune starts to glow, you’re done.”

I was sincerely grateful for that knowledge. This whole thing was sounding a little intimidating. I’d hoped to enchant cooperatively at some point, but this scale was a little bigger than I’d imagined for my first project. “Okay, thank you, Derek. I think what I’m going to do is draw runes for holding light mana, recharging light mana over time, and a maximum capacity for absorbing light mana. That combination of runes is fairly standard.”

“Light and fire,” Keras interjected.

I turned to him. “Light and fire?”

He nodded. “If we’re making this similar to Dawnbringer, her rays use both light and fire. And you’re going to want some enhancement and transference, too.”

“I can do the same thing for those, but just to be clear, these won’t actually do anything other than put mana in the weapon and store it. I’m not sure how to let it do Dawnbringer’s fire attack.”

Keras shook his head. “You won’t have to. Once it has all the right types of mana in it, I should be able to give the weapon the functions it needs.”

I frowned. “I thought you couldn’t make runes on your own, though.”

“That’s what the bond is for. Well, one element of it, anyway. Once there’s mana in there, I can work with it. And, to be clear, I can make runes. They just work somewhat differently.”

Okay, fair enough.

I started flipping through my books, finding all the relevant runes and thinking. “How high of a capacity do you want on these?”

Keras shrugged. “As high as you can go?”

I’d expected that. “Best I can handle is Sunstone, even if I’m just doing the containers. And the containers are only a tiny fraction of the total mana necessary for the enchantment.”

“Can you put multiple containment runes on it for a higher capacity?”

I raised a hand to my lips, considering how best to explain. “Yes, but any individual spell effect can only draw from one capacity rune at a time. That means the strongest spells an item can cast can’t take up more mana than what a single capacity rune would hold. Also, you need a separate recharging rune for each capacity rune, and that gets expensive and time consuming.”

“Okay, that’s good to know. I won’t put any spells on it that take up more than the mana capacity of one container, then. If you can handle the containers, I can handle the rest. We can upgrade the rune to a higher level when you get powerful enough to do that. At that point, I can enhance the sword’s other capabilities.”

“Where should I put the runes?”

Keras pointed at an empty section on the crossguard, just above the grip. “Here. You’re going to use that tool?”

I nodded.

“I’ll make it easier.”

He touched the crossguard. The metal softened.

“That’s a pretty amazing trick.”

With the softened metal, it was easy to etch the runes into the surface. When I was done, Keras waved his hand again, cleaning up any imperfections in my cuts and hardening the metal again.

I was a little jealous. Enchanting would be much easier if I could do that.

But etching was always the easy part, anyway. Now came the hard part.

I checked the exact amount of gray mana necessary to make a container for each rune, then got to work.

And for once, my work was easier than I expected.

Making the containers in the runes was very nearly identical to making a mana crystal, just in a rune shape instead of a prism shape. It was even easier in some respects, since the containers were designed to be hollow and extremely thin.

The total mana requirement for a Sunstone-level container was 7.2 mana, or one fiftieth of a Class 3 mana crystal. I’d only managed to make crystals that held three mana before, but I’d made them in droves without much effort once I’d gotten the hang of it.

This was harder, but within my capabilities. A Citrine-level shell would have been six times more, though, and I didn’t think I had a chance of handling that.

And certainly not twelve of them in a day.

I made six shells, took a break for an hour, and then made six more.

When I was done, Keras tried to charge one.

It shattered instantly.

There was a flicker of light in the rune, but fortunately, no explosion.

Keras muttered a curse I didn’t recognize, and I rebuilt it. Then he tried again. This time, a bit more slowly.

After a minute, his jaw had tensed, and he was breathing heavily...but the rune began to glow.

Keras pulled his hand away, taking a deep breath. “One down.”

Eleven to go.

I let Keras charge the other two light runes before I got an idea. “Hey, Patrick.”

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you try charging one of the fire runes? I mean, at least part way. It’s going to be your sword.”

“C...can I?” He looked positively gleeful at the idea.

“Yeah, but to be clear, you’re not going to be able to fill it all the way up. These are Sunstone-level runes. I’m doing the easy part, which is only seven mana each. Keras has been putting three hundred and sixty mana into them.”

I didn’t say it, but Keras didn’t look any more tired than when he’d started. The only stress for him seemed to come from channeling the mana slowly enough to avoid breaking the runes or the weapon itself.

I handed Patrick the mana watch. “Check your total.”

“Uh, it says 49?”

“Okay, good. Just about the same as my attunement. We’ll get you stronger, but for now, let’s be safe. You’re going to channel 30 mana in there, then stop. Then Keras will handle the remaining 330.”

Patrick grinned. “Got it.”

Derek sat down across from us. “You know what? I can help, too. I’ll finish the fire runes so Keras can rest. Assuming you all want me to.”

Patrick clapped his hands together. “More the merrier!”

Keras gave Derek a nod. “I’d be grateful for your help. The fewer runes I have to handle myself, the fewer chances I have to break it.”

Patrick seemed to struggle to put enough mana into the rune at first. I couldn’t blame him, he’d probably never used more than a couple points to activate an item, and casting a spell probably felt completely different.

But, all told, it only took him a few minutes to get the thirty mana into the first fire rune.

Derek finished the rest of it in under a minute. And, of course, he didn’t look tired at all.

In spite of his usual attitude, though, I don’t think Derek was just trying to show off the fact that he could help as easily as Keras could. When he smiled afterward and shook Patrick’s hand, I saw true comradery there.

Making something, it seemed, brought out the best in all of us.

Transference mana was last. I was tempted to try to do some of it myself, but after thirteen runes at 7.2 mana each, my hand was burning pretty bad. Taking the break in the middle had been smart, but it hadn’t been long enough for me to completely recover from that level of strain. I could have drawn from my mental mana, but I didn’t want to.

So, I let Keras handle it. He seemed to have an easier time with these, going through them faster without breaking a single one.

And then it was done. Twelve runes glowing on the hilt.

“Okay, great.” Keras took a breath. “Now, let’s get the other side.”

I stared at him incredulously. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all. Need to make sure the sides of the sword match. And besides, I’m going to need more mana to work with.”

I sighed. “Fine, fine. But first, I need a break. Can you tell us what the rest of the items do?”

“Fine, fine. Let’s go.”

We headed back over to the item pile.

That foreboding looking dagger with the black aura?

It was gone.

I stared at the spot where it’d been lying last. Keras was staring right along with me.

“That’s bad,” I offered.

“Really bad,” he agreed.

***

We spent the next hour or so searching the house for the missing weapon, but with no success.

Patrick voiced what I suspected most of us were wondering. “How’d it disappear? Daggers don’t just get up and walk away...do they?”

“More than likely, it teleported.” Keras knelt near the spot the dagger had been laying on the floor, turning his head toward Derek. “I take it the wards on this building are for keeping things out, not for keeping anything inside?”

“Right. It didn’t vanish instantly, though. That’s unusual.”

Keras stood up. “Probably was waiting for us to be distracted, so it could get a head start on us.”

“You’re saying it was intelligent?” I asked.

“Almost certainly. It was one of the few magical items in the box I didn’t recognize at all. Maybe it was dangerous enough that Wrynn didn’t want to tell me she had it, or maybe she just got it recently. Either way, your guesses about it are as good as mine.”

Patrick frowned. “Could it be Luck’s Touch?”

I hadn’t heard of that one. “What’s that?”

Keras answered. “Intelligent shape-shifting weapon, usually associated with legends of Aayara Haven, the Lady of Thieves. And yes, it’s plausible Wrynn could have had Luck’s Touch. She and Aayara don’t get along, but Luck’s Touch is notoriously fickle. If he wanted to get on Aayara’s nerves, working with Wrynn for a while would be one way to accomplish that.”

I nodded. “Okay. Any other possibilities?”

“There are numerous intelligent weapons out there. It could very easily have been one bound with a monster, like the ones I use,” Derek offered.

Patrick looked thoughtful. “Maybe it was the Midnight Star?”

Keras gave Patrick an inquisitive look. “Doubtful, that’s supposed to have three blades, sort of like a trident. Surprised you’ve even heard about that, or Luck’s Touch for that matter. Those are legends from my own homeland.”

“Ah, I like to study weapons and monsters in general. Stories of those go back to before the exodus to Kaldwyn.”

“Hrm. Good to know. Derek, any chance you know a Diviner that can track the destination of a teleportation spell?”

“Of course, but without something tied to the item, tracking it will be virtually impossible. A physical description is insufficient.”

I thought about that. “Would the aura from the weapon have seeped into the wood where it was lying?”

“No, not in just a few hours. If it’d been sitting there for weeks, maybe.”

“Beggin’ your pardon m’lords, but if it teleported, would that’ve left a trail?”

We all looked at Marissa, surprised that she’d interjected. She was usually quiet when Derek was involved in a conversation.

Derek frowned. “That...might work. I can ask. Let’s finish cataloguing the rest of this, then I’ll go find a Diviner. I’d rather know what we’re dealing with before anything else wanders off.”

Keras gestured at the remaining items. “Nothing too exciting here, I’m afraid.”

He lifted up the mirror first. “Another communication device. Works like the earrings, but with images rather than sound. I would have been more excited about it, but I have one of my own, and it doesn’t seem to work at all. I’ll try to get this to function, but my best guess is that the paired mirror is out of range.”

Keras set that aside and picked up one of the rings. It was silver with a design of a leaf, or maybe a feather. “Jumping ring. Motion— sorry, you’d call it transference magic. Fairly straightforward, it lets you jump much further.”

I looked at the ring with renewed interest. “Further? Does it trigger when you jump and add an additional burst of force, or do you trigger it manually somehow?”

“Not sure, never used this one, just saw Wrynn with it. I think you activate it manually, so I suppose that adds a bit of flexibility, but a little bit of a cost as well.”

I nodded at that. “Okay, thanks.”

He picked up the other ring, turned it over, and set it back down. This one was gold with a single blue gemstone. “Not sure about this one. We’ll have to have the Diviner look it over.”

Next, a necklace with a spiral-shaped translucent crystal. “This is easily the strongest item in the bunch. Surprised she left it in the box. It blocks most mind-affecting spells.” He smirked at Derek. “I can think of a few people who might need something like this.”

Derek folded his arms. “One time, Keras. It happened one time.”

Keras shrugged a single shoulder. “Well, if you don’t think you’ll need it.”

Derek leaned over and snatched the necklace out of Keras’ hand. “Fine. I’m borrowing it. We can talk about a trade later.”

“Thought so.” Keras laughed, picking up the last of the glowing items — the hairpin. “Ah, yeah, Wrynn loves these. I’m sure everyone’s heard stories about hairpins being used as emergency lockpicks? Well, that rarely works well in practice. Except if you have a magic hairpin.”

Now that was interesting, maybe even more than the necklace. I leaned a little closer. “Think it’d work on chests or doors in the tower?”

“Don’t know. I usually just break those. But since Katashi seemed upset about my habit, it may be worth trying this out. You want to borrow it?”

I nodded hastily. “You bet I do. Also, the jumping ring.”

He blinked. “Really?”

“Definitely. Mobility is one of my biggest weaknesses, especially compared to someone like you or Derek. I still wouldn’t be able to keep up with you, but I might slow you down a bit less.”

Keras handed over the ring and the pin.

“Thanks.”

My response was subdued, but inside, I was positively gleeful. Even if I was just getting to borrow them, I loved having new magical items to play with. I didn’t know if the hairpin would actually work when I needed it to, but I could already think of several rooms where the ring might have helped.

“Before I forget to ask, how do I actually use the hairpin?”

“Oh, just stick it inside the lock. If you touch the tumblers, it should force them to realign.”

Huh. That implied it had some kind of detection magic built in, otherwise it couldn’t know how the locks worked and how to realign them.

Fascinating.

I wanted to test that immediately, but I had a feeling Derek wouldn’t like me tinkering with his locks.

Instead, I slipped on the ring. “Anyone want to make sure I don’t fall off the roof?”

Patrick laughed. “Oh, I have to see this. Sera, Mara, you coming?”

We headed up to the roof, which was definitely the best place to practice untested transportation magic.

Definitely.

***

I managed to avoid knocking myself off the roof the first time I used the ring.

Not the second time, though.

“Oh, goddess! Levitate!” Patrick shouted.

...And I floated safely down to the ground.

My friends gazed over the edge, and I waved up at them sheepishly. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

The amount that the ring pushes me is based on the amount of mana that I send into the ring. It’s probably converting gray mana into transference, as Keras mentioned, or possibly air. Maybe a combination of both.

Which means, if I use a little more from down here...

I jumped, then activated the ring, and flew back onto the roof.

My descent was slower than it should have been, even without Patrick’s intervention. Apparently, whoever built the ring was smart enough to realize that jumping high would result in falling from great heights.

Still, I appreciated Patrick’s quick thinking when I’d fallen. A fall wouldn’t have killed me either way — my sigils and ring of regeneration would have saved me — but it sure could have hurt.

I landed among my friends with a smile. “I could get used to this.”

A bit more tinkering gave me a better idea of the ring’s intended uses...and maybe a few other options.

After that, it was time to try out something I’d been waiting even longer to tinker with.

“Patrick, come over here.”

“Sure!”

“Take off your glove.”

He frowned, but complied. “Did I do something wrong?”

Oops, did the social failure thing again. He probably thinks that’s symbolic or something.

“No, no. I want to try out my new attunement and see if I can make you more powerful.”

His expression brightened. “Oooh! Am I the first one?”

I nodded. “Yep, haven’t tried it on anyone else yet.”

I considered explaining my logic about Marissa and Sera having just received similar infusions of mana from other sources, but after considering it, I realized that would just diminish his happiness at being the first one I picked.

He stuck his hand closer. “Okay, let’s do this. Hit me with all you’ve got.”

I grinned, checking my mana watch. 65/84. I’d recovered almost all of my mana while we’d rested, and then used a bit of it again to tinker with the ring. My hand was still hurting, but it was tolerable for the moment.

I turned my Enchanter attunement on. It’d help me monitor his aura to see what happened.

With that done, I took Patrick’s hand. I sent a surge of mana through my attunement into his. The aura around my hand flashed, then glowed white while the attunement was active.

That was unexpected — it didn’t glow like that when I was just enchanting an item. The aura must have been the purification function at work.

From my side, it didn’t feel any different from the usual tingling sensation of sending my mana into an object. As I spent more time, the tingling would give way to burning, and then throbbing along with my pulse.

I didn’t know what it would feel like to him, though. “Does that hurt at all?”

“No, but it’s...maybe a little uncomfortable. It feels like my hand is filling up with water or something and that the water wants to get out.”

Not a bad analogy for what I was doing to the attunement, really. “I’ll just charge it a little more, then—”

His aura flickered, and his knees buckled for a moment. He stumbled away from me, his aura shifting from transparent to crimson.

The rune on his hand changed.

“W...woah!”

Marissa caught him before he could fall over.

I stepped closer. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just, uh, wow. I think I need to spend some of this.”

Marissa helped Patrick stand back up, then he turned his hand upward and cast a blast of lightening into the air.

He took a deep breath and his aura faded back from Carnelian down to Quartz.

His rune shifted back, too, changing to the simpler Quartz style.

I patted him on the shoulder. “Better now?”

Patrick nodded. “Yeah...that was just more intense than I expected. What happened?”

Oh, right. He couldn’t see what I could see. “You hit Carnelian for just a second.”

“Really? That is so amazing! Can you do it again?”

I found myself grinning, infected by his enthusiasm. “Yeah, but I’m not supposed to push someone over their maximum capacity more than once per week. We didn’t really push you to your limit — that’d be temporarily doubling your mana — but I don’t think we should risk breaking any rules until I have a better idea of what I’m doing.”

“Aww. I finally hit Carnelian and I barely got to do anything with it.” He laughed. “But it was still great! Thank you, Corin.”

“No problem.” I subconsciously wiped my hand on my shirt. Touching someone else still wasn’t easy for me. The moment of experimentation had overridden my reticence toward touch, but now the aftermath was hitting me hard.

“It only took me a few moments, so you’re already very close. You should hit Carnelian permanently soon. If you haven’t hit it by next week on your own, I’ll give you a boost once a week until you get there.”

“That sounds amazing! Thanks!” He stretched his arms. “I think I could still use some more exercise, though. You want to practice a bit?”

I shook my head. “Think I need to rest for a few.”

Really, I just needed a few minutes of not dealing with people.

“Maybe one of the other two will spar with you?”

Marissa waved him over. I found a corner as far away as possible and sat down to watch.

Sera sat down next to me in silence.

She was intruding on my isolation...but I found myself being bothered less than I expected.

Maybe it was just because I didn’t need to talk to her, but Sera didn’t bother me the same way that other people did, even among my friends. I didn’t know why, but at the moment, I didn’t really need to think about it.

I did, however, think about other things in those next minutes of silence. Like how much fun it had been to spend some time experimenting with my friends, even if it had ultimately proven to be too intense to continue.

It also made me realize that I’d taken an uncharacteristic risk by tinkering with the ring on the roof. True, I’d nearly blown myself up when I’d first built my gauntlet, but I’d taken what I’d considered to be reasonable precautions.

This time? My main precaution was bringing my friends.

And it’d worked. Even if the ring hadn’t had a built in safety function, Patrick would have saved me. I’d trusted them, and they’d helped me.

That was...a surprisingly good feeling.

Especially after everything I’d been through with the tower.

Jin came back to my mind without an express invitation, and Tristan quickly followed.

There was a part of me that felt like any trust that I formed was just going to be betrayed.

I shoved that part of me aside as hard as I could. One moment of joy couldn’t banish everything that had happened, but it was a good start, and I was going to bask in it for a while.

Adding to my own positivity was Patrick’s obvious awe at the replica of Dawnbringer that we’d been working on. It wasn’t quite finished yet, but it was already obviously Patrick’s favorite thing in the world.

He was having the time of his life just swinging it at Marissa, even if she was deftly dodging or deflecting every strike before it could connect.

It was good that we hadn’t actually finished the sword yet, because I would have had to step in and stop him from using it if the weapon was more dangerous. I didn’t trust shield sigils to stop whatever crazy magic Keras ended up imbuing it with.

Patrick nearly ended up going off the roof, too, before their sparring match was over.

For a while, Sera and I just watched Patrick and Marissa’s sparring practice. After a bit, though, she passed me a note.

Thanks for working so hard to find something to trade for me. With all these items, we’ll probably have something Sheridan wants.

I wasn’t so certain about that. If anything, the intelligent dagger that had...wandered off seemed like the most likely candidate for something that would be considered forbidden knowledge.

“No problem. I’ll keep working on this. And even if Sheridan doesn’t want to help, I’ll keep looking until I find someone who will.”

I have some ideas, too. You don’t need to make this the only thing you focus on. I’m sure you still want to figure out what Tristan has been up to.

In truth, I’d barely been focusing on that at all since I’d learned he was alive.

It still hurt too much to think about.

Couldn’t he have told me sooner?

Five years. I still wanted to know what had happened to him...but the Tristan who had written to me in that book wasn’t what I’d imagined.

I’d imagined that I’d find his body after many years of searching and beg the goddess to restore him to life. Or, if I was truly lucky, maybe he’d just be a prisoner in need of rescue. I’d known the latter case was unlikely, but I’d hoped for it, since it would be so much simpler.

But this Tristan?

He sounded confident. Almost pleased with what was happening.

In truth, he sounded like Tristan usually did, and that was the worst part.

I hadn’t even checked the book again to see if he’d sent a reply when I’d asked for proof. I didn’t need to. I knew it was him.

I knew the arrogance, the veiled insults toward people he didn’t respect. Every word of that letter was Tristan’s signature.

The relief that I’d hoped for along with that confirmation simply wasn’t there.

Was it horrible of me to be unhappy that Tristan was happy? That my fantasy of rescuing him was unnecessary?

A part of me was still clinging to the hope that there was something amiss that I’d need to fix. I didn’t have the whole story about the situation, of course.

Maybe he had a good reason for everything he was doing.

But I feared the possibility that he didn’t, and because of that, I’d stopped looking.

That was unacceptable.

“You’re right, I do want to know what happened to Tristan. But you’re right here, and helping you is a higher priority. I’m still going to keep looking for him, but now that we know he’s alive, it’s nothing I need to rush.”

It was a coward’s answer, at least in part. But Sera nodded, seeming to accept it.

We looked back to the fight after that, but my mind was elsewhere.

Tristan... What are you really up to?

Chapter VI – Two Heads are Better than One

I tried to bury my worries about Tristan in my studies, but my mind kept wandering.

How had he survived?

Did Mother and Father know?

And, perhaps most importantly, why was he involved in kidnapping Tenjin?

I needed to talk to him directly at some point. He had ample chances to tell me about his situation through the book if he had wanted to. He’d even sent that hooded figure to talk to me in the spire.

That couldn’t have actually been him, could it?

Could his human body have been taken away?

I shook my head. It was much more likely that the creature I’d seen was some sort of solid illusion, like those created with the Shadow attunement.

I needed answers.

I reached under my bed and retrieved Trials of Judgment.

I’d been procrastinating about reading the Mysterious Book Entity’s reply to my question. I’d been afraid to face the possibility that it really was Tristan.

But that was absurd, and I knew it.

Why would I give up when I was finally this close to my goal?

I could do better than that.

I could be better than that.

I flipped open to the most recent page and looked for the Mysterious Book Entity’s latest reply.

Corin,

Your skepticism is warranted. In your position, I wouldn’t believe a presumably deceased family member was writing to me, either.

There are any number of other explanations, after all.

Perhaps I’m simply using the name “Tristan” to get inside your head, after having watched your behavior in the spires. Maybe I need to manipulate you for some sort of task.

But ask yourself first — why would I bother with a ruse on that scale?

What advantage would there be for me to cultivate a single student as an asset? Providing you with a legendary weapon and an escape from the spire?

The answer is obvious.

With my level of influence, there are clearly more powerful tools available.

So, there’s your logical answer. There’s no good reason for anyone else to be bothering.

But it’s still easy to argue that, perhaps, it was simply an issue of opportunity. Maybe I didn’t have the ability to place the book wherever I wanted, and it was your choices that led us to this discussion.

Maybe I’m simply taking advantage of what information I can glean about you.

I’ll offer you another form of proof, then.

When we were children, Father made an effort to introduce us to many prominent families.

He was an excellent performer, parading us as prodigies. Martial talents unlike any seen in a generation. We were winning children’s duels almost as soon as we could walk.

And while displaying our dubious talents, he made connections, and reacquainted himself with old friends. Friends in higher places than his own.

We were taught to be proper, to be polite, and to never say too much about the state of affairs at home.

The intent of it all was quite obvious, in retrospect. Our family’s flames had been fading since the war, and he hoped to secure our name through profitable marriages.

Do you remember Yunika? Perhaps you’ve seen her more recently than I have.

I remember how we used to talk about how perfect it was that she was my age and her sister was yours.

I’d joke that we could be “double brothers” if we married them both. You argued it would be “triple brothers”, since we’d be brothers by blood, and brothers by marriage twice-over.

Father would have been pleased if things had gone that way, I’m sure.

I remember Yunika. I think of her fondly at times. Other times, I regret that I had so little foresight. So little understanding of why Father introduced us to those girls in the first place, and what our fates might have been if things had gone the way he wanted.

So, yes.

I am your brother.

I have thought of you often in the years we have been apart.

In asking the Voice of the Tower about me, it is clear that you thought of me as well.

That pleases me, though it reflects a weakness in your character. You should have grown beyond me long ago.

Still, I must admit to a degree of satisfaction that I left a lasting mark.

It will make it easier for you to work for me when we are reunited, I think.

But I have gone on too long, and I have business to attend to.

Yes, I am Tristan Cadence.

I am your brother.

And I am alive.

I took a breath.

He always did have a flair for the dramatic.

Yunika. How long has it been since I’ve seen her?

I shook my head. Three years, at least.

I’d seen her sister more recently, at least from a distance. I’d kept it that way. The alternative was uncomfortable.

I lifted a pen and wrote a reply.

Dear Mysterious Brother Entity,

I believe you might be who you claim to be. You’ll excuse some continued skepticism until I see you in person.

I paused, uncertain.

What could I possibly say?

The answer was obvious, but difficult.

I missed you.

I paused again, debating.

But I am also deeply concerned.

You have implied a connection with what Orden was planning. For fear that others can read these messages, I will not write any details here.

If you are, in fact, working with the organization that was responsible for those things, I need to know why.

And if you believe I will work for you, or with you, I will need a firmer understanding of what I am getting into.

Do not take my help as a guarantee, my supposed brother.

I miss Tristan Cadence, and I love him.

I’ll decide when I meet you if you qualify to call yourself by that name.

Tell me how, where, and when I can find you.

I was debating writing more when I heard a knock on my bedroom door. I swiftly tucked the book away under my bed.

“Ey, Corin, it’s me.” Marissa’s voice.

I opened the door and waved. “Hey Mara. It already time for training?”

Marissa shook her head. “Naw, ain’t that. Was hopin’ you’d be willing to ‘elp me with a lil’ favor.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What sort of favor?”

“Need a bit o’ help with one of my exams. You got a few?”

I nodded. “Sure, but if it’s studying, I’m not sure I’m going to be all that useful. Patrick is much better about history and artifacts and such, and Sera is the expert on general magic.” I was probably the best versed with the spires themselves, but I didn’t think any of us had classes on those yet.

“Not studyin’, I’m afraid. Need an extra set of hands for one of my finals. Two person test, but I lost my partner.”

I frowned at that. “Lost?”

“Keri failed out of the semester. Someone figured ‘er out, I guess.”

“Figured her out?”

“Guess she was a spider, and turned ‘er in. She lost a whole bunch of points, so she got failed straight out.”

I hadn’t been paying much attention to Spider Division, but it sounded pretty brutal. “I hadn’t realized the spiders lost points if they got reported.”

“Yup. But they get extra points the longer they go without being found. Don’t know the details, teacher just told me a bit when he explained why my partner wasn’t showin’ up.”

I nodded at that. I’d missed my first chance to report spiders — it had apparently happened while I was out in the middle of nowhere with Keras after the incident with the spire. I’d have one more chance right before the end of the year, but I didn’t have enough information to go on to report anyone yet.

Right now, though, I had more pressing concerns. “Okay, what’s this exam? Don’t know if I’ll be able to help with it.”

“Oh, I think you will. It’s for Monster Hunting class.”

I blinked. “You have a Monster Hunting class?” I hadn’t even seen that on the list.

“Yup. It’s one of the ones the heavy combat students get.”

I was immediately a little jealous. I didn’t like actually killing things, but I assumed it would involve fighting illusory creatures like in our fake spire tests. That was both fun and good practice. Still, it seemed weird that she’d pick me for a heavy combat exam. “Wouldn’t Patrick be a better match? He’s got a combat attunement, and he tends to know a lot about monsters.”

“Yeah, but ‘ese out doin’ somethin’ already. Been goin’ out a lot lately.”

I nodded. “Maybe he’s out with Derek. Derek seems to go out practically every night.”

Marissa chuckled. “Doubt that Derek wants Patrick with ‘im while he’s goin’ to taverns lookin’ for lady friends, Corin.”

I blinked. “Is that what Derek’s doing? I just assumed he was...training, or something.”

“You’re adorable sometimes, Cadence. Anyway, test?”

I thought about her offer. “I mean, it sounds fun, but don’t you have any friends with combat attunements?”

She shook her head. “Most of ‘em already have teams. And Sera still ain’t in fightin’ shape.”

That last part was certainly true. “Okay, sure, I’ll help. What’s this test involve?”

Mara grinned. “Oh, yer gonna love this.”

***

I whistled in appreciation at the setup. We were north of the campus, in an area set aside for large-scale training exercises. We were only a few miles from the school proper, but it looked like we were in the middle of the wilderness. Tall trees stretched out in three directions, and the area in front of us was a hillside with only a single obvious entrance.

That entrance led into what appeared to be an abandoned mine. I could see a mine cart just inside, filled with rubble, and a track that the cart must have sat on at some point.

It was pitch black beyond that point, but Marissa held a lantern in her left hand, and I could see some unlit torches along the wall.

Before we’d been sent here, we’d been given a few instructions by her teacher. “In this scenario, you are investigating an abandoned silver mine in the Unclaimed Lands. The miners unearthed an underground passage, which led into a monster lair. One of the miners claimed they saw a glowing sword inside before they fled the area.”

“We supposed to clear out the monsters or get the sword?” Marissa asked.

“The sword is your primary objective,” the teacher explained. “Your secondary objective is to get out unharmed. Clearing the monsters out or otherwise securing the mine is a tertiary objective.”

I nodded at that. “Do we have any idea what types of monsters are in there?”

“None. The miners who survived saw only shadows.”

With that little information, we didn’t know exactly what to prepare for, so we’d have to think quickly once we found anything. After a few more minutes of preparation, the teacher had teleported us here to get started.

Marissa led the way into the mine. I followed close behind. I wasn’t allowed to use Selys-Lyann for this test, since I’d nearly killed myself in one of the tests with it. As such, took a few minutes to repair my demi-gauntlet by attaching the metal portion to a newly-purchased glove. Then I slipped the scabbard containing my transference sword onto my belt.

It was a little different from going into the spire, but I felt a familiar tension in my shoulders.

And I planned to approach the scenario in a similar way.

This should be good practice.

I had to duck down to avoid hitting my head on the low ceiling, and the light from a single lantern was far from ideal. Still, we had an easy enough time making it down the first corridor. It was wide enough for us to walk two abreast, but I stayed behind Mara for the time being, planning to support her with ranged attacks when we inevitably ran into something we had to fight.

Our first challenge, however, was a fork in the path. The path to our right led upward, and I could see some sort of light source in the distance. The left path led downward, into deeper darkness.

“Left or right?” I asked.

Mara frowned, glancing from side to side. “I’m nay sure. S’pose if monsters are in the dark, it’s the dark we should follow.”

I nodded at her logic. “We’ll probably want to explore both routes eventually, but we may as well start down there.”

“Right then.” Marissa led the way, her lantern seeming woefully insufficient.

As we descended further, I began to hear what sounded like running water, but I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination.

We continued until Mara raised a hand, gesturing for me to stop. “Down ‘ere.”

I paused, ducking and squinting. It took several moments before I could see what she was talking about — a hair-thin thread near ankle level. I blinked. “A tripwire?”

“Or something alike, aye. I see more of ‘em up ahead, too. Gonna have to watch our toes.”

I winced. My vision was far from great. “All right. We’ll take it slow.”

Mara stepped over the glimmering strand first, and I cautiously followed. I could see more of them up ahead, just like she said, crisscrossing the hallway and intersecting with each other.

I ducked under a patch of them, then the wires got thicker and thicker up ahead. That made them more obvious, but the passage was thinning, making it harder to avoid them.

We reached an area where the path narrowed to single-file and saw something thick and shiny on the ground ahead, surrounded in rubble. It was about as tall as the hallway...and about as wide, too. It was made of solid metal and covered in those tripwires.

Mara knelt down as we reached it. “It’s a door. Torn right off the hinges.” She glanced from side to side. “And by the looks of it, it was attached to solid rock.”

I blinked, examining the door with her. It was made out of metal and as thick as my arm. It looked like the type of thing I’d expect to see on a bank vault. I saw a few runes on the surface, too. They weren’t charged, but they were similar to the ones I used on a shield sigil. They must have reinforced the already solid door with magic when it was still intact.

It must have taken tremendous force to break it down.

Or, more likely, just break the rock around it and knock it over, I realized.

“Guess we’re up against something big. Or at least strong. An oni, maybe.”

Marissa kept going, and I cautiously followed.

“Oni?”

“Similar to an ogre, but a bit smarter. Generally scary looking, often wields an iron club. I don’t see an ogre being smart enough to lay wires like this, but an oni might.”

I glanced back at the door as we continued. There were an awful lot of strands in that particular area. They were extremely obvious, but there were so many of them that they were still difficult to avoid.

Maybe they were just there to distract us from something else? It was certainly possible.

We stepped and wove through a patch with a half-dozen strands at different angles, then crawled on the floor to avoid a section that took up the whole top of the passageway.

As we advanced, I realized a few important things.

First, it was strange that the strands were glimmering like they were metallic. I wasn’t an expert on tripwires, but that sounded like it was a bad idea in a place like this — the reflection on our light made them more obvious.

Second was that they didn’t seem to have any obvious anchors points in the floors or walls. No nails, no screws, nothing holding them into place.

Third, they didn’t seem to be attached to anything that would set off a trap or alarm. In fact, I didn’t see any traps or alarms at all. The only thing the strands connected to was each other.

It was that last bit that gave it away. “Uh, Mara? I don’t think these are tripwires.”

We could see the cavern opening up just ahead. Mara paused, turning her head toward me. “Oh?”

I thought I heard the slightest hint of movement up ahead. “I think they’re spider webs.”

“Spider...?”

She glanced back toward the large room, then threw herself to the side just in time to avoid a spray of green liquid coming from the center of the room.

I stepped back, avoiding the resulting puddle. That was good, because it sizzled and burned the stone.

Acid? That’s not good.

“Heh heh heh.” I heard a cackling coming from the room ahead of us, but I couldn’t see anything.

“Metallic webs...of course!” Marissa snapped her fingers. “It’s a jor...uh, joro... spider woman!”

I had pretty much no idea what she was talking about. I’d already fought one giant spider, though, and I had no desire to fight more.

Unfortunately, I could already see a handful of person-sized spiders descending from the roof of the cavern ahead. The webbing they were using wasn’t the metallic kind — that must have been from the other creature Mara was describing, but I couldn’t see that yet.

Beyond the spiders, I could see a raised section of stone with a single glowing green crystal on it.

“We fighting or leaving?” I asked.

“We’re going in,” she replied.

Then she rushed into the center of the room and punched a spider in the head.

“Fair.” I drew my sword and followed.

Something snagged my leg only a moment later.

I stumbled, but I’d been ready for this. I managed to keep my balance, sweeping my sword down and severing the web.

I spun, following the webbing to its source, and I saw her.

She was six feet tall, with black hair that reached all the way down to her feet. From the neck down, she was wrapped in that same metallic webbing that we’d seen on the walls, and she had a strand in her hand that I’d just severed.

“My, my. What a sharp sword you have there.” The woman smiled at me.

Meanwhile, Marissa grabbed another person-sized spider around the neck, lifted, and threw it over her shoulder. I heard a crack as it landed, then she kicked backward. It went limp.

Three more spiders descended around her as she moved toward the back of the chamber. “Resh it. Don’t talk to her, Cadence. She can compel men to do her bidding with her voice. Just stick her with something sharp.”

I looked back at the dark-haired woman. “Sorry, purely business. I’m sure you understand.”

I advanced, swinging my sword upward in an arc and sending a shockwave of force in her direction.

She waved a hand and the webbing around her rippled, shifting into a shield of webbing, blocking the attack. “Now that’s a rude way to start a conversation. I really wish you’d stop.”

I shook my head. “Nah.”

I took a few steps forward, barely avoiding another strand of webbing that was on the floor at ankle height.

Her shield of webbing shifted into a long blade. “So rude. You invade my lair, tear down my webs, fight my children...”

“...Cut you in half...” I continued, taking a gamble and jumping forward.

The room had a high ceiling. High enough, I guessed, that I could use the ring of jumping safely. So I did.

The sudden surge of transference mana sent me fifteen feet in the air, and I flew over the spider woman with my sword raised to strike as soon as I landed.

She spun, hurling a glob of webbing at me. I slashed that apart on instinct, and the force sent the halves apart, but some of it still brushed against me and stuck to my arms.

Disgusting, but fortunately, not enough to stop me.

I landed and swung again, this time directly at the spider monster.

She reshaped the webbing around her into a sword, blocking my own.

The transference mana around my blade began to cut through her webbing, but slowly.

And it had gotten stuck.

“You should really stop struggling. We could have such a good time together if you’d just listen to me.”

“Shut it, spider hag.” Marissa threw something — which I belatedly realized was the glowing green crystal I’d seen earlier — and it thumped into the spider woman’s forehead.

She recoiled at the impact, and a trickle of blood dripped from where it had struck. She wasn’t particularly resilient, at least.

“Ow!” The woman rubbed her face. “That really hurt!”

“No seducing my friend!” Mara absently punched another spider in the face, then side-stepped a jet of webbing that one of the others fired at her from its spinneret.

“I’m just trying to have a polite conversation!” The spider woman spat a glob of acid in Marissa’s direction. Marissa dodged, but stepped into a glob of webbing on the floor nearby, getting her foot stuck.

I jabbed my sword at the spider woman while she was distracted, but she managed to avoid the swing by stepping to the side. “What sort of conversation?”

The spider woman shook her head. “Well, for one thing, I was wondering if you’d be opposed to me eating you. I mean, it’s really hard to get quality food down here, and people are just the best. Don’t you think?”

“Eew!” Marissa started pulling at her stuck leg, then punched another spider that tried to bite her. “We are not letting you eat us!”

The spider woman reeled back like she was about to spit again. My sword was still stuck in her webbing, so I stepped in and punched her.

“Ow! So rude!” She pulled back, ripping my sword free from the webbing in the process. “Okay, fine, then! You could at least bring me a light snack. Maybe some kobolds?”

Kobolds?

Were those the source of the lighting upstairs?

“We are not feeding you people!” Marissa managed to tear herself free, but a spider slammed into her from behind, knocking her over.

It raised its head, ready to bite.

I spun and threw my sword directly through the creature’s open mouth.

The spider fell limp.

“Rude!” The spider woman complained. “That was one of my favorite kids!” She frowned. “I think. They’re so stupid. And so hard to tell apart.”

She turned toward me and reshaped the webbing around her into a net. “If you won’t bring me any kobolds, I’m just going to have to eat you whether you like it or not.”

I raised both hands. I was unarmed now, and I didn’t like my odds of fighting her in close quarters without a weapon.

And she was really chatty. Maybe I could play with that.

“I’m not going to bring you any sentient creatures to eat. And you can’t eat us. But I do, have, uh...” I reached into my bag. “Some beef jerky?”

She narrowed her eyes. “What is this...‘beef jerky’?”

I blinked. I hadn’t expected that to go anywhere.

Marissa pulled my sword out of the head of the spider I’d killed, making a sickening crunching sound. “She’s just distracting you so she can web you and eat you, Corin.”

It was probable that Marissa was right, but I also wasn’t in a good fighting position. Buying time was an advantage for the moment, not a disadvantage.

I wasn’t feeling any sort of weird magical attraction to this creature, and it did just seem to be asking for food.

I pulled some beef jerky out of my bag. “Preserved cow meat with a variety of spices. It’s a little tough, but the spice gives it a lot of flavor.

The spider woman sniffed the air. “It’s meat, though?”

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a little tough, because of how it’s been dried, but...”

“Give it here.”

I handed the beef jerky over to her, and she immediately tore off a piece and began to chew.

Her mouth twisted, her eyes narrowed, and then...

“This is delicious.”

She kept eating. “Do you have any more?”

“A little bit. If you’ll call off your other spiders and agree to give us safe passage, I’ll give it to you.” I opened my hand in a giving gesture.

The spider woman seemed to consider that.

Then, she swallowed, and let out a screeching cry into the air.

The remaining spiders retreated back to the ceiling.

Marissa blinked. Then she raised her sword and took a step forward.

“Not a step closer, sword girl. Meat man, give me more food.”

I reached into my bag, pulling out another piece of jerky. The spider woman reached for it, but I pulled my hand away. “Agree to give us safe passage.”

She frowned. “But I don’t want to.”

Are you kidding me?

“Look, this is a good deal for you. Us humans are bland and not seasoned at all. This beef jerky is much tastier.”

The spider woman folded her arms. “I don’t know... You’re probably right, but you have a lot of meat on you. It’s really a quality versus quantity argument.”

I waved the beef jerky at her. “There’s also the chance that we’d kill you if we keep fighting.”

“Nah.” She shook her head. “Not with all the webs you’re stuck in.”

I blinked, looking around. There were strands of webbing stuck to the back of my legs and my shirt.

When did that happen?

I tensed, but I could still make this work.

“I’ll destroy the jerky with my magic if you attack us.” It was a complete bluff. I didn’t have fire magic or anything similarly destructive.

But I doubted she knew that.

“No!” She reached forward, but I moved my hand again. “Okay, fine, fine. You can go. Just give me that food.”

“I’m going to have my friend cut me free first, then I’m going to give you the jerky.”

“Fine, fine. Ugh. You humans are so hard to deal with.”

Marissa moved forward, cut me free, and handed the sword back to me. I held it in my off-hand while I cautiously offered the remaining jerky to the spider.

She snatched it out of my hand with great fervor, then put it straight in her mouth.

She closed her eyes, obviously savoring the flavor.

That helped me realize something important. “You’re...not an illusion, are you?”

She opened her eyes again, beginning to chew. “Oh, no, little human. I’m quite real.”

I’d interacted with plenty of convincing solid illusions during the other tests, and I knew they could talk, but this spider woman was so animated and eccentric that she reminded me of Vanniv.

It was possible they were being controlled by a very enthusiastic actor, but I didn’t get that feeling.

This was an actual monster. Most likely a summoned one — they wouldn’t risk putting us down here with a natural monster. It probably had instructions to act a certain way, but it also still clearly had senses and instincts of its own.

I could work with that.

“You mentioned kobolds. Are those what we’ll find on the upper floors?”

She shook her head, continuing to eat. “Mm, no, not here. The ones that were in this mine got eaten already.”

“By you?”

The spider woman shook her head. “No, no. By the thing that lives below.”

Well, that sounded foreboding.

“What sort of thing?” Mara asked.

“Don’t know. I’m not going down there. I’ve got a nice lair right here. Dark, comfortable, lots of food wandering into it...”

“We are not food,” I reminded her.

“Fine, fine.” She continued to chew on the jerky. “You can go.”

I reached into my bag. The jerky had been the only trail food I’d brought with me. I had the flask that gave me an endless water supply, but no other food in the bag.

But I did have some food stored in the Jaden Box, and I did have the box stored in my bag.

Could I get more out of this creature if I traded her more food?

Maybe, I decided, but it’s not worth the risk of using the Jaden Box in a position where I’m clearly being watched.

If another teacher knew I had the Jaden Box, that could raise questions that I didn’t want to answer.

I was still pondering my approach when Mara asked something important.

“Ya know, we’re trying to find a magic weapon down here. Don’t suppose that’s in your lair?”

“Nah. That’s up in the other thing’s territory.”

“We’re going to head that way. Don’t s’pose you’d want to come with us and eat whatever monsters are up there?”

That was a brilliant idea. I wished I’d thought of it first.

“Nah, I’m comfy down here. But let me give you some advice, since you gave me something delicious. Get in there, get your shiny thing, and get out. Don’t provoke the beast. You won’t like what happens.”

That sounded like good advice.

“Okay, thank you. We’re leaving now.”

Marissa pointed, and I gradually began to withdraw from the room.

The spider woman waved. “Happy hunting! Feel free to come back if you want me to eat you later.”

We made our way out of the room, then carefully watched our step all the way back to the intersection.

“Well, that could have gone worse,” I offered.

“You didn’t listen to me.” Marissa folded her arms.

“I was kind of disarmed at the time.”

Mara shook her head. “No, I’m not complainin’. You were right. Went much better than if you had listened.” She ran her hands through her hair, a look of frustration on her face. “I donno what I’m doin’ down ‘ere. Don’t think I’m cut out for this.”

I furrowed my brow. “You’re kidding. You were annihilating those spiders back there.”

“Aye, but I didn’t even think about the idea of trading with ‘er. I just assumed, you know, monster. And that we’re s’posed ta fight monsters. How’d you figure ‘er out?”

“I think what really tipped me off was that she seemed to have a sense of taste. It all could have been a really talented Shadow controlling her, but the way she was acting struck me like she had senses of her own. That made me think summon — and summons can be bargained with.”

“I’d n’er have thought a that.”

I shrugged. “Sure, but as soon as I brought it up, you took advantage of it in a way that I didn’t. You thought about bringing her with us to make the rest of this easier — and that was a stroke of genius. I doubt any other individual monster down here will be as powerful as she was. If she accepted, it would have handled the whole rest of the test for us.”

Mara looked away. “But she said no.”

“Sometimes the world’s most brilliant ideas don’t work. Doesn’t make them any less insightful.”

“I suppose.” She started walking again, but kept talking. “I s’pose. I just feel lost sometimes, you know?”

“More than you probably realize.” I sighed. “I’ve been behind on a lot of the basic classes all year. Father pulled me out of school three years ago, and I was never a good student even when I was going to class. Good at tests, but I never had the attention for reading anything that didn’t interest me. Never did my homework. Now, that’s all been coming back to haunt me, because there are a lot of basic things I either never learned or never paid enough attention to.”

“At least you got to go to a school for a while.” Marissa sighed.

I raised an eyebrow at that. “I know you grew up outside the city, but...no school at all?”

“Home schooling, they called it. Mam and Pap taught me a few things. Guess I should feel lucky they knew how to read, at least. Most everything else was either wrong or just not good enough.” She shook her head. “Not their fault. Same thing their parents did for them, to be sure. And they saved up everything they could to send me to that Judgment. Now I just want to do them proud.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Are you? I’m not so sure. I’m not learning anythin’ that’ll help back at the farm. Can’t punch wheat and make it grow.”

I blinked. “You’re planning to go back home after this?”

“Sure. Ain’t everyone?”

Definitely not.

I didn’t want to get into that topic, though, so I just shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe. Anyway, you’re a lot more than just a fighter, Mara. You protect people.”

“Sure, good if the occasional thief shows up, or a wild animal. But if I could do what you can do, maybe I could make a real difference. Make all sorts of tools to help people.”

I laughed. She gave me a frustrated look, so I raised my hands defensively. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just that the first thing that happened when I got home was my father telling me how disappointing and pathetic I was for having a coward’s attunement. And the worst thing was, I pretty much agreed with him. Everyone has always told me that this attunement means I wasn’t good enough to get one like yours.”

“Your father said that?”

“In much more loquacious and pretentious terms, but yes.”

“Then your dad’s an ass.”

I laughed again. “Maybe. But I think he just wanted me to be more like him. Do the family proud.”

“Aye. I guess I can see that. Guess that’s what most parents want.”

“I’m sure your parents will be very proud of you, Mara. And if punching doesn’t help at home, you’ve got life mana too right? You could learn to heal.”

She paused in her step, seeming to consider that. “S’pose I could, couldn’t I?”

“Think they teach that for Guardians as an elective. Maybe you could take it next year.”

She nodded, looking thoughtful. “I might just do that.”

We walked in silence for a time after that, until Mara paused again. “Think I can see something up ahead.”

We reached the source of the light. It was a small room filled with mining equipment, with still-lit lanterns on the walls.

Also, bodies.

Specifically, they were kobold bodies. Kobolds were humanoid monsters that tended to be about three feet tall. Some looked closer to human than others — many had animal-like characteristics, or could change in shape.

These particular ones looked mostly like smaller versions of humans, but with greenish-blue skin that reminded me of metal. It wasn’t an unlikely resemblance; some kobolds worked in mines, and they tended to take on characteristics similar to the metals they worked.

They weren’t known for being very smart, but they were generally peaceful. Humans traded with them on occasion, frequently metals for other types of metals.

I didn’t like seeing their bodies, even knowing they were probably just illusions.

Mara approached the closest one, cautiously ducking down and flipping him over with a foot. I would have complained about her callous treatment, but I realized she was probably just being cautious about the possibility that they were faking and laying in ambush for us.

After all, the lights were still on.

That implied there was something still alive down here.

And if it wasn’t the kobolds, it was undoubtedly something worse.

We spent the next few minutes searching the area, but we didn’t find much of note. Mostly mining equipment, more bodies, and some old clothing.

We did, however, find the next step of the path — a long shaft descending into darkness.

“Think this is a lift.” Mara walked around to the other side of the shaft, finding a raised metallic box. “And this is the control for it, I think.”

I cautiously circled the pit. “Yep. Looks like we’re supposed to raise the platform somehow, then use it to get down below.”

I scanned the ceiling and the area inside the box, but I didn’t see any sort of rope leading down or a pulley system. That implied whatever moved the platform was down below, rather than up here.

“Ah!” She opened up a panel on the side of the metal box. “Think this is what we need.”

We took a look inside the box. It had a simple lever control, currently flipped down, and a socket with a single rune etched into it.

I knew what I was looking at — it was a slot for a power source.

“Looks like this is magically powered. And we need an essence crystal to operate it.”

Marissa nodded. “Great. Maybe there’s an essence crystal back with the kobolds?”

I glanced back that way, turning on my attunement.

The kobolds were glowing, since they were some kind of illusions or magical constructs. I was pleased to know my school hadn’t imported dead kobolds (or murdered live ones for just a test).

I didn’t see any essence crystals, though.

And I was pretty sure I knew why.

I think Marissa came to the realization at the same time. “Uh, Corin?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t suppose that power source might have looked like a green rock, would it?”

I pictured the crystal she’d throw at the spider monster’s head. “...Yeah.”

“Oops.”

I sighed. “Yep. I don’t suppose you took it with you?”

She shook her head. “You?”

“Nope. Was too busy trying to get out of there alive. Completely forgot about it.”

“Well, doesn’t that just caw the roost.”

“Yeah. I think. I’m not really sure what that phrase means.”

Marissa just nodded. “I don’t think I do, either. Anyway, should we go back?”

I shook my head. “Probably not. Give me a minute.”

I took a look at the control box more carefully, searching for other runes. I only found one more, and it wasn’t a good sign — it was a targeting rune, indicating that the main runes for operating the device were down below.

That meant if I wanted to try to operate it from up here, I’d either have to completely rewrite the runes, or find it an alternate power source if I wanted to operate it in the intended way.

Checking the rune for the power source, it looked like it was built for a Class 3 Transference Mana Crystal. I could make mana crystals, but nothing even close to that magnitude.

Maybe I could make it work briefly with a weaker crystal? It might be worth an attempt.

“I might be able to power this on my own, but it’ll take a lot out of me, and I’m not sure it’ll work.”

I was already pretty exhausted from all the enchanting I’d done earlier, so I wasn’t sure how much more I could manage.

“How much of your mana do you think it would take to get it up and running?”

I considered that. “Somewhere in the sixty range. That’d be one class lower than the amount that it’s supposed to run on.”

“And you’ve got, what, eighty total?”

“Eighty-four.” I checked it obsessively enough that I was confident about that.

She shook her head. “Not worth it. Might need that mana for something more important. Like, ya know, fighting.”

I knelt down, looking into the depths of the pit. “Did you think to bring rope?”

Marissa winced. “Wasn’t counting on climbing.”

I have some, but it’s in the Jaden Box, and that raises the same problem as before. Maybe next time I need to figure out which items are likely to be used in my tests and keep them in a separate pack.

“I didn’t, either.” I admitted. “Maybe we can find some with the mining supplies?”

We searched for a bit, and we did eventually find a coil of fraying rope, but it was only about ten feet long. Dropping a rock and listening for the sound, we judged the total depth to be about twenty five or thirty feet.

Mara took the rope and walked back over to the control area. “Could attach this, climb part way, and then drop the rest. Shrouds and shield sigils will take care of us, shouldn’t be hurt too bad.”

She was right, but I didn’t like the idea of even minor injuries if we could avoid them. And draining the shield sigils wouldn’t be a great idea, either.

I had a better solution, though. I was wearing it.

I lifted my hand to remind her about the ring. “This doesn’t just help me jump, it slows down falling, too.”

“Great! That should let you get down easy. Maybe you could catch me?”

I winced. “Not confident I could manage that without hurting us more.”

Another idea did come to mind, though. I was almost sure it would work, but I didn’t like it.

“Corin? I know that expression. What you thinkin’?”

I sighed. “I could just pick you up and jump down. The ring doesn’t distinguish between a number of people — it just applies a certain amount of force. It should have no problem slowing the descent for us both. Or getting us back to the top, now that I think about it. That’s going to be pretty important later.”

Mara nodded. “Sounds good. You ready?”

No. Definitely not.

“One second.”

Marissa didn’t even seem the slightest bit awkward.

I had to take a minute to regulate my breathing.

“Not good with heights,” I explained awkwardly. “Could you do that shroud extension thing and keep us both inside your shroud to soften the fall, just in case I mess this up?”

“Oh, sure. Won’t matter much now that you’ve got your own shroud, but it might help a little.”

Just talking about something else helped steel my nerves a little bit. I tried to ignore the itching sensation at the back of my mind that happened any time I had to touch someone.

It helped that I was the one who was going to be carrying her, not the other way around.

It also helped that she was familiar. A friend, even.

But that couldn’t smash the feeling entirely.

I took another breath. “Let’s do this.”

I ducked down, and she wrapped her arms around my neck.

Don’tpanicdon’tpanicdon’tpanic.

Then, I lifted. That wasn’t hard in terms of strength — she was athletic, but skinny, and I was in pretty good shape. With her arms around me, it wasn’t like lifting dead weight, either.

I felt a tingling sensation that didn’t come from my own paranoia. “Shroud’s good. Ready when you are.”

Oh, the shroud. Right.

Breathe.

I took a breath, then I jumped.

We fell.

The fall was at full speed at first. I focused, estimating our time to hit the ground, and then activated the ring. That set off an explosion of force beneath my feet that launched us back up about ten feet.

Mara let out an excited “Wee!” and a giggle at the jolt.

Then we were falling again, but slower. We touched down without incident. We landed atop a metallic cage, which I realized was probably part of the elevator system. I set Marissa down, then we clambered over the cage and down the rest of the way to the floor.

“That was great!” Marissa briefly pulled me into a hug, and I was too stunned to do anything about it. “Okay, let’s go find that scary thing.”

She was off and walking, leaving me to stare blankly into the void for a few moments before I turned to follow her.

Mara’s light seemed...muted, here. Dampened by something in the air, maybe. I couldn’t tell if it was just my perception or if there really was some sort of shadow magic at work.

Probably the latter, knowing my luck. Or maybe both.

The tunnel here was rougher, and we had to watch our step to avoid stumbling over protruding rocks. It led downward for what seemed like miles, but that part probably was just my perception.

The path forked again. I could hear the sound of running water nearby, much louder to the left than the right.

“We going toward the water?” I asked.

“Let’s try the other way first.”

Marissa led the way.

We paused when we found the next group of bodies.

Or, more accurately, skeletons. They’d been dead a while.

Upon inspection, the bodies were human - or at least humanoid. Probably some of the miners we’d heard about.

Almost all of them were facing toward the way we’d come from. Only the furthest body from us was facing toward the direction we were going.

Unlike the others, he held a rusted sword in his hand. The tip of the sword had been broken off and was lying nearby.

A part of me wanted to compliment whoever had set this place up for their attention to detail. The implication was clearly that these people had been running from something. Most of them had died running. The one who had tried to fight had died first.

It really added to the ambiance of the place.

Another part of me was, however, actually somewhat scared.

I knew intellectually this was a test, but it was like those stories about the Blackstone Assassin. Everyone knew that he wasn’t real, but when someone left a black gemstone on your pillow as a prank, there was always a moment of panic before you calmed down and looked for a friend snickering in the corner.

“You know,” I offered, “It’s possible this is a clue that we’re not supposed to go this way.”

“Nah. Just means there’s danger close by. Gotta keep our fists up.”

I kept my sword raised instead. Punching was all well and good, but I preferred having an extra yard of reach. “Can you glean anything from the bodies?”

Marissa looked them over briefly. “Nah. It’s monster huntin’ class, not forensics.”

That was fair, but also somewhat disappointing. I was more interested in the mystery solving portion of this than just hitting things.

I didn’t mind hitting things, per se. As long as they weren’t intelligent and chatty. Or particularly adorable.

Given what we’d seen from these bodies, I expected we might finally have an unambiguously monstrous opponent to deal with. That was actually kind of exciting.

We pushed on, eventually reaching another wide open chamber.

There was seemingly nothing inside — except for the obvious black-bladed sword in the center, thrust into an altar of stone.

“I have literally never seen a more obvious trap.” I waved at the center of the room. “And I’m including those fire-breathing statues from the spire.”

Marissa nodded. She shined her lantern into the room, but we couldn’t see anything else of note. “Think something’s going to drop down from the ceiling? More spiders?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. Let’s walk in carefully, do a circle, and check the floors and ceilings before we touch the thing.”

We did just that, checking the area slowly. We didn’t find any sign of monsters. The ceiling was pretty high up, so it was hard to tell if there were holes that spiders could be hiding inside, but I didn’t see any.

I turned on my Enchanter attunement and glanced around. I didn’t see any magical auras, aside from Mara.

...None at all. Not even on the sword.

“That’s odd.” I stepped a little closer. The sword did have runes on the blade, but they didn’t glow in the slightest.

Mara walked over. “What’s odd?”

“Not sensing any magic on it at all. I mean, maybe that’s just because it’s a theatrical prop...”

Marissa shook her head. “Doubt it. You know they could afford to put an enchanted weapon down here, even if it’s just a basic one. If you’re not seeing magic on it, there’s a reason for that.”

I scanned the runes, but it was hard to see them clearly in the light.

Still, I was reasonably confident about one thing—

I didn’t recognize any of them.

Now, maybe that meant this was a sword of ancient and terrible power, that I couldn’t detect at all because it was made with a different type of magic. The kind of legendary magic weapon that Keras probably keeps stashed under his pillow.

There was a much more obvious explanation, though. “I think it’s a decoy.”

Marissa frowned. “A decoy?”

“Just a fake sword that we’re expected to take. Probably triggers a mechanical trap that’s in the base of that altar. Maybe even a magical trap that’s inside the stone itself. I can’t see through solid rock.”

“But we’re supposed to be ‘ere to get a magic weapon, yeah?”

“Exactly. This is so obvious that I’m betting it’s just here as a distraction.” I considered. “We could try to break open the altar and see if there’s anything else inside, or we can just leave it here and go check the other path.”

“I’m not sure I’d feel right just leavin’ without checkin’ this more.”

I agreed with her assessment. “Okay, then we need to clear the rock without triggering whatever mechanism is connected to the sword itself. Think you can do that?”

Marissa nodded. She extended her hand to her right side. “Been practicin’ just the thing for that.”

Her shroud extended beyond her right hand, taking the shape of a blade. The technique she’d been practicing with Keras.

I took a step back and let her work.

I expected chopping through the solid rock to be a slow process.

Fortunately, it wasn’t solid rock at all.

The stone altar was a façade — it was completely hollowed out inside. The stone on the surface was only a couple inches thick. She chopped it away with ease, then moved it to the side.

The sword was stuck inside a metallic base. That had runes etched into the side that were glowing.

“Let’s see... First rune is motion activation, that makes sense. That’s a shadow rune...a power rune for increasing effect...and some kind of teleportation rune...” I sighed. “Yeah, this thing summons some kind of shadow monsters if you take the sword out.”

“Huh. Neat. Want to fight them?”

I laughed. “Nah, I think we’ll get plenty of fighting done on the other path. But if you want a souvenir, I could probably disable the trap and take the sword out.”

“Sure!”

Just scratching out the runes would trigger a form of backlash, which would be bad. I’d learned how to transfer mana from a rune to another rune, but I didn’t have experience at doing it, and this wasn’t a good place to practice.

Instead, I simply touched the activation rune and transferred the mana straight into the air. Some more powerful items had runes to prevent this sort of thing from being possible — basically generating a shield around the item itself to prevent tampering — but this was basic stuff. There weren’t any prevention measures in effect.

It took me just a minute to do that. Then I repeated the process with the other runes.

Moving the mana from the shadow rune felt a little strange. I’d worked with the other types of mana before, but even touching shadow mana made my skin crawl. It felt...wrong, somehow, like it was draining my strength just letting it come into contact with me.

I didn’t let that bother me, though. “Okay, this side is done. Cut the stone on the other side, just in case there are more runes on the other side.

There weren’t, it turned out. We’d gotten lucky and found the trap on the first try. Still, it had been wise to check.

We took one last precautionary measure — we cut the whole stone section in the floor out where the metal piece was anchored, then checked the bottom for more runes. But there was nothing else, as we’d suspected.

Apparently, these teachers weren’t quite as devious as Orden. I suspected that if she’d been running the test, the whole sword would have turned into a monster to eat us or something.

Weirdly enough, that made me miss her a little. Which was horrible, because she was a traitor, but...

I shook my head, dismissing the feeling as quickly as I could. “Okay, should be good to go.”

Marissa drew the sword.

As we’d expected, nothing happened.

“Huh. Don’t even think this sword is real. Feels too light.” She turned it over, then shook it in the air. “Thinkin’ it’s a stage prop?”

I laughed. “Figures. Okay, ready to check that other path?”

“Yep.”

We headed back down the way we came, then took the other fork.

There were no bodies this way.

Just...skin.

Or, more accurately, molted skin and scales.

“Wow.” Marissa ducked down and picked up a scale. It was about the size of her fist. It was hard to tell in the light, but I thought it was a dark turquoise, or maybe just blue.

“That’s...a pretty big scale.”

“Yup! Oooh, I bet there’s a serpent down there.” She slung the fake sword over her shoulder, bouncing on her heels in enthusiasm. “Let’s go kill it!”

I was somewhat less excited. Sure, the idea of slaying a serpent was exciting, but...I remembered.

I remembered Mizuchi, looming over the Soaring Wings headquarters. She took a breath, lightning flaring around her titanic jaws, and then exhaled.

People screamed and fell. Lord Teft’s barrier, maintained by himself and his simulacra, barely managed to keep us from harm — and we weren’t anywhere close to the blast radius.

This creature certainly wouldn’t be as strong as Mizuchi. Almost nothing was; she was the child of a God Beast, and very nearly a God Beast herself.

But seeing that had given me a realistic idea of my chances against any truly powerful monster, and those chances were extraordinarily low.

“We...may want to wait and make a plan first, Mara.”

She paused in her step. “Oh, right, you’re not in the class. Guess you probably don’t know much about serpents, then?”

I shook my head. “I learned a bit when I was researching the spire itself. Tough scales and a powerful shroud. They can exhale bursts of magic. Some of them can change in shape to a humanoid form, but they usually still have some characteristics that make them stand out. I didn’t learn much about tactics for fighting them, though. My plan was pretty much to flee in terror and hope for the best.”

Marissa laughed. “Well, that’d usually work, but not here. Gotta beat this one and get me a good score. Important thing to know — the scales usually tell you the type of breath it’s got. The environment helps, too. Blue scales and water mean it’s probably a water serpent.”

That made sense. “So, fire would be effective, then?”

“Nah. I mean, it wouldn’t be bad, but opposites aren’t usually the best for monsters. Like cancels out like, but that’s end neutral. You want something that has a violent effect. For water, that means lightning.”

I nodded at the explanation. Something about that bothered me, though. Mizuchi was supposed to be a water dragon, but I’d seen her breathe lightning. Was she actually a lightning dragon, or could she actually use a type of magic she was weak against?

Either seemed strange, but I supposed that the children of God Beasts were powerful enough to break all sorts of the normal rules about how monsters were supposed to work.

“Okay.” I pondered for a moment. “We don’t have lightning. Then what?”

Marissa grinned. “When you don’t have the right element, there is one thing every monster is weak against.”

“Oh?” This sounded like useful information.

“Punching.” She made a fist.

I laughed. “Okay. Anything else I should know?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Serpents can use magic, like karvensi can. Most of them don’t bother unless they’re in their human form, though.”

“What sorts of magic?”

“Depends on the serpent. Usually matches their colors. The older ones get a broader variety, though. The really big ones, like the Tails of Orochi, even have things that work like attunement powers.”

I blinked. “So, there could be serpents that have Enchanter or Guardian abilities?”

“Yeah, sure. But it’s the scarier attunements you really need to worry about. You wouldn’t want to run into a serpent that could use Shadow abilities, for example.”

I wouldn’t want to run into a serpent in general, but she was right. The magic defense abilities of a Shadow or a Shaper being combined with the inherent abilities of a serpent would be terrifying. “Okay, I’ll keep an eye out for any attunement abilities they might use.”

“Great. Let’s get going.”

She led the way further into the tunnel.

We ended up in the largest chamber we’d seen yet. Lit torches were attached to the walls, which seemed strange until I checked them and realized they were enchanted. They’d burn forever, as long as they could gather enough ambient mana.

Maybe it was just for effect, or maybe it was part of the test. I couldn’t be sure.

The center of the room was dominated by a huge pool of water. A waterfall on the right side of the chamber was pouring into that central pool. At a glance, the central pool was too deep for us to see the bottom.

“Don’t get too close,” Mara warned. “Serpent is probably in there somewhere.”

I nodded, keeping my distance. “Do we try to draw it out onto land somehow?”

“Maybe. Let’s keep looking around a bit first.”

We searched the area until Mara found something of note. “Hey, Corin, c’mere.”

There was a wide indentation in the rock near the waterfall. It looked like a slot for something, like a keyhole, but flat and too wide for an ordinary key.

“The sword?” I asked.

“Was thinkin’ the same thing. Should I?”

“Maybe we should cut the side open first and look for the runes. It might be another trap we can disable.”

Marissa frowned. “But that takes soooo long.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Go for it.”

“Watch my back, yeah?”

I nodded, taking up a defensive position behind her.

Marissa stuck the sword in the slot.

I heard a ‘click’, followed by what sounded like a musical chime.

Weird.

Then the waterfall subsided, and the pool of water in the center of the room began to drain.

Behind where the waterfall had been, we could see another passage into a small chamber. A glimmering golden axe hovered in mid-air.

“Okay, I have to admit, that’s a pretty impressive effect.”

We were so distracted by the shiny object that we barely noticed that the room was getting darker.

That wasn’t shadow magic at work.

It was the gigantic serpent that had emerged from the draining water, and was now looming above us.

The creature was much smaller than Mizuchi, but still terrifyingly huge. A good twenty feet of it was exposed, and I couldn’t tell how much was still below the water or coiled up. It was only about four feet wide, but that still meant that it was big enough to swallow a person whole.

I noticed it first. “Uh, Mara?”

She was just about to reach for the axe when she turned. “Huh?...oh. Fudgenuggets.”

The serpent roared, reared up, and took a deep breath.

And, in spite of my better instincts, I didn’t run.

I attacked.

As the creature swooped down, jaws wide, I jumped and activated the ring. I aimed for its head, but it twisted to the side and tried to bite me out of the air.

I activated the ring again, blasting myself backward. The creature’s jaws snapped shut where I’d been floating a moment before.

Marissa charged and did exactly what she promised.

“Rising thunder!” Her first swirled with mana as she pulled it back, then slammed it into the creature’s scales. The serpent roared and recoiled at the impact.

I floated to the ground a moment later. “Let’s keep it flanked!”

“Got it!” Marissa punched it again, while I ran behind it.

I’d considered that a valid tactic right up until the creature’s tail flashed out of the water and slammed right into my chest.

I flew backward, crashing into the stone cavern walls. My barrier and shroud softened the impact, but it still knocked the wind right out of me.

It took me a few whole seconds to stand, and another couple to steady myself.

By that point, Marissa had fallen back on the defensive. The serpent descended to bite her, but she nimbly dodged to the side and landed another punch on the side of the creature’s head.

Its tail whipped out to slam into her, but Marissa was ready, and she hopped several feet in the air to launch herself over it. She couldn’t quite get the height that I could with the ring, but her attunement enhanced her physical capabilities far beyond what an ordinary human could muster.

Marissa drew back for another punch, charging mana in her fist.

The creature whipped its tail — but not at her, this time.

It smashed the water, sending a tidal wave across the room.

We braced ourselves, but the water still impacted us hard and threw us off our feet.

Cold.

I shivered as the water subsided. The chill didn’t bother me as much as the weight — my clothing was soaking now, and that would limit my mobility.

Before we had a chance to recover, the serpent reared up and took a deep breath.

“Dodge!” Marissa yelled.

“You don’t have to tell me that!”

We rushed to opposite sides of the room, both thinking that would help us avoid whatever came next.

We were mistaken.

When the creature exhaled, the temperature in the chamber plummeted, and I realized our first mistake.

We weren’t dealing with a creature of water.

This was a monster of ice.

The serpent turned toward me, still exhaling. The breath was freezing everything in its path solid. I couldn’t trust my shroud to defend against that.

“The wall!” Marissa screamed.

Shivering and barely capable of movement, I realized what she meant just before the serpent’s breath reached me.

I jumped to the side, activating my ring, and threw myself straight at the wall.

Or, more specifically, at the closest enchanted torch.

I slammed right into it. Normally, that would have been a terrible idea, but I was currently both wet and half-frozen from the serpent’s breath, so the flames didn’t burn me in the slightest.

After a moment of hugging up against the torch, I sliced it off the wall and grabbed it with my off-hand, pulling it dangerously close to my skin to evaporate what I could of the clinging ice and water.

The serpent turned away from me and back toward Mara. She had already grabbed a torch and was trying to warm herself in the same way.

Fortunately, the creature had stopped using its breath to freeze the room, but much of the damage had already been done. Part of the lake that hadn’t drained away was frozen solid, and ice clung to nearly every surface of the room. Even maneuvering would be difficult.

That made it all the more dangerous when the creature lunged for Marissa again, jaws wide.

I’m making a bad habit out of this.

I threw my sword at the creature’s back.

It was, fortunately, a much easier throw than hitting the spider had been. The serpent was basically one giant target.

The blade pierced the creature’s scales easily. The serpent screamed and thrashed, abandoning its attack.

I rushed forward, slipped on the ice, and hit the floor.

The serpent turned, howled into the air, and rose up like a snake about to strike.

I barely managed to stand, then fired a blast from my demi-gauntlet into the creature’s head.

That just made it angrier.

The serpent’s head descended, jaws side.

Snap.

The creature’s head continued downward...but fell off to the side, severed from the rest of its body.

Nearby, Marissa lifted the golden axe into the air and cheered. “Yeah! This thing is great!”

I blinked, turned my head to the headless serpent, and then back to Marissa.

Then I burst into laughter. “Talk about dramatic timing there, Mara. That thing was seconds from eating me.”

“I know! It was great!”

Mara twirled the axe around, grinning. “Think this is the real thing we came for. Cut through that thing like paper.”

“Sounds about right.” With my attunement active, I could see several runes glowing on the surface. I couldn’t identify them with Mara swinging it gleefully all over the place, though. “You did great there.”

“Thanks! Couldn’t have gotten a clean shot if you hadn’t thrown your sword at it. Do you practice that? You seem to do it a lot.”

I laughed. “I actually did used to practice throwing weapons, but mostly knives and darts. Swords aren’t great for throwing, but sometimes I don’t have better options.”

“What about that shockwave thing you can do when you swing it?”

“That’s not bad for small stuff, and it hits harder than a dueling cane, but it’s hard to aim and—”

I heard a rumbling to my side. I frowned.

Mara paused, too. “Did you hear that?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it sounded like it was coming from—”

We turned toward the serpent’s body.

It was moving.

More precisely, it was standing back up.

And then, as we gaped in horror, we saw something growing from the severed stump.

Or, more accurately, two somethings.

Something, in this context, being heads.

We hadn’t been fighting a serpent.

We were fighting a hydra.

“Uh, Mara?” I held the torch out in front of me.

“...Yyyyeah, Corinnn?”

“How do we fight a hydra?”

“I....uh...” She was shivering, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t just the cold.

The two heads were finished emerging from the neck now. I watched it with a combination of horror and fascination. How exactly did a regenerative process like that work?

Then the two heads snapped their jaws in the air, and turned their gazes toward us.

I looked at Mara. “Nevermind. Pretty sure we run.”

I grabbed her by the arm and pulled.

She required no further encouragement.

We rushed out of the chamber at maximum speed. The hydra howled in fury behind us, slithering closer to snap at us with twin jaws.

Then we were in the tunnel. One serpentine head reached in to try to bite us, but we kept running.

Moments later, we were too deep for the hydra to reach.

But we still weren’t quite safe.

Water was beginning to drip from the ceiling, seemingly from everywhere. It was like it had suddenly begun to rain.

The cold from that was a problem, but not the main one.

The real problem was that the chambers above and below us were filling with water.

If we didn’t move fast, we were going to drown.

We rushed as quickly as we could, still hand in hand. I slipped once, but Mara dragged me back to my feet, and then she was leading the way.

We reached the elevator. Without a second to converse, she threw her arms around me — fortunately, not chopping my head off in the process — and I dropped the torch to lift her.

I jumped. And, then, mid-air, I jumped again, using the ring.

I kicked off the side of the shaft, then jumped again.

Finally, we landed up top.

Water was still dripping from the ceiling up top. It was either some kind of trap, or some spell the hydra had cast. It hardly mattered.

We knew the way out, so we ran.

We were drenched when we finally got outside.

When we finally sat down, we were laughing like madmen.

Neither of us expected the voice that approached from my right side.

The spider loomed over us, arms folded. “You two absolutely ruined my lair. I’m going to expect reimbursement for this.”

And with that, our test was over.

***

“I admit, I have never seen someone bribe the jorogumo with beef jerky before. That was an inspired tactic.”

Marissa’s teacher was Sir Tanath, a knight of the Soaring Wings. He looked more like a storybook hero than any of the other Soaring Wings I’d seen, his short beard and gleaming blue eyes complimenting his silvery mail and the gold-hilted sword at his side.

“Thank you, sir.” Marissa beamed.

“I’m not done yet. You still left a hideously dangerous monster alive, that could have ambushed you — or someone else — at a later time.”

“But—” I began to interject.

He raised a hand to quiet me. “Nevertheless, too many people fail to realize that intelligent monsters can be used as a resource. I’m a Summoner myself, and that darling creature you met was one of my contracted beasts. I met her in a situation not too different from the one you did, and like you, I realized she was smart enough to be worth working with.”

I blinked. His outward warrior-like appearance made me assume he’d be something like a Guardian, or maybe a foreign attunement like a Soulblade.

Sir Tanath continued. “When I was serving in the Unclaimed Lands, she was one of the best resources at my disposal. I made many other contracts with intelligent monsters there — some were useful, some were dangerous liabilities. A Summoner’s pact is not inviolable; a monster of sufficient cunning can and will find ways to work around it. I am fortunate that thus far I’ve been too entertaining for that particular friend to betray me.

“When you are in a situation with monsters like her, you must ask yourself what the odds are that they will be a threat to you if you leave them alive. In that scenario, virtually all students merely fight her — and lose. You made a wise decision to make a deal. It might have been wiser to simply run, but nevertheless, you did well.”

Sir Tanath turned to face Marissa directly. “I’m pleased to say that by retrieving the axe, you’ve passed the test. By also managing to handle the hydra and jorogumo without any major problems, you’ve earned an A. Once again, you’re near the top of the class. Congratulations, Miss Callahan.” He extended his hand, which Marissa shook enthusiastically.

“Thank you sir! I’m so happy!” Then she raised the axe, grinning. “Uh, can I keep this?”

***

In the end, Sir Tanath did not let her keep the axe. He did, however, return my sword, with a few stern words about leaving my weapons behind.

I really did have a bad habit of doing that.

Even axe-free, Marissa was in a great mood as we walked, still soaking wet, all the way home.

Chapter VII – Overdoing It Just a Tad

It was much later in the same evening that Derek brought a Diviner friend over.

I was far too exhausted from Marissa’s test to pay much attention at that point. His name was Harold or something.

I’d almost forgotten why he’d needed the Diviner. They were looking for the teleportation trail of that strange dagger that had disappeared. They managed to confirm that something had teleported out of the area, but the Diviner explained that his tracking magic was being blocked by something more powerful.

That was not a good sign.

We did get to bombard the Diviner with a few other questions, though.

The magic ring that Keras didn’t recognize turned out to be something that enhanced physical strength. I was sorely tempted to ask to borrow that as well, but I’d already borrowed two things, and Marissa beat me to it while I was hesitating.

In truth, it was a better fit for her skills than mine, but I wasn’t sure she’d need it. We weren’t planning to bring Marissa with us to the spire, and that was the main reason I wanted to stock up on items.

Still, it would have been useful in the fight outside the spire, and we didn’t know if that might happen again. I wasn’t going to begrudge my friends picking up a couple more items of their own.

Aside from that, Sera wrote a note and asked us to have the Diviner look at her modified attunement. He managed to give us a couple bits of new information.

The attunement was still maintaining connections to multiple external entities — meaning her contracts were intact — and that those entities were still attempting to drain away some of her mana continuously.

He also noted that the connections seemed stronger than normal Summoner contracts, which was both scary and fascinating.

I considered asking the Diviner to take a look at Trials of Judgment to see if he could identify how it worked, but I decided against it. Even if he was one of Derek’s friends, I didn’t know if I could trust him with information that important.

After the Diviner headed out, I took Sera up to her room to discuss what we’d learned.

“Seems likely that Vellum was right about the contract spells somehow activating the potion. If it somehow tied you more deeply with your contracted monsters...”

Sera nodded. She still couldn’t reply aloud, but she began writing something.

I kept talking because I could, and because it helped me think. “Wouldn’t you still be able to draw from those contracts, though?”

Sera shook her head, writing some more. I waited this time.

If I have stronger connections than before, that might mean each contract is trying to draw more mana from me.

I did some reading, and there’s some precedent for Summoners making more contracts than they can afford the mana costs for.

The result is similar to what I’m dealing with; those Summoners lost the ability to cast spells completely until they get enough mana to afford the contracts.

Looked into breaking contracts, too. There are a few ways to do it. For full contracts, the best way is to actually summon the monster and negotiate with it. Obviously not an option right now.

There are spells that can forcefully break a contract, but they’re dangerous for both the Summoner and the monster. I don’t want to go that route, either.

I still have a couple bindings that aren’t full contracts, though — the ogre and the wyvern from the Survival Match. Those can be broken more safely. Usually, it’s a simple spell to do it, like how I got rid of a couple of them right before we dealt with the spire. But I can’t even use that spell, because I can’t use my attunement at all.

“Hrm. Is it possible to cast the spell using your mana from another part of your body, like your hand?”

She frowned, then wrote another reply.

I suppose it might be possible. The spell only requires gray mana, and I still have that. But since my attunement is on my lungs, I’ve only learned how to cast Summoner spells through incantations.

“I think you said you could determine where the cost of your spells came from, though, just by thinking about it. Is that something you do after you cast the spell?”

She nodded.

“Hrm. So you just need to be able to initiate the spell, then you can pay for it with mana from your hand. Oh, or maybe the bracer I made you? If the mana cost is too high, maybe you could trigger that along with it.”

She paused, then wrote another line.

It doesn’t sound impossible. I’ll do some reading and try to make it work.

“Good. In the meantime, if your main problem is that the attunement isn’t strong enough to handle all your contracts, maybe we could make it stronger. Not with my attunement. I think trying to infuse it directly with more mana is too much of a risk, after what happened when you drank the potion. Maybe something that doesn’t put more strain on the body, though, like eating some iros fruit?”

She stuck out her tongue in a sign of disgust. I didn’t like the taste of iros fruit, either. I would have recommended lavris, but that fruit was for building mental mana, and that wasn’t what she needed.

But I knew her, and if she thought it’d help, she’d start eating them.

“I’ll see if I can find anything on fruits grown for helping build air and transference mana, since I know that’s what your attunement uses. For tonight, though, I’m going to need to focus on trying to make a gift for Sheridan. I’m not convinced they’ll accept anything we found in Wrynn’s box.”

The sword that I’d been working on with Keras might have been better, but after seeing Patrick’s reaction to it, I couldn’t justify giving it away. If Sheridan wanted a sword, we’d make another one.

After that, I bid Sera good night so she could focus on reading about Summoning and I could get back to work.

Even after eating and resting a bit, my hand was still burning from the effort earlier in the day. I didn’t regret working so hard, but it’d taken a lot out of me. A quick check with my mana watch registered my hand at 45/84.

I guessed it had been about a half hour since I’d drained it down to almost nothing, meaning that it would take me about an hour to recover from zero back to full.

That was about what I’d experienced with my Enchanter attunement as well, although admittedly I never drained that one completely, and I wasn’t sure if the recovery rates would change if I emptied my mana past specific thresholds. Sera’s slower recovery in the tower when she’d pushed herself too far implied that overuse could lead to lowered efficiency.

I wasn’t going to push myself below zero. For safety’s sake, I’d try to keep my mana above ten. If I noticed diminishing returns on my recovery time, I could slow things down further.

Assuming I was willing to use most of my mana once per hour, I figured I could do that two or three more times before I had to sleep.

That was a big improvement over my previous abilities, but I still didn’t have enough time to make something complex.

I did, however, have a lot of ideas.

One of the things that interested me the most was learning how to copy Pre-Attunement Period items like the Jaden Box. It was obvious from watching Keras that his magic worked differently, but in a way that was similar enough that I could conceivably find ways to emulate it. Even if I couldn’t cast spells the same way he did, the end results — transferring magic into an object — could be mimicked.

I needed to figure out a few more details, though. The main impediment seemed to be that they didn’t utilize runes in the same fashion. The ring of jumping didn’t have a single visible rune on it, although perhaps some of the cuts in the metal served a similar function.

The Jaden Box did have runes, but many of them were unrecognizable. Maybe they were just types of runes that had been lost to time, or maybe they worked completely differently.

I was tempted to try to transfer some of the mana from the ring of jumping into an empty ring. Could I split the power in half and make two functional rings that were weaker?

It was a tempting prospect, but ultimately not worth risking ruining the single ring I had. Not yet, anyway. Maybe after I had a better idea of what I was doing.

I didn’t even have any practice transferring enchantments from my own modern style of items to new ones. Conceptually, it was nearly identical to transferring mana from a mana crystal into a rune, but it did pose some additional challenges.

Functional items often had mana flowing between the runes, not just inside them. Attempting to move the mana from one of those runes while it was giving or receiving mana — or worse, actively sustaining a magical function — presented some dangers.

The most common problem was simply losing a bit of mana in the process. That efficiency loss was close to inevitable, unless the item was deactivated before the transfer.

The real problems came from disrupting the item’s operation carelessly or in an improper sequence. It was analogous to sticking your hand in a bonfire to pull out the twig you wanted.

Getting burned was likely, and there was also a good chance you could end up spreading the fire — meaning detonating the item or transferring magic into an unintended object or rune.

To mitigate the risk, you either extinguish the fire, or you could pull out the twigs and logs from other sections first. The latter approach was what I was planning on for my first experiment.

I’d miss the rock of regeneration, but ultimately, I needed something a little more practical.

I picked out a bracer as the target for my enchantment transferring experiment. I liked working with bracers. They were easy to wear and much easier to inscribe than a ring or necklace. Moreover, they were large enough that I didn’t have to bother looking up their mana capacities; there was no risk of overloading a bracer at my level of experience.

From there, I had to figure out which enchantments to move first. Carving the runes only took a few minutes, and during that time I considered the safest sequence.

I decided that the first things I needed to move were the runes that recharged the item, since it would be dangerous to have an item filling up with mana if I took out the other parts.

I could have safely moved the activation rune before that, but I didn’t want the bracer to activate in the same way, so I decided not to bother.

Moving the recharge runes first was going to pose another problem, though — the new item’s capacity runes weren’t functional yet. So, if I moved the recharge runes over and took too long, the new item would eventually explode. I didn’t know how long it would take, but I didn’t like that risk.

I decided that before I moved anything, I’d power the capacity runes on the new item. That was easier to decide than implement, though. The gray mana and mental mana runes were easy enough, but regeneration items also used life mana.

Until recently, I’d never had access to life mana. I’d powered the rock by transferring the mana from crystals, not my own body.

With my Arbiter attunement, I could use life mana — it was the attunement’s secondary mana type. I’d just never done it before.

I powered the other capacity runes first, then took a break to recover. Each rune was taking up nearly my entire mana capacity, since they were Carnelian-level runes. If they’d been Sunstone or Citrine-level, I couldn’t have handled them at all.

I’d been told the original ring was Citrine-level, but I assumed that had to do with complexity or risk factors, not the mana requirements.

After I’d recovered the necessary 60 mana for the life rune, I gave it a try.

It wasn’t difficult using a new type of mana. Not exactly. I already had it flowing inside my body, and I’d been able to feel it as a distinct form of energy since the new attunement had been active. When I had my Enchanter attunement active, I could even see it if I concentrated on pushing some out of my hand and into the air. Life mana was a shimmering green, at least to my perception.

There was still a degree of strangeness that came from manipulating a new form of energy, though, at least for me. Being able to see it helped. If I couldn’t visualize it, I wouldn’t have been confident that I was using life mana instead of just transference or gray, which I’d manipulated so frequently in the past.

Maybe it was easier for someone like Keras, if his magic truly had a cost that was tied to the type he was using. Fire mana costing body heat made sense to me on a visceral level, now that I’d heard about it. I was grateful to my attunement for removing or altering that cost, but it also made it harder to conceptualize what type of mana I was working with.

Regardless, I made it work, and I filled the capacity rune.

I grinned as the rune flickered to life.

Success.

I had to rest a bit more after that. Even moving the runes from the other item would take up a bit of transference mana, both for moving the enchantment from place to place and overcoming the item’s natural resistance to alterations. More advanced items would have specific runes designed as safeguards to prevent alterations, but I’d never made one of those.

Given how I’d handled Jin in the fight, that omission may have saved my life.

Moving the mana from the existing runes on the rock proved easier than I expected. Maybe it was because I’d enchanted the rock myself, but the mana inside didn’t seem to resist my pull at all. The process barely taxed my body and it only took me a handful of minutes.

It still felt a little tougher than charging the rock had been in the tower. Maybe that was because the mana saturation in the tower had helped, or maybe I’d just managed to rush through the process because of the dire nature of the situation.

Either way, I was still enchanting at roughly ten times the pace I’d been able to before I got the new attunement, and that was an amazing improvement.

The last part of the process was charging the new activation rune, which was distinct from both the one on the rock and the one on the original ring. I picked a classic; the standard activation rune used on a dueling cane. That way, no shaking was required, and it could be turned on by someone other than the wearer — a necessity for cases when I wanted to use it to heal unconscious friends.

Hopefully I wouldn’t have to deal with that many unconscious friends in the near future, but I was sensing a bit of a trend, and I wanted to be ready for more.

With the bracer done, I had to lie down and just cradle my aching hand for a while. The ring of regeneration was easing my pain, but it didn’t cancel it out entirely.

That was probably good, because even the diminished pain was letting me push myself down to close to zero on a regular basis, and I’d been warned earlier in the year that pushing myself that hard could result in scar formation.

I had to be ready for tomorrow, but after that, I promised I’d slow down a little. I still planned to exercise regularly, but I’d lost track of the number of times I’d abused my attunement over the course of the day. I needed to stop.

After just one more thing.

The bracer was an interesting idea, but ultimately I knew it was nothing unique. There were probably plenty of variations on the ring of regeneration out there, many of which would be far more powerful than this one. And if Sheridan was anywhere close to as powerful as Derek and Elora, they probably had better items already.

I needed to make something unique. Something that would give someone like Derek or Elora pause.

Ideally, something that would qualify as forbidden knowledge, but I didn’t think I could accomplish that so soon.

I knew what I wanted to attempt, but once I’d laid down on the floor to recover, I physically couldn’t push myself back up for several minutes.

When I did, I noticed that my hand was shaking.

That was not a good sign.

But I couldn’t stop. I needed to do this.

First, I looked up the runes I wanted. Runes that weren’t meant to be combined. Then I drew the design on paper.

My runes were crooked. Awful. If I’d etched them in metal, the item would have been wasted.

But I couldn’t stop, so I put the new bracer on the wrist of my trembling hand and turned it on. Immediately, I felt a surge of relief as a second regeneration item began to work.

It probably wasn’t a wise idea to have two regeneration items working on my body at once, but I promised myself I wouldn’t do it for long. Just long enough to make one more item.

It was an item I’d told Sera that I couldn’t make. I’d told her that it wouldn’t be safe, that it wasn’t possible.

I worked deep into the night, until it was finally finished. I didn’t even try it out, I was too exhausted.

I fell asleep with both the ring and the bracer still active.

In the morning, I couldn’t move my right hand.

Chapter VIII – Sorcery Scars

I took a few moments to breathe, then a few more moments to panic.

My right hand was completely numb.

I slipped off the bracer, rubbing my wrist. I hoped it was just a circulation problem from sleeping with the bracer on too tight.

It wasn’t.

Tentatively, I tried to push a bit of mana through my hand.

That was a mistake.

My hand ignited with agony, the muscles between my thumb and forefinger twitching uncontrollably as I fell backward and bit my tongue.

The ring kicked back in, but instead of soothing my pain, it just reversed it. The inside of my hand felt like ice, the numbness worse than before.

Cradling my hand under my arm for warmth, I found my mana watch and pressed it against my attunement.

85/85.

My mana was fine. It’d even gotten a little higher as I slept. I hadn’t broken my attunement in the same way that Sera had, but I’d managed to do something else.

After several minutes of consideration, I clenched my functional fist and slipped off the ring of regeneration.

Over the next hour, feeling gradually returned to my hand. That feeling, however, was agony.

I may have made a mistake.

I tried to go back to sleep. That was hilariously impossible.

I could hear people chattering downstairs, presumably over breakfast. I had to put a pillow over my head to drown out the sound. Any additional sensory input felt like too much.

I cradled my hand under the covers for the next couple hours until it returned to some degree of normalcy. I could move my fingers. Trying to use any mana sent me back into a state of pain that could best be described as tear-inducing, so I avoided that.

The ring was nearby the whole time, tempting in some respects, but it had also been a part of what had probably caused the problem. By suppressing my pain so much, I’d let it build to the point where the ring and bracer must have numbed the whole area to prevent the pain from affecting me.

I really hoped I hadn’t just injured myself badly enough to leave mana scars. My understanding was that scars formed from repeated overuse, and I’d been pretty good about avoiding that until recently.

Hopefully remembering this pain would serve as a sufficient deterrent to making a similar mistake again.

It also taught me a valuable lesson. I needed to stop using the ring when I didn’t need it or I’d be facing consequences like this in the long run.

It was nearly noon by the time I crawled downstairs, disheveled and still cradling my half-functional hand. I’d missed the morning’s classes.

And there was a stranger in the kitchen.

Specifically, sitting in the middle of the kitchen table, legs crossed in what looked like it was probably some kind of meditative posture.

The newcomer was about my height, wearing layered scholarly robes in crimson. The robes were in a Dalenos style, folded across the center of their chest and constrained with a cloth belt. Their short hair was cut unevenly at a diagonal, as if it had been sliced once with a blade and no further care had been given. They held a half-eaten apple in one hand and a carafe of some kind of liquid in the other.

This was clearly someone who did not care in the slightest what others thought about them.

I liked them immediately.

“Look,” they were saying, “If you’re going to shower me with gifts, you need to make them interesting. If it’s something I could just buy and forget about, it’s not worth risking Wydd’s ire.”

Patrick intercepted me physically before I could approach and make introductions. He took me by the arm and silently walked me out of the room.

Whatwhatwhat—

I panicked for just a moment at the unsolicited physical contact, but I allowed him to lead me to the entrance chamber.

“Sorry, sorry!” He let me go. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Believe me, you don’t want to go in there unprepared.”

I raised an eyebrow. “That was Sheridan Theas, wasn’t it? They’re wearing House Theas colors.”

I didn’t know a lot about House Theas, but I’d done some reading in advance of the meeting. They typically wore red, sometimes gold.

He waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Yeah, but we didn’t know what we were getting into. I mean, maybe Derek did, but he’s been hiding from them for most of the morning.”

“Okay? What exactly is such a problem?”

Patrick sighed. “They’re not interested in anything we’ve been offering. I think they’re enjoying watching us fret, though.”

That was unfortunate. “Has Keras offered to tell them about dominion sorcery? That’s forbidden knowledge, it seems like the most likely thing to work.”

“Keras isn’t here. We’re saving him as a last resort, since most people don’t even know he’s been staying with us. And he said he had business to attend to, something to do with that earring.”

“Probably trying to get it to work. Makes sense. Okay, I can offer the same. I obviously don’t know as much as Keras does, but I could regurgitate the lessons.”

“Don’t think it’ll help, but you can try. Just don’t mention Keras being around unless you need to. We could offer to arrange a meeting between them as a potential ‘gift’ for Sheridan.”

I didn’t think that’d be enough, but it wasn’t a bad idea. “Okay. Do they know about my new attunement yet?”

“Not sure. They didn’t say anything about it. Neither did we.”

“Okay, good. Anything else I need to know?”

“Marissa isn’t here. She’s in class today. Probably not an issue, but figured you should know.”

I nodded. “What else?”

“Uh, just be warned that Sheridan is sort of... eccentric.”

“I can deal with eccentric.”

I headed back into the kitchen. Sheridan’s gaze turned toward me as I approached.

I lifted a hand and waved. “Good morning. I’m Corin Cadence.”

Sheridan picked up another apple from the table and threw it at me.

I stepped to the side, avoiding it, and bowed at the waist. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Honestly, who throws apples at people?

Sheridan stared at me for a moment, then beamed brightly. “Your reflexes are commendable, Master Cadence. Are you here to help negotiate for my ‘dark magic’ as your retainer puts it?”

I shot Patrick a glance. He shrugged at me. “That’s what it sounds like.”

I turned back to Sheridan. “Definitely. Doesn’t matter where magic falls on the light spectrum as long as it works.”

Sheridan looked me up and down, appraising. I suspect Patrick or Marissa might have found that intimidating, but I was too used to being among nobles for that sort of thing to shake me in the slightest.

“I appreciate your pragmatism,” Sheridan began. “Unfortunately, I’m not certain we’ll be able to reach an agreement. Alas, the services your dear sister requires utilize forbidden magic. While I would be happy to help her in private, under conditions she could not observe, it seems your friends are hesitant to agree to such basic precautions. And that leaves me in a difficult position.”

I took a few steps closer and adjusted my style of speaking. If Sheridan wanted pretentious noble banter, I could play that game. “Ah, but certainly you must understand that in these difficult times, we must all take reasonable precautions for our well-being. My darling sister has already suffered so much, I fear I must take every due precaution to ensure she is not harmed again. It’s the only reasonable course of action, don’t you agree?”

Sera shot me a look that wasn’t quite a glare, but probably sat between a glare and a withering glance. She obviously didn’t like being treated like a fragile teacup, but I was playing to the tone of the conversation. Hopefully she’d understand, even if she didn’t like it.

“Of course, of course.” Sheridan shook their mug-carrying hand. “Family is most important, after all. And after all the tragedy you’ve suffered, I’m certain you couldn’t bear to lose someone else.”

Sheridan set the mug down, allowing them to make an exaggerated shrug with both hands. “But my loyalty is to Wydd first, and thus, I am bound to secrecy. Your friends have offered to exchange a few curios for the service, but are such trinkets worth the value of my word? Surely not.”

I lifted my gloved hand in a warding gesture. “I would not dare to insult you with the implication that you would accept a mere trifle in exchange for defying your sacred vows. But perhaps you would accept a trade that even Wydd would approve of?”

Sheridan fluttered their eyes. “If such a thing were to make itself manifest, surely I would consider it.”

“Allow me to begin by offering a small secret, but one of great personal significance.”

I slipped the glove off my right hand, displaying my new Arbiter attunement.

One of Sheridan’s eyebrows raised a fraction. “My, my. When someone banters about trading with a visage, I generally presume it to be all sand and no salt. I wasn’t aware you were an authority on the subject. Consider me thoroughly intrigued.”

Sheridan leaned a hair closer to me, then abandoned the slightness of that gesture to push themselves off the table and walk right up to me. “May I?”

I wasn’t quite sure what the question was. “Of course.”

Sheridan took my hand in theirs, lifted it to their mouth, and kissed my attunement mark.

I blinked, taking a step back unconsciously and breaking their hold.

What?

Ick.

“Fascinating. Just forged, but such potential.” Sheridan smiled. “Yes, quite delightful. Sit. Tell me what you have to offer.”

I stared blankly for a moment, trying to process whether or not Sheridan had just used some kind of identification magic on my attunement during that exchange, or if they were just being strange.

After deciding that the answer was probably both, I backed away and took a seat as instructed. I took a breath, considering where to start. “Would you have any interest in learning about Pre-Attunement Era sorcery?”

“A good thought, but I already know about it. You’ll need to do better than that. And before you offer me any sorcery-imbued trinkets, be aware that your friends have already tried that. Unless you’re hiding away any legendary artifacts, I’m not interested.”

I glanced from side to side.

We...sort of are hiding some legendary artifacts, aren’t we?

But Sheridan doesn’t know that, do they?

I couldn’t tell, but I wasn’t going to let the conversation jump in that direction.

“Perhaps you’d be more interested in something more conventional, then?” I shifted in my seat, allowing me to reach the pouch on my side. Then I pulled out the newly-made bracer of regeneration. “A new take on a ring of regeneration. Wydd would approve of taking something representing innovation, perhaps?”

“I’m certain it’s lovely, but traditional innovation more of Tenjin’s purview. Or Ferras’, depending. Unless it regenerates something other than the body, I’m afraid it’s not forbidden knowledge, and thus it’s outside of Wydd’s domain.”

“Well,” I reached into my bag again. I’d planned on the conversation going this direction. I’d counted on it. “That bracer may only regenerate the body, but this one,” I removed the other new bracer from my bag, “Does something more.”

Sheridan looked the bracer over, inspecting the runes. I didn’t know if they could read them. “Oh? Something to repair bone more effectively, perhaps?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s much better than that. This is a bracer of mana regeneration.”

Sheridan chuckled. “Something that poisons the wearer isn’t exactly the world’s greatest gift, darling.”

Sera shot me a quizzical look. I’d told her that mana storage and regeneration items were impossible when she’d asked for one a few weeks before.

Weeks ago, I hadn’t known how to make one.

I smiled. I’d worked until late at night on it.

I was nearly certain it would work the way I wanted.

I clipped the bracer onto my wrist. “You’re aware, of course, that such poisoning is because of contamination from the creator’s mana?”

Sheridan nodded. “I am a healer, Master Cadence. Of course I’m aware of that. Meaning that if you’re about to show me how it works on yourself, that’s not proof of anything. Yes, you can probably make an item that regenerates your own mana safely. Presuming that you continuously recharge it yourself. Clever, but of limited usefulness to you, and completely useless to anyone else.”

I allowed myself to smile, feeling an uncommon bit of pride. “You’re quite right — that’s the best an ordinary Enchanter could do. I did manage to find discussions of an Emerald-level enchantment for mana regeneration that works, but it’s never been popular due to the extreme cost. It has standard functions for recharging its own mana, much like the healing ring does, but that’s only a small portion of the item.

“The majority of an Emerald-level mana regeneration item’s runes work toward purifying the mana inside it, making the item inefficient. But what if a purification function wasn’t necessary?”

Sheridan’s eyes flashed. “Your Arbiter attunement. You believe that if you enchant an item with purified mana, the mana it regenerates over time will also be untainted?”

“Allow me to demonstrate.” I closed my eyes, forming a crystal in my hand, and then took out my mana watch. My mana in my hand registered 81/85. I showed Sheridan the display. “Normally, I regain my mana over the course of an hour. Thus, regaining three mana would ordinarily take me just about two minutes.”

I pressed the rune on the bracer, activating it. “I used up all the mana that I initially filled it with. The only mana inside the bracer now should be mana generated by the item’s regeneration runes.” I pointed at the appropriate runes to illustrate. “It will quickly recharge my mana with the amount that it has stored within. It also has runes to detect my maximum mana, and will not attempt to recharge me when I’m full.”

I tapped my hand with the mana watch again. It had only been seconds, but my mana registered 85/85 now. I didn’t feel any new discomfort, although my hand was still in enough pain from the night before that I wasn’t sure if I would have been able to tell.

This was a bit of a gamble. I wasn’t certain that the mana inside the device was pure. But if it wasn’t pure, it was probably the same composition as my original mana, and therefore not harmful to me.

Whether or not it would be harmful to someone else was more questionable.

I showed her the display. “When the bracer runs out of stored mana, it will continue to assist my mana regeneration as quickly as it regains its own mana. And that’s at a rate of —”

Sheridan raised a hand. “That’s quite enough. You want to offer me something experimental? Something that might not even work properly, and that obviously could be dangerous to the user?”

“I’m reasonably confident that it will work... But yes.”

“How absolutely delightful. What’s that other trinket there, the one that you’re using to measure your mana? I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

I turned the watch over in my hand. “Oh, this? It’s a mana watch. I made it earlier in the year. It checks your safe mana value like a Diviner would, as well as how much mana you have, and displays a value indicating the—“

“Yes, yes. I saw how it worked. And you made this device?”

“Sure?”

“How widespread is the design?”

I shrugged. “I just tried to patent it, but I haven’t heard back on that yet. As far as I’m aware, only a handful of people know it exists.”

“Delightful. I’ll take it.”

I blinked. “The bracer?”

“No, the mana watch. While I find the idea of a mana regeneration item delightful, and the idea that you were interested in trading me an untested one even more amusing, I would prefer something more practical. You may give me the mana watch now, in exchange for my services.

“When you have properly tested your mana regeneration item, I will consider another trade with you at a future date.” Sheridan opened a hand. “Given how creative you appear to be, I foresee great possibilities for a future business relationship between us.”

Their hand was open, waiting for the mana watch.

I hesitated.

Of all the items I’d made, the mana watch was the one with the greatest personal value. It was how I’d managed to convince myself to use my mental attunement, even if only a little bit.

It felt necessary to me. It wasn’t just a magical item, it was a staple of my way of life now.

Could I use my mental attunement without it? I’d turned it on for a few minutes here and there, of course, but that wasn’t anything like what I’d been doing to train the attunement. That took either hours of keeping the attunement active or directly transferring mana from the attunement into an enchantment.

How could I do that without knowing how much mana I had left?

I could make another one, of course. It wouldn’t feel the same as the original, but I’d survive.

I comforted myself with that thought. For the moment, it was enough to keep the fear at bay.

I put the mana watch in Sheridan’s hand. “Thank you. I’ll look forward to doing more business with you in the future, then.”

Sheridan slipped the watch into their robe. I felt something in my heart disappear along with it. “Excellent. Shall we get to work?” They turned toward Sera.

“What...like right now?” Patrick stammered.

Sheridan chuckled. “Why ever not? I imagine Miss Cadence would appreciate a resolution to this.”

Sera stood up and nodded once.

I agreed with Sheridan. “Are we doing this right here?”

“Goddess, no. There will be blood, and as much as it might amuse me to leave Derek’s kitchen strewn with viscera at some point, it would presently be in poor taste. I do believe Derek has a room upstairs for alchemical experimentation, however. That should have everything we need to take the precautions. Patrick, do be a dear and fetch Derek from whatever shadow he’s managed to hide in?”

“Sure thing!” Patrick waved and headed up stairs.

Patrick brought Derek back a minute later, and Derek grudgingly led the way toward his alchemy room. “I’ll have to clear off the table, but it should be a good place to work. Easy to clean, and I have healing potions if something goes wrong.”

Sheridan chuckled. “Nothing is going to go wrong, darling. I’ve been doing this for years.”

Outside the door, Sheridan stopped me. “You probably don’t want to see this.”

I shrugged. “I’ve seen blood before. Sera, do you want me there?”

Sera nodded emphatically.

“I’ll be in there, then.”

Sheridan turned back toward the door, but continued speaking. “No interrupting me. Regardless of how much she struggles or how bad it looks. You’ll only make things worse.”

With that said, she walked into the room. Derek was already clearing off a large central table, as he’d explained earlier. I recognized most of the equipment from Vellum’s lab and the one alchemy class I’d attended, but it wasn’t important right now.

We helped him move some of the potions onto shelves, then Derek waved at the empty table.

Sheridan nodded. “Good. Sera, take off your shirt. You can keep your undergarments on, but I need to be able to reach the whole front of your torso. Then lie down.”

Sera frowned, but followed their instructions. She waved me over, and I pulled up a chair to sit down next to her. She reached for my hand after she laid down, so I gave her one.

For the moment, her discomfort was going to be a lot worse than what I felt just from holding hands, so I’d tolerate it.

“Not going to give her a speech about how this won’t hurt?” Derek inquired.

“Why lie? All I can promise is that I’m not going to kill her. Provided none of you interrupt me. In fact, none of you are essential, so you should just leave. The brother can stay.”

Derek folded his arms. “I sort of own this house.”

Sheridan pointed at the door. “It’s a big house. Why don’t you find a mirror and gaze at the person you most adore?”

“Now, that’s not fair, Deni. There’s no point to staring at myself all the time — I need to study other people for contrast.” He shook his head. “But fine, I’ll leave. Patrick, come on. I have this great story about when Deni had just turned twelve...”

“Oh, you wouldn’t.”

Derek waved as he dashed out the door. Patrick walked over to Sera before leaving, giving her a brief hug and some presumably comforting words before disappearing and closing the door behind him.

“Goddess, you’re all building this up too much. This isn’t a funeral.” Sheridan shook their head. “Sera, are you ready?”

Sera nodded.

I was thinking about whether or not I had any final questions when Sheridan snapped their fingers in front of Sera’s face.

Sera’s eyes slammed shut, and I felt a wave of drowsiness and vertigo. I tipped backward, but Sheridan caught me before I fell backward.

“Sleep spell. Wasn’t expecting to catch you with it, but physical contact must have passed a bit through.”

I raised a hand to pinch myself in the arm, trying to shake off the sensation. “Ugh. Could have warned us?”

“Nonsense. If she was ready for it, she’d have braced her mental defenses, even unconsciously. The spell probably still would have taken hold, but I wasn’t going to take the risk. Steady yourself.”

I did my best. I’d read a little bit on how to defend myself against mental magic after seeing what had happened to Derek, and that little bit had taught me something important. Since I had an attunement with mental mana, that would give me a degree of resistance, even if mine wasn’t built for casting mind-influencing spells — and I could actively resist mental magic by converting more of the mana in my body into mental mana. By cycling that fresh mental mana through my body, I could burn away the spell.

So, I started doing that.

It wasn’t fast.

I was so distracted with trying to break the spell that I scarcely noticed when Sheridan started the procedure in earnest. Sheridan pressed their hand against Sera’s neck, frowned, and shook their head. “More severe than I expected, but still workable. Let me see the attunement.”

Sheridan flipped Sera over and pressed a hand against the modified attunement mark over her lungs. “Remarkable. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I can sense the damage, but I’m not sure how much I can treat. The throat will come first, and then I’ll see if I can handle making any improvements here.”

I nodded weakly, still focusing on cleansing my mind of the sleep effect. It wasn’t as easy as when we’d practiced, presumably because I wasn’t ready for it. Also, potentially because Sheridan’s spell was more powerful than the ones we’d used in training.

That...seemed odd, though. “How’d you do a sleep spell? Aren’t you a necromancer? That doesn’t sound like a sleep magic type.”

“Obviously that wasn’t my first attunement, darling, just like Arbiter wasn’t your own first attunement. Restricted attunements are almost never given to people without a previous attunement.” Sheridan flipped Sera over again, then pressed a hand against Sera’s neck and closed their eyes. “I’m going to need you to come up here and hold Sera still.”

I stood, stumbled, and steadied myself. “Okay.”

“Sit behind her.”

Sheridan sat Sera up with surprising ease. I pulled my hand out of Sera’s grip, which was harder than it sounded, and then sat behind her. “What do I do?”

“You need to make sure her head is facing downward, but support her neck so that it doesn’t have too much stress.”

“Shouldn’t we just lie her facing down?”

“I need to be able to access the entire front of her neck.”

I nodded, taking the position behind Sera. I essentially was using myself as the back of a chair, which led to another question. “Shouldn’t we just use a chair, then?”

“She’d just fall out of one. Hold her still.”

I held her still, at least as well as I could. My mind was definitely clearing up, even though I was too focused on Sera now to actively try to convert my own mana and fight the effects.

“Now we begin.” Sheridan tapped Sera’s neck and their fingers began to glow.

Sera’s body jerked, and she almost fell off the table immediately. I held her as steady as I could, but she continued to tremble.

Sheridan backed off after a few moments, the glow fading from their finger.

Sera coughed, and that cough produced more blood than I was comfortable with.

“What—”

“Relax, Corin. The blood is supposed to be there. Let her cough.”

There was a surprising surge of anger while Sera continued to cough messily onto the floor. She didn’t wake up in the process, which seemed miraculous, but that sleep spell must have been stronger than I’d expected.

“We’re moving her to a chair now,” Sheridan explained.

Of course we are.

I helped Sheridan move Sera to the closest chair. It was, as I’d expected, much easier to hold her in place that way. “You sure you’ve done this before?”

“Of course. I’ve just never done it outside of a hospital.”

I...didn’t know how to respond to that, but there was definitely some anger involved.

Derek presumably knew.

Sera might have known as well.

But operating on someone outside of a hospital without any prior experience sounded like a terrible risk to me.

Maybe that was why they didn’t tell me.

Once Sera was secure in the chair and her coughing had died down, Sheridan reached forward and touched Sera’s neck again. The glowing reappeared around Sheridan’s fingers, but Sera didn’t spasm this time.

Not until Sheridan’s fingers began to move further down her neck.

I held Sera as steady as I could, grinding my jaw in a mixture of fear and frustration.

Minutes passed. Apparently, the damage went all the way down Sera’s esophagus, which was why she was having such difficulty with speaking.

More time passed. More coughing from Sera. More blood.

I’d expected that removing the physical scar tissue would be some sort of surgical process; it wasn’t. At least, not in this case.

Sheridan was transforming it. Partially liquefying it, if I wasn’t mistaken.

Thus the coughing, the blood, and everything else she was coughing up.

This was feeling more and more awful the more I thought about it.

“Don’t worry, we’ll make Derek clean it up.” Sheridan gave me a knowing look.

That was not what I was worrying about at all.

Sheridan began tracing their fingers back upward, the glow shifting in color to a bright green. Healing, I realized.

I wished I had trained with life mana more. If I had, maybe I would have been able to sense what Sheridan was doing a little better, or even helped. As it was, I had only the barest comprehension of how healing magic worked, and I certainly wasn’t ready to attempt it. That was the kind of thing to practice on scratches, not on internal injuries.

I’d definitely start studying it soon, though. My attunement wasn’t strictly made for healing, but just having life mana meant I could do a bit of it, even if I wasn’t ever going to be an expert.

It only took another minute before Sheridan finished the process of moving up Sera’s body, then back down without any visible glow on their hand, presumably to double check the work.

“Throat and esophagus are done to the best of my ability. Even with my healing, however, the recovery time will be significant — and she may never regain the full use of her voice. There was simply too much damage. She should be able to whisper almost immediately, but she shouldn’t. Tell her to restrain herself from trying.”

“For how long?”

“At least a few days.”

I nodded. “Would it be safe to give her a regeneration item to speed up the healing, or would that make more scarring?”

“Regeneration items should be fine, but it’s not going to help that much. I’ve already healed most of what can be fixed with healing — her body needs to acclimate to the change. But no, it wouldn’t hurt to give her an item if you have one. And she still shouldn’t be trying to talk.”

That was all good to know. “Even being able to whisper in a few days would be a huge improvement. When do you expect her to be able to talk at normal volume, if at all? And what about her attunement?”

“Months, probably, if she recovers that much at all. As for the attunement, I’ll need to use a different technique for that. Mana scars aren’t quite the same as traditional scar tissue. They’re more like clusters...she’s waking up.” Sheridan snapped her fingers, and Sera slumped down again.

I didn’t feel the effects this time, so presumably Sheridan was a bit more careful.

“Now, then. The mana scars are different. I can’t extract them entirely; I need to change them back down into a usable form. Given how severe her scars are, this will likely take several treatments, but we can do the first one today. Let’s lay her back down on the table.”

We did so, placing her face down. Sheridan put their fingers on Sera’s attunement again, then closed their own eyes. “Don’t say anything. Be silent and still.”

I complied.

Sheridan’s fingers began to glow again, but not with a solid color. This time, I could see tiny runes — the size of handwriting, maybe smaller - tracing across Sheridan’s fingers and wrist. I’d never seen anything quite like it.

Then the tiny runes flowed off their hand, into the attunement mark.

Sera twitched once, then let out a sound like a hiss. Then she settled again.

“Done.” Sheridan pronounced. “At least for now. This is not a complete fix — in fact, it may not do anything at all on its own. Make sure to tell her what I told you, and also, tell her not to even try to use her attunement for a few days.”

“You don’t want to explain yourself?”

“Obviously not. Talking to people is awful, and I’ve done more than my tolerance for the day. She’ll wake up in a half hour or so. I’ll be long gone by then.”

“You’re not going to stay and see if she has any side-effects? Complaints?”

“I’ll do another diagnosis spell on her before I leave.” Sheirdan tapped their fingers on Sera. “There. All done. She’s fine. I’m leaving.”

I sighed. “And if she needs to find you for a second treatment...?”

“I’ll contact her directly. Her little mark has gained my interest, so you can be certain I’ll try to follow up. I’m not sure I can fix damage this extensive, but I enjoy a challenge.” Sheridan turned and headed toward the door. “Now, if you need anything else...” They smirked. “I suppose you’ll just have to track me down.”

“And how would I do that?” I asked.

Sheridan reached into a bag at their side and retrieved a business card.

It read:

Sheridan Theas — Professional Necromancer

Raising the Dead, Not Prices*

For Inquiries, Contact House Theas

*Not actually raising the dead, either

There was no address, just a single glowing rune below the text.

I recognized it as a form of targeting rune. In this case, a type designed for a non-enchanter to store a bit of their mana. This type was usually used to identify the owner of an item so that it could not be used by anyone else. In this case, though, I got the impression that it was more like a signature.

When I looked up after reading the card, Sheridan was gone.

I had the distinct feeling I’d just been flirted with.

Maybe.

That was strange on a number of levels, not the least of which was my half-dressed and unconscious sister being next to me.

The pools of blood on the floor weren’t helping the atmosphere, either.

And I still wasn’t quite sure where I stood on the idea of flirting or relationships in general.

I tried not to think about it. Instead, I slipped the bracer of regeneration out of my bag and slipped it on Sera’s wrist. Unlike the ring, I could activate the bracer myself, so I turned it on.

I hoped it would help.

After that, I pretty much just stared blankly at the doorway for a while.

I did hold Sera’s hand again, though.

I held it until she woke up.

It was silly. I didn’t know if she could even tell.

But she’d done the same for me when I’d been hurt, so the idea of it clearly meant something to her.

After a while, it barely bothered me at all.

Chapter IX – Rest and Recovery

I ended up doing the bulk of the cleaning. In spite of Sheridan’s joking about making Derek do the work, I owed him a great deal for both housing us and letting us make a mess in his lab.

I helped put his equipment back, too.

Sera wrote that she felt miserable in the aftermath, but she seemed stable. She coughed a bit more here and there, but there was a minimal amount of blood, and fortunately, no more of the liquefied scar tissue.

More importantly?

She already could whisper again.

It just provoked a series of terrible coughs every time she did.

I reminded her every time that Sheridan had told her not to try to talk for a few days, but Sera was just so happy to be able to communicate verbally at all, she couldn’t stop herself.

She gave me a few more hugs, too, in the direct aftermath. I braced myself for them as best I could. I knew she was just excited.

The most common thing she tried to whisper was some variation on “thank you” for helping her.

That mostly made me feel more awful.

I still felt like the whole thing was my fault on some level, since I’d given her that potion. The whole “it was what let us survive” thing was great, but I had a hard time internalizing that and pushing the self-recrimination out of the way.

It helped that we’d made some progress, though, and I was determined to do more.

Sheridan had given us some hope that Sera’s condition was fixable, even if Sheridan wasn’t certain they could fix it entirely through this method.

If a cure existed, I’d find it.

But for the moment, I had a more pressing priority.

The next dueling exam was coming up, and I didn’t feel even close to ready. I was probably one of the strongest general duelists in my own class, but there were still types of attunements that I didn’t have a good way of countering.

Especially Shapers.

I had plenty of practice “training” against my father, but I still didn’t have any effective means of countering his attunement. The tiles seemed like my best bet, but a skilled Shaper could still shield themselves from the effects of stepping on one.

I spent some time putting together ideas on how to handle each attunement, making some notes. It comforted me to get into that familiar mode, almost like I was preparing for my Judgment again.

But I was still nervous.

I made another mana watch to help diminish my anxiety. I tried to convince myself that I was working on ways to improve my original design, but I knew the truth. I’d grown completely reliant on the mana measurements. I didn’t know if I could function without them.

I felt a little better when it was done. I’d built in one extra function; the new device stored and displayed the last two measurements, rather than just one. It was an incremental improvement, but the bit of progress made me feel less guilty about spending my time on the watch.

The watch was simple enough that it didn’t take long to make, even with the improvements, but at that point the pain had finally gotten to the point where it wasn’t manageable.

If I’d been a more social person, maybe I would have spent the few remaining hours of the night checking in to see how Sera was doing or visiting Marissa or Patrick.

But that wasn’t me.

I spent the rest of the night reading instead.

I still had so many things I needed to learn. I had a bad habit of realizing I was behind on a subject and ignoring it in favor of something that felt more urgent.

I needed to work on breaking that habit, and I was going to start with something that I was interested in studying.

Foreign attunements were a tempting prospect, but I decided to research something a little bit more immediately relevant — tracking magic.

Even if the spire was sealed, there was still a good chance I’d need to track my brother down soon. To do that, I’d need to have at least a basic understanding of the types of tracking magic that were available.

I didn’t have any specific books on the subject, but Derek had a library, and I was able to find a general book on Divination. I paged through it, stopping at a section that caught my eye.

One of the traditional uses of Divination in noble households is paternity testing. In older houses where the retaining purity of a bloodline is of paramount importance, such spells are often used prior to the declaration that a child of questionable birth is an authentic family member.

Similarly, when a “family member” disappears for a long time — say, during war — and later returns, similar spells are often used to verify the person’s identity.

In cases where an entire family is believed to have been wiped out during an event, authentication spells can be used to compare the bloodline of a claimant to a stored blood sample — or even a relic that had been exposed to an ancient family member — to determine if an ancestral connection exists. This practice is somewhat controversial, as seen in the case of the Errant Prince of Valia in the third century...

I shut the book for a moment, considering.

Given how flexible these spells seem to be, I could almost definitely get a Diviner to test if Sera and I are really related — and if so, I could probably even get more specific details.

But do I really care?

If the results told me we’re not related, would that change things for the better?

Probably not.

Father was presumably using the idea of Sera being my sibling as a way to try to create competition between us.

If so, he had utterly failed in that regard.

There were minor practical elements to knowing if we were blood related, though. If Derek thought that we could track Tristan using my blood as a focus, that meant it might be possible to track Sera through the same means — or to track me through her. Maybe it was worth investigating if that was possible.

It was worth thinking about.

More importantly, it was worth asking Sera about.

I’d made the mistake of making a big decision — making Patrick a retainer — without asking her.

I wasn’t going to make that kind of mistake again if I could avoid it.

I wasn’t going to ask her that night, though. I was still overloaded on social activity. I couldn’t handle more contact with people.

I kept reading instead, eventually finding the closest thing to the section I’d originally been looking for.

There are three basic location spells, each of which has numerous variants with more distinct function.

Arrow of Direction shows the caster a visible arrow pointing toward the current direction of the target. The most basic version only lasts a few moments. More powerful versions remain active and continuously shift based on the movements of the caster and the target.

Locate Target shows the caster an image of the target and their current surroundings. More powerful versions persist longer, show a larger area, or include senses other than sight. Using the Locate Target spell through a focus, such as a pool of water or a mirror, is often known as “scrying”.

Evaluate Distance tells the caster how far their target is away from them. More powerful versions work at longer ranges, or also include if the target is moving and the direction of their movement.

Various combinations of these spells also exist; it is extremely common to find spells that combine Arrow of Direction and Evaluate Distance, for example.

Note that spells also exist to block Divination attempts. In these cases, more raw power is required for a Divination to break through the defending spell, much like how an attack spell would need to break through a barrier.

That was all useful information. Now, I just needed to figure out how to get into the spire to make use of it, or maybe test some of the spells outside the spire to see what happened.

A few hours of reading had calmed my nerves a bit and helped diminish the pain in my hand to a manageable level.

I still wasn’t ready to sleep, but I forced myself into bed.

Tomorrow, I had training to do.

Chapter X – Difficult Questions

It was Tensday. My hand had mostly recovered, but I was still feeling nervous about overusing it.

I wasn’t going to stop training, but I needed to be aware that if I kept my regeneration items on, it would dull my pain to the point that I could overwork myself. I resolved to avoid using the regeneration items while I was enchanting and just put them on when I expected to be in combat.

I had three days left to get ready for the next dueling class, and I’d spent much of that time working on fixing Sera’s problem.

I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as just fighting another pair of students from our class. Things with Teft were never that simple.

I wasn’t sure exactly what he’d throw at us, so I needed to prioritize carefully.

I wanted to finish the replica of Dawnbringer, but if the class was anything like the last one, we wouldn’t be allowed to use magical weapons. I estimated that it would take nearly a full day if I didn’t want to overuse my attunement again, and I couldn’t justify using that much time on something we might not be able to use.

I started by making a list of likely things that Teft would change for the test.

First, he could change the style of opponents. Maybe we’ll be fighting people from other classes. Maybe even summoned monsters, like a Survival Match.

If he’s feeling particularly mean, maybe he’ll make us fight a teacher.

To prepare for this, Patrick and I should do some two versus one fights against Derek or Keras. We’ll lose badly, but it will be a good chance to adapt to team tactics against a single stronger opponent.

Second, he could change our team members. My best way of preparing for that is to make sure my close friends are all properly prepared and ready to adapt. I should be ready to work together with anyone, however, even if they aren’t on my team. That means thinking about ways my style can synergize with each individual attunement. I can make notes on this.

Third, he’s almost definitely going to change the tiles.

I should check the arena the night before, either directly if possible, or remotely by asking someone to scry on the area for me. Given Teft’s personality, I don’t think he’d consider it cheating.

Fourth, I could cheat intentionally. If I do check the arena physically in advance, I could make alterations to some or all of the tiles, or place other enchanted items in the arena in advance. That might be something Teft applauds, or it might be something he’d fail me for. After looking at the arena, I’ll consider this and evaluate the risks.

Fifth, I can ask Teft in advance about the next test. It’s likely he won’t tell me anything, but he’s the type of person who might consider asking questions in advance to be part of the test. It is unlikely I will have any points deducted for asking, so this is worth doing, even if I really don’t want to.

I felt like that was a good enough list to start with. Enough so that I swallowed my usual distaste for talking to other human beings and shared it with Sera.

She wrote me another note in reply. She was capable of whispering now, but it seemed like it was still pretty painful for her.

When contemplating cheating, you’d be wise to destroy the evidence in the future. But I applaud you for the thought, even if I think you’re too innocent to ever go through with it. Talking to Teft seems unlikely to help, but wise to attempt.

Thank you for sharing your ideas. I’ll plan to do some two versus one training with Marissa as well. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else we can do to prepare.

That sounded like a good plan — and it reminded me of another training step. “Marissa and I will be getting some team practice today, too.”

Sera tilted her head inquisitively.

“We asked Keras to teach us a few things. He’s already been doing a little bit of combat practice with Marissa, but I asked him to teach me some things as well. We’re having our first lesson together today. Do you want to watch?”

Sera shook her head, scribbling another note.

Not today. Practicing trying to cast Summoning spells through my hand. I tried releasing my contracts verbally now that I can whisper again, but it didn’t work. Just speaking aloud doesn’t help if I can’t draw any mana to trigger the effect. And even with what Sheridan did, I can’t feel my attunement yet. I think the contracts are still draining it too fast for the attunement to generate any mana.

I think I can figure out how to convert the mana in my hand into the right types to break a contract, but it’s hard, because I’m used to converting my mana by using the types I already have as a template...and I don’t have the right types anymore, so I just have to try to feel my way through it.

That all made sense, but it seemed...inefficient. “Do you want me to try to transfer a little bit of transference mana into your hand? It’s purified now, so it should be safe.”

She shook her head.

Thank you, but you’ll forgive me if I’m a little shy about having any more foreign mana injected in my body after what happened last time.

“Yeah, fair. That makes sense. Hrm. I suppose enhancement elixirs would be the same problem, in that case. Maybe I could....”

She raised a hand to stop me from speaking, then shook her head once, and wrote another note.

It’s fine, Corin. You’ve gotten me far enough. I can take it from here, at least for this particular step. If I can’t get this to work, we’ll see about going hunting for flowers in the snow, and you can help with that. But for now? Let me work on this myself for a bit.

That was fair. “Okay, I’ll leave you to it, then. Just be careful, okay?”

If you’re going to go train with Keras, you might be the one who needs to be careful.

I grinned. She was probably right.

***

“Today,” Keras began, “We’re going to start with the two of you showing me what you’re already capable of.”

“Okay,” I replied, “But do we really need to be up here? You know Derek has a training room, right?”

Keras laughed. “Sure, but fighting feels more exciting on a rooftop, doesn’t it?”

Exciting wasn’t the word I would have used, but he wasn’t going to be dissuaded. “Come on, take positions,” Keras instructed. “I want to see how you two hold up against each other.”

He sat down on one of the edges of the roof.

“But you’ve already seen us both fight, m’lord.” Marissa sounded dejected, probably because she’d been hoping to learn some sort of secret techniques immediately.

Admittedly, I’d been sort of hoping for that, too.

Keras waved a hand dismissively. “Sure, but not in a dueling context, and isn’t that what you two are practicing for this week?”

I shrugged at that. “Yeah, but we’re probably not fighting each other again. It’s more likely Teft will make us do something unusual, like fight together against a stronger opponent. Maybe the two of us could fight you for a bit?”

Marissa shot me a concerned look.

Keras just nodded seriously. “Okay, we can do that first.”

I...hadn’t expected him to agree to change his plans like that, so I wasn’t exactly sure how to reply. “Huh. Uh, thank you.”

Keras cracked his knuckles, then unfastened his sword belt and shoved it to the side. The sword in the sheath was just a training weapon — he’d left the enchanted weapon he usually carried downstairs. “You two ready?”

I walked over to Marissa’s side. Ideally, we could guard each other if we were adjacent. I put a hand on the hilt of Selys-Lyann, and then turning to face Keras. “I’m ready. Marissa?”

She took a breath and focused, drawing a dueling cane off her belt. I didn’t see her use weapons frequently, but it was probably a good thing for her to practice with. “Ready.”

Keras made a come-hither gesture with his hand. “Begin.”

I frowned. Keras was still sitting down. “You’re not going to stand up?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Not unless you make me. I like it down here.”

That seemed like a pretty extreme handicap...but then again, I’d seen what he could do. I wasn’t going to underestimate him. I drew Selys-Lyann and turned my head toward Marissa slightly. “Advance together. Attack together.”

“Right. Go.”

We took a step forward in sync.

Keras opened his palm upward toward the air, forming a globe of flame. Then he flicked a finger into it and launched the sphere at us.

I moved first, swinging Selys-Lyann into it. Ice met fire, and the sphere vanished as the opposing elements mixed.

Marissa fired a blast from her cane, but Keras just smacked it out of the air with his other hand.

Another step closer.

My forward foot hit the floor, then began to sink into the stone floor.

“Lesson one.” Keras tapped a hand on the ground, and the stone solidified around my right foot. “When fighting a sorcerer, a threat can come from any direction.”

Marissa punched downward, smashing the stone that had trapped her own foot, then repeated the process for me. While she did so, I slashed toward Keras and pushed on my sword’s mana, creating a shockwave of ice.

Keras waved a hand, and a wall of flame rose up in the path of my ice. Both the attack and the wall vanished on impact.

“That’s an interesting weapon. You said you’d heard a legend about it belonging to one of your goddess’ lovers?” He sounded casual, conversational. This wasn’t straining him in the slightest.

“Yeah, but it’s always hard to tell when Lars is just making things up.” I still intended to do some digging about the sword later, but it just wasn’t a priority right now. That weird dream seemed to match up with what Lars had told me, but that might have just been my imagination filling in details in a fictional tale.

I wiggled my foot now that the stone around it had been crushed, extracting it carefully. Marissa and I stepped forward again.

“It sounds plausible to me. I can take a look at it later and see if I can figure out anything about it, if you’d like.”

“Sure,” I replied, trying to regain my focus. I’d fought a few people who liked to chat constantly — it was almost always a deliberate distraction.

He can use fire and earth magic, as well as whatever that cutting aura is. He’s also much faster and stronger than we are. I need to compensate for that and catch him off guard.

I looked at Marissa and said two words. “Flank him.”

I stepped to the side, rather than forward, and Marissa mirrored my movement. His eyes flicked back and forth between us, but he showed no sign of concern.

I cut the air, pushing another shockwave at him. Keras raised another wall, as I’d hoped.

For a moment, he couldn’t see me. In that moment, I activated the jumping ring.

But I didn’t jump — I just angled my feet. I’d practiced this.

The ring activated and blasted me forward, following in the shockwave’s wake. When the shockwave hit the wall of flame and dispersed it, I was right behind, lunging toward Keras’ face.

He tilted his head to the side, avoiding the attack effortlessly.

Marissa was right behind him, swinging her dueling cane with the blade extended.

He caught the blade between two fingers, then snapped the steel in half.

Marissa hopped back, abandoning the cane. I swung again, and he batted my sword out of the way. For a moment, right before his hand met the sword, his aura shifted to fire.

Vapor rose from Selys-Lyann’s blade.

Marissa threw a kick at the center of his back, and with my attunement active, I could see her shroud concentrated around her leg.

He swatted her foot with an open palm, and she flew backward, landing and sliding about ten feet away.

For that moment, he looked distracted. The sword attacks were too obvious, so I switched my grip momentarily and fired a blast of gray mana from my gauntlet instead.

That hit him straight on. I didn’t see the telltale flicker of a barrier or shroud. He patted the spot on his chest where the bolt had struck and nodded to me. “Not bad. Wasn’t expecting that one.”

While Marissa closed the distance again, Keras stood up.

Marissa threw the broken dueling cane at him. He side-stepped the hurled weapon, and I used that moment to slash at his midsection.

He grabbed the blade of my weapon faster than I could process. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the blade began to glow red, instead of blue, and I saw steam rise from the surface.

Alarmed, I tried to pull the weapon back, but his grip, even holding the blade, was far stronger than mine.

I grabbed the hilt with both hands, wrenching against his strength, but to no avail.

Marissa swung at him with a charged fist, but he stepped to the side again, seemingly without any effort.

I released the grip on my weapon and blasted him with transference mana from my gauntlet.

Keras slid back a few inches, then tossed my sword to the ground. “I like the glove. That’s useful.”

I glared at him. “Please don’t break my sword.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that.” He blocked, rather than dodged, another swing from Marissa. “Just needed to use some flame to make sure the ice wouldn’t spread across my skin. That sword is dangerous, even to someone like me.”

I tried to blast him again, but he swatted it out of the way this time. Marissa followed up with another punch, but he grabbed her arm and hurled her past him.

She hit the floor, rolled, and growled as she rose to her feet.

Think. What can I do that can actually threaten him?

I took a swing at him with the gauntlet, but he dodged my strike even more easily than he had with Marissa.

My sword might be a real danger, but he knows about it, and he’s being careful about it.

I don’t have anything else that can hit him harder than the cane.

...But Marissa does.

He’s been deliberately dodging or grabbing when she uses her arm. He must know about the bracer I gave her that can boost how hard she punches. And now she has that strength-enhancing ring, too.

Keras glanced at Marissa, then back to me.

Marissa was back on her feet, rushing toward us.

I was only a few feet away from him now.

I moved my arms to my sides and activated the jumping ring.

Slamming into Keras was like hitting a brick wall, but my phoenix sigil absorbed some of the force of the impact.

I wrapped my arms around him in the moment after impact.

He broke my grip a second later, but I’d never had any hope of holding him for long.

Just long enough for Marissa to punch him in the face.

Keras staggered at the force of the blow, and I shoved my hand into his chest, activating my gauntlet repeatedly at point-blank range.

I managed four direct hits before he caught my hand, twisted, and shoved me right into Marissa.

We both stumbled at the impact, but managed to avoid falling over.

“That was good teamwork.” Keras rubbed his chin. “I actually felt that. Been a while.”

Marissa beamed. “Got a lot more where that came from.” She put up her fists in a ready stance.

I didn’t have a weapon at this point, so I just mirrored her. “You ready for more?”

Keras laughed. “Sure.” He sat back down. “Go get your sword, Corin.”

I glanced at Marissa, and she nodded.

I went and picked up Selys-Lyann. Keras let me walk back to Marissa without interfering.

I inspected the blade. True to what Keras had claimed, it looked undamaged. A layer of ice had already spread back across the blade’s surface.

“You could go a little harder on us this time,” Marissa offered. “You weren’t attacking at all.”

She was right, I realized — aside from that tiny ball of flame right at the beginning, he was fighting purely defensively. And given how easily I’d cut through the fire, that attack had probably been little more than a distraction...maybe that was when he’d altered the stone in the floor.

“I don’t think you’re ready for me to fight back.” Keras watched us with a taciturn expression.

“We managed to hit you a few times there,” I pointed out. “And I managed to fight against Derek for a while. He seems to hold his own against you.”

Keras shook his head. “I don’t mean to imply either of you is a weak fighter. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Either of you would have been a good fight for me when I was your own age. But I think you’re missing a couple important points.”

Marissa lowered her guard for a moment to fold her arms. “Whatcha mean?”

“One important thing to learn is that unless someone is highly specialized in defense, their defensive capabilities don’t improve as much as their offensive capabilities do.”

Keras folded his hands. “A Sunstone level attuned has six times more mana than a Carnelian. That means, in theory, they can cast an attack spell that’s six times stronger. But their shroud doesn’t block six times more damage, and they don’t necessarily get any faster.

“There are ways around this, to some degree. One of Derek’s contracts is air based, and increases his speed. Another of his contracts is stone-based, and increases his physical durability. But as an Emerald, he has hundreds of times more mana than you do — and he doesn’t have hundreds of times your speed or resilience.

“The same is going to be true for most high-powered fighters. Even an ordinary human could knock an Emerald level Enchanter out with a swift blow from inside their shroud, unless that Enchanter has spells or items that give them additional defense.”

I understood all that, even if I’d never heard it put in those exact terms. It was the reason Jin was able to knock Orden out with a surprise attack, for example. “Okay, sure, but Derek was attacking us during our fight, and we held out okay.”

“I talked to Derek about that fight. Orden instructed him not to kill any of you. That particular command gave him some flexibility to hold back when fighting you.”

That was no surprise — I could tell Derek was trying to resist the commands, he just wasn’t able to break free.

Keras continued. “Moreover, she ordered him not to summon the elementals from his weapons. Presumably, she was worried that if he summoned them, they’d realize he was controlled and find a way to break him free. If he was trying to fight you at anything close to his full strength, that would have gone very differently.”

I furrowed my brow. “That makes sense, but he was still attacking to subdue us. I’m sure you could hold back somewhat, too.”

“I could, but I still might hurt you. Derek is a fairly balanced fighter, since he’s assigned his contracts to enhance his fighting in a number of different ways. I’m specialized in offensive melee combat. I don’t have a traditional shroud, so I don’t have the kind of defensive strength that someone like Derek does. But if I was attacking with any degree of seriousness...” He shook his head. “You wouldn’t like the result.”

Marissa put her arms back up. “Aw, c’mon. It’s no fun if you don’t fight back. Just for a minute?”

Keras narrowed his eyes. “Corin, do you agree with Marissa?”

I nodded. I knew that Keras was probably the most dangerous person I’d ever fought against, but I wanted to see how much of a gap there was in our fighting ability. It would be useful to see just how far I had to grow. “Just try not to snap us like twigs.”

He grinned. “I’ll hold back as much as I can. Are you two ready?”

Marissa shifted to a ready stance. “You bet.”

I raised Selys-Lyann defensively, moving close enough to Marissa that we were nearly touching. It would be easier for us to guard for each other that way. “Ready.”

Keras bowed his head. “Begin.”

One moment, Keras was still sitting several feet away.

The next, there was a sword at my throat.

And Marissa’s throat, because we were next to each other, and the blade was pretty long.

I’d say that I froze, but that would have implied I ever had a chance to move in the first place.

Keras removed the sword slowly, deliberately, and slipped it back into the scabbard at his side.

I’d known he could move fast when he wanted to. He’d been a blur during some of the fight against Derek, and even faster when he’d cut one of Katashi’s attacks out of the air.

But I hadn’t experienced being on the receiving end of it.

It was...not a pleasant experience.

Humbling would have been one way to put it. In that regard, Keras was right. He’d shown us just how absurd the idea of even the two of us fighting against him was.

There was more to it, though.

There was a sort of dysphoria in my mind, a degree of disbelief that anyone could move that quickly. Even if he had magic to make him move faster physically, how could he perceive that much faster than I could?

It wasn’t just that he teleported — he had to be able to stand up, move his arms to a completely different position, pick up the sword from the ground, unsheathe it, and then move to put his sword at our necks.

Did he experience the passage of time in a different way than I did when he was moving like that? Or perhaps permanently? The latter was an even more daunting concept, because it implied a way of seeing the world that was completely alien.

Maybe they were good questions, but all I managed to stammer was, “How?”

Keras leveled his now-sheathed sword in front of him. “A fair question, but we’re not done yet.”

As if to punctuate the point, Marissa swung a fist, impacting the scabbard and battering it out of the way. She tried to follow-up on the opening, but he kicked her in the chest, doubling her over.

I swung Selys-Lyann downward, but it was a feint. As he stepped back and avoided it, I tried something new.

The ring of jumping used transference mana — the same type I used for enchanting all the time. I could feel it, and, to some extent, control it.

I activated the ring again, but I didn’t let the mana seep into my legs and launch me forward.

I refocused it, channeling it all into my left arm as I swung my fist at him.

My own arm’s motion was a blur, too fast for me to follow.

It had worked.

Keras grabbed my fist out of the air anyway.

“Interesting.” He held my fist in an iron grip with a single hand, dodging effortlessly as I used my main hand to swing Selys-Lyann at him again. “Didn’t think you’d be able to use the ring with that level of flexibility yet, but it was a good idea. You would have hit a slower opponent hard.” He smiled. “Unfortunately, you asked for me to put in more effort, and I have no intention of letting either of you hit me again.”

Keras released my hand — then flicked it with a finger, like he had with the fireball earlier.

My hand flew back, smashed by sudden kinetic force. The impact spun me, throwing off my next attempt at a swing.

Marissa coughed, straightened, and flung her right arm out to her side.

Her arm was encased in a blade-like aura, like the one Keras had shown us earlier. It looked considerably thicker than when she’d tried to use it in our dueling test a few days earlier.

She swung the aura blade at him. He raised the scabbard to block — and the aura cut right through it, and the sword within.

Keras dropped the weapon with a surprised look, stepping back just before the aura connected with his body. “Not bad. You’ve been practicing without me.”

Marissa grinned. “Every night.” Then she lunged at him.

Keras side-stepped, blurred, and then he was behind her. I tried to step forward, but he moved too fast. He brought an open hand down on Marissa’s back. The impact blasted her downward and into the ground, cracking the stone floor.

I backed off rather than lunging, swinging at the air and producing another crescent of ice. Keras had admitted to being a close combat specialist, so my best bet was to keep him at a distance.

Keras stepped out of the way of the crescent, forming a ball of flame between his hands. I didn’t like the look of that, so I activated the ring again, blasting myself backward, almost to the opposite side of the roof.

He threw the sphere at Marissa, while she was still pulling herself off the floor. It was a direct hit. Her phoenix sigil’s barrier flickered and shattered on impact, but her shroud absorbed most of the rest of the blast.

Most, but not all. The back of her shirt had a hole burned in it, and the skin beneath was reddened and burned. I heard her let out a pained shout.

“Mara—” I started, but then Keras was in front of me. I took another swing at him out of instinct, but he just batted it to the side with an open hand.

I grabbed him with my other hand and activated the ring of jumping, focusing the energy into him.

The blast shot him backward, almost off the roof.

Almost.

He stopped right at the edge, shaking his head. “Not bad, Corin. But not enough.”

Marissa hissed, tensed her hands, and pushed herself to her feet. She extended her right arm, her shroud sharpening back into a blade shape. “Again.”

Keras raised an eyebrow at her. “...Really? You still want to fight?”

She balled her hands into fists. “I’m just getting started.”

The swordsman laughed, shaking his head. “You don’t know when to give up.” He took a few steps closer, then sat back down. “Let’s start over.”

I walked back over to Marissa, shrugging off my uniform coat and putting it over her shoulders. She winced as she slipped it on, so I reached into my bag to retrieve the ring of regeneration and handed it to her. She put it on, activated it, and nodded in thanks.

“Let me see your phoenix sigil for a minute.”

She turned toward me so I could grab the sigil. With my new attunement, it only took me a few seconds to recharge, although I could feel my hand burning from the effort of using that much mana that quickly.

“Thanks.” She turned back to Keras. “Ready.”

I stretched, then readied myself again. “Ready as well.”

We fought for hours, and I felt like we were getting just a little bit better at keeping up with Keras toward the end, especially when we attacked together.

Our teamwork was getting better in general, too. Toward the end, we managed to block his attacks for each other once or twice, like I’d intended from the beginning.

I never landed another hit on him, though. Neither did Marissa. Not after he’d decided to take us more seriously.

All in all, though?

It was the first time I could remember enjoying combat training in a long, long time.

***

I had Understanding Attunements class that day, and I did go to the class, but I barely paid attention at first. It when Professor Conway introduced a guest that I regained my focus.

“This is Professor Yang, a visiting teacher from Alaris Academy in Caelford. While visiting, he’s agreed to help give you an early introduction to a particularly difficult task — resisting mental compulsion spells.”

Now that got me interested. Professor Yang was tall and heavy, with a pair of thick glasses and an uncovered attunement on his right hand.

It was a Controller attunement. I’d memorized the basic version of that particular mark after I’d seen how devastating Orden’s Controller abilities were. I wanted to be certain I could identify one early if I ever saw one again.

From the look of his particular attunement, I believed he was a Citrine — but it was hard to tell. There were a number of variations of each individual attunement, even at any given level. I’d learned to pick out the main symbol early in life, but I was just learning about all the types of variations that were possible this year.

Attunement levels each added an additional stroke to the rune’s shape, but the location and shape of the stroke varied. We were scheduled to discuss mark variations in the second half of the year, so I hadn’t spent a lot of time studying it yet.

“Professor Conway, thank you for having me. Students, good day to you all.” Professor Yang had a smooth voice without much of a Caelish accent. “I believe Professor Conway has already introduced you to the basics of my attunement, the Controller, but I’d like you to humor me and listen for a few moments before we begin the practical portion of the lesson. Some of this may be review.”

Most of this class had been review for me in general, but I usually didn’t mind. While I’d learned most of the basics about magic as a child, some of the elementary lessons had faded over time, and other things I’d been taught as a youth had been “simplified” to the point of inaccuracy.

The higher degree of accurate information in classes like this one and my general magic theory class made them useful to attend, even if they did go over a lot of information I already knew.

I imagined that classes like these were even more important for people like Marissa, who might not have had much of a formal education at all up to this point in her life.

Professor Yang continued an overview of his attunement. It was, as he said, mostly the basics. I paid more attention once he got into information that was new. “Most Controller spells involve working with perception mana. Perception mana influences how you experience the world, whereas mental mana is used for memory and analyzing information you already know.”

Professor Yang put a finger against his forehead. “While there is a considerable amount of overlap between the two, perception mana is primarily tied to your emotions, senses, and instincts, whereas mental mana is more about reasoning and conscious decision making.

“Both can be used for information gathering purposes; a perception improving spell might help you see or hear better, whereas a mental improvement spell might allow you to process something you couldn’t otherwise, such as improving your mathematical abilities.”

He gestured to the class. “Your brain uses both types of mana, and thus, they work in tandem. This means that some mental spells might still impact how you perceive the world, and some perception spells might still alter how you analyze situations. This is how Controllers influence you. Stand up.”

We all stood up.

It took me a moment to realize that I hadn’t intended to stand up.

That was really unsettling.

“While I’ve been speaking, I’ve been filling the classroom with perception mana. Unless you—”

No. This is unacceptable.

I didn’t like being controlled.

My mind was everything. It was the definition of who I was as a person. I certainly wasn’t going to let someone else play with it.

I sat back down.

Professor Yang turned toward me. “Ah, you discovered a weakness in this style of magic already. I did not explicitly command any of you to remain standing. There’s a little bit of my own perception mana influencing each of your own minds right now, making you vulnerable to my commands. This can be extremely subtle, but once you realize you are being influenced, you can attempt to resist.

He gestured at me. “This student found a basic loophole in my command. Not only can this approach do the obvious and help you avoid committing acts you do not wish to, but it also stimulates your mental mana — and your mental mana is a natural defense against compulsion magic.”

“Perception mana and mental mana work together, but they’re opposites; they cancel each other out much in the same way that fire and water do. You can also attempt to use other perception spells to counter existing ones, but I suspect most of you do not have access to those. Thus, I recommend this simple task. If you apply your mental mana to the purpose of freeing yourself, eventually, you may succeed.”

I was already working on that.

Now that I knew I was under a compulsion spell, I was actively converting some of my mana in my body into mental mana, then trying to cycle that through to my mind. That was a slow process, though, and I couldn’t identify the perception mana to try to target it directly.

Fortunately, I knew what the teacher was saying was accurate; I’d already managed to do something similar with the sleep spell that Sheridan had used. I could probably free myself from the spell like this...eventually.

This was a much subtler effect, though, which raised a concern.

How would I know that I was free, if I hadn’t detected the spell in the first place?

That was unsettling.

“Let’s see if you can actively resist, now that you know you’re compelled. Everyone, sit back down.”

I felt urge to comply, but I was already sitting, so it didn’t have any real impact.

No one managed to resist just yet. We were all sitting now.

“Stand up.”

We all stood.

I clenched my fists. I did not like this exercise.

I could see a few other people nearby who were taking other actions to try to free themselves. I saw someone pinching himself, hoping pain would overwhelm the instincts.

Someone else was covering her ears. That was the best plan I’d seen so far, but when the next command came...

“Sit down.”

She sat, too. Either she had still heard him with her ears covered, or the mana was activating and sending the command regardless of whether or not she heard the voice.

I was cycling my mana as quickly as I could, but the effect didn’t seem to be getting any weaker. In fact, it seemed to be getting harder to resist, not easier.

Professor Yang explained why. “This might seem a bit unfair, but as I’ve been continuing to speak, I’ve been continuing to add more perception mana into the room to reinforce the spell. This is how Controllers usually work, since otherwise, people will begin breaking out shortly after they realize they’re being controlled. This makes resisting compulsion something of an endurance test; you must outlast the Controller’s ability to control you, or wait until they make a mistake you can exploit. Unless, of course, you can force your way out of the spell by generating mental mana quickly enough — which is unlikely for first-year students.”

Unlikely, yes. But not impossible.

An exceptionally talented Diviner or Enchanter, who had honed their skills throughout the entire semester and already hit Carnelian, might have had a chance.

We didn’t have anyone like that in this particular class.

But I did have an idea. A terribly dangerous idea.

I pressed two fingers of my right hand against the mark on my forehead, and I activated my Arbiter attunement.

I’d been converting the mana in my right hand into mental mana, just like I’d done dozens of times before while enchanting — and now, I was using my Arbiter attunement to transfer that mana straight into my mind.

Researcher had warned me that it was risky to try to recharge or empower my own attunement. It wasn’t built for that, and the idea of damaging my mind was horrifying.

Just not as horrifying as being controlled by someone else.

I felt mana surge from my hand into my mind, and for a moment, the whole world went white.

I felt a pressure build inside my ears, like I was swimming deep underwater, and pain building in my temples—

And then I blinked, and the pressure was gone. The pain subsided a moment later.

And the world was different.

My Enchanter attunement was on, without my willing it to do so. The room was swimming with colors, but they seemed brighter, crisper than usual.

I felt like I could pick out more detail in each and every hue. Professor Conway and Professor Yang both had Citrine auras. I’d known that before, but when I looked at Professor Yang, I could see so much more detail now.

His shroud wasn’t just a nebulous aura now; I could see it flowing out of his skin, and that it was thicker around both his hand and his chest.

Meaning he had a second attunement; probably a lung-mark, since he was spreading mana by speaking. I could have guessed that from his casting method, but I couldn’t have clearly identified it from this distance before.

And if I squinted, I thought I could even see a hint of the mana inside his body. I’d never seen anything like that before.

But more importantly, when I pulled my hand away from my forehead, I could see the thickness in the aura around my own body. The crimson was sharper, deeper, than when I’d looked at my own shroud in the past.

And in that moment, I’d understood.

I’d pushed my Enchanter attunement to Carnelian.

I stood up without prompting and bowed at the waist. “Thank you for the lesson.”

Professor Yang turned to me again. “You’re welcome, but we’re not quite done yet. Sit back down.”

I felt just the tiniest tug to obey.

I ignored it. “I’d rather not.”

The whole class turned their eyes toward me. Someone actually cheered.

Normally, I’d have been embarrassed by that, but you know what?

Not that time.

Professor Yang clapped softly. “Very impressive. I rarely see first-year students that can break that spell, even Controller students. Would you like to try resisting something more directed, rather than the class-wide spell?”

I shook my head. “Thank you for the offer, but not right now. That took a lot out of me, and if I’m being honest, I really don’t want to deal with that feeling again.”

“Well,” the professor nodded in sympathy, “Let’s hope you never have to.”

Given my luck, I knew exactly how likely that was.

I was tempted to walk right out of the classroom after that, but I didn’t want to be rude, and I knew there could be more useful information later on. Fortunately, Professor Yang didn’t make any effort to include me in his control spells again.

In fact, now that my Enchanter Attunement had gotten stronger, I could see the perception mana escaping as he spoke — and while it spread with his voice, it went around me. He was deliberately excluding me from the spell.

I both appreciated that and respected that he was capable of doing it. Shaping a spell to avoid one person implied a tremendous degree of mana control.

The rest of the lesson was focused on common signs that your allies were under compulsion spells, and how they could be definitively identified. My own experiences with Derek and my books had given me some insight into that already, but he did clarify a few important things.

Most Controller magic was linked to the sound of the Controller’s voice. If you could change the sound of the Controller’s voice significantly enough that they couldn’t be understood, that would prevent the victim from having to obey commands.

Covering the victim’s ears was effective for that to a point, but as we’d seen with that one clever student, just hearing the person partially was sometimes enough to trigger the command. You’d have to deafen someone entirely, or cover the Controller’s mouth completely, to be certain with that approach.

But that did give me an idea I hadn’t considered before. “Can you fake the Controller’s voice to give someone a command?”

“Huh. I suppose if they didn’t know it was coming from you, absolutely. They’d just have to think they were following the Controller’s orders.”

I grinned.

One new idea to work with, if I could find a way to change my voice.

I left the class feeling a strange combination of disgusted and giddy. I hated that someone had messed with my head, even briefly.

But the feeling of hitting Carnelian as an Enchanter, and seeing mana in a way I’d never seen it before?

That felt pretty darn good.

***

While I was walking back toward Derek’s manor, I checked the mana in my Enchanter Attunement — it read 70/60. That meant I still had a little bit of extra mana from when I’d overcharged it, and that I’d still drop back down to Quartz after I’d used it.

More importantly, it meant that my safe level had stabilized at 60 — the minimum threshold for Carnelian.

I didn’t usually celebrate. I was too focused on my studies, and it just didn’t feel important.

But for something like this?

I veered off from my path and stopped at a store.

I bought an entire chocolate cake.

And when I got back to Derek’s place, I shared it with everyone.

It was a personal accomplishment, sure — but cake was always better with friends.

***

The rest of the day was pretty easy. I burned off the little bit of extra mana I had left over my normal limit by just watching people with my Enchanter attunement active, taking in the sight of mana flowing out of people’s bodies, and getting a better idea of the details I could perceive with a stronger attunement.

Marissa’s shroud hadn’t looked any different from a normal Carnelian one before, but now, I could tell that it looked more solid than mine. It was still permeable to my sight, but it gave the impression that I was looking through something more like ice, whereas my own aura looked more like a misty haze.

Keras’ shroud looked even stranger now. It was still almost colorless, although I could see the hints of silver in it more easily now, even when he wasn’t doing anything with it. And it was subtle, but whenever his aura came in contact with another shroud, I could see tiny crackles of energy — and that the other shroud would begin to fray at the edges.

I resolved not to stand too close to Keras for an extended period of time.

After spending some time with my friends eating the cake, I spent more time studying foreign attunements, and more time thinking about how I’d just used my own.

I’d managed to increase my Enchanter attunement’s power permanently — and the improvement was more than the expected two percent.

Was that because it was my own attunement?

Or maybe because I’d converted the mana into a type that my attunement could easily process before I transferred it?

It could be an extra-large boost because it was the first time I’ve ever done, it, too. Maybe the efficacy of mana transfers decreases over time, and the percent that Researcher told me was an average taken over a long period.

I paced around my room, considering more possibilities.

Maybe the boost that people retain is actually closer to a flat value, rather than being a percentage.

Or maybe it is a percentage, but the percentage varies based on current attunement level.

Oh, could it have to do with the relative level of the target attunement compared to the level of the Arbiter attunement? That might explain how Katashi was able to increase Marissa’s mana pool by such a high amount all at once...but no, that seems less likely.

The source of mana should be irrelevant, as long as it’s pure. Even if the mana density was higher, the initial mana amount isn’t the issue, it’s how much mana your body can safely generate in the aftermath that matters.

Hm.

I wanted to ask Katashi for more information, but I knew I might never see him — or another visage — again.

In the meantime, would it be safe to charge my own attunement regularly?

I didn’t have enough information.

Taking risks with my mind was not appealing, but the benefits of that single action had been significant. My capacity had been going up by roughly two per day, and I’d been at 56 in the morning before classes. That meant that I’d gained roughly 4 mana from that transfer — maybe a little less, depending on rounding.

That was a tremendous boost. An extra 4 mana per week...or, even better, maybe something more like eight percent, if it was based on a percentage of my maximum?

That would be an incredible boost if I could manage to figure out a way to do it routinely.

But what if I was doing myself permanent damage?

I needed to know — or at least have a better idea — before I risked it again.

If I didn’t have access to a visage to ask, my best bet was to find another Arbiter. I didn’t know of any, but maybe Researcher did.

So, I paid her a visit. I expected her to be mad at me when she found out that I’d used the Arbiter attunement on myself.

Her reaction was a little different.

“Ooh! What did it feel like? How high did you increase your mana pool to? And you said you retained more than a two percent increase? How much?”

I spent a few more minutes filling her in on everything else. She was practically bouncing — and I understood why, now. She was a creature of knowledge, and I was teaching her something new. In essence, I was feeding her a meal that she’d never tasted — and, presumably, a good one.

“Okay, so, you want to know if you hurt yourself? Hrm, come here.”

I hesitated, but drew closer.

“Aww, don’t be shy! This won’t hurt, honest.”

I came close enough to her enclosure for her to kneel down and put her hand on my forehead. Fortunately, the contact was brief and clinical.

“Hmm...hmm...hmmm! Okay, all done.” She folded her arms. “I can’t sense anything amiss with your mana. I’m not as good with diagnosing physical problems — you’d want a Mender for that. But there’s no mana scarring, and I don’t sense any problems in the functionality of the attunement itself. It’s working normally.”

I nodded. “Thanks, that does make me feel better. If I asked a Mender to check me for physical problems, what would I ask about?”

“Eh, hard to say. I honestly don’t expect there to be any issues — damaging your attunement was the main concern, and that didn’t happen. I suppose you could check to see if your brain is bleeding or something?”

I really didn’t like that image, but fortunately, it also was pretty clear that Researcher had no idea what she was talking about in that regard. “Okay, thank you. Do you have any insights on where I could find another Arbiter to talk to?”

She shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. There aren’t any that are still at the university, and there haven’t been any entering the Serpent Spire in the last couple years — or, at least, not declared as Arbiters. People usually only put their first attunement on the entry forms. It’s not necessary to include all of them.”

“That’s inconvenient.”

“Arbiters and other people with restricted attunements are usually pretty secretive about it, since it gives them a competitive advantage if no one knows exactly what they can do. The Valian National Library might have documents with listings of other Arbiters and contact information for them, but we don’t have anything like that here.”

That was tricky. The national library was in Estermark, the national capitol. It was hundreds of miles from Beaufort, the city where the academy was located. I could get to Estermark by train, but it would take a while.

“That Arbiter that disappeared. Any idea where he might have gone?”

“Warren Constantine? No indications of his whereabouts, unfortunately. Perhaps Ferras knows, but if she does, she hasn’t said anything publicly.”

If I could talk to Ferras, the Visage of Creation, I could probably solve a number of problems. Assuming she’d actually give me the help I wanted, of course. My Arbiter attunement would probably help with diplomacy with any visage, but it still didn’t guarantee any results. And she was all the way in Caelford, as far as I knew. Going there would take weeks or months.

I considered my other options. “What about experts that might know more about the restricted attunements?”

“Some of the Whispers might know how they work, or high-ranking members of the priesthood. Or people with other restricted attunements.”

Sheridan.

It was an obvious lead, now that I considered it. Sheridan presumably had been using a restricted attunement for a while, but I hadn’t asked them for any information.

Of course, that might necessitate another trade if it was considered forbidden knowledge...unless I could convince them that information about my own attunement didn’t count as forbidden for me.

It would be best to prepare for a trade, if only to keep Sheridan interested in dealing with me in the future. They were a valuable resource, and I didn’t want to squander that by asking for favors with nothing in return.

Of course, it also occurred to me that Tristan might know more — but I wasn’t going to ask him. I didn’t want to even think about the idea of owing him something, not when I was so conflicted about his situation in general.

“I think I know who to ask. Thanks, Researcher.”

Researcher gave me a little bow. “You’re quite welcome, Arbiter. Please come see me any time you have further questions...or more information to share.”

I waved and headed to the exit. “I’ll do that.”

***

I had a few agenda items to address before the next test. The first order of business was getting a Mender to check my condition. Researcher was probably right that I was fine, but I wanted someone specialized in healing to take a look, just in case.

I headed to Derek’s mansion to drop off a couple books I’d picked up in the Divinatory. I’d borrowed a few more tomes on foreign attunements, as well as a couple on advanced enchantments and mana manipulation.

Given my level of access to the restricted section, I also asked Researcher if there were any other powerful magical items that were currently being researched back there....just in case.

She mentioned two more things that interested me. One was a ring that utilized pre-attunement era sorcery, much like the Jaden Box did. The other was a gemstone that appeared to be intelligent.

Unfortunately, both were under more security than the Jaden Box had been, locked inside a safe that required a combination. Even the notes on them were in the safe, so I couldn’t learn more about them.

I got the names of the people who were leading the research teams on the items, but I didn’t recognize either of them. The one studying the ring was a Professor Henge, apparently one of the other enchanting teachers. The other was Lady Whitebrook, who apparently wasn’t a teacher, but a spire researcher who lived right nearby, much like Derek did.

Both of the items interested me, but neither was a priority. I had more than enough things to deal with.

Patrick stopped me when I was heading back out of the manor. “Where you going?”

“The hospital. Nothing to worry about, I just might have done something slightly unwise.”

“Again?”

I folded my arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Patrick laughed. “I’m just teasing. You’re always experimenting with stuff. There are bound to be a few little things that go wrong here and there.”

He was right, of course, but I waved a hand dismissively anyway. “Fine, fine. You’re forgiven. I’ll be back soon.” I started heading for the door.

“Wait, hold on.”

I turned my head back. “Hm?”

“If you’re going to the hospital, there’s something you should know.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Jin is there.”

I turned right back around. “Wait, what?”

Patrick turned away, looking sheepish. “I was going to tell you, but...I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. I checked in on him when Sera and I went to the hospital the other day. He was in bad shape at the time, and, well... I didn’t know if he was going to make it.”

I took a step forward, staring at him. “And you didn’t tell me?”

He didn’t meet my gaze. “If you visited him, and he died afterward, you’d have never forgiven yourself. You’d have told yourself that you should have done something, that you could have fixed things if you’d tried harder. It’s who you are.”

“And if he’s dead now, I have to deal with the fact that I didn’t do anything because you didn’t tell me about it. Thanks for that.”

Patrick turned back to me, shaking his head. “You’re not a doctor, Corin. And you can’t fix everything in general. If you’d tried, you might have made things worse. And honestly? There was someone who did need you at the time, and I was worried that if you went to help Jin, you’d forget all about her. You always focus on one person at a time. Whoever you feel like you need to save.”

I winced. He...wasn’t wrong. “You still could have told me.”

“I could have. And you could have told me about everything with the book and the prisoners in the tower immediately. I just waited a few days. You waited a lot longer.”

I sighed. I wasn’t good at conversations like this. “Fine, fine. I’ll just....I don’t know.”

“Talk to him.”

This time I was the one who looked away. “I don’t know what I’d say. He tried to kill someone.”

“Sure, because none of us were thinking about the consequences of what we were doing for other countries, including his. I’m not saying I agree with how he did it. I don’t, not in the slightest. But he’s your friend, and you should probably hear him out.”

“Bah. Fine.” I couldn’t handle this talk anymore. I waved to Patrick. “I’m leaving. Tell the others I’ll be back later if they ask.”

Patrick returned my wave with his usual enthusisam. “Good luck.”

I almost laughed. Luck was one of the few things I trusted even less than I trusted my social abilities.

***

Getting my medical check was the easy part.

“Looks like you’re just fine,” the Mender informed me. “You said you infused your mind with more mana somehow?”

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a rare attunement.”

I could have said restricted, but they didn’t need that much detail. I wasn’t going to be dishonest, either, though. Misleading a doctor could get me false information about my own condition.

“Sometimes students try to make it through their exams by drinking a bunch of potions with a similar function, and end up causing themselves long-term damage. My advice is to avoid doing it too frequently, and don’t try to push yourself to more than one stage higher in your attunement. As long as you use your attunement sparingly, you should be fine.”

I gave a gesture of acknowledgement. That was similar to what Researcher had told me. “Thanks.”

After that, I just finished up my paperwork and payment and such. I felt relieved that I was physically okay, but I was dreading what happened next.

I asked at the front desk for Jin’s status. They’d finished his surgery a day ago, and he was in a recovery room by himself.

Unfortunately, visitors were allowed, so I didn’t have an easy excuse to just run back home.

I knocked on the door to his room. There was a brief pause, then I heard his voice.

“I’m awake.”

I opened the door and went inside.

The room was smaller than one of our dorms, unadorned save for the hospital bed and a nearby table. Jin was sitting up in the bed, holding a book. He was shirtless, but nearly his entire chest was covered with bandages.

“Corin.”

I nodded, stepping in and closing the door behind me. “Jin.”

He closed his book with a crack and set it down on the table next to his bed. “I don’t suppose you’re here to tell me that you’ve finished more of my commissions.”

I shook my head. “Not this time.”

The corner of his lips shifted upward, just a fraction. “I don’t suppose you’re delivering me a meal? The food here makes the cafeteria look gourmet.”

“I hadn’t considered that.”

Jin chuckled, wincing in the aftermath and moving a hand to his chest. “A shame.”

I gestured to a chair near his bed. “May I?”

His expression shifted to stern. “That depends on why you’re here.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Patrick told me you were here.”

Jin nodded. “He’s checked in a few times. Loyal, that one.”

“Saying that for contrast?”

“Maybe.”

“Which one of us is the disloyal one?”

Jin shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve been debating that for a while. Probably both, in our own ways.”

“You didn’t have to shoot Vera.”

“Obviously.” He folded his hands. “But I was afraid. I’m still afraid. And I couldn’t count on anyone else to help.”

I balled my hands into fists. “We could have talked about options.”

“Like what, exactly? Your solution was to hand everyone over to Katashi. Given time, Vera is probably going to go free, because she cooperated. That probably pleases you, and in Katashi’s mind, it probably passes for ‘justice’. But when she goes back home, she’s going to make more weapons. And someday, those weapons are going to be used to kill thousands of people, maybe more.”

“Killing Vera wouldn’t have stopped artificial attunement research. They’ve been doing it for decades.”

“No, but it might have slowed down one particular research branch — the people focused on making artificial god beast attunements. Those terrify me, Corin. And they should terrify you, too. You saw what Mizuchi was capable of; the god beasts themselves are far worse.”

I had a vivid memory of the damage that Mizuchi had caused, and how close we’d come to being annihilated just by being close enough to be hit by a shockwave from her breath. “You’re right... and that’s what you wanted to happen to Valia.”

Jin winced. “I didn’t want that, but you’re right — I thought it was the right answer. Katashi might have wiped out the people in Valia who were commissioning those god beasts, and maybe even gone after the people in Caelford, too. It was a messy solution. Not perfect, by any means. My hope would be that Katashi would have shown restraint, and only targeted the people responsible for all this.”

I tightened my jaw. “We both know Katashi wasn’t in a good frame of mind to show restraint.”

Jin shrugged. “I suspect he would have if I had a chance to tell him the responsible parties and some more details about what they were working on.”

I folded my arms. “We didn’t have that much information.”

Jin turned his head away. “No. You didn’t have that much information. I did.”

I stared at him for a moment, uncertain.

When I finally replied, I was furious. “What? What the resh haven’t you been telling me? I thought you weren’t a spy.”

Jin laughed. “I’m not a spy, Corin. I just did more digging than you did, and I didn’t tell you everything. You certainly haven’t told me everything, either.”

“When did you possibly have time to do ‘more digging’? And why wouldn’t you tell me?”

Jin ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “You remember the morning before we went to see Vera? When we got the Jaden Box?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Remember how I was already at the Divinatory when you arrived?”

I drew in a breath. “...Yeah?”

“I’d been there for hours. First, the night before, I learned about Vera and the project designation Q-STN. Researcher wouldn’t help me initially, so I went through files myself. Eventually, she got so frustrated by my inefficiency that she told me she’d send an information request to Alaris Academy for me. When I came back in the morning, it was approved, and she handed over a set of documents.”

That didn’t make me any happier. “I trusted you to look into that for me while we were in there. And you...”

“...already had the information, and distracted you with the Jaden Box, which was completely unrelated. Yes.”

I balled my hands into fists. “Why? What did you find?”

“Information on the artificial attunement project that Vera was working on. Researcher still wouldn’t give me everything, but there was enough in there to form an ugly picture. The most relevant portion? Vera was not just an Analyst, or a mere participant in the project. She was the director for the entire ‘god beast attunement’ project. There was someone above her in charge of artificial attunements in general, but Vera had a critical role.”

“That still doesn’t justify trying to murder her. Even a project director can be replaced.”

He shook his head. “I’m not finished. They took some sensible precautions when working on those attunements, with the knowledge that giving children power that could eventually grow to god beast levels was tremendously dangerous.”

Jin took a breath. “One of those precautions was a set of control sigils built into the artificial attunements – and linked directly to unique marks on the project director. Much how a return bell has an anchor, these marks were inexorably intertwined. To prevent anyone else from accessing the control seals, a part of Vera’s mana was stored inside the artificial attunements on the children. If a control command came from anyone else, it wouldn’t work.”

I processed that. “You’re saying that Vera had a means of controlling any one of these artificial attuned, like Orden controlled Derek?”

“Precisely. This is, I believe, why she was so important to everyone. Not just her knowledge, but because she is the key to controlling the existing attuned. They could make more, but it took several years to get a viable test case. My hope was that if I removed Vera from the equation, the intervening years would be enough time for Katashi to shut down the projects entirely.”

“Why wouldn’t you have told me something that important? I might have...”

“Your mother is one of the people who approved testing Echion’s abilities in the Serpent Spire.”

I stopped and stared. “What?”

“Laura Lyran was on the list, along with several other city council members. And no, I don’t know your mother’s name because of any sort of spying. Sera mentioned ‘Lady Lyran’ in conversation, and I connected her with the council member that you and I saw in the memory crystal with Keras. I judged that you would be less likely to cooperate in anything that might lead Katashi to take steps against your mother.”

I glowered at him. “You were going to point Katashi toward potentially killing my mother?”

“I don’t think he would have taken such an extreme step against someone who simply signed the paperwork on the Valia side for running the tests. But I did anticipate you having this reaction, which is why I didn’t tell you about what I’d learned. I could have omitted part of it – like that your mother was involved – but if I’d told you the beginning portion, you might have dragged the rest of it out of Researcher yourself. And then you very likely would have abandoned the whole mission.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just settled for angry. “You lied to me.”

“Mostly in terms of omission, but yes. But in fairness, Vera lied to you, too. First when you were in the jail cell, then later when we—”

I cut him off. “I don’t care about Vera. You manipulated me toward taking steps that could have resulted in harming my mother.”

“I’m sorry for that. But I still believe I did the right thing. You would not have responded rationally, and there was too much at stake.”

“I was relying on you.” I took a step closer, my hand still balled.

Jin pulled away, alarmed. “I truly am sorry, Corin...”

“I don’t care if you’re sorry, Jin. That’s not good enough.”

“Let me make it up to you, then. Please.” His voice was pleading.

“No.” I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Did you even consider what would happen to those children with the attunements if you’d done things your way?”

Jin nodded slowly. “Even if Katashi killed them, which I doubt, it would be better than letting them be used as weapons of war. And if you have any doubt that is what they would have been used for, you’re deluding yourself.”

“You could have told me this. I would have listened to you. We could have—”

“You know that isn’t true. Your family means everything to you. That’s been clear to me from the start.”

He...wasn’t wrong.

What would I have done if Jin had told me all of this in advance?

Would I have cooperated with him and tried to assassinate Vera, just to prevent the possibility that she would go free?

No, I told myself. I wouldn’t have taken that route. I still wouldn’t have been willing to kill her, or to risk my mother.

Which meant that to a degree, what Jin was saying was true. I wouldn’t have gone his way.

But could we have found another option, a third road if we’d worked together?

Maybe.

I couldn’t know.

And for the moment, I was too angry to properly consider it.

I unclenched my fist, turning and heading back toward the door. “I’m leaving.”

Jin’s voice was faint, pained. “I really am sorry, Corin. But I when I think about the damage those god beast attuned could have done—”

I turned my head, shooting him one final glare. “You’ve made your point.”

It wasn’t deliberate, but I slammed the door on the way out.

***

I was still fuming as I fled the hospital quickly after that. I didn’t know what to think about what Jin had said. Was I automatically negatively disposed toward any sort of plan that involved shooting an unconscious woman in the back?

Probably.

Was I being irrational, because the plan he mentioned would have risked my own mother?

Almost certainly.

Did that mean that I was wrong, and that Jin’s plan was right?

Not necessarily.

Jin may have accurately predicted certain elements of my reasoning, but I still thought — or maybe just hoped — that he simply hadn’t given me enough credit. That I would have found a way to use the information and come up with a better plan.

When is using lethal force acceptable?

I wasn’t so innocent that I believed there was always a diplomatic solution to every situation.

The problem was determining when and where the optimal solution was to take the irreversible step of removing someone from the world. And for someone who preferred peaceful solutions, I knew I wasn’t particularly great at reading people.

That was a critical flaw, and there was no easy solution to it.

Magic could give me shortcuts that might help in the future. I could try to learn things like spells for detecting if someone was speaking the truth, or even to try to control someone, if I decided that was more moral — or more effective — than physical violence.

But no magic I knew of could tell me the result of my actions. People had been trying to divine the future with magic since it was first discovered, and the results were always unreliable at best.

So, no matter what method I used to try to solve a problem, I’d never know if I’d picked the right answer. And if I picked fighting against my friends, like I had with Jin?

I’d always have to wrestle with wondering if I was right.

I really, truly hoped that I wouldn’t have to make a decision like that with Tristan.

Chapter XI – A Persistent Hatred for Colored Square Puzzles

I spent the rest of that day studying alone and trying to get invasive thoughts out of my mind. I had too many doubts about Jin, about Patrick, and about my own priorities in life in general.

On the positive side, I finally found the time to start really digging into foreign attunements. I stopped when I found something that sounded fascinating.

The Juggernaut attunement utilizes transference mana to create powerful bursts of kinetic energy, allowing the user to move rapidly around the battlefield. Their specialization is converting their shroud into transference mana, which they can use to deflect physical attacks and smash through obstacles. This is difficult to maintain for long periods of time, so Juggernauts generally only shift their shroud for a few moments at a time.

The first part was how I was trying to use the ring of jumping already...and the second idea was very appealing. Most attunements had limited defense against physical attacks, and deflecting them with transference mana sounded like a perfect solution that might be possible with my own skill set.

I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to convert my shroud at my attunement level, though. Shroud manipulation was a Sunstone level ability for most attunements...but I already knew there were exceptions, like Guardians.

Maybe having two different Carnelian attunements that both generated transference mana would be enough to let me accomplish the same thing?

There was only one way to find out.

I activated my Enchanter attunement to get a better sense of the mana flowing within my body, as well as the two shrouds around it. I could sense the mana inside my body easily enough, but the shroud was more or less invisible to me without my attunement active.

That was a key problem. I couldn’t feel the mana from my shroud in the same way I felt the mana within my body, and that meant I couldn’t just mentally command it to change into another mana type like I would with my internal mana supply.

Maybe that was the key difference between a Carnelian and a Sunstone — would I be able to sense my shroud as if it was part of my own body at that stage? That was an appealing prospect; it would make tricks like this much easier.

In the meantime, I needed to find a workaround.

The first way I tried to experiment was converting some of my mana from gray into transference, and then trying to push it out of my body, hoping it would mix with the shroud.

It didn’t; the transference mana just dissipated into the air.

I wasn’t surprised by the result, but I was a little disappointed.

What else could I do?

I remembered what Keras had said about his own shroud, which wasn’t gray mana. That was because a shroud was a result of the body leaking out excess mana...meaning that if my excess mana was a different type than gray, theoretically the shroud would be the same.

Could I convert so much of my body’s mana into transference mana that I was emitting a different type of aura?

Testing that was a much riskier prospect. Even though I routinely converted a large amount of mana into transference or mental mana, that was in the process of expelling it from my body immediately into a spell. Keeping an abnormal amount of transference mana housed within my body wasn’t necessarily safe.

I skimmed my books about the idea. There were lots of spells that involved infusing your body with various types of mana, either to assist with healing, or to improve your movement, or that sort of thing. I didn’t see anything that referred to those spells changing the composition of the caster’s shroud, though — presumably because they just weren’t changing enough of it to have that effect.

Humans had a lot of gray mana, since that was our mana’s default state. I speculated that it would probably require converting at least half of my mana to change the composition of my shroud, and most spells weren’t designed to use up that much mana, both due to the dangers and the inefficiency.

Reading did remind me that Summoners ended up generating all sorts of mana inside their bodies from their contracts, though, and they didn’t generally suffer any ill effects. That helped me feel a little more comfortable with the idea of tinkering with my mana.

I decided it was worth trying, but in a controlled fashion. I converted some of the mana in my right hand into transference...and waited.

Nothing happened at first. I converted a bit more mana. Then a bit more.

I felt a slight pressure beginning to build, but I wasn’t sure if it was just in my head until the muscles in my hand began to tremble.

I held it just a little longer, watching my shroud...but I couldn’t see any change in the composition.

The pressure gave way to pain. That was a sign it was time to stop.

I released the transference mana from my hand into the air.

The resulting shockwave blasted outward and slammed into the nearest wall. I saw the flicker of protective sorcery — the entire interior of Derek’s house was warded — otherwise I might have put a hole in the wall.

I looked down at my hand, staring blankly.

I can work with this.

The blast was like a much stronger version of what I usually projected out of my gauntlet. Unfortunately, it also took up a vastly greater amount of my mana to use. Probably close to half.

Ordinary spells were designed to consume just a small fraction of the user’s mana, because you had to be able to discharge that amount of mana instantly.

But, logically, if I could have more time to convert the mana before discharging it... I could throw a lot more mana into a single spell.

This wasn’t a unique idea: it was how all Heart-Marked Attuned worked. The difference was that Heart Marks provided support to the body for that specific style of casting.

Without a Heart Mark, trying to practice this style had a clear downside. My hand was throbbing. I didn’t think I’d done any lasting damage, but it was clear my type of attunement wasn’t built to be used that way.

I’d never cared much for design intent, though. The important part was figuring out what I could do with the tools I had — and how I could make new, better tools.

I rested for a few minutes, then I tried again, releasing the mana before the pressure in my hand grew painful.

It had the same effect: a blast of kinetic energy. It was little bit weaker than the last one, but still far stronger than a blast from my gauntlet.

Testing, I could expel enough energy in an instant to push a book around on the floor, but not much more. With several seconds of holding the mana in, though, I could easily push over a chair.

At that point, Patrick came by to check on the noise. I got a little embarrassed, told him I was fine, and decided to find a better spot to practice.

The roof was the obvious choice, but it was occupied — Keras was giving Marissa another lesson. They offered me a chance to join them, but I wasn’t up for that degree of social contact.

I went to the enchantment testing grounds instead, where I’d first tested the gauntlet. I requested one with a shielded test dummy, which the facility had several of.

I spent the next hour or two blasting the test dummy around the tiny testing room. It was surprisingly cathartic.

And, more importantly, it taught me a few valuable pieces of information.

First, I couldn’t generate enough force to push a human back with just an instant of mana conversion. After some testing, I decided I need to store up my mana for about a second to get enough for that.

If I converted the mana in my hand for about five seconds, I could generate enough mana to slam the dummy into the wall hard enough to crack the shield. I had to recharge the dummy’s shields every time I practiced that, though, so I didn’t try it much.

Anything in between would have an intermediate result, and anything longer would result in too much pain for me to use the attacks consecutively.

I considered if I could apply it back to my original idea of converting my shroud, but it wasn’t currently practical. If I could send out a blast of force, I could generate enough energy to deflect a blade — but saving up that much transference mana took too long. It wasn’t practical as a defensive measure.

If I practiced enough, though, I’d get better at using transference mana in general, and it would be easier to convert my shroud when I had enough power to make it plausible.

I went home feeling exhausted, but satisfied with the results, even if they weren’t what I’d been trying to learn.

When I got back, I focused the rest of the evening on more transference mana research. I read a little more on the Juggernaut, as well as other attunements that used transference mana, like the Wavewalker and Shieldbreaker.

There were some types of general spells that anyone with the ability to use a certain type of magic could cast, but as an Enchanter, my classes weren’t focused on teaching those yet. We were expected to be dedicating ourselves to learning how to make magical items almost exclusively, since that was the primary function of our attunement.

Normally, we’d start learning those more general spells next year...but now that I’d been practicing transference mana, I was itching to learn more.

I was thinking about spells that involved infusing the body with transference mana when I remembered one of my previous ideas. I wanted to learn to move like Keras did — too quickly for enemies to react.

I already knew I could blast myself around with transference mana, like I was doing with the ring, but I wanted to find a way to move faster for a sustained period of time.

I found multiple ways of approaching that.

Haste spells are designed to increase the target’s speed. They require tremendous practice to use, however, because they do not increase their target’s mental processing speed — only the speed at which their body moves.

Even minor speed increases require a period of acclimation, because if your body moves more quickly than your mind expects, this can throw off your balance. More powerful spells grow progressively more difficult to control.

Thus, it is advised that you train with incrementally more powerful Haste spells over a long period of time, and do not attempt to use them in a combat environment until you have substantial practice moving at that speed.

The highest level of Haste spells are generally only possible to use while supported by an attunement that can enhance the user’s perception abilities, such as the Spellsinger or Shapeshifter. This means they are often unused, however, as these spells rely on either having two attunements yourself or a second attuned with an emphasis on support magic.

There is no known attunement that generates both transference mana and perception mana. It is possible that these mana types simply do not mix naturally with one another. It is sometimes speculated that the type of attunement that generates this pairing was the Chronomancer, a legendary attunement that supposedly originated from the Spider Spire.

Because of the difficulty of learning to use Haste spells, the opposite type — spells designed to slow enemies — are considerably more popular. These spells do not actually slow the flow of time, but rather constrict enemies with a field of pressure which resists their movements. More powerful Slow spells can slow motions to a crawl or even paralyze them entirely.

Both of those categories of magic sounded extremely useful.

Also, I immediately wanted a Chronomancer attunement more than I’d ever wanted an individual attunement before. Time magic? That sounded incredible.

I read a little more just to try to find more about Chronomancers, but sadly, most books indicated they were nothing more than a myth.

Now that I knew Necromancers were real, though, Chronomancers sounded like they were within the realm of possibility. If they were another restricted attunement, maybe Sheridan would know.

Picking up a third attunement was probably a long way off for me either way; most people never even earned a second. If I wanted to take another Judgment in a different spire, I could do that...but Judgments grew more difficult the more Judgments you’d taken.

Since I already had two attunements, but I’d only taken one Judgment, I wasn’t sure if the tests would consider me to have completed two already. If so, taking another one would probably be impossible for many years. I’d heard of people getting a second attunement at around Sunstone level, but getting a third would probably require at least a Citrine level in both, and that was extremely difficult to achieve.

I pushed that to the side and spent the rest of the evening trying to practice a basic Haste spell.

The first step was very similar to what I’d been doing to try to influence my shroud; just converting some of my gray mana into transference.

There were two differences.

One, I was using a much smaller amount — only five mana worth, rather than the thirty or forty I’d been blasting outward.

Two, I wasn’t releasing it outward. I had to learn to take that mana and spread it out throughout my body, then infuse it into my skin, muscles, and bone. That mana would then naturally dissipate over time, since it was being actively used to enhance my body.

The process was, surprisingly, not that difficult. I had a Mind Mark, and that style of mark was specifically tailored toward easily sensing and moving around the mana inside my body.

It had never felt like much of a benefit compared to what some of the other marks were capable of, but I didn’t have the personal experience to form much of a basis for comparison. Maybe if Sera had my style of mark, she’d have found it easier to cast spells with something other than her lungs.

While I hadn’t had a chance to do much with it yet, having an attunement that improved general mana control meant that I was in an ideal position to experiment with other methods of casting spells. That was a potentially huge advantage in the long term.

My muscles tingled from the infusion of energy, but aside from that, I didn’t really feel any different. Not until I took a step.

That single motion catapulted me forward, sending me into a stumble that turned into a tumble. When I hit the floor, my body bounced.

When I finally stopped bouncing and rolling, I burst into laughter.

That was amazing.

The mana itself had been cushioning my impacts. I still felt them, but only barely. I did feel a little nauseated, though, from the rapid movement.

I tried it again. And again. And again.

I was a little bruised in the aftermath, but I started to get the hang of walking.

After about five minutes of stumbling around the room and running into things, I understood why these spells weren’t more popular. The novelty had mostly worn off, and it was incredibly difficult to move.

Still, I kept practicing.

By the end of the evening, I could perform basic movements with the weakest, Quartz-ranked Haste spell active. Sadly, I was still clumsier with the spell active than without. I had to deliberately move slowly to avoid hurting myself, and that defeated the entire point of the spell.

But progress was progress, and I wasn’t giving up easily.

I resolved to ask Keras for advice the next day. It was likely he could help me with making the learning process more efficient.

I still had a smile when I went to sleep.

***

“Haste spells?” Keras gave me a quizzical look. “I don’t use them.”

I stared back at him with a similar expression. “...Really?”

“Yeah. I know some people who do, but transference mana isn’t really my specialty.”

I frowned. “I’ve seen you move much more rapidly in short bursts, though. How are you accomplishing that?”

“Oh, that? Hm. Nothing I could really teach, unfortunately.”

I’d been afraid of that. “Why? Because I don’t have access to the dominions that you do?”

“Precisely. I can infuse my body with energy from that dominion, and that vastly increases both my strength and my speed. It has a high cost, so I use it sparingly.”

“How do you cope with the loss of balance and coordination?”

He shook his head. “It’s not an issue for me. When I use it, everything around me seems to slow down. I don’t feel like I’m moving any faster, just that everything else is moving slower.”

“...Are you a Chronomancer?”

Keras actually laughed. “No, I’m not using time magic. I’ve seen a lot of strange things over the years, but that’s still one that I haven’t learned.”

“What dominion is it that you’re using then?”

He shifted his stance, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “I’d rather not say.”

I shrugged a shoulder. It didn’t really matter, as long as he was right that it wasn’t something I could use. “Is there any way I could do something similar, even if it’s not the same as yours?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve seen people here use similar abilities, like those Haste spells you talked about, but I’m no expert on the local magic. Derek would be a better person to ask.”

That was a good point, so I bid Keras goodbye and went to ask Derek.

“I don’t use Haste spells, either. One of my bound items enhances my movement, but that’s with air magic, not transference, so it works differently. Haste spells add additional energy to all of your movements, so you get pushed further every time you take a step, or that sort of thing. When I use air magic to increase my speed, it’s more like the wind is carrying me in the direction I want to go.”

That made sense, and it was good to know there were different types of movement magic available. It also meant that any training exercises that Derek used would be different from training with Haste spells, so he couldn’t help teach me, either.

I either needed to focus on practicing more myself, or find someone who actually had trained directly with Haste spells. Preferably both, eventually.

I spent just a little bit more time practicing with Haste that morning, but I didn’t make much progress. Hopefully, if I spent a bit of time on it every day, I’d both learn to master it eventually and increase my overall proficiency with transference magic.

I had breakfast after that, then headed to Magic Theory class.

We had to take a written exam — one of the first I’d taken that semester. Fortunately, I’d always been good with written exams, even if I wasn’t particularly good at studying what I was supposed to.

I didn’t get my results that day, but we apparently would be getting reports on our current grades for each class right before winter vacation, which was just a few weeks away.

After that, I had lunch, and then Mana Manipulation class.

Professor Edlyn was looking unusually serious. Maybe a little concerned?

She had a large box on her lectern, and she put her hands on top of it as class began.

“I’m afraid today is your final exam.”

That was...not good news. I hadn’t been too surprised when Teft had run his final exam early, but I hadn’t expected someone like Professor Edlyn to do the same.

I could see the other students tense, and heard a few confused whispers.

“Please be quiet, everyone.” The professor began to open the box. “While normally we would wait until the week before winter vacation for the test, we’ve needed to adjust the class schedule due to an unforeseen incident.”

What incident? Was she talking about when Mizuchi went on her rampage?

Or maybe that attack on the grand cathedral in Dalenos?

I wasn’t sure how the latter would have impacted the class schedule, but maybe the professor had family nearby that had been injured?

The professor didn’t elaborate. Instead, she simply continued with, “I apologize for the inconvenience. The test will be a simple one. I hope you have all adequately prepared.”

She reached into the box and retrieved an object I recognized — a practice shell for making mana crystals.

“Your objective is to take one of these shells and to focus your mana inside, creating a basic gray mana crystal. You will have one hour to complete this test. I realize this may be too difficult for some of you, since we haven’t practiced doing this in the class yet. I will do my best to grade leniently because the test is being run earlier than usual.”

...I had been nervous about nothing.

I almost laughed, but I managed to restrain myself.

“Please form a line. You may each take one case to practice with. If you are capable of filling one in less than the required hour, you can return for another after you’re done filling the first one.”

I didn’t stand up immediately. I ignored the nervous whispers and complaints around me, waiting to get at the very back of the line.

When I finally reached Professor Edlyn, she handed a case to me.

I held it in my right hand, closed my eyes for a few moments, and then handed it back to her.

“Is something wrong with the case?” She blinked. “Oh, this one is already full. Let me get you another one.”

I couldn’t help myself from chuckling that time. “It wasn’t already full.”

“What do you mean?” She dug another case out of the box, then handed it to me.

“Watch.” I closed my palm around the crystal, focusing my mana.

A week ago, it had taken me ten seconds to form a crystal of this size in one of the practice cases, but I’d been practicing making crystals of a higher degree of density in the open air since then.

I’d gotten it down to four or five seconds.

I handed the filled crystal back to her with a grin.

“...Are you using some sort of slight-of-hand trick?”

I grinned. “Nope. I’ve just been practicing.”

Professor Edlyn pushed up her glasses, looking down her nose at me. “Practicing.”

We were starting to draw some attention from the nearby students now, and I was beginning to regret making a scene.

But only just a little.

It was fun being ahead of the class for a change.

Professor Edlyn glanced me up and down, and I noticed her attunement mark was glowing — a subtle sign that she was using it to look at my aura. “A second attunement? Precisely how long have you been hiding that, Master Cadence?”

I really hadn’t wanted that to come out in public, but in retrospect, it was unavoidable. Plenty of people could see auras, and I had no way of suppressing mine. Maybe I should have looked into something like that as soon as I’d left the spire, but it was far too late now.

“I’ve only had it for a week, professor. I apologize for failing to mention it.”

My teacher sighed, shaking her head. “It’s fine. You’ve passed the test. Congratulations. You can head on home.”

“...Would I get a higher score if I can make a crystal without the case?”

“Show me.”

I did.

Professor Edlyn congratulated me for it, and told me to expect to hear about the “results of my test soon”.

She probably didn’t intend for it to sound ominous, but it definitely did.

I ignored the glares from some of my classmates as I left the room.

I didn’t think my early success would hurt anyone else’s score.

Probably.

***

The rest of the day was easy. I was still in good spirits from both the world’s easiest final exam and the Haste spell experiments, so I was a little more social than usual.

Of course, “social” for me largely meant that I was willing to involve other people in my experiments.

The first was a bit of sparring with Patrick on the rooftop, while I tried to use Haste magic to dodge his attacks. He used it to practice aiming attack spells more accurately at a moving target, so it was good for both of us.

Well, relatively. I was still terrible at moving with a Haste spell active, but practicing in a combat environment — and with more space than a tiny bedroom — helped me get used to it a little bit more.

We had to stop every couple minutes because I was getting seasick from all the sudden movements, but overall, it was both useful and fun. I think Patrick was happy just to get to spend a bit of time training with just the two of us, too.

I had another practice session with Marissa and Keras in the evening.

That went about the same as the last one. I did try attacking with the Haste spell active as a surprise, but Keras was still faster than me. And he wasn’t even using whatever his pseudo-Haste spell was — I didn’t see the telltale change in his aura that indicated that he was getting serious.

I needed a lot more practice before I could catch up to someone like him. That was fine, though. I was making progress, and so were my friends.

I had dinner with everyone. After that, I got back to work.

***

If I’d learned anything from the conversation with Jin, it was that I needed to verify important information on my own.

Everything he’d told me about the god beast attunements fell into that category.

I paid Researcher a visit.

“Greetings, Arbiter. How may I be of service to you today?”

She was in a different outfit today. It was still a suit, but it was mostly white, closer to our student uniforms. The change was jarring enough that it derailed my train of thought. “What’s with the new clothes?”

“Oh, this? A recent study found that humans in Valia have an easier time empathizing with people who physically resemble them. For example, humans — at least in this nation — appear to be more likely to select mates who have a physical appearance that approximates their own. This study has yet to be fully peer-reviewed, but I am eager to test it on my own! My hope is that by appearing more similar to one of the students, they will be more likely to see me as a reliable information source.”

“That’s... I’ll be interested to hear what you find.” It sounded to me like she was extrapolating from the study in a different direction from what I might have, but it didn’t necessarily mean she was wrong, per se.

It also wasn’t what I was there to discuss, though.

Researcher seemed happy about my indication of interest, at least. “I would be quite pleased to share! Now, what can I assist you with?”

I shook my head, clearing my thoughts.

“I need some additional information related to Project Q-STN and Vera Corrington.”

Researcher’s lips tightened. “I’m afraid the project designated Q-STN is still classified information.”

I’d prepared for that. “It’s directly related to the assignment I was working on for Katashi.”

Researcher seemed to consider that, then nodded with renewed cheer. “Yes, of course. I will be happy to provide you with everything you need.”

It didn’t take long for Researcher to direct me to the appropriate documents. She wouldn’t let me take them home, so I spent a few hours reading at the Divinatory.

Everything Jin had said was accurate, including my mother’s name being on the list of people who had approved the god beast attunements being tested in the Serpent Spire.

Elora Theas, it would seem, was assigned to observe the project on behalf of the Valian government. That made her role in the situation much clearer, although I still didn’t know how she’d ended up working with Tristan and attacking Vera’s group.

There was still a great deal more to this picture I wasn’t seeing, but for the moment, at least I had a paper trail to confirm some of Jin’s claims.

That still didn’t mean I agreed with his approach, but it did mean that I could understand it a little bit better.

Mother...How could you allow this?

I bid Researcher a good night and headed back to Derek’s manor.

I wanted to research more, but for the moment, I needed to sleep. I had a test coming up, and I needed to be ready.

***

Wyddsday. The day before the second part of the dueling class final exams. I was almost out of time.

It was also the only day I didn’t have any classes, so I could use it in any way I wanted.

I asked my friends if they’d figured out anything, but they hadn’t. No one had been looking into it; they’d been too focused on practicing.

That left it to me.

I started by looking for Teft himself to ask about the test. I didn’t want to talk to him about it, but it was low risk with a high potential for reward.

For better or worse, I couldn’t find him, at his office or otherwise. I asked Derek and Keras, but they didn’t know where Teft was, either.

So, I asked Researcher to scry on the tournament area.

“That’s an unusual request, Arbiter. Can I ask why?” She peered at me with a strange degree of intensity. She never seemed to blink unless she was using it to display a reaction, like surprise or confusion. Subtle things like that reminded me that as human as she looked, she wasn’t quite the same.

“I’m having a test there tomorrow and I’d like to get information about what I’m up against.”

There was no point in lying to a creature of knowledge. Not only did I suspect she’d be able to tell just by looking at me, it felt rude.

“Oh! Why don’t you just go over there and ask?”

“I’m not sure I’m strictly allowed to know the contents of the test in advance.”

She folded her arms. “Then I’m not sure I’m allowed to help you.”

I frowned. I hadn’t expected resistance from her. “It’s for a dueling class. Knowing your battlefield in advance is a critical part of duel preparation. I did look for the teacher to ask directly, but I couldn’t find him.”

All true, even if I hadn’t looked very hard. And I could have just asked Researcher to locate Teft.

Fortunately, she caved immediately. Nodding vigorously, she proclaimed, “Yes, gathering information is critical to being a successful duelist! Well done!”

“Thanks. Uh, so, you’ll help?”

“Sure! Where is it?”

“The vaban arena.”

Researcher waved her hands, and a flickering image appeared between us. As I stepped closer, I could see that it was an overhead view of the vaban arena. She pointed at the image. “What do you need to see?”

Wow. That was...quick. I’d never seen someone work a scrying spell so effortlessly, but it did make a degree of sense that an elemental could work spells like that easily. I pointed at the spot where we’d had our previous contest.

The map shifted, showing a closer view of that spot. I could see several people inside, working on the arena floor...were those other students?

I watched for a bit, seeing some students lifting up tiles, others putting them down...and still more drawing on new runes.

Wait, is that Professor Vellum down there with them?

Oh, those must be second-year Enchanting students. They must be working to change the arena right before the test.

And on the weekend. Yeah, that sounds like one of Vellum’s classes.

That explained a great deal. I’d suspected they had students working on the tiles, but I’d guessed it would be a massive number of first-year students. Using a single class of second-year Enchanters was more efficient. It wouldn’t take long for a full class of Citrines to enchant all the tiles — or even change the existing enchantments on them.

“Did you see what you needed to see? I can maintain this a little longer, but it’s kind of exhausting.”

I shook my head. “No, I’ve seen what I need to see, thank you.”

Researcher breathed a sigh of relief and released the image. “Great. Was it helpful?”

“Definitely. I know exactly what I need to do.”

***

Professor Vellum’s eyes narrowed as I approached. “You’re not in this class, boy.”

I nodded amiably. “You’re right, but you know me, always looking to improve myself. I thought I’d volunteer to help out with the enchanting here, you know, get myself some experience...”

Vellum tilted her head to the side. “You’re in Teft’s class tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

Vellum cackled. “Now you’re thinking like an Enchanter. Just don’t be too obvious about it.”

I pointed at myself. “Me? Obvious? I’ll be the soul of discretion.”

“We both know that you won’t. But either this will be a glorious disaster, or you’ll manage to wipe the perpetual smirk off your professor’s face. I’ll be pleased to contribute to either.”

And just like that, I participated in Vellum’s second-year enchanting exercise, as a “volunteer”.

When the matches came the next day, I was more than ready.

***

“Corin, why are you grinning like that?” Patrick asked while we waited for class to begin.

“You’ll see.”

As expected, Teft led us to the vaban arena for our second round of tests.

“Assemble the teams you used last time.”

Marissa offered me a friendly nudge. I grinned in spite of the awfulness of being touched without warning. Being on Marissa’s team would make this a lot easier, especially now that she’d had another week to recover and train.

We started doing some warm-up stretches together. She had a smile on her face as she looked at me. “Glad it’s us again, at least. Didn’t want to be paired up with some stranger.”

“Agreed. We’ve practiced this. We can win.”

I didn’t know exactly what the rules of the match were going to be. It would take something truly unfair for me to still have to worry, though.

“Today, your teams are going to be matched against your former teammates. You have five minutes to prepare before matches begin.”

Of course, this was Teft’s class.

Obviously it was going to be unfair.

Marissa and I paused mid-stretch, and there was a brief interlude for expletives.

Teft kept talking. “The rules are the same as last time; you will lose when your shield sigil is depleted, and no outside weapons are allowed. There have been minor alterations to the arena setup, but you should find the match otherwise similar to before.”

We both shifted back to standing positions, sizing each other up. I broke the awkward silence first. “I should tell you in advance that I prepared some things just in case I ended up against someone I couldn’t beat in a fair fight.”

Marissa raised an eyebrow. “And?”

I waved at her. “And obviously, you’re someone I can’t beat in a fair fight.”

“...Resh it, Cadence. I’d think you were tryin’ to flatter me, if ye had an ounce of flattery in you.” She folded her arms.

“I just don’t want you to think I’m targeting you unfairly or something, Mara. I remember when--”

Marissa waved her hands dismissively. “Didn’t know you then, Corin. I get you now. Yer gonna to try to win however you can. It ain’t personal. I get it.” She offered me a hand. “I won’t be going easy, either.”

I clasped her hand. “...You could go a little easy?”

She laughed. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Patrick and Sera seemed to be having a similar conversation, but I couldn’t hear all of it, because Sera was whispering. Patrick’s replies were clear enough. “I won’t throw the match, I promise!”

After that, Sera went over to Teft and pulled him to the side to whisper something to him. That was unusual, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. If she needed help, she’d ask me.

Mara and I spent another minute getting back to our stretches, then we walked over to the ring.

It’s the same as yesterday. Six different active settings on the tiles this time, rather than five like before. No middle of the night alterations that I can see. At least, no obvious ones.

Good.

Our five minutes were up shortly thereafter.

We were the first pair sent into the ring.

I felt a wave of trepidation as Mara and I walked down the steps.

Teft gave us the sigil monitors to attach to our shield sigils when we reached the bottom. We fastened them on as Teft walked away.

We turned our gazes back to each other. There was a shared feeling of anxiousness and trepidation.

“Best luck,” I offered.

“Goddess be with ye,” she gave in solemn reply.

Equally meaningless platitudes. We would win or lose this on our own.

We headed to opposite sides of the arena.

This was not what I’d hoped for on a number of levels.

First, I had wanted as much time to observe the ring as possible. If there had been another match first, I could have confirmed what I’d seen during the setup of the arena.

I tried to console myself with the knowledge that going first was actually to my advantage; if we’d both observed a prior match, Mara would have probably gotten more new information out of it than I would have. I already had a pretty good idea of what we’d be dealing with today.

“Pretty good” was just never good enough for me. I disliked uncertainty, and I’d be uncertain until the match started.

Second, I probably couldn’t beat Mara in a straight fight. Flattery had nothing to do with that; it was an honest assessment. I had two attunements, but neither of them was built for straight combat, and she’d received extra power straight from Katashi. Her total mana to work with was still greater than mine, if only by a small margin.

If I had Selys-Lyann, at least I would have had a reach advantage, but we still weren’t allowed to use any weapons other than standard dueling canes. Melee combat was probably my best bet against most fighters, but against Marissa, I couldn’t count on winning that way.

Third, and worst of all...even if I won, that meant that Marissa lost a match. I didn’t know how badly that would impact our scores. Based on the last match, it seemed like performance was a factor even for the winners, so I hoped that we’d both just be able to make a good fight of it.

That meant that my “win” condition was harder than just winning the match outright. I needed to win, put up a good fight, and make sure Marissa had a chance to show off as well.

Unfortunately, that took one of my best tools right out of the equation.

No matter. I had others.

I was prepared this time.

“Bow to your opponent.”

We bowed. Marissa looked nervous, but determined.

“Begin!”

Marissa rushed forward, just as I’d expected.

I reached into the bag at my side, watching her.

As Marissa hit the red square in front of her, the ground below her erupted with a burst of light. I expected it to badly damage her barrier, as it would have last time.

That didn’t happen.

She was moving so fast that the light barely glanced her — and the portion that hit her didn’t deal any noticeable damage.

It should have.

I activated my attunement, and I took a step back when I saw what she’d done.

Normally, a shroud started at the skin and extended a few inches outward. Barriers generated by most magic, including shield sigils, were further out. They were designed to take damage first to protect the wearer from suffering any injuries.

Mara had reversed that relationship. Her shroud was massive, stretched out in all directions from her body. That meant anything that wanted to damage her barrier had to get through her shroud first.

And she had a lot of shroud to get through.

I couldn’t hope to match that degree of shroud control. Guardians were specialists, after all.

Instead, I reached into my bag and pulled out the first device I’d prepared.

Last time, I’d considered disabling my sigil monitor, but that had the risk of activating it by accident. That risk still existed, so I did something a little different. The monitor itself had inspired me.

I clipped a second device to my shield sigil.

It wouldn’t disable the monitor, but now, I had a second mana supply feeding into my shield. It would be a lot tougher to break.

Marissa hit the next square, then the next, and then a third.

Blue. A flash of shield recharging energy.

Green. A plume of smoke erupted from the ground, enveloping the square in an instant.

Yellow. A wave of frost shot upward, encompassing her legs. It was this match’s replacement for the vines, serving the function of slowing someone down.

With those tiles active, I knew the pattern. I knew how to proceed.

While Marissa ducked down to smash the ice, I pulled out another device. It was a bronze sphere etched with six runes, each one matching a color on the floor.

I put my thumb on the red one and concentrated, sending a flare of mana into it.

Then I sent another surge of mana into the runes that were carved into the bottoms of my boots.

Cautiously, I took a step back.

The square behind me, which had been green, turned to purple.

Perfect.

The dueling cane on my belt began to glow.

I stuck the now-active sphere back in my bag, drew my dueling cane, and opened fire.

Marissa noticed immediately, smashing the charged spheres out of the air without effort.

That was fine.

I took another step back.

Once again, the tile beneath me changed to purple.

Marissa must have noticed, but she didn’t comment.

Instead, she ducked, deflected one of my spheres, and swung her hand down.

It was charged with a cutting aura, and she’d been practicing. She sliced the red tile in front of her out of the floor in seconds.

Not good.

As she lifted it, I fired another blast from my cane, but she just moved the square out of the way.

The tile flickered with energy as she leveled it in my direction.

She’d used the same tactic last time, and I’d expected it, but that didn’t mean a blast of light was easy to dodge.

If I’d mastered Haste, maybe I would have chanced it. But I was far from even managing a beginner level of the spell.

Instead, I pulled a hand mirror out of my bag and held it out in front of me like a shield.

The blast lashed out, crashing right into me. Part of it hit the mirror, of course, but not much.

My barrier cracked, but only a little.

Marissa glanced at the mirror, looking worried.

I grinned.

“Won’t beat me with a tactic you’ve used before.” I waved the mirror at her. “I prepared.”

While I was talking, I shaped my mana, pouring it into recharging the shield sigil as quickly as I could. The backup sigil I’d attached to it was already helping, too.

Marissa tossed the square aside. “Guess I’ll need to use a few new tricks, then.”

She stepped into the empty space where the square had been and took out her own dueling cane. That was unusual, since she rarely used it, and frankly, it wasn’t her strength.

I put away the mirror, trying not to show my relief.

By now, my sphere was almost charged.

I fired a few more blasts from my cane, hoping to buy more time. Marissa parried them, as I’d expected, and returned fire.

I ignited the blade on my cane and smashed it into her attack, intending to deflect the sphere out of the way like I’d done a hundred times before.

The blast ripped the dueling cane right out of my hands.

I blinked.

She fired again, grinning.

What was that?

I threw myself to the side, avoiding the shot, but I was still stunned. She wasn’t on a purple square like I was — her cane shots should have been weaker than mine.

But the amount of force that she’d managed in a single shot had been colossal. If it had hit me directly, it would have cracked my shields badly, and probably thrown me back for good measure.

Her cane was an ordinary one, the same as mine, no special attachments.

But then I remembered —

I’d done something similar, once before.

Against her.

She’d stolen my technique.

She was overcharging her cane.

And she was better at it than I was.

I broke into a run, barely avoiding her shots. I rushed to grab my fallen dueling cane, but she blasted it before I got there, knocking it back further.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry about the floor. Every single tile I touched was turning to purple as long as I stood on it, thanks to the runes on my boots. They would revert to the normal color a few seconds after I stepped away, preventing me from leaving a trail of safe tiles.

Marissa’s shots slowed down. That wasn’t a good thing; she was aiming ahead of me now, anticipating my movements.

I couldn’t keep this up. Eventually, she’d hit me, and I wasn’t doing anything to fight back.

As I ran, I charged transference mana in my right hand.

One second.

Another sphere burst right in front of me. I turned toward Marissa.

Two seconds.

I began to rush toward her, rather than away.

Three seconds.

Marissa took a step back out of reflex, but leveled her cane for another shot.

Four seconds.

I closed a bit of distance, but not enough.

Five seconds.

My hand was beginning to tremble. I had enough mana to strike, but I was still out of range.

Six seconds.

Marissa fired another blast at me.

Seven seconds.

I raised my hand, aimed, and fired.

The blast of mana ripped out of my hand and hit the sphere dead on.

Like deflects like, opposites nullify.

Teft had taught us that rule.

She’d charged her sphere with enhancement mana, the direct opposite of transference.

If they were equally strong, they’d cancel each other out.

But she’d only been charging her cane for a second at a time.

My blast ripped right through the center of Marissa’s sphere and smashed into her, knocking her back a dozen feet.

It was weaker after passing through the sphere — the enhancement mana inside had, in fact, nullified some of my attack — but not much.

I saw Marissa momentarily clutching her chest as she steadied herself. Her shield had been cracked, but I couldn’t tell how much.

My hand was throbbing. I’d charged it more than five seconds, which I knew was my safe limit.

But safety wasn’t a priority right now. Winning was.

Again.

One second.

Energy began to build in my fingers.

Marissa rushed toward me as a blur, faster than I’d thought possible. She was triggering squares with nearly every step, but she moved so fast that they didn’t have time to take effect.

Two seconds.

She’d almost closed the distance between us, and my attack was far from ready.

Three seconds.

She readied a swing.

I tilted my feet and activated the ring of jumping, blasting myself backward across the floor.

Four seconds.

Her swing met open air, but she kept moving, chasing me.

Five seconds.

She was nearly atop me again.

I swung my hand at her chest and released the blast.

She smashed my arm out of the way with her own, sending the attack harmlessly off to the side.

That’s bad.

Her fist slammed into my face. A flare of agony surged through me, and I felt a swell of blood pour down my nose.

I coughed, and she hit me again, this time in the ribs. The barriers and shroud were both slowing her strikes, but not stopping them. Neither was very effective against pure kinetic force.

I’d been warned about that, but I hadn’t solved it.

I managed to get my arm up in time to stop the next hit, but the pain from her two hits was stopping me from doing much else.

Fortunately, I was wearing the ring of regeneration, and that was already working to get my body functional again.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t working as fast as she could punch me.

In a moment of instinct, I managed to activate my ring of jumping again, pushing myself backward to buy some distance. She pursued, but that moment was enough for me to spit out some of the blood that had trickled into my mouth and raise my hands into a guard stance.

When she swung, I side-stepped and punched her back with an instantaneous flare of transference mana. I connected with her shoulder, cracking her shield and making her flinch for just a moment.

I took another step back, moving to a sideways dueling stance.

I wasn’t a Guardian, but I certainly wasn’t untrained at hand-to-hand.

Just that moment of slowing her down meant that she was now standing still long enough for the square below her to kick in.

Unfortunately for me, it was blue. A mana recharging square.

I couldn’t let her stay there.

She seemed to realize the same, and she took a step back, to the edge of the square. She adjusted her footing, looking for openings to hit me again.

While it was tempting to back off and let my injuries heal, I had arrested her momentum, and any sign of weakness would encourage her to pursue. I couldn’t afford that.

Her next attack was a probing jab, which I dodged easily, followed by a sweep toward my feet.

I hopped over it, landed, and flooded my limbs with transference mana.

I’d used a rudimentary Haste spell, one I could barely control. I couldn’t use it to dodge attacks more effectively like I’d originally planned on.

But at this range, that wasn’t what I needed it for.

My fists lashed out like pistons, slamming into Marissa with twice my normal speed and force.

I landed five hits before she managed to grab one of my arms, pull me in, and slam an elbow into my chin.

As I staggered back, she kicked me in the chest, and I flew back another several feet.

I wiped the blood off my face.

Marissa cracked her neck. “Your barrier should be broken by now.”

I stretched my arms, then moved to circle her. “It must be in a good mood.”

She wasn’t wrong. My phoenix sigil had been depleted completely, and my normal sigil would have been empty, if not for my latest attachment.

I pushed a little more mana into recharging my sigil while I was thinking about it, but it wouldn’t amount to much. Even with my vastly increased mana control, it still would have taken me a couple minutes of complete concentration to recharge the sigil entirely.

I’d lost my Haste spell when she’d hit me, but that was fine. I was too dizzy even from the few seconds of using it to do much else with it.

In spite of my hits, Marissa was still in better shape than I was. I was dealing some damage, but her shroud had soaked up much of the strength of my blows.

I didn’t have much time to contemplate a strategy before she charged.

“Sorry.” I managed, pulling the sphere out of my bag.

I’d hoped not to have to resort to using the sphere. It was, after all, completely unfair.

But Marissa was right. I was in it to win, and the sphere was fully charged.

I threw it at the floor in front of her.

She dodged.

It didn’t matter. I wasn’t aiming for her.

As soon as the sphere hit the tiles, it emitted a pulse of mana that stretched outward across the arena floor.

Every tile the shockwave touched changed to red.

And a moment later, they began to fire blasts of mana into the air.

I tapped my foot against the tile below me before it could activate, changing it back to purple.

Marissa had no such advantage.

Instead, she hopped backward, dodging as each tile triggered.

In truth, I’d thought that the gap in timing between blasts would be too small, too insignificant for anyone to dodge.

I was wrong.

As soon as Marissa jumped backward, she jumped forward, right onto the tile that had just activated.

Then, as the tile in front of her glowed and fired again, she moved again.

The arena was a blinding array of burning lights, but somehow, Marissa had already found a pattern.

I stared at her for a moment, briefly struck with awe.

She was closing in on me fast, and I was almost out of tricks.

Almost.

As she got close enough to swing, I activated the ring of jumping, and did something I didn’t usually bother with.

I jumped.

The jump carried me thirty feet up in the air, and I knew from experience that it would also slow my fall.

Marissa was below me, readying a swing for when I landed. She’d chosen to stand on my purple square, where it was safe.

But my square didn’t stay purple.

Within a moment of my departure, it had changed to red and activated.

The ensuing blast hit Marissa from directly below, cracking her shield critically.

It was almost enough, but not quite.

I began to fall.

I charged mana into one of the runes on my right boot and kicked it off as I fell.

Marissa swung at me as I descended, but I activated the ring of jumping again, blasting myself backward.

The motion cost me. I ran straight into a beam of light, which cut my remaining barrier down to almost nothing.

Fortunately, I’d accomplished my goal.

My empty boot landed on the square where Marissa was standing.

The color changed to green, enshrouding the square in smoke.

I landed hard, but my one booted foot changing the square below me to purple.

I was safe.

Marissa was, too — but she didn’t know it. She hadn’t had enough time to observe the functions of the squares, because she’d been charging right through them.

And so, she did exactly what I would have done with such limited information — she got out of the glowing green square as quickly as possible.

To my amazement, she managed to time it perfectly, stepping onto the next tile right after it fired a blast of energy. Given that she’d presumably been blind, I didn’t know how she managed it.

Unfortunately for her, that blindness meant she’d missed something important.

I’d landed right where she’d discarded the square she’d carved out of the floor.

The square flickered once as I poured mana into it, recharging the depleted supply — and then fired a blast that hit Marissa in the face.

Her shield cracked one last time, then shattered.

Marissa vanished.

I had won.

***

“I can’t believe you threw your boot at me.” Marissa laughed.

“I didn’t throw it at you. I threw it at the square.”

“That’s not much better.”

I shook my head. “It’s definitely better. You don’t have runes that I can change.” I considered that for a moment. “At least, not yet. Maybe I could...”

Marissa folded her arms. “Don’t be creepy, Corin.”

“I’m not! I’m just thinking about how Katashi made your attunement stronger. Maybe rather than just strengthening attunements, it might be possible to give them new abilities.”

Marissa frowned. “Not sure it’s wise to be tampering with the work of the goddess.”

Teft finally made it into the recovery room where we were waiting, interjecting in the conversation as we approached. “Master Cadence is many things, Miss Callahan. Inventive, perhaps. Underhanded, certainly. But wise? That would not be a word I would even consider using in his case.”

I turned toward him, wiping my face again with the wet towel the Mender had given me. Marissa had probably torn some cartilage in my nose, but the nasal bone was intact, and the damage was already mostly healed by the time the Menders looked at it. “You’re just cranky because I broke your test.”

“Not at all, Master Cadence.” Teft shook his head. “In fact, I’m quite pleased you decided to reconnoiter before the battle. And preparing specific objects with the test in mind? That’s proper Enchanter behavior.”

I blinked. “Did you just compliment me? I mean, I know it was directly after an insult, but...”

“I am offering a bit of acknowledgement for the things you did right, Master Cadence. You should be prepared by now to know that it will be accompanied by a list of the many things you did wrong.”

“Ah, that’s more like it. You were starting to scare me.”

“The most obvious is that, in spite of having an item that gave you a mobility advantage, you chose to get into a fistfight with a Guardian. And the best fighter in our class, no less. I recognize that you have significant dueling practice, but you are clearly not at Miss Callahan’s level in unarmed combat. What should you have done differently?”

“If I had more time to prepare, I could have made another item for changing squares more selectively. I thought about the idea of making a cane that fired energy designed to activate a specific function on the tiles, but it turned out to be much harder than something that worked on contact. The sphere was the best I could manage.”

“And if you had a rod with that function, how would you have used it?”

“Probably would have made the squares in front of Marissa into the ice ones. Slowing her movement would have let me get enough distance to retrieve my cane, or to get to the square she’d dropped earlier.”

Teft nodded. “More preparation would have been wise, yes. How could you have handled it better with the resources you had on hand?”

“Hm. I’m honestly not sure. Maybe I could have used the ring to keep my distance more, but once she showed that she could hit just as hard as I could in ranged combat, I don’t know.”

Teft folded his hands. “I don’t know is the wisest thing I believe I’ve heard you say, Master Cadence. Miss Callahan, can you think of any ways he could have improved?”

“Hm. I knew about his ring of jumping before the match, but I didn’t know how much force he could charge up in his hands like that. If I had that kind of skill, I would have gone for a ring out. Maybe ran to the edge and then just blasted my opponent at an angle. Or maybe he could have used the ring itself and just launched me out? Don’t know.”

That was a really good strategy, and one I hadn’t seriously considered. I was so focused on exploiting the mechanics of the match that I hadn’t even bothered with something so...conventional.

I needed to improve on that for the future.

“Good. Master Cadence, you may have had the most complicated victory that I’ve seen this year. That is not a compliment, but it does speak to a degree of strategic ability, and an improvement over your last performance. While I heard some of the students speculating that you would be penalized for cheating, I do not intend to punish you. I do have to ask, however — if you are going to fight dishonorably, why not do something that guaranteed your victory?”

He shook his head. “You had full access to the arena before the match. You could have added a new function to the tiles that depleted the shield of anyone who wasn’t wearing your boots, for example.”

I shrugged at that. “Or I could have just set up a single square that gave me an insurmountable advantage, or that would have turned off my opponent’s shields instantly. Or I could have changed the voice activation for the arena to respond to my voice, as well as yours.

“I considered all that, and I determined that it would have defeated part of the point of the test. While preparations for a duel are expected, a real duel would not allow me such an obvious and instantaneous route for victory. I was hoping to find a way to make the match easier, while remaining fair.”

Teft pointed a hand toward the arena. “No match in that arena, or any other, will ever be fair. If your goal is to be fair, you are already sacrificing performance. You won by a hair today, but you will not win every fight in your life while holding back.” He paused. “In the next semester, I expect for you to show me that you have learned this lesson.”

“...So, I pass then?”

“You both pass. Master Cadence, you, won against a superior opponent through preparation, in spite of your mistakes. You receive a grade of B+. Miss Callahan, you lost the match, but your raw fighting ability remains easily the best in the class. Master Cadence, what could she have done better?”

I thought about that for a moment. “That blade-hand technique she used to cut the tiles. She almost definitely could have broken my barrier faster with that, rather than just punching me.”

Marissa winced. “I’d probably have cut you, too, though. I can’t control it that well yet.”

Teft made a gesture of acknowledgement. “A valid concern, given how dangerous that style of technique can be. The solution is to practice your control to the extent that you do not need to have such concerns the next time you have such a match. But that would not have been my advice for this particular match. Instead, I would have advised you to keep your distance, rather than charging in.”

Marissa and I both raised eyebrows at that, and she responded. “But you told him that he was bad for letting me get in close.”

“Indeed. However, what you should have realized was that once he was disarmed, he was practically useless at a distance. Once he was the one who wanted to get into melee range, you could have harried him at a distance with ease. His shield would not have lasted forever.”

We both nodded at that. He was right — my transference mana control wasn’t good enough to hit her at a long distance, and I could only do it a few times. Even now, my hand’s mana hadn’t fully recharged, and we’d been resting for a while.

“In spite of that, your performance was more than adequate. I award you a grade of ‘B’ for this test, and you will retain the highest overall grade in the class as a whole. Unless, of course, one of the later duelists proves superior.”

Marissa breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks. Can we go watch the other matches?”

“Indeed. In fact, I believe one you’ll be quite interested in is just about to start.”

“Ooh!” Marissa grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. “C’mon, let’s go!”

I accepted her grasp with less than the usual amount of awkwardness. I think a round of punching each other had braced me for a degree of physical contact.

And, more importantly, I was just relieved that Teft hadn’t told Marissa that the hand mirror I’d used in the fight wasn’t magical in the slightest.

Maybe I’d fooled him, too.

***

Marissa cheered out loud when Rupert Kent lost to Desmond Vyers, and I was glad to see her excited. I had a hard time focusing on most of the matches, though, because my mind was elsewhere.

I was worried about Sera.

Both Sera and Patrick looked incredibly nervous. I suspected Patrick would be fine even if he lost, but Sera was already having a difficult few weeks. I wasn’t sure how much she’d recovered the use of her attunement, but I doubted it could be much.

I offered to let her borrow the mana regeneration bracer, but she declined my offer.

“I don’t want any unfair advantages. I have to do this myself.” She was still only capable of speaking at a whisper, and even that seemed like a struggle for her, but at least she could talk.

I shrugged at that. “I’ve made items for both you and Patrick. You’re injured, he’s not. I don’t think it’s unreasonable.”

“Don’t worry. I have a plan.” She gave me a weak smile.

“You always do.”

I was curious exactly what that plan was. Had she prepared for the arena itself, like I had, or was she working on some other style of strategy?

The wait was frustrating for me, and I could tell it was agonizing for Patrick and Sera. It was nearly an hour later when they finally entered the arena and took their positions.

“Bow to your opponent.”

They bowed.

“Begin!”

Both combatants moved.

Patrick thrust out a hand, firing a blast of lightning.

Guess he’s not going to hold back.

Sera stepped to the side, both avoiding the blast and putting herself on a purple square.

Unfortunately for her, the tile configuration had changed since my match.

Ice began to spread up her legs.

Patrick caught her with the next blast of lightning, cracking her barrier. She winced, ducked, and waved her right hand.

The ice shattered.

Sera had her power back. Or, a fraction of it, at least.

Neither Patrick or I knew how much of it she’d regained — which, I suspected, was part of the point.

Sera jumped forward over a blue square and onto a green one. A soft glow enveloped her, and her damaged barrier began to recharge.

Had she already discerned this particular tile pattern, just from one square? It was possible — there were only six combinations. Even so, I was impressed.

Patrick mirrored her, stepping onto a green tile next to him and removing her only obvious advantage. Then he hurled another blast of lightning.

Sera turned sideways to present a smaller target, but he hit her regardless. More cracks appeared in her barrier, showing it was close to breaking.

I guessed that the phoenix sigil’s barrier could only take two more hits, then she’d be stuck with just the regular shield sigil. That would probably take two hits to disable total.

The recharge tile was helping, but it was too slow to handle the kind of damage she was taking. She needed to do something to fight back.

Sera knew that, of course.

When Patrick fired his next shot, she clenched her right hand into a fist.

A wall of ice shot up in front of her, blocking the lightning.

Then she snapped her fingers and the wall broke apart into shards, hovering in the air for an instant before flying in Patrick’s direction.

Patrick countered the ice with fire, blasting the projectiles out of the air one at a time. A single shard impacted his shield, shattering and dealing him a minimal amount of damage.

By that point, Sera had moved, jumping onto a red square. Her dueling cane began to glow, and she pulled it off her belt to fire a shot.

Patrick blasted the cane’s energy out of the air easily, but Sera just kept firing a steady stream of mana in his direction. He was forced to draw his cane to begin batting the spheres aside.

When he returned fire, Sera managed to hit him with two blasts, easily deflecting his own.

Good.

She’d forced Patrick onto the defensive. He hopped back a tile, hitting an orange one and triggering a cloud of smoke to rise around him.

That didn’t stop Sera from attacking. She sent a barrage of energy into the smoke, aiming both high and low in case he was ducking.

When Patrick jumped out from the other side onto another green square, he didn’t seem to have taken any further damage.

It was only when Sera’s next blast neared him that I understood why.

His entire body was crackling with lightning.

That lightning lashed out like a living thing, smashing her orb right out of the air.

Sera fired two more shots in rapid succession, but each time, the lightning aura deflected them harmlessly.

I blinked, turning on my attunement, and realized what I was seeing.

Patrick had a shroud. He’d hit Carnelian sometime in the last few days, and he’d already learned how to charge his shroud with lightning.

I immediately felt a bit of envy that he’d picked up on how to manipulate his shroud so quickly, but more than that, I felt concerned.

Sera’s odds had been bad enough before.

Patrick turned sideways, assuming the same dueling stance that Sera had. Then he dropped his cane and began to gather a large ball of lightning in his hands.

That’s not good.

Sera whispered something into the air.

With the arena’s enchantments for amplifying sounds, I was just barely able to hear her.

“Vanniv, I summon you.”

Patrick hurled the sphere.

A winged man with skin like stone appeared in the way.

He was, unfortunately, only six inches tall.

“Ah, Summoner, you finally got around to—”

The ball of lightning flew right past tiny Vanniv. Sera waved a hand, however, and a blast of ice managed to weaken the sphere before it hit her.

The lightning knocked her back a step, but she managed to remain on the same square. The barrier from her phoenix sigil shattered, completely destroyed by the intensity of the blast. If she hadn’t weakened it, I suspected it would have gone straight through her other barrier as well.

Vanniv flapped his tiny wings, turning toward Sera. “What is the meaning of this? Why are you gigantic?” He floated around. “Wait, why is everyone gigantic?... Oh.” He folded his arms. “You probably can’t tell, but I’m glaring at you very intensely right now.”

I couldn’t quite hear Sera’s response, even with the arena’s enchantments. Something about “later”, maybe?

Vanniv turned toward Patrick just in time to see another blast of lightning coming. The tiny karvensi pointed his hand and the electrical energy shifted trajectories, flying harmlessly into a nearby tile. “There. I contributed. You are undoubtedly impressed and ingratiated toward me for this, and thus, you should—”

A handful of jagged icicles flew from Sera’s hand. Patrick blasted at them with lightning, but three shards survived, impacting him hard. He dropped his cane as cracks spread across his shield.

“Just defend me.” Sera instructed Vanniv.

“Fine, fine. But you’re paying me double for this.”

“Twice zero is still zero, you know.”

Tiny Vanniv raised a hand to his forehead, looking aghast. “I’m not getting paid? What sort of relationship do you take this for?”

Three more bolts of lightning flew their way, but Vanniv redirected them without difficulty.

Patrick took a more nuanced approach to his next attack, firing a bolt of lightning that split apart in mid-air. Vanniv managed to redirect the original, but one of the pieces arced around and hit Sera from behind. She staggered, her barrier weakening.

One more hit will end it, I suspected.

Sera dropped down to a knee. At first, I worried she was injured, but then I saw her touching a tile.

She wasn’t an Enchanter. She couldn’t charge or manipulate runes in the way I could.

What was she doing?

Thin lines of ice spread out from her hand, across the tile and onto adjacent ones.

For a moment, nothing happened; and then three of the tiles around her activated all at once, raising clouds of smoke and bursts of light.

She dove into one of the smoke clouds, then blasted more adjacent tiles with frost, activating them in a similar fashion.

Patrick hurled another blast of lightning at her, but Vanniv intercepted it. When that failed, Patrick tried fire, but Vanniv handled that just as easily.

More blasts of ice impacted with orange tiles. In moments, there was a contiguous wall of shadow between Patrick and Sera.

Then Sera moved again, jumping to a purple square just as Patrick fired another blast in her direction.

Vanniv floated close to her again. “I know you know this, Sera, but I don’t have an infinite amount of mana to protect you with.”

She raised a hand to her mouth in a signal to be quiet.

Patrick ducked down, rubbing his right hand. The aura of lightning around him faded, then vanished. His eyes searched, but it seemed like he couldn’t find Sera’s location.

Sera conjured a spike of ice in her hands, then levitated it to where she’d been standing a moment before. After that, she waved a hand and sent it flying in Patrick’s direction.

Patrick saw the shard of ice, blasted it with a ball of fire, and then sent another attack in the direction where the ice had come from. It missed Sera entirely, just as she’d clearly intended.

She probably hadn’t planned for him to start throwing balls of fire into the walls of shadow. Most of the fireballs detonated immediately, clearing the frost on the tiles.

With the pressure from the ice gone, the walls of shadow began to disappear.

Not all of the shadows were gone, but Patrick had cleared enough to see her. He turned toward her and nodded once.

With her concealment gone, she began a familiar incantation.

“Child of the goddess, I call upon your aid.”

She didn’t get a chance to finish it. A ball of fire flew out from inside of one of the few remaining walls of smoke.

Vanniv pointed and detonated the sphere in mid-air, but a second fireball flew out from another shadow wall and exploded behind Sera.

She stumbled forward a step, losing her focus on the incantation and hitting a yellow square. A beam of light shot upward, hitting her shield and breaking it.

Sera vanished.

Vanniv stared at the spot where she’d been a moment before, sighed, and then flew toward the infirmary.

The match was over.

I rushed to the infirmary.

***

I worried that Sera would be crying when I found her inside.

I was wrong in a couple ways.

First, they wouldn’t let me into the infirmary. I probably should have expected that.

Second, when Sera finally emerged, she looked smug.

Patrick came out a few moments later, and he looked pretty pleased, too.

“You two okay?”

Patrick was practically vibrating with energy. “We both passed! Sera had this great plan—”

She shot him a glower and he cut himself off, then leaned in closer to me to whisper. “—and it got us both good grades!”

His idea of whispering was still about as loud as a normal speaking voice, so Sera continued to glower for a moment, before dragging both of us out of the way. Teft emerged from the room a moment later, heading over to prepare the next pair of combatants.

“Discretion, Patrick. Use it,” Sera whispered.

“Right, right. I’ll, uh, tell him later?”

We went back to the stands, where Marissa waited with hugs for both Patrick and Sera. The four of us headed back to Derek’s house together after that, with Patrick explaining on the way.

“So, as soon as Sera got her voice back, she started asking people from Teft’s other classes about how his grading worked. Some first-years, some second-years. She made a big list of factors that he seemed to take into consideration, then made a checklist of things we’d need to do in our match to take advantage of that.”

“You weren’t really dueling against each other,” I concluded. “You were just trying to do everything you knew would get more points with Teft.” I rubbed my chin. “That’s...a great strategy, actually.”

I’d been so focused on winning in a traditional fashion that I hadn’t considered going at it from a higher level and focusing on what would earn a grade, as opposed to a victory. Sera had seen that the real goal was graduation, not winning the match, and planned her strategy around that.

To emphasize Patrick’s point, Sera reached into the pouch at her side and handed me a folded note.

Demonstrate that you have determined the pattern of the tile.

Use at least one tile to your advantage.

Use at least one tile to cause a disadvantage for your opponent.

Use at least one spell to interact with a tile, rather than directly targeting your opponent.

Deal at least some damage to your opponent’s shield.

Move to another tile at least once.

Last for more than five minutes.

The list went on after that. I handed it to Marissa to look over next. I’d seen what I needed to see.

Marissa skimmed it, then nudged Sera. “Could have shared this before the match, you know.”

Sera shook her head. “You didn’t need it. You and Corin did almost everything on the list without seeing it. Showing it to you would have just hurt your focus on fighting.”

She was probably right. I would have obsessed over a list like that, and it would have hurt me more than it helped. I was less sure about Marissa, but we’d done almost everything on the list without trying, so it was probably true.

“Besides,” Patrick added, “We wanted to see which one of you would win.”

I rolled my eyes at that. “You can see that on almost a daily basis.”

Marissa shook her head. “Nae, Patrick’s right. Wasn’t the same as when we’re sparring. That was the first time I’ve seen you really try to fight me.” She cracked her fingers. “It was nice. Wouldn’t mind another match sometime.”

“I wouldn’t have stood a chance if I hadn’t changed the tiles, though.”

She nodded. “Of course you wouldn’t have. That’s why we need to have a rematch. So I can beat you into the ground next time, and feel better about my bruised pride.”

I laughed. “I suppose I’d better start taking our practice a bit more seriously, then.”

“Ye’d better. Because next time, I’m aiming straight for your bag of toys.”

...That wasn’t a bad counter to my strategy, now that I thought about it. If she got my bag — which she could, she was stronger than me and faster most of the time — she’d be able to prevent almost all of my tricks.

I needed to rely on the bag a little less heavily in the future, but for the moment?

I felt great. We’d all passed the class. The hardest part of classes for the first half of the year was over.

We teased each other a bit more on the way home. It was an affectionate kind of teasing, though, and to be honest, it was pretty nice.

Chapter XII – Lessons Learned

I pulled Sera aside when we got back to Derek’s house, asking a question I’d been thinking about since the match. “...What was with the tiny Vanniv?”

She chortled. “Remember how I summoned a weaker version of Seiryu in the spire? Same principle. Summoners usually learn to summon stronger versions of their monsters. I’ve been practicing summoning weaker versions since I got my attunement, so I could eventually learn to summon a weaker version of Seiryu like that. I doubt I’ll ever be able to summon Seiryu at her full strength.”

She shrugged a shoulder, then continued. “Anyway, that was a depowered version of Vanniv. I still don’t have enough strength back to summon the real thing.”

That made sense to me, although I wouldn’t have expected a weaker version to be smaller, even though that was what had happened with Seiryu. Maybe that was just the particular way she’d learned to decrease the power of the monsters she was summoning.

“How functional is your attunement, then?”

Sera shook her head. “Barely at all. I figured out how to break my contracts using my hand, and cast some spells with it. I’ve been recovering a little since then, but not a lot. I can only cast the most basic spells, and even that takes a lot out of me.”

I nodded. “Glad you’re recovering at all.”

“Yeah. I feel more like myself again. I don’t like being useless.” She scratched at her back, where her mark was located. “My attunement feels different now. Not worse...just different.”

“But it still works?”

“Yeah. In fact, Vanniv told me he felt a stronger connection with me, and that maybe we could do something new with it. I’m going to experiment with that when I’ve recovered a bit more.” She coughed, lifting a hand to her throat. “Think I need to stop talking for a while. That match took a lot out of me.”

“Do you need to go to the hospital again?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s not that bad. Just need to rest.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later.”

I headed back to my own room to isolate myself for a while after that, thinking about what she’d said. It was good to hear that she was recovering, I wasn’t confident she’d heal all the way on her own. And we still didn’t know what else had changed with her attunement, unless she’d figured out more than I had.

It also reminded me of another question — how’d she get that contract with Seiryu in the first place?

Had she gone back into the spire after getting her attunement, but before even coming to the academy?

Or had she somehow managed to get a contract during her Judgment?

It was worth asking later, but she clearly wasn’t up for talking. And honestly, it wasn’t all that important. I was just curious.

I’m not ashamed to say that I took it easy for much of the rest of the day. I hadn’t had a chance to just rest in a long time, and it was good to finally have a minute just to breathe.

***

The next week was the easiest I could remember in what felt like ages. We had to study for the last few final examinations, but none of the other classes worried me to the extent that the dueling class had.

Aside from studying, I spent a lot more time training with Marissa and Keras. I used some of that training to try to improve my use of Haste, but even after another week, my coordination was still too poor to use it for moving around rapidly.

It did work for rapid attacks like how I’d used it against Marissa, but only for a couple seconds, or I’d get too dizzy and lose my focus afterward.

My biggest project was finishing up the replica of Dawnbringer with help from Keras and Derek. We did it over the course of a few days so I wouldn’t strain my hand further.

When I finally presented the finished product to Patrick, he lifted it and gazed at it with awe. The silvery blade, etched with golden script, glimmered brightly even in the indoor light. “It’s amazing. I love it. Thank you!”

I grinned. “Glad you like it. Keras said we should tell him when you’re ready to test it out.”

“Does it work like the real Dawnbringer?”

I shrugged. “No idea. The runes I put on it are just for storing and replenishing mana, and for making sure it doesn’t overflow and explode. They don’t actually do anything.”

I pointed at the strange rune Keras had put on it. “That thing is what’s supposed to give it the actual functions. It’s not a traditional rune like Enchanters use — as far as I can tell, it’s more like a contract that Sera makes with a monster, but on a sword. Keras has been funneling mana into it for days, but he hasn’t told me what the functions of it are.”

“Huh. Do you think he’s really seen the real Dawnbringer?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised, given how powerful he is. We can ask him about it sometime.” I paused for a moment, considering. “You’re pretty familiar with the stories about the Six Sacred Swords, right?”

“Of course! They’re my absolute favorite swords. What do you want to know?” He turned away from me, testing the weight of the sword and making a few tentative swings in the air.

I was familiar with a lot of stories about the Six Sacred Swords, but they were just that — stories. Most of them were things I’d heard as a child. I’d never made an academic study of them. I knew legendary monsters and items were something of a hobby for Patrick, though, and maybe he had more reliable knowledge.

I tapped the hilt of the sword at my side. “Do you think there’s any chance Selys-Lyann is one of the six? I know the swords go by different names in different stories. I think Flowbreaker was supposed to be a water or ice sword.”

He lowered his sword and furrowed his brow. “Yeah, Flowbreaker is ice. But I don’t think that’s your sword. I mean, you’re right, there are a lot of different stories. But they almost always talk about Flowbreaker being destroyed.”

I remembered hearing about that, too, but I’d considered it. “When I first found this, it looked rusted. It was inside a pillar of ice. The Voice of the Tower did something with it that repaired it.”

“Still don’t think it’s the same sword. It wouldn’t have been just rusted — Flowbreaker was broken in pieces, and those pieces were scattered all over the continent. Flowbreaker did make ice that grows on its own, though. Maybe they’re related somehow?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s possible. Thanks.”

“Sure! Let me know if you want to know more about the swords sometime.”

“I will.”

There was someone that would have more information, but I wasn’t willing to ask.

Not until Tristan answered so many other, more important questions.

***

After we’d finished the Dawnbringer replica, I approached Keras about something I’d been considering for a while.

“What are the odds I could convince you to help me make a whole bunch of magical items?”

Keras shook his head. “Can’t.”

Not the answer I was hoping for. My chances of making a simply absurd amount of money by selling high powered magical items were diminishing. “Can’t? It didn’t seem like investing the mana in the runes was causing you any difficulty.”

“That’s not the hard part.” He folded his hands together. “You saw the rune I created on the sword before we started to work on it?”

I nodded. “Yeah, you mentioned it’s how you’re actually giving the weapon any functions. Given that you spent so much more time on it, I assumed it was more mana intensive, but I figured we could skip that if we just used conventional function runes.”

“Wouldn’t work. If I tried to enchant something else,” he waved to the sword at my hip, “I’d break it. That wasn’t a standard rune, it was more like one of Sera’s or Derek’s contracts. While I was working on the sword, it was bound to me. That prevented my shroud from damaging it during the process.”

That made some degree of sense. Sera’s contracts were able to transfer mana safely between herself and a monster, like Vanniv or Seiryu. If Keras’ contracts worked similarly, it stood to reason that he could invest mana into a contracted weapon without causing it harm, and... “Does that imply that you’re able to draw power from the weapons you’ve bound as well?”

He shifted awkwardly, turning his head to the side. “I’d rather not say too much on the subject, but yes.”

Huh. Sensitive subject, apparently.

That was fine, I had other avenues of questioning that were more pressing. “Okay, then. So, you need to bind an item to be able to enchant it safely. Can’t you just bind whatever we’re working on?”

“In theory, yes. I already have a number of contracted items, however, and they each use up a bit of my power. I’m near the limit I can handle without reducing my fighting abilities significantly.”

Just like Summoner contracts use up some of Sera’s mana. That was a problem, but it seemed easily solvable. “If the goal is to enchant an item, though, couldn’t you just break the contract afterward? Would the item lose the power if you did?”

“Yes, I can break my contract and leave the mana in the item intact. There’s a problem, though. Binding spells use something more valuable than mana. That’s true for me, and it’s true for people like Sera as well.”

I frowned. “What else would you be using?”

He patted his chest. “A fraction of our spirit.”

“Spirit?” I sounded a little more incredulous than I would have liked. “The Summoner attunement doesn’t have access to spirit magic. It’s just air and transference. And even the combination of those two types isn’t spirit.”

“Attunements have a lot more magic in them than the two types they let you cast. You’ve heard that higher level attuned get a third magic type?”

I saw where his logic was going. “Yeah. Which implies there’s another function on there, it’s just not active until your mana reaches a certain level.”

“Right. And how does the attunement know how much mana you have?”

“You’re implying all attunements have a mana detection function, which means they all have some amount of mental mana.” I thought about that. “And any number of other enchantments we don’t think about, because they’re not actively giving us mana to work with.”

That was kind of a terrifying idea, actually. It meant that I had any number of unidentified enchantment functions built into a mark on my head.

What if one of them was some kind of enchantment that allowed a visage remotely cause the attunement to detonate?

I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

I consoled myself with the fact that humans had apparently figured out how to make artificial attunements, which meant that someone out there had a strong enough understanding of how they worked that they probably would have caught onto a hidden “kill” enchantment.

Probably.

I was already planning to study artificial attunements extensively, but this conversation pushed it higher on my list. I couldn’t study much here, though — no experts were available. I’d need to either track Tristan or Katashi down, or go all the way to Caelford.

“Right. Your attunements are complex, and each one looks to be designed a little differently. The bindings Sera and Derek use create a bond between the spirit of a human and the spirit of a monster, which enables them to transfer mana back and forth.”

“Okay, I get that. But what about a sword? That shouldn’t have a spirit to work with.”

“Right. Most of them don’t, which is the problem. That means I have to give the sword a piece of my spirit in order to make the connection. As I’m sure you understand, that’s not something I can do routinely.”

“...Does the piece of spirit you’re using on the contract grow back?”

“Eventually, but it takes a while. And I don’t exactly like leaving pieces of my spirit lying around. That’s a dangerous prospect. Making a copy of Dawnbringer was a special case. I might be willing to work on other special cases now and again, but I need time to recover first. Weeks, at least, if not months.”

I shivered at the image. I wasn’t sure I’d be willing to cut off a piece of my spirit and put it in an item at all, under any circumstances. I certainly wasn’t going to blame Keras for not wanting to do it regularly. “Okay, let me think for a minute.”

Was there a way of salvaging my idea?

“You mentioned before that powerful enough items, like the Jaden Box, might be able to survive contact with you for a long period of time. If we enchanted an item with defenses, like a powerful shield sigil, could you enchant it safely?”

“Doubtful. Transferring mana into those shells you use would require touching the item, and that’d put me inside the barrier. I’d probably break it as soon as I touched it.”

“Worth testing.”

It took me a few minutes to make a basic shield sigil, then create a container rune like one of the ones we’d put on Patrick’s sword.

It only took him a few seconds to break it.

Over the next couple days, I tried a couple more designs — enchantments designed to protect the object itself, rather than the wearer. I even had Marissa help me with one that used enhancement mana to harden the item, rather than a conventional shield.

Keras broke those, too.

“I don’t think this is going to work, Corin.”

He was probably right, but I was stubborn, and I liked the idea of a theoretically infinite amount of money.

The one with enhancement mana had lasted a little longer.

Maybe Keras could have safely enchanted one that had a Citrine or higher level hardness enchantment...but an item like that would have been as valuable, or more valuable, than the product we were trying to make.

I had another idea, though. “You said that most items don’t have a spirit. Does that imply that some do, and those would be easier to work with?”

“Yeah, but you’re not going to find those just lying around. They’re rare, and bonding myself to one would be the equivalent of a contract with a monster — they’d have to agree to it.”

“What about that black dagger that disappeared earlier?”

He winced. “Wish we hadn’t lost that. I wouldn’t know enough about it to know if it’s something I could make a contract with. But yes, that was probably an example of a weapon with a spirit.”

“How do we make an item grow a spirit? Could we do that artificially, so you don’t have to use some of your own?”

“Most of the time, an item with a spirit implies someone did put a piece in there at some point, and it grew and developed into something unique. There are probably spells that make new spirits, but I’m not an expert in the subject.”

I’d have to find one at some point, then, but it was a low priority. Spirit magic was an entire field of study, and I wasn’t going to look into it for something this dubious. I did want to study it at some point for other reasons, but it was going very low on my list. I had more pressing concerns.

“Crystals.” I realized. It was obvious.

“Hm?” Keras quirked a brow.

“You could make crystals, then I could transfer the mana from them into the item.”

Keras shrugged a shoulder. “Good idea in concept, but I’ve never been able to get that to work. Don’t know if it’s my lack of patience or how my mana works, but I’ve never been able to make mana solid.”

“Want me to teach you how I learned?”

“I suppose you can try.”

A few hours of lessons and practice hadn’t produced any results, but he did say that using a crystal casing made more sense to him than the other methods he’d tried in the past.

It had taken me weeks to make my first crystal, so maybe he’d make one eventually. This seemed like my best bet, so I decided to wish him well, provided him with a set of practice cases, and decided to focus on other things for a while in the meantime.

The first order of business was trying to get Derek to help me with the same money making scheme that I’d been planning to use Keras for.

“No.” He told me. “Don’t have time.”

“Fair enough.”

At least in his case, I got a simple answer.

***

Passing dueling class had left me with a higher degree of confidence that I could pass my classes for the year, but I’d also seen how much it had helped to prepare in advance.

I already knew what one of them was going to be — the third attempt at the fake spire. It would be considered our final exam for Magic Theory class.

This time, I was determined to be ready.

Unlike with Teft’s class, it was clear that researching the rooms in advance was going to be considered cheating. I wasn’t against the idea of cheating a little bit in emergencies — passing was more important than following arbitrary rules — but I didn’t want to take the risk of getting caught.

And, more importantly, beating the test without cheating would be far more satisfying.

I wrote a list of all the rooms we’d seen so far, and drew simple maps of each.

We had a few specific challenges we’d have to overcome for each room. The shadow monster, the fire statues, the false Tyrant in Gold, a sleeping dragon...

Those would all be tough to deal with in direct confrontations, if not impossible.

I spent some time researching magical items to help with those challenges, as well as some general ones.

I still wanted communication items more than anything else, and I spent some time digging into how to make them. Most of them were based around variations of Wayfarer spells, and many of the functions I wanted were higher level than I could handle.

The other problem was getting a communication item to send a message where I wanted it to go.

Most of them worked by sending a message to another item that was enchanted at the same time, similar to how Keras had described the pair of earrings that sent sounds back and forth.

That wasn’t very flexible, though. For any member of my team to communicate with any other member of my team, I would have to make pairs for each combination of team members, and that was both prohibitively expensive and time consuming.

I wrote up a rough design for a single item that could connect to five others by using different runes to activate different communication functions. Unfortunately, the runes involved were too advanced for me to manage, and I didn’t have a Wayfarer friend to help me with them.

I focused on other items instead, trying to prepare a couple things that would both be useful for the test itself and for future ventures into the spires. I had limited time to work with, so I had to prioritize, but I was pleased with my results.

I wasn’t sure what my other final exams would consist of yet. I tried asking around, but the teachers were being pretty tight lipped. Apparently, each individual teacher had quite a bit of flexibility in choosing how to run their finals, as long as it covered certain basics.

Aside from final exams, we only had two real activities left before the end of the school year.

The first, I’d almost forgotten about entirely: Spider Division.

The second, I’d been deliberately ignoring as much as possible: the winter ball.

I briefly went through my list of suspects for spiders, but I hadn’t gathered enough information on anyone.

Roland missing classes was unusual for his personality, and it could have easily been because he was doing special Spider Division activities, but I had no evidence.

Jin was almost too suspicious, to the point where I doubted he was actually a spider.

Beyond that, I hadn’t noticed anyone behaving too unusually. I knew I’d need to make an effort to start investigating soon.

While the whole situation with Katashi and Tenjin was obviously a bigger issue, I still needed to make certain I passed my classes. I couldn’t help anyone if I was kicked out of the school and sent home. I was still determined to score well and get assigned to being a climber.

I checked Trials of Judgment to see if Tristan had sent me any further replies, but there was nothing new.

With worrying about Tristan deferred to another time, that meant I had to confront the one thing I’d been looking forward to the least.

I’d planned on willfully ignoring it right up until the day before, but Patrick never let me get away with doing anything easily.

***

The following day, I had a surprise visitor.

I was reading about artificial attunements at the time, from what little I’d been able to scrounge from the library. The publicly available information was scarce, but it was still worth researching.

“Your friend is at the door for you,” Derek informed me. “You know, the one who almost killed you.”

I didn’t have to clarify who he meant. “Thanks.”

“Just keep an eye on that one. I don’t want to deal with any more trouble than I already am. Understand?”

I nodded to Derek. “I’ll make this quick.”

I headed to the door.

Jin stood in the entryway. He still had a visible bandage on his right arm, but aside from that, he looked reasonably recovered. He’d shaved and brushed his hair, which went a long way toward making him look more like typical Jin. “Corin. I’d like to talk, if you have a bit of time.”

I frowned, then pointed at the floor. “Leave your weapons here.”

Jin raised an eyebrow. “No weapons allowed inside?” He reached into his coat, removing the two pistols I’d enchanted for him.

“No, there are plenty of weapons in here. I’m just not comfortable with you carrying them.”

Jin’s mouth opened, then closed again. Slowly, he set the pistols on the ground without complaint.

“The dagger too,” I said, waving my hand toward it and ignoring the hurt in his expression.

He tilted his head back, breathing in slowly through his nose “Didn’t think you’d remember that.” He unbuckled his belt and set it on the ground. A scabbard carrying a dagger was attached to the back portion, where it had been concealed within his coat. “Satisfied?”

“For now. Come on.”

I took him upstairs, drawing a concerned look from Sera as we walked by her.

We settled in my room. I offered him a chair while I sat on the bed. “What did you want?”

“I know you probably still haven’t forgiven me—”

“Correct.”

He looked irritated at my interruption, but paused only briefly before continuing. “But we’re still supposed to be on a team for the next fake spire test.”

“Skip it. We can handle it without you.”

Jin shook his head. “That’s not acceptable.”

I folded my arms. “Why? Aren’t you a Sunstone-level attuned? How is any of this even applicable to you? Why are you even bothering with classes like ours, at your level?”

Jin relaxed, seeming more prepared for that question. “I performed well enough in my first few years of service to Edria that I was selected to spend two years here as part of an exchange program. Ironically, my main role is to make positive relationships with powerful families here, mostly to help foster good relationships for trade and diplomacy. Unfortunately, I still need to maintain my grades, or they’d just send me back home.”

“I find myself lacking sympathy for your situation. If your goal was to make friends here, you’ve clearly failed.”

Jin’s expression sank. “Look, I know you’re still angry, but can we just find a way to take the tests, at least? You know I can be useful to you. We make a good team.”

“We did make a good team. At this point, how can you expect me to trust that you wouldn’t put a bullet in me the moment I turned my back?”

I didn’t think it was likely that Jin would actually try to attack me again, but there was still a nagging suspicion that he could. Maybe one day he’d decide one day that he needed to clean up any witnesses for his assault on Vera. I didn’t know if I’d ever get over feeling that way.

“I...never wanted to hurt you, Corin. Not physically or otherwise.”

My laugh was tinged with an uncharacteristic bit of spite. “Well, you did both. Congratulations. Now, are we done talking?”

Jin shook his head. “I’m serious about needing to take the exam. And I do think you’ll need me. They’re going to make the final one harder. And I know that getting good grades is important to you, too.”

He was right about that. Good grades were a key to unlock my future freedom. And I couldn’t deny that having a Sunstone-level attuned on my team was a benefit. “It’s not up to me,” I decided.

“Sera will defer to you on this matter, we both know that.”

I drew in a deep breath. “Fine. You can help with the exam. But you’ll be with me. I’m not risking letting you harm the others.”

Jin nodded. “That is acceptable.”

“Good. Now, was that all you needed?”

Jin shook his head. “One last thing. Have you, or any of the others, reported my actions to the authorities?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “I haven’t, and I don’t intend to. I don’t agree with what you did, but you’ve made it clear enough that members of the Valian government were deeply involved with starting all this mess. I’m not turning you over to them.”

“Good.” Jin let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t processed just how tense he’d looked before, but when he changed his posture after that breath, I started to register how nervous he must have been. “Thank you.”

“You can thank me by performing well in the test, and by being honest if you come across any relevant information in the future.”

Jin pursed his lips for a moment, considering. “I can do that.”

With that, I escorted him out of the house.

***

As Jin had predicted, Sera acquiesced when I told her that I thought she should allow Jin to remain on our team.

She wasn’t happy about it, but she was even more pragmatic than I was.

“If he hurts anyone on our team, I’ll kill him myself,” she told me.

I had no reason to doubt her sincerity.

***

It was the twenty-fourth week of the semester, six weeks before the winter ball. The school year would end the week after that, and we’d have a few weeks off before being sent off to participate in some kind of activity before the second year officially started.

Assuming we passed, of course. If we failed out, we’d either be sent to the military or forced to retake the first year, depending on our performance.

Neither was an acceptable option. I had to make sure I passed my classes.

I also needed to graduate with excellent grades, because I wanted to be able to choose to be a military climber. If I passed my classes, but didn’t get good enough scores, there was a good chance I’d be assigned to a support division. If that happened, I wouldn’t have access to the spires until after I finished my service. I’d just be stuck churning out magical items for the military.

A total of two weeks had passed since the dueling midterm.

I had one more of my final exams during that time — Physical Combat class. It was pretty similar to dueling class, but without Teft’s eccentric puzzles, and we were only allowed to use weapons and martial arts. No magic.

I was fortunate enough to be matched against another Enchanter...and most Enchanters didn’t have the kind of combat training I did.

The average Enchanter didn’t have years of “training” with a duelist father to draw from, nor did most Enchanters take the dueling elective. They would have had the same basic physical training that the rest of the university did, but that wasn’t anywhere comparable to my experience.

I probably should have gone a little easier on him. Hopefully he had better scores in other classes.

With that completed, I still had a few more classes I hadn’t taken a final exam for yet. Aside from Magic Theory, which I was already preparing for, I wasn’t sure what I’d be up against.

Understanding Attunements was probably going to be a written exam, and I suspected Introductory Runes would be the same. I wouldn’t be the best in my class for either of those, but I wasn’t particularly worried about them, either.

Permanent Enchantments was a bit more worrisome. It was an elective, so I wouldn’t fail out of the school if I failed the test, but I had a feeling Professor Vellum would find a way to make me feel miserable if I didn’t get a good score.

Possibly even if I did get a good score, knowing her.

I resolved to disappoint her as little as possible.

While we’d prepared for more exams, I’d finally gotten used to using my Arbiter attunement, both on myself and on Patrick.

Sera and I had agreed that using the Arbiter attunement on her was too much of a risk. When I measured her lung mana with the mana watch, it registered at 6/6. It was recovering, but very slowly. Giving her mana might have accelerated that recovery process, but we suspected it was more likely to cause harm.

Marissa was a lower risk, but I still didn’t understand the mechanism behind how Katashi had increased the power of her attunement. The amount of mana he’d given her was several fold more than I could, and I didn’t know if that meant she’d have to wait several times longer before it would be safe to give her more. We decided it was probably safe to give her mana now, but it was safer to wait a few more weeks until after winter break.

In those two weeks, I’d made considerable increases to both my own mana and Patrick’s. My Arbiter attunement registered 106/106 mana now, and my Enchanter attunement was up to 78/78.

I wasn’t improving quite as quickly as I had when I was pushing myself to my limit, but it was still a tremendous improvement for such a short time period.

Notably, I found that repeated uses of my Arbiter attunement didn’t give me the same kind of lasting benefit I received the first time. If I wanted to be able to boost my mana faster with it, I’d have to figure out more advanced techniques, like whatever Katashi had done to Marissa.

Even taking that into account, I was still increasing my safe mana capacity by about one point per day in each attunement. That was about three times faster than I had been advancing just before going back into the spire, so it was great progress.

If I could maintain that pace, I’d hit Sunstone with both attunements within a year. That would put me toward the top of my class. Less than a tenth of second-year students hit Sunstone, and having two attunements at my age was similarly rare. Having both would make me extremely competitive.

I was basking in my own amazingness when Patrick rudely interrupted me.

“Have you talked to Mara today?”

I shook my head. “We haven’t had any training today.” The idea of talking to Mara for other purposes didn’t even occur to me.

“She could, uh, probably use some company right now.” He gestured toward Marissa’s room with a thumb.

“...Why?”

“She asked someone to the winter ball and got turned down, so she’s a little upset.”

I could see that being upsetting, but I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do about it. “Why aren’t you talking to her? Oh, were you the one she asked?”

Patrick laughed. “Oh, good goddess, no. There’s no way she’d ever ask someone like... well, anyway, no. She asked Keras.”

“Keras?” I blinked. “Isn’t he...?”

“Ancient beyond comprehension? Yeah. He told her she was too young, and that he wasn’t planning to go to the ball at all for political reasons. He might not be running from the law at this point, but he still isn’t exactly welcome everywhere.”

I nodded at that. “Makes sense. I’ve thought about skipping it myself.”

“Yeah, same here. But I think we should go. It’s important for making social connections, and you’re a noble. You should be paying attention to that kind of thing.”

I shrugged a shoulder. I wasn’t sure I could be more apathetic if I tried. “I guess.”

“I know you don’t care much about that sort of stuff, Corin, but it’s probably important in the long run. Even if you don’t end up running the household, I know you like having influence over important things. Like the whole situation with Katashi. Making connections can help with that.”

He was right, of course. I just...didn’t want to deal with it. I decided to placate him, though, since it was obviously important to him. “Fine, fine. I’ll go. But I’m still not sure why you want me to talk to Mara...you aren’t trying to get me to ask her to the ball, are you?”

“I was kind of hoping you would. I think it’d go a long way to cheering her up.”

I folded my arms. “And you’re not doing it yourself because...”

“Please, Corin. I already got rejected by Sera. Let my bruised pride recover for a while.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t see how me getting turned down is any better.”

“She’s not going to turn you down, Corin.”

I wrinkled my brow. “You think?”

He nodded seriously. “Pretty sure.”

“Huh.” I pondered that. Did I want to ask Marissa to the ball?

My feelings on the subject were...complicated. I was still reeling from what had happened with Jin, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with another pseudo-romantic entanglement.

I certainly didn’t want to give Marissa the impression that I had a romantic interest in her. She certainly had characteristics that I found attractive, but not in a conventional sense. I admired her for being tremendously good in a fight, and for working hard to achieve that.

Marissa’s demonstration of loyalty and bravery when she’d stepped in front of Katashi was nothing short of awe inspiring.

But was my admiration for her a form of romantic interest?

I really had no idea. I was still getting used to the idea that I could have any romantic interests at all. I still had no interest in physical contact, and I didn’t think Marissa would naturally pick up on that the same way that Jin had. Marissa was smart, but reading people and manipulating them was sort of Jin’s thing. That was one of the things that made me interested in him.

I did like the idea of cheering Marissa up and having company for the ball, though.

I never liked situations where I only had two options. I preferred to make a third.

And that’s why I asked both Patrick and Marissa to accompany me to the ball — as friends.

Romance was all well and good, but to me, having a good time with two of my friends was a far better idea for an evening.

They both accepted my offer. The three of us would make a great team.

And, as likely as it sounded, I found myself excited about going to the ball once again.

But first?

I had more final exams to deal with, and they weren’t going to be easy.

Chapter XIII – Third Time is the Charm

Four of us waited outside the testing facility for our next exam — our third and final chance at the simulated spire.

Jin was the last to arrive. He walked over without any sign of injuries, wearing his characteristic coat over an otherwise ordinary school uniform.

I was still nervous about allowing him to work with us, even after the conversations we’d had.

Is he going to try to use the test for a chance to kill us? Could he make it look like an accident?

I sincerely doubted both, which was the only reason I’d agreed to let him stay on the team. We were being closely monitored, and Jin had made it clear he didn’t hold a grudge.

But that was the thing about irrational fears — you couldn’t just tell them to go away and expect it to work. Trying to actively dispel my fears just expanded them, until I was picturing dozens of possible scenarios for Jin’s betrayal.

The rest of the group looked tense, too...except for Patrick. He just walked over and grabbed Jin in a hug. “Glad to see you’re out of the hospital! C’mon, we were just talking about our strategy.”

We weren’t.

We’d planned the general strategy weeks ago, and confirmed it days before.

But that little lie was enough to get everyone focused on the subject at hand. We’d need to fill Jin in, and accommodate him now that we were sure he’d be joining us. He’d asked to, of course, but we hadn’t wanted to count on it until we actually saw him. I couldn’t trust anything he said at this point.

“Corin,” Patrick gestured to me. “Want to catch Jin up?”

With Sera still having difficulty talking, it had fallen to me to serve as the de-facto leader of our group. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it, but as long as it was a temporary measure, I could deal with it.

I nodded to Patrick, then turned to Jin. “All right, here’s the plan...”

***

We began the test.

The room I was teleported into was pitch black.

I activated my attunement.

At Carnelian level, I had a clearer sense of everything around me, even in the dark. I still couldn’t see clearly — it didn’t give me night vision — but the colors of the images around me were crisper and easier to discern.

We were in the same room I’d started in the very first time.

I’d assumed that was probably the case from the darkness, but I also known that the test could have been changed for our third attempt. We could have ended up with a different challenge entirely.

It was fortunate I’d ended up here, rather than in the other room or a completely new one. That meant less logistical awkwardness and time wasted on switching groups using the return bells.

I wasn’t going to assume everything was unchanged just from one initial indication, but I figured my next action was probably safe.

I sent a spark of mana into the first of three magical items I’d prepared specifically for this exam — a lantern.

The lantern flickered to life, an orb of flame appearing within and casting a glow across the room.

I nodded to Jin, who was at my right side.

He raised his monocle over an eye and scanned the room. I’d made him the item earlier in the year, but I hadn’t actually seen him use it here — he’d been paired with someone else last time.

“There.” He pointed.

I drew the sword on my hip and slashed in the direction he’d pointed. With a hint of mana applied to the transference aura around the blade, I sent a shockwave of force across the room, toward a seemingly empty spot in the back corner.

The furious howl that came in response confirmed Jin’s words.

The creature appeared as it charged into the light, a wolf-like beast with vicious spiked tendrils protruding from its back.

Months ago, the sight of this thing had been terrifying.

By now? It was merely routine.

I side-stepped a spiked tendril and slashed it apart, then stepped in with a jab. The creature reacted quickly, hopping out of my attack range, only to take a bullet to the side from one of Jin’s revolvers.

The noise of the gunshot startled me in spite of expecting it — even with the runes I’d etched into the guns, they were still pretty loud.

Fortunately, the creature failed to take advantage of the opening, opting to turn to run instead. I swiped at the air again, and a shockwave slammed into the creature’s back, leaving a wide cut. Jin fired two more shots, hitting once, before it dematerialized and fled into the wall.

“Resh. Wish we’d killed it outright.” I glanced at the walks cautiously, knowing it could emerge from anywhere now that it was in an incorporeal state.

Jin holstered his pistol. “It’s not a major threat. Stick with the plan. I will watch for it while I work.”

I nodded, walking over to a wall and lighting one of the torches with a burst of mental mana. That extra light would help keep the beast at bay, and it was the first part of completing the room’s central puzzle — unlocking a cage that contained a fountain near the center.

In the fountain was a key, which could be used to unlock the next room.

Thus far, nothing appeared to have changed, and thus, I suspected the solution to the puzzle remained — there were six torches, each with a rune etched beneath them. The runes came in three sets. The solution was to use three different types of mana to light the torches; a different type for each rune set.

Mental mana couldn’t actually ignite anything, of course — we’d figured out that all we had to do was channel a little bit of mana of any type other than gray into the torch and it would light itself.

I lit the matching torch just before the beast lunged at Jin from behind.

“Look—”

Jin kicked backward, catching the beast in the face. Then he spun, ducked, and grabbed it by the neck.

The beast thrashed, spines flying toward his face, but Jin picked it up and slammed it against the ground, then laid his knee across its neck. While I closed with sword in hand, Jin drew a knife and jammed it into the creature’s chest, dragging it downward.

The monster stilled.

“That was...quick.” I blinked at him.

“Been practicing.” Jin gave me a sly grin, then flipped his knife back into a concealed sheath inside his coat. “And I don’t have to hide my strength from you anymore.”

That was true. I hadn’t been paying much attention, but he was burning with his full Sunstone aura. He’d always suppressed his true strength before our fight, but presumably the academy staff already knew about it, and...well, I obviously knew now, too.

I wish I’d learned under better circumstances.

“C’mon. Hard part is over. Let’s get the rest.” He pointed at the torches.

We each picked another one of the remaining pairs and lit them. I used transference mana. I wasn’t sure what type he was using...probably perception?

Either way, we got all the torches lit. The iron cage lifted away, and the fountain in the center was revealed, allowing us to approach and access the key in the water.

The “water” was acid, of course. I hadn’t forgotten that.

Previously, we’d frozen the water, either with Selys-Lyann or Sera’s skills. I was banned from using Selys-Lyann after nearly killing myself with it, so that was out. Sera probably could have frozen it, but we’d decided conserving her mana was a priority.

I had a much simpler solution. I handed Jin the torch, and brought out a small rod, similar to a dueling cane.

I pressed the rune on the cane. The key shook, then flew toward the end of the rod.

Magnetism was a form of metal magic, usually restricted to people with the Forgemaster attunement in Caelford.

There were, however, a few others who could use it.

Keras was one of them, but he couldn’t help me enchant items without risking breaking them.

Fortunately, I had found another option — Tavare, one of Derek’s summoned monsters. It took some convincing to get Derek to summon them to help me with an enchantment, but it was very worth it.

With the key stuck to the end of the rod, I stepped back, avoiding the cage as it fell back to the ground.

“Easy.” I remarked.

“Indeed.” Jin agreed.

The tip of the rod was sizzling. “Oh, ack. Acid on the key.”

I deactivated the magnet function, letting the key drop to the floor. Fortunately, the rod didn’t seem badly damaged.

“Okay, we’ll need to move the key without touching it.” I knelt down next to it.

“Should have kept your gauntlet for that.”

I shook my head. “Don’t need it. I’ve picked up a few new tricks.”

I pulled just a bit of transference mana into my hand, then released it, blasting the key forward.

“Hmpf. Not bad. Can you get it into the keyhole that way?”

I shook my head. “No, but I can get it close enough and pick it back up with the rod for just a second.”

The rod’s tip was burned, but not badly enough that I was overly concerned. We were probably dispersing any remaining acid on the key just by moving it around, too.

I pushed the key over to the door to what I was affectionately calling the “Tyrant Room”. I knew from past experience that it contained a long hall lined by magical vines, and a majestic carpeted floor leading down the center toward a throne.

On the throne was a crown.

Picking up that crown would summon an illusion of the Tyrant in Gold.

I rubbed my face, remembering where he’d punched me in the face. Thanks, Professor Orden. Your teaching methods are second to none.

I shook my head, raising the key to the door using the rod, and opened it.

We’d planned for this, too.

The door opened, revealing exactly the room we’d expected.

There was one problem —

The Tyrant was already there.

Nine feet tall and armored in golden mail, he carried a gilded two-handed sword, which had been lying hidden in the vines last time we’d visited the room.

I’d seen something else shimmering in the vines, too, which I’d presumed to be a hidden key. The plan had been to use the magnetic rod to pull the key out of the room and avoid the crown entirely.

This was, of course, no longer possible.

I backed away immediately.

“Ah, the young swordsman has returned. Do you intend to fight me without the benefit of your winged friend this time?”

I frowned. Professor Orden had been the one running the test last time, hadn’t she?

Who else knew about what I’d done last time?

...Was the Tyrant here a summoned monster, rather than an illusion? If that was the case, perhaps his knowledge would have persisted...

But it was more likely there was just more than one teacher observing and running each test. This was probably an illusion, just like the others.

I couldn’t let his taunts intimidate me.

“I’m afraid I won’t be challenging you today. Just here for the key, no need to scuff your armor.” I glanced around the room while I talked, hoping a bit of chatter would buy me time.

That glimmer I’d seen in the vines was gone.

I saw why a moment later, when the Tyrant raised his left hand. “Regrettably, the key is already in my possession.”

“Is it?” I pointed the magnetic rod at the key and turned it on.

The key flew out of his hand.

The Tyrant stared blankly at us for a moment. “That was rude.”

I nodded. “Yeah, we’re like that.” I tossed the rod, key and all, to Jin. “Try that on the box.”

He caught the rod and headed toward the back of the room, where we’d found a container we’d never been able to open.

The Tyrant took his sword in both hands and stepped forward. “That belonged to me.”

I drew my sword again, taking a traditional fencing stance. “You seem to think a lot of things belong to you.” I gestured with my sword at the crown he was now wearing above his mask. “At least you’ve got the crown. Isn’t that good enough?”

The Tyrant shook his head. “Of course not. Everything belongs to me. I’ll show you why.”

The Tyrant charged.

I slashed the air, sending a shockwave in his direction, but he cut the shockwave in half with a swing of his own. Then he was in swinging range, taking a huge sweep at my midsection.

I backed off.

Jin calmly said, “It doesn’t fit,” as if I wasn’t currently in the middle of battling against a seven-foot tall illusory deity.

“Okay, little help, then?” The Tyrant’s next swing connected with my blade, battering it to the side with incredible force. Then he released one hand to throw a punch at my face.

Not again.

I ducked, lashing out with a punch of my own, charged with transference mana. It only blasted him back a few inches, but that was just enough to make his next swing miss.

I took advantage of that, swiping my blade upward and connecting with his chin.

The blade deflected harmlessly off his steel mask, just as I’d feared.

Then he was swinging again, with enough force to cut me in half.

Move.

I activated the ring of jumping, blasting myself out of the way. The Tyrant’s blade hit the stone where I’d just been standing, and I hit him with a shockwave of force from the side.

He barely even seemed to notice it. His armor was unmarked.

Then Jin shot him in the back of the head.

I heard the ring of metal as I suddenly remembered that Jin was there, and the Tyrant fell forward a step.

Jin’s attunement was preventing both the Tyrant and me from noticing him sneaking up, I realized. Nice.

I couldn’t be too congratulatory, though, because the Tyrant backhanded Jin a moment later.

The Tyrant was still moving, and from what I could see when he spun around to swing his sword at Jin, he was probably unhurt.

This is ridiculous. We can’t beat him in a straight fight.

“Keep him busy!” I shouted.

I heard the sounds of gunfire pinging against metal in response.

I rushed for where Jin had dropped the key next to the box.

Should I keep trying to open the box and hope there’s something useful inside?

No, that could take ages for something that may be unrelated.

I picked up the key and rushed to the other door: the one leading to the fire statues.

I set the key in the lock. It fit. I didn’t turn it.

“Hey! Over here!” I blasted the Tyrant from behind.

“You fight without honor. I am quite disappointed.” He turned, ignoring Jin for the moment, to walk in my direction.

“You know, my father says the same thing all the time.” I waited for the Tyrant to get right in front of me — and thus, in front of the door. “So this is going to be cathartic.”

I turned the key, then immediately activated the ring of jumping to push myself out of the way.

The door opened.

The fire statues inside fired out a blast of incinerating flame, enveloping the Tyrant completely.

It was the same way Jin had been annihilated in the first test. Those flames were a powerful trap.

When the flames subsided, however, the Tyrant still stood.

“You are a fool if you think that—”

Jin hurled a knife.

It pieced the Tyrant right in the center of the chest, through his armor.

The Tyrant lifted a hand to the knife, mumbling in disbelief. “How...?”

“I’ve picked up a few new tricks, too.”

Jin’s second knife lodged in the Tyrant’s skull, just below the crown.

The Tyrant fell to a knee, his greatsword slipping from his fingers.

“Finish it, then.”

I raised a hand for Jin to wait, then walked closer to our injured enemy. “One thing first.”

The Tyrant turned his masked face toward me, but remained silent.

“This is for breaking my favorite nose.” I grabbed the crown off his head, then slammed the pommel of my sword into the knife that was already embedded in his forehead.

His head snapped back and he crumpled to the ground.

I kicked him one more time for good measure, then sheathed my sword.

I sat the crown on my head, then turned to Jin. “So, you want the greatsword?”

“A little gaudy for my tastes, but it might be useful.” He stepped over and picked up the huge weapon. “Surprisingly light. Shall I try it on the box, Sire?”

I shook my now magnificently adorned head. “Nay, good Sir Jin. Perhaps I should take a look at the runes, now that I’m a bit better versed with them.”

I inspected the box. After deciphering the runes, I came to a sad conclusion.

“It would appear that my time as a monarch has come to a swift end.” I took off the crown, rotated it, and found a rune on the back.

I pressed the rune to a matching one on the box.

The crown vanished, and the box clicked open.

“Tragic,” Jin muttered, completely deadpan.

Inside the box, I found another key — this one colored red. “This is probably for the flame room.”

Jin retrieved his knives from the Tyrant’s corpse. “Shall I fetch Sera, then?”

I nodded.

Jin rang the return bell and vanished.

Before Sera appeared, I heard a crashing noise coming from the direction of the Tyrant’s room...followed by a roar loud enough that it caused me to tremble.

I took a defensive stance, looking in that room’s direction, but there was no monster in evidence.

Just the room — and one wall in the back that was glowing under my attuned sight.

The false wall.

I’d remembered that it existed, but I hadn’t planned to make it a priority to investigate unless we couldn’t find the solutions within the Tyrant’s room. With the Tyrant beaten, it had seemed irrelevant, except...

When Sera appeared, I turned to her immediately. “Exactly how tough was that dragon?”

“Why?” She glanced around. “And is that a dead Tyrant? I thought you weren’t going to fight him?”

“I liked his hat.”

“Corin.” Sera folded her arms.

I chuckled. “He was already in the room as soon as we opened it this time. And, from that and some other clues...”

The sound of a roar interrupted me, almost as if on cue.

I continued, “I think the dragon is awake.”

Sera clenched her hands into fists. “Too tough to beat outright, I think. Marissa and Patrick are stronger now, but...”

That was all I needed to hear. “Then let’s go help them.”

She picked up the return bell from the floor, but I shook my head.

“Not like that. Got enough mana to make us levitate?”

Sera nodded, then pointed at our feet. “Float.”

I felt a slight pressure beneath my feet, but that was it. When I glanced down, though, sure enough I was no longer touching the floor. “Huh. Okay, let’s hurry.’

“Where?”

I tucked the red key away in my pouch. “There.” I pointed at the Tyrant’s room. “Follow me.”

I ran. Sera followed.

Just as we expected, the vines didn’t respond when we entered the room. They weren’t activated if we never touched the floor.

“Oh, the false wall, you think it leads—”

I nodded. “Ready?”

“Go.”

I tapped the glowing wall with my sword.

It vanished.

In front of us was a tremendous chamber, probably a hundred feet wide and long, and at least thirty feet tall.

In the center, atop a pile of treasure, was a dragon.

It was the first dragon I had ever seen. Dragons were broadly believed to be mythical offshoots of more conventional serpents like Seiryu and Mizuchi. Rather than having snake-like bodies, dragons were built more like gigantic lions with scales instead of fur.

Both dragons and serpents were usually winged, although some serpents were wingless and capable of flight through other means.

This dragon had bright red scales, indicating a strong association with fire.

More importantly, it was awake, aware, and angry.

As I watched, it took a breath, and exhaled a wave of flame that enveloped nearly a quarter of the room.

The next thing I saw was Marissa, flying upward above the fire, then soaring downward with a gleaming fist.

“Star descends from sky!”

Then she punched the dragon in the face.

The dragon staggered back at the impact of her fist.

That was an image I would not soon forget.

Marissa landed, launching a series of punches and kicks against the creature’s neck without pause. Then she jumped aside to avoid a swipe from one of the dragon’s claws.

A blast of lightning struck the dragon on its side, and it hissed and turned its head toward a new target — Patrick.

At that point, I was done waiting.

“Sera?” I turned my head to her.

She was already forming a globe of ice in her hands. She replied in a still-scratchy voice, “Let’s give it a try.”

We had hoped to avoid fighting the dragon, but we’d always known it was a possibility.

Hitting it with small attacks was never going to work, especially since we were short on attacks with its weakness — ice.

So, we’d formulated a way of hurting it a little more reliably.

I drew my sword and presented the blade to her.

Sera whispered as she moved her hands closer to the sword.

“Child of the goddess,

I call upon your aid,

Summon all your power,

And breathe ice upon his blade.”

She plunged the globe of ice forward and it spread, enveloping the blade.

I nodded in thanks as Sera slumped, holding her throat. That had taken a lot out of her.

As I turned back to the dragon, it was breathing fire again.

Patrick was, impossibly enough, deflecting it with fire of his own.

Like deflects like, Teft’s words echoed in my mind.

But Patrick was falling back, and he was clearly struggling. He couldn’t defend himself for much longer.

Marissa landed on the creature’s back and slammed her fist into it again, but it just shook her off.

I activated the ring of jumping and blasted myself forward, landing in a pile of gold.

Marissa, struggling to stand, caught sight of me. “Corin?”

I nodded to her. “Secret door. Help me flank this thing.”

“Got it,” she replied in a determined tone.

We rushed the dragon from opposite sides.

The dragon ceased breathing fire for a moment, turning toward Marissa.

I stabbed it with my frost-covered sword. The blade sunk in to the hilt.

The dragon howled, whipping its tail toward me with surprising speed. Instinctively, I activated the ring of jumping, taking me over the tail and safely out of the way.

Unfortunately, I’d left the sword embedded in its side.

The dragon turned and swiped at me with a claw before I even had a chance to land, but a blast of lightning hit it in the eye. The claw still connected, but it was a glancing blow.

Even then, it was enough to knock me out of the sky.

Fortunately, between the levitation spell and the ring’s own effect, I just bounced harmlessly in the air before I slammed into the ground.

I could see cracks in my first barrier from the dragon’s claw impacting against it, but that was nothing to worry about.

The dragon turning toward me and opening its mouth was a far bigger concern. I could see a sphere of flame forming between its open jaws.

Then Marissa was in front of me, waving her hands in a circular motion.

The flames blasted over us, but a circular barrier appeared in front of Marissa, blocking the flames. It cracked more and more with every passing moment, but each second, Patrick was blasting the dragon from the side with more lightning.

It eventually turned its gaze away, and Marissa slumped to the ground, shuddering from the effort.

“Th-thanks...” I managed to mumble, pushing myself to my feet.

“Up to you for a bit.” She stumbled backward, and I caught her.

“Got it. You rest.”

Marissa nodded and steadied herself as I rushed forward.

The dragon was turning toward Patrick again, but that didn’t mean it was safe to approach. It was thrashing wildly now, its tail threatening to crush me as I ducked under it and avoided a rear claw.

I tried to grab for the sword embedded in its side, but it just smacked me aside with a claw, moving too fast for me to avoid. I tumbled down the gold pile, my shield cracking further.

The dragon breathed again, in Patrick’s direction. I doubted he could deflect much more — he’d already looked exhausted.

Without the sword, I didn’t have a good weapon to fight with.

But I did have tools.

I grabbed the magnetic cane from my bag, angled it carefully, and then activated a different rune from last time.

Hundreds of pounds of coins, weapons, and other bits of metal were propelled forward, slamming into the dragon’s side.

The dragon teetered, its head turning upward, the flames harmlessly enveloping the ceiling.

Then it was looking at me again.

I turned off the rod and ran.

The smashing sounds behind me were a good indication that I was being followed.

I heard a whir. On instinct, I activated the ring of jumping just in time to blast myself out of the path of a swipe from the creature’s tail.

Unfortunately, I aimed it poorly, and I ended up falling forward. I hit the ground hard this time, indicating that Sera’s levitation spell had finally expired.

When I managed to flip myself over, I found my cane was missing, having slipped out of my grasp.

The dragon loomed over me, fangs bared to strike.

Marissa ripped the frozen sword out of its side.

The dragon howled straight into the air, swinging its head and slamming it straight into Marissa. She flew backward, bouncing as she landed. Her phoenix sigil’s barrier cracked, then shattered entirely.

She still has one more barrier, I assured myself. But it won’t last long. And if we keep fighting this thing, neither will we.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with that impression.

“Run!” Patrick shouted.

That was not a very helpful suggestion, given our precarious position, but he did add a bit right after. “Sera found the key!”

That was good news, at least.

The dragon was moving toward Marissa, and she was still on the ground.

Unmoving, as far as I could tell.

No sword. No magnetic cane.

I glanced from side to side, but I couldn’t see it. There was just too much junk in the pile.

No choice, then.

One.

I picked myself up, beginning to charge transference mana in my right hand.

That was when Patrick jumped on the dragon’s back, his entire body shrouded with lightning. “Go!” He shouted.

The dragon writhed in agony, trying to shake Patrick free. In a moment, I understood why — he was inside the dragon’s shroud. His lightning attacks hadn’t been able to hurt it much from a distance, but up close...

I ran toward the dragon at first, still charging my fist.

Two.

Then I saw Marissa, still down for the count.

And I prioritized.

I let the mana leave my hand, turned, and rushed to Marissa’s side.

She was moving, but only barely. A trail of blood was running down her forehead — she must have impacted the ground even harder than I realized.

Without hesitating, I ducked down and scooped her up from the ground. “We’re leaving.”

She was just aware enough to wrap her arms around me, making her easier to lift. She’d dropped my sword, but at the moment, that wasn’t a priority.

I blasted us forward three times in rapid succession. Given that she probably had a head injury, that might not have been good for her, but I judged that it was better than being splattered by a dragon.

We landed not far from the entrance to the Tyrant’s room. Sera was already running across that room, apparently having levitated herself again.

I spared one last look back at Patrick, then blasted Marissa and myself half way into the Tyrant’s room.

The plants on the side of the room twitched.

I tried to activate the ring of jumping again...

...And nothing happened.

Apparently it does have a limited amount of mana. Oops.

The plants rushed inward.

I ran.

A vine was just about to grab me when Sera cut it in half with a blade of ice, then helped pull us through the doorway into the room where I’d started.

The dragon roared in the distance, but what I heard after was something far more surprising — the gentle sound of a ringing bell.

A few moments later, I realized what had happened as I set Marissa down on the floor.

We took a few deep breaths, then Patrick appeared in the room next to us. “That was fun! Anyone need a break?”

Marissa raised a hand. “I...think I hurt something.”

Sera passed her the return bell that Jin had used. “Go take a rest, Mara. We’ll take care of things from here.”

“Mm. Kay.” Marissa grabbed the bell and rang it, vanishing immediately.

Marissa sounded like she was pretty badly shaken. I hoped that whoever was monitoring the exam would take a look at her head wound now that she was out of the testing area for a while.

We had a more urgent problem to deal with, though.

The dragon had lost its target, and now I could hear its footfalls heading our way.

I picked up the fallen bell, just in case we’d need it later.

“Uh, can we close this door?” Patrick pointed to the entrance of the Tyrant’s room.

“Not sure how to force it shut.” I looked at the opposite side of the Tyrant’s room, where the false wall had been dispelled. “I don’t think it can fit through there, though. We should be—”

A claw smashed away a huge chunk of the wall, making the gap wider.

“—moving as quickly as possible.”

I pointed at the flame statue room.

“On it.” Sera headed toward the room, inspecting it from an angle. “I don’t know if I have enough mana to block all of those.”

“Get what you can.”

She nodded. “Wall. Wall. Wall.”

She pointed, and ice walls appeared, blocking jets of flame.

Jin appeared in the room a moment later, glancing around. “Hm. You have acquired a Patrick.”

“Hey Jin!” Patrick waved enthusiastically.

Jin just gave him a curt nod. “And there’s...that’s a dragon, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, we’re leaving now.” I pointed at the flame statue room. “Want to lead the way?”

“If I must.”

We headed into the chamber.

Sera had managed to block almost all of the statues.

Unfortunately, her ice walls were melting pretty fast, and I doubted she had enough mana to renew them.

I pulled the red key out of my bag. “Remember, the statues can turn. Be careful.”

The two remaining statues were breathing flames across the room in a predictable sequence...at least, predictable until they deliberately changed it when we tried to cross.

Fortunately, we were ready for that. Patrick waved his right hand and deflected the jets of flame out of the way, then stumbled. Jin caught him and dragged him forward.

“Thanks!”

“Keep moving.”

In spite of Patrick’s perpetual cheer, I could tell he didn’t have a lot of mana left himself. Blocking fire from both the dragon and the statues had taxed him close to his limit.

We reached the other side of the room.

I turned the red key in the door.

Nothing happened.

“You have to be kidding me.”

Jin pointed. “There’s a key over there, behind one of the statues.”

I shook my head. “I got the key from this room before and tried it. It didn’t work.”

“I will retrieve it while you try other options.” Jin moved forward, dancing between blasts of flame to head toward the key. I winced, remembering the first time he’d been blasted with the flames, but he was lighter on his feet this time.

And he had his full Sunstone shroud to protect him if he did get hit.

I withdrew the red key from the door. Before I had a moment to consider other options, Sera had slipped by me and she was turning another key in the lock. One with a dragon’s head.

The door clicked open.

“Ooh, nice.”

Ahead of us was a room with a familiar sight — a single central fountain, filled with shimmering blue liquid.

Those of us in the doorway slipped inside, and Jin followed us a moment later with the key from the previous chamber. He’d managed to retrieve it without a scratch.

I scanned the room carefully with my attunement active, but I saw no signs of magic in the room aside from the fountain and a single door on the other side.

“I don’t see any traps. It’s probably safe in here.”

We approached the fountain, but I waved a hand to halt. “That looks like a mana fountain, but let’s be careful here.”

I grabbed a coin out of my bag and flipped it into the water.

It didn’t sizzle on contact. So, probably not acid, at least.

“Jin, can you...?”

He walked over to the water and knelt down, then tentatively reached a hand over to touch it. “It’s mana water.”

We all breathed a sigh of relief.

I also briefly wondered how the examiners had access to a fountain just like the ones in the spire, and if I could figure out a way to make one of my own. Mana water wasn’t nearly as potent as a mana restoration potion, but it was still incredibly useful.

Everyone took a minute just to rest and drink from the pool.

“Should we go back and fight the dragon?” Patrick asked.

I shook my head. “Don’t think we can beat it.”

“Agreed.” Sera added.

“Never fight dragons.” Jin said, without any further explanation.

I agreed, of course, but he sounded almost like he had experience at it.

One more mystery.

“Okay. That,” I pointed at the door, “Is almost certainly going to be a floor guardian room.”

“Oh, right! They’re usually next to mana fountains like this, right?” Patrick sounded excited, and I couldn’t blame him. He hadn’t actually gone on the spire expedition with the rest of us.

He hadn’t nearly been impaled by the limbs of a giant spider, while running from an Emerald-level Soulblade.

Sera, Jin, and I all looked a little more...cautious.

“Plan?” Jin asked.

We had discussed all the rooms we’d already seen, as well as made some other more general plans, but we hadn’t discussed a scenario quite like this. “I think we should run for the stairway if there is one. Even with the mana water, we’re in bad shape.”

I took another drink, considering. “Let me recharge everyone’s phoenix sigils before we go.”

The sound of a gong echoed in the distance.

“...Or maybe not, because I think that means we’re running out of time. How bad of shape are you in?”

“I am intact,” Jin offered helpfully.

“I’m unhurt. You all took the dragon’s attention,” Sera added.

“Uh, not great, honestly,” Patrick admitted. “Phoenix sigil is out, other sigil is bad.”

“I’ll recharge it for just a second, then.” I walked over and grabbed onto Patrick’s sigil, flooding mana into it. It would take minutes to recharge completely, but I could recharge it a little bit in just a few moments. It would be better than nothing.

“We need a plan for if there is no stairway, or if it is inaccessible,” Jin pointed out.

Sera pulled her dueling cane off her belt and handed it to me. “We hit whatever is in there with everything we’ve got. It can’t be worse than a dragon.”

I accepted the cane and nodded to Sera in thanks.

“True. Okay, we ready?”

Everyone acknowledged their readiness. Jin looked a little more skeptical, and I understood why. “Let’s go open the door first. Maybe we can take a look before the fight actually starts and formulate a strategy from there.”

Jin looked noticeably better after I said that. “Agreed.”

We walked over to the door.

There were three keyholes.

As far as I knew, we only had two keys left — the red one from the box, and the one Jin had just retrieved.

Fortunately, Sera pulled out a third. I raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you get that?”

“That series of pillars that led to nowhere above the water in the room I started in? Turns out you were right. There was an invisible platform over there with an invisible key on it.”

“Nice.”

We inserted the three keys.

The door slid open.

Inside was a plain, circular room, almost like what I’d expect from a fighting arena.

There was no visible stairway within.

Instead, on the opposite side, was Professor Meltlake.

Patrick said what we were all probably thinking. “Uh, guys?... That might be worse than the dragon.”

“Hello, students.”

A blazing aura enveloped the professor’s body. “Welcome to your final exam.”

Chapter XIV –These Tests Are Never Fair

Somehow, in spite of having actually fought one of my professors inside the spire, it hadn’t occurred to me that one might show up in the fake spire test.

Teachers weren’t exactly typical spire monsters.

Then again, the professors at this school did seem to have a bizarre fixation on beating up their students in general, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

We paused in the doorway, hesitant. This was a bad situation for a number of reasons.

Professor Meltlake was renowned for her fire magic. Her surname was a title she’d earned by literally evaporating an entire lake.

The best way to counter that was ice magic, but even if Sera was at her best, she wouldn’t have been strong enough to do much against someone of Meltlake’s level. And Sera was still far from recovered.

This was going to be messy.

Sera stepped forward. “Professor, is that actually you over there, or a simulacrum? I need to know if we should be using lethal force.”

“An excellent question, dear. I’m a copy. But even if I wasn’t, I’d invite you to do everything in your power against me. A group of first-years isn’t much of a threat.”

That helped resolve any concerns about killing Meltlake by accident, at least.

“And I assume we have to beat you to conclude the test?” Patrick asked.

“Correct, Patrick. Unlike the rest of this exam, there are no hidden tricks here. You can think of me as a floor guardian.”

That was unfortunate. If there was a hidden trick, we’d have had decent odds of finding it with this group.

“Also, Patrick,” Meltlake continued, “no using the high ranked spells I’ve been teaching you. You’re not ready to use them in an actual fight yet.”

“Aww.” He frowned. “If you say so.”

Professor Meltlake clapped her hands, causing her fiery aura to swell out for a moment before collapsing back around her. “Well, if you students are done with the questions, shall we begin?”

Sera whispered, “Jin, Corin, go right. Patrick, with me. Go.”

Jin and I rushed forward, then veered right.

Jin drew a pistol and opened fire while on the run. His bullets disappeared into Meltlake’s aura, and I saw no sign that any of them connected.

Sera and Patrick ran the opposite direction, and Meltlake turned to follow them. Apparently, she saw them as the threat — and she was probably right.

Meltlake threw a sphere of fire in their direction, which Patrick blasted with a jet of his own flame, knocking it back toward Meltlake. It exploded part-way, and I felt a wave of heat wash over the entire room.

Sera followed up by hurling a shard of ice. Meltlake didn’t even move. The ice shard hit her aura and melted on contact.

Jin and I were safely behind Meltlake now, and I fired a few blasts from my dueling cane at her back.

The spheres of mana hit her aura, crackled, and vanished without a trace.

Meltlake threw a blast of lightning, which forked into two. Patrick’s aura shifted into a crackling field of electricity, causing the lightning aimed at him to rebound off harmlessly, but Sera took a hit. Cracks spread across her shield.

Sera folded her hands and whispered. “Child of the goddess, I call upon your aid—”

Meltlake slammed her cane into the floor, and the whole room shook. Sera fell back, losing her concentration on her spell.

I didn’t have my sword or gauntlet, so I just kept firing the dueling cane at Meltlake. It was ineffective at hurting her, but I had to hope it would work as a distraction.

Jin fired another bullet into her aura, but again, nothing happened.

This is ridiculous, we can’t even hurt her. Unless...

“Jin, can you do what you did to the Tyrant?”

His jaw tightened. “Just tried. The bullets are melting too fast.”

Resh.

Should I ring the bell and get Marissa?

I shook my head, dismissing the idea.

No, she’d have to run all the way across the fire room to get to us, and she’s still probably injured. I can’t lean on her to handle this for me.

Shrouds are less effective at close range. If I had my sword, I could reach that far, but the dueling cane is too short.

I’d seen that problem solved before. Keras could form blades out of his mana, and Marissa had learned to shape her shroud in a similar way.

I still couldn’t do that. My shroud stubbornly refused to move into a blade shape, in spite of numerous attempts.

But I did have another idea, based on something else I’d seen Keras do, and one of my own older techniques.

I pressed a rune on the dueling cane, bringing out the blade.

Then I pressed my hand against the metal and concentrated. This was going to take a minute.

While I focused, Meltlake was beginning to attack with greater ferocity. She threw another sphere of fire, but when Patrick blasted it like before, it split apart into three smaller spheres instead of rebounding.

Those smaller spheres flew apart, then righted themselves and continued flying at Patrick and Sera.

Sera countered one of them with a burst of arctic wind, causing it to detonate prematurely. The explosion knocked her back, but she didn’t look hurt.

Patrick’s aura shifted from lightning to fire. It wasn’t as intense as Meltlake’s aura, but it still was bright enough that it was hard to look at. The other two spheres hit him dead-on, exploding against his shroud, but his own flames deflected most of the damage.

Most. I could see thin cracks underneath his shield. Like deflected like, but there was too much of a difference of raw power here for his fire to protect him completely.

I was surprised by his next move — he charged.

Meltlake threw a lance of flame at Patrick, but he side-stepped it, and the spear slammed into the wall behind him, melting a hole in the stone.

When Patrick came in close, he swung a burning fist at Meltlake’s face. She knocked his hand aside with her cane, then kicked him in the chest. He flew backward, a crack in his shield where she’d connected.

He threw a bolt of lightning at Meltlake as he flew back, but that just vanished as it hit her aura.

“Permafrost Cascade!”

Sera had finished her spell this time, whispering while Patrick had Meltlake distracted.

Dozens of icy shards appeared, raining down on Meltlake. She created a wall of flame in mid-air, interposing it in the path of the shards.

Sera waved a hand and the shards veered off of their path, flying around the wall and slamming into Meltlake’s aura.

I was impressed Sera had pulled off a spell like that. She must have gotten used to drawing mana from the rest of her body. Still, I didn’t think she’d be able to keep it up for long.

Jin immediately opened fire on one of the spots a shard had hit. This time, I saw a flicker of protective mana flickering beneath the shroud.

Good, that makes it more plausible this will work.

I raised my dueling cane, finished with the harder part.

Making a small mana crystal was easy now. I’d made dozens of both solid crystals and hollow ones.

I hadn’t really experimented with other shapes, but it wasn’t hard. I held the proof of that — a dueling cane, with the blade extended by two extra feet of pure crystal.

The real test was what happened when I hit the last rune, flooding the blade with mana.

Just as I’d hoped, it ran right up the metal and into the crystal.

It still wasn’t quite as good as a real sword, but it would do.

Professor Meltlake was finally turning toward my side of the room, apparently having noticed that hit from Jin.

She hurled a sphere of fire in our direction.

Instinctively, I tried to activate the ring of jumping, but it was still out of mana.

Jin stepped in front of the sphere and shot a hole right through it.

The rest of the sphere collapsed harmlessly.

Huh. Didn’t know that could happen.

I took the moment of apparent safety as a chance to charge.

Meltlake was raising her cane to meet my rush when Patrick threw a blast of fire at the floor at her feet. The explosion was harmless with her aura active, but the tremors caused her to stumble just a step.

That bought me the time I needed to close in and strike.

The crystalline blade made it through her aura, hitting her dead on, and then snapped on contact.

I saw the telltale sparks of damage to her barrier, then she waved a hand and I was engulfed in flame.

My vision was nothing but fire. Both sigils and shroud were protecting me, but the heat was so intense that they couldn’t ward it off entirely. I felt my skin crack and burn.

A burst of cold flashed over me, then the flames were gone.

I stepped back, coughing from the smoke.

Sera was coughing, too, for a different reason. I could see the hints of icy mana still around her from the spell she’d used to save me from the enveloping flames.

She clutched her chest, and I felt a sudden spike of worry as I realized how much she’d pushed herself.

Meltlake must have noticed that, too, because she threw another wave of flame directly at Sera.

Patrick tried to get in the way.

He failed.

The inferno washed over Sera, and then she was gone.

The crystal blade on the dueling cane was snapped too short to give the reach I needed to hit Meltlake again. I needed another plan.

Patrick was forming a sphere of lightning in his hands, preparing what looked like a larger attack than I’d seen him use before. I doubted it would work, but I’d have to buy him time.

I rushed to the right, trying to draw Meltlake’s attention. It worked.

She raised her hand to blast me again, but I was ready for it this time.

Haste.

The burst of speed took me out of the way of Meltlake’s attack, but it also threw me off balance. I stumbled and tripped, but recovered before I actually tumbled to the floor.

When I spun back around, I took a blast of lightning straight to the chest.

My phoenix sigil’s barrier shattered immediately, and I felt my shield sigil drain to almost nothing. Meltlake hit hard, and I didn’t have Sera to save me from another attack.

Fortunately, as usual, we’d all forgotten about Jin.

He stood behind her, dagger in hand, and stabbed straight at her neck.

Meltlake side-stepped the attack effortlessly, turned, and enveloped Jin in a blast of fire.

Addendum: Everyone other than Meltlake had forgotten about Jin.

He staggered, raising his arms to protect himself, but she continued the blast. I hurled my dueling cane at Meltlake’s back. The attack connected, but she barely reacted. The cane melted to slag a moment later.

And a moment after that, Jin was gone.

Patrick let out a growl, finally hurling the huge sphere of lightning he’d been forming between his hands.

Meltlake just shook her head and batted it aside effortlessly. “What did I tell you about investing all your mana in one attack?”

“Don’t do it.” Patrick shook his head. “But you also taught me the value of surprises.”

The sphere split apart, just like Meltlake’s had. Then, rather than flying toward her, the spheres each fired a blast of electrical energy from a different angle.

She knocked one of the blasts aside, but the other two hit her in the chest. I saw her convulse for a moment on impact, indicating that he’d done some real damage.

The spheres kept firing, while Patrick sagged from exhaustion.

I began to charge transference mana in my right hand. It was the last attack option I could think of, unless I wanted to run back to another room to try to get my sword.

One.

Meltlake waved her cane, and chunks of stone shot out of the floor, enveloping the lightning spheres. With the threat of the lightning attacks gone, she turned to Patrick. “Your control is improving — you couldn’t have managed that a few weeks ago.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Two.

She shook her head. “It was still a poor choice. You could have done more damage if you’d managed to extinguish my shroud, if only for a moment.”

He shrugged. “I thought a distraction was a better choice.”

Meltlake glanced around. “For what? Corin is unarmed and your friends are all gone.”

Three.

Something slammed into her face a moment later, snapping her neck back.

She staggered, then raised a hand to a bloody lip, wearing an expression of disbelief.

She hadn’t forgotten Jin, like the rest of us had.

But she had underestimated him.

I hadn’t.

The moment Jin had vanished, I knew there were two possibilities. Maybe he’d been taken out of the match like Sera had, but he was a Sunstone, with a stronger shroud than any of ours.

More likely?

He’d gone invisible, using the item I’d given him earlier in the year.

And I had a pretty good idea of his dramatic timing by now. Not quite perfect — I’d only been charging my mana for three seconds, rather than the five I needed for full strength.

But it was close enough.

I lunged forward and punched Meltlake in the face.

She flew backward from the impact, and I felt a hardened barrier cracking against my fist.

Unfortunately, I also felt her aura of fire burn me as I closed in, and that ate up the last of my shield.

A moment later, Meltlake was standing again, and she pointed at me.

All I saw was a single line of light appear from the tip of her finger, aimed right at the center of my chest.

Then there was a flash of pain and my vision went white.

***

When I reappeared in the waiting room, Sera was the only one in there.

No second-year student to watch over us, and more importantly, no Marissa.

I briefly considered just running back into the testing room, but it was pretty clear that I’d be breaking the rules that way. And not in a fun, “Corin always breaks the rules as much as he can while getting away with it” sort of way.

I turned to Sera instead. “You okay?”

She nodded. “Tired.” She coughed, clutched her throat for a second, wincing. “Can’t talk much. Fill me in?”

By the time I’d let her know what I missed, Patrick had appeared.

“Aww.” He folded his arms. “Almost thought we had her for a minute.”

I shrugged. “Jin still might.”

Jin appeared a moment later.

“Or not.”

“She stopped holding back quite as much once we hurt her,” Patrick explained. “The attacks she was using at first were just basic stuff, like Quartz and Citrine level. I think we made her mad.”

“Good. That indicates a degree of success,” Jin replied.

“I agree.” I looked around. “Anyone seen Mara?”

It was five full minutes before a battered Marissa appeared in the room, smoke still rising off her torn and burned clothing.

She had some sort of weird, unfamiliar crystal in her right hand.

“Man,” she mumbled, “That dragon was tough.”

***

There was an awkward pause.

Patrick visibly stared at the gem, then Marissa, then back to the gem.

After a couple minutes of explanation, we found that Marissa had rested for a bit, then run back into the test room once Sera had come out — much like what I’d done in the first exam.

Sera had directed her to the room with Meltlake, but unfortunately, there was a dragon in the way.

Marissa had then solved the dragon problem.

Unfortunately, that had left her too weak to do much of anything else, and Professor Meltlake had come up behind her and finished the job.

The professor showed up in our chamber a minute or so after that.

She was clearly uninjured, so it was probably the real version this time.

“Congratulations. You have successfully passed your final exam for Magic Theory class.”

We let out a holler of victory. Even Jin looked pleased.

Sera broke into coughing again afterward, and I gave her a look of concern.

Professor Meltlake kept talking, though. “You’re one of few teams to reach the floor guardian room at all this year, and one of fewer to actually harm my simulacrum.”

“How close did we get to beating her?” Patrick asked.

Meltlake laughed. “Don’t think a busted lip is going to get you anywhere close to taking me down, Patrick. My simulacrum still had about ninety percent of her mana, and about eighty percent of her barrier left. That is not an insult to your performance by any stretch, however. As first-year students, you were not expected to be able to hurt her at all.”

I nodded at that. The simulacrum was probably at least a Citrine-level monster, and aside from Jin, none of us were anywhere close to that.

It definitely reinforced the knowledge that Derek had been seriously holding back when he’d fought us in the spire. That simulacrum alone was more than enough to beat all of us — and the real Meltlake was probably considerably stronger. A glance showed her aura as Citrine, but I suspected she was hiding an Emerald aura, just like Derek had.

“Given the difficulty of reaching the end of the dungeon, as well as your performance in the fight, I am pleased to give you all a rank of ‘A’ for your final exam. Congratulations.”

We let out another cheer, except for Sera, who wisely kept her enthusiasm subdued.

“Now that we’ve completed the test, can we ask you some questions about it?” I asked.

“Of course. But keep in mind that you still may not speak to any other teams about the test. Some people haven’t finished it yet.”

“Great. Now, let’s start with the dark room...”

We spent the next hour grilling her with questions about how certain puzzles were meant to be solved. I was surprised to find that everyone seemed just as interested in knowing the other solutions as I was. Even Jin had a question or two.

After that hour, Professor Meltlake smiled and waved. “I’m going to have to go — I have another test to run. If you have any further questions, you can ask me at my office at a later time.”

I nodded. “Just one last one. Did anyone do better than we did?”

“Not many,” she admitted. “But one first-year team actually managed to beat my simulacrum.”

I blinked at that. “How?”

“That’s confidential for now, I’m afraid. But I can tell you after the end of the year, if you’re interested.”

“Very interested.” I wanted to learn every trick I could for future tests and trips to the spire.

I wasn’t surprised that someone had managed to outperform us a little — there were hundreds of teams, after all.

But beating the simulacrum?

I had to know who could fight like that.

I’d definitely look forward to finding out.

***

“Hold on, everyone.” Sera stopped us outside the building, as we were about to split up. “Even you, Jin.” Sera’s voice was scratchier than usual, almost as bad as it had been right after her first surgery.

Jin was already ahead of us, but he still turned around and returned to the group. He shoved his hands in his pockets, giving Sera a look of mild irritation.

The rest of us just turned toward Sera, since we were already walking together. Sera was still having trouble talking, but at least she wasn’t coughing.

“I wanted to say that everyone did a great job in there, and we couldn’t have succeeded without everyone’s cooperation.”

We gave her a series of nods.

“Wish they would have let me use this. We might have done even better.” Patrick patted the sword that he’d fastened back on his hip. They’d forced us to hand over his Dawnbringer replica before we’d even entered the exam.

It was a little irritating, but given what had happened with Selys-Lyann, I didn’t blame them for being cautious with our magical weapons. I was lucky they’d even let me bring in the transference sword.

“You still did just fine without it.” Sera gave him a friendly nudge. “Anyway, I had a couple more things to say. First, I would like to ask you all to consider being on my team again next year, provided we all graduate — which I’m sure we will — and that we have similar tests next year.”

“I’m in,” Marissa replied at once. “Couldn’t hope for a better team.”

Patrick gave a cheer. “Yeah! We’ll do even better next time.”

I smiled. “I’ll be here, obviously.”

Jin winced as all eyes turned to him. “I’ll think on it.”

Sera’s eyes narrowed. “Good. I would like to include you, Jin. But there is one more thing.”

Jin tilted his head downward. “Say it.”

She nodded. “You clearly already know where this is going, but I’ll say it regardless. If you ever hurt one of my friends again, I will personally feed you to Seiryu.”

He gave her one of his signature half-nods. “Understood. If that’s all...?”

Sera’s jaw tightened just a hint. “That will be all.”

Jin spun on his heel and walked away.

Patrick’s expression sank. “Was that really necessary, Sera?”

Honestly, I thought she was being too generous, if anything.

I wanted to trust Jin again. Working with him again had been fun. We did make a good team.

But it was going to take more than just not killing anyone during one test to regain my trust.

“You weren’t there,” Sera snapped, tightening her hands into fists. “You don’t get to complain.”

Patrick winced and took a step back.

Marissa stepped in between them. “Hey now, Sera. Don’t bite off your hand just because it itches.”

I hadn’t heard that expression, but it seemed pretty appropriate.

Sera tensed again, then sighed. “Fine, you’re right. I’m sorry, Patrick. I’m just... He nearly killed someone. He could have gotten us all killed. You and Corin might be the forgiving sort, but I’m not going to just pretend we’re all friends again like nothing happened.”

“I’m not sure I can forgive him, either.” I folded my arms. “But let’s not have this argument. If we need to discuss how we’re going to handle Jin at some point, that’s fine. This isn’t the place or the time. We’re in public, and we can’t let all this slip out.”

Sera shook her head. “I said what I needed to say for now. Just know that I’ll be keeping my eyes on him. I know the reasons he gave you in the spire, but I still don’t think we know a fraction of what he’s really up to.”

“All right. If that’s done, then, why don’t we get some eats?” Marissa snagged Sera by the arm. “Nothing like punching a dragon to get my stomach rumbling.”

Patrick laughed. “You’d probably eat the dragon if it was real.”

“What, wouldn’t you? Bet it’d give me magic powers or something. Wasn’t there a story like that?”

“They say that’s how the Blackstone Bandit got so strong. C’mon, I’ll tell you about it on the way to the dining hall.”

Mara frowned. “Don’t you mean the Blackstone Assassin?”

“Naw, totally different. This guy is real — just saw him in the papers recently. Robbed a casino blind just a few weeks ago!”

Patrick continued to regale us with dubious tales of the Blackstone Bandit’s exploits all the way to the dining hall...and through much of lunch, too.

***

Later in that evening, I overheard Sera having a conversation with Keras back at Derek’s manor.

“...Sounds too dangerous. Especially in your condition.” That was Keras’ voice.

“Might be just the thing I need to get my edge back, though. You sure you don’t want to try?”

“Definitely not yet. I’m sorry. The risks are too high. We can talk about it when you hit Sunstone or Citrine.”

“Bah.”

I found the two of them inside Derek’s training room, which we virtually never used, since the rooftop had turned into our de facto location for sparring.

Still, the training room had its uses — most notably two training dummies that had powerful magical shields. The walls were, of course, also shielded.

I waved when I walked in. “What was that all about?”

“We were, um, just talking about Ceris.” Sera’s voice sounded pretty rough again, and that worried me, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to come across as nagging.

In the back of my mind, though, I was making plans for heading to Vanreach Peak at some point in the future. Sheridan’s treatment had helped, but it clearly hadn’t solved the problem entirely.

Sera raised the crystalline sword. From her stumbling over her words and Keras’ dubious expression, I could tell that the sword was definitely not what they had been talking about.

I decided not to push, both because she was clearly uncomfortable, and because Ceris was an interesting topic in itself. She’d had it for several weeks now, but I hadn’t seen her experiment with it much yet — presumably because she didn’t have enough mana to make it work. Either that, or she’d just been training in private.

Ceris was a legendary weapon, the personal sword of Katashi himself. Unlike the Six Sacred Swords, it wasn’t forged for mortal use — rather, it was an instrument wielded by the visage himself, supposedly for his battles against the Children of the Tyrant. They were the only living beings, aside from the Tyrant himself and the god beasts, that were thought to rival the visages in power.

If what Keras had told me earlier was true, some of those children might even be more powerful than an individual visage — which explained why even a visage might need a powerful weapon.

There were other legendary beings that might have been similarly dangerous — the old gods that had supposedly died, and monsters and servants they’d left behind. But as far as I knew, none of those were on this continent — they’d be back in the old lands that our people had left behind during the great exodus to Kaldwyn hundreds of years ago.

Because Ceris was used by a visage, however, legends about it were...varied. Some of them were clearly nonsense, like that Ceris was forged from the heart of another world that had died long ago. Others were a little more plausible; some said that it had once been used by one of the ancient gods who had died in battle against the Tyrant.

In terms of the sword’s actual capabilities, I knew even less.

I waved a hand at Ceris. “I’ve heard the stories about it, of course, but how’s it actually work?”

“We’ve been trying to figure that out.” Sera snapped back to her normal demeanor, tilting the sword sideways. The weapon’s entire blade was made out of some sort of blue crystal.

There were no visible runes on the surface, but I could see some kind of mana swirling around inside the crystal, even without my attunement active.

“What’ve you learned so far?”

Sera turned toward one of the combat dummies. “Here, watch.” She slashed the dummy, and I saw a flicker of energy as it impacted against a shield. Nothing else happened.

I folded my arms. “So, it can be used to...hit things. That’s very impressive, Sera. Truly, it is a blade without equal.”

Sera turned back my way and rolled her eyes. Sighing, she said, “Pay a little more attention, will you? Here, I’ll make it easier. Keras, if you would?”

Keras held up a hand, conjuring a ball of fire and hurling it at Sera before I could react. I had a moment of fear and alarm before Sera raised Ceris to intercept the blast.

What happened next was peculiar. She didn’t cleave the fireball in half like I might have expected Keras to; instead, the sword flashed for an instant and then the ball of fire distorted, seeming to stretch out toward the blade. When the flames reached the crystalline surface, they vanished entirely.

A moment later, the inside of the crystal was swirling with crimson mana.

As I processed what had just happened, she turned and swung the sword at the dummy again. Flames burst across the dummy’s surface as the blade made contact, leaving wide cracks in the protective shield.

Sera was grinning as she turned back toward me. “Get it now?”

I nodded, impressed. “It absorbs and discharges mana. How do you make it work?”

“I just think about the spell that I want to absorb and it pulls it toward the blade, then absorbs it. The range seems to be about ten feet, and it isn’t automatic. I have to mentally command the sword to do it.”

I rubbed my chin. “The fact that it can read your intent is interesting — that’s a pretty sophisticated enchantment. How do you discharge the stored mana?”

“By hitting something. That doesn’t seem to require any special effort, just a certain amount of pressure on the impact. Means I have to be careful — dropping the sword from far enough will set it off.”

“Can it absorb more than one spell at a time?”

“Nope. Have to discharge the last spell before you can store another one.”

That was unfortunate, because I was hoping to be able to mix mana types inside. Having a relatively safe and reliable way to make compound forms of mana would be extremely useful. “What’s the capacity on it?”

Keras interjected there. “I’ve been advising against trying to test that. If we hit the limit, the whole sword could explode. The last time I heard about an artifact exploding, we had to take a city off the map.”

I winced at that thought. “That’s...bad, yeah. But we really need to find out before she can use it in a combat situation, otherwise it could explode at an inopportune time.”

“Right, I’ll make sure we break it precisely at explode-o-clock.” Sera folded her arms.

I laughed. “That’s not what I meant. A powerful Enchanter or Diviner might be able to figure out the capacity. There are spells for testing material capacities, similar to what my mana watch uses for testing personal mana limits.”

“Thought of that.” Sera set the sword down on a nearby table. “Problem is that no one seems to know what the sword is even made out of. Thought the blade was just some kind of hardened mana at first, but it’s definitely not.”

Keras walked over to the sword and tapped on the blade. “It’s similar to a type of crystal I saw once before. It was a green gemstone with ancient enchantments. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that was made out of, either. Normally I can use stone sorcery to get a feel for the composition of most types of stone, but the enchantments on this artifact prevent me from sensing it properly.”

“That might block Enchanters or Diviners in the same way. Hrm.” I took a look at it with my attunement on. The aura around it was colorless right now, which didn’t tell me much. It clearly wasn’t just a Quartz-level item, so it probably used a completely different form of enchanting than modern ones, much like the Jaden Box.

“I’ll see if I can start researching spells for analyzing items. Could be useful, considering the number of magical items we’ve come across that don’t use standard runes. I don’t know if the spells will work, but it’s worth trying.”

Sera nodded. “Thanks.”

“Have you figured out anything else about it?”

Keras shrugged a shoulder. “It has some standard magic sword properties. Tougher than steel, but it’s hard to say if that’s because of enchantments or the crystal itself. It’s sharp, but nothing particularly impressive. Then there’s this.” He picked up the sword, then hit the target with it several times in rapid succession.

I could hear a faint ringing in the air each time he struck, with a slightly different tone — like musical notes.

I blinked. “That’s...really strange. Is it doing anything other than making sound?”

“Can’t tell.” Keras set the sword back down. “Might be some kind of vibration based attack, but if so, it doesn’t seem particularly potent. It seems to change based on where I hit the target, so it might also be some kind of information for the wielder.”

“Information?”

“I think the tone might indicate points the sword considers more vulnerable than others. If it was built for use against powerful monsters, for example, the tone might be useful for finding areas where scales are thinner, or that sort of thing.”

“Like knocking on dungeon walls to find a hollow spot. Huh.” I’d thought of some pretty strange ideas for enchantments over the years, but that definitely wasn’t the type of thing I’d ever considered. “That’s...weird, but I suppose it could be useful.” I thought about it for another moment. “Does it make a different noise when you have a spell stored inside?”

Keras’ eyes and lips narrowed as he considered. “Haven’t noticed a difference, why?”

“If the sword is about storing and distributing mana, and it also has some kind of weak point detection, maybe it can be used to detect for elemental weaknesses as well.”

“Not bad.” Keras tapped his fingers against the table. “I hadn’t thought about it, but that does make sense. I generally don’t bother with figuring out monster weaknesses.”

Probably because you’re so powerful you don’t have to worry about them, I realized with a hint of amusement. But the rest of us mere mortals need to strategize more.

“Wish we had an easier way to test that.” I finally said. “I could build an elementally aligned shield sigil, but it’ll take a while.”

I considered the idea of testing it on a summoned elemental for an instant, but then I realized that was horrifically immoral and dismissed it entirely. Fortunately, no one else brought it up.

Another idea did occur to me, though. “Keras, what about that bond you can make with weapons? Wouldn’t that give you a better idea of how it works?”

Sera frowned. “We talked about that. There are some risks with trying to make a contract with an artifact with unknown properties, especially when we know at least one of them involves absorbing mana. We’re probably going to try it, but we wanted to figure out what we can from safer tests before we make a decision.”

That sounded wise. “Have you figured out if there are only specific types of mana it can absorb?”

“Seems like any of them, at least from what we can tell.” Sera formed a little sphere of ice in her hand, picked the sword back up, and absorbed the spell into the weapon.

There were a lot of possible applications for that. “Could you store a healing spell inside, and then use it to heal someone later?”

Sera blinked. “You want me to use this as a healing sword? Really? That’s your brilliant, non-standard application for this?”

“Hey, I just learned about it. Besides, you know that’d be hilarious.” I folded my arms. “Okay, better one. Teleportation.”

Keras whistled. “That’s not a bad idea, actually. Most people around here block offensive teleportation with their shrouds. But if you could get the sword to hit them directly, it’d be inside the shroud, and completely ignore that defense.” He glanced at Sera. “You’ve got travel sorcery. You should try that.”

She shook her head. “Summoners can learn teleportation spells at higher attunement levels, but I’m a long way from that point. Especially now.” Her expression sank.

“You’ll catch back up.” Keras patted her on the shoulder. I winced on her behalf, but she didn’t seem to mind the contact. She’d never been as sensitive to random people touching her. “Maybe Corin could help with that?”

“We’ve talked about it, and I don’t think using my attunement to strengthen her is a good idea while she’s still recovering. Overcharging her mana is what got her into this in the first place.”

“Agreed,” Sera added quickly, with obvious nervousness in her voice. “Maybe after I get back to the point where I was before the spire.”

Keras glanced at me, then back to Sera. “No need to hurry, I suppose.” From his tone, it was obvious he disagreed with the decision. He didn’t seem like the type to prioritize safety in general, so I could see why.

Fortunately, he didn’t push. He jumped back to the last topic instead. “Anyway, teleportation was a good idea. Maybe you can find some other clever things to store in there eventually. For now, though, it’s an amazing defensive tool if nothing else.”

That was certainly true — being able to pull a spell right out of the air was a great way to stop an attack spell without much effort. I thought Sera would be missing out by using it exclusively for defense, but she could make that choice on her own.

“I’ll think on that some more,” I offered, turning to head back out. “And I’ll get to looking up item identification spells.”

I’d already done a bit of research on the Lesser Identify spell, and I knew the theory of how to cast it, but I hadn’t practiced with it yet. Besides that, I needed a stronger spell to get much useful information.

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something that helps our enemies slightly less than a healing sword, if you try hard enough.” Sera snickered. “But one more thing before you go.”

I paused. “Hm?”

“I’m not just tinkering with a sword. I’m getting back in fighting shape in general. I appreciate you all putting up with my weakness during the last test, but I’m done with dragging everyone else down. Next time we have a group exam, I’m going to be the one leading the way.”

I grinned. “I’ll look forward to that.”

“I’ll need you to do more than just that. I’m going to need a consistent sparring partner.”

I frowned. “Why not just train with all of us?”

“I will to some extent, of course. But Patrick always holds back, and I can’t get as much out of fighting close-range fighters like Mara and Derek.”

I could see the logic there. Her attunement was built for summoning — which she lacked the mana to do effectively right now — and ranged combat. Training against melee fighters was still useful for her, but it didn’t let her practice her main skills.

Patrick was a better match for her, but I didn’t disagree with her evaluation. He’d want to go easy on her to avoid bruising her ego, but that would stunt her ability to train effectively.

“Okay.” I nodded. “You’re on.”

Sera grinned. “Meet on the rooftop in two hours?”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

***

Over the next few days, I spent a bit of my time practicing the Lesser Identify spell.

When I cast Lesser Identify on an object, another aura would appear around it that only I could see. Rather than demonstrating the power of an object like a traditional shroud, the aura displayed by Lesser Identify was color-coded to show the highest concentration of mana in the object.

For example, when I cast it on Selys-Lyann, it showed a blue aura, indicating water mana. Or maybe ice mana. I couldn’t actually tell the difference, because both water and ice had different shades of blue auras, and I didn’t have a lot of samples to compare.

Because I found the basic colors hard to tell apart from composite ones like ice and lightning, I didn’t find the spell particularly useful. It was a good foundation for more powerful information gathering spells, though, and I used it as a way to practice using my mental mana without causing myself the intense distress of draining it continuously.

Once I was confident I could cast it properly, I tested it on Ceris. The resulting aura was pure white and sort of sparkly, which didn’t correspond to anything in my book. That was neat, but not very useful. I told Sera about the results and promised to continue studying.

Beyond that, I tested it on Trials of Judgement. I’d been looking for good ways to figure out how it worked, and this was my first real chance that didn’t involve asking someone for help.

Unfortunately, the result was nothing at all. No glowing aura. The book probably had runes to protect it from detection magic, and they were stronger than my spell.

I was still tempted to take the book apart to find the runes, but I resisted the urge. It wasn’t worth the risk of causing the book damage.

I looked up some more powerful identification spells, but none of the ones in the Quartz and Carnelian range were powerful enough to break through the book’s magical defenses, and they didn’t give me any more information.

I did find a Sunstone-level version that was just called “Identify”. That would tell me several more piece of information about an item, but it cost eighty mana to cast, and I couldn’t manage that yet.

I’ll get there at some point, though.

The more important discovery from all of the practice was that I could cast information gathering spells in general, even if I wasn’t a Diviner. There were a few things that required the Diviner attunement, like making memory crystals, but most of them just required having mental mana.

That knowledge gave me several new options to explore.

I practiced another spell — one I’d first seen when researching Diviners — and left the manor.

I had some tracking to do.

***

The Arrow of Direction spell literally made a glowing arrow that pointed to my target. There were several variations, but I could only cast the most basic version, which lasted a few seconds. It also only worked on targets within a few miles.

Finally, it required a physical item connected to the target to use as a focus. Pieces of the target’s body were best — blood, hair, that sort of thing — but something invested with the target’s mana would work as well.

In this case, I used a business card.

I didn’t find my target at a bar or a seedy casino like I’d pictured.

Instead, they were walking at a park just north of campus, accompanied by a small, intensely fluffy dog.

I found myself hesitating when I got a few feet away, uncertain on how to start the conversation. Fortunately or not, they did it for me.

“Corin, when I told you to track me down, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.” In spite of the chastising message, Sheridan was grinning brightly.

I waved the business card. “I figured the rune on the card stored some kind of information on how I was supposed to contact you. But I didn’t have a spell for extracting that information, and honestly, just using your mana to track you seemed faster.”

Sheridan laughed. “I applaud your corner-cutting abilities. You pass the test.”

I nodded. I’d expected that there was a reason the card didn’t just have an address on it. “I thought about just asking Derek where to find you, but I figured that would have been less impressive.”

“You’re quite right. He’d have sent you to my house, and I’d have to be more formal there. Hold on a second.”

Sheridan reached into a bag at their side, retrieving a small ball and tossing it in front of the dog. The dog rushed toward it, barking lightly.

The ball began to roll away on its own.

“That’ll keep Mister Eviscerator entertained for a while.”

“...You named your dog Eviscerator?”

“Mister Eviscerator. The title is important. He’s very polite.” Sheridan clasped their hands together. “So, business or pleasure?”

That sounded like a trap question. “Maybe a little bit of both? It would be a pleasure to do business with you.”

Sheridan chuckled again. “I’ll give you credit for the effort, but your intentions are obvious. We can keep it professional today. What do you need? Sera doing okay?”

I nodded. “She seems to be recovering fine. That’s not what I’m here about right now.”

Sheridan expression shifted for a moment, giving me a hint that s my answer had been unexpected. “Good, good. What can I help you with, then?”

“I need information. Hard to get information.”

“Well, then you came to the right place, assuming you can afford it. Let’s go have a seat, shall we?” Sheridan glanced back toward Mister Eviscerator, who was still chasing the rolling ball, and then led me toward a nearby park bench.

There were other people in the park — mostly students, and a few other local civilians — but no one that looked to be close enough to overhear our conversation.

“So, what do you want to know about?”

Everything. But I can’t afford to ask about everything I want to know. I’m going to have to get some of my answers from cheaper sources.

“A few subjects. Some we might not be able to discuss in public.”

I glanced around again, but there still wasn’t anyone within earshot, as long as we weren’t yelling.

“And what are we starting with?”

“I’d like to know what you know about Tenjin’s disappearance.”

Sheridan raised an eyebrow. “That’s not exactly a small issue. You sure you want to get involved with that sort of thing?”

“I already am. How do you think I got my second attunement?”

“Ooh, fascinating.” Sheridan folded their arms. “Okay, I’ll do a pure information trade for a bit about that. Elaborate about your Arbiter attunement, and I’ll tell you a bit of what I know.”

I nodded. It was a better trade than I would have hoped for. I wasn’t sure I could trust Sheridan, but there were enough people who knew what had happened with Katashi that I didn’t think this was a particularly difficult secret to discover without my help. Especially for someone with Sheridan’s apparent resources.

“So, remember that time when Mizuchi attacked everyone outside the spire a little while ago...?”

I summarized what had happened with getting my brand, then retrieving “someone” for Katashi and bringing them to the spire. I didn’t tell Sheridan about Vera’s identity or what happened with Orden’s betrayal. If information had a price, I could sell that later.

“Based on your account,” Sheridan began, “I think you would be better off asking me a different question. You most likely know more about Tenjin’s situation than I do.”

I frowned. “I assumed that kind of thing would be your area of expertise. Forbidden knowledge and such.”

“Not everyone who deals in information has the same focus. ‘Forbidden knowledge’ is a very broad subject matter. I happen to deal primarily in forbidden magical knowledge, as opposed to political secrets, the affairs of the gods, and that sort of thing.”

That definitely limited my avenues of conversation, but it did provide me with a better idea of what I should be asking about. “Okay. More specific question, then. Are you working with my brother, Tristan, on whatever he’s been up to?”

“No.”

“Just ‘no’?”

“You’re asking because of my sister’s dealings, I assume?”

I nodded. “And because of your association with Wydd.”

“Ah.” Sheridan smiled. “You gave away something you shouldn’t have there. I wasn’t aware your brother had an association with Wydd.”

“I just assumed...”

“That people who work for Wydd would be aware of each other? That would completely defeat the point of some of our positions. We’re often asked to spy on each other, in fact. Some portion of any group entrusted with forbidden knowledge is going to abuse that knowledge.

“The fear that we’ll be discovered by one of Wydd’s other servants is one of the factors that prevents those abuses. For all I know, you could be working for Wydd right now, and seeing if I slip and say something I’m not supposed to.”

“Wouldn’t you have means of identifying each other, though, in case you needed to share information?”

Sheridan waved a hand. “We have identification phrases and such, but that can be faked. In general, we simply report to our superiors, and they tell us any other contacts we need to know about.”

That sounded extremely frustrating, but I could understand the reasoning behind it. “Okay. Were you approached about working with whatever group Tristan is working for?”

“Ah. A much better question, and the answer is ‘yes’. I deemed the risks too extreme. As such, they did not tell me any important details. As I said, I likely know less than you do.”

I rubbed my chin, processing that. “Okay. Speculate with me for a moment. Who could be the mastermind behind Tenjin’s disappearance? Who would have the resources to coordinate an effort that could keep him gone for this long?”

“Without knowing where Tenjin is, there’s very little I can do to answer that. Ask something else.”

This wasn’t going the way I wanted, but I slowly nodded and considered. “What can you tell me about the Whispers as a whole?”

Sheridan shrugged. “Not much. For starters, there isn’t just one group of Whispers. They’re really separate organizations, each dedicated to one of the visages.”

“And you’re a Whisper of Wydd?”

Sheridan shook their head. “No. Whispers are secret. I’m actually publicly in Wydd’s employ.”

“What does that make you, then? A priest?”

“Hah! Not in the slightest. I’m a magical theory researcher. All of the visages have people like me, who serve in various roles without any sort of fancy religious status or title.”

“I don’t suppose you could tell me who some Whispers of Wydd are?”

Sheridan shook their head with a grave expression. “No. And before you ask, not at any price. That’s not the kind of information that I can sell.”

“Can you tell me more general information about their organization, then? Hierarchy, roles, positions?”

Sheridan shook their head. “Sorry. I don’t like being this evasive, but you’re better off asking an actual Whisper. And even then, they’re probably not going to tell you.”

I sighed. “Okay. Different approach, then. Do you know anything about anyone else who might be working directly with Tenjin’s kidnappers?”

“Yes. Your brother. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“I don’t think I should confirm that.”

“Hah! Good. You’re learning.” Sheridan glanced over to her dog, then back to me. “If these are the only sorts of questions you have, I think we should wrap this discussion up. I’m not going to be able to help you much with it.”

“Okay. Something more in your area of expertise, then.” I pointed to my right hand. “I’d like to learn more about my Arbiter attunement.”

“Ah.” Sheridan smiled. “Now that is more my area of expertise. I take it you already know the basics?”

“Yes. I know how to transfer mana to others, either to restore their mana or exceed their current maximum capacity. But I’ve been thinking about the implications of that, and how they might relate to how I received my attunement in the first place.”

“In what way?”

“When I transfer my mana to someone, I can permanently increase their safe capacity, but only by a fraction. And I’ve been told that I can only do that safely about once a week. This is, presumably, because the body can only acclimate to a certain amount of additional mana at once.”

Sheridan nodded. “That’s correct.”

“When Katashi gave me the brand, though, it seemed to be storing a tremendous amount of mana inside. And I also saw Katashi enhance someone else’s attunement, increasing it by an entire attunement level. In both cases, that would involve an increase in mana that is much greater than what I’ve been told is ‘safe’ to give someone with my attunement.

“I considered whether or not that might be related to Katashi being more powerful than I am, but that doesn’t make sense. It’s the target’s body that is relevant, because it’s their capacity that is being strained by the additional mana.”

Sheridan’s smile broadened. “You see a contradiction. Someone’s body can only handle a certain amount of mana, but Katashi somehow bypassed that restriction in both cases.”

“Meaning that either he was willingly risking our health by giving us an amount of mana that would be unsafe, or, more likely, that he has a method to give people large amounts of power without compromising their safety.” I took a breath. “I want that method.”

Sheridan sighed and scratched the back of their head. “Of course you do. Don’t you have any easy questions?”

I chuckled. “What’s your favorite food?”

“I said easy ones. Okay. What are you offering?”

“For the first question or the second one?”

“For information about Katashi’s methods.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out the mana regeneration bracer. “I tested it. It works.”

Sheridan shook their head. “A few weeks of testing isn’t going to be enough to satisfy me.”

I’d expected that. I pulled a hairpin out of my hair and offered it to Sheridan.

“What’s this?”

I smiled. “I could tell you for the right price.”

“You’re cute, but hiding the value of what you’re negotiating with isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

“It’s a magic lockpick. Put it into a lock, it opens it.”

Sheridan turned the hairpin over in their hand, considering. “Interesting, but no.” They handed it back to me. “I’ll make this a little easier for you. Use your Arbiter attunement on me.”

“That’s all?”

“I want to know what it feels like. And it should permanently increase my mana, if only a little. That’s nothing to scoff at, even at my level of power.”

I nodded. Sheridan extended their hand. I removed my glove, took Sheridan’s hand, and channeled mana into them.

“Tingles a little bit.”

“Don’t move.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

I continued concentrating until my hand burned, then released Sheridan’s hand.

“Interesting.” Sheridan flexed their hand experimentally, examining it. “Thank you for the experience.”

“So, what was the hidden objective behind that?”

Sheridan’s eyes fluttered. “What makes you say I had a hidden objective?”

“Your personality.”

“An excellent answer.” Sheridan smirked. “And you’re right, but I won’t answer that particular question. You’ll find out eventually. As for your previous question, however, I can give a little bit of insight.”

“What can you tell me?”

Sheridan leaned back. “Are you aware that attunement designs have changed over time?”

I nodded. “There are different generations of attunements. Either the goddess herself or the visages are still improving them somehow.”

“Correct. One of the elements of attunement design that has changed over time is how quickly they can grow.”

“Meaning that it used to be harder for your attunements to get stronger?”

“Mostly easier, I believe, although I haven’t studied the details of every individual generation of attunement.”

“But why make those sorts of changes? And if there are mechanisms in place for that, how do they work?”

“Excellent questions.” Sheridan retrieved something from their pouch; the mana watch I’d given them. “You made this little device to measure the amount of mana that someone can safely use.

“Every attunement has something similar built in. Or, several somethings, really. Functions for measuring the amount of mana in the body, and storage functions that determine how the values have changed over time. And also functions for determining the health of the body.”

I could follow the logic. “So, the attunement stores what your last maximum mana was, and continuously tests you to see if you meet certain conditions. If you do, your maximum mana increases.”

“And at certain thresholds, the attunement unlocks entirely new functions,” Sheridan explained. “Carnelian, Sunstone, all of those levels are mana thresholds built into the attunement. And they did not always exist.”

That was new to me. “They didn’t?”

“The first attunements just gave all their abilities to the attuned immediately. The result was a form of mana poisoning that was almost always fatal. Attunement levels and the safety thresholds for mana growth are designed to prevent that.”

“Okay, that explains a bit, but it doesn’t...” I stopped as it began to make sense to me. “Katashi didn’t make my friend’s attunement more powerful. He fundamentally changed how it works.”

Sheridan nodded. “I can’t say for certain, but that’s what I suspect. He most likely changed the values in the rune to say that she was ready for a higher level attunement. In theory, the safety functions in the attunement would still prevent it from flooding their body with too much mana all at once. Your friend’s mana capacity probably increased gradually over the course of several weeks at the maximum possible rate that the attunement deemed safe.”

And Marissa spent those few weeks feeling sick and under-performing.

Still, I knew a lot of people that would be happy to be able to have their attunement level increased rapidly without any significant effort.

There had to be a greater downside than I was seeing.

“If that sort of thing is a possibility, why aren’t all of our attunements designed to increase in power automatically by a certain rate every day?”

“Every time you cast a spell, your body acclimates to using that type of mana. Using mana types and amounts that your body has not acclimated to properly can cause your body harm. If your body had a tremendous amount of mana, but you had never used mana before, and you cast a spell that used even a tenth of it, you’d kill yourself. Because of that, attunements generally require a degree of mana usage before your capacity increases.”

“Why would Katashi make an exception, then, if it’s an important safety function?”

“He was probably able to evaluate your friend’s situation and determine that they could handle it. For example, some types of mana are safer than others. You can safely have — and wield — more life mana in your body than fire mana. If your friend was a Mender, for example, Katashi may have been able to increase their power with minimal risk.”

I nodded. Marissa was a Guardian, and life was one of her mana types. Her attunement was generally defensive in nature. It made sense to me that there would be a lower risk of damage from saturating her body with extra mana.

She also trained constantly, and it was possible her body was able to handle a higher amount of mana than what her attunement was giving her.

The overall answer made sense to me, but it was disappointing. It meant that there was no quick and easy way for me to just change someone’s attunement to Emerald and give them a tremendous amount of power in an instant, even if I figured out how Katashi had done what he had done.

Still, there were avenues I could explore with this knowledge. If Katashi somehow knew that Marissa could handle more mana than she was currently getting, maybe I could figure out how he knew that and learn to do the same. If so, I could potentially accelerate the power growth of other people when it was safe to do so.

And there were some other options I’d have to think about as well.

“What about things that increase mana capacity without exercise, like lavris fruits and enhancement elixirs? How do they work?”

“I’m not an expert on those, but there are a few ways they could work. Lavris fruits and similar foods probably strengthen the body in ways that help it tolerate more mana. It’s possible they also simply use up some of your mana in the digestion process, which would effectively be the same as casting a spell.”

Sheridan took a breath and then continued. “Enhancement elixirs work more like your attunement; they flood the body with mana. That can be useful in moderation, but as you’ve seen with your own attunement, there’s a maximum benefit you can achieve without causing the body harm.”

I rubbed at my chin, thinking. “Okay. But none of that explains how the brand worked that Katashi gave me, or how he changed that into an attunement.”

“You’re quite right, that’s something different. Unfortunately, it’s not something I’m allowed to explain.”

“You sure there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

“Anabelle Farren.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Head researcher for artificial attunements in Caelford. If you really want to know how that brand worked, or how to give someone else an attunement in general, you should talk to her.”

That sounded like something that I absolutely needed to do, but that I couldn’t do immediately. Caelford was weeks away by train, and I wasn’t done with the school year. And even if I was, I didn’t find it likely I’d be able to slip away to Caelford any time soon.

Still, it was good to finally have a name of someone I could talk to. It was both a lead on how to research my own abilities and potentially relevant to Tenjin’s whole situation.

“Anabelle Farren,” I repeated. “I’ll look into that. Thank you.”

Sheridan smiled. “Good. Now, I think I’ve given you enough secrets for one day.”

I nodded and stood up. “Thank you. You’ve been a tremendous help.”

Sheridan waved a hand dismissively. “You were entertaining. That’s a good enough exchange for me.”

***

After talking to Sheridan, it occurred to me that I still hadn’t heard anything from Derek about the other Theas sibling.

There was a part of me that was still tempted to confront Elora directly. She was a key part to all this, but she was also vastly more powerful and influential than I was, and I wasn’t sure if I could deal with her safely. Things clearly hadn’t gone as she’d planned, and I didn’t know if she was still working with Tristan or not.

I decided to ask Derek first. “She’s not around,” he explained.

“Around?” I asked. “What does that mean?”

“She’s apparently been in Dalenos for a month or so.”

I stared at Derek. “Isn’t that around when the grand cathedral in Dalenos exploded?”

I deliberately didn’t mention that my mother was also in Dalenos. This news strengthened the possibility that Elora was working with Mother in some way.

Derek shrugged. “That doesn’t sound like her style.”

“But kidnapping a visage is?”

“That was unusual for her, admittedly. But blowing up a major place of worship seems too...messy for her. She values precision. Organization. The kind of random destruction caused by something like that wouldn’t appeal to her.”

“But you’re not ruling out that she could have been involved?”

Derek sighed. “No. I can’t rule anything out at this point. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a part of the same organization that she’s working with that caused the explosion, I’m just saying I doubt it was her personally.”

I nodded. “Do you have any way of getting in touch with her at a distance? Wayfarer, that sort of thing?”

“I already sent her a few messages. She hasn’t bothered to reply. She’s probably still angry about...well, lots of things.”

That was inconvenient, but I could work around it. “Okay. Point me to your Wayfarer, and I’ll contact her.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Derek frowned. “If she’s reminded that you exist, that gives her a reason to start paying more attention to you.”

“Is that a problem?”

“You do not want Elora Theas’ attention unless you can control that attention.”

I twisted my lips in concern. I didn’t like the sound of that. “I’ve managed to keep up with Sheridan so far. I think it’s worth a try.”

“Deni and Elora are not the same...but it probably won’t hurt. Okay, I’ll give you some directions and write my friend a note.”

Derek gave me a letter, as promised, and sent me to a Wayfarer on the other side of town.

I wrote a brief letter, hoping it would get me an effective response.

Dear Lady Theas,

Please forgive me for the unsolicited message.

This is Corin Cadence, son of Magnus Cadence and Laura Lyran.

I believe we have both been involved in some matters relating to the Serpent Spire, and I would like to arrange for an exchange of information.

It is my hope that we can be of use to each other.

Sincerely,

Corin Cadence

The Wayfarer sent the message for a discount, but it still cost me more than I would have liked. I planned to get back to enchanting and selling goods as soon as the exams were over.

For the moment, I just had to hope the message was worth the cost.

***

Two more weeks passed.

It was week twenty-six, with four weeks before the winter ball.

I was far from idle during that time.

I continued training with my Arbiter attunement, using it to bolster Patrick and Marissa’s mana, as well as the power of my own Enchanter attunement.

Sera wouldn’t let me check her mana for a while, claiming that she didn’t like me bothering her all the time. When she finally let me check her a couple weeks after the exam, her mana registered at 24/24 — more than I’d started the semester with. I still wasn’t comfortable using my Arbiter attunement to make her stronger, but she was getting to the point where she was something closer to a functional Summoner again.

She still had difficulty speaking, though, and pushing herself always resulted in a series of wracking coughs. Sheridan apparently paid her a couple more visits and continued to help heal the mana scarring damage, but I wasn’t around for any of them.

My own attunements were still growing stronger. My Arbiter attunement was up to 121/121 mana, and my Enchanter attunement was at 90/90.

In terms of the rating system, that meant I’d moved up from Carnelian E to Carnelian D for my Enchanter attunement, and my Arbiter attunement was already at Carnelian C. I was well ahead of most of my classmates at this point, although I’d heard about a couple truly outstanding cases that had already gotten even further.

After I hit Sunstone, advancing further would get exponentially harder. The mana requirements for each attunement level went up six-fold for each level. People at higher attunement levels generally gained mana more quickly as well, but only a little bit, not six times faster.

If I wanted to catch up to people like Derek, I’d need to keep finding ways to increase mana capacity faster.

It was with that in mind that I spent most of the first week trying to make an enhancement elixir.

I had a unique advantage in that endeavor. I didn’t need a complex and expensive apparatus to purify my mana: my attunement handled that. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only difficult part of the process.

First, I had to figure out how to create mana in a liquid state. I’d gotten much better at making solid mana crystals, but making liquid mana was a slightly different technique.

I asked Vellum for advice. This was, as usual, a mistake.

“Oh, making Citrine-level potions now? Congratulations, you must have taken two years of potions classes and graduated from the university while I wasn’t paying attention.”

After a few more minutes of exchanging barbs, she made it absolutely clear that I was not ready to make enhancement elixirs, and that she was well aware I would continue to attempt to do so anyway.

She was right, of course. But she also wasn’t particularly helpful.

I dug into books for techniques on mana manipulation, and eventually found some practice exercises for making liquid mana that sounded doable.

The easiest was just channeling mana into a glass of water.

The trick was getting the mana into the water at exactly the right rate so that the water didn’t evaporate, solidify, or explode.

I mourned the loss of many cups that day.

When I finally succeeded in charging a glass of water with mana, the result wasn’t an enhancement elixir, or even a mana potion — it was just water with some mana in it.

Mana potions were the next logical stage in progression from there, and that involved mixing mana-charged water with specific alchemical agents.

Enhancement elixirs required pure mana in liquid form, rather than mana-infused water, as a base. After days of effort, I still couldn’t get mana to coalesce in that state.

And beyond that, an enhancement elixir still required other ingredients — some of which, I learned, were quite expensive.

That week wasn’t a waste, but it wasn’t as much progress as I wanted, either.

I switched my focus on the following week to something I’d neglected — life magic. Life was the secondary mana type for my new attunement, and I hadn’t done anything with it yet.

Ignoring a secondary mana type was pretty common for first-year students. Marissa had barely studied life mana herself, and she’d had it from her Guardian attunement since the beginning of the semester. The primary mana types and compound mana types — like lightning, which Patrick could make from a combination of both air and fire — were far more popular.

It probably would have been more efficient to wait until my second year, then enroll in a class on life magic. But I had a bad habit of wandering into near-death situations.

I didn’t want, “Healing magic didn’t seem like a priority,” to be my final words.

In fact, I didn’t really want to have final words at all, unless they involved something like, “At last, I have transcended beyond the boundaries of my frail human existence.”

Not in a metaphor for dying sense; more in an ascending to a higher state of being sense. That sounded pleasant.

Unfortunately, healing magic wasn’t exactly the type of thing I could master in a week.

I learned early on that “healing” spells involved bombarding a specific part of someone with mana and guiding that mana to rebuild the damaged location. This required a high degree of precision, almost like performing surgery.

If I didn’t have a firm understanding of what the healing spell was supposed to accomplish, it wouldn’t work properly, and I could actually do more harm than good.

For example, if I found someone with a slice in their leg, I could use a healing spell to patch the hole in the skin — but if I didn’t know how the muscle underneath was supposed to be repaired, I could either leave it in a damaged state or heal it incorrectly, making the injury worse.

That meant my week of learning healing magic was largely dedicated to studying books on human anatomy.

The rest of it was spent on practicing the Lesser Regeneration spell, which worked like a weaker version of my ring — it caused the body to heal itself faster. It was much slower than a direct healing spell, but it didn’t require any skill to use, and had a minimal chance of causing harm.

I didn’t expect to get much utility out of the spell, since it was about a tenth the power of the ring, and about a third the power of the bracer. Still, if I was ever in a situation where there were more people injured than I had items to handle, it would potentially be useful.

Beyond that, I continued my usual training routines throughout the two weeks. Keras continued to work with Marissa and me on general combat, and I started doing some ranged combat practice with Sera to get her back into fighting shape.

When those two weeks were up, I had three final exams in a row.

***

Understanding Attunements was, as I expected, a written exam. I suspected I got an average score on that one.

Introductory Runes was also a written exam. That one was considerably easier. I’d been terrible at memorizing attunement runes as a child, but that was because they never had any practical use to me at that age. Now that I was actively Enchanting things, I was learning runes on a daily basis, and memorizing them was much easier when I was practicing them all the time.

Permanent Enchantments, of course, was not a written exam. Professor Vellum never would let us get away with passing her class that easily.

“Ah, students. It brings me great joy to see so many of you here, so eager to display what you’ve learned.”

She wasn’t even trying to disguise the mockery in her tone.

This is going nowhere good.

As we sat down, I could see the nervousness in the expressions of my peers.

Even the greatest monsters couldn’t inspire fear like an old woman who was plotting something.

“Oh! No need to be seated. I wouldn’t dream of giving your final test in something as dull as a classroom. Please, follow me.” Professor Vellum stepped out of the chamber without another word.

We followed after her, most students mumbling suspicious comments to one another. I stayed focused, trying to figure out where exactly we were walking.

It wasn’t long before I knew. I’d already seen her with another class at the vaban stadium, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

But the dueling class finals were over, so what was she planning?

The arena floor was still covered with the same tiles that we’d used during the dueling match. In addition, there were two tables on the far side of the arena floor.

One table held standard enchanting tools, like etching rods and measuring implements.

The rest of them held a miscellany of assorted items: a vase, children’s toys, kitchenware... It looked like someone had dumped out a box of old junk onto the table.

And, knowing Vellum, that was very likely what had happened.

“Stand over here.” She positioned the class on the opposite side from the tables. “Good.”

Vellum folded her hands. “When this semester began, I told you this would be your hardest class. While the work up until this point has proven challenging for some, I was referring specifically to this final test. Many of you will fail. Most of you who do will feel that the test was unfair.”

I felt my jaw tighten as she continued.

She cracked a grin. “That’s because it is, of course. This is a terribly unfair test. Not quite as unfair as the spires, however, which is why you need to be properly prepared before you challenge them.”

Professor Vellum turned and pointed at the tables behind her. “Those will be your supplies. When I say to begin, you may retrieve a single set of tools and a single item from the other table to enchant.”

Some students were already groaning, but that part didn’t make me nervous. Not yet.

“Your test today is a simple one. Assume you are going into the spire with a group of climbers, and you need to prepare. You only have the time and materials to prepare a single item. Ten minutes after we begin, I will begin calling out the names of students, starting from those who have the highest scores. When I call your name, you will present your item to me.”

We were already standing, so someone waved to get Vellum’s attention.

Vellum ignored the student and continued talking. “You may not give me an item you already enchanted before today, or any other magical item for that matter. You also may not add enchantments to another item you already have on you. You must enchant one of the items from those tables.”

Her phrasing on that last line already gave me a slim loophole — I could potentially enchant one of the tools, rather than one of the objects from the other table. But I kept listening.

“You may only use the materials within the arena. You may not leave the arena to go gather more supplies. If you already happen to be carrying enchanting supplies on you, you may use them. Preparation is key.”

I heard several groans at that.

I had a few things in my bag that I always kept on me, but not too much. My tools and a few mana crystals were better than nothing, though.

Beyond that, I did have several magical items I’d already made or purchased, but I wasn’t allowed to turn those in or modify them. I didn’t know if they’d be of any help.

I did have more materials to work with inside the Jaden Box, and the Box was in my bag...but showing it here would be a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

“Now, if you have any questions...?”

Someone was still waving, so she sighed and pointed to them. “Miss Weaver.”

The student finally put her arm down to speak. “Um, can we work together?”

That...hadn’t even been something I’d thought about, shamefully enough.

“Why, yes, dear. You can work together. You’d be surprised how few of my students remember that’s possible. Any other questions?”

Another student waved.

“Mister Thompson.”

“What happens if we’re not finished with an item before the time limit?”

“You fail, obviously. Anyone else?”

No one else waved.

“Very well, then.”

I shifted my stance.

“Your test begins...now.”

I activated the ring of jumping three times in rapid succession, crossing the arena.

I was the second person to reach the tables, after a student who had teleported. Miss Weaver, in fact, the girl who had been so enthusiastic about working with others.

I found it amusing that she’d so quickly left everyone else behind.

Focus.

I activated my attunement, scanning the tables.

Just as I’d suspected, some of the random “junk” items were already enchanted.

Vellum had either put them there as ways for students who couldn’t enchant items quickly to pass...or possibly as traps for people who thought they could get away without doing their own work.

I opted for the cynical explanation and skipped the enchanted items, instead opting to find something with a good mana capacity — a plain metal circlet.

I couldn’t tell what type of metal it was, but from the color I suspected it was either iron or steel, either of which had a good enough capacity for my purposes.

With that in hand, I found a corner and sat down. I didn’t bother grabbing tools; I trusted my own.

I had a few ideas on what I could make.

The simplest option was to build a stronger shield sigil. I’d already built several shield sigils throughout the year. With my own improved mana capacity and two attunements, I could make something with a capacity at least three or four times higher than the phoenix sigils.

I also considered building a weapon. Among the kitchenware, there were some decent-looking knives, and the benefits of having a weapon in the spire were considerable.

With my new training at life magic, I was probably capable of making a weak regeneration item with just the tools on-hand. That was probably the most tempting prospect, since it was something I doubted anyone else in the class could manage.

As far as I knew, everyone else only had an Enchanter attunement, and thus no one else had the ability to use life mana.

When I thought about the scenario, though, I realized there was something I considered even more important than any of the items above.

It wasn’t possible to make what I wanted with just the materials on-hand and my own mana.

Fortunately, I had a solution.

I began carving runes into the circlet. Minutes passed, and I had to stop. I knew most of the runes from memory, but I’d never actually made one of these.

So, I took the return bell out of my bag, and I began to copy.

The jingling of the bell as it came out of my bag drew the attention of a few students. I ignored them.

“Ten minutes. Miss Weaver, you’re up.”

Resh, it’s been ten minutes already?

I didn’t know how high I was in the class, but I had to hurry.

I finished carving the runes.

Then, with the briefest of hesitation, I began to transfer the mana from my return bell’s runes into the circlet.

The rules of the test had been clear — I couldn’t hand in a pre-enchanted item, but I could use my raw materials.

And if I broke an item down into raw materials?

That sounded fair.

Probably.

“Mister Holt.”

I kept working. It didn’t take long to transfer all the runes I was planning to move over.

I didn’t copy the activation rune, though.

I had something more interesting in mind.

I looked down at the floor, the tiles still etched with runes.

Then I copied the runes that Teft used for voice activation.

There were multiple runes at work in the process; one rune for recording a sound, and another that constantly “listened” for similar sounds using mental mana, then finally an activation rune that triggered when the recorded sound was detected.

I copied all of them.

I didn’t have the ability to use sound mana, but I didn’t need to.

I just transferred the necessary mana right out of the tile beneath me.

Damaging school property for the test probably wasn’t going to get me into trouble, especially considering how badly we beat up the arena during the duels. Still, I’d fix it later if Vellum asked me to.

“Miss Winter.”

Was there anything else I needed to do?

I began etching another rune. If I had time, I could give this more functions. Maybe build in a shield? The item probably had a high enough capacity for both the return function and a low-level shield...

I clenched my fist as I began to transfer mana into the first sigil for building a shield.

What else was I forgetting?

I felt like there was something important...

“Mister Cadence.”

I wasn’t done.

There wasn’t nearly enough time.

I packed away my tools, gritting my teeth as I stood.

What else did I need to do?

I was halfway to Professor Vellum.

I stopped, paused, and sent a flicker of mana into the sound-recording activation rune. Then I leaned down and whispered into it. “Return.”

I de-activated the rune.

If I hadn’t recorded a sound, the item would have been completely worthless.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

I finished walking over to Vellum. I was ready now.

“What’ve you got, boy?”

I handed her the circlet.

She turned it over in her hands, frowning. “What’s this nonsense?”

“It’s a return—”

“I know what it is. Or, what it’s obviously supposed to be. You tried to improve on a return bell, yes?” She folded her arms.

I felt pretty confident in my choice. “It seemed like the most important thing to have in the spire was an escape route.”

Vellum waved the circlet. “And you thought you could improve on a decades-old design, did you?”

I nodded. “With respect, yes. Return bells are still useful, but there are always places for improvement.”

“And how much have you tested this new design?”

I winced at that. “Well, I haven’t tested this specific—”

She cut me off with a wave. “So, let me sum this up. You decided the most important thing to bring with you was an emergency exit. However, that was boring, so you made an untested change to the core functionality of the item. If you made it incorrectly, the item is completely useless, and you potentially won’t know until you are in a life or death situation. Is that about accurate?”

I took a deep breath. This was not going well. “I have tested the individual components before, and I am reasonably confident that this method of combining them will work.”

She waved a hand. “Enough of that. Where’s your teleportation anchor?”

I...hadn’t made one of those.

But I still had the one from the original bell, and in theory, since I’d moved all the anchor rune from the bell over directly...

I wasn’t sure if it would still work, actually.

I pulled out the anchor and handed it to her. She glanced it over, turning it in her hands, and then handed it back to me. “A standard anchor. Passable.”

Should I tell her I didn’t make it in the class?

She has to know, doesn’t she? But she didn’t say anything.

“I...” I stammered.

“I’m not done talking to you.” She handed the circlet back to me. “I’m disappointed, Cadence. You made a number of mistakes here, not the least of which was your choice of item. I mentioned in the scenario you were going up with climbers — undoubtedly, one of them would have a bell.”

I started to open my mouth to object, but she waved a hand.

“Just listen. In spite of that, a return bell was not a terrible option — if you had experience making them, and the skills to make one on your own.”

“I’m not going to fail you for transferring mana out of an existing item for the test. Nor will I fail you for stealing mana from the tiles. Those were both valid strategies, and clever ones at that. But when you’re only allowed to bring one tool for something, it’s important to make certain it works. There is a time and a place for experimenting, but it must be done in a safe, controlled environment. If you had truly brought this item into a spire, you would have been gambling with not only your life, but the lives of others.”

I couldn’t help myself from interjecting. “I also wouldn’t have gone into a spire with one item.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I believe you wouldn’t. I’ve seen a number of other items you’ve built, and as we’ve discussed, many are creative. But your particular brand of excess has another flaw. As you grow more powerful, you’ll find that having too many items causes them to interfere with one another.”

I nodded. I’d studied that a bit, and taken it into consideration with the placement of my multiple shield sigils to make sure they didn’t cause any problems with each other. “I can consolidate down to a smaller number of items as I grow more skilled.”

Or, I could just keep storing things in the Jaden Box. But she didn’t need to know that.

“Be that as it may, this test was about preparing one item, not many. In that regard, you have failed. Not because you are a poor Enchanter — in fact, your item shows a higher degree of skill than most of the class. Your failure is in judgment.”

I winced. “I...see. So, I fail the class, then?”

She shook her head. “No. You fail this exam. Your score for the year going into this test was a ‘B’ average. I will give you enough points for this exam that your final score is a ‘D’. Failing you out of the class would only make you more likely to make mistakes in the future. And thus, this once, I will be merciful.”

I took a deep breath. “Thank you, professor.”

She handed me the circlet. “You can thank me by taking that to the Divinatory and finding out if it works. It won’t change your grade, but I know your habits, and I don’t want you using it inside the spire until you know for certain that it’s functional.”

She was right, of course. “Yes, Professor.”

“Good. With your terrible performance today, I expect to see you back in my office next week. We will be going over some fundamentals, since you clearly haven’t paid enough attention to them up to this point.”

I tucked the circlet and the anchor away in my bag. “I’ll be there.”

“Good.” She turned away from me without another word. “Next... Mister Wydmore.”

***

I found myself slouching as I walked toward the Divinatory.

I’m such an idiot sometimes.

I didn’t even deserve to pass that class.

I should have told her about the anchor.

Failing the test bothered me, but the worst part of it was that I hadn’t even admitted to Vellum that I hadn’t completed the whole item while I was there.

She had to know, didn’t she?

I could...just tell her.

I failed the test anyway...would she lower my grade further?

The dishonesty of omitting the information was grating on me, but I couldn’t stand the idea of failing the class entirely because I confessed a new bit of information, either.

Non-standard solutions were second nature to me. Even cheating at one of the exams deliberately didn’t really bother me.

But I hadn’t meant to “cheat” there. There had been no clever trick, no bizarre lateral thinking solution.

No, I’d forgotten something pivotal to passing the test, and I’d effectively lied about it.

That was different.

Did she know?

Would she care?

I thought about that until I was all the way inside the Divinatory’s doors.

***

“Hullo!” Researcher waved. “You’re looking glum, Arbiter. Did you forget something?”

I frowned. “...I...sort of? How’d you know?”

Researcher gave me a sympathetic look. “Casting knowledge spells always takes out a part of me, and it’s awful. Especially the bigger ones. I feel so...wrong.”

Oh, she doesn’t know what happened. She just...associates losing memories with the idea of sadness in general.

It was probably a characteristic of her being a knowledge elemental, but in spite of the miscommunication, I appreciated the sympathy.

And, in truth, I didn’t really feel that differently. The idea of losing my memory was awful. “Yeah. I’m glad I don’t have to pay that cost when casting spells.”

The elemental turned away with a sad look. “I...wish I could get an attunement like yours, so I could cast spells safely like you do.”

I felt a pang of guilt as I realized I’d just inadvertently made her feel worse. “Sorry, Researcher. I wish you could have one, too...” I pondered that for a moment. “What’s stopping you?”

She turned back and blinked at me. “What do you mean?”

I considered for a moment. “I know you’re a summoned version of a spire monster, but couldn’t your original take a judgment? And if she did, wouldn’t you benefit from it?”

“They don’t let us take Judgments.” She shook her head. “Half-elementals, maybe. But pure ones? I don’t know.”

“Half-elementals? You mean...?”

“Oh, sure. There are some out there. But I’m not one of them. I’m just a Fragment.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “What’s that mean?”

“A specific classification of elemental. Stronger than a Figment, weaker than a Gatherer or a Harvester. We embody specific principles of our element.”

“And you are...”

“I’m a Researcher, of course.”

I nodded. “Right. Help me research something.”

“Of course!” She smiled. “How can I help?

I showed her the circlet. “I need to test an item that only works inside the spires outside of the spires.”

“Hmmm.” Researcher looked it over. “I see what you’re trying to do. Return bells work by drawing on a specific concentration level of ambient mana. There are a few school facilities that are designed to specifically mimic that effect. You can test normal return bells or something like that in one of them.”

She gave me some directions, and I thanked her.

I turned the circlet over in my hands, still feeling weirdly empty. “Hey...Researcher?”

“Yes, Arbiter?”

“Can I just stay and study in here for a little while?”

“Of course.” She paused and frowned, maybe finally picking up something in my tone. “Stay as long as you’d like. Nothing makes me feel better like learning.”

“I feel the same way.”

My words were mostly true, but entirely hollow.

Chapter XV – Replacements

I spent the next few days feeling like garbage.

I knew, intellectually, that it wasn’t worth worrying about what I’d done during the test. I’d failed anyway, after all, and there were far greater matters of import in my life.

And it wasn’t like I’d been entirely forthcoming with everyone about everything else in my life, anyway. I wasn’t above withholding information if I thought it was important.

And graduating was important. My goals might have expanded lately, but that didn’t mean I could give up on graduating.

Still, I couldn’t help shaking the feeling of disappointment in myself.

Ultimately, I think it was because I’d let someone down that I actually respected.

I was used to being a failure in my father’s eyes.

And my mother? Well, I had no idea what she felt about me now, because she hadn’t seen fit to write me or visit.

Vellum had always been critical of me, but she’d also been eminently fair. I think that was why I respected her as much as I did.

And by omitting a little detail on that test, I’d violated a contract in my own mind. I didn’t feel like I deserved her trust.

But I also didn’t have the confidence to just go and tell her about it.

It was silly. I’d failed the test anyway. It wasn’t like she could double-fail me.

Probably.

Either way, that wasn’t what I was worried about.

I was just ashamed.

It was fortunate that most of my finals were already over, otherwise my scores might have suffered during that time.

Maybe it would have helped if I’d shared my feelings with someone else.

But I’d never been good at that.

Why am I so weak?

I asked myself that question many times, but I never found a good answer.

***

I still wasn’t in a good frame of mind when Jin came to visit, and seeing him certainly didn’t make things any better.

Neither did his news.

“I believe we are both being followed.”

I nodded to him. It was hardly a surprise at this point.

I knew someone had broken into my dorm, and I’d figured out a plan for following the trail, but I hadn’t followed it yet. I’d had too many other things going on.

I also knew that Derek was having someone follow Jin. I wasn’t sure if that was still what was going on, or if whoever was following me was also following Jin.

Either way, it was worth finding out what Jin knew, and looking into it further. “Do you know who it is, or why they’re doing it?”

Jin shook his head. “No, but they appear to have countermeasures for my attunement.”

“That implies that they’ve done their research on us, and that they have considerable resources.” I rubbed my chin. “Okay. Let’s go find them.”

Jin blinked. I think I startled him. “I didn’t think you trusted me.”

“I still don’t. But I’m reasonably confident you’re not involved in what I found, I’m in an awful mood, and I’m tired of waiting for potential enemies to act against me. I’d rather get ahead of this. You up for some walking?”

“Yes,” Jin confirmed. “I am.”

“Give me a bit to get my things. I’ll meet you by our dorms in around an hour or so.”

Jin nodded and headed out.

By “my things”, I meant putting on Selys-Lyann, my sigils, and my demi-gauntlet. I was going loaded for a potential fight.

The next thing I did was check in with Derek. “Are you still having someone follow Jin?”

Derek shook his head. “No, Jin was stuck in the hospital for so long that I told my contact to stop bothering with it. I’ve considered putting a tail back on him now that he’s up and about, though. Why? Is he acting suspicious?”

“Because someone is still following him.”

Derek frowned. “Well, that’s awkward.”

I sighed in agreement. “Yeah. I’m going look into it. Can you help?”

“I’m busy. But use the stick if you need me?”

I nodded. “Will do.”

Then I excused myself to go tell Keras where we were going.

“Do you want me to follow you?” Keras asked. “I’m not great at stealth, even with the mask.”

I considered that, then agreed. “Give me a few minutes.”

It took me about a half an hour to put together a basic Arrow of Direction enchantment. It was a two piece item, like a return bell. When active, the main item would show the user a glowing arrow that pointed toward the anchor.

I threw it together in a hurry, so it was the weakest version of each of the runes. That meant the range was limited to about a mile, but I still thought that would be plenty. The concept was useful enough that I wanted to make more of them later, but this would be good for the moment.

I kept the anchor in my bag and handed the detection item to Keras. “You can use this to follow us from a good distance away. If you see us, you’re probably too close. Jin is pretty perceptive.”

“Are you expecting trouble?” Keras raised an eyebrow as he asked.

“Very possible.”

Keras grinned. “Good. I haven’t had a decent scrap in a while. Let me get my trouble coat.”

***

I met Jin back at the dooms, then we headed into my room.

“What’s the plan?” He asked.

“We start here.” I pulled up the cut in the carpet, revealing the enchantment that someone had placed on my floor.

“And that is...?”

Right. It was easy to forget that other people didn’t necessarily read runes the way I did. “It tells someone that we’re here. Someone planted it here while I was away.”

“And we’re going to ambush them when they show up?”

I shook my head. “No.” I drew my sword, causing Jin to take a step back. “Oh, sorry. Not attacking you. I’m taking this with us.”

After a moment of consideration, I re-sheathed Selys-Lyann and pulled out the Jaden Box. “Retrieve: Transference Sword.”

I used that sword to cut out the section of floor that had been enchanted. I’d used the other sword because Selys-Lyann had a chance of freezing the whole thing, which I didn’t want to risk. Moreover, a cutting aura was more suited to this sort of job. Sawing at wood with a sword blade would have taken forever, but the transference sword’s aura made it easy.

“What are we doing with that?” Jin sounded curious now, rather than scared.

“Store: Transference Sword.” The sword vanished. “We’re going to trace it back to the source.”

I hadn’t just learned the Arrow of Direction spell to find Sheridan — I’d learned it because it could trace the connections between magic in general.

Using Trials of Judgment to find Tristan was one option, but that wouldn’t work as long as he was inside the spire.

Tracing an enchantment to an anchor, though? That was basic stuff.

I slipped the enchanted floorboard under my coat and we headed out of the room, locking it behind us.

“Let’s go find some trouble.”

***

I was pretty excited about using the Arrow of Direction spell at first. Seeing a glowing line that led straight toward whoever had planted the enchantment in my room sounded great in theory.

In reality, though, we had two major complications.

First, distance. The enchantment was much further away than I’d expected. My initial Arrow of Direction spell didn’t work at all.

With some effort, I managed to cast the Citrine-level version, rather than the Quartz one I’d been practicing. That found the target, but the spell still only lasted a few seconds.

I didn’t have the mana to cast that repeatedly.

So, after we walked for a bit, I stopped and changed my plan.

“I’m going to try to make a second enchantment on the floorboard that traces the first enchantment.”

It was almost identical in concept to what I’d just made for Keras earlier. I didn’t have the second item to use as an anchor, but I didn’t need to – the two items were already connected.

I still couldn’t make it stay on all the time, but by making it an enchantment, I could pass it to Jin and he could use his mana to activate it. That way, we could share the mana costs by passing it back and forth.

The enchanting process was a little shorter this time, since I didn’t have to make the anchor part, and I’d just done something similar earlier in the day.

“You sure this is going to work?” Jin asked.

“No,” I admitted, “But I want to know if it will.”

If it did, maybe I could eventually modify Trials of Judgment in a similar way. It would need to be a much more powerful version of the enchantment than I was capable of casting right now, but anything that fed into my longer-term plans like that was useful.

The enchantment worked perfectly.

I was almost surprised, honestly. I’d been in such a bad frame of mind after what happened with Vellum’s class that I’d been beginning to doubt my abilities as an Enchanter in general.

Seeing that glowing line appear when I turned the enchantment on... there was something magical about that.

I grinned and passed it to Jin. “Try it yourself.”

“This rune?” He asked.

“Yeah. Just a bit of gray mana.”

Jin activated the rune, then stumbled back a step in surprise.

I laughed. “Yeah, the arrow is a little startling at first.”

“Indeed.” He chuckled, straightening his stance. “Shall we go?”

***

We followed the arrow for an hour. Then another hour.

I felt bad for Keras, who presumably was still following us.

After a moment of questioning that, I reached into my pouch and tapped the anchor, casting an Arrow of Direction. I knew anchors could be traced in reverse now, so...

....Yeah, Keras was still behind us. I couldn’t tell the distance without a different spell, but it was clear that he was following the same path that we were, rather than being in the direction of the mansion or something.

I gave him a silent thanks as Jin and I continued toward our unknown destination.

Most of the walk had been relatively quiet, but I didn’t mind that.

I was getting used to working with Jin again, and I was pleased to have someone with a better stealth skill set for this kind of mission, even if I didn’t entirely trust him.

“Any idea if we’re getting close?” Jin asked.

I shook my head. “There’s an Evaluate Distance spell, but I haven’t learned it. It’s on my list.”

We walked a little further.

It was sort of nice, for a while.

“Corin, I’d like to apologize again. I should have been honest with you.”

I sighed. I’d hoped this wasn’t going to come up, but I’d known it was probably inevitable. “I still can’t forgive you, Jin. I’m not sure if I ever will. But I’m willing to work with you on this, at least. We’ll see how that goes.”

Jin nodded. “I will endeavor not to disappoint you again.”

Our destination was not what I’d expected.

I’d imagined a lot of possibilities.

The Vice Chancellor’s office seemed plausible. He was one of the few people who knew about what we were up to at all, and keeping tabs on us made a degree of sense.

A mansion for a noble, like Elora Theas or Lord Teft, also seemed like a strong possibility. Both of them had the means and potentially the motivation.

I’d even considered the possibility of running into my mother, and learning that she was back in Valia and watching me from a distance.

Also, I may have pictured a wizard’s tower and a cave with a dragon.

So, when we exited the campus and headed into a residential area, I was a little surprised.

I was doubly surprised when I found myself wandering into an area with run down older apartment buildings.

I was triply surprised when we headed into a dark alley adjacent to one of those buildings.

I was not, however, surprised when the dark figures dropped from the rooftops and surrounded us.

That part I’d been counting on.

Jin reached into his coat.

Someone in the front of the group — they were all wearing hoods and black neutral masks, so details were tough to discern — spoke up. “There’s no need for that. Don’t start anything and we won’t need to, either.”

Jin slowly nodded and removed an empty hand from his coat, opening it to show that he was unarmed.

The leader stepped forward. As they drew closer, I noticed a single green gemstone in the center of the forehead of the mask. “You’re a long way from school, kids. What brings you out here?” Something was altering their voice when they talked, giving it an unearthly quality. Maybe the mask itself, if I had to guess.

I decided to be direct. I tossed a glowing floorboard into the gap between them and us. “That.”

The leader snapped their fingers. Another figure stepped forward, knelt down, and picked up the board. Then they walked back and whispered something to the leader.

The leader spoke again. “Ah, that. Just a routine bit of work for hire, nothing personal.”

I shrugged. “Okay, nothing personal, then. Just point me toward whoever hired you.”

I heard a chorus of laughter from all around us.

More laughter than there should have been, given that I could only see six people.

I turned my attunement on, but that didn’t reveal any invisible watchers. Every one of the cloaked people was attuned, though, and showing Sunstone-level.

Not good odds, even if there weren’t others hiding invisibly, and I couldn’t be confident of that. My attunement couldn’t break through stronger forms of concealment magic.

Jin spoke up. “Perhaps we can make some sort of arrangement?”

The leader waved a hand. “Afraid not, friend. We have a reputation to maintain.”

I frowned. “And who are you again?”

“My, my.” The leader tapped their mask. “You haven’t heard of us? We’re the famous crew of the bravest of rogues — the Blackstone Bandit!”

My jaw opened for a moment before I regained control of my expression. “The train thief? The one based on a fictional character?”

Another series of laughs from around us.

Fortunately, the leader did not appear offended by my statement. “The very same! But I must assure you, our leader is both quite real, and most proficient at the art of roguery.”

“...Roguery? Is that an actual word?”

I was pretty sure that was not a word. It sounded made-up.

The leader waved a hand. “That’s not important. Either way, I must commend your efforts for making it this far, but your quest is at an end here. Run home, children.”

“Wait.” Jin raised a hand. “What if, hypothetically, we wanted to join the Blackstone Bandits’ crew?”

I shot Jin a look. I don’t know what kind of look it was. I’m not sure there’s a word for a combination of shock, horror, and admiration occurring all at once.

I’m going with shorrorulation. If they can make up words, so can I.

There were a series of whispers from among the hooded figures.

“While we are honored that you wish to join our most prestigious crew, you’ll need to wait a year or two. When you’ve graduated, we’ll find you. There will be tests. You may or may not know when you’ve been tested.”

Well, that was an interesting gamble, but it certainly didn’t get us what we needed right now.

Another question occurred to me. “Does your group have any relationship with the servants of the Tyrant in Gold?”

The group went tense, and I realized I may have made a mistake.

The leader simply folded their arms. “Now, why would you ask something like that?”

“The original Blackstone, the fictional one, had a connection with the Tyrant, yes?”

“Ah,” the leader made a hand signal and the others seemed to relax. “Yes. That’s all purely fictional, I assure you. We have nothing to do with those cultists.”

I nodded.

That was not what their reaction told me.

I’d hit a nerve somehow. That didn’t necessarily imply that they were actually working with the Tyrant, but there was clearly some kind of history there.

I glanced from person to person briefly, but I didn’t see any of the glowing marks on shoulders that Keras had warned me to look for. Just normal attunement marks, in normal locations.

That was good enough information for now. If they’d had the shoulder marks, I might have tried to signal Keras somehow to come in and do something, but for now, I didn’t have enough information to make a move.

And with at least six people, in their own territory, starting a fight without a good reason was a bad idea.

“I don’t suppose you could at least give us a hint about who hired you?” Jin asked.

“A hint?” One of the hooded people behind us said. “I love it. Go ahead, Jade. Give them a hint.”

Ah, so the person in front wasn’t the actual leader, then.

That made sense. It meant the actual leader was able to watch us without being watched in return, and lowered the risk that we’d attack them directly.

“Jade”, the person I’d previously assumed was the leader, raised a hand to their mask, giving a look of consideration.

After a moment, they said, “Someone with great power who may yet be your friend or your enemy, depending on how you play your hand.”

That was absolutely terrible hint.

But I’d take what I can get.

“Thank you. We apologize for intruding on your territory. We will leave you now.” Jin replied.

“We didn’t say you could leave,” Jade replied.

We tensed. I almost reached for my sword.

“Ah, just kidding. Get out of here, kids.” Jade waved a hand. “And walk safe. There are unsavory types about this late at night.”

***

Jin and I headed back toward the dorms at a rapid pace. We did not want the Blackstone Bandits’ crew to change their minds.

“I’m sorry that we failed to learn the identity of our pursuers.” Jin offered after a time.

I shook my head. “We did. We just didn’t find out who hired them. I’d call that a success.”

“Perhaps.” He shook his head. “But it doesn’t feel that way.”

“It’s progress, at least.”

We slowed down a bit when we got back to the school grounds.

I turned toward Jin. “Any ideas on who that clue might point to?”

He shook his head. “It could be any number of people. The ‘with great power’ is the only true hint, in my mind. That could be political, economic, or magical power — but it still narrows the field to a degree.”

I nodded. “I concur. We can most likely rule out other students, and probably our teachers.”

Leaving powerful nobles as options, independently powerful attuned like Derek, and foreign powers like Keras or the Tyrant.

We stopped before reaching the dorms to talk a bit more.

“What are our next steps?” Jin asked.

I frowned. “I don’t know. I’ll talk to Derek and see if he has any ideas. Maybe he’d have some ideas on who might be connected with the Blackstone Bandit.”

“He doesn’t seem like the type to work with thieves.”

I shrugged. “You never know. It sounds like whoever hired that crew has either lost interest in us, or decided to take a different approach. For the moment, I think we’d best just keep our eyes open, and communicate if either of us learns anything.”

Jin nodded. “I can agree to that.”

“Good.” I hesitated for a moment, then added. “Thank you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “For?”

“Coming to me about someone following us. I appreciate the information.”

“Of course.” He hesitated, looking like he wanted to say something more, then simply concluded with, “You’re welcome.”

“It doesn’t change what you did before,” I added hastily.

Jin shook his head. “I did not expect it to. But I hope that perhaps, over time, you can learn to trust me at least a bit again?”

I drew in a deep breath. “I’d like to. But I don’t know.”

Jin gave me that crooked smile of his. “That’s a better answer than you gave me before, at least.”

“It is.” I acknowledged. “Good night, Jin.”

“Good night, Corin.”

***

I met with Keras on the way back to the manor.

“So, did you pick up anything I may have missed?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t presume to know what you noticed, but there were a considerable number of additional members of their group still waiting nearby, both inside the building and atop it. That is not a small organization, Corin. And I believe you found one of their bases of operations.”

I frowned. “Or that whole encounter could have been staged. I don’t see why they would have had a monitoring device in that sort of location. It seemed like just an ordinary neighborhood.”

“Operating out of a seemingly ordinary neighborhood seems like a pretty good way of keeping your group of thieves from being obvious,” Keras pointed out. “It’s not like they’re going to have a big building that says ‘Blackstone Land’ on it.”

I chuckled. “I suppose. Although given how lighthearted they sounded, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Don’t take their levity as a sign of weakness. They were well-organized. Professional. They had people with ranged weapons aiming at you at all times. You were wise to withdraw when you did.”

That only made me more nervous. “Any clues on who they work for?”

Keras shook his head. “No. Did you catch any names? I wasn’t close enough.”

“Jade.”

“That’s not a good sign.”

I nodded. “Because it’s a gemstone name?”

I remembered what he’d told me before.

“It might just be because they’re mimicking the stories about the Blackstone Assassin,” he offered, “But I wouldn’t want to bet on that. I’d advise you to stay as far away from those people as possible.”

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t notice any of those shoulder marks you told me about.”

Keras gave me an approving expression. “Good of you to check. Keep watching for those.”

“I will.”

We got back to the mansion without incident. “Thanks for watching over me.”

“No problem. Get some sleep.”

“You, too.”

He shook his head. “Not just yet for me.” Keras cracked his neck. “I’m still wearing my trouble coat, and I never got to use it.”

***

I never found out what kind of trouble Keras got into that night, when he came back in the morning, his clothes were torn and he was in the best mood I’d seen him in a long time.

I asked him if he’d gone back to fight the Blackstone Bandits, but he just replied, “Nothing like that, Corin. Don’t worry about it.”

I didn’t ask any more questions after that. I had a feeling that I didn’t want to know the answers.

***

I spent just a little bit of time trying to research the Blackstone Bandits. Unfortunately, articles about their group were interspersed with so many references to their legendary namesake assassin that I couldn’t find much reliable information.

Derek told me that he didn’t think they usually did work for hire, but he didn’t know too much about them, either. Most of what he’d heard was that they considered themselves to be “heroic thieves” working against the corruption of large banking institutions like Haven Securities.

That certainly explained the number of bank heists and train robberies that were attributed to them, but it was hard to tell if there was really only a single group, or multiple groups using the Blackstone Bandits’ name. I was leaning toward the latter, since so many of the crimes seemed to be in Caelford, rather than Valia, and the Caelford heists seemed to have slightly different methodology.

While I found it fascinating to read about them, I couldn’t justify spending more time on it. If they really were just hired to watch me for a while, it wasn’t worth investing my time and minimal resources into trying to dig deeper.

I’d have to find way to figure out who had been following me eventually, but for the moment, I had higher priorities.

***

At the beginning of week twenty-seven, the entire student body was called to a meeting on the same grassy area where the orientation had been held.

“Good morning, students,” Chancellor Wallace began. I hadn’t seen her much during the semester, but she still had a powerful presence on the stage. “Congratulations on making it this far into the year. Your dedication to this point is commendable. But you’re not quite finished yet.”

She folded her hands, turning her head to scan from side to side. “As I’m sure many of you remember, the traditional final exam for the first year as a whole involves a climbing expedition into the Serpent Spire. Normally, this involves a group of five students entering with a teacher. Unfortunately, it will not be possible to hold that exam this year.”

There was a murmur in the crowd.

The chancellor waved a hand. “Quiet.”

It was surprisingly effective, nearly instant. I felt a tingling in the back of my mind...some kind of mental attunement at work?

Whatever the effect was, it was so brief that I didn’t have a chance to analyze it or try to chase it out of my body. It was already gone.

Out of curiosity, I activated my attunement. I immediately regretted it.

I couldn’t see the chancellor’s aura through the haze of thousands of others.

I turned it right back off, rubbing my eyes.

The chancellor continued. “The reasons for the change are unimportant, but they have required the implementation of a replacement exam. Over the next two weeks, groups of students will be sent to complete their final examinations. Vice Chancellor Bennet will provide the details.”

She stepped back, allowing the vice chancellor — once again in a military-style uniform — to step up to the lectern to speak.

The vice chancellor’s expression was always stern, but he looked unusually grim today. His eyes showed exhaustion, and his jaw looked like he’d been clenching it tight.

He took a deep breath before speaking. That probably wasn’t a good sign. “The spire test is what normally separates students who are merely academically proficient from those who are truly ready for the next step in their training for service. You’ve all survived simulated spire exams throughout the year, but a few hours in a test room can’t show how you’d survive in a dangerous environment for an extended period of time.”

The vice chancellor paused, taking another breath. “For this examination, you will be broken down into teams of five. Those of you who still have an existing team that has survived up until this point will retain that team. Your team will be assigned a second-year student and given a deployment date. On that date, you will be sent into a training facility to the north of campus.

“You will be given an assignment and seventy-two hours to complete it. You will be expected to pack equipment for surviving in the wilderness for three to ten days. You will be briefed for your mission when you are on-site, and mission-specific equipment may be provided to you at this time.

“This test will be a culmination of everything you have worked on this year. You will be graded not only on the successful completion of your mission, but also any casualties to your team, your efficiency, and your judgment.” He turned to the chancellor, nodding to her.

The chancellor stepped back into position. “Your deployment information should have been delivered to your rooms this morning. If you have not yet received it, you can check with the administration department. Deployment dates will vary, but they begin in two days. While you all have done well to reach this point, bear in mind that last test will be your hardest, and you would be wise to earn any additional points you can through other means. Your graduation is not assured, but if you work hard, it is achievable. Good luck. You are all dismissed.”

With that, we dispersed.

Sera nudged me. “I’m going to go check my mail. Strategy session back at home in a few?”

I nodded mutely. We walked together toward the dorms for a few minutes, splitting off when our buildings were in different directions.

I was still a little hesitant to go back to my old dorm room. Not because I had any real fear of assassins at this point, but because I still wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of running into Jin again.

I was feeling a better about him after we’d done the whole thing with finding the Blackstone Bandit’s crew together, but there was a part of me that also felt like any sort of renewed trust in him was a trap.

I needed to sort through that at some point, but I wasn’t quite ready to talk to him again yet.

And I definitely wasn’t ready to to potentially spend seventy-two hours with him during our next test. That was going to be challenging.

Aside from Jin, I was still worried about the possibility that people were watching my room. I checked the area first, but I didn’t see anyone overtly suspicious.

I cautiously made my way inside.

Nothing inside the dorm itself looked to have been tampered with, but I found multiple pieces of mail that had been slipped under the door.

Most of it was junk, simply because I hadn’t visited in a while.

There were three things of note.

First, I found the deployment assignments.

Deployment Date: Snow 8th, 413, 7:00AM

Platoon Designation: Serpent Epsilon

Platoon Assignment:

- Cadence, Corin (Enchanter)
- Cadence, Sera (Summoner)
- Callahan, Marissa (Guardian)
- Wayland, Patrick (Elementalist)
- Dalen, Jin (Unlisted)
- Winters, Katherine (Student Supervisor)

Students are expected to meet with their supervisor at the Beaufort Train Station at the date and time listed above. Tickets to the station nearest to your training area will be provided.

Details on your mission assignment will be given when you reach the training area.

It was Snow 3rd, so we had less than a week before our deployment. We were probably in the second or third group, depending on whether or not they deployed people in overlapping groups or not. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Next, I had a few report papers listing my grades for various classes. I found the most recent overall report.

Cadence, Corin (Enchanter)

First Year

Overall Class Ranking: 987/8112

Phoenix Division Rank: 188/1564

Current Point Total: 584

Class Scores:

- Magic Theory – 55 (Rank C)
- Understanding Attunements – 65 (Rank B)
- Mana Manipulation – 110 (Rank S)
- Physical Combat – 61 (Rank B)
- Introductory Runes – 75 (Rank B+)
- Elective: Art of Artifice – 30 (Rank D)
- Elective: Dueling – 70 (Rank B)
- General Tests: 118

My scores were pretty respectable. I still wasn’t quite in the top 100, but I was in a healthy spot in the class as a whole.

My mana manipulation score was amazing, though. That must have been what Professor Edlyn had been talking about when she’d given me that ominous line about hearing about my score soon. I’d been worried about nothing; she’d just been talking about rewarding me with an extremely high grade.

That was a relief.

My overall grades still weren’t going to be high enough to please Father, but I wouldn’t have to be completely ashamed, either.

There were two remaining hurdles.

The first was Spider Division.

If our division hadn’t reported anyone correctly, I’d lose two hundred and fifty points, or nearly half of my total. I didn’t think that would put me below the passing threshold by itself, but it would hurt.

And more worryingly, our scores for this year would serve as our starting point for next year. I needed to plan for that as well. Starting out in a weak position for the following year was unacceptable.

The second hurtle was this new exam.

From the way the chancellor had been talking, I suspected a poor performance would result in failing out of the school outright.

Even a mediocre performance might include a significant point loss. That was also unacceptable.

I needed successes both with Spider Division and the next test to ensure I had the best score possible going into the second year.

But first, I had one more piece of mail.

My Dear Corin,

As you have no doubt already heard, matters in Dalenos have been somewhat tumultuous of late.

I have been rendering what aid I can to their beleaguered government, and as such, I remain indisposed for the time being.

My hope is to visit you shortly after the conclusion of your school semester.

I will once again remind you to avoid any dealings with Keras Selyrian. While I have been informed that he has been cleared from his criminal charges, he is nevertheless an extraordinarily dangerous individual.

There are also some family matters I need to discuss with you, but that conversation will best be held in person and in private.

You will be in my thoughts.

Love,

Your Mother

The letter’s date indicated it was sent just a week ago, so fortunately, I hadn’t left it sitting in my apartment for long.

There was...quite a lot to think about from that.

Most of it I didn’t want to think about, but it was too important to ignore.

There had been an attack in Dalenos just after I’d gotten out of the spire. The grand cathedral — a major center of worship — had been destroyed.

Dalenos was a theocracy, largely ruled by Katashi directly. They had an emperor and an empress, but those were largely ceremonial figures, at least in my limited understanding. Katashi and his priesthood had the real power.

Mother had left for Dalenos before that explosion had happened.

Had that been a coincidence?

...Or was she involved?

I couldn’t discount anything at this point. Now that I knew my brother was involved with the kidnapping of Tenjin, it was theoretically possible that other members of my family could be involved in similar affairs.

Moreover, Mother had approved the expedition in which Vera and Echion had entered the Serpent Spire. That meant she at least knew something about the god beast attunements. I didn’t know how much she’d been told, but given the other facts, it was likely her knowledge was significant.

Mother was also suspiciously powerful. She’d been in the council room during that vision I’d seen in the memory crystal Jin had given me, and she’d put up a good fight against Keras. She clearly had two attunements, and at least one of them was probably Emerald-level. As far as I knew, that put her in about the top ten people in Valia in terms of raw power.

I knew she’d spent many years in the military before I had been born, but Father had always been the one who was obsessed with fighting ability. When, how, and why had she gotten that powerful?

I hadn’t even known she had a second attunement — she’d just been an Elementalist when I’d been growing up.

What was going on with her?

I wanted some real answers. Unfortunately, she was abundantly clear that she didn’t want to talk about family matters until we could see each other in person.

Instead, I found Sera and asked her to talk to me in private.

“Read this real quick.” I handed her the letter.

Sera read it over, then handed it back to me. “Not sure how this applies to me.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the issue. I just find it...odd that she was in Dalenos at the time the cathedral was attacked. Could she have known?”

Sera frowned. “Think you’re chasing dragons, Corin. Your mom is in Dalenos all the time. She’s been visiting there for years.”

“Years?” I rubbed my chin. “Why?”

“Climbing, of course. She mostly climbs the Serpent Spire, but she’s been going up to the Tortoise Spire a lot over the last few years. Their culture encourages climbers more, so it’s easier to find groups for an expedition. Therefore, you get a lot more veterans, and it’s easier to climb higher.”

I’d known the parts about the Tortoise Spire having more veteran climbers, but I...hadn’t even realized that Mother was a climber. “What’s she been climbing for?”

“You can’t seriously not know that. Did you never read her letters?”

I frowned. “This didn’t say anything about the spire. Neither did the one that she sent earlier this year.”

“I don’t mean those. I’m talking about the ones we sent you back at home, before we came here.”

“I...” I felt my hands balling into fists. “I haven’t gotten any letters in years. Not from her or from you.”

Sera’s eyes widened just a little. “You mean... I always thought it was weird that you stopped replying a few years ago, but I just assumed... I thought you didn’t want to hear from me.”

I stood up, my fists tightening further, and turned toward the door.

Sera stood up, too. “What are you doing, Corin?” She sounded alarmed.

“I’m going to go punch my father in the face.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. I spun, just barely restraining my urge to take a swing.

It’s not her fault.

I took a breath, stumbling back a step.

“Corin. Calm down.”

“No.” I shook my head. “For once, I’m not going to be calm. This is not okay, Sera.”

“Maybe something just happened with the mail—”

“We both know that isn’t true. Magnus — reshing — Cadence has been screening my mail. Apparently, for reshing years.”

I punched a wall.

I barely felt it, but Sera took a step back, raising her hands defensively.

I processed that, taking a breath and lowering my hands. “Sorry, Sera. I’m not angry at you.”

“Okay, but you’re still scaring me a little, Corin. This isn’t like you.”

I balled my fists again, but I didn’t strike. “Resh it all. I trusted him. I thought Mother had abandoned me. I thought you had abandoned me.” I shook my head. “I sent you letters, too. Both of you. More than once.”

“We never...”

I nodded. “I know. I sent them by handing them to Father, because he always was the one who went to the courier’s office. He probably destroyed them just like he destroyed the ones you sent me. Or maybe he just read them and laughed.”

“Corin...”

My mind was running calculations it probably shouldn’t have been.

At my best estimate, Father was a Citrine-level Shaper. Provided he hadn’t been getting stronger somehow like Mother had.

I had no chance of beating him in a fair fight.

But as I’d discovered with Jin, it was quite possible to beat someone of a higher attunement level if I wasn’t fighting fair.

It wasn’t that I wanted to kill my father. I wasn’t in that frame of mind.

I wanted to hurt him. To humiliate him. To make him understand how much of a monster he was for keeping me away from the rest of my family for all this time.

And a part of my mind was angry at Mother, too.

Letters were great. Maybe she cared for me just a little bit more than I thought if she’d been writing all this time.

In some ways, that hurt more than if she’d abandoned me completely.

I’d been worth scribbles on a piece of paper, but not enough for a visit?

It had been three years since I’d seen her in person.

Three. Years.

Letters didn’t forgive that.

Maybe she’d written some excuses in there, offered a few pitiful explanations.

But ultimately, she could take train rides up to Dalenos — apparently repeatedly — but not make time to visit her son.

Why?

What was so important that she’d be climbing spires rather than visiting her son?

“I’m sorry.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just... I can’t.”

I fled the room.

***

I didn’t jump on a train to Hathridge to go see my father, as tempting as that prospect was.

Instead, I went to Keras’ room and knocked on the door.

He opened it a few moments later, looked me up and down, and gave me a quizzical expression. “Corin? Is something wrong?

I lowered my head. “Yes. I need to be stronger.”

Keras paused, then slowly nodded.

“I think I can help with that.”

***

We didn’t bring Marissa with us this time.

I stood on the rooftop across from Keras, hand on Selys-Lyann’s hilt.

I’d told Keras that I wanted to be stronger, and that was true — but there was a part of me that was just itching for a fight.

“So,” he began, “What did you want to practice?”

An image flashed in my mind, something I’d been trying not to think about since I got to the school.

The smirk on my father’s face as I spat blood on the stone and struggled to push myself to my feet, my arms and legs covered in cuts and bruises.

It wasn’t a particular incident I was remembering.

It was an ordinary day of “training”.

“Teach me a way to defeat an opponent that’s much more powerful than I am.”

Keras nodded, looking contemplative. “Lots of ways to do that. Given your skill set, the most obvious answer is ‘prepare’. You already seem to be doing quite a lot of that.”

I shrugged a shoulder, half-agreeing with him. “I am. But I’m already reaching the point where I’m carrying so many items that the auras are going to start interfering with each other soon. I can be more efficient about that, getting stronger items instead of a bunch of little ones, but I can’t carry hundreds of items for every possible scenario.”

“Doesn’t the box help with that? Seems like it’s perfect for what you’re describing.”

“It is, but I don’t want to rely on it. Other people are going to want to take it from me if they find out I have it. And as you’ve pointed out, I won’t be able to keep it forever. If Wrynn is alive, she’ll probably want it back eventually.”

“Oh, she’s alive. I’m sure of it.” He paused, glancing away for a moment. “Anyway, you’re right that the box isn’t a permanent solution. Okay, we’ll talk about some solutions that don’t involve making a hundred items.”

“Thank you.”

“Get your transference sword, I have an idea.”

I went and retrieved the sword, setting Selys-Lyann down nearby.

“Toss it here for a second.

I threw him the sword.

Keras drew the blade, glancing it over. “Good balance. But more importantly, the aura should work for our purposes.”

He sheathed it and tossed it back to me. I caught it without difficulty.

Keras drew a training sword. He always left his other sword — the one with the silvery aura he’d used against Katashi — in his scabbard.

“The foundation of most of my sword techniques is the manipulation of my aura. I use it in a variety of ways, the most basic of which is simply reshaping my aura into a cutting field, like what I taught Marissa.”

I nodded. “But I can’t do that, since I can’t manipulate my shroud yet.”

“Right. But you can manipulate the aura of an existing magical weapon. I’ve seen you do it. You’ve got a technique similar to my cutting wave. The one where you swing it, and you project a wave of force.”

“Sure. I just push some transference mana through my hand, which reacts with the aura around my sword and pushes the sword’s aura outward.”

He shook his head. “I think you’re doing a little more than that, even if it’s not conscious. If it was just making two auras collide, your blade’s aura would shift, but it wouldn’t fly outward in a crescent shape like that.”

That...made a degree of sense, but I didn’t think I was doing anything else.

Keras swung the practice sword in the air, and a wave of energy rippled outward. “When I cut the air like that, I’m not just slamming my aura into something and hoping it’ll go the right way. I’m shaping my aura into a blade and projecting it in the direction I’m thinking about. My intent determines the dimensions of the shockwave and the direction it goes.”

“And you think I’m doing the same thing, subconsciously?”

“Right. Which means that you have the ability to shape transference mana, at least to a limited degree.”

I frowned at that. “I have to be able to manipulate mana to force it outward, but only when I’m physically touching it. I had a little stronger sense for mana while I was inside the spire — the air was so thick with it that I could move the ambient mana just a little. But...” I drew the sword, inspecting the aura. “I don’t think I can do anything with this aura. Not without cutting my fingers off, anyway.”

“Well, figuring out how to protect yourself from your own weapon’s aura would be a good training exercise. But for the moment, I think I have a theory on how you’re doing what you’re doing.

“The first type of thing I learned to shape was metal, and at first, I couldn’t shape it unless I was touching it. The way I learned to work around that was to use a piece of metal — like a sword — to touch whatever I wanted to shape. That made a sufficient connection for me to manipulate the target.”

I pondered that. “You think that, in the instant my transference mana is touching the aura of the blade, I have enough of a connection to shape the blade’s aura?”

“Exactly.”

“Huh.” If that was true, how could I use that? Would that be applicable to other types of mana as well? Could I figure out how to reshape other forms of mana by connecting them with mine?

If that was possible, it was going to open up a lot of doors for me in the long run.

But I couldn’t get too far ahead of myself. All we had for the moment was a hypothesis. “Okay, can we test that?”

Keras nodded. “Sure. It’ll be good to figure out how much control you have. That can help determine what techniques I can teach you right now. Try this.” His aura stretched out over his sword, then he swung it in the air. A shockwave flew out as expected, but it veered sharply to the right, rather than directly following the trajectory of the swing.

I immediately understood just how useful that kind of technique could be. Everyone would expect an attack to come directly at them — if he could make a shockwave curve off to the side, that was an extremely useful trick in itself. He could anticipate someone’s attempt to dodge, or hit another enemy entirely.

What else could he do?

I was extremely curious, but I needed to focus.

I tried mimicking him, swinging in mid-air and pushing mana out of my hand as usual. The shockwave went straight forward before I could actively concentrate on guiding it another way. And once the shockwave was free of my sword, I couldn’t sense any connection to it.

But I could sense one, ever-so-briefly, when my mana and the sword’s aura met. Keras was right. It was faint, near instantaneous, but a connection was there.

I tried it again and again, but with the same results.

I’d trained myself with my expectations for how the attack was supposed to work. In order to get it to behave differently, I had to find a way to reshape not just the mana, but how I was thinking about the attack.

“Try thinking about me as your target,” Keras suggested, “But I’m going to stand off to the side, rather than in front of you. Swing forward, but try to guide the shockwave toward me.”

I nodded. I wasn’t even going to mention that a success would mean an attack coming straight toward Keras. I knew by now that my attacks were no threat to him. He was clearly specialized in offensive combat, and he didn’t have a traditional shroud, but I was confident he could knock my attacks out of the air with his bare hands if he felt like it.

Even with a target in mind, forcing my attack to arc was surprisingly difficult. I swung and swung, pushing shockwave after shockwave out of the sword.

In the end, it was a moment of frustration that did it. I didn’t think about it — not consciously, like I’d been trying to. I just swung and wanted the aura to move.

And it did.

It didn’t get anywhere near Keras. Not due to his extraordinary skills, but because my aim was way off. The wave curved so hard to the left that it almost made a circle, and then flew off into the night air to dissipate.

It hadn’t been close to what I’d been looking for, but it had worked.

At least in the loosest possible sense. I’d gotten my shockwave to move in a different way, and that meant I could connect with my sword’s aura.

And that was where the real training started.

***

I only had a handful of days left before my final exam.

I threw most of that time into learning sword aura manipulation techniques.

Once I was in a little better state of mind, Keras went and grabbed Marissa to join us. She was already working on similar techniques, but using her own shroud rather than a weapon’s aura.

I planned to switch to using my shroud once I had the ability to work with it, but for the moment, this was excellent practice.

Keras nodded to us as we began our next lesson. “You both seem to have a solid grasp of the basics of manipulating your aura blade...even if Corin is still cheating a bit.”

I smirked. “I’m always walking the line between cleverness and cheating. If good tactics qualify me as a cheater, I’ll take that label and wear it with pride.”

After some trial and error, I’d figured out that only being able to sense the aura for an instant wouldn’t give me the kind of fine control that I needed in order to aim one of those blade shockwaves properly.

To fix that, I’d practiced manifesting a tiny thread of mana connecting my hand to the rune that generated the transference aura. Maintaining the thread required a tiny amount of my mana, but it created a persistent connection that let me sense and manipulate the aura freely.

Keras rolled his eyes at my remark. “We’re getting started. I’ve got something a little different in mind today. Marissa, make a blade aura.”

Marissa bent her knees in a combat stance and extended her right arm. The shroud enveloping her body shifted, with the section around her arm shifting and elongating into a blade-like shape.

When she’d first practiced this, the blade aura had only extended about the length of a hand. Now, it was a solid two feet, giving her reach comparable to holding a short sword. That made it more difficult to use, but vastly more dangerous. Presumably, she’d continue learning to extend it further as her skill level increased.

“Good. Corin, you can draw your sword as well.”

I followed his instructions, then focused for a moment to create a thread of mana connecting to the rune. After that, I fell into a default guard stance.

“Now, both of you, slash. No need to project a wave.”

We slashed through the air. I grinned as I heard the whirring noise from the mana moving through the air.

Magic was awesome.

“Now, let’s say you hit someone with that slash. What portion of the blade aura is actually going to be impacting the target?”

“Not much,” Mara replied. “Prolly less than ‘alf. It’s a double-sided blade aura, and we’re only hittin’ em with one side.”

Keras snapped his fingers. “Precisely. There’s nothing wrong with using a double-edged blade aura as your starting point. In fact, I encourage it, especially when you’re still learning control, or if you’re fighting too rapidly to adjust it. But you can adjust it.”

I lifted my own sword, pondering. “Mara could make a single-edged blade and save mana, sure. But this sword is already emitting mana all around it. That’s just how the runes work.”

“I’m not talking about saving mana, although that’s a valid approach.” Keras grinned, lifting his own practice sword.

I activated my attunement. I could see his aura just a little bit without my attunement active, but it was much easier while it was on.

Keras projected his aura over the practice sword, mimicking the style of my own blade. Then, as I watched, the aura shifted — with one half of the blade’s aura moving to overlap with the other half.

I blinked as I realized what was happening. “You’re pushing all the mana into one side so that it hits harder.”

Keras nodded, then shifted his stance with the point facing toward us.

The aura, too, shifted — until nearly the entire aura was concentrated on the point. “I call it aura compression. It’s similar to what Mara does when she focuses mana in her hands before she punches someone, it’s just to a greater extreme.”

“And my whole hand ain’t hittin’ anyone. It’d be more like if I just put my mana right on knuckles.” Marissa flexed her fingers on her left hand. “I should try that.”

“I’d be careful with that,” Keras cautioned. “When you’re focusing mana in your hand, you’re also reinforcing it so that you don’t break your fingers. You might be able to concentrate some more on the points of contact, but don’t abandon the rest of your hand entirely. With the blade aura, though, it’s extended beyond your hand — you don’t need to worry about hurting yourself. You can make the aura as dense as you can manage. Try it.”

I pushed the mana on my blade. The transference sword was a saber, meaning it only had a single striking edge. Moving all the aura to one side was an intuitive choice, and I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t considered it earlier. Everyone always seemed to have double-sided blade auras, regardless of the style of sword, so I’d just sort of assumed it was normal.

Always question everything.

It was a core part of my philosophy, but that didn’t mean I was perfect at it. I was only human.

Maybe that was something I could improve on eventually, too.

The blade aura moved easily enough, but it was powered by runes that were designed to continuously emit energy all around the sword. The moment I stopped concentrating, the aura snapped back to its original shape. And every moment I pushed on the aura, it took up just a little bit of my mana.

Someone like Keras probably had hundreds or thousands of times my mana. He didn’t have to worry about the cost of shaping an aura.

But for me? I’d have to figure out a smarter way to use this technique.

I swung in the air experimentally, concentrating as I moved the blade.

I imagined an opponent — and in the moment before I made contact, I pushed on the blade aura, compressing it.

For just a moment, the transference aura overlapped with itself, giving it twice as much force.

Good.

I repeated the process, cutting and thrusting.

I could see numerous applications for this.

Focusing the blade aura to add more force was a great offensive strategy, but if I could manipulate the aura of a blade, I could do it with other auras, too.

“Mara, punch me real quick.”

Marissa turned away from practicing with her own aura blade and grinned at me. “Sure!”

I chuckled. “You don’t have to sound that excited.”

Marissa waved a hand dismissively. “S’ what friends are for. Got a particular place you want me to hit you?”

Keras looked on with raised eyebrows.

I shook my head. “Surprise me.”

She jabbed me in the ribs before I was ready. I doubled over in spite of both shield sigils and two shrouds protecting me.

“Oh, goddess! Was that too hard? I was expecting you to have a trick or somethin’.”

I raised a finger and motioned for her to wait while I coughed. “Just...wasn’t...ready...” I took a breath, activating the ring of regeneration. She probably hadn’t hurt me seriously, but the ring gave me an immediate feeling of relief from the pain.

I straightened, bracing myself. “Okay, one second.” I took a breath.

Then I extended another thread of mana from my hand, touching a different rune. “Okay, let me try this.”

I closed my eyes and concentrated, pushing mana through the thread.

The barrier that Marissa had just cracked began to mend itself back together.

Marissa blinked, watching the cracks in the barrier disappear. “How’re you doin’ that without touchin’ the sigil?”

“I made a tiny thread of mana and attached it. It connects my attunement to the sigil, letting me feed power straight into the sigil and keep my hands free for other things.”

“Ooh, that sounds useful! Wish I had transference mana so I could do the same thing.” Marissa grinned. “Shame you still can’t take a punch, though.”

I groaned. “I said I wasn’t ready.”

“You came up with that just now?” Keras raised an eyebrow at me.

I shrugged a shoulder. “Seemed like an obvious application of your technique.”

“It might be for you, but not everyone is as good at extrapolating from existing styles as you are. You’ve got a good tactical mindset. I’ll try to keep teaching you more foundation techniques like that, and hopefully you can continue to expand on them when you need to.”

Was he...complimenting me?

I wasn’t sure how to handle that. I wasn’t used to teachers being...well, nice.

“Uh, thanks?... So, what’s next?”

“Next, you practice what I just taught you. Don’t get too far ahead of yourself. I noticed you refocusing your aura mid-swing — that’s a good exercise. Get used to doing it. Eventually, you’ll be able to do it almost unconsciously, and that’ll make it harder to predict.”

Marissa rolled on her heels. “Okay, but what’s going to be after that?”

Keras scratched the back of his head. “Haven’t thought that far. I’m...not really used to teaching people my fighting style. Maybe spell striking? No, you’re probably not going to get a lot of use out of that yet. Blade splitting would probably be the next logical step. Or spell cutting. Or maybe aura extension?”

“Ooh, blade splitting. I like the sound of that.” Marissa grinned, turning toward me. “Well, Cadence? You want to try mixing this into a little sparrin’?”

I shifted into a defensive stance. “You bet. Let’s get started.”

***

We kept practicing, but Keras didn’t teach us any more of those interesting — if unusual — sounding techniques before it was time to get ready for our final exam.

We did, however, get considerably better at aura compression. And, in my case, I got in a more practice with recharging my shield sigil with mana threads, too.

I drowned myself with practice. It was easier to do that than to think about the possible implications of what my mother was really up to, or about the things my father had hidden from me.

We had a couple brief strategy meetings, but without the details of our mission assignment, we didn’t have much to go on.

Sera and Patrick gathered a little bit of information from other students — we weren’t strictly forbidden from discussing this test like we had been with the fake spire exams.

Unfortunately, no one knew much about it until some of the first students came back from their tests. And every group Sera talked to was given a completely different scenario.

One team was told to reinforce a fortress that was under siege. Another was given the assignment to attack that same fortress and steal a flag from it.

Another team was sent into a wilderness area and told to search for a magical item. That sounded similar to the test I’d taken with Marissa, but much larger in scale. And they’d been attacked by monsters repeatedly. Actual monsters, as far as they could tell.

That made me a little nervous. I stopped by Researcher to ask her for information — one of my new favorite “clever bordering on cheating” tactics — but apparently this test was so new that nothing had been filed on the assignments of specific groups. The teachers were making them up on a day-to-day basis.

We tried to glean what we could from the returning teams, but we didn’t learn much else. As such, we made our preparations as broad as possible.

I considered some options for enchantments I could work on in the last couple days, but I’d been spending most of my time on practicing spells and combat, rather than saving up money. I couldn’t afford many more raw materials, so I didn’t have a lot of options to work with.

I wanted to upgrade the standard shield sigils and bring them up to the same level of power as the phoenix ones, but they were standard school issue and we weren’t allowed to tamper with them.

The phoenix sigils were already close to their mana capacity, so I couldn’t safely upgrade them much further, either.

Instead, I convinced Keras to help me out a bit.

I handed him a small stack of coins.

“You want pure silver?” He asked.

“Yep. It has the best enchanting capacity per volume of anything we have on-hand. Unless you can make valden?”

He shook his head. “I can change some of the properties of a material, but I’m not sure what that would do to the enchantment capacity on it. Might make it better, might make it worse. Probably not worth the risk.”

I nodded. “Just extract the silver from the coins, then.”

“That’s easy enough. You want the results in any particular shape?”

I handed him my phoenix sigil. “You can use that as a mold.”

The coins we were using weren’t pure silver, but they had enough silver content that he could easily separate it from the rest of the metal and reshape it into what I wanted.

After that, I actually went to the Divinatory and did what I was supposed to be doing from the beginning — I had them run tests on the metal to check the enchantment capacity. I didn’t want to take the risk that Keras’ manipulations had somehow altered the metal in a way that would make it unstable.

And it was always good to know if Keras was really doing what he claimed, too. I didn’t have a lot of reason to distrust him on this subject, but I always liked to verify things in general.

The metal was perfect. It was, as Keras claimed, perfectly pure silver.

Silver had roughly twenty times the capacity of copper for an object of equivalent size. The phoenix sigils I’d made before weren’t pure copper, but they were close.

That meant these new silver phoenix sigils were going to have plenty of mana capacity to work with. More than I could possibly fill at my current skill level, which was good.

I wasn’t going to have time to make a full set before the test, but I got to work.

The first enchantment was an upgraded shield. The next level of barrier had twice the total capacity of the previous phoenix sigils, and four times that of a standard shield sigil.

Next, I added a higher tier version of the self-recharging rune, which would allow these sigils to recharge within the same period of time as the old ones.

Finally, the hardest part — a regeneration enchantment. I’d barely been practicing with life mana, but I knew how to use it now, and that meant I could make basic healing and regeneration enchantments without crystals.

Up until this point, I’d only had two regeneration items to work with — the ring being the strongest, and the bracer I’d made by transferring the mana from the healing rock. Ultimately, I wanted everyone in my group to have some form of healing. Anything else was irresponsible.

Also, it fit the phoenix theme. That was important.

The best I could manage was a higher-end Carnelian enchantment, which made the regeneration function comparable to that of the bracer, but much weaker than the ring of regeneration.

I still was concerned about wearing too many regeneration items at the same time, especially when I was working on enchanting. I hadn’t forgotten what had happened with my hand. Still, regeneration was too useful of an ability to ignore. I just had to be a little more conscious of how much I was pushing myself while I was wearing regeneration items.

I had a couple options on how I could distribute the items. Giving four out of five people a regeneration item of some kind was a good option, but keeping the ring in reserve for emergencies was another idea.

I also considered giving the ring and one of the new sigils to Marissa, since she was our front line fighter, and thus the most likely to take a lot of damage.

Ultimately, after a discussion with the rest of the group, I went with spreading the healing out as much as possible.

Marissa and I wore the newly-made silver phoenix sigils. We were the most likely to be in close-range combat, and thus we needed the strongest shields we could get.

I gave the regeneration bracer to Patrick, and the ring of regeneration to Sera.

Patrick and Sera both tended to burn through their mana quickly, so they were both good options for the mana regeneration bracer. I ended up giving it to Patrick, simply because we still weren’t comfortable with the idea of feeding more mana into Sera’s body from an outside source, even if we were confident it was pure.

We still weren’t allowed to bring the extremely dangerous magical weapons for this test, so that meant leaving Ceris, Selys-Lyann, and the Dawnbringer replica behind.

As such, I held onto the transference sword, and I handed the demi-gauntlet off to Sera. She was getting used to casting spells again, but having a weapon to use was helpful. She took an ordinary dueling cane, too, just in case.

After that, I had another decision to make.

Was I willing to use the Jaden Box during this test?

Using the box would potentially save our entire team from having to carry camping equipment, as well as other general supplies. The Jaden Box theoretically had a maximum capacity, but from what Keras explained, we hadn’t gotten anywhere close to reaching it.

It was clear we would be observed to some extent, but mostly by a second-year student, not a teacher. It wasn’t likely they would recognize the box, or understand that I wasn’t supposed to have it. But if I used it to carry all our gear, there was a high chance they would talk about that in a report to the teachers after our assignment was over.

I talked to Sera about it.

“What are the odds you could get the box officially released into your care?” Sera asked.

“Doubt it. It was being researched by Professor Orden. With Orden gone, it’s more likely they would want it returned to the Divinatory, or maybe another member of her research team. I can claim that Orden wanted me to hold onto it, but ultimately it was never really her property in the first place.”

Sera nodded. “Okay. What about disguising it?”

I blinked. “Disguising it how?”

“There are other items that can hold things in a storage space, right?”

I frowned. “Sure, there are bags that can summon linked items that are held in another location. They’re kind of the reverse of jump bells. But they summon everything around the anchor at once, and they’re also extremely expensive.”

“I’m a Summoner. You’re an Enchanter. How plausible is it that we could have made one? Maybe with some unusual altered characteristics so we could summon one item at a time?”

I rubbed my chin. “I don’t know. I haven’t really studied that type of item in detail. Maybe we could sell another student on it, but I doubt a teacher would believe it.”

“People tend to believe things if you don’t give them a reason not to. As long as we can make a somewhat plausible explanation, I doubt they’re going to dig into it. Our team is going to be carrying tons of items you made. Do you really think this one is going to stand out that much?”

I frowned. “I...don’t know. It’s too hard for me to see from an outside perspective.”

“Let’s go with a middle route, then. We’ll still all bring bags, but we’ll put most of the heavy stuff in your box. Tents, that sort of thing. If all you’re storing for us is the tents, and you summon the tents all at once, it will probably look much less suspicious. Does that sound right?”

I nodded. “Sounds plausible. I’ll see if I can study up on other storage enchantments tonight, just so I can have a plausible explanation if necessary. I’d rather still say we got the box from a teacher, though, and just not explain that it’s the Jaden Box. That would make having a higher level item more likely. One more thing, though.”

“Hm?”

“If I’m going to do this, you need to go shop for our supplies. I’m not going to have time.”

“You just hate shopping.”

“...That may true, but I’m still making you do it.”

Sera sighed. “Fine. Deal.”

***

I spent the rest of that evening studying storage and summoning enchantments, just as I’d promised. Much as I’d suspected, they were all higher level than I could possibly accomplish.

The most basic were Sunstone level, and those just summoned a single grouping of items that were within a few feet of an anchor.

Higher level enchantments were required for longer range, for a higher summoning area of effect, or for transporting larger objects. More importantly, however, I did find that it was possible to connect a single item to multiple anchors, and to tie summoning effects to different key words for activation.

In essence, it was possible to fake most of what the Jaden Box could do with standard enchanting, at least in theory. I didn’t see any established item designs for multiple anchors, though. I was just speculating.

The Jaden Box’s function for summoning people was the hardest part to mimic, but I didn’t intend to use that, so I didn’t have to figure out a way to fake it.

Learning this all was useful — both because I did intend to make a copy of the Jaden Box for myself in the future and because it helped me realize just how potent the box was.

Even if I used high level enchantments to get similar functions, the box had the advantage of actually storing things — it didn’t need anchors in other locations. That made it far more secure and easier to use.

It did raise the questions of how and where the box was storing things. The notes had indicated that it was somehow utilizing an extra-dimensional space, which was outside of the scope of any enchantments in my books — even the advanced ones I’d taken from the restricted section.

Maybe there were higher level Enchanters or Summoners who knew more on the subject, but I didn’t have the time to ask them.

I finished my studying, packed the supplies that Sera asked me to, and went to sleep.

The next few days were going to be exhausting.

***

On the way to the train station, I checked my mana levels.

The Arbiter mark on my right hand was up to 138/138 mana, and the Enchanter mark on my forehead registered at 105/105. It had been about two weeks since I’d last marked down my progress, and I’d been going up by just about one point of mana per day.

That wasn’t the most I’d ever gained, but it was pretty consistent with what I’d been getting recently, and I was happy with it. It meant I was still on-track for hitting Sunstone in the following year, which would put me easily toward the top of the class.

Sera had been pushing herself hard in training, and as a result, she’d recovered substantially. Her mana was up to 44/44, which was almost twice what it had been two weeks before. At that rate of growth, she’d be back to Carnelian-level in another two weeks. It was unfortunate that she wouldn’t get there in time for the exam.

I didn’t bother checking the others — they wouldn’t have had significant changes in the last few weeks.

We reached the train station. Finding our second-year student guide wasn’t hard — she was holding up a giant sign that had “Serpent Epsilon” written on with sparkling letters.

I hadn’t even remembered our division name from the paperwork, but Sera headed that direction immediately and the rest of us followed her.

“Hihi!” The student greeted us. “I’m Katherine, but you can call me Kathy! You must be, what was it, Seiran?”

“Sera.” Sera smiled and extended a hand.

“I am so bad with names.” The student fumbled with trying to hold the sign and shake Sera’s hand at the same time, failed, and dropped the sign with a loud thump. “Ack! I am so sorry, let me just...”

Marissa picked up the sign and handed it back to Kathy. “Here ‘ya go. I’m Marissa, but you can call me Mara.”

“Thank you! And that’s a great name. I really like it.”

I could already tell that this person was extremely nice, and that she would make me horribly uncomfortable.

I was not good at handling people that were that energetic.

Still, I made my introductions along with the others. Kathy visibly jumped when Jin said his name. Apparently, he still had his Mesmer abilities that prevented him from being noticed active.

Maybe he couldn’t turn them off? It was worth asking at some point.

We boarded the train shortly thereafter. Mercifully, I was seated next to Jin, and we were both content to spend the trip in awkward silence, which was vastly preferable to awkward conversation.

***

When we arrived at our destination, Kathy ushered us to a waiting carriage. Not one of the Caelford horseless models — a traditional horse-driven one, which was still much more common in Valia.

We piled in. The seats were barely large enough for all of us to fit — it would have comfortably accommodated four people, not six.

Apparently, the school was willing to pay for some degree of transit, but not enough to make it comfortable.

I distracted myself from being pressed awkwardly close against my friends by looking out the window and admiring the scenery. We were outside of Beaufort now, heading north along a road from Calloway Junction toward what I presumed was the previously mentioned testing grounds.

I’d initially assumed that we’d just be going to the same area where I’d helped Marissa with her test, but this was much further to the north.

Small cities gave way to towns, and towns gave way to farmland.

The cobbled roads gave way to dirt.

The broad plains and fields of crops vanished as the carriage entered a thick copse of trees.

“Vanway Forest,” Sera explained. “We’re just south of the Vanreach Mountains. And, like the mountains, this forest is filled with monsters.”

I remembered the Vanreach Mountains — that’s where those herbs were that could be used to make a potion to heal nearly any injury. From Sera’s explanation, I surmised she’d been studying the whole area.

She hadn’t been making a big deal out of her condition now that she was able to speak and cast some spells again, but I was sure she still wanted a long-term solution. Her voice still sounded scratchy, like she had a perpetual cold, and her magic was still uncertain at best.

“This close to civilization?” Patrick asked. “Why not just move the army in to clear them out?”

Marissa scoffed. “You kiddin’? They don’t care ‘bout anyone this far from the city. ‘Sides, you think they want ‘em all gone? Monsters got all sorts o’ parts people harvest. They’re a natural resource. Soarin’ Wings keep an eye on the borders and make sure nothin’ creeps out too far.”

I blinked. I wasn’t surprised by that explanation, but I wouldn’t have expected it from Mara.

I had a tendency to underestimate her knowledge, probably because I assumed that her martial focus meant that she wasn’t much for studying. It was easy to forget that she’d been assigned to the Tortoise’s Heart, and that meant great academic scores, not just solid fighting abilities.

That explanation did raise questions, though. “If what they’re looking for is monster hides and crystals and such, why not just breed monsters in captivity?”

Marissa turned toward me while she explained. “Some people do. Got a place just off campus that breeds Ironweave Spiders for makin’ dueling tunics. Military’s got big bases where they grow all sorts of ‘em, too, both for harvestin’ and for Summoners. Most monsters don’t do well in captivity, though. Won’t breed or don’t grow as large.”

She paused, making a contemplative expression. “Might be because of different food sources, or it might be that they get more mana from the nodes out in the wild. Either way, monsters in cages or on farms never get as big. That means they’ve gotta leave some out here if they want bigger crystals, scales, that sort of thing.”

“Also means they’ve got strict monster hunting laws,” Jin chimed in. I was used to him by now, so I didn’t jump at the sound of his voice, but it was still a little startling. “That helps prevent any species from being driven to extinction.”

“It’s also why some people move out to the Unclaimed Lands. Easier to hunt monsters without restriction out there,” Patrick chimed in. “It’s just really, really dangerous.”

That explanation made a degree of sense, but it still raised more questions in my mind. Would it be possible to find a way to breed full sized monsters in captivity?

I had some moral concerns about that even if it was possible, though. Some monster species were extremely intelligent — even comparable to humans.

I had to hope that the monsters they were talking about hunting were the bestial kind, or even less intelligent, like slimes and golems. There were certainly plenty of those, too.

I was, of course, already aware that most people wouldn’t care about that distinction the way that I did.

The carriage finally halted a bit later, stopping at the base of a large stone structure. It was a jarring sight among the tall trees, which otherwise surrounded the whole area.

“We’re here!” Kathy announced. “Finally get to stretch my legs!”

We all groaned in agreement, exiting the carriage.

We bid the carriage driver a safe trip back, and I offered him a few extra coins for having to deal with the obnoxiousness of listening to teenagers banter for hours.

With that, we approached the building.

Upon closer inspection, the structure was a three-story fortification surrounded by heavy stone walls.

I saw the tower-and-wings symbol of the Soaring Wings flying from one of the two flags atop the structure, and the blue-on-black flag of the nation of Valia above it.

Kathy approached first, waving at one of the two bronze-armored guards standing out front. “Yo, Jody. These are my kids.”

“You made good time, but the other team is already here.” Jody explained. “I’ll need your team to sign in here, then we’ll head inside.”

Other team?

I already didn’t like the sound of that.

We signed some paperwork at the entrance to verify that we’d all arrived safely...and that we accepted the risks involved in this test.

Lovely.

Then Kathy led us inside.

“Stay safe out there,” Jody said, slapping Kathy on the back.

“Always do.”

For some reason, though, Kathy’s usual grin had faded. Her lips had flattened into a hard line.

***

The fortification had several buildings inside, but Kathy led us to the central structure. Within, she took us to a large room that looked to be a cafeteria.

Inside, we found another team waiting for us.

“Oh, ye have to be kidding me.” Marissa tensed, pausing in her step, her hands tightening.

“Well, well. I knew we were having another team join us, but this is a pleasant surprise.” Rupert Kent stood up from where he’d been eating and turned to regard us.

From the sound of his tone, he was still intent on harassing Mara, even after she’d beaten the tar out of him earlier in the year.

Without thinking, I laid a hand on Mara’s shoulder. She turned to me with a look of surprise, then took a breath and relaxed.

She gave me a nod of thanks, then I put my hand down.

It was a simple exchange, positive without any words needed. I...wasn’t used to that. But it was nice.

I couldn’t focus on that, though. I turned to look at the rest of the group. I recognized them just as easily, aside from the second-year student with them.

Loria Marshal was an Elementalist, much like Rupert and Patrick. She was sitting next to Kyra Dyson, her usual dueling partner, and one of the few duelists with the Shadow attunement.

I knew the other two even better. Desmond Vyers was a Shaper, and currently one of the top students in the dueling class. He probably had the highest overall score, maybe tied with Marissa.

The last was Roland Royce. My old friend, who had been raised to be my brother’s retainer.

I hadn’t seen him in months. From Sera’s expression, she was equally surprised, but she rushed past the rest of us to give him a hug.

They’d been getting close at the beginning of the school year. Was there something going on there?

Eh, none of my business.

“Well, it seems like some of you are already acquainted, but let’s do introductions regardless.” Kathy clapped her hands together. “Let’s form a circle and say our names.”

We followed her instructions. The second-year student for their team introduced himself as Jordan Jaldin. He was apparently a Mender.

Kathy didn’t say the name of her attunement, and her mark wasn’t visible.

“Great!” Kathy beamed. “Now that we all know each other, on to the fun part. Your mission briefing!”

Literally no one else, including the other second-year student, seemed excited about this “fun” part.

“Okay, so! For this scenario, you’re going to be sent into a simulated version of the Unclaimed Lands. Your two teams will be working together to deliver a shipment of useful supplies to a ‘new settlement’, which consists of several other teams of students. The supplies you’ll be carrying are real, and they’re going to be useful things the other students will want, so don’t lose them or let them get broken!”

Kathy folded her hands together. “Naturally, that means that there will be other teams working to steal or destroy your stuff. You see, you’ll be moving through territory known to be inhabited by servants of the Tails of Orochi. You all know who they are?”

There were a series of uncertain noises from the group, but Patrick jumped right in. “They’re a cult that worships the children of the God Hydra. They’re not as common as Tyrant cultists, but they’ve got a lot of influence. There are nine tails of Orochi, and they’re—”

“That’s good enough!” Kathy waved a hand. “They’re a cult, and some of the other students are on their team. The Tails groups will be harassing the settler groups, including your own team. We have a map that should lead us to the settlement. If we get there in time — which we should, if you don’t mess this up — you’ll be given another assignment by one of the teachers there. Any questions?”

Marissa stood up from her chair, looking nervous. “Um, why’ve we got two teams ‘ere? This a tough one?”

“Good question! No! There’s a good reason for that, but you’ll probably figure it out when you read your individual assignments. Which you have. All of you. I’ll get those handed out in a few.”

“Individual assignments?” Roland asked.

“Oh, yeah, you should probably know the rules for those. Each of you has individual tasks you’ve been assigned in addition to the main task, which is delivering the goods. Those individual tasks are just as important for your score, maybe more so — it’ll say in your papers. This is important, though.

“You can’t show your individual tasks to anyone else. You can ask for help with them, but you are not allowed to show your papers to other students. And no leaving your papers around so people can find them, either — that’s cheating.”

Why wouldn’t we be able to show our assignments to someone?

Unless...

Oh.

Resh, this is not going to be good.

“Any more questions?”

Sera stood up. “Will you and Jordan be traveling with us?”

“Yup. But we won’t be helping you unless there’s a good reason. Some of your individual tasks may allow you to ask us for specific kinds of help — it’ll say in your papers if so.”

“One more question. Do you have any estimates on how long our particular assignments will last?”

Jordan stood up. “That depends on how long you last. My friend neglected to mention this, but you’ll each be wearing a sigil monitor on your shield sigils during this exercise. If your shield sigil is depleted, it will send us a signal and your location.” He raised a hand-held device that looked like a compass, but marked with several runes.

If that could locate something based on a signal from another item, I definitely wanted to study it later.

Jordan pocketed the item and continued his explanation. “If that happens, we’ll find you and make sure you’re safe, then signal the Soaring Wings to send someone to escort you back to safety. You’ll be done with the test. Needless to say, if this happens before you’ve finished your objective, you fail the test. If it happens after you’ve finished some things and not others...well, you’ll just have to see how you score.”

“Any more questions?”

I was thinking about some, but I decided to wait until after I’d read my assignment. If my suspicions were accurate, it was potentially advantageous for me to avoid asking questions that would give the entire group information.

Kathy retrieved a box containing several sealed envelopes. Each envelope was addressed to one of us. I accepted mine, then went and found a place to sit as far from everyone else as possible to open it.

Cadence, Corin

Platoon Designation: Serpent Epsilon

Primary Assignment: Delivery of goods to designated settlement. When you have reached the designated location, goods will be checked by your contact (see Student Supervisor for information on mission contact).

Secondary Assignment: Discover and eliminate Spider Infiltrator(s).

I had to take a deep breath before I could continue reading.

Resh. Yep, there it is.

I kept reading.

Your platoon and/or the platoon you have been paired with has been infiltrated by one or more members of Spider Division. Some, but not all, of your platoon members have been made aware of this.

The Spider Division member(s) will attempt to sabotage your primary mission, as well as the missions of other teams. For the purpose of this scenario, they are considered infiltrators working for the “Tails of Orochi” organization, who serve as the antagonists for your team during the exercise.

Even if you do not discover your primary mission being actively sabotaged, the Spider Division member(s) may be collecting information that can be passed to other Spider groups already at the settlement, or coordinating with other Tails of Orochi teams (e.g. providing them with location on your information and capabilities). As such, you should be alert at all times, and attempt to discover and eliminate these agents at your soonest opportunity.

You will be rewarded for each Spider you successfully eliminate. This includes Spider operatives in your own platoon(s), as well as Spider agents that you discover in other platoons if applicable.

You will be penalized if the Spider(s) that are associated with your platoon(s) successfully achieve their goals.

You will be penalized if any non-Spider members of your team are eliminated. This penalty will be doubled if they are eliminated directly by a Spider.

As a reminder, you may not show this paperwork to other members of your platoon. You may discuss it verbally, however, or attempt to prove your case through other means.

Good luck.

Now I had many questions.

Unfortunately, I’d been right. The more questions I asked here and now, the more information I’d be giving the one or more Spider agents in our group.

This was not the type of thing I was looking forward to.

Social engineering exercises were much closer to Sera’s — or even Patrick or Jin’s — skill set.

Which, of course, immediately made me wonder if they were the Spider agents.

Resh it.

I wasn’t going to be able to trust anyone, was I?

That was probably the point.

A classic exercise in figuring out who I could trust.

That might have been fun if I wasn’t already actively playing that kind of game every day of my ordinary life.

***

I pulled Kathy to the side before we left the building to ask her a couple quick questions. “My assignment refers to ‘elimination’, and you mentioned we’d be sent home if our sigils were damaged to the point that the alarm went off. What if I just took off my sigil monitor?”

“Not allowed.” She shook her head. “The sigil monitor is set up to send us an alert if you take the monitor off.”

“...And if I disabled that function, or turned the shield monitor off entirely?”

“Wow, you really like to skirt the rules. I like the cut of your jib, kid. But nah, that’s cheating. Sorry.”

I pondered that. “What about taking the sigil off entirely? I mean, we’re going to have to take it off for brief periods of time when we bathe and change and stuff anyway.”

“Sure, people will take them off for a few minutes here or there. That’s guaranteed. But you’ve gotta sleep with them on, and you can’t take them off just to avoid a way of being eliminated, sorry. If we find you doing that on purpose, you’ll be sent home. And I’d advise you to bathe with your shield on out here, even if that means just pinning it to your undergarments and keeping them on. There are actual monsters out there, and you need to stay safe. I’ll tell the others the same.”

Kathy paused. “Look, I know you’ve got to be nervous about your test scores. Everyone wants to pass. I want you to pass. Sometimes finding little tricks can make a test easier, I get that. But here? You’re working with a team. You’re not doing them right if you’re just trying to save yourself. Put that brain of yours to work on the mission.”

I nodded. She had a point.

A point that I fully intended to ignore.

My questions had never been about trying to save myself in the first place.

I just wanted to know what variables I had to work with in terms of methods of triggering and avoiding elimination.

I couldn’t ask her too many more questions or she’d get suspicious of what I was up to. “One last question. I brought my own supplies, but does this facility have a general store or something we can go to before we leave?”

“Yep. You’ll all get a chance to stop there and buy a few things before we head out if you need to.”

Excellent.

I was beginning to form the foundations of a plan. I’d brought a ton of supplies in the Jaden Box, but if I had a chance to shop, I had a few more things I wanted to pick up now that I knew what we were up against.

I headed back to the group.

I couldn’t work while I was being observed, but I could think.

And, if I was going to stay ahead of all my potential adversaries, I had quite a bit of planning to do.

***

As promised, we had a chance to shop for about an hour before we departed. Most people bought extra food, warm clothing, or other small supplies they’d forgotten at home.

I bought other things.

I considered trying to find the time to talk to some of my platoon members in private, but we didn’t have a good window to do it while no one from the other team was around.

From the suspicious glances I was picking up, though, I could tell at least a few people had been given similar information to my own.

Jin and Roland in particular seemed to be paying a lot of attention to everyone else...but I couldn’t tell how much of that was just my own mind playing games.

I couldn’t trust Jin about anything after what he’d done, and he’d always been mysterious.

And Roland had been missing for weeks — that clearly could have been because he’d been assigned to the Spider Division and decided to prioritize those assignments.

Of course, it could have just meant he’d dropped out of the dueling class elective. That was the only class we shared, and I didn’t keep track of him outside of class.

And even though those two seemed to be paying a lot of attention to everyone else, that didn’t mean they were Spiders...it could just as easily mean they were like me, and they’d been given an assignment to find the Spiders.

I’d be able to check them for visible tells if I confronted them, but that would let the Spiders know I was aware of their presence...and that would make me a target.

I had to weigh the advantages of talking to any individual person against the risk that they would be a danger if they were a spider.

Or, of course, I could find another way to check that couldn’t easily be traced back to me.

That would be my first move.

***

An hour later, we headed into the forest, now escorting a pair of wagons drawn by horses.

The wagons were filled with boxes of supplies. Given the sheer number — I counted twelve large crates per wagon — I suspected the settlement had to consist of a large number of students. Probably a hundred or more.

Since we’d presumably be joining the “settlement” once we arrived, it was in our best interests to ensure the boxes were intact, even aside from it being responsible for some of our points.

My first order of business was gathering information.

I activated my attunement and scanned the group.

Marissa, Patrick, and I currently registered as Carnelian.

Sera’s aura was colorless. She’d been Carnelian, but with her mana level as low as it was, she was registering as Quartz right now. Presumably, she’d hit Carnelian again soon, but that did mean she’d have to be careful during this assignment.

Jin’s aura was clear. I knew he was stronger than that, but he was apparently playing it safe and keeping his shroud suppressed while others were around.

On the other team, Roland and Kyra were showing up as Carnelian. The other three were either Quartz or suppressing their shrouds.

I had a hard time seeing any aura on Loria Marshal at all. Either her attunement was particularly weak, or maybe she had an item to conceal it. I did see a couple auras from magical items on her belt, but they were faint, too.

Both of the second-year students had brilliant orange auras that meant they were Sunstone-level. That put them toward the top of their class; hitting Sunstone as a student was relatively rare. I presumed we were assigned two of the stronger students because our own aggregate mana levels were higher than average.

We also happened to be two of the groups consisting of finalists from Teft’s dueling class. That probably wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe Teft had selected our two teams to match us against each other? That sounded like the type of thing he’d do.

Aside from that, I picked up on several magical auras from items the other students were carrying.

I knew the equipment for my team pretty well — no surprises there. We hadn’t coordinated with Jin, but he was carrying at least some of the things I’d enchanted for him earlier in the year.

The other team had fewer magical items, but I did notice a handful. Roland seemed particularly well-outfitted.

I could see several Carnelian-level auras emanating from things he was wearing, including a pair of canes in holsters on his hips. Upgraded dueling canes, most likely.

Was he an Enchanter himself?

That...actually would be a pretty good explanation for why he’d been skipping so many dueling classes. Dueling was hard as an Enchanter, and he might have needed to spend time on studying runes and manufacturing items for other classes.

I couldn’t confirm it right this second, but maybe it was worth asking him directly at some point. He hadn’t volunteered the information, but it was a reasonably harmless question.

I also tried to pay attention to the location of everyone’s attunement marks. That would be relevant if I had to figure out how to fight them later.

And there was very little chance I was getting out of this without a fight.

With that information in mind, I turned off my attunement and headed to the front of the wagons, where most of the others were walking.

The second-year students were the ones driving the wagons themselves. This was good for saving us the trouble, but it also meant that all the students were free to roam and observe each other. Pulling someone to the side was possible, but if I did it this early on it would be conspicuous.

I decided to wait just a little bit before trying to have any private conversations. Instead, I found a cluster of people looking at the map toward the front of the group.

“Looks like it’s about thirty miles to the settlement,” Kyra was saying. “Wagons are going pretty slow. What do you think it’ll take, two days to get there?”

“Low as a day and a half if we can keep up a good pace. Depends on how much we stop to rest. Could be more like three days if we get hit by monsters.” Sera replied. “Or Tails.”

“What kinds of precautions can we take for that?” Patrick asked.

“Might want one or two people riding in each of the wagons at all times. The weight probably wouldn’t slow them down much and they’d be able to defend against any invisible attackers that show up inside.” Kyra offered.

Patrick frowned. “Are invisible attackers really what we’re worried about?”

“It’s what I’d do.” Kyra grinned, cracking her knuckles. “I know you’d probably just throw a fireball at them or something, but we’ve got three Elementalists and a Shaper. I’m not worried about conventional assaults. Sneak thieves are far more likely to do us damage.”

“Uh, not to be too under confident here, but I don’t think having a bunch of Elementalists means we’re guaranteed to stop a magical attack from a distance,” Patrick argued. “They could hit us from any angle at any time.”

I was hesitant to jump into the conversation. I wasn’t particularly comfortable dealing with the number of strangers that were around, especially with the knowledge that we had a traitor among us. But I needed to contribute, and not just to finding the Spiders. “I can enchant the wagons with shields when we stop for the night.”

Kyra turned to me. “You can do that to wagons?”

“Sure. I can enchant pretty much anything, as long as it has a high enough mana capacity. Most types of wood don’t hold as much as metal, but given the sheer size—”

“Okay, I get it. Good. Shields on the wagons. What about the boxes?”

I nodded. “There are a lot of them, but I could probably get to them eventually.” I paused, considering. “Assuming there’s nothing volatile inside the enchantments would interact with.”

Kyra frowned. “Define volatile.”

“Some particular materials react badly to enchantments, but I was thinking more in terms of other magical items. I doubt we’re shipping a bunch of magic swords, but there’s a good chance there are alchemical goods in some of the boxes. If that’s the case...”

“Case. That’s a box pun.” Patrick snickered.

It hadn’t been, but I chuckled anyway.

I continued my explanation. “The simple answer is that I probably shouldn’t enchant any boxes with magic stuff in them. Other boxes are fine, assuming I have enough mana to get to all of them. Might not be able to tonight.”

“Okay, that’s good. Useful. Should we start putting people in the wagons now?” Kyra turned to Sera.

Sera shrugged. “Probably a little early to bother with it. We’re not likely to be attacked immediately.”

“How do we know?” Patrick asked.

“We can’t say for sure, but that would imply a team has been camping out waiting for someone to leave the base. That’s possible, but it doesn’t sound efficient, unless they were told our deployment times.” Sera brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Although it would be nice to get an idea of what level of information our attackers do have, and what their goals are. That might help give us some idea of when they might strike.”

“Don’t think we’ve got much of a lead on that, unless someone’s got info on the Tails in their packet?” Kyra looked hopeful, but we all shook our heads. “Didn’t think so, but it was worth checking. I’ll ask the others later. Maybe someone has a lead.”

“In the meantime, I suspect our best bet is to take a look at the map for likely ambush points. Maybe here,” Sera pointed a finger at a crossroads a few miles down the road, “Or any similar area. Or just right near the settlement. If they’re supposed to be harassing any team, as opposed to our team in specific, their best bet is to set up near the settlement itself.”

“Good point. We should definitely plan to be on the alert when we get close, then, and any time we’re nearing a crossroads or another major point of interest.” Kyra waved at the map. “You holding onto that for now?”

Sera nodded. “I’d like to, if you don’t mind. I’d like to study it for a few hours at least. I can pass it to you later tonight?”

“Sounds good. I’ll go check in with the others.” Kyra waved as she walked away.

It was just Patrick, Sera, and me walking with the map at that point.

I glanced to the side to check on Marissa, just to make sure that Rupert wasn’t harassing her. Fortunately, she just seemed to be chatting with Jin.

I still didn’t trust Jin entirely, but Marissa could take care of herself. She was the only one of us I suspected could reliably handle Jin in a physical fight. As long as she was watching him, I didn’t have to be hyper vigilant about what he was up to.

With that worry dismissed for the moment, I had other worries to contend with.

I already had a few strategies in mind, but it wasn’t time to deploy any of them just yet.

Any sort of traitors would be likely to act either during the middle of an attack by the tails, during a monster attack, or while most of the students were asleep.

If there were multiple of them, they’d also be looking for chances to communicate with each other.

My opportunities to counter them were going to be similar. Anytime people were distracted or asleep, I could try to gather — or place — information.

Any time I could get a single person alone, I could try to interrogate them, directly or indirectly.

I had a few key decisions to make before I made any major moves.

One, I needed to decide if I could trust any of my friends implicitly. This wasn’t a question of whether or not I could know if they were Spiders — I’d decided early on that I couldn’t prove that immediately.

Rather, it was a question of if I trusted anyone enough to cooperate with them regardless of whether or not they were a Spider.

That decision was difficult, because I did not know to what extent we would have mutually exclusive winning conditions. Was it possible for both the Spiders and the non-Spiders on the team to earn enough points to count as a success?

If so, no problem. I could work with the Spiders to ensure we each had a partial success, and enough points to graduate.

If not, that would largely disqualify any sort of cooperative plan. I was not going to let myself fail for a friend, especially if that would mean sabotaging the majority of the group to do so.

So, I needed to know if a cooperative victory was possible before making any decisions in that regard.

Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing their goals yet, and I also didn’t know the exact details of how we were scored.

That meant I’d need to anticipate how the grading process worked and try to bet around that if I used that strategy.

I judged that strategy to be too much of a risk, at least for the moment.

My second decision to make was whether or not I was going to pretend to be a Spider.

I didn’t know if the Spiders were aware of each other’s identities or not. Similarly, I didn’t know if they were aware that people knew there were traitors in the group.

If they already knew each other, it was unlikely to work. Period.

If the Spiders didn’t know who each other were, and they were also unaware that there were people who knew about them, pretending to be a Spider and luring out the other Spider(s) somehow was potentially a viable strategy.

If they didn’t know each other, but they did know that other people knew about them, it was possible I could still pretend to be an additional “undisclosed” Spider.

For the moment, I considered the risks of that strategy too high for the potential rewards, but it was definitely an option to play that way later on.

We continued walking for a few hours. I chatted with people a bit, but not about anything important.

Desmond Vyers was apparently the leader for the other team, but Kyra was giving all the orders and he didn’t seem to care. I didn’t read too much into that; it wasn’t suspicious on its own.

Since Kyra was taking the role of coordinating the other team, she spent a lot of her time talking to Sera. They decided that we’d just have one person riding in each wagon at a time after realizing just how little room there was for anyone to sit with the boxes.

The first shift was Marissa and Jin. The leaders decided they wanted as many of the ranged combatants as possible outside, just in case they had to deflect magical attacks. It wasn’t a bad call.

The hours pressed on without incident, at least at first.

We stopped for a mid-day meal after several hours of walking. Kathy took care of feeding the horses.

The rest of us strategized.

I found Sera talking to Kyra again. Sera waved me over. “We’re talking about sending Vanniv to scout ahead.”

I considered that. “That’s definitely a way to get us some information. I’d be worried about how visible he’d be if he’s flying, though. If he comes back to you to report, it could give away our location.”

Kyra pointed up, and I followed her gesture. The tree cover was pretty thick. “People don’t usually look up very often. And even if they did, they’re going to have a hard time seeing through that canopy.”

I nodded in agreement. “Fair. Might be wise to have him circle around and land behind us or something, though, then fly low to the ground to get back to us. Just in case.”

“I can do that,” Sera replied. “He’s probably going to be happy just to be able to do anything. It’s been ages since I’ve summoned him for anything other than training.”

“Can he even tell? I mean, does he sense the passage of time when he’s not summoned?” If he could, that implied a degree of consciousness, even in an unsummoned state. That was...strange.

Sera seemed to come to the same conclusion, based on how her face contorted as she considered the answer. “He always sounds like he’s complaining about how long it’s been...but maybe that’s just his personality. I can’t see how he could be keeping track of anything unless he’s summoned.” She shook her head. “Anyway, not important right now. We can worry about the details of summoning theory later.”

“Right.” I was curious, though. “Okay, you summoning him right now?”

“May as well. We’ll probably be in a static location for a while. It shouldn’t take him long to scout the next ten miles or so of the road.”

Kyra nodded. “I concur. Go ahead.”

Sera clasped her hands together. “Vanniv, I summon you.”

The winged man of stone appeared at her side a moment later.

He was notably taller than last time. Meaning, of course, that he was back to being human height.

I admit to having been slightly disappointed. The tiny Vanniv was adorable.

“Ah! Excellent. You’ve finally decided to make use of me.” Vanniv beamed, glancing around. “What have we here? A forest, a few lovely maidens?”

“Fewer maidens than you’d think, karvensi.” Kyra replied. “Unless you’re talking about yourself.”

“Ooh, I like this one. She’s got bite.” Vanniv turned his head to Sera. “Can I keep her?”

Sera folded her arms. “Vanniv, don’t be creepy.”

Vanniv put a hand over his heart. “Creepy? Banish that thought from your mind, dear. I am the epitome of wit and charm. One should not mistake my debonair—”

“Quit it.” She poked a finger into his abdomen. “We’re on a timer here.”

“Aren’t you always?” He glanced around, then took in a deep breath. “Very well. I can appreciate the change of scenery, at least. What is this, Vanway?”

Sera nodded. “Surprised you know that.”

“Unlike some people, I have a broad body of experience. And a broad body in general.” He flexed his wings. And his muscles.

It was strange that his body moved like flesh, even though it seemed to consist of stone-like material. How did that work? Did he have ordinary muscles beneath that hardened skin?

I pondered that briefly while Sera filled him in on his assignment.

“Very well. I shall miss you while I’m away, my Summoner. And you as well, Miss...”

“I’m not telling you my name.” Kyra replied.

“That’s an unusual name to go by. Can I call you ‘Not Telling’ for short?”

“Just go, Vanniv.” Sera waved a hand. “Shoo.”

Vanniv rolled his eyes. “Always spoiling my fun. Very well, I’ll be off.”

He took a running start — which was entirely unnecessary, as far as I could tell — and jumped into the air, his wings beating and taking him into the sky.

With that distraction dealt with, I debated talking to Sera about what I knew. Unfortunately, Kyra was still with her, and Kyra was the single most likely person to be a Spider in my mind.

Kyra was both powerful for her age and had the Shadow attunement, which was the classic skill set for an infiltrator. Moreover, she was making executive decisions for her team in spite of not officially being the team leader.

Perhaps that was just an assertive personality at work, but it was certainly possible she was manipulating things deliberately so that the Spiders would have an advantage.

The fact that Sera was sharing information with her so openly was a concern.

Could Sera be a Spider herself?

It felt unlikely to me. I had a hard time believing any of my friends could have gone this far into the year without telling me something like that.

But Sera had always been ambitious and goal oriented. She had a keen strategic mind, even when we were young. Could someone have discovered her talents before the year started and selected her for the Spider Division?

Or maybe I was looking at this wrong — could Spiders be selected later in the year? Even if she hadn’t been a Spider at the beginning, could she have been tapped for that role later on?

That would have made it more plausible that she hadn’t told me, especially if she’d only been selected recently.

Anyone I wanted to share my information with would be a risk. But it was a greater risk if I shared with someone who I considered better at social games and manipulation than myself. Sera definitely fit that, more so than anyone else here.

That meant that in spite of feeling closest to her, she was the most dangerous person to confide in.

Was that risk worth the potential for her help?

I didn’t know.

How could I verify if she was a Spider or not? Or anyone else, for that matter?

The simple answer was that I needed to get ahold of everyone’s paperwork. They weren’t allowed to share, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t steal it.

There were a couple problems with that plan.

One, I wasn’t a trained thief. Basic tactics like doing it at night weren’t beyond me, but everyone would be on their guard here.

Two, if they were Spiders, they could have destroyed their orders or even altered them.

Three, their orders may not have ever contained anything to out them as spiders in the first place.

Those points made trying to search through everyone’s paperwork a risk that had a high potential for turning up nothing.

But it was still my best lead, at least for the moment.

What could I do to improve my odds?

I looked around, considering everyone present.

Was there anyone I could trust implicitly? No.

Was there anyone that would be extremely useful if I got them on my side for this activity?

It was the person my eyes never quite settled on — the person my mind seemed to be forcing me to ignore — that was the right answer.

If I hadn’t been deliberately going down the team list, I wasn’t certain I would have even thought to approach him.

The effects of the Mesmer attunement were subtle. It wasn’t like the brute force effects that we’d trained against.

I was able to resist the mental effect by deliberately purifying my mana and converting more of my mana into mental mana, but only once I was actively aware I was being influenced.

If I hadn’t been aware of Jin’s attunement, I wouldn’t have thought to do it at all. That made it terrifying.

It also meant he had a tremendous advantage in this exercise — if he was on my side.

I started to walk toward him uncertainly.

A hand settled on my arm, stopping me along the way.

I flinched at the sudden contact, turning to find Roland next to me.

He raised his hands in a gesture of apology. “Sorry, Corin. Didn’t mean to startle you. Can we talk a bit?”

I took a breath to calm myself. “Yeah. Sure. Talk.”

“In private?” Roland waved to a section of trees away from the path.

“Yeah. Sure.” I took another breath. Roland walked off the path, and I followed him.

My eyes scanned him again, my attunement activating instinctively.

Nothing on him was immediately alarming. No hidden magical weapons under his clothes.

Still, I couldn’t be too comfortable with him until I knew what his skills were.

Maybe now was the time to find that out.

We walked for just about a minute before he stopped. Even with that slight distance, we were deep enough in the trees that everyone else was out of sight.

I walked to stand a few paces away from him. Far enough that I judged I could easily draw my sword before he could reach me, unless he was even faster than my haste spell was.

I tried to sound casual, but my breath was ragged with nervousness. “What’d you want to talk about?”

Roland tightened his jaw, looking displeased. “I have a secondary assignment, but I can’t complete it alone.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “And you’re asking me...why, exactly?”

He sighed. This clearly wasn’t a comfortable conversation for him, either. “Let’s just say I have a strong indication that you’d be the right one to help.”

“Unfortunately, ‘let’s just say’ isn’t going to be good enough for me right now. I have a secondary assignment, too.”

Roland nodded. “I suspected as much. This appears to be some sort of trust exercise.”

So, he’s got a piece of the puzzle, too, even if it’s not the same one.

I can work with that.

“I gleaned something similar from my own orders. Unfortunately, they also give me a disincentive to share information with people unless I know I can trust them.”

Roland raised an eyebrow at that. “You’ve known me since we were kids, Corin. Of course you can trust me.”

I shook my head. “I mean within the context of this exercise. Although, frankly speaking, I don’t know you very well anymore. We’ve barely spoken in years.”

“I...suppose I’m at fault for that, at least to some degree. We should definitely talk about that. But maybe not right now?” Roland shook his head. “Someone is going to get suspicious if we’re out here too long, and I have a feeling that conversation could take a while.”

“Agreed. For the moment, let’s focus on these assignments. Can you share anything with me about what your paperwork says?”

“Very little. I have a high number of restrictions on what I’m allowed to say and do.”

I frowned at that. It could easily imply that he was a Spider himself — and he was a good candidate for that, given how much he’d been missing throughout the year.

But it wasn’t the only explanation, and I wasn’t going to let myself get trapped in thinking about the first option I’d considered. “Okay. What can you tell me?”

“My orders told me to find the Enchanter with two attunements and discover their mission. I wasn’t aware you had two attunements, but I know you’re an Enchanter. There are other people who it could be, but I know you, so I’m starting with you.”

Dangerous to confirm that, but it’s common knowledge within my group. If he doesn’t learn from me, he’ll probably learn from someone else, unless I can communicate for them not to.

“I’m most likely the one you’re looking for. I’m not telling you my mission without some confirmation that it doesn’t interfere with mine, though.”

Roland nodded. “Understandable. Thank you for that, at least.” He turned to leave.

I blinked. That had been...abrupt. “Hold on. What’s your own attunement?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Not allowed to say. But if you do happen to find out, I’m allowed to use it around you.”

That was an obvious nudge to figure it out on my own. Unfortunately, even with my own attunement active, I couldn’t see what his mark was. It was under his clothing somewhere. Most likely the center of his chest, from the glow I saw from that area — unless he was wearing something under his clothes.

His legs were glowing, too, though. That might have meant he had a Leg Mark, or maybe he was just wearing magic boots. The sheer number of auras on him made it hard for me to tell — and that was probably a deliberate effect.

“Can you tell me which attunements you don’t have?”

Roland smiled for the first time I could remember seeing in years. “That’s a very you question, Corin. But no, I’m not allowed to imply my attunement, either. Sorry. Wish I could make this easier for you.” He shook his head. “Let’s head back. The others will be wondering about us by now.”

He sounded sincere enough, but I had to question his goals.

I thought about it more as I followed him back.

The closest thing I’d heard to a restriction about discussing an attunement was Sera’s contract with Seiryu. I hadn’t studied Summoners extensively, but it was hypothetically possible he had a similar contract with an even greater restriction.

But it didn’t sound likely.

More likely, this specific assignment had instructions not to disclose his attunement. This was clearly a trust exercise — as well as an information gathering exercise.

But even more likely than that answer? He was forbidden to discuss his attunement in general, even outside this test. Just restricting him within one test was a nearly pointless exercise — almost everyone knew each other’s attunements by this point in the year.

But Roland had never disclosed his, even at the beginning of the year. And he’d never shown it off, even during dueling classes.

That strongly implied the restriction predated this test.

So, what possible reasons were there for that?

The simple answer was that Spiders were instructed not to disclose their attunements. If he was a Spider, that was a simple conclusion to draw.

But it wasn’t the only one.

Jin had hidden his attunement because it was a foreign one — and not from a nation that he wanted to be associated with.

Roland was a Valian native. That meant he probably had a Valian attunement...but it wasn’t a guarantee.

Derek had an attunement from Dalenos. It was expensive to take a trip to another country and get a foreign attunement, but there were some advantages. Notably, both Dalenos and Edria allowed people to take attunement exams at a younger age.

That was why Jin was as powerful as he was, and it was probably a good part of why Derek was already an Emerald. Dalenos offered Judgments starting at thirteen — so, four years earlier than in Valia.

Roland was just a little older than me.

My mother had started taking trips to Dalenos to climb their spire a few years ago. Roland had been a part of her household.

Could Roland have gone with her and taken a Judgment at a younger age?

That would have explained a great deal. If he’d taken a Judgment three years ago, he could be around the same level of power as Jin and just hiding it in the same way.

I was beginning to suspect the entire monster-infested forest was just a backdrop for an intelligence gathering activity.

Or, of course, maybe I was just overthinking all this. I had a tendency to do that.

We got back to the wagons. I fetched some food from my pack, ate quickly while pondering my next move, and then settled on my original approach.

I found Jin standing at the border of the woods, eating in silence.

I walked over to him and pulled my water skin out of my pack, offering it to him.

It was the one that provided an endless supply of drinking water, so I wasn’t exactly wasting anything.

He accepted it with a raised eyebrow, taking a quick drink before handing it back to me.

I took a breath. I was so bad at this. “Thought we could talk for a minute.”

“You would technically be correct.” He took another bite of his meal — a sandwich that appeared to consist of nothing but two slices of bread and a piece of cheese wedged between them.

I chuckled. “I, uh, not about us. About the mission. Or, rather, additional missions.”

He frowned, though whether it was at the world’s most boring lunch or my words was hard to judge. “Go on.”

“I could use your help with something.”

He took another bite. “Clearly. Why else would you approach me?”

I folded my arms. “Right. First thing you can help me with is not being dramatic.”

“But it’s part of my charm.”

“No, being brooding and mysterious is part of your charm, not being dramatic. Wait. No, you’re not tricking me into complimenting you.”

“Too late.”

“Resh.” I narrowed my eyes. “Okay, Jin. We’re not dealing with interpersonal things right now. Mission stuff. Focusing now.”

“Of course.”

He was clearly enjoying teasing with me. I was not going to fall for that.

Probably.

“Okay. So, I have a secondary mission that involves gathering information. You can go almost completely unnoticed.”

“Almost?” Jin made the slightest smirk. “Think you’re underestimating me.”

I hated how much I liked that smirk. “Right, clearly you’re an impossible to detect Emerald-level Shadow. Let’s go with that. I have two assignments for you, oh-great-bastion-of-invisibility.”

“I take it that at some point you will tell me what these assignments are.”

“I’m getting to that. Ugh.” I refused to be flustered. It was ineffective. “I need you to find out what Roland’s attunement mark is. It’s probably on his—”

“Diviner.”

I blinked. “What?”

“He’s a Diviner. The mark is on his right leg. He wears enchanted pants to obfuscate the aura. I figured that out ages ago. What else?”

My jaw moved, but no sound emerged.

“Take your time.”

I sighed. “Show off. Okay, fine, why’d you figure that out?”

“Is that important?”

“Maybe.”

“I was sizing up the people who were in your inner circle for anyone who might be able to work through my Mesmer attunement. I noticed that he was the only one who wasn’t disclosing his abilities in conversation. I asked Patrick, who didn’t know either. I had Patrick ask Sera. When she didn’t know, I had to find out myself. That was more complicated and I will save you the details.”

I suddenly had an image of Jin trying to find an opportunity to catch Roland without his pants. I laughed, and that helped me feel a little bit better. “Okay. That’s fine. It’s good information. Great, in fact.”

It didn’t tell me if Roland was a Spider, but if I could trust Jin’s word on the subject — which I probably could — it meant that I had a pretty good idea of what Roland was capable of.

And it wasn’t a foreign attunement. I’d probably just been overanalyzing that one.

Still, it was refreshing to know he was most likely going to be a similar level of power to ours. That meant it’d be easier to counter him if he did turn out to be an adversary.

I cleared my head and focused on the next task. “Okay, next thing. Are we being observed right now?”

Jin scanned from left to right. “Not as far as I can tell.”

“Good. Are you a Spider?”

Jin blinked.

Then he smiled broadly, showing teeth. “Why, of course not.”

“You have to realize that is the world’s most suspicious response.”

Jin laughed. “I’m just startled it took you this long to corner me and ask. But also pleased that you did.”

“Okay, good. Because there’s at least one in the group, and they’re going to sabotage us.”

Jin’s expression shifted immediately to neutral. “What?”

“You heard me. We’ve got an infiltrator in the group. Possibly more than one. And I’d like your help to find them.”

Jin scanned the area again. “I’m revising my earlier assessment. If this is the kind of conversation we’re going to be having, we need to do it further away.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t see anyone watching us when you asked, but if you’re correct, we’re in a considerably greater amount of trouble. Anyone in Spider Division is likely to have alternate means of surveillance that would be harder to detect.”

I frowned. “Such as?”

Jin paused. “You were talking to Roland earlier. Did he touch you?”

“What?”

An image flashed in my mind of him grabbing me by the arm, then apologizing for bumping me.

Jin continued speaking, but my mind put it together at the same time. “Leg-Marked attuned use their spells by touch.”

“...And he’s a Diviner. He could be watching us right now.”

I scanned my body with my attunement active, but I couldn’t see any foreign magical auras.

That meant very little, though. I’d only studied a little bit about divination. Enough to know about tracking spells...but not enough to know about whether or not the target of an active divination spell would have a visible aura on them.

And, like Roland, I had so many magical items at this point that discerning any individual magical effect was tricky at best.

“What do we do about it if he is?”

Jin drew in a sharp breath. “If he is, he’s already outmaneuvered us significantly. He knows we’re aware of Spiders in the group, and he also knows about my attunement now. And as a Diviner, he’s one of few types of attuned that can counter me directly.”

That made sense. “Do you know how to break a divination spell that’s already in effect?”

Jin shrugged. “Distance, maybe, but we’re not going to get out of range. Time, of course.” He snapped his fingers. “Shadow magic. Shadow can nullify most magic in general, especially detection.”

“Kyra, then?”

“She’d be a possible solution,” Jin agreed. “But we don’t even know if we’re being watched. Asking her for help would mean letting her in on this, at least to some degree.”

“Fair. Perhaps for the moment, we should just proceed as if we’re being observed. Kyra is another suspect herself, and I’d rather not let her in on anything just because Roland might be watching. Besides, even if he is observing us, that doesn’t automatically mean he’s a Spider. Gathering information is a normal Diviner task.”

“I concur. But it also means we should draw this conversation to a close. I will investigate things further.”

I nodded. “So will I.”

We had an awkward pause for a moment after that.

Jin lifted up a remaining bit of sandwich. “I’m going to continue eating now.”

“Right. Bye.”

I turned and fled.

Well, I considered, that could have gone worse.

That was when the wagon closest to me exploded.

Chapter XVI – And Then Everything Was On Fire

I did what was obviously the smart thing and ran toward the explosion.

Some others reacted similarly, showing a similar lack of self-preservation instinct.

Others drew weapons.

Marissa ran after the fleeing horses.

Oh, right! Horses.

They ran right past me, obviously terrified from the sudden burst of sound and fire.

I was a little surprised they were free to run at all — they must have been detached from the carriage while they were being fed. This was unfortunate timing.

Unfortunate or, more likely, well-planned by a traitor who needed as many distractions as possible.

Sera was only a few feet away from the carriage, holding her head. The sound of the detonation must have hit her hard at that range.

Patrick stepped in front of her, glanced around, then pointed his hand at the flames. “Extinguish.”

The flames flickered, but didn’t subside.

“Was anyone in there?” Someone asked. I couldn’t tell who.

I rushed over to Sera, who was slowly rising to her feet. “You okay?”

She pointed at her head, then frowned. “Mm,” was all she managed to say.

“Can’t hear me?”

She stared for a moment, then half-nodded uncertainly.

“Resh. Patrick, can you take care of the fire?”

“Trying, but it’s not working. This was a powerful spell, and I’m specialized in lightning, not fire.”

I nodded to him. Then I pointed to Sera, raised my hands up, and made a throwing gesture.

“Wha?” Sera mumbled. “Oh!” She shook her head. “I think...maybe...” She coughed, then took a breath, and began to chant. “Goddess watching from up high, send us snow from the sky!”

I’d expected her Permafrost Cascade spell, but what she conjured was just a bit different. Globes of snow appeared above the carriage and descended, weakening the flames.

The other two Elementalists approached, joining Patrick’s efforts and finally managing to extinguish the flames.

We quickly cleared away the wreckage of the top of the vehicle and confirmed that, fortunately, no one had been inside at the time of the blast.

“What the resh was that?” Kyra asked.

“Explosion,” Patrick explained.

“I caught that, genius. I mean, how’d that happen?”

Rupert picked up a rod from the center of the cabin. It was etched with runes and split in half. “This,” he said, “Looks like an enchanted item.”

All eyes turned to me.

“I was over there, talking to Jin.” I pointed at the spot where Jin had been. He was gone, of course.

“I’m no expert,” Rupert Kent said, “But I do think this is the type of item that could be set in advance and set to detonate at a specific time. Which does seem like the kind of thing you would do, Cadence. No offense.”

“And how would you know about enchanting?” Patrick asked.

Rupert puffed up his chest. “Unlike some of the people here, I actually study quite broadly.”

I waved a hand. “Let me see that and at least confirm if what Rupert is saying is correct.”

“Be my guest.” Rupert tossed me the broken rod. I glanced it over, examining the runes.

He was right. It had a time delayed activation function. The amount of time the item would take before detonating would be based on the amount of mana invested at the time it was used.

“He’s correct about the runes. But I didn’t make this.”

“Right,” Rupert said. “The only Enchanter here didn’t make the magic item. Seems likely.”

“Virtually everyone here is wearing magical items. Anyone could have bought something like this ahead of time. It wouldn’t be expensive.”

“Except they checked us for dangerous weapons on the way in,” Vyers pointed out. “And explosive devices would certainly fall into that category.”

Unless someone was allowed to carry one as a part of being a member of Spider Division, I considered. But explaining that might be unwise.

“Someone could have smuggled it in,” Roland offered. I raised an eyebrow, surprised at his help. “They only did a physical check, not a magical one, as far as I could tell. A Shadow could have gotten through that.”

Some of our eyes shifted to Kyra.

“What? Wasn’t me.” She shrugged. That was apparently going to be the extent of her defense.

“Even if I wanted to make something like that, I couldn’t. That was fire magic. I don’t have fire magic.”

“No, but your buddy there does,” Vyers pointed to Patrick. “And he was the first person to jump to your defense, too. Thinkin’ you could be working together.”

I put my hands up. “And what motivation would I have to do any of this?”

“There are Spiders here,” Jin said, appearing next to Vyers and giving the latter quite a shock. “They have been instructed to sabotage our mission. Our second-year friends can confirm.”

Kathy opened her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Wasn’t supposed to tell you guys, but now that it’s out in the open, yup. That’s part of your test.”

“So, who are they?” Patrick asked.

Kathy blinked. “I’m...obviously not going to just answer that.”

It seemed like a silly question, but Kathy’s eyes shifted when she responded, just for a moment.

I didn’t see where she was looking.

But maybe Patrick had?

Not a bad move, Patrick. Hope you got something.

“Okay, but why? They broke some of our crates, but most of the contents seem intact. Were they just expecting the fire to burn longer?”

“The horses,” Jin answered. “And, if they are particularly clever, a trap for whoever runs after the horses.”

I took just an instant to process that.

Patrick responded first. “Marissa! She’s in danger! We need to go after her.”

Kyra shook her head. “Marissa might be able to keep up with a horse, but she’s a Guardian. None of us are going to be able to catch them any time soon.”

“Actually, that’s not quite true.” I glanced from side to side. “I’ll be right back.”

Haste.

A field of transference mana manifested around my legs.

I broke into a run, ignoring the shouts from the people behind me.

I could clear my name later.

For now, I had a friend to save.

***

I still wasn’t particularly adept at running with the Haste spell active. Even practicing for weeks, I was still stumbling any time I hit a particularly large bump or a root. Twice, I nearly fell flat on my face.

But the speed boost was significant. I hadn’t measured it, but I guessed I was running at about twice my normal speed. Maybe a little less, after accounting for necessary slowdowns to avoid taking a tumble.

With that kind of speed, it only took me about two minutes to find Marissa, surrounded by half a dozen monsters.

The road ahead of her was blocked by a tremendous boulder — and a single figure in a hooded cloak stood atop it, glimmering with magical energy.

Two more humanoid figures in similar garb stood at the edge of the forest, simply watching.

No sign of the horses.

As I approached, a wolf-like beast with metallic blades protruding from its back leapt at Marissa.

She ducked, grabbed its legs while it was still airborne, and then spun and hurled it at another monster — an animated suit of armor.

The monsters collided and tumbled to the ground, but I knew they wouldn’t be down for long.

Still, I had greater concerns.

One of the figures in the forest raised a hand and pointed it straight at Marissa’s back. A halo of fire appeared around his hand.

He’s a heart-marked, and he’s charging a stronger spell.

I ran straight at him.

I was too unsteady on my feet to draw my sword while I was running.

I settled for something else.

One.

Two.

Three.

He turned toward my running footsteps. His hood fell backward, exposing a student’s face with almost comically wide eyes.

He shifted his hand toward me, still glowing with fire.

Four.

Good enough.

I slammed my fist into his chest, discharging the transference energy I’d been storing inside.

He flew backward, slammed into a tree, and then fell still.

I...might have hit him too hard.

Marissa turned toward the sound, absently backhanded a blast of lightning that came at her from the other direction, and then waved at me. “Oh, hey, Corin!”

Then a bear monster jumped on top of her, slamming her to the ground.

“Ack!” I managed, rushing toward her.

The bear-thing reared up to take a bite.

In that moment, Marissa rolled over. “Rude!” She punched it in the face.

The bear fell backward, looking stunned, and Marissa sprung to her feet, throwing a backward kick at the animated suit of armor that had just dislodged itself from the wolf.

Another blast of lightning came from the student on the other side, this time connecting. Marissa winced, falling back, and I saw her shield crack just slightly. It wasn’t the first crack, though.

A quick inspection with my attunement showed that she’d projected her shroud to outside of her shield, just like she had in the arena. That shroud was soaking up most of the damage she was taking, but not all of it.

And if her barrier broke, she’d be out, regardless of whether or not she could keep fighting.

I kept running toward her, but another monster got in my way. It looked mostly like a human, but with a neutral mask instead of a face.

Oh, that’s a—

The figure’s body stretched and distorted, flesh transmuting as it formed a school uniform. Black hair burst from the back of its head. A sword formed in its hand.

Then I was staring at an exceptionally creepy copy of myself, the only distinction being the neutral mask remaining in place of a face.

It raised a sword that matched my own, including with the transference aura surrounding it. I didn’t know how it managed that one.

But I knew what I was fighting. This was a charade, a type of magical construct that could copy the general appearance and capabilities of humans. It wasn’t quite as dangerous as a doppelganger, but it was still considered a Sunstone-level threat.

And it was coming at me fast.

I raised my own sword to parry its first strike, but another strike came at me almost instantly.

With my attunement still active, I understood why. His whole body was glowing with an aura of transference mana.

The charade had copied my Haste spell.

And it was better at using it than I was.

That strike only clipped my coat.

I stepped back, taking a defensive stance, but he struck again and connected this time, leaving a gash along my ribs. My phoenix sigil took the brunt of the damage, but it hit hard.

Not only had it left a gash along my side, the pure force of the blow left me staggering backward and coughing.

Now I know what being hit with a sword with a transference aura feels like.

While the charade continued to harry me, Marissa was still surrounded by five other monsters.

She was doing a great job at defending herself and redirecting their attacks into each other, but she wasn’t doing much real damage, and they were wearing her down.

I need to help her.

I tried to sweep the charade’s legs, but it hopped back, surprisingly nimble.

I wasn’t particularly used to fighting intelligent monsters. Humans usually had an advantage in finesse against the more bestial creatures, like that blade-wolf-thing.

In this case, I had fewer advantages. It was faster than me, and if the moments our blades had met were any indication, probably stronger.

I made a few probing strikes. It responded with expert precision, deflecting my blows without effort.

I had no noticeable skill advantage to exploit. At least not when taking the creature’s enhanced speed into account.

Haste.

I stretched the aura across my entire body, enhancing my speed for both my movements and my attacks.

I unleashed a flurry of rapid strikes. No pausing to aim. No bothering with critical locations.

The charade parried every strike. It was like it knew every move I was about to make.

Maybe it did.

In a fair fight, I stood no chance.

There was only one option, then.

Fortunately, fighting fair had never really been my style, anyway.

It’s just like the shadow I fought in the spire, I realized. Only, instead of a mirror...

The charade jabbed toward my face. I moved my head to the side, but the aura brushed my cheek, leaving a gash.

That strike brought him closer to me, though. I stepped in and rammed my forehead into the mask, discharging a burst of transference mana in the process.

I didn’t like using my mind mana. But I liked losing fights even less.

The creature fell back, cracks spreading across its mask where I’d landed the hit.

My own forehead hurt from the impact, but not enough to slow me down.

Gotcha.

I rammed my sword through the creature’s chest.

That was a bad move.

The charade’s torso distorted, hardening into an armor-like substance.

My sword was stuck.

It brought back its own blade, preparing to strike.

I gripped my sword in both hands, then concentrated.

Condense.

The aura of mana around my blade shifted all to one side — the top of the blade.

Then I pulled upward.

I split the charade’s torso and head in half.

The creature crumpled to the ground immediately, then shifted in shape again. The features that resembled mine dissolved, leaving a clay statue with a cracked mask.

Then even that vanished as the mana sustaining the creature faded away.

I turned toward Marissa. A clawed humanoid with green scales and a beak had grabbed onto her right arm.

She kicked the wolf-like creature as it tried to approach her again, then slammed an elbow backward into the scaled monster, but it didn’t let her go.

The robed figure on the opposite side of the clearing hit her with another blast of lightning. More cracks formed in her shield, and it was evident it wouldn’t hold much longer.

Closing the distance would have taken seconds, but attacking from here was faster.

I swung my sword and projected a wave of force, which hit the green-scaled creature in the back.

As it gasped in pain, Marissa adjusted her stance and hurled it over her head, right into the blades protruding from the top of the wolf.

The results were...messy. But effective.

The scaled monster vanished a moment later.

I rushed forward after that, while Marissa dodged a charge from the bear-like monster and hopped over a sword-strike from the animated suit of armor.

With that, I was at her side. Marissa grinned brightly at me. “Took you long enough.”

“Oh, yes, let’s complain about our rescuer. That seems reasonable.” I blocked a swing from the walking suit of armor.

Marissa rolled her eyes. “Rescue? Is that what this is? Thought you just couldn’t stand two minutes without me.”

The bear-like monster swung around and tried to maim her with a claw, but Marissa danced backward, then swept upward with a kick. Her aura whipped forward and sliced the creature’s head clean in half.

The monster collapsed, then vanished.

“That’s a new one. Haven’t seen you do that with a kick.” I side-stepped a lunge from the blade-covered wolf, jabbing my sword into its side.

The wolf howled, then took a deep breath. A sphere of flame began to form within its jaws.

“Nope, not happening.” I stabbed right through its neck. It vanished a moment later.

A blast of lightning caught me in the side, knocking me back a step and leaving a dangerous web of cracks in my barrier.

I cast a glance at the figure in the woods, then blocked another swing from the suit of armor.

Marissa smashed the armor with a fist, staggering it, and I followed it with a cut that knocked the sword out of its hands.

After that, Marissa punched the helmet right off it. There was no head inside, of course, but it still looked pretty brutal.

Fortunately, it fell and vanished a moment after that.

I slashed another blast of lightning out of the air, then attached a thread of mana to my shield sigil with my other hand. It was something I should have done a lot sooner, but I’d been distracted.

Then I stepped back, avoiding another blast, and began to recharge my sigil.

The last remaining monster was a slime. Marissa kicked it. It died.

“Left or right?” Marissa asked, glancing to the two remaining students, who were slowly beginning to back away.

“One second first. C’mere.”

Marissa raised an eyebrow and turned toward me. “I know I was talkin’ about missing me, but now is hardly the place or the time—”

“Ssh.” I put a hand on her shield sigil and poured mana into it. The cracks faded. “There. And left, by the way.”

Marissa laughed. “Aww, I wanted that guy. But fine.”

We charged in two different directions.

For the sake of symmetry, I sheathed my sword and charged more mana into my fist.

“Star descends from sky!” Marissa shouted in the distance.

“Uh...explodey fist!” I tried.

“Explodey fist?” The cloaked student had just enough time to question my attack naming abilities before I slammed a glowing fist into his chest.

He flew back just like the previous one had. His barrier cracked and shattered.

I rushed over to make sure he wasn’t too badly hurt, but he was already picking himself back up. The shields didn’t stop an attack completely, but they did a pretty good job of stopping a single punch — even a strong one - from causing permanent harm.

I didn’t bother to check on Marissa’s fight immediately. I went to the other student I’d smashed right at the beginning of the fight.

His eyes were reddened, and he still had a trail of tears along his sleeve.

I paused at a few paces away. “You okay?”

“...Yeah. Just disappointed.”

I nodded. “Sorry about that. You did a good job with the ambush.”

“Not good enough, I guess. You’d think with two Summoners and an Elementalist we could have handled two other students.”

I shook my head. “It was a good strategy.” I offered him a hand and helped him to his feet. “Marissa and I are two of the top students in a dueling class. You had bad luck, that’s all.”

“Bad luck.” He shook his head. “Guess that makes me feel a little better, at least. But Dad is still going to beat the resh out of me when I get sent home.”

My fist tightened when I heard that.

I glanced from side to side. No one else was watching us.

“Give me your shield sigil for a second.”

The student frowned, but complied. “Why? I already failed. There’ll be a signal going to the Soaring Wings.”

“They may not be able to tell how many signals are coming from one area.”

I knew how the sigil monitors worked. This one was only slightly different from the ones we’d used in the dueling class.

I sent a hint of mana into the shield sigil, recharging it with just a fraction of the sigil’s capacity. Then I reset the monitoring rune.

With that, it would detect that the shield was still intact. And, hopefully, it would stop signaling the Soaring Wings.

“What are you...?”

I handed it back to him. “Put it back on. It may register as not completely broken. No promises, I haven’t tested this before. Hide until the Soaring Wings show up, then have them check the sigil. They may let you stay.”

“I...thank you. I don’t know what to...”

“Don’t attack my group again. Period.”

The other student nodded weakly.

“Good. I’m going to go check on the others now.”

I started to head toward Marissa.

“Wait.”

I turned my head. “Yeah?”

“One of the traitors in your group is one of the second-years. Kathy.”

I opened and closed my jaw, but no sound came out. One of the second-years? That wasn’t even close to fair.

But of course it wasn’t.

They must have known we wouldn’t consider the second-years an option. That made discovering them much less likely.

And we didn’t even know what Kathy’s attunement was. It hadn’t been listed.

I took a breath. “Thank you. Do you know if there are others?”

The student shook his head. “No, sorry. Kathy was our contact.”

“Got it. Take care of yourself.”

“Thanks... I’m Ryan, by the way.”

“Corin. I’ll see you later.”

I waved and headed over to where Marissa was, weirdly, still facing off against the third student.

I’d expected it to be over with one punch.

Upon arriving at the scene, I could see why it wasn’t. Marissa had just finished pummeling two more monsters into a pulp.

This third student was not only a Summoner, they were a strong one if they still had enough mana for more at this point.

They weren’t even breathing hard. They just stood on that rock, arms folded as Marissa and I approached.

“Fools. This land belongs to the Tails of Orochi. And, like our master, if you cut off a single head—”

“Punching you now.” Marissa slammed a fist into the student’s stomach.

I was mildly disappointed. I’d been enjoying the evil monologue.

The student doubled over, coughing. “Ow.”

“Sorry. Looks like it’s going to take one more.”

Slam.

The student’s shield shattered.

“Ugh. You could have at least let me finish my speech.”

Marissa scoffed. “That is literally never a good idea.”

I walked over. “You both okay?”

“Just a couple scrapes and bruises. Nothin’ yer phoenix sigil won’t fix.” She jerked a thumb at the other student. “And I didn’t hit this guy too hard.”

“Your standards for ‘hard’ are absurd,” the student complained, then broke into a cough.

“All right. Looks like everyone is alive.” I considered casting a lesser regeneration spell on each of the students to help them recover faster, but I still had no experience at actually casting healing spells on other people. Even though regeneration spells were ostensibly safe, they didn’t seem injured badly enough that I should take any sort of risk. I needed to practice healing in a controlled environment first.

“Okay, Mara. Any idea where the horses went?”

“Off the trail. Monsters spooked ‘em.”

“You want to try to follow them into the woods?”

“Nah.”

“Neither do I. Let’s head back to the others. Thanks for coming to help me.”

Marissa grabbed me in a hug.

I froze.

Marissa pulled off. “Somethin’ wrong?”

“Little warning next time, Mara. I’m...sort of sensitive about people grabbing me.”

“Oh. Uh, sorry. I uh, thought it was okay. We’re friends, right?”

“It’s not... Of course we are, I’m just not good at dealing with being touched. I have trouble even with Sera.” I sighed. “It’s nothing personal.”

She frowned. From her expression, I wasn’t sure she believed me. “Oh, okay. I’ll try to be a little more careful, yeah?”

I nodded. “Thanks.”

“Do you, um, want to talk about it?”

“It?”

“Why you’re like that?”

I shook my head. “No. No, I do not.”

“Okay. I understand.”

I doubted that, but I wasn’t going to argue further.

We walked back to the others in silence.

Maybe I should have talked to her.

It might have helped keep the intrusive thoughts — and memories — from running through my head.

***

“You made it back!”

Patrick’s excited tone was a sharp contrast to the tone of my thoughts.

I tried to focus. But sometimes the more I tried to ignore something, the more it forced itself into my mind.

Fortunately, Mara did the talking. “Got jumped by three students on the Orochi team. Got to thinkin’ that this wasn’t a coincidence.”

“We concur.” Vyers said as he approached. “In fact, Corin is suspected of working with them.”

“Unless their team wins by bein’ punched, I doubt that.” Marissa folded her arms. “Ran right out and helped me, unlike the rest of you. Not that I needed any helpin’, mind you.”

Vyers turned to Kyra. “We only have their word for it. She could be one of them, too.”

Kyra nodded. “I’ll go check it out and see if there really are other students out there.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” I suggested. “Assuming their teams are structured like ours, three of them being there means there are still at least two others out there.”

“Unless those two others are already inside our group,” Vyers pointed out.

Possible, I considered, but more likely they’d have a full five and then the infiltrators on top of that.

Still, I couldn’t know for sure.

“All right.” Kyra gestured to Rupert. “Kent, you’re with me.”

Rupert gave Marissa a long look as the pair of them walked past us. Her hands balled into fists, but she didn’t say anything.

“I need to talk to Roland.” I started heading back toward the rest of the group, but Vyers stepped in front of me.

“Don’t think so. Not by yourself, at least. You’ve been having a lot of one-on-one conversations already. That’s more than a little suspicious.”

I nodded. “Sure. I’ve had time alone with Roland, Jin, and Marissa. You can’t honestly think we have four infiltrators, though, can you? That’d be an absurd ratio.”

Vyers shrugged. “I’m not dismissing any possibilities at this point. Could be half of us for all I know.”

“That’d be patently unfair.”

“Do we even know we have an infiltrator?” Marissa asked. “I mean, couldn’t someone have just fireballed that wagon from a distance?”

“You missed it. We found an explosive device in the wagon,” Patrick explained. “But that doesn’t mean it was any one of us. Maybe they had someone who was invisible that planted it.”

“Oh.” Marissa frowned. “Huh.”

“Not impossible,” Vyers turned toward Patrick, “But extremely unlikely.”

“Okay, Vyers. Why don’t you come with me to talk to Roland? You can hear what I have to say.”

“Acceptable.” He nodded. “Let’s go.”

“Any reason why we couldn’t come?” Patrick asked.

I hesitated, but Vyers answered for me. “Information control may be important if we do have an infiltrator in our group. Corin must have something he wants to keep confined for now.”

I made an apologetic expression. “Sorry, Patrick. My intent is to let everyone in on this soon, but I’m under some restrictions right now.”

“Okay.” He raised three fingers in a symbol of good luck. “You’ve got this.”

“Thanks.”

Vyers and I went to talk to Roland.

Of course, Vyers was one of the most suspicious people himself — he’d been weirdly quiet at the beginning, allowing Kyra to take charge, and now he was being much more assertive.

Maybe the explosions had just encouraged him to step up his leadership, but it was plausible there was something more than that going on.

“Roland, step away with us for a moment?” I asked.

“Sure.” Roland nodded, and we found a corner to talk in private. “You found something?”

“Yes. Can I say your attunement in front of other people?”

Roland frowned. “Sure, if you actually know it. But that was awfully quick. You sure you—”

“You’re a Diviner. Right leg.”

“That was...awfully quick. Can I ask?”

“I’ll explain later. For the moment, I’m in need of your expertise.”

“Sure. I can help you now that you’ve identified my attunement.”

Vyers frowned. “Is that part of the test somehow?”

“Not exactly,” Roland explained. “More of a broader school restriction.”

Vyers gave Roland a skeptical look.

I needed to act quickly, in case Vyers was about to stab us in the back. “As a Diviner, you can make memory crystals, correct?”

“Certainly.”

“Can you make them from other people, or just from your own memories?”

“Just my own, unfortunately. Making them from other people is a much more advanced skill.”

“That’s unfortunate. I was hoping you could make memory crystals of everyone reading their assignments.”

Vyers looked at me with an expression of surprise. “That’s...actually a pretty good idea.”

I nodded. “Ideally, that’d let us circumvent the ‘no looking at other people’s paperwork’ rule. For the moment, though, it seems we can only use it to verify Roland’s assignment.”

“I can do that. Hold on a minute.” Roland closed his eyes and opened his palm. It took him a minute or two to form a crystal, which he then handed to me. “It’s not one of the self-triggering ones. I’ll need to cast a spell on you to enable you to view it, and you’ll be incapacitated while you watch.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Let me do it in the middle of the group. Then we can pass it around.”

“Let me watch it first.” Vyers gestured to the crystal. “But still within the group. And you can watch it second. I need to make sure you don’t tamper with it somehow.”

I didn’t have any way of doing that, but that was fine. I appreciated a degree of paranoia. Respected it, even. I handed Vyers the crystal.

“Let’s go.”

We met up with everyone, forming a circle, and explained the situation.

Vyers sat and held the crystal.

Roland pressed two fingers against Vyers’ forehead. “View memory.”

The crystal shimmered.

Then we waited.

Kyra and Rupert returned while Vyers was still watching the crystal vision. “What’s this about?” Kyra asked.

We explained.

“Is this really necessary?” Rupert asked. “It’s obviously gotta be an Enchanter and an Elementalist working together. And it wasn’t me.”

“There could be any number of our members involved,” Sera replied, “Or none at all. Being able to validate that a Diviner is not a member of the opposition is extremely useful. Even if he can’t make crystals from the rest of us, Roland may have other spells he can use to gather information.”

“Fine, fine. Let’s get this over with.”

“Did you find three students?” Sera asked.

Kyra replied. “Two. But they explained they had a third with them that just got away.”

Marissa frowned and glanced at me. “Guess you didn’t hit them all quite hard enough.”

I felt just a little guilty, but if I had the chance to help that student — Ryan — escape from a situation anything like my own...

“I’ll be more careful next time.” It was the best I could manage to say.

Vyers reopened his eyes. “Think he’s clear. You all can watch, too.”

He passed the crystal to me, and Roland repeated the spell.

This wasn’t my first time viewing a memory crystal, but it was still disorienting seeing through someone else’s eyes.

At least in this case, I didn’t need to see much. The memory was from him reading the paperwork, so I just had to read what he had been reading.

There was nothing in the memories aside from the paper — I couldn’t even hear anyone talking in the background. He must have gone somewhere quiet to read.

Royce, Roland

Platoon Designation: Phoenix Omega

Primary Assignment: Delivery of goods to designated settlement. When you have reached the designated location, goods will be checked by your contact (see Student Supervisor for information on mission contact).

Secondary Assignment: Assist the Enchanter with two attunements if you can discover their mission. Your usual requirements are applicable.

The handwriting was different from my own paperwork. He must have been given his assignment by someone different. I wasn’t sure if that mattered.

My eyes reopened a minute later.

“I don’t see anything overtly suspicious.” I handed it to the next person.

Something seemed just a little bit off, though.

Was I just being too suspicious of everything?

“Okay, while everyone else is watching that, we still need to work. We’ve lost two horses, and some of our supplies are damaged.” Sera waved at the nearest wagon. “Fortunately, the horses for the other wagon didn’t bolt, so we still have one functional one.”

“Can one horse pull a wagon?” Patrick asked.

“Not one that heavy,” Roland replied. “But we might be able to consolidate the undamaged boxes into one carriage and leave the other behind.”

“We can carry a few boxes if the horses can’t handle it all,” Marissa offered.

I turned to Patrick. “Could you levitate a wagon?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Way too heavy. One box, maybe, and even then I couldn’t do it for very long.”

“Guess we’re consolidating boxes, then, and we’ll see if they can handle the load,” Kyra offered. “Let’s have a few of us stay here and watch the people using the crystal. The rest can check the damage and pack up.

We got to work.

Vyers pulled me to the side. “I may have misjudged you. That was a wise idea. I still don’t trust you, but there’s a better chance you’re not involved. But why did his orders say to find you?”

I wasn’t sure if I should say, but at this point it was mostly out in the open. “I had orders to find the traitor — or traitors — in the group from the beginning.”

“And you didn’t think to tell the rest of us about something that important?”

“I didn’t want anyone to be aware that someone knew there were traitors. If I told everyone I knew about the infiltrators, everyone would be on their guard around me.”

“Still a bad strategy. Ten set of eyes — or even five, if we have five traitors — would have been better than yours.”

I titled my head back and forth noncommittally. “Maybe. I didn’t expect them to move this quickly.”

“Well, they did. And now we’ve gotta clean up the mess. Anything else I should know?”

My lips tightened as I considered. “Nothing I’m comfortable saying to one person at a time.”

“That, at least, I can agree with. Fine. But if you do know anything, you need to find a time to share. And soon.”

I nodded. “Agreed.”

The only question was who I should share that information with.

I had the most evidence that Roland was not involved, but elements of it still bothered me. His inability to share information still hadn’t been fully explained, and it certainly could have been because he was a Spider.

Moreover, just seeing his paperwork didn’t mean he couldn’t have been given a different assignment verbally.

And he was carrying a bunch of magical items, which I still hadn’t gotten an explanation for. If he was a Diviner, that meant he had definitely been equipped by someone in advance. I didn’t know if he had explosive items or not. I would have needed to examine everything in his bags for that.

I wasn’t sure any degree of evidence was going to make me completely secure in Roland’s loyalties.

Who, then?

Could I trust that there were few enough traitors that just excluding Kathy from the discussion and including two or more others would mean it was likely at least one person I was talking to could be trusted?

Was there any way I could determine someone’s affiliation with any degree of certainty?

Vanniv descended from the sky while I was considering — and that gave me an idea.

***

We marched on. Vanniv pointed out a few locations where we’d have to watch out for monsters, and in each case we sent a group ahead to wipe them out.

There weren’t any major threats in the area — we had hundreds of students going down these pathways, and most of the monsters must have been cleared out by the earlier groups or the Soaring Wings.

Later in the evening, I pulled Vyers, Sera, and Jin into a discussion.

“I think I have a method of solving our problem. There’s one major issue, though. Kathy is most likely one of the traitors.”

“Kathy?” Vyers looked incredulous. “You think they’d make a second-year... Wait, yeah, our professors really are that cruel. Okay. Maybe.”

“I can handle Kathy.” Jin patted one of the pistols on his waist.

“That’s...not exactly the kind of problem I was talking about, Jin. But good to know.” I shook my head. “It’s information that’s the issue. I need to ask a policy question on whether something is allowed, and I’m not sure I can trust the answers from the second-years. If Kathy is compromised, Jordan might be as well.”

“That seems a little extreme. We’d have to doubt every element of our assignments at that point,” Sera pointed out. “Which, I suppose, could be the purpose of this assignment. But I doubt it. They want us to be working toward being soldiers, and that’s going to require a degree of trust for the chain of command and authority figures.”

“I concur,” Vyers replied. “If Kathy is compromised, I find it less likely that Jordan would be. And in either case, I doubt that a rules issue would be something they could lie about. That seems like it’s beyond the scope of someone playing a traitor in the test.”

“Fair. It’s a wording question.”

“Why do you think Kathy is a traitor?” Sera asked.

“One of the players on the other team told me,” I explained.

“...Why would they give you an honest answer about that?” Vyers asked. “They’re probably just trying to sew discord.”

I shook my head. “I doubt it. It was after I eliminated them.”

“They probably just wanted to get back at you, then, by planting false information. Maybe save their score.” Vyers explained.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “But they told me because I was being nice.”

“...Oh. Hm.”

“You’re sure about this, Corin?” Sera sounded concerned.

“No. I’m not sure about any of this. I’m terrible at people. But, if nothing else, now we have a means for getting answers.”

Sera smirked at that. “Okay. Let’s give it a try. I’ll go get Jordan.”

She walked off, bringing Jordan over to the rest of us a few minutes later.

“What’s this about?” Jordan asked.

“I have a question. Our orders from before the test were that we could not show our paperwork to other students. Correct?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “Sure.”

“Does that mean we could show them to someone else who isn’t a student? Say, a professor?”

Jordan nodded. “Good question. Yeah, if you find one of the professors at the encampment, you could show them your orders.”

“And other non-students?” I asked.

“I guess, but I don’t see any reason that other people would be out here.”

I turned toward Sera.

She’d already picked up on the idea, of course. “Vanniv, I summon you.”

Vanniv appeared by her side. “Twice? You must have missed me terribly.”

Jordan turned to Vanniv, then back to us. “I’m not...hmm... Yeah, you know what? Breaking the spirit of the rules a little bit, but I think you’d get away with it.”

“That’s all I needed to know.” I reached into my pouch and retrieved my paperwork. “Vanniv, do me a favor and read this out loud.”

A few minutes later, Vanniv had read the paperwork of Sera, Vyers, myself, and even Jordan out loud.

Everyone had little secondary assignments, but aside from mine, none mentioned the Spiders in the group. The others were pretty mundane. Sera was tasked with making a contract with a monster living in the woods, for example.

And none of them had any orders to sabotage the group.

“Shall we continue this with everyone else?” Sera asked.

“Let’s.” Vyers replied.

“Don’t forget that this doesn’t prove anything,” I pointed out. “We may very well discover that no one has written instructions to betray the group. They could have been given their orders verbally.”

“It’s still a good start. There has to be a reason they wouldn’t let us share our orders directly. We’re fortunate we had help.” Sera patted Vanniv on the arm.

“I live to serve.” Vanniv bowed. “Myself, that is.”

Sera rolled her eyes. “Truly, you’re a paragon of virtue.”

“When one considers self-preservation a virtue, I would indeed be an exemplar.”

We retrieved the others. “Be ready for anything.”

“What’s this?” Kyra asked.

“We’ve determined a fair method for learning everyone’s assignments without breaking the rules.” Sera waved to Vanniv. “He’s not a student, so we can share them with him. He reads them aloud.”

“That feels a little like cheating,” Rupert pointed out.

“No, it’s fair.” Kathy explained. “It was expected that someone would eventually think to ask for outside help. Either that, or you’d just have someone like Kyra rifle through everyone’s bags at night.”

That was the backup plan, but I was going to ask Jin, not Kyra.

“Vanniv, go ahead and read the ones we already handed you first.”

Vanniv read ours out loud again.

“Now, let’s form a line and have everyone—”

“Sera could have asked the karvensi to say anything,” Kyra protested. “And a Summoner with a karvensi would be quite capable of helping an Enchanter make a fire enchantment.”

“I am quite proficient at fire magic,” Vanniv offered.

“Not helping right now,” Sera nudged him. “Look, the rest of these people saw me summon Vanniv. I couldn’t have given him orders like that.”

“Standing orders. You could have told him last time you summoned him, when he was ‘scouting’,” Kyra pointed out.

That was...true. And Sera did have the planning abilities to have told him something like that in advance.

Maybe she’d come up with this plan before I had...and maybe..

“Vanniv, I command you to ignore any previous orders that I may have given you related to those papers. I command you to read them aloud again, without any alterations.”

He read the papers aloud again. There were no changes.

“Satisfied?” Sera asked.

“...Probably.” Kyra replied.

Kyra and Vyers were almost as paranoid as I was. I decided I liked them.

“Okay, if that’s resolved, can we have him read the rest of the papers?” I asked.

“One problem,” Rupert replied. “I lit mine on fire.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

“Actually,” Kathy added, “I did, too.”

Convenient.

But it wasn’t a bad strategy, even for someone who wasn’t a traitor, if they had any information in their documents they didn’t want getting out. It was possible I should have destroyed my own paperwork to prevent any Spiders from reading it.

“Great. Well, the rest of you, then?”

“I destroyed mine as well,” Roland added belatedly. “But you all saw me reading them.”

Most people seemed satisfied with that, but I wasn’t certain.

Vanniv read the paperwork that was handed to him after that. I felt intensely relieved that Patrick and Marissa didn’t have anything suspicious in their assignments.

I was less relieved and more surprised when Kyra didn’t have any suspicious orders. Her personal assignment was to discover the location of a hidden item in the encampment we were heading to and to retrieve it. Nothing involving Spiders.

Vanniv returned everyone’s papers to their original owners, and we packed them away.

“So, now what?” Vyers asked. “We’re no closer to a solution.”

“We are,” Sera replied. “We have at least partial verification that several people are innocent. Rupert and Kathy are now our most serious subjects.”

“Don’t blame me just because I was smart enough to take precautions against theft.” Rupert folded his arms. “And you think a second-year is a suspect? Please.”

“Actually,” I put a hand on the hilt of my sword, “I had a little conversation with one of the members of the other team after we beat them down.”

“Oh?”

I drew my weapon and pointed it at Kathy. “He said you were their contact.”

Kathy put a hand over her heart. “Me? That’s insane. I’m one of your supervisors.”

“And I have a practiced distrust for authority figures.” I took a step forward. “What’s your attunement, Kathy? You never told us.”

“Mine?” She tilted her head to the side. “It’s the one that lets me do—”

Marissa grabbed her from behind, pinning Kathy’s arms. “Nope. That’s an ‘I’m about to surprise attack you’ phrase if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Could have just said an attunement name if you wanted to tell us,” Vyers replied.

Kathy growled. “You’re making a big mistake.”

“Why? You still haven’t told us your attunement. Are you still claiming you’re innocent?” I asked.

“No, not because of that. Because while you’ve been watching me, my partner has been finishing our assignment.”

“Assignment?” Vyers asked.

The sound of a gunshot rang out through the air.

Chapter XVII – Shots Fired

The next sound was a body falling to the ground near the wagon.

Jin stood over the fallen body of Loria Marshal.

I felt my heart freeze in my chest. I turned and raised my sword, preparing to charge.

Kathy shook and managed to wrench herself free from Marissa’s grip, then spun and kicked Marissa backward with surprising force.

With a laugh, Kathy reached into a pouch at her side and pulled out a bell.

Without hesitation, Jin raised his pistol and fired twice more.

Both bullets hit Kathy straight in the chest. Her Sunstone-level shroud absorbed some of the impact, but not enough.

Her shield sigil cracked.

I charged at Jin. Sera stepped in my way. “Corin, stop.”

“Jin is—”

“Disposing of both traitors,” Jin replied. Then he knelt down and helped Loria to her feet.

Loria shook her head. “Resh it. How’d you know I was there?”

I looked at Loria again with my attunement active. Her aura was still Quartz, hard to discern.

But she was carrying fewer items on her belt than I’d seen before. Two, rather than three.

She has an item with the same function as Jin’s attunement, I realized. That’s why I wasn’t even thinking about her. And it was why he was able to pick up on it.

“My secret,” Jin replied. “Sorry I hit you that close.”

She shook her head. “No problem. Didn’t hurt. Rubber bullets?”

Jin nodded. “Indeed.”

Kathy grumbled and set her bell down. “Bah. We were so close.”

I turned to Kathy. “So, you were another Enchanter, and you worked with Loria — an Elementalist — to make the explosive devices?”

“Got it in one.” Kathy sighed. “Were we that obvious?”

“Not at all.” I shook my head. “You two did great. Can you confirm if there are any other traitors in the group?”

Kathy shook her head. “It was just the two of us. Good job figuring us out.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

I couldn’t trust her completely, but since she was eliminated from the test, I figured she didn’t have much motivation to continue deceiving us.

Marissa gave Kathy a concerned look. “You two aren’t going to be failed out, are you?”

Kathy shook her head. “Probably not. We managed to blow up one of the wagons, after all. And we were pretty badly outnumbered.”

“What do we do now?” Patrick asked.

“Probably wait here for the Soaring Wings to pick these two up, then keep going. We’ve already found two traitors. And if Kathy is lying and there any more are in the group, they’re badly outnumbered at this point.” I offered.

“We wanna do anything else to check people while we’re stuck ‘ere?” Marissa asked.

“Don’t know if we can. Unless Roland has any spells that might be of use?” I turned toward Roland.

“Nothing relevant, I’m afraid. If I knew any truth detection spells, I would have been using them a long time ago. And it’s not like there’s a ‘detect spider division’ spell.”

“Okay, let’s take this time to rest, then,” Sera suggested. “Maybe get another meal. It’s late.”

We took Sera up on that suggestion. Everyone ate together, even the two students we’d already eliminated. There were no hard feelings — they were just doing their assignment. In fact, things seemed less tense now that the conflict had been resolved.

After the meal break, we pressed on for the remainder of the day. We didn’t quite make it to the settlement by nightfall, though. While Marissa wanted to press on through the rest of the evening, most of us were too exhausted, including the horses.

We made camp just a little way off the trail.

It had been ages since I’d gone camping with a large group. My last “camping” experience was when I’d been teleported out of the spire directly to Keras. I’d spent the night in the middle of the woods with him and my injured allies.

In retrospect, it’s fascinating that Katashi was able to teleport me directly to Keras’ location. Did he know exactly where Keras was, or did he have some kind of anchor directly connected to Keras?

It’s probably something specific to Keras, because if Katashi could just teleport to any person he wanted, he would have found Tenjin immediately.

Hrm.

Normally, I would have just pushed those questions into my queue of things to research, but I was trying to break the habit of putting things off. And I needed to be better about taking advantage of the information sources I had available.

“Sera, come with me for a bit.”

We walked behind the wagon, and then retrieved the tents and other heavy items from the Jaden Box. No one asked any questions about where we’d gotten them from. Maybe they assumed we’d been carrying them the whole time, or that they’d been inside the wagon.

If they weren’t going to ask, I wasn’t going to volunteer anything.

We set up the tents, and I asked Sera to talk to me privately inside one of them for a bit. The thin canvas of the tent wouldn’t block that much sound, but we could whisper without looking too suspicious.

“Can I ask you some questions about teleportation?”

Sera rubbed her throat. “Yeah, but I’m not going to be able to talk much. Been speaking a lot today and my throat is killing me.”

That was worrisome. It was easy to forget that Sera was improving, but she still wasn’t fully healed. I wasn’t sure she’d ever recover completely on her own.

We weren’t far from the Vanreach Mountains right now, and that meant the herbs needed to concoct something to heal her were close by. That was something I wanted to look into, but it wasn’t the right time. As much as I wanted to help her, failing our exam wasn’t an option. Maybe we could investigate it after the exams were over, though, while we were still in the general region.

“Okay, I’ll keep this brief.” I shared my thoughts about how we’d been teleported straight to Keras.

“Hm.” Sera pondered for a moment. “I doubt Keras registered as enough of a priority for Katashi to bother divining his exact location regularly. I think it’s more likely your second guess: an anchor. Which is more worrying for Keras, to be certain, since anchors can be used for much more than just teleporting someone into your general vicinity.”

I nodded. “Maybe when Keras was in prison, Katashi took some of his belongings?”

“Or, even simpler. Katashi could have collected some of Keras’ blood after their fight, just like you did.” Sera rubbed her throat again, wincing.

“Okay. I think that’s a good enough explanation for now. Thanks for the help, Sera.”

She smiled, although her expression was still distorted by pain. “No problem. I’m glad you asked.”

I pondered what I could do about that, and I came up with something mundane. “Let me make you some tea.”

Sera blinked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you make tea. Or cook anything. Ever.” She laughed, but it quickly transitioned into a cough.

“I’ll make Patrick do the real work. Come on.”

We slipped out of the tent. I did, in fact, have herbs for tea with me.

“Patrick, can you start a campfire? I want to make some tea.”

He nodded. “Sure, that’s easy. Help me gather some stones to make a ring first, though, so it doesn’t spread.”

“That may be unwise,” Roland interjected. “Starting a fire is going to make a clear signal about our location. If there are still other teams looking to ambush someone, we’d be making ourselves an obvious target.”

“But we’ll be miserable without heat,” Rupert complained. “It’s cold up here. Practically freezing.”

Our group conferred for a bit longer before finally settling on making the fire, but keeping it small. We needed something to cook with in general, and not just for tea.

We also decided to set watch rotations for the evening. Patrick, Marissa, and I would take the first watch, then wake Desmond, Jin, and Rupert for the second. Kyra, Roland, and Sera would be third.

Jordan didn’t take a shift, since he wasn’t really required to help us, just to escort us.

We made the tea, as well as an evening meal, and then the second and third watch groups went to sleep.

As the night drew on, the temperature in the area dropped. As much as I hated to admit it, Rupert had a point. Without the fire, we would have been in awful shape.

Patrick, Marissa, and I huddled close to the flame. It wasn’t the ideal position for keeping watch, but we were freezing, and we had weapons close at hand. We agreed that one of us would stand up and patrol the area every once in a while.

“So...cold...” Patrick murmured.

We shivered in agreement, but the boredom of just sitting around bothered me more than the temperature. I didn’t like just sitting without an activity.

“We should do something,” I suggested.

Marissa shook her head. “Don’t think I’m movin’ from here, Cadence. Fire is all that keeps this tolerable.”

“Maybe we can tell stories?” Patrick suggested.

“Wouldn’t mind hearin’ a few, but I don’t got much to tell,” Marissa admitted sadly.

“You used to read all the time, Patrick,” I recalled. “You got any good stories?”

“Tons! Let’s see...” Patrick grinned. “Okay, I’ve got one. Let me tell you about Symphony, the Lady of Thieves...”

***

No one attacked us in the middle of the night. I admit that I was almost disappointed. Fighting always warmed me up.

Still, I enjoyed hearing Patrick’s stories, and Marissa seemed even more enraptured with them.

A group of Soaring Wings members met up with us the next morning, resplendent in their copper-colored plate armor and white tabards.

While the armor style was antiquated — dueling tunics were in favor these days, since they didn’t restrict mobility as much as traditional armor — there was still something impressive about seeing someone wearing heavy armor. And given that dueling tunics and shrouds didn’t offer the same degree of protection against close-range attacks, the armor still had a degree of utility to it, especially against monsters with close-ranged attacks.

We exchanged a few words, then the Soaring Wings escorted Loria and Kathy away from our camp. I felt a little sorry that they’d been eliminated from the test so soon, even if they were up against us. They’d been in a difficult position.

With that done, we packed our equipment and continued the trek toward the settlement.

The settlement was better developed than I’d envisioned. I’d pictured a circle of tents and wagons, but they’d built a wooden wall around the whole place, and sections of the wall had runes on them. They even had a crude gate, which swung open as we approached.

Six students approached from the open gate, putting us on our guard. I recognized the leader — Curtis Maddock, my dorm chief. I hadn’t seen him much since I’d moved into Derek’s manor. He gave me an odd look, probably because he’d assumed I’d been kicked out of the school or something.

“I’ll take care of this,” Kyra declared, moving to the front of the group. We’d never settled on who would be our spokesperson, but no one complained. Sera would have been a good candidate under normal circumstances, but her voice was clearly still bothering her.

“Who goes there?” Curtis shouted. I could see that his group was equally tense, hands hovering near weapons.

“Just a resupply group from Valia,” Kyra explained. “We have crates of dried meat, vegetables, blankets, and other odds and ends.”

Curtis folded his arms. “We were told that there would be two wagons.”

“Saboteurs destroyed one of our wagons before we got here. Tails of Orochi traitors,” Kyra spit into the dirt near her, emphasizing the effect.

That drew a series of sympathetic nods from the other students, and a couple of them visibly relaxed.

“Okay,” Curtis explained, “We’re going to have to check through your crates before you go in. I’m sure you’re exhausted and want to get inside, but as you said yourself, saboteurs have been a problem. We need to make sure you’re not sneaking anything dangerous in there.”

I heard a groan from Rupert, but no one actually complained.

“That won’t be a problem. We’ll just wait nearby,” Kyra offered.

“Stay in sight, and keep your hands off your weapons,” Curtis instructed.

It took them a few minutes to retrieve a pry bar from somewhere in the camp, then the better part of an hour to go through all the boxes and catalogue the contents. We spent most of that time chatting with each other, while keeping an eye on the other students to make sure they didn’t ambush us. It seemed unlikely that the Tails of Orochi would have taken over the entire camp, but we didn’t want to discount it as a possibility.

“You’re cleared to go in, but the commander is going to want to see you. He’ll get you work assignments and tell you where to camp. Follow me.”

Curtis led us inside to the commander...who was, unfortunately, even more familiar than my former dorm chief.

“When I heard that a resupply team had arrived with half the expected supplies, I should have known who to expect.” Lord Teft addressed us with a cynical tone that felt reminiscent of the first few days of class. Having had a year of exposure to his demeanor, however, I knew that at least a portion of this was deliberate exaggeration.

He’d eschewed his usual tailored suit for a military uniform, replete with ranking signifiers and other honors. I didn’t know how much of that was real and how much was a part of the character he was playing for this scenario. In fact, I didn’t really know much about his background in general.

It didn’t matter at the moment.

Kyra snapped to attention with surprising briskness. “Reporting for duty, sir.”

Most of the rest of us managed to mimic her change in stance after a short delay.

Teft returned our hesitant salutes, then shifted to a leisurely pose and waved a hand. “At ease. And tell me what happened.”

Kyra nodded, then hesitated. “Think Cadence would be better to fill you in, sir.”

“Which one?” Teft asked.

I sighed, stepping forward. Sera wasn’t in any condition to chat.

I filled him in on what had happened, including crediting Jin with doing most of the work in neutralizing the traitors.

“Well, at least someone has some initiative around here.” Teft turned to Jin, which in turn reminded the rest of us that Jin was still with the group. Even knowing what his attunement did, I still had a hard time remembering he was present unless I actively focused on him. “Mister Dalen, is it?” I realized that they’d met before, but Jin wasn’t in our dueling class, so Teft didn’t know Jin as well. Teft continued, “I’ll be assigning you to something special. Stay behind when I dismiss the others.”

Jin tilted his head downward in silent acknowledgement.

Teft turned back to the rest of us. “As much as it pains me to admit it, the rest of you are combat veterans compared to most of the people in this camp. As such, I will be assigning you to some of our tasks that have a higher risk of encountering enemy forces. I take it there are no objections?”

He didn’t wait long enough for anyone to actually raise objections. “Good. I have a couple assignments that happen to be rather urgent.” Teft looked our group over, assessing. “Kent, Vyers, Dyson, and... Roland, you’re on monster hunting duty. Master Jaldin, you will continue overseeing them. Master Maddock, please escort them to the scouting area. Master Chord will provide them with further instructions.”

It took me a moment to realize that Teft still had never learned Roland’s last name, after teasing him during the first day of class. I had a little internal chuckle about that.

Rupert, Desmond, Roland, and Kyra fell into line behind Curtis and headed to another part of the camp.

He’s splitting us back into our initial teams, I realized. That would have been more of a relief before we’d found the traitors. Now, it was almost disappointing. I wasn’t fond of Desmond, but the other two were serious fighters. I wouldn’t have minded having a Shaper and a Shadow with our group for whatever we were up against next.

“Miss Callahan, Miss Cadence, and Master Wayland. You will be going on a rescue mission. Are you familiar with the Temple of Fire?”

Patrick could barely contain his glee. “The...You mean, that Temple of Fire, sir? The temple where Soulbrand was forged?”

Teft rolled his eyes. “No, I mean one of the other Temples of Fire. Yes, Wayland. We’re only a few miles away.”

We weren’t actually a few miles away from anything of the sort, but I had an idea of where this was going. Since our scenario involved being a part of a settlement in the Unclaimed Lands, apparently our simulated location must have been somewhere near the Temple of Fire.

Marissa was frowning, though. The Unclaimed Lands weren’t something we’d gone over in a lot of detail in school yet. I knew about the Temple of Fire because it had come up frequently in my studies of the spires. I took a moment to explain for her benefit. “The Temple of Fire is one of the six elemental temples in the Unclaimed Lands. They’re similar to the spires, but much older. Some people believe the goddess used the elemental temples as blueprints for building the spires.”

“Indeed, Master Cadence. But I was asking Master Wayland,” Teft cut in.

I grimaced. “My apologies.”

“Since you both failed to explain the most important parts, however, that falls to me.” Teft folded his arms. “The elemental temples house the prime crystals. These crystals were some of the earliest sources of magic for humanity, during the pre-Attunement period. They remain possible sources of magical power, but reaching one is more difficult than a Judgment, both due to the locations of the temples and the necessary trials to reach the crystal itself. That, and of course, politics. Because of all these factors, they have fallen out of common use.”

“But we sent in a group to try to reach one,” I surmised.

“Correct. Much like the spires, a group of six is required to enter. Unlike the spires, however, the temples only allow six people inside at a time total.  They cannot support two or more groups at a time.”

I could see where this was going. “Someone didn’t come out.”

Teft nodded to me. “We sent a full group of six in an effort to begin cataloguing the rooms and making their way to the crystal. A few hours ago, a return bell was used... and half of the team was within the area of effect. The team only had a single bell.”

“Meaning the other three people are marooned inside,” Patrick concluded. “That’s horrible!”

“Until your arrival, we did not have any group that I felt was potentially capable of a rescue operation. The temple is dangerous enough for a group of six. Your skills may prove sufficient, however.”

Is...Teft complimenting us?

Wait, no, I’m not part of the group that is going.

Everything makes sense again.

“Any further questions? If not, time is of the essence. The longer we wait, the less likely you are to find any survivors inside.”

I had several, but Sera spoke up first. “Begging your pardon, Commander, but I don’t believe the group assignment is ideal.”

We all turned to look at her.

“Oh? How so?” Teft folded his arms.

“You should send Corin instead of me,” Sera’s tone was pained, but not because of her throat.

“Care to explain why you believe I should be sending an Enchanter — who could be helping to reinforce our settlement’s defenses, as I’d planned — instead of a Summoner?”

Sera sighed, took a moment, and then found her words. “This isn’t easy for me to admit, but I’m not in the best shape for combat duty, sir. As I believe you’re already aware, I have a long-term injury that I’ve been recovering from. I believe it may interfere with my ability to complete this assignment.”

Teft raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen you participate in combat since then, Miss Cadence, and as I recall you were quite stubborn about it. When I gave you the chance to opt out before, you chose to fight.”

“I’ve...had a chance to reevaluate that, sir.” Sera took another breath. “The last time I pushed myself seriously, my condition got worse. My safe mana threshold went down for a couple weeks.”

I...hadn’t realized that. She must have been talking about the last simulated spire test, where we’d fought Professor Meltlake. I’d known she’d pushed herself hard, but... that was terrifying. Her safe mana capacity decreasing implied that she’d caused herself more permanent damage. That wasn’t acceptable for a mere test.

She must have recovered since then, because I’d tested her mana capacity afterward and it was getting higher again. Still, I didn’t know how much extra work that had meant for her, or how many extra treatments from Sheridan she’d needed.

She hadn’t told me.

I wasn’t angry about that, but I was a little concerned.

“You are aware that there could be consequences for turning down an assignment, Miss Cadence?” Teft actually sounded concerned.

“Yes, sir. If I accepted the assignment, I believe I would not only be jeopardizing my own long-term ability to use my attunement, but potentially the success of the mission.”

Teft nodded slowly. “You have made a prudent decision.” He paused, then added. “Very well, I will find another team to handle this.”

Patrick blinked. “Wait. The rest of us could still go. We’ve still got three people!”

Teft shook his head. “Without Miss Cadence, your group would be ill-equipped for the Temple of Fire. Her expertise with ice magic is the reason I chose your group. Without her, you don’t have the skills you need.”

I hesitated. “That’s not...entirely true, Commander.”

Teft turned to me. “Oh? Have you somehow acquired a third attunement you haven’t told me about?”

“I still have a sword imbued with ice magic. If you recall, I showed it to you the first day we met.”

I was avoiding references to “class” because everyone else was. Everyone must have decided that talking directly about the school would have broken the immersion of the scenario.

It was for exactly that reason that I’d taken a gamble on this specific suggestion. I’d been told that I wasn’t allowed to use Selys-Lyann in future tests, because I’d nearly killed myself with it.

I hoped that since we were supposed to treat this scenario like a “real” expedition into the Unclaimed Lands, Teft would let that rule slide.

Teft narrowed his eyes at me, which wasn’t a promising response. “As I recall, that sword is extremely dangerous. Cursed, they say. Am I to understand that you brought it with you?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s packed away safe.” That was true, at least. It was in the Jaden Box.

He drew in a breath, looking uneasy. “I am prepared to allow you to take Miss Cadence’s place and use the sword...under the condition that you will be extremely cautious with using it.”

I bowed my head in thanks and relief. “Of course, sir.”

“Good. I will be assigning someone to shadow your group and wait for you outside the temple. They will inform me if you fail to return within the designated time frame.”

“Which is?” Marissa asked.

“You will have three hours to enter the temple, rescue the other team, and return.”

I felt my jaw tense. That wasn’t a lot of time to work with. “I have some questions, before we go.”

“Of course you do.” Teft sounded exasperated, but I expected he was actually pleased. In spite of his dismissive demeanor, he appreciated planning. “Proceed.”

“Do you have a map of the section that’s already been explored, or any other details?”

Teft shook his head. “I do not.”

I nodded, expecting that. “The three people who made it out. Can we talk to them?”

That actually seemed to catch Teft off-guard, and he made the slightest hint of a smile. “Sadly, no. They’ve...already been sent back to Valia for medical treatment.”

Meaning he hadn’t prepared any actors to play that part in this portion of the exercise. I think I might have earned some good will from asking, though.

“Do you have any additional resources you could loan us to ensure our success? Healing potions, fire resistance equipment, maybe a return bell?”

Teft paused to consider. “I’ll get you a return bell. We don’t have any of the rest of that on-hand, and it would take too long to prepare. You need to get moving as soon as you are prepared.”

That was an acceptable result. “I believe that’s all I need, then.”

“Very well. Those of you who are going to the temple, go prepare any supplies you plan to bring, and leave anything unnecessary behind with me. I’ll watch it while you’re gone, and you can make camp afterward. In the meantime, I’ll give Miss Cadence and Master Dalen their assignments.”

We exchanged a few words with Sera and Jin, then headed to do that.

I went inside the wagon, then opened the Jaden Box. “Retrieve: Selys-Lyann. Store: Transference Sword.”

I didn’t want to carry two swords at the same time, it was just too cumbersome.

It felt good to sheathe Selys-Lyann at my side again, although I admit I was a bit nervous about using it in a test again. In spite of suggesting it myself, I knew there were serious risks.

After that, I checked through my gear, keeping only essential climbing supplies on me. I’d leave everything else with Teft, as he’d instructed. Storing everything in the Jaden Box would have been easy, but it would have also been suspicious. He probably knew I still had the box, but I wasn’t going to remind him if I could avoid it.

We headed back to Teft after everyone had finished picking what they wanted to bring.

I pulled Sera to the side for a moment before we left, though.

“That was brave of you.”

Sera looked away, ashamed. “Brave? To throw you into a dangerous situation, because I can’t handle it?”

I shook my head. “In your place, I don’t think my pride would have let me turn the assignment down. You made the hard choice to say you weren’t in any condition to fight. That was the right call.” I hesitated, then added, “I...didn’t realize you’d gotten worse after the last test.”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Well, you worried me now...but we’ll deal with it. Just be honest with me if it happens again, okay?”

She frowned, then nodded. “Okay. We’ll talk about this more some other time. Stay safe, okay? Don’t do anything reckless.”

“What, like bring a cursed sword into a school exam? That doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”

Sera gave me a weak chuckle. “I mean it, though.”

“Don’t worry. I’m always careful. What could possibly go wrong?”

Chapter XVIII – Everything That Could Possibly Go Wrong

We picked up a return bell from Teft. After that, he sent us on the path toward the Temple of Fire. A second-year student led the way, while another student followed us, presumably to keep an eye on how much time we were taking inside.

Marissa was clearly nervous. “Mind givin’ me a bit more ‘bout this place? I’m not real familiar.”

She was probably understating that. I doubted she’d even heard of the place before Teft had mentioned it. I would have been pretty nervous in her place, too.

Patrick chimed in before I had a chance. He was bristling with excitement. “So, this is the place where they forged Soulbrand, one of the Six Sacred Swords. It’s really, really old. Like thousands of years.”

“But what’re we up against? It just like another spire?”

“It’s smaller,” I explained, “And you should expect most of the challenges to be fire themed.”

“Or something related to fire, like metal or lava,” Patrick added. “Maybe even lightning.”

Marissa frowned again. “Not sure how much I can do ‘bout that sort of thing.”

“Aww, you’ll be fine.” Patrick nudged her. “You’ll just punch the lightning out or something. You’ve done that before!”

She brightened a bit. “I suppose I have, haven’t I?”

“Right before you punched that smug look clean off Rupert’s face!” Patrick laughed, then looked from side to side, likely checking to make sure Rupert wasn’t in hearing range. He wasn’t — we were already well outside of the settlement at that point.

We walked a bit further in relative quiet before Marissa posed another question. “If these things are older than the spires, who made ‘em?”

Patrick frowned. “I guess the goddess just made them earlier?”

I shook my head. “Unlikely. The first sightings of Selys were only about four hundred years ago, right before the spires themselves appeared. The most common theory is that there were older gods here thousands of years ago, and that they left or died out.”

“Tyrant must have gotten ‘em, rest their souls,” Marissa said solemnly.

I was getting progressively less confident that the Tyrant in Gold had the kind of role in the world that Aspectists believed, but I didn’t want to get into an argument. “Maybe,” I replied, “The people of Sytennia believe they just went to sleep.”

“Oh, I remember hearing a bit about that when we were kids. Mom and Dad said to forget about it, though.” Patrick looked down. “And my teachers always got upset when I asked about things like that. Told me that I should pray on it or read the scriptures. But the scriptures don’t talk about the elemental temples at all.”

I felt a rare surge of anger and struggled to maintain a neutral expression. Shutting down children who had questions was the opposite of what a teacher should be doing.

Before I could get into a rant, though, Marissa changed the line of discussion. “You know anything specific we should be keepin’ our eyes out for?”

That was a reasonable thing to discuss, so I let my frustration burn away and refocused on the topic at hand. “There’ll probably be a single powerful monster just before the room with the crystal, similar to a spire guardian. I don’t know if the other group got that far, but if they did, we’re in for a serious fight. Most stories indicate that it’s a phoenix, but I’ve also heard that a dragon might be a possibility.”

Marissa nodded. “A phoenix, eh? That might be tricky. Hard to keep them down for any length of time. That might be why Teft wanted us to bring ice magic. That’s real effective against them.” She seemed a little more comfortable now that we were talking about specific monsters.

We continued discussing possible fire monsters we could run into, as well as other general strategies, until we reached our destination.

There was no obvious “temple”. Instead, we reached the base of a mountainside — presumably the Vanreach Mountains — and found a tremendous metal doorway.

The exterior of the door was carved with intricate artistry. They weren’t runes; more like pictographs for an unfamiliar language. I activated my attunement, but the doors didn’t glow. I could see a hint of light from beyond the doorway, however.

“I’ll wait outside for three hours, then I’ll report your failure,” the student who’d been following us explained. I tried not to respond poorly to how certain he sounded that things would play out that way.

I glanced to Marissa and Patrick. “You two ready to go?”

They made noises of acknowledgement.

I drew Selys-Lyann. “I’ll lead the way. Marissa, you’re on my left, so I don’t hit you by accident. Patrick, stay behind the two of us. I want you to be ready to reshape fire out of the way if we hit any traps.”

We shifted into formation, then approached the door.

The student who’d been leading us placed a metallic cube into a slot in the door, and I heard a click. Then I heard the grinding of gears, and the doors slid open.

The light that I’d seen through the crack in the doorway intensified as the doors opened, but not purely from magic. The passageway led into a hallway lit with dozens of torches, making it almost blindingly bright.

I passed Patrick the return bell. “You’d better hold onto this, since Marissa and I will need our hands free to fight.”

He accepted the bell, then we headed inside.

The initial hallway didn’t feel anything like a spire. It was just a well-lit cavern entrance, more reminiscent of what Marissa and I had encountered during her test.

With that memory in mind, I watched the floor carefully as we advanced. I didn’t want to hit any more webs, or trip-wires, or any sort of deadly trap tiles.

That meant, of course, that I wasn’t looking up.

The first thing I noticed was a shadow thickening, then Marissa shoved me.

I hit the wall just before a giant centipede hit the ground where I’d been standing. It was almost as big as I was and heavy enough to crack the ground on impact.

Marissa punched it hard enough to hurl it backward.

I heard a “click” as the centipede landed, then spears jetted out of the floor beneath it, impaling the creature.

Oh, there’s the floor trap I’ve been looking for.

The centipede struggled for a moment to break free from the spears, then Patrick blasted it with a bolt of lightning, and it fell still.

“Thanks,” I offered Marissa.

She smiled. “Gotta keep your feet light and your arms lighter.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I nodded anyway.

We proceeded a little more cautiously after that, checking both the floor and the ceiling.

We had to hug the wall to get past the centipede, and getting that close to it was a little disgusting.

Where do the test administrators even find monsters like this?

Never mind, I don’t want to know.

After that, the next thing we noticed wasn’t a trap, but the growing heat. Outside, we’d been at the border of a snow-tipped mountain range. It wasn’t snowing at our level of altitude, but it was still cold.

Every few steps, this place was getting warmer. By the time we’d passed the centipede, it felt more like spring weather.

Another dozen steps and it was summer.

By the time the natural cavern walls started to give way to worked stone bricks, it felt like we were near a hearth.

We reached another doorway, and then transitioned into something that looked more like I’d have initially expected. The next chamber was a square room of cut stone with a single central pillar. That pillar had a fist-sized red crystal in the center.

There were torches in the corners of the room. Three out of the four were lit.

There were three doorways: the entrance, one straight ahead, and one to our right. All of the doors were open.

Near the pillar I saw a pair of lion-like monsters with fierce horns. I couldn’t identify them at a glance, but they looked formidable. They were, however, lying unmoving on the ground, covered in wounds.

“The temple hasn’t completely reset,” I mused aloud. “The first team will have already solved some of these rooms. That’s going to make things a little easier, but since there were still dangers in the entry hall, it’s going to be tough to know which places are completely clear.”

We moved cautiously into the chamber. Marissa kicked one of the lion-like monster bodies, just to be sure it was dead. It didn’t move. “Shouldn’t these have vanished if they’re dead?” She blinked. “Come to think of it, the centipede didn’t disappear, either.”

“Temple monsters aren’t like spire ones,” Patrick explained. “I don’t think they turn into crystals.”

“Huh. Wonder why that is.”

I was curious, too, and I had theories...but this wasn’t the time for that discussion. “Patrick, I see an unlit torch, and my climber instincts are telling me that’s a problem. Can you handle that?”

“If the other group didn’t light it, there might be a reason for that,” Marissa suggested. “Maybe they had to be lit in a certain order? The doors are already open. Lighting something might close them, or trigger a trap.”

I frowned. I didn’t like leaving a torch unlit on a visceral level, but I agreed with her. “Okay. We’ll keep it in mind, but we’ll leave it as-is for now. Let’s check the right doorway.”

I heard a whir as I approached the doorway. I jumped backward just in time to avoid getting smashed by a huge metallic sphere that swung out of the doorway.

That’s...weirdly familiar.

I’d nearly been crushed by a similar pendulum trap during my Judgment. Ah, memories.

After backing away to a safe distance, I got a better look at the room beyond the doorway. There were several swinging spheres, similar to the room I’d seen in the spire, but this room had a notable difference.

The room’s floor wasn’t stone. Instead, it was a metallic grate, divided into four sections. Periodically, jets of fire would blast upward from one of the sections to incinerate anything above them.

My first thought was to try to find the runes to disable the traps, but I checked with my attunement, and I couldn’t see them from outside the room.

There were two more pathways from that room. One was straight across from us, and the other was on the left side. The doorway across from us was open, but the one on the left was closed. The closed door was solid stone, which was a little strange. It also had a keyhole.

There were a couple stone outcroppings right in front of each doorway. They looked large enough to stand on safely, but they’d be tough to reach.

I remembered how Keras had handled the pendulum room in the spire. We didn’t have the same sword skills he did, but his solution was an easy one, and it would eliminate a good part of the danger.

“Marissa, do you think you’d be able to cut through those spheres?”

She frowned. “Haven’t had much luck with cutting metal. It’s tougher than stone. I could probably manage it if they were standin’ still, but it’d while. Can’t do it while they’re movin’ at that speed, wouldn’t get a clean cut. Maybe just the chains that’re holdin’ ‘em?”

I considered that, then shook my head. “Too much of a risk that one of the spheres will fall on the grates. Those things don’t look like they can support too much weight, and it might break that part of the floor.”

“That really a problem, though? I think we could just hop across if the traps were gone.”

I tried to judge the distance to the exits — it was probably about twenty feet. With my ring, I could make it easily. Patrick could levitate. Marissa could jump almost as far as I could, even without the ring.

It was possible, but I still felt like it was a bad solution.

“Let’s check the other room while we think.”

We checked the other doorway from the entrance room.

That room was more straightforward. The room was circular, with three piles of human-looking bones on the floor.

Also, the bones were on fire.

“Hope that isn’t the team we’re supposed to be rescuing,” Patrick remarked.

Marissa shot him a shocked look, but I just laughed.

“The door beyond it is open,” I pointed at the single door on the other side, “So they made it further. Those are probably some kind of animated bone monsters. Betting they’ll stand up when we get inside.”

Marissa took on a contemplative look, then asked, “You boys ever do any bowling?”

Two minutes later, we enacted the plan.

As soon as the pendulum swung out of the doorway, Patrick pointed a hand at it. “Levitate.”

The pendulum paused in its swing, then began to descend more slowly.

This was expected — we knew it was probably too heavy for Patrick to hold it completely.

I swung Selys-Lyann, projecting a wave of ice to hit the chain, freezing it solid.

Marissa leapt from the ground, swinging a blade-aura from her hand and smashed the frozen chain.

The pendulum slowly descended slowly to the floor.

The three of us worked together to roll the sphere to the entrance to the other room.

“Ready?”

We lined it up.

Patrick pointed again. “Levitate.” He couldn’t lift it completely, but that lowered the effective weight, making the sphere much easier to move.

Marissa lowered herself, braced against the sphere, and then shoved.

Crunch.

The sphere crashed right into the first bone pile, mashing the skeleton to pulp.

The three of us let out a combined cheer.

Then the other two bone piles began to rise from the ground.

We’d known that might happen.

“My turn.” I stepped in front of Marissa, swinging Selys-Lyann in a wide arc. The frozen shockwave that emerged hit both skeletons, extinguishing a portion of the fire around them.

That wasn’t enough to stop the bones from coming together and beginning to lurch toward us, but it had extinguished a good portion of the flames.

Each of the skeletons formed a blazing sword between their hands.

Their eye sockets burned with menace. Or maybe fire. It was probably just more fire, to be honest.

Marissa went left, while I went right.

I swung Selys-Lyann. It cut right through the skeleton’s flame sword without resistance, then smashed into the skeleton’s ribs. The latter part wasn’t very effective, though. Slashing weapons weren’t great against skeletons.

The skeleton fell backward from my strike and its own counterattack fell far short.

Marissa lunged at her skeleton, but had to fall back when it jabbed at her stomach. She had a disadvantage in reach, and that meant she had to wait until she found an opening.

Patrick made her one. As he pointed his hand, the flame sword the skeleton near her was carrying twisted, then shrank to the length of a dagger.

The skeleton swung it at Marissa again, or rather at the air in front of her. It didn’t seem to realize that its weapon had gotten shorter, and it missed entirely.

She closed the distance and punched its skull right off.

I dodged another swing from the skeleton that I was fighting, then swung upward at the skeleton’s sword arm, severing it at the wrist.

It charged. I side-stepped and hit it in the neck. That didn’t actually cut all the way through, but it fell to the floor anyway.

The skeletons ceased to move. We hit them a few more times just to be sure.

“Wanna drop some spheres on the other two?” Marissa asked with a grin.

I didn’t like the idea of wasting Patrick’s mana or more time, but honestly, it was kind of fun. And more importantly, it was a good way to get rid of the pendulums.

“Let’s do it.”

Clearing the remaining pendulums was a little trickier, since they were inside the room. That didn’t pose any problems for Patrick — he could levitate things at a distance — but it meant that Marissa briefly had to go inside the room to cut them down.

We took a minute just to memorize the timing on the flame jets coming from the floor.

The flames go for about three seconds, then off for three seconds before it rotates to the next section. It goes clockwise, then stops at the top-left corner and switches directions. Then it switches directions again when it gets to the top right.

Not as simple as if it was just rotating one way, but not particularly difficult, either. Still, I’m glad I’m not the one going in there.

“Patrick, be ready to deflect the fire for Marissa if she misses her timing.”

Patrick nodded seriously.

Marissa didn’t miss, though. The moment Patrick cast his levitation on the closest pendulum, she was moving.

I launched my shockwave, hit the next chain, and she smashed it apart.

Then she landed, kicked the sphere toward us, and followed it back to the main room with seconds to spare.

We repeated the process until all the pendulums were clear.

“We going through the skeleton room first or the pendulum room?” Patrick asked.

“After all that?” Marissa pointed to the pendulum room with a serious expression.

“Right. Of course.”

We made our way across the pendulum room. The grates made me nervous, but now that we knew the timing, it wasn’t particularly dangerous.

Still, I felt a chill spread-across my sword arm as we moved to the opposite doorway. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t my imagination — a thin layer ice was starting to creep down my hand and wrist.

I flexed my hand, grimaced, and tried to command the ice to move out of the way.

Nothing happened. I didn’t have the ability to shape ice. And if whatever was causing the ice to spread was listening to my thoughts, it didn’t give me any response.

I sheathed the sword. Only then did the ice begin to melt away.

I need to be careful about using this too much. And I really need to figure out how it works.

We arrived in the safe spot at the entrance to the next room.

We’d chosen the doorway that was already open, with the hope that we’d find the team we were supposed to rescue inside.

We had no such luck.

The room’s contents were simple – two streams of flowing lava, and in between them, a single treasure chest.

The treasure chest was already open.

“Is that thing empty?” Marissa asked.

“Looks like,” I asked. “Patrick, float it here?”

Patrick nodded. “No problem. Levitate.”

He moved the treasure chest to us.

I had a moment of panic at the realization that it could be a mimic — a monster disguised as a treasure box — and re-drew my sword as it approached.

Fortunately, it didn’t bite.

Sometimes an empty box is just an empty box.

“Other team must have already been through here. Let’s check the other door.”

The other door in the pendulum room was closed, but we surmised that the empty box had probably held the key to it. We made our way to the door easily and checked, finding it unlocked. That didn’t prove what the contents of the box had been, but it still gave us another path to check.

I opened the stone door.

This room was very different.

For one thing, the ceiling was about thirty feet up.

For another, there was a steel statue in the center of the room. The statue’s head almost reached the ceiling. I could see some writing on the wall behind the statue, but I didn’t get a chance to read it.

“Ack,” Patrick reflexively took a step back. I caught him before he stepped back onto the grate just a moment before another blast of fire came up behind us. “Sorry, sorry! That’s just...uh, big.”

And it was moving. The statue knelt down, opening a palm toward us.

At first, I thought it might be a friendly gesture of some kind. Maybe everything in here wasn’t trying to kill us.

Then I saw the hole in the center of its hand.

“Resh!” I stepped forward and swung, launching a shockwave of ice.

The blast of flame that emerged from the statue’s hand obliterated the shockwave.

Patrick reacted fast, pushing both hands forward to try to stop the flames. He only managed to slow them for a moment.

In that moment, Marissa shut the door.

The flames must have impacted the stone, but they didn’t blast through.

We all took a few deep breaths.

“Did you see anything other than the giant statue in there?” I asked.

“No people,” Patrick replied.

“There was something written on the back wall about three flames lighting the way,” Marissa offered.

She must have great vision to pick all that up from here.

I considered for a moment. “I’m betting this room was just a clue for the three torches in the entry way. We can come back here if we need to...but I’m going to be honest, I don’t think we should try to fight that thing.”

Marissa looked marginally disappointed, but Patrick nodded quickly in agreement.

We made our way back to the entrance, then to the skeleton room. The skeletons were still pinned beneath the spheres and unmoving.

From there, we checked the next chamber.

“Soulbrand’s forge,” Patrick whispered in awe.

Lava flowed freely down the walls of the room. Even being a few feet away, the temperature was absurdly hot, almost too difficult to bear. Fortunately, the air within seemed breathable. There was probably an enchantment keeping the space habitable, but just barely.

The room itself was divided into rings, each separated by a section of about two feet of flowing lava.

In the outer ring there was some sort of stone pipe toward the back of the room. Lava flowed freely through it, then into the rings in the floor.

To the side of that chimney, I could see a stack of blacksmithing tools. A huge hammer of blackened metal, tongs, and an apron.

Beyond that fiery ring was a section with a stack of silvery and golden metal bars.

Then there was another fiery ring, and in the center of it, a raised platform with an anvil. And next to that, a raised stone table with some other objects on it. I couldn’t see them clearly from a distance.

Ice was spreading across my hand again. I sheathed Selys-Lyann, tucking my hand under my opposite arm to let it warm up.

“I want to make a magic sword here. I want to make all the magic swords here,” Patrick mumbled.

“Wouldn’t mind a few new toys to play with myself,” Marissa chuckled, “But I don’t think we’ve got time for that.

Patrick looked sincerely dejected.

I cautiously stepped inside to take a closer look. The sections of flowing lava were a danger, but easily avoidable. I didn’t see any monsters or any signs of other traps.

There was another doorway on the left side of the room, but it was completely blocked by a waterfall of lava flowing from an open hole in the ceiling. The door itself beyond was open.

The next thing I noticed was a series of large cracks on the back wall of the room. That was a bit suspicious.

“Marissa?”

“Hm?”

I pointed at the cracks. “Want to punch this?”

She frowned. “As much as I do love punchin’ — well, everythin’, really — are you sure there isn’t gonna be a flood of lava behind that?”

I paused. “No. No, I am not. Good point, let’s not do that right now.”

“See that up there?” Marissa pointed at the central platform.

I turned my head toward it. “Sure. What about it?”

“I think that raised stone area next to the anvil has a mold.”

I raised an eyebrow. “For making a sword?”

She shook her head. “No. For making a key.”

I nodded in understanding. “That’s probably how the other team opened the door to the next room.” I pointed at the door beyond the flowing lava. “But I suppose it could be for a later room, too. Do you know how to use a forge like this?”

Marissa shook her head. “Never did any smithin’ with lava. Wager we could figure something out, though.”

I turned to Patrick. “Take a minute to rest outside. You’ve been doing most of the real work.”

“Thanks,” Patrick replied, clear gratitude in his tone. “Heat is killing me in here.”

Marissa and I hopped across the lava to the middle section, grabbed some metal bars, and then made our way to the raised area in the center. I had to use my ring of jumping to get there, but it still had plenty of mana left, so I wasn’t too worried.

There were, in fact, multiple molds on the top.

Including both a key mold and a sword mold.

“We making both?” I asked Marissa.

“We’re definitely making both.”

As it turns out, I am a terrible blacksmith.

I initially assumed we were just supposed to heat the metal in the lava, then pour it into the molds.

It turns out that if you heat metal in lava, the metal just melts right there, rather than cooperating and staying in a solid state until you have it in exactly the right position.

It was only at that point that we realized that there were levers on the platform.

And when we moved the levers, a mechanical arm moved the entire platform.

The next thing we discovered was that one of the directions moved the platform directly into the path of one of the lava falls.

After frantically pushing the lever back in the opposite direction, Marissa and I made running jumps back to the center of the room.

The platform was briefly bathed in molten fire, then moved back to its original position, seemingly unharmed. A few moments later, there was a brief flash of light and the remaining lava on the central platform vanished.

“That went well,” I offered.

Marissa giggled hysterically. “That is my least favorite lever now.”

After a bit more tinkering, we figured out that we could rotate the section with the molds, put a bar of metal into a slot above the mold, then move the platform to a section where the lava would pour from the chimney into a pipe that led to the metal...melting the metal and sending it into the mold.

This probably wasn’t the best solution available. Some of the lava escaped the pipe and nearly got into the key mold, but I managed to freeze it with Selys-Lyann while we moved the platform again.

Then we had a new key.

The second time, we rotated it to make a sword, too. Neither of us knew what the silver or gold metal were, so we made the key out of gold and the sword out of silver.

I froze them both with ice from Selys-Lyann. There was probably a better way to cool them properly, but I didn’t know how. This made them retrievable, at least.

After that, we returned to Patrick and took a break.

“How much time do you think we have left?” Marissa asked.

“At least an hour,” I replied.

Patrick looked contemplative. “You think? I figured we were almost out of time.”

I groaned. “I hope not. I need a break.”

I retrieved my flask of endless water from my bag. We drank deeply.

In retrospect, an infinite amount of water might have helped with some of the other problems we’d been running into.

After a brief rest, we made our way back into the room. Patrick held onto the new silvery sword, even though it was an awful weapon. Whatever metal it was made out of was heavy, and it didn’t have a proper grip on it.

Still, he wasn’t allowed to use his Dawnbringer Replica in the tests, so it meant he had a weapon if he needed one. Maybe I should have asked for him to have permission to use that here, but I didn’t want to push my luck.

I could have just given him the transference sword if I’d thought about it, but he seemed happier with this new and shiny one.

We made our way to the lava fall blocking the doorway, then Marissa hopped to the central platform. “Ready?”

We acknowledged, and she hit the levers on the central platform to move it. The platform moved to right below the lava fall, blocking the lava’s flow.

We still had to be cautious, but it made a path to get into the doorway.

We followed the hallway to the next room.

In the center was a fountain with clear blue liquid.

We knew exactly what that was. A mana fountain. We were almost at the end.

There were a few possibilities about what that meant. Maybe we’d missed the people were meant to rescue in a previous room, like the one with the giant statue. Or maybe we were supposed to bust down that cracked wall after all, and they would have been beyond it.

Maybe there never were people to rescue.

Or maybe they were those skeletons. That would have been really awkward.

Most likely, though? They were in the final chamber alongside some sort of horrible monster.

We took another break.

We needed it. It was really hot.

Then we made our way to the single door on the opposite side of the room and opened it.

Inside, we saw three fallen human bodies.

One was right near the door, unmoving, with three huge claw marks across his back. He was facing the door.

That told me that the door was probably going to close as soon as we entered, or that whatever had hit him had been fast enough to prevent him from leaving. Either was a concern.

Another was near a different door, this one on the right side of the room. That was a woman, and she was trembling, a bleeding wound across her forehead. She had a golden key in her right hand.

Unfortunately, that right hand was no longer connected to rest of her body.

The final body was near the center of the room. A sword and shield were lying next to him. I couldn’t see any obvious injuries at a distance.

More importantly?

I couldn’t see a monster, either.

I turned to the woman that appeared to still be conscious. “We’re here to rescue you. Can you talk?”

She didn’t even turn to acknowledge me. She just stared at her severed hand.

“She’s in a bad way. Don’t think we’re gettin’ much out of ‘er.” Marissa frowned. “Think the monster is going to show up the moment we go in?”

“Seems likely,” Patrick replied.

I frowned. “And the door is probably going to close behind us.”

“Think that key is for the other exit?” Marissa gestured to the other doorway. “We could make a run for it.”

“I think that was her plan.” My eyes narrowed. “And it didn’t go well.”

“What’s our plan, then?” Patrick asked.

I briefly debated going back to get one of those giant metal spheres to block the doorway and prevent it from closing behind us, but we were short on time. I didn’t know how a person with a severed arm had survived this long, but I wasn’t going to gamble on taking a few more minutes when she was in that bad of shape.

“We do what they didn’t do.” I glanced to each of them. “We stick together.”

Patrick and Marissa nodded.

We stepped inside as a team.

The door slammed shut behind us.

And the injured woman screamed.

The monster descended from the ceiling.

But after our lesson at the entrance, we were a little more ready for a threat from above.

A long tail lashed at Patrick, but he expertly dodged out of the way.

He wasn’t ready for when the tail paused, revealing a snake-like head atop it. The snake head opened its jaws and exhaled a jet of fire toward us.

I countered the flames with a shockwave from Selys-Lyann, but as with the giant, it didn’t have the power to stop the fire completely.

Patrick waved both hands and fired a burst of fire right back at it. The two flame attacks slammed into each other and spread outward, sending burning energy across the room.

Fortunately, it didn’t hit anyone directly.

Marissa jumped and swung a fist at the snake head, but the tail whipped out of the way, and we got a better look at the main body.

It was tremendous, at least twenty feet tall, with the body of a lion and the head of a goat.

“A chimera,” Marissa mumbled, “Of the classic variety.”

The three of us fell back into formation while the chimera’s goat head bleated into the air.

“What do we do against a chimera?” Patrick asked.

“Dodge!” Marissa replied in a panicked tone.

The chimera had already started to charge.

We rushed the sides of the room while it closed the distance, trying to trample over us.

That did exactly what we’d been hoping to avoid. We were separated, with Marissa and I on the beast’s right side and Patrick on the left.

The tail swung toward Patrick again.

“Marissa, up!” I yelled.

She got my meaning, leaping into the air and aiming for the snake head before it could breathe fire again.

The tail switched directions and opened its mouth hungrily.

“Resh.” Marissa raised her arms to block, but she couldn’t do much against fire breath without fire or ice magic.

The snake-head breathed flame, but only for a moment. Patrick jammed his new sword into the chimera’s side, then stepped back and channeled a bolt of lightning into the metal.

The new sword was ruined, but it had done its job well.

Marissa flew through the flames, her shroud absorbing the brief blast, and slashed a blade-aura covered hand across the tail. Unfortunately, she hit too low, and the scales on the surface of the tail absorbed most of the blow. A flow of blood emerged from the wound, but the head wasn’t severed.

Marissa landed on Patrick’s side of the chimera. I lunged from the opposite side, stabbing it with Selys-Lyann.

The chimera swung toward me faster than I’d expected, hitting me hard with a claw.

I flew backward, losing my grip on the sword and impacting with a wall.

That was bad for me, but it was worse for the chimera.

Ice was already spreading from the wound, and it was getting further each moment.

My barrier was badly cracked by the attack, but between that and the two shrouds, I was still in pretty good shape.

Unfortunately, now I had the chimera’s attention, and I was unarmed and backed against a wall.

The chimera turned toward me and prepared to charge.

One, I counted, focusing on my right hand.

“Patrick, I need more height!” Marissa shouted as she charged at the creature from behind.

Two.

The chimera charged, the snake head poised to breathe down on me the moment it got close.

Marissa jumped.

“Levitate!”

Three.

Marissa flew twice as high this time, swung, and floated downward to the floor.

When she hit the ground, the serpent’s head fell next to her.

The chimera’s remaining head roared as it continued the charge.

I jumped, too.

Four. Good enough. Jump.

The ring of jumping carried me upward, and I slammed a fist into the goat’s head, releasing the mana I’d stored in my hand.

And just like that, I punched out a twenty-foot tall chimera.

The creature fell to the ground, insensate. Marissa moved closer and swept her hand across the other neck, finishing the job.

I groaned, rubbing my newly-bruised hand, and retrieved Selys-Lyann.

Patrick rushed to the woman in the corner. “It’s going to be okay.”

“You...killed it.” She mumbled. “You actually...killed it.”

“It’s okay. We’re going to get you to help.”

We probably should have insisted on bringing a healer, but it was far too late at this point. If we were lucky, maybe the student waiting outside was a Mender.

After sheathing Selys-Lyann, I checked the nearest other person, while Patrick attempted to calm the wounded woman. It was remarkable she was alive and conscious with such a serious injury — I assumed she was probably a Guardian or a Mender herself, and she had done something to stop the severed arm from bleeding.

After a minute of checking, the other two didn’t seem to be conscious or breathing. I was pretty sure they were dead, but I wasn’t an expert.

Either way, we’d found the three people. Marissa and I transported the fallen bodies as carefully as we could to the corner.

“We’re going to get out of here now,” Partrick explained.

“Wait,” the woman insisted. “Crystal...it should be in the next room...”

She looked at her severed hand, still holding the key. “We could still get to the crystal and finish our mission.”

I glanced at the other two. That was a sorely tempting prospect, but it wasn’t our mission. “I’m sorry, we can always come back for the crystal later.” I shook my head. “You and your companions need immediate medical treatment.”

She shook her head. “No, no... The crystal.”

“I’m with Corin here.” Patrick nodded.

“Same,” Marissa replied.

“Stay close.” Patrick picked up the severed hand, then rang the return bell.

We found ourselves outside.

***

The student outside was very, very surprised when six people appeared near him.

“Gaah!”

Ordinarily, I might have laughed, but I was in damage control mode. “We have three injured people here. Are you a Mender, by any chance?”

He shook his head. “No. Summoner. But I can summon something to get a message to town real fast, hold on.”

He summoned an air elemental, which flew to the settlement after receiving his instructions.

Then we waited, dealing with the wounded as best we could. I used a couple Lesser Regeneration spells on each of them, but I doubted it would accomplish much.

I didn’t hold out much hope for the two that were unconscious, but I didn’t say anything for fear that announcing that they were dead might disturb the survivor.

About ten minutes later, she lost consciousness, too.

I put my silver phoenix sigil on her, kicking myself for waiting so long, and then activated it. I explained what I was doing out loud because a part of me knew that none of this was real, as realistic as it was, and I wanted whoever was judging the whole thing to know that I was using a regeneration item on her.

Fortunately, regeneration spells and items weren’t harmful to people that were uninjured. That would have been a little awkward, otherwise.

It was about ten minutes after that the medics arrived, carrying each of the people away. One of them took my sigil off and handed it back to me, explaining they would take it from there.

I was grateful to have my sigil back and pinned it back on.

“Well,” the student assigned to watching us said, “Good work. I didn’t think you’d make it out of there.”

I nodded somberly. I’d have felt better if we’d managed to help all three victims, but two of them seemed beyond help by the time we’d gotten to the last room.

Would that have been possible if we’d made it through the temple faster?

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer to that, but if I got a chance after the test was over, I planned to ask.

***

We returned to Teft. Patrick was upbeat in spite of losing his new sword.

I was kicking myself for failing to take any of those weird metal bars with me before we left the forge. I could have stored them in the Jaden Box. In fairness, though, we were clearly being observed and that might have caused me problems later.

We explained what had happened to Teft, and he nodded along. “May I have the key that you forged?”

We handed it to him.

“Good. This may make our next trip into the Temple of Fire considerably easier.” He paused for a moment, then said, “You’re dismissed for the day. Good work.”

We retrieved our things, got directions to where we were supposed to make camp, and got some much needed food and rest.

***

We spent the next few days working within the settlement itself. I spent most of my time reinforcing the enchantments on the area, just as Teft had originally intended for me to do.

It felt good to get to use my enchanting skills for something practical that could potentially help protect a big group of people. I knew it was all just a test, but if this was the type of thing that an Enchanter did for the military, I didn’t hate it as much as I’d expected.

Desmond, Kyra, and Rupert met up with us each day after they’d finished their own work. I got used to having them in our camp.

Roland, Jin, and Sera, however, did not. Apparently they’d all ended up being assigned to duties “elsewhere”.

I hoped that meant that Sera and Jin might be going to the Vanreach Mountains, but that turned out to be a bit too optimistic.

When they finally met back up with us almost a week later, Sera explained that they’d simply been on long-distance reconnaissance duty, searching for a good location for another settlement site.

I’d gotten so used to working at the settlement that it almost came as a shock when Teft told us it was time to leave. “Congratulations. You haven’t completely failed at all of your responsibilities here. Now it’s time to go home, and you’ll find out if your performance was good enough to make it to the next year.”

That wasn’t exactly encouraging, but it was as good as I could expect out of Teft.

“One question before we go,” I asked.

“Hm?”

“Those people we got out of the temple. Did any of them survive?”

Teft looked stymied for a moment, then he smiled softly and nodded. “Yes. One of them made it. You did well.”

That might have been an on-the-spot decision, but it still felt good to know that maybe we’d done at least a little bit of good.

I hoped that if we encountered a similar scenario that was real, we’d manage to do even better.

***

The whole team was reassembled for the journey back to the train station. Minus the two people who had already been eliminated, of course.

The trek back was much easier than the way there. We’d gotten used to each other, as well as being outdoors.

I was still anxious to get home, though. I needed a real shower.

We were a little surprised when a group of people met us on the road. They were adults, meaning they weren’t a group of students working for the Tails of Orochi looking to get in a last-minute ambush.

At first, I expected them to be a group of Soaring Wings who were there to escort us back.

But they weren’t wearing armor or the right colors.

They were dressed in Valian military uniforms. Two men and two women, well-equipped.

“Students, attention.” The lead figure stepped forward. He was a broad-shouldered man with brown hair streaked with just a hint of gray.

We didn’t know who they were, but we still knew how to snap to attention.

“We are here on behalf of Valia’s Divinatory Division.” He turned toward me. “Corin Cadence, you’re going to need to come with us.”

Divinatory Division?

...Meaning military intelligence?

That can’t possibly be good.

I inspected them again, activating my attunement.

Their auras were clear, suppressed. That implied that they were all at least Sunstone level, in order to have that level of control. They were carrying some enchanted items, too.

Carnelian-level shield sigils and weapons. That wasn’t terribly surprising — the military would have better standard-issue gear than students — but it was still impressive.

That wasn’t what gave me a pause for concern, though.

I could see the glow of attunement marks on most of the four. The speaker had a heart mark.

Two of the others had marks on their right hands. Unsurprising for combatants.

The last had a mark on her left leg.

None of that was a problem.

The worrying part was that the last soldier, with the leg mark, also had a glowing spot in the back of her right shoulder.

That wasn’t a spot for attunements.

But I did remember something else that could be found in that location on someone’s body.

I took a deep breath and stepped forward. “Sir. May I ask what this is about, sir?”

He shook his head. “You will be informed of everything you need to know in private. Please come this way.”

“Sir, may I have a few moments to hand off some key information and items my team will need to complete their assignment before we leave?”

He tensed his jaw. “You have two minutes.”

“Sera, come here.” I waved for her to follow me and headed to the back of the wagon.

“What’s this about, Corin?” Sera asked. “The Tenjin situation?”

I shook my head, shuffling through the bag at my side. “I don’t know. Probably. But that’s not what concerns me. Those aren’t Valian soldiers.”

“What?”

“Or at least, not just Valian soldiers.” I pulled the Jaden Box out of my bag and flipped open the lid. “Retrieve: Empty Vial.”

An empty alchemical vial appeared. I opened the top.

“Hold this open.”

She held the box. “Corin...?”

I drew my sword just an inch and ran my index finger across the blade.

Then I put my finger over the vial and squeezed.

“Corin! What are you...oh.” She quieted, considering. “You handing me the box along with it?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not ready for a summoning spell, and I might need the contents. But I want you to hold onto the vial and use it to track me if necessary.”

I stoppered the vial and handed it to her.

She frowned, shoving it in a pouch. “We could probably just track you using me, you know.”

I didn’t want to say that I still wasn’t sure that we were blood related. “You’ll probably get better range with my blood. Just find a Diviner if you don’t see me soon. And if you need to follow me, bring Derek and Keras. These guys are dangerous.” I leaned forward and whispered in her ears. “Servants of the Tyrant.”

Her eyes widened. “Seriously?”

I gave her an apologetic tip of my head.

“You shouldn’t go with them. We should fight.”

I shook my head. “Four adults, each of whom is at least Sunstone. Probably Citrine or Emerald. No. Most, if not all, of us would die even if all of us were coordinated. And we’re not. We’re a bunch of students.”

“Precautions?” Sera asked. “I’ll have Vanniv watch you from the sky.”

I nodded. “Roland can monitor me, too—”

“Time to go, kid!” One of the soldiers yelled.

“Keep the team intact. I’ll be back.”

“Let me go with you,” Sera grabbed my arm. “They’ll want me, too, if they know I’m your family.”

I shook my head. “No. Too much of a risk. If my blood dries up, you’re the best method for tracking me down. And there’s no reason to put us both in danger at the same time.”

I pulled free from her. “Gotta go, Sis.”

“...Sis?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “It works.”

I turned and walked off to join the soldiers.

Together, we marched into the woods.

I was already making my first move.

When I’d left Sera, I hadn’t just cut my finger.

I’d attached a strand of mana to the box, too. And I was going to keep making that strand longer as I walked.

I’d leave myself a trail that I could follow back to the others — or that they could follow to me, if they picked it up. Vanniv’s airborne surveillance would be more effective for that, but I wanted redundancies.

“So...mind telling me what this is about?”

The leader shook his head. “Not yet. You’re not in trouble, though. Don’t worry about failing out of your class. That’ll be taken care of.”

Hah, like that was what I was worried about.

“Thanks, that makes me feel a little better.”

Completely, blatantly untrue.

We kept walking.

What was I doing?

The soldiers looked relatively at-ease, but I couldn’t be.

If I had miscalculated, there was a reasonable chance that they were going to kill me out here. I had no chance of winning against four people of Sunstone level or higher. None.

Should I have taken Sera’s route and tried to rally everyone for a fight?

No, I told myself. That would have just gotten other people killed. And I need to know what these people want with me.

We walked for what felt like at least an hour.

They weren’t silent during that time. It was worse than that — they were casual. One of them — Michel, I got from context — talked about wanting to go see a new play that was coming out soon. She was one of the ones with a hand-mark.

Another, Woods, complained about his feet hurting.

Carter wanted Woods to read a book that she was excited about.

The leader, Thomas, wanted Michel to go drinking with him.

None of that was important.

I was studying little details when I could.

Michel isn’t wearing a glove. It took me a few minutes to get at an angle where I could take a look without appearing too obvious.

Guardian. Older generation mark, but I think it’s Citrine.

Woods doesn’t just have sore feet. He favors his right leg. He has an old injury. He’s wearing a glove, but from the way he talks, I think he’s a close combat fighter, too. He’s wearing a sword. The others have dueling canes.

Carter is the one with the shoulder mark. Can’t get a good look at it, or at her leg mark.

Thomas is breathing a little more heavily than the others. A cold, maybe. I don’t think I can do anything with that right now. Wait, hold on. He has a second mark on his back. Lungs, then.

That made him more dangerous, but at least it wasn’t another shoulder mark. I didn’t know what those did, but from what Keras had explained, anyone with one would be at least a Citrine or Emerald level threat.

I should have asked for more about what the followers of the Tyrant were capable of.

Now if I had to fight, I was going in virtually blind.

And that meant I wasn’t planning to fight at all.

I needed to find every possible alternative. Every means of escape.

The odds of that working narrowed further when we reached our destination. A cabin in the middle of the woods.

Thomas walked up and knocked on the door. A moment later, it opened, and I took a step back.

The young woman on the other side wasn’t wearing a military uniform. She had long blonde hair, perfectly styled, and wore a fire-red dress.

A casual look would have told me she was dressed for a ball, but a closer inspection of the dress showed that it consisted of threads with a faint metallic sheen. That’s Ironweave, or something like it. The same thing they use to make dueling tunics. She just dyed it red to make it look fancy.

Similarly, she was wearing several pieces of gaudy-looking jewelry, but they weren’t cosmetic. Well, most of the pieces weren’t.

Her necklace glowed with an Emerald-level enchantment, and the two overly-large crystals on the rings on her hands were essence crystals. High-density ones, at least Class 3 or 4. They were probably worth a fortune.

She had a second necklace — or something else — glowing green under the high collar of her dress. That was unusual, considering two enchanted items in the same location tended to interfere with each other. Having two powerful items in the same location was a strange risk. Maybe someone as powerful as she was had a workaround, though.

My conclusion? She was a tremendously dangerous person with a carefully cultivated appearance of indulgence.

And with that, I had a good idea of who I was talking to and how dangerous my situation had become.

“Corin Cadence.” Elora Theas gave me a charming smile, with just the slightest hint of her teeth showing. “I believe you wished to speak to me.”

I have made a terrible mistake.

I didn’t dare step forward, so I chose to bow instead. “Lady Theas. It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”

I hadn’t expected for it to be under these circumstances, but that was probably obvious.

Elora returned my bow. “The pleasure is mine. I believe it’s long past time we discussed some issues of mutual interest.” Elora stepped outside. The soldiers parted for her. “Would you like any refreshments? I have a bit of tea inside.”

I shook my head. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer some answers.”

“Straight to business, then. You’re very much like your brother in that regard.”

My heart skipped a beat. “My...brother?”

I was feigning my reaction to a degree. I was reasonably confident she was working with Tristan at one point or another.

But a part of that reaction was real, too. I still didn’t know how to handle the fact that Tristan was both alive and working with some very dangerous people.

“Ah, yes. What do you know about your brother, Corin?”

I narrowed my eyes. “My brother entered the spire five years ago. He failed his Judgment. And he never returned.”

Elora smiled. “You’re making some interesting assumptions there. But you’ve given me an important answer with that, and so I owe you one in exchange. What would you like to know?”

“What are you working on with Tristan?”

She shook her head. “Poorly phrased. Currently, the answer to that would be ‘nothing’. My turn. Your dear mother. How is she?”

“You probably know better than I do.”

“That doesn’t help me, dear. Try again.”

I didn’t like this sort of information gathering game. I recognized what she was doing, of course, trying to pry information out of me that I wouldn’t even realize was important. Sera would have been better at countering that sort of strategy.

I had no patience for it.

“I haven’t seen my mother in close to three years. As far as I know, she’s out of the country.”

“Ah. Now that is helpful. Your turn.”

I narrowed my eyes.

Fine, if she’s going to play this way, I’m going to ask something I actually care about. “What do you know about what happened with Tristan in the spire?”

“I do think it would be better to ask him that question, don’t you?”

I folded my arms. “I don’t exactly have the means to do that.”

“I think we both know that you do, darling.”

She knows about the book. Either that, or she wants to try to gauge my reaction to her statement.

“Very well, an alternate question. What’s the point to all this? Kidnapping me?”

Elora laughed. “Oh, my dear Corin. We’re not doing anything so base as kidnapping you. We’re extracting you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Extracting? As in, from a dangerous situation?”

“Quite. But you owe me two questions now. Let me see... What do you know about any weaknesses that the visage Katashi might possess?”

One of the soldiers — Woods — shuffled uncomfortably.

I considered the question.

How much do I want to give these people?

Nothing, I decided almost immediately. Not until I know their motives. But I have to at least make what I’m saying sound convincing, in order to ask other questions myself.

I can make an opportunity out of this, provided they don’t just kill me afterward.

“His healing abilities are weaker than those of his sister, Ferras.”

Elora narrowed her eyes. “And how would you know that?”

“Because someone suffered an injury that he couldn’t heal, but he suggested that Ferras might be able to. You’ve asked two questions, now it’s my turn.”

“That was a follow-up. But very well, I’m amused. You may ask.”

“Why choose to send people for me right now? You could have just sent me an invitation to meet you sometime after the test.”

She shook her head. “And my dear, sweet Derek would have dissuaded you, or tailed you. No, you’re isolated out here. I can’t have Derek tainting your mind or dashing in to carry you off somewhere.”

I nodded. It was a reasonable assessment.

“You seem nervous. Why?”

I blinked. “Because I was worried I was going to be executed?”

“Oh, dear. No, nothing of the sort, I assure you. You’re far too useful right now.”

The last two words didn’t evade my notice. “Okay, you claim you’re here to ‘extract’ me. Where do you plan to take me?”

“Why, Corin. I’m going to make all your dreams come true.” She clasped her hands together. “I’m taking you to your brother.”

I took a step back. “How? The Serpent Spire is locked.”

Elora laughed. “A second question, but I’ll humor you. Locks have keys, darling. Now, my turn! What has Derek told you about me?”

The jilted lover looking for gossip?

No, this is more tactical.

“He misses you.”

“Nonsense, he would never say that.”

I shook my head. “It’s not what he says. It’s what he doesn’t say.”

That was one of those lines that sounded much deeper and more philosophical than it actually was.

Unfortunately, my paltry platitudes were ineffective. “Your assessment, while adorable, is not what I needed. What has he told you about me?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “He told me that you’re a powerful Summoner. I think he used to climb with you. And you used to know Tristan, as children. You and Tristan were working together for a while, and you tried to bring Derek in on your plans. Derek refused, and you parted ways.”

“True enough. Uninteresting, but mostly accurate. Go ahead.”

I nodded. “I take it you’re the one who hired the Blackstone Bandits to keep an eye on me?”

“I wouldn’t quite call it ‘hiring’, but yes, I was the reason they were looking after you for a time.” She smiled. “Let me ask you something that might actually have a useful answer.” Elora smiled. “How much do you know about the man who calls himself Keras Selyrian?”

Carter turned and looked straight at Elora, then to me. She was clearly interested.

“A bit. He’s a criminal who you attempted to arrest, working with my mother. He escaped.”

“Intriguing. I believe you know a good deal more than that.”

I slowly moved my head up and down, considering what was safe to say.

“He’s a foreigner and an expert combatant. I watched a memory crystal of your fight with him. He’s comparable to an Emerald-level attuned, if not stronger.”

“You’re dodging.”

I shrugged. “Maybe you should have been more specific.”

Elora waved a hand, her crystal ring glimmering as the light on it shifted. “Very well, then. Go ahead.”

I glanced to Carter, then back to Elora. “How long have you been working with servants of the Tyrant in Gold?”

Elora frowned. “What?”

The soldiers all tensed, turning toward me.

I may have just made another terrible mistake. But resh it, if she honestly doesn’t know, I’d rather have one potential ally than zero.

“Carter has a magical mark on the back of her right shoulder that—”

Eyes turned toward Carter.

Carter took a few steps back and reached into her pouch.

Woods tackled her to the ground.

I heard a snap. It wasn’t from the impact, though.

Woods pulled Carter’s arms behind her.

“Disarm and search her.” Elora clapped her hands together.

“You who are born of the Serpent,

Wrought with scales of adamant and bearing claws of fire,

I call upon our pact.

Visage of venom, hear my voice!

Wyvern, I summon you!”

A draconic beast appeared in the air above Elora, roaring into the sky. It was considerably larger than the version she’d summoned against Derek and Sera in the survival match.

Either she’d been holding back then, or she’d grown considerably stronger in the last few months.

Possibly both.

Michel moved to help hold Carter’s legs down, while Thomas flipped open Carter’s pouch, pulling her hand out of it and retrieving what she’d grabbed.

A stick, now snapped in two.

“What’s this?” Thomas demanded.

Carter chuckled. “A twig, obviously, sir. Never seen one before?”

Oh, no.

I turned to Elora. “That’s a signaling item. We need to leave right now.”

Elora turned to look at me, her eyes narrowing. Then, slowly, she nodded. “Agreed. Finish disarming her, then we’re getting out of here.”

“You’re too late.” Carter laughed again. “He’s already here.”

There was a blur of movement.

Then Woods fell backward, staring at two arms that were no longer connected to his hands.

Thomas had just enough time to open his mouth before a blur slammed into his throat. His hands reached up toward a growing line of red.

Michel’s aura flared yellow for an instant before something struck her in the jaw, slamming her into the ground hard enough to send her into a tumble across the forest floor.

The attacker was faster than my eyes could perceive.

Then someone was looming above Carter, a look of disdain on his face as he lifted — and then tossed — Woods’ severed hands.

“Attunements.” The figure wiped his own bloodstained hands against his previously pristine white shirt.

“You think so highly of them, and yet, they can’t help you in the slightest if you’re suppressing them.” He shook his head. “Not that little ones like yours would have mattered, anyway.”

The man was tall, slender, with short hair that had been dyed a dark green tone. His garb was entirely white, aside from the bloodstains.

His eyes were bright yellow. Almost gold.

“Now.” He turned down to Carter. “What’s all this nonsense?”

Carter stumbled to her feet. “I’m sorry. I’ve been compromised. We were instructed to suppress our attunements, and I couldn’t hide the mark properly.”

The man raised a blood-stained finger to her lips. “That’s enough, darling. No need for excuses. We’ll clean things up.”

To the side, Elora moved a finger.

The wyvern dove.

The man turned, frowned, and dodged a swipe from a barbed tail.

“Elias, Warden of the Adamantine Wall, I summon you!”

A titanic stone figure burst from the ground in front of Elora. I’d seen this before, in my vision of her fight with Keras, but I hadn’t seen it in person.

The man smacked the wyvern’s tail to the side with a palm, looking up at the stone golem. “Hrm. Neat.”

“Elias, bind him with chains of authority!”

Golden chains manifested around the man, pulling him toward the ground.

He frowned. Then the wyvern slammed its tail into his chest.

He didn’t move an inch. That kind of mass should have smashed through solid stone, but he didn’t even seem to notice the impact.

The bloodstained man just stared blankly for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think you’re doing this right.”

He touched a hand to the chains. “You see, this is all magic. The chains...” He closed his eyes, and the chains vanished. “This rather vicious beast.”

The man vanished, then reappeared with his hand grabbing the creature’s tail.

Then the wyvern vanished, too.

The man pointed at the golem. “This one looks sturdier, but in truth, it’s the same.”

He walked casually toward the massive golem as it brought it fists down on top of him. It must have been two stories tall, dozens of tons in weight.

He raised a hand and caught the descending stone fist. For the first time, he seemed to show a hint of effort, just for an instant.

And then the golem collapsed into an inert pile of stone.

“Delicious.” He smiled, turning back toward Carter. “Now, where were we?”

“We were leaving, I believe, m’lord Saffron.”

Saffron. That’s one of those “ess” names Keras warned me about.

The man — Saffron — nodded. “Ah, yes, yes.” He turned toward Elora. “But she was rather rude, wasn’t she?”

He took a step forward, then paused.

Thomas had grabbed his leg. The wound on Thomas’ neck was gone. “Never leave a healer in a condition to heal themselves, monster. Now die.”

A black aura flared from Thomas’ hands, burning through Saffron’s pant leg.

Saffron winced. “Good advice. I’ll offer some in return.” Saffron shook his leg free, then knelt down. He showed no signs of injury. “Don’t talk so much in the middle of a fight. Especially when you’re completely outmatched. Here, I’ll help.”

There was another blur, then Thomas fell backward, letting out a distorted scream.

All that had happened in a handful of seconds. I wasn’t waiting for anything else. I bolted toward the woods. If anyone was smart and still alive, they’d follow me.

Haste.

I threw as much mana as I could into my legs. I didn’t care about finesse right now.

Saffron appeared right in front of me. I barely stopped myself from running right into him.

“You’re fleeing from me.” He stared at me.

“I... I’m not with them,” I managed to stammer.

His eyes narrowed. “No?... Hm, interesting. Sit.”

I found myself sitting.

“Good boy. We’ll talk when I’m done.” He vanished again.

My mind was screaming to get up, but my body wouldn’t respond.

This is no time for half-measures.

I reached up and touched my Enchanter attunement, then I flooded it with pure mana from my hand.

More.

More!

I charged my attunement with mana until my hand burned and trembled with agony.

But I still couldn’t make myself stand.

Shivering, I pushed myself around to look back in the direction I’d come from. The mental command forced me to sit, but it wasn’t restricting me from doing anything else.

The first thing I considered was pulling my own signaling stick out of the Jaden Box, but that wasn’t likely to work. Derek was too far away to get to me quickly, and I didn’t even know if the stick would work at all at this range.

Instead, I pulled the signal monitor off my shield sigil. That would trigger the tracking device to activate.

It was a slim hope that the Soaring Wings would arrive in time to help. In truth, I didn’t know if they could handle a threat like this, anyway. I didn’t even know if Derek could.

But I wasn’t going to let myself die without doing everything I could to try to survive.

Thomas was pawing at his mouth. Trying to heal a missing tongue, perhaps.

Michel was back on her feet, her Citrine aura active. I watched as she focused mana in a fist and threw a punch at Saffron.

Saffron stepped to the side, avoiding the attack as if it had come at him in slow motion. Then Saffron’s hand moved like a blur, and I saw a splatter of crimson across the forest floor.

Michel fell to her knees, clutching at what was left of her throat. She didn’t rise again after that.

I shivered.

I still couldn’t stand. Instead, I turned toward a tree, tilting my feet.

Jump.

It wasn’t much, but I blasted myself a few feet to the side.

Jump.

I pushed myself further, trying to conceal myself from view. I wasn’t going to get very far with just the ring moving me, but maybe Saffron would forget about me if I was lucky.

At the moment, he was walking toward Elora. She hurled blasts of fire and lightning from her hands, but he just walked through them, ignoring the attacks entirely. They vanished when they hit him.

An expression of understanding crossed Elora’s face, and she changed tactics. “Torrent of Stone.” A tornado of dozens of stone spears appeared around her.

“Interesting strategy.” Saffron turned toward her and tilted his head in acknowledgement. “You’ve summoned actual stone. Only the force carrying them is magical.”

The spears flew forward in a swarm, slamming into him.

On contact, they shattered into splinters.

“Unfortunately, they’re simply not good enough. I do commend your efforts, though.” He nodded. “Wait a moment. Why do you look so familiar?”

While they were distracted with each other, I reached into my bag.

I needed a way to get myself out of there, and I couldn’t do it while I was forced to remain seated.

“Retrieve: Ring of Derek Controlling.”

The ring that Orden had used to control Derek wasn’t explicitly designed to control him, but I used the name because it was memorable.

An ordinary Enchanter wouldn’t have had much use for the ring, unless they were the one who had made it. It stored a bit of Orden’s mana inside a rune, which made the runes respond to her voice commands.

I understood how it worked because I’d made several of the same type of rune while working on the tiles for Teft’s final exam.

Orden was a wise enough Enchanter to put anti-tampering runes on it to prevent any of the runes from being added or removed.

She did, not, however, account for an Arbiter, who could purify the mana in a rune that already existed.

I touched the rune that contained Orden’s mana and activated my Arbiter attunement. In moments, Orden’s mana signature was gone.

“You will desist at once.” Elora’s voice trembled.

“Will I now?...Oh, no. I know where I know you from.” Saffron broke into a fit of laughter, doubling over. “Oh, how fun! I never thought... No, I can’t. Ah, this is so unfortunate.”

A spear burst from the ground under him, its crystalline form sparkling like diamond.

It pierced straight through Saffron’s chest.

Blood pooled around the wound.

Elora waved a hand. Five more spears shot up from the ground, piercing through his body with similar ease.

“Trash.” Elora coughed. She must have been overusing her lung mana with all those spells. “You’ll pay for—”

Saffron’s hand reached down, snapping the first spear in twain. After that success, I saw a blur of rapid motion as he destroyed the rest.

He tumbled to the ground, then reached backward awkwardly to extract the remains of the spears from his body. “Fascinating.” He coughed, tossing a bit of spear to the ground. “That was unexpected.”

I slipped the ring on my hand.

I wasn’t sure it would work, but I had to try.

I whispered to myself, “Stand up.”

The ring activated immediately. I felt perception mana flood into me from the enchantments as the command took effect.

...But I didn’t stand.

Saffron’s spell was stronger than the ring.

I felt my heart pounding in my chest as panic threatened to overwhelm me. But I had to keep fighting. I wouldn’t let myself stop.

The conflicting commands burned in my mind, and I shivered with effort. “Stand up,” I repeated. The ring activated again.

Saffron cracked his neck, then his body blurred, and the remaining spears had been tossed to the side.

And as I watched, the gaping wounds on his body began to close. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve found anything that can hurt me.” Saffron bowed toward Elora. “You have truly impressed me.”

“Keep watching.” Elora clapped her hands together.

A dozen more of the diamantine spears burst from the ground.

But they didn’t hit anything.

Saffron was next to Elora now. “I’m afraid that won’t work a second time. I was quite distracted at first. But I was complimenting you. You shouldn’t be so rude.”

Elora took a step back. “You’re—”

He raised a bloodstained finger toward her lips. “Ssh.”

Elora glared at him.

“Stand up!” I told myself again, still shivering as the conflicting mana worked within my body.

Saffron’s spell snapped.

Slowly, I stood up, just in time to see Carter walking toward me.

Saffron was still staring at Elora. “Now, tell me, where did you get that face?”

Elora glared at him for one more moment, then looked to where the soldiers were lying bleeding on the ground.

“This is a simple question. Where. Did. You. Get. Your. Face.”

“My parents, obviously.” Elora took a step back.

Saffron shook his head. “No, no. That’s not what I meant. Think about my question.”

Carter dropped into a fighting stance as she approached, glaring at me. “You’re going to pay for screwing my cover.”

Resh, almost made it.

She’s probably Citrine level or higher, and a leg marked. That means she’s close combat focused. I don’t know if I can handle her.

I reached into my bag again as Carter drew closer. “Retrieve: Signaling Stick.”

Carter paused, staring as I pulled the stick out of the bag.

“Not one step closer.” I waved the stick. “You know what this is.”

Carter continued to approach, but more cautiously. “Might just be a stick you found on the floor.”

Elora was still talking to Saffron, but I couldn’t focus on that while my own life was at risk.

I moved my hands to brace for breaking it. “Think about how I recognized yours immediately, and how I recognized your mark.”

“You’re an Enchanter, you could have—”

I decided to gamble.

“I’d advise you to stop walking now. Sterling will be very upset if I call him all the way out here.”

I’d picked a random name, the first one I’d remembered from the “ess” names that Keras had given me.

From the way that Carter paled and took a step back, I took it I’d hit the mark. “Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” she said. “You just hand that over to me and we’ll get this sorted out.”

“Not going to happen. You stand down, and I’ll talk this over with your master directly. Then you can tell him why you were involved with interrupting my mission for this nonsense.”

“I didn’t—”

My gamble was working, but there was a problem.

Saffron seemed to have run out of patience for Elora, and now his hands were wrapped around her neck.

If I let things go, maybe I could have simply talked my way out of the situation. If I’d sold Carter with my lies, maybe Saffron would have listened, too.

But even if I didn’t approve of everything that Elora had done, I couldn’t just watch her die.

Not just out of my general pacifism, in this case.

She was my best lead on information about my brother.

I took a few steps forward, ignoring Carter. She actually stepped away from me as I moved closer to Saffron.

I whispered to myself. “Don’t listen to any of Saffron’s commands.”

The ring activated again. I didn’t know if doing that in advance would be enough to shield me if he commanded me again, but it was better than nothing.

Then I addressed Saffron directly, putting on a veil of false confidence. “Please stop that, Saffron. My master has made something of an investment in that one, and I’ve been asked to ensure she isn’t harmed.” I casually waved the stick in the air, hoping it would get his attention.

He turned his head toward me. “What master are you... Wait, how are you standing?”

I raised my hand and showed him the ring. “A small gift from my master protected me.” I considered my next words closely. “Sterling would not be pleased if I was forced to do the bidding of others.”

“Sterling.” He almost spat the word. “This girl is one of his projects?”

I nodded with the utmost confidence, having zero idea of what I was talking about. “Of course. Can’t you see why?”

He glanced at her, then back to me. “This is a bit perverse, even by his standards.” Saffron grinned. “But I can see the appeal. There is one problem, however.”

“Oh?”

Saffron turned back to Elora. “I’ve always enjoyed breaking my brother’s toys.”

I heard a snap.

Elora’s fingers.

And then she vanished.

Saffron’s shoulders sagged. “Really? She can teleport?” He blurred again, appearing at Carter’s side. “Idiot. You didn’t tell me they had a teleporter.”

“Forgive me, Lord Saffron. I assumed you knew.”

“Deflecting blame? You’ll be punished for that later. But for now, I should finish here, hmm?” Saffron turned to me. “Now, tell me your name, rank, and authentication phrase.”

The ring activated, sending me command to obey.

I appear to have made a terrible mistake.

I’d purified the rune that was responsible for filtering when the ring activated.

At the moment, that meant that it would activate if anyone gave me a verbal command. I could fix that eventually, but it would require making permanent modifications to the ring.

My previous command to ignore Saffron was still at work. The end result was that a surge of pain flooded through my body as the commands conflicted. I wasn’t ready for it like I had been when I’d activated the ring in the first place, and I ended up falling backward in surprise.

Saffron stalked forward toward me. “I said now, boy.”

I fought to resist as the compulsion activated again. A few moments later, I would have failed.

Elora Theas appeared next to me and grabbed me by the arm.

I didn’t resist in the slightest.

She snapped her fingers, and then we were elsewhere.

***

We appeared right outside of Derek’s mansion.

Elora fell forward and vomited noisily. I managed to steady her enough that she didn’t fall into her own mess.

My own head was still swimming, but I was clearly in better shape than she was.

“Door.” Elora managed to say.

I grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

By the time I turned back to her, Elora had fallen to the ground. Not in her mess, fortunately. But her eyes were closed.

I picked her up and shouted as I walked inside. “Derek! Keras! Help!”

I carried Elora inside, only managing a few steps before Derek came running down the stairs.

He was unarmed.

He looked like he’d just gotten out of bed, wearing nightclothes, a silver bracelet on his right wrist, and a crimson bracelet on the left. He was also wearing a necklace that looked vaguely familiar.

“Corin? What’s...?”

He took a moment to process what he was seeing. “I’ll take her.”

Derek ran over, gingerly slipping his arms under Elora and lifting her. “Close the door and tell me what happened.”

“Get Keras. Now.”

I ran back to the door, lifting the horizontal bar across it. This manor was built like a fortress, and the door was designed accordingly.

“Keras isn’t here right now. Why?”

A fist burst through the front door.

“Because there is a slim possibility we may have been followed by a Child of the Tyrant in Gold.”

Derek stared at the door. “Oh. Yeah, that’s bad.” Derek looked from side to side. “Take her somewhere safe.”

Elora groaned in his arms. “...No. Down.”

Derek set Elora down gently on the floor, then put his hand on the crimson bracelet. “Delsys, I summon you.”

A crimson-skinned figure appeared at his side, blazing winds whipping around him. Derek pointed at the back of the room. “Find Keras and bring him back here immediately.

The flame creature nodded, then seemed to condense as it shifted in form to a blazing bird and flew out straight through the rear wall, leaving a bird-shaped hole.

The door flew off its hinges.

Saffron stood in the doorway. “I do not like it when people leave me in the middle of a conversation.”

Derek took a step forward. “Sir, you’ve just broken my front door. I do not appreciate that.”

Saffron turned his gaze toward Derek. “I’m terribly sorry, I mean no offense. I just need to dismember those two a little bit, then I’ll fix your door...” He shook his head. “No, I probably won’t.”

Derek’s aura brightened to Emerald, and he put a hand on the silver bracelet. “Tavare, I sum—”

“Stop, Derek.” Elora grabbed his leg. She was still having trouble standing. “He absorbs magic. It works on summons.”

Absorbs?

I’d seen him make those monsters vanish, but I hadn’t understood what was happening.

Derek nodded. “Get yourself and Corin out of here. At least until you recover enough to help.”

Saffron took a step forward. “Those are my prey.” His eyes narrowed. “I did not give them permission to leave.”

Saffron vanished again.

When he reappeared, his fingers were an inch away from punching though the center of Elora’s chest.

Saffron’s expression was perplexed. He struggled to move further.

Derek had grabbed him around the wrist. “I think not.”

Then Derek slammed a fist into Saffron’s face.

The Child of the Tyrant fell backward with a bloody lip.

Saffron raised a hand, wiping away the blood with an already-filthy hand. “Now that...is interesting.”

“Derek. Be. Careful.” I managed. Then I ran for the stairs.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a fight that was little more than a blur.

It was immediately evident that I had never seen Derek use a fraction of his true strength.

When Derek flew past me and crashed into the stairwell, it became apparent that even his true strength might not be enough.

Derek was moving again in an instant.

And I was running again a moment later.

When I was on the second floor, I paused. What could I even do in a fight like this?

The first order of business was pulling off the Ring of Derek Controlling. I dropped it back into my bag, along with the stick. I’d look into modifying the ring later, but for the moment, it was a liability if anyone could command me to do anything.

If I wanted to escape, that seemed fairly simple. I could go to the roof, jump off, and use the ring of jumping to flee to safety.

But would that even work? This thing had followed us all the way here in moments.

It clearly had some kind of tracking and teleportation, not to mention movement that was so fast I couldn’t even perceive it.

How can I fight this thing?

I could get Selys-Lyann, but he absorbs magic. Selys-Lyann probably wouldn’t hurt him, if I could even land a hit at all.

Absorbing magic...

I ran toward Sera’s room instead of my own.

I found Ceris, the Song of Harmony, lying next to her bed.

Like deflects like.

Will it work?

I wasn’t sure, but I had to try.

I grabbed the sword and ran down the stairs.

Derek swung a fist at Saffron, but the Tyrant’s child stepped back and avoided the swing.

Blood was trailing down the right side of Derek’s face. His right eye was closed.

Saffron pointed at Derek. “I tire of this. Sit.”

Derek’s necklace flashed with sudden light. “Nah.”

Then Derek stepped in and slammed a fist into Saffron’s gut.

Saffron stumbled back, startled. “What? How?”

Derek didn’t slow down to explain, he just launched a hail of punches that sent the Tyrant’s child staggering back.

Meanwhile, I could see Elora on the opposite side of the room. There was a growing aura of mana around her hands, white mixed with crimson.

Saffron swept at Derek’s legs, but Derek hopped over it and kicked Saffron in the chest. The Tyrant’s child stumbled back, snarled, and then caught Derek’s arm on the next swing.

“This has been absolutely delightful. But I’m afraid you’re just not good enough.” Saffron shook his head. “A disappointment, really. I was hoping...”

Derek slammed his other fist into Saffron’s jaw, knocking the Tyrant’s child back a step.

Saffron just shook his head and kept talking. “...For a real challenge today. Like I used to have, before... Ah, it doesn’t matter.” A blur.

Derek flew backward, slamming into a stone wall.

Elora continued to focus, a swirling nimbus of light around her growing stronger with every moment.

I slowed as I went down the stairs.

Saffron turned his head toward me. “Oh, hello. You’re the one I was meaning to talk to later. But now I’m in a poor mood, so I think I’m just going to go ahead and kill you either way.”

Haste.

I wasn’t anywhere close to fast enough to hit him, even layering as much mana as I could throughout my body.

I didn’t try.

I just threw Ceris toward Derek as quickly as I could.

Saffron blurred and almost casually snatched the sword out of the air. “What’s...? Ah!”

He dropped the sword as his hand began to burn where he touched Ceris’ grip.

Then Derek slammed into his back and pressed him into the wall. “Now, hold still.”

Derek grabbed Saffron’s arms and pinned him against the stone.

I rushed for Ceris.

Elora’s hands glowed brighter, almost blinding to look at. I’d never seen that much mana collected into a single spell. Not even close.

“Elora, hit him now!”

“You’re in the way, idiot!”

“I know! Hit him through me!” Derek yelled.

Saffron laughed. “Are you joking? There’s no way—”

“You absolute idiot!” Elora pointed her right hand. “Fine! If you want to die here, die!”

Elora began to chant, mana emerging from her mouth.

“Burning bright with starry light,

Your strength and mine are one...”

Saffron’s struggles against Derek intensified, but Derek managed to keep him pressed against the wall. For the moment, at least.

“I call upon your divine might,

Flames that can burn even the soul of the sun!

Rage of the God Phoenix!”

The mana crystal in the ring on Elora’s right hand shattered.

An explosion of white flames enveloped her, rising into the shape of a blazing bird.

Elora, barely visible amongst the flames, pointed her finger.

The flames surged forward.

No. I’m not sacrificing Derek for this.

I raised Ceris, the Song of Harmony, and I willed it to work.

The white fire arced, shifting course in mid-air, straight into Ceris’ blade.

I didn’t wait an instant. I could see Saffron turning, throwing Derek off.

I lowered my arm to strike.

Haste.

Jump. Jump. Jump.

The force of activating the ring repeatedly threw me forward with a speed I couldn’t possibly control. But I didn’t need to.

I’d already aimed.

I jammed Ceris right through the center of Saffron’s chest.

There was an explosion of incendiary whiteness as the stored spell was released.

And when my vision cleared, a spherical hole larger than a fist was missing from the center of Saffron’s chest.

Saffron stared at me in shock.

I pulled the sword back and swung again, aiming for his neck.

He raised an arm and deflected the blow, almost casually.

The sword cut into his flesh, but...

Saffron shook his head, grinning through bloodstained teeth.

Where his hand had been burned by touching the sword, the wound was already gone.

The hole in his chest was beginning to close.

And even the cut I’d just made on his arm was almost closed.

No.

I screamed, swinging the sword again and again. He blocked every strike with his arms.

He was healing faster than I could hurt him.

And then, with sudden force, he struck back.

I’d never felt my ribs buckle like that before.

I fell backward, hit the floor, and rolled.

The sword tumbled from my fingers.

“That,” I heard Saffron say, “Was incredible!”

The Tyrant’s child burst into laughter.

My coughing produced blood. That seemed bad.

My silver phoenix sigil was active, already working to try to fix my injuries. But it only had a fraction of the power of the ring of regeneration, and even the ring took time to address broken bones.

I’d left the ring with Sera. In retrospect, that had been a costly mistake.

With effort, I managed to push myself over to face upward.

I tried to reach for Ceris.

Derek ducked down and picked it up first. “Not my first choice of a weapon, but it’ll do.” Derek cracked his neck. The left side of his chest was stained with blood now, and I couldn’t tell how much of it was his.

“You already tried that. It didn’t work.” Saffron shook his head. “At least be creative.”

“Creativity has its place, of course. But in the absence of good ideas, I usually find that hitting something hard enough repeatedly will solve the problem.” Derek grinned. “And I’ve noticed something.”

Saffron tilted his head to the side. “Oh?”

“You’re healing slower than you were a few minutes ago.” Derek pointed Ceris at him. “I think you’re running out of mana.”

Saffron growled. “Not possible.”

Derek stepped to the side. Away from me, and probably deliberately. How generous.

“Oh? So you have an infinite supply of mana? I doubt that. We all have our limits.” Derek tilted his head downward. “And I think you’re dangerously close to hitting yours.”

I managed to cast a glance to the other side of the room, toward Elora.

She had collapsed against a wall and fallen to the ground. I wasn’t sure if she was even conscious.

She clearly already had been low on mana before she’d thrown that incredible spell. Whatever she’d cast had taken what she’d had left, and probably more.

I couldn’t move more than a hair. I’d burned nearly all of my mana just trying to get free from Saffron’s compulsion.

It was down to Derek now.

And Derek was, from the looks of it, pretty badly injured himself.

Saffron moved.

It was the slightest thing, just a hint of a step forward.

Derek took the bait, swinging at Saffron’s outstretched hand.

Saffron side-stepped the blow and caught Ceris’ blade.

Then he slammed a palm into Derek’s jaw, knocking him back.

And tearing Ceris free from his grip.

“Tavare,” Derek said, coughing as he stumbled backward.

“Your summoned monsters are useless,” Saffron said as he hurled the sword into a nearby wall. Ceris pierced through the stone, embedded to the hilt.

“I call you.”

A slight variation in phrasing, I realized.

No elemental appeared at his side.

Instead, a gleaming sword flew down the stairs and toward Derek’s outstretched hand.

Saffron turned and grabbed for the hilt.

The sword shifted mid-air and moved out of the way.

Then Derek was armed.

“Much better.” Derek stepped forward, swinging at a diagonal, and projected a wave of cutting force.

Saffron side-stepped the shockwave, but Derek twitched a hand and the energy followed Saffron’s path.

Saffron raised his hands just in time to block the impact. It left long gouges along his arms.

“Just as I expected. You can’t absorb kinetic energy.” He swung his sword again, horizontally this time. Another shockwave flew out, but this one stretched then split apart, each one flying to hit Saffron from a different angle.

“You have become an irritation.” Saffron pronounced. “I don’t like to do this, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to resort to taking this a fraction more seriously.”

Saffron clapped his hands. “A shame, really. I’d like to—”

Derek blurred forward and slashed Saffron across the throat.

Saffron flickered as the sword passed though him, and I realized what that meant at the same moment that Derek must have.

Illusion.

Another Saffron appeared behind Derek a moment later, and then slammed a fist into his back.

Derek stumbled and fell to his knees.

“As I was saying, I try not to use magic actively, because it spoils the thrill of the hunt. But you’re exceptional, for a human. Even if the other humans did wear me down a bit first.”

Derek spun around, bringing the sword upward in a rising slash.

Saffron caught the sword between his palms, then shoved backward.

Derek stumbled, running into something—

A second Saffron, who spun him around and punched him in the face.

Derek fell to his knees again, lips bloody.

“Illusions. Simulacra.” Derek spat blood, shaking his head. “Can’t fight me with just one of you?”

Saffron smiled. “I could, of course. But you’re getting special treatment since you’ve done so very well!”

One Saffron threw a punch, which Derek side-stepped and responded to with a series of rapid slashes.

The other Saffron folded his hands together. They began to glow red.

My ribs were still burning.

My hand was still barely functional from all the mana I’d used.

But I could not just lie here and watch Derek get beaten to death.

I couldn’t stand, but resh it, I could crawl.

I slowly began to pull myself across the floor toward the wall where Ceris had impacted. I didn’t think I had any chance of doing much with it, but maybe I could get it back to Derek. He was trained at fighting with two swords.

Another Saffron appeared in front of me.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

He reached down and lifted me by the throat. “You managed to do me considerable harm earlier, young man.” Saffron shook his head. “That was uncalled for. I think it’s time I return the favor, hmm?”

For the second time in a day, I charged transference mana into my forehead and slammed it into someone.

It was considerably more effective than I expected.

In fact, it erased a good portion of the false Saffron’s face.

He dropped me, falling back and reaching upward toward the eyes that had just been evaporated.

As tough as the original Saffron was, simulacra were made of mana. Enhancement mana, or a derivative of it.

And transference mana, my very favorite for attacking, was the exact opposite.

I fell to the floor, rolled to avoid the simulacrum stomping a foot on me, and drew the transference sword straight into a swing.

I cut his legs off at the knees.

The Saffron simulacrum fell to the ground, and I rolled on top of him, jamming the sword into his back.

The simulacrum vanished.

I turned my head back toward the other fight. Derek was falling back, being attacked by three different copies of Saffron striking him from different sides.

I pointed my sword at the nearest Saffron, focused the energy in the tip of my sword, and pushed.

It blasted a hole right through the simulacrum’s back.

Incredulous, it turned toward me. Derek swept his sword through its neck a moment later.

We can do this, I told myself. I just need to—

Another Saffron appeared next to me.

I slashed at him out of reflex.

He caught the sword in his hand, lifting it. “Interesting.”

Then he snapped it in half.

Oh.

Saffron — the actual Saffron — leaned down, with half a broken sword in his hands.

I heard a noise toward the entrance, briefly turning my eyes in that direction.

Saffron placed the sword against the center of my chest. The broken blade’s edge began to glow with white light, brighter and brighter. “I think it’s only fair that I do to you what you did to me. Symmetry is important.” He nodded to himself. “Any last words?”

I managed a slight smile. “Keras Selyrian is right behind you.”

Saffron went still, then laughed. “As far as last words go—”

A hand landed on Saffron’s shoulder, then spun him around.

“...Oh.”

The punch that followed carried Saffron across the room, into the mansion wall, and then through that same stone wall.

I looked up at Keras, coughed, and then smiled. “Hey.”

Keras reached down and pulled me to my feet, then turned toward where a very-much alive Saffron was walking back through the hole in the wall.

“I’ll take things from here.”

Saffron clapped his hands together. An aura of white flame began to swirl around him.

“What was it again?”

Oh, no.

The flames intensified, swirling around Saffron in a nexus of fire. “Ah, yes.” He pointed his hand at Keras. “Rage of the God Phoenix.”

The aura of flames formed a soaring bird, rushing over Saffron and then following his pointed hand toward us.

Keras stepped in the way. His aura shifted in the same way I’d seen it move a hundred times before, forming a blade of energy around his right hand.

He cut the spell in half.

The remaining streams of white fire flew to either side of him, impacting against the back wall of the house and burning a pair of holes straight through it.

I stared in disbelief.

Keras tilted his head downward. “Saffron.”

“Keras.” Saffron spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor. “This is a surprise.”

The swordsman put a hand on the hilt of his sword. “I’ll give you a fair opportunity to leave.”

Derek swung his sword in an arc, dispatching the last of the simulacra. “Are you kidding? This guy wrecked my house, Keras. Also, less importantly, he may have killed Elora.”

Keras took a step toward Saffron, drawing his sword just an inch out of the scabbard. “Leave.”

Saffron’s eyes scanned across the room. Elora. Derek. Keras. Me.

“I’ll remember this. I’ll remember all of you.”

Then he snapped his fingers and vanished.

Derek glanced from side to side. “I seriously think I’m going to need a new house.”

Then he collapsed, senseless, to the mansion floor.

***

There’s something absolutely terrifying about not being able to move.

Saffron’s magic had forced me to remain sitting. Now, I had to force myself to lie still. Not as bad, but still far from my favorite activity.

Keras stood up from checking on me. “Good news is that I don’t think any of your ribs punctured a lung. Bad news is that I am not a medical professional.”

I nodded, then coughed. I was lying down on the floor. He’d insisted that I remain still until I got proper treatment. “You going to go get help?”

He shook his head. “Not until someone else gets here to watch over you, or more likely when Derek wakes up. There’s too much of a chance that Saffron will come back.”

I winced. “Could you beat him, if he does?”

Keras shrugged. “Maybe. In the state when he fled, most likely. From what it sounds like, you wore him down pretty badly. I’m proud of you. But if he comes back any time soon, he won’t do it by himself. And two Children of the Tyrant?” He shook his head. “Not good odds. Even for me.”

I didn’t like the sound of that in the slightest. “...Is there anything we can do right now to make sure that if he does come back it’s, you know, less likely to be fatal for us?”

“Don’t think so. As I’m sure you saw, there aren’t a lot of people who can stand up to one of the Tyrant’s children. I don’t know anyone local who can fight as well as Derek. Maybe I could grab his equipment for him? It looks like he just got out of bed, and he doesn’t have all his Soulblade items on him.” Keras shook his head. “Frankly, he probably did better than I would have without a weapon.”

I nodded at his logic. As a Soulblade, Derek was almost as reliant on his equipment as I was. I didn’t know if he could have beaten Saffron if he had all of his items on him, but it probably would have been a closer match.

I considered telling Keras to go get the items, but I hesitated. I didn’t want to take the chance that Saffron would return in the few minutes Keras left me all alone.

Before I had a chance to reply, a burning figure flew in through the back wall. I reached for my sword on my hip, only to realize that it wasn’t there, and belatedly, that the figure was just Delsys coming back.

Delsys had reverted to his humanoid form — a red-skinned man with blazing wings and a tornado of flame surrounding him. He hovered just a few inches above the floor.

He moved toward Derek’s fallen body, tilting his head down, then turned his head toward Keras. “This is unacceptable.”

“I hear you.” Keras sounded exasperated. “Sorry, I couldn’t get here in time.”

Delsys let out a low growl. “When I find the creature that did this, I will burn it until nothing but ash remains.”

“Delsys,” I managed, before breaking into a coughing fit. The blazing figure turned its head toward me.

“Young Cadence,” he replied.

“Derek and Elora need a healer. Do you know any nearby?”

“I am not well-versed in the skills of mortals.”

I pondered that. “Sheridan Theas. Can you find them?”

“I am aware of the home of Sheridan Theas. If they are present, I will retrieve them.” Delsys nodded, then changed into the shape of a blazing bird, and flew back out.

...Leaving another hole in the wall.

“Well, at least now help is probably on the way,” Keras remarked.

I sighed. “...Yeah.” I managed to lift a hand to my forehead, wiping away sweat. “How did you get powerful enough to fight people like that, Keras? It’s...the gap in our strength seems impossible to bridge. As you said, Derek is about as strong as humans get. And even he was at a disadvantage against Saffron.”

“I wouldn’t completely agree with you there. Derek might have been weaker than Saffron, but if he had all his equipment, I think he could have forced Saffron to retreat like I did. Immortal beings like Saffron don’t generally like to risk fighting anyone who stands any chance at causing them lasting harm.”

“Maybe.” I didn’t get the impression Saffron considered any of us a serious threat. “But what if we wanted to win, rather than just force a stalemate? Is it even possible for a human to achieve the power necessary to do that?”

Keras shrugged a shoulder. “I have met a few humans with as much raw power as Saffron...but they’re people who have found ways to extend their life span beyond normal human limits.”

He’s probably talking about people like Wrynn Jaden, I realized.

“So, if I wanted an equivalent amount of magical power to someone like Saffron, I’d need more than a human lifetime to get it?”

“Not necessarily, although that would be the most plausible route. You saw what Saffron could do, yes? The Children of the Tyrant are all like that — they can absorb magic. Not just for a short time, either. They can steal power from items, or from people, in ways that make themselves permanently stronger.”

He shook his head. “Many of them have had hundreds of years of practice doing just that. Imagine not having to train in the slightest, just putting your hand on some hapless victim and taking all their strength.”

“And there’s no downside to that? No limit to the amount they can absorb?”

Keras shook his head. “Not that I’ve seen. They tend to specialize in a few types of magic, so maybe they have difficulty absorbing opposing magic types. It probably causes conflicts in their body if they have too much of two opposing types. But while that is a limit, it’s not one that’s particularly exploitable, when they’re practically invincible and still have several types of magic to work with.”

“How would you beat one, then? You said you thought you might be able to.”

“I have something of an unfair advantage.” He patted the sword on his hip. “I can hurt them in ways they can’t regenerate from. That doesn’t mean I’d be guaranteed a victory, though. Many of them, especially the stronger ones, would have tactics that would allow them to wear me down without ever getting into my swinging range. Saffron isn’t the most strategic of the bunch, which is why I’d stand a reasonable chance.”

I gestured at the sword on his hip. “Is that the reason you’re so dangerous? I don’t see you draw the sword very often. One of the Six Sacred Swords, I’m guessing?”

“Not quite, but you’re not far off.” He shook his head. “Anyway, the weapon is a part of it, but it’s useless on its own. Hand it to an ordinary swordsman and they’d just kill themselves with it.”

He tapped a hand against his chest. “Much of my strength comes from practicing magic in ways that permanently reinforce my body. It’s a very slow process. I use things like strength and resilience spells until my body acclimates to them and improves.

“You’re already working on that yourself — practicing that Haste spell is going to make you faster and faster, as your body acclimates to it. Another portion is learning techniques that are designed for single combat against opponents that are stronger than I am. We’re training you for that, too.”

“But I’m sure a lot of people train like that.”

“Sure.” Keras nodded. “To some degree, at least. I’m sure you’ve noticed that training your Haste spell is a painful and frustrating process. Many are going to abandon that, unless they have perception spells to make it easier, like you talked about wanting. Sometimes the most frustrating training methods bear the most fruit.”

That made sense. “But that can’t be enough to catch up to someone like Saffron. If what you’re saying is true, he could just drain a single Sunstone’s mana and it’d be more power than I’ve earned in my life.”

“Fortunately, I don’t think their mana absorption is one hundred percent efficient. But your point remains true. There are two other reasons I’m as powerful as I am. One, is that I’m constantly looking for shortcuts to make myself more powerful. Some of them work better than others.

“That flask of magic water you gave Sera? It might have backfired, but that’s the type of idea that I’ve made use of a dozen times. Some of them have taken me out of commission for a while. Others have nearly killed me. But I’ve survived to this point, and I’m stronger for it.”

Keras shook his head. “Don’t take that as encouragement to go that route, though. I have another reason why I’m as strong as I am, and it’s a part of the reason I can afford to experiment.”

“You’re not human,” I guessed. “You’re...what, a God Beast? Or something like it?”

“I suppose that’s not a bad comparison, although I’m not sure I like it. I’m...well, it’s a bit complicated. Didn’t even find out myself until I was an adult. That made for something of a confusing childhood.”

“I’d imagine.”

“Anyway, I have advantages and disadvantages because of it. In terms of sheer combat ability, it’s mostly advantages. It’s the other parts of life that I have more trouble with.” He gazed away, distant and contemplative.

I let him think for a while.

But not too long.

Being incapacitated and in terrible pain was extremely boring. “Your shortcuts. Would any of them work for me?”

“Not sure. Most of the ones I’ve used are directly related to what I am. A human wouldn’t survive them. Maybe one of the crystals at the elemental temples...” He shook his head. “I don’t think you’re ready for that yet.” Keras folded his arms, sitting down next to me. “You might have been on the right track with the mana water.”

I nodded weakly. “I’d been planning to study it further, and similar things like enhancement elixirs. But that still seems so slow.”

I expected him to give me a speech about how slow, incremental growth was the safe way to go. That was, after all, the same kind of lecture I got from everyone else. That I had to pay my dues, train for years, and eventually maybe — just maybe — I’d be good enough.

Or, perhaps he’d give me a lecture about how power wasn’t what was important, and that I needed to grow as a person and learn to be responsible and avoid conflict.

Or maybe he’d tell me that I had a pair of support attunements, and that I should never have been trying to fight someone directly at all. That it was complete folly for an Enchanter to try to be a front-line combatant.

Instead, he said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t have the patience for that approach after a fight with someone like Saffron, either. Okay. Let’s think of something.”

“...Really?”

“Sure. You think I want you to feel helpless? Accept your weakness? That’s no way to live. I might not have an instant solution, but I’ll try to help you figure something out. Don’t get your hopes up about us finding something that’s going to make you as strong as Saffron, of course. But there are ways to win battles without being as strong as your opponent.”

“Of course, but I can’t expect to do that reliably. If Elora hadn’t teleported me out of that area, I’d have been at Saffron’s mercy. And it’s not like that was an isolated incident. I’m routinely running into enemies that are too powerful to fight directly.”

“So...don’t, then.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “What am I supposed to do, tell them to spare me so I can train for a year and give them a better fight later?”

“You’d be surprised at how well that can work, but no, that’s not what I meant.” Keras waved a hand dismissively. “I mean that you seem to be fixating on how to win in a one on one fight without any sort of situational advantages. That isn’t playing to your strengths.”

I tried not to feel offended by that. “Is this where you tell me that I’m an Enchanter, and I should be focused on making items for fighters, not trying to fight?”

“That isn’t what I was suggesting in the slightest.” He raised a hand to adjust his mask. “The strength I’m talking about is your flexibility. You’re extremely creative in how you make use of the items and abilities at your disposal. I’ve been trying to teach you my style of fighting, but I don’t think that’s what suits you. You already have your own.”

“My...own fighting style?”

“Sure. I trained for years to learn conventional fighting styles, just like you have. Sparring with dueling teachers, military training, that sort of thing. I was never a terrible swordsman, but I wasn’t exceptional, either. And being average was never acceptable. To excel, I had to learn to do what other people couldn’t do. And I’ve already seen you doing some of that — I just think you need to embrace it.”

Keras was right.

I’d been trying to copy the general approach to combat from other people my entire life. My father, Tristan, everyone who had ever trained me had ideas on how to approach combat. Many of these came from long years of training and tradition.

But those fighting styles were built for Guardians, or Shapers, or Elementalists. Not for Enchanters or Arbiters.

Even when I was training with Keras himself, I was focused on how I could use my own skills to make approximations of his, rather than developing something that suited me.

“You’re right. I have a combination of attunements that virtually no one else does. I’ve barely bothered to think about how I can do something unique with that.”

Keras grinned. “Now you’re getting it. What can you do that I can’t?”

I tapped my shield sigil. “Make mana threads. I can use them to connect to my sword and manipulate its aura.”

“That’s excellent, but that’s still finding a way to copy one of my techniques. You should still be doing things like that, but I think you can do more than just that. What’s something you can do with that, or otherwise, that I can’t do at all?”

I took a moment to ponder that. “I can attach a thread to my shield sigil so that I can recharge it in the middle of a fight.”

“Good. What else?”

I considered that. “I figured out that I can attach threads to other people’s sigils and recharge them, too.”

“Excellent, that’s much better. What else?”

“...Maybe learn to make solid mana threads, eventually? I can make solid mana crystals, so...”

“That’s an excellent answer. I can see a number of applications for it. What else?”

“Give me a minute to think.”

“Take your time. You’re not going to make a new fighting style overnight.”

***

I remembered talking to Keras for a bit, strategizing. Then the pain got worse, and the exhaustion overwhelmed me.

I don’t even remember making my way to my bedroom, but I must have eventually.

When I opened my eyes later, I saw a familiar figure looming over me. Not Keras, this time.

“Morning, darling. You gave me quite the scare.” Sheridan Theas was sitting over me, their hands on my...shirtless...chest.

I took just a moment to panic, trying to sit up.

They put a firm hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down. “Not so suddenly, Corin. I’m still working on you.”

Working?...

Oh.

I managed to suppress my panic, settling back down.

I was in an unfamiliar bed, but my pants were on, and I was starting to recall what had just happened. “Right. Working. Injuries. That’s why I’m...”

Sheridan laughed. “What, did you think I was taking advantage? How scandalous. I’d kill me for that, even if Derek or Keras didn’t get to it first. Don’t worry, Corin. You’re safe. I’m just mending your ribs.”

I gave Sheridan a slow nod. “Uh, thanks. I’m sorry, I just...”

Sheridan shook their head. “Don’t worry about it in the slightest. I probably should have given you some warning. I was just trying to hold you down so you didn’t move and make your injuries worse. You were tossing and turning quite a bit in your sleep. Nightmares, I think.”

I gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry. I...get those kind of a lot.”

“Maybe we can find something for that later. In the meantime, though, just try to relax a bit while I finish this up?”

“Thanks...” More of my memory was returning. “Derek? Elora? Are they...?”

“Derek is recovering, but he’ll be in rough shape for a while. I treated him first, though, so he’s stable. My sister, unfortunately, is also alive. That’s one winter wish that I’ll have to work on a little harder.” Sheridan chuckled.

“You hate your sister that much?”

“Oh, no, dear. I love my sister. I just prefer to love her from as far away as possible. And the grave would, of course, be the most distant option.” Sheridan rolled their eyes. “Anyway, don’t pay any mind to my jousting with Elora. It’s a form of affection.”

I nodded. Even that slight movement sent a new surge of pain through my chest.

I could understand what Sheridan meant. Sera and I did quite a bit of teasing each other, even if it wasn’t quite as extreme as what Sheridan was talking about.

“And Saffron?”

“That monster never came back, but we’ve relocated to my house for the time being. There was too much of a risk that Saffron would send someone to that place, even if he didn’t come himself.”

That made me feel somewhat better, at least. “Is Keras still with us?”

“Oh, that one has been watching you like a paternal phoenix, dear. Right now, I think he’s pacing outside. I can get him when I’m done with this, if you’d like.”

“Thanks. Has anyone told Sera that I’m safe?”

Sheridan shook their head. “No, but I do know a Wayfarer nearby. We can send a message later. You should stay here for a while, at least for a few days.”

I frowned at that. “I’d like to go check on where Saffron first arrived. Some of those people he hurt might still be alive.”

“Elora’s people? Didn’t they abduct you just a bit?”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I want to leave them to die out there. If Saffron went back...”

Sheridan shook their head. “If Saffron went back, there’d be nothing left for us to save. If Saffron didn’t go back to them, though, perhaps some of them may have lived. But it’s been hours at this point, they’d have moved to somewhere else if they were in any condition to do so.”

“I’d still like to make sure they get help, if they’re alive.”

Sheridan shrugged a shoulder. “I’m sure Elora will see to it when she wakes.”

“You don’t seem too concerned.”

Sheridan laughed. “Concerned? About a bunch of people who grabbed a teenager in the middle of an exam to use him for a convoluted scheme? No, Corin, I’m not concerned about the fate of that sort of person. I think it’s sweet that you’re kind enough to care, but if you think any one of those people would have given you the same kind of thought, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not them. Will you look into it for me?”

Sheridan sighed. “Fine. I’ll look into survivors. But only because you’re such a darling. Now, will you do me the kindness of shutting up for a few minutes so I can work?”

“Yes, right. Of course.”

Shutting up was harder than I expected.

This was not due to boredom.

It was because knitting my ribs back together with magic was considerably more painful than I expected.

I considered asking Sheridan to stop, and just relying on the silver phoenix sigil or getting the ring of regeneration back to fix the injuries, but fixing bone damage with regeneration could have taken weeks.

I didn’t have that kind of time.

So, I gritted my teeth through the pain of bones and cartilage knitting in my chest, all the while thinking about a single idea.

I needed to be stronger.

I couldn’t promise myself I’d never lose a fight again. That was absurd, unrealistic in a world with monsters as strong as Saffron.

But I could dedicate myself to making strategies for next time.

Maybe then, I wouldn’t feel so reshing useless.

Chapter XIX – Emergency Preparedness

In spite of my best intentions, I spent the rest of the day in bed. Broken bones weren’t exactly the kind of injury I could shrug off, even with magical healing.

The following day, Sheridan visited again, and I confirmed that they had contacted Sera. That would help ensure Sera didn’t panic and try to launch some kind of rescue mission, at least.

When I was up and walking, the first thing I did was pay a visit to Elora Theas. I wasn’t clear on if we were in her home or Sheridan’s, but either way, she was there.

The guards outside her room gave me some side-eye when I asked to see her.

The guards inside her room were even less thrilled.

Elora dismissed them. “Leave us. He’s no threat to me.”

Not yet, maybe.

Elora was resting in a tremendous canopy bed, sheets pulled up to conceal her lower body. She set a book aside, sitting up to turn toward me. “Cadence. I expected you to come by at some point.” She turned aside and coughed loudly, then raised a hand to her throat. “We may need to make this brief. Talking is still...challenging.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “Mana scarring?”

She nodded. “That last spell was not a simple thing, even for me.”

“Sheridan is treating you, I assume?”

“If you can call what my sibling does ‘treatment’, yes.” Elora shook her head. “But surely you didn’t come here to inquire about my health.”

“No.” I folded my arms. “You have a way to get me to Tristan. Now would be a good time.”

Elora laughed, then coughed again. She raised a hand in a gesture to wait, continued coughing for a time, and then spoke again. “After what we just went through? You must be joking.”

“Not in the slightest. I’ve been waiting for years to see Tristan again. I could use some real answers. And you were right — there are some questions only he can answer for me.”

“Perhaps. But I can’t help you. Not right now.” She folded her hands.

“I barely survived Saffron. If I’m not mistaken, you didn’t fare much better. I don’t feel like waiting.”

Elora sighed. “We can’t always get what we want, darling. Let me be clearer — I can’t help you, even if I wanted to. I’m too weak to teleport anyone right now, and I’d need that skill to get us to Tristan in the spire.”

I gave her a half-nod. That made sense, at least. “How long?”

“Don’t rush. It will only lead to disaster.” Elora paused. “But that’s not the answer you’re looking for. A few weeks, at the least. Maybe months.”

“You hurt yourself that badly?” It wasn’t impossible. I’d seen how long it was taking Sera to recover from mana scars.

“No, it’s not entirely that. There’s the issue of needing a team of Climbers that I can trust. You saw my last team.”

I nodded, putting things together. “The four people you sent to grab me, yourself, and me. That’s six.”

“And now I know that one of those people was a traitor. Michel and Woods are dead. Thomas survived, but he’s still critically injured.”

“Were they actually Valian soldiers?”

Elora shrugged a shoulder. “More or less. They finished their mandatory service and were assigned to my house guard. Legally, they retain their military ranks while in my service. So, not conventional soldiers, but the uniforms were real.”

Right. She’s a member of the Council of Lords. Having soldiers to protect her makes sense. “And abducting a student wasn’t something they had any concerns about?”

“You’re looking at it all wrong. This was never supposed to be a conflict. I signed all the paperwork to have you removed from the test early. You were practically done, anyway. You’ll be given a passing grade. The school chancellor wasn’t pleased, but I told her it was government business. Which it is, although she wouldn’t like the details.”

I leaned up against the nearby wall. “You called it an extraction before. What were you extracting me from? Is there some kind of threat still out in the forest?”

“Nothing like that. It’s not likely that they’ll act this soon. But I knew something would be happening within the next few months, and that Tristan would be displeased if you were injured or killed as a result. So, I was going to bring you to him. For safety.”

“And for some credit with Tristan, I presume. Maybe to make up for the mistake of telling Derek about your plans?”

Elora smirked. “You’re more like your brother than I expected. Always assuming the worst of people.” She paused, then added. “But you’re not wrong.”

I didn’t particularly like what that description implied about Tristan, but I wasn’t going to press the issue. I had more important questions. “What if I provided a group of people to climb the spire with you?”

“Oh, darling, your group of children isn’t going to be sufficient for my standards. Kind of you to offer, though.”

I felt my hands tighten, but I released them. Giving tells to show that she was getting under my skin was not to my advantage. “No students, then. Derek, Keras, yourself, and myself make four. Sheridan would make five. For the sixth... Lord Teft, perhaps.”

“I can’t even begin to tell you how terrible of a plan that is. No, wait, yes I can. Let’s begin with Derek, shall we? He’s actively working against Tristan. Bring him along, he’s not going to help you have a tearful reunion. He’ll want to settle the score.”

She raised two fingers. “Second. Keras Selyrian. I don’t know how you’ve managed to end up working with one of the most dangerous people on the continent, but if you think you understand his motivations, you’re sorely mistaken. He’d certainly make climbing the spire easier, but I’m not convinced he’d let any of us live when he’s reached his goals.”

Three fingers. “Sheridan. You couldn’t afford their help.”

Four fingers. “Lord Teft. Same problem with Derek. He wouldn’t support what Tristan is doing. Moreover, he’s less useful.”

Five fingers. “Me. I’m in no shape to climb the spires right now. And, in frankness, neither are you. Not for a few weeks, at least.”

I took a breath. “Fine. Not immediately, then. But you seemed to believe there was a good reason to get me out of here, and I assume you still want Tristan’s good will.”

“Certainly. But my risks are calculated ones. Now that I’m aware that a servant of the Tyrant managed to infiltrate my household guard, I’m going to need to dedicate my efforts to vetting everyone. I’m sure you understand the need for such a precaution.”

I nodded. “Do you know how Carter slipped in?”

“I hired Carter personally more than two years ago. And I can assure you, having seen both of her shoulders, she did not have a tattoo at the time. It would have had to have been recent.”

I pondered that. “Could that have something to do with the Blackstone Bandits?”

Elora sighed. “Carter has nothing to do with them. I know what you’re thinking, but my contact with the Blackstone Bandits was brief and unrelated.”

She sounded annoyed that I’d made the connection. Maybe I was hitting close to home, or maybe she just didn’t like my assumptions. From her expression, I judged it would be unwise to push that line of conversation further, so I switched approaches. “Could Carter have concealed the mark on her back with an illusion?”

“Certainly, and she probably was doing that for a while. But I have ways of seeing through most illusions. That might have kept her from being noticed on a day-to-day basis by others, but...” Elora shook her head. “The tattoo must have been recent. Which implies she was compromised recently, likely by Saffron himself.”

“Could the Tyrant cultists be working with Tristan?”

Elora frowned. “Unlikely. He did mention a powerful patron...but no, I doubt it. It’s more likely that Saffron had my household infiltrated for other reasons. Perhaps he knows what I was involved with, but it’s more likely he simply wanted eyes on a member of the Council of Lords.”

It was comforting to think that Tristan probably hadn’t sunk to working with followers of the Tyrant, but I couldn’t count on that.

And that bit about a powerful patron?

That was worrying.

“Okay. You need to recover. Is there a way that I could get into the spire without your help?”

Elora shook her head. “It’s locked. I have a key, but only I can use it. And even if you got inside the tower, you’d never find Tristan without me. Simply climbing up isn’t going to get you to him.”

I didn’t miss her emphasis. “Does that imply that Tristan is in the subterranean levels, rather than up high?”

Elora raised a hand to rub at her neck. I suspected that overusing her mana had affected her throat, much like it had for Sera. “I’m not going to give you that kind of information. I will escort you to him when it’s time, by my own methods, and for my own reasons.”

She coughed again, then sighed. “I’m losing my voice again. I’ll say this much — I’m grateful that you uncovered a traitor in my house, even if it ended as poorly as it did. I do intend to get you to Tristan. But you will need to be patient.”

“One more thing, sorry. That spell you used... you have a contract with the God Phoenix, don’t you?”

Elora smiled. “I suppose the name of the spell gave it away, didn’t it? Keep that to yourself, if you would. There are very few of us with god beast contracts.”

I can think of one more.

“Could you have summoned Suzaku?”

“Ah, I see what you’re thinking.” Elora shook her head. “The god beasts generally don’t allow people to summon them outside of their own spire, even in simulacra form. Exceptions tend to have a cost that’s measured in lives. Even if I’d have been willing to sacrifice myself, I wouldn’t have had enough mana left to manage a true summoning. And a simulacrum of the God Phoenix would have been just as susceptible to his mana absorption as any other summon.”

I nodded at her explanation. “That also means you wouldn’t be able to summon Suzaku if he arrives again.”

“Yes. And, just so you understand, that was a Sapphire-level spell. There’s nothing stronger. Even I couldn’t have cast it on my own.” She raised a hand, showing her single remaining mana crystal ring. “I don’t know of anything capable of doing more damage. We shouldn’t antagonize him again.”

Well, if nothing else, that’s finally some confirmation that Sapphire-level abilities exist. I don’t know if that means there are Sapphire-level attuned, but it stands to reason that there could be.

I rubbed at my chin. “I understand. But I have a feeling that there will be consequences for our fight with Saffron, and I’d like to get ahead of that. If nothing else, Tristan needs to be aware of what happened.”

“You have a way of ensuring that, do you not?”

I frowned. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good. Now, leave me. We’ll speak again when I’m in a more presentable condition.”

I nodded. “I wish you a swift recovery.”

“For your sake as well as mine, I’m certain.”

I turned to leave. “You’re not wrong.”

***

When I had a moment alone, I checked Trials of Judgment.

No new replies from Tristan.

I was...angry about that. Frustrated.

Maybe a little scared, too.

Was he failing to reply because I wasn’t important? Was he toying with me?

Or was he in trouble? Hurt?

Dead?

I had no way of knowing.

I wrote him a message.

Dear Mysterious Brother Entity,

Be advised that an agent of the Tyrant of Gold infiltrated one of the households of one of your former allies. The agent has been deterred for the time being, but not without casualties.

A Child of the Tyrant was involved. Saffron.

If you are working with these people, I strongly urge you to reconsider. Saffron was clearly unstable at best.

If you are not working with them...

Be careful.

-Corin Cadence

I had so much more that I wanted to say, but for the time being, formality was a defense for my sanity. A solid shell to prevent my fears from breaking through and ravaging my mind.

And in truth, I still wasn’t sure I was ready for Tristan’s answers.

***

Most of the next day was painful. Slow. Boring.

I was eager for my friends to get back from the test, but the train schedule meant that they wouldn’t be arriving until late at night.

House Theas seemed a little more “proper” than Derek’s household had been.

They wouldn’t even let Keras and me train on the rooftop for some reason. “There are training rooms for that,” they said.

So unimaginative.

I did spend a little bit of time practicing, but I didn’t have the energy for much. It turns out that having your ribs broken makes a lot of things more difficult, like just breathing properly. Even with the worst of the damage repaired, it felt like everything hurt for a while.

I focused what energy I could on what Keras and I had talked about — finding a way of fighting that suited me, rather than just copying other people.

I’d been picking up so many new techniques throughout the year that I hadn’t really put much effort into figuring out how I could use my various skills in tandem with each other for a greater result.

The keystone for that was expanding my training with mana threads.

I’d already figured out that I could connect a thread of mana to a shield sigil to recharge it. That was a great start.

What could I do with my other items?

And what else could I do with a shield sigil, beyond just recharging it?

I experimented with a number of different possibilities.

Could I project mana threads at a distance to interact with items I wasn’t carrying?

The answer was “yes”, but my accuracy was terrible. I’d need to practice before it was practical.

Could I make solid mana threads, like how I made mana crystals?

I definitely could, but they were so fragile that they didn’t have much utility. I’d have to practice with that more to figure out if I could make any kind of use out of them.

The biggest find? I could connect two items to each other.

Most items didn’t have compatible mana types, so shifting mana from one place to another wasn’t particularly useful. But for cases like the shield sigils, they were virtually identical.

When I was in a test with the remaining mana of the standard-issue sigil determining my success or failure, being able to near-instantly refill my shield sigil by moving mana from the other sigil would be tremendously useful.

The combat applications were potentially significant, too.

Could I channel mana from an item straight into the aura-generating rune on my sword, changing the element of the aura?

I didn’t have any good way of testing that one. I retrieved Selys-Lyann and tried tinkering with it, but I couldn’t pull any of the mana out of the runes. I still hadn’t figured out how all the runes worked, but that implied that one of them was an anti-tampering measure.

Knowing what I knew now, that wasn’t a bad idea.

If I could figure out how to remotely alter the functions of item runes, someone else could, too.

I spent much of the day working on researching anti-tampering runes.

Eventually, I found a design that wouldn’t allow anyone to modify the enchantments on an item unless their personal mana signature matched the mana stored in another rune.

That would let me continue to tinker with my own items, but prevent any external modifications — at least in theory. Someone could still destroy the anti-tampering rune, or overpower it with a stronger spell, but that would be considerably more work.

I only had time to put an anti-tampering rune on my silver phoenix sigil before evening had arrived and I got confirmation that my platoon was heading back home.

I went to meet them at the train station.

***

Patrick rushed over as soon as he saw me. “You’re okay!”

I nodded. “Yeah, at least for the most part.”

The others followed right behind him.

Sera grabbed me into a hug. I awkwardly reciprocated.

She pulled away after that, wearing a slight smile that concealed a well of other emotion. “Vanniv saw the attack, or the beginning of it, at least. He went to get help, but by the time he came back, you were already gone. And there were just...bodies.”

I winced. “I’m sorry, Sera. I’m okay, though.”

She looked skeptical.

“Really, I’m okay. I mean, mostly. Shaken, obviously...but I’ll live.”

“I won’t press.” She folded her arms. “But it’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” I gave my best effort at a smile, which wasn’t very good. Still, I meant what I said. I also didn’t want to think about Saffron anymore, so I changed the topic. “How did the rest of the test go?”

“I’m afraid your departure was the last twist in our little story, and it’s the only thing the others would talk about on the other way back. Really, Brother, do you always have to be the center of attention?” It was a good attempt at sounding like she was back to her usual teasing, but her tone was off.

Still, I appreciated the effort, so I played along. “I try to be consistent. And I’m sure you were glad to have a day or two away from me, given how irritating I am.”

“Of course.” She wiped her eyes. “Obviously.”

Marissa came up behind her, reaching out awkwardly, and then pulling back. “I, uh, hi Corin.”

I realized that she’d stopped because of our last exchange, and I gave her a nod of gratitude. I extended an arm and offered her a half-hug. That was more tolerable to me, and she seemed to want the physical connection, even if it wasn’t exactly the kind of reassurance I personally enjoyed. “It’s good to see you, Mara.”

She accepted the half-hug and stepped back. “You...so, is there anyone you need me to hit for you?” She punched one fist into her other palm.

I laughed. “Maybe. I’ll explain when we get back to Elora’s place.”

Marissa blinked. “Elora? Is that a girl’s name?”

Patrick grinned. “Ooh, have you been...”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like that. She’s more like Derek’s girlfriend, if anything.”

“Aww.” Patrick chuckled. “I was hoping for some good gossip.”

I shook my head. “No gossip. But I do have a lot to tell you all.” I glanced from side to side. “Where’s Jin?”

“He went back separately,” Sera explained. “Said he had some business to attend to.”

Well, that’s not ominous or anything.

I nodded, but I felt oddly disappointed. Wasn’t he worried about me?

I dismissed the concern. He had his own ways of handling worry, just like I did.

If he wanted to check on me, he could do it any time.

I waved toward a nearby carriage, where Keras was waiting. “Let’s head out. I’ll explain everything when we get to a secure area.”

“Secure...?” Sera asked. “This is going to be one of your stories that changes everything, isn’t it?”

I considered that. “No. Just our living arrangements.”

***

The manor we were staying in belonged to Sheridan Theas, and it was on the opposite side of the city from the university. That meant that going back to school from there would have been a bit of a trek, but we were officially done with our exams, so it was a suitable place to stay for the few remaining weeks of the semester.

In truth, we probably could have gone back to our respective homes at that point if we’d wanted to. There would be closing ceremonies for the year, as well as the winter ball, but neither of those were strictly mandatory to attend.

I explained everything that had happened to me to the others. No omissions. They were deep enough in this situation now that they deserved to know.

After that, we took trips with Keras and a mostly-recovered Derek back to Derek’s manor to retrieve our things.

On one of those trips, I stopped Derek and asked him a question. “Who made the magic emergency stick that you gave me?”

Derek paused in his step. “An old friend, why?”

“Because Saffron’s agent in Elora’s group had one that was almost identical. They used it to signal Saffron. That’s how he showed up to attack us in the first place.”

Derek spent a moment making some colorful curses, at least one of which involved that other Enchanter doing things with a hamster that sounded both awkward and anatomically impossible.

After that, though, he turned to me. “I’ll look into that. They sell primarily to climbers out of a local casino. They probably just sold the stick without any idea of who they were dealing with...but I’ll find out.”

I nodded. “Any chance you’d be willing to give me a name?”

“No.” He shook his head. “This one is personal. Trust me, I’ll deal with it. And if they do end up being involved, I’ll let you know what I find out.”

I didn’t like that, but we all had our secrets, and I understood Derek’s need to keep some things to himself. “Okay. Is the stick that you gave me safe for me to hold onto?”

“Yes. It’s unlikely the item itself is compromised. It’s more that my friend might just be selling to an organization they shouldn’t be.”

The most important part of that exchange was that Derek had seemed genuinely surprised. I’d wanted to know if he’d knowingly been working with someone connected to the Tyrant, and from his response, it sounded unlikely. That was good enough for me.

I nodded to Derek and we continued walking back to the manor.

I’d already picked up the most important of my own items — Selys-Lyann and the Trials of Judgment book — but I still had a few other miscellaneous bits and pieces to move over.

I also stopped at the area where I’d hit Saffron with Ceris. As I’d suspected, there was a dried bloodstain.

I collected what I could of the blood in a vial. I had no intention of summoning Saffron with the Jaden Box, but I knew blood could be used for other things, like tracking spells.

After that, I did some thinking about where I wanted to stay.

Staying on House Theas’ lands would not be a long-term arrangement. There were too many servants, guards, and other people I didn’t necessarily trust. It wasn’t just a personal home like Derek’s house — this was a full estate, complete with three different houses, an expansive garden, and even a swimming pool.

That made it far less personal and far less enticing to me.

Going back to either my own humble dorm room or Derek’s house was not an option, though. Not when Saffron could show back up at any time.

I was concerned that even with the degree of security at House Theas, we were still woefully unprepared for another attack by a threat of that magnitude.

The hope seemed to be that Saffron simply wouldn’t know where to look for us, and that the wards on the house would block any efforts at divination. I didn’t find either of those things particularly likely to be true, but I agreed that being in a different house made it less likely Saffron would find us immediately, at least.

Keras assured us that if Saffron hadn’t attacked again immediately, he probably wasn’t going to any time soon...but that still didn’t excuse a lack of planning for if and when he did decide to finish what he’d started.

I spent most of the next two weeks working on my own solution to that problem — communication devices.

I made a series of voice-activated necklaces that could be used to send a message to anyone else with a matching necklace.

The flexibility to connect with any other necklace was tricky to sort out, but I made it work similarly to the function-changing runes I’d seen on the tiles in Teft’s dueling tests.

Similar items existed on the market, but making them myself was a fifth of the cost. And even then, it was still expensive. Fortunately, Elora and Derek provided the necessary funds for the crystals.

In total, I made four devices. I gave three of them to Derek, Elora, and Keras. I kept the last for myself.

My other project was testing the circlet I’d made in Vellum’s class from modifying the return bell.

I couldn’t go into the spire to test it properly in there, but the campus had test areas saturated with mana that were designed to mimic the effects of the spire. They were used for testing a number of items that normally only worked in the spires, including standard return bells.

My circlet didn’t work, plain and simple. Mostly because it was missing a proper anchor. The one from the original return bell didn’t work with it.

Much of my remaining time in the following weeks was just getting that device to function.

To do that, I had to add a new “Targeting Rune” to both the circlet and the anchor.

Targeting runes were used to store the target of an item that needed to be able to “aim” for a certain location when it was activated. In the case of a teleportation item, a targeting rune was used to set the destination of the teleportation spell. Without one, the results would simply be random.

By putting matching Targeting Runes on both the circlet and the anchor, I ensured that the circlet would always teleport to the anchor’s location, as long as the anchor was within range.

The rest of that time went into upgrading it to work like a jump bell, so it could be used outside of the spire.

I was only able to copy the runes for the most basic form of jump bell — I simply didn’t have the mana or the control for a higher level enchantment. That meant the teleportation effect on the circlet was limited to about half a mile in range. I wasn’t going to be using it to quickly jump across the city, or anything like that.

Still, any form of teleportation device was immensely useful, and I planned to make more of them just as soon as I had time.

I attended the closing ceremony for the school.

I got my final grades for the year.

Cadence, Corin (Enchanter)

First Year

Overall Class Ranking: 1544/8112

Phoenix Division Rank: 238/1564

Current Point Total: 760

Class Scores:

- Magic Theory – 55 (Rank C)
- Understanding Attunements – 65 (Rank B)
- Mana Manipulation – 110 (Rank S)
- Physical Combat – 61 (Rank B)
- Introductory Runes – 75 (Rank B+)
- Elective: Art of Artifice – 30 (Rank D)
- Elective: Dueling – 70 (Rank B)
- General Tests: 118
- Final Examination: 176 (Rank C)
- Overall Grade: Rank B

I’d apparently gotten a “C” score for my final, which was lower than the rest of my friends. They’d ended the test with a B- score. Presumably, my lower ranking was because I’d been pulled out early by Elora’s intervention.

That was a little frustrating, especially since I’d been almost finished with the exam when Elora arrived. Still, I was grateful to at least have a passing grade.

And I’d have an above average overall score going into the second year, too. That was a major relief.

And then, with all that finished, it was time for the last thing before the school closed for the year.

The winter ball.

After everything I’d been through, it sounded so mundane. I’d gone on a quest for a visage, earned a second attunement, and fought a child of the Tyrant himself.

Why was I still so nervous about a ball?

It couldn’t be that bad, could it?

Chapter XX – Ballroom Dancing

“Store: Selys-Lyann.”

“Store: Broken Transference Sword.”

“Store: Etching rod.”

“Store: Additional food supplies.”

“Store: Additional water.”

“Store: Fifty feet of rope.”

“Store: Ten foot pole.”

“Store: Flint and steel.”

“Store: Tent.”

“Store: Pillow.”

“Store: Universal Mana Crystal.”

“Store: Cloak of Temperature Shielding.”

“Store: Ring of Derek Controlling.”

I still didn’t have an official name for the ring, but did still find that one hilarious.

I probably would have just worn the ring if I’d figured out how to make it safe, but I hadn’t determined how to remove the anti-tampering runes yet. If I could do that, I could make it respond to my own voice alone, much like Orden had. That would make it an extremely useful too.

Maybe not a moral tool, but I’d worry about that later.

Sera watched me with an amused expression. “Are you sure you’ve got everything you need for the ball? You might want to put two or three more swords in there, just in case.”

I nodded seriously. “You’re right. Go get Ceris. I’ll go ask Patrick to get the Dawnbringer replica.”

She folded her arms. “You’re joking. This is a party, Corin. And, while I know those are more terrifying to you than the average monster, I don’t think an arsenal is going to solve that.”

“You might be surprised how much a few artifact-level weapons can solve.”

Sera sighed. “Fine. I’ll get Ceris. But only to make you feel better. I still think this is ludicrous. There are going to be hundreds of attuned there. Probably thousands. Even Saffron would think twice about attacking a group of that size.”

I sucked in a breath, my hand trembling slightly when I heard his name. “You didn’t see him, Sera. I respect that you don’t think anything is going to happen, but...just let me have this?”

“Fine, fine. But after that, you have to let me dress you up. You’re not going to a ball wearing that.”

I was wearing utilitarian boots, thick trousers, and a simple black doublet. It was a very similar outfit to what I’d first worn into the spire.

I felt vaguely offended. “I’m dressed practically.”

“You’re practically undressed.” She rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you have at least some formalwear?”

“Formal...wear?” I replied in a teasing tone.

“You’re impossible. Fine. I’m going to get my sword, and then I’m taking you shopping. We can bring Marissa. She’s almost as hopeless as you are.”

That gave me an idea. “Well, if we’re going shopping, and I’m going with Marissa and Patrick... Maybe we should all match?”

Sera folded her arms. “Clearly, having a theme would help, yes.”

I smirked. “I have an idea.”

***

A few hours later, I had successfully traded a newly-made mana watch to Elora Theas in exchange for four professionally-tailored dueling tunics.

The mana watch wasn’t worth nearly as much as the tunics, but Elora had seen her sibling with one, and that meant she needed one. It was a sign of Elora’s immense wealth that she barely seemed to think about making such a disproportionate trade.

I’d remembered that the dress she’d worn was made from the same material as a dueling tunic, and I’d guessed — correctly — that it meant she knew a tailor that worked with the materials.

The truth was even more impressive. House Theas owned one of the largest suppliers of Ironweave and Steelweave Silk in the city, as well as a number of tailoring shops.

It had been a simple thing for Elora to clear a few hours in the schedule of a tailor and have tunics adjusted to fit each of us. If we had a little longer, she claimed she would have had the tailor make them for us from scratch, but we didn’t have the time.

Once the tunics were adjusted, she had them dyed the blue and white colors of House Cadence.

She also provided us with matching trousers, made of the same silk. Those were free, simply because Elora wouldn’t imagine providing us with anything less than full matching suits.

Even Sera, who had been previously quite excited by a freshly-purchased dress, was happy to cast it aside for the matching outfits.

I didn’t care much for how they looked. I just felt better in the comforting weight of a dueling tunic, and the knowledge that it could stop at least a few blasts from a dueling cane.

It was nearing evening when we finished, which was important, because it was the night of the ball.

And all of us, including Elora, were going.

***

We arrived at the ball a few hours later, traveling at first by train and then taking the rest of the journey in a carriage that Elora provided.

The ball was being held at the estate of Archduchess Lanoy, the current ruler of one of Valia’s four archduchies. I’d met a few members of her family, but I hadn’t met her personally.

Her son, Councilor Gerald Lanoy, was one of the council members that I’d seen fighting against Keras in the memory crystal that Jin had brought me earlier in the year. I wondered if he’d be in attendance.

Councilor Lanoy had called himself Tenjin’s adjutant in the vision, which implied that he worked for Tenjin personally. If it wasn’t a ceremonial title, I suspected he might have answers to some of my questions.

Our carriage moved into a line of dozens — maybe hundreds — of other arriving carriages.

The winter ball was a celebration for all the students who had managed to finish the year. Most of the school’s students would be there, as well as many teachers and important political figures. Thousands of people in total.

In a group of that size, some of those people undoubtedly worked for groups that had reasons to hurt me. More followers of the Tyrant, or people who had worked with Orden, for example.

I would have felt better if Derek or Keras was going, but they were both staying behind.

Keras had a good reason — his last encounter with Councilor Lanoy had been when the man had lured him into a meeting to have him arrested. I could see why he wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of going to Lanoy’s home.

Derek was a little vaguer, simply claiming he had “somewhere else to be”. Moreover, he was still healing from his injuries from his fight with Saffron. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had walked out of that with a few broken bones.

We passed dozens of outlying buildings, each flying banners of House Lanoy. Up ahead, our destination could not be described as a simple mansion like Derek’s house had been.

“Palace” would have been a better term.

We approached through a garden lined with crimson flowers and bronze statues depicting heroes of ages long gone.

When we finally made our way through the gardens, we found our way up a marble stairway wide enough for hundreds. Ahead of that, we could see the main entrance. Titanic doors that appeared to be wrought from solid gold were flanked by tall white pillars that held aloft the rest of the structure.

It was a monument to opulence that made me supremely uncomfortable.

A single, cylindrical tower loomed above the rest of the structure, with an artistic rendition of a serpent wrapped around it and resting its head at the top. That, at least, I could appreciate.

Marissa, Patrick, and I approached the line to the entrance. I felt awkward, constrained in the press of hundreds of bodies.

Sera had chosen to go separately, along with her date, and promised to meet us inside. I still didn’t know who she was going with. She clearly was hoping to make it a surprise.

I hoped it’d be a good one.

As we stood in the line, Marissa and Patrick made idle conversation with each other and a few other students. I made a few replies when prompted.

I was too distracted to say much, since I was spending most of my attention looking for Jin.

I didn’t find him.

We made our way inside. Guards in golden mail, holding ceremonial glaives, checked us for weapons.

We’d anticipated that, and I’d stored all of our weapons in the Jaden Box. I had that in the pouch on my side. Fortunately, they didn’t ask to take the box, otherwise I would have been in a difficult situation.

After determining that we were unarmed, the guards pointed us toward the main ballroom.

Because, obviously, a place of this size had several ballrooms.

Apparently, the first-year students were being sent to the main ballroom because there were more of us.

I presumed there would be separate events and ceremonies in each room, and that the most important guests were going to be moving back and forth between the ballrooms for speeches.

There were no assigned seats for the students, only for important guests.

The interior of the ballroom was just as gaudy as the exterior of the building. It was divided into four quarters, each with a different color of tiles on the floor. White for student seating, black for adult guests, blue for dancing, and green for refreshments.

In the center of everything was a smaller square which contained a raised stage. At the moment, it contained a group of musicians, who were playing a classical tune.

I could also see a podium on it, where I assumed speeches would take place later in the evening.

I wasn’t looking forward to those. They always ended up being terribly boring.

The ceiling was made of glass or some sort of transparent crystal, allowing the light of the stars to shine down from above.

The walls were lined with portraits of people who were probably famous, but who I didn’t know or care the slightest bit about.

Now that we were inside, theoretically we had gotten to the part of the party that was supposed to be fun.

I...just wasn’t sure how I was supposed to make that part happen.

Marissa, Patrick, and I found an open table. The other two sat down to wait for Sera to arrive, but I was feeling too jittery to sit.

I glanced around at my options.

Dancing was terrifying.

Politicians? Who wanted to talk to them? Certainly not me.

Other students?

Nah.

The last section was food.

Eating it is, I decided. Eating forever.

“I’m going to go get food,” I declared as I left the others, bravely delving into the massive crowd.

This was a mistake. There are people here. I should have just sat down.

As I attempted to navigate through the press of bodies, I searched the area for any familiar faces that I needed to avoid.

In the area with the important guests, I could see several people of interest.

Elora was sitting at the lead table, this time wearing a dress that looked like it had been wrought entirely from silver. I knew better — it was just another type of dyed metallic weave, and likely offered similar protection to her previous dress. Still, it looked impressive.

She was laughing with a gentleman who looked to be about her age that I didn’t recognize. He had a strong resemblance to Derek, aside from his hair, which was short and white. A sibling, maybe?

Ugh, Derek and Elora’s relationship was the worst kind of complicated.

I didn’t see Sheridan, although I knew they were supposed to be at the party somewhere. Presumably, they had gone to the other ballroom, either to avoid Elora or simply to talk to other people they knew.

Councilor Lanoy was sitting a few seats down from Elora, next to an older woman that I presumed was his mother, the host of the party. They were both chatting with Chancellor Wallace, who was standing on the other side of the table.

I recognized a few other people, including a couple teachers and some other wealthy nobles my parents had introduced me to years and years ago. I assumed many of my professors would be in attendance, but fortunately, I didn’t see any of them right away.

I finally made it through the general crowd and into the food line.

What am I even doing here? This is absurd. There’s no reason for me to be at a party like this.

I saw Jin just a few moments after that, leaning up against one of the walls with a cocktail in hand.

Oh.

That’s why.

He winked at me.

I very deliberately looked away.

I continued waiting in line, observing everywhere Jin wasn’t as a way to fill my time.

As expected, there were hundreds of students already here, and more pouring in all the time. Occasionally, I’d hear some commotion as some high profile guest entered the room. Occasionally, mild applause, usually for someone on the Council of Lords or someone in a fancy military uniform.

The most interesting thing for me turned out to be the runes on the walls. Like Elora and Derek’s household, this place was heavily enchanted. It made sense to have a degree of security for any locale that was going to house this many people, but they’d been thorough.

I saw dozens of copies of runes I recognized — shielding, anti-teleportation, anti-scrying, that sort of thing. The specific shapes were similar to what I recognized, but not identical; given the architecture of the room, I suspected that was because they were old fashioned rune designs.

Long lines of the protective glyphs trailed from floor to ceiling, spaced out roughly every twenty feet. I assumed that indicated that the runes had a limited area of effect — either that, or they were just reinforcing them with redundancy. It was impressive either way.

I wasn’t the only one inspecting them, either. I saw a few others near the walls, admiring the intricacy of the runic patterns.

One person in particular caught my eyes — a young woman with purple hair that trailed all the way down to her hips. There were plenty of people with dyed hair with unusual colors at the party, so that wouldn’t have necessarily caught my attention on its own.

I noticed a couple things that made her more eye-catching.

The first thing I noticed was that she was walking right up to the runes and tracing figures in the air next to them. A mnemonic device for remembering the shapes, maybe?

Nobody was stopping her, and the runes weren’t going out, so I didn’t see any cause for alarm. Still, it was unusual enough that I registered the need to keep an eye on her.

The second thing I realized was that I’d seen her somewhere before. But where? Somewhere at the academy, maybe? I couldn’t quite remember.

Before looking away, I tried turning on my attunement to see how powerful she was, but the blur of hundreds of auras made it almost impossible to see anything at a distance. I thought her aura was probably just clear, though.

Notably, she wasn’t the only person with a clear aura, or no aura at all. In fact, most of the people in the guest section, as well as most of the serving staff, didn’t have auras.

I hadn’t seen so many non-attuned civilians in one place in ages. I’d started to think of being attuned as the default, when in reality, most people never earned one.

After a few more minutes of awkwardness, I made it to the food. I heaped far more than I was likely to actually eat on my plate. Realizing that the drinks were in bottles, I tucked a few under a shoulder to be considerate to my friends. Then I awkwardly waddled through the crowd, spending most of the time desperately trying to keep the bottles from slipping and breaking on the floor.

I made it back to our table just in time for Sera’s grand entrance to the ball.

There was a hush near the entrance as she walked into the room.

No, not because of her. In spite of being far more politically savvy than I was, Sera wasn’t well-known. Not yet, at least.

It was her date that drew stares and murmurs.

He was hard not to notice, given his wingspan was nearly twice his height.

I sighed, putting down the plate and bottles so I could hold my face in my hands.

Of course Sera had brought Vanniv to the ball.

He was tall, charming, and looked like a fashion model. His abs looked like they were literally chiseled.

I wasn’t sure how she’d managed to find him a suit in House Cadence’s colors with slits for his wings. Maybe that was why she’d insisted on coming separately?

The crowd had to part around them, simply because Vanniv’s wings were so wide that he couldn’t enter the room otherwise.

They made their way over to our table.

“Corin! Dear Brother.” Sera opened her arms.

I rolled my eyes at her as theatrically as possible, then obliged in giving her a hug. “Hello, dear Sister.”

Nearby Vanniv grinned and opened his arms as well. Not toward anyone in particular.

Patrick, always a good sport, rose from his chair and gave Vanniv a hug. Vanniv seemed briefly startled, then grinned and pulled Patrick in closer, like they’d been long-lost brothers.

I felt a pang of envy as that thought ran through my mind and I remembered what the spire had taken away from me.

“Patrick! Ah, I see you have the lovely Marissa with you as well.” Vanniv turned his head downward and offered Marissa an exaggerated wink.

Marissa folded her arms. “So, you’re Sera’s mystery date?”

Sera finally let me go and stepped back. “He most certainly is! I considered all sorts of students, but I thought I’d go with a real man.”

“And there is no realer man than I,” Vanniv replied with a nod. “Excepting for the fact that I am a magically created copy of the original Vanniv, of course, and thus completely fake.”

Sera patted him on the arm. “There, there. You’re real enough for me, dear.”

“I know. Ah!” Vanniv snatched one of my bottles off the table. “Drinks! This is what I’m here for.”

Sera sat down and leaned back in her chair. “You’re here to be my date.”

“Yes, yes. And drinking. Drinking many things.” Vanniv smiled. He didn’t seem to know how to get the stopper out of the bottle — which was understandable, I didn’t either — so he simply snapped the stem at the top and began to drink.

The luxuries of having stone skin, I supposed. Never have to worry about mild lacerations.

“This is quite good! I believe I am getting drunk.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was apple juice.

Apparently, neither did anyone else.

I leaned over toward Sera. “So...Vanniv. Isn’t he technically only, like, ten weeks old?”

“This copy of him might be, sure, but he has the memories of his original self. Who is twenty, thank-you-very-much.”

I chuckled. “And the fact that he’s compelled to obey your every whim doesn’t strike you as unethical?”

“Please, Corin. I’m showing him off at a fancy party. Vanniv and I are both too classy—”

Vanniv broke off the top of a second bottle, but a little too hard this time, spilling half the contents on the table.

“Correction.” Sera sighed. “I am far too classy to do anything untoward with my control of a summoned monster.”

I laughed. “Fair.”

I turned away, focusing on eating my food.

I didn’t mention the fact that I was pretty sure that Sera had told us she had a date for the ball before she’d made her contract with Vanniv.

If she wanted to play this off like it was her plan all along, I wasn’t going to get in her way.

She deserved a chance to smile and laugh. And, as weird as it might have seemed, Vanniv did, too.

Sera wasn’t going to let me get away with teasing her without a bit of retribution, though. “So, Corin. You’re looking quite charming in that new outfit. I can tell that at least one person is particularly taken with it.”

Oh no.

I coughed. “Please don’t tell me—”

“He’s staring right at you. Quite brazenly, in fact. My, my.”

I sighed, turning to find that Jin had relocated to lean against a different wall, but that he was still watching me. He noticed that I’d noticed him and tilted his hat downward.

He’s...not going to stop doing that, is he?

I set my fork down. “I’ll be right back.”

“Good luck! Don’t get your heart broken.”

I shook my head as I left the table, heading toward Jin.

“Corin,” he said amiably as I approached. “What a surprise to find you here.”

I folded my arms. “You could stare at me a little less, you know.”

Jin smirked. “Why? There’s nothing else that interests me here.”

Do not be charmed.

He is not charming.

There is no charming happening here. None.

“While I appreciate your interest, there are plenty of fascinating people here. And a band! Playing music. You could watch the band.”

“Watching the band isn’t what people come to a ball for, Corin.” He pointed a hand toward another section of the room.

The dancing section.

I watched the distant figures swaying together in harmony. Holding each other close.

It was a romantic ideal. The kind of thing that we’d read about as children, seen in plays and operas.

How could I justify doing that with someone who I didn’t trust?

My jaw tightened. “I haven’t forgiven you. I can’t forgive you.”

Jin looked away. “I know. I don’t expect you to. But that conflict we had...does that really cancel out the things we’ve shared?”

“No,” I shook my head, “But it does make it difficult for me to want to have anything to do with you.”

Jin winced. “It would appear I’ve made a mistake in coming here.” He nodded, more to himself then to me. “Have a good night, Corin.”

He turned to leave.

I spoke without thinking. “Wait.”

Jin turned toward me, raising an eyebrow.

“One song.”

Jin tilted his head.

“I’ll dance with you for one song. That’s it. No more.”

Jin exhaled heavily. “...I understand.” He spoke again, more quietly. “I’ll be glad to have a chance to dance with you at all.”

He led the way toward the dance area.

He took my hands.

We swayed together, awkwardly at first.

Don’t forget what he did.

This doesn’t mean anything.

The song ended.

We continued to sway, even in the silence.

***

Minutes passed.

Perhaps hours.

Finally, I broke away.

“Thank you, Corin.” Jin bowed at the waist. “You have made my evening worthwhile.”

I bowed in return. “I...good night, Jin.”

“Good night, Corin.”

Jin disappeared into the crowd.

I breathed a sigh of relief, slipping back to the table.

Sera waggled her eyebrows at me suggestively.

I just glared at her. I couldn’t even articulate my thoughts, I certainly couldn’t come up with anything clever to say.

I settled for eating my now-cold food. It was still pretty good.

I found myself finally starting to relax a little bit, now that Jin was gone, and I had something to focus on aside from my insecurities.

Unfortunately, my insecurities were creeping up right behind me.

“C...Corin?”

I froze at the sound of that voice, my fork still in-hand.

Gently, I set the tool down, and turned to face the horror behind me.

The young woman was just my age, with her auburn hair cut just above the shoulders. She wore large, round glasses with tiny runes etched into the frames.

Her dress was white with silver accents. Her family colors, that I’d seen a hundred times. It was accented by a large silver broach, etched with runes that were easier to read if I had the ability to pay any attention.

The frilly white umbrella she carried was very traditionally ladylike. It didn’t suit her in the slightest.

My voice caught in my throat. It wasn’t because I was choking, fortunately.

“Um, hello. I don’t know if you remember me, but, um...”

“Cecily,” I managed, somehow.

She let out a heavy breath, although I couldn’t tell if it was out of relief or mortification. “You remembered me. That’s, uh, good, I suppose. I just...wanted...can we talk for a minute?”

I glanced from side to side.

Vanniv gave me a hugely exaggerated wink, and Sera followed it with a hand-sign that was either supportive or some kind of lewd gesture.

I looked back at Cecily. “Sure.”

“Okay, good.” She took another breath. “This is good. Can, uh, we have the talk in private?”

I stood up, glancing to the others. “I’ll be right back.”

“Not a problem, Corin. We’ll be here.” Patrick grinned at me. “Good to see you, Cecily.”

She seemed to ease up just a little at Patrick’s comment. “Thanks, Patrick. It’s nice to see you, too.”

Cecily reached out for my hand. I stared at it for a moment, then processed how crowded it was and the necessity of her gesture before accepting it.

Cecily led me through the crowd...and then outside the room entirely.

I followed, breathing heavily as we moved through the groups of people, and feeling a little less anxious once we managed to get outside of the ballroom. She seemed to have some idea of where she was leading me, at least.

The term “murder hallway” somehow jumped into my mind.

I was getting ambushed entirely too frequently. It was possible that it had done something bad to my nerves.

She didn’t take me far, fortunately. She took me through the halls and then back outside of the building through a side door, into a garden with a hedge maze.

There were fewer people here. Fortunately, none of them seemed to have glowing tattoos on their shoulders. I was very certain to check for that.

Instead, they mostly seemed to be young couples, determined to get lost in one of the corners of the hedge maze.

I realized, of course, that we appeared to be doing the same.

Was...that what this was?

No, there was no way Cecily would be this forward about something like that.

She couldn’t have changed that much, not even after this many years.

By the time she pulled me into a dead-end in the maze, I was reasonably confident that being killed here would be preferable to being in the crowded party, so I just sort of resigned myself to that possibility and started to consider what other options could explain her behavior.

I wasn’t properly prepared for what she said next, though.

That seemed to be a theme in my life.

“So, uh, Corin.” She released my hand, turning to face me and leaning close. “Read any good books lately?”

I stared at her blankly for a moment, processing. “You couldn’t possibly mean...”

She frowned. “I suppose I wasn’t clear enough. I spent so long trying to figure out the right way to sound witty about that, too. Drat. I mean, have you had a chance to look at your messages from Tristan in the last few days?”

My jaw opened, then closed, without any words escaping.

That was more like Cecily, at least.

Somehow, she’d always managed to catch me off-guard.

Cecily winced. “Was that too direct?”

I shook my head. “No, no. And that opening line was wonderful, I just... didn’t expect it. I didn’t expect, well, you.”

“I’m sorry! I can go if I’m bothering you, I just, um, there’s something important...”

I took a deep breath. “No, wait. My fault. I’m being terrible.” I raised my hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I don’t want you to leave, Cecily. You’re fine. I’m just processing.”

She nodded. “Okay. Right. Processing, I understand that.”

“So.” I clasped my hands together. “Before we continue, we’re at a crowded party, and I don’t know how you know about this at all, but we probably shouldn’t be talking here.”

“That’s why we’re in this secluded location!” She gestured all around us. “Also, it’s why I brought this.” She waggled her umbrella.

I glanced upward, paying closer attention.

There were just a few runes on the inside of it, cleverly concealed by the curvature of the cloth.

Silence and anti-scrying, I realized. “Oh.” I blinked. “That’s actually rather brilliant. It’s restricting noise from escaping.”

“B...brilliant?” Cecily took a sharp breath, then stepped back.

Had I said something wrong?

I just kept talking, though. Like I do when I’m excited. “I assume it’s intended to keep anyone who isn’t underneath the umbrella from hearing us?”

“It’s actually a few feet wider than that, and it only dulls the sound and makes it harder to hear, rather than silent. Silence is conspicuous, but just a murmur makes it sound like we’re mumbling to each other. Most people won’t notice a difference.”

I bobbed my head in approval and then pointed at another rune. “And that rune blocks scrying spells, I think. But I don’t recognize the third one.”

“Oh, this?” She pointed at the third rune. “It’s not in the current curriculum; I’m not surprised you haven’t seen it. I’m a little surprised you even recognized the anti-scrying rune, to be honest. This one is a mild observation-blocking rune. It makes us less interesting to anyone who is within range, but not within the range of this other rune,” she pointed at another rune I hadn’t seen, “which lets the people who are within just a few feet of the umbrella interact with each other normally.”

I clasped my hands together in realization. “You’re mimicking an effect similar to the Mesmer attunement.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “I’m surprised you’re familiar with that. It’s somewhat obscure.”

I chuckled. “Believe me, I’m more than familiar with it at this point. But that’s another story.” I leaned forward slightly. “And that broach — that’s an improved shield sigil, right?”

She nodded fervently. “Yes, isn’t that silver bird you’re wearing a variant on that as well?”

“Sure is.” I was wearing the silver phoenix sigil on the right breast of my tunic. It looked better there than on my pants, where I usually wore it. I tilted it upward so she could see it more easily.

She leaned closer. “May I....?”

“Oh, sure.” I unpinned it.

She unpinned her own broach. We traded.

I inspected the runes on her broach. “Four enhancement runes... One for the shield itself, one for capacity, one for recharging. The fourth is connected to a series of knowledge runes... Interesting. Iterative hardening? Something that reinforces the shield in locations where it’s recently been hit?”

Cecily let out a gleeful laugh. “You’re the first person who understood that just by looking at it. Professor Vellum told me no one would ever—”

I laughed. “Vellum says a lot of things.”

“She certainly does.” Cecily ran her finger over my own sigil. “Fascinating. Building regeneration into a shielding device for an all-purpose defensive item. I can see that. And then, this is, what? A defensive rune for the sigil itself, tied to some kind of storage rune? I’m afraid I’m not familiar with it.”

“The two runes together prevent anyone with different mana from my own from tampering with the enchantments. Just a precautionary measure. It’d probably never be necessary.”

Cecily shook her head. “No, I think it’s quite intelligent. I’m not much of a fighter, but I’ve been experimenting with ideas for making items that are designed to remotely interact with other items. An enchantment like that would make it much more difficult, if not impossible.”

That’s...very similar to what I was thinking about doing with my mana threads. But making items for it would probably be easier, if a little less flexible.

I’d stopped talking for a moment, just thinking while I turned her shield sigil over in my hands.

“...You think that’s a terrible idea, don’t you?” Cecily asked.

“Hm?” I shook my head, remembering what I’d been talking with her about. “Oh, no. It was just extremely similar to one of my own ideas. Also, you reminded me about a time I detonated someone’s shield sigil.”

“Detonated? Wouldn’t that be terribly dangerous?”

“That was kind of the point,” I admitted, chagrinned. “But that’s a long story. I suppose you may know bits of it, if you know about the book.”

“Oh! Right. The book. Tristan. Yes. I need to give you a message. Very important.”

I nodded at her. “What’s the message?”

“Uh, well, it’s to make sure you listen to the last thing he sent to you.”

I considered that. “I don’t think I’ve seen that message yet. I’ll take a look later.”

“You should really take a look soon. Like, maybe right now?” She sounded hopeful.

I glanced from side to side. There was no one else in this part of the maze.

Just Cecily Lambert and me.

How many times had we been alone like this when we’d been young, chatting and laughing about other books?

I reached into the bag at my side, then hesitated. “First, let’s trade these back before we forget.” I handed her the broach.

“Oh, right. Of course.” She returned my sigil. “I didn’t mean... I hope I didn’t offend....”

“You’re fine, Cecily. But before I confirm if I have the book with me, I need to know how you know about it in the first place. How involved are you in all this?”

Cecily winced. “Not very?” She glanced from side to side, much like I had moments before. “I’m sorry. I don’t know much about all this. I just heard recently that your brother was alive. And I was so glad. I know how much he meant to Yunika...and, to you, of course.”

I nodded. “Did he approach you somehow? In the spire?”

“Him? No. I haven’t seen Tristan. Have you?”

I shook my head. “No, not in person.”

“I think Yunika has.” Cecily shook her head. “Maybe. She won’t tell me much. She just told me that I needed to get you to read the book, and to heed his warning.”

“Warning?”

Cecily gave me a sad look. “Can we...just leave the party? Then you can read the book, and we can just catch up on all this. Come home with me?”

I shook my head. “I need to know more about what’s going on before I can make any decisions about that.”

“Then...” She glanced downward toward my bag.

It occurred to me that there was a possibility, however slight, that this was some sort of attempt by an outside party to determine if I really had the book.

Or, perhaps, even to steal it.

But with what Cecily had demonstrated she already knew?

And Yunika...Cecily’s sister?

She’d been Tristan’s fiancée, before he disappeared.

We’d talked as children about marrying the two sisters together. It was the same story that Tristan had sent to me to verify who he was.

Had that been a hint that he’d been talking to Yunika?

I made a decision on instinct. It was a careless one, far from my usual style.

I chose to trust someone.

I reached into my bag and flipped open the lid of the Jaden Box.

“Retrieve: Trials of Judgment.”

The book appeared.

Cecily stared. “W...wow. What is that? I’ve seen storage items, but something that can recall something specific? Is it linked to some kind of—”

“That’s a discussion for another time, Cecily. Sorry. Let me take a look at this.”

Cecily nodded. “Can I see?”

I paused, then shrugged.

You know what? If I’m in halfway, might as well go the rest.

“Yeah, come closer.”

She took a couple steps closer, then turned so she could read with me.

I flipped the book open, all the way to the last thing I’d sent to Tristan, then past it.

I found a new reply.

Corin,

Do not, under any circumstances, attend the winter ball.

If for some reason you find yourself at the ball, leave as soon as possible without making a scene.

Certain matters have gotten beyond my control. I would advise you to head to Dalenos as quickly as possible. There’s someone you need to talk to there. By now, I suspect you know who I mean.

I’ll say this one last time: Do not attend the winter ball. You will be in extreme danger if you are present.

Do not attempt to warn others.

You cannot stop what is coming.

Neither could I.

I am sorry.

-Tristan Cadence

I glanced at Cecily.

She looked up from the page, frowning. “...Well, that’s foreboding.”

I nodded slowly. “No one told you what it was going to say?”

“No. Yunika just told me to find you and give you that message. She...” Cecily frowned. “...implied that I should leave right afterward.”

I closed the book and set it inside the box. “Store: Trials of Judgment.” The book vanished.

“That’s amazing! Can I see...”

I shook my head. “Not right this minute. Maybe later.”

Cecily frowned. “I suppose you’re right. After reading that? We really should be leaving.”

I raised a hand to my chin. “He was tremendously vague about what was going on. Do you have any idea about why he would be so concerned?”

“No. Yunika was clear that they had enemies, though. She said someone very dangerous was looking for Tristan, but she wouldn’t tell me why.”

“I might be able to share something about that later.”

A loud voice interrupted us, sounding like it was coming from everywhere at once. “All guests, please proceed to the main ballroom. The chancellor’s speech is about to begin.”

I glanced at Cecily. “If there’s going to be something happening, that sounds like it could be a good time.”

She reached out and grabbed my hand. “We should leave, Corin. Your brother’s note was abundantly clear. It’s not safe to stay.”

I nodded. “You’re right. But it wasn’t clear on if it was just dangerous for me, or if it’s something that could hurt everyone else.”

“Corin. ‘You cannot stop what’s coming’,” Cecily quoted from the book.

I shrugged a shoulder. “He’s been wrong before.” I started to head back toward the main ballroom, still holding Cecily’s hand.

She followed. “This is a mistake, Corin. We should be leaving.”

“At least let me warn Sera and Patrick. They can leave with us. We don’t have any indication of what this threat is. If it’s an individual that may be looking to attack me, I’m already here, and having numbers with us may help.”

Cecily stopped walking, pulling her hand free from mine. “You’re going to be stubborn about this, aren’t you?”

I turned my head toward her. “Yep.” She didn’t look like she was reaching for a weapon or anything, at least.

She just looked sad.

Cecily shook her head. “Fine. I’m going with you to warn the others. But we are leaving after that, even if it’s as a group.”

A second announcement went out, mirroring the first. The speech would be happening in a few moments.

That gave me just a precious few moments to consider. “Okay. We’ll get our friends, then leave. Deal.”

Cecily’s expression hardened to one of resolve. “Good.”

She took my hand again, and together, we made our way back to the ballroom.

I felt like someone was watching us as we walked back in, but as soon as my mind noted it, the thought seemed to fade away.

It wasn’t important.

We headed toward the table with Sera and the others.

The chancellor was standing in the center of the room, a handful of officials and a few professors standing with her.

Behind us, guards closed the doors to the room.

Cecily’s hand tightened around mine.

We continued to the table, sitting down just as the chancellor began her speech.

“Today, I am proud to greet the graduating class of four-twelve!”

Students cheered, while the faculty clapped politely.

“I’d also like to congratulate all of our students who just finished their first year. When we first began this year, I told you...” the chancellor began.

I ignored her, leaning toward Sera to whisper. “We need to leave as soon as this speech is over.”

Sera blinked at me. “What, why?”

“Message indicated that we are in significant danger.”

“Like, right now? What sort of danger?”

“Don’t know, but it sounded bad. Like, we can’t deal with it bad. We need to get the others and go.”

Someone at a table nearby told us to be quiet. We ignored them.

“Okay, sure. I’ll tell Marissa.” She leaned over to whisper to Marissa.

“...You should all be proud to have conquered your first year, but the greater challenges await...” the chancellor continued.

I was next to Patrick, so I relayed the message to him.

“What? Really? It was just getting good! And I haven’t, uh, had a chance to dance with anyone yet...”

“Patrick.” I narrowed my eyes, trying to look as serious as possible. “We. Are. Leaving.”

He nodded. “Got it. At least you finally got to see Cecily, eh?”

I didn’t have a response to that, so I just quieted to listen to the end of the speech.

“For everyone here that supported our graduating class — parents, professors, and our sponsors — I’d like to give you our sincerest thanks. You’ve helped ensure that our graduates will be the shield that protects this country for generations to come.”

“It’s funny that you talk about protecting your country,” came a voice from the student section. “When you stand with the very people who sold it out.”

The voice was loud enough that I could hear it clearly, likely amplified by magic like the chancellor’s own speech.

I didn’t see the speaker until she stepped out from the tables and onto the floor in the center of the room, facing the chancellor.

The woman with long purple hair.

I had a very bad feeling about where this was going.

“Change of plans. Leaving immediately. Everyone grab onto me.” I said it just loud enough that the people at my table to could hear.

And apparently the table behind us, because they complained about the noise again.

I stuck my hand toward the center of the table.

Cecily grabbed my hand immediately. The others leaned forward a moment later, including Vanniv.

The chancellor turned toward the woman. “Who are you, and what are you talking about, young lady?”

“Young.” The purple-haired woman laughed. “That’s a faulty assumption, but nowhere near as large of a mistake as the ones that led you to this day. You should ask the councilors next to you about the deal that they just made.”

An older woman — the owner of the estate, Archduchess Lanoy, I realized — stepped forward next to Chancellor Wallace. “You will be silent, young lady. How dare you speak to us this way? The chancellor was in the middle of a—”

The purple-haired woman waved a hand.

Archduchess Lanoy collapsed unceremoniously to the floor.

At the distance, I couldn’t see what had happened. I just heard the screams.

I didn’t wait a moment longer. “Return.”

The circlet on my head flashed.

Nothing else happened.

“Anti-teleport runes,” Cecily said, releasing her grip. “They’re all over the walls.”

Resh, I saw those earlier.

And so did the purple-haired woman.

“What have you done?” A man’s voice demanded.

I couldn’t see him over the crowd of people that were starting to stand up.

My friends let go of me, turning to move. Sera began to mutter the words of a spell.

There was a crash, followed by a burst of light, then more screaming.

“Now,” came the purple-haired woman’s voice again, “You will all sit still and be silent.”

I felt the weight of her words slam down on my mind like a hammer.

I shuddered. Grips on my arm tightened.

All around me, hundreds of panicked students were sitting down.

Once everyone was seated, it was easier to see what had happened.

The purple-haired woman was standing in the center of the room.

She was the only one still standing in that area.

Most of the others, including Chancellor Wallace, were lying flat on the ground. I couldn’t see clearly, but they looked to be covered with burns.

Councilor Lanoy was sitting, rather than lying on the floor, and he was visibly trembling with effort. I remembered that he had been powerful — he was one of the people who had confronted Keras, along with my mother.

But, as much as he was clearly struggling, he failed to force himself to stand.

There were a handful of others who were still seated on the central stage, rather than lying prone.

With a moment of shock, I realized that one of them was Lord Teft.

I need to move.

I started to convert my mana into mental mana, cycling it to try to rid my body of the spell’s effect. But this was powerful mind magic. It was probably a hair weaker than what Saffron had hit me with, but it wasn’t just working on one person — it had hit everyone in the room. Thousands of people.

And even slightly weaker than Saffron’s magic was still far stronger than anything I could manage.

I’d stored the Ring of Derek Controlling in the Jaden Box. If I could have reached it, I might have been able to use it to free myself. Unfortunately, the purple-haired woman’s command was stricter than what Saffron had used, and it prevented me from moving at all. I couldn’t reach for the box or speak to retrieve items.

The purple-haired woman walked over to the podium where Chancellor Wallace had once stood, kicked Chancellor Wallace’s body off the stage, and leaned forward.

“That’s better.” She grinned brightly.

It was hard to tell from a distance, but it looked almost like she had fangs.

“I’d like to welcome the final graduating class of Lorian Heights University.” She clapped her hands together. “Isn’t that exciting? To be one of the very last?” She sighed dramatically. “I suppose it would be more exciting if you had a few minutes left to celebrate. But alas, that’s not to be.”

One of the people on the stage — an older man in a military uniform — managed to struggle to his feet. “You will cease this at once.”

The purple-haired woman turned. “My, that was quick. You’re a strong one, for a human. Be a wise man as well and sit down, will you?”

The older man took a step forward. “You will not intimidate me, young lady. I’ve faced worse—”

“I sincerely doubt that.” The woman waved a hand again.

The older man dropped to his knees, clutching his throat.

The purple-haired woman turned back to the podium. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes. I’d like you all to understand that this is not your fault. Referring to the students, that is. This is their fault.” She pointed a hand backward, toward the people struggling on the stage. “For compromising everything this nation once stood for.”

I glanced toward the guest section. There were a handful of people who looked like they were beginning to break free from the spell and whisper to one another, but they weren’t standing. They probably didn’t want to draw this woman’s attention.

“You see,” the woman continued, “I don’t get out much. Out of the spire, that is. And when I do? It’s usually because someone did something terribly wrong. A few noblemen who need to be taught a lesson in Edria. A handful of conspirators working to research forbidden magic. The nation of Lavia, preparing to invade a spire. That sort of thing.”

She smiled again. “You see, when I’m sent out here, it means that someone has made a mistake of such a magnitude that no one is going to forget it for generations. And in this case, that mistake was selling Valia out to the Tyrant in Gold.”

I heard a few gasps from the crowd. Apparently, the inability to speak hadn’t sealed off our ability to vocalize entirely.

Maybe I would have tried to use that if I wasn’t too terrified.

Move, damn you.

Her command was even worse than what Saffron had used. “Sit still” prevented me from moving at all, otherwise I would have tried to move my hand to my forehead to transfer my mana.

“Now, not everyone here can be equally blamed, of course.” The woman continued. “When Tenjin disappeared, your council was quick to seek another benefactor. Perhaps it was obvious that they would turn toward the most powerful option they could think of.”

The purple-haired woman sighed. “Frankly, I’m very disappointed with all of you.” She turned around, pointed a hand at the people on the stage.

Councilor Lanoy managed to struggle to his feet. “It is...not what...you say...”

“Oh? Did you have something to say in your defense, Councilor? I’d love to hear it.”

“Goddess...abandoned us...long...ago...”

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

Lanoy seemed genuinely confused. “Selys has not appeared in centuries.”

The purple-haired woman sighed, shaking her head. “Are the gifts that she has given to you insufficient? Spires filled with magic, and her own children to watch over you?” There was a hint of spite as she added, “Not all of us are so fortunate as to be the favorite children.”

“You call us fortunate?” Lanoy’s voice was clearer now. “You were born with greater power than any human can possibly achieve, Mizuchi.”

I shivered as I heard the name.

No, no no...

“Power, yes. I certainly have that.” Mizuchi laughed. “But you were the ones given freedom. And you’ve squandered it. Turned away from your benefactor at your first opportunity.”

Lanoy tilted his head downward. “You can have your freedom as well, Mizuchi. Let us discuss—”

“There will be no further discussion.” Mizuchi waved a hand downward and a blast of kinetic energy followed her movement, smashing Lanoy into the ground.

As Lanoy struggled to push himself back to his feet, an aura of lightning began to crackle around Mizuchi.

She took a step closer to the councilor. “Your words are empty. Your excuses are insufficient. You are guilty of heresy and treason. I will be your executioner.”

Lanoy traced a hand through the air. A dozen spheres of mana appeared around him, rotating in a circular pattern.

Mizuchi tilted her head to the side. “Really? You’re going to try to fight me?”

“You’re not invincible.” Lanoy snapped his fingers.

The spheres of mana each fired a series of blasts of white light, enveloping Mizuchi entirely.

When my vision cleared, Mizuchi stood in the same spot, completely unscathed. “Invincible? Not technically, I suppose. But I am close enough that there’s no practical difference.”

Lanoy unleashed another series of blasts with similar results, but that seemed to draw Mizuchi’s attention.

That allowed three people in the guest section to stand up and launch attacks of their own from a different angle.

A teacher called on a rain of ice from the above, sending shards of jagged frost in Mizuchi’s direction.

A Guardian jumped forward, blade drawn.

A woman stood and raised a longbow, firing an arrow that glowed with white light.

Mizuchi snatched the arrow out of the air, ignored the shards of ice, and spun as the swordsman arrived.

When her fist impacted his chest, the room shook like thunder.

The Guardian’s entire chest caved on the impact, and his limp body flew a dozen feet before landing at the foot of a table.

Someone managed to scream.

The aura of lightning around Mizuchi continued to grow.

“How are you outside of your spire?” Lanoy demanded. “Who sent you? Tenjin is gone. Is Katashi so vengeful that he—”

Mizuchi took another step toward the councilor. “You needn’t know the details. You wouldn’t live long enough to act on anything you learned.”

I had a few ideas, but none of that really mattered at the moment.

My focus was on getting enough of my will back to speak.

If I could speak, I could activate my necklace and send messages to Derek and Keras.

Elora was already here somewhere, but I knew she wasn’t at her best. She was still recovering from her mana scars.

Maybe, just maybe, the three of them would stand a chance.

I couldn’t imagine anyone else who did.

Lanoy hurled another attack, a more concentrated beam of light. Mizuchi side-stepped that one. Perhaps it might have been powerful enough to harm her if it had connected, but she seemed to avoid it without effort.

The councilor growled, sounding angrier as Mizuchi drew closer. “You cannot be here without the authority of—”

“Enough.” Mizuchi raised a hand. “I might allow a few survivors to spread the word about what happened here. But you won’t be one of them, Councilor.”

Mizuchi vanished, moving too fast for me to perceive. When she reappeared, her arm was sticking through the center of Councilor Lanoy’s chest.

He slumped forward, unmoving.

Mizuchi extracted her bloodstained arm, shaking her head. I thought I saw a hint of emotion cross her face. Disappointment, perhaps. “Traitor. That death was cleaner than you deserved.”

Mizuchi stared down at the body for just another moment, then raised her head and concentrated. The lightning around her lashed out, then forked toward the remaining people on the stage.

I managed a moment of worry for Lord Teft, still struggling to stand.

The lightning never struck.

It arced upward.

We’d all been focusing too hard on the few people who could stand.

No one noticed the one person who was floating above the entire area, now holding a ball of swirling lightning in her hand.

“Hello, Mizuchi.”

Professor Meltlake landed on the opposite side of the stage, tossing the ball of lightning into the air. It dispersed a moment later.

Mizuchi tilted her head downward. “At last.” She grinned, displaying teeth. “A hero arrives.” She clapped her hands together, a shockwave blasting outward in all directions. The few others on the stage who had managed to stand flew backward, smashing against the ground.

Professor Meltlake just floated back a few inches when the shockwave reached her, otherwise unaffected. She turned her longer, more traditional dueling cane toward Mizuchi. “Let the children leave. I’ll give you the entertainment you want.”

“Oh, no. And deprive you of your motivation? Why would I do such a thing?” Mizuchi turned toward us.

The students.

“In fact, if you’re so concerned—”

Meltlake didn’t say a word. Her cane just flashed and an inferno roared outward, overtaking Mizuchi in an instant. The intensity of the fire was so great that I could feel the heat, even hundreds of feet away.

The flames continued to swirl and smolder for several moments, before vanishing utterly.

Mizuchi turned back toward Meltlake. Her dress had been burned away, revealing purple scales in the place of skin. Only her face and neck looked human.

And those looked like they’d been barely singed. “Hm. You’re not bad, but—”

Another blast of flame leapt out of Meltlake’s cane. She waved her off-hand a moment later, and something within the fire detonated.

The room trembled, the glass roof above us shattering.

A sphere of white enveloped the spot where Mizuchi had stood, then faded.

Mizuchi remained, of course. I could have expected no other result.

But this time?

Her skin and scales both looked just slightly cracked.

Mizuchi snarled and moved her hands together, forming a ball of lightning and hurling it back toward Meltlake.

Meltlake gestured upward. “Wall of Stone.”

The floor of the room cracked as a rectangular section of stone rose, blocking the lightning blast.

Mizuchi charged and slammed a fist into it, shattering the wall into pieces.

Meltlake backed off a step, then flew upward and yelled. “Evacuate as soon as you can move!”

I could see a handful of people in the guest section were doing just that. I didn’t recognize them, but they were rushing for the door.

A couple students had managed to do the same. But only a couple, out of thousands of us.

Mizuchi gestured, and a blast of lightning came from above, like a true bolt from the skies. It slammed into Meltlake, and she tumbled downward, hitting the floor.

Smoke rose from Meltlake as she stood.

Mizuchi rushed forward, aiming a claw for Meltlake’s chest.

And then that smoke gave way to fire.

Mizuchi’s claw hit the aura of fire and burned. She hissed, pulling the claw back before it impacted.

Meltlake raised her rod and pointed at the center of Mizuchi’s chest. A thin line of white fire of blinding intensity blasted out from it.

Mizuchi blurred and appeared several feet away. “That might have actually hurt me. You’ve become quite the nuisance.”

Professor Meltlake coughed. Blood was streaming out of her nose. She raised her rod again, but Mizuchi was faster.

Mizuchi shoved both hands down, ducking under Meltlake’s next blast, and touched the tiles.

A section of floor beneath them instantly changed from stone into deep water.

Meltlake fell as the floor shifted, before she could react. Her aura of flame extinguished.

Mizuchi, however, stood on the water as if it was solid stone.

She tapped a finger against the water, and it froze solid, entombing Meltlake inside.

I need to move.

I pushed my mind harder, to move faster, but nothing was working. I couldn’t shake myself free.

“Now, then.” Mizuchi turned toward the guest section. “Who would like to be next?”

Meltlake burst out of the ice right behind Mizuchi, her body once again ablaze. “Haven’t you heard how I got my name?”

The water that she’d emerged from was burning.

Meltlake put a hand on Mizuchi’s shoulder, then Mizuchi burst into flames.

Mizuchi roared, her scales cracking further at the intensity of the fire, then swung around and drove a fist into Meltlake’s chest.

I heard a gasp of air from Patrick as his mentor flew backward, smashed into a stone pillar, then landed hard on the floor, unmoving.

Mizuchi shook herself, as if wet, and the flames on her skin and scales vanished. I could see tiny rivulets of blood running between the cracks. She’d been burned badly.

Not invincible, then. But even Meltlake couldn’t put her down.

I needed to do something.

I spoke.

“Necklace...Message Keras. Help...”

The necklace flashed for an instant, then died.

This room had been protected against communication magic, too.

I had no way to call for help.

“How wonderful.” Mizuchi dusted herself off. “That was unexpected. Anyone else?”

A blade constructed from raw mana slammed into the side of her face.

She didn’t even react.

Lord Teft slashed at her neck next, but it failed to break through her skin.

“Nothing but an irritant.” She plunged a hand straight through his chest.

My eyes went wide for just a moment.

Then the body detonated.

The explosion of mana sent Mizuchi staggering back, right into the swing of a second Lord Teft.

Simulacra, I realized with a hint of relief.

Mizuchi growled, swinging a fist as she turned, but the other Teft ducked the strike and jabbed her in the ribs. It was just as ineffective as before.

They can’t hurt her, though. He’s just buying time. His weapons are just mana constructs — they must have taken his real dueling cane at the door.

I need to do something.

I focused my mana, trying to push the power from my right hand all the way through my body and into my Enchanter attunement, but it worked too slowly to be effective.

My friends were clearly struggling, too, but none of them had managed to stand or speak. We couldn’t move in the slightest.

With one exception.

Marissa’s hand was trembling.

She was the strongest of us. Almost strong enough to fight off the effect.

If she can get free...

It was a fraction of hope, not nearly enough. But I had to try.

“Mara,” I managed a feeble whisper. “Take...my...hand.”

Mara’s eyes turned toward me. Then I heard her grunt with effort, as she began to make the monumental effort of moving her hand toward mine.

We were lucky — we had already been in contact when I’d tried to teleport us out of the area with my circlet.

Her hand wasn’t far.

But every inch felt like miles.

I struggled with every fraction of my own strength to move my own hand toward hers.

On the stage, Mizuchi finished battering another Lord Teft, which exploded on her like the last.

Another glowing arrow struck her from behind, but it simply shattered against her scales without effect.

One of the house guards charged from one of the sides of the room, jumping through the air and swinging a gleaming blade.

Mizuchi pointed a finger, and a tiny beam of light pierced through the guard’s chest.

The guard landed, took a single ineffective swing with the glowing blade, and then collapsed.

“I’m so glad you’ve all decided to provide me with a hint of entertainment, at least.” She spun, catching Lord Teft’s conjured weapon. “But alas, all good things come to an end.”

She yanked the phantasmal dueling cane out of his hands, and plunged it into the very much real Lord Teft’s chest.

He fell backward, clutching at the bleeding wound.

Move!

My hand slid an inch.

Marissa’s hand moved two inches more.

Our fingers brushed against each other.

Mizuchi turned toward the fallen group on her stage. “I suppose I should clean up this mess.”

She waved a hand. A wave of fire blasted outward, engulfing the still-struggling bodies on the stage.

Teft managed to roll off the platform and avoid the fire, landing hard on his back.

The others were not so lucky.

I heard screams.

I really hoped that Elora wasn’t one of the people on that stage. We weren’t exactly friends, but I still needed her help.

Move!

Our hands slid further, but not quite enough. My strength was waning. My mind was burning.

Cecily leaned over and toppled into me. Her weight pushed me further.

My hand landed on Marissa’s.

I activated my Arbiter attunement, shoving every bit of mana I had into Marissa.

Her aura flared, then changed.

It was burning orange as she stood.

“Mara, box,” I managed to whisper.

But I was too late — Marissa was already moving.

Mizuchi hopped off the stage, turning her head downward toward Lord Teft. “You fought well, all things considered. You have my respect.”

She raised a hand, which shifted in form into a blue-scaled claw. Then she swung it down at Teft’s neck.

“Star descends from sky!”

Marissa slammed a glowing fist into Mizuchi’s face.

Mizuchi stumbled back just a step, staggered by the strike.

And, at the point of impact, the cracks that Meltlake had made began to spread.

“Interesting.” Mizuchi cracked the knuckles on her claw. “A student? I didn’t expect any of you to be able to struggle.”

“Lot of folks underestimate me.” Marissa shifted into a fighting stance. “Lot of folks lose.”

“Oh, how delightful. This one thinks she’s a fighter.” Mizuchi lunged with a claw, so fast I could barely see it.

Marissa just shifted her head slightly to the side, then brought a knee up toward Mizuchi’s gut.

Mizuchi responded quickly, blocking with her own leg, and then stepped back. She tilted her head to the side, examining.

Marissa didn’t give her a chance for much analysis. She swept a hand out in a chop. When Mizuchi didn’t bother to block, Marissa reshaped her shroud into a blade just before it impacted against Mizuchi’s shoulder.

A thin line of red appeared across Mizuchi’s scales.

Mizuchi turned her head downward, inspecting the damage. Marissa had hit her on the right shoulder.

“Impressive.” Mizuchi turned her eyes back up to meet Marissa’s. “I think I’ll kill you next.”

She swept out with a claw again, but Marissa side-stepped the strike and responded with a jab of her own.

Mizuchi caught Marissa’s hand.

And squeezed.

Marissa screamed, smashing Mizuchi with her other fist.

Mizuchi barely seemed to feel the impact, but she let go.

Marissa’s right hand was a bloody mess. She cradled it against her chest, breathing heavily.

“That was a truly exceptional effort, and you should be commended for it.”

I tried to move again, but I had no strength left. I’d given everything to Marissa.

I had to keep trying anyway. My eyes searched from side to side, searching for something, anything I could use.

Another glowing arrow of light flashed from the guest section.

Mizuchi turned, caught it, and hurled it straight back at the archer.

The archer ducked out of the way, drawing another arrow.

Marissa punched Mizuchi in the spine with her good hand.

Mizuchi hissed, spun, and swung a kick at Marissa.

Marissa hopped backward, ducked, and then swung her good hand upward in an arc, launching a shockwave of cutting force.

It hit Mizuchi with no effect.

My eyes settled on something — the mana regeneration bracer on Patrick’s arm.

It had a store of my mana inside.

If I could get to it...

I couldn’t move, but I could still feel the auras of my objects against my body.

The mana regeneration bracer was an obvious candidate, but everything I’d enchanted myself had a bit of my own mana in it.

I wasn’t wearing much. Most of my items were in the Jaden Box. I’d been afraid that anything unusual would be taken at the door.

But I did have my phoenix sigil and my mana watch.

It only took the slightest sliver of my mana to connect with their capacity runes.

And then, rather than pushing mana into them, I began to pull.

Marissa dodged another one of Mizuchi’s swings, but she stumbled and fell backward.

Mizuchi took advantage of the opening immediately, launching a kick at Marissa’s chest.

Marissa raised an arm to block, but the kick impacted with such force that it carried her off the ground, throwing her backward a dozen feet. She hit the ground and tumbled into an expert roll.

She managed to make it back to her feet before Mizuchi hit her again, this time in the right shoulder.

Marissa screamed, then jammed her fingers toward Mizuchi’s eyes.

Mizuchi just moved her head to the side, then kicked again.

Marissa hopped back, slower this time, and began to circle back around to where she’d first attacked.

I didn’t know why she was going that way, but I couldn’t think about it.

I poured my effort into draining the mana out of my items.

I drained the mana watch completely. As much as my mind was screaming that I needed it, I knew rationally that it was less important in the middle of a fight.

And for once, my self-control was stronger than my fear.

I drained the shield sigil about halfway. I needed the mana, but I wasn’t going to leave myself completely defenseless.

With a little bit of my mana restored, I concentrated, forming a longer thread of mana out of my right hand.

Then, with a hint of transference mana, I pushed the string toward Patrick’s bracer.

I missed. I pushed again.

Marissa dodged another swing, hopping onto the stage.

Mizuchi hurled a blast of lightning.

Marissa focused her shroud and slashed it in half, just like Keras would have.

But she wasn’t at Keras’ level of skill. Not yet.

The blast was weakened, but it still hit her, sending her into a series of convulsions as she fell to her knees.

Mizuchi hopped onto the stage casually. “Are we done now?” She threw a swing at Marissa’s head.

Marissa ducked the swing, then rolled off the stage.

Mizuchi hissed. “You’re beginning to irritate me, girl.”

“Good, that means I’m startin’ to warm up.” Marissa hopped to the side as Mizuchi lunged at her.

Mizuchi landed near Teft.

More specifically, she landed inside what looked like a bear trap composed of raw mana.

The trap snapped shut around Mizuchi’s leg. She screamed.

Teft, still on the ground, waved a hand. Chains of mana appeared around Mizuchi.

Then columns of mana shot upward all around her, each as thick as a fist.

Like the bars of a prison cell.

Mizuchi snarled, straining at the chains. They cracked, but didn’t break.

“Now,” Teft yelled, his voice somehow strong in spite of his injury.

The archer fired another arrow.

Mizuchi twisted, snapped the chains, and caught the arrow in a clawed hand.

But that was just another distraction.

Elora Theas appeared right behind Mizuchi, a swirling ball of air mana in her hands.

Professor Meltlake pushed herself to her feet, wiping blood from her forehead, and pointing her cane.

They attacked Mizuchi from opposite sides. Elora hurled the sphere of mana, and Meltlake conjured a tremendous torrent of flame.

When the attacks impacted, they mixed. And wind, when mixed with flame, combusted.

The resulting explosion rocked the chamber, unattended tables and chairs aside. I had to brace my feet to keep from falling over. My ears rang.

A large section of the floor around where Mizuchi had stood was simply missing. Nearby the tapestries nearest the center of the room caught fire, spreading smoke.

Elora stumbled back, falling onto the stage.

Meltlake collapsed, blood streaming freely from her nose.

When the smoke cleared, Mizuchi was almost unrecognizable.

Not because she was wounded.

Rather, because she had abandoned the frailties of the human form that she had chosen to mimic.

Vast wings had wrapped around her, shielding her body from the flames.

The skin on her face had warped and fallen away, leaving only scales.

Four horns protruded from the top of her head, and her spine gave way to a long tail that ended in spines.

She was not in her true form; not a serpent.

But she was closer.

And those few things we might have called injuries were entirely gone.

“It has been many years,” her voice was stronger now, the pulse of mana in her tone, “since I have been forced to wear this form.”

Her hands, both clawed now, grabbed onto the bars and pushed. The bars began to buckle almost immediately. “You have done well. Each of you should be proud to have survived this long.”

I still felt the compulsion to remain still and silent, but it felt weaker. The spell must have lost some of its potency when Mizuchi shifted forms.

Moreover, the mana I was taking out of the items was already pure. Mizuchi’s spell had only affected people, not the mana stored in items.

If I can just get a little more...

Mizuchi smashed a clawed hand through the few conjured bars of mana that were still surrounding her. Most had been obliterated by the combined attack.

Elora took one look at Mizuchi and snapped her fingers, vanishing.

I didn’t blame her in the slightest.

Elora must have broken the anti-teleportation runes, I realized. That’s why she took so long to attack.

I hope she gets us some help.

“Necklace. Message Keras. Help.”

The necklace flashed again, but faded immediately. Elora must not have broken the anti-communication runes.

Maybe she hadn’t even broken the anti-teleport ones, so much as weakened them or made an exception for herself.

What else could I do? I could whisper, but that wasn’t much on its own.

I tried to move my other hand toward my pouch. If I could reach the Jaden Box, maybe...

Mizuchi growled at the spot where Elora had been a moment before. “Irritating. I suppose she will have to be dealt with at a later time.”

Mizuchi turned her head to Meltlake next, but the professor was unmoving on the floor.

Next, she turned back toward Marissa.

Marissa had taken the time to get some distance, at least. She’d run almost back to where the rest of the students were. She was only a few feet from the closest student tables.

That distance didn’t last more than a moment.

Mizuchi moved faster now, appearing in front of Marissa.

“I think you could have been a hero, if you’d lived long enough.” Mizuchi’s tail slammed into Marissa, spines piercing into her arm.

Marissa fell to a knee.

“No!” I heard Patrick yell.

He was standing now.

I turned my head to him. “Patrick. Box.”

I was insistent enough that I managed to get his attention.

Patrick reached into my bag and pulled the box out. “Good idea, Corin. I’ll take things from here. Retrieve: Dawnbringer Replica.”

His sword appeared.

“Patrick, wait—”

He stuck the box in my hand, then he began to run.

Mizuchi smashed Marissa in the jaw, sending her tumbling back and ripping the spines free from her arm.

This time, Mara didn’t get back up.

I looked hopefully toward Teft, the last person that I knew might be able to intervene.

His eyes were closed. He’d been close to the epicenter of the explosion, and he was badly burned. I couldn’t tell if he was just unconscious or dead.

Resh. What can I do?

“You lasted a long time, for a child. I’ll give you the honor of a good send-off.”

Mizuchi took a deep breath.

Marissa didn’t move.

Mizuchi exhaled, a wave of lightning exploding out of her mouth. The same lightning breath that had nearly annihilated us when we’d been hundreds of feet away just ten weeks before.

My eyes widened as Patrick charged into the path of the attack.

And swung a sword that gleamed like a mirror.

Mizuchi’s draconic breath struck the blade — and rebounded back at her.

The blast flashed across the room in an instant, slamming straight into Mizuchi and sending her crashing into the opposite wall. The stone splintered on impact.

When Mizuchi extracted herself from the wreckage, she bled.

“Where...” Mizuchi snarled, “Did you get Dawnbringer?”

“She’s not Dawnbringer,” Patrick replied, raising the gleaming blade. “I call her Bright Reflection.”

Mizuchi howled. The room trembled, stone shaking and cracking apart.

But I didn’t tremble. I was done trembling.

I stood.

“Retrieve: Selys-Lyann. Retrieve: Ring of Jumping. Retrieve: Ceris.”

Sera was rising, too, and I could see more other students around us breaking free. That reflected blast must have hit Mizuchi hard enough to loosen her control on everyone.

I passed Sera the crystalline sword.

I slipped the ring of jumping on and raised the Selys-Lyann.

I paused for one moment, considering. “Retrieve: Keras’ Blood.”

A vial of blood appeared. “Summon Keras Selyrian.”

Nothing happened.

Resh. The box hasn’t had enough time to recover yet.

I shook my head. “Store: Keras’ Blood.”

Then I took a step toward the fight.

“Don’t go,” Cecily managed. She was still sitting. Shaking. “You promised we’d leave together.”

“We will. But for the moment, I have work to do.” I turned my head toward Sera. “Think you can manage your bigger summon?”

“Not a chance. I can barely summon Vanniv.”

Vanniv himself was still struggling to get free of the spell, but showing no sign of success. He didn’t have enough mana to work with, and he couldn’t purify it like I could.

I nodded. “Then I guess we’re doing this the hard way.”

Mizuchi extracted herself from the rubble.

Many other students were free now, not just the handful of us.

Most of them were fleeing the room.

Sera and I resisted that tide, pushing forward to stand next to Patrick.

The three of us stood together in front of Marissa’s fallen form.

We would not let Mizuchi get closer to her.

Not. One. Inch.

Mizuchi walked toward us, almost casually, her tail twitching behind her.

She glanced at each of us, then back toward Patrick. “Is there someone just giving out legendary magical swords to children? Because I’m fairly certain I recognize all three of those.”

Patrick tilted his head downward. “Turn back, monster. You will find no further prey here.”

“Ooh, you’re a brave one. Almost as brave as your friend was. But you saw what happened to her, didn’t you? Broken, beaten, battered?”

“Alive,” Patrick managed. “That’s a better result than you seem to be aiming for.”

Mizuchi gave a smile that was very definitely fangs now. “I like your spirit. I’ll enjoy breaking it.”

She vanished.

I was ready for that this time.

Haste.

I was swinging at the spot just in front of Patrick in an instant. I didn’t need to be able to see how fast she was moving if I could predict her behavior.

Selys-Lyann cracked against the scales on the side of Mizuchi’s arm. She whirled toward me as the ice began to spread.

Sera jabbed at her from the other side, leaving a gouge in Mizuchi’s scales.

Mizuchi turned around toward Sera, but Sera stepped back and raised her off-hand to point. “Bind.”

A swirling ring of symbols appeared in the air around Mizuchi, then contracted until they touched her scales and disappeared.

Mizuchi tilted her head downward. “Really? You’re going to do that right now?” She shook her head. “You think you can turn my own powers against me? Let’s see you try.”

I swung at Mizuchi again while she was speaking, but she just stepped to the side. Patrick threw a blast of lightning, but it bounced off Mizuchi’s scales without effect.

Mizuchi pointed at Sera, producing a blast of flame.

Sera waved upward, raising a wall of ice.

The fire blasted straight through it, hitting Sera. I saw her barrier shatter on contact, and she flew backward and hit the floor.

Mizuchi turned, shaking her head. “Amateur.”

Sera shuddered on the floor, smoke rising from her torso.

Patrick screamed and lunged.

Mizuchi caught his sword in a single hand.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not the real thing.”

Then she snapped it in half, flipped the broken blade around, and plunged it into Patrick’s chest.

He stumbled back a single step, gasped, and then swung again with his broken blade.

Mizuchi just stepped to the side.

Patrick fell forward and joined Sera on the ground.

I jabbed toward Mizuchi’s throat.

She batted the sword out of the way with ease, then swung her tail at me.

Jump.

I blasted myself backward, avoiding the swing.

“Ooh, interesting. You’ve got a bit of spark. But now this one,” she pointed toward Marissa, still on the floor. “Has no one guarding her.”

A sphere of flame manifested in her hand, glowing brighter and brighter.

Then the fireball moved, but not toward Marissa.

Sera was still on the ground, but she’d crawled closer to Mizuchi and lifted her sword.

The ball of flame moved into Ceris’ blade, causing the sword to grow red. Then Sera swung it right into the back of Mizuchi’s leg.

The sword bit in deep, and flames burst out of the wound.

Mizuchi screamed.

She kicked backward, hitting Sera in the shoulder hard enough that I saw Sera’s shoulder pop out of place.

Sera hit the ground and screamed herself, the sword slipping from her grasp.

I aimed the tip of my sword toward Mizuchi’s eye.

Jump.

Mizuchi caught the blade. Her hand began to freeze.

“Irritating.” She pulled her hand back, shattering the ice, and then swung her other claw at me.

I couldn’t dodge effectively without releasing my sword.

Instead, I side-stepped to diminish the impact, and focused on the mana thread that was still connected to my shield sigil.

I felt the shield’s power — and I moved it, all into one spot. Right at the point of impact.

Her claw hit the barrier and rebounded off the focused shield.

My shield shattered. It had blocked her blow — barely — but that one strike had taken up the entire barrier.

I responded while she was surprised, channeling transference mana into my off-hand and punching her in the chest.

It was like punching a solid stone wall. She didn’t even budge.

She released her grip on my sword, shaking her head, then swung her other claw at me.

Jump.

I wasn’t fast enough.

Her claw gouged a wound in my left arm before the power of the ring carried me out of the way.

And then, by the time I’d oriented myself, Mizuchi was in front of me again. She was just that much faster than I was.

I made another jab with Selys-Lyann, but she manifested an aura of flame around one hand and batted it harmlessly out of the way.

“I am curious where you got that. But not curious enough to keep you alive.”

Mizuchi raised a claw, an aura of electricity manifesting around it and growing thicker by the moment.

I tried to step back, but she lunged too quickly.

She would have hit me if someone else hadn’t hit her first.

“Star descends from sky.”

The attack was now all-too-familiar, but it wasn’t Marissa who executed it.

Professor Conway slammed a fist into Mizuchi’s face, knocking her back just a few feet. “Go, Corin. Get your friends to safety. I will hold her as long as I can.”

I stepped back to disengage.

My left arm was burning from my wound, but fortunately, the regeneration function of my phoenix sigil was dulling that enough to keep me somewhat functional.

Professor Conway jumped and kicked Mizuchi in the chest, knocking her back further.

I found Vanniv finally moving, dragging Sera away from the battle.

“Can you get her out of here?” I asked.

Vanniv nodded, looking determined.

“Corin...” Sera coughed.

“Grab Marissa, too, if you can.” I instructed him.

“I will.” Vanniv slung Sera over one shoulder and Marissa over the other, then took flight.

I found Cecily pulling the sword fragment of out of Patrick’s chest. He wasn’t moving.

“Can you get him out of here?” I asked her.

“Not alone,” Cecily replied. Then she added, “Not being stubborn. I physically can’t carry Patrick.”

I nodded. He was pretty heavy.

And honestly, I didn’t know if he was even safe to move. That chest wound looked pretty bad.

I knelt down and put a hand on his chest, focusing my mana.

I hadn’t practiced healing magic, but this wasn’t exactly a good time to be picky.

At least I’d read up about the theory.

I concentrated and poured life mana toward the wound, then spread it and began to conceptualize the type of damage I was trying to repair. Bone and muscle began to knit themselves back together.

I wasn’t going to try to heal him completely. I just needed to try to stop the bleeding so he could be moved.

I didn’t get the chance.

Professor Conway’s body hit the ground a few feet away from us.

I looked up just in time to see Mizuchi’s tail whipping toward my face.

Cecily moved faster than I did.

She reached down and grabbed her umbrella, blocking the tail and deflecting it out of the way.

Then, with one smooth motion, she pulled back on the handle of the umbrella and revealed a blade hidden inside.

Mizuchi swung a claw at her, but Cecily deflected it with the blade and riposted, sending Mizuchi stumbling back a step.

An arrow hit Mizuchi from behind a moment later, causing her to turn and rampage toward the guest section.

I turned my head toward her. “I...thought you said you weren’t a fighter.”

“That was in relative terms.”

“Relative to who?”

Cecily shrugged, standing. “Keep healing him. I don’t know how you’re healing him, but it seems to be working.”

I nodded and went back to work. Patrick’s chest was rising and falling, at least.

I hoped that Marissa and Sera were okay. I hadn’t had the chance to check. Presumably, if Vanniv got them outside, he could find a healer somewhere in the crowd. They were both wearing their regenerative equipment, too. I’d insisted on that much.

I poured more mana into the wound, watching with fascination as the severed pieces of bone began to unite.

I couldn’t hope to do anything about any internal damage he suffered. I didn’t know how to diagnose it.

Once the wound was shut, I stopped, and switched to casting a Lesser Regeneration spell. Hopefully that would work along with his equipment toward healing any internal injuries.

With that done, I began to slowly lift Patrick from the ground.

Cecily turned to help, and together, the two of us began to inch toward the door.

There was virtually no one left at this point. Almost everyone was either dead, unconscious, or had fled the chamber.

So, I wasn’t particularly surprised when Mizuchi landed right in front of the open doorway, just before we made it there.

Cecily and I wordlessly set Patrick down and turned to a sideways dueling stance.

We’d done this together before, as children.

Of course, we hadn’t been fighting the neigh-invulnerable child of a god beast back then. We’d just been training against a very different kind of monster.

Mizuchi kicked over a nearby table, looking from side to side. “You children really are persistent. I think you’re the last ones left, though.”

“I’ll surrender if you’ll spare the other two,” I offered.

Cecily actually kicked me when I said that.

“How very noble of you, but I’m afraid I’m not interested.” Mizuchi took a few steps forward. “A shame. I’ll remember you, at least. I remember the last one who used that sword against me, too.”

“Sorry, Cecily. I’ll try to keep her busy. Go—”

Then Mizuchi’s hand was around my neck, and she was lifting me off the ground. “I think not. There will be no more ‘holding me off’, no more stalling for time.”

Another voice came from right behind her. “You put that boy down this instant, young lady.”

I watched Mizuchi’s draconic features contort in confusion. Then she turned, dragging me by the throat.

Professor Vellum stood in the doorway to the room.

“You,” Mizuchi hissed.

She tossed me to the side like an unwanted child. I hit the wall hard. I think I might have broken something. Possibly my pride.

“Yes, yes. Me. Shall we have a bit of a chat?” Vellum clapped her hands together.

Mizuchi’s swing ripped through the air, tearing straight through Vellum.

Without resistance, since the image of Vellum just wobbled a bit and then raised an eyebrow. “Come now, Mizuchi. You should know better than to believe I’d just walk right over here and talk to you from a few feet away.”

“You are not supposed to be here.” Mizuchi turned her head from side to side, searching.

“I’m obviously not. I thought I’d made that clear. Do pay attention.”

Mizuchi hissed. “Then you will be unable to interfere with my meal.”

That was a good point, and one that sent me quickly scuttling back to my feet. I raised Selys-Lyann into a guard position and began to inch my way toward the door.

Cecily, however, was still on the other side of Mizuchi. With an unconscious Patrick that she couldn’t move on the floor next to her.

Resh.

Definitely going to have to do this the hard way.

I slashed in the air, projecting a shockwave of ice.

Mizuchi turned, looking mildly surprised, and raised a claw to block the attack.

I twitched my right hand.

The shockwave moved, shifting its path, and slammed Mizuchi in the face. Ice formed where it impacted, and she raised her hands to claw it away.

“Now! Run!” I yelled.

Cecily took one last look at Patrick, then turned and ran for the door.

I slashed at the air twice more, sending more shockwaves of ice to slow Mizuchi down before rushing for Patrick.

Mizuchi recovered too quickly. A wave of flame enveloped her body, pushing outward and clearing the frost.

She moved straight in between me and Patrick.

“I don’t believe I was done talking to you.” Vellum’s image said. “Perhaps this will get your attention?”

An explosion ripped through the air above us. The sudden noise and intensity naturally drew my gaze upward, and Mizuchi reacted in much the same way.

“Behold!” Vellum clapped her hands. Vibrant colors spread across the skies as another explosion occurred. “My power far eclipses your own.”

Mizuchi turned toward Vellum and hissed. “Really, old crone? You think I don’t know what fireworks are?”

I inched toward Patrick while Mizuchi was distracted. Any chance was better than no chance.

“No, no, dear. You’ve got it all wrong.” More fireworks exploded in the sky. Vellum pointed upward.

Mizuchi looked, shaking her head. “There’s nothing there. Just your parlor tricks.”

“That’s just the beauty of such tricks, my dear. They’re all about misdirection.”

Another Professor Vellum appeared right next to Mizuchi. “You were looking up when you should have been looking down.”

Mizuchi glanced down.

She was surrounded by a ring of runes.

“By my power, by divine power, by the power of the stars,” Vellum snapped her fingers. “I banish you from this place. Begone.”

The runes flashed.

Mizuchi vanished.

Then Professor Vellum smiled, clutched her chest, and collapsed to the ground.

Chapter XXI – Deep Wounds

I knelt next to Professor Vellum immediately.

“There is no possible reshing way I am going to let you die before you explain what just happened.”

I turned on my attunement.

Professor Vellum had no aura at all.

That was not a good sign.

I began the treatment process by panicking.

Then, I cast a Lesser Regeneration spell on her, like I had with Patrick.

It wouldn’t be harmful, but I didn’t know if it could help, either.

She didn’t move. Her chest didn’t seem to be rising and falling.

A moment of inspection told me that her heart wasn’t beating, either.

I didn’t know how to deal with that.

I wasn’t medically trained. I’d read a few pages on healing magic. It did not involve restarting hearts.

I screamed for help.

But nobody came.

After a few more moments of panic, I realized the anti-communication runes were on this specific room, not necessarily the entire house.

I rushed out the doorway.

“Necklace. Message Elora. Mizuchi is gone, need immediate medical help.”

Elora Theas appeared next to me a few seconds later, wobbling on her feet.

Sheridan appeared with her. “What happened? How badly are you hurt?”

“Not me. There are other people hurt in the ballroom.”

Sheridan pointed at my arm. “You are hurt.”

I looked to my left arm. Blood was seeping into my tunic from where Mizuchi’s claw had hit me. “I have a regeneration item on. I’m stable, we can deal with this later. For now, there are higher priorities. Professor Vellum’s heart stopped. And Patrick is pretty badly hurt, too.”

Sheridan frowned, but nodded. “Show me.”

I led the two of them to Vellum.

Sheridan knelt down, put a hand to Vellum’s chest, and then winced.

I turned to Elora. “You didn’t happen to bring Derek or Keras with you...?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t teleport all the way back home from here. Not enough mana. Sheridan was at the party, just in the other ballroom with the second-years. No one attacked that room. What happened after I left?”

I waved a hand across the room. “A mess. Vellum managed to banish Mizuchi somehow.”

I gritted my teeth as I remembered Professor Conway hitting the ground near me. “I need to check on anyone else who might still be alive.”

“Banish...?” Elora frowned. “That’s...unusual.”

“We can worry about that later. Help me find people who are alive?”

Elora shook her head. “I’m going to go get more healers.”

“Even better.”

“I already sent messages to Derek and Keras to hurry here, but it’s a long distance. Even with their speed, it’s going to be a while.”

“What are the odds that Mizuchi comes back?” I asked Elora.

“Unlikely. Banishment spells usually take a while to shake off. Days, at least, if not longer. Not that Mizuchi should have been able to get out of the spire in the first place...”

I nodded. We’d have to look into how that had happened later.

I had ideas, but I didn’t want to think about them at the moment. My focus was on finding and helping survivors.

Minutes passed as I found anyone with a pulse and threw a Lesser Regeneration spell on them. With my minimal expertise, it was the safest way I could treat them without risking further harm.

I had no experience with triage, but I understood the concept readily enough.

I had to ignore the people who were too far gone for my meager treatment.

A few minutes later, I saw Sheridan’s shoulders slump. I rushed over to them.

“It’s done,” Sheridan said. “Vellum’s heart is pumping. She’ll live. For a little while longer, at least.”

“Th-thank you.” I managed. I let out a deep breath.

Sheridan smiled. “It’s my job. Now, let’s see who else we can help, shall we?”

We went to Patrick next. I felt terrible that I hadn’t gone to him first, but I knew a stopped heart was something that needed immediate attention.

“He’s doing fine. But, uh, try not to remake any bone until you know what you’re doing? You’ve got some bone in parts that should be cartilage.”

I winced.

“I can fix it before he wakes up. But here, watch.”

I watched, and I learned.

Hours passed.

At one point, I stopped to take a vial out of the Jaden Box. I walked to the area where Sera had managed to land a cut on Mizuchi’s leg.

I collected what I could of Mizuchi’s blood. I knew it could be extremely important.

I asked Elora to check on Sera and Marissa as soon as she got back. She reported that they were outside recovering.

That was good. It meant I didn’t have to worry about them immediately.

I pointed Sheridan to a few people that had been alive, but beyond my ability to treat. They treated some, and, like me, had to move past others.

Elora arrived with more healers, and more guards.

The guards weren’t in case Mizuchi came back. They were to keep anyone who wasn’t a medic from coming back into the room.

There were some surviving teachers and staff that had been in other rooms, deliberately avoiding the chancellor’s speech. And the second-year students had been in a separate ballroom, so they hadn’t been affected by the attack.

They were outside now, consoling children and directing people home.

After the healers came the people who were there to move the bodies.

I knew some of those bodies.

The old woman who had hosted the party.

Chancellor Wallace.

Professor Conway.

That last one...hurt. It really hurt.

He’d saved my life.

If I’d moved just a little bit faster, maybe I could have saved his.

I tightened my hands as I thought about it, but I couldn’t cry.

I still had more wounds to stitch. More blood to wipe off my hands.

I worked until I couldn’t, and then I worked some more.

***

I found Cecily waiting outside.

“You’re a jerk.”

I nodded to her. “I know.”

Cecily looked away. “You should have just come home with me when I asked.”

I shook my head. “No. I might be a jerk, but by being here, I saved a lot of lives. So did you.”

She turned her head back toward me. “I was scared, you know. I’m still scared.”

“I know.”

“Come with me back home now? I...don’t want to be alone right now.”

I shook my head. “I need to make sure Patrick and Marissa recover. They’re in bad shape.”

“I...” Cecily frowned.

“But you can come with me. We’re going to be at Elora Theas’ estate. She can teleport us there once she’s recovered a bit more.”

Cecily sighed. “Everything always has to be done your way, doesn’t it?”

“In this case? Yes. Yes, it absolutely does.”

“Fine.” Cecily folded her arms. “But you owe me some answers.”

“That’s fine. I wouldn’t mind hearing what you think about a few things, too.”

***

Cecily and I found the others shortly later.

Patrick had woken up after Sheridan’s treatment, but he was still in a lot of pain.

Sera and Marissa were both asleep when I found them, huddled together under a blanket.

Apparently, the healer that Vanniv had found hadn’t been skilled enough to treat them completely, but he’d been able to treat the most serious wounds and gave them something to help them sleep until better healers arrived.

Vanniv was still there, being uncharacteristically quiet. He rested his hand on Sera’s forehead. I thought she’d probably find that comforting.

Derek and Keras had apparently arrived a couple hours before, but hadn’t been allowed into the manor. They’d been briefed on what had happened already, and they were standing guard over our injured companions.

Sheridan and Elora were both still working. I sent Elora a message with our location, so they could find us and teleport us back when she had sufficiently recovered.

I didn’t trust my own meager skills to do any better with the healing on my injured comrades directly, so I just cast a Lesser Regeneration spell on each of them and sat down to rest.

My hand ached. My head ached.

I’d dipped below my safe levels in both attunements.

There was no alternative, as far as I was concerned.

I couldn’t check my mana watch. I’d disabled it by draining out of it during the fight. Still, I knew I was deep in the negatives. I didn’t care. There were too many cases when even a basic regeneration spell might have saved a life.

After a little while, Patrick started crying.

Vanniv took his hand off Sera to move closer and rest Patrick’s head on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

I waited, worried, and felt useless.

Hours passed.

Eventually, Elora and Sheridan returned.

They took us home.

***

We were all hurting when we arrived. Physically, emotionally, or both.

Derek left again almost immediately to head to the hospital where several of the wounded were taken.

He didn’t talk about it much, but Professor Meltlake was his aunt, and she was in terrible shape. She’d survived, but even with Sheridan’s treatment at the scene, it was uncertain how long she’d take to recover.

We moved Patrick, Marissa, and Sera to the master bedroom. Elora had her household staff drag additional beds inside. We set them up side by side.

Elora and Sheridan left together after that, assuring us that they’d make sure to have guards posted on their rooms as well.

The chances of Mizuchi coming after us to finish what she’d started were low, but we weren’t going to be foolish enough to skip taking precautions.

I didn’t trust random house guards to watch over us. Not after seeing that Elora’s staff had already been infiltrated once.

Keras agreed to take the first shift on watching over the rest of us while we slept.

I promised to take the second.

Cecily agreed to take a third watch. I didn’t intend to wake her.

I liked Cecily, but I didn’t trust her.

I would have expected to have trouble sleeping, but my exhaustion was bone deep. I wasn’t sure I’d ever overused my attunements to that extent before.

Fortunately, I was tired enough that I didn’t have any nightmares about the scars that might have resulted from that.

Keras didn’t wake me until well after dawn. He’d let me get a full night sleep.

I suspected that was probably his intention from the beginning.

Keras must have also spent the evening piecing the Dawnbringer replica back together. The blade was fully repaired when he set it down next to where Patrick was sleeping.

Everyone else woke slowly in the hours that followed.

Elora brought us to the dining room for breakfast a bit later, then dismissed her house staff.

“Eat,” she said, “Then I believe we have a great deal to discuss.”

***

We devoured a quick breakfast. Most of us hadn’t had a chance to eat anything the night before, and eating was an important part of recovering from both injuries and over exerting ourselves.

After that, it was time to discuss our situation.

“Is there anything to block people from listening in on this room?” Cecily asked.

“No. Just the house in general,” Elora answered.

I stood up. “Can we write on the walls?”

Elora raised an eyebrow. “If you must. I suppose this is important enough.”

I looked to Cecily. “You get silence, I’ll get anti-scrying?”

She nodded. “Right.”

We set up the appropriate wards on the walls, then checked each other’s work, just in case.

“Satisfied?” Elora asked.

“For now,” Cecily replied.

Elora looked to me, then back to Cecily. “How much does she know? How much do the rest of them know?”

“Most of them know what I know. Cecily... I’m less certain about. She seems to know about Tristan, but I don’t think she’d be aware of what happened with Saffron.”

Cecily looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “Who’s Saffron?”

“I’ll explain later. Or maybe now, if it’s relevant.”

“Right,” Elora said. “That makes this somewhat easier, at least. A more important question, Cadence. Who do you trust?”

“Well, not you, certainly.”

Sheridan snickered.

I continued, “But for the most part, the people in this room already know enough about the situation that I’m comfortable sharing more. Information security is important, but I’m tired. Tired of trying to keep secrets. Tired of not knowing what’s really going on. Tired of fighting people who are a hundred times more powerful than I am.”

“A good sentiment, although I might argue that imminent danger might reinforce the need for secrecy, rather than lead us toward eschewing it.” Elora folded her hands on the table. “Nevertheless, I believe this particular situation is bad enough to warrant a cooperative response.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that we’ve fought the two most dangerous people I’ve ever encountered in the last few weeks, and that we need to coordinate to prevent that from happening again.”

Keras leaned across the table sleepily. “Don’t you mean the second and third most dangerous people?”

Elora narrowed her eyes. “I don’t even know what you are, darling. But if you’re feeling disappointed that I didn’t include you, don’t fret. I don’t count you as dangerous in the slightest for one reason.”

Keras raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Elora smiled. “It was obvious in our little spat. You either can’t — or won’t — use lethal force. Perhaps you’re under some sort of persistent enchantment?”

Keras chuckled and leaned back. “You keep thinking that.”

Elora turned away from him with a victorious smirk. “Back to the point. We need to take precautions.”

I nodded. I’d been thinking about the best way to approach this since last night. “Did you know that attack was coming? You tried to extract me a while ago.”

Elora shook her head. “I didn’t have the specifics. I just knew there would be an attack on heads of government sometime soon. I didn’t expect it this soon.”

Cecily turned to look at me with a questioning glance. I shook my head at her. She was better off not giving away her own information unless she needed to.

I wanted to know what Cecily knew, but that didn’t mean I wanted Elora to know what Cecily knew.

At the moment, Elora probably believed that Cecily had the least information out of anyone, and that meant she would not register as a threat.

I preferred to keep it that way.

“You knew there was going to be an attack on the government and you didn’t do anything about it?” Sera asked.

Elora shook her head. “I didn’t say that. Certain individuals were warned or evacuated, not just Corin.”

“You didn’t warn me.” Sheridan folded their arms.

“I didn’t think you’d be a target. I suspected they’d be hitting a council meeting. Normally, the group responsible tries to avoid collateral damage.”

“They were avoiding collateral damage,” Sera said, “At least more than they pretended to be.”

We all turned toward her.

Patrick frowned. “Uh, Sera, I don’t think sending the daughter of a god beast to a party is avoiding damage.”

Sera shook her head. “It certainly was. How closely were you watching Mizuchi?”

“Can you please not be vague, Sera?” Cecily asked. “I’m not handling this well.”

Sera frowned. “Sorry. Mizuchi was able to paralyze everyone in the room with a single spell. She only used that spell once: to deliver her speech without interruption. She obliterated the people on the stage. After that? Her attacks were more focused. She eliminated specific targets, and fought back against the people that attacked her.”

Sera paused, taking a breath. “She clearly had wide area of effect attack spells, but she never aimed them at the students. Even when she finally used her breath weapon, she directed it in a line. A shaper of her level could have made it fork, or jump to multiple targets, with ease. But she aimed it just at Marissa.

“Sure, Mara was fighting hard,” she offered, giving Marissa a nod of acknowledgement, “But if Mizuchi’s goal was to kill everyone, she could have spread out that breath attack. Or used it more than once.”

“You’re saying...if we hadn’t fought, she wouldn’t have ‘urt us at all?” Marissa sounded terribly dejected.

I stepped in. “Maybe she wouldn’t have hurt the students, sure, but when you stepped in she was just about to kill Teft and Meltlake. They were both down and bleeding. And I checked — they’re both alive. Badly hurt, but alive. You saved them both.”

Marissa’s expression shifted to resolve, and she sat a little straighter after that.

And I turned toward Patrick. “And you saved her in turn. No one needs to regret getting involved. But I think Sera’s right.”

“Yes, Mizuchi was obviously holding back,” Elora waved a hand dismissively. “She could have just turned into a ten story tall serpent and rolled around on us if she wanted everyone in the room dead. That was a message, as she said in the beginning. But that group isn’t usually as messy about this sort of thing.”

“You’ve mentioned ‘that group’ a couple times now.” Keras adjusted his mask. It was strange to see it on him indoors. “Who are we dealing with? Tails of Orochi? No, I suppose it’d be the Scales of Seiryu if it was Mizuchi...”

“It’s neither. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about them.”

Keras frowned. “That’s what you’re going to be vague about? I think that’s pretty critical to this discussion.”

Elora sighed, then adjusted her necklace and pulled down the high collar of her dress to expose her throat.

There was a glowing runic mark on her neck. The source of that second aura I’d seen under her dress earlier.

I’d wondered why she had two magical items in the same spot. She didn’t — this was something different.

And the rune looked an awful lot like the kind of brand that Katashi had put on my hand. The kind that I’d been told could explode if I didn’t complete a certain objective in time.

“When I say I can’t tell you, I mean I can’t tell you.”

Keras leaned closer, narrowing his eyes. “Well.” His jaw tightened. “That changes things, now doesn’t it?”

The implication was fairly obvious, but I had so many questions.

But how does it —

Cecily leaned closer. “How does the mark work? Does it respond to certain words? Or is someone listening to your conversations to remotely activate it? Oh! What if we just asked you yes or no questions?”

I blinked at Cecily.

“I can’t discuss it.” Elora adjusted her dress and necklace, covering the mark. “Now you know there are some things I can’t talk about, however, and my reason for it.”

Cecily frowned. “Could you maybe just write down what your restrictions are? Then maybe we could find a work around.”

“It won’t work,” Sheridan explained. “She can’t talk about it, but I understand the general theory. Brands like that are designed to read your thoughts. Attempts to deliberately circumvent the brand will result in increasing levels of danger to the person with it.”

Elora nodded and made a gesture of thanks to her sibling.

“Okay,” Keras sighed. “So you can’t tell us about them, but this was apparently non-standard. Fine. Where can we get more information?”

“Tristan,” I offered. “He seemed to know about what was going to happen.”

“But, if Tristan really is alive, he’d be in the spire, right?” Patrick asked. “And we wouldn’t know where?”

“The latter portion is indeed a concern,” Elora replied. “I can get us inside, but I always used a Wayfarer to contact him once we arrived. That Wayfarer is now dead. It might be possible to locate him with a Diviner, but my Diviner is also dead.”

I winced at that, remembering what had happened when Saffron attacked. “I may be able to contact him if we get inside.”

“A ‘maybe’ isn’t good enough in this case. Even if you could get him a message, he may not be able to reply. Given how things have gone, I suspect he is no longer in the position he once was.” Elora replied.

“And that position is...?” Sera asked.

“I can’t talk about it.” Elora motioned to her neck.

Sera grunted in irritation. “Fine. Then we need a Diviner.”

“Even if you had one, I wouldn’t be interested in taking anyone into the spire right now. The situation inside has clearly changed, and that means it could be dangerous.” Elora shook her head. “Moreover, Corin described Mizuchi as having been banished. Is that right?”

“That’s the word that Vellum used,” I confirmed.

“When you banish a creature, it goes back to its home. For creatures like elementals, that means their home plane.”

“But for a spire monster,” Sheridan added, “That means their spire.”

“Meaning that Mizuchi is back home.” I nodded at the logic. “And if we go in there, she might come after us.”

“It’s a risk I wouldn’t want to take,” Elora explained, “Not unless there is no alternative. And I believe we can find several superior alternatives.”

Keras gave me an apologetic look. “You should probably just leave the country for a while.”

I blinked. “Seriously?”

Elora turned to nod in agreement to Keras. “Even if Mizuchi leaves the spire again, I doubt she’ll leave Valia proper. I’ve never seen a spire monster go that far outside of their territory. Corin would likely be safer away from here.”

I shook my head. “Fleeing might save our lives, but it’s not going to actually solve anything. Other people are going to keep dying until we figure out what’s going on here.”

Sera turned toward me. “And you think we’re the best equipped to handle that? Aside from Mara, we got demolished when we tried to fight Mizuchi. And from what I hear, your fight with Saffron didn’t go much better.”

I made a noncommittal grunt in response.

“It’s not always about fighting,” Keras offered, surprising me. “But even if what you’re pursing is a diplomatic solution, you’d probably be better off waiting. Leave for a few months. Let the monsters lose your trail. In about two weeks, I should be able to get us some help.”

He gave me a meaningful look.

Meaning that he can leave the country and get equipment?

Oh, no, he’s talking about the Jaden Box.

When I’d first picked up the box, the documentation had said that it would take about two hundred days to recharge. It had been a lot less than that.

When I’d used it to try to summon Keras, I’d hoped that it might use less mana when trying to summon someone close by. That was still possible, and would require further testing, but it didn’t work in that case.

I considered his offer. “In terms of help... Could you get us someone else as powerful as you are?”

He nodded. “Potentially. Maybe more than one person, if we’re lucky enough that some of my friends are in the same place.”

That was a tempting offer, but assuming the two hundred day limit was accurate — and I couldn’t assume it was wrong — we were still more than a hundred days away.

If this mystery organization was acting now, they could do a lot of damage in that time period.

Cecily turned to me. “You should go to your mother.”

Mother?...

Something clicked in my mind.

Tristan had been trying to get me to go to Dalenos, too. That was where Mother presumably was.

Did that mean she was involved in all this?

I wasn’t sure I could handle another family member being involved in this madness.

Or was he just trying to get us both to be in a safe location?

“Uh, I like Lady Lyran and all,” Patrick offered, “But I’m not sure how that has anything to do with this?”

“Lady Lyran is on the city council. She may be a target, like I was,” Elora offered. “It would be kind of us to inform her that there may be a threat.”

That was an explanation, but not the only one. But I wasn’t convinced that Elora was one of Mizuchi’s targets in the first place.

Elora had left almost immediately after hitting Mizuchi with that powerful attack. Maybe that was because of how exhausted she was — she still hadn’t fully recovered from fighting Saffron — but maybe she just wanted to make a show of contributing before she left.

Mizuchi hadn’t had a chance to attack Elora, so there was no way for me to know if she would have if she’d had the chance.

I couldn’t trust Elora on this. Not when she’d presumably been one of the people who had started this in the first place.

Going to my mother was a potential route for getting answers, although it was somewhat less likely now that I’d seen that Elora had some kind of brand. If my mother worked for the same organization, maybe she would have one as well.

In retrospect, I didn’t have any good information on the brand at all. I just had the word of Elora and her sibling.

I trusted Sheridan a little more. They’d helped both me and Sera, after all. But their loyalty was probably to their sister.

“Lady Lyran?” Keras frowned, turning to me. “I think your mother tried to have me arrested last time we met.”

“Yes, that was her with me,” Elora confirmed, making things more awkward for me. I’d been trying not to let Keras in on that little fact.

That added another complication I’d have to deal with. “Sorry about that. I’m sure I can clear that up.” I turned to Elora, deliberately changing the subject. “You were just in Dalenos. Were you with my mother?”

Elora shook her head. “No, but we were on related business. I have a feeling I could locate her, as long as she isn’t in the spire at the moment.”

Keras raised a hand in a gesture for me to pause. “I didn’t realize it was Dalenos you were talking about heading to in order to meet your mother. I’m not one to hold a grudge, but I didn’t exactly have a good experience last time I was in Dalenos. I can’t go with you if you’re heading there.”

“Katashi didn’t clear your name?” I asked.

“Oh, that was taken care of. But I may have made some personal enemies, and I’d rather avoid any conflicts with them. Believe me, that wouldn’t be good for anyone involved.” Keras reached up and adjusted his mask, which just made it look more lopsided.

I couldn’t laugh at how silly that looked, though. He’d just added a whole other complication.

I put my head in my hands, thinking. People chatted around me for a moment, but I focused on my own thoughts.

What did I want to do?

Visiting my mother might get me a few answers, but I didn’t know if I could even find her.

And if Keras wouldn’t come with me, I’d be losing one of my strongest allies.

While I had Keras with me, I had a real chance to climb high in the spire. I also currently had access to Elora, who could get us inside, and a full team worth of people that I trusted.

I didn’t know if I’d ever get that kind of opportunity again.

Moreover, Tristan’s last letter had made it sound like something had gone wrong. If he was in danger, that made it an even higher priority for me to meet him as quickly as possible.

I would never forgive myself if I had a chance to see Tristan and I missed it because I’d chosen the safer path.

“Okay,” I said, addressing the room, “Elora is right that we should send Mother a message. But if we want any real answers, any real solutions, we’re not going to find them outside the spire.”

“Well,” Elora said, “I’m not going back in there. Not while I’m very likely to be toward the top of Mizuchi’s list of delicious morsels.”

I took a breath. “Can you teleport me inside without you?”

Elora frowned. “Theoretically possible, but I don’t like it.”

“Because you wouldn’t get anything out of it?” Keras asked.

Elora rolled her eyes. “Well, there’s that, obviously. But also because it has a high chance to get Corin killed, and Tristan would hold me responsible for that.”

“I’ll take responsibility,” I said. “I can send him a message explaining that.”

Elora laughed. “You don’t know your brother very well.”

That...hurt.

Sera intervened on my behalf. “Of course not. He hasn’t seen his brother in five years, and now he believes Tristan may be involved in a mass killing. One that you played a role in initiating.”

Elora didn’t get angry, as I’d expected. She just waved a hand. “True, true. Fine. I can send you into the spire. But not without a full team that has a method of locating Tristan. We’re doing this right or we’re not doing it at all.”

I nodded at that. “I can work with that.”

“This...that’s a mistake, Corin.” Cecily shuffled her chair closer to mine. “You really should go see your mother. I’m sure she could explain all this. And with a vastly lower risk?”

“I’m very tired of running away from danger, Cecily.”

“That doesn’t mean you should run toward it.”

She had a point.

I didn’t like risks, either. Normally, I avoided them as much as possible. I planned for every contingency I could think of, even ones that weren’t likely.

But in this case, I had resources at my disposal that I was likely to lose, and Keras’ mention about Dalenos had made it clear that it was possible for me to lose those resources at any time.

Everything had started with Tristan — with his attack on Tenjin in the spire.

And now, all evidence was pointing toward that situation coming to a resolution. One that I suspected wouldn’t end well for my brother, unless I took the steps to help him.

The spire had been sealed shut again.

Someone didn’t want anyone finding something that was inside.

Maybe Katashi had sealed it again himself, to prevent any interference in the investigation. But even if that was the case, the fact that the spire hadn’t been unsealed after another couple months meant something had to have gone wrong.

I needed to learn what was happening inside the spire. Tristan was my highest priority, but I also needed to learn what was going on with Tenjin still being missing and Mizuchi being on the loose.

I wasn’t going to get that much information anywhere else.

“For what it’s worth,” Sheridan lifted their glass and swished it around, looking thoughtful, “I agree with Corin.”

“Of course you do,” Elora sighed. “You always have to disagree with me.”

“While you’re quite right, sister, I have other reasons.” Sheridan took a sip from their glass, then set it down. “For one, I don’t believe finding Corin’s mother in Dalenos is likely to work. She’s most likely climbing the spire — and if she is, she’d be just as hard to find as Tristan, if not harder.”

“And if she’s outside?” Elora asked.

“If Lady Lyran is outside of the spire, we can simply contact her via a Wayfarer. I’ll send a message immediately telling her what happened, and to be careful. She’ll know what to do.”

“Thanks.” I nodded to Sheridan. “I’d appreciate that.”

“You’re welcome. Now, beyond that, I believe we’ve been overlooking the real issue. Whoever is organizing all this madness is almost certainly within the spire. Even if that isn’t Tristan, we should be looking for them if we wish to stop this.”

Elora waved a hand in a conciliatory gesture. “You do have a point.”

“I still don’t think he should go...” Cecily’s voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

I dismissed that line of thought for the moment. “Sorry, Cecily. I’ll be careful. But there are good reasons I need to do this. For one, while Mizuchi may be in there, there’s a good chance that someone equally dangerous is hunting me out here.”

“Ah, yes. She hadn’t heard about Saffron.” Elora raised a hand to right below her lips. “I suppose I can see your logic. He did seem the vindictive sort.”

Cecily frowned. “Who could possibly be as dangerous as Mizuchi?”

“He’s a child of the Tyrant in Gold,” I explained.

“...Oh.” She blinked, then adjusted her glasses. “Wait, really?”

I gave her a gesture of acknowledgement.

“Wow. You have had a terrible few weeks.”

“That does raise an important question, though.” Patrick’s hand went to his chest, though I couldn’t tell if he was doing it consciously or not. “What happens if we do run into Mizuchi in the spire?”

“I think she might be weak against lightning,” I offered. “When you reflected that lightning attack, it seemed to hurt her more than anything else. And she’s supposed to be a water serpent, so that would make sense.”

“I thought that, too. I hit her with lightning again right after that.” Patrick shook his head. “It bounced right off.”

I remembered that. Strange. Even though Patrick’s spell was obviously much weaker than Mizuchi’s breath, it probably should have done something if it was her elemental weakness. “Hrm.”

“How does a water serpent cast lightning spells, anyway?” Patrick asked. “I mean, shouldn’t that be, like, impossible?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she has all forms of elemental magic. God beasts break a lot of the rules of what you’d expect from normal monsters. Their children often have unusual capabilities as well,” Elora offered. “It would be better if you abandon any ideas of beating Mizuchi in a straight fight. She wasn’t even using her true form.”

That was a valid answer, but a bit dismissive. Even if children of the god beasts had unusual abilities, I assumed they had to have some kind of logic behind them.

If she could use types of magic that other creatures of her element couldn’t, there had to be a source for that.

“Even if we can’t beat her, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss tactics.” I shook my head. “We don’t have to win in a straight fight, but I’d be more confident facing her if we had a plan.”

Elora gestured for me to slow down. “You’re better off retreating if you see her. That banishment spell — if it really was a banishment — might keep her confined to a specific area. It probably will also make her weaker for a while. Banishment is powerful magic.”

Banishment was from a restricted attunement, if I remembered right. That meant Vellum had a second attunement she hadn’t told me about. That wasn’t exactly surprising, given her personality.

I hope she’s...if she died, it would be my fault, wouldn’t it?

I tried not to think about that, refocusing on the conversation.

Elora’s comments had given me another idea. “We’ll plan to retreat if we see her. Or, alternatively, I might have a way to get her to talk to us.”

Elora raised an eyebrow at that. “Care to share?”

Time to use a small secret to hide the larger one.

I slipped off the glove on my right hand. “I have a restricted attunement. Arbiter.”

Almost all of them already knew about it. It was a minimal risk. Elora and Cecily were the only exceptions.

Cecily leaned down, tilting her head to look closely at it. “Wow, what is that? I’ve never seen an attunement like this. Is it like that weird thing on her neck?”

“Funny story, it started out that way, but no. Katashi gave it to me. And as it happens, it gives me a degree of authority over certain types of monsters. If I can find a monster inside the spire that knows more about what is going on, I might be able to use this to convince them to help.”

I was stretching a little there, but only a tad. Researcher had indicated that she was obligated to help an Arbiter — there were probably others like her.

“Huh.” Cecily poked a finger at it. “What’s it do?”

“That’s a little outside of this discussion, dear,” Elora offered. “But for what it’s worth, I think talking to monsters might be a good idea. Talking to Mizuchi, however, is a terrible idea. She’s simply too dangerous.”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just so interesting!” Cecily leaned back in her chair. “Can I ask you about it later?”

I nodded to her. “Sure.”

She looked positively gleeful at the idea.

“Okay, so, spire.” Patrick tapped on the table. “I’m going. Who’s going?”

I frowned. “You’re still pretty badly hurt, Pa—”

“Nope. You don’t get to say that.” I noticed that Patrick’s hand went instinctively to his chest, where his injury was, in spite of his objection. “I didn’t go with you last time, and you nearly died. You didn’t tell me when you were being abducted,” he shot an angry look at Elora, “and you nearly died again. There is no way you’re leaving me behind this time. None.”

I took a breath. “Okay. Patrick is going.”

Patrick nodded, setting his jaw, but looking slightly mollified at my agreement.

I turned toward Keras. “I didn’t ask before, but honestly, I don’t think there’s any chance we can make this work without you.”

Keras waved a hand sleepily. “Of course I’m going.”

“Well, if ‘ese goin’, and Patrick’s goin’...” Marissa grinned. “I suppose I’m goin’, too.”

Sheridan shot Marissa a stern look. “Patrick is on the mend, but he only has one injury. You are in no condition to be going into a spire.”

Marissa leaned forward, lifting the one fist that wasn’t currently covered in bandages. “Look, I’ve still got one good punchin’ hand. More than good enough.”

“Marissa, you’re the strongest physical fighter here, aside from Keras,” I said, “But I agree with Sheridan on this. You need to recover first.”

Marissa wrinkled her nose at me. “What about your regeneration ring? Can’t you slap that thing on me for a few days?”

“I don’t think we’re going to wait that long before we go in,” I explained. “At least, I’d rather get in there right away.”

“Moreover, a ring is not going to repair the kind of severe bone damage you suffered,” Sheridan explained. “Not quickly, anyway. I can work on healing you a bit faster, but it will not be immediate, and it would be much less comfortable if I speed it up.”

Keras turned to me. “You should give Marissa the few days she needs. You could all use a few days of rest after what you just experienced.”

Truthfully?

I wanted to go right then.

Every day I waited was more of a chance for something else to happen. For something to get worse.

But I looked around, and I saw precisely zero faces supporting my stance on that subject.

If I was going to get my way about going to the spire, I had to know how to concede a few points here and there.

“Okay. Fine. If we give it a few days, maybe Derek would be willing to come along as well.”

Cecily leaned over and whispered to me, “Who’s Derek?”

“Derek Hartigan. Emerald-level Soulblade.” I whispered back.

“Oooh. Fancy.”

I rolled my eyes.

“You still need a Diviner,” Sera noted.

I nodded, while simultaneously noting that Sera had not volunteered to join us in the spire.

Given how things had gone last time, I didn’t blame her.

I could ask her privately about it later.

“I have an idea on that,” I told her.

“Someone you can trust?” Elora asked. “That could survive in the spire?”

I considered that. “Better than any of us, in a way.”

“Who do you mean?”

I smiled. “It’ll be a surprise. I’ll introduce you later if she agrees.”

I was feeling pretty good about my plans when I heard a knock at the chamber door.

Elora went and opened it. One of her household staff was standing there, and he leaned over and whispered something to Elora.

She frowned, turned toward us, and said, “Magnus Cadence is at the front door, asking to see his son.”

Sera and I exchanged looks.

Patrick stood up first. “Corin, you want me to go talk to him while you take care of this?”

More than anything in the world.

I took a breath.

“Thank you, Patrick. But I should talk to him.”

Nonono.

I stood up.

Patrick took a few steps closer. “...Do you want me to go with you, at least?”

I looked at him quizzically.

I hadn’t said anything, had I?

How much did he know?

But I just shook my head. “Yeah... I think I’d like that. Thanks.”

Sera turned toward me. “I should probably go with you, too.”

I glanced at her. “If he said he wanted to talk to me, specifically, he probably doesn’t know you’re here. You’re probably better off keeping it that way. He’s not going to be happy about any of this.”

“Fair.” She frowned. “But I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Thanks.” I meant it when I said that.

But I was also relieved that she wasn’t coming along.

This was not going to be pleasant.

Sera hung back reluctantly as Patrick and I headed to the door.

***

Magnus Cadence sat on a couch in the guest area in the entrance, sipping tea.

He looked so...normal. Composed.

If I didn’t know him, I wouldn’t have been frightened in the slightest.

As it was, I jolted and paused in my step as soon as he set his tea cup down and stood up.

He stood, waiting for us to come closer, appraising.

When we were within arm’s reach, he nodded. “You seem mostly intact.”

“Hello, Father. I’m sorry we didn’t—” I began.

“Quiet, Son.” He raised a hand to silence me. “I haven’t given you permission to speak.”

This was not going to be good.

“Now, imagine you’re in my position. You receive a message late last night that the winter ball — attended by very nearly every student of Lorian Heights — has been assaulted by one of the most powerful monsters in existence.”

He clasped his hands together. “You listen, agonizing, as you learn that the main ballroom, where the first-year students were sitting, was the center of the devastation. You recall, of course, that your two living children are both first-year students.”

“And so, of course, you want to rush to the scene. But it’s late at night in winter, and there are no trains running. You hire a carriage. You arrive to find many wounded still being treated, and others rushed to the hospital.”

He winced, turning his head to the side. “You ask, but no one can tell you where your children are.”

His hands tighten. “You had hoped, at first, that they were simply not in attendance. But they are on the guest list. And one of the guards even remembers someone of Sera’s description entering the party with a summoned monster. Apparently, she made quite a stir. But now she’s missing. They both are.”

“You go to the hospital next.” His hands were fists now. “And then you go to the morgue.”

He takes a breath. “After looking through the bodies that were too badly burned to be identified, you believe your children are not there. You return to the hospital, and are fortunate enough to find an old colleague. Lord Teft informed me that he last saw you fighting with Mizuchi, a decision so irrational that I cannot even begin to comprehend how you came to that state. But, regardless, he believed you had survived. He had heard that you were helping Sheridan Theas with the injured.”

Father’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t told me anything about having a healing attunement, so I assumed that was in error. Surely, you wouldn’t fail to tell me about something as significant as a second attunement? But Teft was correct about one thing, at least. Here you are. House Theas.”

He glanced from side to side. Father, Patrick, and I were the only ones in the room.

Father nodded to himself, and then punched me straight in the jaw.

I stumbled backward and fell.

My lip was bleeding.

“Corin!” Patrick stepped back, eyes widening. Then he rushed to kneel down and check on me.

At first, I was simply startled.

He’s never hit me in public before.

But that was followed by a moment of relief.

...Which means that someone finally saw him hit me.

My father took a step closer, wiping his fist on his coat. “Insolent child. You are lucky I didn’t use steel. I thought I’d taught you better than this.”

Patrick reached down and pulled me to my feet.

I took a breath, then looked away. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I should have—”

He hit me again, in the ribs this time. “I still haven’t given you permission to speak.”

I doubled over from the force of the blow.

But as much as it hurt?

It hurt a hell of a lot less than it had when I hadn’t had two shrouds and a pair of shield sigils.

I straightened, holding my chest and coughing.

“Sir, with respect, that’s enough.” Patrick stepped between us. “I’m sure that Corin didn’t mean any harm. He was taking care of the rest of us all night.”

Father raised his fist, but not toward me this time.

I caught his hand.

Magnus Cadence turned his gaze to me, then he raised his other fist. “Do not test me, Son.”

I narrowed my eyes, my pulse quickening. “Were you about to hit Patrick?”

He tensed his jaw. “I will discipline my children as I see fit, and I will not allow some peasant to question—”

Haste.

I was still getting used to using the Haste spell in a fight.

I wasn’t very good at maintaining my accuracy with it.

But when all I wanted to do was hit someone very hard, very fast?

It was great for that.

I punched Magnus Cadence.

I punched him a lot.

In a few seconds, he fell back, holding his stomach.

“You’ll regret—”

Don’t give him a chance to move.

No chance to cast.

No quarter.

Jump.

The ring of jumping activated. I slammed my fist into his jaw.

He didn’t budge in the slightest.

In the moment I’d taken to close the distance, his defensive instincts must have kicked in. His body was wrapped in a translucent field of energy now, visible to the naked eye. Not a mere shroud – a projection of armor, created with a Shaper attunement.

And, unlike a shroud, an armor spell was perfectly capable of stopping a punch entirely.

I took a step back, gripping my knuckles. I’d bruised them on the impact.

Magnus simply stared at me for a moment, then reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a handkerchief. He wiped the blood away from his lips from when I’d hit him the first time, then raised a hand to his chin. “You’ve chosen an odd time to grow a backbone, Son.”

“You threatened my friend.” I felt my whole body tense as I braced myself for another strike.

Magnus shook his head. “No, Son. I was going to discipline your retainer, as is my right. If you wish for this,” he waved at Patrick, “to be your retainer, he will need to bear the burdens of all that entails. And you,” he turned his eyes back to me, “will need to remember one of the first lessons I taught you.”

Magnus took a breath, staring me down. “Never start a fight you can’t possibly finish.”

He didn’t move to attack.

That was bad. I would have been ready for a swing or a blast of mana.

He sounded calm, collected.

That was more terrifying than if he’d flown into a rage. If I’d simply made him angry, he’d probably stop at just hitting me.

But if he was thinking critically, he could do something more harmful.

I took a step to block his view of Patrick, who still looked too startled to know how to handle the situation.

I began to charge transference mana in my right hand. Transference countered enhancement, which was what Magnus used for his armor spell. If I hit him hard enough—

I’d spent too much time thinking. Something hit my back, knocking me toward Magnus. Then Magnus slammed another fist into me, reinforced with enhancement mana.

I hit the floor hard.

When I was pushing myself to my feet, I noticed my father had drawn a cane from his belt. “You’ll stay down if you know what’s best for you.”

I let the mana in my right hand dissipate. I couldn’t punch him from this distance. I pushed myself into a sitting position.

Magnus pointed toward Patrick with his cane. “Step forward, Patrick.”

Patrick trembled for just a moment, then nodded, more to himself than Magnus. His voice was weak, but he managed a plea. “Please...just don’t hurt Corin any more, sir.”

“What are you to my son?”

Patrick answered immediately. “I’m his retainer, sir.”

“Good. At least you were listening. I trust you’re aware of what being a retainer entails?”

I started to stand up. “Father, this isn’t—”

“Quiet,” Magnus hissed.

“I protect him, sir.” He looked at the cane, then raised his eyes to meet my father’s directly.

Magnus turned his head to me. “I don’t relish doing this, Son. But you need to learn proper respect and to remember your place. And it would seem that disciplining you directly is no longer sufficient.”

Magnus raised his cane.

“That will be quite enough, Father.” Sera’s voice was still rough from the damage to her throat, but easy enough to understand.

I hadn’t noticed when she’d stepped into the room.

From the way his head swung and his expression, I don’t think Magnus had noticed her, either.

“Sera.” Father lowered his cane. “This matter does not concern you.”

Sera stepped closer, glancing down to me, then back to Magnus. “I’d respectfully disagree, Father. I’m certain my dear brother meant no offense, and we are guests here. Perhaps it would be best not to make a poor impression on our hosts?”

Magnus waved a hand dismissively. “Please, Sera. If I told Edrigan Theas that I needed to discipline my child and his retainer, he’d gladly hand me his own cane.”

“Perhaps outside, but not on the carpet.”

There weren’t actually any bloodstains on the carpet that I can see, but Sera had managed something important — she’d gotten him to look.

And after that moment of doubt, Magnus slipped his cane back onto his belt. “Perhaps you have a point. It has been some time since I’ve visited, and I would not wish to make a poor impression.” He glanced down toward me, his eyes full of disdain. “I trust you’ve learned your lesson?”

I nodded slowly. “Of course, Father.”

“Good.” He glanced to Sera, then back to me. “I will be going to speak to Edrigan. I trust that by the time I’m finished, you two will be ready to return home.”

Sera cut in before I could. “We will, of course, return as soon as possible. But both Corin and I have injuries from Mizuchi’s attack that require further treatment. And I’m certain you know that Sheridan Theas is one of the most skilled healers available. We would be unwise to turn aside their hospitality.”

Magnus waved a hand. “Very well, you may remain as long as you need further treatment. But I expect no further delays.”

“Of course, Father.” Sera smiled sweetly.

Magnus turned to Patrick, looking him up and down. “You may continue to serve my son.”

With that, he walked out of the room, heading to another wing of the house.

I breathed a sigh of relief, letting just a bit of the tension out of my shoulders.

Sera and Patrick scrambled to help me to my feet.

“...Thanks,” I managed.

“Come on,” Sera said. “Let’s go get you cleaned up.”

***

Sera and I found a private room to talk after that. Patrick was graceful enough to give us a few minutes to ourselves.

“Corin, that was...”

“Routine,” I replied.

She drew in a sharp breath. “I saw scars. Every once in a while, when you rolled up your sleeves, or your shirt got pulled down a little—”

I looked away. “Stop. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“How long, Corin?”

I tightened my fists. “...A long time. It got worse when Mother left. Much worse.”

“...Why would anyone do that to their child?”

I shook my head. “He called it training. Sometimes, it was a part of training... or at least that’s what he used to disguise it.” I shook my head. “Other times...he was just so angry. So angry that Mother left. That Tristan was gone.”

She put a hand on my arm. I pulled away.

“I’m so sorry, Corin. I didn’t know.”

I nodded. “I know.” I took a breath. “I wish you never had to find out.”

Sera looked away. “When he first told me that he was my father...” She raised a hand to wipe her eyes. “I was so happy.”

The tears came more clearly after that.

“I was happy.”

***

We took a little while longer to go back to the room where I had been staying and find me a change of clothes.

Sera got some water to help me wash the blood off my face.

It was nothing new to me.

Routine, as I’d said.

Except that I’d fought back this time.

That was dangerous.

But I had no regrets.

***

I spent a little while longer just sitting with Sera. Trying to talk about other things, to get my mind off of what had happened.

It didn’t work.

I went and found Patrick.

“Thank you.”

He blinked at me. “For what?”

“For being there. For trying to step in.” I shook my head.

“I should have done more.” He looked away.

“No, you were perfect.” I sighed. “If you would have fought him, he would have killed you.”

“You really think so?”

I nodded. “He’s a professional duelist. I managed to surprise him, but I never really had a chance. He could have killed us both if he had wanted to.”

“In the middle of Elora’s house?”

I shrugged. “It would have been messy, but he probably could have gotten away with it. Don’t know.” I shook my head. “Either way, it’s better that you didn’t fight him. Still...thanks.”

“I’m your retainer, Corin. If I can’t do something like that, what good am I?”

I laughed. “You’re absurd, Patrick. You’re a great friend to me, even without throwing yourself in harm’s way. But the fact that you did...well, it matters.” I took a breath. “I’m not good at this kind of talk. Can we go do something else?”

“Sure. I think Cecily has been trying to find a chance to talk to you in private.”

Well, that was awkward in a different way, but at least it was the kind of awfulness that just had to do with political secrets and maneuvering. Nothing I wasn’t used to at this point.

“Okay. I’ll go talk to her.”

***

I found Cecily still in the dining area, then asked her to come with me to talk to me privately. We went back to the bedroom I’d been assigned. Sera had left by then, rejoining the others.

“You’re really going to go to the spire? That’s your plan?”

I nodded. “You know more than you’ve told me.”

“Obviously. You know more than you’ve been saying, too.”

That was true. “Let me fill you in on a few things.”

I spent a solid hour catching her up. Her eyes widened when I explained what had happened with Professor Orden, and again when I told her about my fight with Jin.

She was an engaged audience.

Better that than her being engaged to me, at least.

“Your turn.”

She blinked. “I...wow. You really fought Professor Orden? And a Child of the Tyrant?”

“Yeah. Neither experience was fun. I need to know, though — what’s your place in all this?”

She reached into a bag at her side and retrieved a book.

I didn’t even need to see the words to recognize it. The colors and dimensions were identical. “You’re kidding.”

“I found it during my Judgment. The Voice of the Tower started guiding me, giving me some directions,” she explained. “Then he told me he was Tristan Cadence, and that he was trapped inside the spire. I told Yunika. She already knew.”

There were multiple important bits of information there.

Especially the word “trapped”.

I had to know more about that. “Did he explain what he meant when he said he was trapped?”

She shook her head. “He implied there were things he couldn’t say. Maybe he has a mark like the one that Elora does?”

That wouldn’t be surprising. If Elora’s mark was real, then maybe all the members of their faction had one?

If so, it would mean that even finding Tristan might not get me the answers I wanted. But if it didn’t, getting inside the spire still gave me several other options. Especially with the team I was planning to bring with me.

“Okay. How did Yunika know about it?”

“She’s been climbing for the last couple years. Apparently, at one point, she was separated from her group...and Tristan appeared. He saved her from a monster. Like a hero.”

That was very interesting. It was the first thing I’d heard that implied that Tristan could physically appear in person in the sections of the tower that climbers explored.

I’d been assuming he was probably in the lower levels of the tower somewhere, in that administrative section that Researcher had alluded to.

It was possible that was still the case, though, and that he was simply able to move — or project illusions that looked like him, rather than just illusions that looked like a hovering cloak.

“And he, what, recruited her?”

Cecily shook her head. “No. He just warned her to stay away from the spire for a while, and to get her family out of the city before the end of the year. This was just a couple months ago. We’ve been preparing to leave, but Mom and Dad have been stubborn. They won’t believe Yunika, and she wouldn’t leave without them.”

That made sense, but it also raised the question of why Tristan didn’t recruit Yunika to whatever organization he was a part of.

Was he trying to keep her out of harm’s way?

Or did she simply lack the skills he needed to be useful tool?

I wasn’t sure I could believe what Cecily was telling me. She seemed genuine enough, but I’d been fooled before.

I also couldn’t guarantee that what Yunika had told Cecily was true. Maybe Yunika was working with Tristan, and simply wouldn’t tell her.

But for the moment, at least, Yunika sounded like a dead-end. I’d follow up with her directly for more information if I failed to find Tristan, but at the moment, Tristan and Elora were much more likely sources of information to pursue.

“Okay.” I nodded. “Do you want to come with us into the spire?”

Cecily gave me an awkward laugh. “Uh, I’m flattered, but I’m not really...” She shook her head. “I fought Mizuchi because I had to. But I don’t like fighting, Corin. I never have. And the spire? It’s terrifying in there. I don’t know how you can be so casual about going inside like this.”

“I prepare.” I tapped my head. “Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. And it’s still never enough. Not really. But if Tristan is in there? That’s where I need to be.”

“And I can’t convince you to wait a few months? Get those allies that your masked friend talked about?”

I shook my head. “Bringing Keras’ friends in on this would just introduce more people that I couldn’t necessarily trust. As much as I like Keras, I don’t know his true motives, or even what he is. I can trust that his primary goal right now seems to be to get in Katashi’s good graces, though, and that means he’s going to keep protecting me. With others, I can’t say the same. And I’m also just not willing to wait that long.”

Cecily sighed. “You’re still so stubborn.”

I nodded. “I know. Some things never change.”

She looked me straight in the eyes and said. “Yeah... You’re right. Some things never change.”

I’m pretty dense when it comes to things like that, but I’m pretty sure there was some sort of romantic implication in there.

So, I did the natural thing, said, “Okay, good talk. Bye for now,” and fled the room.

Chapter XXII – Unlikely Companions

It was only minutes after fleeing from Cecily that I remembered she’d been in my room, and that there was stuff I needed in there.

Awkward.

Either way, I had other preparations to do before going to the spire.

“Say, Keras. You don’t happen to have, hrm, infinite money?”

Keras chuckled. “No, Corin. And most of my money and equipment isn’t even in the country. I do have some money in an international bank, but it’s not a lot. Why?”

“If we’re serious about climbing the spire, we’re going to need equipment. I have more than last time, but we’re not going to have someone with us who can teleport. I’d rather we have a few ways of immediately escaping the spire if things go badly.”

He made a contemplative expression. “I can probably afford a couple little things. Let me hit the bank.”

I wasn’t sure what “little” meant, but I also didn’t want to impose further on Derek or Elora. I owed them enough as it was, and when you owed powerful people things, they eventually came to collect.

I was glad they’d funded the communication necklaces, but asking for more money wasn’t something I was comfortable with.

Keras returned a few hours later. “Okay. Let’s go shopping.”

I grinned. “I know just the place.”

An hour or so later, I paid my first visit in several weeks to the Climber’s Court.

They always had the strangest customers.

That day, the weirdest was a student who looked to be about my age — maybe even younger — that was being followed around by a half-dozen golems of various materials.

Instead of a traditional necklace, he wore what looked like a cube with runes etched all over it. I didn’t recognize a single one of the runes.

He mumbled something to himself, complaining about someone named “Zach”, and then left the building.

On another day, I might have asked him about that cube. Or the golems.

His relationship with that “Zach” was less interesting.

But I was busy, so I ignored him and headed inside.

“Corin! My favorite customer.”

I rolled my eyes at Lars. “Hey, Lars. I’ve brought a friend to intro—”

“...Lars? Lars Mantrake?” Keras’ voice was full of disbelief.

Lars took one look at Keras and made a belly-deep laugh. “Keras Selyrian. I never thought I’d see you in a civilized place like this.”

“Believe me, it’s not by choice.” Keras stepped forward and gave Lars a hug.

Huh.

“You two...know each other?”

Lars turned to me. “Might have gone on an adventure or two together, back in the day.”

Keras nodded. “He used to serve as quartermaster for an expedition in the Unclaimed Lands. I traveled with them from time to time.”

“Well, well.” Lars took a step back, waving at the shop. “If you’re here, I have to charge twice as much.”

Keras laughed. “I would expect nothing less.”

***

I spent a while catching up with Lars while Keras looked around the shop.

Business had been slow with the spire closed, but he still got some from students and other regular customers.

I didn’t tell him about much. Just generalities. Nothing particularly personal.

There was a part of me that wanted to tell him, though.

Maybe in a different place, at a different time.

I almost considered inviting him to come with us to the spire. He was a former climber himself, after all.

But I’d seen how he looked after Mizuchi’s attack.

Sad. Shaken.

Not afraid. No, there was something else there.

I’d noticed that Lars told a lot of stories about his old days in the spire, but not about why they’d ended.

I didn’t mention Mizuchi attacking the ball.

I let him spend some time catching up with Keras, too, while I searched the shop.

I listened in to a polite degree.

“Do you remember that time in the tomb, with that undead sorcerer?” Lars asked.

“You think I could forget that? We must have held that doorway for two hours. You kept pouring healing potions on me whenever I got injured. I never got the stains out of that shirt.”

Lars laughed. “That sounds about right. Can’t believe how many potions we wasted that day.”

“We? I’m not the one who tried to drown a wight in them.”

“Now, that’s not fair. We all thought healing magic would hurt them.”

I smiled.

It was good to hear them sharing stories.

It was a little surprising to hear that any of Lars’ stories were actually true, but I decided to chalk that up to him being selective while a friend was around.

I lingered a little longer than I needed to in the store, picking out what I wanted long before we actually left.

“Oh! And there was that time with the hydra...”

I smiled. For the first time in days, something felt right.

***

With Patrick, Marissa, Keras, and me, we had a group of four.

I invited Derek, but he turned me down.

He was staying at the hospital with his aunt, Professor Meltlake.

She apparently didn’t have anyone else.

There were obviously other members of the Hartigan family — they were a prominent house. I didn’t ask why no one else was there for her. If he wanted to explain, he would have.

But I realized the fact that she didn’t use the Hartigan name might have involved more than her just acquiring a fancy personal title.

I visited her, but she hadn’t woken up. She was...not in good shape.

I tried not to think too much about what I could have done to prevent that.

I tried to visit Professor Vellum, too, but she’d already left the hospital. That was good, I guessed.

I didn’t know where else to look for her. She wasn’t at her office, and the school was basically shut down for the year.

I wanted to know what had happened to her. But, perhaps even more than that, I could have used her advice.

Even if I knew she wouldn’t approve of my plan.

I resolved to figure out how to contact her later, but for now, I had more pressing concerns.

Without Derek, I wanted someone else who was close to his level of power. That didn’t leave a lot of candidates. Teft was still badly injured, even more so than his students.

Sheridan was the logical choice. I asked them to come, and they agreed faster than I’d expected.

With that, we had a healer. And I was pretty confident that Sheridan had a few other tricks up their sleeve, too.

Number six had to be a Diviner. Or, at least, someone with a comparable skill set.

I headed to the Divinatory.

***

“So, I know you have information gathering magic. Does that work the same way for you inside the spire?”

Researcher blinked. “I am a Researcher. My abilities are designed to function within the tower. The original that I am copied from resides and studies within.”

I nodded. “That’s what I thought. Do you have spells designed for locating people?”

“Yes. My abilities are similar to a human Diviner’s, but with a stronger emphasis on searching through large quantities of data. Location spells are within my abilities.” She gave me a quizzical look. “This is an unusual line of questioning.”

“I need to find someone who is inside the tower.” I folded my hands in front of me. “Would you be able to help with that?”

“It is... generally not permitted for me to provide information on anyone inside the spire to anyone other than one of the visages or other researchers. As you are an Arbiter, however...” Researcher frowned. “I have not been prepared for this situation. It may be irrelevant, however, as I am not capable of reaching the spire.”

She waved down at the apparatus that was providing her with the mana necessary to remain stable.

I’d thought of that, though. “How much mana do you need to remain stable?”

“I consume a total of one hundred mana per hour.”

That was more than what I was hoping for, but I could work with it. Maybe.

I took out my bracer of mana regeneration and offered it toward her. “This device is designed to regenerate the wearer’s mana. It has a mana capacity of sixty, and regenerates one mana per minute. Can you determine if the mana inside is something you could use?”

She took the offered bracer, turning it over in her hands.

For a moment, her pupil and sclera shifted to bright azure. “The mana inside is pure, and the transfer function would work on me.”

Her eyes returned to normal, and she handed the bracer back to me. “Your measurements appear to be accurate as well. I would drain the initial mana charge in approximately 36 minutes, if not for the regeneration function. In that 36 minutes, it would have regained another 36 mana. That would take me 21 minutes to drain, during which it would regain...”

I waved a hand to stop her. “You’d be able to last just about an hour, yeah. We could get you to the spire that fast without a problem, although we’d need to make sure to get approval from the guards in advance to avoid waiting in line or any paperwork.”

“But I would not necessarily have enough time to get back.”

I pondered that. “What would happen if you ran out of mana? Would you reappear here?”

She shook her head. “I would die.”

I blinked. “...Die?”

“This version of me would cease to exist. While my Summoner could summon another copy, it would not be...me.”

She sounded...scared.

Had she developed enough of a sense of self to distinguish herself from other versions?

In a way, it made sense. Vanniv also had humanoid intelligence, and he had a similar epiphany, if not to the same degree. He’d just wanted to be re-summoned in the future; apparently, that was enough to count as continuing to exist.

Maybe Researcher was different because of the apparatus that maintained her, or maybe she’d just been in this state so long that the function of the summoning spell that inhibited her desire for self-preservation had failed.

Either way, I’d have to respect her view. If she considered vanishing to equate to death, I needed to prevent that. “Okay, let’s not let that happen. Hrm.” I considered options. “Can you use a return bell?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I am not certain. It is most likely possible, however.”

I wasn’t going to accept uncertainty when someone’s life was involved. “Can you pull mana directly out of another object if it’s not designed to transfer mana?”

She shook her head.

I considered other options for a bit, but it was Researcher that suggested the solution that should have been obvious. “Did you enchant that bracer yourself, purifying it with the Arbiter attunement?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“Can you make a second bracer?”

I put a hand on my forehead in exasperation. “Of course. Or I could just add copies of all the runes to the same bracer and double the capacity and regeneration. It shouldn’t be anywhere near the mana capacity of the metal yet.”

“That would provide one hundred and twenty mana per hour, which is sufficient to support me indefinitely — provided I do not expend mana on spells.”

I hadn’t considered that last part. “How much mana would it cost for you to detect someone’s location within the tower?”

“I have a number of spells with location functions, but they vary in cost and requirements. Most have a cost within ten to six hundred mana.”

Six...hundred?

I couldn’t possibly supply enough for that. “Okay, but there’s something basic you could do with ten?”

“Ten mana would be sufficient to determine if someone is present within the tower.”

That wasn’t quite good enough. “What about sixty? With that, could you get a floor number, or a direction?”

“A direction would be possible. Determining the exact floor number would be a more powerful spell, costing three hundred and sixty mana.”

Out of my current range, then. But a direction was probably good enough. We could use it more than once and just keep climbing. “What would you need in order to cast a direction spell?”

“A unique identifier, such as a material component linked to the target, or sufficient knowledge to search using a mental connection.”

I nodded. “I think we can provide that.”

Researcher floated down to her pedestal for a moment, looking wistful. “I do not know if I should help you. You may be exceeding the authority of an Arbiter by asking for this.”

I had to choose my words carefully here. I didn’t want to be dishonest. “This is related to a matter of both personal significance to me and directly related to a task that Visage Katashi asked me to investigate previously. If I am able to complete this task, I may be able to provide further information to Katashi that would assist him with a matter of significant importance.”

That was tailoring my answer, to be sure, but it wasn’t a lie.

And I did want to help Katashi find Tenjin... I just didn’t want to get my brother killed in the process.

Even if Tristan was involved in something I didn’t approve of, he was still my brother.

And, more than anything, I needed to ask him what had happened and why he’d made the choices that he had.

There was still so much I didn’t understand.

She seemed to search my face...and for a moment, her eyes changed again. “You are speaking the truth. For the most part, at least.”

Oh, resh. I didn’t know she could do that.

I grinned sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to be misleading.”

“Yes, you did.” She shook her head. “But it is sufficient justification, even if you are hiding something. You sincerely believe you could acquire information that would be relevant to a visage. That implies you are operating within your role as an Arbiter, and therefore I can assist you, even in a matter that would normally be forbidden.”

Researcher turned her head away. “In the future, I would prefer if you do not deceive me, however.”

I clenched my hands for a moment, then nodded. “Sorry. It’s a delicate matter. I will try to be more direct in the future.”

She looked back. “I believe you.”

Another question occurred to me. “Would leaving here violate your Summoner’s instructions?”

Researcher smiled. “They have not given me explicit instructions to remain, since it would normally be impossible for me to leave without them.”

“Okay. And how powerful would you say you are in combat?”

Her eyes widened for a moment. “I...would be useless in a fight. I do not even have a shroud. Do you anticipate violence occurring?”

That...was bad.

“We’re going to be climbing the spire. There will be all sorts of rooms, some of which will involve traps or battle.”

She took a step back. “Oh. I’ve never gone up the spire before. I’ve seen much of it, of course, and I knew...”

“If you know a way for us to move up without fighting, I’d be glad to use it.”

She shook her head. “Shortcuts do exist, but I do not have access to them, and neither would you.”

That was disappointing. “Okay, we’ll just need to protect you, then.”

“We?”

I nodded. “For now, I’ll go upgrade this bracer to make it strong enough to maintain you. We’ll test it in this environment for a few hours, just to make sure it works. Then we’ll leave in a couple days, and you can meet the team.”

***

I spent most of the rest of the evening upgrading the bracer, as promised.

The rest of the night was dedicated to modifying the Ring of Derek Controlling.

The anti-tampering runes were a tricky problem to solve.

I couldn’t move the mana out of the runes. I couldn’t add new runes. Destroying the runes might have worked, but it also might have destroyed the ring.

I was just about to use my etching rod to try to scratch out the runes when I came up with a slightly safer plan.

I asked Keras to use his metal magic to reshape the ring to remove the tiny sections of metal containing the anti-tampering runes. Fortunately, it didn’t explode.

With that, the ring was safe to modify.

I made some minor adjustments, and then I put it on and ran some tests.

It worked exactly as expected.

The next day, I gave the bracer to Researcher. We tested it. It worked as expected.

After that, we had two days remaining before it was time to head into the spire.

We all spent more of that time preparing.

Keras had purchased five return bells from Lars at my request. They were expensive, but everyone having a separate means to evacuate would make things much safer.

I didn’t need a bell; I still had my circlet, with the same function, but voice activation. If for some reason it didn’t work, though, having the bells as backup would be great.

We debated where to place the anchors for the return bells. Elora’s house was too far away, as was the school — it had to be within about a mile of the spire.

That left a random place, like I’d used last time, or something more familiar. We’d initially talked about using Derek’s old manor, but I didn’t like the risk of Saffron showing up there, even if it was very unlikely he would arrive right when we did. There was always the chance he had it under observation.

Ultimately, we just left the anchor rods with Lars. Apparently, it wasn’t the first time someone had done that. His shop was near the spire for a reason.

After that talk, I remembered what he’d said about healing potions earlier.

They were expensive. Like, shockingly expensive. A single potion cost about half as much as a return bell.

Apparently, that was because they required so much mana to be saturated into a small area to be effective, and because they also required certain rare herbs to create a useful healing effect (as opposed to just pouring raw liquid life mana onto a wound, which would be awful).

There were cheaper ones, but Lars didn’t sell them. Apparently he’d had bad experiences. I didn’t question that.

Sera and I pooled our funds and bought a case of a half dozen of them. I stored them in the Jaden Box.

Aside from that, I spent the last of my time training with Keras, and working on building a mana regeneration function into my phoenix sigil. It was much easier now that I’d both built and upgraded the bracers.

I didn’t know if wearing a mana regeneration item at all times would be safe for me, so I put in a function rune that would stop sending mana into my body, just in case.

It wouldn’t be a waste if I had to do that. A quick test with my mana threads told me that I could easily move mana from one part of the phoenix sigil to another — meaning the stored mana for the mana regeneration function could be moved to the shields to recharge them instantly.

I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it that way, but realistically? I knew I would.

I wanted to build a replacement mana watch. I wanted desperately to check my mana.

I didn’t.

It wasn’t a priority.

And I had started to learn just how important a few days of properly prioritized time could be.

I got one final night of decent sleep.

I said goodbye to the friends that weren’t going with us.

And then, with five unlikely companions, I made my way to the Serpent Spire.

Chapter XXIII – Climber

“I...can’t believe I’m going to the spire.” Researcher was practically bouncing with excitement. She was walking next to me, but I use the term “walking” loosely, because her feet never quite touched the ground.

The bracer of mana regeneration shined brightly on her right wrist. I was glad it actually fit her. I hadn’t thought to check the fit in advance.

I’d given her one other item after some consideration — my school-issued shield sigil. She didn’t have a shroud to protect her, and I knew first-hand that anyone’s chances of surviving in the tower without a barrier were minimal.

I had the materials to make another silver phoenix sigil for her, but I hadn’t thought about it in advance. If we ended up spending several days in the spire — which was a real possibility — I planned to make her one as soon as possible.

I went to meet up with the others just outside the Climber’s Gate like we’d planned. I expected that part to be relatively straightforward, but I’d forgotten a minute detail.

Researcher froze when she saw Keras in the distance.

In that moment, I remembered what had happened the last time an elemental had seen him.

She trembled. For a moment, I thought she was going to bolt in the opposite direction.

She ran straight at him instead.

“Who are you? What are you? What’s that mask? How are you making your shroud do that?”

Keras took a step back, eyes widening, and lifted his hands in a warding gesture. “I, uh, hi. You can call me Keras.”

“But that’s not your name, is it? You’re not a person! But you’re not a summoned monster, either.” Researcher didn’t slow down until she was inches from running into him. When she finally did, she stood up on her toes, bringing her face so close to his that her nose was almost touching his mask.

I walked over, trying not to show how amused I was by Keras’ obvious discomfort.

Keras tilted his head down. “That’s complicated...and a bit of a secret.”

Researcher’s shoulders slumped. “But I want to know.”

Keras sighed. “You’re a knowledge elemental, aren’t you?”

“Oh! Yes.” She nodded vehemently. “Forgive me for failing to introduce myself. I’m Researcher 437-C. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Right.” Keras took a step back. “Knowledge is your sustenance, isn’t it?”

“Well, technically I can subsist by converting gray mana into mental mana, but that’s so...disappointing.” She looked away from him. She was usually so professional that seeing this reaction was jarring, but it was kind of endearing.

Do elementals have stronger emotional responses than humans? Tavare shifted their behaviors rapidly, too, and Researcher had a similar shift in approach when I told her I was an Arbiter...

Or maybe I’m just the unusual one. A lot of humans seem to experience emotions more intensely than I do, too.

Keras sighed. “I can’t tell you everything you want to know right now, but...” He leaned down and whispered something in her ear.

Researcher’s eyes widened, almost comically. “That...is so amazing! I mean, how would that even work? Are you coming with us into the spire?”

“I should be, yes.”

“Amazing...” Researcher turned back to me. “I am so excited.”

Elora walked over to the rest of us. “Well, this is all quite fascinating, but I’d like to be gone as quickly as possible. Can you all please head to the spire?”

I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were teleporting us in.”

“In a sense. I’m opening one of the gates and activating it to lead toward a specific destination. Simple teleportation would never get through the spire’s defenses.”

I frowned. That wasn’t what it had sounded like when she’d described before, but she had been pretty vague.

Elora led the group of us toward an unguarded section of the spire, then reached into a pouch at her hip and pulled out what looked like a comically large crystalline key. It was vaguely shaped like a serpent, complete with fangs serving as the tines of the key.

I stared at it for a second before recognition dawned on me.

That’s like the key we found last time we visited the tower. It’s slightly different in shape, but it’s a serpentine and made of crystal.

Does that mean the other key would have allowed for a secret entrance into the spire, too?

I wished I’d kept it, but Orden had taken the key and never given it back to us. Maybe she knew.

A section of the wall glimmered and vanished.

There was a glowing magical barrier behind that section of wall. Beyond that, I could see only darkness.

“Servants of the Spire, I beseech you to open the way. I am Elora, of the House of Theas, bound by my pact to serve.”

She reached forward and touched the barrier with a bare hand. It vanished.

Then there was just blackness ahead of us.

Elora turned to the group. “I wish you luck and safety. If things don’t go as planned, I recommend you leave immediately. There are still other options.”

We exchanged a few goodbyes.

And with that taken care of, the six of us entered the tower.

There was the usual moment of disorientation as I stepped through the gate, then the dysphoria of seeing entirely new surroundings.

And when I say entirely new, I mean that in the literal sense.

We’d gone through the same entrance as last time, but this was far from the same destination.

I knew, even at a glance, that something had gone wrong. Or, at least, not quite the way I’d expected.

We were not on the first floor.

And worse than that?

We weren’t all in the same place.

***

Four of us stood in a square chamber wrought from brown stone. Massive tree roots broke through the floors in several locations, and overgrowth of vines covered the walls to my left and behind me. I mentally labeled those directions “east” and “south”, because I didn’t have any way of determining actual directions while inside the spire.

More jarring than the appearance of the chamber, however, was the distinct lack of Keras and Researcher.

I glanced around twice, wondering if they’d somehow ended up elsewhere in the same room, but there was no sign of either of them.

“Well,” Sheridan searched the room with their eyes, much as I had, “This is an auspicious start.”

“Where are we?” Patrick asked.

“From the look of it, I’d say somewhere around the twentieth floor,” I offered.

Marissa blinked. “How can you tell?”

“The spire is always changing, but every set of ten floors has a general theme,” Sheridan offered. “Corin is right. The twenty first through thirtieth floors are wood and nature themed. If we’re in the first half, it will be similar to the other spires — lots of small rooms with individual challenges. If we’re in the upper half, each floor will have a single harder challenge.”

I frowned, reaching up to my necklace. “Message. Keras. Can you hear me?”

I heard Keras reply almost immediately. “Yes. Are you safe?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. At least the necklaces worked. “Yes. I’m with Marissa, Patrick, and Sheridan. We seem to be around the twentieth floor. Is Researcher with you?”

“Yes, unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately?”

“We’re in prison cells. Almost identical to where you first found me.”

I raised a hand to cover my eyes. Ugh. “Okay. Can you get out?”

There was a pause. “Same problem as when I was first in one. If I break out, it could trigger traps to incinerate the other cells. The runes are different, so I don’t know how bad it would be. Researcher might not survive.”

I clenched my hands into fists. “We’ll see if we can figure out how to come to you.”

“Hold on.”

Keras went silent for a few moments, while I relayed everything we’d discussed to the others.

“Researcher says she can identify the runes and figure out an order that we can safely disable them, but it’s going to take a while. Probably hours, at least. Once we’re out, she should be able to locate you, and we can fight our way there. Don’t bother trying to come to us — we’re probably below the first floor like before. It would take you ages to get here.”

I nodded, then I realized he couldn’t actually see me. “Okay. You may just want to use your return bell once you get out of the cells.”

“If we can get out, I can handle twenty floors. We’ll have to be careful, but Researcher should be able to guide me to you. Best guess is that it will take at least four or five days, though. Maybe a week.”

That wasn’t great news, but at least they’d be able to catch up to us eventually. “Any idea why you’re in there?”

“Researcher says that the teleportation effect on the entrance was probably set up to route non-human entities to a different location than humans. Non-humans probably weren’t supposed to take that door. Either that, or someone changed it specifically as a trap for people like me.”

Or creatures like Children of the Tyrant, I realized.

It was a sensible precaution, but inconvenient.

I turned to the others and explained the situation.

“Should we just camp here until they catch up?” Patrick asked.

Mara frowned. “That sounds really boring.”

“Boring or not, Patrick has a point,” Sheridan replied. “People are expected to be at least Sunstone level to clear this floor. And that’s with six people, not four.”

“The longer we’re idle, the more likely that Mizuchi frees herself from wherever she’s banished. Moreover, people from Tristan’s organization are probably aware that we’re here. If we just sit here, they could make a move — either against us, or outside the spire.”

“How would we even find Tristan without Researcher?” Patrick asked.

That was a good question.

I did have a way, but I’d been hesitant to show it around everyone.

Bah. It was far too late for this kind of secret.

“Retrieve: Trials of Judgment.”

I showed everyone the book. “I can communicate with Tristan with this. Provided he’s actually paying attention.”

Sheridan’s eyes narrowed. “How very interesting.”

I grabbed a pen and flipped the book open, planning to write Tristan that I was inside the tower.

I didn’t need to. There was already a new message.

Corin,

While I am pleased to see that you are alive, I am disappointed you did not follow my instructions.

You should not be in the spire right now.

You should leave.

I’m not the only one who knows you’re here.

You are in tremendous danger as long as you remain, and I am not in any position to help you.

-Mysterious Brother Entity

I wrote back.

Tristan,

I’m coming for you.

Please tell me where you are.

I’d hoped he would give me directions, but based on our previous interactions, I didn’t think he would.

So, carefully, I pried apart the pages of the book. I could see the runes inside the binding. I might have done some damage to the book in the process, but I told myself it was necessary.

I pressed my finger against the rune that I believed was responsible for communication with a matching book and focused.

Arrow of Direction.

A glowing arrow appeared, pointing straight up.

After an instant, it vanished.

I tried the spell a few more times, but every subsequent attempt failed. I’d probably triggered some kind of location spell countermeasures.

But I’d learned two important things.

One, Tristan was somewhere above us.

And two, I apparently had the ability to use basic information gathering spells inside the spire. I presumed that was because my Arbiter attunement marked me as an assistant to the visages, so the spire’s basic countermeasures against divination didn’t affect me.

That could be very significant in the longer term, if I could learn better information gathering spells. For the moment, however, I had to work with the minimal information I had.

Then I tucked the book away in my bag. I didn’t store it in the box — I wanted to be able to check it quickly.

“Tristan is above us somewhere. I don’t know where.”

Sheridan folded their arms. “I don’t suppose your brother could give us some clues on how to make it through the rooms on this floor?”

I glanced back toward the book, then back to Sheridan. “Believe me, he’s awful at that. We’re better off on our own.”

I didn’t mention the fact that Tristan wanted us to leave. Maybe I should have, but with two of our climbers separated from the group, morale was already low. I didn’t want everyone to decide to abandon the expedition.

Sheridan rolled their eyes. “Okay. Let’s go.”

The room had three doors. Each was a simple wooden door with a handle, similar to what I’d seen on the first floor.

Each door did, however, have a single colorful gemstone in the center.

To the west, a red gemstone.

To the north, blue.

To the east, yellow.

The presence of the gems seemed odd. I remembered the color coded doors in my Judgment, but they hadn’t been like that in the first floor of the spire.

And when I’d read about the spire, I didn’t remember there being gems like these in the upper floors. Was that just an omission in the books I’d read?

“Sheridan, have you been up here before?”

They nodded. “Sure. But not many times. I’ve done some climbing, but I’m not a professional like Derek or Elora. And this is already different from anything I recognize.”

“Any idea which way to go?”

Sheridan shrugged. “Derek is usually the one leading the way, and he prefers physical stuff. That’d be either red or yellow.”

“So, it’s normal that there are gems on the doors?” I asked.

Sheridan frowned. “Now that you mention it, this spire doesn’t usually have them, outside of Judgments. The Tortoise Spire has them on every floor, though.”

I scratched my chin. “...Any idea about why there might be a change?”

Sheridan shook their head. “Katashi’s personal preference, maybe? Don’t know.”

That was an interesting possibility.

Could Katashi be restricting the spire in Tenjin’s absence? “Hm.” Probably wasn’t worth worrying about immediately. “Okay. Red is fighting, yellow is speed and agility?”

“Red is more like brute force in general, but yeah. Something like that. Blue tends to be puzzles.”

I turned to the others. “Any preferences?”

Marissa enthusiastically punched one hand into the other, then winced. Apparently, she wasn’t fully healed yet.

Patrick just shrugged.

“We’ll check each of them. Mara, up front with me. Unless Sheridan is hiding physical combat skills?”

Sheridan shook their head. “I’m a Mender and a Necromancer. I can fight a bit, but healing is my focus. My attack spells are ranged.”

“Okay, let’s do this.”

We walked to the blue door first, since it seemed the least likely to explode in our faces.

It led to a circular room with a large pool of water in the center. No monsters, no obvious traps. Just a big pool of water.

I closed the door. “None of you have water magic, I assume?”

A chorus of shaking heads.

“Okay, we’ll skip that for now.”

Selys-Lyann could potentially freeze the water, but without walking in, I couldn’t get a better look at what the actual challenge was. If it was something like swimming to the next room, I didn’t think it would be a good idea without water magic.

I opened the yellow door.

There was no floor in the next room.

It was just a long hallway with vines draped from the ceiling, leading to another yellow door on the other side.

Some of the vines looked sturdier than others.

I gazed downward, but there was only pitch blackness below. Clearly, falling was a bad idea.

I closed the door.

“Not too bad,” Patrick noted. “I think I could maintain four levitation spells at this point. We could probably skip the vines entirely.”

“And Corin’s got ‘is ring.” Mara looked thoughtful. “We want to try this one?”

I shook my head. “Let’s check the last one first. I have a feeling there’s going to be a trick in there.”

We headed to the red door and pulled it open.

The room ahead was circular, with doors on the left and right sides.

The floor was grass and dirt, rather than stone. The more concerning part, however, were the knee-high mushrooms that stuck out in dozens of places. There were probably at least thirty of them.

“Mushrooms?” Marissa asked. “That’s the challenge?”

She had to say something.

All at once, the mushrooms began to rip themselves free from the ground. They sprouted tiny, spongy arms and legs and charged.

Marissa lowered herself into a combat stance, but they never got that close.

Instead, the hoard of mushroom creatures stopped a dozen feet away and opened fang-filled mouths, ejecting clouds of some kind of mist.

Or, more likely, toxic spores.

I tried to slam the door shut.

Obviously, it couldn’t be that simple.

As soon as the door closed, it disintegrated, leaving no barrier between us and the clouds of spores.

Patrick reacted quickly, pushing his hand forward. A gust of wind blasted outward, pushing back the mist.

“Don’t get close or breathe that in!” Sheridan instructed. “You do not want to see what happens.”

I drew Selys-Lyann and slashed in mid-air, launching a shockwave of ice and freezing a pair of them solid.

Marissa punched at the air, sending out a shockwave of her own and blasting several of the mushrooms back.

But there were dozens. Patrick maintained the gust of wind, but the mushrooms were pressing through it.

Sheridan pointed at the floor. Spears of bone erupted from the ground, piercing through the lead wave of mushrooms and stopping the charge.

That gave Patrick a moment to point with his other hand and hurl a tiny, compact sphere of flame.

He stopped the wind for just a moment, then when the sphere of flame was near the mushrooms, he activated the wind again.

The moment the wind made contact with the sphere, it detonated, annihilating nearly every remaining mushroom.

Patrick stepped forward, blasting the smoke from the explosion clear with another concentrated burst of wind, then clearing the remaining mushrooms with more blasts of fire and lightning.

“Wow.” Marissa nudged Patrick. “Not bad.”

Patrick blushed. “Wide area spells are sort of what I’m made for.”

“Still, Mara’s right. You were quick to counter those spores. That could have gone a lot worse.” I pointed toward the room. “I guess we’ve pretty much cleared this one out. May as well go inside and check the doors?”

Patrick spent a few more moments using wind to send the remaining spores as far from us as possible, then created bubbles of air around us just in case. I hadn’t realized he had that degree of control of air magic. It was pretty impressive.

The south door had a white gem, which was intriguing, but it was locked. “White means, what, a safe room?”

Sheridan nodded. “Yeah. We definitely want to get back here if we can. It’s strange to have one so close to where we started. You usually have to go through about six rooms to get to a safer room. There are shortcuts, but right next to the entrance is...odd.”

“Can we break it open?” Marissa asked.

Sheridan shook their head. “Not a good idea. Spire guardians often show up if you start breaking things, and I don’t know if we can handle one.”

“Other door, then.” I pointed across the room. Another red gem. “Hopefully the key is over that way.”

We headed to the other door and opened it.

The next room was another long hallway, much like the one with the vines, but wrought from solid stone. It was wide enough to walk two abreast, but just barely.

The floor was dirt and grass, though, and I could see some roots protruding from the floor.

“Anyone see any obvious traps?” I asked.

“Nothing.” Patrick frowned. “I don’t like it.”

“Better than the vines,” Mara offered. “I bet those were going to reach down and try to eat us or somethin’.”

She was probably right. I turned to Sheridan. “Preference on this room or the vines?”

“It’s generally safer to continue down the same path unless you have a good reason to go back. Every door leads you one step closer to an exit.”

“On it is, then.” I turned toward Patrick. “Be ready to levitate us if the floor is dangerous?”

“You got it.”

We pressed on into the next room.

The distinct lack of immediate death traps made me nervous.

Maybe it’s just a hallway?

That was too optimistic, of course. I never believed it.

We reached the door on the opposite side of the hall. There weren’t any obvious traps on it, but we didn’t have someone like Vera with us who could check with any degree of reliability.

I turned the door knob and opened it.

There was a solid stone wall on the other side.

The door we’d entered the room from slammed shut. That was a little startling, but not particularly worrisome in itself.

There was a grinding noise as the walls of the hallway began to move closer together.

Then the roots below us began to slither upward, latching onto our legs.

After a series of expletives from everyone, Patrick and I drew our swords and began to hack away at the vines. Marissa lashed out with a blade aura from her injured hand.

Sheridan focused on the walls, turning to the left and dragging a hand slowly upward. Spears of bone blasted from the ground on both sides of the hall.

For a moment, the walls slowed their progress inward, but the bone spears were already beginning to creak.

Sheridan gestured, conjuring more bone spears to replace the ones that were being crushed. “Can’t keep this up forever. Need an exit.”

“Check the walls,” I instructed the others. “There will probably be a hollow spot somewhere.”

Mara finished cutting herself free and leapt to the door I’d just opened, slamming her good fist into the stone. It cracked, but didn’t break.

Not hollow, then. And probably not the right path.

She winced and swung around to begin working on other walls.

Patrick and I focused on vines, trying to keep us from getting entangled. Sheridan’s efforts were entirely on slowing down the creeping walls.

I guessed we had a minute or two before we were crushed. I’d try to activate my circlet and teleport us out before that happened, but I couldn’t guarantee teleportation would work in this room.

Marissa continued to leap from place to place, pounding on walls without finding any weak points.

“Up!” Sheridan yelled.

It took me a moment to see it, even with Sheridan’s prompting — a section of the ceiling that had just a slight outline around it.

Marissa saw it, though. She ducked, channeling energy around her good hand.

“Dragon ascends to sky!”

She jumped higher than I’d thought possible, swinging her fist upward, and smashed straight through the ceiling into the next room.

The rest of us ran to the spot where she’d jumped.

She reached down with a hand. “Safe!”

I jumped. Marissa caught my hand and pulled me through.

We helped the other two up a few moments later.

The room below us lasted longer than I expected. It took another solid minute before the walls had completely closed, pulverizing anything that was still inside.

Still, we were all breathing heavily while we took in our new surroundings.

This chamber was much smaller, maybe ten feet in each direction. It looked like we were inside a house now, or maybe a school building.

There was a table in the center of the chamber, not far from where we’d emerged through the floor. It contained an open book, a single piece of parchment next to the book, and several pieces of alchemical equipment. Burners, distillation devices, that sort of thing.

Next to those was an hourglass, slowly draining sand from top to bottom. It looked like it had just started the moment we’d entered the room.

The single door to exit the room was directly in front of us. The gem in the door was colorless. It had an obvious slot for a key next to the handle.

The left wall had a shelf with dozens of labeled jars and vials. Alchemical ingredients. Shadeleaf, Lifestrand, that sort of thing.

Along the back wall, there were three large crystalline containers. Each was open on the top, but solid on the other three sides.

Within each of the crystalline containers was a gold-rimmed treasure box.

The far left treasure box was immersed in liquid.

The central one was surrounded by an aura of fire.

And the one on the far right? Lightning crackled within the crystalline container.

Patrick walked over to the table and read the single piece of parchment aloud. “Find the right solution to choose your path.”

I put a hand over my eyes. “Solution...? Ugh, the goddess’ puns are awful.”

Sheridan walked over to the table, flipping through the book. “Alchemical recipes. But reading through all this would take ages.” They turned to me. “Corin, you’re an Enchanter. They teach you alchemy classes, yes?”

I winced. “I sat in on a single class once. Aside from that, I’ve read a couple books on enhancement elixirs, and attended a couple lectures. I know how to distill things. Nothing advanced.”

“Better than the rest of us, I suspect.” Sheridan offered me the book. “I learned about which potions to use to treat specific conditions, but not how to make them.”

I scanned over the page the book had already been open to. With luck, it would be relevant.

Neutralizing existing alchemical compounds typically requires introducing a concoction of a directly opposing magic type. This can be dangerous, however, because too much or too little of any individual ingredient can change the elemental alignment of the result.

Rather than neutralizing the original concoction, this can potentially cause an explosive, or otherwise dangerous, reaction.

The following ingredients are your best sources for basic elemental affinities.

Waterweed is the best representation of water. It is a bright blue flower with a long, thorny green stalk.

Firebloom is used in concoctions for the element of fire. It is a red bulb that glows softly at night.

I skimmed over the rest of the ingredients it mentioned, moving on to the next page, which discussed activating agents and how to mix each.

“I can...probably make something with this.” I glanced at the hourglass. It wasn’t draining particularly quickly — it probably was literally an hour. “I’m not confident that I can get the mixture right, though.”

“We’re just trying to get to the boxes, right?” Patrick asked.

“Presumably,” Sheridan replied.

“The solution determines the path. We may get different keys for the room based on how we solve it.” I waved at the boxes. “Getting the chests out would probably be pretty simple without bothering to use alchemy. There may be a penalty of some kind if we just brute force it.”

Sheridan shook their head. “Usually there isn’t a penalty for brute force, so much as a benefit for solving the puzzle as completely as possible.”

I nodded at that, remembering the room filled with all the keys last time. We’d explored it more completely than we needed to, and gotten an extra key out of it. It was possible this was going to work similarly.

“Okay. I’m going to try to figure out concoctions for neutralizing fire, water, and lightning. In the meantime, the rest of you figure out any alternate solutions you can.”

Fire and water were simple; they neutralized each other.

Lightning was trickier. It was a combination of fire and air, which meant I needed a combination of water and earth.

But that didn’t mean just mixing a water herb with an earth herb. Just mixing fire and air didn’t make lightning; that would make an explosion. Mixing water and earth would make...soggy earth, not whatever their combined element was.

“What’s the elemental opposite of lightning?” I asked Patrick. He was specialized in lightning, so I figured he’d know.

“Sand.”

Huh. Wouldn’t have been what I would have guessed, but I trusted him.

There was actual sand in one of the jars, but I didn’t think that was the same as the sand element, and Patrick didn’t think it would work either.

That meant I needed to find ingredients that represented the sand element, or maybe something that was designed to merge two primary elements into one of the more complex ones.

I rummaged through jars and skimmed through the book’s glossary of components.

Flameflower: A more powerful source of the fire element. Used in concoctions for granting temporary fire elemental power. Warning: Combusts when exposed to air magic.

Apprentice’s Berry: Represents mental mana. Delicious. Highly recommended.

Bird’s Foot: Represents transference mana.

Luck Lily Extract: Liquid extracted from a luck lily. When exposed to transference mana, causes teleportation to a seemingly random nearby location. Extremely dangerous.

Windbow: Represents air mana. Warning: Combusts when exposed to fire mana.

Dreamglow: Takes on the elemental property of a single spell that is cast into it.

Frostcane: Alchemically null on its own, but reacts to ice magic, creating an initial burst of ice and then taking on the ice element after exposure.

Mage’s Folly: Reverses the elemental affinity of a concoction.

Twilight’s Call: Represents umbral mana.

Last Bell: Represents death mana.

Queen’s Crown: Used to enhance the potency of concoctions.

There were dozens of other listings.

The fact that the list wasn’t in alphabetical order bothered me deeply.

The hourglass was half way drained.

“Uh, Corin? Don’t mean to rush ya, but maybe we should skip the potions?” Marissa offered. “Is it really that important to do it that way?”

“Probably not, but I want to do this right if we can.” I started setting jars on the table.

Waterweed for water.

Firebloom for fire.

Those were the simple ones, and I found what I needed to mix with them for the most basic of potions. In both cases, just water and an alchemically neutral agent to “activate” the compound. I chose peppermint for that function, since it was the weakest one and in plentiful supply.

I opened the waterweed jar and found a green flower with a blue stem inside. I was in the middle of chopping it when I realized that was wrong.

“Son of a...” I set my tools down, turning to the others. “The jars are mislabeled. Find me a blue flower with a green, thorny stem.”

It took a few more minutes for me to assign out the descriptions of all the components I needed, and for everyone to find them.

Once I had real waterweed and actual peppermint, I made the elixir.

It didn’t look like much of anything, but we were running short on time.

I poured it on the fire.

The liquid seemed to cut right through the flame. It didn’t sputter and smoke like a normal fire exposed to water; it just made the fire vanish on contact.

I kept pouring until the water reached a near-invisible rune on the bottom of the container, which went out as soon as the liquid reached it.

“It worked!” Patrick clapped me on the shoulder. I ignored the moment of anxiety that caused. “Great work, Corin. Should we take this box and go?”

I shook my head. “Let me try the others.”

The firebloom elixir was just as easy to make, but it didn’t work as well. The “water” inside that box must have been something other than actual water.

After a bit of additional experimenting, I used flameflower instead of firebloom. That worked.

Our sand was running low.

I still hadn’t found any ingredient that corresponded to sand magic.

I lifted a plant in front of Patrick, then set it on the table. “Hit that with lightning.”

“Seriously?” He blinked.

“Yes.”

He shocked the plant. It glowed with electricity.

Carefully, I used a stone rod to sweep that ingredient — dreamglow — into a mixing bowl.

Then, I prepared the mage’s folly, and mixed that in.

The lightning around the dreamglow flickered once more, then faded. The flower turned gray-brown.

Fascinating.

“Uh, Corin, we really need to go.”

“Get the other boxes out and get ready.”

I finished the last elixir, which ended up being a gritty gray-brown compound, and poured it into the lightning box.

The lightning rune flickered and died on contact.

A musical chime sounded throughout the room.

The three boxes and the hourglass vanished.

The transparent gem on the door changed to white.

And a key appeared in the center of the room.

“Well done,” Sheridan said. “I suspect those boxes would have held standard keys. You’ve made us a better path. White should be a safe room.”

“Ooh, nice!” Patrick walked over the door. “Can we get out of here now?”

“Just give me a few more minutes.” I grinned. “I was hoping this would stop the timer. I have something else I wanted to do in here.”

Marissa tilted her head to the side. “What’s that?”

I illustrated by pulling the Jaden Box out of my bag, putting the remaining firebloom into the correct jar, and then putting the corner of the jar in the box. “Store: Firebloom.”

“Oooh.” Patrick clapped his hands together. “Nice.”

***

It took us another good hour to get everything sorted into the right containers and then stored in the Jaden Box.

I fully intended to take anything useful in the spire that I came across, as long as it wasn’t nailed down or on fire.

Possibly even if it was.

After that, we proceeded into the next room.

It was eerily familiar — a room with white stone walls, three doors leading in different directions, and a fountain in the center filled with mana-infused water.

We didn’t stop for long in the safe room; everyone felt like the alchemy room had been enough of a break.

We checked all three doors.

To the left, a door with a yellow gem, leading into a room where stone spikes would protrude from tiles in the floor every few seconds.

Easily solved with levitation, provided that there aren’t any other tricks.

There were two other doors in that room; an orange one and a green one.

On the north side of the safe room, we found a door with a blue crystal.

That one led to a much larger room with a rotating circular platform in the center, divided into several wedges. The platform was angled downward, like a funnel, and at the base of each of the wedges was a huge hole. Each of the wedges had huge letters written across it, but I couldn’t read the words from this distance.

On the side of the platform were three huge metallic spheres, probably around the size of my entire torso. At a glance, I judged the spheres to be just the right size to fit into the holes in the platform.

To complicate matters, there was a gap with no floor — maybe fifteen feet — between the wheel and the closest accessible areas around it. That meant we couldn’t just walk the spheres over and drop them in the holes.

I’d never been to a casino, but even I recognized the concept behind the challenge.

Marissa pointed. “I want to do that one!”

I glanced at her. “You want to gamble on whether or not we succeed?”

“S’not just gambling. It’s a test of skill!” Marissa clapped her hands together, then winced. She kept forgetting one of her hands was still injured. “It’ll be fair, right?”

“No.” “Nah.” “Definitely not,” came the chorus of replies from me, Patrick, and Sheridan.

“Aww.” Marissa folded her arms. “I bet we can figure something neat out for it. Maybe levitate the spheres?”

Patrick squinted as he inspected the room. “Depends on how heavy those are. They look like they’re metal — they could be hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds.”

“We can investigate it, but let’s check the red room first.” I gestured to the last door.

We walked over and opened it.

The room ahead looked like a pleasant garden, save for the gigantic snake-like heads that were erupting from the grass even as we opened the door.

I slammed the door shut. “Okay. Who’s good at gambling?”

Marissa laughed. “Don’t like snakes, Corin?”

“I don’t like poison. And that, Mara, looks like the kind of room where we’d get poisoned.”

“Bah, I could take ‘em. But I prefer the wheel thing, anyway. That looks more fun!”

“More importantly,” Sheridan pointed out, “It looked like a way up. I’m fairly confident I saw ‘stairs’ written on one of the slats on the whirl wheel.”

I hadn’t been able to get a look from that far away, but apparently Sheridan had better eyesight.

I also wasn’t familiar with the term “whirl wheel”, but I didn’t bother asking about it. It was easy enough to glean from context.

We started heading to the blue room, but we were interrupted by the sound of Keras’ voice.

“Corin, we have a problem.”

I paused in my step. “What’s wrong? Er, I mean, necklace. Message Keras. What’s wrong?”

It was easy to forget that I had to activate the necklace before I could actually send a reply.

“Researcher is...gone.”

I felt a moment of panic. “...Gone?”

“She was just telling me about the next rune to smash, then she said something about her Summoner, shivered, and disappeared.”

That was bad.

Potentially very bad.

If her Summoner had just called her back to the Divinatory, at least she’d be safe, but we’d have lost our tracker.

If her Summoner had unsummoned her...or cut off her contract entirely...

...She’d be dead. And it would be my fault.

“No specifics?” I asked, just to confirm.

“No. Whatever it was, she couldn’t resist it. I think she was trying to, but it only lasted a second.”

Resh.

“Okay. Did her bracers disappear with her?”

“Yeah?”

At least that meant if she was physically transported somewhere else, she’d still have a mana source. That was good.

“Okay. Did she tell you how to get to us?”

“Not in detail, but up is up. I’ve climbed a good way before. Now that she’s not here, I can just cut through here and start climbing, but I’m worried about her.”

“Understood, but we have no way to find her right now. Just head to us, then we’ll see if we can figure out if we can find her later.”

“Okay. I’m on my way, but even without Researcher slowing me down, it’s going to be a while.”

We said goodbye and turned off the necklaces for now.

I hoped Researcher was safe.

We headed to the blue room.

As soon as we were inside, I heard a loud ticking on the right side of the room. A clock had started, listing three hundred seconds.

There were no obvious traps, so we headed closer to the spheres, which were positioned about ten feet from the gap in the floor.

At that distance, I could see more details, and with that, more complications.

First, the wheel was surrounded by translucent crystal, similar to the walls I’d seen in the prison. There were gaps on the top side of the crystal, but only right around the outer ring of the wheel.

Second, the outer ring of the wheel was spinning faster than the central section, meaning that they were separate pieces. We couldn’t just throw the ball inside and expect it to roll directly down the nearest wedge in the funnel section — the momentum of the outer wheel would probably move it around a bit before it fell.

Third, there were tons of tiny runes on the walls of the room. I wanted to read them, but there wasn’t enough time. I could tell at a glance that several of them involved attack spells.

Fourth, I could now read the inner “wedges” that lead to the holes.

There were twelve in total. Some were more pleasant than others.

Monsters!

Traps!

Fabulous Prizes!

Bigger Traps!

Stairs Up!

Extremely Dangerous Traps!

I Forgot What This One Does!

Money!

Moderately Dangerous Traps!

Mystery!

Bigger Monsters!

Literally Nothing!

We had a moment of silence while we all processed the goddess’ terrible sense of humor.

Well, most of us. Patrick snickered a little.

“Aiming for the stairs is obvious, but we’ll also want to figure out which two other ones we want to aim for.” Sheridan noted.

I thought about that. “We could aim for the same spot more than once. Obviously if we miss the stairs on the first time we’ll retry that, but maybe we could trigger the ‘Fabulous Prizes’ one twice?”

Marissa knelt down and began to lift the spheres. She grunted with effort. “These are heavy.” She sat the last one back down. “And they’re not all the same weight.”

The latter part was actually even worse — it meant that the first throw wouldn’t necessarily dictate the behavior of future spheres.

I turned to Sheridan. “Think that timer is for the first sphere, or for all three of them?”

“Always assume the worst.”

“Fair. Okay. We need to get this moving. Patrick, can you levitate one?”

Patrick frowned. “I don’t know. If Mara was struggling with them, probably not. Mara, show me the lightest one?”

She pointed to the one in the center.

“Levitate.”

It floated off the ground just a few inches, then bobbed up and back down. That wasn’t how the spell normally behaved.

Patrick took a breath and focused on the sphere. It hovered upward a few more inches. “I can move it, but barely. Might need someone to give it a shove.”

And that means he probably won’t be able to move the heavier ones at all.

“Put it down a sec.”

Patrick dismissed the spell. The sphere dropped, cracking the stone floor below. “Oops.”

I glanced at the clock. Three minutes left.

I quickly explained my plan, and got a round of agreements.

One and a half minutes.

I drew my sword, then charged toward the gap and took a leap.

Jump.

The blast from my ring hurled me toward the wheel.

Blasts of fire shot out from the side walls. Fortunately, I was ready. I slashed in the air and sent shockwaves in both directions. Ice neutralized fire.

I landed atop the crystalline structure that encased the top of the wheel.

I sheathed my sword.

Patrick levitated the first sphere.

Marissa punched it.

It flew at me faster than expected, but I still managed to step in the way and catch it. The impact carried me back a few steps, but I managed to avoid falling into the abyss below.

Sheridan pointed and a pair of walls of bone appeared within the outer wheel.

I rolled the ball until it was at the edge of the crystal, then waited for the wheel to cycle around and dropped it into the section that Sheridan had walled off. It rolled right down into the “Stairs Up!” slot, because that was the only pathway that hadn’t been blocked.

A glowing doorway appeared in the wall next to the entrance, rather than a literal stairway. It had a symbol of an up arrow above the door, so it was still obvious we’d found our path.

The clock continued ticking down. We had two spheres left.

“Go!” I gestured to the others.

Patrick tried to levitate the next sphere, but it was too heavy, as expected.

As Marissa hefted it upward, Sheridan conjured a bone bridge across the gap.

Slowly, Marissa began to carry it across. Rolling it might have been faster, but it was more likely she’d roll the ball right into a pit that way.

I drew my sword just as Marissa began crossing the bridge. The fire traps activated on the sides of the room again, and Marissa wasn’t in any position to defend herself.

I managed to slash one of the fire blasts out of the air, while Patrick shaped the other flames out of the way.

Ten seconds.

I put my sword away, debating if I should try to jump across and do something with the third sphere.

Sheridan conjured another pair of walls inside the wheel, but Marissa lost her grip with her injured hand and dropped the ball a moment too soon.

It landed in the “Mystery!” slot.

Then all the light in the room was gone, and I was falling.

Marissa and I screamed at the same time.

That was nice. At least we had company while we fell rapidly into a seemingly endless abyss.

After a moment, I realized my falling had slowed down because of the ring.

Marissa had no such advantage. Her screaming told me that she was below me, now.

I needed to think fast in case there was a bottom here to hit.

I reached into my bag. “Retrieve: Lantern.”

The magic lantern appeared in my hand, and I activated it immediately.

We were falling down a cylindrical shaft. I still couldn’t see a bottom, but I could see Marissa below — barely.

I didn’t have much time to think about a perfect solution.

I pulled off the ring of jumping, and I began to fall faster. I kept a tight grip on it with one hand, while holding the lantern in my other.

Marissa was still far below me, but she’d flown toward a side wall and now she was trying to slow herself down by grabbing onto it. It wasn’t working.

I pointed my hand upward and focused, then unleashed a spherical burst of transference mana.

The explosion pushed me down.

Below, I thought I could finally start to see the ground, and Marissa was still edging closer to it rapidly.

The “ground” wasn’t a solid floor, of course. That would have been too simple. It was a green, bubbling liquid.

Almost certainly acid.

Possibly acid that was also on fire.

I pushed more mana out of my hand, blasting myself downward faster and faster.

Until I passed her.

I lost my grip on the lantern. Fortunately, it stayed on, even as it plummeted.

I slipped the ring back on.

My movement slowed as it reactivated. Fortunately, the pressure was evenly distributed throughout my body, and it felt more like an upward gust of wind than anything else.

Marissa crashed into me from above. That part hurt.

For a moment, we flailed ineffectively until we caught hold of each other.

The ring slowed us both. This was good, because I saw the lantern continue to drop past us, and then I heard the splash and fizzle as it hit the liquid.

It was dark again, except for a light far above us.

I couldn’t see the source, but at least it let me orient myself to be sure I was facing up.

“Hold on!”

A fall was almost certainly going to be fatal. I couldn’t let us down gradually and just try to climb after we’d rested.

My circlet was an option now that I was physically in contact with Mara, but I wasn’t going to give up this soon, and I wasn’t sure it would work.

Jump.

That took us upward a bit, but nowhere near enough.

I repeated it three more times before the ring ran out of mana and ceased to work.

But the ring was just using transference mana. Sure, it had special functions to make sure it emitted from below me, but I’d already proven I could guide myself downward with mana.

How hard could going upward be?

Pretty darn hard, it turned out.

I managed to blast us into the wall, rather than upward.

As we thudded against the wall, though, Marissa formed a blade around her good hand and slammed it into the wall. It made a hole.

She buried her arm in deeper as we began to slip back downward, then held us both in place with just that one arm. I had to cling to her, since she wasn’t in any position to hold onto me.

I was worried her arm was going to break — it certainly would have if she’d tried this on her way down. Fortunately, the ring’s slow falling function was still active, and she still had her own strength-enhancing ring on.

Still, holding us in place with one arm couldn’t have been comfortable.

“Don’t let go,” she instructed me.

“That’s pretty obvious, yeah.”

I’d like to say I came up with some kind of brilliant solution, but in reality, we huddled there against the wall for a solid ten minutes before Patrick finally managed to levitate himself all the way down to us, then made a gust of wind that lifted us back up the shaft.

“Sorry for taking so long. We had to fight the monsters that appeared up there.”

When we finally arrived back on solid ground, we found that the room was once again lit, and a dozen monster corpses were pinned to the walls with spears of bone.

A few of them also looked like they’d been burned.

One of them somehow had been crushed with the single remaining sphere. I wondered how they’d managed that one, but for the moment, Mara and I were both too busy recovering from our terror to say almost anything.

Marissa and I scrambled as quickly as possible away from the edge of the pit, then just sat down with our backs to the wall, next to each other. Breathing. Just breathing.

It took me another minute to realize that aside from the monsters, we had one new addition to the room — a human-sized cube with a question mark written on it, near the door. It had a crease in the middle and a keyhole.

Patrick lifted up a key which was also shaped like a question mark. “Want to see what’s in there?”

“No.” Marissa and I responded immediately.

“Aww.”

I sighed. “Give us five minutes.”

They gave us a good hour. With the clock stopped and the monsters dead, there were no further threats here. No obvious ones, anyway.

I still felt incredibly nervous about the box. I didn’t trust anything in this spire.

I drew my sword before Patrick moved to the keyhole, and Sheridan set up a cage of bone around most of the box — just in case it exploded.

Patrick insisted on being the one to open it. Sheridan left just enough room in her bone cage for him to stick his hand in and turn the key.

There was a click, then nothing. No traps.

Patrick extracted his hand, then pushed on the top half of the box. It fell open.

We couldn’t see through the bone wall, but Patrick could see through the hole he’d reached through.

His eyes widened.

“We’re going to be rich.”

***

Most of the contents of the box turned out to be coins. Gold, silver, and copper.

Money was always good, but the items inside interested all of us more.

There were six of them, presumably because the spire was designed for six people.

The first was a spear, leaned up against one of the walls of the box. It looked like a single piece of wood that had grown naturally into a spear shape, rather than cut. At the center, the bottom, and the tip of the spear, blue gleaming crystals were embedded in the wood, and light seemed to radiate outward from them like veins.

The second was a shirt of greenish metallic leaves. It proved to be both lightweight and extremely resilient. Also, shiny.

The third was a pair of completely ordinary looking boots. They looked a little small for me.

The fourth was a hatchet made out of polished blue stone with a leather grip.

The fifth was a classic longbow with a dozen golden runes etched into the wood.

The last was an unlabeled potion bottle filled with blue liquid.

All six of them glowed with Citrine-level auras.

“This might actually be worth almost dying.” Mara leaned forward, focusing on inspecting the weapons.

Sheridan looked at me. “Can you identify items yet?”

“Only a little. I can cast a Lesser Identify spell, but it doesn’t tell me much.”

After we confirmed there were no hidden traps in the box, we extracted the items and laid them down. I spent a few minutes inspecting the runes I could find on each, as well as casting the Lesser Identify spell on each of them.

Lesser Identify just told me the specific mana type of the strongest enchantment on each.

The axe and spear, as well as the armored shirt, had enhancement as their strongest magic type. That was unsurprising; enhancement was the standard mana type for both making items harder to break and for making weapons hit harder.

The bow and the boots had air.

The boots were almost definitely levitation boots, which would have saved us a tremendous amount of trouble if we’d had them a few minutes earlier. That was probably also an element of the goddess’ sense of humor.

The bow I was less sure about, but air magic to guide arrows or make them fly faster made sense.

I couldn’t get any results from the bottle, presumably because the liquid was the magical part.

I didn’t try casting Lesser Identify on the liquid because I knew some liquids — like the primer I’d taken from the fountain — reacted to magic being cast on them. I’d have to find a better way to figure out what it was for.

We decided we’d need to figure out what the items did in detail before we split them up permanently, but that we’d hand out some temporary assignments for the moment.

The boots only fit Marissa, so she took those and shoved them in her pack.

Patrick took the spear. He already had a magic weapon, but he said having one with more reach would be useful.

Sheridan took both the hatchet and the bow. As the only actual Citrine-level person there, it made sense for them to have a larger share of the spoils.

I threw on the shirt of leaves. It required moving my silver phoenix sigil to my pants and taking off my other shield sigil entirely to prevent them from overlapping, but it was a Citrine-level defensive item. Marissa didn’t want it — she was worried about it ruining her mobility — so I was the next best candidate.

I stored the potion in the Jaden Box.

We counted up the gold pieces — there were only twenty of those — and split them evenly. It was still a lot of money.

There were so many other coins that I just shoveled them all into the Jaden Box and stored them to distribute later.

When we were done and recovered, we headed to the doorway with the up arrow and opened it.

On the other side of the door, there was a glowing portal, rather than a stairway.

I glanced at Sheridan.

“Not unusual. There’s usually only one physical stairway on each floor. You’re stepping in a teleporter any time you go into another part of the spire, anyway. This is just a fancier version.”

I nodded at that. “I’ll go in first.”

Mara stepped up next to me. “Right behind you.”

I stepped into the portal.

When my vision cleared, I was in the center of another room.

It was pure white, and mostly empty, save for a pair of regal-looking doors about twenty feet away from me.

I glanced behind me, finding another door of the more routine variety on the opposite side of the room. The ceiling was a high one, probably dozens of meters up.

I waited, but my friends didn’t appear next to me like they should have.

Instead, the doors across me opened, and someone stepped out from between them.

“Hello, little brother. I’ve been expecting you.”

Chapter XXIV – Scales of the Serpent

Five years had changed Tristan Cadence a great deal, but visually, he was much the same.

He was tall, with the athletic physique of a professional duelist, and the impeccable confidence to match. His brown hair was our mother’s, but it had grown much longer in his time away from home.

He may have had characteristics that mirrored our father as well, but I chose to ignore those.

Tristan wore a formal tunic that trailed to his feet, and a sword belted on his hip. He slowly shook his head. “I warned you not to come here, but I knew you wouldn’t listen.”

He opened his arms wide. “Welcome to my humble home.”

I glanced from side to side. “Where are my friends?”

Tristan chuckled. “They’re fine. They went straight to a safe room on the next floor. I made special arrangements for when you passed through that doorway.”

I nodded slowly, examining the area further. “Was this all a part of your plan, then? Telling me not to come here, just to encourage me to do it?”

“No, no. I was sincere about that. It really was dangerous for you to come here, and you shouldn’t stay long. We’re both in danger right now. But since you made it obvious you were too stubborn to leave from written instructions alone, I decided it would be wise to tell you directly.”

I took a breath. “We can leave just as soon as you’re ready to go.”

Tristan laughed. “If it was that simple, I’d have left a long time ago.”

I’d expected that answer. I frowned, scanning the area again while I considered my approach.

Tristan frowned. “You’re being awfully quiet. I assumed you’d object more strenuously.”

I turned my eyes back to him. “I’m looking for traps.”

“This isn’t that sort of room. Not that I blame you for checking, of course.”

Thinking of Tristan himself, I wasn’t entirely certain I agreed. His appearance here could have easily been a trap in itself.

I turned my attunement on.

He registered as having a Sunstone-level aura. Ordinary for his age, nothing like monstrously powerful youths like Derek or Elora.

I nodded to myself.

He’s probably suppressing his shroud.

I took a few steps forward. “Before we discuss things any further, I should confirm something. How can I be certain that you’re Tristan and not an illusion or trick?”

“Ah, good, we’re getting to that part already. Shall I tell you another story about our youth?”

I shrugged. “A simulacrum could tell a story.”

“Ah. Nothing I can do is going to prove I’m not a copy of myself. I can, however, at least convince you that I’m something with Tristan’s memories, and not a trap by someone else?”

I folded my arms. “A bit of transference mana could test if you’re a simulacrum.”

Tristan blinked. “You want to hit me with mana?”

“It won’t hurt. Probably.”

Tristan sighed. “Does it even matter if I’m a simulacrum or not?”

“I’d really like to know. Someone else could control a simulacrum. Get you to say anything they want you to.”

“Humans can be controlled, too.” Tristan took a few steps closer. “Don’t you recall what happened to Derek?”

“You’re not exactly inspiring confidence by pointing out there are other ways you could be deceiving me.”

Tristan waved a hand dismissively. “Fine, fine. I’m not lying, though. It really is me. And you can run your little test.”

I channeled just a bit of transference mana in my hand, walked to a few feet away, and blasted him with it.

Tristan rubbed his shoulder, but he didn’t evaporate. “Satisfied?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. Give me your hand.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to flood you with purified mana to attempt to free you from mental compulsion, since you pointed out you could be controlled by someone else.”

Tristan laughed. “I suppose that wouldn’t hurt anything.” He reached out his hand.

And, for the first time in five years, I held my brother’s hand.

Then I bombarded it with mana.

Tristan made a perplexed expression. “That tingles a little.”

“You’ll be fine.”

I waited until I’d given him what I approximated to be about fifty mana before releasing my grip.

“That felt a little odd...but no, I’m not mind controlled, Corin. This is really me. Are your tests done?”

“Those parts are, at least. Now, tell me something obscure that Tristan would know.”

Tristan smiled. “A better test. Let’s see... I always hated my middle name growing up, because I thought it sounded like a girl’s name.”

“Val does sound kind of like a girl’s name, yeah. They should have gone with Valor. But a lot of people know about your middle name.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Like who?”

“I’m not feeding you more information. Nice try.” I folded my arms. “Tell me something about myself.”

“You were always jealous of my height.”

“Too generic. Anyone could guess that. Try again.”

“You were jealous of my swordsmanship, too.”

“So was virtually everyone your age and younger.”

Tristan pointed a finger at me. “Fine. Once, when you were about three, you stepped on an insect and it stopped moving. I explained to you that it was dead, and what that meant. You cried for the next hour. You were inconsolable.” He pulled a hand back to his hip. “From what I’ve seen, you haven’t changed.”

I glanced at him up and down. “You don’t seem to have changed much, either.”

“You’re wrong about that.” He turned his head away. “But if you believe my identity now, I suppose we can discuss more important things. I’m sure you have questions. Shall we start with some of the obvious ones?”

I nodded slowly, taking a breath. After all this time, it really was him.

Tristan, my older brother, was right in front of me.

I should have been happier. I should have been thrilled.

But he wasn’t what I’d expected. He wasn’t dead, or chained to the walls of a dark cell.

He looked...normal. Healthy. Safe.

I...didn’t know how to handle that.

I had so many questions I wanted to ask him. The first one that came to me wasn’t what I’d planned on. It just sort of slipped out.

“...why didn’t you come home?”

Tristan raised a hand to brush some unkempt hair out of his eyes. “That’s...sort of a complicated question.”

“I think I deserve an answer.” I shook my head. “I... Why didn’t you at least tell us you were alive? Mother, Father, and I... Everything changed while you were gone.”

Tristan shook his head slowly, a hint of sadness in his tone as he replied. “That wasn’t my choice. It wasn’t allowed.”

“Not allowed? By who?”

I found my hands balling into fists.

“Calm down, Corin. The simple answer is ‘Tenjin’, but there’s more to it.” He let out an exasperated breath, his expression somewhere between sadness and frustration. “I wasn’t expecting you to react like this. You seem almost upset to see me.”

I took a breath. “I’m not upset to see you, Tristan. I’m glad you’re alive.” My hands tightened again. “But when you first contacted me, you lied. I asked the Voice of the Tower if they knew anything about you, and you lied.”

Tristan hesitated for a moment, a pang of guilt playing across his features. “I just said that there were a lot of people who came through the tower, and—”

“Don’t play semantics. You deliberately deceived me.”

He nodded. “I did. I wasn’t ready to tell you. There were too many other things that needed to fall into place.”

“And you manipulated me into helping with that.”

Tristan furrowed his brow. “It wasn’t my first choice. But as I’m sure you recall, the first person who found the prison didn’t end well, and I had a limited time window to work with.”

“I...” I let my hands unclench. “You don’t know what it’s been like back at home without you.”

Tristan just shrugged at that. “I heard Mother and Father split up a few years ago.”

“That was just a small part. Father pulled me out of school. He was obsessed with ‘training’ me to be better than you, just so that I wouldn’t die in the spire like you had. It...wasn’t good for me, Tristan.”

Tristan actually laughed. “You think a little training is bad? You haven’t seen half the things I have, Corin. I’m sure that Father just wanted to help you be safe.”

“Safe?” I lifted up shirt of metallic leaves, and my own cloth shirt underneath.

Even with all the healing I’d gone through, and all the regeneration items, the scars from the blade of a dueling cane were clearly visible. “Does this look like he was trying to make me safe?”

“That’s...” Tristan shook his head. “I’m sorry, Corin. I didn’t know. But I’m sure Father was just trying to discipline you properly. You never were good at following instructions.”

Tristan smiled like it was an inside joke. Something that I should have been laughing at along with him.

I let my shirt sink back down, and I felt something in my heart sink along with it.

Tristan didn’t understand.

But how could he? He hadn’t been there.

He hadn’t seen it.

He hadn’t heard the shouting or felt the blows.

There might have been some “training” involved at first, but in the end, there had only been anger.

I turned my head away. “I can’t talk about this anymore.”

“That’s fine. It wasn’t what I thought you were going to ask about, anyway. I’m sure you have other questions.”

I nodded slowly, taking deep breaths to try to calm myself. “How are you alive?”

“Ah. Now that’s more like it.” Tristan smiled again, seeming pleased that things were going back to the script he’d prepared for. “When we grew up, they told us there were two outcomes to a Judgment. Succeed, and you earn an attunement. Fail, and you die. We always had legends about survivors, of course, but they were few. You latched onto them even before I disappeared. You didn’t want to believe the goddess would kill people just for failing some stupid test.

“The irony is that you were right in a way, but terribly wrong in another. It’s not that the goddess spares the failures, as you’d hoped. It’s that she does considerably worse.”

“Worse?” I felt my heart sink further.

Tristan’s smile faded. “You see, Corin, when I finished my Judgment, I met someone. A man appeared to me, and he told me something that sounded wonderful. That many of those who disappeared in the tower were still alive, serving the will of the goddess.

“He told me that he was one such servant — a Whisper. An envoy of Tenjin himself. And that I had been chosen as one of only a dozen candidates to remain within the spire to train and join his order.

“I knew even then that it sounded too good to be true...but I wanted to believe. And he told me that if I changed my mind, I would only need to stay in the spire for five years. I would be given an attunement — a powerful one, that no ordinary person would be given — and a new identity to use if I chose to leave.

“I asked questions. He told me about the basics of what we would be doing, and it’s much like a hundred scholars have speculated. People prepare rooms in the spire, change the connections. Prepare treasure and traps. It seemed reasonable, and I thought I could make a positive change if I stayed. Make the spires more efficient, less lethal. He assured me that others were already working to do the same. That the goddess wished to test us, not to kill us.”

Tristan shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter what the goddess wanted. She’s not paying any attention. Or, if she is, she doesn’t care.” He sighed. “The visages have been in charge for ages. And their interest isn’t in building humanity into something greater. It certainly isn’t in getting us to the top of the spires. The visages are just like any other petty despots. They have power now, and they’ll do whatever they can to keep it or expand it further.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that our society is built around a series of lies.”

His lips twisted into a sneer. “The ‘Tyrant in Gold’ rules the entire outside world. A lie.”

He turned his face upward. “The goddess watches over us and guides us on our path. A lie.”

He gestured to the whole room around us. “The visages do her will in the world, and help us to achieve greatness. A lie.”

“It’s all lies. The foundation of our culture is rotten.”

“We’re taught to avoid the world outside of Kaldwyn, but it’s not because it’s dangerous. It’s not because the Tyrant is in complete control. It’s because if we saw the other continents, we’d see other perspectives. Places that still oppose the Tyrant openly. And other lands where no one has ever heard of the Tyrant in Gold.”

“We’re taught that the goddess watches over us, but when has she ever intervened, for or against anyone? Selys may have existed once, but in effect, she’s as dead as the other gods. More so, perhaps. And if she does live? Look at her teachings. Look at how much is hidden from us. We are forced to worship her, and her alone.

“We are taught the outside world is dangerous, and few are even allowed to leave. People who know too much of the truth are kept imprisoned, as your friend Keras was, or branded to prevent them from speaking. What does that sound like to you, Corin? Because, to me, that sounds like the work of a tyrant.”

His words came faster and faster, almost hysterical. “But that isn’t even the worst of it. The visages are always seeking greater control. Perhaps some of them still believe in bits and pieces of the message that they espouse, that they will raise humanity to a higher standard.

“But look at their actions. When a kingdom — like Lavia, for example — grows too powerful? They smash it apart. When a culture clings too hard to old traditions that predate the coming of the goddess to these lands? They stamp them out. I’m sure you’ve heard that Edria had a visage marching with them during the invasion of Kelridge. Why do you think the other visages allowed that? Because human society has never been free.

“Their goal has never been anything less than the complete subjugation of our species. We are nothing but tools to them, game pieces to be played against the other visages in their struggles for dominance.”

I didn’t know what to say to all that. I pondered while he took a breath, and finally settled for a question. “How do you know all this?”

“Because I was a part of it, Corin. I was a Whisper. I worked for Tenjin directly. I learned the functions of the spire — and I watched hundreds, even thousands of people climb the spires. And I saw that as they rose higher, the challenges grew less and less fair.”

I held up a hand for him to pause. “Wait. I thought you were a Whisper of Wydd?”

Tenjin smiled. “That part came later. An offer came to do some work for the Whispers of Wydd. I accepted, of course, but remained in Tenjin’s retinue the entire time.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“By that point, I’d been working for Tenjin a few years, and I’d already seen the unfairness in the spires’ designs.”

“Unfairness?”

Tristan shook his head. “It seems humorous at first, when a room subverts expectations. It’s much less funny when a group of climbers does everything right, and everyone dies. Because they were set up to fail. I know this, because I followed orders. I helped build those unfair tests. I watched the results — until I could watch no longer.”

“But some people do reach the top...don’t they?” My voice was quiet, uncertain.

“Every few decades, perhaps. Someone who is exactly what the visage is looking for. Someone who shows the right loyalties. The right amount of faith in the goddess. Someone powerful, but easy to manipulate. Reaching the top of the spire has never simply been about being the best. It’s about being someone the visages believe they can use.”

Tristan smiled. “Your friend Keras, for example, would never reach the top of this spire. They know his goals, and they would not wish for him to succeed. It doesn’t matter how powerful he is; they’d simply put in a room with no exits.”

“That’s...” I shook my head. “Why wouldn’t they want Keras to reach the top of the spire?”

“Because they’re afraid of the changes he’d cause if he managed to find a way to speak to the goddess herself. That is one of the few things I actually agree with the visages on.”

I blinked. “Why? What would happen?”

Tristan folded his hands in front of him. “Keras plans to ask the goddess to do something active in the world. I don’t know exactly what it is, but if he succeeds in drawing Selys back into world affairs, it could be catastrophic. I’m not convinced she’s even alive, but if she is, it’s better for her to remain uninvolved in world affairs. That is preferable to a being with her degree of power that may decide we’ve all been a failed experiment.”

That’s a grim way of looking at it, but he has a point.

I wanted to believe that if Selys was real, and she was made aware of our problems, maybe she’d make things better.

But I wasn’t the one who had been trapped in a spire of Selys’ design for the last five years. I could see why Tristan might be less excited about the goddess taking any further steps to intervene in human affairs.

If Selys was powerful enough to create the God Beasts and the visages, she was clearly much more powerful than they were, at least as individuals. If she didn’t like how a nation developed, would she simply wipe them off the planet?

I didn’t want to find out.

But I still had many other questions. “Wait. So, why switch allegiances to Wydd, then? They’re still a visage.”

“Knowledge. Forbidden knowledge, to be specific.” Tristan folded his hands. “I learned a great deal from working with the Whispers of Wydd. Things about the inner workings of the spires. The functionality of attunements. Monsters. Bits of information that could be used as tools to aid in my plans.”

“So, you learned these things...and what, started a revolution?”

“Ah, I wish I could take credit for such a thing, but no.” Tristan shook his head. “I’m relatively new to all this. People have been watching the terrors wrought by the visages for centuries. Planning. Paving the way for future generations to act. I am only one participant in this, and I am not even one of the leaders of the current movement.”

“How did you get involved, then?”

Tristan smiled. “Mother, of course.”

“Mother? She’s one of the people causing all this?”

He shook his head. “No, not exactly. Only in the loosest sense. She did not organize anything — that was already happening before I even was recruited into the spire. It started with Orden and her ilk, working within the Whispers, and other powerful organizations. They recruited high-ranking priests and government officials who knew the truth.

“No, Mother’s life changed when she reached the halfway point of the spire, and she was offered a deal.”

I frowned. “A deal?”

“As I said, the visages do not wish for anyone to reach the top of the spire unless they have the proper characteristics. Mother was powerful, influential, and dedicated. She had a singular goal. She would have pursued it to her dying day if she needed to.” He turned his head to the side. “But it was not to be.”

“What was this deal?”

Tristan turned back to me. “Tenjin came to her directly. He praised her for her achievements, having reached higher in the spire than anyone had in decades. And he offered her a gift — a boon that he would grant himself if she would never set foot in the spire again.”

I felt my heart sink. “And she asked for him to bring you back.”

“Indeed.” Tristan laughed. “It was her goal from the beginning. Tenjin knew this; he had watched her, and she had mentioned it often to the others who climbed with her from time to time. He told her that I was alive, and in his service. She was overjoyed at first, until she learned that Tenjin would not allow me to leave.”

“Tenjin’s compromise was that he let us meet. He believed that I was loyal, and that simply knowing that I was alive and healthy would be enough for mother.” Tristan shook his head. “We were allowed to talk within the spire for a single hour. Ostensibly in private, but I knew that we’d be watched. I could not tell her the truth there, but I was able to pass her a seemingly innocuous book.”

“A book like mine?”

Tristan nodded. “Precisely. It’s possible Tenjin realized what I’d given her and simply chose not to act. But I took the risk, and it worked. I wrote to her. I explained what I knew. And she began to plan, recruiting more people outside the spire to our plan. She became instrumental to our efforts, since few of those who know what I do are ever allowed to leave.”

“But why did Tenjin allow the meeting at all? Why not just tell her that you were dead, and beyond his abilities to revive?”

“It is unwise for the visages to admit to weaknesses or limitations. It undermines their authority. Moreover, I believe Tenjin thought she could be manipulated. Perhaps, up until the point where he was captured, he believed everything was still going according to plan. Even beings as ancient as they are have the ability to make mistakes. In fact, an inability to accurately anticipate how humans think is perhaps one of their greatest weaknesses.”

“Couldn’t he have just let you leave, then? Only letting you speak for an hour must have seemed like a poor reward for all of Mother’s years of climbing.”

Tristan shook his head. “I should probably explain something else. There would have been an uprising long ago if those of us within the spires had the freedom to do as we chose. But we are carefully watched and, of course, limited by other factors.”

He lifted up his shirt.

His entire chest was covered with a massive runic inscription. “Is that...a brand? Like the one Katashi had put on me?”

“Precisely. A much more complex variation. The more knowledge and access a Whisper is given, the more is added to our brand — and the more things we’re restricted from. In my case, the core function is to prevent me from ever leaving the spire. It would explode if I did, and I assure you that would be quite fatal.”

“Couldn’t Tenjin just have removed it? Maybe removed your memories?”

Tristan pulled his shirt back down, then put a hand over his chest. “Perhaps with great effort, but the brand was not Tenjin’s work. It was placed by another visage.”

“Wydd, I presume?”

“Precisely. Tenjin may have been able to remove it, but if Wydd learned of that, it may have caused a conflict between them. It was not worth the risk. Moreover, Tenjin has always framed these marks as something he disagrees with, that Wydd forces upon us.”

“Wait. So Tenjin knew you were working for Wydd?”

Tristan nodded. “Oh, of course. Working for another visage from time to time was not unusual. I may have made it sound clandestine, but any work that I performed for Wydd went through approved channels. The only ‘secret’ portion was that the Whispers of Wydd believed I was loyal to Wydd, and Tenjin believed I was loyal to him.”

“Why would he take the risk of keeping you close if there was any chance that your loyalties could be compromised?”

Tristan chuckled. “I don’t think you understand precisely how powerful these visages are. Under ordinary circumstances, no human could possibly challenge them. That has led to each and every one of them developing a degree of arrogance. Tenjin probably knew there was a chance that Wydd would try to use me against him in some way, but he would never have expected it to be a physical assault.”

Tristan shook his head. “Similarly, I suspect he believed that Mother or I would take out our aggression against Wydd, if we felt that it was Wydd that was keeping us apart. He thought he could manipulate us to his own ends.”

I nodded at that. “But he failed. You moved against Tenjin first.”

“Indeed. Not because Tenjin is the worst of the visages, but because of convenience. Once Mother had the book, I was able to explain a great deal to her. She spoke with many of the Whispers who operated out of the spire, and they made plans. When we learned that Vera Corrington was coming to the spire to test a new form of artificial attuned, it was a perfect opportunity to lure Tenjin into a vulnerable position. We took it.”

“I still don’t understand how you managed to incapacitate a visage.”

Tristan chuckled, stepping out of the doorway and finally letting it close. “A great deal of knowledge of how his abilities work, the element of surprise, and a good deal of luck.”

I hesitated now that he was approaching. I didn’t think he was going to attack me, but I was still on high alert. “That’s not a real answer.”

“No, you’re right. But I can’t tell you everything.” He tapped his chest.

I understood the gesture, but I wasn’t going to take that simple of a response. “You could claim that anything you don’t want to tell me is one of the things your brand prevents.”

“Also true. But I have no motivation to omit things like the weaknesses of the visages. I want them to be defeated.”

“Including Wydd? Or are they helping you?”

Tristan shook his head. “That’s an excellent question, not no, Wydd isn’t working with us. I’m sure Wydd is aware of everything that is happening, however, and they probably have an angle on how to use it to their advantage.”

I tilted my head to the side. “Why did you imply that you wanted me to join the Whispers of Wydd, then?”

“Ah. That.” Tristan shrugged. “I planned to have you infiltrate them to get information for me. But things change, and that’s no longer wise. The details are unimportant.”

I frowned, considering. “Who’s backing you for all this, if it isn’t Wydd? You implied you had someone powerful helping you.”

Tristan shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t talk about that. But it’s not Wydd, and I’ll say that it isn’t the Tyrant, either.”

I gave him a dirty look. “I don’t like the fact that you’re still keeping secrets.”

“You’re going to have to accept a degree of it. I’m sorry for that. But just as you don’t trust me, I can’t completely trust you with everything, either.”

That made a degree of sense, but I still felt a brief surge of frustration. “Fine, fine. But why try to attack the visages directly like this? I mean, it’s obvious you feel they’re manipulating people, but what’s your end goal here? Killing them all? Would that even be possible?”

“Perhaps it would be, but that would be a terrible risk at best.” Tristan shook his head. “No, that’s not my goal. Although it is a more popular one.”

“What do you mean?”

“As I said, I’m not in charge of this little uprising. Many Whispers have far more influence than I. I played a key part in imprisoning Tenjin, and that has earned me a degree of clout, but I am not the one making all the decisions. And that, unfortunately, has put you in harm’s way. I am sorry for that.”

He didn’t sound particularly sorry.

“You mean what happened with Mizuchi? What was that about?”

“Someone working to remove competition. The uprising has a central ideal — that humanity must be liberated from the oppression of the visages. This sounds like a good unifying factor on the surface, but there’s no agreement in how to go about doing it. This has resulted in the birth of three sub-factions, each with different goals.”

He raised a finger. “First, and most prominently, you have the Godslayer faction. They believe the visages must be killed. They also believe that anyone who has been complicit in the visages retaining control, such as the rulers of most kingdoms and the highest ranking priests, should also be removed.”

Tristan raised a second finger. “The Peacemaker faction believes that our goal should be to work with the visages, and get them to acknowledge their faults. That we should, perhaps, show a firm hand and our willingness to fight, but that ultimately we are better off working with the visages than against them.”

“Finally,” he raised a third finger, “There is my faction. A much smaller group, with little support and different goals.” He paused. “It was the Godslayer faction that employed Mizuchi to attack that ball. Their goal was to remove important figures of government, as well as supporters for the Peacemaker faction and my own group.”

“How is that possible? Shouldn’t Mizuchi only be able to leave the spire with the help of a visage?”

Tristan shook his head. “A powerful enough Summoner with a contract with Mizuchi could use a true summoning spell to bring her outside of the spire. I believe that is what happened.”

I tightened my jaw. “A powerful Summoner...like Elora Theas, perhaps?”

“I find it unlikely that it was Elora, but you’re wise to suspect her. She has the capability to accomplish such a thing, but I don’t believe she has the motivation.”

I nodded. “Do you have any idea on who else it might be?”

“I’m not certain. I’ve had minimal contact with the outside world. You probably know more Summoners than I do.”

I didn’t think I knew any as powerful as Elora, but I could do some digging at the Divinatory another time. “And this faction of yours — what is it?”

“I’m glad you asked.” He clapped his hands together. “I call us Ascension. I believe there is a fundamental flaw in simply trying to eliminate the visages or work with them. In the first case, we would then be at the whim of other powerful beings, either from within our continent or the outside world. The latter case is an overly optimistic dream. There is no way to negotiate with a being that can wipe out your cities with a swipe of their hand and outlive you a hundred times over.

“The visages do not rule us because they are too strong. They rule us because humanity is too weak. If we ever truly wish for humanity to emerge from the shadow of the visages, we must rise to be their equals. And that, my dear brother, is my goal. To raise every human being — not just a chosen few — to power comparable to that of the visages themselves.”

I folded my arms. “That sounds good from a conceptual standpoint, but what happens when any ordinary person who has a bad day can wipe out a city?”

Tristan nodded. “Giving everyone exactly the same capabilities as a visage would be a mistake, of course. We do not need every human being to have that degree of offensive power. But imagine if every human had a Guardian attunement, at a level higher than Emerald, and bodies as resilient as a serpent’s.

“Imagine if no one had to die from malnutrition, disease, or accidents. And if an outside force chose to invade our continent? Every citizen could break swords with their bare hands. Bullets would deflect from their shrouds.”

I’d considered much the same, though on a smaller scale, when I first thought about the potential ramifications of artificial attunements. Widespread Wayfarer attunements for rapid transportation. Elementalists who simply manipulated the weather to improve crop yields. Menders on every street in case someone was injured.

It was an appealing prospect, but it seemed almost too good to be true.

A part of me tried to fabricate reasons in my mind why it was too dangerous, or why it couldn’t be possible.

But I knew the truth — there was a part of me that was just afraid of change. And another part that was afraid of losing what made me special.

I’d risked my life for that attunement. Was it really fair for others to get them for free? Perhaps even any attunement of their choice?

But that was an inherently selfish line of thinking.

If there was a way that everyone could have attunements, in a way that didn’t cause great harm, that was a goal worth striving toward.

But if that really was Tristan’s goal, it still raised further questions. “If your goal is widespread attunements for humanity, why did you sabotage Vera’s test?”

“That was Orden’s work, not mine. And while I could have opposed her, I would have failed. She was one of very few Whispers who had enough trust from the visages to work outside of the spires. I’m sure she had a brand to prevent her from talking about certain things, but she had freedom, and that freedom gave her power and influence.” He turned his head toward the room he’d exited from.

“But Orden is out of the picture now, and I have access to excellent sources of research. Moreover, artificial attunement research continues unimpeded within Caelford. While Vera’s team was important, they were only one group of several.”

I turned toward the doors he’d come from and pointed. “That room — that’s where you’re keeping Tenjin? And those other researchers?”

Tristan shook his head. “I won’t answer that. I wanted you to know why I’m doing what I’m doing, but you’re not working with me. I’d like you to, and I’ll make you that offer here and now. But it would take time and trust before I would give you a secret as great as Tenjin’s location.”

I could respect that. I was getting used to having secrets of my own. “Okay. I do have to ask one more thing, though.”

“Of course. I’m sure you have many questions.”

“When you first were admitting who you were in the book... Why’d you send me a villain monologue?”

Tristan broke into laughter. “I was a bit over the top, wasn’t I? In truth, I didn’t know what to say to you. I would have told you the truth earlier, but I couldn’t risk the possibility that Orden was going to find your book. Until she was out of the picture, I couldn’t write my name in there. If she’d known I had ways of communicating with the outside world, she could have used that against me. Had me executed, even.” He shook his head. “But aside from that? There’s a part of me that wanted to motivate you.”

“In what way? I already was looking for you.”

“Of course. And...” He looked pained for a moment. “Thank you, Corin. Like Mother, you never stopped believing that I might be alive. You even asked about me during your Judgment. I’m grateful for that. You’ve always asked questions — that’s something I respect about you.”

“But?”

“But I needed you to dig deeper. I needed you to consider the possibility that anyone could be a threat. Even me. You need to internalize that. It will help you survive the things to come.”

“And those things are?”

“I’m working on it.” Tristan sighed. “I have plans, of course, but the attack on the ball injured or killed many of my key allies. It’s going to take me some time to—”

There was a loud snap as the door behind me flew off its hinges.

I spun, drawing my sword.

I heard the sound of metal sliding against leather from behind me as Tristan did the same.

In front of us, in the open doorway, was my sister. Sera.

How is she—

A figure behind her pushed her forward.

Sera stumbled, then broke into a run toward me.

“Go ahead and run, Summoner.”

Mizuchi smiled as she stepped into the room, glancing from side to side. She was in her human form, with the long purple hair. “I’d be glad to have you all in one place. It’s easier to kill you at the same time that way.”

I ran to Sera, stopping when she was near me. “What happened? How are you here?”

Sera stopped running when she reached me. “She summoned me.”

“...what?”

Mizuchi laughed. “You humans are so arrogant. You forget that we serpents are superior beings. And that we can learn your little ‘attunement’ arts, too.”

I glanced at Sera. “But without a contract...”

Sera let out a nervous chuckle, stepping behind me. She was unarmed, and had a long gash along her right arm. “I cast a binding on her during the fight in the ball.”

“And what your sister didn’t realize is that when you have a binding or a contact with another Summoner, they go both ways.” Mizuchi clasped her hands together. “Of course, normally I would have ignored a little girl trying to bind me, as insolent of a gesture as it was. But imagine my surprise when I learned that she was the sister of the legendary Tristan Cadence. Blood of his blood.”

I glanced at Sera’s injury and realized what had happened at the same time Tristan explained it.

“A tracking spell.” Tristan stepped forward next to the two of us, assuming a traditional dueling stance. “But I know your abilities, Mizuchi. Summoning is among them, but Divination is not.”

“Ah, yes, quite right.” Mizuchi turned back toward the doorway. “Come along, darling. Don’t be shy.”

Researcher stepped into the room after her, her head bowed in shame. “I...”

“I didn’t tell you to speak, dear. I’m just showing you so they understand their mistake.”

And I did.

I remembered where I’d seen Mizuchi before — stepping out of the restricted section of the Divinatory.

When I’d helped Mara during her test, she’d told me that serpents could learn attunement abilities. She’d also told me that they could assume a human form, but often with some distinguishing characteristics. Like purple hair, for example. The same color as Mizuchi’s scales.

That hadn’t been enough for me to consider the possibility that Researcher’s Summoner had been someone who wasn’t human.

While I could conceptualize the idea of a serpent living in human society in disguise, the thought that one of them might have already been doing something like that so close to me... it had never even occurred to me.

How long had Mizuchi been monitoring the academy? It was right outside the spire, so she could have summoned Researcher and left her at the academy at any time she’d been outside. It could have been years before.

Or maybe she wasn’t Researcher’s original Summoner — she’d just made a contract later, like at the time I’d seen Mizuchi leaving.

It didn’t matter at the moment.

What mattered was that we’d been completely outmaneuvered.

“You’re a difficult man to find, Tristan Cadence.” Mizuchi stepped forward. She was still a good twenty feet from us, but that barely meant anything with her speed and ranged attacks. “I was fortunate I detected Researcher’s entry to the spire and summoned her to see what she was doing.

“Imagine how surprised I was to learn that you were planning to meet with your brother! I’d have never reached you if you’d been wise enough to remain in your little sanctum, but you were foolish enough to step outside.”

Tristan stepped out in front of Sera and me. “What do you want, Mizuchi?”

“I think I already made that perfectly clear.” She raised a hand, inspecting it. The hand shifted into a claw. “You have committed the worst sort of treason, Tristan Cadence. I’m certain that you’re aware the penalty for that is execution.”

Tristan raised his off-hand into a gesture to wait. “If you do that, you’ll never learn where Tenjin is.”

“I’m sure I’ll learn to live with my disappointment.”

Researcher stepped forward from the doorway. “I’m...sorry, Corin. If I’d refused to help her, she’d have broken our contract. I’d be gone forever.”

I understood not wanting to die. “It’s okay. We’ll figure this out.”

“Such an optimist. You’re very like your mother. It’s a shame she’s not here to see her children die, but I’ll make sure to tell her all about it before I deal with her.”

Tristan stepped forward again. “Can I confirm who sent you, at least, if you’re planning to kill us anyway?”

“A good try, dear, but no. How about you stop moving and prepare to die?”

I felt my body freeze as Mizuchi’s spell took hold. I was getting really tired of mental compulsion spells, and this one was extremely potent.

Fortunately, I had planned for this.

“Ignore her commands,” I whispered to myself.

That activated the Ring Formerly Known as the Ring of Derek Controlling, which I’d modified to only activate based on my instructions.

The perception mana flooded into me, successfully overriding Mizuchi’s command. Her spell was weaker than what she’d used in the ballroom, most likely because she was still recovering from being banished.

I took a step forward, preparing to draw my weapon.

“Shrugged that one off somehow? Okay, just go ahead and kill yourselves.”

I struggled as her command washed over me, raising my sword. Not to fight Mizuchi, but to follow her order.

“Ignore her,” I commanded myself. The ring activated again, but this time, she’d put more effort into the spell. The ring wasn’t working quickly enough.

My arm continued to move against my will, bringing my sword up to my throat. I struggled to convert my mana into mental mana, but I was failing.

Tristan took a breath, then stepped back and put a hand on my shoulder, seemingly unaffected by Mizuchi’s spell. “Absorb magic.”

I felt Mizuchi’s spell tear out of me, freeing me from the paralysis in an instant.

It was not a pleasant sensation. Still, I was glad to be free.

He repeated the process with Sera. “Absorb magic.”

Sera and I shivered as we recovered from the spells, taking a few more steps back.

Mizuchi shook her head. “That attunement of yours is extremely irritating. I suppose we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

“It can be a lot more than irritating.” Tristan took another step closer to Mizuchi, retaining his combat stance. “Don’t test me. You won’t like the results.”

Mizuchi laughed. “You think you can threaten me?”

“You’re not at your full strength. You were just banished recently. I doubt you can even transform.” Tristan took a step forward. “My brother here fought you when you were at full strength and made it through. I’m willing to bet I can do better.”

“Your brother survived because I let him survive, fool.” Mizuchi let out a growl. “And while I may not be at my full strength, I’m still more than capable of handling a few human children.”

While Tristan briefly had Mizuchi’s attention, I reached into my bag and opened the Jaden Box. “Retrieve: Healing Potion.”

I handed it to Sera. “Drink that.”

She nodded, accepted the potion, and drank it. The wound on her arm began to close.

It wasn’t much, but if we were going to fight Mizuchi, I wanted to be as prepared as possible.

And giving her the healing potion had given me another idea.

“I’m done chatting.” Mizuchi clapped her hands together. “Now begins the killing. After I prevent you from fleeing, that is.”

She whirled around, moving as a blur away from us. Then her claw was scratching a rune into the wall.

I realized what it was immediately — an anti-teleportation rune. She was sealing off our only means of escape.

In that moment, I could have activated the necklace and fled before she finished it. But Tristan couldn’t leave the spire; his brand would kill him.

And I was not leaving him behind to die.

I glanced at Tristan with my attunement active. His aura was still Sunstone. If he’d been hiding his power like I’d expected, he hadn’t made any move to change it.

When I looked at Mizuchi, I saw something far more interesting. Her shroud was shimmering, with several colors, which I recognized as being multiple layers.

Much like me, she had the equivalent of multiple attunements. Or at least multiple shrouds.

Several of them. I couldn’t count the number; it was too much of a blur.

Sera acted in the moment while Mizuchi was distracted. “Wall.”

A wall of ice appeared, crossing the entire room between us and Mizuchi.

“Wall. Wall. Wall.” She layered more walls in our way, knowing they wouldn’t last long.

I turned to Tristan. “Can you beat her, since she’s weaker than usual?”

Tristan raised a hand to his face and laughed hysterically. “Goddess, no. I was bluffing. We don’t stand a chance.”

“Then can you get Keras to us?”

Mizuchi finished her rune, turning toward us and taking a deep breath.

I saw something interesting then, since my attunement was still active; one of the layers of her shroud vanished as she inhaled.

That was fascinating.

“Not from here,” Tristan replied. “Only from the sanctum. There’s no time.”

Mizuchi exhaled, blasting a jet of flame straight through all four layers of Sera’s wall.

Tristan jumped in the way of the attack.

For an instant, Tristan was engulfed in fire, and my heart sank.

Then the flames twisted and converged into a single point — his right fist.

He stepped toward Mizuchi. The flames surged upward from his hand, enveloping his sword. “Thanks. I needed something that could hurt you.”

Mizuchi growled and lunged at him, moving faster than I could follow.

Tristan could, though. He stepped out of the way, swinging and hitting Mizuchi with his burning blade. The flames exploded on contact, and Mizuchi flew backward, cracking into the ice wall.

Sera pointed. “Wall.”

Another wall appeared in front of Mizuchi and curved around her, effectively trapping her between two walls.

Tristan stepped forward as Mizuchi began battering the wall with her fists, snarling as ice cracked away.

I reached back into my bag. “Retrieve: Healing Potion.”

A healing potion appeared.

Mizuchi burst through the ice.

Tristan jabbed at her again, but she evaded this time, and his sword hit the ice. She slammed him in the chest with a claw, and he flew backward, disarmed.

Mizuchi lunged at Tristan, but Sera raised another ice wall. Mizuchi crashed into it.

Tristan clutched at his ribs, stumbling back. I tossed him my sword.

He caught it just as Mizuchi burst through the wall, then swung it in mid-air and projected a shockwave.

The wave of ice slammed into Mizuchi with no effect.

Then she was right next to Tristan, swinging at him again.

Tristan barely managed to step backward and avoid the blow.

I stopped watching. I had work to do.

“Retrieve: Mage’s Folly.”

The herb appeared. I opened the healing potion and tossed it inside. The liquid changed from red to black.

“Retrieve: Queen’s Crown.”

Another herb appeared. I tossed it in. The liquid bubbled and sparkled.

I replaced the stopper and looked back at the fight.

Tristan was down on the ground. Mizuchi was right on top of him, holding his arms. She was laughing and squeezing, probably with enough force to break bones.

I ran just a few steps closer to make sure my aim was good, then threw the potion at her.

The glass bottle exploded across her back.

She let go of Tristan and screamed.

Mage’s Folly reversed the effect of a concoction.

Queen’s Crown greatly amplified the effect.

I’d hit her with a reversed, amplified healing potion.

Tristan struggled to get out from under her while she screamed, but she was still pinning him with her body. She swiped a clawed hand downward, and I saw blood splatter as it gouged across his face.

Sera hit Mizuchi with a blast of wind, and Mizuchi was sufficiently distracted that the air knocked her away.

Mizuchi was rising again in a moment, though. She took a breath, and flames burst from her body, evaporating the potion before it could do more damage.

That was bad, because I’d hoped the potion would continue to burn through her and deal more damage.

It was also enlightening, however. One of the layers of her shroud vanished when she inhaled, just like when she’d used her breath attack.

That gave me something to consider, but I had something more urgent to worry about.

Scales were beginning to appear across her skin.

She was changing forms.

It would take a few seconds, but that wasn’t enough time for much.

I reached into my bag again, trying to think.

Sera ran toward where Researcher was standing in the doorway. She said something, but I couldn’t hear her.

Tristan was still on the ground, clutching at his face. Selys-Lyann lay nearby.

Think, Corin. Think!

“Retrieve: Keras’ blood. Summon Keras Selyrian.”

Nothing happened.

I’d hoped that being inside the spire, maybe the additional mana and the short distance would be enough to let the box work. But that hope had been in vain.

That was fine. I had other options. “Store: Keras’ Blood. Retrieve: Silverbrand.”

A silver dagger appeared in my hand. I knew that, at least according to Keras, it was a powerful magical item that had once belonged to Wrynn Jaden.

I hurled it at Mizuchi.

It bounced off her scales and fell to the floor without effect.

Note to self: Foreign magical items are not always as useful as the Jaden Box.

After that, Mizuchi was done transforming.

Wings and a tail burst from her back. Horns emerged from her head. Her entire body was covered with scales now.

“Now,” she turned toward Sera, “You’re the weakest one, Summoner. I think you’ll be first.”

Sera whispered, “You’re wrong.”

“What was that, dear? Speak up.” Mizuchi floated a few feet off the ground, then reached up and formed a ball of flame in her right hand.

“I said, you’re wrong.”

“About which point?”

“All of it.” Sera reached out her right hand. She was wearing her bracer, the one I’d given her that enhanced Summoning spells. “I’m not weak. I’m not going to die. And,” she grinned, “I’m not a Summoner. Not anymore.”

Her bracer glowed for a moment, then she brought her hands together in front of her. “Vanniv, I invoke your power.”

Sera’s entire body began to glow as mana burned in the air around her.

Then wings of stone appeared behind her, merging with a suit of stone armor that formed around her body from the neck down.

“An ascended attunement.” Mizuchi tilted her head downward for a moment. “You’re an Invoker now. That’s very interesting. If ultimately meaningless.”

Mizuchi hurled her sphere of fire, but Sera just raised a hand and pointed at it. A gust of wind blasted the sphere, detonating it early.

The blast was large enough that it hurled me off my feet, and I landed several feet away. My silver phoenix sigil protected me from the heat, though.

Tristan wasn’t quite as lucky. The explosion hit him on the ground, and I could see that he’d been badly burned.

I pulled myself to my feet and reached into my bag.

Sera soared upward. Mizuchi followed.

I ran to Tristan. “Retrieve: Healing Potion.”

Tristan sat up, and I shoved the potion at him.

The right side of his face was a bloody mess, and a good portion of his chest and neck were covered with burns. His shroud had stopped the blast from being fatal, at least.

He awkwardly reached for the potion. I put it in his hand.

“Thanks,” he managed, drinking it and coughing. “You should go. Run for the door she came in, then teleport once you’re outside.”

I shook my head. “I’ve been working to see you again for five years. I am not letting you die here.”

Above us, Mizuchi hurled blasts of lightning at Sera, but she shaped them out of the way. They struck the walls and blasted apart chunks of stone.

I didn’t know how Sera was powerful enough to be countering Mizuchi’s attacks. She was clearly still fighting on the defensive, but she’d never been able to counter anything close to the level of Mizuchi’s attacks.

At the moment, I had more pressing concerns. “Retrieve: Healing Potion. Retrieve: Healing Potion.”

I laid out the two remaining potions. “Drink these. I’m going to see if I can help Sera somehow.”

I picked up Selys-Lyann.

Tristan grudgingly began to drink the potions, shaking his head. “You can’t beat her.”

“No.” I shook my head. “But I’m not alone.”

I pointed my sword upward.

It was a bad angle for trying to send a slash in Mizuchi’s direction, and I’d seen that it wasn’t powerful enough to do much to her in her current state, anyway.

Instead, I remembered what Keras had taught me.

I concentrated, forming a mana thread and connecting it to the sword’s runes, then reshaping the ice energy around the blade. I formed it into a single point around the tip, as if I was planning to thrust.

Mizuchi flew toward Sera, raising a claw that glimmered with mana.

Sera flew to the side to dodge, but the claw was a feint.

Mizuchi’s tail snapped upward, tearing off one of Sera’s stone wings.

Unbalanced, Sera fell from the sky.

Mizuchi descended after her, ready to strike.

I struck first.

My ring of jumping wasn’t recharged yet, but the fall from the last room had made it clear that I didn’t really need it.

I jumped, blasting myself upward with transference mana, and jammed my sword into Mizuchi’s wing.

Even with the added force of transference mana pushing me, the sword failed to pierce her scales.

But a physical attack bypassed her shroud, and that meant the ice that I’d been gathering into a single point connected straight with her wing.

Mizuchi hissed as the ice blasted over her wing and began to spread further. She lost her focus on the attack and flew to the side, then descended slowly to the ground.

I flew backward from the force of the impact, but landed on my feet.

Sera landed less gracefully, smashing into the ground on her back. She groaned and pulled herself to her feet a moment later, but with only one wing intact, she couldn’t fly.

Mizuchi shook herself as the ice spread, then groaned, took a breath, and emitted a blast of flame from all around her. The ice melted.

Again, one of the layers of her shroud vanished as she emitted the flames, confirming the pattern that I’d suspected.

Every time she breathed in for an attack, she was weakening her own shroud.

But it didn’t last long. I could already see a new layer of the shroud forming around her.

Still...maybe it was enough.

Sera was standing again. She conjured a ball of lightning and hurled it at Mizuchi, but Mizuchi simply walked into it. The attack hit her shroud and deflected out of the way without effect.

“Is that the best you can do, little girl? You really think that invoking a single monster is going to be good enough to beat me?”

Mizuchi flew forward as a blur, far too fast.

A terrified voice yelled something from the doorway. “Sera, jump!”

Mizuchi swung her tail at Sera an instant later.

Sera jumped over the strike, then swung her remaining wing and smashed it into Mizuchi’s chest.

The serpent staggered backward, hissing. “Oh, I’m going to kill that bitch. Researcher!” She turned her head toward the doorway.

Researcher was cowering there.

Mizuchi tilted her head downward. “I warned you what would happen if you betrayed me.”

“I...” Researcher shook her head. “Corin is my friend. I don’t want you to hurt him anymore. Or anyone else.”

I felt something in my heart give way when I realized what was about to happen.

I charged at Mizuchi swinging, but I was far too slow.

“You don’t get to have friends. You don’t get to have anything, in fact. Researcher, I break our contract.”

I expected Researcher to vanish. To die the moment her contract was broken.

But I hadn’t been paying enough attention. Neither had Mizuchi.

“I never planned to beat you by invoking one monster.” Sera turned toward the Mizuchi. “So I made another contract. Researcher, I invoke your power.”

A brilliant nimbus of light engulfed Sera for the briefest of moments, then collapsed inward toward her face. When the light faded, her eyes continued to glow.

That was what Sera had been doing when she’d rushed toward the doorway. She’d made a contract with Researcher, allowing Researcher to survive without Mizuchi.

Mizuchi howled and rushed toward Researcher, but Sera formed a whirlwind of mana that shot herself directly into Mizuchi’s path.

When Mizuchi swept her tail at Sera, the attack missed by a large margin. The next three swipes of her claws were equally ineffective, with Sera somehow anticipating them and stepping out of the way.

She’s using Divination to anticipate Mizuchi’s movements, I realized. Researcher must have been doing that before, which is why she knew to warn Sera to jump. And now she’s given Sera that ability.

Mizuchi stepped back and pulled her hands together, firing a wide blast of flame that enveloped nearly the entire half of the room that Sera was in.

Sera didn’t have nearly the power to counter it directly, even with Vanniv’s power. Instead, she fired a much smaller blast of ice, which burrowed a small hole in the fire blast. She stood in the exact spot it cleared, with the fire blast washing over her without causing damage.

She countered with a blast of lightning, which hit Mizuchi directly, but didn’t deal any damage.

I did notice something potentially important, though. It wasn’t the first layer of Mizuchi’s shroud that deflected the lightning; it went through two layers before deflecting off the third.

In that moment, I developed a hypothesis, but I couldn’t be certain about it.

I moved to Tristan. He was back on his feet.

I handed him my sword. “Next time she takes a breath, I want you to hit her immediately, as hard as you can. Push the ice aura into her if you can.”

He nodded. Even after the potions, he was still in bad shape, and half his face was still covered in blood.

His right eye was closed. I suspected it was ruined.

He took the sword anyway and walked closer to where Sera and Mizuchi were still exchanging blows.

Sera was still anticipating Mizuchi’s strikes, but she lacked Mizuchi’s raw speed.

Mizuchi swung a claw, extending her aura much like Keras would, but forming three massive blades rather than a single one. Sera formed a shield of ice and blocked the attack, then responded with a burst of fire.

The fire wasn’t effective; it reflected off Mizuchi’s shroud, just like the lightning had. But it did teach me something. I was almost certain the fire deflected off the first layer of the shroud that it hit, rather than the third.

That was enough to gamble on.

I began to charge transference mana in my right hand.

Mizuchi ripped off Sera’s remaining wing, then hit her with a solid blow to the chest. Sera flew backward, her stone armor cracking from the force of the blow.

She was running out of time.

I ran closer, reaching into my bag again, and to the Jaden Box.

“Retrieve: Luck Lily Extract.” A globe of liquid appeared. I left it in the bag.

Mizuchi flew after Sera, but Sera raised a wall of ice in Mizuchi’s path.

I ran to where Silverbrand had clattered to the ground, grabbing it off the floor.

Mizuchi stopped, growled, and took a deep breath.

Tristan ran toward Mizuchi, raising Selys-Lyann.

Sera raised her hands and formed a dome of stone that encompassed Mizuchi entirely.

Now or never.

I hurled Silverbrand at my target.

My aim was a little off.

That was an unacceptable result, so I blasted the hilt of the dagger with transference mana.

Inside the spire, my control over my mana was fantastic. Good enough, in fact, that it caught the pommel of the dagger and carried it straight into the anti-teleportation rune.

The rune fizzled and died.

Mizuchi’s breath of lightning annihilated the wall of stone surrounding her a moment later, burning straight through the wall of ice as well.

It hit Sera, too.

She flew backward on impact, smashing into the floor. Her armor crumbled, and she convulsed uncontrollably on the ground.

In that moment, while Mizuchi’s shroud was at its weakest, Tristan was ready. He hit her with a focused blast of ice from Selys-Lyann, which broke through her remaining shrouds and hit her, spreading across her body.

She took another breath.

Another one of her shrouds vanished, consumed as she converted it into mana to blast away the ice.

As the ice melted away, I closed in and made my next throw.

Her lightning shroud was gone. Her fire shroud was gone.

The bottle froze as it passed through the ice layer of her shroud, then shattered on impact, drenching her with Luck Lily Extract.

Mizuchi had just a moment to look at me with confusion before I blasted her with transference mana, triggering the effects of the compound.

Teleportation to a random location.

Mizuchi vanished.

And, for just a moment, the room was silent.

Tristan stared at the space where Mizuchi had been just a moment before. “What the resh was that?”

“Teleportation potion, basically. I don’t know where it sent her. It probably won’t keep her long.”

“We need to go.”

I nodded. I rushed to Sera.

She was still conscious, but barely. “Retrieve: Healing Potion.” I pressed it to her mouth, and she drank.

“Mm.” She coughed. “I...don’t think I can move.”

I picked her up and turned to Tristan. “Where can we go?”

Researcher ran out of the doorway where she’d been hiding, joining us.

“This way.” Tristan led us to the double doors he’d emerged from. “In Tenjin’s name, I unlock this sanctum.”

The doors swung open.

Researcher and I followed him inside.

“In Tenjin’s name, I seal this sanctum.”

The doors slammed shut behind us.

“We should be safe for now.”

I set Sera down.

We all just sat there for a moment, breathing heavily.

“I can’t believe we just survived a fight with Mizuchi.” Tristan wiped the blood from his face on his shirt.

Sera chuckled, then coughed. “That’s two for us. You’re behind.”

Tristan laughed. “I suppose you’re right. I think I’ll let the two of you keep the advantage in that area.”

Sera turned to me. “So, she was weaker right after she took a breath, or something?”

I nodded. “She had multiple shrouds, each of a specific element. Sort of like how Professor Meltlake could turn her shroud into fire, but Mizuchi had several at once. Every time she drew in a breath, she was using the corresponding shroud to power it. The first time I hit her with a potion, she used her fire shroud to evaporate it before it could do much damage. I knew if I wanted to teleport her, I needed that fire shroud gone, and ideally the lightning as well.

“When she took the breath, it used up the lightning shroud. Then Tristan hit her, and she used her fire shroud up to get rid of the ice. After that, she still had multiple layers. I don’t know what they all were, but I think it hit the ice one first, so it froze. From there, I hit it with transference mana, which triggered the compound to teleport her.”

“That’s...actually pretty impressive,” Sera admitted. “Even if I’d figured out how her shroud worked, I probably would have just tried to wear it down and hit her hard while her defenses were weak. Your approach was better.”

“I don’t know if it was better,” Tristan cut in, “But it was definitely Corin’s style.”

I grinned.

Keras had been right.

I was much more effective when I was fighting like me, rather than trying to be someone else.

I turned to Tristan, an important question coming to mind and wiping away my moment of reflection. “How confident are you that she can’t find us in here?”

“She can’t get in. No one can, not without the right key.” Tristan patted his chest.

“This is Tenjin’s private sanctum, then?” Sera asked.

“Indeed. Or, it was.” Tristan grinned.

“I don’t believe I should be in here.” Researcher said, glancing from side to side. “This is a forbidden place. Even the other visages are not allowed inside without Tenjin’s permission.”

I glanced down the hallway ahead. It was stark white walls of stone, and I could see a larger chamber ahead, but not a lot else from my vantage point. “How is it that you have access to this place?”

“I stole it.”

I raised an eyebrow.

Researcher gasped.

“My attunement. It allows me to steal magic.”

Several things clicked together in my head at once. “You have the Sovereign attunement. That’s how you were able to absorb those spells that Mizuchi cast. It’s probably also how you incapacitated Tenjin in the first place.”

Tristan nodded. “Indeed. The first thing I did when we ambushed him was steal a bit of his power. Much like when you strengthen someone with your Arbiter attunement, however, I didn’t retain all of that. I did, however, manage to target and hold onto something specific — a mark on his body that he used as a key for accessing certain parts of the tower.

“That mark enabled me to access his sanctum, as well as control many of the functions of the spire that normally only he had access to. I’ve even been able to keep the other visages out of this room, at least for now.”

I glanced to Researcher, then back to Tristan. “I’m not sure you should be saying all this around her.”

Researcher frowned. “But I like knowing things.”

Tristan waved a hand dismissively. “It’s harmless. If this version of her is bound to Sera now, she’ll be loyal to her. And many of the actual Researchers already know what I’m up to, anyway. I have an arrangement with some of them.”

“An arrangement?” I asked.

“Not all of the monsters are exactly happy about being kept inside a tower for their entire lives, bred to be slaughtered by climbers or used at the visage’s whim.”

Researcher’s expression shifted to something inscrutable. “I suppose I’m lucky to be a copy that was allowed to be outside of the spire. Few are given such a chance.”

That explained a great deal about how Tristan was able to keep working within the spire in the way he had been — if there were monsters on his side, in addition to other Whispers, I could see how evading Katashi for as long as he had was more plausible. Maybe the monsters were even feeding Katashi false information.

Sera frowned. “If you had access to everything in the spire, why didn’t you just give yourself a whole pile of magical equipment?”

“I like the way you think. I did do that, although I couldn’t access everything. Because of a brand on my body, I can’t physically leave the spire...nor can I travel to certain other parts of the tower in person. That makes retrieving things difficult, because I’m forced to work through intermediaries.”

He pointed down the hallway. “I have some things in there that I wish I’d been wearing during that fight. I was only expecting to meet with Corin. Normally, I’m untraceable while I’m in the sanctum.”

Tristan turned his head toward the floor, brushing his face again to clear another patch of blood off of it. He looked exhausted, and I didn’t blame him. “I didn’t think that anyone would be looking for me in the few minutes I was outside...but I hadn’t anticipated the possibility that someone had already divulged our plans. Researcher must have been watching us, and reported to Mizuchi the moment that I was vulnerable.”

“I’m sorry.” Researcher’s voice was a whisper.

I turned to her. “It’s okay. We know you didn’t mean any harm, and you helped us out in the end.”

Researcher nodded, but she appeared unconvinced.

Sera broke into a fit of coughing, and I turned toward her. “You okay?”

“Yeah...” She raised a hand, coughing again. “Just used too much mana again.”

I winced, remembering what happened last time she’d done something like that. “How bad is it?”

“Not as bad as last time. I was distributing it throughout my body, not just to my lungs. And most of the mana I was using was Vanniv’s, not mine. My everything hurts, but I don’t think I’ve caused myself more permanent damage this time. A few more minutes and I might have.”

That largely confirmed what I’d speculated about how she was using those powerful spells against Mizuchi — her new Invoker attunement seemed to let her draw power directly from her summoned monsters, rather than just casting their spells with her own mana supply.

If that was the case, she was vastly more powerful. I planned to ask her about how it worked later, but for the moment, I had more pressing concerns.

“We should have Sheridan look at you and make sure there isn’t any more scarring, just in case.”

Sera nodded. “Where is Sheridan, anyway? And the others?” She turned to Tristan, “And I suppose this might be a good time for me to learn what happened to my older brother?”

We took a while to fill her in. I told her about what had happened in the spire, and Tristan told her basically everything he’d told me.

I felt guilty that I didn’t have a way to send a message to Sheridan, Patrick, and Marissa to let them know that I was okay...but I hadn’t actually been gone for that long. Maybe an hour. They probably weren’t panicking too much.

“So, question.” I turned to Tristan. “Is this where you’re keeping Tenjin?”

Researcher’s eyes widened at that question, and she leaned forward expectantly.

“I...I’m sorry, Corin. I’m not going to tell you that. It’s been good to see you. And you as well, Sera.” He shook his head.

The look of disappointment on Researcher’s face was so sharp that it almost made me sad just looking at her. I couldn’t believe how expressive she was.

Tristan turned his head upward, looking wistful. “I can’t let you in on everything until I’m certain that we’re in agreement on how to proceed. And that’s going to take more than just saying a few words, if you say them at all. It’s going to take time.”

After everything I’d been through, it was hard to hear that, even if I couldn’t disagree with his reasoning.

I didn’t know if I could even believe the things he’d been telling me. The events of the last several months hadn’t exactly taught me to trust people.

We were silent for a time.

“Is your eye okay?” I asked.

Tristan grimaced. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you have someone you can get to heal it properly?”

Tristan shook his head.

“You should bring my friends here. Sheridan might be able to fix it.”

Tristan looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “You want me to put my fate in the hands of Sheridan Theas?”

I folded my arms. “They’ve healed both Sera and my injuries more than once.”

“Oh, I know they’re talented. But they work for Wydd, Corin. Do you understand?”

I blinked. “You think they’ve been spying on us?”

“Undoubtedly. If it was just Patrick with you, I would have brought him up to talk. I don’t know as much about the blonde girl, but she probably would have been fine. Sheridan Theas? There is zero chance they don’t have their own angle on this.”

“Okay, maybe. But we’re just talking about healing your eye.”

Tristan shook his head. “They could put a shard of bone through it just as easily, and remove a threat to their visage.”

I sighed. “Fine. Here.” I pulled the silver phoenix sigil off my pants. “This has shielding, regeneration, and mana regeneration functions. Put it on and activate it. I don’t think it’ll fix an eye, but...”

Tristan accepted it, pinning it to his shirt and activating it. “I’ll give it a try, at least. Thank you.”

“Consider it repayment for giving me Selys-Lyann...and about that. Can you tell me more about it?”

“Some other time. For the moment, I think it would be best if you return to your friends.”

I frowned. “Why? We’ve only just reunited. It’s been five years, Tristan.”

“Because Mizuchi may not be able to reach us here, but she can almost certainly reach them.”

I had a moment of panic as I processed that. “Wait. Sera, don’t you still have a bond with her?”

Sera blinked. “Mizuchi, I release you.” Then she took a breath. “There. Gone. Thanks for reminding me. I’m barely conscious right now, I wouldn’t have thought of it for a while.”

I didn’t know if Mizuchi could have summoned Sera again immediately, but I was glad that we’d cut that possibility off before we found out the hard way.

I turned back to Tristan. “How quickly do you think she’ll find them?”

“Without her bond to Researcher, it would take her longer to find someone, but she may already know where they are if Researcher told her earlier. It could be hours, or she could have already found them.”

“She knows where they were.” Researcher said. “I don’t know if she’s heading there or not. I can’t divine her from here.”

I stood up. “We need to go, then.”

Tristan stood as well. “Follow me.”

He led us down the hallway and into the larger chamber up ahead.

From a distance, I hadn’t understood the scale.

The room was circular, maybe a hundred feet across. But the real scale came from the height.

My gaze shifted upward, taking in the spiral stairways and ladders that connected the levels of the room. And as I continued to look upward, I realized I couldn’t see where it ended – there were dozens of levels above us.

When Tristan had mentioned a “sanctum”, I had pictured something like a personal quarters. A bedroom, a desk, maybe some kind of devices for monitoring the building.

I wasn’t thinking big enough.

Just on the level that we were standing, I could see dozens of things I wanted to run to and examine.

The outer wall of the room was ringed with doors, each of which had a reflective mirror-like panel to the side and a number above it.

Rings of metal were built into the floor, with each ring having lines of metal that led off to various devices and contraptions throughout the chamber. With my attunement active, I could see mana flowing within them, and I realized they were some kind of conduits for magical energy.

The devices themselves were myriad and wondrous. On the left side of the room, dozens of human-sized mana crystal were housed inside crystalline tubes, suspended in some kind of liquid. I’d never seen even a single mana crystal that large before. I couldn’t imagine the kinds of items they could power.

On the right side of the room were dozens of bookshelves, but rather than books, they contained more crystals, stored in labeled jars.

They’re memory crystals, I realized. They might be a more efficient means of storage for someone like Tenjin that can access them easily.

In the center of the room was a single titanic pillar filled with liquid, not unlike the one that had contained Selys-Lyann, but on a massively larger scale. I could see numerous runes etched into the surface and mana glimmering within the waters.

I could see multiple ways to reach the higher levels – stairways on each side of the room, and a few rune-activated platforms that looked like they might serve as elevators.

“...wow,” Researcher mumbled, her eyes widening.

“Yeah,” was all I managed to reply.

“This way,” Tristan gestured, following the wall to the right.

“Are you sure we can’t stay here a little while?” Researcher asked. “I’d really like to know what that thing is. And that one. And...”

I completely agreed with her. Just seeing that place...I had so many questions.

I couldn’t stay. I knew that.

...But I wasn’t going to let Researcher be disappointed, just because I couldn’t stay myself. “Sera, can you re-summon Researcher later, even if we leave her in the spire?”

Sera nodded. “Sure, the type of contract we made supports that.”

“Tristan, can she stay here for a bit? It would make her happy, and she might be able to help you a bit while she’s here.”

Tristan sighed. “Fine, she can stay a little while. But I’m going to be very strict about what I give her access to.”

Researcher clapped her hands together, beaming. “Thank you! Thank you!”

I was happy that Tristan had accepted. Mostly for Researcher’s sake, because she was clearly thrilled.

But in truth? I wanted to know how much information she could gather that might be useful to the rest of us, too.

I leaned over and whispered to her, “Get me some notes on the giant crystals and the pillar if you can.”

I wished I had time to give her more detailed instructions, or to properly prioritize.

Researcher gave me a conspiratorial grin. “Of course!”

Her reply was a little too loud, spoiling any effect at secrecy, but Tristan didn’t seem to notice. He was walking quickly, until he finally stopped near a door.

“Okay. This is it.”

The door had a “21” over it. The floor number, maybe?

He turned to the mirror-like panel next to it and ran a finger across it.

An image appeared in the surface, showing a room from above.

I saw Marissa, Patrick, and Sheridan sitting in the center of the room, talking.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized Mizuchi wasn’t there.

“They seem safe. You should go to them now, before Mizuchi finds them, and leave the spire immediately.” Tristan shook his head. “I’m sorry I can’t talk to you longer. It’s been good to see you both.”

He extended a hand to me.

I felt several emotions converge there. Doubt. Fear. Relief.

I clasped his hand. “I’m...glad you’re alive, Tristan.”

“Thanks.” He took a breath and pulled his hand away, reaching out to Sera. “Sera, it’s good to see you as well.”

Sera looked Tristan up and down, then frowned. “Yeah.” She didn’t reach for his hand. “Sure.”

Tristan put his hand back down. “Go on, you two. Given how things have been going, I suspect I’ll see you again soon enough.”

I wasn’t so certain about that.

Tristan opened the door. I could see a glimmering portal there.

I gave Tristan one last look.

“Goodbye, Corin.”

“Goodbye, Tristan.”

And I stepped through the door.

Epilogue – Another Step Forward

Sheridan, Marissa, and Patrick were somewhat surprised when I appeared in the room.

They were more surprised Sera appeared a moment later.

I didn’t fill them in on the whole situation. Instead, I told them that we needed to leave the spire immediately, because Mizuchi was presumably going to be looking for us.

We got an immediate chorus of agreements.

I sent a message to Keras with my necklace and told him we were leaving the spire, and that he should meet us outside. He sounded a little disappointed, but he agreed.

We used one of the return bells and exited the spire.

Keras did the same.

Then, with everyone else together, we headed back to the Theas household to talk.

Sheridan checked Sera over on the way and confirmed that Sera hadn’t done herself any more permanent damage, but advised that she’d strained her entire body with those invocations, and that she shouldn’t do it again.

Preferably ever.

When we arrived back at the manor, we gathered everyone together, including Derek and Elora, and filled them in on what had happened.

I was somewhat hesitant to say anything around Elora or Sheridan, since I knew they both most likely had their own agendas, but I was exhausted with keeping secrets. If they were going to be my allies, I wanted to treat them with respect.

Elora couldn’t confirm anything Tristan had told us — she still had a brand on her neck, and it clearly had different restrictions than his did.

She did, however, confirm that she was still considered a part of his “Ascension” faction...she simply had fallen “out of touch” with most of their organization.

Meaning she was probably lying low and waiting to see how the infighting resolved itself, rather than risking herself further.

Derek was uncharacteristically silent throughout the discussion.

After we finished sharing what we’d learned, Sera and I went to talk alone in the bedroom I’d been assigned.

“So.” I sat down on the bed. Sera sat next to me. “You’ve got an ascended attunement, apparently?”

Sera nodded. “I didn’t even know for certain that was what it was until Mizuchi mentioned it. But I’ve been feeling a stronger connection to my summoned monsters while I’ve been recovering. After the ball, Vanniv and I started practicing with it, and I figured out I could draw a bunch of his mana into me all at once. It makes me a lot stronger. It’s a little scary, though.”

“Yeah, after what happened with the water, I don’t blame you for being cautious. But you do feel okay now?”

“Yeah. I think the attunement is built for doing that sort of thing. It was handling most of the burden of all that mana coming in...but I don’t think I’ll be able to do it often. When I first practiced with Vanniv, he said he thought it worked more like a Soulblade summon. The kind of thing you can’t do more than once every few weeks, or it gets dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?”

“It puts a lot of strain on both of us. It’s almost like we’re merging our mana together for a while. That could permanently alter how our mana works if we do it too much.”

“Makes sense.” Keras had mentioned something similar about not being able to use some of his abilities too often because of how they altered his mana. “Could you have done that with Seiryu?”

Sera shook her head. “Not a chance. It still costs some of my mana to try to do that invoking thing, just like summoning something does. I still don’t have enough mana to summon Seiryu, so I wouldn’t be able to invoke her, either.”

“What about using Vanniv’s mana to summon Seiryu?”

“It doesn’t work like that. When I’m invoking someone, I’m only able to cast their spells with their mana, not mine. It’s basically like I have all of their abilities, on top of my own, but I can’t mix them together freely. Not yet, anyway.”

“That’s still pretty incredible.”

Sera smiled. “No kidding. I wish I could do it more often.” She paused for a moment. “I still can’t believe we beat Mizuchi.”

“Well, we didn’t, really. We just teleported her off. And she was much weaker than the last time we fought her, if you didn’t notice.”

Sera nodded. “I did. The banishment spell was probably weakening her, and I think Tristan drained some of her mana with his attunement while they were grappling with each other.”

I hadn’t actually noticed that last part, but it certainly made sense. It also led me to a more awkward, and more important, discussion. “What’s your take on the situation with Tristan?” I asked.

“I don’t trust him.” Sera shook her head. “But I don’t know what we should do.”

I bobbed my head in agreement. “I feel the same way. But I want to trust him. He’s our brother.”

Sera winced when I said that. “...I suppose he is.”

I frowned. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Sera sighed. “I told you before. Tristan... he didn’t always treat me well. You always idolized him, but he’s not... he’s not the perfect person you think he is.”

“I...are you saying he... He didn’t touch you, did he?”

She shook her head vehemently. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

That was good, because if he had, I probably would have gone straight back to the spire to have a very different conversation.

“He was cruel, Corin.” She wiped at her eyes. “There’s a lot of your father in him. More than I think you realize.”

I didn’t want to think about the implications of that. “I’m sorry, Sera. Is there something...what do you want me to do?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “I know how much Tristan means to you. But when you’re considering whether or not you trust him...just remember that there’s another side to him that he doesn’t show around you.”

“I’ll try.” I put a hand on hers. “And for what it’s worth? I’m not going to make any more big decisions without you. I mean, barring cases when we’re in completely different locations and—”

“I know what you meant, Corin.” She paused, then smiled and squeezed my hand. “Thank you, that means a lot.”

After that, we chatted a little longer, then washed up and went to sleep in the same room.

In the morning, I had a new message in my book.

Sera and I read it together.

Dear Brother,

I regret that our meeting was so brief.

As a result, I was not able to share as much as I wished with you, and I failed to ask you for a direct answer to an important question.

You know my mission now.

It will not be an easy one.

My resources are thin, and my allies are few.

My enemies are numerous and powerful.

I know that you cannot entirely trust me. That is something that will take time and knowledge.

But, if you are willing, I could use your help.

I have contacts in Caelford working on something important. Given what you already know, I’m certain you can guess what field of study it pertains to. I need someone I can trust to go and work with them. Someone who isn’t known to be a member of my organization.

Will you join my cause, and help give humanity the power that it needs to stand among the gods?

I await your answer.

-Tristan Cadence

I spoke with Sera for a time. Debated. Considered. Analyzed.

In the end, I wrote a single word in reply.

Yes.

***

I had a few visits to make before I left the country.

The first was the easiest. Cecily had left House Theas and gone home, but her family didn’t live far away.

I knocked on the door.

It was her sister, Yunika Lambert, that answered.

Her eyes widened a little when she saw me. “Corin Cadence?” She blinked. “It’s been a long time...what brings you here?”

“I was here to see Cecily, actually. But I think there are a few things you should know, too.”

Yunika nodded. “Come inside.”

I followed Yunika in.

She waved. “I think she’s in her room. I have questions for you, but I think you should probably talk to Cecily first.”

I found my way to Cecily’s door and hesitated.

It had been so easy just to walk in here and visit her.

Why had I waited this long?

Why was my hand trembling?

People were so much more terrifying than monsters.

I knocked softly on the door.

“Who is it?”

I hesitated again.

After a moment, I managed, “It’s Corin.”

I heard footsteps running for the door. She flung the door open.

I braced myself as she threw her arms around me. “Corin! You’re okay!”

“...Yeah, I’m fine.”

She buried her head in my shoulder. “Thank the goddess... I... I was so worried you wouldn’t come back.”

I awkwardly pat her on the back. “I’m okay. It’s okay now.”

I was still terrible at this sort of thing.

But as much as I didn’t like being touched....there was something important about the fact that she’d worried about me.

That she’d cared.

I took a breath and then pulled her just a little bit closer.

“It’s going to be okay.”

I wasn’t sure that I believed that, but on occasion, it felt good to pretend.

***

I spent some time telling Cecily about what had happened in the spire.

I didn’t share every single detail. I didn’t know how secure their house was.

But I did confirm that I’d found Tristan. That he was really alive in there.

Cecily smiled, brushing her eyes. “I’m so happy for you. I’m sure Yunika will be thrilled, too. Do you know when she’ll get to see him again?”

I shook my head. “...I think it might be a while.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Cecily turned her head away. “But I know she’ll wait as long as it takes.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I changed the topic. “I have a little something for you.”

Cecily blinked. “A souvenir, perhaps?”

I shook my head. “No, not something from the spire. I’ll try to remember that next time.”

I pulled the mana watch out of my bag and handed it to her. I’d fixed it earlier in the day. “You said you liked this when you saw it at the party. I thought you might want it.”

It was true that I thought she’d like the watch, but there was another reason I was giving it to her.

It was my way of getting telling myself that I needed to stop using it as a crutch.

If I wanted to grow stronger, I needed to stop letting my fear restrict my methods of training.

She accepted the watch with a grin. “Thank you! It’s a lovely gift. I’m afraid I don’t have anything ready for you right now, but...”

I shook my head. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I have a rather large favor to ask for.”

“Would you like to come with me on an adventure?”

***

Cecily agreed to come with us to Caelford, of course.

I couldn’t explain why I was so excited that she accepted.

Maybe I just wanted another Enchanter’s opinions on my research. A peer that I could share my excitement with. Someone who might understand bits of artificial attunement theory that could work with me on new ideas and tests.

Perhaps she represented a tie to a brighter spot in my past, something I wished I’d been able to hold onto a little tighter.

But maybe there was a bit more to it than that.

After that, we went and found Yunika, and told her a bit about what had happened. Yunika was clearly heartbroken that Tristan hadn’t left the spire with me, but she still seemed pleased to know that he was alive and well.

I made certain to mention that Tristan was clearly thinking of her, too.

With that finished, I had another visit to make that I wasn’t looking forward to quite as much.

***

I didn’t like visiting the hospital.

It was especially difficult when I didn’t even know if the person I was visiting was going to be alive.

Or if she was alive...I was a little worried that she hated me.

It didn’t take long to verify the first part. “Second floor, room 208.”

I knocked on the door.

“Didn’t you read the sign? It says clearly, ‘no solicitors’.”

There was no such sign, nor were solicitors likely to be a problem at the hospital.

I rolled my eyes.

At least Professor Vellum’s sense of humor was intact.

“It’s Corin.”

There was a brief pause. “...Ah, well, then. What are you waiting for, boy? Come in.”

I opened the door and stepped inside.

I expected Professor Vellum to be in a hospital bed, but I found her sitting back in a large chair, covered in an absolutely absurd pile of blankets. She set down a book on the table next to her as I walked in.

“Hmpf. No flowers? What sort of cheapskate are you?”

I chuckled and shut the door. “I figured you’d want something with a more practical application.”

“What, so you smuggled me some liquor, then? I could use enough to knock myself out for about a week.”

I gave her a shrug. “No, but this should keep you busy for a while.”

I set a stack of papers on the desk next to her.

She picked up the first page. “Application for the patent and distribution of....” Vellum turned her head to me. “You brought me incomplete patent applications as a gift?”

“Well, you do have plenty of free time on your hands. And since our last patent didn’t go through, I figured.”

“You are the worst hospital visitor I have ever encountered. And that’s impressive, because I’m including doctors on that list, and they have needles.”

I laughed. “You’ll be happier when you read through and see what I’m offering.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

I smiled. “How many people do you know that can make mana regeneration items?”

Vellum’s eyes narrowed at me, then she glanced back to the papers. “Hmm.” She lifted up the stack, paging through briefly. “You want to patent something that only works when you make it?”

“It’s not literally something that only I can make. It’s just that, like you taught me, purifying magic is normally a horrendously inefficient process. Now, I’m not a patent lawyer, but from what I could tell from a cursory trip to the patent office... I don’t think anyone has ever bothered to patent mana regeneration items in general. People do make them, but they’re so rare and inefficient that no one is bothering with securing the rights. It currently has little value, but...”

“You think it will be valuable in the future.”

That was an understatement. “Once artificial attunements are more widespread, any number of people could have the same combination of attunements that I do. When that happens, it will be much easier to make mana regeneration items like mine. And I can already tell you that they’re extremely useful.”

Vellum nodded. “Very well. And why are you bothering to involve me? You’ve clearly gone through most the research process already.”

I shrugged. “I have no experience with filing patents, and I could use your expertise.” I hesitated, glancing away.

“And?”

“...And as something of an apology.”

“For what, boy? You aren’t the only one I rescued at the ball, you know.”

I shook my head. “I’m grateful for that, of course...but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Oh?”

“When I took your final exam...I wasn’t exactly honest with you. I, uh, didn’t really make a separate anchor for the teleportation necklace. And I uh, sort of implied that I had?”

Vellum broke into laughter, so hard that she ended up covering her face. “My dear boy, that was obvious. When I asked you about how the anchor worked, that was a jab. I was telling you that I knew you hadn’t made a proper anchor for it.” She laughed again, shaking her head. “You’re fine, dear. That was already reflected in your grade.”

“...It was?”

Vellum nodded. “The more important question is...did you fix it?”

I hesitated. “Yes, but—”

“Does it work now?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now, don’t make the same mistake again. Moving an enchantment from one item to another might seem simpler than making a new item from scratch, but there are additional layers of complexity that it’s easy to forget about.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t. Not properly.” She set down the papers and waved to another nearby chair. “Take a seat. It’s time for your lesson.”

I took a seat and listened attentively to my mentor’s advice.

***

There was one last trip to make before I left town.

No, not to Magnus Cadence.

He’d get a letter if he was lucky.

I pushed my way into the doors of the Climber’s Court. It was busy that day, with customers gathered around Lars as he told a story.

“...The wind lashed about us as we climbed toward the Wind Temple. And when I say ‘lashed’, I mean like a damn scythe. The living whirlwinds would tear you apart if they blew past you. But dangerous as they were, they weren’t the real problem. The razor winds had been called by Raizo, the wielder of the Cloudcutter.”

He paused, spreading his hands wide for dramatic effect, “And Raizo had a score to settle with me.”

The customers were so distracted that I don’t think they even notice me enter, but Lars did. “Corin, lad! Come here and listen. I’m just getting to the best part!”

I came over and listened to his story, leaning against a nearby counter to listen.

He drew us in with his story of swords and monsters, of legendary magic and heroes lost.

And then, when his story was done, he reached behind the counter.

“And here it is. A fragment of the Prime Crystal of Air itself, taken from that last battle in the Wind Temple.”

He lifted the glimmering crystal, which glowed with brilliant light even without my attunement active.

“One of my most precious possessions. A relic of times long lost, guarded by the tengu for centuries, and earned through battles hard-fought and won.”

He closed his eyes in a moment of solemnity, nodding to himself.

“Bidding begins at five hundred and eighty gold pieces.”

And with that, the auction began.

I didn’t leave that night with a piece of legendary crystal, or any other item from that shop.

But after the last customer left, and the night was dark, he gave me something more important when I said my goodbyes.

“Aw, leavin, are ye? That’s a shame. Ye might not be my highest payin’ customer, but yer still a good one.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

“Don’t look so sad, lad.” Lars smiled. “I’ll still be here when you get back.”

***

I never had a chance to say goodbye to Derek. He’d disappeared right around the same time I’d entered the spire. Elora assured me that he simply did this on occasion, and that he’d be fine.

I left him a short note thanking him for everything, and Elora assured me that she’d make sure it got to him.

I still didn’t trust Elora in general, but I figured I could trust her with that.

While I was writing letters, though, I did write one to my mother.

Mother,

I’ve discovered a bit of what happened in the spire.

I’m heading out of the country for a while.

I considered coming to you, but I think this is for the best.

I am safe. Sera will be with me.

And so will Patrick. He’s one of my retainers now, if you haven’t heard.

I hope that you’re safe and well in Dalenos.

We do have much to discuss. I hope you will be back in Valia by the time I return.

Your Son,

-Corin

I considered explaining that I’d met with Tristan, but I couldn’t trust that the letter would reach my mother without being compromised by someone else. The risks were too high.

And she already knew he was alive.

That fact still weighed heavily on me, but I tried not to think about it too much.

Was I being a hypocrite by not telling my father what I knew?

Absolutely.

But after everything Magnus Cadence had done, I couldn’t bring myself to care.

With my final business completed, I met with my friends.

Sera, Patrick, and Marissa – my closest companions.

Keras, my new swordsmanship teacher.

And finally Cecily.

I didn’t really know what she was to me yet, but I did look forward to finding out.

With them, I boarded the train to Caelford.

The trip across the continent would take about two weeks.

And so, those five friends persuaded me to tell this story.

I agreed under a few conditions.

First, they had to understand that I was going from memory, and that not every detail of every conversation was going to be perfectly accurate.

It was possible that I might embellish a few little bits and pieces here and there.

Second, they’d have to keep the story to themselves. I didn’t want this information spreading to anyone else without a chance for me to approve whoever we were going to share it with. Trust still wasn’t easy for me.

Third, I wasn’t going to omit bits for anyone. That meant there were going to be a few pieces of the story that might be a little embarrassing to me, or to others.

So, uh, sorry about telling everyone about when you asked Sera out, Patrick.

After that, though, there was one last condition.

This story was offered as a trade.

Sera, you’re going to need to tell us at some point how you walked out of your Judgment the ability to summon a god beast.

But first?

Keras, it’s your turn to tell us a story.

Tell us about Dawnbringer and the Six Sacred Swords.

THE END

Appendix I – Attunement Mark Levels

From a Lesson by Professor Vestan, Introductory Runes Class

Attunement marks physically change when you reach an appropriate mana threshold.

Two factors make this obvious; one, the mark will physically change, and two, your aura will change in color.

Of course, not everyone can perceive aura colors. This is an advantage that Enchanters and Diviners — as well as their analogues in other countries — have early on. It is only at higher attunement levels that other attuned begin to detect auras, and even then, some never truly see them.

The aura colors follow the colors of the rainbow. Locally, we refer to these by gemstone names — Quartz representing clear, Carnelian being red, Sunstone being orange, and so on.

Some other nations use other systems; either simply referring to the name of the color itself, or, in Edria’s case, ignoring it entirely and referring to levels by number. This last case is most likely because Edria has so few attuned that see aura colors; thus, a numeric scheme for progression seems more logical to them.

These level thresholds are not purely a visual change, however. They represent a clear change in your capabilities. Most teachers like to talk about these in generalities — that you will gain a shroud at Carnelian, for example. In truth, the abilities you earn at each attunement level vary considerably from attunement to attunement. There are general rules, but it’s important to remember that there are also exceptions.

Today, we’ll be working on memorizing the basic runes for each attunement at their first few levels. Please do keep in mind, however, that attunement marks have variations. The ones we’ll be discussing here are the current basic marks for your generation. We’ll discuss what that means in greater detail later this year.

Diviner Attunement

Diviner Level

Rune

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Guardian Attunement

Guardian Level

Rune

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Elementalist Attunement

Elementalist Level

Rune

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Enchanter Attunement

Enchanter Level

Rune

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Mender Attunement

Mender Level

Rune

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Shadow Attunement

Shadow Level

Rune

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Shaper Attunement

Shaper Level

Rune

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Summoner Attunement

Summoner Level

Rune

Quartz

Carnelian

Sunstone

Appendix II – Attunement Mark Variations

From a Lesson by Professor Meltlake, Magic Theory Class

Attunements theory is constantly being updated. This is, at least in part, because attunements themselves are always changing.

I don’t mean that just in terms of an individual person’s attunement growing stronger — although that’s certainly important, and we’ll get to details on that later on.

The first factor of change that I’m mentioning is magical specializations. Different attuned naturally gravitate toward specific types of magic, and as they improve, their attunement subtly changes. The attunement adapts to generate a larger amount of that mana type in the body, which allows the attuned to use it more easily. In extreme cases, this can cause the mark itself to change. In my case, for example, I am highly specialized in fire magic, and my attunement mark reflects this by having a distinct fire modification.

The other change is even more interesting. The goddess — or, perhaps the visages — are constantly updating the design and functions of types of attunements. My own Elementalist mark is subtly different from Patrick’s, because he has a more recent iteration of the mark than my own.

Here’s a standard Elementalist mark, like Patrick’s.

This is what my own mark looks like.

Similarly, my father’s mark is different from either of ours, because he has an earlier mark. His looks like this.

Now, a portion of these changes are due to the attunement levels being different, but some changes are a legacy of the age in which the attunements were given.

Note the central line; in my father’s generation, this was longer, and had a tail. That is absent in both Patrick’s variant and my own.

Similarly, the line that crosses through the center is somewhat different in all three versions.

We refer to these different versions of each attunement as “attunement generations”. Since we began recording these changes about one hundred and seventy years ago, there have been fifteen different revisions to each attunement that have resulted in clear visible changes. The core symbol for each attunement has remained similar, but the outlying marks have changed substantially over time. Thus, we can assume that a new attunement generation occurs roughly once every ten years, give or take a few.

There is also a strong possibility that there have been other, subtler changes that have not resulted in a visual difference in each attunement.

You’re probably wondering why attunements are being changed. The answer is simple — the goddess is clearly still improving them. While the goddess is a being of tremendous power and knowledge that vastly outstrips our own, she is not all-knowing, and she is still capable of learning and improving.

What are some of these improvements, you might ask?

Well, for one thing, our modern attunements are demonstrably better at converting mana between different types than older generations. A hundred years ago, converting enough mana for a spell took several minutes, and then the attunement “held” that converted mana in the desired state until it was used. This meant you essentially had to ration out all the types of mana you wanted to use before going into a dangerous situation, rather than being able to convert mana freely like you can now.

Another major improvement? Shrouds.

Attunements have always caused some degree of mana to leak out, creating an aura...but that aura didn’t always have any sort of useful function.

The very first recorded improvement to attunements — and the one that got us to start recording changes — was the implementation of the “defensive shroud” function, which manipulates the excess essence around an attuned into the type of barrier we use it for today. Prior to that, all that additional mana was simply wasted.

Earlier versions of the defensive shroud had differences, too. Initially, only Citrine and higher level attuned had access to that shroud. It’s theorized that this is because earlier shroud-generation functions were less efficient, and required more of a shroud to have any use. It’s also possible that earlier versions required a larger amount of mana to be drawn from the attunement to make them function.

You might be surprised by that last part, but yes, your attunement’s basic functions do use up a bit of your mana at all times. When we measure your safe mana usage, that’s already taken into account. The shroud is one of these autonomous functions, but there are other basic ones as well.

The attunement is constantly monitoring the amount of mana in each part of your body, and that function requires some mana. The function that converts some of your mana also requires mana. Even the attunement functions that help regulate the flow of mana in your body require a little bit of your mana in order to work.

For the Enchanters in the class, this might sound like an attunement is much like a magical item. You’re not wrong. In fact, attunements function almost identically to magical items — they’re just a thousand times more complex than a typical item. Your attunement rune replicates the functions of dozens, if not hundreds, of different types of enchantments.

Artificial attunements, then, were created by understanding each of these functions and learning to replicate them. We’re still not perfect at making attunements ourselves — but like the goddess herself, we’re always learning.

Appendix III – Characters and Terms

From Corin’s class notes

House Cadence:

- Magnus Cadence – Head of House Cadence, father of Tristan and Corin Cadence. Presumably also the father of Sera Cadence.

- Laura Lyran – Head of House Lyran, mother of Tristan and Corin Cadence. Emerald-level attuned with the Swordmaster and Elementalist attunements. Member of Valia’s Council of Lords.

- Tristan Cadence – Elder son of Magnus Cadence and Laura Lyran. Disappeared into the Serpent Tower during his Judgment. Presumed deceased.

- Corin Cadence – Younger son of Magnus Cadence and Laura Lyran. Presumptive heir to both houses after Tristan’s disappearance. Earned an Enchanter attunement in the spire. Was given a mysterious new attunement by Katashi, the Visage of Valor.

- Sera Cadence – Previously known as Sera Shard, Sera Cadence was legitimized by Magnus Cadence after passing her Attunement exam. She is presumed to be a bastard child of Magnus Cadence. After being legitimized, she is now a potential heir to the house. She is the same age as Corin and has a Summoner attunement.

University Staff:

- Chancellor Wallace – In charge of all university activities.

- Lieutenant Commander Jack Bennet – Vice Chancellor, former military commander.

Professors:

- Professor Edlyn – Assisted with new student orientation. Teaches Enchanting class.

- Professor Ceridan – In charge of Tiger Class. Teaches Elementalists.

- Professor Lyras Orden – In charge of Serpent Class. Has a mysterious connection with The Voice of the Tower.

- Professor Vellum – Teaches classes on permanent enchantments. Serves as Corin’s mentor for most enchanting-related studies.

- Professor Conway – Teaches Attunements class.

- Lord Jonathan Teft – In charge of Hydra Class. Teaches dueling.

- Doctor Tordrin – In charge of Phoenix Class.

- Professor Meltlake – General Magic Theory class. Legendary Elementalist.

- Professor Vanway – Teacher for an unknown class. Not one of Corin’s professors.

- Sir Tanath – A member of the Soaring Wings, and a Summoner. One of Marissa’s teachers.

- Professor Vestan – Corin’s Introductory Runes teacher.

Students:

- Patrick Wayland – One of Corin’s childhood friends, now his first retainer. An Elementalist and magical weapon enthusiast.

- Jin Dalen – A mysterious foreign student from East Edria with a Sunstone-level Mesmer attunement. His family is sworn to House Dalen, the former ruling house of East Edria from the days before it was under Edrian rule. He was badly injured after fighting against Corin in the Serpent Spire, but escaped using Corin’s return bell.

- Marissa Callahan – One of Corin’s classmates. Usually called “Mara” by her friends. Guardian.

- Roland Royce – One of Sera’s friends, former friend of Tristan’s.

- Cecily Lambert – The younger sister of Yunika Lambert. One of Corin’s closest childhood companions.

- Curtis Maddock – Dorm chief for Corin’s dorm.

- Lisa Stone – Former classmate from Corin’s childhood.

- Jordan Jaldin – A second-year student that supervises one of the teams for the final exams.

- Katherine Winters – A second-year student that supervises Corin’s team for the final exams. Goes by Kathy.

Other People:

- Lars Mantrake – Shopkeeper for the Climber’s Court, a magic item shop. As a former climber, he has many stories of the spires, almost half of which are probably true.

- Keras Selyrian – Mysterious swordsman that Corin first encounters during his Judgment. Currently serving as Corin’s bodyguard in order to get into the good graces of Katashi, the Visage of Valor.

- Echion – Child with an unusual mark across his forehead. Corin first meets Echion during his Judgment.

- Vera Corrington – Tower explorer that Corin first encounters during his Judgment.

- Aloras Corrington – Automotive engineer. Vera’s brother.

- Derek Hartigan – Heir to House Hartigan, an ancient noble house. Has an Emerald-level Soulblade attunement.

- Tavare – Derek’s Summoned blade elemental.

- Delsys – Derek’s Summoned flame/wind elemental.

- Elora Theas – Heir to House Theas, an ancient noble house. Extremely powerful Summoner.

- Sheridan Theas – Elora Theas’ sibling, and a follower of Wydd. Wields the restricted “Necromancer” attunement, but specializes in healing. Derek usually refers to them by the nickname “Deni”.

- Vanniv – A summoned karvensi. Both Elora and Sera have contracts with Vanniv.

- Researcher – A knowledge elemental that resides in the restricted section of the Divinatory.

- Yunika Lambert – Cecily Lambert’s older sister, and Tristan’s former fiancée.

- Meredith Hawkins – A historical figure who supposedly escaped one of the spires after several years of being trapped inside. Commonly believed to be a con artist.

- Johannes Edington – An academic who attempted to enter a Judgment and stay inside as long as possible in order to preserve memories of what the rooms looked like. Emerged a few months later and published a paper on his findings.

Visages:

- Katashi – Visage of Valor, patron Visage of Dalenos, where he is a central figure in their government.

- Melkyr – Visage of Resilience, patron Visage of Edria.

- Ferras – Visage of Creation, patron Visage of Caelford.

- Tenjin – Visage of Inspiration, patron Visage of Valia. Currently missing.

- Kerivas – Visage of Law, second patron Visage of Edria.

- Wydd – Visage of Forbidden Knowledge. Location unknown. Often depicted as a trickster or shapeshifter.

God Beasts:

- Genbu, the God Tortoise – God Beast of Dalenos.

- Seiryu, the God Serpent – God Beast of Valia.

- Orochi , the God Hydra - God Beast of Edria.

- Byakko, the God Tiger - God Beast of Caelford.

- Suzaku, the God Phoenix – God Beast of East Edria.

- Arachne, the God Spider – God Beast of (????)

God Beast Children:

- Mizuchi – Deadly serpent, called “Hero’s End”. Child of Seiryu. Believed to be virtually invulnerable.

Other Powers:

- The Tyrant in Gold – A divine being that is antithetical to Selys, and believed to be comparable to her in power. The scriptures teach that he is in control of the entire world outside of Kaldwyn.

- Saffron – A child of the Tyrant in Gold. Tremendously powerful, most likely on a similar level to Mizuchi.

Major Nations:

- Valia – Nation on the eastern coast of the continent of Kaldwyn. Home to the Serpent Tower and the Lorian Heights Academy.

- Edria – Imperialistic southern nation. Conquered Kelridge during the Six Years War and nearly conquered Valia as well.

- Caelford – Technologically advanced nation on the western coast of the continent. Allied with Valia.

- Dalenos – Theocracy; covers most of the northern side of the continent.

- Kelridge – A territory that was a part of Dalenos prior to the Six Years War. Conquered by Edria and now known as East Edria.

Days of the Week:

- Orsay
- Kyrsday
- Wainsday
- Fersday
- Vasday
- Wyddsay

Acknlowedgmenets

The title of the first Arcane Ascension book, Sufficiently Advanced Magic, is a homage to Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The title of this book, On the Shoulders of Titans, is a reference to the quote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” This is most famously attributed to Sir Isaac Newton, though variations of the quote predate him.

In the context of this story, the quote is representing the generations of researchers building from the knowledge of the past, ultimately resulting in developments like artificial attunements.

Corin Cadence owes his existence to the “Cobalt Nightmares” role-playing game campaign by Bernard Hansel, Justin Green, Danielle Collins, and numerous other game masters and staff. While the Corin in this novel differs significantly from the character in that game world, playing “Corin Page” is what gave me the first hints of inspiration for this book.

Similarly, Sera Shard/Sera Cadence was inspired by her analogue in Cobalt Nightmares, played by Jess Richards.

Sir Tanath is a cameo for one of my readers, Charles DeGregorio. I hope my brief depiction honored his character.

As always, my beta readers were essential in improving the quality of this manuscript. My beta readers included Sean Anderson, Ari Barzilai,
Brittany Chhutani, Steven Ericksen, Ira Ham, Brian Heins, Jean, John Findlay, C.W. Fox, Jacob Fullmer, Gereon Hinz, Domagoj Kurmaić, Josh Kutterer, Rachel Noel, Jess Richards, Bruce Rowe, Christine Rowe, Jay Taylor, and Chris Zamora.

Much of my inspiration for this work came from web serials such as Mother of Learning by nobody103, Worm by Wildbow, and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Another layer of my inspiration came from JRPGs such as Final Fantasy, Tower of Druaga, Azure Dreams, Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals, Ys, and Bravely Default. In specific, the massive towers owe much of their existence to the earlier JRPGs on the list, and the idea of building a magic system around character classes was largely inspired by Bravely Default. While many earlier JRPGs had “job class” systems, Bravely Default worked character classes into their story — and that’s something I wanted to expand on further.

I’d like to thank the many readers over on my blog for their encouragements and suggestions, especially during the period of time I was debating many title options.

Finally, thanks to the community over on Reddit’s /r/fantasy, especially asuraemulator, Green0Photon, Jadeyard, and the other users that took the time to give me feedback on my earlier works.

Similar Works

I’m often asked for recommendations for books similar to Sufficiently Advanced Magic.

If you’re looking for another magical school story with a protagonist that does a lot of research into how magic works, I would recommend the web serial Mother of Learning.

If you’re looking for another book with a lot of anime-flavored combat scenes, I’d recommend the Cradle series by Will Wight.

If you’re looking for more books with strong RPG inspiration, there are a couple up-and-coming genre labels to look for.

“LitRPGs” tend to literally take place in a video game, or in a world that has overt RPG mechanics, such as character classes and levels. Some classic examples include the .Hack series and Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes. If you’re looking for one of these, I’d recommend Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko.

There are a number of places to find great LitRPG recommendations. For example, there’s a large LitRPG Facebook group that can be found here. There is also a LitRPG subreddit, which can be found here.

“GameLit” is a slightly broader genre that includes game inspired fiction in general. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline would be a good example of this.

If you’re looking for an online community for more GameLit recommendations, you may want to look at GameLit Society group. There’s also a more general GameLit group. There’s also a GameLit subreddit, which can be found here.

A Note From the Author

The next Arcane Ascension book will be a side story/prequel from Keras’ perspective, as the end of this book implied.

It will not be listed as Arcane Ascension Book 3, because it doesn’t come afterward chronologically. Instead, it will be listed as the first book of a new Keras-specific series. The current tentative book title is Six Sacred Swords. I don’t have a series title just yet.

Six Sacred Swords will touch on story elements that are related to this story, like the Children of the Tyrant and the titular swords, but it takes place many years earlier and most of the cast will be different (aside from a few cameos and surprises). It will also be the book where we start to see major crossover elements from my War of Broken Mirrors, for those people who are reading my other series.

If you liked reading about Keras in this book, I’d recommend checking out Six Sacred Swords when it comes out. If you’re not particularly interested in Keras, however, you should be fine to skip it and just wait for the next “main” Arcane Ascension book.

Because Six Sacred Swords is next in this series, and I’m also going to be finishing the third book in the War of Broken Mirrors series before I even write that, it will most likely be at least two years before Arcane Ascension Book 3 comes out. (So, roughly March or April of 2020, possibly later.)

That break will give me more time to come up with more awesome ideas, though, and I suspect it will end up being the best book in the series so far as a result. Maybe. Hopefully.

Thank you all for reading this book. I hope you enjoyed it!

And if you’re interested in a little sneak peek at Six Sacred Swords?

There’s one just ahead.

Six Sacred Swords Preview Chapter – Legends Lost

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with magic swords.

There’s a magic sword at the very start of my personal story, but I’m not going to start right there. You wanted to know about how I’d encountered Dawnbringer, one of your six weapons of legend.

That’s a much better story.

Let me tell you about when I first came to your lovely continent of Kaldwyn.

***

I woke in the Whispering Woods. I didn’t know the name at the time, of course, but I trust that you’ve probably heard of them.

Most of it looked pretty standard as far as forests go, at least at first. Tall trees, occasional patches of high grass, a few mysterious blue flowers growing to the side of where I woke.

Mist. Lots of mist. I could see a good twenty feet, though, so it didn’t add any particular sense of danger. The forest that I grew up in got misty at times, too.

I pushed myself off the ground and wondered how in the name of the gods I’d gotten there.

My head swam as I rose, teetering on my feet.

My stomach grumbled.

How long had I been out?

I wiped the dirt from my hands on my tunic, then spent a moment just rubbing my temples. It didn’t help much, but my mind was clearing even if the pain wasn’t fading.

When I opened my eyes, I scanned the area. I didn’t recognize my surroundings. The tree bark was a lighter shade of green than I was used to, almost as bright as the grass below.

I really need to break the habit of letting old sages teleport me to strange places.

I didn’t notice any immediate dangers, fortunately, and based on the disruption in the foliage I suspected I was on a path. The brush had been cleared in a broad enough swath that it said “human trail” rather than “animal trail” to my quick assessment, but I didn’t see any boot marks or other clear indications to confirm my hypothesis.

No other people around. This was disconcerting, because my memory was gradually coming back, and I was not supposed to be alone.

“You’re going to be sent to another continent. It will be unfamiliar to you, but you’ll find your way in time. You must meet with their goddess and bring her to join our cause. Without her help, we stand no chance against the threat that is to come.”

That’s what the old sage had told us before he’d sent us away.

Lesson One: Old sages will never tell you the full story.

This one wasn’t even the particularly infuriating kind with all the riddles and vagueness.

No, he’d just either omitted some key information or something had gone horribly wrong.

I didn’t know which was worse.

Either way, no friends nearby. I’d have to find them later.

At least I felt relatively intact. No horrifying teleportation damage to my person, at least as far as I could tell without a mirror.

I checked my side. The sword was there, as it always was, and locked firmly in its scabbard.

Good.

Couldn’t let that thing escape. There was no telling what it would get up to if I wasn’t around to keep it reigned in.

I still had my backpack on, too. I had been preparing for a journey to another land, even if I’d expected to show up somewhere a little bit more civilized.

I checked my pack.

I had most of the basics. A little bit of food, little bit of water, bandages, rope, mask of a long dead god, that sort of thing.

I heard something crack behind me.

I dropped my pack, spun, and drew my blade in a flash of unparalleled grace.

The squirrel was unimpressed.

I sighed, sheathing my weapon slowly to prevent any damage to the nearby terrain, and then picked my backpack back up.

Fortunately, I didn’t have anything particularly breakable inside.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a tent with me, so I was going to need to find shelter pretty fast.

I glanced left and right. I couldn’t see any clear signs of human traffic in either direction, nor could I hear the sounds of water, so I picked a direction at random.

Left it is.

Before I wandered off, I set up a small rock formation to mark the spot in case I ended up wandering back there. It was easy to get lost in the middle of a forest, especially the particularly misty kind.

After that, I headed left.

The path was dirt and grass, almost completely straight, surrounded on both sides by forests. It was just broad enough for two people to walk abreast comfortably. It felt cultivated. Deliberate.

That wasn’t worrying in itself, though — manmade paths often were deliberately cultivated. Maybe this had been a common path to a town at one point, and someone had cleared out the trees and foliage on this path a year or two ago.

No, the worrying part was that it felt too similar. After walking for just a few minutes, I felt a bit dizzy, and I had the disconcerting sensation that I’d seen each and every tree in the path before.

“Trespasser, turn back. Before it is too late.”

The voice sounded like it was coming from all around me, but I couldn’t see a source. I pointed at myself. “Me? I mean, I assume you mean me, but if there are invisible people around, maybe you could clarify?”

I glanced around again. No source, no reply. I’d dealt with invisible adversaries before, and usually I could catch a hint of movement from the sound of footfalls. Maybe even a blur of motion, if the caster was less experienced. I didn’t catch any of that, though.

I kept walking.

My earlier assessment was accurate. A few minutes after that, I walked right back into the glade where I’d started, coming into it from the opposite side. I wasn’t imagining it; I found the cluster of stones I’d set as a marker.

That seemed...odd, though. The path was almost perfectly straight. I’d placed the bed of rocks because it was easy to get lost in most forests, where there weren’t coherent trails, or where there were lots of branches in the pathways that did exist.

I hadn’t taken any branches from the path. I’d seen a few of them, but I’d gone completely straight.

I ducked down, inspected the group of rocks to make certain they were the same ones, and headed off again.

“Turn back.”

The same voice. It didn’t alarm me quite as much this time, but it still grated on my nerves. Now it seemed like I was being followed, or maybe observed from a distance. I’d seen some spells that could be used to watch people from afar and send sound to a remote area. Maybe that was what was happening?

“Do you mean ‘turn back’ as in ‘leave this place, pitiful mortal’? Or is it more of a ‘turn back, you’re going the wrong direction, and make a left at the fork’? If you’re just being helpful, some clarity would be appreciated.” Again, I looked and listened for movement, but I found nothing.

I resumed walking.

Took me about the same amount of time to end up right back where I started.

If there’s anything worse than a mysterious misty forest, it’s a magical mysterious misty forest.

I tried walking the opposite direction. Same result. Pushing through the forest in one of the other two directions was tougher, so it took me a little longer to appear back in my starting location.

The same voice spoke to me about mid-way. The message was marginally different this time, at least. “This is a sacred place. You are not welcome here.”

It had been pretty obvious the voice wasn’t just trying to give me directions, of course, but the fact that this was a sacred location? That was new and interesting.

I tried replying each time, of course. Not just to be polite. I was trying to get a reaction, just in case anyone was physically present. I was leaning toward the explanation that whoever was watching me was in a remote location, and since they didn’t appear to be responding directly to what I said, I wasn’t sure if they could even hear me.

I tried going part way down each path, then taking one of the branches. That got me a little bit of new scenery, but I still ended up in the same grove somehow. After four attempts at trying branches of the path, I knew the brute force approach of just trying every trail was going to take too long.

I kept getting one message with each trip.

“Turn back.”

“This place is deadly to outsiders.”

“There is no treasure here, only death.”

“The Whispering Woods are not for your kind.”

I finally knew the name for the area after that one. And I had to admit, it was pretty apt. I might have gone for “Nameless Voice that Growls Angrily at Intruders Woods”, since it wasn’t really whispering, but I had to admit that the original name was a lot easier to remember.

I tried tying a shirt over my eyes and walking down the path blind. That was slow going. When I finally took off the makeshift blindfold, I was in an unfamiliar location...but after I walked a bit further, I still ended up back in the grove.

I tried it a second time, keeping the blindfold on longer, but it didn’t help. By this point, I was starting to recognize all the surrounding areas as well — the area I was looping through was maybe half a kilometer in each direction, and I was routinely running into landmarks, including my own tracks.

With a frustrated groan, I took off my backpack and sat down to think.

What’s causing me to loop back around? Is there a mental effect that’s causing me to think I’m going straight, even when I’m not? Perhaps something occurs a little ways into the woods, turning me around?

Maybe there’s something happening where I’m losing some of my memories and wandering back?

Or maybe I’m not actually going in a circle and there are several areas that look virtually identical?

No, that last one is too much effort. It’s probably something simpler, like the mind effect or memory loss. Could be a property of the mist.

Okay, I can work with this. The area isn’t that big. I can figure out if it’s time of exposure to the mist that gets me to turn around, or if there are certain locations that are affecting me, or if there’s another cause entirely.

The voice kept “whispering” at me each time I walked through the area, but with no indication that it was hearing my replies. That was a shame, because some of my remarks were pretty amusing, and it was a shame that my foreboding observer wasn’t getting to enjoy them.

“Is it your job to just watch people and...be creepy at them? Or is this more of a hobby? Because if it’s a job, I could probably find you a better option. Not to be rude, but you clearly have a talent for growling at strangers, and I can think of some people who could use that.”

I consoled myself with the fact that this whole experience was probably even more repetitive for them than it was for me.

I opened up my pack, found parchment and a quill, and started working on a map. I counted paces in each direction. It took me an almost identical number of paces to get back to the glade regardless of whether or not I went left or right, and it felt like the same amount of time.

That made it likely that the glade was physically at the center of whatever effect I was in, and that the effect had something to do with my location, not the amount of time that was passing.

Once I’d done that, I started dragging a stick behind me to make a line in the dirt. If I’d planned better, I could have just paid attention to my boot trails, but I’d walked over the area so many times now that it wouldn’t work for this particular test.

I glanced behind me periodically, watching the line I was making.

I’d walked just about half way through the total distance of the loop when I realized that the line behind me was gone, with the exception of the last few feet I’d just drawn.

I turned around, walking back the way I’d came...and there was the longer line again, leading a long way down the trail in front of me.

I felt a renewed wave of nausea hit me and paused to take a drink.

That was when I noticed a small cluster of rocks that I hadn’t placed.

Foregoing the drink, I walked over to the rocks and knelt down to inspect them.

I found runes carved into the ones in the center.

There you are.

I didn’t know exactly what the rune did. Wasn’t my area of expertise, and honestly, I don’t even remember what it looked like.

I do remember the cathartic feeling when I smashed the rock, though. Mm. Breaking things.

There was a flash of light when I shattered the stone, then I was elsewhere.

My stomach briefly protested in response to the teleportation effect, but fortunately, there was nothing immediately dangerous to assault me during the recovery.

I took in my surroundings. Same forest, or one designed to look suspiciously similar. Now I was on the border of a hillside, though, or maybe a mountainside. I couldn’t determine the scale due to the mist.

Either way, the stone outcropping near me had a pretty conspicuous looking cave with an obviously humanoid sized entrance.

I almost avoided it out of irritation. I didn’t like playing so directly into someone else’s hands, but I had a job to do. I’d been told that the goddess I was looking for had a thing for presenting challenges, but I wasn’t expecting anything quite this obvious... or something quite so soon after my arrival.

I’d been hoping to end up in a nice town with my friends, with some time to plan and gather information.

Hope can be a source of strength, but when it fails to deliver what I want, I’ve found a good degree of stubbornness to be an appropriate substitute.

So, I walked into the cave.

The mist was even thicker inside. I could only see a few feet in front of me, and even that was hazy.

I could feel the moisture in the air, and that moisture made it easier to pick up the scents around me. Moss, feathers, a hint of death.

My hand settled on the sword on my left hip out of instinct, but I didn’t draw it. There was no need to make things worse.

I was tempted to conjure a bit of flame to disperse the mist around me and provide some much-needed light, but the cost of maintaining it for a trek of indeterminate length was more of a risk than I was willing to take.

Instead, I walked back out of the cave for a minute or so, found a branch of about an arm’s length, broke off the little twigs protruding from the sides, and tried to light it with the flint and steel from my pack.

After about a minute of trying to get a spark to catch on the wood, I gave up and just ignited the top of the branch with sorcery. A chill ran down my spine as I felt the spell’s cost, but it wasn’t much of a burden. A mere flicker of fire wouldn’t drain my strength as much as maintaining a ball of flame would have.

The branch blazed brightly as I strode into the depths of darkness.

Oh, come on. I’m not being that dramatic. A little bit of narrative flavor never hurt anyone. You could use a little more of it when you tell us the next part of your story, Corin.

Anyway, cave. Right.

With the makeshift torch, I could see a little bit further — just far enough to notice the trail of bones. I could also see that the cave went deep into the mountainside, expanding beyond the human-sized entrance into a vast cavern with an open area ahead and what looked like a couple different possible paths.

I ducked under a stalactite, reminded myself not to stand straight up, and knelt next to the first skull I could find.

Deer, I think. Looks about adult sized.

I inspected some of the other large bones nearby, frowning as I took in the size of the gouges on the ribs. They’d been pushed inward, and I could see gouges on several of them where something sharp had cut into the bone.

Crushed by claws, and big ones. Large enough to wrap around the entire torso of the deer, I think.

Either that, or five people with clubs and axes.

Going to go with claws.

I stood up, hit my head, and died.

Kidding, kidding. I didn’t die until much later.

Didn’t even hit my head. I’d been climbing through enough caves that I knew to exercise due caution. I remained in a crouch until the cave widened, and the ceiling was high enough to stand back up without bashing my head.

It was fortunate that I was close to the ground for a while, because that made it easier to notice the spine crawlers.

What are spine crawlers, you ask? Why, they’re like centipedes, only three feet long, about eight inches thick, and, as I swiftly learned, swift to anger.

Their gray skin blended near perfectly with the stone floor — it was the glint from the light reflecting on their carapaces that gave them away.

By that point, it was almost too late. I was only inches from a nest, and one was slithering toward my feet.

I backpedaled because, well, no one wants to get eaten by giant poisonous worms. That took me into the other monster nest.

Vines wrapped around my legs as the winged beasts descended from the ceiling. They looked like bats, but with wings that were more birdlike, if bird feathers were metallic and razor-edged.

Also, given how rapidly the vines were moving from the cave floor to encircle me, one or both of the monster types could use nature sorcery.

Yeah, not a fun cave.

I tugged on the vines. Animated or not, they were vines, and not particularly strong. I snapped one just in time to see one of the razor bats — no idea if that’s what they’re typically called, just going to go with it — flapping its wings in my direction.

Which, predictably, sent a wave of razor-sharp feathers in my direction.

The feathers weren’t actually metal, so I couldn’t turn them aside with metal sorcery. I resisted the instinct to draw my blade and hurled myself out of the way, narrowly avoiding the quills.

The few lingering vines wrapped around me weren’t sufficient to hold me in place, but the ones I snapped were quickly replaced by more, and now I was on the ground with razor bats above me and a spine crawler, well, crawling closer.

I flared my aura, surrounding my body in a silvery blur. Vines disintegrated. Inches of stone beneath me vanished, not even dust left in my aura’s wake.

I rolled in the opposite direction of where the vines had been, my right hand burning from the power I’d just used. I didn’t even have time to regret it before I was pushing myself to the side, failing to avoid another barrage of feathers entirely. A quill glanced along my back, drawing a trail of blood.

I rolled, grabbing the quill with two fingers and hurling it right back at the bat.

It missed. I’m a good shot, but it was a feather, not a throwing knife.

I threw the knife from my belt next. I hit the bat that time, and it fell.

The spine crawlers were on top of it in seconds, biting with venom-laced fangs. I scurried backward, retrieving my fallen torch, and watched as another spine crawler dislodged its jaw and sprayed acid on the still-wriggling razor bat.

A good portion of the bat melted away before it ceased struggling entirely.

A smaller portion of my knife melted along with it.

And I liked that knife.

Rather than extract revenge for the vicious daggercide that had just been committed, however, I took the more cautious course of pushing myself to my feet and inching away from the scene. The spine crawlers didn’t seem to notice me at all now that they had easier prey, but I didn’t want to risk aggravating them further with any sudden movements.

Burning through those vines with my aura had been...unwise. Overusing it was dangerous in a different way from conjuring too much fire. It wouldn’t harm me.

Not physically, at least.

Practicing any type of sorcery generates essence — what you’d call mana where you’re from — of that type in the body. That essence changes you; subtly with some types of mana, more overtly with others.

I could use three fairly common types of sorcery: flame, stone, and metal. I wasn’t really sure what the first one did to my body, but stone and metal essence both worked to reinforce skin, muscles, and bone. I’d practiced metal sorcery daily since childhood, and that had made my body both stronger and more resilient than any ordinary human.

I’d disintegrated the vines using another, lesser known type of sorcery. I’d practiced it unknowingly for years by using the sword sheathed at my side, and during that process, it had bled into my essence.

Now I was generating some of that type of essence myself all the time, even without the sword.

That wasn’t a good thing.

The aura that was around me at all times?

It breaks things.

Anything I’m in contact with for long enough wears down. Food, clothes, armor, weapons - it all breaks. I’m not talking about just accelerating the normal passage of time, either. That’d be ruin sorcery, which is related, but less dangerous.

My aura is gradually cutting through everything around me — erasing pieces of everything it touches. This is not convenient.

For example, if I wear items that generate protective sorcery, like a shield sigil?

My aura breaks the barrier down in minutes, rendering the item worthless. Even the magical object itself will gradually break down, unless the item is shielded well enough to prevent the aura from cutting through it. Very few defensive spells are that resilient.

I had precisely three things on me that were powerful enough to survive long-term exposure to my aura without harm. My sword, the scabbard designed to hold it, and a weird mask that I really shouldn’t have held onto.

My aura was already too strong for me to suppress it entirely at any given time; it was cutting away at my backpack, my boots, everything around me, just very slowly. I probably had about a week to get to a town before my equipment fell apart.

Any time I used that type of sorcery, I’d make the problem worse. Permanently, unless I also improved my degree of control over the aura, and that was easier said than done. Drawing the sword involved the same type of risk; a portion of that destructive magic would leak into me any time it wasn’t sheathed.

If I didn’t find a solution, I’d eventually get to the point where I couldn’t touch non-magical objects at all.

Or people.

I didn’t exactly care for the idea of never being able to hug my friends or family again.

The old man who had sent me to this place?

He was a famous scholar of sorcerous theory, and one of the few people who might have had an idea of how to help me.

But there was always a price.

And with that in mind, I continued into the cave. My back still ached from the brush with the razor bat’s quill. I waited until I was several minutes in before pausing, putting down the torch, and digging bandages and ointment out of my bag. The wound was relatively shallow, but not shallow enough that I could ignore it entirely. I applied the ointment and bound the wound, then continued on.

“Turn back.” The voice boomed, and it sounded like it was coming from directly in front of me.

I saw the pair of glowing motes of light — presumably eyes - in the distant mist a moment later.

I waved my off-hand. “Oh, it’s you! I was hoping I’d eventually get to meet you.”

The twin lights blinked.

I walked closer, passing the torch to my off-hand. I wanted my sword arm ready, but I didn’t move it close to the hilt. I didn’t want to appear threatening.

“Leave. This is your final warning.”

I ducked under another low portion of the ceiling as I approached. The cavern walls encroached around me until I could barely fit down the tunnel, then widened again into a massive, almost circular chamber. The mist was the thickest I’d seen so far. I could feel the moisture on my skin, taste it with every breath.

I could vaguely make out the outline of a humanoid figure ahead of me. That was a bit of a comfort, since I wasn’t sure I should expect anything close to human. Plenty of monsters could produce a human-sounding voice.

“I’m sorry to intrude. I don’t mean to be rude.” I grinned, pausing now that I was almost close enough to get a good look at who I was talking to. I could see the outline of hair, almost floor-length. Slender arms and legs...did those hands end in claws?

Yeah, those were definitely claws.

The figure must have been wearing white. They blended in with the mists so thoroughly that I couldn’t make out any other details. I guessed they were probably about ten feet away now, which was about the furthest I could see in the haze.

“Then you should have left when you had a chance.” They raised a clawed hand. “Prepare yourself.”

I raised a hand. “Woah, hold on, slow down. No need to get aggressive. I tried talking to you back in the forest, but I didn’t get any reply. I assume those messages were just stored somehow, maybe enchantments in the rocks, like the ones that were leading me in circles?”

The figure folded their arms. “That is irrelevant. This is a sacred place, and you are trespassing.”

“Sorry, sorry! Didn’t mean to intrude. I was teleported to this forest, and I’m lost. I’m supposed to be looking for a goddess. They call her Selys here, I believe? Are you her?”

The figure tilted its head to the side. “...Are you mocking me? Is that a serious question?”

“Completely serious.”

The person....creature...thing exhaled heavily enough that I felt it. The air pushed me back a step. I steadied myself, bracing for an attack, but realized it had just sighed.

Humanoid or not, this thing really knew how to breathe. “I am not the goddess, but I do serve her. I am the guardian of the Shrine of the Dawnbringer, one of the Six Sacred Swords.”

I nodded. I was finally making some progress here. “Okay, great. If you’re in her employ, could you direct me to where I can find her?”

“If thou dost seek the goddess, thee must climb the Soaring Spires. For the goddess resides in the skies above, and only atop the spires might ye glimpse upon her greatness. But, be forewarned, ere ye have false hope — centuries live and die between the successes of would-be heroes that seek to reach the spire’s summit.”

Yeah, they actually used ‘thou’. Apparently they had penchants for both growling and theatrics. Maybe if I was lucky I’d get a prophecy at some point, too.

“That’s great, thank you for that. So, there are a few of these spires?”

“Six are the spires, as six are the sacred swords.”

“Huh. Sounds like that’s not a coincidence, then?”

The figure lowered its head, as if in prayer. “Atop each spire lays one of the god beasts, ferocious guardians that await those who would dare to seek an audience with the goddess. None would stand a chance against these beasts, save for the sacred swords — one blade forged to survive the power of each beast.”

I considered that. “Okay. Any spires I can go to where the beast has already been defeated, maybe skip the trouble? I do like fighting titanic monsters, don’t get me wrong, but I’m kind of in a hurry.”

The figure ahead of me growled in the most hostile fashion yet. “No god beast has ever been truly defeated. Heroes wielding the blades have earned sufficient respect to pass.”

“Got it, that makes sense. I should have known this wouldn’t be that simple.” I sighed in a somewhat less spectacular fashion than the creature I was talking to. “And you’re the guardian of one of the swords?”

“So I am. Since time immemorial, my people have served here—”

“Wow. You must be really bored. Could I interest you in a different line of work? You seem much more familiar with the area than I am, maybe you could—”

“Insolent creature! My task is a sacred calling, given by the goddess herself. Your banter and jesting is what bores me. Either flee from my sight, or challenge me. Those are your choices.”

I frowned. This was not going where I wanted it to. “I apologize. I did not mean to insult your calling. If you require a challenge for the sword, would it be possible for me to challenge you something other than fighting? I mean this question with the utmost sincerity. I have Crowns pieces in my backpack, for example, and a deck of playing cards—”

“If it is a sacred sword you wish to wield, it is your prowess with a blade that must be proven.”

“What are the terms? Could we have a match to the first successful hit of any kind, for instance?”

“We would fight until one of us could fight no longer. I would not be gentle. Face me and you should expect to lose your life.”

“Would surrender be an option for either side?”

“No.”

“Could I convince you to alter the terms to a middle ground? First blood, perhaps?”

“The terms are set down by tradition, they cannot be altered.”

I nodded sadly. “I expected as much. And the sword is right past you?”

“Indeed. It lays in the grove of three shrines, untouched in the decade since it was last claimed.”

So, someone had tried this a decade ago. Presumably, they’d failed, because the creature I was speaking to had implied it had been hundreds of years since a success. Maybe that had been hyperbole, though. They did seem to have a flair for the dramatic. Worse than mine, even. “Okay. And just to be clear, your responsibility is to guard this specific tunnel?”

“Such is the path to the sword.”

I focused, trying to peer through the mist as best I could. I thought I could just barely make out an exit tunnel on the opposite side of the chamber, maybe twenty feet away.

I picked my torch back up, waved, and shifted my stance as if I was about to turn around. “Okay, thanks for all the information.”

“You’re...leaving?”

I think they actually sounded a little disappointed. “Yep. I’m not going to invade someone’s home and fight them just so I can walk through a particular cavern. I figure now that I broke your little teleportation rune, I can probably just walk out of the forest and find a town. But you’re a great storyteller — that part about the spire was riveting. You’re welcome to come with me if you’d like.”

“You...mock me.”

I shook my head. “Nope. I just don’t think that anyone should have to live their life in a cave because a goddess told them to, and I’m certainly not going to fight you just because a goddess put you here.”

The creature in front of me growled and lowered their stance. “You insult me and the goddess alike.”

“I don’t mean to be insulting.” I raised my off-hand in a defensive gesture. “Just sympathizing. My own life has been largely dictated by the whims of the gods, and I’m tired of it. If you’d like to get out of this situation, I’d be glad to help you.”

No growl that time, which was progress. Just a tilt of the head to the side, maybe a bit of introspection. “I will not leave while my task remains undone.”

“I understand.” I nodded affably. “Well, I’m leaving then.”

“See that you do not return unless you are prepared to face my challenge.”

“Right. That won’t be a problem.”

I shifted to the left as if I was turning around...and rushed forward at top speed.

I’d gone left because the torch was currently in my right hand, and as I sprinted past the creature, I waved it right in front of their eyes. Not close enough to hit them — I was just going for momentary blindness.

They roared, far louder than their body should have been able to, and the entire room shook. Dust and debris rained from the ceiling. Fortunately, I was used to sprinting across uneven terrain, and I maintained my footing. I turned toward the exit tunnel as I moved, finding it easily as I approached.

I was only a couple feet away when a wall of stone shot upward from the ground, blocking the path.

I spun just in time to dodge a spiked tail that was arcing toward my face.

“Coward! Craven! Curr!” The creature roared, lunging at me with clawed hands. As they drew closer, I got a better look. They had a human-looking face and body, but they were covered from head to toe in white scales, and they had a serpentine tail covered in wicked six-inch spikes.

I side-stepped the lunge and the creature missed, stumbling. I realized that it was probably still half-blind from the torch, and they had probably responded to my movements through hearing or another sense.

That didn’t stop them from whipping its tail around the moment they failed to connect with me, though. It was a low sweep, so I hopped over it, backing up and keeping the torch in front of me. “A little redundant there. Coward and craven are pretty much the same thing. I appreciate alliteration, though.”

They just roared at me in reply. They were done talking for the moment, it seemed.

I considered sprinting back toward the entrance, but they were in reach of me now, and faster than I’d expected. I wasn’t confident I could outpace them, especially after it recovered its sight.

Instead, I stepped to the side and began to circle them, moving gradually back to the area that had been sealed by the wall. I wasn’t a master of stone sorcery, but I could use it. If I could find a few moments, maybe I could make a gap big enough to climb through.

“I’d really like to avoid fight—”

They swiped a claw and knocked the torch right out of my hand.

I stared blankly for a moment as the light source clattered across the floor, then punched the scaled creature in the face.

Hard.

The creature staggered back, raising a hand to its cheek. Their expression changed.

To a smile. “Better.” Their blue eyes seemed to shimmer in the dark.

That was not a good sign.

I’d learned to control my swings a long time ago, because I liked being able to spar with humans without crushing their bones to powder.

But I’d taken that swing out of instinct. It wasn’t quite my full strength, but I would have put my fist through the stone wall without any difficulty.

They weren’t even visibly bruised.

Their return punch came a moment later, and I raised an arm to block. The blow carried me off the ground and threw me back a good ten feet. I landed in a slide, my arm aching from the force of the impact.

Motion sorcery, I realized. No amount of pure physical strength would have knocked me upward like that; instead, the strike had carried with it a blast of magic that enhanced and spread out the impact.

I knew what was coming next.

They blurred, flashing forward in a burst of kinetic energy, closing the gap between us in an instant.

But I’d fought motion sorcerers more times than I could count. Even before they landed, I was rotating my hips for a real punch, the kind I used to practice tearing through breastplates.

I hit them dead-on in the solar plexus. That actually slowed them down. They doubled over, clutching their chest and coughing.

For a moment, I was concerned that I’d misjudged and hit too hard.

Their tail whipped over their head, spiked tip arcing toward my throat. I grabbed it just in time, cutting one of my fingers on a spike in the process. They jerked the tail back, but I maintained my grip and stumbled forward.

With my free hand, I tried to throw another punch, but they grabbed my arm with both of theirs. We were practically on top of each other at that point, so I threw a knee upward. They countered by raising their own leg to block, which I hadn’t expected.

They snarled, biting at me with a set of teeth that were just slightly sharper than human ones. I stepped back to avoid the bite, and they finally managed to pull their tail free from my grip. Before they could swing it again, though, I slammed my boot down on their foot.

That got my hands free while they recoiled, and I used that freedom to back off a few feet. My left hand was still bleeding from where it had brushed against a spine, but not badly.

They backed off as well, apparently assessing me. That seemed good, until they kept backing off to the point where they disappeared into the mist.

I glanced around nervously, then headed for where I’d dropped the torch.

It went out before I reached it.

Resh.

I was plunged into darkness. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear something moving to the side of me.

Something big.

“Can I interest you in calling this a draw?”

I heard a growl, followed by what sounded like bones snapping to my side.

I continued to inch toward where I’d last seen the torch. Since blinding the creature had seemingly worked, it was possible that the creature would have a tough time finding me in the dark, even if its night vision was better than mine.

I was pretty close to where I’d thought the torch was when I ran into something much larger than I was.

I took a step back. I hadn’t remembered a wall there. I raised a hand and ran it across....scales. Large scales, each the size of my fist.

Uh oh.

I stepped back just before something slammed into me the size of my entire midsection, hard enough to throw me almost ceiling-high. I landed hard and fell on my side, rolling a few feet across the floor.

That hurt.

I barely managed to push myself to the side before something landed on the stone where I’d been moments before, smashing the stone of the cavern floor.

Even without the light, I was close enough to get a glimpse of the clawed appendage that landed near my face. It was even bigger than what I’d felt connect with me, probably about the size of the upper half of my body.

I’d been thrown and battered by nothing more than a glancing blow.

I pushed myself to my feet with a cough, raising my left hand.

The darkness wasn’t slowing this thing down as much as I’d hoped, but it was making it impossible for me to evaluate my opponent effectively.

Burn. A sphere of flame the size of a watermelon appeared in my hand, and a chill ran down my spine as the spell extracted its cost. I rarely conjured fire on this scale due to the tax on my body, but I needed this flame for two reasons — both to see, and as a potential detergent to further attacks.

“Foolish human,” they spoke, the room trembling with each word. “Had you chosen to fight me honorably from the outset, I would not have used this form.”

As it spoke, I took in what I was looking at.

A huge, serpentine head with a pair of vicious horns, each of which was large enough to impale me with ease.

A leonine body covered in hardened scales, with four massive clawed hands. Though standing on four legs, it was still twice as tall as I was.

And its wings were vast, at least twenty feet in total span, nearly brushing the ceiling and walls.

It was a creature of legend.

Unfortunately, I had no idea what I was looking at.

They don’t have dragons where I come from.

About the Author

Andrew Rowe was once a professional game designer for awesome companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Cryptic Studios, and Obsidian Entertainment. Nowadays, he’s writing full time.

When he’s not crunching numbers for game balance, he runs live-action role-playing games set in the same universe as his books. In addition, he writes for pen and paper role-playing games.

Aside from game design and writing, Andrew watches a lot of anime, reads a metric ton of fantasy books, and plays every role-playing game he can get his hands on.

Interested in following Andrew’s books releases, or discussing them with other people? You can find more info, update, and discussions in a few places online:

Andrew’s Blog: https://andrewkrowe.wordpress.com/

Mailing List: https://andrewkrowe.wordpress.com/mailing-list/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Arcane-Ascension-378362729189084/

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClimbersCourt/

Other Books by Andrew Rowe

The War of Broken Mirrors Series

Forging Divinity

Stealing Sorcery

Defying Destiny (Coming Soon)

Arcane Ascension Series

Sufficiently Advanced Magic

On the Shoulders of Titans

Six Sacred Swords (Spinoff; Coming Soon)

Arcane Ascension Book 3 (Coming Soon)