The Torch that Ignites the Stars (Arcane Ascension Book 3)

by Andrew Rowe

  “So accusatory! I’ll have you know this wasn’t stolen.”

  I stared at her accusingly.

  “Hey! Don’t look so suspicious. I did have to do a little sneaking to find the right place, but the document itself is a copy.”

  “A copy? How?”

  Sera grinned. “Well, I was going to keep it a secret, but since you’re so impressed…hold on a moment.”

  Sera left the room briefly, returning a few minutes later with Researcher.

  Why didn’t she just summon her? I suppose it’s a waste of mana if Researcher is just down the hall…and maybe Researcher doesn’t like being summoned. I know she doesn’t like being unsummoned, I suppose just being teleported could cause her some distress, if to a lesser extent.

  Maybe I should have asked, but I didn’t like prying into that sort of thing.

  Researcher smiled at me as she entered. “Master Cadence, Miss Cadence, how may I be of service?”

  Sera lazily waved a hand in my direction. “Tell Corin about your documentation abilities.”

  “Of course.” Researcher nodded, then turned to me. “As a Researcher with a library focus, I have the ability to quickly absorb the information in written documents. This allows me to rapidly reconstruct any document I have viewed, either through a projection,” she raised a hand, and a phantasmal parchment appeared in front of her, “or, if desired, by physically copying that information by hand.”

  I raised the document Sera had handed to me. “So, you hand-wrote this after seeing the original?”

  “Not precisely. I scanned the original document magically; I never read it. Additionally, I did not write it manually. I used a device called a typewriter, which allowed for increased legibility and precision.”

  I blinked. I’d seen a typewriter in the archive before, so I knew what one was. “Aren’t those expensive?”

  “They are much more common in Caelford, and Miss Cadence was able to borrow access to one of them at the lab. From my understanding, she was under considerably less scrutiny than you were in general, and had more downtime.”

  I nodded. That made a degree of sense. “How’d you find the right document?”

  “At a certain point in Sera’s tour, they asked her to demonstrate one of her existing contracts. She wisely asked for them to wait a bit and returned to the hotel to retrieve me and acquire permission for me to join the facility tour. As we toured the facility, I silently began to scan for nearby documents for the appearance of the words ‘Warren Constantine’. I have a relatively wide range for this, but it takes some time. When I found these words, I analyzed and stored the entire relevant documents. The one in your possession is his personnel file, although he was mentioned in several others.”

  “That is…pretty incredible, Researcher. I didn’t know you could do that.”

  Researcher beamed. “The acquisition, storage, and presentation of knowledge are some of my core functions. I know a variety of spells for those purposes. It has been a pleasure to be able to utilize them for new information, outside of the scope of the school library.”

  “I’m glad. I hope we can find you plenty more information to work with in the future.”

  Researcher bowed. “It would be my great pleasure.”

  Sera turned to her. “Thanks, Researcher. Good explanation. You can head back to our room.”

  “I will do so.” Researcher bowed and left to return to the other hotel room.

  Sera turned back to me. “Pretty useful, right?”

  “Incredibly so. I knew she worked in the archive, but…I’d always pictured her just manually memorizing things, just with an enhanced mind. This is far more impressive.”

  “Elementals aren’t quite like us. They’re more specialized than even the most capable humans – and because of that, they can do some truly impressive things. Which, of course, I intend to use to our utmost advantage.”

  I grinned. Sometimes, Sera and I thought along similar lines. “Good. So, I’ll read this soon, but if you want to summarize…”

  “In summary, Warren Constantine was the only Arbiter they could get to work here for an extended period of time. He was integral to the start of the project and super passionate. When he left, they got Biomancers to replace him, but they’re not quite as good at human Enchantment stuff because they don’t have the same automatic purification function that Arbiters do. So, they needed to get Citrine-level Biomancers to do the same work as an Arbiter, and even then, apparently Arbiters are just able to handle some elements of the project more intuitively. They implied higher-level Arbiters have some special functions that help, but I didn’t find any details.”

  I nodded. That sounded about like what I expected. “From my own research, it sounds like most of the other Arbiters work for visages directly. There are normally only a handful of us at any given time — like, one or two per visage. There’s clearly a demand for more Arbiters, but the lab isn’t making artificial ones.”

  “Hm. Might antagonize the visages if Arbiters are supposed to be restricted.”

  “I think that’s plausible. If Wydd considers them forbidden knowledge, maybe duplicating their functions would be politically problematic. It’s very possible they simply don’t know how to make all the Arbiter functions, since it’s such a rare attunement.”

  “I think you’ve caught the most likely explanation, there.” Sera gestured at my hand. “You mentioned that spell they taught you early on for scanning attunements. I get the impression that spell didn’t exist when Warren Constantine worked for them, or that he was simply too secretive to let them use it on him. Either way, I don’t think they’ve had a chance to use it on an Arbiter yet.”

  “Agreed. They want the sub-glyphs. They’ve been nice about it, but Ashon hasn’t exactly been subtle about his interest.”

  “Wow. If you think someone is unsubtle…”

  “Come on, I’m not that bad…am I?” I gave her a quizzical look.

  Sera just snorted.

  I tried not to be too hurt by that. “Fine, fine. Either way, I haven’t let them use the analysis spell on my Arbiter mark yet. Unless they can do it silently, from a distance, like what Researcher was doing with books. Or they have runes on the walls that record the runes of everyone who walks in. Or…”

  “I get it. It’s possible they had a way to do it subtly and remotely that you couldn’t detect. Yeah, that’s an issue.” Sera frowned. “But this Ashon guy has still been asking to see it?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “Every day. I thought it might just be a personal interest at first — and there’s probably some of that — but I was already on my guard with the facility, so I kept saying ‘no’. I’m glad I did, because it’s been more and more obvious that they assigned him to me with the intent to get that information. I suspect they tried to find someone I’d naturally be inclined to trust.”

  “So, you’re saying he’s cute, then?”

  I let out an exasperated sigh. “I meant someone that shared my interests in esoteric enchantment theory. I’m not here to find a date.”

  “But if you were, someone who is obviously befriending you with ulterior motives does seem like your type.”

  “Ouch. That happened once, Sera. Once.”

  Sera shrugged. “Verdict isn’t out on Cecily yet.”

  “Oh, come on. We’ve known each other since we were kids!”

  She gave me a mischievous grin. “So, you’re not denying that you’re interested in Ceci, then.”

  I groaned. “I don’t know. I still don’t think I get this whole romance thing, and honestly, it’s not all that important right now. Are you really concerned Cecily might be planning to stab us in the back? I thought you liked her.”

  “Eh. I do like her. But she was a little too ready to jump into that spire for a second Judgment as a Carnelian. Sure, Farren said some weird prophetic nonsense, but that shouldn’t be enough to assure Cecily that it’s safe. She’s hiding something.”

  “You don’t thin
k she’s just trying to keep up with the rest of us? I thought she was sincere about feeling like she was behind the curve compared to the rest of our group.”

  “Oh, I do think she was being sincere about that. I also think she was afraid to go back in that spire…but not afraid enough. I think Tristan told her something he didn’t tell the rest of us. Maybe he made arrangements for her to get a second attunement safely. He clearly has other Whispers that he’s working with, and we’re in Caelford, where the whole artificial attunement thing started. This is the spire he’d be most likely to have connections to.”

  I shook my head. “Why not just tell us about that, then?”

  “Compartmentalizing is a good way to determine if he has a leak somewhere in his information network. It’s also very probable that he doesn’t want you interacting with specific Whispers, since he doesn’t want other people to know how heavily involved you are in all this. That helps keep you safer. He might also think you wouldn’t approve of whatever he’s doing with Cecily. You’re extremely risk averse, and even if he’s rigging a Judgment on Cecily’s behalf, it can’t be entirely risk-free for her. Finally, Tristan is probably just used to keeping secrets. It may not be intuitive to him to share.”

  Sera…had a point. Several, in fact. It was glaringly obvious that she was better at reading people than I was. I wasn’t sure if I should be jealous of that, grateful, or both.

  I exhaled a breath. “Okay. Let’s say Tristan rigged this Judgment for Cecily somehow. Wouldn’t she be back by now?”

  Sera shrugged. “Depends on how subtle he’s being about it. If I was in Tristan’s position, I’d want the Judgment to look as normal as possible. Maybe take measures to ensure that Cecily doesn’t die, and probably decide her secondary attunement in advance rather than basing it on the test results. That kind of thing would be harder to detect if any other Whispers are auditing it. Given that it’s a second Judgment, maybe they even have multiple Whispers monitoring it at the same time, and whoever works for Tristan is having to help in extremely subtle ways.”

  “…And if they can’t find a window to do so, Cecily could still die in the process. She could be dead already.”

  “True, but unlikely. She has items to escape. While we have run into anti-teleportation runes, and the chances of something killing her instantly exist, I think the odds of her survival are higher than even an initial Judgment would be.”

  “That doesn’t really line up with second Judgment numbers.”

  “Eh, I’ve read those studies, too, but they don’t include factors like how many people take return bells with them. It’s just success, escape, and disappearance rates. We don’t know what the odds would be specifically for people who do bring a bell, and your item is better than a standard bell.”

  I nodded slowly. I hoped Sera was right. It was making me nervous just to think about it. “Okay. I’ll try to believe Cecily is still alive in there.”

  “You had faith in Tristan. He survived.” Sera grinned at me. “You of all people should remember that.”

  “I…sort of. Tristan’s situation isn’t exactly what I would call ideal.” I forced a weak smile. “I don’t want to think about that right now. Back to our previous talk. Warren Constantine. What happened to him?”

  Sera winced. “The records were honestly a little vague on that. The basics, though? He had a huge argument with Farren, stormed out of the building, and just…vanished. Didn’t even collect his last paycheck. Records say that they tried to contact him at his last known address, but they found the place totally abandoned.”

  “Hm. Maybe we could check the place out with Researcher and see if she can find any leads on where he went?”

  “We already did.”

  I blinked. “What? Did you find anything?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing of interest. It’s been over a decade. Unless he’s the type to keep things in secret compartments, it’s unlikely there’s any trace of him to find. Admittedly, he does seem like the type that might do that, but the new owners of the place weren’t going to let us go poking and prodding walls. They weren’t related to Constantine. Hadn’t even heard of him. There have been at least at three other owners since he left.”

  “You’ve done that much research on this already? How long ago did you get this file?”

  “Day two.” She shrugged.

  “And you didn’t tell me? Why?”

  “Because you seemed like you were having a good time. And I hadn’t seen you enjoy yourself that sincerely since…I don’t even know when. It’s supposed to be our vacation. I wanted you to actually have one.”

  “…Oh.”

  Sera smiled. “I do actually care about your well-being, you know.”

  “I…know. Thanks, Sera.” I didn’t know what else to say to that. I probably should have told her I cared about her, too. Which I do. But I’m really bad at that sort of thing. I’m much better at awkwardly avoiding the subject. “So, uh, that house has other people in it. And no trace of Constantine.”

  “Apartment, actually, but yeah. No trace we could find. You might have better luck if you want to go. The owners were pretty nice.”

  “I’ll…uh, pass.” The very idea of trying to talk to strangers for a purpose like that made me shudder. “Any other leads on him?”

  “There are things in the file about previous disputes between Warren and Farren, but not a lot of details. Farren herself would be the best resource, but I don’t think we should ask her. This is one place where I actually agree with Tristan — she is absolutely not to be trusted. She has an angle on this, above and beyond just experimenting with children and turning them into super weapons. I don’t know what that angle is, but I have a feeling we’re safer not prying into it right now.”

  I nodded, thinking. “Okay. What about physically tracing Warren’s current location using a tracking spell? If we had something tied to him, like some of his blood…”

  “I doubt they’ve got any of that handy. And even if they did, Arbiter attunements scrub mana signatures. Would an Arbiter even be traceable like that?”

  “I don’t actually know. Hm. Valid question. Can you go grab Researcher again and have her try to track me?”

  “Sure. Back in a few.”

  A few minutes later, they returned. Researcher folded her arms in front of her in what must have been some kind of friendly gesture I wasn’t familiar with. “I am pleased to see you again so soon, Master Cadence. Is there something I can assist you with?”

  “Yep. Question. Will an Arrow of Direction spell work on someone like Corin with no mana signature?”

  Researcher turned her head to me, then back to Sera. “Technically, the answer to that is ‘yes’, but according to my attempts to extrapolate your intentions, the answer is somewhat more nuanced.”

  Sera furrowed her brow. “Elaborate.”

  “An Arrow of Direction targeting an individual without a mana signature will simply show everyone and everything in the area without a mana signature. For example, if there are other items in the area that have been purified, or other Arbiters, they would all appear the same to a standard Arrow of Direction spell. When I cast one a moment ago, for example, it displayed several arrows — one to Corin and one to each of the items he crafted that each of you are currently wearing.”

  I exhaled a breath. “That’s…useful to know, Researcher, thank you.”

  “I strive to be useful and informative at all times, Master Cadence.” She gave me a mild bow. “Is there anything else I can assist you with?”

  “Is there another way to use an Arrow of Direction to search for Corin more easily?” Sera asked.

  “Allow me a moment to process.” Exactly one moment later, Researcher spoke again. “Not with that particular spell. There are, however, variants that are capable of searching based on criteria other than mana structure. Contract-based tracking spells and spells that search based on shade or spirit signatures are possible. I am personally capable of casting a
spirit-based variant on Arrow of Direction called Spirit Tracking, as well as a number of sub-variants, such as—”

  Sera cut her off with a wave. “Is that spell something you could teach to us?”

  “To Corin, yes. He has sufficient mental mana for that purpose. While the conditions of our contract do enable me to provide you with mental mana, I regret to inform you that your total mana capacity is too low to cast even the weakest variation on this spell.”

  Sera rubbed at the top of her nose in obvious frustration. “You don’t need to remind me of my insufficient mana pool. But thank you, Researcher. What would this spell require to cast?”

  “It’s largely identical to Arrow of Direction, it simply detects the target based on a different type of energy. This is somewhat more difficult to execute; as prerequisites, I would need to teach Corin a basic Detect Spirit spell, as well as a Spirit Perception spell.”

  “Wouldn’t those require spirit mana?” I asked.

  “There are variants that draw from spirit mana for a higher degree of fidelity, but mental mana is capable of granting senses outside of the scope of the mana types that you personally possess. This is, for example, how you are capable of identifying mana types you are not capable of casting when you cast the Lesser Identify spell.”

  I nodded to her. “Ah. That makes sense. So, I’m basically doing something like Detect Aura, but tuned toward only one specific mana type?”

  “You are correct. Then, from there, you will need to learn to combine that with a function similar to Arrow of Direction.”

  That actually sounded pretty simple, all things considered. “Okay. Once I’ve learned the spells, what would we need?”

  “Something possessing a sample of the target’s spirit. Given that the parameters you’ve given me are ‘track Corin’, you could use yourself easily enough, but my assessment is that you are merely an example case, rather than the intended subject. Is that correct?”

  I gave her an affirmative gesture. “We’re looking at tracking another Arbiter, and I was an example.”

  “Understood.” Researcher looked back to Sera. “You would need something with a sample of the appropriate Arbiter’s spirit, which may prove challenging to obtain. A spirit-bonded item would serve, but such things are rare. A more likely source would be some of the Arbiter’s blood.”