by Andrew Rowe
“Better to refresh our mana.” I sat down at the base of the mana fountain, removing my waterskin and filling it with the mana water. “Maybe stock up on this, too.”
We spent a few minutes drinking mana water, resting, and storing a bit of mana water for later use. Then, we headed to the door with the skull lock.
“Patrick, Mara, any advice based on your last expedition?” Sera asked.
“The last spire guardian we fought was a big armored bear. Strong and tough, but not very fast.” Patrick paused, then belatedly added, “Oh, also it was on fire.”
Mara shook her head. “Fire bears are the worst.”
“Any traps, or was it a fairly conventional fight?” I asked.
“Just a standard fight. Was a little tough for just the two of us, but doable. We beat it through attrition.”
“Was that the only spire guardian you fought?” Sera asked.
“Yeah, only the first floor had a conventional spire design. Everything afterward was…weirder. We had plenty of fights after that, including some that were harder than the fire bear, but nothing else I’d call a spire guardian.”
“Sounds simple enough. Let’s see if we can get an eye on our opponent from the entrance. Be ready to move in case it jumps or attacks through the doorway.”
We headed to the door. Sera inserted the skull key, which vanished into the lock. Patrick reached for the door, but Mara put a hand on his arm.
“Let’s be a little safer about this one, yeah?”
“Fair.” He took a breath, stepping back.
Mara touched the center of the door. It vanished entirely.
The room ahead was much larger, probably a hundred feet across and fifty feet wide. It was much taller, too, probably about fifty feet in height. There were four colossal pillars reaching upward toward the ceiling, each several feet wide. At the far end was a circular stairway blocked by stone walls on three sides and a barred metal gate on the front. There was an obvious keyhole for the gate.
We found the key easily enough. It was attached to the collar of a titanic three-headed lupine beast that snarled at us the instant the door vanished.
The moment we saw the wolf, we stepped out of the doorway out of instinct. This may have been a bit preemptive: the wolf didn’t exhale a breath of blistering flame from one of its three heads for at least two or three seconds.
Right after the wave of fire passed through the now-open doorway, Sera waved a hand in that direction. “Wall.” A wall of ice appeared, blocking the entrance. Given the power of that flame breath, I didn’t expect it to last long. The wolf itself wouldn’t fit through the doorway — it was about ten feet tall and several feet wide — but if it could get a head through the doorway after melting the wall, we’d be in trouble. “Suggestions?”
“I’ve got this one.” Patrick cracked his neck, stepping up to the ice wall. “It’s a tri-hound. Three heads, three breath weapons. It’s pretty similar to the chimera we fought in the final exam, just a little more agile and probably lower on durability. If you’ll get rid of the wall, I can handle it.”
“By yourself?” I blinked. “That’s a spire guardian, Patrick. You sure?”
“Yep. And I won’t be alone.” He lifted his sword. “I’ve got Bright Reflection, remember?”
I picked up on the basics of his plan immediately, but gave him a dubious look. “Does the sword have enough mana left for that?”
“It’s recovered over the last few rooms and during our break. I don’t think I’ll need full mana for this. You can always jump in if—”
A blast of lightning smashed into the ice wall, melting straight through the center of it.
“We’ll be on standby.” Sera waved a hand, shaping the remaining ice out of the way. “Go for it, Patrick.”
Patrick gave a grateful nod. I stared incredulously as he rushed straight into the spire guardian room. As he moved inside, the wolf focused all three heads on him immediately, growling and pawing at the ground.
I felt a surge of panic.
It’s going to charge. He can’t magically reflect a charge.
I stepped forward, but Sera put an arm in my way. “He needs this.”
The wolf roared and leapt. It crossed the space toward Patrick in a moment, ready to eviscerate him with now-flaming claws.
Just before it reached him, Patrick ducked down…then launched himself straight into the air.
A loud crack filled the air as he shot upward with blistering speed, easily evading the tri-hound’s pounce. Then without pause, he hurled a blast of lightning straight at the hound’s leftmost head. The blast connected before the hound could react, causing it to shudder and roar, turning its heads upward to inhale.
Patrick was already moving again, shooting across the room to avoid an exhaled gout of ice potent enough that I could feel the chill from the doorway. He hurled a blast of fire in response, but the hound was quick enough to see it this time, shifting one of its other heads to exhale a fireball and blast Patrick’s flames out of the air before they connected.
Patrick hurled a jagged bolt of lightning at the hound, but it sprang out of the lightning’s path, growling and sniffing at the air. Three heads focused narrowed eyes on Patrick, seemingly considering how best to devour someone who was floating in mid-air.
“Come on!” He cheerily waved with Bright Reflection. “I’m right here!”
The hound roared, then inhaled again, the eyes of its central head glowing bright crimson. Patrick floated in place until the moment the hound exhaled a wave of fiery breath, then casually evaded the jet of flame by flying to the side.
…Or, he tried to, anyway. The burning breath curved in mid-air, following his path.
Patrick didn’t panic — instead, he simply pulled back his sword and said, “Bright Reflection.”
His sword, a mere facsimile of the true Sacred Sword of Light, nevertheless glowed with a brightness rivaling the rising sun itself. It was too bright to even look at directly, but I was able to follow the result. With a casual swing of the brilliant brand, he smashed the incoming flame breath back at the hound.
The blast caught the hound dead-on, lighting a portion of its back fur on fire. It howled in agony, rolling on the ground to extinguish the flames — and in that moment, Patrick shot downward from the sky, ramming Bright Reflection into the tri-hound’s underbelly.
The sword sunk in deeply. Too deeply.
When the massive beast continued to roll, Patrick’s sword was embedded so far into it that the sword was torn from his grip. He barely managed to fly out of range before the hound smashed him with its flailing movements. A moment later, he was in the air again, but without his primary weapon. And while he’d done some damage with that lunge, it didn’t look anywhere close to fatal.
He hurled a few weak blasts of flame from the air, but the hound ignored them entirely, continuing to roll until the stronger flames from its own breath were extinguished. Then it pushed itself back to its feet, looking upward and growling loudly.
I thought I saw Patrick reach for something glittering in one of his sleeves, but then he hesitated, choosing to launch another blast of lightning instead of grabbing the object. The lightning arced in mid-air to the hilt of Bright Reflection, channeling straight through the sword and into the hound’s body. The tri-hound howled and shuddered, briefly pawing at the sword embedded in its underbelly, but the sword remained trapped in place.
Resh, that was a good plan. If he had his sword back…
But it had failed. The hound turned back toward him, and I could see Patrick wobbling in mid-air. His mana was running low. Maybe critically low — it was too hard for me to tell at a glance.
Then all three heads began to inhale at the same time. Lightning sparked in the nostrils of one head, frost formed around another, and smoke gathered around the central head.
Meltlake took a step forward, but Mara raised a hand. “Don’t worry, Professor. He’s got this.”
The hound exhaled a to
rrent of three types of mana at once, each of the three attacks curving toward Patrick at a different angle. Without Bright Reflection, he had no way to turn the attacks against the hound, and they were far stronger than his own magic. The blasts might have been avoidable on their own, but three at once, with each head being able to control one…he didn’t stand a chance at evading them.
He didn’t need to.
Patrick’s hands shot out, one burning and the other wreathed in lightning. As the attacks approached, he hurled his own straight into them. His attacks weren’t even close to the same power as the hounds, but he didn’t need them to be.
Like deflects like, Teft’s words echoed in my mind.
That wouldn’t work against attacks that were overwhelmingly powerful, but Patrick had grown much stronger over the months since the year had begun. He couldn’t hope to contest the hound’s breath weapons directly, but such power wasn’t necessary — he just needed to nudge them slightly out of the way. Just enough to cause the two blasts he could deflect to collide with the one he couldn’t.
Nudged from their original path, the three attacks met in mid-air. Patrick needed to time his counterstrikes close to the point of impact to prevent the hound from reshaping its own breath like it had with the fire, which meant that they were almost close enough to hit him when it happened — and the explosive detonation in the air was a little too close. The sheer force of the explosion hurled Patrick backward, smashing him into one of the chamber’s walls.
In that moment, he was dazed. And in that moment, the hound chose to strike. The tremendous beast ran forward as Patrick shook his head to collect himself. He was still floating in mid-air, twenty feet off the ground. Too high even for the hound to reach in a single bound…but not, it seemed, too high to reach when it jumped on one of the chamber’s pillars, landing sideways on the surface, and then somehow leaping off of that and straight toward Patrick.
At that point, Mara got out of the way to let Meltlake move, but it was too late. The hound was airborne, lunging for Patrick with the jaws of its central head open wide, trailing smoke and fire.
Patrick was too slow to dodge, but not too slow to act. His right arm shot out and pointed with his wand. “Freeze.”
A lance of ice flashed out from the wand — and straight into the hound’s open mouth. Then, as it met with the flames within, the tri-hound met with a particularly explosive case of indigestion.
By which I mean to say that the tri-hound exploded.
The blast slammed Patrick into the wall again, and he sunk toward the floor. With a waved hand, Professor Meltlake steadied him on a gust of wind, slowly lowering him to the ground.
The key from the hound’s collar — the only thing remaining of the hound after the creature detonated — hit the ground with a “tink” before Patrick did.
I rushed over to Patrick as he landed on the ground. He was blinking rapidly and looked like an absolute mess, but he was otherwise visibly unharmed.
I grabbed him to help him to his feet. “Lesser Regeneration.” A flare of mana passed between us. Just because I didn’t see any injuries didn’t mean he hadn’t suffered any. “You okay?”
“Yep!” He took my hand and pulled himself back up. “Thanks, Corin!”
Sera came up right behind me. “Patrick. That was…amazing. You beat a spire guardian on your own!”
He blushed bright crimson. “Th—thanks, Sera. It wasn’t, uh, that big of a deal.”
“No, it was.” Meltlake put a hand on his forehead, rustling his hair. “You’ve made me proud, apprentice. Even I wouldn’t have tried that at your age.”
“I…uh, gosh. I…don’t know what to say.”
I pulled my hand back just in time to avoid Mara coming in and hugging him. “No more solo work like that for a while, yeah? You did great showing off there, but you can’t hog all the fun.”
Patrick laughed, still blushing. “Fine, fine. Thanks, everyone.”
“So, the ice was the wand, I get that. But how were you flying?” I asked. “I know you can levitate, but full-on flight is a higher-level spell than Carnelian, isn’t it?”
Patrick grinned. “You didn’t think I came out of the spire without any new toys, did you?” He lifted a foot to show me something I hadn’t paid attention to — a wing pattern on his boot. I hadn’t even realized he was wearing new boots, since I didn’t really pay much attention to fashion.
“Ooh. Flying boots. And since you’re already an Elementalist….”
“I can recharge them. And since I already had levitation experience, picking up on the fine control of flight wasn’t too hard.”
“And I take it the wand is your other reward from the last spire trip?”
“Yep. Rounds out one of the last elements I needed. If I can get my hands on an earth item, I’ll have all the basics covered early, and I can start practicing for when I get them from my attunement at higher levels.”
“You get all of them from your attunement?” Mara asked. “Thought there was just a tertiary mana type at Citrine.”
“For most attunements, yeah. Elementalists get more mana types as a perk of the attunement. It’s how you see Meltlake using earth on occasion.”
“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that,” Meltlake said. “But this isn’t class. Let’s get to that next floor, shall we?”
Sera picked up the key, then offered it to Patrick. “I think you deserve to do the honors.”
Patrick laughed gleefully, finally dislodged himself from Mara’s hug, and took the key. “Thanks, Sera.” He glanced around. “Everyone ready?”
We gave him a round of confirmations. I did one last cursory check to make sure Patrick wasn’t visibly injured, and we took a couple minutes for Patrick to go drink some more mana water from the fountain in the previous room and recover. We retrieved Bright Reflection, of course, and Patrick gingerly replaced it in the scabbard at his side. Then, with Patrick looking somewhat refreshed, we walked as a group to the gate guarding the stairway. Patrick turned the key and the entire gate vanished, as if it had never been there.
Huh. Was that some kind of solid illusion or spell effect? I wonder if I could learn how to make gates that—
“Corin, we’re going.” Sera gently nudged me, pointing toward the stairway.
“Oh, sorry. Coming.” I stared upward as my friends stepped onto the stairway, walking upward. Then, after one last look at the spire guardian’s room, I followed them.
And for the first time, I walked up the stairs to the second floor of one of the Soaring Spires.
Chapter XI – Extreme Shipping
There was a door at the top of the stairway. We briefly checked it for traps, finding none. When we opened it, we saw only a white space ahead.
“Is that…?” Sera asked.
“It’s perfectly normal,” Meltlake said in a reassuring tone. “All the doors in the spire teleport us. This one is just being a little more blatant. We’ll be in for a change of scenery on the other side of it, but that’s nothing to worry about. The Tiger Spire has a bit more variety than you’re probably used to from the Serpent Spire.”
Sera looked a little uncomfortable, but Mara squeezed her hand reassuringly. “We did a bunch of these doorways on the last trip. It’ll be fine.”
That seemed to help. Sera gave a weak smile. “Come on, then.”
Mara practically dragged Sera through the doorway. The rest of us followed.
I was ready for a change, but not quite the scale.
The most famous examples of teleportation tend to be titanic in scale. The ancient gateways in the Unclaimed Lands that supposedly used to allow people to walk from one place on the continent to another in an instant. Or Keras being sent from one continent to another by some bearded old wizard. Even the legends of fiends and heroes from other worlds finding their way to our own.
The teleportation I’d seen had been frankly pretty mundane by comparison. Routine. Fake escape bells to switch group members in the sc
hool exams. Real escape bells to leave a spire. Jump bells to cross a room. That teleportation potion I’d used to get rid of Mizuchi.
Okay, that last one was admittedly pretty good.
But small in scale, right? Nothing too flashy, nothing world-shaking. Nothing that felt like long-distance travel.
So, it kind of took me off-guard a little when I stepped through a doorway and found myself staring into the heart of the ocean.
My first instinct was to freeze. This was good, since if I’d done what Keras probably would have and attacked the ocean or something, things would have ended badly for me.
(I make no claims as to whether or not Keras could have successfully punched out the ocean.)
Anyway, there was only a thin guardrail between me and a long drop off the side of the…
…Was I on a ship?
I was on a ship! And a huge ship, too.
It was at least a couple hundred feet wide and several hundred feet long. We were near one of the edges on the front of the ship — that’s, uh, the prow, right? No, I’ll just stop talking about ship terms. Okay.
The front of the boat. Yeah.
There were multiple sails. Four, I think? I also thought I heard the hum of something far below that sounded like an engine, but I didn’t see any stacks emitting steam. Maybe a mana-based engine, then, or something like one of those fancy combustion engines from Caelford? I wasn’t sure.
There were multiple doors leading to cabins on the top level, as well as a raised platform to another door. I thought I could see the wheel up there, but there were people in the way.
I tensed. We had room to maneuver, but there were a lot of people on board. My whole group had appeared around me, and we were hardly the only ones. I saw dozens, maybe hundreds of people standing around and chatting, or reclining on the deck, or working on what I presumed to be ship-running tasks. I noted a few in what looked like uniforms, as well as a much broader variety of outfits among other people. Most were in what looked like typical civilian garb, but I noted a few that looked like they were wearing military uniforms, and even one woman in a full suit of heavy copper armor.