Brightblade

by Jez Cajiao

  I disconnected from Seneschal, feeling the sense of his mind fade as Oracle flew silently alongside me as we hurried up the stairs, spiraling around and around. I jumped over loose bones and the occasional bit of leather or detritus that had fallen from the undead as we went, finally reaching the pair of freshly grown stone slabs that sat to either side of the doorway leading to the Hall of Memories. Looking them over, I could see how they would move, sliding almost effortlessly into place, then dropping down into grooves cut into the walls and floor. Forming an overlapping plate, they would fully cover the passage before a final growth of stone would seal them in place against any attempts to move them. It would be as easy to rip the stones out of the ceiling or wall with bare hands as move this barrier once it was in place.

  I grinned and returned down the stairs to Bob, pleased to find that he’d piled everything up that was noteworthy. He was waiting patiently and hefting a pair of swords, one in either upper hand, while the lower ones held daggers. Damn, he looked lethal now.

  I checked over the gear, disappointed that most of it was junk. My breastplate was beyond repair, so I replaced it with the one I’d been wearing on my arrival. I also found a dozen silver coins, three copper, and a silver ring set aside for me. Beyond that was armor that had most of the previous inhabitant still rotted to the inside, or weapons that were frankly crap, covered in rust and chipped so badly they’d likely shatter with one good blow.

  Last of all, I collected the dirks I’d used, sheathing them in their hidden slots and scooping up my naginata. As I lifted the weapon, something caught my eye. In addition to the usual brilliant gleam of steel, the blade seemed… different.

  I found my water skin and used it to wash the blade clean, but the steel blade was altered somehow. Rather than the dull gleam I had come to expect, it now had the brilliant shine of silver. As I turned the blade this way and that, I could see a pattern moving, almost like a sluggish liquid, but it remained bound within the form the blade had always held.

  I tried spinning it, then working through some experimental jabs and blows before bringing it in close to examine it again. The Silverbright potion I’d used had somehow altered the weapon. It was still solid‒banging it with a fist proved that‒but the metal itself seemed to slowly shift as though contained within an invisible mold.

  “Hey, Oracle!” I called out, holding my weapon out to her as she flew over. “What do you think of this?” I watched as she alighted on the haft and looked into the blade as though mesmerized.

  “It…it’s beautiful!” she said, gently touching it with one outstretched hand. When she was sure it was solid, she tried pressing on it and hitting it herself. “What happened to it?”

  “Well, I was kinda hoping you knew!” I muttered, checking my mana. I had nearly enough; as soon as it had replenished to ten points, I cast ‘Identify’ and began to grin.

  Naginata

  Further Description Yes/No

  Damage:

  24-40 +6

  Details:

  This two-handed weapon was built from a combination of modern Earth techniques and traditional Japanese skills, creating a weapon that is truly deadly in the hands of a skilled user.

  Enhanced; This weapon has been enhanced through Silverbright and has absorbed some of the soul of its victim. Current capacity: 6/100

  Bonus ability granted: To be chosen…

  Rarity

  Magical

  Durability

  Charge:

  Highly Rare

  Yes

  87/100

  N/A

  “Okay, so what; the potion turned it into a vampire weapon?” I asked Oracle.

  “No! It evolved it! It’s made it into an evolving weapon, somehow? Everything you kill with it should make it stronger, and the first creature you fed it was an ancient SporeMother! A creature that had killed thousands in her time!”

  “Okay, so the ‘soul’ of that thing, for want of a better word, filled six slots in the Naginata, and it now does six damage more than it did before. Everything I kill with it is going to increase the damage I do with it? That’s awesome! If I get it to a hundred, even killing weak-ass things, I’ll be unstoppable! And there’s a bonus ability…” I concentrated on the bonus option, and it expanded before me, offering three choices:

  Bonus Weapon Ability

  Effect

  Level

  Health bonus

  Increase your base health by? x1 where? is the amount of soul slots filled….

  1

  Magical infusion

  Casting your spells through this weapon will infuse it with that ability for the duration of channeling and cause ?x1 damage where ? is equal to the damage done by the cast spell…

  1

  Pain

  Cause additional phantom pain from strikes with this weapon, distracting your enemies and making it harder to cast spells…

  1

  “Okay, that’s just confusing…” I muttered. “So, if I chose the health bonus, since the weapon has six soul slots filled, I’d get a boost of six to my health? That’s crap!”

  “Jax, it’s an evolving weapon. This is at Level One; if you select one of these traits, then get enough soul energy to level it again, it might double, or more! Imagine if you leveled it to ten, to gain ten times the soul energy stored. Get it to a hundred, and you’d have an extra thousand health!”

  “Or, more importantly, I could do a fuck-ton of magical damage. If we’d had this earlier, the SporeMother wouldn’t have stood a chance; or if I’d infused my naginata with fire, I could have killed DarkSpore with ease. Holy shit! Wait… this could be seriously overpowered. Not that I’m complaining, you understand, but if I can do this, surely other people could as well?”

  “Whatever that Silverbright is, it isn’t listed in any of the books I know. I’d never heard of it before. But you can’t waste the capacity on weak enemies; imagine the difference if you used it only on stronger enemies! Oh, wow!” She suddenly gasped, grabbing her cheeks and staring at me with wide eyes. Her voice dropped to a mere whisper. “Do you know what this means?”

  “Wait, what did you just think of?!” I asked, grinning at her.

  “Armor!” she squealed. “Imagine what you could do if you made armor like this! Stealth gear that could make you truly invisible! Or heavy armor that would be invulnerable! What could stop you? You could find Tommy; you could kill anyone that tried to stop you! You could become a god!” She trailed off into a whisper again, and I frowned at her, my mind caught up in the possibilities. I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make the pickle tingle; the thought of being a god, maybe going back to Earth and gutting the Baron and his kind… but no. I could imagine the kind of path I’d end up going down if I set out with the aim of becoming a god.

  “When power becomes all important, the ends justify the means...” I whispered to myself. I didn’t know where I’d heard that, or if I’d just bastardized a quote, but it was true, nonetheless.

  I remembered snatches of the memories of Her that I’d been given and resolved not to spread the knowledge of Her gifts. Even as I felt my heart ache in memory of Her death, I also knew, without knowing how, that the Oath he (I?) had sworn had transferred to me. Looking back, I wasn’t even sad about it. She deserved it, and more, even if I’d never really known her.

  I’d come here for Tommy, and to help the people I’d spent my life dreaming about. Power without a good reason was pointless, but growing stronger to protect them? That, I could do.

  I pondered the choices again. Health would be a huge help, especially considering how close I’d come to death so far. And pain… well, it would be useful as a distraction, but it felt kinda wrong. No, the best choice for me was Magical Infusion, upgrading my weapon into a magical one. I selected it and grinned as the entire length of my naginata flashed with silvery light.

  You have chosen Magical Infusion as your weapon evolution…

  Chapter Twenty

  We ate a lit
tle food and drank some water, checked over our weapons and my armor were as ready as they could be, then descended deeper into the Tower. As we went lower, we found that the Tower spread out considerably.

  The occasional level with a garden was badly overgrown, and many of the rooms had been destroyed. The floors we passed were empty, confirmed by Seneschal, as well as by my own ‘mk2 enhanced’ eyeballs, but as each level passed, the floors grew in size.

  Soon there were hundreds of small rooms, or dozens of large ones, on every floor. Many walls and doors had collapsed, with piles of rubble marking sites of both magical and mundane battles. Random piles of ruined equipment were scattered everywhere, and Oracle described in hushed whispers the battles that had been fought by the few defenders against the SporeMother’s forces.

  I’d been insanely lucky, not only to defeat her at all, but also to face her as I did, as years of decreasing meals and old age had atrophied her forces and abilities. I’d fought the equivalent of a ninety-year-old grandmother, as opposed to the creature in her prime. And I’d still only survived by a combination of blind luck and sheer bloody-mindedness.

  If I had not become bored of feeding the mana well and had attempted to loot the top floor, I would have died. Blind luck, greed, and my own low boredom threshold had saved me.

  “Oracle, what level were the defenders here? On average, I mean?” I asked quietly, looking at the devastation surrounding me.

  “I think the common soldiers were about level twenty, officers and the mages maybe thirty, and the Tower Magus would have been at least forty-five, from what I remember. He was always despairing of reaching level fifty; I remember that much. Why?”

  Level forty-five. I couldn’t even imagine the power he must have had. I was so outclassed, it wasn’t even funny. I’d faced low-level creatures in here, purely because the higher levels had died or atrophied centuries ago. The SporeMother herself had kept everything away that might have moved in, but now? For all I knew, there were goblin hunting parties or orcs investigating downstairs, All in their twenties and above. Shit, shit, shit!

  “We need to get the defenses up and working here, Oracle, and fast!” I muttered, speeding up and heading for the next level.

  “What? Oh, yeah, okay!” she said, a big smile on her face as she forgot about the old residents of the tower, their deaths surrounding us even as we picked up speed.

  As we came into the lower floors of the Tower, I found that as the size of the floors increased, so did the height. Rather than the occasional cathedrallike ceiling, they had become the norm. Oracle was constantly pointing out sections that had been barracks, and armories, food halls and areas for dancing. I passed through them all in a daze, feeling small and insignificant.

  Someone had created this Tower from magic. They’d made a dancehall for the common people and soldiers that made the Sistine Chapel look, well, cheap and half assed. The walls were covered in murals that were, in turn, covered in ash and the detritus of centuries.

  As I walked, I noticed the complete lack of so much as a rat, and Oracle pointed out that the SporeMother and the Sporelings would have eaten them. All that survived inside were occasional insects. I cursed as one bit my neck, slapping my hand on it and looking at the bloody mark it’d left behind. Little bastard had been the size of my pinkie nail.

  I grimaced and flicked bits of its corpse away to land on mushrooms that climbed out of a crack in the stones,. A tiny rivulet of water flowed down one wall and across the floor to disappear into another crack. I frowned and reached out to Seneschal with my mind.

  “Seneschal?”

  “Yes, Jax?”

  “What condition is the Tower in? Can you see all of it yet?”

  “I have extended my senses to the first subterranean floor now. I sense no living or undead, but there are… bodies… and the Tower is in poor condition. Even with the mana collectors finally drawing in significant quantities, it will be a long time before I can fully repair and rebuild the Tower.”

  “Roughly how long?”

  “At this rate, just under two years to fully rebuild the Tower.”

  “Okay; how long to make it structurally safe? Because I gotta tell you, I’m not liking seeing streams running through the lower floors and collapsed walls, considering all the weight that’s above me right now…”

  “Structurally safe is my priority right now. I estimate three months to seal the walls and repair the majority of dangerous leaks.”

  “What about security? Making the doors, things like that?”

  “Depends on the door, really. Sorry, Jax, but there are over a thousand doors currently broken or damaged. Windows are missing, and the lower floors are entirely overgrown and will need to be cleared before they can be repaired. It becomes a question of safety versus infrastructure. If we get the golem facilities online, they would speed up repairs and clearing out areas, plus they would function as a security force. However, in the time they would need to be repaired, I could repair thirty percent of the most dangerous structural damage. Add to that, the golems themselves would require parts and mana upkeep. Can we afford to wait for the damage to be repaired? The risk is very real that we could repair the golem facilities, only to have the roof collapse on top of it before it produces a single unit, wasting a month of our mana production…”

  “Damn, I was hoping it wouldn’t be that bad…”

  “It’s worse. If you hadn’t awoken me when you did, the Tower would be unlikely to survive another decade. Even now, a particularly bad storm could end us.”

  “Feck.”

  “Indeed; now, if you don’t mind…?”

  I felt Seneschal disappear after a few seconds, and I grunted, shaking my head. The Tower was on its last legs; I was even luckier than I thought, to have survived so far.

  I began to hear birdsong again, and as I reached the next level, I saw a large pile of debris stacked over what I assumed was a low balcony. I clambered over it, pulling stones out and chucking them aside. My need for fresh air and sunshine made me less cautious than I should have been, but with Bob’s help, directed by his mounted wisp no less, we soon cleared away enough ground that I could push and wriggle through until I stood outside.

  The light was diffused by thousands of leaves overhead. The trees that I’d seen from above were true giants, hundreds of feet tall. The floor where I stood was maybe two floors above the ground level, but still rested under the tree canopy. I took it all in, reveling in the vibrant life I could see and hear. Colorful birds flitted from tree to tree, and while few other life forms were on display, I knew instinctively that, with the SporeMother’s death, more would soon return to the nearby forest.

  I walked across grass and clambered over tree roots, amazed at the life on this side of the wall. Inside, there were occasional piles of mushrooms and bare roots, but all was dark and silent. Out here, the forest exploded with life. I loved it. I sat down on a moss-covered boulder by a tinkling stream, watching flies flit across the water as birds dove to eat them. Apples and other fruit hung from the trees. Some, I recognized from the gardens above, others from home, and still some I’d never seen before.

  “Jax, are you okay?” Oracle asked, landing next to me and gently reaching out to touch my cheek. It was only then I realized that tears covered my cheeks. I laughed and ignored my tears in unashamed joy.

  “Okay? Oracle, this is beautiful! I’ve never seen anything like it!” I gestured out with one hand. The stream ran out from where I sat to fall over the edge of the balcony. I felt the mist of the water landing behind me, pouring down from floors above to continually replenish the stream winding away through the undergrowth of the forest floor far below. Occasionally, I watched animals, always in the distance. There, a dozen deer ran, a solitary great cat pursuing them; here, something that looked suspiciously like an oversized squirrel stared at me from across the clearing.

  I was enraptured, and sat for long minutes, the horrors of the last few months finally slipping away.
Everything I’d done to get here, the fights, the arena, the pain, all of it was worth this moment of perfect peace. I sat there for a while, enjoying the scents and feel of the forest all around me. The ground outside the tower was covered in moss and small plants. Collapsed buildings and a tumbled down outer wall were all consumed by the forest. I’d never seen the wilderness so…. wild. It looked beautiful, yet also sad. This had been an outpost of a great civilization, but now, it was buried in the forest, abandoned by all save an evil creature that had killed and tortured.

  Eventually I got up, my thoughts taking a darker turn as I reflected on the SporeMother and the many victims she must have fed on. Oracle had left me to myself, but as I climbed back inside, she flitted through the hole we’d made and into the Tower proper.

  We let Bob lead the way, passing down long corridors, over collapsed walls and through rooms seemingly without end. Without the clear path left by the SporeMother in her mad rush toward me earlier, we’d have been hopelessly lost.

  Even the moss and fungus had withered where she had walked, leaving a trodden path of death and destruction across the lower floors.

  Eventually, we found a hole in the main floor, the path leading straight to it. It dropped down into the subterranean levels. The three of us stood looking down into the darkness below. We’d long since moved from any rooms with even a hint of outdoor light, but here, the darkness seemed oppressive, and the smell…. There was no doubt this led to the creature’s lair.