by Andrew Rowe
“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 speci
fic, 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.”