Sufficiently Advanced Magic

by Andrew Rowe

  I limped my way toward the lit torch, muscles sore from the impacts with the floor and walls. I frowned as soon as I noticed the tiny rune etched into the surface of the metal base. I didn’t recognize it.

  “There’s a marking here.” I pointed at it.

  Patrick walked up next to me. “Never seen that before. One of your Enchanter things?”

  “Probably, but not one I’m familiar with. I’ve got a book, but it would take too long to look it up.” I walked over to the next torch, squinting at the base. Another marking — a different one. “Not good. This has a different rune. There probably is a specific element for each. Or maybe a specific sequence we have to light them?”

  “I could try hitting the next one with lightning and seeing if it works,” Patrick offered.

  I shook my head vehemently. “I’m not ready to face whatever that thing is again. Let’s see if we can find another clue somewhere else in here.”

  Drawing closer to the cage, I got a better look at the fountain and, more importantly, the gleaming object within. A silvery-white key. That was obviously important.

  Could I get it out immediately? A blast from the knockback function on my demi-gauntlet might displace enough water to reveal the key, then a second well-placed blast might knock it out... but I’d seen an aura between the bars. There was probably a shield on the whole thing; it was probably cage-shaped so we could see the prize within. Maybe I could bust through the shield, but it didn’t seem worth the mana to experiment.

  I found Patrick kneeling next to the box. “Kinda want to know what’s in here.” He picked up the box — which I wouldn’t have done — and shook it — which I definitely wouldn’t have done. I could hear something clinking around inside.

  “Please don’t break that.” My hand twitched as I envisioned a potion bottle cracking inside.

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” He set it back down. “I don’t see any openings. I could try to blast it open?”

  “Let’s save that approach for if we can’t figure anything else out. I’m going to see if I can find—”

  Glowing eyes in the far corner of the room. It may have been my imagination, but I felt like the whole room had gotten just a little bit darker.

  “Relight the torch, Patrick.” I took a step backward, nearly tripping over the box.

  “Hrm?”

  “Relight it!”

  I pointed my hand toward the glowing eyes, readying another attack. They narrowed slightly in response. I could see no sign of the creature’s body within the darker corner, so I couldn’t even be certain it was the same monster as before.

  Patrick moved back to the original torch, repeating his original incantation over it. There a flicker of white, then the torch’s glow returned to full strength. When I looked again, the eyes were gone.

  I drew in a sharp breath. “Okay, looks like those torches go out on their own after a while. How’s your mana?”

  “I’m still fine.”

  I nodded and withdrew the bell from my pouch. “I’m going to swap out for a minute for Jin. He has some divination abilities; have him look at the runes and the box.”

  “You’re leaving?” Patrick’s expression sank.

  “You or Jin can swap out and bring me back in just as soon as you’ve picked up more info,” I assured him. “Keep your eyes on the walls, too, and be ready to kill that thing with fire.”

  With that, I rang the bell. My stomach lurched as my vision went white.

  ***

  I was in a waiting room. There were two large couches. The older student who’d brought us in was lounging across one of them. Jin sat stoically on the other, hands folded in his lap.

  Odd. I’d expected him to swap places with me instantly, but I guess that wasn’t how this worked.

  The female student sat up. “Oh, hey! You actually did the bell thing? Huh. Guess you’re up, then!” She pointed at Jin.

  Jin turned his head to look at me quizzically.

  I nodded a greeting to him. “Got some stuff in there that we need Divination for. Feel free to switch back out for me after you identify things, but you can stay in there if you think you can solve it.”

  His mouth twisted as his eyes flicked from my face to my disarrayed uniform, lingering on my unresponsive arm. “You look like you got hit by a carriage.” He sounded irritated.

  I raised my good arm self-consciously, trying to smooth out a wrinkle with a gauntleted hand. “Uh, yeah. Don’t let the room get dark. Patrick will explain the rest.”

  The student supervising us pointed at the single door at the far side of the lounge. “That’ll take you back to the entrance room, then head toward the door his team went into when they started. You can ring the bell again if you need to.”

  Jin nodded, heading that way with haste.

  I sat down on the couch carefully, inspecting my arm now that I had sufficient light. No visible damage, but it still felt numb. I looked at the older student. “Why does my arm still feel weird? I figured any illusory damage from in there would fade as soon as I got out.”

  “You won’t get any answers about the test from me, kid.” She smirked.

  I rubbed the arm, grimacing. “Can I do whatever I want in here, at least?”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Sure, I guess. You’re technically still taking the test.”

  Okay, then. How can I game that?

  I didn’t have any way of healing my arm. Even if I had conventional healing, I wasn’t sure it would work on what was probably fake damage.

  If it was a mental effect, which seemed possible, I might be able to get rid of it if I had something designed for purging mind control, but I didn’t have that either. Sleep might have fixed it, but I’d never been good at falling asleep on command.

  I settled for doing something I knew I could do. I started recharging my shield sigil. The process was relatively simple: I just touched the sigil and gradually pushed gray mana into it. As long as I was making contact with the device, it would accept the mana and slowly begin to recharge. I’d gone through the process enough times now that I could tell when it had reached capacity.

  A full recharge still took me a few minutes. Teft’s ability to recharge the sigils in a few moments was pretty impressive. Most people, even experts, didn’t have that kind of mana control. I was getting faster at it, but I had a long way before I reached Teft’s level of proficiency.

  I was still in the process of recharging when Patrick appeared in front of me.

  On the floor.

  More alarmingly, he wasn’t moving.

  I rushed to his side, kneeling and gingerly rolling him over. Unconscious. It took me a moment to confirm that his chest was still rising and falling.

  I heard a laugh from the other couch. “Looks like you lost one.”

  I whipped my head up to glare at her. “What’s wrong with him?” I demanded.

  She rolled her eyes. “Relax, kid. He’s just asleep. He’ll wake up when the test is over.”

  I let out a low growl, which actually drew an expression of concern from her. Reaching down with both arms, I lifted Patrick from the cold stone of the floor and set him down on the couch I’d vacated.

  I didn’t realize that the numbness in my arm was gone until after I’d finished moving him. Anger had burned away the chill in my mind.

  I stomped my way toward the exit door.

  “Where are you going?” The other student asked.

  “To finish this.”

  I pushed into the main room, then back to the door where I’d first entered the challenge. I didn’t know what the rules were for re-entering when someone was knocked out, but she had said that I was still technically taking the test.

  I opened the door and saw the swirl of darkness within. This time, I was ready.

  ***

  The sound of muffled gunfire reached me before sight took hold.

  The room was moderately lit this time, three torches burning different colors on the walls. Jin was bac
kpedaling rapidly, twin revolvers in his hands.

  The creature, now fully visible, lashed out at him with vicious speed, four tendrils striking downward with whip-like motions, piercing the floor as Jin jumped and fired his guns. Both shots hit home, joining other bullet holes in the creature’s scaly hide. The wounds dripped green ichor that sizzled as it splattered against the room’s floor.

  Jin had the creature’s attention, but his attacks seemed to be having a minimal effect. It retracted the tendrils and lunged, jaws outstretched. Jin stepped to the side, brushing a corner of his coat into the creature’s mouth. It snapped down on the cloth, fangs piercing into the uniform as Jin twisted and pressed a revolver against the top of its head, firing straight into the skull.

  The beast recoiled at the impact, tearing a ragged section out of Jin’s coat and shaking its head as if to rid itself of an insect. Then it surged again, too close now for Jin to dodge.

  So he didn’t. He kicked it in the face once, twice, and thrice before bringing his gun down to smash it in the face.

  By this point, I had my sword drawn, and I was slowly advancing. I really didn’t want to get into melee range of that thing, but the sword was undoubtedly the most effective weapon in my possession. If bullets were barely slowing the thing down, I had little chance of killing it with the gauntlet or the cane sitting on my opposite hip.

  A tendril snapped forward, forcing Jin to duck to avoid being impaled, and the creature took that opportunity to ram him with its horns. Jin tried to shift to the right, but one of the horns caught him as the beast charged. I saw his barrier flicker into existence, then begin to splinter and crack as the creature pushed, slamming Jin into the wall.

  Jin gasped as the move knocked the air out of his lungs, then began pounding on the creature’s head ineffectively with his weapons. I didn’t know why he wasn’t firing the guns, but I couldn’t let this go on. The cracks spreading like spiderwebs across his barrier were a sign that it was at critical capacity. In a moment, he’d go from merely being crushed to having a three foot horn sticking through his chest.

  Unacceptable.

  I felt the wisps of frost gathering on my blade as I thrust it into the creature’s side, aiming for where I hoped a heart might be. I wasn’t exactly familiar with the anatomy of unidentifiable nightmare monsters, from the way it roared as the saber pierced through a soft-spot between scales I guessed I’d hit something important.

  It tried to turn toward me, and I pushed the weapon deeper, letting out a roar of my own as I shoved. A visible layer of frost expanded outward from the wound, spreading across the creature’s flank.

  It spun, swept my legs out from under me with a claw, and then jumped backward as I hit the floor.

  And as I recovered, readying a gauntlet to block the next strike, it turned — and it ran.

  Taking my sword with it as it passed through the wall.

  My eyes widened. I... hadn’t realized that was possible.

  Jin had recovered before I did, reaching down with a hand and helping me to my feet. “Good timing,” he observed. His breaths had slowed to an almost normal rate. “Patrick is dead. We solved the torch problem, but the creature came anyway.”

  “What’s the solution?” I glanced at the torches. Only two of them remained lit, indicating one of them had gone out during the fight.

  “They’re in matched pairs. Doesn’t matter which mana type you start with, but you need to light the match with the same type.”

  And we’d tried to light two non-matching ones with fire, and failed the puzzle. That made sense. “Okay, so we’ve still got two lit with... what is that, lightning?” The two lit torches had some kind of crackling energy floating within them.

  Jin nodded. “I do not know if we have enough distinct mana types for the two remaining pairs without Patrick. We had managed to ignite two pairs, but the creature ambushed him when he walked into the darkness to light the last.”

  Ugh. “Did you try gray?”

  He again nodded. “Doesn’t work.”

  I frowned, thinking back to the poem.

  Two to keep our bodies strong,

  A pair to keep our hearts from wrong,

  A final two to light the path.

  Maybe the pairs had to be physical, mental, and, uh, light? I wasn’t really sure on that last one.

  It was worth trying. I cautiously moved over to the nearest unlit torch and pressed my gauntlet against it. “Have you tried transference?”

  “No.”

  I activate the gauntlet, blasting the torch with raw kinetic force. The torch shook, cracks appearing on the surface of the glass — oops — and a flicker of light manifested within the orb.

  Success!

  “Looks like that one works. Do you know which one—,”

  Jin was pointing to the other side of the room when I turned to look at him. There was a torch back there, sure, but that wasn’t what he was pointing at.

  Eyes in the dark. My sword was still lodged in the creature’s side, the weapon’s icy glow illuminating a patch of frost that was still slowly spreading across the monster’s hide.

  I cracked my neck. It was time to get my sword back.

  I glanced at Jin. “You need a minute to reload?”

  “I already did. That monster can make itself selectively incorporeal, though. If it sees me aiming, it’ll just go incorporeal to avoid most of the hits.”

  Why wasn’t it going incorporeal to get rid of the sword, then? Oh, maybe the weapon being stuck in it meant the creature’s ability treated the saber as part of its own body? That explained how it managed to take the weapon out through the wall earlier.

  “I’ll distract it.”

  “Patrick said that, too.”

  ...That’s grim.

  “Well, it sounds like he did... at least for a minute.” I drew my dueling cane with my left hand. I wasn’t as good at using it with my left, but I could manage, and the demi-gauntlet would interfere with using it in my right.

  “True,” Jin admitted.

  “Going left.” I stepped left and opened fire with the cane, feeling the sharp pull of mana through my hand. It was a familiar sensation, as invigorating as it was painful.

  Only half of my blasts landed. I’d expected a rush, but it started leaping in a zig-zag pattern to avoid the assault, showing more intelligence than I expected. Spines descended from the air as it approached. I flicked the switch on the cane’s hilt, side-stepped, and deflected the first spine with the blade.

  The creature hissed, the second spine missing me as it winced at the impact of a bullet against its side. I jumped over a sweeping claw, then danced back as it attempted to gore me, jamming my blade toward the bullet-hole that Jin had put in its skull. I missed as it continued to move, losing my grip on the cane as it impacted an undamaged portion of the skull. The weapon went flying to the side, further gunshots piercing the creature’s hide as it reared up on its hind legs.

  I didn’t like the look of that.

  I was already jumping to the side when it slammed its feet down and breathed fire in a vast arc, blasting nearly a quarter of the room. Even outside the main arc of the flames, my barrier still visibly manifested to protect me from the rising heat.

  It was still spitting out the blast of incendiary breath when I rolled beneath it, grabbed the hilt of my sword, and pulled.

  The saber’s blade was sharp, but I wasn’t pulling at the right angle to make a good cut.

  I had something a little different in mind: cracking some ice.

  I put my full weight into it as I pulled, feeling something give in the creature’s side as the section of frozen hide began break apart.

  The creature howled, dragging me along the floor as it rushed toward a wall, one of its massive legs landing on top of one of mine with a crunch.

  I slipped free, sword in hand, as a section of frozen hide gave way.

  The creature, still solid, slammed into the wall a few meters ahead of me. At last, it lay stil
l.

  It was only in reflection afterward that I realized that I’d almost made the thing collapse on top of me... which would have brought a swift and uncomfortable end to my test.

  As it was, I couldn’t feel my left leg, the one it had stomped on as it retreated.

  “Jin...” I mumbled, a spark of cold surging through my leg, “Make sure it’s dead.”

  He walked over to me, reaching out a hand expectantly. Nearly incapacitated by the spreading feeling of numbness, it took me a moment before I understood what he wanted.

  Oh, right.

  I flipped the sword around, offering him the hilt. He accepted it, walked over to the monster, and stabbed it a dozen times.

  “Dead,” he pronounced, and walked back over.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, pushing myself into a seated position.

  “You going to get up?” he asked mildly.

  “I’m not sure I can. Thing stepped on me while I was under it.”

  “That was a stupid move.”

  I nodded, wincing. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Worked, though,” he allowed. “And you gave me an idea.”

  He walked over to one of the last two unlit torches and swiped my sword into the globe.

  A moment later, the blue-white glow of frost manifested within the sphere. Jin smirked in satisfaction, moving to the last torch as I ineffectively massaged my leg.

  Another flick of the blade — Jin clearly knew how to handle the thing — and the last torch was lit.

  The cage in the center of the room rumbled, and then lifted, an unseen hook pulling it until it contacted the ceiling. The cage remained in place, hovering over the statue, but there was sufficient room to access the things within it now.

  Jin walked over to me next. “The pain is in your head. Shake it off.”

  “Uh, trying.” The best I managed was to push myself into a crawl, getting me a little closer to the statue. “Anything in there aside from the key?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He looked down at me, sighed, and laid the sword down on the floor. “You’re no good to me like this.” He reached into a pouch at his side, withdrawing a flask, and then handed it to me. “Drink, it’ll heal you.”