Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension Book 1)

by Andrew Rowe

  She drew back, glancing around. “Don’t stare at me. This is a group decision.”

  We kept staring.

  She caved with characteristic eye roll. “Okay, fine.” She pursed her lips and looked around at us. “This is a good opportunity for us to work together on a smaller scale. It’ll help with our teamwork when we do the bigger tests... I’m sure that’s the point.” She paused, biting a hangnail on her thumb absently. “Jin, you’re still not telling us what your attunement is, yeah?”

  They stared each other down. Jin looked away first. “Well, I could tell you,” he said brightly, “but it wouldn’t necessarily be true...”

  The tone rang false after my exposure to his normal formal stoicism. His normally wry humor had an edge to it. He was even more nervous than I realized.

  Sera tilted her head back, clearly considering. She knew about the items I was making him, and I’d shown her the list of the ones I’d finished so far. As our nominal leader, it was important that she had as good of an idea of his capabilities as possible.

  “Okay,” she decided, “you’re sitting out. Corin, Patrick, and I have a pretty good idea of what you can do, and we’ll call you in if we need to.”

  Jin nodded curtly. “A wise stratagem.” He rotated his shoulder, avoiding anyone’s gaze.

  Sera glanced at Marissa next. “Marissa, you’re the strongest fighter we have. If they tell us which room is going to involve fighting, I’ll put you in there with Patrick; he’ll support you from range. If we’re going in blind, you’re with me. Any objections?”

  We shook our heads. It seemed like a pretty reasonable way to break things down. I folded my arms. “Anyone have any insights from other students? I know some of them were taking the test earlier this week.”

  “Sworn to secrecy.” Patrick was tapping his foot, probably unconsciously. “Think we’ll get the same speech when we finish our test. Roland was adamant that there would be consequences if he spilled anything. From the sound of it, they’re real serious about keeping this test a surprise.”

  That made sense. A test similar to the tower would be vastly easier if someone already knew the challenges in advance.

  I knew we’d be taking more than one test like this; I’d seen future tests on the schedule. At least two more tests of this kind before our first trip into the actual tower, maybe more in the second half of the year.

  Maybe I could find a way to make some sort of observation device enchantment and leave it in one of the chambers? It would have to be one of the self-recharging kind, since I probably wouldn’t have a chance to find it and recharge it. It’d be expensive, but observation devices were fairly standard.

  I was confident I could build one in time for the second test if I could afford the materials. I’d have to figure out a good way to hide it, though. Other students had certainly tried that sort of thing before and the professors would be on the lookout for them.

  The older student came back out of the room, holding a pair of bells. “Okay, who wants these?”

  Sera reached out a hand. “I’ll take them and distribute them once we know where we’re going.”

  The student frowned. “Haven’t picked your teams yet? You’re out of time, kid.”

  Sera tightened her jaw. I could see her biting back a retort about being a ‘kid’ in her expression. “We have two team setups, depending on how much you’re going to tell us about the rooms in advance. Do we get any foreknowledge on the types of challenges?”

  “Nope. Pick or I pick for you.”

  Sera took the bells, then handed me one. “Plan B, then. You’re with Patrick. C’mon, Marissa.”

  We all stood up, arranging ourselves into teams.

  “All right, standby kid, go into the room I was just standing in. You two,” she pointed at Sera and Marissa, then at a door on the left side of the room, “over there.”

  They walked to the door, standing just outside it. “And you two, by the magical process of elimination, get to go to that door.”

  I rolled my eyes, waving for Patrick to follow me. When we reached the door, I tucked the bell away in a pouch on my side.

  “Case you kids didn’t pick up on another obvious thing, this is a return bell. You can ring the bell if you want to swap out. Make sure the person ringing it is the one that wants to leave.”

  I’d guessed most of that, but it was good to confirm. A question occurred to me, though. “Any limit on the number of swaps we can do?”

  “Nah, just going to cost you a headache.”

  That was good, but, “Do we lose points for switching people?”

  “Can’t tell you how you’re scored.”

  “Does the bell stay with the person who rings it, or does it stay in the room?” I could tell she was getting annoyed, but it was worth it to push for as much information as I could get.

  Unfortunately, she had reached the end of her patience. “So many questions!” she griped. “It’ll drop where you used it. There’ll always be a return bell in the test room.”

  I looked across the room at Sera. “Do we want to arrange pre-set times to switch and share info?”

  The older student wasn’t having that. “Cute idea, kid, but you’re out of strategy time. Test starts in three... two...”

  Oh, resh!

  “One... go.”

  We opened our doors. The inside of my room was pitch black, so I hesitated to step inside immediately — but that turned out not to matter. An unseen force yanked me inside the moment I processed the black. I heard an amused, “Have fun!” echoing from somewhere behind me as I stood amidst the dark.

  ***

  So, I wasn’t afraid of the dark exactly, but I admit I was more than a little concerned.

  Yeah, concerned. That’s a good word.

  Once I stopped shaking, I took a deep breath and considered my options. I didn’t have any kind of light magic available, but Patrick could probably illuminate the room with fire... assuming there wasn’t anything combustible in the air.

  They wouldn’t do that, would they?

  I held off on the suggestion, just in case the teachers were feeling particularly malicious with the room’s design.

  I also wasn’t even sure Patrick was still with me.

  “Patrick, you there?”

  There was a brief, disconcerting pause. “Uh, yeah, sorry. I can’t see, can you?”

  “No, but I’m working on it.”

  Maybe I could see something with my attunement enabled?

  I concentrated for a moment, activating my attunement.

  The light was nearly as blinding as the darkness.

  The whole room glowed brightly under my enhanced vision, which shouldn’t have surprised me. The test was probably being constructed from a whole bunch of illusions and enchanted objects, meaning practically everything was magical.

  The luminescence of the objects in the room didn’t extend to anything around them, so I wasn’t exactly getting a clear image of the whole place, just glowing outlines within a canvas of black. It was enough to let me pick out some key features, though.

  The room itself was rectangular, and I was near one of the corners, standing on solid ground. A man stood next to me. Presumably, that was Patrick, but I couldn’t actually see that level of detail. All I could make out was a glowing person’s outline. He had something in his right hand. A dueling cane, maybe?

  No door behind us, but I could see outlines that might have been doorframes on two of the walls.

  The center of the room was obscured, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what I was looking at. There was a dome-shaped cage, with some light leaking through the bars, making it look almost solid.

  There was a humanoid figure standing inside the cage, arms uplifted toward the ceiling. Completely immobile. That was mildly disconcerting.

  I saw something that looked like a box on the floor near a corner directly across from where I was standing. The glow around it was vibrant red, indicating some kind of dest
ructive magic. An explosive, then? Or a trapped box?

  A rectangular wedge jutted out of the floor in front of the cage. It was too thin to be another box. It looked like a wall segment that was out of position.

  Finally, there were small, rod-like objects attached to several of the walls. It took me an embarrassingly long moment to realize what they were.

  “There are unlit torches on the walls. Can you make fire?”

  I hadn’t disproven the presence of flammable gas, but my attunement wasn’t picking up anything obvious, and the presence of torches pretty strongly implied they were meant to be lit.

  “Uh, yeah, but I only know attack spells. They’re not really meant for light.”

  I nodded, belatedly realizing he couldn’t actually see my response. “That’s fine. I’ll guide you to a torch, and hopefully it’s got some kind of material on the top you can ignite. If not, we’ll try something else.”

  I wasn’t big on touching other people, but it couldn’t be helped. It was easier for me to tolerate when I was the one initiating contact, at least. “Going to grab your hand and lead you. Follow slowly.”

  “Got it.”

  His skin felt weirdly clammy. Maybe that was normal, though... it’d been a while since I’d held anyone’s hand. A long while. I guided him to the a torch on the wall nearest us and set his hand on top of it.

  “That’s it. I’d recommend trying something weak.” I pulled my own hand away, taking a step back.

  “I could have figured that one out on my own, Corin.” The wry observation was tempered by Patrick’s natural geniality. “Okay, lemme see.” He took a breath.

  “Extinguished fire in the night,

  I beseech you to Ignite.”

  A sphere of flame manifested in Patrick’s hand and blasted through the torch, right into the wall behind it. I winced at the scorch marks left on the wall, but the spell succeeded at serving its purpose. The torch was lit, but not without consequence.

  The chime of a bell sounded in the distance. I frowned, looking around the room, but I couldn’t see the source of the noise.

  I could see the rest of the room a bit more clearly, though, even with only one torch lit.

  We weren’t far from the box. In better lighting, I determined that it was... a box. Not a treasure chest, not a coffin, not even a wooden crate. A box. It had no obvious seams, cracks, or keyhole. I couldn’t even tell what it was made out of.

  I could see the cage a little more clearly, too. No prisoner inside, but there was something... a statue of Tenjin, the Visage of Inspiration. She was at the center of a fountain, with water descending from her uplifted hands into the basin below. I thought I caught a glimmer of something metallic near her feet, but it was still too dark to see.

  The torch itself was wrought from blackened metal with a glass-encased top, almost like a lantern, but with a visible sphere of orange fire swirling within. I felt fortunate the fire spell had worked. If I’d seen the strange torch more clearly before I tried the plan, I would have assumed the glass would have blocked the spell.

  Upon closer examination, I found a piece of fiber. A wick, maybe? It led right into the enclosed glass. That meant the torches could probably be lit through mundane means, too. I hadn’t actually brought any fire starting supplies in my bag, but I’d have to think about that for next time.

  “You got enough mana to light the other torches?” I noted five more of them around the room. With some light available, I also turned off my attunement. Keeping it on was going to give me a headache, as well as drain my mana supply.

  Patrick grinned, looking visibly more confident now that we had a bit of light. “Yep, I’ll get started.”

  He walked over to the next one, put his hand over it, and repeated his incantation. A brief flicker of flame, the torch was lit—

  And the room went black.

  There was no bell to accompany this event. It was a hiss in the air, a sound of something being torn apart, followed by the growl of something bestial.

  At that point, I was no longer merely concerned. I’d made the leap straight to terrified.

  Something slammed into me with battering-ram force. I flew backward, smashing into the wall, my shield sigil absorbing as much of the impact as it could. I sunk to the floor.

  “Corin?” came Patrick’s uncertain voice.

  “Reshing relight the other torch, now!”

  I turned my attunement back on just before it hit me again, a clawed hand the size of my torso tossing me along the wall and sending me skidding across the floor.

  “I can’t see where it is!”

  The beast was fast, nearly on top of me again before I had a chance to reply. It wasn’t truly visible even with my attunement active, more of a blur of disruption within the things I could see. From the blur of movement streaking toward me, I pictured a lion the size of a carriage, trailing multiple spine-laced tails.

  I raised my demi-gauntlet and focused my will, pressing raw mana into the device. A sphere of gray mana flashed from my outstretched hand, blasting into my onrushing foe. The impact didn’t stagger it much — I was using the attack function, not the knockback function — but it let out a roar of pain at the impact.

  The blast had also briefly illuminated the room enough for me to get a better look at what I was fighting. It wasn’t a lion... it was utterly, horribly worse. It looked more like a horned panther with draconic scales the size of my fist, each of the tails I’d seen before a serpentine tendril that extended from the creature’s spine. The tendrils moved independently and several of them were raised above the creature’s back, looking poised to strike like a snake.

  I wanted nothing to do with that thing, but it seemed to have a difference of opinion.

  Tendrils descended like spears from the sky.

  I focused again, sending mana into the other rune. There was a sharp burst of pain from using so much of my power in rapid succession, but the blast of kinetic energy that ripped out managed to knock the creature back a few steps, throwing the tendrils out of position. They ripped into the stone floor, and then it was dark again.

  “Just throw a fireball at it, I’m under attack over here!”

  “Oh, goddess! Um, flames of, no...”

  Something hit my left shoulder — a smaller impact than the claw had been. I heard a crack and felt a jolt of agony, letting out a roar of my own at the sensation.

  I twitched my head to the side just as something else whistled past, intersecting the space where it had been a moment before.

  Then there was light, a chime, and the creature retreated, passing right through the wall at my side.

  Patrick had relit the first torch he’d ignited. Now that we could see a little more clearly, I groaned and pushed myself into a sitting position.

  My left arm was numb, but the pain had largely faded. A glance didn’t show any visible injuries. The shield sigil must have stopped it from piercing through me.

  Patrick rushed to my side. “You all right?”

  I rubbed at the arm; it wasn’t just numb, it felt cold. “I think so, but I might need to find a healer after this. Nothing urgent. Don’t relight that other torch.”

  “No kidding. What do you think that thing was?”

  I tried to shrug — and that hurt. Okay, no more moving that arm for a while.

  I started to push myself to my feet, and Patrick knelt down and helped haul me into a standing position without prompting. It was a little awkward, but I was grateful nonetheless.

  “Not sure. Something related to barghensi and behemoths, maybe, but of a shadow variety? The flames seemed to scare it off. Light probably hurts it.”

  Patrick pointed at the wedge I’d seen with my attunement on. “This thing has some writing on it, maybe that’ll tell us.”

  He had better eyes than I did. I couldn’t see any writing at that distance. We approached cautiously, but there were no other obvious monsters in evidence.

  As I got closer, I saw that my compan
ion was right; the wedge was a stone tablet, floor to ceiling, with tiny letters etched into the surface near the middle. Said middle was slightly higher up than my head. With the low light and the distance, I had some trouble reading it, but I managed to piece it together over a minute or so.

  Six visages of goddess see,

  The light of mortal destiny.

  Two to keep our bodies strong,

  A pair to keep our hearts from wrong,

  A final two to light the path,

  And keep us from the goddess wrath.

  Each guides us in a different way,

  And for these gifts a toll we pay.

  Six visages of goddess see,

  The light of mortal destiny.

  My face twitched as I noted the grammatical and capitalization errors in the poem — really, “goddess wrath”? — but I brushed the instinct aside as best I could. I’d need some time to think about the poem to sort out the relevant parts. In the meantime, I walked to the other side of the tablet, inspecting it and finding a second message.

  You will be devoured within the dark.

  I shivered. That was certainly more direct, but definitely not comforting.

  “Ooookay.” I looked at Patrick. “You read all that?”

  “Yeah. Looks like we’re supposed to give gifts to the visages?”

  “I don’t think it means literal gifts,” I said. “I’m guessing they’re talking about those torch things. Except, you know, they’re not actually torches. Going to guess we need to light each torch in the appropriate way.”

  Patrick nodded. “Different element for each, then? How do we know which element goes to each torch-thing?”

  I almost tried to shrug again, but managed to abort the motion before I hurt myself this time. “Might not have to do them in any kind of order. I didn’t see any runes or symbols of specific visages on them, and we’d have to have been really lucky to get fire right on the first try if there is supposed to be a specific gift for each. We should look at them more carefully, but it more likely just means we have to do six different elements in any order.”

  “I don’t actually have spells for six elements, though,” he reminded me.