by Andrew Rowe
I was just about to stand up to ask a follow-up question...
“And that’s all the time we have for today. Class dismissed!”
Oh, cruel temptation. She wanted us to wonder.
I sighed.
“Mysterious towers” was one more thing I’d need to fit into my research schedule. If this secret tower was connected to the six Shifting Spires, maybe it could help illuminate some additional secrets about how the towers truly worked.
***
Late one night, I heard a knock at my door. This was not all that unusual in itself, but I was still a little bit worried about potential assassins. I brought my sword with me as I approached the door. “Coming!”
I opened the door a few moments later. Jin was standing outside. He was standing with his back straight, wearing an intensely serious expression. “Corin.”
I waved at him. “Oh, hey, Jin. Don’t have any more items ready for you just yet, sorry.”
He shook his head. “I am not here for that.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? What can I help you with?”
He raised a gloved hand to his chin. “It has been brought to my attention that there is a formal social event coming up in the winter. It is customary for students to attend with a date.”
I winced. The last time someone had asked me to help them find a date to the ball hadn’t exactly ended well. “You want me to ask someone for you?”
Jin tilted his head downward and laughed nervously. “No, Corin. I want you to come with me to the ball.”
Oh.
Oh!
I blinked. “Uh, I mean, as a friend? Or as a date?”
“As a date, unless you have an objection.”
“I...uh...”
“Breathe, Corin. You can think about it.”
Thinking. Right.
I did some of that breathing thing.
I didn’t know what to say.
Jin had stood out from the first moment I’d seen him. He was strange; he seemed smart. Our interactions always left me grinning. Was I attracted to him?
I mean, he had a pleasing aesthetic. Athletic body and all. I liked the shape of his chin?
But that just meant I liked looking at him. I still didn’t — what if he wanted to... It honestly never occurred to me that this might be an issue. I had no interest in asking anyone out, and the thought of someone taking an interest in me hadn’t crossed my mind.
Now that he’d asked, though... Could I date someone?
My face was reddening.
I closed my eyes for a moment, flexing my hands in the air and taking a deep breath. “Okay. Breathing now. I think I’m interested? I’ve never really done anything like this before. And, uh, just so you know, I’m not that into...touching?”
He nodded. “I’ve noticed. It won’t be a problem. We can dance if you decide you want to. If not, I would be more than happy just to have you there to talk with me.”
I laughed, just a hair too loud to be natural. Dancing. Is that all?
I think I can handle dancing.
Maybe.
Maybe just talking. Talking is fine.
“Okay, let’s go with that, then. It’s a date.”
“I look forward to it.” The slightest smile crossed his lips. “Good night.”
I nodded hastily. “Okay. Great. Good night.”
Jin closed the door.
I stared at it for another few moments before retreating to my bed, heart pounding in my chest.
What have I done?
I don’t know how to date!
In spite of my panic, a spark of excitement had been lit. As the minutes passed and my anxiety faded, I once more found myself grinning after our conversation.
I had a date!
***
Twenty weeks into the semester. It was time for our second major exam, and I didn’t feel anywhere close to ready.
We assembled for a strategy session the day before the test. Fortunately, we were using Marissa’s room this time, on account of it being much larger than mine. She was still in the Tortoise’s Heart, indicating she was getting excellent grades, but the rest of us were still stuck in the normal ones.
Except for Jin, maybe. I wasn’t actually sure if he was still in the room above me — I rarely visited him directly. He’d usually found me.
Even with the extra room, it was pretty cramped with five of us, but I was glad to see everyone.
Especially since I had presents.
I passed out the sigils first, since I had one for everyone. They were a simple enough design — a few runes etched into the back of a copper phoenix, about the same size as our usual existing shield sigils.
“What’s this?” Patrick accepted his phoenix sigil, fiddling with the pin on the back. “Should I put it on?”
“Wouldn’t hurt anything.” I handed out the last one, which Jin eyed dubiously. “They’re self-recharging shield sigils. Higher capacity than the class-issued ones, and if they’re drained, they’ll refill completely in about an hour. You can still recharge them manually, but you won’t need to unless it’s an emergency.”
Marissa blinked. “Wouldn’t something like that be super expensive?”
I grinned. “If you had to buy them, sure. Fortunately, aside from the metal, I made everything I needed myself. They’re not much more complicated than a standard shield sigil — just a few extra runes to make them recharge automatically.”
Jin scratched at his chin, turning the phoenix over in his hands. “Useful. I wasn’t aware you had reached the point of making Carnelian-level items en masse.”
I chuckled. “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten your list. In fact, I managed to get to one of your higher priority ones that I couldn’t make before.” I dug through the pouch on my side, withdrawing a monocle on a chain.
This one had been the toughest project yet — in part because of the amount of mental mana it required, and in part because I had to borrow a Shadow to test if it worked. Took three attempts to get everything working right, but it’d been worth it.
I handed it to him gingerly — I wasn’t going to risk tossing something so easily breakable.
In retrospect, maybe I should have thrown a resilience enhancement on it, too.
Jin lifted the monocle over an eye, frowned, and looked at his right arm.
Which promptly vanished.
I blinked, and I heard a few gasps from the others. We’d seen plenty of magic before, but Jin rarely showed off his capabilities in public.
Is he showing us a bit more trust, or is he just doing this as another step in obfuscating his real attunement?
I could ask him about it, but that might get him to retreat back into keeping everything to himself. If he’s a Spider, he probably can’t tell us anything more than he already has without losing points.
His arm reappeared a moment later. “Acceptable,” he pronounced. From the tiny curve of his mouth, though, I could see that I’d pleased him.
Patrick nudged me. “You going to share what that was with the rest of the class?”
“True Seeing,” Jin explained. “It sees through illusions and deceptions.”
“Mm.” I raised a finger. “Not quite True Seeing, unfortunately. That’s a higher level version of the same effect. But it generally functions the way you described — it just won’t work on extremely high level illusions.”
Jin gave a curt nod. “Of course. Thank you.”
“You got it.” I turned to Marissa next. “Your turn, Mara.”
She blinked. “You actually got me something? I, uh, there’s no way I can repay you for any of this...”
I laughed, startling her. “You’re a part of the team, Marissa. This is my contribution.” I looked around to the rest of the group. “Something we all need to be clear about — I’m not going to be able to pull the same kind of weight within the tests as the rest of you. Preparation is my strength. Sure, I’ll contribute ideas and muscle once we’re in there, but as you all get better
with your attunements, the gulf in our abilities is only going to grow.”
I folded my hands together. “Best thing you can do to thank me? Use these. Both within the tests and outside them. And if they don’t work the way you want them to? Let me know. I can make adjustments, or hand the item to someone else and make you something different.”
I took out a plain copper bracelet and passed it over to Marissa. “If it makes you feel any better, this was the simplest item of the bunch. One of my favorites, though.”
She accepted the bracelet, turning it over in her hands. “What’s it do?”
“If it detects you sending mana through your arm, it sends more. It’s a standard design for Guardians, nothing fancy. Won’t interfere with your abilities — it just makes them stronger.”
Marissa snapped the bracelet on, grinning. “Means a lot that you ‘membered what I wanted. Can’t wait to hit something and see how these work.”
“Figured you would like them.” More digging through my bag before I produced a leather glove. “Ah, Sera. Yours.” I tossed it to her.
She caught it with narrowed eyes. “This is a House Cadence symbol.”
“Oh, uh, yeah. I kind of had that made for you.” I winked at her.
She took a deep breath. “I...don’t think I’m—”
“I never gave you a proper gift to welcome you into the family. But you’re family, and it’s about time I started treating you that way.”
She slipped off the blank glove she’d been wearing, trying the new one on. “It’s...a little big.”
I chuckled. “I didn’t know your exact size, so I had to guess. You’ll grow into it.”
“I’m seventeen, Corin. I don’t think my hands are growing that much more.”
I waved a hand dismissively. “We can get it tailored. That’s not the enchanted part.”
More digging through the bag, until I produced a metal bracer, which I passed to Sera. “I was going to make you a demi-gauntlet like mine, until I realized that would cover the house symbol. You should be able to strap this over the glove without a problem.”
“This what we talked about before?” She inspected the runes on the surface, then started strapping it on over the glove.
“Yup. See the bottom rune? The one that looks kind of like a guy with horns?”
“That looks nothing like a guy with horns, Corin.”
“Okay, but you see what I mean. I’m not an artist.”
“Thank the goddess for that small kindness.”
I raised three fingers in a rude gesture. “Anyway, if you want to use the bracer, touch that with your other hand and channel just a little bit of mana into it. Like what you’d do with a dueling cane. That primes it, and it’ll use the full mana reserve next time you try to summon something.”
She nodded. “How much did you manage to store in there?”
“One hundred and twenty mana.”
Sera blinked rapidly. “I didn’t think you even had that much.”
I lifted my necklace, showing off the “46/46” displayed on it. I’d gotten much stronger over the last three weeks of rapidly making items, but still nowhere near the mana held in that device. “I don’t. I cheated — there are four separate storage runes in there, each with 30 mana in them.”
“That’s still more than I thought you could do in one session.”
I tapped the necklace to my right hand, changing the display to “58/58”. “I couldn’t charge that much if it was mental mana, but the mana stored in those is gray. I charged them from my hand.”
Jin gave me a quizzical look. “Why do you have more mana in your hand than your attunement?”
Oh, right, I hadn’t told everyone about that.
“Paralyzing fear. Nothing for you to worry about.” I tapped the necklace to my forehead again, setting it back to monitor my mind. I got nervous any time it wasn’t actively doing that.
Jin raised a hand to his lips, looking like he wanted to say something more, but he remained silent.
Then Sera hugged me. “Thanks, Corin.”
Humancontacttoomuch.
I patted her awkwardly on the back, suppressing a shudder. It’s just Sera, I told myself. Hugging Sera is fine. She’s safe. You’re safe.
Comforting her when she was injured had been easier because I had initiated it myself. I still wasn’t good at handling other people touching me. It was easier with Sera than anyone else, but she’d surprised me. I probably would have panicked less if I had a chance to brace myself.
“Uh, you’re welcome. Thanks. Hope you like it.”
She released me a moment later, to my great relief.
Patrick looked at me expectantly.
I strongly considered pretending I didn’t get him anything, but it was too much effort. “And, of course, I saved the best for last.”
I tossed Patrick the ring, a House Cadence symbol on it.
Signet rings weren’t common in Valia. Gloves usually served the purpose of marking a noble house here. Rings were more common up in Dalenos, where they tended to be more traditional.
If we’d been down in Edria, I’m pretty sure my gesture would have been considered a proposal for marriage.
Heh.
Anyway, the ring itself wasn’t a big deal like giving him a glove would be, but it was still a symbol of the house, which made it a good gift.
And, it was metal set with a gem, which made it great for enchanting.
“Nice!” He slipped it on his pointer finger immediately. Fortunately, it looked like a good fit. I’d assumed correctly that he’d wear a ring about the same size as I did. “What’s it do?”
“It’s similar to what I made Sera and Marissa. It enhances your spells, but more like Marissa’s. It puts a bit of extra mana into every spell, rather than using it all at once like Sera’s. Also, it only works for lightning. Apparently, gray mana works for enhancing lightning, but it wouldn’t help other elemental spells.”
Patrick grinned wide. “Lightning’s the best, anyway.”
“Excellent. So, now that I’m bankrupt, let’s get to the actual planning session.”
***
We spent the next couple hours talking strategy and going over everyone’s new capabilities. We’d all been talking pretty frequently over the last ten weeks, so nothing was particularly surprising.
Sera still had access to the creatures she’d bound during the Survival Match, but she didn’t have enough mana to summon the wyvern. That was fine, as far as I was concerned. The ogre and karvensi were more than good enough. The karvensi had been considerably weaker than the wyvern in terms of raw power, but its intelligence and flexibility had made it just as effective, if not more so.
Patrick had been training with Meltlake constantly, but he’d shown a stronger affinity for lightning than her traditional fire spells. Fortunately, Meltlake was still capable of teaching those, and he’d picked up a couple noteworthy spells — a lightning storm that would periodically rain bolts on enemies, a weapon electrification spell, and a chain lightning spell that would jump between enemy targets.
Marissa had spent the vast majority of her time developing her shroud. When I briefly turned my attunement on, I was shocked by the intensity of it. Her shroud was already vastly stronger than the phoenix sigils I’d made us, and she seemed to be maintaining it without any effort. I wondered just how much damage it could deflect and what else she could do with it.
Jin assured us he’d gotten better at “everything” and left it at that.
It was the end of the night when I showed them what I’d made for myself — a saber with gray and transference enchantments layered across the surface to increase the striking power. It was a poor substitute for the Selys-Lyann, but at least I had a weapon I was allowed to use. I’d considered a dueling cane, but I didn’t need one. A saber was a better close-range weapon and I had the gauntlet to handle ranged attacks.
I wished I’d had more time to make some items focused on utility — detecting
traps, increased mobility, teleportation, unlocking boxes and doors — but I’d pushed myself to the brink of exhaustion just trying to get these last few items ready in time.
That had also prevented me from making any items that were specifically intended for the test rooms we’d already seen. My priority was making sure the items that I made would be flexible enough to work in multiple tests, as well as the actual Serpent Spire.
Fortunately, now that I was capable of churning out roughly two or three magical items per week, I was confident I’d be much better prepared for our third test.
Assuming we didn’t fail out of the school during this one, of course.
And, with that rather sobering thought in mind, I made my way back to my room to sleep.
***
We didn’t have a second-year student to prep us for the test this time.
We had Professor Orden.
She was wearing a tailored black suit as usual, but she had her hair up in a bun today. Some sort of special occasion, maybe? She usually kept it down.
“Ah, some of my favorite students. Make sure to entertain me.”
The group exchanged worried glances.
The preparation room was the same. I glanced at the three exit doors with my attunement on. Two of them glowed with purple auras. Presumably the effect that would teleport us into the testing area.
“Same rules as last time,” Orden explained, leaning on a long dueling cane. “Any questions?”
Sera shook her head. “No, professor. I believe we’re clear.”
“Great. Who’s sitting out with me?”
We’d agreed on our plan the night before, but I still felt a little nervous.
Marissa spoke. “I’m starting outside.”
Orden raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’re leaving your Guardian behind?” The teacher shook her head incredulously. “Well, whatever. Your funeral. Head to your doors, kids.”
I nodded, heading to the same door I’d taken last time. Patrick was with me — he’d be our muscle. Jin and Sera headed for the other door.
“Good luck,” Sera offered to us.
“Same,” I replied.
Professor Orden walked over to each group and handed a member of each team a return bell. “Don’t forget these.”
We accepted our return bells. I tucked mine away in my bag, turning toward the entrance door.