Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension Book 1)

by Andrew Rowe

  That tile sunk into the ground, too.

  “Oops?” he mumbled.

  A hail of dozens of ice spears fired out of holes in the wall on the opposite side of the room, all aimed for Derek.

  His arm blurred again, and then he had a flaming blade in hand, shattering each of the icy spears in a flicker of motions that were too quick for my eyes to follow.

  I had to admit, it was pretty impressive.

  Lowering his weapon after smashing the barrage, Derek sighed. “Okay. I need to stop moving for a minute.”

  “Figured that one out all by yourself, did you?” Vera laughed, gingerly pressing a finger against the top of the first tile that Derek had stepped on. It was slowly moving back upward to the level of the rest of the floor. “Okay. Good news is that the tiles don’t seem to be linked to each other, so you haven’t triggered a chain reaction with those first couple missteps. Bad news is that each tile can trigger more than once, and I don’t see an easy way to differentiate them from normal tiles. If there are any normal tiles.”

  Vera knelt down at the doorway, sweeping her hand around the area connecting to the first tile. “Hold on, let me check around here a little more.”

  Derek frowned, looking down. “That’s fine... I’ll just, uh, stand here. And protect you. Yes. That is definitely what I will be doing.”

  “How very gallant of you.” Vera continued tracing her way around the tile until she’d made a full circuit with her hand. “Okay, there are some spots that aren’t going to trigger any traps. I can figure them out by touch, but you’re all going to have to follow me carefully. And we should have a plan for crossing that bridge before we get this started.”

  “I can handle that part,” Sera offered. “I can make an ice bridge.”

  I glanced at her. “Any chance you could make an ice floor over the whole floor that’s solid enough for us to step on without touching the tiles?”

  She pursed her lips, seeming to consider the idea. “I could, but it’d take up...maybe two thirds of my mana?”

  “That’s too much, never mind. We’ll deal with it.”

  Vera nodded. “Okay, I’ll lead the way, then. Derek will be next. He can ‘protect me’ if anything goes wrong. Sera can come up after that, then the rest of you.”

  We made our way to the middle of the room slowly, but without incident.

  Sera pointed her hand at the broken gap in the bridge.

  “Child of the goddess, I call upon our pact. Form a bridge of ice!”

  A thick section of ice formed over the gap. It looked slick, but when Vera tested it with a foot she judged that it was stable enough to cross.

  We followed her to the other side of the bridge. It was Jin that noticed that we’d missed something.

  “There’s a key at the bottom of the water.”

  He pointed to the bottom left corner of the pool. I wasn’t even sure I could see it at first, but I checked my mana watch — it’s still 37/48, Corin, you haven’t used any since the last time you checked — and turned my attunement on.

  Yeah, definitely a key down there.

  Sera frowned down at the water. “Want me to try to lift it out with air magic?”

  Derek narrowed his eyes at the key. “Might not be a bad idea, assuming you can maintain the bridge at the same time. Also, don’t splash us. That’s probably acid.”

  Sera nodded. “That’ll make it... trickier. But I think I can manage it.”

  She pointed her hand toward the spot in the water and began to whisper into the air.

  “Wyvern, I call upon our pact. Deliver this key unto me.”

  The effect was surprisingly subdued. The key floated upward unceremoniously to the top of the water, then out of it toward Sera’s waiting hand.

  I’d been expecting a tornado or a hurricane or something. I was a little disappointed, but I could live with it.

  Sera waved her hand at the last moment and the key dropped onto the stone at her feet. As Derek had suspected, the droplets of liquid that had collected on the key burned into the bridge’s surface.

  “If you’ll all move to the side a bit, I’ll use the wind to push the key straight into the lock,” Sera offered.

  Vera shook her head. “Let me check the lock first. The key might not actually correspond to it.”

  “Seriously?” Sera glanced down at the key. “I mean, I can respect being tricky, but that’d be a little ridiculous.”

  “It’s more likely the key could actually be used in multiple places. That’s more the goddess’ style, in my experience,” Derek suggested. “Vera, you want to check the walls for more secret passages?”

  “Uh, not particularly. Going to be kind of a pain to get over to each of the walls...but I suppose that was a rhetorical question and I should do it anyway. Fine. The rest of you wait on the bridge. It’s all safe, as far as I can tell.”

  We waited on the bridge while Vera made a careful circuit around the room, feeling her way across the floor to find the safe spots before she stepped forward. After a couple minutes, she stood up to rub her back. All that bending forward and half-crawling must have been pretty awkward.

  Eventually, she reached the walls and made her way around the room to check each of them. It was when she hit the south west corner that she paused. “Huh. Light me up, that’s a surprise. There is a false wall here. You still got that pickaxe?”

  ...we’d left the pickaxe in the key room.

  After about a minute of deliberation, we decided that simply having Derek punch his way through the false wall would be faster and more efficient than trying to make our way all the way back to the key room.

  Vera led Derek over to the wall.

  He started punching right through it with his bare hands.

  I really hoped he wasn’t the traitor I thought he was, because if he was, we were going to be in a lot of trouble.

  Punching out sections of wall didn’t take him much longer than the pickaxe had, but it took us all another couple minutes to make our way over to the hole he’d excavated. It led into another tunnel, just like the first secret passage had. There was a door with a blue keyhole at the end.

  “Gotta make a choice here,” Derek explained. “Keys in the tower almost always disappear when they’re used, so we can only open one of these two doors. Assuming it’s the same key for both.”

  Vera tapped on the keyhole. “It is. I checked the other lock. They use the same key.”

  “We’ll take the secret passage, Derek,” Professor Orden instructed.

  “Yes, Professor.” He nodded to her. “Okay, Sera, can you float the key over here?”

  “No problem.” Another quick air spell and she floated the key into the lock and turned it.

  Derek opened the door.

  The blast of air coming from the other room slammed him backward into Vera. It hit the rest of us in the next moment, and the sheer force of the gust carried me off the ground before I could react.

  I flew backward out of the tunnel, uncontrolled until Jin grabbed me by the wrist. Somehow, he’d reacted fast enough to slam a dagger — a dagger I’d never seen — into the stone wall on the side of the tunnel to anchor himself into place.

  Professor Orden crashed into me a second later, breaking Jin’s grip - then Orden and I were out of the tunnel and back in the previous room, airborne over a pool of acid and quickly approaching the opposite wall.

  As I flew through the air toward imminent death, my mind somehow managed to inform me, “There’s the hurricane you wanted, Corin.”

  Oh, the sharpness of my wit. Truly it cuts me more deeply than any other.

  “Wyvern, I call upon our pact! Protect us from the wind!”

  Sera’s spell blocked the wind.

  This was probably good for those people who were in the tunnel.

  Unfortunately, Orden and I were still entangled and airborne.

  There was an almost comical instant when the last of the air faded and we began to fall.

  I pa
nicked.

  Orden acted.

  She ripped the dueling cane off my belt, shot a blast of energy at a nearby tile and triggered the trap.

  The acid was only a moment away, but the spears of ice from the trap reached us first.

  Orden grabbed the closest spear and slammed it into the stone as we fell, intending to use it as an anchor like Jin had with the knife.

  The ice spear bounced right off the stone. Magic or not, it couldn’t pierce rock.

  Orden and I hit the acid hard.

  For a moment, I was pretty confident I was going to die right there. My barrier kicked in before the acid could burn me, but with the barrier preventing the liquid from completely reaching me, I sank like a rock.

  Orden was still there with me, her own barrier protecting her. I didn’t realize how important that was until she spoke a single word. “Teleport.”

  And then we were standing back at the entrance to the tunnel, very much alive.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was only momentary.

  Sera was kneeling on the ground at the entrance to the tunnel, breathing far too heavily. “Can’t...hold... the wind...much...longer...”

  Resh.

  Professor Orden and I stepped past her into the tunnel.

  I could see the point where Sera’s spell — a twisting mist of green — was blocking off the wind at the end of the tunnel.

  Derek had moved beyond that point. His Emerald aura was flaring, and he was physically pushing his way through the gale. The rest of us didn’t have any hope of mimicking that feat, though, and it didn’t look like Sera was going to be able to hold the wind long enough for the rest of us to wait here safely.

  The easy approach was probably to move us all out of the tunnel and way off to the side, but that meant that Derek would have to try to tangle with that room alone. He probably could survive it without difficulty, but we had no way of knowing if he’d find a way to stop the wind — which meant that it was a dead end if we didn’t all get through.

  “Can you teleport us to the other side of that room?” I asked Orden.

  Orden shook her head. “I need an anchor to teleport. In this case, I was able to teleport back to Jin’s location. I could get us to Derek, but we’d just be blown right back out of the room.”

  “Derek, close the door!” Vera shouted.

  “What?” He shouted back. “Did you say my name? I can’t hear you over the wind!”

  Orden stepped closer to Sera’s wind barrier, while Sera continued to shiver. With my attunement active, I could see threads of green leaking out of her. It was rather disconcerting.

  Professor Orden frowned at the barrier. “We shouldn’t close the door. Derek could get stuck in there. We don’t know that this door will reopen if we try.” She turned back around. “Sera, can you make an ice wall at the entrance to this tunnel?”

  She shook her head. She was looking flushed, her breathing accompanied by a wheeze.

  I needed to do something.

  Can I use Selys-Lyann to make enough ice to form a wall? No, not enough time.

  Blast through the wind with my gauntlet? No, the wind is continuous, it wouldn’t last.

  I gestured toward the tunnel entrance. “Everyone, we need to get out of the hallway and let Sera rest.”

  We moved out of the tunnel and off to the side of the door, where the wind wouldn’t hit us when it picked back up. When we were all out of the way aside from Sera, I grabbed onto her tight and pulled her toward me.

  I nearly lost her, but Jin grabbed me around the waist and anchored me. Together, we pulled her out of the doorway.

  The wind whipped past us at deadly speed, but we were safe.

  Sera was still breathing hard. I slipped off my backpack, withdrawing my water and handing it to her. She drank a sip, coughed that water up and retched onto the floor near us, and then drank some more. She managed to keep it down the second time.

  She hugged me tightly and I hugged her right back. Even my usual reticence toward human contract was apparently overwhelmed by just how reshing close we’d just come to meeting our end.

  We all sat down. I handed Sera the mana watch. She wordlessly accepted it, fumbling with the watch to find the right spot on her back to measure her mana.

  -30/112.

  She’d gone well beyond her safe mana limit. That meant potential permanent damage. No wonder she wasn’t talking.

  She looked at the number, grimaced just slightly, and handed the watch back to me. I mussed her hair. “Quick thinking, blocking the wind. You saved us there. The rest of us will take care of things for a bit.”

  Sera nodded, still looking painfully weak. If I was a Mender, maybe I could have healed her, but...

  I sighed at my own stupidity. “I’ve still got the ring of regeneration,” I realized out loud. I handed her the ring. “Put that on, it’ll make you feel a bit better.”

  She accepted the ring gratefully and slipped it on. She closed her eyes, letting out a sigh of momentary relief.

  I felt a little better knowing the ring would probably keep her from getting worse, at least.

  I glanced at the others. “Okay. Plan?”

  Professor Orden shook her head. “As a Wayfarer, I have all sorts of movement-oriented spell. Unfortunately, none of them really involve blocking or resisting the wind. I could levitate someone, but that would just make them more susceptible to being blown away.”

  I refrained from asking why she hadn’t levitated us across this room in the first place. Presumably she wanted to save her mana, or maybe it required her to concentrate on one person at a time.

  Maybe she just enjoyed having other people do all the work. It didn’t matter. I needed to focus.

  I still had a handful of magical items I hadn’t used, but none of them seemed applicable to the situation. I was sorely tempted to consult the book, but everyone could see me. Was it worth outing the book’s existence here?

  Maybe. It really was a tremendously dangerous situation. Extreme measures were warranted. But it wasn’t an extreme approach that I suspected to actually help.

  The book would probably just write back something like, “Corin, you’re in the Room of Killing Wind. It has winds that kill you. Avoid them.”

  I rolled my eyes at the thought. For a magic book, it wasn’t actually very helpful.

  Aside from that, I didn’t really have any items that felt close to appropriate. Maybe Professor Orden did? That gave me a bit of an idea, at least. “Do you want to try that serpent key on the other door? Maybe we can just take the other route and get Derek back here.”

  Professor Orden furrowed her brow, seeming to consider the suggestion. “Only if we can think of no alternative. The other room could be equally or more dangerous, and it could also introduce a new element that makes this room more deadly.”

  A fair argument. “Okay. Do we have any way of communicating with Derek?”

  Orden nodded. “I have a spell that sends messages, but it’s one way. He would not be able to reply.”

  Sera tried to say something, but it just came out as a cough. She frowned, and then mimed drawing something and looked at me expectantly.

  I set my backpack down, once again debating if I was willing to take out the book. Instead, I retrieved a pen and frowned. “Anyone have paper? Sera needs to write something.”

  Vera dug some out of a bag. “Here you go, dear. Thanks again for the save back there.”

  Sera nodded to Vera, accepting the paper and my pen.

  She wrote out, “Vanniv could probably stop the wind.”

  I frowned. “You’re not in any condition to summon Vanniv right now.”

  She nodded, writing again. “Agreed. If we call Derek back, we can camp here for a few hours until I’m sufficiently rested.”

  I relayed Sera’s plan to the rest of the group.

  “I’m not confident a summoned karvensi is going to be sufficient to repel wind of that strength,” Orden remarked, “But it is the bes
t plan I’ve heard so far. I’ll send Derek the message.”

  Orden whispered into the air. I couldn’t hear her words, but with my attunement active I did see a hint of mana leaving her mouth. It was a strange effect.

  I turned my attunement back off, checking my mana. 34/48. Still safe, but I was getting close to the point where I usually stopped.

  Ten minutes later, Derek still hadn’t come back.

  “Anyone else getting a little worried?” Vera asked. “I mean, he’s an Emerald and all, but he’s not invincible. What if something happened?”

  “Unless someone has something new to contribute, I don’t believe we have any option other than waiting,” Professor Orden replied. “I wouldn’t be overly concerned, however. In spite of his bluster, Derek is quite creative.”

  This was emphasized when Derek’s fist burst through the wall behind me a moment later.

  I startled, standing up and nearly stumbling back into the wind. Jin caught me and steadied me.

  Derek punched his way through the rest of the wall over the following couple minutes. “Phew. That was rough. This wall isn’t thin like the one we were supposed to go through.”

  I blinked. “What happened? And didn’t you say we’re supposed to not destroy the normal walls, because of spire guardians and such?”

  “Yeah, that’s the funny thing. I realized a spire guardian was just what we needed. Punched a wall a whole bunch until one showed up. Huge iron golem, really mean. Then I punched through him, too.” Derek cracked his neck, and then wiped his lips.

  Was that blood?

  “Anyway, his body is big and heavy enough that the wind can’t push it. Unfortunately, I can’t push it very well, either. Thing must weigh more than a train car. So, I busted all the way through here. His body is blocking the wind on the other side of the passage. He’s around the middle of the room, though, so it won’t get us the whole way through.”

  “If I can get in half-way, I can look for ways to disable the wind. There’s probably a trigger somewhere,” Vera suggested.

  We pushed ourselves to our feet. Derek’s strength had come through for us again, but we’d need to handle the rest ourselves.

  And, at a second glance — yeah, his lip definitely was bleeding.