On the Shoulders of Titans

by Andrew Rowe

  And if it wasn’t the kobolds, it was undoubtedly something worse.

  We spent the next few minutes searching the area, but we didn’t find much of note. Mostly mining equipment, more bodies, and some old clothing.

  We did, however, find the next step of the path — a long shaft descending into darkness.

  “Think this is a lift.” Mara walked around to the other side of the shaft, finding a raised metallic box. “And this is the control for it, I think.”

  I cautiously circled the pit. “Yep. Looks like we’re supposed to raise the platform somehow, then use it to get down below.”

  I scanned the ceiling and the area inside the box, but I didn’t see any sort of rope leading down or a pulley system. That implied whatever moved the platform was down below, rather than up here.

  “Ah!” She opened up a panel on the side of the metal box. “Think this is what we need.”

  We took a look inside the box. It had a simple lever control, currently flipped down, and a socket with a single rune etched into it.

  I knew what I was looking at — it was a slot for a power source.

  “Looks like this is magically powered. And we need an essence crystal to operate it.”

  Marissa nodded. “Great. Maybe there’s an essence crystal back with the kobolds?”

  I glanced back that way, turning on my attunement.

  The kobolds were glowing, since they were some kind of illusions or magical constructs. I was pleased to know my school hadn’t imported dead kobolds (or murdered live ones for just a test).

  I didn’t see any essence crystals, though.

  And I was pretty sure I knew why.

  I think Marissa came to the realization at the same time. “Uh, Corin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t suppose that power source might have looked like a green rock, would it?”

  I pictured the crystal she’d throw at the spider monster’s head. “...Yeah.”

  “Oops.”

  I sighed. “Yep. I don’t suppose you took it with you?”

  She shook her head. “You?”

  “Nope. Was too busy trying to get out of there alive. Completely forgot about it.”

  “Well, doesn’t that just caw the roost.”

  “Yeah. I think. I’m not really sure what that phrase means.”

  Marissa just nodded. “I don’t think I do, either. Anyway, should we go back?”

  I shook my head. “Probably not. Give me a minute.”

  I took a look at the control box more carefully, searching for other runes. I only found one more, and it wasn’t a good sign — it was a targeting rune, indicating that the main runes for operating the device were down below.

  That meant if I wanted to try to operate it from up here, I’d either have to completely rewrite the runes, or find it an alternate power source if I wanted to operate it in the intended way.

  Checking the rune for the power source, it looked like it was built for a Class 3 Transference Mana Crystal. I could make mana crystals, but nothing even close to that magnitude.

  Maybe I could make it work briefly with a weaker crystal? It might be worth an attempt.

  “I might be able to power this on my own, but it’ll take a lot out of me, and I’m not sure it’ll work.”

  I was already pretty exhausted from all the enchanting I’d done earlier, so I wasn’t sure how much more I could manage.

  “How much of your mana do you think it would take to get it up and running?”

  I considered that. “Somewhere in the sixty range. That’d be one class lower than the amount that it’s supposed to run on.”

  “And you’ve got, what, eighty total?”

  “Eighty-four.” I checked it obsessively enough that I was confident about that.

  She shook her head. “Not worth it. Might need that mana for something more important. Like, ya know, fighting.”

  I knelt down, looking into the depths of the pit. “Did you think to bring rope?”

  Marissa winced. “Wasn’t counting on climbing.”

  I have some, but it’s in the Jaden Box, and that raises the same problem as before. Maybe next time I need to figure out which items are likely to be used in my tests and keep them in a separate pack.

  “I didn’t, either.” I admitted. “Maybe we can find some with the mining supplies?”

  We searched for a bit, and we did eventually find a coil of fraying rope, but it was only about ten feet long. Dropping a rock and listening for the sound, we judged the total depth to be about twenty five or thirty feet.

  Mara took the rope and walked back over to the control area. “Could attach this, climb part way, and then drop the rest. Shrouds and shield sigils will take care of us, shouldn’t be hurt too bad.”

  She was right, but I didn’t like the idea of even minor injuries if we could avoid them. And draining the shield sigils wouldn’t be a great idea, either.

  I had a better solution, though. I was wearing it.

  I lifted my hand to remind her about the ring. “This doesn’t just help me jump, it slows down falling, too.”

  “Great! That should let you get down easy. Maybe you could catch me?”

  I winced. “Not confident I could manage that without hurting us more.”

  Another idea did come to mind, though. I was almost sure it would work, but I didn’t like it.

  “Corin? I know that expression. What you thinkin’?”

  I sighed. “I could just pick you up and jump down. The ring doesn’t distinguish between a number of people — it just applies a certain amount of force. It should have no problem slowing the descent for us both. Or getting us back to the top, now that I think about it. That’s going to be pretty important later.”

  Mara nodded. “Sounds good. You ready?”

  No. Definitely not.

  “One second.”

  Marissa didn’t even seem the slightest bit awkward.

  I had to take a minute to regulate my breathing.

  “Not good with heights,” I explained awkwardly. “Could you do that shroud extension thing and keep us both inside your shroud to soften the fall, just in case I mess this up?”

  “Oh, sure. Won’t matter much now that you’ve got your own shroud, but it might help a little.”

  Just talking about something else helped steel my nerves a little bit. I tried to ignore the itching sensation at the back of my mind that happened any time I had to touch someone.

  It helped that I was the one who was going to be carrying her, not the other way around.

  It also helped that she was familiar. A friend, even.

  But that couldn’t smash the feeling entirely.

  I took another breath. “Let’s do this.”

  I ducked down, and she wrapped her arms around my neck.

  Don’tpanicdon’tpanicdon’tpanic.

  Then, I lifted. That wasn’t hard in terms of strength — she was athletic, but skinny, and I was in pretty good shape. With her arms around me, it wasn’t like lifting dead weight, either.

  I felt a tingling sensation that didn’t come from my own paranoia. “Shroud’s good. Ready when you are.”

  Oh, the shroud. Right.

  Breathe.

  I took a breath, then I jumped.

  We fell.

  The fall was at full speed at first. I focused, estimating our time to hit the ground, and then activated the ring. That set off an explosion of force beneath my feet that launched us back up about ten feet.

  Mara let out an excited “Wee!” and a giggle at the jolt.

  Then we were falling again, but slower. We touched down without incident. We landed atop a metallic cage, which I realized was probably part of the elevator system. I set Marissa down, then we clambered over the cage and down the rest of the way to the floor.

  “That was great!” Marissa briefly pulled me into a hug, and I was too stunned to do anything about it. “Okay, let’s go find that scary thing.”

  She was of
f and walking, leaving me to stare blankly into the void for a few moments before I turned to follow her.

  Mara’s light seemed...muted, here. Dampened by something in the air, maybe. I couldn’t tell if it was just my perception or if there really was some sort of shadow magic at work.

  Probably the latter, knowing my luck. Or maybe both.

  The tunnel here was rougher, and we had to watch our step to avoid stumbling over protruding rocks. It led downward for what seemed like miles, but that part probably was just my perception.

  The path forked again. I could hear the sound of running water nearby, much louder to the left than the right.

  “We going toward the water?” I asked.

  “Let’s try the other way first.”

  Marissa led the way.

  We paused when we found the next group of bodies.

  Or, more accurately, skeletons. They’d been dead a while.

  Upon inspection, the bodies were human - or at least humanoid. Probably some of the miners we’d heard about.

  Almost all of them were facing toward the way we’d come from. Only the furthest body from us was facing toward the direction we were going.

  Unlike the others, he held a rusted sword in his hand. The tip of the sword had been broken off and was lying nearby.

  A part of me wanted to compliment whoever had set this place up for their attention to detail. The implication was clearly that these people had been running from something. Most of them had died running. The one who had tried to fight had died first.

  It really added to the ambiance of the place.

  Another part of me was, however, actually somewhat scared.

  I knew intellectually this was a test, but it was like those stories about the Blackstone Assassin. Everyone knew that he wasn’t real, but when someone left a black gemstone on your pillow as a prank, there was always a moment of panic before you calmed down and looked for a friend snickering in the corner.

  “You know,” I offered, “It’s possible this is a clue that we’re not supposed to go this way.”

  “Nah. Just means there’s danger close by. Gotta keep our fists up.”

  I kept my sword raised instead. Punching was all well and good, but I preferred having an extra yard of reach. “Can you glean anything from the bodies?”

  Marissa looked them over briefly. “Nah. It’s monster huntin’ class, not forensics.”

  That was fair, but also somewhat disappointing. I was more interested in the mystery solving portion of this than just hitting things.

  I didn’t mind hitting things, per se. As long as they weren’t intelligent and chatty. Or particularly adorable.

  Given what we’d seen from these bodies, I expected we might finally have an unambiguously monstrous opponent to deal with. That was actually kind of exciting.

  We pushed on, eventually reaching another wide open chamber.

  There was seemingly nothing inside — except for the obvious black-bladed sword in the center, thrust into an altar of stone.

  “I have literally never seen a more obvious trap.” I waved at the center of the room. “And I’m including those fire-breathing statues from the spire.”

  Marissa nodded. She shined her lantern into the room, but we couldn’t see anything else of note. “Think something’s going to drop down from the ceiling? More spiders?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t know. Let’s walk in carefully, do a circle, and check the floors and ceilings before we touch the thing.”

  We did just that, checking the area slowly. We didn’t find any sign of monsters. The ceiling was pretty high up, so it was hard to tell if there were holes that spiders could be hiding inside, but I didn’t see any.

  I turned on my Enchanter attunement and glanced around. I didn’t see any magical auras, aside from Mara.

  ...None at all. Not even on the sword.

  “That’s odd.” I stepped a little closer. The sword did have runes on the blade, but they didn’t glow in the slightest.

  Mara walked over. “What’s odd?”

  “Not sensing any magic on it at all. I mean, maybe that’s just because it’s a theatrical prop...”

  Marissa shook her head. “Doubt it. You know they could afford to put an enchanted weapon down here, even if it’s just a basic one. If you’re not seeing magic on it, there’s a reason for that.”

  I scanned the runes, but it was hard to see them clearly in the light.

  Still, I was reasonably confident about one thing—

  I didn’t recognize any of them.

  Now, maybe that meant this was a sword of ancient and terrible power, that I couldn’t detect at all because it was made with a different type of magic. The kind of legendary magic weapon that Keras probably keeps stashed under his pillow.

  There was a much more obvious explanation, though. “I think it’s a decoy.”

  Marissa frowned. “A decoy?”

  “Just a fake sword that we’re expected to take. Probably triggers a mechanical trap that’s in the base of that altar. Maybe even a magical trap that’s inside the stone itself. I can’t see through solid rock.”

  “But we’re supposed to be ‘ere to get a magic weapon, yeah?”

  “Exactly. This is so obvious that I’m betting it’s just here as a distraction.” I considered. “We could try to break open the altar and see if there’s anything else inside, or we can just leave it here and go check the other path.”

  “I’m not sure I’d feel right just leavin’ without checkin’ this more.”

  I agreed with her assessment. “Okay, then we need to clear the rock without triggering whatever mechanism is connected to the sword itself. Think you can do that?”

  Marissa nodded. She extended her hand to her right side. “Been practicin’ just the thing for that.”

  Her shroud extended beyond her right hand, taking the shape of a blade. The technique she’d been practicing with Keras.

  I took a step back and let her work.

  I expected chopping through the solid rock to be a slow process.

  Fortunately, it wasn’t solid rock at all.

  The stone altar was a façade — it was completely hollowed out inside. The stone on the surface was only a couple inches thick. She chopped it away with ease, then moved it to the side.

  The sword was stuck inside a metallic base. That had runes etched into the side that were glowing.

  “Let’s see... First rune is motion activation, that makes sense. That’s a shadow rune...a power rune for increasing effect...and some kind of teleportation rune...” I sighed. “Yeah, this thing summons some kind of shadow monsters if you take the sword out.”

  “Huh. Neat. Want to fight them?”

  I laughed. “Nah, I think we’ll get plenty of fighting done on the other path. But if you want a souvenir, I could probably disable the trap and take the sword out.”

  “Sure!”

  Just scratching out the runes would trigger a form of backlash, which would be bad. I’d learned how to transfer mana from a rune to another rune, but I didn’t have experience at doing it, and this wasn’t a good place to practice.

  Instead, I simply touched the activation rune and transferred the mana straight into the air. Some more powerful items had runes to prevent this sort of thing from being possible — basically generating a shield around the item itself to prevent tampering — but this was basic stuff. There weren’t any prevention measures in effect.

  It took me just a minute to do that. Then I repeated the process with the other runes.

  Moving the mana from the shadow rune felt a little strange. I’d worked with the other types of mana before, but even touching shadow mana made my skin crawl. It felt...wrong, somehow, like it was draining my strength just letting it come into contact with me.

  I didn’t let that bother me, though. “Okay, this side is done. Cut the stone on the other side, just in case there are more runes on the other side.

  There weren’t, it turned out. We’d gotte
n lucky and found the trap on the first try. Still, it had been wise to check.

  We took one last precautionary measure — we cut the whole stone section in the floor out where the metal piece was anchored, then checked the bottom for more runes. But there was nothing else, as we’d suspected.

  Apparently, these teachers weren’t quite as devious as Orden. I suspected that if she’d been running the test, the whole sword would have turned into a monster to eat us or something.

  Weirdly enough, that made me miss her a little. Which was horrible, because she was a traitor, but...

  I shook my head, dismissing the feeling as quickly as I could. “Okay, should be good to go.”

  Marissa drew the sword.

  As we’d expected, nothing happened.

  “Huh. Don’t even think this sword is real. Feels too light.” She turned it over, then shook it in the air. “Thinkin’ it’s a stage prop?”

  I laughed. “Figures. Okay, ready to check that other path?”

  “Yep.”

  We headed back down the way we came, then took the other fork.

  There were no bodies this way.

  Just...skin.

  Or, more accurately, molted skin and scales.

  “Wow.” Marissa ducked down and picked up a scale. It was about the size of her fist. It was hard to tell in the light, but I thought it was a dark turquoise, or maybe just blue.

  “That’s...a pretty big scale.”

  “Yup! Oooh, I bet there’s a serpent down there.” She slung the fake sword over her shoulder, bouncing on her heels in enthusiasm. “Let’s go kill it!”

  I was somewhat less excited. Sure, the idea of slaying a serpent was exciting, but...I remembered.

  I remembered Mizuchi, looming over the Soaring Wings headquarters. She took a breath, lightning flaring around her titanic jaws, and then exhaled.

  People screamed and fell. Lord Teft’s barrier, maintained by himself and his simulacra, barely managed to keep us from harm — and we weren’t anywhere close to the blast radius.

  This creature certainly wouldn’t be as strong as Mizuchi. Almost nothing was; she was the child of a God Beast, and very nearly a God Beast herself.

  But seeing that had given me a realistic idea of my chances against any truly powerful monster, and those chances were extraordinarily low.