On the Shoulders of Titans

by Andrew Rowe

  Sera shook her head. “You didn’t need it. You and Corin did almost everything on the list without seeing it. Showing it to you would have just hurt your focus on fighting.”

  She was probably right. I would have obsessed over a list like that, and it would have hurt me more than it helped. I was less sure about Marissa, but we’d done almost everything on the list without trying, so it was probably true.

  “Besides,” Patrick added, “We wanted to see which one of you would win.”

  I rolled my eyes at that. “You can see that on almost a daily basis.”

  Marissa shook her head. “Nae, Patrick’s right. Wasn’t the same as when we’re sparring. That was the first time I’ve seen you really try to fight me.” She cracked her fingers. “It was nice. Wouldn’t mind another match sometime.”

  “I wouldn’t have stood a chance if I hadn’t changed the tiles, though.”

  She nodded. “Of course you wouldn’t have. That’s why we need to have a rematch. So I can beat you into the ground next time, and feel better about my bruised pride.”

  I laughed. “I suppose I’d better start taking our practice a bit more seriously, then.”

  “Ye’d better. Because next time, I’m aiming straight for your bag of toys.”

  ...That wasn’t a bad counter to my strategy, now that I thought about it. If she got my bag — which she could, she was stronger than me and faster most of the time — she’d be able to prevent almost all of my tricks.

  I needed to rely on the bag a little less heavily in the future, but for the moment?

  I felt great. We’d all passed the class. The hardest part of classes for the first half of the year was over.

  We teased each other a bit more on the way home. It was an affectionate kind of teasing, though, and to be honest, it was pretty nice.

  Chapter XII – Lessons Learned

  I pulled Sera aside when we got back to Derek’s house, asking a question I’d been thinking about since the match. “...What was with the tiny Vanniv?”

  She chortled. “Remember how I summoned a weaker version of Seiryu in the spire? Same principle. Summoners usually learn to summon stronger versions of their monsters. I’ve been practicing summoning weaker versions since I got my attunement, so I could eventually learn to summon a weaker version of Seiryu like that. I doubt I’ll ever be able to summon Seiryu at her full strength.”

  She shrugged a shoulder, then continued. “Anyway, that was a depowered version of Vanniv. I still don’t have enough strength back to summon the real thing.”

  That made sense to me, although I wouldn’t have expected a weaker version to be smaller, even though that was what had happened with Seiryu. Maybe that was just the particular way she’d learned to decrease the power of the monsters she was summoning.

  “How functional is your attunement, then?”

  Sera shook her head. “Barely at all. I figured out how to break my contracts using my hand, and cast some spells with it. I’ve been recovering a little since then, but not a lot. I can only cast the most basic spells, and even that takes a lot out of me.”

  I nodded. “Glad you’re recovering at all.”

  “Yeah. I feel more like myself again. I don’t like being useless.” She scratched at her back, where her mark was located. “My attunement feels different now. Not worse...just different.”

  “But it still works?”

  “Yeah. In fact, Vanniv told me he felt a stronger connection with me, and that maybe we could do something new with it. I’m going to experiment with that when I’ve recovered a bit more.” She coughed, lifting a hand to her throat. “Think I need to stop talking for a while. That match took a lot out of me.”

  “Do you need to go to the hospital again?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not that bad. Just need to rest.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

  I headed back to my own room to isolate myself for a while after that, thinking about what she’d said. It was good to hear that she was recovering, I wasn’t confident she’d heal all the way on her own. And we still didn’t know what else had changed with her attunement, unless she’d figured out more than I had.

  It also reminded me of another question — how’d she get that contract with Seiryu in the first place?

  Had she gone back into the spire after getting her attunement, but before even coming to the academy?

  Or had she somehow managed to get a contract during her Judgment?

  It was worth asking later, but she clearly wasn’t up for talking. And honestly, it wasn’t all that important. I was just curious.

  I’m not ashamed to say that I took it easy for much of the rest of the day. I hadn’t had a chance to just rest in a long time, and it was good to finally have a minute just to breathe.

  ***

  The next week was the easiest I could remember in what felt like ages. We had to study for the last few final examinations, but none of the other classes worried me to the extent that the dueling class had.

  Aside from studying, I spent a lot more time training with Marissa and Keras. I used some of that training to try to improve my use of Haste, but even after another week, my coordination was still too poor to use it for moving around rapidly.

  It did work for rapid attacks like how I’d used it against Marissa, but only for a couple seconds, or I’d get too dizzy and lose my focus afterward.

  My biggest project was finishing up the replica of Dawnbringer with help from Keras and Derek. We did it over the course of a few days so I wouldn’t strain my hand further.

  When I finally presented the finished product to Patrick, he lifted it and gazed at it with awe. The silvery blade, etched with golden script, glimmered brightly even in the indoor light. “It’s amazing. I love it. Thank you!”

  I grinned. “Glad you like it. Keras said we should tell him when you’re ready to test it out.”

  “Does it work like the real Dawnbringer?”

  I shrugged. “No idea. The runes I put on it are just for storing and replenishing mana, and for making sure it doesn’t overflow and explode. They don’t actually do anything.”

  I pointed at the strange rune Keras had put on it. “That thing is what’s supposed to give it the actual functions. It’s not a traditional rune like Enchanters use — as far as I can tell, it’s more like a contract that Sera makes with a monster, but on a sword. Keras has been funneling mana into it for days, but he hasn’t told me what the functions of it are.”

  “Huh. Do you think he’s really seen the real Dawnbringer?”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised, given how powerful he is. We can ask him about it sometime.” I paused for a moment, considering. “You’re pretty familiar with the stories about the Six Sacred Swords, right?”

  “Of course! They’re my absolute favorite swords. What do you want to know?” He turned away from me, testing the weight of the sword and making a few tentative swings in the air.

  I was familiar with a lot of stories about the Six Sacred Swords, but they were just that — stories. Most of them were things I’d heard as a child. I’d never made an academic study of them. I knew legendary monsters and items were something of a hobby for Patrick, though, and maybe he had more reliable knowledge.

  I tapped the hilt of the sword at my side. “Do you think there’s any chance Selys-Lyann is one of the six? I know the swords go by different names in different stories. I think Flowbreaker was supposed to be a water or ice sword.”

  He lowered his sword and furrowed his brow. “Yeah, Flowbreaker is ice. But I don’t think that’s your sword. I mean, you’re right, there are a lot of different stories. But they almost always talk about Flowbreaker being destroyed.”

  I remembered hearing about that, too, but I’d considered it. “When I first found this, it looked rusted. It was inside a pillar of ice. The Voice of the Tower did something with it that repaired it.”

  “Still don’t think it’s the same sword. It wouldn’t have been jus
t rusted — Flowbreaker was broken in pieces, and those pieces were scattered all over the continent. Flowbreaker did make ice that grows on its own, though. Maybe they’re related somehow?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s possible. Thanks.”

  “Sure! Let me know if you want to know more about the swords sometime.”

  “I will.”

  There was someone that would have more information, but I wasn’t willing to ask.

  Not until Tristan answered so many other, more important questions.

  ***

  After we’d finished the Dawnbringer replica, I approached Keras about something I’d been considering for a while.

  “What are the odds I could convince you to help me make a whole bunch of magical items?”

  Keras shook his head. “Can’t.”

  Not the answer I was hoping for. My chances of making a simply absurd amount of money by selling high powered magical items were diminishing. “Can’t? It didn’t seem like investing the mana in the runes was causing you any difficulty.”

  “That’s not the hard part.” He folded his hands together. “You saw the rune I created on the sword before we started to work on it?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, you mentioned it’s how you’re actually giving the weapon any functions. Given that you spent so much more time on it, I assumed it was more mana intensive, but I figured we could skip that if we just used conventional function runes.”

  “Wouldn’t work. If I tried to enchant something else,” he waved to the sword at my hip, “I’d break it. That wasn’t a standard rune, it was more like one of Sera’s or Derek’s contracts. While I was working on the sword, it was bound to me. That prevented my shroud from damaging it during the process.”

  That made some degree of sense. Sera’s contracts were able to transfer mana safely between herself and a monster, like Vanniv or Seiryu. If Keras’ contracts worked similarly, it stood to reason that he could invest mana into a contracted weapon without causing it harm, and... “Does that imply that you’re able to draw power from the weapons you’ve bound as well?”

  He shifted awkwardly, turning his head to the side. “I’d rather not say too much on the subject, but yes.”

  Huh. Sensitive subject, apparently.

  That was fine, I had other avenues of questioning that were more pressing. “Okay, then. So, you need to bind an item to be able to enchant it safely. Can’t you just bind whatever we’re working on?”

  “In theory, yes. I already have a number of contracted items, however, and they each use up a bit of my power. I’m near the limit I can handle without reducing my fighting abilities significantly.”

  Just like Summoner contracts use up some of Sera’s mana. That was a problem, but it seemed easily solvable. “If the goal is to enchant an item, though, couldn’t you just break the contract afterward? Would the item lose the power if you did?”

  “Yes, I can break my contract and leave the mana in the item intact. There’s a problem, though. Binding spells use something more valuable than mana. That’s true for me, and it’s true for people like Sera as well.”

  I frowned. “What else would you be using?”

  He patted his chest. “A fraction of our spirit.”

  “Spirit?” I sounded a little more incredulous than I would have liked. “The Summoner attunement doesn’t have access to spirit magic. It’s just air and transference. And even the combination of those two types isn’t spirit.”

  “Attunements have a lot more magic in them than the two types they let you cast. You’ve heard that higher level attuned get a third magic type?”

  I saw where his logic was going. “Yeah. Which implies there’s another function on there, it’s just not active until your mana reaches a certain level.”

  “Right. And how does the attunement know how much mana you have?”

  “You’re implying all attunements have a mana detection function, which means they all have some amount of mental mana.” I thought about that. “And any number of other enchantments we don’t think about, because they’re not actively giving us mana to work with.”

  That was kind of a terrifying idea, actually. It meant that I had any number of unidentified enchantment functions built into a mark on my head.

  What if one of them was some kind of enchantment that allowed a visage remotely cause the attunement to detonate?

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  I consoled myself with the fact that humans had apparently figured out how to make artificial attunements, which meant that someone out there had a strong enough understanding of how they worked that they probably would have caught onto a hidden “kill” enchantment.

  Probably.

  I was already planning to study artificial attunements extensively, but this conversation pushed it higher on my list. I couldn’t study much here, though — no experts were available. I’d need to either track Tristan or Katashi down, or go all the way to Caelford.

  “Right. Your attunements are complex, and each one looks to be designed a little differently. The bindings Sera and Derek use create a bond between the spirit of a human and the spirit of a monster, which enables them to transfer mana back and forth.”

  “Okay, I get that. But what about a sword? That shouldn’t have a spirit to work with.”

  “Right. Most of them don’t, which is the problem. That means I have to give the sword a piece of my spirit in order to make the connection. As I’m sure you understand, that’s not something I can do routinely.”

  “...Does the piece of spirit you’re using on the contract grow back?”

  “Eventually, but it takes a while. And I don’t exactly like leaving pieces of my spirit lying around. That’s a dangerous prospect. Making a copy of Dawnbringer was a special case. I might be willing to work on other special cases now and again, but I need time to recover first. Weeks, at least, if not months.”

  I shivered at the image. I wasn’t sure I’d be willing to cut off a piece of my spirit and put it in an item at all, under any circumstances. I certainly wasn’t going to blame Keras for not wanting to do it regularly. “Okay, let me think for a minute.”

  Was there a way of salvaging my idea?

  “You mentioned before that powerful enough items, like the Jaden Box, might be able to survive contact with you for a long period of time. If we enchanted an item with defenses, like a powerful shield sigil, could you enchant it safely?”

  “Doubtful. Transferring mana into those shells you use would require touching the item, and that’d put me inside the barrier. I’d probably break it as soon as I touched it.”

  “Worth testing.”

  It took me a few minutes to make a basic shield sigil, then create a container rune like one of the ones we’d put on Patrick’s sword.

  It only took him a few seconds to break it.

  Over the next couple days, I tried a couple more designs — enchantments designed to protect the object itself, rather than the wearer. I even had Marissa help me with one that used enhancement mana to harden the item, rather than a conventional shield.

  Keras broke those, too.

  “I don’t think this is going to work, Corin.”

  He was probably right, but I was stubborn, and I liked the idea of a theoretically infinite amount of money.

  The one with enhancement mana had lasted a little longer.

  Maybe Keras could have safely enchanted one that had a Citrine or higher level hardness enchantment...but an item like that would have been as valuable, or more valuable, than the product we were trying to make.

  I had another idea, though. “You said that most items don’t have a spirit. Does that imply that some do, and those would be easier to work with?”

  “Yeah, but you’re not going to find those just lying around. They’re rare, and bonding myself to one would be the equivalent of a contract with a monster — they’d have to agree to it.”

  “What about that black dagger that disappeared earlier?” />
  He winced. “Wish we hadn’t lost that. I wouldn’t know enough about it to know if it’s something I could make a contract with. But yes, that was probably an example of a weapon with a spirit.”

  “How do we make an item grow a spirit? Could we do that artificially, so you don’t have to use some of your own?”

  “Most of the time, an item with a spirit implies someone did put a piece in there at some point, and it grew and developed into something unique. There are probably spells that make new spirits, but I’m not an expert in the subject.”

  I’d have to find one at some point, then, but it was a low priority. Spirit magic was an entire field of study, and I wasn’t going to look into it for something this dubious. I did want to study it at some point for other reasons, but it was going very low on my list. I had more pressing concerns.

  “Crystals.” I realized. It was obvious.

  “Hm?” Keras quirked a brow.

  “You could make crystals, then I could transfer the mana from them into the item.”

  Keras shrugged a shoulder. “Good idea in concept, but I’ve never been able to get that to work. Don’t know if it’s my lack of patience or how my mana works, but I’ve never been able to make mana solid.”

  “Want me to teach you how I learned?”

  “I suppose you can try.”

  A few hours of lessons and practice hadn’t produced any results, but he did say that using a crystal casing made more sense to him than the other methods he’d tried in the past.

  It had taken me weeks to make my first crystal, so maybe he’d make one eventually. This seemed like my best bet, so I decided to wish him well, provided him with a set of practice cases, and decided to focus on other things for a while in the meantime.

  The first order of business was trying to get Derek to help me with the same money making scheme that I’d been planning to use Keras for.

  “No.” He told me. “Don’t have time.”

  “Fair enough.”

  At least in his case, I got a simple answer.

  ***

  Passing dueling class had left me with a higher degree of confidence that I could pass my classes for the year, but I’d also seen how much it had helped to prepare in advance.