“If you had a rune like that, would its power be accessible to me while wielding you as a sword?” he asked.
Eva flashed a broad smile at him and nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “I am impressed that you managed to put that together. That is exactly how it would work.”
“Awesome,” said Ari. “I think I know what we’ll be on the lookout for first.”
He started to walk toward the door, but Eva took hold of his wrist before he could step away from her.
“About the extra essence I have,” she said. “It is better if you store it within yourself so I can use my full absorption capacity on the next mesmer we encounter.”
“Oh, right,” said Ari. “So how exactly does the transfer work?”
In answer, Eva moved in a little closer to him. She brushed a hand against his cheek and slowly bought her mouth forward to meet his. Ari kissed her back, feeling a little surprised at how turned on he suddenly was. He wrapped an arm around her, letting his hand settle on the cusp of her buttocks.
“That is how,” said Eva, as the kiss ended.
Ari exhaled and saw an ambient, blue mist come out on his breath. He could feel a subtle but discernable energy running through his body, all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes. He didn’t look any different, at least from what he could see, but he could feel the magic, the essence, reverberating through him.
“It feels interesting,” said Ari. “Almost like when I sleep on my arm and wake up with it asleep, except… pleasurable, instead of painful.”
“I’m glad it does not unnerve you too much,” said Eva.
“I could see that being the case if I had enough essence in me,” he said. “But this much, I think I can manage.”
He walked over to the door, frowning as he noticed that it didn’t have an obvious handle. There was a ward circle on it, with a rune different from any of the ones he’d seen before in the tower.
“It is an essence lock,” said Eva. “How fitting. You’ll have to use the essence you just absorbed to open it. This is a good chance for you to get a sense of how wards work.”
Ari nodded. He ran a finger across the runes and pressed his hand against it. He could feel the ward in more than just a physical sense, almost as though it was a container that he’d reached into. He focused his will and tried to relax, letting his body release some of the tingling essence he’d just absorbed into the door’s ward.
The rune circle glowed with a soft, ambient white light, but only for an instant.
“It didn’t work?” said Ari.
“You need more essence,” said Eva. “It is the outer door of the labyrinth, so it may take a significant amount.”
“Damn,” said Ari. “Is that it for today, then? If we can’t get past this door, we won’t be able to go any further.”
Eva smiled at him. She took his hand and led him back over to the tunnel that had led into the room. She sat down, and he took a seat next to her, furrowing her brow.
“I know that smirk,” said Ari. “You know something that I don’t.”
“I do,” she said. “There is another option. You’ll see what I mean if we wait here for a time.”
She flashed with light and turned back into Azurelight before Ari could press her further. He picked the sword up and set it across his lap, running a finger over the hilt and absentmindedly wondering if she could feel his touch as a weapon.
Ten minutes later, a purple sphere burst into existence in the center of the chamber. Ari stumbled to his feet, though the mesmer didn’t notice him immediately and meandered a few feet further away from him.
“They come back…?” he whispered. “The mesmers don’t die?”
“It’s called respawning,” said Eva. “The mesmers were created from the remnants of the souls of the Saidican Empire. My people sought immortality in the face of a world-ending threat, and in a sense, they found it.”
“That’s incredible,” said Ari. He shook his head, unsure about how he felt about the revelation. He’d been considering the idea of clearing out the labyrinth and bringing Kerys down into it as a safer alternative to the tower. But if the mesmers respawned, he doubted it would ever be a safe enough place for them to inhabit.
“Each time a mesmer respawns, it gets a little bit stronger,” said Eva. “Blue mesmers can take years to respawn, while black, purple, and red ones tend to respawn much faster.”
“I can absorb its essence again, right?” asked Ari. “That’s why you had me wait, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Eva. “Though the amount you can absorb diminishes if you defeat a specific mesmer multiple times. It’s likely that you can absorb enough from this one despite that, before it respawns at a strength that would prevent you from defeating it.”
“This is why you wanted me to come here, isn’t it?” he said. “You knew that I’d at least be able to come out with some newly absorbed essence as long as I made it inside.”
“Yes, exactly,” said Eva.
Ari took another minute to prepare himself, then attacked the purple mesmer a second time. The fight started out differently, but the mesmer’s movements were more familiar to him.
It was far from a predictable opponent, but Ari remembered the way it dodged and feinted. Adding to his tactical advantage was the fact that the reverse did not seem to apply to the mesmer, which fought him as though he was a brand-new opponent.
But Ari could also see what Eva had meant about the mesmer getting stronger. It was faster now, and though it had no physical body to speak of, the ferocity of its attacks was much higher.
He managed to win, but only after avoiding several strikes that could very well have led to his death. The mesmer slumped forward onto his blade after the final thrust, flashing with purple energy and vanishing again.
This time, Ari felt the essence automatically passing through Eva in her sword form and rushing into him. It was like taking a breath of air or drinking from a waterskin on a hot day. The essence felt vital within him, humming and pulsing, ready to be used.
He pressed his hand on the door’s ward lock again and pushed the essence into it. This time, the ward lit up as soon as he’d finished. The door let out a small rumble, and stone began to grind against stone as it sank downward into the ground.
“How long would you guess it’s been since someone’s last opened that?” he asked.
Eva did the sword version of shrugging her shoulders, which was apparently to just ignore the question.
Decades? Centuries? Ari wondered. It was hard for him to see a way for one of the Chosen—or even the sort of exiles that Jed’s group had been composed of—to find a way down into the labyrinth and then past the essence lock.
The mesmers couldn’t even be damaged by non-enchanted weapons, not to mention the intuitive leap it would have taken to guess that they respawned and could be harvested for essence to open the door.
“Not bad for an orphan,” he said, with a grin. He took a step into the next chamber, which was a long hallway with a door on either side and two along the walls.
His ankle caught against something, and a thrumming noise cut through the air. Eva returned to her normal form in a flash of light while simultaneously throwing herself against him and knocking him out of the way of a salvo of crossbow bolts that had apparently been rigged to a tripwire.
“Mud and blood,” muttered Ari. “Who puts a trap in a random hallway?”
Eva let out a small groan. Ari looked over at her and saw the shaft of one of the crossbow bolts protruding from her shoulder.
“Eva!” he said. “Damn! Here, try not to move!”
“It is okay, milord,” she said. “The injury is not that bad. Just a scrape, really.”
Ari could read the pain and annoyance in her expression. She was blinking back tears, which he found a little surprising, given how stony her demeanor oftentimes was when she was being serious. She closed shaky fingers around the shaft and attempted to pull it out, to no avail.
>
“Do you think it’s wise to take it out?” asked Ari. “I’ve heard these types of injuries bleed more when tampered with.”
“I will need to, if I’m to heal,” said Eva. “Once it is loose from my shoulder, you can transfer essence into me to help with the process if you have any left.”
Ari had a small amount left, and after considering it for a moment, he nodded. Eva was still struggling with the bolt, leaning with her back against the side of the safe portion of the hallway.
He took her into a gentle embrace and leaned her back against the stone floor. Eva frowned a little, but didn’t stop him as he moved to take hold of the bolt. He let his eyes settle on hers, hoping that the experience wouldn’t be too traumatic.
“I’m going to pull it out on three,” said Ari.
“I am ready,” said Eva, through gritted teeth.
“One.” Ari pulled it out immediately, not giving her a chance to tense up any further. Eva let out a small cry of pain and arched her back.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Now for the essence.”
He placed a hand on her chest and tried to will essence into her the same way he had for the ward. Eva shook her head.
“It will not work like that for us,” she said. “It has to be… like before.”
“Oh, right.” He leaned over Eva and gave her a kiss, hesitating as his lips touched hers and feeling his way through the process. The intimate contact opened a channel between them, and it was easy to pass his essence on to her once that was done.
“That is good,” said Eva. “Thank you, Lord Stoneblood. My shoulder should start healing soon.”
Ari cast a skeptical glance at the injury. Blood was still dripping from it, not enough to put her life in danger, but enough to make him worry. Her white armor hadn’t been pierced by the crossbow bolt, but the edge of it was now stained an obvious crimson red.
“Would it help you to be in sword form for this?” he asked.
“There are more tripwires ahead of us,” said Eva. “I would prefer not to let you face them alone. We should turn back for now.”
“Not quite yet,” he said. “I have an idea about how to get past those.”
Eva nodded, and her body flashed as she turned back into Azurelight, the beautiful, slim greatsword with the perfect sapphire pommel stone. Ari caught it in midair and sheathed it in the scabbard hanging across his shoulders. He wouldn’t need it if what he was about to do ended up working.
CHAPTER 22
Ari reached into his tunic and fished out his newly filled bag of sarkin flower. He sniffed the fresh leaves, frowning at the somewhat muted smell. It usually wasn’t hard to tell the potency of sarkin flower from a sniff or two, and the flowerheads that he’d managed to collect were what he should have expected from a plant growing in the wild.
He popped most of it into his mouth, chewing as much as he could and then letting the mush settle under his tongue for a minute. It was the quickest way to feel the effects of the drug outside of smoking it. It only took a minute for the first heady rush of euphoria to hit him, but that wasn’t what he was interested in.
The drug sharpened his senses, and the first thing Ari was struck by was the deafening silence of the labyrinth. He could hear his own breathing and movements, and quite literally nothing else. Nowhere should have been able to be that quiet.
He shook the feeling off and squinted further down the hallway. The tripwires were thin, almost invisible, but he could see at least a couple of them with the help of the drug. Reaching down to the floor, Ari scooped a small pile of dust up and cast it into the air.
Small bits of dust clung to tripwires that he’d missed as it fell, which was exactly what he’d been hoping for. He could see enough of them now to be fairly confident about what it would take to get to the other side of the hallway.
They were arrayed in a frustratingly complex pattern, some of them at ankle level, others at neck level. A few were crisscrossed diagonally into the shape of an x, which he could only assume would trigger two salvos of crossbows at once. Not a fun thought.
“Perhaps it would be wise to reconsider progressing any further,” said Eva.
“I can do this,” he said. “I just have to move carefully.”
He was surprised by how much more confident his voice sounded than he actually felt. Ari started forward, stepping over the first few trip wires, which were at ground level and easy enough to avoid. He ducked under another and had to continue ducking as he also lifted his leg up over the next one, which was at thigh height.
The x pattern loomed ahead of him. He initially thought he’d just be able to crawl underneath it, but there was an additional trip wire running across at ankle level. He’d have to slip through the side, and do it in a way that would keep him from falling onto the trip wires immediately after it.
The issue with going through on the side was that his entire body wouldn’t fit at a normal angle. He’d have to lean himself at an awkward slant and attempt to hop from foot to foot as he passed by.
Ari took a breath, moved into position, and then attempted it without giving himself enough time to second guess himself. His leading foot landed on solid ground, which was good. His trailing foot caught on one of the trip wires. Which, of course, was bad.
He heard the thrum of the crossbows, but the more immediate issue he had was the fact that he was off balance and in the midst of falling. He desperately flailed an arm out toward the wall and found one of the doors on the side of the hallway instead. It was open, and it had a handle his fingers immediately grabbed onto.
The door carried Ari along with it as it swung into the room, and he felt at least one of the crossbow bolts pass close enough by to make his tunic rustle in its wake. His heart was pounding with sufficient force to make him concerned, though part of that was probably due to the Sarkin flower.
“Okay,” he said. “That was a little too close.”
“If only someone had advised you against that course of action, milord,” said Eva.
“Oh, shut your pommel-stone,” said Ari.
He rose to his feet and surveyed the room he was in. It was illuminated, surprisingly. A single, small ward was inscribed onto the ceiling, and it glowed with a faint, white light that he guessed had been intended for that specific purpose.
He was in a centuries old bedroom, untouched by anything other than the passage of time. Ari slowly scanned it over, noticing that the bed still had several blankets on it that had somehow withstood the years.
“I’m actually going to take these with me,” he said, shaking one of them to dust it off. “They’re still in good shape.”
They were made of some kind of silky animal fur that was profoundly soft to the touch. There were two of them, but each was more than twice as large as the makeshift blankets he’d fashioned out of the kellowack canvas. Ari rolled them up and set them into his pack, stuffing them down far enough to make room for anything else he found.
The bedroom had a small chest in the corner. Having learned his lesson from the hallway, Ari meticulously checked it over for tripwires or other traps before lifting it open. It wasn’t locked, though the plume of dust that shot up as the lid shifted the air was a defense mechanism in its own right.
“What is this stuff?” he said. “Papers? Along with… another blanket?”
“That is a cloak,” said Eva. “And those are scrolls. It is likely that all of them are enchanted.”
“You think so?” asked Ari. “Is there any way for us to know for sure?”
“Try touching them,” said Eva. “Even without a mystica of your own, you should be able to sense a faint echo of the essence within an enchantment.”
Ari did as she’d requested, feeling a bit strange as he ran his hands over the items within the chest. It was hard at first, but after a couple of seconds, the soft hum of magical energy became obvious and identifiable to him.
“Nifty,” said Ari. “That’s going to come in handy the next time we’re in
here. Is there any way for me to tell what the different enchantments are? Or at least what the cloak is enchanted with?”
“Not as you are now,” said Eva. “It is a task that requires the skills of a practiced diviner. Unfortunately, there may not be an easy way to find out beyond simple experimentation.”
Ari shrugged. “I guess that would have been too easy.”
He tucked the cloak away into his pack, not wanting to do that particular bit of experimentation while still in the labyrinth. The scrolls were all extremely old, and Ari half crumbled one of them as he was shifting them into his pack.
“We’ll have to take it slow on the way back up to the surface,” he said.
He noticed a small handle next to the door as he turned around that didn’t appear to be connected to a cabinet or door. Ari had a suspicion about what it did, and he took hold of it and jiggled it around until he found the proper direction to turn it.
A soft, shifting noise came from the hallway. He poked his head out and grinned, noticing that the trip wires had all receded into the floor, or walls, or wherever they went when they weren’t making dangerous deals with hidden crossbows.
There was another door directly across from the one that Ari had opened, but it was locked with an essence ward, as was the one at the far end of the hall. He figured that he could attempt to fight the mesmer in the first chamber a few more times to gather the requisite essence needed to progress further if he really wanted to.
As much as the idea appealed to him, it didn’t seem wise. Eva was recovering from her injury, and Kerys was alone back at the tower. Ari decided to head back the way he’d come from, taking a route close to the wall through the chamber with the mesmer to avoid attracting its attention.
The skies were clear overhead when he made it back outside, which dissolved some of the tension he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. Ari carefully pulled the labyrinth’s cover back into place before heading back through the city in the direction of the tower.
He jogged most of the way, cutting the length of the trip down by at least a third. He was starving by the time he made it to the bottom of the hill and hoped that Kerys had managed to scavenge some food for dinner.
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