The Torch that Ignites the Stars (Arcane Ascension Book 3)

by Andrew Rowe

  “…So, no pressure, or anything.” I gave a weak laugh.

  “I cannot say I envy you. I was much older when I learned of the Arbiter attunement’s true potential. But perhaps by knowing this at such an early point, you will be able to face it better. Find a solution I did not, before it is too late.”

  “…Meaning before I hit Citrine-level, I suppose.”

  Warren nodded. “Until then, you have a degree of security…at least in terms of your own potential for directly making harmful changes. The risk still exists that Farren could steal the secrets of your attunement, however.”

  “Would the spells to simply view my sub-glyphs be enough for that?”

  Warren shook his head. “No, they would have to go further. Cut off your hand, perhaps, as I once feared, and then graft the Arbiter attunement to another person with a higher safe mana threshold. Or perhaps kidnap you and force your mana level high enough to expose the Arbiter’s functions. There are ways this could be done…but I do not know if Farren would risk them. She will be gentle, at first. Even she would not idly risk your patron’s wrath. I believe that is why she has not yet done this to the other Arbiters: she has not been willing to risk a visage’s intervention. Not yet…but perhaps soon.”

  I thought about the god beast attunement project and the assault on Tenjin. Perhaps those were mere pieces of Farren’s plot to gain access to every attunement on the planet…or perhaps that was simply the fear of an old man who had, by his own admission, lost his ability to be objective.

  We were both silent for a time, poking at our remaining food.

  “This has all been a bit grim, hasn’t it?” Warren frowned. “I’m sorry for that. I’ve given you a great burden. The least I can do is offer something to help lift a bit of that weight.”

  “…Meaning?”

  “If you must know the dangers of your attunement, I will teach you some of its strengths as well. Finish eating. Then, when you are ready, we will begin your lessons.”

  “What sort of lessons?”

  “Let’s talk a bit about the Peridot attunement level.”

  I blinked. “…Peridot? There isn’t a Peridot level.”

  “No.” Warren’s smile returned. “Not yet.”

  Chapter XXIV – A Reflection of The Future

  I spent the rest of the day studying with Warren, learning every bit I could about attunement functionality and design. The nature of specific functions that had eluded me gradually became clearer, and though I still didn’t understand the language of sub-glyphs well enough to do anything like create my own functions, I had a much better idea of the scope of work that would be required.

  He helped me understand the specific attunement functions that changed an attunement into a brand, or vice versa, but those were in the set that I couldn’t access yet. Thus, it wasn’t something I was ready to experiment with.

  That was probably for the best. As eager as I was to learn countermeasures for brands, this was one of the subjects where I was very likely to get my hand blown off if I started tinkering too soon.

  I’ll figure you out eventually. Then, maybe, I can build in some security features of my own to prevent external tampering.

  …And learn how to remove the brand functions entirely, someday.

  It was late in the evening when Sera finally returned. I was relieved enough that I almost hugged her.

  Almost.

  “How’d it go?” I asked instead.

  “See for yourself.” Sera reached into a pouch, and then tossed me a crystal.

  “Is this…” I frowned, turning it over in my hands.

  “A memory crystal. Yep.” She looked…tired. Uncharacteristically tired. “I’m going to eat. We can chat about it when you’re done viewing.”

  “Wait. How’d you even get this? Something special from inside the test?”

  “Corin. I have a Researcher summon, remember?”

  “Oh. Right.” I shook my head. “I suppose it does make sense she could do that. Okay.”

  “Come on. Go watch the thing. I’m dying to hear what you think.”

  I nodded, then headed up to the bedroom. I gave Sera one last look as I reached the next part of the stairway — something about her was off — but she didn’t physically look injured.

  She’d tell me if she wanted me to know, wouldn’t she?

  …Or maybe this is her way of saying something, I suppose.

  I turned the crystal over in my hands.

  Hm.

  I resumed walking, making my way into the bedroom and sat down on my bed. Turning the crystal over in my hands, I braced myself, then said, “View.”

  Then, all at once, my senses were no longer my own.

  ***

  It was always disorienting seeing through different eyes, but stranger still when looking at familiar sights through them.

  I knew the Transcendence Gateway Crystal’s chamber, but looking at it from a shorter height felt…off. Disorienting. Similarly, looking at Vanniv’s admittedly impressive chest was a lot weirder when my head was barely above chest-level on him.

  Fortunately, I — or rather Sera — didn’t stare at him for too long. My gaze shifted to the crystal. “This is the second-to-last round, then?” And then after a moment she continued, “Excellent, thank you.”

  That brought two major things to my attention.

  First, this crystal apparently only covered the last two rounds, which was good, because I hadn’t been wise enough to ask Sera how long I’d be stuck inside her memories. It would have been supremely awkward to have to sit through six or more hours of trials, so I was fortunate that this was toward the end.

  Second, Sera was presumably communicating with the crystal via telepathy like I had…but I couldn’t hear that through the memory crystal. It made sense, given that telepathic communication was essentially thoughts, and thoughts weren’t recorded…but it was going to be hugely inconvenient in terms of understanding what was happening, especially if she was sending mental commands like I had from time to time.

  “Shall I go and provide a show?” Vanniv asked.

  Sera glanced at a wall of the room, which showed an illusory projection of her own front chamber. It was structured quite differently from my own: rather than being virtually empty, the room had two stone statues — most likely golems — and a treasure box standing between them. The statues were positioned to have their hands outstretched toward the treasure box, as if offering it.

  There was only a single obvious exit, which was located on the north side of the chamber and seemingly unlocked. The right wall of the room was very obviously cracked, however, in a pattern designed to attract attention. Presumably, it led to a “secret” path that would be obvious to anyone who took the barest glance at it. Accessing it would be trickier, although I expected that most high-level attuned who noted it would have some way of blasting through it.

  There were no obvious challengers yet. Much to my chagrin, Sera was only looking at the part of the wall displaying the entrance chamber, and thus, I couldn’t get a good idea of the layout of the rest of her constructed dungeon yet.

  “Give it a moment…”

  A pair of intruders walked in the front door.

  The first was a tall man wearing a long coat and two pistols holstered on his belt. No, not Jin in his Blackstone Bandit garb, although admittedly there were some similarities in the outfits. This man was much larger in build and wore a fashionable suit beneath his coat. He wore a hat as well, but flatter than the style of Jin’s. I thought it complimented his beard very well.

  My heart jumped when the second entrant came in the door.

  That can’t be…

  He was shorter than the first entrant, but the unrolled sleeves of his white shirt showed heavy muscle. He had no visible attunement marks. He wore a hat, too, but one that came to a narrow point. Two shortswords sat on his hips, as well as a crossbow, a coil of rope, and several pouches. He rested a bone-white hatchet against his shoulder,
scanning the room as soon as he came in and giving an appreciative whistle. “Not bad. Think they’re mobile?”

  The taller man gave the statues an appraising look. “Hard to tell from here.” Then he raised a hand in the other man’s way and said. “Wait, wait. Hold on. Mechanics check.”

  “Fine, fine. Could be timed, too. Make it quick, Kester.”

  The larger man groaned in something that must have been agreement, then reached down to his belt and removed a thin cylinder. He pressed a button on the side, then made a whipping motion, causing the cylinder to expand into a long pole. With the pole, he began to methodically tap sections of the floor of the room.

  The shorter man waited just a moment, then noted aloud, “Fantastic articulation. They look like…what, granite? Do you think they’re hollow?”

  “Working, Lars,” the other man — presumably Kester — groaned.

  And there it was. Confirmation.

  That younger, hatchet-wielding adventurer was a much younger Lars Mantrake, owner of the Climber’s Court.

  Seeing Keras in the shrine had been a bit of a shock, but most of the panic had come from my knowledge that I was absolutely doomed if he possessed a fraction of his actual combat ability.

  This was a very different sort of surprise.

  Like…holy goddess, Lars actually had an adventuring career? He hadn’t made it all up?

  I mean, I knew Keras had said he’d met Lars out in the Unclaimed Lands at one point…but he’d said Lars was a quartermaster. This wasn’t exactly quartermaster work…except maybe it was, given the way Lars was eyeing those statues.

  When Kester said, “clear” and Lars walked up to the statue with measuring tape, things rapidly clicked in my mind.

  Maybe this wasn’t so far off, after all.

  Sera mumbled, “He wouldn’t.”

  “Likelihood of a trigger occurring?” Lars asked.

  Kester raised some kind of lens over his right eye, groaned, and then clicked another button on his pole. He tapped it against the floor again in a few different sections, then hesitantly collapsed it, picked up another tool, and pressed it to the back of the left statue’s neck.

  For a moment, I expected him to get smashed to bits when the statue came to life, but no such thing happened. “Mechanism is tied to the box and the door. Need to inspect the box first.”

  “Mimic?”

  “Unlikely, but…” There was a blur as Kester’s hand went down to his hip, blurred, and then a loud crack resounded in the air. The front of the box splintered in an instant. “Nope.”

  Lars kicked the top off the box.

  It was empty, save for a piece of paper. I couldn’t quite read it from my vantage point, but fortunately, Lars read it aloud. “Lay thee down thy iron if thy true heart wishes steel.” He turned to Kester, dropping the page back inside. “Magic?”

  “Don’t see any.” Kester leaned down, knocking around the frame of the box with a gloved hand. “Mechanical trap on the bottom. Probably triggers if something of sufficient weight is left inside.”

  “Opens the door?” Lars asked.

  “Probably, or activates the statues. I’m leaning toward opens the door.”

  “Perfect, perfect.” Lars shifted his shoulders, then said, “Get the bag.”

  Then, with no further hesitation, he chopped off the left statue’s arm.

  “Oh, come on!” Sera half-shouted from the safety of the crystal chamber. She was apparently distant enough that the invaders didn’t hear her, since they didn’t react. I didn’t get a good idea of how large the dungeon was.

  Nearby, Vanniv laughed deeply. “Shall I go and intervene before those ruffians disassemble too much of your puzzle?”

  “No,” Sera groaned. “It’s fine. I probably just won’t make a profit on this one. You can go do the boss room thing.”

  “Splendid!” Vanniv clapped his hands, almost in time with Lars’ next chop slicing another piece off the statue. “I shall depart forthwith.” He bowed, then moved, presumably out of the room. Sera didn’t watch him.

  She just watched those poor, innocent statues get chopped to bits, while Lars tossed the pieces in a pile.

  While Lars chopped, Kester lifted each piece, briefly appraised it, then tossed it into some kind of large sack.

  I desperately wished I could laugh. They were looting the puzzle.

  Truly, this was the work of adventurers.

  Lars, I’m sorry I ever doubted you.

  When they eventually finished picking up all the statue bits, including cores that confirmed that these were golems, Lars lazily tossed an arm into the box. There was a click, but the door didn’t open.

  Kester walked to the door, knocked on it, lifted some sort of tool to listen at it, then said, “It’s unlocked.”

  “Huh.” Lars lifted his hatchet. “Neat. Say, how much do you think we could get for that wall over there?”

  Kester turned his eyes toward the cracked wall, appraising, and then said, “Can’t know until we find out.”

  At that point, they began stealing the dungeon wall.

  ***

  Minutes passed as Kester and Lars systemically disassembled that wall, the traps in the room beyond that wall, the treasure box within those traps, and finally, the treasure box that had been in the entrance.

  Then, finally, having earned a bag of gemstones and a considerable amount of rubble and wood, they set up near the sole door in the entrance room and stole that as well.

  “You’re punishing me, aren’t you?” Sera asked the crystal. “This is punishment for my tactics. For my hubris.”

  If there was any reply from the crystal, it made no visible sign.

  While Sera was complaining, Kester and Lars stole the huge lock that had once been on the door. Then, finally, they stepped through the doorway into the next chamber.

  The next room involved a series of pit traps with a gigantic four-bladed trap whirling in the center. It looked kind of like a circular fan, just a whole lot sharper. The fan-like trap’s spinning death blades managed to cover nearly the entire room, so stepping inside much further would have been a significant risk.

  Rather than attempt the timing necessary to evade the whirling blades as designed, Kester jammed the blades by throwing a pot of some kind of adhesive into the mechanism at the center of them. Once it had significantly slowed, Lars hurled his axe into the ceiling above the trap. From there, Kester removed a device from his belt that fired a grappling hook, which caught on the axe, and used that to pull himself above the blades.

  Then, slowly, Kester lowered himself to the top of the still-slowly-spinning device, stood on top of it, and began to jam small rods into the adhesive until it stopped entirely.

  Once that was done, he removed the most mundane of all tools: a screwdriver. “You’re on bag duty,” Kester said.

  Lars hopped over, crossing twenty feet in a single bound, pulled out a giant sack of his own and held it out.

  Then, slowly, Kester unscrewed the four blades of the trap and tossed them into the bag.

  “I am quickly beginning to understand why Selys has some adventurers murdered,” Sera mumbled.

  I could see her perspective, given that they were slowly disassembling and stealing her entire dungeon.

  Personally?

  I found the entire thing absolutely hilarious, and I suddenly felt as if I had a new idea of what I wanted to do when I grew up.

  The next room involved a handful of snake-like humanoids with scales on their upper body and entire snake-like tails instead of legs. Nagas or something, maybe? I could never remember the difference between nagas and lamias.

  Anyway, rather than fighting them, Kester immediately began speaking in some kind of strange hissing language. The four might-be-naga things stood up straighter on their tails, hissing once, then one of them slithered forward and responded in seemingly harsh tones.

  “Weapons down,” Kester said in Valian. “Don’t show your teeth.”

  Lars l
owered his axe, which he’d retrieved from the ceiling of the previous room. “They selling?”

  “We’ll see.”

  The next few minutes involved a series of unintelligible discussions between Kester and the snake-like creatures, involving considerable gesticulation and occasionally sticking out their tongues at strange angles.

  This concluded with Kester pouring half a broken golem out of a bag and trading it for a two large, curved swords and a handful of scales from each of the snake creatures.

  Then, each side seeming satisfied with the trade, they parted ways with some kind of amicable gesture of butting their heads against one another.

  I had no idea what to say to that.

  In the next room, they found Vanniv.

  “Hello!” Vanniv waved cheerfully as he hovered above a pit of lava. Small fire elementals crawled in the lava below. The room had no floor.

  “Greetings, karvensi friend!” Kester waved. “Any chance you could let us across?”

  “Absolutely, yes! I would be quite happy to. Please, come in so we can talk.”

  Kester and Lars exchanged glances.

  “You know, we would,” Lars said, “But we couldn’t help but notice that your floor is missing. Now, no need to be embarrassed about that: I have some very high-quality flooring material that I just purchased, and I’d be more than happy to sell it at a reasonable price.”

  Lars was very clearly attempting to sell Vanniv the walls from earlier in the dungeon. This was, perhaps, the most enterprising financial move I had ever witnessed, and I admit to being somewhat awestruck.