by Andrew Rowe
The oni raised his club over one shoulder, glowering down at her, and said something in Edrian.
She shrugged and kept walking.
The moment she came within reach, the oni swung his club downward, deceptively fast for someone of his height. It didn’t matter. His club stopped in mid-air.
Nothing visible was stopping him. Hartigan kept walking. The oni looked perplexed, then his face turned toward anger. He moved his other hand to the shaft of the club and pushed, his muscles straining.
The club barely moved an inch.
Wordlessly, he released his hands from the club as Hartigan drew even closer, balling his fists. The club continued to hover in mid-air where he’d left it.
When he pulled back a hand to swing, Hartigan twitched a finger. The club surged forward, hilt first, and slammed into the oni’s chest.
He grunted with surprise, stumbling backward. It didn’t seem to hurt him much, but it did throw off his balance.
While he stumbled, Hartigan made a casual sweeping motion with her hand.
That was when I saw it — the rocks subtly stirring below him, and his hair moving. He seemed to sense it himself just a moment too late.
The blast of wind carried him straight off the cliff, sending him plummeting toward the rocks below.
Hartigan walked on, unbothered.
The crowd responded with whispered awe.
I was pretty impressed, too. Trapping that oni’s weapon mid-swing was a work of sorcery far more impressive than mere blasts of fire and lightning. Not because of the sheer power it required, though it was certainly no easy feat in that regard. The level of control it took to trap a single weapon without any clear indication of what she was doing was simply ludicrous. I didn’t even know if she’d used air magic to trap the weapon or not — that was the most likely, since it was how she’d thrown the oni off the cliff, but it could have been something else entirely. She’d done it so naturally that there hadn’t been the slightest disturbance in the air.
As she continued up the mountainside, unhindered by enemies for the moment, I switched to viewing another crystal.
Shun was pushing a gigantic stone block across the room toward an obvious switch on the floor. Aside from the difficulty of moving the stone block, I saw no other traps or challenges. Maybe he’d already cleared them? Either way, that room looked boring, so I looked at another crystal.
The Green Guardian had reappeared on another one, still fighting the hydra. As I watched, he hurled himself in the way of an attack aimed for a civilian, who had been hiding under a half-collapsed rooftop nearby. I was impressed — both because he was willing to put himself in harm’s way, and because he’d actually noticed the civilian’s presence. Maybe he’d seen the civilian moving earlier, but from his current angle, they were well hidden.
I added the possibility of some sort of enhanced senses to my mental list of The Green Guardian’s abilities as I watched him fly backward, smashed by the hydra’s tail.
He crashed through a wall, then came flying back toward the hydra a moment later, green energy glowing around his hands. He flew to the side to avoid a jet of flame breath from a single head, then punched that head in the jaw. The hydra’s neck snapped upward, which implied some impressive force behind the strike. Then he flew to the side to avoid another head sweeping down to snap at him with open jaws.
A moment later, he flew downward, touching the ground with his still-glowing hands.
The hydra staggered, and I didn’t understand why at first — until I saw cracks begin to form in the ground.
In mere moments, the ground beneath the hydra splintered apart. A wide fissure opened as the hydra scrambled to move out of the way — only to meet with another flying punch from The Green Guardian. The hydra staggered back just enough, one foot reaching into the precipice, then another.
The fissure widened, and the hydra fell into the world’s gaping maw.
The crowd erupted in wild cheers. Even Dawn seemed pretty excited.
I snorted in amusement. A real hydra likely would have shapeshifted back into a human form for stability, avoiding the fall — but I couldn’t expect whatever illusions or summoned monsters they were using for the test to behave perfectly. And, in fairness, I’d only fought one hydra before — it was possible, even likely, that not all of them were as adept at shapeshifting as Zenkichi had been.
And, I had to grudgingly admit that I was enjoying the heroic spectacle, too.
The Green Guardian flew off to rescue the civilian he’d taken that hit for earlier, carrying the injured man out of the town.
I turned to look at another crystal, trying to find Reika.
I found her somewhere I didn’t expect — on a screen that focused on Shun, not her.
They stood on opposite sides of the same room, presumably inside the temple area. Apparently, touching the egg had teleported her to somewhere in the temple area.
They were talking, but I couldn’t hear anything. Either the crystals didn’t relay sound, or wherever my box was located was too far away from the crystal to hear it. I tried to read their lips, which was only moderately successful.
From Reika’s gesturing and a couple words, like “friends” and “together”, I got the impression she was trying to get Shun to go with her somewhere.
Shun responded by immediately turning and walking out one of the room’s doors, then slamming a foot into the ground, raising a wall of stone behind him.
I caught Reika saying “rude”, and I agreed with her. Unfortunately, I lost sight of her a moment later, because the crystal was focusing on Shun and he was walking elsewhere.
Shun ended up in a chamber containing a gigantic hourglass — with sand already half-drained into the bottom — on the opposite wall. There were two closed doors on the left and right sides of the room.
In front of the hourglass was a scale, which seemed to be slightly skewed toward the right. There were about a dozen metal bars of various sizes in front of the scale.
There was a sign nearby with writing in multiple languages. It said, “Use all the blocks and balance the scale.”
Another boring puzzle one.
I started to turn away.
I froze, then turned my head back.
I hadn’t really considered that I’d been forcing Dawn to watch the parts I was interested in, without asking for her input. I knew she’d been sharing my sense of sight, but I hadn’t really thought about the implications of that.
I’ll watch for a minute, then.
Just a minute. If it’s too boring, I’m looking at another one again.
<…Thanks.>
Shun approached the scale, picking up one brick and putting it on the left side. The hand of the scale sank, but not enough to even it out.
He experimented some more. With a certain combination of three bricks on one side and one on the other, he managed to get the scales even…but nothing happened.
At that point, he glowered at the scale, probably realizing the same thing that I did — it said to use all the blocks, not just balance the scale.
And his time was rapidly running out.
He fidgeted with adding and subtracting bricks for another minute, trying to weigh each of them against one another and determine which was heaviest.
From the rate the sand was flowing, though, it was clear he wouldn’t finish in time. Not with that strategy.
I didn’t know what would happen when time ran out, but it couldn’t be good.
Frantically, he set the three bricks on the left and one on the right that had gotten it to balance. Then, he pressed a hand on the floor beneath each side of the scale.
Stone pillars rose from the ground underneath each side — and stopped right below each. Then, tendrils of stone rose over each side.
He’s locking the hands of the scal
e in place so they can’t move regardless of what he puts on each side.
I smiled. Now that was a more fun way to solve a puzzle.
I mean, I obviously would have just blown through the doors. But if I had to solve a puzzle, this was a route I appreciated.
With the sides of the scale locked, he picked up all the remaining bricks and dropped them onto one side. The hand couldn’t move. There was a loud click.
The hourglass stopped flowing, and both doors on the sides of the room flew open.
I felt myself smile, infected by Dawn’s enthusiasm. Shun headed to a door on the left side — and then the crystal changed.
The Green Guardian had left the still-burning town. I wasn’t sure if that was because he’d already saved everyone, or if he’d simply chosen to move on for more points. A quick glance at the other crystals didn’t show me anyone else in the town, either. Maybe he just wasn’t very good at extinguishing fires.
He stood next to the base of the mountain, folding his arms. Then a stone pillar began to rise beneath him, carrying him upward.
...Is he going to try to get to the top of the mountain that way?
I stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending.
Can anyone possibly have enough mana to make a pillar the height of a mountain all at once?
I could make pillars and walls, sure, but even making a handful of ten-foot walls was still tiring to me. I knew attunements helped to mitigate cost, but as that pillar grew to fifty feet in height, then a hundred, I simply had to stare in awe.
How is he doing that?
I frowned at that. I didn’t have a good idea of the mana scale, but if raising a pillar wide enough to stand on cost, say, five mana per foot in height, and the mountain was five miles high, that’d cost something over one hundred and twenty-five thousand mana.
Maybe my math is off. Maybe it’s a lower mana cost to make a pillar. Or maybe he wasn’t planning to go all the way to the top...?
As I watched, the pillar continued to rise, and I began to wonder, for the first time, if I was out of my depth.
Dawn was right. I couldn’t be discouraged by having different capabilities than other people.
If he was relying on something like creating a pillar to climb, that meant he had a reason not to be using other forms of movement. Why wasn’t he flying, when that would be so much faster? Was there something limiting his ability to fly?
That was interesting, if it was true. Potentially something I could work with in the future.
I turned away as Reika appeared in another crystal in my peripheral vision.
Reika stood in the middle of a small stone room that was rapidly filling with water. There was only a single door, and it was straight across from her, with a comically large keyhole.
There was an altar in the center of the room with dozens of bits of metal laid out on it. They were strangely shaped, and many had circular open sections on the end. Reika was fiddling with a couple of pieces with her hands, an expression of intense concentration on her face.
When she slammed a hand down with one piece of metal and picked up another, I realized what I was looking at — she was assembling a key from parts.
This room would be so much easier for me.
No, I’d still probably just obliterate the door.
Even if I just talk about killing doors?
We continued to chat while the water rose to waist height.
I frowned. Couldn’t she just go straight through the door in her mist form?
It’s not cheating, it’s expedited non-linear puzzle completion.
I saw Reika make an “ah hah!” face as she plugged the end of one metal bit into another, then pushed through the water to shove a newly-assembled key into the doorway.
It snapped in half.
Reika stared at the broken half of the key, an expression of utter betrayal on her features. For a moment, it looked almost like she was going to cry.
Then she punched the door so hard it flew off its hinges.
I cheered for her, and the rest of the audience cheered right along with me.
See? Everyone likes a good expedited non-linear problem solution.
That’s the same thing like ninety-nine percent of the time.
It’s not the only one, but it’s usually the fastest.
I continued watching Reika. The door had flown into a long hallway, which led toward a stairway leading upward. She followed the path until she reached a dry section, then took a moment to shake off some of the water clinging to her before continuing up the stairs to a single door.
When she swung it open, a jet of flame shot through it. She dodged to the side, then as the flames continued, she made a contemplative expression.
Then she walked a little closer to the flame, turning around, and dried her clothes.
The audience laughed. Then she, partially dried, turned into mist and slipped straight through the flame and into the room.
The room was hexagonal, with a treasure box in one corner near the opposite side, and two seemingly locked doors on other opposite sections.
Six jets of fire were emitting from huge pipes in the middle of the room, blocking various portions of the area. They emitted fire for several seconds at a time, stopping briefly at seemingly predictable intervals.
Aside from the flame jets, there weren’t any clear threats. It was probably designed to be some kind of timing-based puzzle, since the flames were emitted at different intervals.
Instead of bothering with that, Reika simply re-solidified near the treasure box, kicking it out of the path of the flames. It crashed into a nearby wall.
The box itself was solid metal, and looked to require a key. There were no obvious keys in the room, so it was probable she was supposed to have retrieved one from somewhere else — or maybe assembled one from the previous room.
Instead, she bent down and did something I’d never seen.
She put her hand on the box. In an instant, the metal box turned to mist. A key clattered to the ground.
My jaw dropped a little. I heard a murmur from the audience, too.
Obviously, I’d known Reika could turn inanimate objects into mist — or, more accurately, send them to the spirit plane. She had to be able to do that to switch her bodies out, after all.
But I’d never seen her do it on something she wasn’t wearing or carrying. In fact, the idea of just doing it on whatever she was touching hadn’t even really occurred to me as a potential application of her magic. I’d internalized it as just being shapeshifting magic and hadn’t considered the broader applications of what she could do with it.
If she could send objects to another plane of existence at will...
...Well, that had some terrifying applications, now didn’t it?
For the first time, I wondered if I’d underestimated her. I felt a little bit of concern at that...and then, more strongly, satisfaction.
She’d always been a worthy opponent. But every new ability she gained, every clever new way she could find to apply her power, made her more of a challenge.
How can I counter that if she tries to do it to me? Maybe I need to pick up some kind of spiritual anchoring technique. Hm...
While I contemplated fighting her newly demonstrated ability, Reika co
ntinued her match.
The box rematerialized almost as soon as she’d snatched the key, but I didn’t know if that was because her ability had a short duration or because she’d deliberately set it up that way to conserve mana. That uncertainty only added to my interest.
She moved toward the nearest door, dodging a jet of flame with a burst of speed without paying any attention to the timing, and slipped the key into the lock.
The crystal changed. Just when I’d been getting more excited, too.
But I wasn’t disappointed by what I saw next.
Lady Hartigan had reached the top of the mountain, and she stood across from where Flamewing perched atop a titanic nest.
Within that nest were at least a half-dozen eggs, each larger than the one that Reika had taken. I didn’t know if that meant they were worth more points than the small one or not, but the sheer number made them colossally valuable either way.
Hartigan strode toward Flamewing with a straight back, raising her cane to rest on her shoulder. I saw her mouth open, and I read her lips as best I could.
She said something like, “You’re in my way.”
I had to admit, it took a tremendous amount of gall to tell that to a thirty-foot tall bird guarding its own nest. I kind of liked it.
The bird seemed to like it a little less.
Flamewing didn’t fly at her like the tiny ones had with Reika. Instead, Flamewing brought back her wings and then flapped them forward suddenly, creating a tremendous gust of burning air.
Hartigan raised a single hand. A path opened in the hot air, and she walked forward through it.
Flamewing soared higher, its wings burning brighter and brighter, the flames shifting from red to blue.
Hartigan turned her head upward, then set her cane down on the ground. She leaned on it patiently, waiting.
When Flamewing struck, the torrent of fire was briefly blinding. The crystal went white.
Then Hartigan stood — or rather floated — over a crater, where the dirt and stone of the mountainside had melted into burning liquid.
