Awaken Online- Flame

by Travis Bagwell

  Finn glared at her. She wasn’t helping. It was clear the earth mage was nervous. He’d been more cautious since Finn had revealed the very real stakes at play here. He could certainly sympathize. AO had stopped feeling like a game to him a long time ago. But they needed Kyyle to be focused – a lot would be riding on his performance.

  Julia caught his look and sighed. She moved forward, resting a hand on Kyyle’s shoulder, and his eyes finally lifted to meet hers. “Hey, you’ve got this,” she said more emphatically. “We trust you.”

  Finn saw the earth mage’s gaze harden as he met her stare, his shoulders straightening. “Yeah… yeah, you’re right.”

  “Alright,” Finn said, “I’m leaving Daniel here with you, Kyyle. He can signal me and Julia when you need to retreat to the temple. Then your job is to reinforce the building. Just buy us as much time as you can.” The earth mage nodded and gripped his staff more tightly, moving toward one of the slits carved into the nearby glass wall.

  “Daniel, you good?” Finn asked.

  “Yes, sir. I understand the plan,” the AI chirped. “It only has a 9.63% chance of success, although that’s admittedly better than some of your previous ideas.”

  “Thank you for the vote of approval,” Finn commented dryly. Then he looked at the group. They were ready – or as ready as they were going to be. “Okay, on three,” he said, glancing meaningfully at Kyyle.

  “One…”

  The earth mage took a deep breath and began casting.

  “Two…”

  Several lumps of stone slowly rose from the far end of the city at the very edge of Kyyle’s rather impressive control range.

  “Three…”

  The amorphous blobs contorted in Finn’s vision, the stone drifting together to form torsos and limbs. Three roughly humanoid figures began to take shape. Then the rock smoothed out, creating finer details. Hands and fingers, equipment, and weapons soon coated the statues that were forming on the far end of the cavern – inert doppelgangers of each of their group’s members.

  To Finn’s gaze, the figures glowed with a vibrant emerald light, the energy giving away the illusion. But he suspected someone without his enhanced abilities would only see a weary group of people – actually, he was counting on it.

  Then Kyyle worked real magic.

  The earth mage continued the channel, emerald energy twining around his staff as his brow furrowed in concentration. One of the statues suddenly moved, the action jerky and halting. Then it took a shuffling step forward. Then another. And another.

  The others began moving as well. As he had practiced, Kyyle kept the movements small – as though they were tired and broken from their trip up from the pit. Finn had a limp and cradled his head, and Julia’s weapons sagged in her grip.

  Not only did they want to appear weary, but those awkward movements also hid the ruse. Kyyle was no match for Vanessa’s illusions. The coloring was off – the statues a plain dull gray. They were relying on the assumption that the group would be covered in dust and sweat. The process of partially dissolving and reforming the stone to create a sense of movement was also extremely difficult. Kyyle wasn’t quite proficient enough to mimic the tug and pull of real muscle or Julia’s flowing grace…

  Not yet, anyway.

  If they ever made it out of here, Finn was going to make him practice this trick.

  The statues shuffled out toward the riverbank, as though searching for an easier path up toward the temple. In contrast to the real companions, the doppelgangers were less careful. They didn’t stay behind cover and shuffled openly up the bank.

  As the statues neared the first land mine, Finn gestured to Julia, and the pair readied themselves. Finn’s eyes were on the temple. Already, he could see faint streamers of energy curling amid the fire mana. It seemed some of their enemies had already noticed the movements down by the river of mana.

  Then the first of the statues crossed that thin white line.

  They could feel the detonation from their hiding place, the ground trembling from the force of the blast. Finn whipped his head around, a plume of orange rocketing into the air from farther down the cavern. The green outlines of the statues leapt to the side, the rock floating for just a second too long in his sight as Kyyle strained to mimic their movements – how they would have dived for cover.

  He had been practicing that move for nearly an hour now.

  Luckily, the mine had decimated the side of the nearby building, the ball bearings ripping apart the glass and showering the area in dust, debris, and glass shrapnel. This helped conceal the unnatural movements of the lifeless doppelgangers and their gray color. Not that the real group members looked all that much better, each of them covered in a thick layer of grime that they had carried up with them from the lower levels of the Abyss.

  Their enemies came pouring out of the temple.

  Finn saw three fast-moving forms race out of the entrance.

  The mana in their Najima was dimmer, indicating a small quantity and concentration of mana. Metallic green weapons were held in their hands, and the shimmers of red and yellow gave away the gems embedded in the hilts. Even more telling were the intricate symbols carved into the fighters’ bodies, glowing lines of power tracing their wards. They streaked down into the city, the glowing designs flashing momentarily as they leaped up onto the roofs of the ruined buildings to avoid the traps and jumped from structure to structure.

  Hmm, they must be using the wards intermittently to reduce the mana cost, Finn thought. That was clever. It also meant that despite their smaller mana pool, the fighters would be able to use their wards for quite a while before they were running on empty.

  Even more interesting, Finn soon saw three more figures emerge behind the fighters, moving more slowly out of the main doors. Skittering down the steps, a legion of metallic green spiders crawled out of the hole and gathered atop the buildings that ringed the temple. Behind those automatons, a massive wall of ice soon erupted from the floor, forming a barrier nearly twelve feet high that fully encircled the temple. The mechanids were locked outside that wall, creating a thin line of robotic sentries.

  Finn’s fists clenched. This wasn’t ideal.

  It was clear that Kalisha’s crew were encircling the structure and creating an interior defensive line – using the fighters as a strike force.

  It seemed the two groups were working together after all.

  Whether that was because they couldn’t open the vault or they just didn’t want Finn’s group to succeed, he couldn’t be sure. But he also supposed it didn’t matter.

  Finn rested a hand on Kyyle’s shoulder. “Good luck,” Finn said.

  The earth mage just nodded, but his gaze didn’t waver and his hands never stopped moving as he guided the statues, who were now winding through the city streets at a blazing erratic pace, diving between the ruined building as though anticipating an attack. Although, Kyyle was following a preset path – one that took him near almost every mine. Luckily, the group had already carefully mapped out the locations of the explosives. The detonations would help keep the fighters at bay and mask the illusion.

  Finn and Julia raced out of the other end of the ruined building, making a beeline toward the edge of the cavern wall. As they ran, Finn cast his Magma Armor, coating both of his arms. Then he pulled two of the dark metal spheres from his pack, tossing them up into the air as hard as he could. His fingers never stopped moving as his legs pumped, and Julia led them through the ruined debris. The spheres were soon awash in flame, hovering high in the air at the edge of his control range. He immediately moved them in front of the clusters of fire crystals that lined the wall, using the ambient flicker of the gems to hide the spheres as they moved forward.

  Meanwhile, he shifted his attention to the line of green mechanids ahead, their bright-emerald outlines standing out in stark contrast to the massive sapphire wall of ice behind them. Finn could also make out thin white beams projected by each automaton – it seemed they used
the same light mana crystals as part of their targeting systems. If they were relying on a normal spectrum of light, it might also be safe to assume that Julia would still trigger the drones, despite her lack of mana. So, she couldn’t risk attacking the mechanids head-on.

  Although, there was another way to blast a hole in the line of robotic sentries.

  Finn’s fingers twitched, and his spheres rushed outward and then straight down, making certain to stay perfectly outside the arc of the white mana.

  The dark orbs smashed through the metal casing and crushed the air crystal in the center of two of the mechanids within only a fraction of a second, the machines immediately falling limp. With his sight, Finn didn’t need to destroy them completely. Kalisha had already told him how they were powered, and the gems nestled in the center of the automatons glowed bright yellow in his sight. He idly wished he could collect one of the mechanids to study, but there wasn’t time…

  Finn snatched one metallic orb from the air as the pair approached the ice wall and then ratcheted up the temperature on his remaining sphere to heat rank 4 before smashing it into a long flat panel. With a twitch of his fingers, he pushed the flaming disc into the wall of ice. The heat quickly cut a hole through the barrier, and Finn and Julia rushed through. As soon as they made it to the other side, Finn crumpled the metal back into a ball and then snatched the cooling metal from the air.

  He needed to give his mana a chance to regenerate completely.

  The pair raced along the cavern wall even as more explosions detonated behind them, plumes of orange mana jetting up into the cavern from different spots among the ruins. It seemed Kyyle had split up the statues and was leading the fighters on a merry chase. Hopefully, the chaos was enough to absorb the attention of Kalisha and her crew as well.

  Finn and Julia soon circled around to the back of the temple, hopping up onto the glass terrace that ringed the structure. They edged around the building, their backs to the thick glass and darted from column to column. As they neared the front of the building, they both hesitated for a fraction of a second. Julia touched Finn’s arm.

  “You got this?” she asked, panting slightly.

  “We’ve got this,” he said emphatically, looking where he suspected her eyes to be, although she was nearly invisible in his sight. “Be safe,” he said, and he saw her armor dip. A nod, most likely.

  Then they parted ways. Julia knew her job. She would drop into Sneak for now. Her goal was to defend the temple, buy him time, and give Kyyle room to retreat. Once the fighter and merchant groups realized the statues were fakes, they would be headed back to the temple… and fast.

  They didn’t have much time.

  Finn slid around the corner of the building and stepped quickly toward the hole that had been blasted in the main doors. He saw Kalisha and her group standing atop the remains of a tall building just inside the ice wall – their position offering them a vantage point on the rest of the cavern. Sadik’s and Vanessa’s outlines stood beside the merchant. It seemed all three of them were occupied with the explosions farther down the cavern.

  When he was certain that they weren’t focused on the temple, Finn slipped inside.

  He soon found himself inside a massive chamber. It resembled a church – or it might have a long time ago. The remains of pews dotted the rectangular enclosure, broken only by a single clear trail among the debris that led to the dais on the other end of the building. On the center of that platform rested a simple glass column and basin. Finn couldn’t help but recall Bilel’s entry, remembering the mana that had glowed within its depths. Even now, the column shone like a divine, flaming pillar in his sight, the orange-and-red light so intense it almost hurt to stare at it directly. Behind that basin, lava flowed down onto the dais before forming a lake of molten energy.

  Finn made his way forward quickly, jogging down the clear trail through the room. Within only seconds, he had arrived at the dais. He spared a glance into the basin, shielding his eyes with one hand against the glare. Resting at the bottom of the bowl was glowing, liquid mana – no more than a cupful. A long crack had been formed in the basin, the liquid leaking through and dripping to the floor.

  And where the mana touched the glass, a pool of magma had formed, eating through the floor and creating a sheer cliff on the other side of the basin. It was that lava that had carved through the wall of the temple and created the flowing river they had witnessed on their way inside the cavern. The heat was intense, almost pushing Finn away from the basin and causing a renewed layer of sweat to coat his body instantly. Each breath burned. He couldn’t stay this close for long.

  But Finn wasn’t here for the basin.

  He was looking for the vault.

  His eyes skimmed the area until they came to rest on the nearby wall. Faint lines of dark-green energy were superimposed over the glass – although, they were barely visible with the way the orange fire mana permeated the air. Finn moved closer and away from the intense heat of the lake. In his sight, it almost looked like metal had been embedded into the glass, the mana standing out clearly against the energy of the temple walls. Although, the mana was still too dim for him to make out much detail.

  His fingers reached forward, and he touched the wall, feeling the indentations in the glass. He abruptly switched on Short-Sighted, and the system thankfully marked him as out of combat despite the constant explosions from Kyyle’s ruse. The blue energy cascaded across his sight, and the mana washed away.

  He could now see what lay before him.

  Although, it didn’t quite match his memory of the vision.

  A massive circular picture had been carved directly into the face of the glass wall of the temple. However, the pattern was pure chaos, the lines failing to connect and creating an unintelligible combination of shapes. This didn’t look like any lock he had ever seen before. He could feel doubt creep into his mind. Had he been wrong? Was there no vault here? Had he made one failed assumption that could cost them everything?

  Even now, he could hear more detonations coming from outside. Kyyle couldn’t keep up the chase for forever. Finn needed to move quickly.

  This is it – it must be, he thought frantically.

  Finn peered closer, feeling out the edges of the chaotic patterns with his fingers. As he inspected the design, he could see that circle was comprised of multiple, concentric rings, creating at least five layers. Maybe each ring was designed to rotate into place, forming a more concrete design? He took a step back, reorganizing the patterns in his mind as he visualized rotating each layer. This would have been easier with Daniel’s help, but he could still see how some of the edges and lines would connect…

  He stepped forward again and shoved at one layer.

  Nothing. The glass didn’t budge at all.

  “Damn it,” Finn murmured.

  “Have you figured it out yet?” a voice asked from behind him. Finn whirled, already preparing to cast Imbue Fire. Yet he hesitated as he saw Julia’s outline, her face and clothing shimmering in the blue haze cast by his sight.

  Finn’s brow furrowed. “What are you doing in here?” he asked. “It’s too early.”

  A faint pause, and he thought he saw her attention flick to his face, her eyes widening ever-so-slightly as she saw his bandage. Then it was gone. Maybe it had just been his imagination, a product of heat and stress. His vision wasn’t great beyond a few feet, so he might have misread her reaction…

  “Kalisha’s group was pulling back closer to the temple, and it seemed too risky to stay outside with her mechanids. I thought I’d come to help defend you in case they decided to re-enter the temple,” Julia offered. Her eyes looked past him to the image on the wall. “That’s the vault, I take it?”

  Finn nodded, glancing distractedly at the disc on the wall. “I think so.”

  “You manage to crack it yet?”

  “Not exactly,” Finn murmured. He had tilted his head to look at the wall, but kept Julia in his peripheral vision, his true focus
on her. Thankfully, the bandage and his new eyes made it difficult to track where he was looking. “Yet another damn riddle, and we don’t have much time…”

  His daughter’s explanation didn’t make a lot of sense. Why would the merchants pull back early? And even if they had, Julia was more than capable of staying out of sight with Sneak. Then a thought occurred to him, a weight settling in his stomach.

  Unless he wasn’t really speaking to Julia.

  What if he had been right? If this was the vault, then it didn’t look like it had been opened. Perhaps the other groups hadn’t been able to get inside. If that was the case, and Finn was in their shoes, what would he do? Perhaps accept his ruse, allow him to sneak inside the temple, let him open the vault, and then steal the relic from him.

  Maybe even embed a spy…

  Except Julia was wearing her lance and shield. How would Vanessa have seen her new weapons? A worm of doubt squirmed through Finn’s mind.

  Well, there’s one way to find out for sure.

  Finn abruptly reactivated his sight.

  Suddenly, Julia’s form was awash in mana, her body easily visible to him. Except Julia didn’t carry a wand or wear robes – and there was only one person with that much water mana surging through her body. Finn kept his face perfectly neutral, staring at the patterns on the nearby wall as the fake Julia approached him.

  The fingers of Finn’s right hand twitched, hidden behind his body.

  “I think maybe the circular layers rotate,” Finn murmured, using the conversation and his own mumbled thoughts to mask his incantation. He took another step back toward the basin, his face still pointed at the image – as though he was trying to get a better angle to inspect the designs. “Although, they don’t move. I think they need to be activated by something… maybe mana?” he asked, half-talking to himself.