by Andrew Rowe
I tried not to wince at the chorus of chuckles that followed.
“I’ve talked to Keras about it, and it would be dangerous, but there are enough advantages that we’re willing to take you along. Even if we can get a divination spell to work from outside of the spire, it’s not going to give us enough to find Tristan, especially if he’s moving. If you’re with us, we can have the diviner cast the spell any time to get his current location. And if we do find Tristan, you’re the most likely to be able to talk him into cooperating.” He paused. “It’s also possible you could talk Katashi down if he gets angry at us for investigating this on our own.”
I wasn’t exactly sure that was true, but I wasn’t going to disagree with arguments that supported taking me along. “Okay, but you just said the spire was sealed. How are we getting in?”
Derek shook his head. “We’ll probably have to wait. Keras thinks he might know an alternate way in, but he’s going to have to get in contact with a friend. Use this time to prepare as heavily as you can, but be ready to go any day. If that spire opens up, I want to be able to jump in there within hours. I’ll be working to have a full team ready to go.”
“Okay. As for a team, I’d like to take—”
Derek waved a hand. “No other novices.” He raised both hands defensively to ward off the ensuing glares from my classmates. “It’s nothing personal, but even bringing one Carnelian along for something like this is a tremendous risk. We’re effectively losing two slots to bring Corin, because someone is going to have to protect him full-time. We’re going to take a balanced team of veterans, all Citrine or higher. This is not negotiable.”
Sera looked like she wanted to argue, but when she opened up her mouth, no words escaped. She settled with a frown.
Patrick spoke where she couldn’t, though. “Isn’t it more important to bring people you can trust in there? You don’t know who might be working with the bad guys.”
Derek shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve been climbing for years, Patrick. I know a lot of other climbers better than I know any of you. I can put a good group together. If it’s any consolation, I’ll probably be bringing Teft, and you know him.”
There was a round of confused blinking.
Patrick replied first. “Teft? Seriously? You think that makes us more comfortable? That guy is a jerk.”
I turned to Patrick. “No, it makes sense. I might not like his personality, but he’s already involved, and we can be reasonably confident he’s wasn’t working with Orden. If he was, she would have brought him into the spire with us. He’s Citrine-level, and he’s got an excellent attunement for fighting.” I paused. “Moreover, someone needs to sign the paperwork for me to be able to get back in the spire.”
“I hadn’t even considered that,” Derek admitted. “You’re right, a student isn’t getting in there without a teacher to escort them. Even then, going in with a full group of climbers is going to look a little strange, but we can probably make it work.”
I nodded. “So, that’s you, me, maybe Teft... I assume Keras?”
“I’ll be there. I intend to see this through, and I’m supposed to be watching over you.” Keras gestured at his eyes, then at me. If that was supposed to feel reassuring, it certainly didn’t.
“I will most likely ask Sheridan, but it depends on how they behave during the meeting tomorrow. I’m reasonably confident they weren’t working with Elora when I investigated months ago, but that could have changed. I’ll pry a bit, see if I can pull any secrets loose.”
“You could ask Professor Meltlake instead of Teft!” Patrick grinned at his own idea. “She’d be amazing!”
Derek rolled his eyes. “No, I will not be bringing Aunt Meltlake with me into the tower. Powerful or not, I’d never be able to stand her lecturing.”
“Aunt Meltlake?” Patrick sounded as confused as I felt.
“She’s my mother’s half-sister, and a Hartigan by birth. And she’s just as irritating as any member of my mother’s family, I assure you.”
Huh. I suppose that made a degree of sense, given House Hartigan’s reputation for powerful offensive magic in general.
Maybe I’d change my own name at some point, if I did something as amazing as evaporating a lake in a duel.
“Regardless,” Derek continued, “Aunt Meltlake is well past her prime. I’d prefer to bring people who have been in the tower recently. I have a list of names to check with. I expect to have a team assembled within a week or two, just to be on standby. The real problem is getting a Diviner with spells that can track people inside the spire, but I’ll get that sorted out eventually.” He turned to me. “Depending on how high Tristan is in there, we could be inside for weeks. You should start putting together equipment with that in mind.”
I nodded. “I don’t suppose you have extra magical items you could loan me for the trip, given how dangerous this could be?”
Derek seemed to consider that. “I’ll see what I can put together. My resources aren’t what they once were. You might have better luck with Keras.”
Keras shook his head. “I tend to travel light. Most items don’t work very well for me. I have a cache of equipment I’ve picked up from my various adventures, but it’s in Caelford.”
“Why won’t items work fer you?” Marissa sounded curious, and she was watching Keras intently.
“It has to do with my aura, or I suppose you’d call it a shroud. It’s not gray mana like yours, and it has a tendency to interfere with items. Only powerful ones, like my sword and mask or the Jaden Box...” He paused, blinking. “Hey, Corin. How full was the box when you got it?”
I tilted my head to the side. “Full?”
Keras grinned. “If you’re lucky, we might not have as much of a shortage as I thought. Toss me the box?”
I didn’t have it on me. “Hold on, I’ll go get it.”
I headed upstairs, bringing the box back down. I was hesitant to hand it to Keras — he clearly wanted it for his own reasons — but he could have taken it from me by force at any time if he wanted to.
I handed it to him.
“This should be fun. I need to make some space.”
He went and sat down on the floor in the middle of the room, setting the box down in front of him. “Retrieve: All Items.”
A moment later, Keras was surrounded by...stuff.
All sorts of stuff.
At a glance, I saw dozens of weapons, at least two full suits of armor, several bags of various sizes, and dozens of bottles and vials. There must have been hundreds of pounds of equipment in total.
“Oh, Wrynn, you beautiful thing.” Keras lifted up a potion filled with red fluid and kissed the side of it, then opened the top of the box and put the potion down inside. It didn’t fit, completely, but... “Store Superior Healing Potion.”
The potion vanished.
I broke down in laughter, so hard I nearly cried.
I had taken a magic box filled with items into the tower, and I’d never even tried to get them out. I hadn’t even checked.
True, I probably wouldn’t have known there was a way to simply empty everything out — that wasn’t in the documentation — but checking for a healing potion? That wasn’t out of the question.
I might have been able to save Vera without making a magic rock, or maybe found a better solution to any number of other situations.
I turned to Keras. “That kind of potion wouldn’t help Sera, would it?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s just for wounds. Don’t think it would do anything for the kind of mana scarring she has.”
I nodded. I expected that, but it was good to check. His magic was functionally distinct from what I was used to, so I didn’t want to assume that “healing potion” meant the same thing to him that it did to me.
Keras lifted up a glimmering dagger etched with runes, turning it over in his hands with genuine fondness. “I remember you.” He gingerly put the hilt into the box. “Store: Silverbrand.”
The dagge
r vanished. He turned his head to me. “Most of this is mundane,” he gestured at a full backpack that had appeared at his side, “But there are a few things that might interest you. And moreover, it’s a good way to keep a whole bunch of non-magical supplies without having to worry about the weight.”
Another thing I hadn’t considered. “What’s the maximum capacity?”
“Not sure, exactly. It’ll just stop storing when it gets there, though, so you don’t have to worry about it too much.”
Keras patted a hand on the ground next to him. “Come help me organize this when you’re done eating, and we’ll see what we can find.”
It wasn’t long before all of us, even Derek, were sitting on the floor and shifting around mysterious items with legitimate excitement.
Sera, who had already brought paper downstairs to aid in her communication, started working on a catalogue of everything we found in the box and the words we were using to store them. It would be a useful reference, because Wrynn had stored a lot of stuff.
I dug through piles of equipment, searching for anything that interested me. There were coins, flasks, potion bottles... even a few entire bars of metal.
She also had a surprising number of flowers. Either she was the sentimental type or an alchemist. Possibly both. Based on the fact that most of them were either bound in bundles or inside labeled vials, I was guessing the latter.
Perhaps more interesting, the labels on those vials were in a foreign language. It looked almost like one of the two lettering systems they used in Dalenos, but not quite. I showed a vial to Keras. “Can you read his?”
He lifted it. “Hm? Oh, sure. It’s in Liadran. Just says ‘aldenleaf, five units’.”
“Huh.” I put the vial down. I hadn’t heard of that language. Maybe I could ask him more about it later, but I had a higher priority for the moment.
I shifted on my attunement, searching through the piles for anything that glowed with magic. I found a handful of items that glowed, but it was hard to tell how powerful they were. Much like Keras, many of them had auras that didn’t seem to fit into the standard color framework.
A hand-mirror glowed purple. A necklace had a turquoise glow that rippled like waves.
I considered the possibility that purple was simply higher on the color scale than even Sapphire. While that was possible, I suspected these items simply had auras that didn’t work the same way. It wasn’t impossible; Keras was one precedent for it, and I’d also seen elemental auras that glowed with the color of the element, rather than a representation of the item’s power.
Maybe that was what was going on here?
A couple rings and what looked like a hairpin had more conventional yellow auras, but I still couldn’t be sure they were Citrine items. They had some runes etched into them, but I wasn’t familiar with any of the ones that I saw.
There were three more daggers that had magical glows — apparently, Wrynn Jaden liked daggers. One had a lime green aura, the second was crimson, and the third one glowed black. I didn’t even want to touch that one. I didn’t know what a black aura meant, but it didn’t sound good.
I warned the others, of course.
The last glowing item I found was an earring that glowed with a soft white hue, almost transparent. Keras gasped aloud when he saw it.
“Let me see that.” He gestured, and I handed the earring over. Keras turned it over in his fingers reverently. “I should have asked you to open the box sooner.”
I tilted my head to the side. “I take it that thing is powerful?”
“No. Probably the weakest item in the bunch in terms of raw power. But it’s the most important, at least to me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sentimental value?”
“No, practical. Did you see a second one?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Good. This is part of a matched set. They’re designed to allow communication with each other.” He raised it to an eye, then hovered it next to his ear. “But I don’t think it’s active.”
Marissa leaned over. “Yer lady friend leave that for you, then?”
He nodded. “Not for me, necessarily, but I’d be one of the ones to know how to use it. I thought it was unusual that Wrynn left the box behind. It’s useful, as I’m sure you can see, and she rarely parts with it. This might help explain what she was up to.”
I frowned at that. “Seems too circuitous. How’d she know you, or whoever she wanted to get the box, would end up with it?”
“Sorry, I phrased that poorly. I don’t think she abandoned the box so that someone would find the earring. That wouldn’t work.”
Keras paused, seemingly considering how to explain. “I think she left the box for some other reason, and if I can get this to work, it might help tell me why. It uses sound magic. Maybe she kept the other earring, or maybe she even stored a message inside. Problem is, one of our other friends made this, not me. And she made lots of them — with different passwords.”
“As interesting as that is,” Derek cut in, “Is it useful to us right now? We have a short time to come up with a gift for Deni, and I’m seeing some prime candidates here, assuming any of it is useful.”
Keras closed his hand around the earring. “This is personally valuable to me, but it would have no use as a gift. There are plenty of communication items in your magic shops. As for the other items, none of them belong to you. They belong to Wrynn.”
Derek shrugged. “Provided she’s still alive. Death would be the simplest explanation for why she doesn’t have the box, yes?”
Keras gave Derek a sharp look. “Simplest, but not the most likely. When last we met, Wrynn was about my equal in a fight, and vastly more flexible. I’d give her better than even odds against one of your visages. It would take a great many enemies to threaten her.”
“Or the rigors of age.” Derek started to lean down toward one of the daggers. Marissa smacked his hand away.
“Yer bein’ a jerk, m’lord.”
I tensed for a moment — I didn’t know if Derek was going to take being insulted in his own home well — but fortunately, he just laughed.
“Oh, Keras knows I’m just teasing.”
Keras continued to glare.
Derek made a forced smile. “Well, regardless of Wrynn Jaden’s status, I think a bit of pragmatism might be appropriate here. She abandoned this years ago. Clearly she couldn’t need the contents that badly.”
I turned my head to Keras. “Derek has a point. We probably need these items a great deal more than she does right now. Not even necessarily for gifts. If we’re going to the tower and these might be useful...”
Keras closed his eyes, then shook his head a moment later. “Very well. I recognize most of these, and I can tell you what those do. For the ones I don’t recognize, we’ll need someone to identify them.”
“I can arrange for a Diviner to visit,” Derek chimed in happily.
“Once we’ve determined the functions, I will loan some of these items out, with the understanding that they all belong to Wrynn. If we end up trading something as a gift to this Sheridan to heal Sera,” he turned his head toward Sera. “Sera will owe me something comparable to pay Wrynn back.”
Sera gave a curt nod.
“Good.” He turned to Derek. “Similarly, if any loaned items are broken or go missing, I’ll expect them to be replaced.”
“That’s quite acceptable. And, for what it’s worth, I have quite a trove of items myself from my climbing days. They’re not all here, of course, but I have a few things lying about that might interest you. Perhaps we can arrange for some trades?”
“I will consider it. I have some idea of which items Wrynn would be more willing to part with, but I don’t wish to presume too much on her behalf.”
“Fine, fine. For now, tell us what you know?”
Keras nodded and sat down next to the magic items pile.
He picked up one of the daggers first. It had a wavy blade, the kind I’d always associ
ated with dark rituals in old stage plays. “Couple of Wrynn’s backup weapons here. This is a nasty one. Makes its own poison.”
Keras set it back down, picking up the second one. “Don’t recognize this one. I can sense a connection with the Dominion of Flame, though.”
“How does that work?” I considered my question, then added, “I mean, your sense. I didn’t think you could see auras.”
“I can’t.” Keras put the dagger down. “But I can feel some of them, especially for types of mana I’m familiar with. The sensation varies based on the specific type of mana. I can feel warmth from the dagger, even when I’m not touching it, and I know it’s not physically that hot. My aura is sensing the flame inside and sending me a signal, which feels like heat.”
“That’s not all that different from how I can sense auras,” Derek added. “Many attuned with hand or leg attunements eventually develop a sense like that. But we can’t sense the mana from anything unless it’s inside our shrouds.”
Patrick moved over to sit next to Keras. “Uh, I don’t want to presume, but if that’s a fire dagger, is there any chance I might be able to borrow it? You know, just for a little while?”
“You’re an Elementalist, correct?”
Patrick nodded in reply.
“No, not this, then. None of the daggers.”
Patrick looked like Keras had just thrown those daggers at a puppy. “...Oh, okay. Sorry, I guess.”
“You don’t want a dagger as an Elementalist, unless it’s a last resort. Don’t want you thinking about one of these as an option. In a real fight, if someone gets that close, they’re more likely to use it against you than you are to use it to your advantage. You want something with range. Either a true ranged weapon, like a bow, or something with physical reach.”
Patrick looked back up. “...But we don’t have anything like that, do we?”
“Not in Wrynn’s pile, no. But these spires seem to have magic weapons all over the place.”
“Yeah, I guess. Just not sure I’ll make it far enough in the year to get back in there.”
Keras frowned. “Is this academy that difficult?”
Marissa jumped in. “Quite a difficult one, m’lord Keras. Very few make it to the second year, and fewer still graduate.”
