I nodded as Claire stepped forward and led us across a natural bridge over the stream.
“So, how exactly does this work?” I asked as we ascended the stairs.
“Every temple has five floors. In this particular one, we start at the bottom and work our way back to the top. The final floor features a battle with the god or goddess of that temple. In order to claim this goddess’ stone, you need to prove yourself worthy of the prize,” Claire explained. “Each deity has a different set of requirements. You can’t kill them, so the only way to win and obtain their stone is to fulfill their desired condition.”
“And what is that requirement?”
“The goddess of Balgyra’s temple is named Ranera. She’s the goddess of life. That’s all I can tell you,” she replied.”
“But you’ve done this one before, haven’t you?” I asked.
Claire nodded. “I have, but it’s against the Summoner’s code to give you the answer. Each temple is a series of trials meant to test the Summoner’s skill. To tell you Ranera’s condition would defeat the purpose of the trial.”
We reached the top of the stairs, stopping in front of the pedestal.
“How does this work exactly?” McKenna asked as she examined the pillar.
“You place the hand with your affinity mark onto the top of the pedestal and then…well, it’s best to wait and see what happens,” Claire responded.
McKenna smirked and bobbed her head, then moved to place her hand atop the stone.
“Hold up,” Claire interrupted. “The trials are for Summoners only.”
“So? He’s not a Summoner,” McKenna said, pointing at me.
“No, but he’s an Oathbreaker—an Omni—and thus has access to all five kinds of magika stones. Besides, the trials are deadly. Once you enter them, the only way out is to win or die trying.”
McKenna pulled her hand away from the pedestal. “All right, I’m out.”
“Hey, Leon, you’re an Omni. Want to come?” I asked, turning around to face him.
“Deadly trials, all-powerful gods, mysterious conditions—I’ll pass,” he said with a forced smile.
“All right,” Claire said, “then it’s settled. Bella, McKenna, and Leon will stay here, and Aren and I will enter the trials.”
“We can go together?” I asked.
“Sure, why not?”
“You said it was meant to test my skill. And you’ve done it already, so won’t you just be able to do it all for me?” I asked.
Claire shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. The trials change every time someone enters the temple so that every person’s experience is unique and different. The only floor that remains the same is the final one where you face the goddess. That one you will have to do alone.”
Well, it would be nice to have someone along who has done these before. Who knows? I shrugged, impatient to begin. We still needed to get out of these tunnels, find Elsie, and stop the supreme commander.
“Okay. Give me your hand,” Claire said, holding out her own.
I took it.
Claire turned to the others. “If we’re not back in two hours, then we’re dead, and you should proceed ahead without us. Follow the stream, and it’ll take you to the entrance of Winkerk’s sewer system.”
Bella’s eyes went wide and fear spread across her face.
“It’s all right, I’ll be—”
Bella lunged forward and wrapped me in a tight hug, her tears falling on my cheek. “I lo—”
“Don’t say it.”
She pushed away from me and furrowed her brow.
“Not now, not yet, and especially, not here. But I’m not saying, ‘not ever.’ Okay?”
Bella nodded and stepped back with the others.
“See you soon,” Claire said, then she placed our hands on the pedestal at the same time.
White light rose up in a circle around us, completely enveloping us. It grew brighter and faster, and then everyone was gone.
When the light faded, Claire and I stood in a nearly empty room with two pedestals at its center.
“What just happened?” I asked, briefly out of sorts.
“Teleport stone,” Claire explained. “All the temples use them. It’s how you get around from one room to the next. Since every floor is different, it stands to reason that you can’t just climb a set of stairs.”
It made sense. I didn’t understand the magic that operated the place, but I trusted Claire’s explanation.
“So, this is the first room? It doesn’t seem so deadly,” I said.
Claire laughed. “This is the entrance hall. Call it a last chance to chicken out. The pedestal on the left will take you back to the top and out of the temple. The one of the right will take us to the first room. In order to not get split up, we should touch the pedestals together.”
I stepped forward and moved toward the pedestal.
“Wait,” Claire said. “There’s no telling what will await us on the other side. I’ve been dropped into the middle of a battle zone before. We need to come up with a plan first.”
“Why didn’t we do this up there?”
“Because the secrets of the temple are meant only for those who enter its trials,” Claire said.
“Fair enough.”
“Every temple has five floors—”
“You said that already,” I remarked.
Claire stuck out her tongue. “Let me finish. Each of the four main floors will focus on a different skill: strength, intelligence, agility, and accuracy. There’s no telling what the object of the test is until you’re in the middle of it, and even then, it’s not always obvious.”
“Such as?”
“Well, one room I was in had a statue with a riddle engraved on it. Usually, something like that is an intelligence test. But try as I might, there was no solution to the riddle available. I ended up kicking the statue in frustration, and it broke, revealing a key that unlocked a door to a pedestal room.”
“Not always obvious,” I repeated. “Got it.”
“And then there’s the—”
“Can we just go already? You’re going to be with me, right? You can explain this stuff as it’s needed.”
“Suit yourself,” Claire said.
Together, we stepped up to the pillar.
Claire looked me in the eyes. “Last chance to go back.”
“Bring it,” I said, placing our hands on the right pillar.
White light rose up around us again, and away we went.
Showtime.
Thirty-Nine
I don’t know what I was expecting, but the first level we teleported to was rather underwhelming. After Claire’s pep talk, I had thought the light would fade to a minotaur swinging a giant axe at my head or something similar.
Instead, this room looked no different than the last one, save a table with several dozen different vials sitting on top of it.
On the other side of the table stood a door, but other than that, the room was empty.
“What am I looking at here?” I asked. “I’m confused. I thought these were tests of skill.”
“Skill shows itself in many different ways, and not all of those ways are with brute force,” Claire chided.
Letting go of my hand, Claire walked over to the table. Sliding a piece of parchment out from under the vials, she scanned the document. “Hmm…”
I raised my eyebrows. “Mind sharing?”
“I’ve seen rooms like this before, though not in this exact form. It’s a mind test.”
“Then this is the… what were those four you said again? Strength, agility… intelligence? This is an intelligence trial?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. I told you these rooms are tricky. They are often far from obvious, and there’s usually some sort of catch or twist.”
“Well, what’s it say?” I prodded, pointing at the note.
Claire flipped the page over and extended it toward me. “Read it yourself.”
I took the pa
rchment and looked down at the words scrawled upon it:
Welcome, Summoner, to the first floor,
Complete the task to access the door.
In order to pass, you’ll need your nose,
Hands, arms, legs, and toes.
Only one vial will help you excel,
The rest lead straight to hell.
Choose wisely and apply,
Turn slowly then swing wide.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she replied. “But the third set of lines would seem to imply that out of…” she turned and counted the vials, “…twenty-four possible solutions, only one will allow us to succeed, and the others will quite likely kill us.”
“Wonderful,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “And the rest of it?”
Claire shook her head. “I honestly don’t know.”
“What, we’re stuck then? With a one in twenty-four possibility of death? I don’t like those odds. Some test. How does anyone pass these things?”
“Many don’t,” said Claire, frowning. “There’s a reason that Summoners are the rarest of all the affinities. That being said, each trial always provides you with enough information or context to successfully complete it.”
I lifted the page and re-read the instructions.
In order to pass, you’ll need your nose.
Stepping up to the table, I picked a vial at random and sniffed it. I wrinkled my nose and pulled away.
“What?” Claire asked.
“It smells like tobacco.”
“Here, let me smell,” she said, motioning for me to give it to her.
I handed it over with a shrug. “Suit yourself.”
She lifted it to her nose. “That’s probably nicotine. Extremely high concentrations of that stuff can kill you in a couple of hours.”
“And people ingest this stuff willingly?”
Claire nodded. “The consumable kind is significantly diluted, but yeah, kind of ridiculous, huh?”
I picked up the next vial and took a whiff. “Hydrogen peroxide. I’d recognize that smell anywhere.”
“Also deadly in high doses,” Claire announced, then gestured to an empty corner of the table. “Here, let's set all of the bad ones on this side so we don’t try them again.”
I set down the hydrogen peroxide next to the nicotine and tried a few more vials. They were all pretty indistinguishable so I just put them back in the center of the table with all the others.
“What are we looking for here? Really? This could take hours, and we told the others to leave if we didn’t come back in two.”
“Don’t be such a whiner; it won’t take us that long,” she said.
Sighing, I stepped over to the wall and sat down. Claire continued checking scents and separating out the bad from the maybe bad.
I decided to read the note again, focusing on a different line.
Hands, arms, legs, and toes.
“Hands, arms, legs, toes, hands, arms, legs, toes, hands… arms…” A light went on in my head. “We’re looking for something you’d put on your arms and legs.”
“Like a medicinal lotion?” Claire asked.
“Or just something that smells good,” I replied.
Renewed with hope, I jumped to my feet and went at the vials again. Three unrecognizable scents later, that hope was waning—and fast.
I picked up a fourth vial and gave it a sniff. It was wonderful. “Mmm… I think I found it. It smells just like almonds.” I started to turn the vial to pour the liquid onto my hands.
“No, stop!” Claire shouted at the top of her lungs, dropping the vial she held in the process.
I’m not sure what was more alarming, her voice or the sound of the glass shattering into a hundred pieces and the subsequent sizzle that issued forth from the liquid as it ate away the stone floor.
Whatever the case, I quickly set the vial down and stepped away from table. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Am I—I’m fine, forget about me. Are you an idiot?” Claire asked a little too harshly for my liking.
I furrowed my brow. “How do you mean?”
“You said ‘almonds,’ right?”
I nodded.
“Every royal knows that the smell of almonds means the presence of cyanide,” she said.
I recoiled in shock both at what I’d almost done and the condescending tone in her voice. “Well sor-ry, Princess, not all of us were deemed worthy enough for lessons in running a kingdom.”
“Don’t make this about you and father,” she said, glaring at me.
“I didn’t say anything about father, that was all you.”
Claire opened her mouth to reply, but before she could speak, I said, “Can we just get back to our task, please?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she stared at me for a long second, then sighed. “Put it over here with the others and let’s keep going.”
I grabbed the vial and set it in the ‘bad’ pile.
We had ten bad vials, one broken vial, and thirteen scents still to go. After four more scentless—to me anyway—liquids, I grew frustrated and threw one of them across the room where it shattered as it hit the wall.
“Hey! What did you do that for? What if that was the right one?”
“It wasn’t,” I said gruffly.
“How do you know?”
“Because it just wasn’t. The clue said we’re supposed to smell something and these vials have no scents!” I shouted, holding my hands out toward the still massive pile.
Claire bit her lip, her eyes flitting between me and the vials. “Maybe you’re right. What if we’re going about this the wrong way? What if half of these were put here specifically to confuse us? The reason we don’t smell anything is because they have no scent.”
“And since we need one that does smell, it stands to reason we can eliminate them,” I said. “Brilliant!”
We separated out the vials that had a scent from the ones that didn’t, and we were left with three scents.
I picked them up one at a time and smelled them. The first was like lavender, and the second had a fruity smell to it. Lifting the last vial, I held it up to my nose. “Oh, gods, that’s strong,” I said.
“Which one?” Claire asked.
I handed it to her. “It smells like that stuff old people use.”
Claire took a sniff. “It reminds me of a muscle relaxer, but that’s not for old people. I’ve used it before, you put it on sore arms and…that’s it!”
“What’s it? What do you put it on?” I asked.
“Arms and legs. The clue said that you need your nose and your arms and legs. This is the vial we need.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“Well, no, I can’t be 100% sure, but it sounds logical to me.”
“Go for it,” I said.
Claire shook her head. “This is all on you. I’ve completed these trials once before. You need to be the one to complete each task. Technically, I’m not even supposed to be here.”
I scowled but then resigned myself to her reasoning. If one of us was going to die from a mistake, I supposed I should be the one to volunteer.
Taking the vial from Claire, I poured it all over my hands in one go then closed my eyes and waited for something bad to happen.
“What’s wrong?” Claire asked.
I opened my eyes and looked around. I was still here. Breathing. Not dead. “Nothing, nothing is wrong,” I said with a smile.
“Then go try the door,” she said.
Stepping past the table, I approached the door. My hand gripped the knob, and I heard a soft click.
“Did it work?”
“Shhh,” I said, turning the knob slowly like the clue said to do.
When it wouldn’t budge another centimeter, I pulled quickly and jumped out of the way as the door opened.
Nothing happened.
Claire peered through the open door with wide eyes.
; “What is it? What happened?” I asked, worried.
“You did it! There’s a pedestal in here to take us up to the next floor.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. We’d got it right, and I wasn’t going to die—at least, not yet.
Together, we entered the room with the next pedestal. She took my hand, and we touched the stone as one.
White light rose up around us once more, and we were whisked away to our next challenge.
When the light dissipated, I looked around and found myself in the center of a giant coliseum with thousands of cheering onlookers all staring back at us.
“Are you seeing this?” I said over my shoulder.
“Yeah, looks like a straight up strength test,” Claire replied.
“And the last one was…?”
“Intelligence probably, hard to say. They’re not always as clear as this.”
“Are these people really here?” I asked.
“Unlikely, it’s probably a fabrication of the magic in the temples,” Claire said. “Like any of the tasks, the scenery and the trial itself are specially crafted for the challengers.”
The clinking of metal drew my attention to the arena floor where an iron portcullis rose at the opposite end. The crowd went wild as a lion roared and burst forth from the darkness beyond the gate.
I slipped my bow off my shoulder and nocked an arrow before it covered half the distance between us. Claire drew her dagger, but I didn’t think it was going to do much against the king of beasts.
It didn’t take a genius to realize that the goal of this task was to kill or be killed. I loosed an arrow, and it drilled home, nailing the lion in the eye. The beast faltered and plowed into the ground.
Not waiting for it to rise, I loosed a second arrow, but when the projectile arrived, it hit nothing but air as the lion faded away.
“What happened?” I asked, a little shocked.
“You killed it,” Claire answered.
“Seriously? What was it like a level 5 or something? I thought this was supposed to be hard.”
“Don’t get cocky, look,” Claire said, pointing to the left.
Sworn Guardian: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure (Forbidden Magic Book 1) Page 29
