Sworn Guardian: A LitRPG/GameLit Adventure (Forbidden Magic Book 1)

by T. L. Branson

  “Well, we would be stuck here, and that means that we’d most surely die,” she explained matter-of-factly.

  After a brief pause while I processed her words, I quickly said, “Yeah. Good idea. Let’s bring the axe.”

  I stepped over to Claire and put my hand around the shaft of the axe. I noted immediately that the handle was etched with a deep geometric pattern, kind of like a maze.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Claire asked.

  “Taking the axe,” I said.

  “I can handle it on my own, thanks. Besides, how do you plan to fire that bow carrying this thing?”

  I backed away and held up my hands. “All right, fine, but if you start to get tired of carrying it, let me know.”

  “Noted, but not necessary.”

  With our business in the arena done, we stepped up to the pedestal and placed our hands upon it.

  Once again, the white energy surrounded us, and we were whisked away.

  Before the light even faded, I could feel the change in the rooms. Where the arena had been cool and breezy, this new room felt stuffy and hot—incredibly hot.

  As my surroundings came into view, the first thing I saw was a horizontal stream of fire headed straight for us.

  I grabbed Claire and pulled her down as I dove for the ground.

  The fire passed over our heads less than a foot away, its heat scorching the skin on my neck.

  There was no time to rest, however, as another row of flames swung towards us along the ground.

  I hopped to my feet and backed away and out of the reach of the fire, only to have Claire shove me to the ground again.

  “Hey! What’s the—” but the question died on my throat as I saw a guillotine blade slam into the ground where I’d just been standing.

  “It’s agility!” Claire shouted. “Move!”

  I didn’t need any prodding. In the moment that it took to stand once more, I took in the room—or rather tunnel—we found ourselves in. Behind us, I saw a metal pillar about waist high, spinning around with two geysers of fire spewing out of it from the top and two from the bottom. The two were off-center from each other, covering all four directions at once. Then there was the blade I’d narrowly avoided.

  Ahead, I saw an equally deadly array of traps awaiting us. The spot where we stood seemed relatively safe, though I couldn’t say for certain it would remain so.

  Claire raced forward and ducked under a set of spinning blades, though her effort was strained with the axe on her back.

  The gods were nuts if they required us to transport that thing through an agility test. Or perhaps that was part of the test in and of itself, I didn’t know. This whole trial thing was becoming more outrageous by the second. So much for being cocky about how easy I thought this would be.

  As soon as we encountered another safe spot, I pushed in front of Claire. If she was dealing with a handicap, the least I could do was help show her the way.

  Ahead of me swung a heavy blade at the end of a rope. It would disappear beyond the wall of the tunnel and then come back the other direction, back and forth, swinging like a pendulum.

  I let it go by a few times to get the timing right, and then I jumped across.

  As soon as my feet landed, I knew something was wrong. The ground wasn’t solid like the stone I’d just left but instead sank down with my weight.

  “Go, go, go!” Claire shouted.

  Another pendulum stood before me, moving slightly faster than the last, but I couldn’t afford to figure out the timing as I heard stone grating on stone. I leaped forward and prayed I didn’t get cut in half.

  The blade swung by a second before I passed through the space. The moment my feet left the ground, I heard several whooshes followed by a hundred different pings. Looking back, I saw a torrent of arrows slamming into the stone where I’d stood. After a few seconds, it stopped, and the stone panel on the ground reset itself.

  Looking around, the area where I was now seemed safe enough. “Come on,” I shouted back to Claire.

  She waited until precisely the right moment and then hopped through both sets of pendulums, completely avoiding depressing the trap mechanism by keeping her feet away from the center of the path.

  As soon as Claire was through, a wall slammed down to fill the space where the second pendulum had been, thus cutting off any retreat.

  In front of us, a shower of flames blocked our way forward.

  When the fire retreated, a small space became visible barely large enough for one person to stand before there was another geyser of flames shooting down from above. When that one faded, another was revealed beyond and another past that.

  For half a second, all four firewalls disappeared. I moved a step forward, but the first shower of flames returned, causing me to jump back into Claire.

  I thought I’d play this like the pendulums and watch the timing of the fire a few times before daring to step forward, but my plans went out the window as the stone wall behind us started to slowly slide forward, pushing us unceremoniously toward the flames.

  Faster than I would have liked, our safe space was disappearing, and we were forced to lay our backs flat against the advancing wall. Yet, still it persisted. With each passing second, the flames got hotter against my face.

  “Oh, Chet!” I yelled, casting Claire a worried look.

  Automatically, the first wall of fire ended.

  “Don’t look at me, go!” she shouted.

  I jumped forward, giving Claire some room. When the second geyser disappeared, Claire stepped up into the space where I’d just stood.

  It became less difficult than it had initially looked. From what I’d seen, there was no danger of getting stuck, unless one of the geysers misfired.

  That thought gave me little comfort.

  The third fire wall disappeared and then the fourth. Claire yelped as the first re-engaged right behind her, but a quick check showed that she hadn't been harmed.

  I rushed out of the trap and let Claire get well clear of any danger before coming to a halt. As soon as she was safe, the moving stone wall stopped and rose back up into the ceiling.

  It seemed like we’d found another safe zone and were granted a brief reprieve before the next traps began.

  “Are all agility tests like this one?” I asked.

  Claire shook her head. “I was chased by an unkillable ironhorn once.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Yeah, not fun.”

  I took a deep breath and surveyed the way ahead. Immediately in front of us were two sets of stone pillars that were smashing into each other from above and below. One wrong step there and we’d become pancakes. But thankfully, they didn’t seem to be too difficult to navigate.

  The tricky part lay beyond that.

  Arrows were raining down from above at odd intervals. One would fire slowly, then two in rapid succession, followed by a single arrow, which was then finished off with a hail of arrows soaring across from right to left.

  Past that, I saw a series of three spears at three different heights flying out to skewer the unobservant.

  “Are you sure you got this?” I asked Claire.

  She rolled her shoulder where the axe lay, stretching it. “I’m good.”

  As we had been doing, I led the way, jumping easily through the first set of smashers.

  I knew I was in trouble the second my feet touched the ground and another pressure plate activated.

  “Chet!” I shouted and dove forward straight through the next set of smashers. The stone walls came crashing down, narrowly missing me by an inch. Out of curiosity, I glanced over my shoulder to see a pile of spears come racing out of the ceiling to slam down onto the pressure plate.

  Unfortunately, the look cost me as an arrow from the other trap drilled right into my shoulder. I screamed and fell back against the wall. Two more arrows sailed down, well away from me, then a single slow one came again.

  Move, I told myself.

  Gritting
through the pain, I pressed forward into the final trap as the flood of arrows sounded off behind me.

  I ducked under the top spear as it lanced out and then jumped to avoid the lower one, and finally, I was clear.

  In front of me stood the pedestal to end the task. I would have sighed in relief if it weren’t for the piercing pain in my shoulder.

  Ripping the arrow free, I activated the Healing stone and mended my wound.

  “Are you all right?” Claire called out.

  “Nothing to worry about,” I answered. “This is it, you do this, and we’re all done. Take your time and be careful not to trigger the trap after that first smasher.”

  Claire nodded.

  Just as she was about to make her move, a deep rumble followed by a loud bang sounded forth from the back of the tunnel where we’d begun.

  Confusion struck me, but Claire’s face only showed panic. As a red and orange ball of fire rapidly filled the tunnel, advancing toward us, I understood why.

  Claire jumped through the first smasher, avoided the pressure plate, and promptly hopped through the second smasher. Dodging the spear trap, though, had put her off balance, and her leap was mistimed. Consequently, she caught her foot on the bottom smasher as it sunk back down.

  When she crashed into the ground, the impact knocked the axe free from her grasp. An arrow slammed into the stone next to her head, and she rolled over, avoiding the two that followed.

  Unfortunately, this put her out of the reach of the axe.

  She tried to go for it, but the next arrow was already flying at her, so she withdrew.

  “Get out of there!” I shouted, knowing what was coming next.

  She yelled in frustration, then rolled forward and dove between the spear traps.

  Before she even hit the ground, I launched myself back into the mess to retrieve the axe.

  I would have gladly left it, but Claire was convinced it was necessary, and what good would it do to live here, only to die in the next task because we were unable to complete it?

  I jumped over the spears and dodged to the left around the arrow trap. As I reached down to grab the axe, my gaze rose up to take in the massive wall of fire hurtling towards me. The heat intensified with each passing second.

  “Aren!” Claire yelled.

  I spun and hefted the axe, using it as a shield from the arrows as they pinged off its large blade. Then I swung and smashed through the middle spear, ducking under the upper spear as it shot out.

  My back burned as the flames caught up to me and wrapped around my body. At the same instant, Claire grabbed my hand and slammed it down onto the pedestal, and we were gone.

  Forty-One

  I screamed in pain as we arrived on the next floor and rolled around on the ground, desperately trying to distinguish the flames covering my body.

  Immediately calling forth the Ice spell in my mind, the frost activated but never had a chance to set in as the flames instantly melted it and turned it to water, thankfully dousing the fire.

  I fell onto my back and lay there for a long minute as I caught my breath.

  “That was crazy,” Claire said.

  “You’re telling me,” I replied as I sat up.

  A quick check of my body revealed that my armor had taken the worst of the fire damage, saving me from any physical harm, though the situation had done more than enough to shake me.

  After I stood, I got a good look at the new room.

  It was perfectly square, and Claire and I were on an island of sorts in the center of the room that was surrounded by water on all sides. There were no doors or windows that I could see. We found ourselves on a completely empty platform, containing no other visible props or obstacles anywhere about the room.

  “What is this one?” I asked.

  “Intelligence, strength, agility,” Claire rambled to herself. “That makes this… accuracy?”

  “I’m confused,” I said. “If this is accuracy, what are we supposed to do?”

  I looked around the room again, but there were no writings, no note, no book, no plaque, nothing of any kind to indicate instructions or give us any kind of clue. The only anomaly was a two-foot gouge in the floor at the center of the platform.

  “What do you suppose this is?” I asked, kneeling beside it and running my hand down into the groove. There seemed to be nothing special about it.

  Claire looked down at the groove, then glanced over to the axe. Noticing that the blade was about as wide as the slot in the ground, I now understood her reasoning for wanting to bring it.

  She picked up the axe and played with it until the blade slid neatly into the groove. When only the handle remained above the ground, I heard a click that likely meant the axe was locked in place.

  I spun around, looking for something to have activated. Since this was an accuracy test, I was expecting that maybe some targets would have appeared near the ceiling that I would need to shoot, but I was disappointed when nothing happened.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “What are we doing here?”

  “How am I supposed to know?”

  “I’m not the one who’s done this twice now.”

  “Three times,” she said.

  “Exactly my point. You’ve got more experience, so what are we facing?”

  Claire sighed, her chin in her hand as she pondered the situation. “It’s possible that this is not an accuracy test.”

  “All right,” I said, “Then what is it? Didn’t you say there’s only one test of each type per trial?”

  “I—I really don’t know what this one is.”

  “Okay, let’s walk through this,” I said. “The minotaur was clearly strength, and I think we’d both agree that we just barely survived agility. So, if the vials were potentially an accuracy test since it was less mind game and more about getting the choice correct on the first try, then that would make this intelligence.”

  Claire nodded. “Makes sense. But where’s the intellectual aspect of this test? What are we missing?”

  “Maybe that’s part of it: using our heads to find the pieces that we need. Where haven’t we looked yet?”

  Claire glanced around the room once more. “There’s nothing here, and there’s nowhere to look.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” I said as it suddenly dawned on me, and I pointed at the water. “We haven’t looked down.”

  Slipping my bow and quiver off my shoulders, I prepared to dive into the water.

  “Wait!” Claire shouted. “It could be a trap.”

  “I think you’re being a little too paranoid because of that last room,” I said.

  Claire placed her hand on my arm. “Just humor me,” she said, holding up one of my arrows.

  I bit my lip but then motioned for her to continue.

  She knelt at the edge of the platform and dipped the head of my arrow into the water. When she pulled the arrow out of the water, it appeared perfectly fine.

  Claire frowned.

  “What were you expecting? Acid?” I asked.

  “First rule of the Summoner temples, assume everything is trying to kill you.”

  “Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be the case here. May I?”

  Claire reluctantly gave her permission.

  I took a deep breath and jumped into the water.

  The first thing I took note of was the pool’s depth. It was so far down that it grew too dark to make out where it ended or if there really was anything down there that we needed.

  Not having much choice, I swam down as far as I could, but before I even got close to the bottom, I realized that I’d never make it back in one breath if I continued on, so I turned around and resurfaced.

  “What did you see?” Claire asked.

  “Nothing,” I replied as I held onto the stony edge. “And it’s too deep for me to check out, I’ll never be able to hold my breath that long. What are we supposed to do now?”

  Claire stood silently for a moment. “Wait, didn
’t you get an Aqualung stone from the ironhorn?”

  I’d completely forgotten about that. Reaching into my pocket, I fished it out and dropped it into the final slot on my chest.

  I moved to tap the stone, then I stopped and looked at Claire. “Wait a minute. If this temple is meant for Summoners, why would there be a task that requires me to use an Engineer’s stone?”

  “Do you want the short or the long answer?” Claire asked.

  I glared at her.

  “Father told me that the Allyrian Oath is a magika manipulation of the standard Engineer stone, Scan, and one of the forbidden magics, Love, created by one of our ancestors two hundred years ago. At its core, the Love magika is not really about emotion, but about devotion. By merging the two, when an oath is broken, the symbol of that promise—” she pointed to her affinity mark “—changes color, revealing the deception.”

  “You’re telling me that the Oath is a sham?”

  Claire nodded slowly. “Father said that it used to be a way to tell if someone was lying, but that our great-great-great-grandfather managed to apply the magika to the military in order to identify spies in our ranks. Over the years, it became a way to control our magic users to prevent them from becoming too powerful or overthrowing the kingdom.

  “The point is: the gods don’t give a flying leap about our oaths. Most Summoners are Oathbreakers—or Omnis—even in Allyria. Why else do you think we typically wear gloves all the time? It’s to cover our mark.”

  I stared long and hard at Claire as I processed her words. This discussion was far from over, but we’d spent too much time in this temple already, and it would have to wait until later. Besides, I thought Bella and McKenna deserved to hear this as well.

  Tapping the Aqualung stone, I dropped below the surface of the water once more. Out of habit, I held my breath as I dove. When my oxygen began to run low, my lungs started to seize up, which didn’t make sense considering the implications of the magika stone.

  Maybe they were wrong, and it wasn’t Aqualung, or maybe I got a bad stone. I turned around once more and made for the surface.

  Faster and faster I swam, but I’d gone too deep before I noticed my predicament and knew I wasn’t going to make it.