by Turtle Me
Caera was watching us expectantly, so I waved my hand toward the slope. “After you, my mighty companion.”
Regis swished his shadowy tail as he trotted on ahead. Within sixty feet, though, the drifts were well over his head, and, even though the cold wasn’t bothering him, his tiny wolven body wasn’t equipped to swim through snow.
After struggling for a couple of minutes to keep up any sort of progress, pouncing and paddling through the snow, Regis gave up. “You know, I think I’ve stretched my legs enough. I better go back to gathering aether.” With that, my companion leapt up as if trying to jump into my arms, but instead faded into my body.
“What did he mean, gather aether?” Caera asked as we pushed forward through snow that was now up to my hips. I was leading, breaking a path so that Caera could more easily follow.
“My summons is powered by aether. When we used… the purple fire, well, we used up all his power. So he shrunk into this form.” I kept my tone matter-of-fact, as if it were perfectly normal to have an aether-powered shadow wolf for a companion.
“But he’s not really a summons, is he?” I could practically feel her piercing eyes burning into the back of my neck.
“No, I suppose not. Not the way you normally think of one.”
“And…” Caera hesitated. I kept my attention forward, shoveling through the deep, heavy powder. “And you’re not really a mage, are you? Not the way we’d normally think of one, anyway. You don’t use mana.”
I stopped walking, more out of realization than out of apprehension—realization of how tired I was of hiding everything about myself to everyone that I came across. There was no way I could answer truthfully without giving away who I really was, but any lie would be as obvious as the horns on her head.
“No, I suppose not.”
We marched in silence for a few minutes, and soon the snow was up to my ribs. A strong hand on my shoulder pulled me up short. I turned to see what was the matter, but was blinded by my own bedroll being tossed over my face.
Caera laughed for the first time, a refreshing yet elegant sound. “I’m no ordinary mage either, remember?”
I jerked the wool blanket from my face, already gathering aether into my extremities to defend myself if needed, but Caera wasn’t attacking me. She wasn’t even looking at me.
An ominous power was growing within her, however, and when she finally met my eyes, there was a dark fire in them. “You might want to move aside, Grey.”
I stepped back into the snow, getting out of her path as she drew her sword—her real sword. The dark, flaming aura I’d seen her use when fighting the giant monster in the convergence zone flickered around the red blade, turning it black.
This time, though, it was much more muted, less wild and dangerous.
Then Caera thrust the sword forward and the dark flames billowed outward, carving a channel in the snow for at least two hundred yards.
She turned back and walked toward me, sheathing her long curved blade. Snatching the bedroll back and wrapping it over her shoulder, she shot me an almost childish grin. “You look tired, Grey. Let me lead for awhile.”
“That trick was more impressive the first time I saw it,” I muttered, dusting the snow off of my clothes.
Snorting indelicately, Caera spun away and started marching through the wide path she’d made.
I followed, my mind entirely occupied by Caera’s ability. When she’d used her power in the convergence zone, I had been too busy not dying to really examine it. This time, though, I had watched carefully as she manifested the dark aura and released the torrent of black fire.
The flames hadn’t produced heat. They destroyed without burning, kind of like the violet fires of the Destruction rune, but she wasn’t using aether. In the convergence zone, those same flames had eaten through the titanic guardian’s attack, literally carving a path through the beam of energy.
I flashed back to my battle with Nico, how he had controlled the dark flames to destroy my lightning storm. Caera’s ability seemed similar, able to destroy both energy and matter. Then I thought of Cadell’s soulfire, and how it was able to burn away someone’s life force from inside, preventing even vivum from healing them.
Then something I hadn’t thought about in a very long time returned to me. I was walking through the forest with Windsom, my asuran protector and mentor. Birds were chirping. The sun shining through the leaves dappled his wise old face as we walked. He was teaching me about the different asuran races and their magic.
He had described the nature of aether, though he struggled to communicate into the “lesser tongue,” and had settled on referring to it as a “creation-type mana art.” The Vritra were made up mostly of basilisks, a race that used a decay-type mana art, though he never gave me another name for it.
Was that what Caera was using? A unique deviant form of mana-based magic?
I watched Caera’s navy hair bounce around her onyx horns as she strode ahead of me like nothing could touch her. She was incredibly talented—and equally confident in her abilities. When I’d first seen the way she fought, I’d immediately been reminded of myself.
It was no secret that Agrona and his basilisks had bred with the people of Alacrya. Clearly Caera was the result of such experiments, but she hid her ancestry when we first met in the Relictombs—using her strongest ability only when there was no other option. Something about this zone had caused her disguise to fail, but even the first time I’d met her while she was with her two guards, she had hidden her horns.
Why?
‘Right? Personally, I think they’re hot.’
When we reached the end of the path carved by Caera’s power, the snow was deep enough that the channel had become a tunnel. Instead of a round, rippling tunnel of ice, though, the fifteen-foot-deep cave in the snow was rough and imprecise, like a dozen children had dug it out with their bare hands.
With no heat to melt the snow, allowing it to refreeze and harden, the tunnel didn’t seem safe to enter—but that wasn’t all that was bothering me.
Caera lifted her sword from her shoulder and pointed it forward, but I held out a hand. “I don’t think your power is best suited to this kind of thing. Save your strength. Based on my experience in the Relictombs, it won’t be long before something tries to kill us.”
“I concede the point. What do you suggest, Grey?”
As far as I could tell, we were still a quarter mile or more from the round bulge we’d seen from the rim of the caldera. The powdery snow made walking on its surface impractical, as either one of us could sink in over our head with each step.
‘You could blast a tunnel with aether,’ Regis suggested.
I had already considered this, but the aether cost of utilizing Gauntlet Form for something as mundane as drilling a whole through the snow seemed reckless. Drilling…
Regis, you’re a genius.
‘I… know?’ I could sense my companion’s confusion, but I was already preparing myself.
With a thought, I encouraged Regis to move to my hand to help draw the aether that I released from my core. I didn’t build up a large blast of aether like I might have if I were preparing for an attack, but instead I released a small burst of aetheric energy.
As I siphoned aether through my arm, I willed it to coalesce rather than surge out, but the manifestation faded in my palm; this was something new, and it required more control than creating a straightforward burst of energy.
Taking a deep breath and tuning out Regis’s stray thoughts and Caera’s piercing gaze, I tried again—and again.
After the fourth attempt, the aether finally manifested into the form of a globular balloon that dispersed as soon as it left my palm. After the seventh attempt, the aether took shape into a sphere that grew larger as I fed it more aether.
It took every ounce of my concentration to keep the shimmering purple globe from dispersing as it grew to my height. Then I shoved, driving the aetheric sphere
forward into the snow.
Despite using only a fraction of the aether it would’ve taken to unleash a full aetheric blast, the large aetheric orb bored through over twenty feet of snow before it faded away, leaving behind a round, stable tunnel that we could easily walk through.
“Good enough,” I huffed. I had hoped to manipulate the aether into a cone-shaped drill, but seeing as even a half-decent sphere was barely possible, I quickly settled for something simpler.
‘You know, that’s pretty much exactly what I was thinking.’
Of course it was, I teased.
Caera walked carefully into the tunnel, her hand running across the wall and roof as she warily inspected my handiwork. “Clever. Can you do it again?”
Nodding, I said, “I should be able to get to that dome without totally draining myself, yeah.”
She stepped aside, gesturing into the tunnel. “After you, my mighty companion.”
Whether it was because I was tired from the amount of concentration that went into the aetheric spell—if it could even be called that—or just because I was still proud of my accomplishment, I actually let out a small laugh before building up aether in my right hand again.
By resting briefly after every few uses of the aether cannon, as Regis quickly dubbed it, I was able to keep my core topped up, just in case we ran into anything hostile under the snow. I took it as a good sign that we did not, however, and within an hour we found what we were looking for.
Behind me, Caera held up a light artifact, revealing a smooth, gleaming white wall. I ran my hand along the cold stone.
“I’ve never seen anything like it—like frost that’s been turned into stone,” I said, brushing away the snow at the outer edges of the tunnel. My aetheric sphere hadn’t even scratched the surface. “Let’s hope there’s a door somewhere.”
Utilizing my new aether cannon spell, I began to open up space around the outside of the white dome. Wherever the swirling purple energy touched the shining stone, my power seemed to disperse, rolling over the smooth surface like water across wax.
Then, with a final pulse of aether, golden-white light spilled from an arched door in the dome, causing our snowy tunnel to blaze so brightly that I had to shield my eyes.
Caera held up her hand to ward off the glare. “I hope that light is coming from a nice, warm fire.”
Blinking away the glittering stars in my eyes, I drew the white dagger, infused my body with aether, and moved cautiously up to the archway.
The inside wasn’t exactly what I had expected.
The dome was about forty feet tall at its peak, and nearly one hundred feet wide. Blazing balls of light drifted through the air like paper lanterns. A dais rose up from the floor at the center of the cavernous room, and on it was a beautifully carved arch.
Or, what was left of it.
Though the dais was twenty feet across and raised up ten feet over the level of the floor, it still looked small and forlorn in the huge, empty space. There was an atmosphere of neglect and loss within the dome that made my skin crawl.
From next to me, Caera said, “It looks… broken.”
Scanning the room again to make sure there were no enemies clinging to the ceiling or creeping along the walls, I stepped into the dome, then slowly crossed the open expanse to the stairs, feeling entirely exposed.
There was a pile of random items at the foot of the stairs. Caera kneeled down to inspect them.
“Bones, mostly, but look at this?”
She held up a pure white arrowhead. “It looks like it’s made from the same material as the dome.” I took it from her and rubbed it between my fingers; it was cold to the touch and silky smooth. “And look at this.”
Draped from her fingers was a leather cord hung with large, curved talons, like those of a hawk or an eagle, but larger.
“Made from something native to this zone, I imagine,” I said, pressing my fingertip to point at one of the claws. I winced as a drop of blood bloomed on my fingertip. “Damned sharp.”
“Made by what though, I wonder,” Caera asked, tossing the talon necklace back into the pile.
Although I was interested in the items and what they might tell us about this zone, I was more interested in getting out of it. Stepping over the scattered objects, I took the stairs two at a time until I reached the top of the platform.
The arch was ten feet high and just as wide. I ran my fingers across the designs, which were incredibly detailed, showing animals at play in gardens full of impressively crafted plants and flowers.
But Caera had been right. Several pieces of the arch were missing, which, assuming that this was the portal out of the zone, meant that we were stuck.
309
To Kill or Not to Kill
My fingers ran over the arch’s frame, tracing the jagged, broken edges where parts of the large structure were missing.
Was this another challenge or just bad luck? I had hoped that crossing the frozen wasteland was enough to leave this zone, but clearly that wasn’t it.
I turned to Caera. “Do you see any pieces of the arch in that pile? It looks like there are at least four or five separate chunks that have been broken off, judging by the damage.”
She sifted through the large pile for a moment before looking back up at me and shaking her head. “There’s quite a bit to sort through here, but I don’t see anything else in the same white stone the arch seems to be made of. Maybe here under some of the bones…” She kept rummaging, but I wasn’t hopeful. Things were never that easy in the Relictombs.
Regis popped out of my side, landing on the platform and shaking himself like a dog, the violet flames of his mane flickering. He gazed up at the ancient structure towering over him before speaking. “Do you even need the pieces? Maybe that fancy new power of yours can just… fix it.”
“You can’t just fix…” The rest of my words died in my throat as I realized my companion had a point. Pressing my palm to the arch, I ignited the newly acquired godrune that sat latent within me. Repairing all of the mirrors in the last zone had given me more than enough practice utilizing Aroa’s Requiem, but the sensation still felt new and raw, almost foreign.
The rune glowed golden from beneath my clothes as aether circulated through it, and purple motes of aether began to swirl around my hand. The motes left me and flowed along the arch, concentrating where the broken edges stood out against the flawlessly smooth carvings.
Aside from some light scuffs fading away, nothing happened. I kept concentrating, imagining the missing fragments of the arch rebuilding themselves. The sparkling particles of aether had simply worked when I’d used the rune before, repairing the cracked mirrors and releasing the imprisoned ascenders with no direction from me.
But I had seen what to do in the vision of the future…
Maybe I needed more understanding of how to repair an item, or what its purpose was, to affect it with Aroa’s Requiem.
Or maybe that wasn’t it either.
Frustrated more at myself than the circumstances we were in, I let out a sigh.
“It’s not working,” Regis said helpfully.
“I can see that,” I muttered, withdrawing aether from my godrune. The purple motes flickered out one by one as the rune’s glow faded. “Try searching the rest of the hall for any pieces of the arch. Maybe if we can find them I’ll be able to repair it.”
“Maybe? I mean, I’m as much an optimist as the next guy, but ‘maybe’ sounds like—”
“Do we have any other choice?” I snapped, glaring down at the shadow wolf pup.
Regis’s ears drooped. “No, I suppose not.”
I sighed as my companion hopped from stair to stair and began sniffing around the outside wall of the huge space. Sylvie and I had never fought like this—but that wasn’t Regis’s fault. Sylvie had always been my counterpoint, providing me wisdom when I was being foolish, temperance when I was reckless, bravery when I was afraid.
&nbs
p; Regis, on the other hand, was more like me, reinforcing both my strengths and my weaknesses. Was that why I was harder on him than I had been on Sylvie? I thought back to those first moments in the Relictombs, when I woke up alone and powerless—alone except for him.
Without him, waking up in that sanctuary room without Sylvie, knowing she sacrificed herself for me…
Sitting down on the edge of the platform with my legs dangling down the side, I withdrew the rainbow-colored stone that held my bond. It had been quite some time since I had tried pushing aether into it, but I could feel that I hadn’t grown strong enough yet. Despite everything I’d faced and all that I had learned since waking up magicless and broken in the Relictombs, I had barely scratched the surface of what was possible with aether.
I’m going to get you out of there someday, Sylv. I promise. When you meet Regis you’re going to—
“Another relic secreted away from the Vritra?” Caera asked as she slid to a seat beside me, my bedroll pulled tightly around her shoulders. Her navy hair fell in front of her eyes and she leaned down to inspect Sylvie’s egg.
“Not exactly,” I said, turning my eyes back to the iridescent egg.
“It’s beautiful,” Caera said, her words barely a whisper.
“Thanks,” I said, hurriedly stashing the egg back in my dimensional storage rune before she was able to study it any more closely.
I started to stand up when strong fingers gripped me around the forearm and pulled me back to my seat. I turned to make some excuse to Caera, but she was staring at me flabbergasted. “What was that?”
My eyes narrowed. “I don’t think I’m obligated to tell you what my—”
“I’m not talking about the colorful stone,” she said, waving my words away with her free hand. “How did you do that? Where did it go?”
Nonplussed, I showed her the back of my hand and the dimensional storage ring that I wore. “In my—”
“No, you didn’t.” She shook her head, her usual calm demeanor replaced by a childlike excitement. “You didn’t activate the ring just now, I could tell. Wait, you can’t…” Caera’s eyes widened in realization. “Of course, how did I not see it before? You don’t have mana to activate the ring.”
