“What?” Macille looks at me skeptically. “Say again?”
I am still a bit bleary, only having just woken up from my nap a few minutes ago. A few sconces placed about the rectangular room offer the warm glow of fire, and the constant flickering had finally lulled me to sleep. The deep exhaustion that I feel in my bones helped more than a little bit with that as well.
I rub some of the sleep out of my eye, pulling away from Macille and looking up at him. A little ways off, Dovik continues walking back and forth in the room, muttering to himself intermittently as he tries to puzzle out the solution that will let us move forward. The intervening hours don’t seem to have effected the man in the least. If anything, he looks livelier now than when we first entered.
“I said that I don’t understand the purpose of this Passage,” I repeat. “Why would hundreds of people come here to take place in this death race? Why would nobles send their sons and daughters here to die? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Macille looks at me with disbelief apparent on his face for a long while before shaking his head. “You really don’t know do you.”
“Don’t look at me like I’m stupid,” I tell him.
“Sorry. It’s just, I can’t believe that Arabella never explained that to you. Though, now that I think about it, Kendon was the one who explained it to me, after hearing from Coriander.” Macille rubs the back of his neck, looking at me a little embarrassed now. “Dovik, do you want to--”
His question is cut off as Dovik waves a hand in our direction, harshly shushing Macille. Dovik never even looks over, simply returning to puzzling out the room as soon as Macille stops speaking to him.
“What is it?” I ask Macille. “What is the big secret?”
“That’s the thing,” Macille says. “It isn’t a secret. The reason for participating in this Passage is fairly apparent if you think about it for a while, effort values.”
“You know about effort values?” I can’t stop myself from asking.
Macille squints at me. “Yes, of course. How else do you think that I would be able to improve in the areas that I need to?”
The idiocy of my own question hits me a second later. Of course, that would be something that every essentia magician would know about. If not, there would be no reason for them to undergo focused training, trying to improve themselves in particular areas. Why would Macille bother running every day and lifting weights if it weren’t for the fact that upon reinforcing his soul his Strength and Speed attributes would be improved because of the effort that he spent.
I realize that my mouth it opening and closing like a fish, and get ahold of myself. “Please, continue. I won’t ask anymore dumb questions.”
“It isn’t a dumb question,” Macille says. He spends a moment staring at the ceiling, trying to think of how to go on. “Sometimes I forget that you didn’t have a proper teacher as a magician. Arabella Willian certainly wasn’t a proper instructor.”
“You can say that again.”
“I can and I will, many more times in the future. All that woman really offered me were constant illusionary battles and a facility to train in. If it weren’t for the instruction that my grandmother already imparted to me and Kendon, I don’t think that we would have made much headway. Let’s get off of that though. From what I can tell, there are two main points of this Passage. The first is effort value.
“Typically, it will take an essentia magician two to three years to bridge the gap between rank one and two. It is inevitable for everyone to eventually reach the precipice of rank two; it is a forgone conclusion once you have completed your set of essentia. If you do nothing except go about your daily life once you have made a full set of essentia, no training, no hunting monsters, you will typically reach the threshold to rank two in five or six years. That is what most people do, but the less effort that you put in toward improving your soul, the weaker you are when you do finally hit the second rank.”
“And that is because of effort values?” I venture.
“Precisely. Not only does fighting and slaying monsters help you reinforce your soul faster by forcing you to pit your will against that of a monsters in mortal combat, but it also focuses your effort values. It isn’t that you will lose effort value by going about a normal life while slowly reinforcing your soul passively, but your effort values will become diffuse. The people who wait to hit rank two will find that their effort values are influenced by minor things, their attributes become hugely spread out; they aren’t specialized at all. Take yourself for instance, if you spend an entire day blowing up bears with balls of fire, I am willing to bet that your magical strength will be what your soul reinforcement focuses on improving for you. On the other hand, if you spent a month going back and forth from market, doing whatever it is that you do on an orchard, then I doubt you would have such a direct benefit to your magic when you did eventually gain a soul reinforcement. The drudgery of life distributes your effort value in all different directions.”
“Life on an orchard isn’t that dull,” I say, though I do see his point. If it really did take a month to passively gain a level, then I could easily see my effort values going into Strength, Speed, Recovery, Perception, and maybe even Defense from just working the orchard. When would there be time for me to work on my Magic attribute?
“I’m not trying to offend,” Macille quickly says. I gesture for him to continue. “Typically, the faster that you can reinforce your soul, the better. Combat is regarded as the best way to go about it, since you can lean into your strengths. When you focus on what you are already good at and fight enough in a single day to reinforce your soul, then naturally you would expect your effort to pay off in fortifying your soul in the direction that you are already going. That is the first major reason for this Passage to begin with. There aren’t many places in the world where the scions of noble houses can be sent to receive such focused training against monsters in a controlled environment. If we end up fighting monsters every single day, having to rely on ourselves and our wits to survive, there is no reason that we couldn’t climb to the second rank far faster than we can anywhere else.”
“Even beyond that,” I say, starting to understand. “One of the prizes for this dungeon is a soul cage. The Willian guild wants people to break through to the second rank even while inside of the Passage.”
“Exactly,” Macille sets his head back against the wall with a sigh. “I can’t believe that Arabella didn’t explain that much to you. I don’t know why I thought that she would. The woman seems tight lipped about everything.”
“Yeah,” I say, looking down at my hands. I cannot bad mouth the woman too much, without her I doubt that I would have completed my set of essentia with the fantastic finds like the Dragon and Magic Essentias. I also would never have received the Eye of Volaash, an artifact that has been an incredible gift to me. I do have to admit that she is not a very good teacher, but she told me herself that she wasn’t when I first started out on this road I am on now.
“You have to understand that something like the Passage, a real crucible where you can push yourself to the extreme and really focus on your effort, is something very attractive to elves like me,” Macille says.
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“How do you mean?”
“Unlike humans, elves have to be very deliberate with our training. Humans have more leeway, because you build up unused energy, when you reach the second rank you are then able to specialize if you can influence that unused energy correctly in that moment. Elves don’t have that luxury. We have to be very deliberate from the beginning, there is no wiggle room for us.”
I huff. “Don’t get down on yourself too much. You forgot to include how elves are stronger than everyone else because of how you don’t have any unused energy. Humans only catch up to you when they reach rank two, but as soon as elves reinforce their souls again, they are ahead once more.”
“Well…I don’t really have anything to say to that.” Macille offers me a dashing smile, and I can’t even pretend to be annoyed with him.
“That still doesn’t explain why nobles would send their sons and daughters here to die,” I say.
“Some death is going to be inevitable when you are having people fight for their lives with monsters, but I understand your question. Now don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you are a bit ignorant of the wider world.”
I squint at him, biting back the snarky reply that I feel rising in me. “Go on.”
“Every time that I have heard you speak about it, you seem to place the nobility on this pedestal. I understand, growing up in the part of Gale that you did, the nobility was probably the only power that you had to even think about. There are all kinds of powers in this world, all kinds of factions that exist outside of the nobility. From how you have spoken about them, it seems to me that you do not understand how powerful the Willian Guild is. The Willian Guild is a part of the Big Six. There are six guilds whose power stretches across the world, three of which are guilds of essentia magicians, and one of those three is the Willian Guild. They have made inroads and cultivated some of the most powerful people alive today. Their influence is a global domain, and their power is enough to rival the might of entire nations. Less than a hundred years ago they, along with the Falling Lightning Guild, were responsible for toppling Kressmoor.”
Macille looks at me for a long time, but the name means nothing to me. “Kressmoor,” he repeats. “The lich king who conquered the Galo Federation.”
“That sounds like something that happened outside of Gale,” I say. “They didn’t teach much about foreign politics in my church school.”
“When we get out of here, I am going to take you to a proper library,” Macille says.
“It’s a date,” I reply.
Macille’s eyes widen at my words, and he quickly looks away. I feel a heat rising to my own face. “So, anyway,” he continues. “Participating in this Passage is a good way to make relations with the guild. That is what I was trying to get at. It also looks good for you when you try applying to join the guild in the future. Actually joining the guild isn’t something easy to do.”
“Is that why you joined the Passage?” I ask. “To join the Willian Guild later on.”
“No,” he says, his words heavy. “I have something else that I need to do.”
“Hey lovebirds!” Dovik calls over to us. “I think I figured out the puzzle.”
We join him over at the tiles, and Dovik begins to explain the meaning of all the symbols and how he has gone to extensive lengths to solve the room. Honestly, most of it goes over my head, not because I can’t understand what he is saying, but because his tone is just too self-satisfied for me to bother paying attention to. In essence, we have to walk on particular tiles to cross the room, and if we do that, then the door on the other side will open.
We are out of the room in less than ten minutes, the intervening hours of waiting in the puzzle room more than enough for us to recover from the previous fight. The doorway of darkness we walk through opens up onto a stone bridge that extends out and away from us. We pause for a moment on the bridge, looking out toward the huge circle of stone that is suspended in the center of a cavern so vast I cannot see where the walls end.
The circle of stone in front of us is held aloft by chains, the links of which are as thick around as my leg, and which come down from out of the darkness above. Off the edge of the stone walkway I stand on, I can see the floor of the cavern below, a sea of viscous black sludge that gives off the scent of oil. Where the chains connect to the circular platform, braziers of green flame illuminate the platform. Standing in the center of the platform, eyes closed, is a towering monster vaguely shaped like a human.
The monster stands fifteen feet tall, its skin is a deep red, hair long and white as it falls in cascading curls down its back. It appears male, though I can see clear feminine features in its face which possesses six closed eyes. Even from all the way at the opposite end of the walkway, almost a hundred feet distant, I can hear its deep breathing rasping the air and can almost feel it stealing my own breath with each inhale. The monster holds in its hands a great ax made of steel, the head of which is as large and wicked as a coffin.
Two chains extend out of the back of the monster, hovering upwards against the pull of gravity, connected to cages large enough to house someone my size. In the cage on the left rests a crane, the colors of its feathers a shining green and violet. In the cage on the right, a crazed red ape thrashes about, raging against the bars of its cell.
The Red Jailor(Level 73)
I look behind us but find that the doorway we entered through has vanished. I reach out and grab ahold of Dovik’s sleeve when he takes a step forward, attempting to walk down the bridge of stone we stand on toward the circular platform and waiting monster.
“Are you insane?” I whisper in his ear. “Do you see the size of that thing?”
“It’s big,” he says, nodding. He points out toward the Red Jailor that continues to stand in the center of its platform with its eyes closed. “It isn’t wearing much armor though. I think that we can kill it.”
My hands shake where I hold onto Dovik, and I am certain that there is fear in my eyes. I have fought monsters before, but I have never even seen something as big as the Red Jailor.
“Look,” Dovik says, gingerly removing my hand from his arm. “This is likely the last thing that we have to face in this dungeon. Once we have completed this we can leave this dungeon. Stay far away from it, Macille and I will keep you safe.” He looks back toward Macille over my shoulder. “Leave Adrius back here. It would be too dangerous to bring him to the platform.”
“I agree,” Macille says, taking great care in setting Adrius down on the walkway.
The two of them begin to ready themselves for battle as if facing something like this huge monster is ordinary. I swallow, trying to get the sticking feeling out of my throat as I look on at the monster. I begin to pool magic into the head of my staff, but some wriggling part of my mind tells me that my magic isn’t going to be effective on this creature. Magic flashes over me, making me jump, and I realize that it is merely Macille empowering my armor.
“Let’s go,” Dovik says, nodding back toward Macille.
Macille offers me a smile as he walks to the front of our group of three, hefting his big shield and sword. “Don’t worry,” he says. “We can take this thing.”
Before I can say anything in reply, he has already turned away, walking confidently down the walkway toward the platform. Dovik follows on Macille’s heels, magic already racing down towards the tips of his twin weapons. My feet feel like lead; sweat already stands out on my neck and runs down my back. Despite the fear that screams at me to do anything else, I grit my teeth, biting my cheek, and force myself to walk after them.
The moment that Macille sets foot onto the great stone platform in the middle of the dark cavern, all six eyes of the Red Jailor snap open. It stares down at us with an odd mix of pity and lust, its full and lavender lips turning up in a smile that sends a shiver running through me. The chains sprouting out of its back begin to clink in a hideous progression as the monster raises its ax, but Macille doesn’t stop moving forward; in fact, he begins to sprint across the distance towards the monster.
The Jailor’s overhead swing is like a flash of lightning, the ax arcing down from its overhead strike at an impossible speed, slamming into the stone of the platform. There is a flash of light as Macille’s spectral armor sparks to life for the barest moment, his shield meeting the head of the ax, barely redirecting it as it craters into the platform. A scream follows in the next second, one of the Jailor’s massive fingers falling in a spray of blood to the ground.
“Finally,” I hear Dovik say next to me as he spins his weapons. “A challenge.”