“So, after the migrants gained the support of the Oreads of Oriana’s Crown, they made their way into the Dahili Desert with both a new goal and a new hope.”
The time construct began to ring its bell as Professor Mark finished his closing statement for the history lesson.
“Ben, one more thing,” he said in Eunoian. The professor had taken to teaching any classes I had alone with him in the language, since I was nearly fluent even after only a year of study.
“These extra lessons have been to help you get a bit ahead of what we're going to study whilst you are away.” The pale skinned elf reached under his desk and pulled out a book about four inches thick, my eyes widening as he did so.
“This is a book I’ve written for another project I’m working on. It covers the entire Settler's Era, along with the Meraki Expansion, Eunoia’s Treaty, the Discovery of Critus-” he paused, “Basically everything up until a millennium and a half ago. It is a bit of a passion project of mine, so do tell me what you think of it. And one more thing, while its majority is written in Aspen, there are a few primary sources in their native tongues, but with your penchant for languages I expect that to be no issue for you.”
Taking the tome, and almost dropping it surprised by its heft, I put the book on my desk. Walking back to the professor I carried a small jar of pebbles I’d asked one of my maids to get me. They had been hesitant, and likely asked someone else to confirm they could, but it was just pebbles and I received them a day later. While the objects I’d asked for weren’t contraband, my parents would have been… reluctant, to hear what I wanted to use them for, but with the deal we had made, the professor's opinion was the one that mattered.
“Professor, I know that you wanted me to work on the string formation exercises, and I know they’re not perfect.”
I put the jar on the table before joining my index fingers at the tips. As I separated them, I formed a string of mana, wind attributed mana specifically, and pulled my hands apart until it was about a foot long. This was the simplest shaping exercise, and I’d been practicing it for over two months now. Continuing to let the thread lengthen as my hands stayed still, the line of mana drooped, no longer being held taut.
Attempting to go beyond expectations with my display, I began on the second level exercise. Creating two more strands of mana, one on each hand, I slowly wrapped them around the original string. Once they reached the other hand I did it again, this time with four lines. While the exact number I increased the threads by didn’t matter, I felt the exponential increase to be more impressive. It was halfway through sixteen, I felt myself getting low on wind mana, so I retracted as much of the mana as I could before letting the green construct collapse into particles, then vanish to my manasight entirely.
I didn’t necessarily need the mana. What I had planned could also be done using earth mana, but I was most proficient in manipulating the green mana, so I figured it was best to have as much as possible.
Taking a few deep breaths, I continued my earlier statement as if the three minutes it had taken me to form the construct were only a few seconds.
“But I think I’ve practiced the basics enough; I think I’m ready for a third level exercise. The pebbles-”
“Are for Darvis’s Disk, yes?”
I nodded. I had learned about the drill from: The History and Practical Uses of Magic, 80th Edition, one of the books I had taken from Understudy’s library.
“Well, you are clearly proficient in first and second level exercises. While the disk is considered third level, even if high third level, it is more than just a singular exercise, it’s a gateway. If you just wanted a new practice method, you could start on a number of things. Making your strands thinner if you want to master output control. Infusing them with more mana if you wanted to strengthen them to better effect the world more generally. You could simply continue the string path with the lasso exercise if you felt you needed to start on the third level. Why should I teach you the disk?”
Everything the professor said was spot on, Darvis’s Disk was difficult but not actually that complicated, the possibilities it opened however, were infinite. Working on the size of my strings would help with my output control, helping me waste less mana. Sure, the lasso exercise was also third level, but I wanted to learn the disk specifically, because of its potential.
I stared at the professor for a moment, his expression was unreadable. Not knowing if saying anything would raise or lower my chances, I took a leap and spoke.
“Well, I planned on continuing to work on the string and rope exercises and want to work on constructing the lasso. I just thought the disk looked cooler and since it is also a third level exercise, and I’m not going to be here, it seemed like a good time to ask.
After what felt like minutes, but was really just seconds, the professor leaned back in his chair and laughed. The sudden outburst was out of character for him and worried me, so I was relieved when he started speaking.
“Alright, fine,” he said, his laughter dying down, “but you have to promise that even if you do manage to master the exercise before you get back, you won’t make any alterations to it.”
I nodded vigorously and ran back to my seat.
“Listen carefully because I’m only explaining this once.”
My impromptu lesson with the professor ended forty-five minutes later, and though he’d claimed to only be willing to speak once, he answered every question I had about the exercise, even showing multiple examples throughout.
“Bye, Professor, I’ll make sure to show you how far I’ve gotten when I get back!” I said, a beaming smile stuck to my face.
“Yes, you do that,” he replied, and with a final wave, I was off.
“What’s got you so happy, sir,” my blue-eyed guard asked as a spear appeared in his hand.
“Just excited about the trip,” I semi-lied as we began to walk through the castle corridors, the bag of books bouncing on my back.
The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Liza had made sure my bags were packed. The bracers had been vented and inspected a few days prior, a process that left me in Understudy for an entire day, and all the other details for the trip had long been finalized.
Dinner was more crowded than normal with my family, Tabatha, the twins, Winston, Sofia, Mark, and Leven all in attendance. While it had only been a few months since we’d all been together, much had changed.
My mother’s stomach had swelled substantially, and there was no doubt that she was pregnant. It was both amazing and horrifying that shortly before my first memories I’d been in there. Leven seemed to have grown nicer over the months. He’d arrived in Vander a few days ago to see the final tests of the balance bracers before I left for Storia. In an odd show of kindness, he offered to host me in Martresh, Sofia’s hometown, the next time I was let out to the palace. While I was excited about the idea of spending time in the seaside city, my mother seemed much more suspicious of the old man’s offer.
While the dark-skinned elf’s attitude toward me might have changed for the better, Winston wasn’t as lucky. After learning of Sofia’s recent engagement to the guard captain, it seemed Leven had a new target for all his scorn. I was unsure what an engagement was, but knew I was glad I wasn’t in one.
The most interesting change to me was Lisa’s advancement to Giga Core, the second mana core stage. From what I’d assumed, the twins had formed their cores late, partly due to living with me during their formative years, so it was nice to see them advancing.
As everyone left the royal dining hall, guards accompanying their charges back to their respective rooms, I heard the tail end of a conversation between Lisa and Abe, the head butler.
“Bah don’t worry about that Alisa, what you need to be focusing on is settling your mana and adapting to your power. I have a few things to take care of, but I’ll meet you in the wing’s third training ground in an hour.”
Making his way to leave, Abe walked around Lisa.
Noticing me looking at him, the tan skinned man gave a quick, “Prince Benjamin,” as he straightened his red and black striped bow tie and continued on his way.
Closing the door to my room, I considered the half-formed plan that had been floating around my mind for the last ten minutes. I knew where training ground three was, my sword lessons were normally held there. While the basic sword stances and swings I’d started learning the months prior were nice, they were nothing compared to the magic Lisa and the butler had been discussing. The only question was how to escape, I mean, leave, my room. I looked towards the vents, a bit more of my scheme falling into place.
There were two vents in my room, one directly in the ceiling, and another in the middle of the room about a foot off the ground. Going to my closet, I took out a screwdriver and hammer I’d pulled from one of the maid carts, a spreading knife from the kitchen, and a light construct from my desk drawer. While I was always being watched outside my section, inside I basically had free rein, something I made sure to take advantage of.
Over the few months I’d lived in this room I’d tested every method of escape exhaustively and while the vents were my best option to leave freely, they were also the most obvious. To seemingly prevent me from doing exactly what I was about to, the vent had four different pairs of screws. One set could be taken out by using the knife to loosen them, the actual screwdriver could be used in tandem with the hammer to pry another two screws out. The final two sets were much trickier because they were infused with mana.
The first few times I’d attempted to open the vent, this was where I stopped. The other screws could be put back in easy enough, but the only way I had thought of to remove the corner screws was to remove the mana. Early in the testing for the balance bracers, they had shown the ability to drain the mana from not only me, but anything that was actively pushing mana into my body, such as the atmosphere. What tests hadn’t shown, and I’d discovered in my own, was that the unique link created was bidirectional. Some mana drained by the bracers could be drawn back into me if done within a certain amount of time. My plan was to use my bracers to drain the screws.
There wasn’t supposed to be any ambient mana in my section of the castle, my parents had filled the entire division with runes preventing it from entering and absorbing what lingered in the air. The screws, like all other magitech in my room, worked around this by using a casing that contained a mana source, likely a crystal, rather than using the ambient mana to function. This not only meant they had to be recharged or replaced, but they also could be exhausted of mana. Sitting in a cross-legged position, I focused on the mana that had been getting absorbed by my bracers all night and tried to link it with the dregs of mana yet to be dispersed from my body by the runes.
Realizing I should have done this first, I forced the remaining drops into the left arm bracer, which happily took them. As the connection between my epidermal mana and the bracers actively worked, I pulled.
Another thing the testing hadn’t shown was how exceedingly difficult it was to keep mana I took from the bracers. Even though the mana was technically mine, it had already been deemed excess. Standing, and struggling to keep the mana in my metaphysical grasp, I attempted to use the first shaping exercise to create four strings. My brain screamed at me to stop, but I couldn't, I would have no mana to try again, this was it. Barely managing to control the flickering mana constructs, I linked one to each screw casing, then released my hold.
As Sofia described it, “The bracers are like regulators, they monitor the amount of mana you’re absorbing and help you take what you can handle and absorb or release what you can’t.
From what I understood, this was due to my body was always pulling in mana when possible. I hoped to use the bracers to start pulling the mana from the screws, then, using a combination of the bracers and runes, absorb the rest of the mana. There were a few reasons why I never actually tried this method, the main one being that I had no way to replace the mana. That wouldn’t be as much of an issue as usual though, since the next time someone came to refill the casings, I would be long gone. When they realized the mana had been depleted, I hoped they would just assume someone forgot to do it while I was gone, if not, well that was future Ben’s problem.
The final four screws fell with a satisfying clink, and I hesitantly went to move the metal grate. The covering basically fell off, and I quickly put it to the side as my heart began to hammer. Picking up the light construct, something I’d gotten with the camping gear a while back, I made my way into the vent.
Lisa’s meeting with the head butler was in forty-five minutes. From my room, the walk to the third training ground, or Training Ground C, took about fifteen-minutes. I, however, would be spending much more time than that getting there due to a few key issues. The first of which was the direction of the vent being opposite the one I needed to go. Slowly crawling, as to not make too much noise, I went deeper into the dark corridor before making it to a corner where I reached my second issue.
The vent turned directly towards Liza’s room and from what I could tell it was dark. If she was asleep in there, which wasn’t likely, any noise or light that made crawling would likely change that. Switching into a set of training coveralls, hoping they would reduce the noise, and grabbing a thin cloth to dim the light, I went back into the vent.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
After shimmying past Liza’s room, and one more after that, I reached a cross…vents, of sorts. One went out of my ward, while the other looped back in on the other side. It would have been obvious which one to pick if not for said vent leading vertically upwards a meter ahead of me. Sighing quietly, I made my way towards the one that stayed on my level. As I suspected, it went around towards the first room on the right and likely looped back into the vent I just came from, if not just ending entirely.
Making my way to the vertical vent, I put the light in my mouth, dried my hands against my shirt as I heard people do in stories, and vertically crab walked up the vent. It was surprisingly easy, all the exercise over the last five months had been a great help, and while there was a bit of sliding, I still managed to make the climb quickly. Getting myself up and over the vent, I noticed a new issue, I’d have to go back down. In all my focus, I’d failed to notice the shaft I’d climbed was almost three meters long. I looked around for another way down and saw a similar set of ducts that seemed to go through my ward.
While it likely connected to the one in the ceiling of my room, that vent covering was still firmly in place, so my only way out would be the way I came in, a problem for future Ben. Shrugging, and turning towards the section exit, I was met with another issue, it was blocked. A brief inspection showed me it was more a metal sheet with runes than a true divider, and just a small push allowed me to turn it to the side and gently lay it down. As I did so, I was rewarded with the familiar sensation of mana being absorbed by my body.
Continuing out after replacing the sheet, I made the first right I could, which continued along the hallway for its entirety. This made it easy to just follow the directions I had memorized, as I praised who ever made these vent shafts as sturdy as they were. Finally reaching the training room I was given two choices, up or down. The one up went far higher than the ten-feet I had first climbed, while the other option meant I’d have to climb when I wanted to leave. Though tempted to make my retreat as easy as possible, I only had a few minutes before the meeting and I wanted to enjoy the show, not worry about a potential five-meter fall. Going down the shaft was easy; the toughest part being repositioning myself to be feet first so I could use the slight angle of the vent to slide down. Slowing myself as I descended, I lightly arrived in the training ground.
Finally, at my goal, I was somewhat disappointed to be greeted by darkness. Both the feeling and the lack of light didn’t last, as one by one, all the lights in the room began to turn on. Making sure my light was off, so I didn’t give away my position, I watched as Abraham, Lisa, and Liza all walked into the large room.
“I know you need to rest for your trip tomorrow Liza, so I’ll do preparations.”
With a flick of his hand the odd butler used what had to be a gust of wind to slam the door shut. As the sound reverberated off the walls, he floated, or maybe flew, straight upwards and began to manipulate his surroundings. A breeze began to swirl in the center of the sandy ground, quickly forming into a tornado of dust. While it looked erratic at first glance, I had no doubt of Abe’s control as he handily cleared the grounds of all its furniture and debris, stacking everything in a corner. For a moment I considered using manasight but knew even if I could successfully do so, something I wasn’t confident of in these conditions, any use of mana would greatly raise my chances of being caught. That was why I had been forcing all the mana my body absorbed into the bracers.
“We will start no spells, shaping is legal” Abe said to the stretching pair, “Weapons are whatever you prefer, each bout goes until I call a fatal blow. Two fights or three, you call.”
“Three,” the pair said in unison.
“Stop doing that, it’s weird, no one actually talks at the same time.”
I was surprised at what I was seeing. The man who just looked like a nice, if strange, middle-aged butler was actually the twins’ magic instructor and a rather powerful mage. I’d seen my father use wind magic before, but nothing like that. When Abe talked to me, he was exuberant and easily distracted, but here, the way he talked to Lisa and Liza was commanding. It was with such habitual ease, I couldn’t tell which was real, this gruff persona or his more carefree one.
The stretching lasted for another minute or so before the twins began to walk onto the field. They wore tight fit black bodysuits, a much sleeker model of the coveralls I trained in, and each carried a pair of wooden daggers they’d grabbed from the weapons rack. Liza had her hair tied up, while Lisa let her long locks flow behind her as she walked. Idly, I hoped they would fight away from my wall so I could get a good view of the fights. Luckily enough, they ended up stopping towards the middle of the room, turning to face one another about a hundred feet from my wall.
“Begin.” Taking a hand off one end of his curled mustache, Abe used it to swipe down, announcing the beginning of the fight.
Lisa was the first to move, long dark blonde hair flowing behind her as she jabbed her right arm out with a dagger strike. Liza responded with a duck, keeping Lisa in range of her wooden daggers, but before Liza could counterattack, Lisa extended further, changing the angle of her blade to perform a downward slash. Allowing her front foot to slide on the rocky ground, Liza pushed further into her sister's guard as she blocked the slash with a dagger of her own. Just as I thought Liza was going to be stuck on the defensive she struck out with a frontward jab of her own. When the strike was easily stopped by Lisa, her sister smiled, well I like to think it was a smile but so far away I couldn’t be sure. To me, it looked like Lisa had suddenly jerked back from nothing, as if an invisible attack had tried to hit her, then a thin line of red appeared on her cheek.
Realizing she had used wind mana to extend her blade's length, Liza jabbed again and again. While the first attach caught Lisa by surprise, the follow-ups were less effective. Both twin’s forms beginning to blur as the strikes and dodges sped up, but even after seven more strikes all Liza had to show for them was a bit of Lisa’s hair falling slowly to the ground. With both sister’s guards still wide-open Liza decided she wasn’t done yet. Faking a horizontal slash at Lisa’s head, Liza jabbed at her sister's heart hoping to end the fight.
It was difficult to see from my angle, but it looked like right before she could make contact, Lisa turned her body enough for the strike to hit her shoulder rather than chest. This stopped the blow from being deemed lethal, and Liza from winning. It still marked the end of the fight however, as Lisa handily flipped the dagger in her right to point down and tapped Liza’s head.
A gust of wind flew through the room along with Abraham’s voice.
“Winner, Lisa.”
As the pair were flung backward by the breeze, the thin man continued to speak.
“Liza, we’ll start with you. What did you do wrong?”
Well, I, um,” Liza hesitantly began, her voice surprisingly meek. “I continued trying to push into Lisa’s guard, though I knew she had the speed advantage.”
“Speed and power,” the salt and pepper haired man corrected. “Ok, so you played too close, now why did you do that.”
“Well, we both had daggers and I knew she was faster, and stronger,” Liza hastily added the last part, “so I figured the only way to end the fight quickly was if I bet everything on one strike.”
“A fair assumption,” Abe said with a nod, some of his cheer returning, before quickly vanishing. “Except, it seems you have forgotten a key piece of information. Lisa, what were the rules of the bout?”
“Shaping only, any weapon, first to fatal blow,” the bouncy twin replied, red bow still affixed to her head even after all her swift movements.
Apparently, Liza understood something because her form changed from one of confusion to realization.
“Yes Liza, there is a reason why I let you pick your own weapon. Sometimes but not always you may know the skill set of the person you are going up against. If you know they use the same weapon as you, there are a few things that are relevant when fighting them, ability, skill, and magic. I removed actual spells from the equation and your sister is now a higher core rank than you, so what was left.
“Skill.” Liza frowned.
“Of which the two of you are basically equal. While your use of raw shaping to extend your blade's length was commendable it wasn’t enough. So, what should you have done?”
“I’m unsure, as I am not nearly as proficient with any other weapon as I am with the short blades.”
“Ah,” Abe said, and he actually laughed, “Good, I was expecting you to assume I wanted you to pick a weapon up randomly. While there are times you may find yourself fighting with anything you can get your hands on, that is not the point of this training. What you should have been doing, and will start doing while you’re away, is learning a new weapon to the proficiency you are at with dagger.”
Liza nodded, and Abraham turned to Lisa.
“You relied too much on being a higher core than your sister, it’s easy to see you still haven't adapted to having a Giga core. If your sister fights smarter, something I’m sure she will be doing, your fights won’t as easy. Go again.”
Retreating, Abraham raised his hand and called for the beginning of the next bout.
I was getting tired as the third fight was coming to a close. In the second Liza did as Abe instructed, fighting smarter, letting Lisa come to her, slowly wearing the stronger sister down, and eventually, after Lisa overextended on a strike, winning. The third fight both had seemingly been at their best and as I watched Lisa kick out at the back of Liza’s knee before delivering a dagger directly to the spine, I couldn’t help but be even more impressed.
“Winner, Liza, I mean Lisa, Gods, how am I still doing that. Anyway, that last fight ran long, so we’re only going to do one of each, wind first.”
This time, the head butler flew back with a flourish, and both twins followed suit until they were about twelve-meters apart. Landing silently, at least to my ears, the pair dropped into their fighting stance as they waited for Abraham’s cue. Accompanied by likely only the first phoneme of the call to action, Liza was off.
All my drowsiness washed away as she unleashed two blades of wind. I figured she had to have been chanting from before the fight’s start because I doubted Liza could silently cast a third circle spell, though if she could, that was amazing. Unlike the rest of the castle, the training grounds allowed for people with sufficient permissions to allow for spells higher than the second circle to be cast, and it seemed Abraham had such authorization.
The wind magic was basically just a blur to my unenhanced eyes, but I didn't want to risk being caught now. As the blades of concentrated wind mana reached Lisa, they impacted against a wall of mana a few feet in front of her, second or third circle, I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t seen her cast anything and while I might have missed her doing so, I doubted it. If it was third circle, that would be surprising, Lisa didn’t seem like the type to spend days on end casting a defensive spell. If it was second circle, that made more sense based on what I knew of the girl, but the wall's power would have to be strong to withstand two third circle spells.
‘Maybe an overcharged second circle spell,’ I thought to myself.
I got my answer a second later as Liza sent four more blades towards her sister, only for them all to fail to penetrate the barrier.
‘Definitely a silently cast third circle spell,’ I confirmed mentally.
Lisa began to advance slowly, her barrier moving in tandem. Liza, however, must have felt the pace of the battle was too slow challenging Lisa’s walk with a full sprinting run. She closed the nearly nine meters in an instant, vanishing then reappearing at the barrier arm extended, wind swirling around its tip.
The straight strike from Liza’s blade was enough, as she pierced the defensive spell, sending wind out in all directions. While the spell failed to keep her opponent away, it did give Lisa enough time to dodge her sister's arrow like strike. In a similar move to Liza’s earlier, Lisa fell into a half split before using her back leg to do a modified version of a kip-up. Legs windmilling, she shot out gusts in all directions, forcing her sister back as she regained her footing.
At this point, I was so amazed by how cool Lisa’s last attack looked, I almost missed Liza’s response. Rather than try to fight against her sister's spell, the blue bowed warrior went back and up with the wind before… stepping on it? Liza put on another burst of speed as she ran across the air as if it was split ground. It was clear she couldn’t do it for long as she decreased in height with each footfall, but it was enough to get her above Lisa’s recovering frame.
Rather than a direct attach, Liza used another two wind blades, these seemingly weaker than the others, as she shot past Lisa, landing behind her. Lisa turned towards her opponent, now on her feet and braced for another attach, but none came. Liza was muttering something, likely using the lull between action to cast a spell, taking from her example Lisa did the same. Sheathing both daggers on side hilts her hands began to move rapidly.
There were different techniques that could be used when it came to the process of casting spells. Chanting, runology, visualization, and many more, with chants being the easiest and most common way of spell casting. These were known as spell aids.
The way the professor explained it was that: “Words have power. This is because the idea’s passed through them have power. This means that people can chant the same words and get different results, and vice versa. The reason chants can be used with such frequency today is due to spell formalist.”
He then broke onto a tangent which explained the progress made over the last thousand years and why chants were so powerful. During the same lesson, I also learned about another spell aid with near equal repeatability and much more speed when mastered, it was what Lisa was using now, hand signs. Signing was much more complicated than chants, they used a combination of visualization with what were known as mana-gates. While less effective at the higher levels, the spell aid could be used to brutal efficiency at the early core formation stages.
Finishing her rapid movements, hands clasped against her body with her fingers pointing forward, Lisa slowly, and with what looked to be great effort, pulled them apart. I looked at Liza to see her response to the twin's new move, but she just continued to chant, a more worried look on her face.
Then Lisa spoke, the first audible words of the fight, “Divided Front.”
My ears popped and breath caught as the pressure in the area changed. Lisa was a new Giga Core; it would have been reasonable to assume she was yet to gain any fourth circle spells, that assumption was wrong. I could actually feel the wind push against the walls as the vent I was looking through shook slightly from the force. Lisa darted forward; her speed much greater than her opponent’s earlier showing.
Liza seemed to finally be ready as she finished her chant while lowering her arms both palms facing down. Stopping her hands level with her chest she shouted a phrase of her own.
“Heaven’s Push.”
Lisa smiled, seeming to believe this was her victory, right before she fell nearly flat on her face, momentum still carrying her forward. Liza simply stepped to the side and jabbed down with a dagger to her sister’s neck as she skidded by. As I looked at the two panting women, I realized Abe wasn’t the only one who changed. Liza’s gray eyes held a levity I’d never seen before, and she was smiling a wide, full toothed grin. Lisa dusting herself off was the opposite, her normally cheery demeanor clouded by defeat.
“Victory, Elizabeth, and very well done one at that. Your opening was messy, but it helped sell that you were vulnerable during that last clash. And that spell modification to not only overcharge it but manipulate direction, dangerous but beautiful.” The butler turned to Lisa. “I’m glad to see you aren’t wasting your time, I wasn’t expecting a fourth circle spell from you so soon, but you let that make you overconfident.”
He turned toward the direction Lisa had run from. Three divots dug deep into the earth, one less so as Lisa had absorbed the brunt of the impact.
“Relying too much on any perceived weakness can be damning, especially when your opponent knows their weakness. Liza, knowing you’d believe yourself to be faster, stronger, and apparently superior in magic, prepared a trump card, which she released right when you believed yourself the victor. Again, very, very well fought from the both of you. Ten minutes then,” the lights in the space dimmed, “shadow.”
Almost as soon as the spar ended, my drowsiness returned in droves. While I’d have loved to see their final fight, the well over twelve-hour day I had combined with the dark training room were sure to put me to sleep, and I couldn’t let that happen. Scurrying my way back to where I’d entered, I heard Abe speak before my heart stopped. His words were unintelligible from this distance, but they were much less relevant than the metal grate blocking my path. Before I could try anything, it shot upwards. I stared at it hesitantly, hoping it wouldn’t shoot back down. After a minute of nothing happening, I scrambled through, not wanting to leave with fewer limbs that I had entered.
The climb was made more difficult by both my sweaty hands, and hammering heart, but I made it up the tunnel slowly. Turning on my light, the construct still wrapped fully by the cloth, I made my way back to the hall based on memory. After ten minutes of nonstop crawling, my stomach hurt, but I was finally back at the entrance of my section. Affixing the metal grate back in place, I half slid half fell down the ten-foot drop, as silently as possible, before dragging myself the rest of the way. Liza not being there combined with the fatigue made me forget about stealth and I basically flopped into my room.
I half expected to be greeted by an entourage of palace security, royal guards, and anyone else that could be spared, but the area was gracefully empty. Quickly but properly, I put all the screws and my tools back, even managing to make the mana infused ones look correct, and basically fell into my bed. It was with fantasies of flight, battle, and the dread of an early wake-up call I fell into a deep sleep.