Mikayla carefully peered out through the crack in the wall at the base of the Spear, searching for any hint of the Giant Roc.
There was none to be found, and she breathed a sigh of relief, crawling back out into the open tundra.
“Okay. The main entrance hall is thataway,” she reminded herself, checking her Health, Mana and Stamina bars and setting off around the diameter of the wizard’s tower.
[HEALTH: 1000/1000]
[MANA: 1200/1200]
[STAMINA: 900/900]
For the past couple of days, she and Nocturnus been exploring the areas of Astralia’s Spear that they could access, scavenging for anything useful. Most of the other high-level wizard’s quarters had remained inaccessible, and Nocturnus had advised against trying to force her way in. It was a miracle that the Spear had held up as well as it had, a feat which could be attributed entirely to generations of mages layering durability and protection enchantments. Attempting to break those enchantments, or the walls on which they were engraved, could all too easily bring the upper floors down on them.
Unfortunately, their efforts hadn’t turned up anything of use; almost everything had rotted away over the centuries since the Spear had been abandoned. Killing the pillbugs had gotten her to Level 6, and she’d slapped an extra point each into Charisma and Willpower for it. Their only stroke of luck had been a single chest with a stasis enchantment on it, containing a dozen potions and - surprisingly - an entire chocolate cake.
Treating herself with slices of that had done a lot for her mental health.
The potions were great too, and she had several strapped to her belt. Each had been brewed for someone with much larger resource pools than she had, so Nocturnus fully expected that ingesting one would immediately refill her Health, Mana or Stamina. She hadn’t wanted to waste any by testing them, though.
The good luck, however, was countered by the bad. Upon making their way to the main entrance hall on the ground floor, they had discovered that the main doors to the Spire had been broken into and the hall turned into a nest, currently inhabited by a monster that resembled a bear the size of a dump truck, with icicles growing out of its back.
At least, Mikayla had thought it was bad luck. Nocturnus was thrilled. “Excellent! A sparring partner for you!”
Her protests still rang in her ears, because she clearly hadn’t voiced enough of them.
“You want me to fight that thing? Willingly?!”
“You need to get stronger. Level 6 just isn’t going to cut it. And that thing’s one of the best foes we could have asked for. Rimeroar Bears only wake up for one day every couple of months. They go have one big meal, then go back to sleep. All you have to do is get in close and kill it before it wakes up. Just stab it right in the throat!”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound so hard,”
Mikayla wanted to eat her words, because the Rimeroar Bear had looked a lot smaller from the upper balcony than it did now that she was standing in front of it.
Its pelt was a dirty white, with tangles and dead leaves knotted into it. Foggy white stalagmites of solid ice grew out of its back and arms, each the size of a car. It seemed to radiate frigid air with every snore from its barn-sized gut.
And the real trouble was that it had rolled onto its back. Its vulnerable throat was twenty feet above her, and to reach it she would have to climb onto its back.
Mikayla balled her fists. “Mana Assistance, Black Knight,”
“Are we ready for the slaughter?” Nocturnus demanded as soon as the armour had formed.
“Small problem, mister stab happy. How am I going to reach up there? I don’t think this thing will sleep through me trying to climb onto its belly,”
“Hmm, yes, I see. Don’t worry, we can work with this. But you will have to be fast,”
“You just really want to see me kill this thing, don’t you?”
“Would you prefer to go and search for something else to kill, and chance another encounter with the Giant Roc?”
Mikayla blanched at the prospect. Those flashes of cyan light were still dancing behind her eyes. “Right, so how am I getting up there?”
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“It’s earlier than I had planned, and I’m not certain you’re ready, but strength is tempered in the flames of strife! So I believe it’s time for you to unlock the true power of my armour!”
She digested this. “Are you talking about Goliath mode, or is there a different ‘true power’?”
“You . . already know of the Goliath function. I see,” Nocturnus sounded disappointed.
“I used it with the sword a couple of times. Never with the armour though. But I can see why this would be a good time for it,” Mikayla nodded, sizing the bear up. “How big does it get? Can it make me as big as the bear? Bigger?”
“It could, but Goliath is a more flexible power than that. Its size increases its mana drain proportionately. Become twice as large, and it will cost twice the mana to maintain. Become ten times as large, and it costs ten times the mana,”
Mikayla nodded, running the numbers in her mind. “I see. So if one Mana Point buys me two seconds of armour, then at ten mana for two seconds of super armour . .” She glanced at her Mana Bar, which was already being drained by the Black Knight.
[MANA: 1156/1200]
“I can keep it up at full size for a bit less than four minutes before I run dry. That’s plenty of time to stab a bear,”
“Your calculation is wrong. You need to factor in the cost of keeping the sword manifested as well,” Nocturnus reminded her. “Also. Who said that ten times the size was its maximum?” A sly whisper entered her ear, and her eyebrows shot up at the implications.
“. . That is going to be very cool when I’m strong enough to use it,”
“Haha! It was and it will be again,” As Nocturnus cackled, Mikayla redid her maths. “Ten mana for four seconds of sword time at ten times the size. That’s thirty mana for four seconds of super armour and super sword time,”
“Don’t forget, you don’t have to keep the armour at full size at all times. It’s . . actually, no, nevermind, even I never really got the hang of that,” the ghost interrupted himself.
“Got the hang of what?” Mikayla questioned. “Also, that means I get two minutes and forty seconds of Goliath fighting before my mana runs dry. Okay, a bit less, since I’m wasting mana to talk to you,”
“It was Yevgenia’s special technique. She had such good control over her mana that she could change the size of her armour and weapons on the fly, mid-fight,”
“. . What, like Ant-Man?”
“I know not of what an ant man is, but I presume so, yes. It was shockingly effective - you have not known fear until you have seen a knife grow to the size of a castle gate an instant before it hits you. But I never managed to replicate it, and given that you are still reliant on Mana Assistance, I cannot expect you to succeed where I failed. Enough dallying, you are wasting your mana. Launch your assault, and strike fast, before the Rimeroar Bear awakens and counterattacks,”
“Right,” Mikayla raised her hand. She took a second to check that the three potions she’d clipped to her belt were still there; she’d slotted two Mana Potions and two Health Potions into the notches, ready for her to draw upon if the fight went badly.
“Mana Assistance, sword,” She felt her energy flow into the tips of her fingers, and the silver-red blade appeared in her hands. “Okay, here goes nothing. Mana Assistance, put my armour and sword in Goliath mode at ten times the size,”
There was a roaring in her ears.
Strength fled her veins, only to be transformed and come rushing back into her muscles. Her feet were hoisted off the ground as the Black Knight’s spine suddenly and dramatically lengthened. The chestplate grew around her, enveloping her, and threads of mana wrapped around her limbs, suspending Mikayla in a cradle of red hard-light nerves.
The boots of black glass that no longer had her feet inside them swelled like balloons, spikes erupting from their soles for added friction, and the greaves parted to release knee armour with serrated edges. Newly formed walls of magic erupted from the swelling shoulder pads, engulfing and expanding the armour’s arms and carrying with them a mesmerising nebula of energy that unfolded like a blooming flower at her wrists, becoming hands large enough to pick up a person and throw them. The sword in her hands grew to match, unfolding and extending in an impossibly complicated pattern of glowing red lines.
The spiked shoulders parted, and a huge, dome-shaped helmet emerged from the torso, with a crown of three spikes protruding from its brow. Strings of light shot into Mikayla’s eyes, worming under her eyelids and latching onto her optic nerves. There was none of the pain that she’d expected when she saw the ropes of mana penetrating her head, but she still squeezed them shut reflexively.
And the Black Knight opened its eyes.
Mikayla audibly gasped as she peered through the twin pools of red light that had appeared behind the Black Knight’s visor. She looked at the sword in her right hand, then at her left, experimentally flexing her fingers, and was amazed when the massive black gauntlet responded as though it were her own body. The Rimeroar Bear, which had been an impossibly massive opponent, suddenly looked like it was just a particularly large and strange dog; still appreciably dangerous, but in no way the harbinger of certain death that it had seemed to be a moment ago.
And it was moving. She could see its eyelids were fluttering. Oh no, deploying the Black Knight must have woken it up!
“Quit gawking at yourself! You’ve got two minutes!” Nocturnus’ voice echoed around her.
“Right!” She tried to reply, but it was the Black Knight that spoke, a word that shook the atrium of the Spear like a thunderclap. The bear startled, and, realising that she was about to miss her window of opportunity, Mikayla struck.
She hadn’t accounted for how much longer it took to move at such a massive size.
The bear was startled to see the massive sword reversing in the air above it and bringing its tip down towards its throat. The Black Knight wasn’t slow by any means, but compared to Mikayla’s own reflexes it felt ponderous. Enough so that by the time the sword was coming down, the monster bear had rolled to the side and dragged itself out of the way, the tip of her sword only carving a shallow nick into the side of its head.
It reared up and roared, bringing its claws to bear in a threatening display, and Mikayla raised the Black Knight’s sword in her best guard stance. The fight was on.