Mikayla muttered a silent apology to her Stamina bar, which had been flirting with emptiness. One hundred and forty-two flights of stairs. She’d counted them, which seemed like less of a good idea in hindsight.

For a second she’d almost wished for a monster to come charging out of one of the many doorways they’d passed, then caught herself and berated her foolishness for tempting fate. Fortunately, nothing of the sort had come to pass.

Contrary to her expectations, the various doors had been labelled with signs that she could read. The early floors had been things like ‘Apprentice Dormitory A’, ‘Fourth-Year Classrooms’ and ‘Greenhouse Block E’. “This place must have been like real life Hogwarts when people still lived here,” she murmured.

“As I recall, the signs are inscribed to appear to all as though they were written in the native language of whoever reads them. So if there’s something strange about how they read to you, blame your mother tongue,” Nocturnus shrugged.

“Ah, so the Harry Potter references are all in my head,” There was a niggling thought there, a curiosity that she didn’t have the energy to properly interrogate, but then Nocturnus asked who Harry Potter was and she was distracted by needing to explain the book series.

They had arrived at a large and ornate doorway with a glowing blue field blocking it, and a sign that read {OFFICES OF HEADMISTRESS ASTRALIA}. Several of the personal quarters that they’d passed had boasted similar defensive measures, and Mikayla’s shoulders slumped. “Well, we’re here. Now, how do we get in?” She paused. “If you’re about to tell me to shoulder-check my way through a force field and hope that the armour makes it not hurt too much -“

“No, no, that would be starring insane. Even for me,” Nocturnus sounded surprisingly defensive.

Mikayla squinted at him. “You did that once, didn’t you?”

“. . three times, back at the workshop she built in the Cloudfingers. That is unimportant, we have more pressing issues than my follies. She assured me that she’d placed the correct ‘key’ engraving on my Sword Core, so that when I got back here I ought to be able to unseal her workshop,” Nocturnus hissed ruefully. “I made it, even if it did take a couple of centuries longer than I’d planned,”

“And a little help from yours truly,” Mikayla added with a playful smile.

“Yes . . indeed . .”

“So how do I do this?”

“That panel, on the left. Press the Core Controller to it,” She peered at a pane of tinted glass that looked suspiciously like a scanner for a security card, and rubbed the corroded bracer on it, hoping that its damage hadn’t rendered the thing non-functional.

For a few tense moments, there was no reaction.

But then the barrier turned green and faded into sparkles of light, and a wave of warm air buffeted Mikayla’s face through the Black Knight’s Armour. “There’s heating in here!” she gasped in joy, throwing herself inside without heed for the possible dangers.

Fortunately, Astralia of the White Skies had not been so paranoid as to lay traps around her entrance. Indeed, the sitting room that they found themselves in felt like Mikayla had been transported back to her own world, in an executive lounge at a company retreat or similar. There was an actual carpet underfoot, and couches. Ornate wooden coffee tables and a desk where she could imagine a secretary sitting. Instead of fluorescent lights, glowing runes in a circular pattern were etched into a wooden panel affixed to the ceiling. “This has all been here, undisturbed, for two hundred years?” Mikayla breathed in confusion.

“Indeed, all held in stasis by Astralia’s runecraft. She was so optimistic back then. We all were, before the Monster King appeared. Acting like the Kaiju Collapse was merely a temporary inconvenience and within a week life would go on as though nothing had ever happened,” Nocturnus’ voice had turned wistful again. “Ahem. She never actually invited me up here before, so this is where my knowledge ends. Look around, let’s see what we can find,”

Mikayla had already left the foyer behind and come to a corridor with four more doors adjoining it. But she had already scored a victory with the first door she opened, which led into a large and opulent bedroom, dominated by a massive, fluffy mattress and pillows, and with closets full of warm clothes hanging open. “A bed! Jackets! All those stairs were worth it!”

She looked down at herself, remembering that what was left of her clothes were still caked in dried blood. Amazingly, her sneakers had held up alright, but everything else was absolutely ruined, to say nothing of the filth staining her exposed arms and legs..

Checking the doors adjoining the bedroom turned up a wonder even greater than the bed and wardrobe; a bathroom. There was no shower, which she should have expected, but there were soaps, and towels, what looked like an elaborate if antiquated toilet, and a massive bathtub made of some white ceramic material.

Her elation lasted until she realised that she couldn’t see a way to fill it with water. “Damnit, is there no faucet? Nocturnus, how do people around here fill their baths?”

“There was a pulley system by which apprentices and servants would send up buckets of water. A mage would then heat it up using their own mana. Also, I do hope that you’re going to remember to dismiss me before undressing yourself,”

“. . I’m going to have to go all the way back down to the bottom, find a bucket and a river, and cart water all the way back up here if I want a bath, aren’t I?”

“It seems so,”

“. . Not in this shirt,”

Twenty minutes of spit-scrubbing later, Mikayla had finally cleaned herself up enough to feel comfortable perusing Astralia’s wardrobe. This brought her to the second unpleasant realisation of the day. “She took most of her clothes with her when she left, didn’t she?”

“I know not how things are in your world, but we tended to indulge the frivolities of geniuses to keep them happy. It did take Astralia a while to internalise the fact that the Kaiju Collapse would not permit us our creature comforts,”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

Mikayla shook her head in dismay as she searched Astralia’s leavings for clothes that would be warm and yet loose enough to not hinder her movements. She was certain there would be more fighting in the near future.

Eventually, she had picked out her new attire; a thick leather cuirass that hung to her thighs and was coloured a deep red, with a warm black undershirt and leggings. For extra padding, she added a cloak that wrapped around her shoulders, a pair of steel bracers, and boots that had both thick soles and a comfortable inner lining.

[EQUIPPED ARCHAIC CUIRASS (ANTIQUE)]

[EQUIPPED ARCHAIC COTTON UNDERSHIRT (ANTIQUE)]

[EQUIPPED ARCHAIC LEATHER HIKING BOOTS (ANTIQUE)]

[EQUIPPED ARCHAIC CLOAK (ANTIQUE)]

Her old, ruined clothes laid forgotten in a wastebasket. She had only kept one thing from them; her powerless phone and its charging cable were tucked into the inside pocket of her new coat. In this world of magic and monsters, there had to be some kind of lightning spell or similar that she could learn to use that would recharge it. She wasn’t ready to give up on her beloved phone.

“Alright, what’s next?”

The second door turned out to lead to the larder, which was full of dried meats and vegetables, held within glass boxes that were covered with glowing runes. Her stomach growled at the sight of the preserved foodstuffs, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten all day. All the same, she knew better than to blindly trust two-hundred-year-old groceries. “Nocturnus? Think this is safe to eat?”

“Probably, but you’ll need to find the key to disable the stasis enchantments first. She said she’d left a spare in her workshop,”

“Which I guess is this door,” Mikayla decided, turning to the next door in the corridor and forcing it open.

As soon as they laid eyes on what was within that room, Nocturnus cackled gleefully. “Oh, brilliant!”

The room was cluttered beyond belief. Boxes of junk that she had no names for were stacked in the corners. Large easels supported blackboard with complicated equations written in a language she couldn’t read, and diagrams for what looked like Cores similar to the Black Knight Armour. The workshop was dominated by what looked like an operating table, with a cluster of tools at one end surrounding a receptacle that was holding a blue gemstone, and several angled glass panes over the rest of it.

Mikayla’s eye was drawn not to the mysterious magical devices, but to the small sack of rough gemstones that had tipped over and spilled out on the edge of the table. She hastened to it and peered down at them, cooing appreciatively. “If I ever get home, I’m gonna be rich,”

“There is so much more than money to be had here, lass! This is one of Astralia’s Engraving Arrays,” Nocturnus explained with a hint of reverence in his tone. “It’s still here,”

“What’s an Engraving Array?” Mikayla asked, inspecting the machinery.

“It’s what makes Cores,” the ancient ghost emphasised. “I hoped she had one here. She was working on the concept for years before she had to repurpose it as Kaiju-slaying weaponry. It was her life’s work,”

Mikayla stilled, then looked more closely at the gemstones. Most of them were red, but she picked out a half-dozen blue and two green. “So, then all of these are -“

“Uncut. They’re not Cores yet, they need to be Engraved first. But that’s what the Array is for,” Nocturnus elaborated.

“Right! Right, right, right,” Mikayla moved over to the plinth that was holding an uncut lapis. “So how do we use it?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea whatsoever,”

She considered this, then twisted her lips and flicked the aggravating blue gem on her wrist. “Don’t get me all excited if we don’t have anything that actually helps, damnit!”

“Ah! Apologies, apologies! Please don’t do that again! I’m sure it can’t be that hard to figure out! She was teaching her apprentices, certainly there shall be notes or something around here!”

“Right,” She looked around, searching for anything that would give her an indication of where to begin. Her gaze fell upon a pile of scattered papers in the corner, and she pounced on them, pulling them apart and scrutinising them.

They were notes, alright. “The coefficient of the equation that denotes the depth of the secondary incision layer must be proportionate to the . .” Mikayla trailed off, head already spinning. “I don’t think this is going to get me very far,”

“It shall be worth the effort if it gets us a new weapon in our arsenal. No one else is going to make a bow for us,”

“A what?” Mikayla quirked an eyebrow. “Why would we make a bow?”

“You need a ranged weapon. There are monsters that can keep their distance and blast you into pieces from afar, and that was before they all turned into Kaijus. I used to have Techniques that let me engage foes at range, but they are beyond you even if I were able to properly teach you them. The sword is good, even if an amateur like you ought be grateful that a Kaiju shall not punish you for your lacking technique, but not every problem we face shall be solved by a sword,”

“Yeah, okay that’s fair,” she admitted with a hum. “In which case . . oh, here’s something I understand. I think this says ‘Diamond is better than Jade, which is better than Lapis, which is better than Ruby, which is better than Amber’. And there’s a note about how Amber is trash and only fit for cheap tools,” She squinted. “There’s also something crossed-out about needing to experiment with Pearls? Oh, but apparently they’re unstable?”

Nocturnus sounded like he was choking, which was a very confusing thing to hear from a disembodied voice inside a helmet. “. . Nocty, buddy, you okay?”

“What does she mean, Lapis is only average?! My armour is on a Lapis gem! My sword was only a Ruby! Nicholas got a Diamond! She used a Diamond for her own armour, and a Jade for Yevgenia’s! I had thought the colours were merely for aesthetics, but she was being a cheapskate?!”

“Whoa, hey, we don’t know that,” Mikayla pacified him. “Maybe she just only had three good ones?”

He grumbled. “Perhaps . . also. Who or what is a ‘Nocty’?”

“It’s a nickname! You’re my friend, so you get a nickname,” Affection crept into her voice as she realised just how much the armour ghost had grown on her, for her to be that comfortable with him already.

“You have strange customs in your world,” he murmured.

“No, that’s just me,” Mikayla looked back at the notes, only for her stomach to growl. “. . oh, right, we came in here for the key to the fridge. This,” she poked the pile of incomprehensible words with a vengeance, “can wait until after I’ve eaten,”

“Right, of course. Look for a bracelet with an Engraved glass plate hanging from it,”

It took several minutes of rummaging through drawers, but Mikayla finally turned up a trinket matching that description. She didn’t hesitate to rush back over to the larder and start rubbing it at suspicious spots around the engravings on the lid. As she did, she couldn’t help but marvel at it. “This is a key card. A two-hundred-year-old key card. I need to stop thinking of this world as being just medieval times with magic and monsters. Not when someone here invented key cards hundreds of years before my world did,”

She finally pressed it into a slot that turned out to fit it perfectly, and runes split between the larder’s surface and the key card lit up, like a sentence made complete by the addition of a missing word. There was a click, and the lid popped open, releasing the dulled scent of frozen meat and preserved vegetables. The growling in Mikayla’s stomach intensified, but she forced herself to stop. Food poisoning was the last thing she needed. It all looked fine, but . . “Nocturnus, are you completely certain this’ll be safe to eat?”

“Astralia would always take any excuse to boast about how the contents of her storage lockers would outlive us all. You need to eat, and in your place, I would trust Astralia’s food more than Kaiju meat,”

“Well. When you put it that way,”