At Callipho’s shop, the group noticed that the alchemist left potions behind on the counter. Nine of them in fact. Three of them, Tahir could tell, were healing potions. Two more looked like the auric recovery potion Theo had given him days prior, and the other four…
“They’re for me.” Theo said, pulling them close. “They’re for rebalancing my soul, he made one for each element.” Did Callipho guess his apprentice would relapse, and that the group would need the healing potions? “I…I’ll go make us some tea, then we can talk about Tahir’s thing.”
Given a moment to collect themselves, lounge in the chairs of the back room of the shop, and sip some tea, Metilia finally asked the question. “So what did you have in mind that involved us not turning in the mission immediately, Tahir?”
Tahir had considered the best way to explain since before they entered the city. “What if we cleared out the trees ourselves, then explored the ruins?” He let the question hang for several seconds before going on to explain. “That oil is absurdly powerful. We took out nearly half the trees with just two bottles. I think if we take out the big one, then the void-corruption would start receding. Since we know about it, we can go in quickly before it has a chance to drain our energy.” He explained, then looked to Theo.
She nodded in response. “I have a couple bottles left we can use, but are you sure we can clear the ruin by ourselves?”
“Honestly? No, but I’m confident in our ability to run away. We can at least see what’s inside.” He considered the possibility that the source of void corruption might just come from the ruin itself, but confirming that would be part of the scouting mission he took to begin with. “I won’t lie, though. at least a small amount of treasure from that ruin would solve all of my financial problems for a while, not to mention any ancient magical items we can find.” Was it incredibly risky, greedy, and a little selfish of him? Yes, but Tahir wouldn’t push them into this if they didn’t want to, and he certainly wouldn’t go himself. He thought of asking Hurida, but she seemed the type to only put herself in danger as needed, not go for a needlessly reckless action.
Metilia took a long draw from her cup of tea before continuing. “Call it fatigue from sitting at the collective’s front desk for a month and a half, but I think Tahir’s plan has merit. I know they’ll be the first to crawl into every nook and cranny of the ruin when it becomes public knowledge. I’d love to get one over on them, even if it means making sure they can’t have the prestige of opening the door.” She set her cup down. “My question is what happens if we don’t make it back. The void corruption needs to be made known about before it spreads.”
Theo chimed in. “I’d hope it doesn’t come to that, but I could leave a letter to master Callipho. He should be back in a couple weeks. If we time it right, we can get there when it’ll only be a day or two between the time we get to the ruins and the time he gets back, and then he can tell everyone about the void corruption.”
“Which gives us a couple days.” Tahir said. “Assuming the tree only takes us one, we can go through the ruins, dig as deep as we can, and get out if there’s any serious injury. If higher tier mages catch wind, we might have to deal with long range teleportation magic, but we’ll probably know whether or not we need to leave back for Balrech on the first day.”
“And during the week before we leave, we can take care of a few things.” Metilia looked over at Tahir. “Your blade, for example. You need a new one. I can make it for you, though I have a question. I’m sure you’ve gotten used to the gladius as a weapon, but given that you use it for attacking and deflecting rather than blocking and defense, I think a single-edged sword would suit you better. Sound good?”
Tahir barely registered the question due to focusing on her saying she’d make his weapon. “That should be fine, I think?” He confirmed. She worked out his fighting style pretty well from the couple times she’d seen him in combat. He had little in the way of defenses other than his aura, and using a weapon that he couldn’t easily maneuver with in one hand would make his magic harder. Swords, especially the shortsword, worked fairly well for this purpose. He developed the style to work around his short mana pool when he first started at the Redclouds, and learning to boost his defenses with aura caused him to focus fully on offense, but he only ever used shortswords or daggers.
“Great.” Metilia turned to Theo. “It probably won’t develop into anything you can use by the time we get there, but you should work with Tahir on gaining a better control of your aura. Basic exercises should be fine for the time being, since I don’t think you ever got into a habit of doing those.”
Theo gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. “Can do! I can prep some stuff other than the oil too.”
Metilia nodded, and then looked back over to Tahir, but paused before speaking. “One last thing. Tomorrow, after we’ve all had a nice, long sleep in our beds, let’s get you to the leyline crossing.”
###
Tahir stood at the entrance to the mage’s collective building. The previous night, he tried to refuse Metilia and Theo’s offer to pay for his materials and access to the leyline, but they insisted, and Metilia’s comment about wanting to be as prepared as they possibly could proved too good an argument for Tahir to refute. Even with the time it might take for him to get used to the new power level of spirit, since he had six days for testing.
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Eventually, he gave in and let them give him the money. They even trusted him to head straight to the collective - since Metilia wouldn’t go back during the week. Both to not associate herself with Tahir and give them any shred of suspicion, and so they couldn’t ask her to go back to front desk duty.
He considered himself lucky. He had just under four weeks to the end of the month, and just getting a tier one spirit would have had him working daily, probably multiple silver requests a day on top of trying to worm his way into any party going for a gold request that would have him. He might have scraped up the money just before the qualification date, but he’d still have to try to reach for a gold ranking with a test, and make sure he knew how to work with his tier one spirit.
If they could get something good out of this ruin, he’d skip the need for all of that. He didn’t want to let Metilia and Theo down.
To that end, he walked into the collective building with a confident stride. He walked past the receptionist, a blond half-elf, and went straight for the material supply to buy what he needed for the ritual. He did the math for these materials in advance, and they came out at about 100 gold. Satisfied, he made his way back to the receptionist and placed his pouch of 400 some odd gold on the counter. “I’d like access to the leyline crossing.”
The receptionist seemed bored, barely paying attention to the lobby around him, but he perked up at the loud thunk of the hefty coin purse hitting the desk. “Ah, alright sir. That’ll be 400 gold for non-affiliated members, but you seem to know that already…” He tipped the bag over and cast a spell that had the coins stacking themselves into the proper amounts, leaving the change behind. “Might I ask what for, good sir?”
Although they were covered, Tahir did need a separate bag for all of the materials he’d just bought. He noticed the half-elf glancing curiously. “A ritual I read in a book.” He answered. Not lying, but not going into detail. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself if he could avoid it, but he had to endure at least a small amount of scrutiny to go through.”
“Ah, well good luck then.” Beside the receptionist’s desk, a doorway opened up from the wall. Tahir felt as if he could hear the curiosity leaving the guy’s voice. The ritual Tahir mentioned could be any number of rituals from any number of books, but he managed to give the impression that it was written down, and most likely a well-known thing, so nothing worth getting curious about.
At least, Tahir hoped he gave that impression as he gave the man a nod and walked off into the new passageway. He could practically feel the power of the leyline, giving him goosebumps as he walked through a long hallway, and stepped into a quiet courtyard at the end.
When the goddess Presia pulled the world, and her son’s namesake, Odium from the formless void, it is said she used something akin to a net. Where that proto-net ‘dug in’ to the world left lines where mana and the world's own energy naturally flowed, and places where the points of that proto-net connected were known as leyline crossings.
That is the story anyway. The leyline crossings are far from uniform in their location. Given the power that people could leverage from them, it's no surprise that almost every major capital city in Itera was built on top of a leyline crossing. And Tahir currently stood at the nexus of Esharia’s. He simply basked in the power of it for a while, then went to work, not wanting to attract the attention of anyone who might want to use the leyline while he was there.
He set up the ritual, making the appropriate adjustments from tier zero to tier one, and placing the more expensive materials in the right spots. He double and triple checked, and once he was sure, sat down at the center and began the ritual.
As before, his mind left to the ethereal, and the call his soul gave out through the ritual felt much stronger. The distinct feeling of being watched was stronger as well. Tahir looked around once more, but couldn’t see, or maybe simply couldn’t perceive anything that observed him in the ethereal plane. At least until the spirits arrived.
Another sizable group of spirits, something he confirmed with Metilia, was abnormal for the summoning ritual. This time, he could see distinct shapes rather than just orbs of light. Silhouettes and the barest hint of features in different colors. They swam, or flew close to him in the ether. He could hear them talking. To him? Or each other? He could hear speaking and chattering in a language that he couldn’t understand, so he guessed it was some combination of both.
Just like the tier zero ritual, he had to focus in on the spirits to get a sense of who they were. He received a much higher amount of information than the tier zero spirits, however. He got a better sense of what the spirit represented, and a glimpse into their personalities and desires. These spirits offered a much more complex choice than before, so he had to take time to appropriately go through and process each spirit. He also finally brushed up against the darker aspects of this magic.
Some of the spirits felt uncomfortable and alien, and some felt outright malicious. Tahir stayed wary of the latter more than the former, but they insisted upon him, floating by and demanding his attention even as he switched to different spirits. Thankfully, the ritual warded them off, and the cost of the materials for it mostly went into making sure a ward protected his mind and soul from spirits trying to worm their way in. He kept on with his work, focusing on every spirit he could, and after a while he could feel himself nearing the end of the ritual.
It helped that, after looking through it all, he had a goal for the immediate future. Something that would help him reach gold rank with the Redclouds, sure, but more imminently, something to help him deal with his mana and aura being drained by the void-corrupted space. With that in mind, he smiled to himself as he chose a spirit from the group that came to greet him, and initiated contact.