image [https://i.imgur.com/Ci05Pcx.jpg]

I had just begun to like Master Jiaolong. He didn’t overly describe things like Dino, and his cooldown-resetting tea would let me leave the tier after I finished the dungeon, but tricking me into jumping through hoops before facing him in a duel exasperated me. He must have known I was in a hurry because these trainers missed nothing.

And besides wasting time, I still couldn’t defeat perfect fighters in melee combat. I could score two hits through Time Stop and my Cossack of Rewind, but how could I deliver the third without spells like Slipstream? And by giving me that kung fu tea beforehand meant I couldn’t drink it afterward and prepare myself for the dungeon. It was a dirty trick all around.

Reflecting none of my inner turmoil in my expression, I replied with a curt bow. “Yes, sifu.” Like a good little pupil, I focused on the problem at hand, defeating Jiaolong without blowing through all my cooldowns.

Jiaolong produced another wooden sword from the courtyard’s corner. “The challenger may choose the weapon. I assume you prefer a blade?”

Nodding, I accepted the wooden dummy sword.

“Shields?”

I shook my head, knowing full well that I didn’t have Shield Bash or any shield powers. I’d never known Dino to use abilities, so perhaps defeating him with cooldowns was possible. “Are abilities allowed?”

“If you wish to use them, you may do so.” Jiaolong backed away and bowed while I did the same. “It is my role to decide what constitutes a kill. Wounds count for nothing.”

I focused on his eyes and studied his footwork. Jiaolong’s hypnotic fluidity made me check the combat log to see if his shuffling came from a combat ability, but it was just his normal sidestep. I watched him shift his weight from leg to leg with my peripheral vision while focusing on his eyes. I shifted my feet, bracing for attacks that never came.

I opened with a Thrust, a pierce that extended the tip of my wooden blade, but Jiaolong leaned to the side so quickly and jabbed his own weapon that I couldn’t avoid its tip.

“Score—but only a wound.”

Before I meditated on his sense of fairness, he switched his feet and followed with another stab. I rolled away from it, but the maneuver had cost me a split second of recovery, long enough to elicit a third attack, one which struck home.

“A kill shot, Candidate Apache.” Jiaolong backed away, giving me time to recover my footing.

Something felt wrong. I recalled the scene of Audigger and Fabulosa battling on the skiff, hitting each other without regard to defense. Perhaps winning outright wasn’t the right play. I just needed to score one legitimate hit. The double-Time Stop would take care of the rest of the duel.

I switched to a basic defensive stance called la folla, which made Jiaolong’s brow furrow. It used a forward pivoting foot strong enough to deflect attacks with an upright blade.

By shifting the weight to the back foot, it prepared me for a suicidal attack—useless in other circumstances, but in a three-kill duel, participants lived to fight another round. While the master concentrated on penetrating my fake defense, I struck him hard with a blow.

His own boffer slapped my neck.

He gasped in surprise and backed away. “Two kill shots, a mutual elimination. The score is one to two, my favor.”

After resetting, I triggered Time Stop. Jiaolong stood frozen and defenseless, as I delivered my second kill shot. With the few seconds left, I didn’t have enough for another strike and backed away.

The master showed admiration at what must appeared to him as blinding speed. He bowed once more. “Two strikes each. The next kill shot wins the duel.”

After returning his bow, I reset Time Stop with my cassock and performed the maneuver again. It was a cheap way to win, but its dear reward soothed my guilt.

Jiaolong kneeled and made a sweeping gesture with his boffer toward the monastery. “Congratulations, young master, and welcome to the Morphren Sanctuary.”

“Thank you, sifu.”

“You may call me Master Jiaolong, Master Apache.”

“Thank you, again, Master Jiaolong. Will you keep others from entering this sanctuary?”

“I am honor-bound to do so.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I have reasons to believe others may try to force their way inside. Has anyone else gained access to the sanctuary in recent years?”

“You speak of Master Toadkiller.”

“Toadkiller’s a master?” If he’d passed Jiaolong’s tests, I could see why Toadkiller chose this place to hide his secret.

“He defeated me three to zero.”

“But how?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I’m afraid it’s not my place to speak of another master’s secrets.”

Crossing my arms, I pondered strategies for discovering more about Toadkiller. Jiaolong was not a pliant person. After considering the problem, I gave up. “I must be off. Time is short. Please, excuse me.”

“Not to worry.” He stepped aside, a grand gesture my access to the sanctuary.

“Thank you, Master Jiaolong.” We bowed for the last time, and I hurried into the building.

When the sanctuary’s shadow fell over me, the smell of decay assaulted my nose. A mélange of rotting vegetation, wood, and fibers from tapestries and curtains mixed with the odor of musty masonry. The aerocline’s humidity had done the monastery’s structural integrity no favors.

The dank, dismal conditions reminded me to rebuff, and I readied another array of stat potions. Light filtered through the arched entryways between rooms and barred windows, but firing up Presence helped me see better.

A brittle black caking of soot covered the upper walls and high ceilings, but the smell of rot had long since supplanted the smell of burned wood.

Corroded bars and gates covered stained glass windows and intricately carved doors, giving the impression of an artfully constructed prison. Even to an untrained eye, the security elements stood apart from the monastery’s original architecture.

I fired up Mineral Communion. The images the spell evoked from stonework depended on its surface. Ceilings blackened with soot reflected scenes before a veneer of smoke caked it over. Similarly, eroded or worn floors wouldn’t remember their earlier days, and mixed or corroded minerals produced only a fuzzy, static vision of its past. Recent disturbances, such as footprints or damage to the masonry, glowed as if covered in UV paint.

The memories told the story of a building used in multiple ways. The oldest showed active social functions. Servants carried food, and dignitaries received families and councils at the door. It might have been a school at one time, judging by the number of adolescents. Monks or scholars played a role in its history. In other memories, patients milled about it. I had no desire to watch a mob bust through its doors, so I didn’t spend too much time in the foyer. This entrance would have been the healers’ second line of defense and a site of grim carnage.

Dissecting the visuals took time and focus, but knowing that I sought Toadkiller’s trail simplified matters. Three recent pairs of footprints meandered about the room. Judging by their faded appearance, they looked over a year old, but the impressions stood out enough that I could easily track them. I followed where they sifted through debris. Faint glowing spots on the walls showed where someone had touched them—as if a forensics team had dusted the place for fingerprints. The patterns matched those of people searching for secret doors, an understandable pursuit, for the thick walls could hide any number of hidden cavities and hollows.

Returning to the flagstones’ memories, I looked for glimpses of Narol, Ipix, and Toadkiller when they first cleared the dungeon. While sifting through scenes, I caught one image of their dungeon crawl. I spotted someone crouching beneath the archway to the next room.

The flagstones only showed his back from a low vantage, but his punky, warrior-of-the-wasteland accessories betrayed a modern aesthetic. Broad-shouldered and covered with piercings, tattoos, and a manicured mohawk, he all but announced himself to be a gamer’s avatar. He lacked rings and bracers, and his mismatched and incomplete armor set hinted that he was lower level.

This speculation troubled me—if Toadkiller had passed Jiaolong years ago, he’d be much stronger now.

Casting Detect Magic exposed a rune in the exact location where the person crouched. Read Magic revealed the rune’s function. Its five-foot proximity trigger activated an unknown delivery of primal magic. I’d Inscribed Runes to destroy items and set off Compression Spheres, but never primal spells. Even though I’d wasted the morning with Jiaolong, if Miros allowed ways to rig direct damage spells to a rune, I wanted to know.

I pulled out a piece of parchment and copied it, making annotations of the parts I didn’t understand.

Unfortunately, the rune didn’t contain a targeting function, so whatever primal spell it triggered affected an area. Even if I figured out how to use it, spells like Scorch and Shocking Reach wouldn’t work.

When I first learned to Inscribe Runes, I thought placing many runes in a single location could make an area fatal. With enough time, multiplying even the smallest amount of damage could be deadly. But I never figured out how to place a second rune in the same place without deactivating the first.

Whatever this rune triggered, it inflicted enough damage to justify the time it took to create. I wasn’t sure if Slipstreaming through would activate it. If it acted like Earthquake, it could bring down the building, so I played it safe, climbed over debris piled against the walls, and squeezed around it.

The room’s location name listed in my interface changed from narthex to calefactory, though neither of the words meant anything to me. From my best guess, a calefactory was a sitting room and a social place until the monastery converted it into a quarantine facility before someone added bars.

But the bars had withered into flakey sticks of rust. A hard shake could dislodge their corroded frames or the crumbling cement molds that held them. Their fragility seemed a shame, for sturdy iron bars were excellent for Slipstreaming through to escape danger.

Moving with Gladius Cognitus drawn left a squiggling line of blue light. To erase it, I periodically sheathed my sword. I took my time, methodically stopping and processing visions from Mineral Communion to avoid getting tunnel-visioned by its effects. I avoided traps, monsters, and players from catching me off guard.

I followed glowing footsteps through the calefactory and into a room dominated by enormous fireplaces at either end. The interface called it a refectory. The stone visions showed monks eating at rows of tables, now long gone. Like the preceding room, monks or doctors converted it into an infirmary, replacing its tables with sleeping pallets. The only bars in the room hung only over the windows, which were so far off the floor they didn’t seem worth installing. A large audience chamber connected to the refectory, but before I followed the footsteps to it, I examined another door.

Glowing fingerprints feathered the portal’s edges. At first, I thought the door was ajar, but it wasn’t on hinges. Someone had leaned it against the doorframe. I pushed the door to the side and peered into a smaller room. Fingerprints covered the drawers and shelves, aligning the walls of an office space. The map interface called it a counting house. Whatever valuables the place held had been taken long ago, and I saw nothing worth a second look.

The interface called the area next to the communal dining hall a chapter house. Repurposing it for a quarantine area couldn’t conceal its town hall purpose. Its octagonal symmetry enclosed rows of raised seating built into the architecture.

Smoke blackened the ceiling, which opened to the afternoon sky. The missing roof represented the most significant damage to the monastery. The smell and lighting conditions were much better than in the refectory, revealing paintings and carved wall ornaments. Great murals depicted scenes of a giant sitting cross-legged amongst smaller figures, presumably worshippers. The flaking faded paint lost many details, and black soot obscured half of the panel, but the common theme in all eight cult images showed a sharp change in skin color between the giant’s left and right sides—blue and dark orange.

“Gladdy, do you recognize that figure from history?”

“It resembles Morphren, the Dual One. This is his sanctuary.”