“You’re telling me you can see magic?” The usually unflappable Wolf demanded as he paced back and forth across the command tent. My dazed thoughts were finally beginning to settle even if my mana wasn’t so quick to recover.
Mana: 14/90
“Arcane Perception. It’s the only path skill I received when I picked my professional path” I explained, watching Wolf stop and shake his head.
“It grants you a skill like that and you still took it as your secondary path. You had so much potential and you’re squandering it boy.”
“I thought you said that inscription itself is independent of path.” I said, crossing my arms. “Can no one else see mana with their path skills?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing!” Wolf yelled.
“What about the ‘glow’ I see when inscriptions are activated?” I asked.
“That ‘glow’ is either intentional, or a byproduct of an imprecise inscription. It’s not the same as seeing mana.”
“River’s choices are his own, Wolf.” Rain said, reaching out a hand to stop the inscriptionist’s pacing. “What’s important is that it stays quiet. I don’t want the council or other tribes to try and take advantage of him when they arrive next year. Autumn, Brook, and Karl heard, but I’ll ask them to stay quiet. In the meantime, why don’t you keep working with River as you have been.”
Wolf sucked in a deep breath and nodded. He turned to me. “Can you see mana moving through inscriptions?”
“Probably?” I shrugged. “But the sight is perception-based.”
“Then I have a few things I would like you to look at.”
“Maybe once my mana regenerates a bit.” I groaned.
“Yes I know, I’ll wait, now come.”
Wolf dragged me over to the still-standing tower where the strange runic circle was carved into the floor.
“Why this circle first?” I asked Wolf as we stepped inside the dim tower. “Wouldn’t something simple be better? Or the giant rune in the center of the excavation? Aren’t you a bit obsessed with this?”
“I’m not obsessed, I just prefer to direct my mental energy towards one problem at a time. Now be quiet until I set up the ward.” Wolf said as he reached into his pocket and drew out a now-familiar silencing ward. “Normally I’d be a bit more hesitant to waste the arcane mana, but with you here, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Now, what I first want you to do is look at what happens to the mana when you activate one of the runes. I want to see if my hunch is correct”
I shrugged and walked over the squat behind the circle of runes. With a deep breath, I activated Arcane Perception.
Inside the tower the sepia haze of earth and life mana gave way to a faint purple energy that danced across the surface of every stone and brick. Only the flat slab at the center of the circle of rune was different. It looked like an opaque sheet of purple mana rather than the subtle purple of the bricks around it.
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“Well?” Wolf asked and I stepped on a rune, giving it just enough power to activate. A faint pulse of purple, hardly visible over the background pall of mana, rippled through the runes. As Wolf predicted, it seemed to drip down and out of sight rather than into the brilliant purple slab.
“The mana seems to move around and down rather than inward.” I said, deactivating my skill and pointing to the center of the nearest rune.
“Good to see my intuition is right.” Wolf said. “I don’t think the visible runes on the slab are important at all. The rest of the rune inscription is somewhere out of sight beneath the stone.”
“Well, in that case it’s a pity my ability doesn’t give me x-ray vision.”
“Indeed. I’ll have to think on it. There are a few other things I’d like you to look at in the meantime.”
“Wait.” I said. “I didn’t mention it before, but the slab with the runes looks strange. It’s covered in a dense layer of arcane mana - strong enough that I can’t see any stone beneath it at all.”
“You could have mentioned that first. It’s opaque you say? I’d suggest that maybe there is a barrier there, but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s only stone here.” Wolf mused, bending down to rub his hand against the gray surface. “Does the opaque mana begin right at the edge of the slab here?”
“No, it starts just past the joint, right about here.” I said, leaning out over the stone to point to another spot. I reached my other hand out to brace myself against the stone slab only for my fingers to meet nothing at all. My hand phased through the illusionary surface where, with a shout of surprise, I pitched headfirst through the floor and into the darkness below.
My back slammed against stone steps and I began to tumble head over heels down a narrow staircase, before I finally stopped on a smooth stone floor. I swore and brushed away a fresh drop of blood on my snout before heaving my bruised back into a sitting position.
I sat in a world of perfect darkness. I heard nothing either. Not Wolf, Brook, or Rain. Not the work of the camp, or the pounding of Kar’ktar’s hammer. Just silence and warm damp air.
Warning, you have entered a region of high ambient mana.
Mana regeneration increased by 2.1x
“What the hell.” I said, my voice echoing strangely through the silence. Whatever that ‘slab’ was made of, it sure as hell wasn’t stone. With a thought, I activated my mana perception only for a thick purple haze to fill my vision, obscuring all else. Without an engraving tool to carve a light rune, I began to grow nervous in the darkness.
Perhaps I could draw the rune in the air as my sister did. There was no difference between an engraved and casted spell beyond the materials and longevity right? I would just need to modify it. Deciding to give it a try, I used my intent to trace the shape of the arcane light rune in the darkness. I gave it mana and grinned as a soft blue light illuminated the space around me.
I sat at the edge of a large stone passage that looked to be carved from the plateau itself. Hundreds of linear runes lined a floor of polished stone that rose with elegant steps and curves into pristine stone walls. A few strands of runes diverged from the central design to flow up the far walls to where a silver sconce held aloft a single yellow crystal. Behind me, a much smaller rectangular staircase, the one I’d tumbled down, ascended back to the tower above.
Something about this place pulled at my mind just as the spire of arcane mana had. I felt something here, hidden within the darkness beyond my vision. I wanted to march down these halls and explore the mysteries hidden within them.
I sighed and marched my bruised rump back up the narrow stairs to the surface, stopping only when I reached a featureless ceiling of stone. Or fake-stone I supposed. My fingers passed through it as easily as before. With a small sigh of relief, I continued up the steps.
As soon as my head breached the barrier, I heard Wolf and Rain’s urgent voices mixing with the daily sounds of the camp. The sound ward had been deactivated during my short foray into the tunnels and the camp’s entire contingent of inscriptionists had made their way into the tower where they worked to set up a makeshift workshop. My sister stood off to the side with Earth and Carmen while several others peered in through the tower door.
“River!” Wolf exclaimed, breaking off from his discussion with Rain as he spotted my head. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, I just tumbled down a staircase here.” I said, pulling myself the rest of the way out. “There is a large tunnel and a lot of inscription work down there.”
**********
“Why is half the expedition here?” I asked Rain a few minutes later, rubbing the top of my newly healed snout. There was a renewed flurry of activity in the tower around us as the others scrambled around.
“We were gathering the others to test whether they could enter as you had.” He said. “Who knows what might have lurked down there.”
“And has anyone?” I asked, although I knew the answer before Rain shook his head.
“Not yet, though we’ll have the rest of the expedition tested this afternoon.” I nodded, my mind running over why I might have been able to pass through the slab where others failed. The only change recently was my pathing ceremony and the mark of Trickster. If the latter were true, then only Autumn might be able to enter. There was only one way to be sure.
I leaned back against the wall and watched as the expedition members entered the tower one by one and placed their hand against the floor. When Autumn entered I tensed as she bent down to touch the stone and pressed her fingers flat against it.
Then, even as I could process the disappointment, the stone surface appeared to ripple. Autumn’s hand passed through the barrier.
Rain sighed. “And then there were two.”