I blinked up from the floor, the room tilting before my eyes. I struggled to bring the walls and the runes and the silver orb into focus. Only a single feeble thought breached the fog.
We had to leave this place or we would die.
Autumn groaned beside me, rolling over and pushing herself to her knees. She wobbled as she did so.
“Weee shhhnee t’leev” She slurred, and I agreed. I rolled myself over, began to stand, and toppled face first into the stone. Autumn crawled over to me and together we tottered upright, braced ourselves against the wall, stumbled over to the door.
The rest became a blur. I remember heading west. I remember the warm lights. I remember falling again and again. I remember sharp stone stairs against my shins. I remember tasting the crisp clean air of the plateau and rolling onto the cold stone. Someone shouted my name, but I ignored it. I felt safe. Safe with Autumn’s strength beside me. Safe enough to close my eyes just for a moment.
**********
I stared at the dark stone of the tower ceiling, my eyes blinking as they struggled to focus. How long had I been lying here? I thought, trying to move. For a brief moment of panic, my body refused to respond, but then my head flopped sideways.
“River’s waking up!” Thorn yelled. She, Wolf, and to my surprise Melwyn, rushed over from the half-log table around which they stood. They stopped several paces away and peered down at me.
“River, can you hear me?” Melwyn asked and I nodded. “You should be able to move properly soon. How do you feel?”
I looked inward at that, only to be overwhelmed by angry limbs and aching muscles. My very veins burned in my arms and the three affinities in my chest made their displeasure very clear.
“Aweful.” I groaned. “Why do I feel this way? And where is Autumn?”
“Autumn is fine and recovering in the medical tent. What you feel are the side effects of mana poisoning.” Melwyn explained. “Your willpower was not high enough to fight against whatever mana you encountered down there.”
“The air was thick with it.” I nodded, remembering the feeling of power and the… I groaned as my time below flooded back to me. “I think I may have done some stupid things.”
“You think?” Thorn cut in, only to shrink away when Melwyn shot her a glare.
“Do you think you can move a bit?” The elf asked and I gave a noncommittal grunt. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything right now. “When you feel able, I would like you to take that staff you’re holding and place it against the wall.”
I looked down only to start when I saw the familiar ebony and gold staff clutched against my chest. The quartz crystal at the top crackled with a haze of power just inches from my head. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember carrying the thing out.
“Just take it.” I said, forcing the staff toward the others who backed away.
“We can’t. It acts up when anyone other than you or maybe Autumn goes near it.” Wolf explained. “Just put it aside for now.”
With a weak toss, I shoved the staff towards an empty wall. As soon as it left my hand, I felt a burden lift from my soul. My throbbing affinities, though still painful, calmed. Sucking in a deep breath, I sat up only for Melwyn to rush over and stare deeply into my eyes. I looked away, feeling more than a little guilty and embarrassed.
“That artifact was doing a number on you.”
“Sorry.” I muttered.
“Don’t be sorry. Mana poisoning does things to your mind. It makes you overconfident, it makes you ignore pain and inhibits motor function while preserving just enough of your sanity for you not to notice something’s wrong.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Sounds like alcohol.”
“There are some parallels.” Melwyn agreed. “Now if you’re okay to walk, let us leave this place and let Wolf and Thorn worry about the artifact you found. We can rest somewhere away from here.”
I nodded and followed her without another word.
“Is there any way to avoid mana poisoning?” I asked as Melwyn led us up the crumbled blocks to the top of the wall surrounding the plateau.
“Practice, but a higher willpower helps.” Melwyn answered. “It’s a useful skill to have for more than just areas of high ambient magic. You can stop all sorts of malicious magical intrusion.”
“And you’ll teach me?” I asked as we sat down on the speckled gray stone bricks, giving us an unobstructed view of the northern mountains.
Melwyn nodded. “Yes. We can begin today if you’d like. Once you recover a bit.”
“I would.” I said and paused for a moment. “Why are you here with me and not Carmen?” I wondered. “Are he and Fig not the expedition healers?”
“I have more knowledge on magic and magical maladies than anyone else in the expedition and Carmen is with Autumn right now since she suffered more than you did from the mana poisoning.” She paused. “I’ve been tasked with interrogating you about what you two found below. The others are discussing the possible consequences as we speak.”
“That bad, huh.” I grumbled.
Melwyn sighed. “It might be. Others may come to the same conclusion as I.”
“And that is?” I prodded.
“Before I answer that, first tell me your story from the beginning.” She said, bringing out a notebook and a small enchanted pen from the pouch at her hip.
I told her everything from the moment I fell down those steps, to the rune-filled halls, to the storage areas filled with broken golems. She stopped me there. “Level 413. Are you sure?” She asked and I nodded.
“Is that high?” I asked. “I don’t have much of a sense of levels here.”
“The highest known level for an elvenoid is a human warlord far to the south with a level in the 230’s. This may not seem like that much of a difference, but path levels and the attributes you gain from them are not linear. A 413 golem could wade through a legion of level 100 soldiers without a scratch.”
“That seems like a large discrepancy.”
“The old histories of the old Heli empire cite prominent figures as having absurd levels. I never quite took them seriously, but maybe I should. It’s easy to dismiss the past in favor of modern achievements, but it doesn’t matter. You should continue.”
I continued my tale of the dragonfly golems, the circular passageway, and finally of the room beneath the council chamber. Melwyn hardly reacted when I recounted the fight with the slime, but when I spoke of the sphere and the staff, her pen scratched furious lines in her notebook. She even had me sketch the shape of the room on a blank page of her book.
“Words appeared?” She stopped me again. “And you could read them?”
“The characters looked a bit different from normal Helise, but I could read them fine.”
“And what did they say?”
“I don’t exactly remember, but it gave a bunch of system status information? It reminded me a lot like a computer from where I’m from.”
“Computer?” Melwyn frowned as she tasted the English word.
I blinked. How was I supposed to explain a computer to someone from a world like this? I tried anyway.
“It’s a machine that’s able to take in information, process it, and give you results. Similar to a rudimentary brain, but very adept at numerical calculations that our own brains find difficult. We used them for just about everything from entertainment to managing money to communicating to controlling large complicated systems with minimal user oversight.”
“And you think this is the same?”
“I’m not sure. It could just have a number of manually set analogue functions rather than a computer as I know of them.”
“We will have to discuss this in more depth later, but let’s move on. What happened next?”
“It told me that no one had accessed the system in over 4300 years and that my path qualified me to be what it called a ‘Keeper’.” Melwyn’s breath caught at that last word, but she refrained from interrupting me. “It stopped me from moving until I agreed. I was worried about the mana poisoning at that point, so I accepted. And then there was a pulse of magic from far beneath us.”
“Below. Not the sphere itself.” Melwyn confirmed.
I shrugged. “Both I guess, bit it started below. But when the magic hit me I saw things. I saw the expedition stumble. I saw orcs to the north and the cities around us. I saw other wardstones begin to sing. I don’t know how much was a fever dream and how much was real.”
“I suspect all of it was real.” The elf sighed and clutched her forehead with both hands. “Earth might get mad at me for telling you this, but I think you ought to know.” I looked up expectantly, waiting for her to continue. She did only after a long moment.
“There are a few surviving historical texts spinning tales of power, knowledge, and advanced magic that most dismiss as works of fiction, but I think I’m starting to believe the latter. The histories tell of a great Empire that once spread across half of Realgar and into the worlds beyond. But more than tribal politics and the ruling councils, they mention unbelievable magical systems in an almost dismissive fashion as if they were mundane aspects of life. Arcane power was gathered in the heart of cities and fed beneath the streets like veins of blood. Every wardstone on the continent was connected, creating havens safe from the appearance of monsters and magical beasts alike. There was communication, travel, and teleportation over massive distances.
“All of this magic and technology was linked back and controlled by a complex system of inscriptions at the heart and capitol of each continent. For each of these there was a single administrator who answered only to the council of tribes. Someone referred to as a ‘Keeper’.”
“Keeper of nothing by an ancient ruin.” I said.
“For now.” The elf nodded. “But the pulse of magic mirrored a single anecdote preserved in the old texts. If I made the connection, then others certainly will. Soon the entire continent will set their sights on the Heartwood.”
“And that’s what the others are meeting about.” I finished.
“Yes. But at the very least we will have until after the spring mana surge to prepare.”
As if to mock Melwyn’s words, the north-facing sentry shouted out a warning and pointed to the sky.