The next few hours passed in a blur as Gabe, Simon, and Professor Alrik went about cataloging the artifacts within the vault. One of the first things they did was group them by class. In total, there were a little over two hundred of the artifacts, but only a few dozen different classes. Most classes had several imbued with their pattern, though there were a few with only a single artifact. Without knowing what the source of the classes was, or even if that was a correct framing of the different mana patterns, they couldn’t say for sure if the difference in abundance of the artifacts was related to the relative rarity of the classes or just a byproduct of the conflict between the Council of Elders and Branot’s faction.
It was Simon who noticed that there didn’t appear to be any associated with the Sunshaper class mentioned in the journal.
“The Sunshapers were a part of Branot’s group. If this vault represents the artifacts that the Council of Elders were able to hang on to, I wonder if there is another vault hidden somewhere that contains the ones Branot was in control of. That might explain why there aren’t any Sunshaper artifacts.”
“That very well may be the case,” replied Professor Alrik. “If the artifacts in this vault are not sufficient for us to learn how to weave mana through the soul, then perhaps we should look more into that possibility. Queen Skarnara might have the answers, though I am wary of engaging with her more than we have to. I am not certain of her motivations.”
All three of them cast a glance towards the Soul Weaver spider that had taken up residence in one of the corners of the ceiling, a band of woven metal on its front right limb still glowing with an ethereal silver light from Professor Alrik’s spell. The spider had selected the item after going through almost half of all of the artifacts in the vault, though they weren’t sure if that meant it was looking for that artifact and the mana pattern imbued within it specifically, or if it just found one that fit its search criteria. They weren’t even sure if the spider was acting on Queen Skarnara’s order or its own.
It had retreated to the corner immediately after donning the band, and since then hadn’t moved. While they were wary of the spider, it had helped them both with navigating the citadel and dealing with the creatures in the city, so they were content to let it have the artifact.
After sorting the artifacts by class, Professor Alrik began to fill up a book he retrieved from the pack with pictures and descriptions of the compound mana node patterns and the spellforms associated with each class. While the sheer breadth of new knowledge was impressive enough, he was particularly fascinated with how the enchantments functioned. The seamlessness of how the information was imparted when holding an artifact spoke to a high-tiered mental mana-based spell, something well beyond even his capabilities.
Gabe and Simon assisted the professor with this for a while but soon became restless. While Professor Alrik was content methodically going through each item, recording slight deviations in compound node patterns and speculating on their importance, the two young men couldn’t resist the temptation to actually use the artifacts. They each grabbed a couple from different classes and went out into the hall to experiment with them.
“Alright, Gabe. Since you’re the one who took the biggest risk getting here, even if I did heroically jump in at the last moment to save you from your fated demise, you get the honors of casting the first spell,” Simon said once he and Gabe were far enough down the hall that the noise from their experiments wouldn’t disturb the professor. “What are you going to try first?”
Gabe currently held three artifacts- a ring, a circlet, and a shortsword. Honestly, he hadn’t really wanted the sword, but Simon cajoled him into grabbing one of the weapons. One of the first things they discovered was that holding multiple artifacts caused the patterns they created within the soul to overlap, creating a messy scrambled image that made it difficult to discern individual components, which conflicted with the telepathic information transfer.
Setting down the circlet and the sword, Gabe put the ring on his right hand. Outside of the radius of Professor Alrik’s spell, the ring no longer glowed with the same gold-speckled bright green light it had back in the vault. The plaque next to the ring had read “Verdant Guardian” and when Gabe looked inward toward his soul, he could feel the pulse of power coming from his life, physical, and earth mana nodes. He was slowly getting used to the sudden influx of power that came with using one of the artifacts.
Now that he wasn’t holding the other two artifacts, he could clearly see the Verdant Guardian pattern that was being projected onto his soul. Similar to the amulent he had held previously, multiple subpatterns were connected into a larger whole, though this one only granted two compound mana types, nature mana from life and earth mana and stability mana from physical and earth mana.
Before experimenting with either of those or any of the spellforms woven within the pattern, Gabe first drew out some life mana and wove it into the familiar pattern for Aura of Vitality. Or at least he tried to. The threads of mana he pulled had a different feel to them. Usually, there was a wild vibrancy to the mana, an almost living quality to it that he had to wrangle with his will to shape it into the pattern he wanted. While there was still an undercurrent of that to the threads, they were also much more rigid and inflexible. It was orders of magnitude more difficult to manipulate the mana threads, so much so that a thin bead of sweat began trickling down his forehead as he tried to cast the spell.
“Everything okay there? You’re just kind of standing there with an expression on your face that could either mean you're focusing very intently on something or you really need to use the bathroom,” asked Simon.
“Be…quiet….casting….spell,” Gabe muttered between clenched teeth.
Finally, he was able to complete the spellform and the soft green light of his aura extended out around him.
“Did you just cast Aura of Vitality?” asked Simon curiously. “With all the effort you were putting in, I figured you were going with something big. Why so much difficulty with a tier two spell that you have already mastered?”
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“You try casting something. The mana from the artifact feels different. It doesn’t move as easily.”
Simon looked at the hammer in his hand. It was the same one that he had picked up earlier when they first entered the vault. It had the Forgemaster pattern imbued within it, which was one of the few classes that appeared to only have a single artifact. After Professor Alrik documented its pattern, Simon announced that he wanted it for himself. He was still staring at the hammer when a thick steel wall erupted from the floor right in front of him, causing Gabe to fall backward in surprise.
“What? How did you do that so quickly?” Gabe asked in amazement as he walked around the wall. It was tall enough to reach the ceiling, but only about five feet wide so it didn’t span the entire width of the hallway. “Even if the mana from the hammer responded normally, there’s no way you could cast a spell that has to be at least tier two that you have never seen before with easily.”
“It was tier three actually,” replied Simon with a confused expression on his face that quickly morphed into an amused smile as a second wall rose up next to the first. “There it is. It appears that the magic of these artifacts is just too much for a lowly junior apprentice. Maybe when you’re older you’ll be able to handle one of these.”
“Knock it off. There’s clearly some trick to it. If you won’t tell me, I’ll figure it out myself.”
A distant expression fell over Gabe’s face as he once again looked inward at the pattern being projected to his soul. The spell that Simon cast had clearly come from the hammer, so maybe when a person used an artifact, it was more difficult to cast spells that weren’t a part of the pattern. He quickly went through the spellforms that he could see, their names and effects passing through his mind as he focused on each. As much as he wanted to outdo Simon, none of the ones currently available to him were above tier two. It made sense, Simon had been expanding and strengthening his soul for much longer than Gabe had, so he likely had access to much more of the Forgemaster pattern than Gabe did the Verdant Guardian one.
Reviewing his options, he finally settled on one called Barkskin. The impression that flashed across his mind let him know that the spell was similar to Simon’s Stoneskin spell and would cause a thick layer of protective bark to grow over his body. He first tried to pull threads from his life and earth node to weave them into the correct pattern to form nature mana but found the mana just as difficult to work with as it had before. On top of that, even if he was able to get it into that shape, he wasn’t sure how he would then form the proper spellfrom for Barkskin.
By accident, his attention shifted from the nature mana pattern to the Barkskin spellform. All at once, he experienced a rush of mana as the threads he had been trying to wrangle moved of their own accord, swiftly following along the pattern into the nature mana node and then into the Barkskin spellform. The next second, overlapping sheets of bark began growing from his skin with a layer of moss forming in between as cushioning.
“Woah, that was weird.”
“I know, right?” laughed Simon. “I guess that explains why the mana threads are so difficult to control. Something about the enchantment must allow them to follow preplanned patterns when the correct command is given.”
“Yeah, this is much easier than learning how to weave mana with just your will alone. Practically anyone can pick up one of these and begin casting spells.”
“I wonder if that was the point.”
“What do you mean?”
“From the last few pages Master Alrik read to us, it sounded like as the conflict wore on, people were just given any artifact that was available and sent into battle. It might be that the enchantments on the artifacts were changed at some point to make them easier to use by people not familiar with the spells or mana types.”
Before Gabe could respond, the ground shook raining dust and debris on top of the two men as a loud boom followed by a mighty roar echoed through the citadel.
“Are you both okay?” asked Professor Alrik running into the hall, followed shortly by the Soul Weave spider. Seeing their nods, the concerned expression on his face shifted into one of confusion as he eyes the two walls and the bark growing from Gabe’s skin. “I see you were successful in using the artifacts to cast spells. You did not accidentally summon some great beast into this plane of existence that would account for the noise and ground shaking, did you?”
“No Master, that wasn’t us. Do you think there are people still alive down here after all this time?”
“A minute ago I would have highly doubted that, however, it appears that there is something out there other than those creatures we fought on our way here.”
“We have to go see what’s going on,” declared Gabe. “If there is someone out there, then they might be in danger.”
“I agree,” chimed in Simon hefting his hammer. “Besides, if there is some great beast out there, well then that solves a question I had about how I would practice some of these spells.”
“Alright, we will go,” said Professor Alrik. He quickly chanted a short spell and a light appeared on the wall. “This will help us find our way back here. Let us be quick about it, lives may be in danger.”
The trip back to the entrance of the citadel was quick, with the Soul Weaver spider once again taking the lead and acting as a guide. The light Professor Alrik conjured followed them, leaving a trail in its wake. They wasted no time exiting through the hole in the door as the ground continued to shake from whatever battle was taking place. They soon got their answers as the moment they left the citadel, they could see a massive version of the monsters they fought earlier flying in the sky a few blocks away from where they stood. It was easily the size of the citadel itself and its long tail was flicking through the air, demolishing buildings with every swipe.
The alpha creature was clearly in combat against someone as small explosions detonated ineffectively against its scales. A few moments later, a ray of brilliant ray shot at the beast, searing straight through the scales and burning a small hole into its flank. It roared ferociously, its cry echoed all around by the cries of the normal-sized versions.
“We need to get over there,” said Gabe looking at the others. “It sounds like there are dozens of the smaller ones there, it would take an entire army to defeat them all.”
“I agree, though I think we should be careful. Something about that last attack seemed familiar,” said Professor Alrik.
They moved with haste toward the sounds of the conflict, slowing only as the full battle came into view. It was as he’d feared, a small group was battling against a veritable onslaught of the creatures. He was about to see what spells he had that could be useful when a flash of red hair caught his attention. There, not thirty feet away from him, shooting off arrows so quickly he could hardly follow, was Freya.