The first thing Gabe noticed when he regained consciousness was that he was lying on something hard. He could hear someone breathing close by, but for now he kept his eyes closed, the events of that vault replaying in his mind. Physically, he seemed to be fine but gone was that feeling of vitality and life that he’d grown used to since attuning his soul. In its place was a hole that throbbed and burned. Ever since awakening his life node, Gabe had been able to feel the mana within him. He hadn’t realized just how important that sensation had been to his sense of self until it was gone.
At last, he opened his eyes, expecting to see one of the Knights standing guard. Much to his surprise, it was Simon who was sitting just a few feet away from him. The two of them seemed to be a small cavern with only a small amount of light being generated from some fungi growing along the wall. The dim lighting cast Simon’s face in shadows and the young man appeared to staring at nothing.
“Simon?” asked Gabe as he sat up.
The sound of Gabe’s voice broke Simon out of his trance and he looked over at his friend, relief evident on his face.
“Gabe! I’m so glad you’re awake. I wasn’t sure, I mean, your injury, and then you were unconscious and there wasn’t anything I could do.”
“What happened? How did we get here?”
A curious expression passed over Simon’s face. He looked down and Gabe realized that Simon was holding an item in his hand. It was difficult to see in the dim light, but he could just make out a bracelet with several small gemstones inlaid within it.
“Is that one of the artifacts? Is that how we got away?”
“After you passed out, I knew I needed to do something. Master Alrik told me it was too risky to channel so much of the artifacts’ mana but I couldn’t just leave you behind. I…I damaged my soul fighting off the Knights. Your magic healed my injuries, but it couldn’t help my soul. When I heard them trying to get through the walls, I reached for an artifact I’d set aside as a backup plan. I wasn’t sure it would work, not with the state my soul was in but I knew I wasn’t in any state to carry you. So I picked it up.”
There was something off about Simon’s tone, but Gabe couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Well, the artifact must have worked, right? Otherwise, we’d be captured right now.”
And that’s when it hit him. He looked around the cavern, straining his eyes to see everything he could. It was as he’d feared, it was just him and Simon there.
“You weren’t able to get to Professor Alrik,” Gabe said softly.
Simon didn’t respond to Gabe, instead, he continued his story.
“When I picked up the bracelet, it wasn’t like the other times I used the artifacts. There was a great pressure in my soul and I was worried that it was too damaged to access the artifact’s mana. I could feel the connection so I pulled at it and the pressure built until something broke. All at once all of its mana poured into me. For a split second, it was pure agony but then the pain went away and I felt whole again. The artifact healed my soul and forced open three new nodes. If that wasn’t strange enough, the class pattern was etched into my soul. Even when I let go of the artifact, it’s still there, it’s like it has become a part of me.
By this point, they were almost through the final wall so I grabbed you and tried to activate Shadowstep, a spell that should have let us teleport out of the room but it didn’t work. The pattern was there, but it wasn’t connected to my mana nodes, so I tried to weave the spellform like I would normally. The mana threads were firmer, and more solid than they’d ever been before. I did it, Gabe, I did what Master Alrik was trying to do. I weaved the mana through my soul into the class pattern. It was hard, much harder than casting a spell used to be, but I finished it right as they broke through. Once I finished it, I could feel the connection to the spell as it was a part of me and I dumped all the mana I could into it. When we landed here, I realized my mistake.”
Gabe didn’t know what to say. He knew that Simon was beating himself up over not getting Professor Alrik out of there too, but from the sound of things, the two of them had just barely been able to escape. He scooted over next to him and placed a hand on his back.
“Thank you for getting us out of there. I don’t know how many other people would have been able to do what you did in those circumstances. I think Professor Alrik would be proud of you.”
In the dim light of the cave, Gabe could see Simon’s eyes tear up. The professor had been like a father to Simon after his own passed away, losing him like this must have felt awful. Gabe sat there with him in silence for a while, gently rubbing his back and letting him know that he didn’t have to go through this alone.
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“Enough of that,” Simon said rubbing at his face a few minutes later. “Besides, I have something for you Gabe.”
Simon reached into his pocket and pulled out a pendant necklace. The Spellstell was threaded around three gemstones in various shades of blue and the whole thing was about the size of Gabe’s palm.
“I figured you might have damaged your soul trying to heal us so before I Shadowstepped us out of there, I grabbed this. Oddly enough, now that I have the Voidwalker pattern etched onto my soul, I can’t sense the pattern in this one so I don’t know what it does.”
Gabe reached out and took the necklace. As soon as he made contact with the metal, he felt the pressure Simon had described. Simon took Gabe’s hand in his and gave it a squeeze.
“It’s a bitch at first, but it’s worth it, I think.”
Gabe took in a breath and directly his will toward the mana he could sense within the artifacts pushing through the pressure that was blocking him. At a certain there he felt a crack and mana flooded into him with such intensity, that he nearly fell back as if he was struck. Just as the pain became intolerable, it receded, taking with it the ache he’d been feeling in his soul. The feeling of life mana was still absent, but there was something else there. He could taste salt and there was a sensation of deep power.
“So, what was it?” Simon asked elbowing him in the side playfully.
When Gabe reflected inward, it was as Simon had described. The class pattern wasn’t just a psychic impression, it was carved into his very being. He could only see a small part of the pattern, but he knew its potential.
“Reefbreaker.”
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Freya was sitting alone outside of the citadel. She couldn’t wait to get out of the tunnels and back to Aranthia. Her bow was on the ground beside her and she was staring at it. Ever since she was a little girl with her first training bow, she’s loved the way the weapon felt in her hands. There was just something about the power of it, the way the bowstring grew taut with tension as she pulled it back, eager to propel the arrow toward her target. It was a form of magic in its own right, a way to affect things far away from her. But now when she looked at her bow, all she saw was the expression on Gabe’s face after she shot him.
Anger she could have dealt with, betrayal something she could understand. No, what she couldn’t handle was the sadness that had plagued his face. Gods damn Alrik and his mental compulsion spells. Why did he have to craft one so insidious that so much of Gabe’s true personality would shine through? It would have been easier if Gabe had just been a mindless drone forced to follow orders. And he had to have been following orders, there’s no way the Gabe she knew would have been able to deceive the Knights well enough to lead them into a trap like that. Everything had been going so well until the end and now she didn’t even know if she had it in her to pick up her bow again. It was these stupid tunnels, nothing good ever came out of them.
“Freya, is it alright if I join you?”
She was snapped out of her thoughts by Iansi’a. The elf Knight Captain looked tired. Her face was covered in sweat and grime and she held her helmet in her hand. In the other was a canvas sack that looked like it had something oddly shaped within it. Rather than respond, Freya simply shrugged her shoulders. Taking it as an invitation, Iansi’a sat down beside her.
“I know today was rough and it may not feel like it, but we did succeed in our goal. Alrik is apprehended and soon enough will stand before the Council to answer for his crimes. A force of great evil has been neutralized, all because of you. You should be proud of yourself.”
“If what we did was so great, then why do I like the bad guy?”
“I’ll let you in a secret Freya,” sighed Iansi’a. “Being the good guys means making the hard calls and sometimes that means we need to do things that keep us up at night. But it’s the fact that it bothers you so much that proves you're in the right. Guys like Alrik don’t care about the people they hurt. To the extent that he cares about Gabe or his apprentice, he’s just upset that he’s lost some useful assets. I’m not exaggerating when I say that we couldn’t have done this without you, especially at the end. You saw what needed to be done and you took care of it. Those are the defining features of a Knight.”
Iansi’a reached into the sack and pulled out a gleaming metal bow. Along its edges were rows of finely cut gemstones that twinkled with an inner light. Curiously, it didn’t have a strong but the metal was light and flexible.
“That vault was a literal treasure trove that will benefit the Pathways of Illumination for centuries to come. If the researchers can discover how they were made, we’re likely to be on the precipe of a new magical age. But of all the weapons and items in that vault, there was only a single bow. This bow. And I talked it over with the rest of the team, we all agree that it should be yours.”
Iansi’a extended her hand, offering the bow to Freya. She didn’t know what to think. She’d been given the rundown by the Knights that these were powerful artifacts that granted users access to previously unknown magics. Even the weakest of them would be worth a fortune and they were going to offer one to her?
“I don’t think I can accept that,” said Freya softly.
“Please, it’s yours,” Iansi’a insisted. “I meant what I said, Freya. You would make an excellent Knight. I know you feel that because you don’t have magic, you don’t belong but that just isn’t true. And with that bow in your hands, it wouldn’t matter anyway. What do you say?”
Freya looked at her old bow and all she saw was Gabe’s face. These tunnels had taken so much from her. First her original party, then Gabe. Was she really going to let them take away her passion for archery? Would she be okay going back to the Adventuer’s Guild and sitting behind a desk every day? She made her decision. She reached out and took hold of the bow and for the first time in her life, she felt mana stir within her.