NOVEL NEXT 121 - Finally, Some Answers
"I thought," Archmund said, "that you were going to give some explanation about how it was better if I'd learned it for myself."
"That's something you would do," Gelias said. Rory and Beatrice nodded vigorously.
Guilty as charged. He was big on learning by doing and project-based learning. But he would have preferred to learn from others' mistakes over his own.
"It's a common rule that letting your magic affiliate with any faction with a magical identity of its own weakens you to their magical influence," Gelias said. "Didn't your magic teacher tell you that?"
Archmund shook his head. "She was a self-proclaimed genius."
Gelias grimaced. "That always bodes poorly."
"But they took so little power!" Beatrice said. The Keycards had attuned nearly instantly.
"That's all it takes," Gelias said. "The slightest touch of power, in exchange for letting you move about this place freely, but bound by its rules and traditions as a price."
Archmund swallowed. Yeah, that sounded about right for any group, organization, or workplace he'd ever heard of. Perhaps heaven and hell were bureaucracies, like in Chinese mythology.
"That explains what happened to them," Archmund said, "but what happened to me?"
"Perhaps you're just uniquely vulnerable to being given power," Gelias said. "Or perhaps it was just human nature."
"Let's go with that second one."
"You're clever, Granavale. Far cleverer than most people around you. Anyone can see that. The type to proclaim yourself a genius."
Archmund grimaced. "And that always bodes poorly, huh?"
"It can," Gelias said. "If you don't have people who can counterbalance your more extreme tendencies around you. And I knew I wasn't strong enough to be that person. Every instinct in me told me I would have to be significantly stronger if I had any hope of pulling you back from the path you were following. All I could do was pray you would come to your senses and free yourself."
"Did you expect me to?"
"You have a good heart, but you don't like following the obvious paths set out for you. This place was bound to clash with your spirit eventually. I'm glad it didn't take too long."
Was this how it felt when someone else knew more than they should've? Archmund couldn't deny it was kind of annoying. Which reminded him of something else.
"I also got another… I suppose it's an unwanted guest," Archmund said. "A sort of invisible companion that speaks in my head. It says it will never act against my interests, and its information seems reliable, and it's associated with my personal progression through this Dungeon, but… any chance you know something?"
Gelias paused. "You're sure it's not a vivid hallucination? That you haven't lost it?"
Well, that was a concerning answer.
"I mean you all thought I'd lost it, so."
"Is it still here?"
"I saw it," Archmund said. "When I opened my eyes to magic, and I cleared the Monsters I'd sent after you, I saw it around my head like a crown. A connection between me and the universe."
"I have no idea," Gelias said. "It could be a part of your mind. It could be a messenger of the Goddess or the One Below. It could be your first steps to becoming a sage. Only you can answer that."
"So, you wanted answers," Gelias said. "I can't help but notice we're missing a friend."
"That's why I need your help," Archmund said. "Mary's… she's not waking up. I'm told it shouldn't be too hard to wake her, but… I need your expertise. I need someone who can feel her magic that won't… intrude."
"I can help with that indeed," Gelias said.
"Thanks… friend."
Gelias nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Archmund opened one final portal. The glass door to the office glinted, a hundred meters away.
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"This isn't that far," Rory said. "I thought you said you'd protected Mary?"
"I did," Archmund said. "But it's mystical protection. Spiritual. Theoretically."
"How confident are you in the strength and integrity of those protections?" Gelias said.
Well, Gemmy had told him how to build those protections. He'd thought Gemmy might be a parasite or some malicious entity, but it was starting to seem more and more like Gemmy was actually a magical link between his mind and the fundamentals of reality, twisted in such a form that he could understand. Basically, Clippy from Microsoft Word 2000.
"It looks fine and clear to me?" Beatrice said. "No defenses, but no Monsters, either."
"Open your sight," Gelias said. "Look at this place, truly look at it."
Archmund did. Every surface was slicked with the dense Dungeon darkness, like oil splattered across a messy kitchen. Clawing at the door of the office. The slightest provocation would…
"Let's try to get to her," Archmund said testily.
They charged forward —
And then the Monsters attacked. Emerging from the darkness like birds from a shaken tree or bees from a kicked hive.
Archmund raised his Gemstone Rapier in front of his face, but he needn't have bothered. Rory threw his Gemstone Quarterstaff, spinning through the air like a helicopter rotor. The Monsters spat poisonous darkness towards them, and Rory intercepted it all, melting the darkness away with charismatic light, transmuted through his quarterstaff. He wasn't a meatshield, he was a beacon of light, banishing the darkness of doubt. He was more than a pawn — he was a guiding example, of what kindness could be.
Gelias Let A Thousand Arrows Fly, over and over, in a blistering barrage. Weak Monsters fell, their heads popping like watermelons, as they scrambled over each other to attack the four of them. But a good number of them lived, the arrows sticking in their heads, malevolent pincushions. Though he still kept his secrets, now he was as willing as any to be part of the team. Sometimes, the strong were made stronger through coordination and cooperation.
When Archmund's eyes shifted, he would lose track of Beatrice. If he focused, he could find her, but her Shadow Cloak let her slip from his awareness should he release his attention at all.
But she had embraced her possibilities. No longer was she nipping at his heels, trying to leech off of his glory and complaining when she failed to capture even a small fraction of his potential.
She blocked the projectiles Rory didn't with red marks of her wand, harsh gashes scoured in the war-rared air. For the Monsters that stood once Gelias struck them, she slung her metal knife in rapid parabola along her lanyard-chain, its tip hardened by wand-drawn black. Monsters fell to nothing, the Gems they dropped far too disparate and porous to be of magical use. Each worth a peasant's year.
But the four of them were in unspoken agreement — get to their fifth compatriot, Mary, first, then collect the dregs. Some would dissolve, but that was fine, all things considered. They'd already harvested a king's ransom's worth of functional Gems.
Archmund peppered what Monsters remained with his Infrared Lance. A full, powerful blast, strong enough to kill. And yet for some, it didn't.
They managed a stalemate. The Monsters kept coming for them, but they were kept fully at bay.
"Is it just me, or are they stronger?" he muttered.
He hadn't meant his words to carried, but he felt the air grow tense — though it couldn't get much tenser than the middle of a fight.
"We noticed that, too," Gelias said. "When you held them back and harvested them, that power went somewhere."
That was concerning. But he had a bigger concern. He had to save Mary, no matter what might be binding her in place.
"You could try the Cufflinks," Rory said hesitantly.
Archmund shooks his head. "I'd be useless afterwards."
Using it to find Gelias had taken him down to about 40% of his magical reserves. He hadn't been keeping track of his total amount, but he had to image he'd been pretty close to full since he'd been relying on the Dungeon's borrowed power for heavy lifting. If he used it again, to clear the way, who knew how weakened he might leave himself?
But there had to be a way. A clever way.
He pulled out the Diamond Hand.
"That's still so creepy," Beatrice muttered. "And morbid."
The Portal and the Power to Fire were just the flashiest applications of the Diamond Hand. The basic Skill was Warp.
"I thought you didn't have enough power for a portal," Rory said.
"Gemmy," Archmund thought. "You said that Warp could draw on the environmental miasma to distort space. Was that contingent on me being interconnected with the Dungeon?"
"Nope! The Diamond Hand can harness environmental power even if you can't! But without a strong connection to the Dungeon, it'll be inefficient and imprecise!"
"And how much of my power will it drain?"
"A minimal amount."
That tracked. He hadn't been able to use it to teleport directly in front of Rory and Beatrice and Gelias, so he'd had to spend valuable time and energy finding them.
But sometimes, he didn't need a precise scalpel. He needed a blunt hammer.
Warp had let him stretch his office. It was only logical that it could compress it.
He began the process of Warp, and the space between them and the office compressed, and suddenly a wave of Monsters were upon them.
They fought them off as Archmund hurriedly undid the process.
"Let's not do that again," Beatrice said.
"You were thinking of bringing the door to us instead of walking there?" Gelias said.
Archmund nodded. "Compressing the distance also compressed the miasma. Not a great move."
"So if compressing it compresses the Monsters… then would stretching it…" Rory said.
Archmund almost snapped that was a stupid idea, because if you stretched the distance then you'd have to walk further, but he stopped himself because it was actually a genius idea.
He was thinking in terms of making the distance to the door shorter or longer.
But if it was a matter of density, then he could stretch the width of the corridor, and compress the length to boot. He warped the room to be several football fields wide while staying the same length, and they began to walk.
They walked slow and scared at first, unsure if the banished deluge would return. But even the sense of malice emanating from the walls had diminished. The miasma had been stretched thin, and it would take time for it to pool so densely. Like water pooling on a city street after a rain, it gathered to the deepest parts, and would take time to overflow again.
And so they came to the office door.
It was locked. Archmund reached for his Keycard, but Gelias's hand caught him, his eyes filled with warning.
"You're right," Archmund said. "Let's do this the hard way."
And he kicked the door in.