NOVEL NEXT Chapter Thirty-Six: Grotto's Waystations
Though I worked most of Saturday, spending the time between customers working on Jadis' remodel using the flipping back and forth technique that professor Toadweather had suggested to me. I wasn't able to get it to the point of being able to activate both sides at once, but I managed to get the techniques to about a half-second interval between each of the sides of the bowl.
As soon as I was done, however, I hopped on my broom and flew back to the school in a rush, landing before the tall brass spire where the lockers were located, then walked into the locker room. Once again, as I passed through the door frame, I felt a warm, wet sensation rush over me, like leaping into a sun-beaten lake in the middle of summer, before emerging in the locker room.
Unlike before, however, the sensation rushed to my ring, where it seemed to condense. I held the ring up, studying it, but the third star didn't light up, and the vault of stored spells didn't seem to grow any larger. Despite that, there was still a power that pulsed through the ring, like a wave of balmy beach water. I pushed a bit of ether into the first function, the one that seemed to bring me to the extraspatial tunnels connecting the library, dining hall, registration, and my dorm room.
I half expected a tunnel to open up in the wall, and half expected for nothing at all to happen, but I still managed to be surprised. The ring did manage to draw in the ether, and the star began to glow more brightly. It shimmered for a few moments, then dimmed back down to its normal level of light, releasing the draw it had on my ether. Despite the rather obvious reaction, no secret passage appeared for bearers of the ring to use. In fact, the lockers didn't even visibly react, their wooden doors and gold plaques still sitting placidly.
If something had changed, it would most likely be in my own locker, so I started walking down the hall, letting the spatial warping blur me past the walls of past students. I did wonder what happened to items in a locker that belonged to the dead. There was probably some way for a professor, or at least the Erudite, to force his way in, given that he was able to deposit the hydra parts, but how many would think to claim their deceased family's school locker? What if there was nobody to claim it?
Ultimately I had no answers, and just stopped at my own locker, opening it with a wave of my student card and stepping inside, where I felt a slight flash of vindication. The large room on the other side was barren, as I didn't own enough stuff to be worth keeping in the locker, but situated right against the back wall was a door frame that led to a familiar set of tunnels. Admittedly, that wasn't quite as useful as being able to just draw and stow things from the locker remotely, but it was still a rather large step toward making the locker more convenient. Instead of crossing the entire campus to go to a building where I didn't live and didn't have any of my classes, I could just take a quick walk from my dorm.
That did raise a handful of other questions, however – namely, if just visiting a place wasn't enough to create a doorway, and I needed to actively power the ring, where else could I create them?
I decided to hold off on experimenting about that for a little bit, and instead withdrew a few items from my Etherius locker, placed them on the ground, then left. As soon as I was in the hall, I tried to draw them back into the Etherius locker from the school one, imagined the items teleporting to me, and even tried to mimic professor Toadweather's chant. I drew out my student slate to see if that would activate it, tried to cast Arcane Passage to see if I could teleport the objects instead of myself somehow, and went back in to see if the slate would reveal any hidden puzzles, but all my efforts came to nothing
There was still the odd sense of power clinging to the ring, however. I tried to reach for it, to manipulate it, to guide it as a method to merge my two lockers or to transfer things between them, or bring things from the locker to me, but no matter what I did, I wasn't able to get the power to respond.
Hopeful that I'd be able to get something – anything – from the strange feeling, I cast ethersight and studied my bound signet ring. Sure enough, clinging to the artificery like a watery film was a layer of what I thought might be bloodline magic, though I wasn't entirely sure. Non-wizard sources of power didn't have nearly the same level of details when examined under ethersight, but they were visible, and I was confident that this wasn't divine, psychic, or life enforcement at work. That only left songcalling, bloodlines, and destiny magic, and it felt most like a bloodline, just not one I recognized.
That set off a new round of me attempting to interact with the warm watery magic with my own fire, but once again, I was unable to get any sort of result.
I wasn't too disappointed. Being able to access it through the tunnels was interesting enough as is, and it had revealed that I was capable of expanding the network. That alone was worth it – if I'd only ever been locked into being able to access the initial four places it granted, it would have been rather lackluster. Especially once I graduated, and didn't have a room at the school or a meal plan any longer.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
With a newfound sense of vigor and excitement, I left the locker room – which caused the bloodline power condensed around the ring to vanish as well – then began to visit places around the school. The first stop that I made was at the fountains with the animated water sculptures that sat at the front of the registration hall. It didn't yield a new path, which was hardly surprising, so I set off to the entrance of Shadesilk forest and tried there.
This time, I got something. When I fed my ring ether, it began to glow and suck in my magic once again, and one of the towering oak trees that stood in the entrance to the tail through the woods morphed, forming a doorway that I could access with the ring.
Cheered on by that success, I headed deeper into the forest, and stepped into the faerie castle where I had classes with professor Toadweather. There was a party raging, as there often seemed to be when I visited the castle outside of class time, but the party wasn't enough to stop me from being able to open up another waystation within the grotto's paths. This one was located in a small hall closet that mainly held cleaning supplies. I said my gracious hellos to professor Toadweather, who was drinking out of an acorn cap, and then left to visit some of the other places deep in the shadesilk forest.
In the initial map of the school, I'd spotted a dryad's grove, naiad's pond, and the cave of the Erudite's draconic familiar on the map. I'd stayed well clear of the familiar, and planned to continue giving them a wide berth, but the other two were at least worth a visit.
Following my memories from the handful of times I'd seen the map, as well as the more recent time that I'd followed Yushin to very near the grove, I floated above the shadesilk forest and flew to where I thought the grove was. I was a bit off course, but after walking through the forest, following the scent of dryadic bloodlines, and bypassing a handful of large black colored silken spider webs, I passed through a break of trees and emerged into a clearing. In the center of the clearing was a single tall tree, at least fifty feet tall, and striped with a dozen different colors in a way that was somewhat like those found in Grand Trees.
The tree was laden with fruit, each one the size of my clenched fist, but not like any sort of fruit that I'd seen before. They were a blend of swirling colors, shifting slightly as I watched them, like whirls of acrylic paints mixing together. They were shaped somewhat like pears, but at the top where they tapered off, the fruits were indented slightly, like the top of a cherry. Their skins looked thick and slightly crinkly, like an orange or an avocado.
The scent that the tree gave off was absolutely staggering. Most dryad bloodlines weren't all that powerful, usually ranking above a werewolf, but well below a dragon of a comparable age. Whatever this hamadryad had done, however, it was more than a minor upgrade. The entire tree reeked of power, edging over either Gerhard's or the dark sect cultivator that had taken the entire team to fight.
A woman, with skin like bark and hair like flowing vines, stepped from the tree and studied me.
"Why have you come to my grove, child of flame? Do you seek to test yourself to claim one of my fruits?"
"I… hadn't even realized that was a thing, nor do I know what your fruits do," I admitted. "I mainly came here because I'm a member of the Coven of the Twilight Grotto, and thought I may be able to create a tunnel that linked here."
I held up my hand to show the ring as I spoke, though I made sure to move slowly, so that she wouldn't think that I was going to conjure a blast of my breath or anything of the sort. The hamadryad studied it, then nodded.
"Very well. Place your artificer magic, and then be gone from my grove. It is not pleasant for my roots to have a burning spark like you dancing upon them. Should you wish to challenge me for a fruit, you may return, as is the right of any university student. Otherwise, I would ask you to leave me and my daughters alone."
I bowed slightly in respect, then channeled ether into the ring. One of the trees in the grove – indeed, the only one that didn't have dryad bloodline magic seeping from it – turned into a doorway, and I stepped through and took the short walk back to the castle before leaving to find the naiad pool.
The pool was equal in beauty to the dryad grove, with shining waters that managed to perfectly reflect the forest around them, while simultaneously being so perfectly crystal clear that I could see dozens of fish floating through the pond, which was really more like a small lake. Unlike in the dryad grove, multiple students had gathered around, and I sighed as I heard them attempting to flirt with the naiads, and rolled my eyes, which actually caught the attention of one of the unearthly beautiful water spirits.
"Are we really so boring?" she asked, batting her long eyelashes at me. I just shrugged.
"No, but I think that the people here trying to charm you all are idiots," I said. "I can smell your bloodlines. Most of you are at least in your seventies. There's nothing a twenty year old is going to say that's actually that impressive to you. Also, if any of them met a wild naiad from an elemental plane, they'd probably wind up being dragged under and killed."
That got a lopsided grin from the naiad, who nodded her agreement.
"No, none of them – including you – are that impressive. But it is good fun to tease them. What are you here for? Given how you've barely looked at me, I'm guessing you're the sort who only cares about the magic. The Naiad's kiss ritual?"
"Maybe sometime," I said. "It's on my list of rituals to do, but it's admittedly lower than the buckler. No, I'm here for this."
I waved my hand to create another waypoint, this one right along the edge of the water. The naiad I'd been speaking to nodded and wandered off, while I stepped through to go see if I could find anywhere else to put one. Maybe the seer's bonfire? And definitely in the observatory. Oh, and maybe…