The entrance to the Crystal Caverns wasn’t what I had expected. In fact, it looked a lot like the entrance to a cellar. When Jackson pulled open the doors, they led down into a stairwell filled with the same silvery mist that made up the cloud we floated on, or the mist that led from the common areas into our individual rooms.

  “Well, that’s nah ominous a’ all,” Salem said. “Think we’re movin’ into some demiplane or something?”

  “Seems likely,” I agreed, sniffing the air, but unable to discern where exactly the portal led. I grunted, then flicked my wand and placed a dragonfire infused shield and arcane armor over myself.

  “I’ll go first.”

  “I should go second,” Jackson said. “If Emrys is hurt, I can heal him some.”

  “Third,” Yushin shrugged, and Salem nodded.

  I stepped through the silver mist, and a moment later was assaulted by the change in the air. Hot sand blew far above us, and we were surrounded by stone and magic on all sides. There were traces of dark and powerful things slipping from distant spots, and I thought I could actually smell an elemental plane of stone or earth.

  My eyes helped expand the story my nose was telling me. I had appeared in a tunnel set with bracing, like the sort used to mine out ores. The walls were lined with glowing crystals, shedding enough light that my human companions should be able to see fairly well.

  The tunnel before us led into a fairly circular room, which in turn branched off into five different forks. Over each of the forks was a simple spell diagram. It wasn’t one that could actually be used for spellcasting, as most of the interior had been left blank, but by counting the rings, I could see the tunnels marked with third through seventh circle.

  Each of the tunnels gave off a different scent, but it was almost all overpowered by the acrid stench that rolled out of the seventh circle tunnel, like rotting meat and ozone mixed with absinthe and sewage. I pinched my nose and disjointed my bloodline, not wanting to smell it any more than I had to.

  A moment after I took everything in, Jackson arrived, followed swiftly by Yushin, and then Salem. They examined the walls and ceilings, and I took a moment to also cast ethersight, just in case we stumbled across any good components. I doubted we’d see any this early in, but it couldn’t hurt to be thorough. The walls radiated the cantrips of the light spell infused into the crystal, but otherwise, the spell didn’t reveal much.

  “Which path do we take?” Jackson asked. “We’re all third circle casters, so I think third circle makes the most sense.”

  “But we’re also all stronger than an average third circle,” I pointed out. “Yushin and I have our bloodlines, Salem’s got his psychic powers, and you’ve got divine miracles.”

  “That is true, but it depends on if this is the kind of test that we are supposed to attempt as a group, or as individuals,” Yushin said. “A group test, I think three or four. Individuals, I would say four, perhaps even five.”

  “We can’t know that, though,” Jackson said. “There weren’t any instructions.”

  Salem coughed and put his hand on the tile, speaking as he knelt.

  “Did’ya forget that postcognition is one of the powers I’ve developed?” he said. “Ave got plenty of thread for this.”

  I wondered if he was using a Hydref expression, or if the power used by psychics was really called thread, but before I could ask, he rose and started speaking again.

  “Seems like it’s usually done in two,” he said. “Ah saw a few do it in three, an’ Wesley did it alone an hour or two ago…”

  “Four it is?” I said, though it was more of a question. When nobody objected, I started moving down the tunnel, conjuring a weirlight to float over my head and light the way, pivoting my shield this way and that, and letting my bloodline fall back into place.

  As we moved down the tunnel, I thought I began to catch the scent of something new and strange, like whiskers, dreams, and shadows. Memories of something long passed, and of something yet to be. It was an odd sensation, and I glanced back at Salem.

  “I smell something, think it may be psychic…”

  Salem flicked his hands out and muttered something, closing his eyes.

  “Nae a psychic attack,” he said. “But there is somethin’. It’s got a mind shield, an’ a real slippery one at that, so it migh’ be able tah. Down the tunnel.”

  I tensed and focused on my arcane missile, then paused. Jackson was going to be on offense, more than likely. I shifted, focusing on a curse. I wasn’t especially well versed with weaving curses on the fly yet, but I could at least do something.

  I began muttering and flicking my wand, and as I did, I felt the spell shaping into place far quicker than it should have. I’d imbued enough of the misfortune part of my curse affinity to allow me to weave curses at a much faster rate, even if the only ones that were instant were the pre-made ones.

  I wove a curse through the air, creating a large field of misfortune, but with a hefty limit on it – namely, that it would only strike out at someone who attempted to attack the minds of one of us. The break condition was also incredibly simple – all they had to do was not assault our minds for a minute.

  The spell did drain my ether pool, but with nobody to really target the misfortune on, the drain was minimal, and we made our way down step by step, until we emerged into a room. It was large and circular, like the one earlier, but this time it only had a single path leading deeper.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  More pressingly, there was a massive sphinx in the middle of the room, easily twenty five feet long, and her tail lashing. She turned as we entered, and stone rumbled, sealing off the path deeper in – though notably, not the exit.

  She fixed us with a feral smile, then spoke, her voice booming through the entire room and resounding off the walls.

  “Welcome, strangers, but beware,

  As you approach this maiden fair,

  I may be the first of of challenges four,

  Each person’s riddle answered to pass my door!”

  I took a sniff, and judged her… not as powerful as I’d feared. She was strong, certainly, and had a distinctly etheric smell that suggested she was a summoned being, but her power seemed about on par with what I’d expect to be able to fight two fourth circle mages to a standstill.

  That was probably the other side of the puzzle, then. We could answer her riddles and pass with no violence, or try and take her out.

  “Ask an’ we shall answer, oh comely lass,” Salem said, speaking up first.

  “Black as the night, yet with an opal shine. Almost a murder, though only unkind.”

  “Ah hells, this is poignant,” Salem muttered. “A bloody raven.”

  “You may pass, Salem of Hydref,” the sphinx said.

  I stepped up next, wanting to get this over with, and the sphinx examined me.

  “No legs have I to dance, nor lungs to breathe, nor life that ends to die. And yet I do all three. What am I?”

  I considered it for a moment. Salem’s riddle had indeed – as he had put it – been poignant. I was guessing mine would as well. And there was something that could dance, breathe, and die.

  “Fire,” I said.

  “You may pass, Emrys of Many Places.”

  Jackson stepped up next and closed his eyes.

  “An abbot can cast a new candle from three stubs, and he finds nine stubs in his congregation. How many new candles can he make?”

  Jackson paused, clearly almost answering three on instinct, but stopping himself at the last moment.

  “Four,” he said. “He makes three candles, which leave three stubs. That creates a fourth candle.”

  “You may pass, Jackson of White Sands,” the sphinx intoned.

  Finally Yushin stepped forward.

  “Slayer of kings and taker of thrones, sits upon knife and clings onto bones. A sea of green in which you shall play, for this wi–”

  “Poison,” Yushin answered, before the sphinx even had a chance to finish. The sphinx stared for a moment, then nodded.

  “You may pass, Yushin of the Golden Palace.”

  The stone blocking the entryway melted, and I glanced around.

  “Everyone ready?” I asked, then began heading down the path.

  We began filing down the path, when Yushin shouted. I pivoted on instinct, bringing my shield in front of me, and an arrow slammed into it. There was a slight flicker of blue as it struck, but then it plinked to the floor, harmless.

  “Poison,” Yushin said. “Pale… Pale…”

  She grunted and then spoke in Hua-Long, and I translated for the group.

  “Whitewyrm Mercury.”

  “Yes. It is very painful, but incredibly slow to kill. You would have hours of pain, yes, but also time to get to a healer before it actually began to damage your heart.”

  “Makes sense, given tha’ all this is a test’n’such,” Salem said. “Still bit of a prick move, though.”

  I nodded, and we continued to make our way down the hall, but our training in the library had shown its worth. Ethersight revealed runes before they could activate, and either summon stone, lifeberry, or Salem’s psychic affinity let us set them off remotely. Yushin’s senses revealed poisons, and my own revealed a few burning oil traps hidden in the ceiling.

  Before long, we emerged into another circular chamber, not unlike the one we had fought the sphinx in, and my nose was struck with the overwhelming smell of wet dog, mixed with a strangely pungent metallic smell, like the scent near a forge, but wrong. Its bloodline was stronger than the sphinx, but also felt… limited.

  Not in the sense of an external limiter, but in the sense that it didn’t have a breadth of functions. Yushin had her cracks at the bottom of her pool, and I had the coals in my bonfire, but both of us had a variety of things we could use our bloodline for, and do so flexibly. This wasn’t so flexible or varied, more akin to an ogre’s bloodline, which was potent, but only really did two things: improve a person’s strength and their toughness.

  In the center of the room, a massive creature, the size of a horse and cat together, that resembled a six legged wolf paced, watching us, and the path forward snapped shut, stone blocking the way once again.

  The wolf lunged, and I brought the shield forward to block it. It struck the spell, there was a flare of blue, and it vanished.

  The wolf was on me then, and I spun to the side, moving underneath it. I whipped my wand down, throwing a combat misfortune curse at it, but the curse seemed to slide right off. A fireball slammed into it from one side, and a wind blade from another, but both of them seemed to do nothing.

  I rolled between its legs and leapt into the air, slamming my bloodline down into the coals and landing atop its back. It whipped its head around and snapped at me, but I leapt back and shifted to one side and then the other, leading it away.

  “It’s immune to magic!” I shouted, but my friends had already figured that much out. Salem was retreating back up the tunnel, while Jackson seemed to have gotten a sword somewhere.

  With his musculature, bright eyes, and dark skin, he looked like the portrait of a hero as he dashed in, slamming his sword into the creature’s legs. It threw the beast off balance, and it lunged for me, trying to snap me up before turning around fully to face Jackson.

  I thrust my hand forward and condensed my bloodline in my hand. The wolf’s jaws slammed shut around it, and with a heave of strength, I lifted it into the air and threw it across the room.

  Yushin appeared from nowhere in front of the wolf’s now-exposed throat and drove a dagger into its throat, but even as blood flowed from the wounds we had dealt it, it stood again.

  I swished my wand, summoning Orla, and then casting summon gadhar a second time, taking a guess about the creature. It was clearly immune to spellcasting, but it wasn’t plainly immune to power of all sorts. My shield had stopped it, after all, it had just vanished a moment later.

  The wolf dove for my summoned dogs, who flared their wings out and flew overhead, barking and releasing pulses of their own bloodline to beat it back, and Yushin appeared again underneath it, scoring its stomach with her daggers. Jackson shifted, sweeping his sword forward and cutting into its chest.

  I pulled a single silver coin from my pocket, glad to see my theory proven correct, and cast coinshot, the spell from the transmutation syllabus, infusing the spell with a bit of dragonfire.

  The coin ripped through the air with the force of an arrow and drove into the eye of the wolf, and the battle was over. That single shot didn’t end it, but between my pair of gadhar and supporting coinshots, Jackson’s bladework, and Yushin’s daggers, we were able to end the creature before too long, and the door rumbled open.

  Salem returned, and flashed us a slightly nervous smile.

  “Sorry ‘bout tha’,” he said. “It was immune to my mind attacks an’ the wind spells I learned.”

  “Not a problem,” Jackson said, smiling as his sword faded away into motes of golden light. “We all have our strengths. I would be useless against a psychic only enemy.”

  Yushin simply nodded her agreement.

  “I don’t blame you at all,” I said, waving my hand while I began Xander’s massage on my bloodline and ether pool. “One or two challenges left, depending on if the trapped hallway counts. Let me recast my defensive spells, and we can go.”

  Patreon Here!

  Discord Here!