Book 3, Chapter 58 (Patreon)

The tunnel was short, barely ten feet long before ending with a locked door. I examined it thoroughly to confirm there were no magical traps, then stepped aside to let Averin do the same. Our third wheel just lurked in the back, mostly peering out into the tower to make sure no one had noticed us.

“Looks clean to me,” Averin said.

“Same, but when I try to scry the other side, something is blocking me. I’m thinking this is a double-walled vault. This door is here to block the mana emanations, and there’s a whole separate warding scheme on the other side that we won’t see until we trigger it by opening the door.”

“Could be, but if so, we’re going to have a hard time getting through it.” Averin glanced over at me, then back at the wall behind us and added slyly, “Unless you know something I don’t.”

“I’ve seen these kinds of set ups before,” I answered. “I can’t say for certain what will happen when we try to open this door, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility that we’ll trigger some sort of alarm or defensive ward.”

“And since we don’t even know if the trap exists, let alone how to access it and disarm it, we’re stuck unless we want to risk someone’s life and possibly the contents of whatever’s on the other side recklessly opening it.”

“That about sums it up,” I said. “If I had to guess, I would say this door is actually locked and the proper key to open it would disarm the wards. Picking the lock or forcing the door could have… unpredictable results.”

“Damn it,” Averin swore. “We’re so close, but this is nothing on its own. What if whatever’s behind this door could give us the edge we’re looking for?”

There was every possibility that this door would recognize me just like the wards hiding it had. I might be able to just turn the door handle and walk right in. Of course, that might result in my lifeless, smoking body being hurled a hundred feet straight back through the air as well. I had a wide variety of trap wards linked to this design, and couldn’t tell which one, if any, was in play here.

“Give me a few minutes to work on it,” I said.

“What good would that do? Either there’s something completely undetectable back there, or there isn’t.”

“I didn’t say it was undetectable,” I told Averin, trying to keep the annoyance out of my tone. “I said it was blocking my scrying spell. There are plenty of other ways to see what we’re up against. Just give me a few minutes and some space.”

The whole divination discipline revolved around magic that was cast remotely at extreme ranges and provided sensory feedback. There were some outliers, sure, but by and large, that was what divinations were good for. But they weren’t the only method of getting information, just the easiest.

I started casting a transmutation spell on the door, nothing special, just a basic-tier shift to sandstone. The door resisted the effect—partially because the metal was too strong to be so casually changed with such little mana working on it, but mostly because of the wards—but that was irrelevant. I wasn’t actually trying to change it into sandstone. I just wanted to disrupt its composition enough to ruin its mana shielding properties. Even that wouldn’t be enough by itself, with the door liable to snap back into its original form as soon as I let go of the transmutation spell, but it did stretch things enough to thread a needle of divination through it.

The moment I let go of my transmutation, the door would sever my divination. But until then, I had it wedged open just a hair, barely enough for me to begin to examine the inside of the room. There was a trap ward in there like I’d suspected, but I was going to need to a few minutes to fully examine it. That process was sped up by the fact that I’d designed what I was looking at, but I wasn’t going to assume whoever had recreated it here hadn’t altered anything.

As for who the architect of this whole place was, I was assuming my idiot apprentice Ammun until proven otherwise. As far as I was concerned, this entire tower was a super weapon he’d built using my notes and designs on a magical fortress, only expanded upon to draw from the world core directly to fire beams of pure destructive mana.

Averin watched in silence while I worked, his eyes narrowed as he tried to keep up with what I was doing. Several times, he opened his mouth to speak, only to close it, frown to himself, and shake his head. Once, he glanced up at the invisible scry eye I’d tossed up into the corner to watch him and the messenger, proving that his mana sense was fine enough to detect it even if no one else ever had.

“Ah, found it,” I said. “Nasty little acid bomb conjuration tied to the ward that’ll detonate about two feet behind us if I don’t disable it. There’s… something else… behind it. Huh, that’s weird.”

Mana tendrils directed by my divinations prodded at the ward, trying to peel back the acid bomb construct without setting it off. That was a delicate task, but I managed to clip a spell line in the connecting rune structure by rerouting it into a circular loop. I’d have to fix that in about thirty seconds or the mana would start warping and the whole thing would go off, but it gave me the wiggle room I needed to get past the acid bomb.

“It’s a tattler,” I said. “Not sure who it’s linked to, but someone in the tower.”

“Shit,” Averin swore. “That’s it then. We’re not getting in.”

“Let’s not be so hasty,” I said.

A few years ago, he would have been right. I could maybe bend the ward enough to squeeze through on its own, but not with all the other stuff going on in there, not to mention the door I was still holding an active transmutation on. But, that was then. I had a thousand times more mana at my disposal and access to practically my entire repertoire of spells. It would take me many years to even come close to replacing all the tools and equipment I’d lost, but I also wasn’t anywhere near needing those kinds of specialized devices yet.

In short, successfully cracking a tattler ward without setting it off was no longer beyond my reach. It would take a considerable amount of mana, especially given the size of this ward, but I could wrap the whole thing in a cage of my own mana, create a false tattler at the end of the ethereal strand of mana that connected the tattler to its owner, and then sever that construct from the whole.

At least, I could as long as I finished it in the next eight seconds before the acid bomb snapped from the feedback and killed us. Well, killed Averin. I’d survive just fine.

Mana surged through the hole I’d created in the door, enveloping the ward and causing Averin to jerk back in surprise. I wrapped it around the ward and smothered it as my own power filled in all the gaps and started warping it to uselessness. A bulb of mana grew from the tattler connection, and just before I could sever them, I spotted a second line. Hurriedly, I created another decoy, then I cut both loose and broke the entire ward by brute force.

Three seconds to spare.

“What is happening with your mana?” Averin asked as it circulated back into me.

“I just broke the ward. I’m harvesting as much of the mana as I can from it.”

It was only partially a lie. I was taking the mana from the ward that I’d subsumed, if only because I’d grown too accustomed to scrounging and saving every bit of mana I could, but it was also a cover for my own mana’s breath. There was no need to reveal that particular trick, especially since Averin seemed competent enough that I thought he might be able to duplicate it.

“Time to see what’s on the other side,” I said as I reached out a hand to the door. Averin suppressed a flinch when I opened it, but after nothing happened, he eagerly peered past me into the dark room.

I’d already seen it with my scrying spells once I’d gotten through the door, of course. It was too bad the metal and stone that made up the walls and floors of the tower were equally impervious to scrying spells going through them, but I could still make it work if I was within transmuting distance. The layout was very similar to what I remembered from my own vaults and labs.

It was a control station for the tower, or more likely, for a section of the tower. It might even control this whole floor, but given the size, I was hesitant to assume that. Either way, we were about to find out.

“This looks like the ward interfaces in some of the government buildings,” Averin said. In the center of the room was a waist-high circular pillar divided into four sections. Each section had its own set of crystals that projected the interface screen and allowed the user to navigate them. Mine required a fine mastery of divination to manipulate, but after a few moments of study, I realized that these had been dumbed down to the point where even an apprentice mage could make them work. The only requirement was rudimentary mana control.

“Hold on,” I said as Averin rushed for the closest interface. “This place was already hidden behind two sets of wards and a lethal trap.”

“And there could be another on this pedestal, yes,” he said. “That is what I’m looking for.”

“Well, if you’re sure.” I gestured for Averin to proceed while I settled back near the door to watch.

The messenger who’d been escorting us walked into the room and glanced over at his boss, then nodded to me. “All clear outside,” he announced. “I could barely feel the mana fluctuations from the outer wall, so I don’t expect anyone else is going to notice them. How are we doing in here?”

“Averin is examining the interface for traps,” I told the man.

He looked at the pedestal, did a double take, and asked, “Is that one of the floor controllers the sentinels use to shift things around?”

I just shrugged. Not knowing what a floor controller looked like to begin with, I didn’t feel qualified to answer him. Though if I had to guess, I would say the interface was directly connected to some of the tower’s functions. The only thing I could say for certain was that the tattler had been set to deliver an alarm to someone above us and someone else below.

Now that I thought about it, those tattler lines were still connected to my decoy wards. Tracing them might not be a bad idea. The one going straight up was easy to follow. It rose a few miles and locked into a different interface panel, presumably in some sort of secured government building or Great House stronghold.

The one going straight down, though, that was more interesting. I traced it as far as I could, but it just kept going and going, and going. After about fifty miles, I couldn’t stretch my own divinations much farther without casting some master-tier spells that would require some prep time and a bit more space to work with.

Idly, I wondered if it went all the way to the base of the tower, and if so, what exactly was down there to receive it. Before I could ask if there were any myths or legends about what was all the way at the bottom, Averin let out a satisfied laugh.

“Got it,” he said. “Just the same basic security they all have. Now, let’s see what this thing can do.”