Sera gave me a weak chuckle. “I mean it, though.”
“Don’t worry. I’m always careful. What could possibly go wrong?”
Chapter XVIII – Everything That Could Possibly Go Wrong
We picked up a return bell from Teft. After that, he sent us on the path toward the Temple of Fire. A second-year student led the way, while another student followed us, presumably to keep an eye on how much time we were taking inside.
Marissa was clearly nervous. “Mind givin’ me a bit more ‘bout this place? I’m not real familiar.”
She was probably understating that. I doubted she’d even heard of the place before Teft had mentioned it. I would have been pretty nervous in her place, too.
Patrick chimed in before I had a chance. He was bristling with excitement. “So, this is the place where they forged Soulbrand, one of the Six Sacred Swords. It’s really, really old. Like thousands of years.”
“But what’re we up against? It just like another spire?”
“It’s smaller,” I explained, “And you should expect most of the challenges to be fire themed.”
“Or something related to fire, like metal or lava,” Patrick added. “Maybe even lightning.”
Marissa frowned again. “Not sure how much I can do ‘bout that sort of thing.”
“Aww, you’ll be fine.” Patrick nudged her. “You’ll just punch the lightning out or something. You’ve done that before!”
She brightened a bit. “I suppose I have, haven’t I?”
“Right before you punched that smug look clean off Rupert’s face!” Patrick laughed, then looked from side to side, likely checking to make sure Rupert wasn’t in hearing range. He wasn’t — we were already well outside of the settlement at that point.
We walked a bit further in relative quiet before Marissa posed another question. “If these things are older than the spires, who made ‘em?”
Patrick frowned. “I guess the goddess just made them earlier?”
I shook my head. “Unlikely. The first sightings of Selys were only about four hundred years ago, right before the spires themselves appeared. The most common theory is that there were older gods here thousands of years ago, and that they left or died out.”
“Tyrant must have gotten ‘em, rest their souls,” Marissa said solemnly.
I was getting progressively less confident that the Tyrant in Gold had the kind of role in the world that Aspectists believed, but I didn’t want to get into an argument. “Maybe,” I replied, “The people of Sytennia believe they just went to sleep.”
“Oh, I remember hearing a bit about that when we were kids. Mom and Dad said to forget about it, though.” Patrick looked down. “And my teachers always got upset when I asked about things like that. Told me that I should pray on it or read the scriptures. But the scriptures don’t talk about the elemental temples at all.”
I felt a rare surge of anger and struggled to maintain a neutral expression. Shutting down children who had questions was the opposite of what a teacher should be doing.
Before I could get into a rant, though, Marissa changed the line of discussion. “You know anything specific we should be keepin’ our eyes out for?”
That was a reasonable thing to discuss, so I let my frustration burn away and refocused on the topic at hand. “There’ll probably be a single powerful monster just before the room with the crystal, similar to a spire guardian. I don’t know if the other group got that far, but if they did, we’re in for a serious fight. Most stories indicate that it’s a phoenix, but I’ve also heard that a dragon might be a possibility.”
Marissa nodded. “A phoenix, eh? That might be tricky. Hard to keep them down for any length of time. That might be why Teft wanted us to bring ice magic. That’s real effective against them.” She seemed a little more comfortable now that we were talking about specific monsters.
We continued discussing possible fire monsters we could run into, as well as other general strategies, until we reached our destination.
There was no obvious “temple”. Instead, we reached the base of a mountainside — presumably the Vanreach Mountains — and found a tremendous metal doorway.
The exterior of the door was carved with intricate artistry. They weren’t runes; more like pictographs for an unfamiliar language. I activated my attunement, but the doors didn’t glow. I could see a hint of light from beyond the doorway, however.
“I’ll wait outside for three hours, then I’ll report your failure,” the student who’d been following us explained. I tried not to respond poorly to how certain he sounded that things would play out that way.
I glanced to Marissa and Patrick. “You two ready to go?”
They made noises of acknowledgement.
I drew Selys-Lyann. “I’ll lead the way. Marissa, you’re on my left, so I don’t hit you by accident. Patrick, stay behind the two of us. I want you to be ready to reshape fire out of the way if we hit any traps.”
We shifted into formation, then approached the door.
The student who’d been leading us placed a metallic cube into a slot in the door, and I heard a click. Then I heard the grinding of gears, and the doors slid open.
The light that I’d seen through the crack in the doorway intensified as the doors opened, but not purely from magic. The passageway led into a hallway lit with dozens of torches, making it almost blindingly bright.
I passed Patrick the return bell. “You’d better hold onto this, since Marissa and I will need our hands free to fight.”
He accepted the bell, then we headed inside.
The initial hallway didn’t feel anything like a spire. It was just a well-lit cavern entrance, more reminiscent of what Marissa and I had encountered during her test.
With that memory in mind, I watched the floor carefully as we advanced. I didn’t want to hit any more webs, or trip-wires, or any sort of deadly trap tiles.
That meant, of course, that I wasn’t looking up.
The first thing I noticed was a shadow thickening, then Marissa shoved me.
I hit the wall just before a giant centipede hit the ground where I’d been standing. It was almost as big as I was and heavy enough to crack the ground on impact.
Marissa punched it hard enough to hurl it backward.
I heard a “click” as the centipede landed, then spears jetted out of the floor beneath it, impaling the creature.
Oh, there’s the floor trap I’ve been looking for.
The centipede struggled for a moment to break free from the spears, then Patrick blasted it with a bolt of lightning, and it fell still.
“Thanks,” I offered Marissa.
She smiled. “Gotta keep your feet light and your arms lighter.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but I nodded anyway.
We proceeded a little more cautiously after that, checking both the floor and the ceiling.
We had to hug the wall to get past the centipede, and getting that close to it was a little disgusting.
Where do the test administrators even find monsters like this?
Never mind, I don’t want to know.
After that, the next thing we noticed wasn’t a trap, but the growing heat. Outside, we’d been at the border of a snow-tipped mountain range. It wasn’t snowing at our level of altitude, but it was still cold.
Every few steps, this place was getting warmer. By the time we’d passed the centipede, it felt more like spring weather.