My eyes widened. “What are the restrictions on that?”
Researcher turned to me. “No known distance limitations. This summoning effect appears to be capable of bypassing most, if not all, anti-teleportation limitations. Lead Researcher Orden has placed an additional external seal on the box to prevent reckless tests, such as attempting to summon visages, which she deemed to have potentially catastrophic consequences.”
No distance limitations.
Could I summon Tristan with it?
I’d need an item strongly connected to him. I had a few things in my room that had belonged to him, but I wouldn’t want to risk the chance they’d fail. I was confident I could find something at home, though. Maybe even a brush that still had some of his hair?
It sounded so…easy. So much easier than trying to climb to the top of the tower.
Would it work if he was dead?
I’d need to find out more about this.
Researcher had mentioned Lead Researcher Orden, meaning Professor Orden was studying it.
I’d seen the box before. It had been in her drawer, and I’d marked down the few runes I could remember.
I scratched my chin. “Is the Jaden Box in this facility right now?”
Researcher nodded. “Yes, although access to the item is restricted to members of Lead Researcher Orden’s team.”
I raised the key that Orden gave me. “As it happens, we work for Professor Orden.”
Not strictly a lie, but I felt a little bad for the deception.
Jin gave me a raised eyebrow, but Researcher just beamed at me. “Of course! It’s in a box labeled Lyras Orden on row 15-C. Be advised to follow all of the instructions with the attached documentation. Also, the box is inside a safe. The safe code is 13-9-63.”
Sorry, Professor Orden. You were the one who encouraged me to break in here and take what I needed.
I found the box, Jin following close behind me. “Are you certain this is wise?”
I glanced back at him. “No, but this could give us a considerable amount of safety if things go badly. For example, if we step into the tower and we can’t find Katashi, maybe we could find something connected to him and use this to summon him.”
Jin nodded. “I see the logic, but we should save that for a last resort. It is clear that using the box on a visage could have dangerous consequences.”
“Orden should have a better idea of how safe it would be. We can ask her if things get desperate enough that the box seems necessary. For the moment, we’ll be discrete.”
He put a hand over his forehead. “That’s part of the problem. You don’t think she’s going to notice you took it?”
I shrugged. “I’ve got so much magic stuff at this point that I doubt she’ll notice the aura on it standing out. I’ll only take it out in emergencies. If she does figure out that I took it, I’ll just refer back to her earlier desire for Whisper candidates to show initiative.”
Jin sighed. “Fine. But we’re putting it back when we’re done.”
That was just vague enough that I could agree to it. “Sure.”
We found a safe inside the box, along with research notes, just as Researcher had indicated. I skimmed through the notes first.
Jaden Box
Object Classification: Artifact, Miscellaneous
Attunement Leveclass="underline" Unknown; exhibits properties that exceed Emerald capabilities
Description: The Jaden Box is believed to be a creation of the legendary sorceress Wrynn Jaden. It demonstrates forms of Pre-Attunement Period sorcery that cannot be easily duplicated in the modern period. To date, we have discovered three of the box’s functions.
First, if the word “Store” is spoken aloud while in physical contact with the box, and followed by another word or short phrase that describes the object, any object placed inside the box within the next ten second period will be transported to an extra-planar space.
When the box is open and the command, “Retrieve” is given, followed by a phrase corresponding to an item that has been stored, the stored item will be teleported out of the extra-planar space and appear directly above the box. Fortunately, large objects will be shunted out of the way if there are people in the space above the box; this has saved more than one researcher from being inadvertently killed by teleportation fragmentation.
There are some restrictions on what can be stored; see research document ENX-4.
The third function of the box is the most dangerous and thus additional limitations have been placed on the box through the creation of an outer shell (see shell diagram). When an item is placed inside the box and is not stored in the extra-planar space, the command “Summon” can be used, followed by the name of an individual with a strong connection to the item. For example, a vial of Professor Lyras Orden’s blood was successfully used to summon her from the base of the Serpent Spire to the research laboratory.
Early studies indicate that the connection utilized by the box to summon an individual appears to be a mana signature. This means that any object that stores some of the mana of an individual, such as magical items created by the individual, should potentially be usable as a summoning focus.
Studies on this object have been restricted for two reasons. One, the unclear limitations have been a cause for concern that a researcher could inadvertently summon a powerful entity that may take issue with being summoned (e.g. one of the visages).
The second reason is that the summoning spell consumes a vast amount of air and transference mana; in specific, we approximate that the discharge is roughly twenty thousand mana of each type.
While the box does recharge its mana over time, it does so at a rate consistent with standard Sunstone-level items, regaining approximately one hundred mana per day. Thus, the summoning effect can only be used roughly once every two hundred days.
I wasn’t able to analyze everything about the box, but I was able to sense the mana within it. There was a lot. Thousands at least. I tried checking it with my mana watch, but it didn’t register anything. The watch wasn’t designed to interact with other items, and even if it was, this was a strange enough object that it might not have worked either way.
More importantly, I was able to detect that the box wasn’t currently recharging. That meant it already had a full charge of mana and could be used at any time.
I scanned over the rest of the research. The diagrams of the runes were fascinating — I’d want to learn more about them later — but for now, I didn’t have time. I was supposed to be meeting Professor Orden outside shortly.
The limitations on the box meant that I wasn’t going to be able to pick up just any old thing that Tristan had owned and throw it in there to summon him. I was already thinking of options, though. If hair from a brush didn’t work, maybe one of my parents had kept some of his baby teeth?