Chapter 40: Chapter 40: Secrets, Truths, and Bullshitting

CHAPTER FORTY

Secrets, Truths, and Bullshitting

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This nightmare was one I didn’t have in a while. Not since the day I first stepped into the Academy.

I was lying on a slab of stone inside a space that had, until that night, been considered a place of holy worship for Freya, goddess of love and battle. My hands were tied. So were my feet. They bound me so tightly that I barely had any wiggle room.

“Hel, Ravena, Knull,” they chanted around me. “Hel, Ravena, Knull.”

My head, the only part of me I could move freely, glanced sideways—and there he was staring back at me. Lorias Löwenthal, with that fanatic glint in his eyes that were reflected in the faces of his fellow cultists.

“Hel, Ravena, Knull,” the chant continued like a broken record that grated my ears. “Hel, Ravena, Knull.”

Finally, the cult leader, this fiery-haired elf with her long curly hair dipping down to tickle my face, raised her sacrificial blade high, and whispered, “Banvænn… Eilífligr,” so that only I could hear the elvish words that loosely translated to ‘being at the point of death’ and ‘immortality’ which I didn’t know back when I was eleven, but this was a strangely lucid dream I was having in which my brain’s translation skills seemed to be working just fine.

“Eilífligr!” she cried into the heavens, and then she stabbed me in the chest.

---

I woke up screaming in an unfamiliar place and in an unfamiliar bed that was harder than the fluffy marshmallow that was in my room back at the tower.

“Where…”

The vaulted ceiling was made entirely of a white canvas supported by round wooden beams. Softly glowing yellow lights hung from these beams like a line of Christmas lights. Wooden fans also hung from the ceiling, although the breeze from the open window behind my bed was quite chilly already.

A glance to my left, and I discovered that I was at the end of a long, rectangular room whose walls were made of the same white canvas as the one on the ceiling. Many of these white tarps were tied to round pillars set at intervals along the room, with several of them rolled up so that the morning light filtered into the spacious hall.

Lined along both sides of this space were cots like mine, with many of them filled with novices who’d been part of my raid group. They sported varying types of injuries ranging from bandaged heads and body parts to kids sitting on their cots while nursing arms and legs wrapped in slings. One or two novices lay unmoving on their cots, and I could only hope they weren’t… well, best not to think about it.

The scent of lavender hung in the air mixed with herbal smells one might catch at an apothecary. Many of these scents came from the jars and bowls on the table right next to my cot. I assumed they’d been used on me.

“This must be the Academy’s infirmary,” I guessed. “Which means I’m back at campus?”

“Duh. Where else would we take you?” The speaker spoke in a low, scratchy voice that carried with it a hint of a Scottish accent.

I glanced to my right, and sure enough, I found the Academy’s grandmaster leaning his back against a chair that had been made for people a lot bigger than the dwarf.

“Note to self, order furniture that’s suitable for multiple species… this thing’s killing my spine,” he grumbled.

“I guess you’ve been sitting there for a while,” I said.

Emerald eyes alight with the glint of magic appraised me.

“Nurse Pennyweather did a good job fixing you up, but I’m sure you would have healed just fine with a little rest… Troublemakers don’t die that easily.” The dwarf drummed pudgy fingers against the wooden armrest of his chair. “Of course, you wouldn’t have come down with a case of ‘Mana Burn’ if you hadn’t been recklessly using a grimoire you have no business reading.”

My hand flew to my neck, which was when I noticed that my silver chain was gone.

“Looking for this?” With his other hand, Dwalinn raised the silver chain that both my hearthstone and the Flameheart grimoire hung from.

“Um, I invoke the finder’s keepers’ rule, sir,” I said quickly.

There was an important rule among adventurers that we kept the spoils that come into our possession through raids, quests, and tests as long as these items had no living owner to their name.

“Poppycock,” Dwalinn replied dismissively. “You’re not an adventurer yet, Mr. Wisdom.”

Dwalinn’s piercing gaze switched from me to the softly glowing orange trinket hanging from the chain in his hand.

“When Grimsever told me what you were up to in the library… I thought you’d go for one of the lesser grimoires. I didn’t think you’d claim one of the most dangerous relics in that godsdamn vault,” he grumbled.

“But I—”

“How you even knew the method to attune with this grimoire is a surprise in itself, but the fact that you beat my enchantment, allowing you free reign of the vault, now that’s damn amazing too,” he conceded.

“I knew it!” I sat up. “That ‘Gold Fever’ was all your doing.”

“Of course, it was my doing,” Dwalinn replied in a pleased tone. “Why would I leave a valuable location unprotected in this place full of kleptomaniacs who don’t have the common sense to turn away from the dangerous magical items that could get them killed.”

He leaned forward and poked me in the shoulder, and I felt pain spread out from the point of impact to sting my entire arm.

“Make no mistake, keeping this grimoire open haphazardly put a huge strain on your mind and body that nearly killed you, Mr. Wisdom,” Dwalinn reiterated.

“Mana burn,” I repeated.

This particular condition was mentioned in Divah’s guide right underneath the trick to keeping one’s grimoire open for longer than was recommended. Mana burn was the result of abusing an outside source to amplify one’s internal magic, causing damage to the magical core and circuitry permeating the body. Side effects ranged from minor stuff like muscle tremors and high blood pressure to major issues like seizures and strokes.

Since I’d passed out during the last stage of last night’s dungeon break while in tremendous pain, I assumed that meant my condition had been pretty bad.

“Am I—”

Dwalinn shook his head.

“Some internal bleeding and muscle strain, but nothing too bad. Honestly, you passed out more from over-exhaustion than anything else,” Dwalinn assured me.

Then, to my surprise, Dwalinn threw my silver chain back at me.

“Y-you’re not…taking this from me?” I asked as I caught the chain with the Flameheart still hanging from it.

“You would be better off if I did… But, the whole point of the Academy is to help novices succeed at becoming adventurers.” Dwalinn’s brow creased. “What would be the point of limiting your potential and taking away something that could help your growth?”

It’s official. This dwarf was crazy—and I liked him even more now.

“There will be restrictions, of course,” Dwalinn said in a matter-of-fact tone.

I looped the chain back on my neck. “What kind of restrictions?”

“You’ll be adding Grimoire Studies to your elective choices,” he said.

The study of grimoires from their history, abilities, and even the locations of lost relics—yep, I could live with that condition.

“You’re also not allowed to keep your grimoire open in any novice-related events,” Dwalinn added. “That includes both the sports festival and the proving exams that determine novice rankings.”

“Um, does that mean I’ve got my ticket to next week’s exams?” I asked in a hopeful tone.

“Lorelai, magnanimous as she is, gave you two tickets for yesterday’s performance. Doomsday’s also giving you one because he’s a big giant softie,” Dwalinn shrugged.

Holy Hel, three whole tickets… Not that I knew how they worked yet, but you could bet that Draken, Saga, even Liara—I’m coming for everyone!

“And~~d when you say I can’t open my grimoire…”

“You can’t use its power to strengthen your magic, but spells you’ve learned from it are fair game.”

Dwalinn gave me a curious look.

“I hear you can make the ground explode and stuff…”

“I can.”

“Sweet.” He grinned.

However, realizing that he shouldn’t be patting the troublemaker on the back, Dwalinn forced his expression back into that of a brooding disciplinarian. Honestly, he’d stopped being intimidating after he gave me back my grimoire.

“By the way…” The grandmaster leaned forward so that I could see his glower. “Under no circumstances are you to keep your grimoire open for more than a few seconds. This rule stands throughout your tenure as a novice of the Academy, understood?”

“Understood,” I said quickly.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could stick to that rule. Not when I now knew what some of my enemies were up to.

“Um, master…” There was no point asking if we’d won. The fact that we were here talking like this made that clear enough. There was, however, something I did need to know. “…how many died?”

Dwalinn must have already known that I’d been the mastermind of our camp’s strategy, which is why he seemed to hesitate to give me a casualty count. However, I’d accepted the job Mistress Lorelai tasked me with so I was prepared for the fallout. Or I thought I was.

“Eight novices and twice as many adventurers,” he answered evenly.

“Which novices?”

“There are three from Apprentice-One. You don’t know the others.”

My fingers tightened around the blanket of my cot. “Who?”

Dwalinn gave me a look that said he wasn’t blaming me, but I stared at him until he relented.

He sighed. “Shana Starr, Jackson Grover, and Bjorn Ericsson.”

I didn’t know the first two very well. I just knew Shana was a nymph with dark skin that glowed like a sea of stars, while Jackson was the only other satyr in class. They were both red cloaks.

In my mind’s eye, I recalled a moment I’d shared with Bjorn the Viking where I helped bandage a deep wound in his side. That had happened in the run where I got killed by the maenad queen for the first time, so Bjorn wouldn’t have remembered. I did though.

“Vargr,” I cursed.

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Truthfully, losing only twenty-four friendlies during the first dungeon break to occur in over a hundred years would probably be considered a good result by outside observers. But, strangely enough, I couldn’t just think of Bjorn and the others as just numbers. And the thought that my strategy caused their deaths made me want to puke badly.

I felt Dwalinn’s calloused hand patting my arm.

“Don’t beat yourself too hard, Mr. Wisdom… their deaths aren’t on you,” he insisted. “And, from what Lorelai tells me, you’re the only one who predicted this scenario would come to pass.”

He gave me a scrutinizing look, and I realized that this was the reason he’d been waiting for me to wake up. Dwalinn was interested in how I knew about the dungeon break, but I couldn’t tell him the truth. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,” I reasoned.

Dwalinn raised a bushy eyebrow. “Are you quoting Sherlock Holmes to me?”

“A dungeon break was the only logical conclusion I could think of,” I lied. “If you think about it, a roaming horde of monsters would have been clocked by LEPRCON or some other agency way before they reached us.”

I racked my brain for more bullshit to help sell my lie.

“Plus, Lugh’s Lament was the only location they could have come from,” I reasoned, “and the scouts first spotted them in the south which was right in the vicinity of the dungeon.”

Gods, I was a good liar. Now, if only he didn’t ask me about how I knew about things in advance—which of course he did, and there was no way Dwalinn would accept the lie of Star-Spangled Sight. Not when he owned the scroll that taught the spell.

“I had a dream,” I blurted out.

Holy Hel, I didn’t think I’d lean into the whole prophet thing, but what other choice did I have?

“Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think it was a prophecy…”

Okay, okay, slowly de-escalate and finished with something more plausible.

“Um, maybe the gods sent me that dream, or, um, maybe I was just attuned to what was happening in the dungeon—I mean, that happens, right?”

I was grasping on straws here, but instead of poking holes in my bullshit, Dwalinn laughed out loud. He laughed and laughed until tears began to pool in his eyes. People were beginning to look our way too.

“So, you don’t think you’re a prophet, but you might be a chosen one of the gods.” He wiped at the tears in his eyes. “Haven’t laughed that good in a while.”

He reached into the folds of his blue robes and then pulled out a scroll which he then threw at me. I caught it out of reflex.

“Open it.”

I did as he instructed—and my eyes widened at the scroll’s contents.

“This is for the next time you need to lie about whatever it is you’re hiding,” Dwalinn chuckled.

In my hands was the spell scroll for the third-level invocation spell, the Star-Spangled Sight. The very same spell I’d used to lie to Mistress Lorelai about how I knew what I knew.

“I don’t get it…” I frowned at him. “You think I’m lying…”

“I do.”

“Then why give me this?”

“Do you know how many kids there are like you in this Academy?”

“I don’t know what—”

“Everyone has a secret, Mr. Wisdom.” Dwalinn crossed his arms over his chest. “Some, like you, have special secrets that benefit themselves and others… In that regard, you’re not that special.”

“Um, I beg to differ.”

“Don’t disagree with me when I’m giving you a pass, you reprobate.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dwalinn glowered at me.

“I might be singing a different tune if you hadn’t used whatever secret gift of foresight you possess to help your fellow novices. In the end, you saved lives with it,” Dwalinn shrugged. “And what’s the purpose of the Academy?”

“…To help novices succeed at becoming adventurers?” I supposed.

“Exactly.” Dwalinn shuffled his butt so he could lean back in his chair. “Truthfully, I’m curious to see what happens when someone like you clashes with the other ‘secret keepers’ we’ve got among the ranked novices.”

“So~~o, it’s not just because you want me to succeed as an adventurer…” I raised an eyebrow at him. “You think my… foresight… might spice things up and make things more entertaining…?”

“One of my few guilty pleasures in this place is watching you novices beat each other up during proving exams.” Dwalinn snapped his finger, the world tilted, and then his chalice appeared in his hand. “So, don’t disappoint me, Mr. Wisdom.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

“Now, if you’re done bullshitting me, how about you tell me your theory on how this dungeon break came about?” he prompted.

Dwalinn’s mistake was thinking my secret was simply a gift of foresight, but I didn’t mind leaning into this misunderstanding for now. So, I told him about how I suspected that the Golden Bow might have experimented with the fissure at the heart of a dungeon core. Interestingly, Dwalinn didn’t seem overly surprised with my theory, and he would soon divulge why.

After they’d crushed the remainder of the horde and sent the injured back through the rainbow portal, Dwalinn led a group of masters and Crimson Corsairs elites down into the heart of Lugh’s Lament. What they found there was described to me in very graphic detail as if Dwalinn didn’t care that he was talking to his student.

“The central chamber—the dungeon’s heart—was a temple interior hewn from the blackened rock of this giant cavern,” he began. “That’s where we found the bodies.”

He painted a scene of gruesome death for me; adventurer and monster corpses littering the craggy ground, their blood and guts splayed out for the world to see.

“Blood was everywhere… on the floor, the walls, even the ceiling that was thirty feet high—it was a Jackson Pollock painting come to life,” he reiterated.

Dwalinn would explain that most of the dead adventurers were outside contractors with very few of the dead bearing the crest of the Golden Bow on their gear.

“What about…”

I couldn’t say Lorias’s name out loud because I didn’t want to implicate Liara in any way, even though I knew her dad was as much of a monster as the emissary I’d killed.

Dwalinn noticed my hesitation but didn’t press me about it. Instead, he gave me the information I wanted as if he’d already deduced why I was being so cagey.

“There weren’t any Golden Bow executives among the dead,” he answered. “We suspect they went through the fissure after it was opened.”

Dwalinn went on to describe the fissure at the end of the temple they were in. How it wasn’t just a floating crack in space-time like one might expect, but a garish open wound pulsing with otherworldly light spilling corrupted magical energy into the Earth.

“Widening a dungeon fissure to that extent in an uncontrolled environment with zero protective measures is pure madness,” Dwalinn grumbled.

“Did you close it?” I asked.

“Of course, we closed it,” Dwalinn replied. “There’d be another dungeon break if we hadn’t.”

Surprisingly, the thought that her father might be stuck on the other side of that fissure made me feel bad for Liara. However, the part of me that held a grudge against Lorias Löwenthal was glad to see the back of him.

“How did you close it?”

“Same way you clear a dungeon permanently, Mr. Wisdom…” He slid a finger across his beard. “You kill the monster at its heart.”

“That’s it?” I frowned. “Kill the dungeon boss and the fissure closes up?”

“Without an ‘originator’ to draw energy from a fissure, the thing will eventually close up on its own,” Dwalinn explained. “Usually within an hour of a dungeon boss’s death. But this one took five times as long to collapse back into the tomb that it originally was before negative emotion and cursed energy brought that dungeon to life.”

“So, um, Lugh’s Lament is just gone?”

“Yes… Although there’s always a chance a second fissure could appear in that same spot if humans living nearby don’t learn to control their emotions better," He smiled knowingly at me. "But that’s not what you’re concerned about, is it?”

Duh. All those spoils just lying there waiting to be plundered—what a waste. At least that’s what I assumed until Dwalinn told me that wasn’t the case.

“Wait, so, we do get rewards?”

“And here I was thinking you were just going to keep moping about stuff you can’t change.” Dwalinn passed me a small pouch whose contents clinked when they fell into my palm. “That’s your share of the original quest’s earnings.”

“What about the spoils from the battle?” I asked.

“You’ll get your reward later at the awarding ceremony,” Dwalinn said as he got up from his seat.

My mouth went suddenly dry. “There’s a ceremony?”

“Funeral too, but yeah, we’re celebrating a hard-fought victory, and Lorelai has asked that a couple of novices be recognized for their achievements.” He downed his chalice in one gulp and then let out a loud burp. “Best get ready for later, Mr. Wisdom. You’re about to be famous.”

 

Glad tidings, fellow novices!

One more chapter until the end of volume I. What are your thoughts so far? Do you agree with Dwalinn's teaching methods? The dwarf's cutting Will a lot of slack here after all. ;P

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