Chapter 7: Chapter 7: Divah’s Guide to Adventuring

CHAPTER SEVEN

Divah’s Guide to Adventuring

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I know, I know—I sounded like some mustachioed villain from a daytime TV drama about to lure the beautiful damsel into some dark corner of the tower so I could have my way with her. But that wasn’t my intent, and I think Liara could sense that.

“This isn’t me just being nice. I need you as much as you’ll need me,” I admitted.

“Why would I need you?” Liara countered.

“Because I meant it when I said I could help you jump over that wall you’re stuck behind,” I answered.

No, I wasn’t being altruistic. The things written down in the journal required a guide that had access to places a newbie novice like me couldn’t get to without arousing suspicion. It was just easier to make Liara a willing accomplice.

It took her another half-minute of contemplation, but once she finished weighing the pros and cons in her mind, the decision to become my ally showed clear in the growing curiosity alight in Liara’s face.

“Alright, I’ll take you down there…” Liara took my hand and shook it. “But you better not be wasting my time, Wisdom.”

After we shook hands, Liara wasted no time leading me to the tiny alcove hidden behind the bar. Carved on its back wall were the same leaf-like geometric patterns of the tower’s facade; two bowed trees shaped to look like… “Is this a secret door?”

My eyes widened with delight. “Please be a secret door. Please be a secret door…”

Liara pressed her ‘bronze’ badge against the very center of the carving, and we both heard the soft click that preceded the wall sliding backward to reveal the dark passage beyond it.

“Yey,” I whispered excitedly.

Liara glanced sideways at me before rolling her eyes. “You are a weird human boy.”

“That’s a compliment,” I replied.

Truthfully, I knew there was a hidden passage somewhere in the tower’s base. It had been written down in the journal. However, I didn’t know where the entrance to this passage was. Divah could be sparse with her intel at times, which made having an accomplice necessary.

Liara pulled at the golden chain around her neck and brought out the hearthstone she kept hidden underneath her leather vest. It lacked a metal sheen as mine did but there was a hint of reddish-brown mixed in with the clear crystal. Proof that Liara was well on her way to becoming a proper copper-ranked adventurer.

The sight of it made me wonder why she was in such a rut. Clearly, she was talented enough. So, it wasn’t that. I doubt Liara would tell me if I asked her though. I would have to discover her secrets for myself if I wanted to make her a proper companion.

“Kenaz,” Liara whispered.

Light flared out of the hearthstone and illuminated our surroundings, revealing the spiral staircase that led down into the tower’s basement.

Yes, she did just call on the same ‘torch rune’ that I used to blow up my blood and distract Doomsday back in the Crucible. Runes had many functions. They were that versatile.

Liara and I moved down the spiral staircase that took at least a half-hour to traverse. There was another narrow corridor at the bottom that opened up into a low-ceilinged chamber reminiscent of a castle’s underbelly; a series of interconnected arched stone passages that one could easily get lost in.

“Nice basement,” I said. “It’s sufficiently creepy…”

“Don’t leave my side,” Liara insisted.

“I won’t,” I replied.

Apart from Liara’s hearthstone, what little light guided our way came from the soft glow of the light-emitting gemstones hanging at intervals along the arches. More than once, I saw locked wooden doors along our path which I likened to a series of buttons one needed to hit to execute a secret move in a classic fighting game—left, right, right, left, right, left, and a turn—and then we found ourselves standing in front of two iron doors covered in protective runes.

I whistled appreciatively. “Not every day you see the ‘Aegishjalmur’ displayed like this...”

The aptly named ‘Helm of Awe’—a realmsverse symbol of protection in the form of a circle with eight tridents emanating from its center—dominated the surface of these iron double doors.

“This might be a challenge to unlock,” I deduced.

Liara’s eyebrow twitched upward. “You think you can bypass an aegishjalmur?”

“I’ve picked up a lot of interesting tricks in my time with Divah.” Once again, I patted the journal strapped to my belt. I was about to pull it out and read through one of those ‘tricks’ Divah taught me, but Liara got in my way.

“As much as I would love to see you try and fail”—Liara grabbed my wrist just as I was about to place my right hand on the door—“I’d rather no one found out we were here without permission... Besides, there’s an easier way to get into the chamber beyond.”

She pulled out her badge again and then pressed it to the door.

“You have administrator privileges?” I guessed.

“I’m one of the tower’s peer counselors,” Liara answered.

“So, you don’t just act as a guide you literally provide guidance?” My brow furrowed. By the All-Father, did I just luck on the first sap—person—I chose as my accomplice?

Liara was too busy whispering the magic words needed to unlock the arcane security system blocking our path forward to answer. Once she finished her chant, the glowing wards receded into the iron similar to how a puddle of water was absorbed into the sand. Then the doors swung inward to reveal the chamber beyond.

“Thank the gods I met you early on,” I whispered.

The chamber we stepped into was like being transported back to that garden that dominated the center of campus as it was also a place of verdant grass and healthy flower shrubs. The sky above—yes, the ceiling was an actual magical sky—wasn’t like the starry sky of Yggdrasil but an aurora of blue and green and yellow hues. This seemingly optical illusion reflected the light of a single small pool at the very center of this secret garden. It was a pool that glowed with an inner light. Here was one of the hidden sources of power peppered across the realmsverse, one that constantly released magical energy into the ether.

Liara noticed the wide-eyed look on my face and asked, “Is this the first time you’ve seen a fairy well?”

“No,” I replied.

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I’d seen fairy wells before, but they had long dried up from the overuse of fools who didn’t know how to properly care for them. So, I could never have imagined the beauty I witnessed now despite Divah once telling me about this fairy well that was hidden inside this very tower.

“Find the fairy well and begin your journey, kiddo,” was Divah’s last instruction to me. It had also been the reason she told me to join the Mages Tower instead of the Warrior’s Lodge or the Rogues Gallery.

Now to see if Divah’s intuition was spot-on… I sat beside the fairy well lotus-style and then patted the patch of grass to my right. “Let’s get started.”

“What are you planning?” Liara asked as she sat by my side.

“What do you know about the well’s purpose?”

“It powers the tower’s magical defenses.”

“So... it’s just a battery to you?”

“Essentially…” Liara fidgeted in her seat. “I’m aware that the water of a fairy well has a high volume of magical energy in it, but no one’s managed to refine or dilute its properties to make it useful.”

This tracked pretty well with what I knew of conventional wisdom regarding fairy wells. However, Divah had taught me not to trust in unadventurous ideas.

“There’s always a second or third side to every tale,” she’d once told me. “The job of an adventurer is to discover these hidden paths that’ll help them get to where they want to go.”

That’s how Divah claimed she discovered a more practical use for the fairy well’s magical energies. She jumped into one and solved its mysteries through trial and error. Luckily for Liara and me, Divah had also recorded her discoveries in the journal she’d passed on to me. It was this very journal I now unstrapped from my belt so that I could review its contents before attempting to do what most people believed to be impossible.

“What are you—”

“One moment please,” I said.

DIVAH’S GUIDE TO ADVENTURING

These words were plastered over the journal’s worn leather cover. It was a cover I’d reread a thousand times, but every single time sent a shot of wanderlust straight into my chest while an epic musical score began to play in my head.

I turned the journal to the first page and reread the words written there for the thousandth time.

In pursuit of a grand adventure, I challenged myself to be better. I learned a great deal and decided to share this knowledge with you. Not to make your journey easier, but to increase your chances of survival. So, don’t let pre-established logic and practices limit you, Will. Dare to see things not as they are, but what they can be.

Goosebumps appeared on the back of my arms as I remembered how thankful I was that Divah had found me after I was resurrected that first time. Otherwise, I would have probably turned into a monster who hated everything—and I’m not into that sort of ‘edge-lord’ scenario.

I moved on to another page, one that gave a specific accounting of Divah’s past experiments with this same fairy well I now sat in front of.

“It’s been nearly a hundred years since she was here,” I smiled warmly at the journal in my hands, “but she’s still taking me to school…”

“Are you alright?” Liara asked.

I heard the concern in her voice, and I figured she noticed something weird on my face. Nostalgia had that effect on me.

“Here’s your first lesson, Liara...” I closed the book and strapped it back onto my belt before I drew my hands together as if in prayer. “As a mage, I’m sure you know that the ‘Arcane Arts’ is the practice of using spells to reshape our reality.”

I separated my hands to form a triangle with them, and the surrounding air was so dense with magical energy that the bit of mana I let slip from my fingertips drew this triangle for me in the form of blue sparks.

“How did you—”

“I used my mana to direct the magical energy leaking out of the well,” I answered.

Yes, yes, this didn’t sound groundbreaking, but it really was. Liara thought so too. Her jaw dropping slightly kind of gave her away.

“Usually, we harness our internal mana to cast spells”—moving my hands counterclockwise, I created a second triangle that interlocked with the first—“but some spells are too strong for us to sustain alone, so we sometimes need an outside source to draw that energy from.”

“I already know that.” Liara pointed a finger at the fairy well. “As I said, the ‘well’ powers our—”

“But I bet you didn’t know that we could do more than just draw its energy to conjure barriers...” Moving my hands in a clockwise direction, I created a third triangle, one that interlocked with the other two. “I bet you didn’t know that we could absorb that magical energy into ourselves and even make it our own...”

“That’s impossible,” Liara frowned, and with the light of the fairy well splashing on her face, she somehow looked even prettier. “Many scholars have attempted this—even going as far as to drink the pool’s water—but all they ever got for their troubles was madness or death...”

“It always seems impossible”—I snapped my fingers, causing the three interlocked triangles to vibrate while sparks flew out of them in every direction—“until you discover it isn’t...”

“Dare to see things not as they are, but what they can be,” I stated.

Liara raised an eyebrow at me. “You formed a valknut... It’s the Academy’s symbol that represents our three schools, but a valknut doesn’t have an actual purpose in spellcraft.”

I grinned. “Doesn’t it?”

With the ‘valknut’ floating above it, the light of the pool shifted from its aurora of color into a single blueish hue. As if to point out that the divergent streams of magical energy dormant in the fairy pool had found momentary balance.

“The valknut doesn’t just reflect the connection between earth, heaven, and the underworld, it brings them together in harmony,” I explained. Then I elbowed her arm. “So, you up for a skinny dip in this pool?”

“Excuse me?” Liara’s arms wrapped around her chest as if I’d just asked her to do something kinky, which I kind of did but not in whatever creepy way had just popped up in her brain. “Are you insane?”

I will admit to being slightly off my rocker, but that’s par for the course for a teenager who comes back after every gruesome death. So, while ignoring her shocked expression, I got up and took off my clothes, leaving only my undies on for propriety’s sake.

“We can only make the pool’s magic ours once every cycle of the new moon... Most of it will just flush out of every pore in our body like how too much chili mead makes you stink, but the bit we keep will help us grow exponentially... And I’m not just talking small gains here but an instant level up.” I glanced over at Liara and noticed that expressions of skepticism and desire were at war on her face. “Well, are you coming?”

Without waiting for her reply, I jumped into the fairy well and let myself get swallowed in its magical depths. Soon enough, I heard Liara plunge in after me.