15 - Riddle

I felt utterly horrible for what happened to Melina because of my helmet. It never should have happened, but I was so used to having a magic vision that I never stopped to ask myself if others had it and how it would have felt if they suddenly gained a whole new sense. They didn’t feel good, it seemed. Melina was a rank 13 and not even she could withstand the barrage of information about the world that having a magic vision blasted right into your brain for more than a few moments.

Thinking back, during the few days I spent without magic vision between my appearance in this world and the fabrication of the helmet, my head felt kinda empty. Very empty.

“I’m sorry.” I tried to apologize yet again. “Are you feeling okay now?”

“Yes, Ishrin, for the tenth time I am okay! Stop apologizing!”

I sulked, but she was right. Usually a nosebleed meant that a brain was being scrambled, but all the tests I did on her confirmed that she was perfectly fine. There was no use in saying ‘sorry’ over and over again. We just walked through the forest in silence, Liù flying around and bothering Lisette first, then Melina, then me before she went to rest for a while only to resume her rounds soon after. She was having fun, I could tell: she had grown accustomed to the two girls and I could even dare say that she was growing attached to them. I was too. They were very pleasant company.

Eventually the compass led us to a small prairie close to a rushing river. I could hear the sound of water in the distance, and streaks of light blue magic rose from the river below and drew great arcs in the air as the magic of the water mixed with the ambient magic of the forest. The needle floating in the water Melina was holding started to spin, a clear indicator that its time was up. Right on cue, the water cylinder lost cohesion and all the water splashed to the ground, eliciting a yelp from the fox girl.

“Did I do something?” She asked.

“No,” I smiled. “We are here.”

The clearing was surrounded by large stones, roughly shaped like statues of animals and people. I couldn’t really tell what they looked like, covered in moss and vines as they were, but they were clearly more than just random rocks. They all pointed at the center of the glade, the hunched backs of the humanoid figures as well as the feline muzzles of the animal statues.

“Ishrin, can you read me the poem again? The part where it talks about the glade.”

I perked up. “Of course! Let me fetch it. Here:

The glade was still in the morning air,

And the owl and the dove rested at peace

For the ring of light watched the heir

His son and his niece.”

“It seems like the poem has instructions on how to activate these statues.” Lisette said.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Melina said. “The owl and the dove…”

She moved from statue to state, clearing them of the overgrowth of vines and moss that blurred their features. There were two statues she spent the most time on, and indeed they looked like an own and a dove looking towards the center of the clearing from two opposites points in the circle of stone figures.

“They have latent magic,” I said. “But they are not active.”

“There must be an activation sequence.” Lisette said.

“A ritual!” Melina said.

“Perhaps…” I muttered, missing the joke entirely. “The poem mentions a ring of light. Could it be the sun?”

I paced around. There were tall trees all around, crowning the clearing with their tall branches and even though the sun shone high in the sky, their canopy blocked most of the light plunging the place in perpetual shadow. Yet, the flowers on the rich soil seemed to glow brightly, and the moss shone with dew glistening in the still misty air like a pale morning of winter.

Something caught my attention. While the dove and the owl’s stony figures occupied diametrically opposite places in the circle of statues, the other two points of interest didn’t hold any statues. In their places along the other diameter of the circle, the only other significative diameter of course, for out of the infinity of possible lines that cut a circle in two once you know one then only another one becomes important while all the rest are worthless… well in those two places there were small pillars of stone, cylindrical and tall, with something at the top. A gem, one white like glass or frosted water, the other clear like crystal.

“What’s the path that the sun takes in the sky?” I asked.

Lisette shrugged. “I do not know.”

Melina instead traced an arc with her hand. It didn’t intersect with the pillars, nor with the small holes in the canopy that I was just now spotting. There were three such holes, I noticed, in apparently random positions.

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Melina shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“There is a sense to it, I mean there must be!” I said. “We just need to find it.”

Lisette sat on a rock. “I am not very good at riddles.” She said, drooping.

“Don’t worry! We are a party, we cover each other’s weaknesses, don’t we?” Melina said.

“Cover each other’s…” she echoed.

I kept staring at the canopy. The three holes were almost perfect circles, unnatural ways for plant matter to develop, and indeed all three were marked by faint yet very visible traces of bright green magic. It was Liù, however, who provided me with the clue I needed to figure out the riddle. Looking at her I thought about her light, and thinking about light and crystals made me think about refractions and reflections. When did I learn about them, I wondered? I could not recall, but ever since I investigated the nature of light I learned so many things that increased my power by leaps and bounds. What did light do, so magical and so strange?

“The heir, his son and niece, the poem says.” I said, then showed the holes in the canopy to Melina. “Are there a trio of stars in these relative positions?”

She pondered about it for a while. Her face lit up with understanding. “There are!” She said. “But only in summer. It’s fall now.”

I smiled. “Well, this quest either requires a lot of patience…” I said. “Or special means.”

“I do not have patience.” Lisette said. “Please tell me that you have special means.”

***

We waited until nightfall before I could do anything. I did have some special means, but sadly even they had limits with my current level of power. Once the sun was down, however, I was finally ready to act. I had laid out the required ingredients for the ritual I had in mind with the help of the three girls already, only needing to do the performance to activate it.

Suddenly the firmament shifted. The deep light of the stars, point of light flickering lonely in a sea of their siblings hanging over our heads, became impossibly fast streaks like meteors that drew circles and arcs above, the whole sky spinning more and more rapidly until it was all a blur of grey. The moon sometimes passed by, a streak of white in the sea of grey.

The girls watched with their mouth open the spectacle, and I kept shepherding the stars about in the firmament until I felt that summertime was coming, and started to slow them down until they were once again still.

“W-what did you do? Did you rewind time?” Melina asked, worried.

“It’s only an illusion. Don’t worry.”

However, the illusion did what it was supposed to do. The three stars shone right where the holes were, their light weak and feeble very visible under my magic vision. Like three solid beams, previously unseen magic hit the two crystals on top of the pillars from two of the stars, while the light of the third star lit the rest of the glade in a soft, ethereal silver.

The ground shook. The crystals lit up and started to shine ever more brightly, and the statues of the owl and dove were hit by beams from these crystals and exploded, shedding their stony exteriors to reveal a body of gold and jade. At the center, where I was standing, I felt magic build up. I moved out of the way right before four beams coming from the four vertices of the circle all converged on one point, hitting the air and severing the space that hung there like a sheet of paper being held over a candle.

It burned, and a hole appeared.

“Is this… another realm? Oh, we need to—” Melina began.

“You are not seriously thinking about notifying the guild.” Lisette cut her off.

I laughed.

“You’re right.” She said. “But, what should we do?”

“We go in.” I said. “Let’s see what’s on the other side.”

The poem did mention something about finding the lost spawn and bringing them back, after all.