EG Book 7 Chapter 25 (Patreon)

*** AUTHOR’S NOTE ***

Well, I think I wrote the last chapter of this book, so y’all will be getting chapters rapid fire for a little while. I’m not super happy with it, so we’ll see.

*** AUTHOR’S NOTE ***

We should explore the building they were in,” I said. “I heard them mentioning something about a vault that they couldn’t open.”

“It would be a good place to recover as well,” Vaya said. “I am exhausted and need to gather.”

“I too could use a rest,” Sia said, shrinking down to land on my shoulder.

“There were three other Naga along with the undead,” Bridget said, “but they were all pretty weak. Nearly thirty of those Fire blasted creatures though. Vaya, can you check me out for their curse? I got scratched and bit a couple of times, but I think I managed to keep it out of me.”

“Sure,” Vaya said as we walked around towards the building the Naga were investigating. The structure was four stories tall, the largest of any we’d seen so far. There were four pillars stretching upward to the overhang, though only two still connected. The walls were made of brick, like all the other buildings, but these ones were all various colors of white marble, brilliantly bright compared to the store next to it.

“Whoa,” Jon said.

“Yeah, now that I do not got ugly things pawing at me, I can admire it. This is a gorgeous building,” Bridget said.

We hurried inside, looking over our shoulders just in case some other Naga were coming to investigate the sounds of battle. “Zimnodlot is still above the city,” Sia said. “Princess Aleksandra has not encountered any Naga, and he does not see any response to our fight. They were unable to hear it, something about the still intact buildings is disrupting the sound from around us. Princess Aleksandra is investigating a structure now. Lampart tells me that Ming has ambushed two Seed Core Naga and eight (zombies).”

“Thanks, Sia,” I told him. “Come on, we can investigate this, uh, bank. It kinda looks like a bank.” Inside the double doorway, which was unadorned with a door like every other structure in the ruined city, was a large open atrium. The room stretched three of the four stories of the building, and had a few windows looking into it from the wall across from us. A large stone counter still stood to the right, and the rear wall had three openings leading deeper in. The floor was mostly covered with stone dust and detritus, leaving the tracks of the Naga and Gallu obvious. Each doorway and the counter had a line straight to them.

“So, where first?” Jon asked.

“Probably need to find some stairs down,” Bridget said. “Vaults are usually placed underground if possible.”

“I am going to see what is behind that counter,” Vaya pointed.

“Uh, I guess let’s split up, but don’t go too far,” I said. “Jon, you take the far left door. Bridget, the middle one, and I’ll check the right door. Sia, see if there is anything visible in the rooms through the windows?”

I felt Sia’s agreement as he leapt off my shoulder with a flutter of wings, while Vaya followed the Naga’s path to the counter. I kept looking around while walking to the right door. The room was bigger than I thought it was, as the doorway was three meters tall. The center door was nearly ten meters away.

My chosen door led to a large hallway that extended another twenty meters. Every four meters there was an opening to the right. I looked into the first one and found a small square room. “Huh, I wonder what this was for? Maybe the attendants would take the customers here for one on one meetings? All the furniture must have rotted away or been taken whenever the M’Zee evacuated the city.”

I investigated all the rooms, but they were identical. The end of the hallway had another opening, but I didn’t want to get too far into the building without talking to the others. I turned and jogged back through to the main atrium, and found Bridget had just gotten back out of her door as well.

“I found a bunch of small rooms, along with two bathrooms,” Bridget said.

“Only the small rooms for me, though the hallway extended deeper in,” I said.

“Mine too,” she responded.

“I got the stairs up,” Jon said, poking his head out, “the first floor has a smaller open area to the rear of the building, but I did not go past that.”

“There is a small lock box in the counter that has not been opened,” Vaya said, walking over. “I could not figure out how to do so.”

“Neat,” I said. “Show me?”

“We are going to go upstairs and explore,” Jon said, grabbing Bridget’s hand.

She led me to the stone counter and then around it. The counter had two built-in shelves that ran the entire length, with the exception of the very middle. There, fully enclosed in the stone, was a metal box. The door of the box was smooth metal, with the only blemish a small hole. The box lightly glowed with Aether, letting me know that it was Inscribed and powered, but I couldn’t see the runic lines. “I wonder if we should get Sam to come check this out?” I said.

“Why?” Vaya asked.

“You know how I can see Aether?” She nodded. “Well, Sam can read Inscriptions. She’d be able to tell us what all of the runes are.”

“Or we could just break it open,” Vaya said. “Samantha has her own task right now.”

“Okay,” I said with a shrug. I formed a Forceful Punch, only using it with a hammer hand straight down on the counter next to the box. The stone shattered, collapsing the counter for nearly a full meter to either side of my impact zone. The safe tumbled out of the now broken enclosure, and Vaya quickly caught it. It zapped her, but it was only at the upper end of Condensation in strength.

“Ow, that stings,” she said, carefully putting it on the ground. “I am going to slice off the very front of it only.” She held both her hands out, and then started to run Water Aether between them. It formed two lines, each one speeding up every second. After almost a minute, she slowly separated her hands until they were just wider than the box. The lines of Water were moving fast enough that they were howling, and as she carefully drug them along the edge of the box the metal seemed to scream.

The Aether in the box flared for a bit, a small shield appearing on the metal attempting to stop the cutting. It broke nearly immediately, though, Vaya’s strength well beyond what it was designed to resist. Vaya spent nearly two minutes carving through the box. She could have done it much faster, but she was very obviously focusing on keeping any damage to the interior of the box to a minimum.

With a clank, the front of the box fell off. She’d estimated the thickness of the safe’s door nearly perfectly, leaving only a very thin film of metal blocking entrance to the interior. “I am not sure I can cut through that precisely enough,” Vaya said. “Can you?”

“Uh, I think so,” I said. I crouched next to the box, then extended a single finger. I coated the tip of my finger with Aether, modifying the Plasma Edge technique to use Metal Aether instead. I created a tiny blade, only five millimeters long, then tapped the upper left corner. It punctured straight through. I moved down the top, making a cut in every centimeter or so. Once I reached the right edge, I moved back along the line to put another hole in the middle of each pair.

After finishing cutting through the entirety of the top, I moved a quarter of the way down on either side. Once done with that, I pushed the top in enough to get a finger through, then yanked outward with all my strength. With a shriek, the metal ripped off the front, giving us access to the safe.

Inside, there were three disks of metal covered in Inscriptions. I reached in and took them. “Well, these are pretty neat, but I don’t know what they do,” I said.

“Might be keys for the vault downstairs?” Vaya suggested.

“Here,” I handed her two, “I’m going to run some Aether through the input here.” I pointed at one of the few runes I recognized.

“Be careful,” Vaya said, stepping away from me.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. Once Vaya was a few meters away, I focused on the disk in my hand. I pushed out a tiny streamer of Aether into the Inscription. Over the next few seconds, the runes carved into it gradually grew brighter. Nothing else happened beyond it starting to reject the Aether after ten seconds. I looked over at Vaya. “Eh, probably keys like you thought. They’re not doing anything else but glowing right now.”

“Well, what now?” Vaya asked.

“Hey Sia, where are you?” I asked him.

“Third floor. I believe I am in the manager’s office. There is intact wood furniture in this room,” he told me.

“Can you tell Jon and Bridget that Vaya and I are going to the end of the right hallway?”

“I will,” he answered.

“Want to check out the hallway there?” I asked Vaya, pointing where I had looked the first time.

“I do not have anything else to do,” she said with a grin.

The end of the hallway was a small room with the stairs down dropping from the middle of it. Piles of dust around the edges showed that there were probably cabinets or shelves there before the city was abandoned. There were ten stairs down before a landing flipped the direction, and then another ten stairs. There were two more landings, each separated by ten stairs, before the stairs ended.

In front of us was a small room, four meters by three meters. The only adornment was a two meter square of solid metal. The left side had a meter long rod that was attached into the door as a handle. The door was incandescent in my Aether Sight. “Whoa, that is huge,” Vaya said.

“Yeah, it is. I don’t think we’re going to get through that easily,” I said. “I can barely see the metal due to the Aether it is giving off.”

“Try one of the keys?” Vaya asked.

“We can try,” I said, then put it to the door. I channeled some Aether into it. I felt the disk vibrate, then tried to pull the bar down. It didn’t budge.

“Maybe all three?” Vaya said, then put the other two onto the door. It didn’t work. We tried all three, two, each one individually, then tried to put them on the bar, under the bar, around it. After twenty minutes of trying, we finally gave up.

“Yeah, I don’t think these are for the vault,” I said. “Want to try to cut through it?”

“Let us explore the rest of the building first,” Vaya answered. “Maybe we will find the actual keys to the vault.”

“Aiden, there is something in this room that seems odd,” Sia sent to me, “Can you come up here and see if you see something with your Aether Sight?”

“Sure thing, bud,” I said, then looked at Vaya. “Sia thinks he found something on the third floor and wants me to check it out.”

“Well then, I will race you,” she said, then turned and sprinted up the stairs.

“Cheater!” I yelled after her, breaking into my own run to try and catch up. All I heard in response was laughter. I followed her up, down the hallway and around to the leftmost doorway. The opening led to the stairs upward, and I followed closely behind Vaya.

We ignored the first two landings, and the stairs ended on the third floor. “Ha, beat you,” Vaya said.

“Eh, I was just enjoying the view,” I told her.

She immediately turned bright red, then gave me a sultry smile. “Well, thank you,” she said. She spun away from me and sauntered through the open doorway, deliberately exaggerating her stride.

I gave her a wolf whistle, which only resulted in a confused look. I broke out laughing, “I guess that doesn’t translate,” I giggled.

“I can guess from context,” Vaya said with a grin, her face still red. “I do not think I have heard anyone whistle like that, or whistle at all to show appreciation for someone.”

“Huh, got it,” I said. “I think you are beautiful, and I am amazed that you are interested in me at all.”

She shook her head and laughed, “Only you would doubt your own worthiness. Come on, let us see what Sia discovered.”

I grinned after her, then we walked through a hallway before following the flickering light given off by Sia’s feathers. “About time,” Sia told us. “That wall. What do you see?”

“Uh, it’s definitely Inscribed, but I cannot tell how,” I said. “Here, the edges of it are here.” I moved to the wall, then etched two lines showing the corner of the Inscribed area. I then did the same on the other three corners, only for the stone surface to rippled and then vanish, revealing another safe in the middle of the hidden area.

“I figured out what the disks are for,” Vaya said, then tapped the disk she was holding to the safe. It clunked, and the door opened. Inside were three bars of a glittering metal, green-gold in color, and a single disk with a different set of inscriptions. “That is orichalcum! I have only heard of it. It is an incredibly rare metal, stronger than anything else we have found, and it can hold Inscriptions like nothing else.”

“Well, yoink,” I said, grabbing all three bars into my ring. “Do you think the disk there is the key to the vault below?”

“It could be,” Vaya said.

“Then take it down and try it out,” Sia said.

“Will do, Sia,” I said. “And without you, we would not have found this at all!”

Sia cawed triumphantly, then flapped up to my shoulder. He pecked my ear, and I felt his impatience.

“Come on Vaya, his imperial majesty Siarczysty wants us to open the vault below,” I said, faux importance dripping from my voice.

“Well, we cannot inconvenience his august self,” Vaya said, doing a giant bow, beyond even what I would give to King Craesti.

“It is about time you recognize my importance,” Sia said, though I could feel laughter in his voice.

We ran back down, waving at Jon and Bridget who were in the hallway on the second floor as we passed by. After navigating all the turns, we arrived in front of the vault. Vaya stepped forward, pushing Aether into the new disk, only for nothing to happen yet again.

“Uh, ask Kami to bring Samantha here?” Vaya said, looking down at the disk.

“Yeah, maybe she can spot something? Sia, can you scout the path from the safe house to here?” I asked him.

“Take me outside,” he said. I ran out of the bank, and Sia jumped off my shoulder and spiraled up into the sky.

Two minutes later, Kami came running into sight, Sam riding his back with an expression of terror. “How can you be so fast?” She asked rhetorically, staggering as she slid off Kami.

“Once you advance enough, it will seem slow,” I told her. “We have a puzzle for you. I’m hoping that your Inscription Sight can figure out what we are supposed to do.”

“I’ll try,” Sam said. She followed me down to the vault, where Vaya was holding the manager’s disk and the disks we found in the atrium counter.

“Samantha, thank you for coming,” Vaya said. “This was found …” she explained where the different disks came from and what we had attempted to do so far.

Sam nodded, taking the disks from her and looking at them closely. She started to mutter to herself, too quietly for me to really hear it, and turning the disks over. She moved over to the vault door, her head turning back and forth as she examined it.

Finally, ten minutes later, she handed me the smaller disk found in the counter. “Channel Aether into this, and hold it here,” she said, pointing to a specific location in the upper right. “Vaya, do you have another disk? Good, then channel Aether into it and hold it here.” She guided Vaya to a location in the bottom right of the vault door. After we both were settled, she started to channel Aether into the manager’s disk, and placed it just to the right of where the bar would go once it rotated ninety degrees.

A loud clunk sounded out, and she grabbed the bar and pulled it down. It moved easily, and once it was horizontal she was able to push the door open with no issues.

“Whoa,” I said, looking inside.