Jay was rolling the ring with the empty setting around in his hands when the grinding noise came. [Sense Magic] pinged along as the noise rose and fell silent when it did. He didn’t bother poking his head out of the tent to see what was causing it; it was probably just Kallin preemptively raising the stormbreak Warinot had mentioned.
He was too busy to worry about it. The ring Agensyx had brought up for him and the tidbit the earth mage had mentioned about being able to display the contents of his storage ring on his summary sheet had combined to give him an idea: what if he could make something happen with the gemless ring he’d stolen from the Duke’s storage closet?
Actual enchantments were probably out of the question; he had none of the knowledge about rune inscriptions and mana shaping that were necessary for that. He definitely didn’t have time to puzzle them out himself, or to take the traditional route of an apprenticeship. Spying on Elyra’s work repairing his diving suit might yield something, but he would be hanging a lot on the idea of that actually working and him not getting caught.
One of the books had described enchanters defending their secrets as “like a drake hoards its fortune.” Jay did not want to find out how literal that was. He had no desire whatsoever to become some enchantment-hunting Indiana Jones figure.
That left him on his own to figure out what the best thing to try was. Jay brought the setting close to his eye. If anything was going to succeed, it would probably be focused around that. He didn’t have anything that could create a proper, true gemstone; Divinity should be more than up to the playing the role despite not quite qualifying. Hopefully whatever portion manifested wasn’t too fragile. He’d never tested it without making it specifically to be broken.
Jay sketched out the shape of it in his mind. Broad at the bottom so the lower prongs would hold it in place but narrow enough at the top that it could rest between the upper versions without tilting. His mental image became the classic diamond shape that every cartoon had ever included, the point on the bottom facing up.
He took a breath; he let it out. The noise of the grinding stone, newly returned, faded to nothing compared to his focus on that shape and its soon-to-be-occupied gap in the setting.
Divinity rose to his call when he reached for it, tracing itself into the place. Jay could feel it trying to bulge instead of sticking to the shape and diverted a little bit of attention each time to smoothing that out instead of letting it ruin the overall shape. Three points of the resource ticked away as it condensed, going from an outline, to a shape that looked like it was made of sand, to the solid golden imitation gemstone he’d been picturing.
When it became fully real, Jay felt the difference, like feeling a door latch fully. He was almost surprised there hadn’t been an audible click, but, as his brief period of concentration faded, he realized there could have been and he probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Now, what could it do?
That was underwhelming. Jay was happy enough that it had worked, but he was sure that if he’d been more experienced, he could have made the effect better. It was something to work on. A glorified quest marker was not worth three points of Divinity. That was if it worked like that, which the vagueness of the wording didn’t clarify at all. Maybe it would turn out to be his savior if he ever got stuck in a labyrinth.
Still, message received from the Overgoddess: “get on with it already.”
Making the gem was also apparently an Active Skill that the System recognized, judging from the window that popped into being to acknowledge his effort.
That would be useful. The description implied that he could do it to any type of magical resource he had access to, which raised its own set of questions, but he could fill in the gaps on his own. There had to be some way to store other types of magic for use by any of the crafter-type Classes. What would it take to get his hands on something like that?
He’d have to find out.
The rest of the camp had gone oddly silent. Jay had meant to show up before everyone left just in case his suit had been fixed enough to go with them, even knowing that it wouldn’t have been. At least he could have shown that he didn’t mind being left behind. Jay went to leave the tent, thinking he might be able to catch the rest of the group just as they set out, only to find a layer of solid stone outside the canvas flap.
“What the hell?” he muttered. Was someone pranking him? Was this Kallin’s way of making sure he was available to keep going through the other System configurations and the events of the goblin warren? Or was it something that had been done in an attempt to keep him from trying to sneak off and take his unrepaired diving suit out anyway?
Well, if the front flap had been walled off, they’d probably done the other sides too. Just in case, Jay tapped the tent’s canvas sides and met hard stone each time. That made sense; no one on this island was stupid. No one except him, at least, since he still couldn’t figure out what he’d done to be blocked in. That was never a good sign.
Jay summoned the [Crypt], letting Alister out again at long last.
What – the parasite skeleton began, only for Jay to cut him off immediately.
Try to find any way out of here, he commanded. Quickly.
Taken aback by the uncharacteristic intensity of the man’s thoughts, Alister wound his way through the tent.
Nothing. Why are we trapped?
Short answer: they might know. Long answer: we might be absolutely fucked, Jay replied. Longer answer: I may be even worse of a liar than I thought I was and they may have realized something was up.
Stolen story; please report.
The Alister-sized stone archway that formed the entrance to [Crypt]’s undead storage tried to fade. Jay didn’t let it.
The worst case scenario would be them coming back to find you here, he began. I need you to go back in.
The resurrected parasite hated the idea, he could feel it, but he could also feel the begrudging acceptance of how much worse that would make the situation. He slithered back in and Jay let the gate retreat back into the ground. Time for a Plan B.
Agensyx?
There was no response. He tried again a few times, calling out with increasing mental volume and even jolts of various emotions, but none of it earned a reply. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the spirit had just come back, Jay would have guessed he was just occupied. Unfortunately, the fact that this was happening at the same time as he was locked behind stone made it ominous.
Just as he was resigning himself to the idea of having to wait to get any information until the earth mage – or maybe Warinot, or one of the other accomplished mages – felt like giving it, the light in the tent changed. The built-in light enchantments in the fabric had been set to the soft yellow he preferred, and that didn’t change, but it was joined by a turquoise glow. The light coalesced into an eye that grew rapidly more opaque, etching itself onto the world in quick brushstrokes.
[Sense Magic] pinged once as it fully solidified, the sound louder than nearly every other spell he’d witnessed, and fell silent. If it was possible to get tinnitus in a mental ear, that would have done it.
“So this is the one.” The eye pulsed in time with the coldly feminine voice’s words. “He looks… underwhelming.”
“That’s rude,” Jay said.
Kallin’s voice joined the conversation, vibrating the canvas of the tent as if he was speaking directly through the stone. Hell, he probably was. That sounded like exactly the kind of thing he could have pulled off.
“He’s deadlier than he looks, Venerable,” the absent metal man said. “He’s already killed one of the others. There’s going to be quite a bit of explaining to be done to the Rathi family.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Jay tried.
“You turned him into an abomination and forced us to take drastic measures. On what plane is that different from killing him?” Kallin snapped.
Drastic measures? What did that mean?
“Oh, he’s one of those faslik,” the woman’s voice said. “Kill him and be done with it, Evior.”
The eye began to fade, dissipating back into the light that made it up.
“Madam Venerable. Venerable Nolore,” Kallin started, notes of pleading already showing. “It’s more than that. Please, listen.”
“Fine,” she said, her eye snapping back to its full opacity. “You have twenty seconds to make your case.”
“From the beginning, he’s been odd. He stowed away on the boat to get here. At first we just thought he was a last-minute addition, and it worked out since he made it an even number and we didn’t have to have a group short.
“But that didn’t mean we didn’t check around, at least,” Kallin said. “Elyra and Esha sent out missives, asking who had included him at the last minute. Every one of them was met with bafflement. No one had ever heard of this so-called Jay Carter.”
The voice on the other end of the eye made a noise of interest at that. “An odd name.”
“Certainly. Not unheard of, but not common either, not in this century,” Kallin agreed. “He claimed to be a [Snake Tamer], which was also unusual for an educationally sponsored expedition like this. We thought he was just here to try to hijack our research, though; it wouldn’t be the first time someone under a serpent banner had done that.”
“And we show them exactly how little they get out of it every time,” the woman crowed.
Jay couldn’t help but notice both that it had been more than twenty seconds and that they were talking about him like he wasn’t there. He tried to speak up, to defend himself or at least beg for a crumb of understanding, but Kallin bulldozed his words before the sound actually made it anywhere.
“We do. But more and more odd happenings surrounded him. He was kidnapped by goblins that none of us had found. He came back tainted from head to toe by what is clearly post-Curse necromantic power. He has abilities that shouldn’t be possible for any tamer Class, especially not one claiming to be level eleven.”
“So what do you think he really is? You’re clearly building to something.” The woman’s voice was still cold as ice but sounded more interested in the conversation now.
“I am,” Kallin said. “I believe that this supposed [Snake Tamer] is actually a highly evolved form of undead sent out into the world by the first developed [Necromancer] this world has seen since the Curse.”
The earth mage’s final words hit Jay with the force of a city gate closing. He said it so confidently for something that was somehow both uncomfortably close to the truth and impossibly far from it. Either way, it wasn’t a good sign for that accusation to be getting levelled at him.
He braced for a spear of stone to shoot out and skewer him.
“You never could resist the drama, could you, Kallin?” the woman asked. “I’m sure you have a solution all planned out, too.”
The smile in the metal man’s voice was audible as he replied. “We have a necropolis right here. One of the emptiest, even. Why not do to this thing what is done to all the other artifacts of necromancy?”
“A sound plan,” Venerable Nolore’s voice replied. “I don’t have to tell you to keep an eye on as many of the recorded exits as possible, do I? If you let this undead thing of your escape out of negligence, you’ll be the one responsible for what it does.”
It seemed like he wasn’t going to get a chance to defend himself, then. Halea had clearly never heard of due process, but given that it had seemed like any association with necromancy was an instant death sentence, maybe this was the version of punishment that passed for a lenient sentence.
“Don’t worry, Venerable. Not only will I be watching, listening, and feeling for anything going wrong at every egress point, I have also put in my own measure of control to ensure he does not escape.”
“Good boy,” the woman replied. “You always did have a brain for this kind of thing. By the time you return to the academy, you should find a hefty bonus waiting for you. Pending review, of course.”
“Of course,” Kallin said.
“Good. Then make it so, Evior.”
The turquoise eye dissolved and with it went the effects on the normal tent lighting.
“Can you even understand me, creature? To be perfectly honest, I doubt it, but maybe some glimpse of this is getting through to whoever you used to be.
“Assuming you were a victim, I pity you. You will not like the necropolis and I sincerely hope whatever scrap of your consciousness remains will flee before long. If you were not a victim, though, if you donated your body and soul willingly to this… I hope you stick around for a good, long time.”
Jay jolted as the tent jostled. “You couldn’t even give me the chance to stand up for myself?”
“Oh so you do actually hear and adapt. Unless that’s your controller in there, riding tandem in your head. Either way, no. You don’t get that chance. You aren’t worth the seconds it would take us to deliberate over it. If I didn’t have to be inhabiting this stone now to get you in there, I wouldn’t even be sparing an ear for this.”
“Seems unfair. And unnecessarily rude.”
“You want to call something unfair? You want unnecessarily rude? It’ll just be you, that undead snake of yours, and my own deterrent down there. I hope you rot slowly. I hope there’s forgotten levels of demented traps down there. I hope…”
The string of increasingly vitriolic wishes continued for as long as the movement did. They cut off at the same time that [Astral Sense] let him know he was no longer under stars at all. The stone dissolved from around the tent audibly.
Jay almost didn’t want to poke his head out. If this was some kind of hell-prison realm, what would it look like? Something out of a cenobite’s wet dream, maybe, filled with chains and torture implements of varieties he’d never even imagined.
But he had to look sometime. Jay flipped back the flap of the tent and saw only a wall of scales. He supposed at least he’d have Agensyx for company. Maybe between the two, they’d avoid whatever Kallin’s deterrent was for long enough to find a way out.
He let the flap fall again and instead went under the side of the tent that didn’t have more of his familiar’s bulk leaning against it, taking a good look around when he stood back up. It was not a reassuring sight.
