Wakespire (The Weirkey Chronicles Book 7), page 5
"Their wings..." She realized she might be stumbling into a sensitive issue, but plunged forward. "Is that what happens when white and black wings merge?"
"What?" Isorales stared at her as if she'd said something absolutely absurd. "I don't, uh... I don't know how it works where you come from, but no. Gray wings are normal, for normal mountains. They're not from undercloud nations at all."
"Oh, sorry. What makes them a challenger?"
"Nobody thought their lineage was particularly important, but their leader also ascended to Authority during the first round. An 8th class Authority, too, not like you'd expect. It surprised everyone, so now he's been gaining allies and his patron has made a lot of money off it."
More Authorities. Even though Nauda had stood among many powerful soulcrafters, she found herself a little intimidated. Yes, most of them probably didn't have brilliant soulhomes, and the intensity of cantae couldn't compare to the battle between Strongholds on Fithe. But these were people about her age, people she was going to be competing against in a matter of hours. Fiyu and Theo might be able to keep up, but could she?
"Anybody else?" Nauda shook off the thoughts and looked around the room. "Most of the other Rulers look average to me, but they can't all be here."
"Well, there's the Jadadictus lineage. Which means, umm, me." Isorales raised a hand in an awkward wave. "I'm Isorales Jadadictus. Should I have said that before? Wasn't sure if that would mean anything to you."
"I'm not familiar with local politics, so it's fine." Nauda gave him a smile despite the fact that her entire body had tensed up. He was a rival after all, and possibly much more dangerous than she had expected. His shielding wall must be fantastic, because she had honestly thought he was an Archcrafter.
"Technically we're a major competitor, but I wouldn't worry about us. We started with four teams and the Dortorus teams took out half our soulcrafters in the very first round. And I'm basically a disappointment to my entire lineage, so I don't know how long I'll be able to stay in the competition."
"Was this all an attempt to recruit me, then?"
Isorales looked dismayed for a moment, then grinned weakly when he saw she was joking. "No, no, nothing like that... I really just wanted to talk. My family doesn't want to lose face relying on others. Besides, we're declining, so it's not like you would want to join our teams."
"So we could be fighting each other tomorrow."
"Well, most of the challenges don't involve fighting each other, but we'll definitely be competing. Have you seen the scoreboards? Points are given on a curve, so it's hard to work together."
Nauda had seen the scores, just like she'd heard everyone talking about Authority "classes", and she had ignored them. More ranking obsessions, as far as she could tell. Other worlds were so concerned about who was stronger than who. There didn't appear to be any strategy they could access based on all those points and scales, so they didn't matter. All she could do was offer everything she had during the competition.
"Isorales!" The blue-masked Authority boomed out from across the room, marching in their direction. "You still haven't ascended, huh?"
"I'm..." Isorales started to say more, but swallowed as his opponent spread his gray wings to either side.
"We're coming for you, tomorrow!" The Gatrium soulcrafters sneered at them on their way out and Isorales kept his eyes lowered.
"I... good luck tomorrow." Isorales mumbled out the words and then fled, his mangled wings bobbing after him. Nauda wanted to ask him about the apparent conflict, or even just help him feel better, but there was no time. She needed to sleep for the competition, and tomorrow they would all be enemies.
On her way back, she found herself instead looking back toward the Dortorus teams. Those golden wings were so familiar... as she walked into a relatively empty hallway of the palace, Nauda opened up her pouch.
"Senka, were you listening?"
"Mostly." She stuck her head out, hair tousled but eyes sharp. "Normal Noveni politics, sounds like."
"Do you think this Dortorus family could be related to Ariano of the Golden Wings? Back on Tatian, I mean. I know he left Noven because-"
"Are you sporping kidding me?" Senka regarded her with malicious amusement. "Wings that color are one of the most common types. There have to be hundreds of noble lineages with those wings across the world. The chance that there's any connection is basically zero."
Nauda scowled down. "Who made you the expert on Noven?"
"Shut up, gurfoop!" Senka laughed as she wriggled out of the bag, then ran off ahead. Grouchy as she was, Nauda let her go.
Or maybe she was just tired. Not only was it difficult to gauge how long she had been awake, the sheer light itself was starting to wear on her. Her only point of comparison was the desert of Arbai. That place had been drier and bleaker, yet the sterile light of all the Noveni suns wearied her in a different way. Nauda decided just to go back to the others and get a good sleep before the competition.
After she got back, it all went absurdly quickly. Nauda had been looking forward to a proper Noveni meal instead of rations, but when she got back the others had already acquired food. The light flakes of bread were sweet, but unremarkable. After that, Nauda fell asleep and seemed to wake up a moment later with Theo shaking her.
She blearily pulled herself together as she realized that the strange light had made her oversleep. Unlike the usual washed-out white, the sunlight was more blue than anything. They took their sleigh and joined all the other competitors as they flew away from Ugustial city and toward a massive tower atop a nearby mountain. It was only while staring at it that Nauda's brain reengaged.
"Wait, are we going to a ceremony?" she asked dully.
"The ceremony was part of everything we missed last month," Theo told her. "Make sure you're awake, because I think we're going in as soon as we arrive. We're running late."
Hadn't she been registering their names and eating just an hour ago? Nauda slapped her cheeks and forced herself to focus. There was no time to look at the tower or think about anything else - she needed to be ready for anything. When they got closer, a Noveni official directed them toward a large blue portal.
"As soon as you step inside," the official said, "your second trial of the Wakespire will begin. Please enter quickly."
Except it was their first time and Nauda had no idea what to expect. Guchiro had already taken over the sleigh, so they needed to head inside. Nauda gripped her staff, glanced at the others, and plunged through the portal into the unknown.
Chapter 4
Entering the spire briefly reminded Theo of crossing between worlds, then he realized they were nothing alike. All the disorientation, none of the liminal elevation. The portal entrance definitely transported them across space, but it simply dumped them into a room in the same world.
That room was a cube, roughly twenty feet along any side. No entrances or exits, but they'd emerged from a carving of an archway. Since every other surface was formed from plain white stone blocks, scrubbed of any significant details, all the rest of his attention fell on the four columns of light on the opposite side of the room.
Even as they took a step inside, the light shivered and vanished, revealing a quartet of stage two demons. These had spider-like bones emerging from their backs, but otherwise they were the same as second stage demons on any world. Four of them against four contestants: clearly a first room designed to filter out Archcrafters or completely incompetent Rulers. For their group, it should be no trouble at all.
"Let's finish this quickly!" Theo said. He was already casting a gravitational field underneath the demons.
All demons had some resistance to cantae abilities, but with his spherical flow handling the raw power of his singularity, Theo could multiply gravity significantly. He might even have been able to kill them all himself, but to conserve energy he simply smashed them against the ceiling, then caught them in mid-air as they fell.
By now the others didn't need any direction. Nauda already had her staff raised while he was casting the field and she quickly used her binding skill to push the demons together. As soon as they were aligned, Fiyu unleashed a storm of light bolts that tore through them.
A matter of seconds after they had entered the room, the challenge was over.
"And I'm also here!" Senka stood with her hands on her hips and an exaggerated look of pride on her face. "But really, my only contribution will be to step out now."
"Are we allowed to forfeit?" Theo asked.
"You can announce it or walk out," Senka said, already walking behind them. Two sides of the room had lit up: a blue portal circled in the archway behind them while another had emerged on the opposite side. Just before Senka stepped into the swirling cantae, she glanced back at him. "You should be able to handle this, but hurry."
As soon as she touched the portal, she vanished. As he jogged toward the portal onward, Theo couldn't help but wonder what she meant. If she knew something specific, surely she would have told him earlier. Then again, her memory could be erratic. It wasn't like he'd planned to waste time, so he focused onward regardless.
On the other side of the spatial twist, they entered a second room with the portal already fading behind them. This chamber didn't look like a battle arena at all: the floor was covered in glass and water flowed through translucent silvery channels underneath. Above the glass stood a large number of levers that appeared to change gates in the channels.
"A puzzle? Really?" Theo muttered to himself and hoped that the Noveni in charge had a better sense of puzzle design than the average game developer. He'd been prepared to fight his way through a gauntlet, so having to finish random puzzles just irritated him.
"Looks like it's supposed to flow into here?" Nauda crouched down on the opposite side, examining some sort of mechanism underneath the glass.
"There are golden lines drawn beneath the pipes," Fiyu pointed out. "They appear to be rooms. Could this be a representation of a soulhome?"
Theo laughed as he realized that his experience with video games had actually tripped him up. Without any preconceived notions, his allies had immediately seen the truth: this was a cantae flow exercise. As soon as he started looking for it, he saw the representations of chambers and understood the objective of the task.
"Think of the end gate as the window for a technique," Theo said, already hauling on one lever. "We probably need to get all the cantae flowing there instead of being wasted."
The others immediately joined him. He'd worried about trying to coordinate their efforts, but the puzzle itself wasn't that hard. Because they all saw the flaws in the cantae flow, they quickly switched the channels until all the pipes all flowed in the same direction. The combined force pushed against the mechanism Nauda had pointed out and the portal onward opened.
Nauda grinned at him as they moved on and Theo automatically grinned back. Fiyu appeared to be smiling as well from just behind them. It was more than their teamwork that cheered him, however: his faith in the people running the test had been restored. The water puzzle might not have been challenging, but it would stymie anyone who didn't have a decent theoretical knowledge of cantae flow. You wouldn't be able to win the Wakespire with brute force alone.
Theo was beginning to feel like he had a handle on the trials, then they entered the next room. Or rather a tunnel. When they stepped from the next portal, they stood inside a large tube of glass. It was completely cylindrical except for a flat floor across the bottom.
"Some kind of trap?" Nauda advanced forward first, but the tube appeared to spiral upward harmlessly.
As they moved inward, Theo saw that their tube was only one of several, all gently spiraling around the sides of a vast cylindrical room. The other paths soon became half-tubes with open tops, and he braced himself when theirs lost its roof, but nothing attacked them. So far, he hadn't noticed any threats at all. It looked like they could simply continue up their glass pathway until they reached the portal at the top.
He wasn't sure what to make of the room at all. Each glass tube ended in a different portal, so perhaps there was an element of risk there? Since there didn't appear to be any danger, they sped up toward the top.
"Do you feel anything?" Nauda whispered to Fiyu.
"It appears to be an empty tower. Four pathways leading to the top, with no..." She trailed off and Theo glanced back at her just in time to see Fiyu turn in alarm. "There's someone else here!"
Four figures emerged at the bottom of another of the glass pathways: three Rulers and an Authority. Theo wasn't sure about the purpose of the room, but he suddenly understood the risk. The leader of the group was a man wearing a featureless blue mask... he must have been the Gatrium contender that Nauda had blearily told them about.
"How did you get here first?" Even through the narrow mask eye holes, his rage was obvious. "Attack, you fools, stop them!"
All four began sprinting up their pathway and hurling cantae bolts as soon as they were free of the glass roof. As he sped up, Theo noted that none of them tried to fly or leave their pathway. He decided to do the same and cast some torsion bolts of his own: not toward the group, but toward the walkway ahead of them. Most had to retreat and only the Authority pushed through his bolts.
"Stealth?" Fiyu asked, coming up beside him. Theo shook his head: they had a head start and they were almost to the exit, so there was no point revealing another one of her techniques.
Before they reached the portal, they had been nearly singed by a multitude of attacks. Another team had come through a third glass tube as well, this one all with Dortorus golden wings. The Gatrium team turned some of their attention to the new arrivals, leaving Theo and the others to plunge into their portal.
On the other side, darkness surrounded them. Theo took a deep breath and began focusing on his new gravity sense, which revealed a cube filled with a host of smaller objects. He had hoped to take a moment to talk to the others about the previous room and their strategy going forward, but it seemed like there was no time for that.
"Do not worry." Fiyu's fingers gripped his sleeve and he could feel that she was pulling Nauda as well. "Follow me and this should not be difficult."
Without her guidance, the room would have been a hellish gauntlet of apparently bottomless pits, spinning blades, and sliding blocks. It was all more than Theo could keep up with, so all his new sense gave him was dread. But since he trusted Fiyu, it was a simple matter to follow her directions. They made it through the room without any injuries and stepped into an ordinarily lit chamber.
This one was smaller, containing a desk with a number of books and a model of the golden spire. Strangest of all, there was a Noveni man drawing papers out of a box. He stared at them and his jaw worked soundlessly before he managed to summon any actual words.
"You're here already?" He shook his head. "So sorry, not quite ready yet..."
"Is this some kind of trick?" Nauda asked. She brandished her spear in his direction. "Are you going to give us a riddle or attack us or something?"
"No! What kind of barbarians are you?" The man sat down behind his desk and frowned at them. "This is the first Room of Blessings. You can observe the progress of your rivals here and choose one of them to grant a benefit in their next trial."
"Do we have to give one?" Theo asked.
"Yes, it's a requirement to move on. And you can't choose yourselves."
"Oh, then it is a strategic question," Fiyu said.
She nodded as if this was reasonable, but to Theo it sounded like a con. The largest families could bless one another, either equally or pooling all their choices toward their best team. Small teams would be at a disadvantage... but that didn't matter.
"We're not wasting time on that," Theo announced. "Just pick someone, anyone."
"Let's help Isorales Jadadictus," Nauda said. She shrugged when he glanced toward her. "He seemed nice and might be an ally later."
"Doesn't matter, the point is to hurry on."
"You don't... want to examine the tower?" The Noveni official blinked at them in surprise and gestured toward the spire model. Theo was already rushing past him and it seemed like the next portal was active, so there was nothing to stop them.
He didn't have enough information to play the local politics, so Nauda's instinct was as good as any. Theo was much more concerned about the fact that they seemed to be ahead of the curve. That was probably in large part due to Fiyu, but the reason didn't matter. Even before Senka's comment about hurrying, he'd suspected that there were rewards for speed. Leading the pack was their best chance of catching up to all the teams that had participated in the first round.
The next room was another empty cube... except for a large statue in the center. Fiyu readied herself as soon as she saw it, while Nauda just sighed.
"I don't suppose this is a statue-based puzzle?"
As an answer, the apparently squat statue unfolded into a lean golem over twice their height. Its entire body was made from a shimmering silver that felt like a sublime material to Theo. Building automatons was difficult as far as he knew, and the materials alone had to be expensive. One thing was sure: this was going to be a bigger challenge than the demons.
"Another team has applied a curse," a disembodied voice told them calmly. "This chamber's difficulty will be intensified."
Cantae rolled over the golem's body. It pulled two long blades from within its chest cavity and charged.
Chapter 5
Theo really should have panicked. As the golem marched toward him, its blades swinging, he calmly cast both a gravitational field and a series of torsion bolts.
Against a normal opponent, that might have been the correct decision. But the golem appeared capable of resisting his gravitational change and his bolts reflected off its shiny surface. It was on him faster than he expected and its reach was far larger than he'd anticipated, as it crouched down and swept one blade in a long horizontal sweep.
