"This is showing sincerity?" Sofia grumbled as she moved her body according to the sword forms Professor Davar showed them. Focused mentoring had been over a couple of hours ago, but she and Juliette were still practising.
"Shut up and don't distract me!" Juliette yelled when her foot shifted a fraction of an inch off the form. The Elemental energy she was calling, Wind in this case, dispersed violently and knocked her off her feet. She got up and rubbed her bottom, hiking up her short skirt in the process and flashing her underwear at Sofia. Which then distracted her enough that the trajectory of her swing diverted enough to break the form.
Boom!
Fire Elemental energy dispersed just as violently and would have made her clothes catch on fire if not for the basic enchantments woven into them.
"This sucks," Sofia observed. "Why are we doing this again?"
"Because mastering the flow means any movement we make will allow the Elements to converge faster, allowing at least a fifty percent increase in our casting speed, and a boost in power," Juliette said, "without increasing spell components."
"Ah, yeah," Sofia nodded. That was indeed worth it. The value of each spell component was fixed and there was no way to cram more power out of a spell without adding more components. Except for when they advanced beyond Magus and gained Elemental Truths anyway.
Wait.
Sofia scrunched her nose as she thought furiously. There was no way to increase a spell's power without Elemental Truths. That meant that the reason the sword forms were increasing the spells power was they were…Elemental Truths. Her eyes widened and she said as much, only for Juliette to roll her eyes.
"Well, of course it is!" Juliette said, "Why do you think I was so surprised? Professor Davar is generous beyond belief, and I'm afraid of what she'll ask of us once we do learn the forms and apply them."
"But the token…"
"You'd be a fool to think that," Juliette said. "A gold does not equate to the value of a path to an Elemental Truth. And do you think that the two sword forms she showed us was all of it? I heard her call it the 'Four Phases of the Sword'. She has two more forms that probably correlate to Water and Earth."
"Yeah…" Sofia pursed her lips. "Let's get all of Professor Davar's tokens that we can?"
"Agreed. But leave it to me. You're as blunt as a sledgehammer and you'll tip off the others."
Sofia shook her head. "It might be too late for that. You remember at the registrar? She's a hot commodity. Heh, wanna bet that the other staff and faculty know and are scheming to get her tokens, too? That's probably why Secretary Ferron told Professor Davar to give out ten tokens a week."
"So that means there are five more available…"
"Probably not. She teaches two classes, remember?"
"Do you think we can snag Francis' tokens?"
"If we go and offer two golds for each one, probably."
"Then let's go! Before he sells it to someone else!"
__________
The hallways that followed the first one were full of skeleton brawlers. None of them had anything on, and were unarmed. Gwendith figured that it wouldn't stay that way, and she was right since by the hallway after that, the skeletons now had spears.
Rusted, blunted, and frankly, spears with shafts that were so brittle all it took was a stiff breeze to break them, but spears nonetheless. In a hallway that was barely wide enough for her and Heron to walk shoulder to shoulder, the relatively smaller frames of the skeletons meant that they could present three or four bodies at a time. And that meant there were at least eight spearpoints menacing them, four at the front and four behind them. All they needed to have a phalanx was shields.
"Fire Bolt," Gwendith cast. The spell slammed against the front runner and ignited its black tendrils.
"Fire Bolt," she cast again and hit the next skeleton. Both were still active, damaged but relatively functional. They charged at Heron who snorted derisively and smashed their spears apart with his hardened air shields, then swept them off their legs with his spear.
"Fire Bolt."
"Will you quit it!" Heron yelped. "Just use your Anima!"
"Heh," Gwendith smirked. "We have to practise."
"At least break their skulls instead of burning the black sludge off their bones."
"Oh, alright," Gwendith huffed. "Stone Bolt."
She winced when it took nearly thrice as long to cast that spell compared to Fire Bolt. The skeleton's skull was smashed though.
"Urk! Just use those ice blocks instead!"
"What are you complaining about?" Gwendith huffed. "It's not as if those things can hurt you."
"No, but they are annoying."
Even as Heron griped, he smashed through the line of skeletons and soon enough they cleared the hallway. They were rewarded with another hallway, and this time the skeletons carried better weapons. Still spears, but they at least looked like serviceable weapons.
Gwendith spent that time honing her Arcana Weaving. She struck with Ice Bolt, though she tried making the projectile blunt instead of pointy. It didn't quite work as she expected, but she was able to seize the bolts before they went past her control zone and manipulated them as if they were her created Ice Daggers.
"At least I won't waste Animus making the daggers," she muttered.
Perhaps if she asked Yuriko to modify the spells so that they didn't have forward momentum? She didn't know how her lover could easily tweak the spells, since the construction was rather opaque to her. Sure, after Yuriko moved things around, they made sense, but Gwendith didn't know why they made sense. Perhaps if she studied Arcana Weaving for years, she might get the same intuition Yuriko did.
In lieu of that, she felt a bit closer to her Ennoia when she manipulated Fire and Water Elemental spells, though she could only cast spells with three circles, or thirty components so far. She could push to learn and cast more complex spells, she knew, but she didn't have to rush. And Arcana Weaving wasn't better than how the three Ancients fought anyway. Well, for Saki, casting spells saved her meagre Animus reserves, even while they were in a Chaos Fount.
While she and Heron were playing around, Saki had gone ahead. Clad in her Shadow Ennoia, the skeletons didn't seem to care about her presence and she slipped through the gaps. After they cleared a couple more hallways, each with a hundred cold bodies, Saki came back.
"A couple more hallways and there's a chamber," Saki said. "It's a dead end, but there's something there."
"Oh, well, let's get to it then," Gwendith said.
The next two hallways were much the same. There were a bit more skeletons, this time they carried large, round shields that covered their torsos, but not their legs. Heron's spear sweep easily knocked them off their feet and from there, it was a simple matter of crushing skulls.
It took half an hour to power through the enemies, and when they arrived in the chamber, Gwendith couldn't help but laugh. "It's a bit dramatic, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Heron agreed.
The chamber looked like nothing more than a scene from a frightening story, of cultists and crazies, who sacrificed lives to fuel fell rituals. The chamber was circular, and the floor was marked with red lines linked together in runescript arrays. At the very centre of the room was an altar. On it were candles that had a black flame burning, which cast no shadows, but didn't really illuminate the room much.
Bones were piled at deliberate points on the ritual circle, with each one hosting a prominent humanoid skull on top. In the middle of the blacklight candles was a stone slab. It lay flat on the space so Gwendith couldn't see any details, but she imagined it had some kind of map, maybe forbidden knowledge? Or far more likely, simple pageantry.
Saki moved to the left while Heron headed directly to the altar. Gwendith followed behind him, but looked at the runescript formation painted in blood. The patterns looked familiar, but in a strange twisted way. Gwendith figured that if she actually powered the ritual circle with Animus, something might happen, but as it were, Elemental energies bounced off the blood. Not that she was foolish enough to actually do that. But maybe she could copy it and have Yuriko look it over?
She was just about to whip out a notebook when Heron touched the stone slab.
"Hey, look at this."
Gwendith and Saki approached the altar and peeked. The slab looked like it was part of a bigger one, considering the jagged edges and the contents. It looked like a rudimentary map, Gwendith decided after several minutes of examination. None of them touched it, wary of traps. But perhaps this was a key, and the map was where the treasure was? Ambrosia? What else could be had from the place?
Well, clearly it wasn't just Ambrosia considering how rare it was. Beast cores and Elemental Ores, apparently. There was little of that here, which maybe why they didn't meet any other delvers. On their way here, they had crossed paths with several adventurers, and while the stand off had been somewhat tense, the fact that all of them wore the Adventurers' Guild badges meant that they were ultimately on the same side.
Still, she had heard more than a few tales of caution back in the guild tavern in Kaliso. There was also a board with faces of known bandits, murderers, and ex-adventurers placed prominently next to the bar, so…clearly, Chaos Founts didn't just have monsters as threats, but possibly people too.
Gwendith reached for the slab, but Heron stopped her for a moment. "Be ready for anything."
"You think it's a trap?"
"That's likely."
"Are you scared?" Gwendith asked in a teasing tone.
"No, I'm worried about the two of you."
"Hmph. Don't be." She took the slab, but she kept her Animakinesis ready.
Almost as soon as the slab left the altar, the entrance was shut by a stone door that dropped from above. A moment later, vents opened along the bottom of the walls and a green gas whooshed in.
Gwendith and Heron immediately expanded their Anima and covered Saki in it. Heron's was tougher than hers so she retracted and moved away. The billowing gas cloud touched the edge of her aura and…
Nothing.
Huh?
"This is…" Gwendith gasped. "Chaos!"
"Oh! It is." Heron agreed as he wicked a bit of it towards his hand. He touched the cloud and it rolled around his fingers, then he drew a deep breath. Tendrils of ambient Chaos siphoned into his mouth. "It is Chaos, but it doesn't feel right."
"Poison?" Gwendith asked.
"No, more like it feels stale." Heron shook his head. "But I've no trouble processing it into Animus."
"Oh, I need a top up," Saki said as she stepped out of Heron's aura. She took a seated meditation and began respiring Chaos and Animus. She brought out the regeneration cube as well as a couple of jade cartridges.
"Good idea," Gwendith said approvingly. Her Frozen Scales were far from complete and she could use more Chaos to convert to Animus to fuel its growth. Heron sat down too and began absorbing as much Chaos as he could contain. There wasn't much of the gas clouds left after a couple of minutes, and by that time, the door blocking the entrance actually retracted on its own.
The last bits of Chaos were siphoned up by Saki and the three of them marched out of the chamber. Without the skeletons, the journey back took less than ten minutes. As the sunlight touched the slab, the picture on it shimmered and shifted. An illusory arrowhead appeared on it, and it pointed towards where the sun was setting. Even when she turned it around, the arrowhead didn't alter its heading.
"I guess it is a treasure map," Heron laughed. "But that trap wasn't very deadly."
"Hmm, no, it wasn't. Not to us." Gwendith grinned. "But if it were the locals…" She frowned, then continued, "They don't have an Animus Core. Who knows how they would be changed by that much Chaos?"
Heron shrugged. "They have those protective amulets. They would have been fine."
"Then what kind of trap was that?"
"Well, I guess we'll find out more when we reach where this thing's pointing at," Heron said. "And it looks like we'll be in this place for another week."
"Or more," Gwendith muttered. She was missing Yuriko already. Oh well, by the time they return, she was sure her lover would be more than eager to welcome them back.