David Niemitz
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Guild Mage 134
🕑 Added 2025-03-20 19:19:02 +0000 UTCChapter 134: One Frozen Moment
“A second waystone?” Commander Jagan scoffed. “Impossible. Why would there be two at the same rift?”
“I can think of at least one good reason,” Liv said. “If I were a goddess, doing – well, whatever it is she was doing, down here – I wouldn’t want to walk up and down those stairs every time I moved between the surface and here. That might be fine for marching your army of corpses, but I’d get sick of it pretty quickly.”
“So she built something to solve the problem,” Arjun concluded, nodding his head. “What else do you see here?”
“There’s a control room,” Liv said. Just like under the Tidal Rift, but she didn’t speak the words out loud. Jagan had made it clear that she couldn’t trust him, after all. “I don’t understand all of this, here,” she continued, touching another point on the map. “One of the words is ‘ring,’ but I don’t know the other. This –” Liv moved her finger, “– includes the word for ‘dock,’ but I can’t see how that would be possible this far underground. I saw a river, from the walls, but not an ocean or a lake. And then there’s clearly something here, in the center,” she finished, “but it isn’t labelled, or even mapped out beyond the door.”
“I can tell you what this is,” Wren said, putting her finger over the Vædic sigils that included the ‘dock.’ “I recognize it from Ractia’s rift in the mountains. I don’t know the words, exactly, but that’s where they stored Antrian war machines.” The huntress shuddered. “Creepy.”
Liv considered her plan for a moment before speaking out loud. “We’re going to the waystone first,” she decided. “I want to know whether I’m even right about what it is, and then I want to know how functional it is, and whether it links up to the one on the surface. If it does, we know our way out. If it doesn’t, that means we’ll have to fight our way up the stairs again. Once I know the answer to those questions, I can decide our next steps. Stay close,” she told the group, and set off along the right hand corridor.
After so long abandoned, Liv would have expected a layer of dust to coat everything, and the air to be foul, but that wasn’t at all what they found as they walked. In fact, every surface of the hallway seemed clean, the air odorless without even a hint of being stale, and even the mana-stones set into the ceiling were more intact than those in the tunnel that led to the Well. Perhaps, Liv speculated, wandering corpses had caused the damage.
When they came upon the first Antrian, Liv was forced to reconsider that idea.
The war-machine was crouched on the floor of the hallway, leaning against one wall, and when she recognized its distinctive bulk in the dim light of the mana-stones, she held up a hand to stop the others and raised her wand. Behind her, she could hear the ksatriyas lift their shields by the rustling and clinking of their armor.
Liv watched the Antrian for a long moment, but it did not move. “I don’t hear anything, do you?” she asked, and both Wren and Arjun shook their heads. Together, they crept forward, until the light of the oil lantern revealed things more clearly.
The ancient war machine looked much like Karis had. It was all made of rusted and corroded steel, with Vædic sigils etched into its arms. Portions of its armor were melted, broken, or removed, and Liv could see the telltale signs that it had been hit with hammers and hacked at with swords or axes: scratches and dents in the metal, especially around the torso. Someone must have finally wrenched the armor plating that protected the chest off, and inside Liv could see shattered glass. If there had ever been a brain inside, it had long since decayed.
“How long do you think it’s been here?” Arjun asked.
“If I had to guess? A thousand years,” Liv said. “Didn’t your ancestors come here and kill Costia? They must have had to fight their way past her guards to do it. Look.” She pointed at the wall around where the Antrian had fallen, which had been dented, scratched, and scorched as well, though it had not rusted. “The only question is whether they used the stairs to get down, or the waystone.”
The answer to that question became clear the further they went, as three more rusted and wrecked Antrians slumped at various points in the passageway, and a fifth had been rolled aside off the waystone itself, as if to clear the way. Liv was surprised at how small the stone actually was: unlike those she was used to, this one was only perhaps five feet across, with no more than eight or nine sigils engraved on it.
“So? Does it work?” Wren asked. The huntress remained near the entrance to the circular room, which appeared to have been built entirely to encompass the waystone, and nothing else. Once she’d established there was no threat in the chamber, she turned back to keep watch over the hallway.
Liv knelt down and touched the waystone. The mana inside practically leapt up to welcome her hand, and she actually had to pull back and stop her mana from flowing down to activate the device. “Fully charged,” she said, but she didn’t stand up yet. “And there, you see?” Liv pointed to one of the sigils. “That matches the one we used to come from Coral Bay to here. But there should be a lot of others, and they’re missing. The only other marking I recognize is for the Tomb of Celris.”
“We should use the waystone to return to the surface,” Jagan said. While he’d approached with Liv to examine the stone, his two soldiers had remained back with Wren to watch for any threat from the hallway.
“You can feel free to do that if you wish,” Liv told him. “But I’m not done down here.” She stood up, and turned to head back out into the corridor, but the commander stepped in her way, forcing her to halt.
“You’ve already gotten one of your friends killed,” Commander Jagan told her, with a sneer. “Isn’t that enough to prove to you how foolish this was? Go up now, before any more of us die.”
The sight of Isabel’s body being pulled backward into the shaft, the monstrous corpse’s paw over her face, the crack of the neck, all came to the surface of Liv’s mind like a fish suddenly leaping out of the water in the Aspen River. Ruthlessly, she pushed the memory aside. “We came down here for a reason,” Liv said. “We need to learn more about what Ractia is doing. I’m not leaving until I’ve done that. You can come with us, or you can go back up to the city. I’m sure you know how to work a stone yourself, Commander.” She stepped around him and back out into the hall.
“Where are we headed?” Wren asked, falling in behind her. A third set of steps told Liv that Arjun was bringing up the rear.
“I want to make certain that we won’t be interrupted,” Liv explained, heading back toward the intersection. “The place the Antrians were stored is near the control room. We’re going to make sure there aren’t any left waiting around in there, first. If there are, we either disable them or seal it off.”
As they passed the map, Liv paused just long enough to cast a second barrier of ice, blocking off the passage back to the shaft itself just about a foot beyond where the rectangle of glass was mounted on the wall. For a moment, she tried to listen for sounds from the end of the hall, but either the distance was too great, or the hordes of the dead had abandoned pursuit. In any event, the spell left her with only eight rings of mana, so she drained her rings and bracelet, as well. By the time she’d done that, Jagan and his men had caught up with them, much to Liv’s disappointment. Everything would probably just be easier at this point if the man had left; certainly, she’d be worried about one less thing going wrong.
Regardless, she pushed down the left corridor, on toward the control room. They passed the occasional rusted out and broken hulk of an Antrian as they went, always moved off to the side against one of the walls to clear the way. “They must have taken their dead with them, after the battle was over, don’t you think?” she asked Arjun.
He’d come up to walk at Liv’s left, while Wren trailed behind, keeping herself between Liv and Jagan. “They would have, yes,” her friend agreed. “For funeral rites. I was thinking the same thing - only the remains of enemies left behind. It means they had time to care for their wounded and take the dead out after the battle was over.”
“Or that all the dead stood back up and joined the enemy,” Wren pointed out, and Liv couldn’t help but shiver.
The ‘dock’ – whatever that meant, in this case – was easily reached, and whatever door had once been there was gone. Metal steps led down onto a kind of raised, long metal platform, almost like a hallway but without the walls. Instead, to either side, strange arrangements of metal, pulsing, glowing mana-stone, and peculiar metal wire formed row upon row of strange cradles. Every one was empty, but the entire room still seemed to thrum with magical power.
“This is exactly what the place she found Karis looked like,” Wren said, pointing to one of the bizarre standing cradles. “He was in one of those things, just standing there like he’d been asleep for a thousand years.”
“Do you think it's worth sealing the room off?” Liv asked Wren.
The huntress shook her head. “We’d be able to see it if any of them were still in here. It’s pretty obvious.”
Trusting in Wren’s judgement, Liv led them deeper into the rift, toward the section on the map marked ‘control room.’ Unfortunately, when they arrived at their destination, unlike the chamber which must have once housed all of the shattered Antrians, the great metal doors were shut, and Liv could find no way of opening them.
“We could try to break them open,” Wren suggested. “Call up one of those giant fists of ice you make, Liv, and just batter it down.”
Liv bit her lip, considering. “I’m willing to try that if we aren’t able to find anything else,” she said, after thinking it over. “I’m worried about what might get broken or damaged if I force our way in. Before we do that, let’s see what else is open. We can always come back here, but I can’t unbreak something once I hit it.”
The followed the hallway to the next intersection, and took a right, making for the section of the map that had been labelled as having something to do with a ‘ring.’ With every step, the density of mana in the rift increased, until Liv could feel it pressing against her skin. The route took them past the doors which had been unmarked on the map – and unlike the entrance to the control room, these had already been battered open.
A pile of crushed, scorched, and rusted Antrians had been heaped up around the open entrance, and that – along with an amount of mana that was nearly crushing – was enough to draw Liv over for a closer look. “Be careful,” she cautioned, as she picked her way through the ancient hulks. “Some of this metal looks sharp.”
“There must have been something inside,” Arjun guessed. “They were defending it.”
Whatever the Antrians had been defending, the rooms beyond must have seen the heaviest fighting. More of the war-machines were thrown up against the walls, and the signs of fire magic, the dents and slashes left by weapons, broken mana stones, all of it pointed to a battle where spells had been thrown about desperately. After a thousand years, anything that wasn’t made of metal or stone was gone, though again, something had prevented dust from settling. It was even possible, Liv reflected, that the ancestors of the Dakruimans had simply looted everything of value that might have been here. Perhaps likely.
“There’s something here,” Arjun said, and broke off from the group, striding deeper into the chambers, toward the very heart of the rift.
“Arjun, wait!” Liv hissed, suddenly aware of every sound she made. She hurried after him, wand in hand. The last thing she wanted was one of them to get into a fight alone. Something crunched under her boot, and Liv looked down to see fragments of bleached bone, broken off from a strange protrusion on the floor.
She followed Arjun into an immense inner chamber, a great circle with a high, vaulted ceiling, all made not of metal, but of beautiful marble. Liv thought the floor might be made of the same substance, but it was difficult to tell, because it was nearly entirely covered in bone.
Not bones, or individual skeletons, Liv realized, slowly moving her eyes over the scene. No, it was as if someone had frozen a wave while it was in motion. The bone rose in crests and sprays from a point in the center of the room, where a single spear had been thrust through a woman’s corpse, impaling her to the floor.
The corpse was made entirely of bone, from the fingertips to the curls of hair falling back from the dead woman’s head. A second woman, the one driving the spear down through the first, was also sculpted entirely of bone. Each of them was dressed, as well, with each fold of fabric sculpted as if with painstaking precision, and mana pulsed out from them in tangible waves.
“Ksatriya,” Commander Jagan murmured, and Liv looked back to see that he and his men had dropped to their knees and lowered their heads.
“What does he mean?” Liv asked, turning to Arjun for an explanation.
Arjun had moved forward, as close to the center of the room as he could get, without stepping onto the frozen crests of bone. “Ksatriya killed the Lady of Bones by impaling the goddess on her spear,” he explained. “But the stories say that she died doing it.”
Liv swallowed. “Which means if that’s Ksatriya, then the other one is Costia.”
“We must leave this place,” Commander Jagan said, his head still bowed. “We cannot disturb the rest of our ancestor.”
“It doesn’t feel like being in Ractia’s presence,” Liv said, glancing over to Wren, who nodded. “Let me…” Liv took a deep breath to center herself, and allowed her eyes to close. She allowed Aluth to wake in the back of her mind, from where it lay coiled next to Luc and Cel. When the word had first been imprinted, back in Coral Bay, she’d been able to sense mana all throughout the building: not just the power of the people in the room with her, but those walking about the halls or sitting down for lectures.
Now, she sought to feel what might be left of a goddess who was a thousand years dead. Just an instant was enough - the light that flared from the woman of bone was blinding. “There’s something there, though,” Liv told the others, after she had opened her eyes again. “The bone is – permeated with mana? Or maybe actually producing it. I don’t think it’s just the ambient magic from the rift.” Liv recalled the wands that Duchess Julianne and Princess Milisant carried, crafted from the bones of a dead god.
With a murmured incantation, Liv conjured a platform of shining blue mana beneath her feet, and then used it to lift herself off the ground, until she was high enough to skim out over the frozen waves of bone and make her way to the center of the room. The spell came easily, as if the magic in the air around them was desperate to be used.
“No!” Jagan shouted, and Liv turned to see the Dakruiman commander rushing at her, club lifted for a strike, his forehead popping with darkened veins. Before he could cross the distance, however, Wren interposed herself, with a drawn dagger in each hand, and Jagan hesitated. In the meanwhile, both of his soldiers had gotten up to their feet, but they looked uncertain, and pale with mana sickness.
“Tell them to stop,” Liv said, looking to Arjun. Her platform hovered over the outer crest of the bone spray, rather than pushing forward.
Arjun began shouting at the two ksatriyas, one of who said something back. Liv counted it as a victory that they hadn’t charged yet: it was a sign of how afraid they were, she thought.
“Jagan,” Liv said, spinning the disc of mana about so that she faced him, “you need to leave now.”
“I don’t follow your orders,” the man said, with a scowl.
“Did General Mishra order you to draw your weapon on me? Did he order you to kill me?” Liv asked him. The commander’s hesitation was answer enough. “I didn’t think so. Vivek Sharma warned me about you before we set out,” she told him. “I could put up with it when you were just not helping us. But if you’re going to try to attack my friends and I, then you are choosing to make yourself our enemy.”
Liv lifted her wand, slowly and deliberately, and levelled at Commander Jagan’s face. “As my enemy, you can either flee, or stand and fight. Which one will it be?”
Jagan’s eyes flicked between her wand, and Wren, who remained in front of him with her daggers raised. He looked to Arjun next, but the dark-haired boy shifted so that he was facing off against the soldiers, as well. “You’re a traitor,” Jagan growled. “If you had any hope your jati would take you back before, bury it now.”
“I’m not the one who just tried to attack someone from behind,” Arjun pointed out. “I don’t think our ancestor would appreciate that.” He nodded in the direction of the woman who stood in the center of the room, spear in hand, an eternal statue of frozen bone.
Jagan growled something, and the two soldiers fell in beside him, their shields raised together, just as Liv had seen the ksatriya fight against the horde of the dead.
Liv’s fingers tightened on the smooth wood of the wand in her hand, and she licked her lips to wet them. “Leave,” she repeated. “Or I will make you leave.”
Comments
Hermit Yarma
It's been surprising how Arjun has really taken the death in stride.
Hermit Yarma
"We can always come back here, but I can’t unbreak something once I hit it." Guess what else you cannot unbreak.
Tarrim
Most also don't know she was there. Jurian may even be able to convince the professors to keep it quiet. He just needs a reason they'll agree with. So long as no one who knows she fought and where doesn't hear about the lightning it will be fine. It's also quite possible some of the other professors would ignore it if they are able to. She does still need the second word the guild has, although she might be able to get someone else to give it to her at some point even if she has to flee. The bigger issue if she is discovered is consequences for Julianne and Liv probably having to stay out of the kingdom for the most part. Liv would definitely say one of the eld taught me if it comes out so hopefully Julianne doesn't get in trouble.
FuriousDee
The locals do care or they wouldn’t have sent them. He was sent because he volunteered and it is extremely dangerous so the general wasn’t going to force anyone to go. I also don’t see how her having to cast spells is artificial particularly as he has a cost for each spell and a capacity.
FuriousDee
If he had sent graduates he couldn’t have had them take a first year along with them. There isn’t proof that she knows lightning magic she just needs to be kept out the way incase someone pushes for a check to attack the duchess. The coronation will cause a lot of political change which would make that sort of push less likely. None of this is any more plot armour than her needing to go to unusually timed culling and being attacked by a bat. Plot is what makes stories run.
Mircea Popescu
I don’t understand why everyone is complaining about plot armor. Every book that does not kill characters willy nilly has plot armor. If a major change happens to a character, it’s because the plot demanded it. Liv is understandingly very hesitant to draw mana from air, since the last time she almost died and had to be in a coma for her recovery. She is in dubious relations with the people here, there are no guarantees they will help her unconditionally, especially after they get out and the soldier has time to accuse her of sacrilege or whatever. Also, it is stated she used half of her mana before Isabel died, so her mana after they escaped must be extremely low. It is recharging, but she is cautious with using it. Regarding the comments about her leaving for a few weeks not helping people forget she used lightning , keep in mind that the students were far away from the actual fighting, and she only used it twice, once inside the dungeon. And since her leaving, everyone involved in the incident would then be left dealing with the aftermath of the fight, plus the aftermath of the king dying. My guess is that some people would have figured it out, but it will not be known to everyone in the academy, and she will be able to keep on doing what she was doing. Alternatively, she may simply finish her studies since she already reached journeyman and learned the word, which were her main reasons for attending. The story is not perfect by any means, but idk why y’all hating so much with a thumb up your ass
John Koor
There were potentially entire armies invading the gods' strongholds. The war machine was merely a member of the guards back when the guards lived. Sure, they were elites, but they were merely obstacles for groups that ended up killing gods. Magical knowledge has also likely been greatly diminished since the fall of the gods, so the war machine guy had returned to a world where he felt like he was surrounded by primitive weaklings and was likely much more dangerous to current era people.
307Bookworm_AOB
agreed....it pretty much went downhill during school arc.
Jake
Can't help but find I agree, unfortunately. I've had to suspend quite a bit of disbelief through this arc. I'm still confused as to how a second year student was the most senior person Jurian could find. Are there not, like, graduates available? And even if you operate on the assumption that they're all at the coronation, weren't they coming back the afternoon Liv's group left for the rift or something? Wouldn't they immediately go ahead and send a few more people, maybe someone who has more experience than a college sophomore? It is a greater rift, yes? Also, I don't see how Liv being gone for a few weeks is supposed to help people forget about the lightning. Regardless of whether or not she's there when the professors get back, people will be talking about it just the same. If it's so important that she's in danger because of it, then I don't think Loredan is just going to forget about it. Can't he just check if she has the word imprinted at any time anyway?
307Bookworm_AOB
Plot Armor. All the bad decisions since after the King Tide is just plot armor. Her loss of mana is just fuel for her to use the Abyss's raw mana, turn into a Demi-Goddess magical girl and spread the power of friendship to every person she sleeps with or gets killed. Plot armor.
Storyflower
I thought these war machines were impossibly strong? The sheer number of them here doesn't make sense considering they were defeated anyway.
melchi
I believe so, like her items and mana should be coming back, but I think getting a whole ring of mana all at once from a rift is really dangerous. The passive rate is not very quick.
Grayson
The locals didn't care--they should be grateful to the guild for helping them. Why would a general send an antagonistic officer on a mission?? Makes no sense. Also, author deliberately using up Liz's mana...scene feels artificial...
Tarrim
They had no choice in bringing them down as the locals wanted them to have supervision. Isabel gave Liv control but none of them could get the soldiers to obey them. She isn't a cold blooded killer at this point and it won't be their word against Jagan, Vivek Sharma can tell who is telling the truth with one of his words. Could she kill him probably but it would cost her valuable mana and might turn the locals against them so better to make them run. Actually this may help her with her lightning problem as it will distract from her fight on the beach. I suspect most are going to be heading back to college after they get back. So no contested leadership probably.
Alexander Johnson
I was gonna say - something about the mana consumption in these past few chapters hasn't added up
CherMi
I feel like the whole conflict is contrived at this point. First they took a clearly antagonistic man with them for no reason I could see. Then they took two soldiers with language barrier in a life-or-death situation, which is completely idiotic on its own. Then they didn't clear the chain of command or orders in any way. Then Isabel died, because she's the only one not from Liv's core group there who could die to create future drama. Now Jagan tried to kill Liv and she hesitates to just kill him, instead trying to make him go away. Why? If they return, it will be the commander's word against Liv's and if he dies down there with his soldiers, everyone will blame her anyway. Liv is inexperienced, but this string of dumb decisions leading to more drama in the future feels like it's just for the plot to move in a certain direction. I can already see drama with the guild group because Liv "killed" their leader and is nominally in charge now, guilt for Liv and getting opinions on it from Arjun and Wren, then afterwards scrutiny from the archmages back home - when the whole purpose was to avoid that scrutiny in the first place. I've recently binged on RR and subscribed on patreon, and an arc away from the academy sounded exciting at first. But I don't know, after the last few chapters and what seems to be coming up, the idea of skipping the whole arc seems more and more tempting. The only not tedious thing is whatever lore Liv is about to uncover. Sorry for the rant, just wanted to explain the feeling the thought of reading the next 5-10 chapters evoked in me.
Fuzzycakes
+1!
John Koor
“Impossibly. Why would there be two at the same rift?” - impossible That night be fine for marching your army of corpses, but I’d get sick of it pretty quickly.” -might
Tarrim
They will at least need to be drained and a good amount of time to recover. Good chance they will have longer term problems as well
Grayson
Even breathing mana carefully, shouldn't Liv be slowly recharging? She was slowly gaining mana back in the depths of the rift of coral bay, after all...
Kory Smith
“the horse of the dead had abandoned”pursuit > horde of the dead
Jake
I feel like Jagen and his men are toast at this point anyway. Aren't they currently doing the mana equivalent of looking in an open nuclear reactor?
Dreamysyu
Notifications finally seem to be working!
