Uncleftish Beholding

Before we, the arcanists, stepped into the room designated for us, there was some more discussion. I also sent off a message in the party chat informing everyone that we'd found some people from outside of our original sector. Strangely enough, while the other groups had advanced earlier, none of them had seen anyone else yet, but that was really the least of the many confusing things in the design of the Tower. We checked out all of the doors in the hallway, and came back to discuss.

"That's really the only special one," Anna said. "I'd suggest we split in two groups, but really that's up to our new, uh, friends," I said. "I don't trust the Yanks," Mrs. Hoxley said. "Fuck that, I'm going into the magic room. The **** upstairs fucking loves wizard shit, it's gotta be piss," Emma said. "You know you can't say that around Americans," Brooke said. "What, piss?" Emma said. "Just go with the wizards if you want to or don't," Hannah said. "We should stick together, Raj," Ajit said. "No, you should get your quest completed. We'll find each other," Raj said. "One of us might die," Ajit said. "Then we will meet some other time," Raj said. "Oh shut it, we'll live through this and find each other," Ajit said. "So we're all just doing what the blighted colonials want? Fine, I'm sure you'd leave an old woman to do things on her own otherwise," Mrs. Huxley said.

"So, it's agreed?" I said. "So Raj and myself shall go with Hannah and Zack? I see no issue with it, should we talk tactics?" Arthur said. "We can get hit hard," Zack said. "Hit back pretty hard too," Hannah said. "Nothing wrong with a group of four in a melee. We can watch each other's backs," Raj said. "A'ight, we'll just go through a challenge room at random, you can go get your hubris on," Zack said.

I took a deep breath to go and open the door, but heard Brooke take a deep breath to my left and reach for the handle first. I was more than fine with someone else taking the initiative for a change, so I stepped aside and looked into the newly opened room.

From what we could see from the hallway it looked like some sort of a workshop or a lab. The first and most obvious feature was that the room had roiling, glowing blue smoke billowing up to about knee height, which seemed to be the main source of illumination. The other sources of light were fluorescent lamps on ten separate tables, or workbenches or something. These were made out of metal, it looked like stainless steel, and each had a lamp and a large selection of gizmos, doohickeys, thingmajigs and doodads. There were crystals, sprockets and gears arranged on each.

"Anyone have any experience with anything like that? It doesn't feel like any spellcraft I've studied so far," I said. "Might as well get it over with," Brooke said, moving to step into the room. "Hold on, we can still go back. I done a bit of tinkering, but this shit looks complex," Emma said. "Losing your nerve now of all times?" Mrs. Hoxley said. "Let's give it a shot. Its probably a bad idea to not do this quest anyways," Anna said. After a moment all of us nodded and we stepped into the room.

The door closed behind us. On its own. Then, with a heavy thud a slab of metal as thick as my forearm slammed down with a loud clang. Then, for good measure, a barrier of arcane energy blazed to life.

The increasingly familiar disembodied voice came to life. This time it didn't sound like it was coming from cheap speakers, but rather as if it was whispered by the wind. Or, as it were, dramatically shouted by the wind.

"Ah, my young, budding magi. My very favorite students. Please understand. I love you. And that is why I am doing this to you. I am doing this to you, because I love you. The smoke in this room will begin to rise at the end of this communication. Once it fills the room to the ceiling it will be transformed into poisonous gas. After which point, unless some of you are cheating by using poison immunity items, your brilliant, brilliant minds will be turned to coughing, bright bursts of electrochemistry broadcasting suffering to themselves.

Followed rapidly by death.

Find a way to neutralize the gas before it reduces you all to coughing, screaming, dying animals to unlock the door forward. What are you waiting for? The smart move would have been to rush to your stations as soon as you heard the words 'poisonous gas'!"

Emma had, in fact, rushed over to the nearest workstation at about that time, while Mrs. Hoxley started moving when the voice said 'what are you waiting for'. The rest of us stood there momentarily stunned before we each took up a workstation of our own. None of the items on the workbench made any sense to me, except…

"This is artificing, I have the skill at rank 1. This doesn't make much sense to me though, anyone have anything higher?" I said. "Got it at two. Shit's fucked though, miles above what I can figure out," Emma said. "Well can we do anything? Maybe find the vents and block them off," Anna said.

Ajit cast some sort of a spell, then looked around.

"No good. There are no vents, the gas is just appearing out of nowhere," he said. "Oh, I can't believe I'll die because I'm surrounded by dullards," Mrs. Hoxley said. "Well there's the obvious play. We could raise the skill high enough to get to whatever we can use to complete the challenge, the smoke isn't rising that quickly," Brooke said. "Right, of course. Let's get to it?" I said.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. "I understand nothing about this. Wouldn't know where to start," Ajit said.

I thought about it and there was really only one reasonable way to go about this.

"Emma, you keep working on your own, if it's possible to slap something together by yourself, you'll have the best chance," I said. "Got it, boss," Emma said. "The rest of you, gather around, I'm going to try to teach you, hopefully that way you can get to rank 1 and start figuring it out on your own," I said.

The rest of them walked up to my table, though Mrs. Hoxley was grumbling something about Yanks that was becoming less and less cute. But whatever. I only had my artificial, Tower-granted skill to go by, but as I opened my mouth and started explaining, I found that there were some fundamentals that I didn't even know that I knew before I started talking.

"So, these crystals here will be the power source for whatever we end up making. You can combine them with other items via runes, sort of like the spell sigils in your spellbooks, to create effects. It helps if you know the spell whose effect you are trying to replicate, but at a high enough skill level you can extrapolate from incomplete knowledge," I said.

The smoke was rising at a barely perceptible rate. It didn't seem like we would be in any imminent danger, but you could never know. Or, rather, you could know that soon enough something would go wrong. That said, it was quite spectacular what all of those points in mental attributes that everyone had clearly been pumping up could do for a study session. Even Mrs. Huxley got past her caustic demeanor quickly when we started talking shop, and ended up asking a lot of insightful questions.

"So do you think etching will be important to this? My right hand has been shaking since 2014, and I haven't written with my left since using it got beaten out of me in primary school," she said. "Well, I would recommend trying to use your left. But yes, shaky lines would be an issue. A lot of the designs are exacting and specific," I said. "I'm sure there is a lot we will need done that won't need etching. Explain again how those connections work," Ajit said.

We spoke quickly and focused hard on the task at hand, and finally we heard a scratching from a notebook. It was mine, and it had given me the skill Teaching 1. No one else had got anything, so I suggested we move on to practical application. I thought I could probably make a wand for one of my most basic spells. So I instructed everyone to pick a rank 1 spell of their own and start combining the ingredients on the table with the crystals and see what happens.

We all returned to our workshops, when the voice filled the air once again.

"Oops! Six air elementals have slipped through the gas delivery system. They'll be with you any moment. Better think fast," he said.

"Shit, work on your wands. I've dealt with these before. Fus," I said, and my spellbook flew up in front of me.

I knew the elementals weren't here yet, because the gas was coming from below, and I had dealt with air elementals before, and visible gas was exactly their main weakness. There. A twist of disrupted air dashed from an invisible grate under the smoke and was flying at speed towards Ajit's table. I blocked it off with a barrier and slammed several icicles through it.

Three more disruptions flew directly up through the gas, into the clear air above.

"Fuck, get ready to lose vision," I said as I flipped my spellbook over to the fog spell and filled the rest of the room with mist. In hindsight, this could have been some sort of a gotcha, where the arch-asshole would go like 'whoops looks like the room is full of mist, time to gas you', but I didn't know any other ways to deal with air elementals, so whatever.

"Can't see for darn, boy, I guess I'll help you deal with the buggers," Mrs. Hoxley said.

Which was a fair criticism, but, again. I couldn't fight what I couldn't see, and the fog would make it hard enough as it was, so I focused hard with the icicle spell on my lips to cast at any moment. Brooke screamed, and then I saw a flash of deep red light as the second air elemental died. "I'm fine, flesh wound," Brooke said, and we kept close watch on the rest of it.

It took us five minutes to get all of them down, and nobody had gained even a single rank in artificing by the time it was done. The fucking voice spoke again.

"Ohoho! Well done dealing with those elementals. It would be a shame if you had filled the room with some sort of a sight-hampering smoke or mist in order to be able to perceive them! After all, time is running out," he said.

But I was ready for that and was already moving towards Emma's table. When I got there I cast my vacuum ball spell, and for the first time I used it for more or less the intended effect. A ball of perfectly transparent vacuum now enveloped Emma's workspace. She put her face in it to see better, tried to breathe in, had all of the air pulled out of her lungs, pulled back and started gasping, before I explained:

"Vacuum, the spell creates vacuum," I said. "Thanks for the warning, wanker," she said.

I repeated the spell five more times, knowing well that it left me at around half-ish of my mana. With my pretty decent Arcana ability, the fog spell would likely last through the duration of the challenge, so it was imperative to provide everyone with the ability to see what they were working on. Fortunately, the blue glowing smoke was still very much distinct against the white mist of my spell, so we had time.

We got back to work, working at a frantic, controlled pace. Ajit was doing the best at keeping calm, he was the first to finish a wand and get the skill, though Emma got to 3 before I got to 2.

"Get me something to write on," she said, "I'll start figuring out the device, you'll need more practice." I threw her my non-magical notebook, and Emma gave her a pencil-shaped piece of charcoal, and she got to work. By the time I hit artificing 3, the blue smoke was around our neck height. If we didn't have the vacuum spell, we'd be fucked right about now. I went over to Emma's workplace and looked at her schematics.

"Right, we'll use my vacuum spell for the device, duh," I said. "Big fucking hoover. How's your handwriting?" Emma said. "Better than ever," I said. "That doesn't mean bloody shit if you were crap before," Emma said. "Pretty good," I said. "Good, because mine's rubbish. Start etching it in repeated patterns on these. Rest of you, get some fucking wands ready, then pull the crystals right back out and bring them to me when you hit level 3, alright?" Emma said.

The finished device looked a lot like one of those plasma globe lamp toys, except the glass casing was carefully etched with spell runes by yours truly. It was attached to all of the crystals in the room by thick copper wiring, which Brooke had, somehow, also inscribed with runes. Everyone had put their hand into one aspect of the creation or another.

"Test run?" Ajit said. "Too fucking late," Emma said, put her hand on the contraption and pulsed all of her mana into it at once.

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