Wulf spent the last few seconds of his invisibility hunting around the inside of the vault, searching for any more guards.
None were posted inside. No one knew that anyone had gotten inside.
When the invisibility wore off, both he and Kalee were safe. "Just be quiet," he whispered. "I don't know what kinds of alarms we have inside here."
The inside of the vault was tight. Its hallways fanned out from the center of the cylinder like the spokes of a wheel, and the walls were lined with pipes and nothing else. Hanging lanterns lit the way, but the ceiling was so low that Wulf had to duck under them. There was a spiral staircase at the center, which led to the different levels of the vault.
Between each of the spokes, there was a cage. He couldn't see the runes, but he could hear the rushing water and hissing steam. Everything was salty and humid, and all the joints of the pipes had white crystal growing on them. Beneath the hissing steam, the cages rattled and shook, and there was a distant roar.
"We just need to be fast, then," Kalee said. "Get our spirits and advance right here. We can't carry them out."
"We need something compatible," Wulf said. "Something that will work with our Classes."
"If they have anything like that."
"They better have something like that," he replied. "Just going by the arcane pressure in here, there has to be nearly a hundred orichalcum level spirits."
"You think we can get one for Irmond and Seith, too, despite their…uh, hesitance?"
"I think they probably underestimate our ability to do crazy things if they think we can find a way to fit an orichalcum-level spirit or two…or three or four in our storage pendants." Gulf grinned. "Considering your staff is nowhere near full, and we specifically built it to hold lots of constructs, and that the cages are just constructs?"
"Yeah, I like your thinking," Kalee said.
Wulf walked back down the hallway spoke until he reached the center of the vault, then looked back. There were twenty spirits stored on every level, the a human-made label—as opposed to something the Field made—reading 'Spirit – Orichalcum – Earth aspect' or some variant.
There was nothing useful on this level, so they descended. Alarms still blared, and they echoed down the metal hallways, making his ears ring. He couldn't imagine how painful it would've been if he hadn't enhanced his durability.
A briny, coppery smell infiltrated everything, almost like the sea was bleeding, and it kept getting more intense the deeper they travelled. They passed through all five levels of the vault, taking note of everything in the vault, then turned to each other.
Kalee said, "There was a paalchite rock spirit. That has to be helpful for your current route, right?"
"Yeah, I was thinking that," Wulf said. He chewed the inside of his lip. It was nice to have a paalchite spirit right in front of them, but it almost felt too easy. A rock spirit like this, not tied up in a golem or an Oronith, would take whatever form it pleased, but he could use it. Aloud, he reasoned, "It'd be helpful for my piloting abilities, sure. But that'd be a deviation from the route I've been taking. Yeah, it'd be piloting, but I'm an Alchemist who happens to be able to control Oroniths, not a Pilot who happens to be an Alchemist."
Kalee rubbed her chin. "There were no poison spirits."
"There was a nature spirit," Wulf replied. "From a skycolumn pine."
"That's not a deviation?"
"Their needles are poisonous to non-Ascendants, and they tend to…wander across the land," he replied. "Very slowly, at first, which is why they're barely considered monsters. But the older they get, the stronger they become. First, monsters, then in incredibly rare cases, their spirit just leaves and becomes something else."
Kalee nodded. "It'd be helpful, yeah."
"I'm not sure if there was much for you," he replied. "You need something force-oriented, right?"
"Perhaps," she replied. "Which there wasn't much of. The sword spirit could do the trick, given time, but I'm not sure if I have time to adjust, and swords harness wedge forces, not gravity."
"So something related to constructs?"
"There was a flotsam ocean spirit," she replied. "But I'm not sure if wood is the way to go. I haven't worked with wood much."
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"No," Wulf agreed. "Alright, what about the greatmouse spirit?"
Greatmice were a type of monster that feasted on harvests, growing larger and larger, and engorging itself until it could no longer move. Unlike regular mice, they never stopped growing, and would never burst. The Field just let them keep eating. They created greedy spirits, which usually ended up dying before they grew intelligent.
"Why that one?" Kalee asked.
"Consumption," Wulf replied. "You're a Consumption Mage. You have to consume something for greater power. Something tells me bonding with a creature like that would help your class."
"That makes sense," she replied.
They rushed back through the vault, splitting apart so they could return to their chosen spirits.
Wulf travelled up two storeys, then took a spoke and slid to a halt in front of a small circle on the wall with a label above it, reading, 'Spirit – Orichalcum – Nature aspect.' The circle had a handle inlaid in the center and a rune-lock.
This lock, however, was only to stop the spirit from getting out. He used the remaining aura granted to him by the invisibility potion and fuel the lock, without having to insert a specific combination. The runes lit up blue, metal clicked, and when he pulled on the tube, it slid out of the wall.
This was how most people would accept the spirit. The prospective customers would come in, buy an Orichalcum or whichever level they could afford, then absorb it without even seeing it and without completing the advancement. Most times, it wasted the spirit, because they wouldn't get a proper Spiritmark that way.
At least, that was what Wulf understood. He was in unknown territory now, and this was his first attempt at any of this.
He leaned over, peering through a slot in the tube, trying to catch a single glimpse of what lay beyond the tube.
He couldn't see far into the cage. There was a fluorescent green glow, bright runes, and hissing steam, and that was about all he could identify.
But there was also a lever tucked into the inside of the tube he'd just exposed. It was painted bright red, and there was no label, but judging by the surrounding wall, and how some of the cooling tubes had gaps and shutoff valves in them…
He pulled the lever. It folded down into the tube, and a clunk ran through the surrounding wall. Valves hissed shut, and already, the metal began heating up.
With a hiss, a small doorway pulled away from the wall. It blended in perfectly, filled with tubes and pipes. It had curved corners, and Wulf had to hunch his back to get through.
Keeping his head down, he stepped through the doorway.
He found himself inside a fifteen-foot wide triangular room. It wasn't exactly a cage—it didn't have bars on the walls, or a latched gate, but the walls were made of pearlescent stone tile. He squinted at them.
It was the same type of material that Azanthius' bracer was made of, but now that Wulf had tamed his senses slightly, it didn't make his vision swim as much. Each individual coin-sized tile had a rune in the center, and the tiles nearest to the doorway were blazing with heat. The air rippled.
They were all containment runes, ensuring that the spirit stay trapped at the center of the chamber.
It was a swirling, shapeless vortex of vibrant green light. At one point, it would've been larger. It would've been more like the storm-spirit he'd encountered in his crossing—a giant, lumbering beast watching over the forest.
"What have they done to you…" Wulf breathed.
The spirit lashed out. It was hard to tell where it was looking, or what it was thinking, or if it even had a mind left after all this. How long had it even been kept here? If it had been left on its own in the wilds, would it have advanced beyond Orichalcum?
Wulf stepped to the side, narrowly avoiding a bolt of green light from the center of the vortex. His mind screamed out in warning, like the attack was deeply poisonous. When it touched the tiles, the attack dissipated, and the spirit shrank down.
"We don't have much time," Wulf said. He was supposed to negotiate with it, right? Make a deal? "Soon, it's going to be too hot, and we'll both get fried on the way out. But you want something more, don't you?"
The spirit didn't move. It could've attacked Wulf again, but it stayed in the center of the room, swirling, packed together, and timid.
"I can get you out of here. Join me, bond with me, and you'll share in my humanity," he replied. "I can give you what you're missing."
"Can…you?" the spirit hissed, straining against something, as if speaking took all its effort.
Wulf stopped for a moment, his breath catching. "I—"
"Everyone who walks past is thinking about one thing: strength," the spirit said. "They don't have what we desire. They won't bond with us. The last time someone earned the power they desired from us was…I do not know how long."
"You're well-spoken, for a spirit," Wulf replied. "But no one else would've opened the door."
"No one else except your friend."
"You can sense her?"
"Of course."
Wulf chuckled. "Well, look. She's special."
"So are you. But is it in the right way?" Again, it asked, "Can you give me what I want? Can you make me feel alive, or are you just like the others?"
"They're looking for power for power's sake," Wulf breathed. "There's nothing in that." He lowered his arms. "I did that once, too. And I didn't get very far. But I'm looking for something else, now. I'm not sure if I've found it. I don't know if I can give you what you desire, because I'm looking for it, too. I wasn't alive, I wasn't feeling any of the things I needed to. But I know what to look for. If you join me…well, I can't promise you anything right now. I can promise you the future, though. Because when I save the world, there's going to be a world worth living in."
The spirit let out an airy huff.
"I know you don't feel the same as me," Wulf said. "But you want to. And I know you're capable of respect. So what do you say? Is that a respectable purpose?"
"I accept your proposition," the spirit said.
Before Wulf could say anything else, the spirit raced toward him.
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