CHAPTER 48

You have selected the Inquisitor Archetype. You are now an Inquisitor.

Sure, fine. I wait for one nervous beat before the words fade away and others take their place. I’m getting nervous. This period of reprieve won’t last forever.

Select 1 Basic Spell from one of the following Traditions:

SHADOW

Darkness

Darkvision

DIVINATION

Hunch

Peephole

None of these spells, amazing as they certainly are, are likely to help me get out of here. I begin reading through descriptions but find myself getting distracted, too conscious of the dire situation I find myself in to pay them more than the dimmest attention. Thinking of skipping this step, of coming back to the material world, causes no alteration in the pages. It’s the Divination spells that finally wrest my focus back into place.

Hunch

You are warned of the next instance of danger that might cause you harm. Duration: 1 hour.

Peephole

Draw a circle with a 5 cm radius on a solid object. For the next minute, you, and only you, can see and hear through the circle.

I quickly – maybe too quickly – select Hunch. It just seems simple enough and all around useful. In any case, I’m not hinging on spells to get me out of this mess. In fact, my hopes rest on the Rogue Perks. If I know Rogues, and I really don’t, then…

Select 2 Perks from the following list:

ROGUE – Level 1

Counterfeiting

Dirty Fighter

Lockpicking

Pickpocket

Yes!

I select Lockpicking after only a cursory look-over of the description. It’s vague enough, but it encompasses what I need: knowledge of locks and how to nudge them open. For the second Perk, which the misty pages infuriatingly insist I pick now, I take Dirty Fighter. From the brief paragraph that accompanies it, the Perk rewards and encourages a no-nonsense sort of approach to getting opponents to the ground. Right now, I’ll take any advantage I can get.

You have unlocked 1 Local Secret.

Come on!

Immediately, the misty pages dissolve before my frustration, leaving me blinking in their absence. The real world comes back into focus, gloomy in the dying light, each object into sharp relief. Door, chair, table, bed, and, more importantly, manacles. I’ll get back to the Secret later.

I snap my head to look at the window above and to my left. The wooden boards, vaguely orange with the light coming from outside, were put up recently by an amateur carpenter. Someone who used too many nails and didn’t really know what to do with them except hammer them down hard. I find what I’m looking for almost immediately: a nail bent out of shape but not brought completely down, leaving a little metal hook peeking out above the wood.

My maimed arm will the useless here, but I’m blessed with more means to reach nails. In a wink, I’ve turned myself around on the bed, manacled hand above my head, and am reaching for the nail with my feet.

Hmm. Hopeless. The little hook is too small, and I’m in the wrong position to pull like this. If only I… The sheets. I stomp one end down on the bed and bite the one closest to me before ripping free a long, straight line of fabric.

Getting the strip of cloth in the hook is the work of a moment. I manage two loops around it, just in case the nail proves stubborn, and then wrap the remaining length of fabric around my feet like it was a rope I was planning to ascend.

Careful now…

It takes a few firm pulls plus an agonizing moment where the sheet seems like it’s going to rip apart before the shoddily hammered nail comes free, dangling from the end of the cloth. The rest I could have done blindfolded: I get the nail to my mouth and then reach for the manacle. The lock wouldn’t have come apart more easily if the gods themselves had ordered it to.

As quick as a wink, I’m on my feet, and just as quick I stumble. My vision swims as the blood drains from my head and my legs feel like matchsticks under me, unequal to the task of supporting my weight. I fall, hit my shoulder against the wall, and sliiiiide to the ground.

Ow.

I’m weak as a kitten. Spots dance in my vision and I have to hang my head low so the blood will know where to go. Anything else and I’m likely to pass out or vomit whatever passes for lunch in Godtouched cells.

Even with the infection and the blood loss, I’m too weak. How long have I been out? My scrapes and bruises are gone, though that could be the result of healing magic.

It’s while I’m lying here, breathing in and out, trying to rein my body in like it’s a misbehaving horse, that the last moments catch up to me. Between dissipating the misty pages and unlocking the manacle it couldn’t have been more than a minute. Hands free. Or one hand caged and the other missing, at least.

By whatever metric, Godtouched or normal, that was an impressive feat. And it had all come so… naturally. My transition to level 1 wasn’t a timid enhancement of my abilities so much as it was a jump from someone surviving through dumb luck and the skin of his teeth to someone actually competent, calm, poised, with a plan…

A plan. Right. Apart from the tunic I’m wearing, long and gray, and the hooked nail in my hand, I’ve got nothing else on me. The night is coming, its cold and reaching fingers making themselves felt in the gloom. Wherever I am, it will be swarming with Godtouched, all intent on roasting me alive for infiltrating their game and pissing on it.

I can’t keep a half-maniacal grin from spreading across my face as I force myself upright and to the door.

Bring’em.

*

The lock clicks open and the door swings on well-oiled hinges. I peek out, quiet as a mouse, into a silent, dusty corridor. There are no torches or magical flames and everything would be thrown in gloom if not for the feeble rays of sunlight escaping through other open doors.

The first thing that registers is clear and also surprising: no one has used this corridor in a long time. Other rooms I peek into are just like mine, only bereft of chairs and with windows covered but unboarded. I slink into one of these and, slowly and efficiently, pull the covers open, letting the setting sun’s light stream into the room and varnish every surface in waning gold.

After I blink away the sunspots, my breath catches in my throat. It’s a city. The city, and it stretches – a long way it stretches before giving way to orange fields which then turn into forest bordered by distant hills. Behind these, the sun is setting, even now disappearing. My eyes wonder, and focus on the ocean. The water, I saw it quickly before the Challenge, a distant stretch of blue squeezed between buildings and dotted with ships. That faraway glimpse compares to this like ashes to a bonfire. The violet expanse before me, lapping at a coast that rises in cliffs and falls in dark beaches, is no big lake but an infinite and darkening expanse.

I have to force myself back to the present, rip my eyes away from the scenery and think: I know where I am. This is Black Sword Keep, which rises higher than any other building in Red Harbor. From the looks of it, I’m very, very high within the keep itself. The breeze ruffles my hair as I look down, down into the rows of sanely-sized houses, two or three stories tall, among which a people of ants, fading into the gloom just as lights starting coming on in the wider streets, go about their business. I wonder if I should feel scared, if vertigo should reach into my chest and squeeze my heart until I’m paralyzed with fear. Instead, all I feel is peace.

Which is when I hear the noise. Muffled, distant, but a noise still, the sound of steps, coming from the dusty corridor. I pull the window cover, throwing the room into darkness, and crouch low to the floor, mingling with the shadows. My heart drums up a gallop as the steps, whoever they belong to, approach. They’re not hurried, simply purposeful, and leaving now would certainly put me in their maker’s sight.

I make my legs stop shaking. My hand be still. And I wait.

It’s not a long wait until a man passes in front of my hiding place, an impression of a short coat, a strong jaw, dark skin, and a vain primness, his eyes lost in the distance, his mouth moving in private conversation with himself. As soon as he’s passed, I dash out, crouched low, grabbing the doorjamb for extra swing as I turn and dart down the corridor the way he came.

My jailer’s mutters don’t raise up in surprise behind me nor do his steps quicken to give chase. A little surprised, I pass the larger door that marks the end of the corridor and throw myself down a narrow curving staircase before I realize that he isn’t chasing me at all, that he didn’t even notice me dashing like mad a second before he passed.

Sneaky, I realize. The skill, or Perk, or whatever it’s called.

It’s as natural as Lockpicking. My feet just know how to step silently as moths, my body how to bend to mix with the background.

I’m level 1, I keep thinking. I’m level 1, I’m actually, really level 1, that’s—

The stairs bend sharply. Too sharply. When the cry of alarm comes – the man upstairs realizing I’m not in my cell anymore – and I take my eyes off the steps for a thin slice of a moment, that’s when another man, dressed in the drab uniform of servants everywhere, materializes in front of me, two steps down. We eye each other. I take in his balding head, the vague wondering in his eyes, the warm bowl of soup on a tray that he carries. He’s probably focused on my tunic, perhaps my missing body part, perhaps considering how to react when a barefoot stranger comes running out of the dark.

Dirty Fighting kicks in like a drunk, uninvited guest. I poke the man in the eye.

As he yelps and soup flies in the air, I dash between him and the central pillar, flying down a couple steps before slipping on a slimy, soupy mess and finishing the remaining three steps on my ass. Both men above are shouting now, one in alarm, the other in pain.

I look one way, then the other. This corridor is much grander and better taken care of than the one above, any speck of dust a distant and unwelcome memory. It stretches in two perpendicular directions, one quiet, distinguished, burnished with gold and silver, the other leading to a landing where violent, flashing colors shock an unseen crowd into shouts and cheers.

Approaching curses above compel a quick choice. I figure I’ll be harder to find in the chaos and dart towards the landing. I hear someone calling after me by name, a desperate whispered yell which I ignore. A flash of blue light flares in the opening past the landing, bringing the crowd into sharp relief and blinding me slightly but giving me the cover I need to exit the cover unseen, dart to the left and hug the wall.

This space is open to the sky, the landing squaring it on four sides and filled with people. Filled to the brim. A mass of bodies piles against the rails, looking down at something I can’t quite make out and shouting in consonance with the lights. Another blue flash comes with a crackle of lightning, and the audience winces, mutters among itself, too interested in what what’s happening down in the open courtyard to notice me crouched behind them.

Suits me fine.

In the mess of bodies, it’s impossible for my pursuers to find me, so it’s all a matter of laying low, keeping to the shadows, and finding a way out of here.

I’ve gone half around the landing when I finally catch sight of it, what everyone’s so invested in. It’s a wide, green, shimmering surface, much like the one that leas me into the dungeon, but no one is going through this one. No. It looks more like something is trying to come out.

In the middle distance, enlarged beyond their natural size, facing each other in a wide arena littered with statues, two Godtouched are locked in battle.

One is a monstrous warrior. A giant, I think at first, until I see her features are human, though if the statues are any indication of size, larger than any human I’ve ever seen. She swings a club on massive arms, and sparks trail after every strike, destroying statues and scattering the pieces. Her opponent, however, is a tougher target than that.

He’s a young man, not much older than I am, dressed in blue and white. ‘Man’ might be the wrong word. A smattering of scales spreads up from his neck and envelop his face, coming down also to his fingers. His cloak billows behind him, and it takes me a moment to realize his feet don’t touch the ground. His movements are quick, hard to follow as he darts this way and that, flying away from every attack thrown at him. The audience, all Godtouched as far as I can tell, watches him with wary eyes that they then turn to each other. Preoccupied.

The woman attacks again. The scaled man flies close to the ground and away from her and extends his hands. A lightning bolt shears through the air, blinding us all, and buries itself in the woman, leaving a black mark behind. The audience winces.

I cannot take my eyes away from the battle. This is magic – real, powerful magic – being wielded not for demonstration but to the extent of its capacities to destroy. Another lightning bolt hits, and another swing of the mace misses. The woman is getting winded, slowing down, the wounds starting to get to her. By the audience’s reaction, the battle is done, the outcome unavoidable.

In the end, the scaled man simply comes to rest in front of the titan-woman, floating down to look her in the eye. They stay like that a moment, and whatever magic that allows us to see the battle circles them, approaching, catching the intensity of their gazes, the nearly imperceptible nod of the woman’s head.

The lightning comes down, then, blinding everyone, turning the green surface to white.

For a moment, nothing can be seen. And then, in spots, the image returns, sound following shortly after. The scaled man is standing in the middle of the arena, facing a large lump of unrecognizable charred meat. A black shape spreads from the point of impact on the ground, and more debris has joined that of the statues’: pieces from an unseen ceiling above.

Rain falls in through the hole the lightning left in its trail of destruction. The scaled man looks up, blinking, as the water strikes his face. His eyes seem to be lost in whatever he sees above.

A cry begins, coming from where I don’t know, since everyone in this courtyard is studiously silent.

Champion.

Champion.

Champion!

CHAMPION!

The lightningwielder walks up to the dead titan and searches her body for a moment before coming up with a shimmering stone. The image focuses on it, revealing an amethyst. He then walks to a so far unseen spot in the arena where an intricate purple door, its surface decorated with two closed wings, awaits. The Door opens into a purple swirling portal. The man steps inside and vanishes.

It’s only then that I realize what’s happened. What I just saw, what this battle meant. It wasn’t two Godtouched showing off, no. it was the end of the Challenge, the true Challenge, far beyond Funnels and petty traps. Two people like me, who followed the path of power until its final, dire consequences. Until only one remained.

The Champion.