FWFW 3 - 56

Olivia burst through the door, the professors and inspector on her heels, and ran down the corridor, the tails of her magenta, hunting winds just in sight as they whipped around the corner. “Can you see them?” she called over her shoulder, face flushed with excitement and the high that always accompanied the surge of Energy from casting a new spell.

“No!” Carlu called.

“The spell is designed to let you see the trail, not others,” Alyss added, breathless from trying to keep up with the much longer-legged Olivia. Olivia hurried after her winds, wondering if they’d truly leave her behind if she didn’t try to keep pace, but not wanting to risk testing it. They flew down a set of stairs, then another long corridor, and then underneath a door that Olivia had never been through. When she pulled on the handle, it was locked.

“Stand aside,” Oylla said, producing a key that glimmered with red and silver motes of Energy. She tapped it to the handle, and the door *clicked* as it unlocked. Olivia pulled it open, and a small room with a narrow descending stair greeted her. One of her magenta breezes was swirling around the top of the stair, and when Olivia approached, it whooshed down the steps.

“It waited for me!” Olivia laughed, hurrying down the narrow stairway. It ended after twenty or thirty steps in a cramped stone tunnel with a dozen or so brass pipes lining its ceiling. Olivia had to duck as she stepped off the stair.

“Olivia! I know you’re excited about the spell, but you must be cautious. These maintenance tunnels aren’t frequently traversed, and we could come upon our quarry,” Oylla said, a bright orb of yellow light flaring to life near her head.

“Right,” Olivia said. “I can see my hunting breeze swirling around a junction about fifty feet ahead.”

“You used air-attuned Energy? Interesting . . . and clever!” Alyss said, nodding her approval. Olivia smiled at her professor and then hurried down the corridor, now brightly illuminated by Oylla’s spell.

At the junction, she turned to the right, following her churning breezes, and soon they came to another locked door, this one made of iron and rusted around the edges. Carlu cleared his throat and spoke up, “When I conducted my survey of the grounds, I wasn’t shown this door.”

“The academy is a very big place, Inspector,” Oylla said, stepping forward with her magical key. As she tapped it on the door’s handle and its bolt noisily slid open, she said, “We showed you more than many of the board members wanted to.”

Olivia tugged the door open and was pleased to see her brightly colored gust of air swirling around a circular stone staircase that descended yet again. It had no railing, and the stones looked damp and were patched with mold. “Where does this go?” she asked, gingerly stepping into the small, circular room, afraid she might slip into the open stairwell.

“Ancestors know,” Oylla said. “I’ve not been this deep beneath the academy in ages, and never via this stairwell.”

“Watch your step,” Olivia said to the others, suddenly remembering her magical boots and the fact that she wouldn’t even notice if the steps were slippery. With that foreknowledge, she strode confidently down the narrow, damp steps, following the winding curve of the open stairwell. She didn’t want to look over the edge for fear of triggering some sort of vertigo, but then a sputtering red flaring light fell down the shaft, illuminating the depths.

The red light bounced and sizzled as it fell into a puddle at the bottom, and Olivia reckoned they were about halfway down. Oylla said, “Carlu, it’s nice to see what’s down there, but if the killer had been lurking, you’d have given away the chase.”

“I think our progress is noisy enough to belay such worries,” Carlu said.

Olivia quickened her pace, taking two steps at a time, enjoying the confidence her boots gave her. “Don’t hurry!” she called back. “I have magical boots! I won’t go far ahead.”

“Olivia! Stay in sight!” Alyss called from quite a ways behind her. Olivia splashed down into the puddle where Carlu’s red flare sputtered, sending up steam and smoke. The stairway was shaped like it was following the inside of a deep well, and the room at the bottom was round to match. A low tunnel, seemingly carved into the stone of the mountain, led away, and Olivia could see her magenta breezes swirling around in the tunnel about fifty yards distant.

She crouched, summoned an orb of crackling plasma, and, holding it before her, started into the tunnel. She’d made it about halfway to her hunting winds when Oylla called after her, “Olivia! Wait for us.” Olivia wanted to hurry. Her heart raced with excitement, and she guessed it was the feeling everyone who ever talked about “the thrill of the hunt” must have meant. She forced herself to calm down and stopped, waiting patiently for Oylla and the others to catch up.

“Glad you waited,” Alyss said from behind Oylla. The petite professor hardly had to duck to be in the tunnel, whereas Oylla and Olivia were nearly bent double. Carlu crouched in the back, looking a bit out of sorts though still maintaining his usual decorum. He reached up to press his spectacles into place and nodded as Olivia made eye contact with him.

“Are we all ready, then?” She asked. “My winds are swirling around something about thirty feet ahead.”

“Yes, for the love of knowledge, please hurry. My back can’t take this tunnel much longer,” Oylla hissed.

Olivia nodded in sympathy and turned to hurry forward, her boots splashing in the thin layer of water on the stone. When she caught up to her breezes, swirling and swooping in the air, she saw that a round, metallic door had stopped them. It reminded her of an airlock door you might see on an old ship or submarine. The metal wasn’t iron, it had more of a dull gray appearance, and there wasn’t any sign of oxidation. She reached forward and gave the wheel at its center a tug, but it didn’t move.

“What’s this?” Oylla said as she approached, straightening up in the wider space before the large metal door.

Olivia shrugged and pointed, “It’s locked. Will your key work?”

“Let me see,” Oylla said, pulling out her sparkling key again. She tapped it on the wheel, but nothing happened, other than some sparks flying off her key and it clicking against the metal. “This isn’t an academy door. Someone added it without the knowledge of the board. At least without all of the board’s knowledge.”

“Let me try,” said Carlu, stepping forward. “I know a spell or three for getting into places criminals don’t want me poking around.” Olivia watched and listened as he tried one spell after another, his hands glowing with his brand of silvery Energy, and she wondered what his affinity was. After five minutes or so, though, he backed up, shaking his head. “No luck. It’s warded rather powerfully.”

“All right. Back up,” Oylla-dak said, pulling her shoulders back and motioning for the three others to move into the tunnel. “I don’t like to use this affinity, but I have a spell that might breach this door.”

Olivia followed Alyss into the tunnel, Carlu close behind, and as they crouched down, watching Oylla, she asked, “What affinity is she talking about?”

“She has an affinity with abyssal Energy. She rarely uses it, focusing on the pure portion of her Core.”

“Abyssal?” Olivia raised an eyebrow.

“It’s not well understood, but the Energy found at great depths beneath the earth or deep in the trenches of the oceans gains characteristics that are more destructive than normal Energy. I believe your Professor found her Energy affinity while exploring a cave system under the World Breaker Mountains to the north,” Carlu replied before Alyss had a chance.

“Earth,” Olivia echoed, once again noting the use of the term despite their world being called Fanwath. She wondered if he was using a different word, but the System Language Integration made her hear “earth.” Before she could ask another question, Oylla hissed, holding out her hands to form a ball of blazing violet-tinged yellow Energy. Olivia couldn’t see her face, but Oylla’s shoulders were hunched, and chords on her neck stood out with the strain of containing her spell.

A moment later, as the ball of Energy grew bright enough that Olivia had to shield her eyes, Oylla screamed, and a beam of blazing violet and yellow Energy surged toward the metal door. Olivia watched, between squinted eyelids, as the beam smashed into the door and seemed to be absorbed by the metal. The entire surface of the barrier began to glow with heat, and then, just as Olivia thought it might break or burst or melt to slag, Oylla’s spell ended, and she fell forward in exhaustion.

Alyss rushed forward in the heat and light of the glowing doorway and helped Oylla to stand. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine; it’s just an exhausting spell. Whenever I work with the abyssal Energy, I feel hungover for days.” Oylla stared at the door, her starlight eyes narrowed in frustration, and said, “If it could absorb that much Energy, I don’t know if we can get through. At least not without assembling a full cohort of professors.”

“Why don’t you let me give it a try?” Olivia stepped out of the tunnel, straightening up.

“Olivia, I know you have some destructive spells, but I don’t think you can match what I just threw at that door.” Oylla reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll make sure you’re present when we attempt again.”

Olivia reached into her storage ring and pulled out her Crown of Nightmarch. “I know I don’t have more power than you, normally, Oylla. This crown lets me do something rather extreme once per day, though. Why don’t you step back into the tunnel, please.”

“Ancestors! Olivia, I can feel the Energy in that crown from here!” Alyss said, allowing Oylla to drape an arm over her shoulders.

“Yes, it’s quite an item. I’ve only used it once, and, well, it was like riding a lightning bolt.” Olivia lifted the crown to her head, smiling at the familiar, comforting weight. She’d worn the thing for a rather long while in the dungeon. She felt stronger, more powerful, and prepared when it was on her head, and she wished she had the confidence to wear it all the time, even around the academy. She briefly imagined her cohort’s reaction to her strutting around with a crown, and when she pictured Adaida, the smile on her face faltered. What had she gotten herself into with her?

“Olivia, be careful,” Oylla said, allowing Alyss to guide her back into the tunnel where Carlu still watched, thoughtfully regarding Olivia and her crown.

Olivia tuned them and their low, whispered conversation out, focusing on the metal door. She contemplated using Pyrosteam Blast, but she didn’t want to punch a hole in the door. She wanted it gone. “Plasma Wave it is,” she said, priming the spell in her pathway. Before, when she’d used the crown to destroy the boss monster that had been about to crush Bronwyn, she’d acted in a sort of reflex.

Olivia’s heart raced suddenly, and panic made her stomach flutter. Could just the thought of Bronwyn do that to her? No, it wasn’t Bronwyn that did it. It was Olivia’s betrayal. How was she going to explain that she’d been away from her for just a few days and had already been so disloyal—already developed doubts about her feelings for the beautiful, funny, brave woman?

“Are you all right, Olivia?” Alyss asked, jerking her out of her introspection.

“Yes, just bracing myself. Stay back. It’s going to get very hot in here.” Olivia took a deep breath and then stretched her hands out, mentally feeling for the additional pathway the Crown of Nightmarch built as a bridge to her when she wore it. When she cast her spell, she channeled it through the crown and back into herself, now massively magnified, then she fired it out at her target, just as she usually would.

Olivia had seen news stories about flash floods and how water surged down dry gullies to sweep away bridges and cars. That was what her Plasma Wave was like as it erupted into the air before her. It was a crackling, superheated torrent that smashed into the metal door and nearly instantly filled its Energy absorbing qualities to bursting. The door flared from red to orange to yellow to blinding white in just a second, and then it was gone, blown to shreds of glowing metal droplets in the fury of Olivia’s spell.

As her spell ended, Olivia heard a high-pitched keening wail and realized she was screaming. She fell to her knees, breathing heavily, her vision blotted out by the white afterimage of her spell, and her pathways scoured and raw from the torrent of Energy she’d channeled. Still, she felt better than the first time she’d done it, and she wondered if it was something that would continue to get easier. Was she damaging herself, or was she making herself stronger?

These thoughts raced through her mind as she knelt there, but then she felt hands on her shoulders and her companions' soft, distant voices, and she allowed them to help her stand. When she blinked her eyes, and the bright image of her spell began to fade, she realized there was a System message in her vision:

***Congratulations! You’ve learned the spell: Plasma Wave - Advanced***

***Plasma Wave - Advanced: Prerequisite: Affinity - Fire, Affinity - Air. You conjure forth a surging wave of pure plasma. Your experience with overcharging this spell has allowed you to create more destructive and malleable plasma than usual. Energy cost: 300, Cooldown: Minimal.***

“That’s nice,” she said, reading the description of her spell improvement.

“Olivia?” Oylla asked, gripping her chin and turning her eyes up to her face. “Are you all right? Ancestors! I’ve never seen a person channel that much Energy!”

“I’m fine, thank you, Professor,” Olivia said, allowing Carlu to help her to her feet. “My spell improved from basic to advanced. I was just reading the description.”

“You cleared the path, Olivia,” Alyss said, peering through the space where the door used to be. Splatters of molten metal, still glowing from the heat, ticking like a thousand little clocks as they cooled, coated the tunnel for the next thirty feet or so, and beyond that, Olivia could see flickering blue lights.

“That blue—it’s the same as the killer’s Energy.” Olivia stepped forward, an orb of plasma floating before her. She’d summoned it so effortlessly that it was almost like taking a step or flexing a muscle. “I’m sure he’s running. Come on!”