To Fly the Soaring Tides

“In what world is manipulating orichalcum easy? Do you even realize how absurd it is to have so much in your home?” Nanri thought she had a grasp on how clueless the girl was, “Don’t you need to undo the seal first anyway? That’s what those magic circles are, right?”

“You would think so,” Cira said, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That oversized hunk of orichalcum is the key. Remove it and the seal is undone. Everything else is a ruse designed to harm you… or me, I suppose.”

Cira summoned a cup of water and took a break leaning up against the wall. She was already low on mana and wasn’t excited about the prospect of downing more mana potions all day. She’d run out before Lomp ever arrived with more.

Nanri was shocked, “Why would he do that to you?”

“As I said, it’s forbidden for a reason.” Cira looked up into a corner of the ceiling, trying to stare into the past, “My father once ran out of here with his eyes bleeding, straight to the workshop. He even left the door wide open for a few minutes. I’m not sure I’d ever seen him that scared. If I hadn’t seen him running, I may have made an attempt then.”

“I’m not so sure I should go in…” the witch was losing heart.

“Believe me,” Cira shook her head, “Whatever he saw… we don’t have what it takes to so much as try to comprehend it. That’s our safety net.”

Nanri’s shoulders went stiff, “I… still don’t know.”

Standing up, Cira laughed and held out her hand, “Don’t worry, I won’t force you to go in. I told you I’d look first, didn’t I? Now come on, I don’t have all week to pull a key out of a door.”

She helped Nanri up then headed back the way they came. The witch followed behind, “What are we going to do about the key then?”

Walking down the hall, Cira pondered, “I’d rather not utterly destroy the door. It’d be nice to seal it back up later, and it’s definitely trapped. I thought we could set up an array or two, and I could probably raid my father’s closet for something ridiculous to wear for this situation.”

They stopped at the third door down. The seal on this door was the basic one that most doors within Breeze Haven shared, and Cira undid it quickly. Stepping inside, there were tables lining most of the room with different tools for crafting artifacts and enchanting them. On the other side of the room there was a large furnace, anvils, and just about anything one needed to make weapons, which usually got enchanted as well.

“So, you have a forge down here too… Your house is amazing, Cira.” Nanri looked the room over.

“Thanks!” She unabashedly smiled, “I missed being home… but enough of that. Let’s make this snappy.”

On one of the benches were Cira’s crossbows. She hadn’t decided what to do with them yet but was workshopping a bolt-summoning enchantment. She pushed them both aside.

First, she drank two more mana elixirs to top out, then straining both arms, Cira held the orichalcum staff aloft and white tablets appeared on the table one after the other, piling up. She stopped when they spilled over.

After seeing a confused look on her assistant’s face, Cira explained, “Nullstone. It will only last an hour, so we’ll need to make tons of these fast. Have you made arrays before?”

“I can make arrays to enhance my titanium spells, then some basics from the academy. I haven’t used nullstone, but it conducts mana of any element, right?”

Some materials just worked better with different elements, but nullstone worked fine with any. That’s not what Cira was going for though, “And, you can make arrays to geomance any material you want, say, orichalcum for instance. But it’s impossible to work with and I’m low on the real deal,” she said, leaning against an orichalcum staff that she could only lift with magical assistance.

Nanri moved on, “I trust you know how to engrave such a glyph?”

Cira put up a finger, “Not me. My father, naturally, had one. I turned it into a stamp years ago. I think it should be...” she rummaged through a few drawers and a cabinet before pulling out a golden stamp a little smaller than her palm. “Here it is. Orichalcum of course. Check it out.”

Cira slid one of the tablets over and there was a dim flash in her hand as she brought the stamp down. As it slammed, another few tablets fell off the table. When she pulled away, it revealed an intricate magic circle engraved with the color of earth mana. She handed the stamp to Nanri, “Now you try. I think we can make a few hundred of these, but I have a different one to work on.”

With the stamp in hand, Nanri looked at Cira with a hard to read expression.

“What…?” The humble sorcerer asked, “Were you expecting some absurdly tedious and drawn-out forge trip full of new challenges and things you’ve never seen before?”

“Quite frankly,” Nanri nodded, “yes.”

“Well, not today. Forbidden knowledge awaits, so get to stampin’.” Cira moved a couple desks over to start her own project.

These were simple glyphs she had to make, but they still required an orichalcum needle. After digging through a stack of books, she picked one out and looked through it, swiftly finding the page she needed. It was a matter of copying what she saw with absolute precision—the difficulty came in trying to do this quickly.

And fifty minutes later, she had completed sixteen of them, “That’s all the time we have. How many did you do?”

The witch set the stamp down with a thud and leaned against the table, sweat dripping down her face, “I… I have no idea.” There were a few empty bottles next to the greatly diminished stack of tablets.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re using all of them. Help me throw them in these baskets.” She grabbed a few from across the room and they filled them to the brim. As they rose off the ground, Cira enjoyed a smug grin at her assistant complimenting her baskets and they left the forge.

“What glyphs were you making?” Nanri asked as they approached the sealed door.

“As you know, orichalcum is a mana insulator,” She let her glyphs go and they floated to their position in front of her, in a circle facing the door. “These runes weaken that property. Combined with all your orichalchum specific geomancy enhancement circles, I hope to manipulate it like butter.”

“I see… Well, there are a lot of them. What’s your plan with these by the way?”

Cira explained her design in great detail. For the lackluster sixteen glyph array she had created, she conjured a quick metal frame to hold them in place to focus everything on the single cast. Nanri’s construct was much more robust.

“Just leave my hand out!” Cira’s muffled voice came from inside a metal cage, “And a little hole for my eyes.”

The glyphs were snug against her body facing inward, directing all of their effect straight into Cira. She was the center of the array. In fact, it was supporting her arm as she held the staff forward, but she still had to drop a strength enhancement to keep her wrist from breaking. She was now fully encased in a layer of nullstone glyphs wrapped in titanium.

“Are you sure about this?” Nanri asked.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in… at least a few months. Is that all of them?”

“That’s all of them!” She sighed and stepped back.

The hallway was instantly bathed in soft tan light, but it burned so bright, the girls had to shield their eyes. Nanri ended up on the ground and Cira reluctantly forced mana into her frail eyelids. It was times like these Spatial Sense really came in handy.

The explosion of mana that came from her staff sent the air rippling around the room. The windows all down the hall flew open and started banging. Slowly, Cira watched the key slide out of its slot in the sealed door. A hair’s breadth a time, but constant. She struggled to keep it up, but could feel her mana depleting slowly.

“I’m doing it!” Cira cackled over the echoed sounds of rupturing mana, “It’s working!”

Inches at a time, she watched it pull. Minutes passed and her skin became hot. Cira also felt a headache coming on. If she hadn’t been in such a rush, she could have drained the dimnuts and used that potion to combat the mental strain.

The pain was starting to get bad, and Cira wanted to take a break to try again, but she was so close. Just a few more inches and they’d be in. The hall had gotten hotter, and the noise around her was overbearing. She could feel the glyphs start to break apart and knew it was time for one last push. Their effects would increase until they eventually, or rapidly in this case, turned to dust.

The light blaring out of her father’s treasured relic got somehow brighter still. She swore she could smell something burning. But it was right there. She’d pulled out a ridiculous amount of the key and the door couldn’t be any thicker. There was no way. This was the breaking point, and she put everything she had into it, finally getting low on mana, she had to push her limits.

Right when it loosened up and started sliding easily, there was a bang. Before she was knocked away, Cira saw the key disappear and heard something shatter. The door slammed open then all the glyphs exploded at once before fading into light, as they were conjured. Cira sat on the ground, coughing and trying to fan the dust away.

“Cira!” She felt a hand on her arm, “Are you alright?!”

It was her assistant, trying to assist. “Yeah, I think so… I need mana. Quick…” She leaned on the floor in a daze.

Nanri handed an elixir to her, and she sloppily drank it with both hands. Otherwise helpless, the witch rubbed her back to help it go down. “I can’t believe that worked…”

They both gazed at the open doorway. It was a dark room beyond, and there was dust clearing against the wall opposite them. A shiver ran down Cira’s spine as she remembered all her father’s warnings. She would learn something she couldn’t forget. Things would visit her in her sleep. She would accidentally read a curse.

Cira stood up and slowly walked to the door, “You wait here. I’ll take a look.” Her pace slowed as she approached the threshold. Peering in, it was smaller than she expected. There were strange objects on the tables, bookcases. A few mysterious preserved creatures. After taking a deep breath, she made a single step in and looked both ways as if there’d be a trap around the corner. There wasn’t.

“So, what did I break…?” Feeling a little more courageous after the first step, she entered the room. The dust was just beginning to settle. There were shards of broken porcelain strewn across the ground. What in the world is this…? When the dust settled, she saw the key resting there. “Huh?! He tricked me again!”

The key seemed to be sitting on some kind of platform. Almost a depression in the ground. She looked around the room and didn’t see anything else made of porcelain. There were many rare treasures, but she could hardly identify a single one. Some were shiny and some looked like glass. There was an ominous black skull twice the size of hers that she couldn’t discern, then another door in the center of the wall leading somewhere.

She went to pick up a shard off the ground and noticed it was ornately painted like some of her dishes upstairs, but in a different style. She rummaged through them and found a handle—her finger fit over as it would one of her teacups.

“—aaaaand that should be enough time.”

“Ahh!” Cira yelped and dropped the piece in her hand, shattering it again. She stumbled and backed up until she found the wall, jaw slack and mumbling failed words. Her eyes shot open, and lights flashed over her body. “…Dad?”

Like an apparition, the fading image of her father stood across the room. He wore flowing robes of white and gold with a wide collar—they were ones she’d long since refitted. He had a dark beard that came down to his chest and ended in a slight curl. On his head was the pearlescent hat with a gold star hung from its point.

“Cira are you—” Nanri came running into the room with concern but froze after seeing the ghost. Cira hadn’t paid her any mind.

She couldn’t. Cira was fixed on it as well. He stood there resting a hand on his staff—the very same one Cira held in hers. The gentle smile he wore could be seen in his golden eyes, and he looked right at her as he would when he was listening to her.

“My, look how you’ve grown!” he said with a wide grin, “Oh, I’ve missed you too, my dear. There, there…” he patted the air where her head would be if she were shorter and stood before him.

Cira’s face became stiff as she watched her father’s grin slowly break, and he held his stomach with a boisterous laugh, “Ahh, I’m sorry for that. You have to let an old man have his fun. And I thought you’d like a moment before I scold you.”

She turned white and pressed further against the wall. Nanri felt like she was intruding but didn’t want to leave her alone, so she inched a little closer to the door and snuck into the hall.

Cira had caught her breath and finally realized what was happening, “Dad… you asshole!” She threw a book and his ghost wisped around before snapping back.

“Now, now, Cira, I’m sorry.” His grin softened and his tone turned serious. His voice had a rich gravitas that filled the room, “I’m sorry I had to leave you so soon… I’m sure you’ve grown up into an incredible sorcerer and I wish I were still around to witness it. The challenges you’ve faced in my absence—I’m sure there have been many. They’ve all made you much stronger and wiser, I’m certain. There was… so much more I wanted to teach you, but you’re more than capable on your own now. So, thank you for coming here. I can rest easy knowing how far you’ve come. My daughter… I’m very proud of you.”

He wore a natural smile and his tone at the end was warm, but she could hear a hint of sadness. The staff slipped from her hands and clattered to the ground. Cira slid down the wall, gasping with tears in her eyes. She didn’t even know how many years it had been since she’d seen him. Four? Five? Even more? She still hadn’t been ready.

The key was rigged to shoot into the room and land on a pressure plate, activating whatever this was. She couldn’t even be upset about it right now. Gazen seemed to plan for this and allowed her plenty of time to cry. After a few minutes she wiped her tears off and moved towards the center of the room, conjuring a chair to sit in.

With uncanny timing, her father continued, “Now, I’m glad you’re here, but I am upset.” His face grew stern again and she hung her head as his projection wagged a finger at her, “Have I not told you this place is forbidden for a reason?”

“I know…”

“But I knew you would attempt to break in,” he said, “So, of course this isn’t the real forbidden archive.”