Andrew Rowe - On the Shoulders of Titans

I blinked. “I thought you liked her.”

“I did. Doesn’t mean she was a good person. I’ve done a lot of digging into those artificial attunements over the years, and the picture isn’t pretty.” Derek shook his head. “That’s a topic for another time, though. For the moment, I have a present for you.”

He took out a stick.

I put a hand over my heart. “Such a touching gift! You shouldn’t have.”

The swordsman shoved the piece of wood in my direction. I accepted it with more curiosity than cynicism, turning it over in my hands. No obvious runes.

I turned my attunement on.

The glow was very subtle, but it was there. Just a hint of a colorless translucent field, like around a Quartz-level attuned, but fainter. If I wasn’t looking for it in specific, I was confident I wouldn’t have noticed it. Even looking straight at it I was half-convinced it was just in my mind.

I frowned, turning my attunement back off.

“That,” Derek gestured, “Is perhaps the world’s most advanced magical object.”

My eyes shifted down, then back to him. “Yeah, no, not believing that.”

He laughed. “Okay, fine, it’s a stick. But it is a magical item — and, as I’m sure you noticed, not a typical one.”

“No runes.” I ran my fingers across the surface. “Not even invisible ones.” I paused, considering. “Wait. Is this one of your Soulblade items?”

“Oh, no, I don’t like you that much. It’s just an unusual enchanting style.”

I turned it over in my hands. “Where are the runes?”

“That’s between me and the Enchanter who made it.” He grinned. “And that gives you an advantage. No one knows to look for it.”

Hrm. Maybe he carved runes on an inner rod and glued this bark onto it?

Or maybe there aren’t any runes, and it’s alchemically treated somehow?

I turned the stick over in my hands, pondering.

“So, what’s it actually do?”

“If you crack it in half, it sends a signal to a linked item in my possession. My item will make a sound and begin to glow. Once I notice it, I can activate my item to see a visible trail to the location of your stick.”

I raised a hand to my chin, thinking. “It’s an emergency signal. That’s good, but wouldn’t something like a return bell be better?”

Derek grinned. “Sure, but those are expensive. Sticks are cheap.”

“Thanks, Derek. Your generosity is overwhelming.” I set the stick down on the table. “If I get my bell back at some point, could I set it to teleport here?”

“Nope. Anti-teleportation field around the whole house. You’d need a key to circumvent it — and I’m not letting you make one of those. Besides, standard return bells only work if you’re in the spire. They draw on the tower’s mana or something. You can make ones that work anywhere, but they’re more expensive and have a shorter range. We usually call those jump bells.”

Huh. I guess that’s why the ones we used during the fake tower tests worked a little bit differently?

I’ll have to keep that in mind for the future.

I nodded. “Okay. Do you have more magic sticks, at least? Sera, Marissa, and Patrick could probably use them.”

“I can handle making those. Might take a few days, but I’ll get one for each of them.”

“Okay, thanks.” My mind was starting to wander onto the next steps in my plan. I should figure out how to make one of those more advanced return bells. I think Derek called them jump bells? They’re probably too powerful for me to assemble on my own right now, but I could start working toward it.

Derek raised a single finger. “One more thing. That new attunement you’ve got? I’m pretty sure it’s either an ascended attunement or a restricted attunement.”

I tilted my head to the side. “What are those?”

I’d heard of ascended attunements briefly, but I had no idea what restricted attunements were.

“Ascended attunements are attunements that have progressed to the point of changing into something new. They can generally do everything a normal attunement can, but some new things.”

“So, they’re just more powerful than normal attunements?” I asked.

Derek shook his head. “It’s not a matter of power, like progressing from Quartz to Carnelian would be. Ascended attunements just have new things they can do, like giving you additional types of mana or new abilities. Before you ask, I don’t know how to get one, and I don’t know much about how they work. Believe me, I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while.”

I nodded.

Derek continued. “I think it’s more likely you’ve got a restricted attunement. There are a handful of attunements you can’t get out of a standard Judgment. The only known people with them are the ones that the visages hand them to. No pun intended there. It’s possible they normally come from Judgments in the Spider Spire, but since no one knows where that is, it’s impossible to say.”

Now that was interesting. “Isn’t there some kind of seventh tower in the middle of the Unclaimed Lands, too?”

“Oh, that?” Derek laughed again. “It’s real, but it’s useless, as far as I can tell. I’ve been there. It looks like a Soaring Spire — maybe even bigger, actually. It’s cylindrical, and it’s the only one that’s perfectly smooth. There’s only one set of gates, and it’s locked tight. Couldn’t put a scratch on them.”

“…You tried to blast your way into a spire?”

Derek shrugged. “I was bored, alone, and hundreds of miles from home. I didn’t want to waste the whole trip out there. So, yeah. I tried to break into the tower…a lot. I tried climbing it, too. Summoned my pact-bound friends. Nothing we tried worked.”

Huh. “Okay. Well, it’s probably not related to this.”

He raised a hand to his chin. “Unless you can get in there through the other towers. If there’s a way to teleport from another tower, it’d be a perfect safe hiding place for the people who captured Tenjin… Presuming the place is set up like the other spires, of course, and that there are safe spots. Which there might not be.”

“I’ll try to do some research on that, too, if I can find the time.”

“Don’t worry about that spire. You were right — it’s probably not related. If you really want to be involved with this, I definitely think talking to your mother should be the priority. Aside from that, let’s get you and your friends strong enough that I’ll be comfortable taking you with me to the tower if I need to.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a good plan. Does that mean you’re going to offer us some kind of special training? Teach us the secrets of how you reached Emerald at such a young age, maybe?”

“Goddess, no. I don’t have time for that.” Derek grinned. “But you know? Keras might.”

I thought back to Derek’s Emerald-level summoned monster panicking at the idea of even sparring with Keras.

This was a terrible idea.

Marissa and I stood up at the same time, then glanced meaningfully at each other.

Well, at least I’m not the only crazy one.

We found Keras back on the roof. I don’t know when or how he slipped past us to get back up there, but it didn’t really matter.

He was sitting with his legs folded in front of him in an unusual style, his sword laid across his lap. His eyes were closed.

On a hunch, I flicked my attunement on.

The aura around the unsheathed blade of his sword was a silvery hue under my attuned vision, thicker than the flickers of argent I’d seen in his personal shroud during moments of intensity.