Andrew Rowe - Sufficiently Advanced Magic

I gestured toward the tunnel entrance. “Everyone, we need to get out of the hallway and let Sera rest.”

We moved out of the tunnel and off to the side of the door, where the wind wouldn’t hit us when it picked back up. When we were all out of the way aside from Sera, I grabbed onto her tight and pulled her toward me.

I nearly lost her, but Jin grabbed me around the waist and anchored me. Together, we pulled her out of the doorway.

The wind whipped past us at deadly speed, but we were safe.

Sera was still breathing hard. I slipped off my backpack, withdrawing my water and handing it to her. She drank a sip, coughed that water up and retched onto the floor near us, and then drank some more. She managed to keep it down the second time.

She hugged me tightly and I hugged her right back. Even my usual reticence toward human contract was apparently overwhelmed by just how reshing close we’d just come to meeting our end.

We all sat down. I handed Sera the mana watch. She wordlessly accepted it, fumbling with the watch to find the right spot on her back to measure her mana.

-30/112.

She’d gone well beyond her safe mana limit. That meant potential permanent damage. No wonder she wasn’t talking.

She looked at the number, grimaced just slightly, and handed the watch back to me. I mussed her hair. “Quick thinking, blocking the wind. You saved us there. The rest of us will take care of things for a bit.”

Sera nodded, still looking painfully weak. If I was a Mender, maybe I could have healed her, but…

I sighed at my own stupidity. “I’ve still got the ring of regeneration,” I realized out loud. I handed her the ring. “Put that on, it’ll make you feel a bit better.”

She accepted the ring gratefully and slipped it on. She closed her eyes, letting out a sigh of momentary relief.

I felt a little better knowing the ring would probably keep her from getting worse, at least.

I glanced at the others. “Okay. Plan?”

Professor Orden shook her head. “As a Wayfarer, I have all sorts of movement-oriented spell. Unfortunately, none of them really involve blocking or resisting the wind. I could levitate someone, but that would just make them more susceptible to being blown away.”

I refrained from asking why she hadn’t levitated us across this room in the first place. Presumably she wanted to save her mana, or maybe it required her to concentrate on one person at a time.

Maybe she just enjoyed having other people do all the work. It didn’t matter. I needed to focus.

I still had a handful of magical items I hadn’t used, but none of them seemed applicable to the situation. I was sorely tempted to consult the book, but everyone could see me. Was it worth outing the book’s existence here?

Maybe. It really was a tremendously dangerous situation. Extreme measures were warranted. But it wasn’t an extreme approach that I suspected to actually help.

The book would probably just write back something like, “ Corin, you’re in the Room of Killing Wind. It has winds that kill you. Avoid them. ”

I rolled my eyes at the thought. For a magic book, it wasn’t actually very helpful.

Aside from that, I didn’t really have any items that felt close to appropriate. Maybe Professor Orden did? That gave me a bit of an idea, at least. “Do you want to try that serpent key on the other door? Maybe we can just take the other route and get Derek back here.”

Professor Orden furrowed her brow, seeming to consider the suggestion. “Only if we can think of no alternative. The other room could be equally or more dangerous, and it could also introduce a new element that makes this room more deadly.”

A fair argument. “Okay. Do we have any way of communicating with Derek?”

Orden nodded. “I have a spell that sends messages, but it’s one way. He would not be able to reply.”

Sera tried to say something, but it just came out as a cough. She frowned, and then mimed drawing something and looked at me expectantly.

I set my backpack down, once again debating if I was willing to take out the book. Instead, I retrieved a pen and frowned. “Anyone have paper? Sera needs to write something.”

Vera dug some out of a bag. “Here you go, dear. Thanks again for the save back there.”

Sera nodded to Vera, accepting the paper and my pen.

She wrote out, “Vanniv could probably stop the wind.”

I frowned. “You’re not in any condition to summon Vanniv right now.”

She nodded, writing again. “Agreed. If we call Derek back, we can camp here for a few hours until I’m sufficiently rested.”

I relayed Sera’s plan to the rest of the group.

“I’m not confident a summoned karvensi is going to be sufficient to repel wind of that strength,” Orden remarked, “But it is the best plan I’ve heard so far. I’ll send Derek the message.”

Orden whispered into the air. I couldn’t hear her words, but with my attunement active I did see a hint of mana leaving her mouth. It was a strange effect.

I turned my attunement back off, checking my mana. 34/48. Still safe, but I was getting close to the point where I usually stopped.

Ten minutes later, Derek still hadn’t come back.

“Anyone else getting a little worried?” Vera asked. “I mean, he’s an Emerald and all, but he’s not invincible. What if something happened?”

“Unless someone has something new to contribute, I don’t believe we have any option other than waiting,” Professor Orden replied. “I wouldn’t be overly concerned, however. In spite of his bluster, Derek is quite creative.”

This was emphasized when Derek’s fist burst through the wall behind me a moment later.

I startled, standing up and nearly stumbling back into the wind. Jin caught me and steadied me.

Derek punched his way through the rest of the wall over the following couple minutes. “Phew. That was rough. This wall isn’t thin like the one we were supposed to go through.”

I blinked. “What happened? And didn’t you say we’re supposed to not destroy the normal walls, because of spire guardians and such?”

“Yeah, that’s the funny thing. I realized a spire guardian was just what we needed. Punched a wall a whole bunch until one showed up. Huge iron golem, really mean. Then I punched through him, too.” Derek cracked his neck, and then wiped his lips.

Was that blood?

“Anyway, his body is big and heavy enough that the wind can’t push it. Unfortunately, I can’t push it very well, either. Thing must weigh more than a train car. So, I busted all the way through here. His body is blocking the wind on the other side of the passage. He’s around the middle of the room, though, so it won’t get us the whole way through.”

“If I can get in half-way, I can look for ways to disable the wind. There’s probably a trigger somewhere,” Vera suggested.

We pushed ourselves to our feet. Derek’s strength had come through for us again, but we’d need to handle the rest ourselves.

And, at a second glance — yeah, his lip definitely was bleeding.

Even he wasn’t invincible.

We carefully made our way through Derek’s hand-made tunnel, emerging behind the colossal form of the fallen spire guardian.

Derek hadn’t been kidding about how large it was. The golem must have been thirty feet tall when it was standing. Now, fallen on its side, its shoulder was just about as high as I was tall.

That realization made me look up. The ceiling of this room was absurdly high, probably thirty meters up.

Across the room, I could see a series of runes on the wall that were generating the blasts of wind. If we could neutralize those runes somehow, we could stop the gale.

Between the runes was, of course, another door. No sign of a lock on this one.