Andrew Rowe - Sufficiently Advanced Magic

“You said you got further than we did — what was your side like?” I shifted to get a look at their maps.

Sera pointed to a circle in the center of her room map. “We started out on this little platform surrounded by water. There were these pillars that came up from the water that we had to jump to, but there was a serpent in the water.”

She pointed to some smaller circles. “There were a few platform paths. We started with the one that led to the left door, got about halfway before the serpent tried to chew on us. Then Marissa hit it with her explodey punch.”

Marissa scratched the back of her head, reddening a bit. “Uh, it’s actually called Star Descends from Sky , Miss—”

Sera waved a hand dismissively. “Right, right. So, she exploded the serpent, which made things a lot easier. Got to the door, but it was locked. Spent a while hopping between platforms. One of ‘em was empty, one led to seemingly nothing, but a couple led to switches. We hit those and a key showed up on the empty platform.”

Marissa looked like she wanted to say something, so I nudged Sera to stop talking. Sera flicked me with a finger, but she apparently got the message.

Given a window of silence, Marissa chimed in. “There were things under the water, too. I saw a grate, and another serpent — a bigger one.”

“Probably just to eat us if we fell in the water.” Sera twitched her nose. “I guess the grate could be a thing, but we found the key to the door.”

I thought back to my own misadventures going through a grate in the floor of a tower room. It was a real possibility that thing represented a second exit. “Did you try going down there?”

“Of course not.” Sara sounded irritated. “At a minimum, we needed to check the obvious door first, and we did. The key from the platform opened it.”

I scratched my chin. “What about the platform that seemed to go nowhere?”

“Seemed like a false path,” she said with a shrug.

“Might have been an invisible platform at the end,” I suggested.

Sera frowned. “Neither of us had any way of seeing invisible stuff.”

“That’s what swapping team members is for. Jin or I could have handled it.”

“Maybe,” her words were clipped, “but we were doing fine on our own.”

“Not trying to knock you down here, Sera. You did better than we did, and that’s great. But we should be scouring every inch of these rooms. That’s going to take teamwork.”

Sera took a deep breath. “All right,” she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. She took another breath and rotated her shoulders, loosening her posture. “You’re right. I suppose we could have used some magic eyes. If we get stuck in the same room next time, I’ll swap Jin in to take a quick look.”

I nodded. “Assuming we use the same teams next time.”

Patrick gave me a dejected look. “You think we should change them?”

I held up a placating hand. “Maybe, maybe not. If we think we’re going to be in the same rooms, it might be advantageous to switch things up and get new skills in each of them. Or maybe I’m overanalyzing things and we should just do the same stuff faster next time.”

“Faster?” Sera looked thrown at the shift.

“Toward the end of my test, I started hearing a bell ringing in the distance. It was going faster and faster. I’m pretty sure I was running out of time; that’s part of why I rushed my second room.”

“Never heard anything like that on our side. Did you, Mara?” Sera looked at Marissa, who shook her head in response.

From the context, I picked up that ‘Mara’ was a nickname for Marissa I hadn’t heard. I liked it.

Sera expression grew contemplative. “Maybe specific things give us time extensions, or take time away.”

That made sense.

“All right. What was in your second room?” I asked.

Sera grinned, which I supposed was an improvement from her poor mood earlier. “The dragon.” Or perhaps it wasn’t.

I pursed my lips and glared at her. “A dragon .” My tone was dry. It seemed she was done being serious with the conversation.

“Yup,” she said, amusement in her voice. “Big ‘ol dragon, sleeping on a pile of treasure. Right out of a story book.”

“Dragons aren’t real .”

“Right,” she agreed cheerfully. “But they can put whatever they want in a test.”

I rolled my eyes. “I figured they’d want to make this as much like a real tower climb as possible.”

“Eh, we’re hearing new stories coming out of the towers every year,” she countered dismissively. “They change. Maybe eventually there will be a dragon in one of them.”

“Okay,” I sighed. “So? What’d you do?”

“Well, after we were done staring…” She paused when Marissa coughed and sent her a wink. “We snuck over, quiet as we could, and gawked at the treasure. Tons of magic-looking items in the pile. When we got near the top, we could see a door on the other side. Buuut,” she threw out her arms in exaggerated despair, eyes turned to the ceiling, “it was locked, of course. We tried to play it smart. Looked through the pile until we found a key.” She pointed to a point on the map on the map. “It was on the far right side, underneath a helmet.”

I took note of where she indicated. It sounded like the kind of test where any kind of greed would wake the dragon early.

“The dragon woke right up when I touched the key. Roared like thunder having a bad day. By that point, we were running for the door.”

I leaned in, hooked despite myself. “And then?”

“Thing takes a deep breath, breathing fire all over us.” Sera jerked a thumb at Marissa. “Mara steps in front of me, waving her hands in this circly thing, pushing the fire back like a fan. We still get a little scorched, but the sigils absorb it. I make it to the door and try the key — it doesn’t work.”

Oh, those bastards.

Sera continued, “The dragon flaps upward, flying over the pile, and lunges straight at us. Mara jumps at it, hitting it with her explodey punch, right in the jaw.”

Marissa winced at another use of “explodey punch” to describe her technique, but didn’t say anything.

“There’s a flash as the punch ignites the air, but the dragon is unfazed. Doesn’t even slow down. Snaps its jaws right around Mara’s chest.” Sera put the back of her hand against her forehead. “I screamed in vengeful woe for my fallen comrade, summoning a storm of ice to tear into the dragon’s scales. It screamed into the air, injured,” she ignored Marissa’s mortified mutterings in the background and lifted her chin, “and breathed another blast of flame toward me. I raised an ice wall, but the dragon’s flame was too intense, and I didn’t have Mara to protect me.”

Marissa was flame-red. She had one hand up to cover her eyes.

Sera dropped the dramatic pose. “The next thing I knew, I was waking up outside the test room.”

I considered the story. “Probably did better than I would have,” I concluded.

Sera shook her head. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about that. Your sword might be the key to that fight. The dragon was definitely weaker against ice.”

I looked down, dejected. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not allowed to take it into tests anymore.”

“Oh.” Sera was silent for a moment, then put her hand on top of mine. “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’ll find another way to handle it.”

“Yeah.” I thought for a moment. “Seems like we both lost to fire, actually. And ice was useful on both sides for this test.”

“True. You thinking we should learn more ice spells before the next test?”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’d be good for you and Patrick. I can’t cast ice. Not sure about Marissa.” I sent the Guardian a questioning look.