And that he’d remembered it.
That part had been the hardest for Bergman to believe, and for Alarion to explain. So many of his memories of the challenge dungeon were either lost or jumbled and broken by the magic intended to wipe them clean, if not the mere passage of time. But Alarion was certain, his memory of Valentina’s ‘maze’ was as solid as the rock wall it had been a part of. It was so strong, so clear that only magic could be responsible.
Somehow, she’d cheated her goddess to give him one more advantage, one he’d not even understood until now.
It also made him look at the rest of his disjointed memories in a different light. Were there other secret messages, other hidden boons waiting to be uncovered?
He knew of at least one.
Minor Elixir of Perception [Rare](Rank I)
Description: A dark orange potion that smells of strawberries.
Type: Potion
Enchantment: Upon consumption, increase user’s perception score by 25% for one hour.
The item, one of two rewards he’d received for… something—a challenge to be sure, though he could not recall the details in anything but the vaguest of terms—was an oddity. Every other reward from the challenge dungeon had made its way into constant use, either by imparting a new skill or as a piece of equipment such as his [Hilt Wrap of the Lost and Recovered]; everything but the elixir.
Unlike all the rest, it was a consumable, and not an especially useful one at that. A 25% boost to a single attribute was nothing to scoff at, but with a single use and an hour-long duration, it was barely worth mentioning. He’d always assumed that he’d been meant to use it during the challenge dungeon itself; that he’d somehow missed its value there, and then promptly stored it away for a rainy day that never came. It had been a safe assumption until today.
Make sure not to throw away the vial. It was expensive.
Valentina’s words echoed through his mind with the same crystal clarity as his memory of the pattern she’d made for him. Like the maze on the wall, the words were buried in his memory, hidden there until he needed them; so pristine that there was no mistaking her intent.
In his haste, and to Bergman’s horror, he poured the elixir onto the floor to get at the secret within.
Valentina Lyon’s Looking Glass of the Hidden Revealed [Divine](Rank IV)
Description: An inconspicuous elixir bottle. It smells vaguely of strawberries.
Requirements: 1,500 PER. 5,000 LUK. Favor of Lal Viren (Major)
Attunement Cost: 324 points.
Type: Observation/Misc/Consumable/Relic
Enchantment: By looking through the top of this bottle, the user can see through any Illusions of up to rank V and below. By looking through the bottom of this bottle, the user can become invisible to any observation skills and/or spells of rank IV and below. These effects can be used for up to 30 minutes per day.
If shattered, the largest fragment of this item will enable the user to see that which is most hidden, with no time restrictions.
“S-She gave you a relic?” Bergman said after examining the description in stunned silence.
“Apparently.”
“D-Do you even… no, of course you don’t,” the well educated boy complained. “Each Incarnate makes one of these, usually toward the end of their life. It’s a capstone, an expression of h-how they lived as an Incarnate Goddess.”
“Powerful, then.”
It wasn’t a question, though Bergman treated it like one. “The Itinerate Blade, The C-Crown of Regia Amari? Y-Yes, Alarion. Even the weakest are powerful, v-vanishingly rare and sought after.”
It didn’t seem that way on his first read, though Alarion knew enough to know that he drastically undervalued tools that provided anything but direct combat advantages. The ability to hard counter almost any visual illusion, or to vanish from sight against all but the most powerful Awakened on all of Ilun, certainly seemed divine. Still, he knew that the real value was in that last line.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
To see that which is most hidden.
Alarion had confided much about his life to his friends, but he had never spoken a word about Valentina’s final letter to anyone, not even to ZEKE. She’d made clear the risks she’d taken to reach out to him, for something as simple as a letter; risks that he suspected were not only directed at him. For her to have secreted out a divine relic, it had to be more than just a gift.
But that knowledge just led to new questions.
She’d made no secret of her distrust for the goddess she’d once shared bodies with, but she’d given him an artifact that could only be used if he bound himself yet further in Lal Viren’s favor. She’d given him an item to ‘see that which is most hidden’ but no hint to who or what that was.
Not that it mattered for now.
“Ivor.”
“I won’t speak a word,” Bergman said, his voice steady with effort. “We can go to the Ordinate for a geas, if you feel it necessary.”
Alarion shook his head. He trusted Bergman’s word, both out of friendship and mutually assured destruction. Bergman had just as much to lose should their house of cards tumble, and a geas would not prevent someone from forcing the secret out of him; it would only punish him further for his failure.
“Thank you,” Alarion said, slipping the empty bottle inside one of his many pockets. “I will not be able to use it until I have more favor and considerably higher attributes, so let us focus on getting that upgrade.”
Doing so proved more difficult than intended, for a variety of reasons.
The first task was pulling Alarion’s memories into reality. With Bergman’s help, Alarion sketched out the full maze as he remembered it, a task that took several hours and a considerable number of pages, both due to the length and Alarion’s less-than-stellar artistic ability.
Next came the crucial task of deciphering how the pattern was to be used. As a two-dimensional image, it did not map easily onto a three-dimensional object, nor were there any obvious signifiers of where to start or end. Here it was Bergman who came to the rescue, suggesting what was rather obvious in retrospect. Each checkpoint in the puzzle marked an individual line section for the revised implement.
The real struggle was deciding where each one went.
On this, Alarion’s memories and drawings were of no help. There was no rhyme or reason either man could determine, and after nearly a day of trying to find a pattern, they fell back on Alarion’s preferred puzzle-solving method—brute force.
Alarion spent the evening sketching each line segment onto its own sheet of paper in as much detail as possible. The following day, they repeated Bergman’s initial experiment, clashing their mana against one another within the mace to reveal the points of failure, before painstakingly matching the more detailed diagrams to each.
It took two days of trial and error and another day of double-checking their work before they felt comfortable even touching the mace. Especially given the scale of the undertaking.
Bergman’s original intention had been a modest correction to the existing design. He’d wanted to touch up errors and improve efficiency while leaving room for Alarion to make another attempt when his skills had sharpened further; incremental change, not revolutionary.
But Valentina clearly had other ideas.
Typical revision of an arcane implement like Alarion’s involved the use of fine mana control to ‘burn off’ unwanted portions of the existing diagram. Such work was stressful and time-consuming for a typical Awakened. Their conservative plan would have taken dozens of hours and would have required Bergman’s continuous presence as a mediator. Needless to say, doing the same with Valentina’s plan would be impossible.
They would need to start fresh, which carried its own risks.
Cleansing the mace took days. The self-repairing, mana-reactive liquid metal used in its creation was difficult to remove, but that was the least of their problems. The gold had leached into the mace itself, bonding tightly to its host in a way no scraper or chemical could remove, forcing the two Awakened to tediously burn out the remnants over the course of days. Even then, they would not have succeeded without Witch’s help.
“This is all wrong,” the redhead complained as she reviewed their work with the scowl of an artist looking at the work of an amateur. “Did you even try Vasile’s Osmosis?” Alarion and Bergman exchanged looks that said more than enough, though it was the girl who appeared more embarrassed as she quickly added, “Sir.”
“Please do not call me that,” said Alarion.
Annie had arrived only two days earlier with the most recent wave of recruits, and like many of them, she had wondered where the famed Orphan was to be found. Unlike most of the others who were content to hurry up and wait, she had been asking around enough that her questions landed with Lily, and through her, Bergman.
Time had always been a factor, but the bell had begun to toll. With nearly half the roster already on base, and the rest set to arrive within the week, Alarion was running out of time for seclusion and training. He needed his implement back, and he needed it quickly.
And who better to ask for help with a magical item than an [Item Mage]?
It was a good thing that Lily had made the suggestion, because even if either of them had gotten over their pride enough to ask for help, they might never have recognized her as a soldier—even with a uniform as a reminder. She was just that small.
Not slim or dainty, just small.
After a lifetime of malnutrition, Alarion had only recently undergone a growth spurt that pushed him over five and a half feet. This made him one of the noticeably shorter men on base—especially when constantly standing alongside Kali—but the crown of her ridiculous hat barely reached his chin. Despite that, and her out-of-date dossier photo, there was no mistaking the girl for a child. She was short but curvaceous, with elegant cheekbones, striking blue eyes, and absolutely no nonsense in her attitude.
“If you give me the afternoon, I should be able to get this ready for you S…” the girl trailed off, her lips pursed together, clearly struggling.
“Orphan, is fine.”
“I should be able to get this ready for you, Orphan.” She nodded. “I also have some tools to help with the engraving. And better pigments. You were using that Third Council garbage, right?”
“Garbage?”
“Yeah, it’s trash. They flooded the old empire like… two hundred years ago? Insanely toxic, hard to get rid of, as you can see, and the accuracy leaves a lot to be desired. Most people switched over to the Steelborn formulations or Lal Tia’s variant.” She scratched one well-trimmed nail along a trail of gold flecks still buried in the mace, oblivious to Alarion’s indignance and Bergman’s barely concealed laughter. “Really, the only reason anyone uses this stuff is that it’s cheap and it keeps. Though this mace is nice. Where did you say you found it?”