Kanin Fyre: Chapter 8 - Dunmora

The next night, we track Zyneth with the obsidian dagger we made for him. This works exceptionally well, until he plants it in an empty room to lure us into a trap. The night after that, he leaves his dagger behind. We try to plant more glass on him as a tracker, but he quickly picks up on this as well. The fourth night, and our last night aboard the airship, we try a different strategy.

After that first night, we began exercising our Refraction spell. We would wait until after we did our round of hide and seek with Zyneth, and then use all our remaining mana to practice with the spell. This got it up to Level 4, but we’ll probably need more than a few days of practice to get it higher than that. If nothing else, it did reduce the mana requirement, so we can now hold the spell on our entire body for about thirty seconds.

Meanwhile, we can keep it going on our core for almost ten minutes.

The first thing we do is stash our Inventory glass in a storage closet we’d found. We break several of its Chains into smaller segments, so if we need it we can call the glass to us without bashing the door down. Then we go below deck.

Over the last two nights, we’ve had a chance to explore the crew area and underbelly of the ship. There are a lot of interesting hidey-holes down there; we were able to elude Zyneth for almost two hours last night.

We take a stairwell slowly and silently down to the crew level, pausing to keep an ear out for any approaching crewmates. The stairwell is the one place on the ship, besides the main deck, that is well lit enough to be a threat for us to be discovered. Once we’re down in the main network of halls, we set our plan into motion.

I’ll admit, a lot of this was Ink’s idea, and I’m not a terribly huge fan of it. But we’ve tried my strategies, and they didn’t work, so it's only fair to let Ink give it a go tonight.

From the crew cabins we descend to the storage deck. It’s full of supply crates and stacks of linens. A perfect place to conclude our game with a low likelihood of anyone stumbling in on us. We separate our core from our body, then bring out a smaller volume of glass we’d stored in our Inventory. We quickly chain these about our core and do a few practice walks around the room. The shape is about as big as a cat but with six limbs, each equipped with smaller clusters of glass at the end that can act as grip. It looks about like a terrifyingly oversized glass tarantula with two of its legs plucked off. As I said: Ink’s idea.

We spend a few hours mapping out every inch of the room and trying different vantage points. When our surveillance glass detects movement, we shift our focus outside.

We’ve gotten better at disguising our glass over the last few nights. One shard we flattened into a pane and pressed up against the window. Other ones we’ve hid tucked under steps of the stairs, or in the corners of ceilings. When Zyneth finds one, he bashes it with the butt of his knife, which apart from being just plain rude, also disrupts our vision. Tonight, he only finds one of them.

We track his movement through the ship until he finally makes it to the cargo hold. We’re tucked behind some crates, using tactically positioned shards of glass to give us a clear view of every inch of the room.

Zyneth steps inside, pulling the hatch shut behind him. He pauses to take in the details of his surroundings; dim red lights glow in the ceiling, enough to barely light the room while maintaining a visitor’s night vision.

“If you’re not in here,” he says, “you’ve got me.”

He’s speaking quietly, but we have glass close enough to pick up the sounds. Moving slowly through the room, his eyes dart every which way, hand resting on the hilt of his blade. We wait until he’s halfway through.

Controlling our body when it’s been separated from our core feels odd. Mechanically, nothing about how we move it is different compared to when our core is in our chest. We’re still seeing through it, hearing through it. But at this distance, it stops feeling like our body, and feels more like a tool—or maybe, a limb. Either way, we have it carefully sneak out of its hiding place. Slowly, it creeps up behind him.

Zyneth spins around, summoning a crackle of lightning to his palm. I guess since no one can see us down here, he decided to up the stakes.

Our body dives out of the way, void limbs sprouting to impact the ground first,  catching the body to keep it from breaking. Our body rolls through the motion, then springs toward the door. Zyneth gives chase.

We activate Refraction and start to move.

Zyneth lets off a spark of electricity, just enough to zap through one of the void limbs we had reaching for the door. There’s glass underneath, however, so Zyneth still has to throw himself forward to stop us from opening it—which would prevent him from using his lightning again. He grabs our wrist and plants his feet, pivots, does something with his hip, and spins us around to place himself between our body and the door.

“I believe that’s it,” he says, raising his hands to indicate an end to the fight. “You’ve been found out.”

Not quite.

We raise a cluster of glass to Zyneth’s left while we continue to crawl along the wall on the right. When Zyneth’s attention flickers to the glass, which we form into a Lightbeam, we speed up, scurrying around the opposite wall until we reach the struts above the room’s door.

Zyneth jumps to the side, placing our body between him and the Lightbeam. But the attack is a feint. Behind our Core, we arrange another cluster of glass into a second Lightbeam, aiming it at Zyneth. At that same moment, Zyneth pauses, his gaze flickering to our body’s chest; its cavity is empty.

Zyneth swears, spinning around in anticipation of a surprise attack, but his gaze skips over us. That’s when we drop the Refraction and activate the Lightbeam. A harmless beam of light—no mana involved—falls over Zyneth’s chest like a laser-pointer.

“Boo,” we say.

Zyneth looks up at us in shock. “How did you do that?”

We can’t help but feel a little satisfied at his obvious surprise. “Refraction,” we say. We begin to pick our way down the wall.

“What… Oh. I thought you didn’t have enough mana for that spell.” Zyneth sits back in defeat, running a hand through his hair.

“Got more.” We make it to the ground, looking up at Zyneth. “Smaller body, less mana.”

He lets out a breath. “So that’s why you’re in that form. Well, you got me.” He pauses, a conflicted look passing over his face. “That form is rather…”

Yeah, yeah. You don’t have to tell us. We know how creepy it looks—though one of us sees this as a good thing while the other sees it as a drawback. We nudge our mind, promoting a separation so we can better speak with Zyneth.

 “Blame Ink,” I say as it pulls away. “It was the one that insisted on six legs.”

Zyneth chuckles. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. The deception with your body was clever. I figured the first Lightbeam was a decoy, but I wasn’t expecting a second.”

I have my body come sit down next to my core. Meanwhile, I recall all the glass in the area and start gathering it up. Ink, who has been split between our various forms, also gathers back into one entity. It exudes extreme smugness at our victory. If I’m being honest, I’m pretty chuffed about it too.

“I can keep the camouflage spell going on this form for about five minutes,” I tell him. “If it’s just my core, double that.”

“What about your whole body?” he asks.

I set myself down and start unchaining the glass straps that are keeping me in this spider form. “Thirty-four seconds,” I say.

Zyneth watches with interest as I stitch all of my glass back together. “Well, that’s something. But using it with a smaller form does seem more practical. Could you use it on multiple separate pieces of glass?

That’s a good question. I’ve never thought to try it. But when I concentrate on a couple clusters of glass and void, I realize I could.

“Huh. Neat.”

Zyneth raises his eyebrows. “That’s a pretty incredible ability if true. You’re saying you can make all of your glasses invisible and float them anywhere you like?”

“Not exactly,” I say. “I can’t use Refraction on individual pieces, or even my core. I need at least a small cluster of glass and void for it to work.” Although, that means I could create an army of glass hands, and make all of them camouflaged. Probably not for more than two minutes, or so, but still. That would be pretty cool. Or creepy. Depending on your point of view.

I finish collecting myself up, and then Zyneth and I sneak back out the way we came in. I’ll still be giving Ink a few more hours to roam around, but I’m feeling pretty good about the progress we’ve made. Once we’re able to level up our void spells?

Now, that will be something.

#

Everyone’s at the rails when we descend to the Dunmora dock. The city is called Starcove, and I’m starting to understand why. The city is arrayed around the bay, with the sunlight shimmering across the water like stars. Unlike Simora, however, which was built out over the water, Starcove is built up. The buildings are all tapering spires, stretching toward the clouds like skyscrapers. The air is filled with more airships, many of them docked high up along the tall, thin buildings. Harpies also flit through the air here; I’ve really only seen them in any number in the mountainous city of Fort Stalwart, back in Valenia. It seems they tend to prefer cities built around flight, which in retrospect makes complete sense.

As our airship drifts toward a dock, many of the passengers shift toward one side of the deck. I send some glass to take a look at whatever it is that drew their attention.

“See, there?” an elf says, pointing toward the ground.

“Yes!” their companion cries. “Wow. I can’t believe we made it.”

About a mile away is a giant white circle with thin squiggly lines etched over its face. I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking at, but from our vantage point I can tell it’s enormous. A strange kind of boardwalk appears to have been constructed around it, and over it, crisscrossing in odd patterns.

Zyneth finally catches a sight between the shoulders of two passengers, and his breath catches.

“What is it?” I ask him.

“That’s the Gods’ Tournament,” he says, a note of awe in his tone.

Yeah, I sort of deduced that much. “But what’s the competition?”

“If I had to guess,” Zyneth says, “it would be to make it out. Yes—a test of navigation. Wayfinding is within Yua Tin’s domain, so it makes sense.”

“Out?” I stare at the structure a bit longer, able to make out the distant movement of people walking across the boardwalks, which gives me a better idea of the structure’s size.

Like looking at one of those optical illusion puzzles, the structure abruptly snaps into clarity.

“It’s a maze,” I realize. A giant stone maze with the spectator’s viewing platforms built above it.

‘A test of navigation’ seems to be a bit of an understatement.