Chapter 53: The Bait and the Hook

  The road to the Silver Spire was paved with white stone and good intentions, which, in my experience, usually meant there was a trap door somewhere.

  We were making good time. The Slipstream Duster kept the humidity off my skin, its friction-nullifying field making every step feel like gliding. Vrex, outfitted with his new Prismatic Intake, wasn't wheezing for mana every ten minutes. We looked less like refugees and more like a professional, albeit strange, mercenary unit.

  I pulled up the Schema as we walked, admiring the symmetry of the numbers.

  Horizon: 15.

  Lumen: 15.

  Kensho: 13.

  Egress: 13.

  "It’s aesthetically pleasing, isn't it?" I remarked, tracing the lines between the constellations in my mind. "Everything within two points of each other. Perfectly balanced."

  Vrex glanced over, his heavy stone brows furrowing. "It is a plateau, Kaelen. Not a peak."

  "Everyone loves a plateau," I countered. "Great views. Stable footing."

  "And zero elevation," Vrex rumbled, his tone turning into a lecture. "The Empyrean Ladder rewards specialization. To unlock the higher tiers of Remembrance Arts—to truly break reality—you need to push a specific attribute to its absolute limit. You are spreading your potential thin."

  He gestured to his own massive frame.

  "I am a mountain because I poured everything into Horizon. If I had distributed my growth equally, I would not be the Unshakeable Earth. I would be... a gravel driveway. Durable, but easily walked upon."

  "But if you poured everything into Horizon," I pointed out, "you move like a tectonic plate. You're slow. If I specialize, I gain a massive strength, but I also create a massive blind spot."

  "That is the cost of power," Vrex argued. "Paradigms—the Classes that define a Wayfarer's soul—require a Defining Anchor. They require you to embody a specific concept. If you are 'Okay' at everything, the Universe will not know what to call you. You will never manifest a Paradigm."

  I closed the Schema, the golden rings fading from my vision. I thought about the Prismatic Weave. I thought about being a filter, a conduit, a glitch.

  "Maybe I don't want a label," I said, kicking a loose pebble. "If I specialize, I become a tool. A hammer sees nails. A shield sees threats. But if I stay balanced? I can be whatever the situation needs me to be."

  "You risk becoming a master of nothing," Vrex warned. "A jack of all trades is often a corpse in a specialist's world."

  I grinned, patting the Void-Knife at my hip. "I'm not worried about the label, Vrex. The System calls me an anomaly. You call me a glitch. I think I'm just... the user. If the Universe doesn't have a Paradigm for 'Guy who is pretty good at everything,' then I'll just figure it out. Or I'll write a new one."

  Vrex let out a sound like grinding boulders—his version of a sigh. "Your confidence is either your greatest asset or your epitaph. I have not decided which."

  "I'll let you know when we get to the—"

  I stopped.

  Ahead, on the side of the road, a figure lay crumpled in the grass. It was a young elf-like woman, her robes torn, clutching a staff that was snapped in two. She wasn't moving.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Vrex froze instantly. "Movement. Casualty ahead."

  I didn't speak. I didn't activate Kensho. I didn't scan the trees.

  I just walked toward her.

  My pace wasn't cautious. It was casual. Loose.

  "Kaelen," Vrex hissed, holding his position. "Maintain spacing. Scan for signatures."

  I ignored him. I walked right up to the woman. She groaned, rolling over, clutching her side. Blood—bright, red, and wet—stained her fingers.

  "Help..." she wheezed, her eyes glassy and unfocused. "Please... the Wardens... they took the others..."

  I stood over her. I looked down at her terrified face. I reached into my pouch.

  The woman’s eyes flickered to my hand, a micro-expression of relief.

  I didn't pull out a potion. I pulled out the Void-Knife.

  In one fluid motion, I dropped to a knee and drove the blade not into her, but into the empty air six inches above her head.

  ZZZ-SNAP.

  The air screamed. The Tyrant blade bit into something invisible—a taut, high-tension wire of magical force that had been hovering right over the bait.

  The woman’s glassy stare vanished instantly, replaced by sharp, cold shock.

  "Static Spike," I whispered.

  I slammed my free hand onto her forehead. A pulse of Null-resonance blasted into her skull.

  She shrieked, her concentration shattering. The illusion of her wounds flickered and died. The "blood" on her hands turned into clear, alchemical slime.

  "Trap!" she screamed, her voice no longer weak, but commanding.

  The forest exploded.

  Because I had severed the tripwire, the ambush didn't spring cleanly. It misfired.

  High above, the camouflage netting failed. A massive metal sphere—the Gravity Anchor—dropped prematurely. It clipped a branch on the way down, spinning wildly off-axis.

  "Vrex! Catch!" I shouted, kicking the woman in the chest to send her sprawling out of the impact zone.

  I rolled backward, Egress firing in my veins.

  BOOM.

  The Anchor hit the ground where I had been standing a second ago. It didn't land flat; it landed on its side. The gravity field activated, but instead of crushing us into the earth, it projected a cone of crushing force sideways, carving a trench through the forest like an invisible bulldozer.

  Trees snapped. The road buckled.

  Vrex roared, his Mantle flaring as the edge of the gravity wave hit him. He didn't crumble; he leaned into it, his boots grinding sparks from the stone as he held his ground.

  From the canopy, three figures in matte-grey armor dropped on rappelling lines. They were clearly expecting us to be pancakes. Instead, they found a chaotic battlefield.

  [Entity: Arcanorum Warden - Special Operations]

  I didn't wait for them to land. I was already moving.

  I sprinted up the tree trunk the first Warden was sliding down. He fumbled with his suppression rod, surprised to see his target charging him vertically.

  I slashed the rappel line with the Void-Knife.

  The Warden fell twenty feet, crashing into the undergrowth with a heavy metallic clatter.

  "Secure the anomaly!" the woman screamed, scrambling to her feet, her hands weaving a spell.

  I turned to engage her, but the air around me suddenly grew thick. Static electricity prickled my skin.

  The second Warden had landed. He didn't aim at me. He slammed his rod into the ground.

  THRUM.

  A pulse of disruption magic expanded outward. It hit my Slipstream Duster. The friction-nullifying field inverted instantly. My coat went rigid, freezing in mid-air like a sculpture. My momentum died. I crashed to the ground, my limbs tangled in my own gear.

  "Target immobilized," the Warden announced, his voice a metallic growl.

  I struggled, but the Duster was like a straitjacket.

  Vrex was fighting the third Warden, his hammer swinging, but the sideways gravity field from the malfunctioning Anchor was pulling him toward the trees. He was fighting the enemy and the physics at the same time.

  "Surrender," the woman spat, wiping blood from her lip where I’d kicked her. She held a crystal to her ear. "Ambush compromised, but targets are contained. Requesting extraction."

  She looked at me with a mixture of hatred and grudging respect.

  "You shouldn't have seen that wire," she hissed. "It was masked with a master level illusion."

  "I didn't see it," I grunted, trying to reach my knife. "I just realized you were too pretty to be dying in a ditch."

  The Warden stepped on my hand, pinning it to the dirt. He leveled the rod at my temple.

  "Sleep," he ordered.

  A spike of white noise tore through my brain. The world folded in on itself.

  My last thought before the darkness took me was that Vrex was right. I had figured out the trap, but I hadn't been strong enough to break it.

  Next time, I thought, as the black consumed me. I will go for the kill.