First, the vines and roots throwing knives at Jonah’s barrier froze, though the handful of knives they had thrown right before the timer stopped still flew through the air and clattered against the floor after bouncing off of the barrier. Jonah didn’t drop his barrier right away, however, perhaps still waiting to see if we were in the clear or not.
Second, the Rootbound Gate slowly lowered Ruth and Nimbus to the ground, but it did not, I noticed, actually let them free. As a result, neither of them relaxed, though Nimbus had stopped his struggling, perhaps because he realized it was pointless at this point.
And third, I looked up in time to see the grasping stone fingers of the Tree Chimp Guardian inches from my face, not moving any closer, as if frozen in time. Its stony monkey features were frozen in a wild grin like a triumphant predator about to tear apart its captured prey. A shudder went down my spine when I realized I hadn’t even heard it coming at me, perhaps because I had been so focused on inscribing those glyphs that I hadn’t noticed anything else.
If I had been just one second slower in inscribing the Gate Podium …
All at once, our portables pinged, and then the Tree Chimp Guardian climbed back onto its perch above the gate with disturbingly natural movements, like it was made of flesh and blood, not rock. The Rootbound Gate shuddered and let go of Nimbus and Ruth as the rest of the crisscrossing vines and roots covering the door rapidly decayed and fell onto the floor with soft crunches and cracks. The knife-throwing vines and roots also dropped to the ground harmlessly, looking exactly the same as they had before they came to life—if grayer and more withered.
As soon as all of the room’s dangers returned to their original positions, a bell chimed from somewhere deep in the dungeon, and a glowing white scroll—a dungeon notification—unfurled in my vision:
Congratulations! By inscribing Balance on the Gate Podium, you have successfully completed the challenge of the first room of the Verdant Seal! Though there was a degree of ambiguity at first due to Scriptor Aaron Thorn and the countdown timer completing their tasks at the same time, the Arcane Codex has decreed that your Party has completed the challenge requirements of the first room and may now continue on to the second room when you are ready.
Room rewards for every member of Jonah Uri’s Codex Party for completing the first room:
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+100 Words
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+5 to all Stats
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+20 Lines to Runic Knowledge
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+20 Lines to Spellcasting
Codex Note: You may spend no more than two hours in the first room preparing for the challenges of the second room before you must enter the next room. Additionally, feel free to gather any loot or objects of interest that you want before you leave. Any loot that is left unclaimed will be absorbed back into the dungeon’s resources to be used again for different mobs or challenges in the future.
The notification blinked away. At the same time, Jonah lowered his trident, and his barrier collapsed like it was made of glass, the shards vanishing into thin air before they landed on the ground.
Jonah himself nearly collapsed onto the floor, but managed to lean on his trident for support at the last minute. His wobbly knees, however, gave out, and I ran over and caught him on my shoulders, letting Jonah lean on me for support.
But Jonah was a lot heavier than he looked, so I carefully helped him lie down on the floor, with his trident next to him. This gave me a good look at his burned hand, and I cringed when I saw it.
What looked like a black, unrecognizable glyph had been burned into the palm of his right hand. That was the hand without his portable gauntlet, but it clearly still caused pain based on the way he clutched it close to his chest.
Ruth appeared on Jonah’s other side, kneeling next to him, with Nimbus sitting on her shoulders. She took Jonah’s hand and examined it before grimacing. “Codex Burn. Ouch.”
I raised an eyebrow at Ruth. “What is Codex Burn?”
Ruth didn’t look at me as she let go of Jonah’s hand and started digging through her bag for something, perhaps healing supplies or medicine. “Something that Codexers usually only get if they access too much information from the Codex at once or if they try to do something that the Codex forbids. I’ve never seen it inflicted on someone’s hand like this before, however. Pretty unusual.”
Jonah grunted. He was still covered in sweat, even though he was no longer maintaining his barrier. “This dungeon is pretty unusual. I blame the Eldarians.”
I bit my lower lip and looked at Jonah’s hand again. “Will you be able to heal him? And will it affect Jonah’s ability to use the Codex?”
Jonah growled under his breath. “It already has. That barrier I had to maintain? It was a spell I had stored in my trident for emergency use. It’s powerful, but it’s a stationary spell that requires the user to maintain a specific form to maximize its strength. That’s why it was getting weaker as time went on—because my form was getting sloppier as I got more tired. Which is why I normally don’t like using it, but my Codex Burn kept me from using my normal barrier spells that are a lot less specific about stances and forms and can be maintained longer.” He sighed heavily. “I’m glad that my uncle didn’t see that. The dishonor would never leave me.”
“You should really just be glad that Aaron saved us,” said Ruth as she pulled out a jar with some kind of purple ointment and a brush. She popped the lid off her jar and dipped the brush into the purple ointment, its tip glistening under the light from the crystals embedded in the ceiling overhead. “Now give me your hand so I can apply this burn-healing ointment. Fair warning: it will sting for a minute or two, but should heal your Codex Burn within the next ten minutes. Though if the burn is severe, it might take as much as twenty minutes.”
Jonah dutifully held out his hand toward Ruth and didn’t even wince when she brushed his palm with the purple healing ointment. That was impressive because I certainly would have at least squirmed if she applied that same ointment to my hand. Then again, it was pretty clear that Jonah had come from some kind of warrior background where he probably was used to getting treated for serious injuries, though I still didn’t know exactly where he was from or who his family was.
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I whistled as Jonah flexed his hand, though I noticed that he stopped doing it, perhaps because of the stinging ointment. “Do you just carry around medicine for every occasion, Ruth?”
Ruth shrugged as she screwed the lid back onto the Anti-Codex Burn ointment and put both it and the brush back in her bag. “I would be a terrible Harmonic Healer if I didn’t carry a wide variety of medicines and healing items to cover common injuries like Codex Burns; we Harmonic Healers don’t use just spells to heal, you know. This is all pretty standard stuff. We would be in much worse shape if Jonah or one of us had lost a limb or something like that instead. I still can’t heal those injuries, unlike … unlike Martha and … and the other researchers …”
Ruth seemed to get distracted when she mentioned her dead research party, her eyes dipping to the floor as if she was still thinking about how awful Martha had looked before Wolfbrand had killed her. I bit my lower lip, but wasn’t sure what to say to make her feel better. Though Martha had been quite the domineering and bossy woman, even she didn’t deserve to be murdered in such a gruesome fashion. Nor did the other researchers, for that matter.
Nimbus hopped off Ruth’s shoulders and landed next to me. “That was some quick thinking back there with the glyphs, Aaron. When your first attempt failed and Ruth and I got captured by the gate, I thought for sure I would never get to eat a banana again. How did you know which glyphs to inscribe on the Gate Podium? You must have gotten lucky.”
I glanced at the Gate Podium and then at the Rootbound Gate itself, no longer locked or protected by the vine barrier that had been covering it previously. “Not luck, Nimbus. Logic. The actual lucky part was that the Arcane Codex decided that I had completed the puzzle before the timer ended. If it had ruled the other way, then all the logic in the world wouldn’t have helped us.”
Nimbus wriggled his nose. “Logic?”
I took a deep breath and rose to my feet. I walked over to the Gate Podium and compared the glyphs on it to the glyphs on the gate. Oddly, the glyphs I had traced with Trace Glyph were still active, even though they should have faded by now. “Did you know that there are multiple ways of expressing the same idea with glyphs using different glyphs? It was something I read in one of the books at the North Forest Codexium when we were training.”
I heard Jonah scoff behind me. “You still read books? You guys really are behind the times out here.”
I looked over my shoulder at Jonah and raised a questioning eyebrow. “You mean you guys don’t read books?”
Jonah, cradling his burned hand, shook his head. “Most Codexers get their learning and information from Stationary Nodes in Codexiums where I’m from. Nobody reads books except for non-Codexers who can’t access Stationary Nodes. Or those weird Bookers, though I’m pretty sure nobody wants to be like those people.”
Ruth nodded in agreement. “It’s the same in Admah. I did do a lot of book reading and studying when I was in school, but after I completed my Codex Trial and got my portable, I haven’t even looked at a book since then. The Codex is just so much more efficient than book reading, though I guess sometimes books do have good information in them too.”
Jonah scoffed. “At this point, pretty much everything important or useful you could learn from books has been entered into the Codex. Don’t see the point of them anymore, honestly, unless you aren’t a Codexer.”
Nimbus scratched his ear. “I don’t know. Books, at least, have pages made of delicious paper you can eat. Can’t do that with those Nodes you humans carry around.”
I felt slightly embarrassed at revealing just how backward and behind the times we apparently were here in North Forest compared to the rest of the continent, but I was used to that by now, so I kept going. “Right. Well, our Codex Keeper happened to have an old book about inscribing glyphs and interpreting runes in our Codexium that I paged through during one of our training sessions. It talked about how glyphs can have multiple meanings, especially when you string them together with other glyphs in specific orders.”
I gestured at the Gate Podium. “Take the glyph for Balance. That is a single glyph meant to represent the idea of balancing two different numbers or concepts, which is what most people think of when they think of balance. In some Kingdoms, the glyph for Balance is used to help correct any imbalances in rituals or Codex-powered machines that were not accounted for when they were making the ritual or building the machines. It’s also often inscribed in the foundations of buildings and houses in areas prone to earthquakes to keep them steady. It’s a pretty useful and versatile glyph.”
Nimbus hopped over to me and got on his hind legs again to look at the glowing glyphs I had traced on the Gate Podium. “So why didn’t the original Balance glyph work?”
I pointed at the gate before us. “Because the Verdant Seal didn’t want the literal glyph for Balance. It was actually referring to balance between two different concepts—in this case, the glyph for Life and the glyph for Decay. It wasn’t asking for literal balance. It was asking for balance between these two ideas that are seemingly in opposition to each other but actually complement each other.”
Nimbus sat back down on the floor and scratched his ear. “That sounds too abstract to me. Does it have any practical significance or—?”
“I get it!” said Ruth, appearing on my other side. She rubbed her hands together eagerly. “Life and Decay must refer to the theme of this dungeon! Of course. Why didn’t I see that before?”
“Every dungeon has a theme,” said Jonah behind me, making me look over my shoulder again to see him standing up and walking over to us. “Usually, it’s some kind of philosophical or abstract theme that gives you a clue as to what kind of challenges and dangers you might run into when you enter the dungeon. It’s not always obvious what a dungeon’s theme is in a new dungeon, however, until you enter it and explore. And sometimes dungeons have different themes for every floor, so the themes of Life and Decay might be the themes for the first floor, but not for the subsequent floors.”
I frowned at Jonah, slightly puzzled. “Thanks for the explanation, but I’m not sure why you felt the need to explain that when no one asked you.”
Jonah stopped a few feet from me, leaning on his trident, and regarding me with a rather sardonic expression. “I figured you were probably going to ask that question as soon as Ruth mentioned that dungeons have themes. Figured that you didn’t know about dungeon themes, seeing as you don’t know a lot of things about the Codex that most people do.”
Nimbus nodded. “That is a fair point, Jonah. I am glad you are taking the initiative and explaining things before Aaron has to ask questions. I was getting annoyed with all of his question-asking, anyway.”
I wanted to be annoyed, but neither Jonah nor Nimbus was entirely wrong about my ignorance of dungeon themes or my tendency to ask questions about things I didn’t know much about. I still felt embarrassed about my ignorance and the fact that it was apparently starting to become a trend, but hopefully, as I learned more about things, I would be asking fewer and fewer questions.
Thankfully, it was Ruth’s turn to ask questions next, and she said, “What made you think to interpret the dungeon notification in a more abstract way, Aaron? That wouldn’t have occurred to me.”
I folded my arms across my chest and glanced at the Rootbound Gate again. “It’s not intuitive, I agree, but I think that’s the point. The Codex doesn’t want us to rely on conventional thinking to get through this dungeon. I think that discovering the themes of this dungeon will make it easier for us to prepare for the next couple of rooms. I imagine they will only get harder from here.”
Jonah nodded. “Yeah, that’s about how these things work. Each room will probably get harder and harder until the last room. Personally, I think we should keep moving. We don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
Jonah marched past me toward the door as if he had already forgotten about me, but I hadn’t forgotten about him.
So I threw out my arm in front of Jonah’s chest, stopping him mid-stride and causing him to glare at me in annoyance. His glare was quite intense, almost enough to make me back down, but I held my ground and glared right back at him.
Behind us, I heard Ruth gasp and Nimbus make a nervous clicking sound with his teeth, but I kept my gaze on Jonah. “No. We need to talk first.”
Jonah tilted his head to the side in annoyance. “About what? The room rewards we got? We can look at those—”
“Not talking about the rewards,” I interrupted Jonah. I poked Jonah in the chest. “I want to talk about our plan for dealing with future rooms going forward. Because your original plan nearly got us killed. And we aren’t going to rush into danger again like that ever again. Do you understand?”
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