The Pill in the Silent Tower
"Please, go on in."
Mage Lucien took the lead, and the knights followed after him. Once he was inside, Dominic turned back.
"Come with us."
"No. I'll go on my own."
Dominic pressed him no further. With regret plain on his face, he offered a silent bow and set off toward the light Lucien had conjured and set drifting ahead of them.
The door shut with a heavy thud, and Yan spoke.
"May I take your refusal of Marquis Dominic's invitation to mean you'll be traveling with us?"
"Yes. I'd like to accompany you."
"Might I ask why you chose us?"
"I heard you kept your promise to Chris. Of everyone here, I judged you the one most worth trusting."
"I see."
Chris turned to Nuba, court mage of the Grant Kingdom.
"I'm a little worn out. Would you open it, Sir Nuba?"
Nuba set his staff against the middle door.
"I don't think I have the mana for it. Please finish the working, Lord David."
"Of course."
A moment later Nuba staggered back, and Chris took his place. Before long the door swung open.
"After you."
Nuba and the knights went in, and Chris stepped through last of all. Behind him the door closed with a sound that rang like a bad omen. There would be no going back. All that remained to him was the way forward.
"Let's go."
Nuba drew a mana lamp from his spatial pouch and pushed the dark aside. Chris shaped a single small fireball and set it floating ahead of them.
Yan drew his sword and took the lead.
"Let's move."
Chris fell in at the very rear. The path through the black cave was rough and uneven, and he had no doubt traps lay in wait along it. Tension dried his mouth to paper.
He watched every side at once. The floor might give way. The ceiling might come down. The walls might close in. Arrows might fly, or poison spray from some hidden mouth.
Or am I wrong?
He walked for some thirty minutes strung tight as wire, and nothing changed at all. It was the perfect place to lay a trap. So why wasn't there one?
The very absence of anything made him more anxious, more restless. He had spent so much nerve on it that the back of his skull had begun to ache.
Another five minutes on, light showed ahead. The cave was ending.
Yan halted with the brightness before him.
"There may be monsters outside. Stay sharp."
The lack of traps had clearly gnawed at him as well. He let his eyes adjust to the light, then burst out in a single rush, aura streaming from the sword he held before him.
Michael and Bianca followed and covered left and right. Nuba charged out with his staff leading. Chris led with his staff as well, though he had no intention of spraying magic. When trouble broke, using his body was easier and faster than casting.
A single thread of wind passed over them. And then nothing happened at all.
Embarrassed, Nuba cleared his throat.
"Opening the door must have been the qualification."
The knights lowered their swords.
"So it would seem."
Yan gave an awkward laugh.
"Where are we?"
Chris looked around. A quiet forest enclosed them on every side.
"Does anyone have a map, by any chance?"
At his question, every head shook.
"Is this the first time knights of the kingdom have entered the Horace Ruins?"
When Yan nodded, Chris turned it over.
First time through, and they just walked in? These people have some nerve.
"So you came in without any real information."
"That's right."
Chris put it kindly.
"Your courage is remarkable."
Said honestly, it wasn't courage. It was recklessness.
"Do you know the way out?"
"That, we know. The Silver Key."
"That's a relief. Where do we go now?"
Yan looked to Nuba, as if to say he would defer to the mage's judgment. Nuba considered, then pointed ahead.
"We've come out of the cave, so we ought to head the opposite way."
They followed his lead. The trees did not stand thick, and the grass had not grown wild, so the walking was easy enough, and yet a strange sense of ill omen clung to Chris. It stayed with him the whole way through the forest.
We came out of the cave. Why does this feel so wrong?
He soon found the cause. The birdsong and animal cries that ought to have filled a forest were simply not there.
"It's too quiet."
He half expected a monster to burst from the trees and come at them. Yan seemed to feel the same. His face hardened, and he quickened his pace. The others lengthened their strides to match.
There is a saying that it is better to take the beating first. When Chris first heard it, he thought it was wrong. More than once a slave overseer had been called away in the middle of a beating by some urgent business. True, the times they beat you through to the end were more common, but even then it hurt less to be struck late, after the overseer had worn himself out.
Today, for the first time, he thought the saying might be right. The tension had gone on so long that he almost wished a monster would simply leap out and attack.
No attack came before they were clear of the forest.
What is this?
The ominous feeling only grew stronger for it.
Nothing in the cave. Nothing in the forest.
Chris frowned.
Just how terrible a trial are they saving for us, to let us off this easily?
"Sir Yan, are the Horace Ruins always this slack?"
Yan looked troubled.
"It's my first time in the ruins, so I couldn't say."
Nuba spoke up.
"I'd always heard that ruins were dangerous, as a rule..."
Chris's eyes lit.
"Right? Dangerous is what's normal, isn't it? At the very least, half the party ought to be ground down before—"
Bianca cut him off, her voice edged.
"They say words take root. Watch your mouth."
"I'm not wishing anyone dead. It's just so quiet that it feels wrong, doesn't it?"
It was no empty courtesy. Chris truly felt the ill omen, and the feeling spread until a chill seemed to coil around the whole party.
Michael cleared his throat, then raised a hand toward the left ahead of them.
"There. A tower."
It stood about two stories high, and it was not broad. A very small tower. But vines thick with leaves wound around it like snakes, and the sight of them was deeply ominous. It looked like the sort of place a ghost might come leaping out of.
"Let's have a look."
Once again Yan took the lead. Chris stuck close behind him.
"It looks ill-omened."
"We came looking for treasure. We didn't come sightseeing."
Nuba nodded and took up the thought.
"We can hardly pass by a likely place for treasure just because it feels ominous."
They reached the tower in short order. A blackened lock hung from the door handle.
"I'll undo it."
Nuba brought his staff close to the lock and began to chant. Chris caught a fragment of the incantation, something like unlock.
Perhaps because the lock was bigger than a fist, the release spell would not take. Sweat beaded on Nuba's brow, and his face went red. It did not seem to be the strain that changed his color. He had stepped forward with confidence, and now the lock would not yield, and the embarrassment of it showed.
Bianca spoke.
"Mage David, would you care to try?"
At her words Nuba's flush climbed all the way to his hairline.
Yan muttered.
"There's a great deal of rust on this lock."
He was right. Rust caked it thick. Michael picked up the thread.
"It's so rusted the lock won't open."
They were trying to save Nuba's face. Nuba cleared his throat and stepped back, and Yan drew his sword and brought it down on the lock. Aura struck the clasp hard.
Steel rang. The clasp sheared away, and the lock fell.
It hit the ground with a dull thud. Yan kicked it aside and pushed the door.
It opened with a foul, grating screech. Yan stepped inside as he spoke.
"The hinges are badly rusted too."
When the others did not follow his meaning, he added to it.
"The tower's been left alone long enough for this much rust to set in."
Bianca said, "If no one's been in and out, the treasure ought to still be here."
Expectation, excitement, and greed passed over them like a heat. Even Chris, who had declared again and again that he had no interest in treasure, felt the itch of wanting.
I didn't come into the ruins because I wanted to. But since I'm here anyway, it would be nice to walk out with something.
Eager now, he stepped into the tower. As before, Commander Yan led the way. The first floor held little of note: one table and two chairs, and that was all. On the off chance, Chris opened the drawers and then took the furniture apart piece by piece. It was ordinary.
"Up to the second floor."
Yan climbed the stairs at an unhurried pace. Chris watched his feet on the steps and imagined arrows flying from the walls. Nothing. The imagining spread, and he pictured the ceiling coming down. Still nothing. At last the picture curdled into flames pouring over them.
Even when Yan's foot came down past the topmost step, no trap sprang.
Why aren't there any traps?
He could not make sense of it.
"Oh!"
The exclamation slipped from Yan's mouth.
There's something on the second floor!
Those who had been waiting below in case a trap went off took the stairs in a rush.
"What is it?"
Nuba asked, too impatient to wait. He leaned his head out past Yan and took in the second floor. On a table of marble sat a square, transparent glass bottle, and inside it a pill no bigger than a piece of hard candy floated in midair.
"Elixir!"
Of every medicine Chris knew, an elixir was the most precious: a mystical draught said to cure every illness and grant unaging life. The pill drifting in the bottle as if it were swimming through empty air looked so uncanny that the word had come to him at once. Nuba, however, went stiff with anger.
"Just because I'm an Old Mage, do you mean to look down on me this far?"
Chris could not understand why a man who was usually so meek had suddenly flown into a rage.
"What's the matter?"
"You mean to call it an elixir, trick the rest of us, and take it for yourself."
"I have no such intention."
"We are not fools. The knights all know what that is. An elixir? Talk sense."
"Then what is it?"
"It's Motaro. Motaro!"
"What's Motaro?"
Even the courteous Michael lost his temper.
"Mage David, this is disgraceful. That's enough."
Chris was dumbfounded.
"I said I don't know because I don't know! What did I even do?"
"And you think we'll give up a medicine that forges rings just because you play at ignorance? Wake up."
"You don't mean the rings of Chukhwan."
Their cold faces said that he did.
"Whoa."
The breath of wonder left him, and then the understanding came.
Bind a ring, and your lifespan grows. The tower masters, and Elder Julien, came into the ruins hunting Motaro.
Chris bit his lower lip hard between his teeth.
That right there is a real treasure.
Motaro was a treasure among treasures, the thing that raised one's standing in Chukhwan. An elixir among elixirs. His hand went toward it of its own accord, and Yan coughed a warning.
"Ahem!"
Chris drew his hand back.
Bianca said, "You told us you had no interest in treasure, Mage."
"Me? Did I?"
"I heard it with my own ears."
The knights raised their voices as one.
"So did I."
Chris lifted his staff without thinking. The knights flinched, and he understood at once that the gesture had been taken as hostile, so he leaned the staff against the wall. That much announced he had no intention of using violence, but they remained tense all the same.
A Sword Master could swat a Jenyeom without any trouble. Why are they this wary?
He could not make sense of it.
Chris lowered his voice and offered an excuse.
"When I said I had no greed for treasure, I meant ordinary treasure. Motaro is an entirely different matter. If I offer Motaro to my superiors, my offenses will be forgiven."
Offer up the Motaro, and every magic tower on the continent would set his past aside and welcome him. Then he could enter a tower and learn magic properly, by the system.