Half an hour later, Serenity knew he’d found it. There were two hinge points for the center of the spell, the signed surrender in the back of the Book of Karit and the pedestal the Book rested on; it wasn’t innately magical but it had the appropriate symbology of support such that over the time the spell was running it had taken on much of the spells’ weight. Between the Book and the pedestal, they supported the weight of the spell and balanced it to maintain the Tower, flexing as power was drawn into or out of the ritual spell.
Probably mostly out of, but there were some interesting damage marks on the pedestal that showed it had also been used as a power sink at least once.
The Book and the pedestal could balance the spell from anywhere inside the Tower. If the ritual spell was set up correctly, it wouldn’t be possible to remove either from the Tower without first breaking the spell; it simply wouldn’t go. Forcing it would be the same as trying to break the spell through sheer force; possible, but not by Serenity at his current Tier. Even a portal or a teleportation spell wouldn’t change that; they wouldn’t pass through a portal and a teleportation spell would be unbalanced by the extra weight of the Tower that tried to go with it, which would cause it to either fail or simply not include the book unless it was powerful enough to include the Tower.
Serenity was fairly confident the ritual was set up correctly. The spellforms were there and seemed properly connected. There were ways around it, of course - there always were - but they were all more trouble than simply breaking the spell. They were only worth it if for some reason he needed the book or pedestal outside the spell with the spell intact; for this spell, Serenity couldn’t think of any reason he’d want that.
He wasn’t going to break the spell immediately, but it was good to know that he could. The pedestal was the weak point if he wanted to preserve the Book of Karit; all he had to do was compromise its integrity and the spell would be unbalanced. At that point, there were several options.
The simplest was to force the book out of the Tower; if he was strong enough, that would break it. The most likely to work, however, was to cast a ritual of his own that would redirect the unbalanced energy into demolishing the Tower. Once it fell, the ritual would be fully broken.
The option Serenity planned to take, however, was something that should be far faster than a ritual and far more likely than pitting his strength against a ritual, even a damaged ritual, cast by a higher Tier spellcaster. There was another weak point he could attack: the Tower itself. The ensouled swords were part of the structure of the ritual. Once it was unbalanced, Serenity thought there was a good chance he could free them of their bindings using Down to the River. It would give them the release they hadn’t been allowed while also damaging the ritual. At that point, it might fail on its own; if it didn’t, Serenity was fairly confident that anyone who could pick up the Book of Karit could remove it from the remains of the Tower of Broken Swords and end the spell.
The swords were a weak point that most people would have trouble attacking; soul magic was rare, whether it was a Skill or learned. Whoever had made the Tower clearly had access to soul magic; Serenity hoped it was through another ritual. That would make the most sense for the sort of mass production of ensouled weapons he saw here and it was far more common than any other sort of soul magic. Even he knew a few rituals that could bind souls on a recent battlefield if he had the time.
Of course, that was a waste; binding souls into broken weapons was a symbol of domination but other than its use in a later ritual it was nearly pointless. As far as the Final Reaper was concerned, there were far better uses for battlefields than binding dead souls into broken weapons.
The fact that Serenity didn’t want to do either of those rituals didn’t have any bearing on the matter.
Serenity double checked his evaluation of the ritual, then nodded, satisfied. His plans should work; if they didn’t, he could still succeed by damaging the walls of the Tower of Broken Swords, but it would be far more difficult if he couldn’t send the souls away first.
When he left the Tower, the others were sitting outside. Sillon seemed to be taking a nap, while Kerr was performing some sort of practice kata. The two acolytes were watching Kerr; Rissa and Ekari were playing one of the board games that Ekari had introduced Rissa to while they waited on Lyka.
Serenity blinked and checked again; Ekari was still there. Rissa had come on the tour, but Ekari had headed to the infirmary with Blaze and Ita. “Ekari? All done at the infirmary?”
“They gave us a quick tour then booted us out. Politely, of course.” Ekari’s voice sounded absolutely controlled, but even Serenity could tell that she was holding herself rigidly. She was quite a bit more upset than her voice indicated and not hiding it as well as usual. “Blaze is not happy, so I figured I’d come and see if I could find you.”
Serenity figured he’d better wait to ask about what had made Blaze unhappy and Ekari quietly pissed until they were back in private, away from the acolytes. It seemed unlikely that being quietly shoved out of the infirmary was the entire reason. “How did you find me? A moon’s a big place.”
Ekari grinned and seemed to relax a little. “There were only a couple dozen options for public places for a tour, but the real answer is that Mother told me. I really expected to find you at the Water Garden with how long you were gone, but I started here since this was the second destination.”
Serenity was glad Ekari was referring to High Priestess Karin as “Mother”. It seemed like she was happier about the relationship now; whether it was because of Blaze’s healing or because she knew her mother’s actions weren’t by her own choice. “This place is interesting. Did you know that the Tower of Broken Swords is a ritual site? The Book of Karit…”
Serenity stopped himself there. This was something else he shouldn’t go into detail about in front of the acolytes, especially not Acolyte Tinar. The man didn’t seem all that bright, but he had an exceptional memory.
There was also something about the Book that he hadn’t noticed until he said its name out loud in front of Ekari. Karit, Karin, and Ekari were all five letters long, and they all contained “kari”. Somehow that didn’t seem like a coincidence, but it was something he definitely wasn’t going to bring up here. “Why don’t we head back? I think we’ve spent long enough on this tour.”
Serenity stopped short when he entered the common area. Blaze wasn’t just “not happy”; he was throwing small balls of colored light at the wall and watching them splash violently, leaving temporary small streaks of color that ran down the wall before vanishing.
It was interesting; Serenity had no idea what Skill he was using. He couldn’t think of one that would do anything like that, since it seemed essentially useless. It would be simple to create a spell that could do something similar, but Serenity didn’t see a running spell construct to make the balls; each one was its own spell.
Rissa smacked into Serenity’s back, which prompted him to move out of the doorway and let everyone else in.
“Sorry about that.” Serenity had forgotten there were people behind him.
“It’s fine.” Rissa’s attention was now also on Blaze. “Does that make you feel better?”
Blaze closed his hand around the last ball instead of throwing it; the light went out and it dissipated quickly. “A bit.”
The door was closed and the acolytes weren’t present; they were on their way to dinner, but Rissa had carefully told them that she wanted some time to prepare first. This was as private as they were going to get. “What happened at the infirmary?”
Blaze shook his head. “There are no real healers there. They probably have some of the Paths, but they are not healers. If they were, they would know better than to try what they did. I can tell the difference between an injury that is healing and someone who is being altered. It is obvious. Worse, they think that locking a door and calling it off limits for the safety of the patients is reasonable.”
“Altered?” That didn’t sound good.
Blaze shrugged. “Fairly standard combat alterations. Faster reflexes, higher strength, stronger bones, thicker skin, that sort of thing. It’s extremely uncomfortable to do and can have some pretty negative consequences, but a lot of people have it done anyway. They should have just admitted it. It was a stupid lie.”
Serenity lowered his eyebrows. That didn’t add up. “That’s not why you’re upset, then. A bad lie wouldn’t tick you off so much.”
Blaze shook himself. “No. I’m angry about what Ekari found.”
Ekari had already flopped herself onto a couch, if lying on her back with her knees pulled up against her chest, holding them in place with her arms could be called “flopped”. It probably couldn’t. “I snuck through the locked door while everyone else was busy trying to keep track of us on the tour; Ita accidentally knocked a supply cart over which gave me the perfect chance. The other side of the infirmary was not like any infirmary I’ve ever been in.”
Ekari looked like she was sucking on a lemon. “The patients were strapped to their beds. A few were struggling, but most just lay there like there was no one home even though their eyes were open. That was possibly explainable, but at the back of the area I found a man who struggled so much that he bled from the restraints. The blood was green. He was still struggling when I got there; it looked like he was trying to reach something on the table a little ways away from him.”
Ekari unrolled herself and sprang to her feet, then reached into a pocket. “The table had these.”
She was holding a group of four small glass-like green rocks; it looked like they’d been tumbled to remove all the sharp edges. The smallest was about the size of a marble while the largest was a bit over twice the diameter. None were particularly spherical; they were all a little oddly shaped, sort of like real rocks.
They also smelled absolutely delicious. Serenity took a step towards her hand before he realized what he was doing and made himself back up. “Please put those away and keep them away from me.”
He wanted them. He wanted them fairly badly now. They really smelled good.
At the same time, Serenity knew better. All of the evidence they had from the vision and from Ekari’s story said that they were likely to have some pretty bad consequences. On top of that, Serenity knew what the rocks had to be. They had to be pieces of Lyka’s core. He wasn’t sure what the connection between them and everything else was, but eating them was definitely not something he should do, no matter how good they smelled.
Ekari tucked the translucent green rocks in her pocket, then frowned. “Oh, there was one other thing. That guy with the green blood was muttering the whole time. I managed to catch a few words, and it sounded a lot like that language, what did you call it? English?”
Serenity blinked. “Fuck.”
Ekari nodded. “Yes, that was one of the words.”
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