timewalk

  Aliandra Breakfast was tasty but eaten quickly; everyone was eager to get to town and take care of various errands and chores. Ali packed a few are magic books in her ring, just in case she o adjust something on the fly. She had just discovered a potential solution to her teleportation problem, and she was eager to experiment with it from the guild. The solution had e to her in a moment of surprising inspiration while studying the obscure triggers in a dusty, and decidedly a magie Ryn had uhed somewhere deep within the bowels of the Ciradyl Grand Library’s extensive se devoted to cataloging this magic of lost or fotten cultures.

  It had been torturous to uhe dense and overly teical manual, written in an archaic dialect of the Dwarven nguage, but what she had teased from its fragile pages was the method ter her spells based on various attributes and properties of the triggering mana itself. She could trigger on her own mana signature, or even reize the specifia ‘shape’ of a target runic circle. The a design principles, when applied to her runic magitroduced so muplexity that it pced very real limitations on how well it would scale – mainly because the formations of the triggers had to be duplicated and built into the runic structure itself, essentially making two runic circles with copies of each other embedded within the design. And that was if she wanted a sirigger. She had tried sketg out a double trigger design, but all she had earned was a headache. However, it had givehe method for activating a teleportation locus based on a single specific source teleportation circle. It was a bit of a round-about approach, but she was certain it would aplish what she wanted – a teleportation locus that could only accept ining teleportation magi a specific designated source circle. She had even inscribed the first half of her experiment in the fgsto the bottom of the atrium beside the circle that would take them to the Novaspark Academy.

  Teleportation Locus – Linked Magic – level 51 (Are)A magical locus that serves as an enhaeleport destination.Mana Key: [inplete – unknown teleport runic circle]Runic Circle

  She had inscribed the marigger to require her own personal mana signature and to match several runic variations she inteo inscribe ieleportation circle at the other end. It would be a little over two hundred and fifty mana to maintaieleportation circle in the guild hall, but the venience of it was worth it. And she could break it in the case of an emergency. If it worked, the library may just bee a mini-hub of travel; a study destination for the growing guild.

  “Ok, I’m ready,” Mato said, stepping off the spiral staircase to joi the bottom of the library. His eyes lingered on the brand-new circle of electrum-inscribed runes Ali had pleted. “That looks plicated – pretty, though.”

  “It took some work to make the destination locus secure,” Ali said, quirking an eyebrow at the grinnikin. “I don’t want just anyone showing up – you know, like people specifically called Mato.”

  “Huh,” he snorted. “What’s your favorite dish, again?”

  “All of them! You’re in. Permaly.”

  “Mmm, so easily bought,” he rumbled.

  Blushing mildly, Ali sorted through her minions, deg to leave most of them behind, choosing only her Hellfire Imp, a Kobold acolyte, and her new Abyssal Stalker to apany them to the guild.

  “You’re bringing that thing?” asked, gesturing toward her chosen minions.

  “I want to practice getting used to its Blood St,” she said, gng at her murderous-looking spider demon. It had taken some time to get used to the overp sense around just her friends, and it was certain to be even harder up in town around all those people. “Besides it has great stealth, nobody will see it. Here watch.” She quickly instructed the stalker to hide, and it vanished from most of her senses, only the ooze and her own Martial Insight able to tell where it was.

  “That is pretty good,” Mato said. “It has no st, and I ’t eve it in my sanctuary aura. I hear it when it moves, though.”

  “It cloak its mana,” she answered, proud of the additions to her forces. Even the Vampire Hors – which she had set loose in the forest cavern to scout for sneaky rogues or assassins.

  “I think he meant the other one,” Malika said, pointing at the imp she was using to boost her intelligeribute. “Mieriel will yell at you if it burns her precious carpet.”

  “ht,” she said, frowning at the tiny imp. She had gotten so used to them that she had fotten it ermaly wreathed in hellfire. “Maybe I leave it outside?”

  “Tabitha will probably try to figure out some way to use the hellfire for cooking. Imp-roasted marshmallows, anyone?” Mato said with a grin.

  They stepped through Ali’s teleport circle to the Novaspark Academy locus one by one and then made their way to the Adventurers Guild, but when they arrived, the entire pce was in disarray. Half the building was torn down, and unfamiliar people were crawling all over it with an iy of purpose and stant flickers of mana as they worked.

  “What’s going on?” Ali asked, finding Vivian Ross out oreet the work beside Tabitha’s food cart.

  “Hi, Aliandra,” Vivian said, giving the imp a suspicious side-eye and then arg an eyebrow in the general dire of the invisible Abyssal Stalker. “With all the crafters ing in and out every day, and all the new recruits, the guild was just getting too small. So, I bought the abandoned plot door and we’re expanding. We’re going to have a bigger guild hall, more training rooms, a dormitory, and expand Weldin’s store substantially.”

  “More store space?” Malika said, excitement oozing from her voice.

  “Oh, that seems good,” Ali said. It was rather shog, to be ho, and she hadn’t expected the entire building to be torn dowhey arrived. But she had found it rather cramped the st few times she had been up here.

  “gratutions on reag gold rank,” Vivian said, addressing the others. “Why don’t you all e with me? Mieriel has set up around the er and we get you ys.” And with that Ali found herself left to her own devices amid the bustle and banging of furious stru.

  Curious, she wandered around the site, practig trag people by the st of their blood – which was not nearly as overwhelming as she had feared – but every time one of the crafters and artisans did something unusual with their mana, she found herself gawping in amazement. How does she afford it? The guild must have been doing rather well financially for Vivian to be able to uake such a big project, and Ali couldn’t help w just how much of that was because of her own group’s efforts.

  A bigger store… Weldin always seemed busy with crafters ing and going stantly. Nothing remained on dispy iore for very long, but the scale of this uaking implied far more success than she had even imagined. I should check my at. She generally left the group’s fio Malika’s capable ma, and she had a few arras that regurly funded her bank at, but she rarely checked on it herself, relying on Ryn more often than not.

  She peered down inte hole in the middle of what used to be the guild hall, where an impressive amount of earth magic was being wielded to excavate. At the bottom of the hole, she found two dwarven women p their mana into the stone, making it and bend, flowing like water as they restructured it into a staircase that led down to what looked like it might eventually bee a lower floor or a basement.

  “Oi, careful!” one of them excimed. “Go any deeper and it will colpse into the sewers below.”

  “Aye, I fot.”

  “ ya not see?”

  “Shut yer yapping gob, Belra.”

  The banter betweewo stone crafters seemed good-natured; at least Ali decided the absence of dwarven profanity lent it a sense of camaraderie rather than actual annoyaheir words made her focus on the rock below their feet instead of their earth magid to her surprise, she could see the mana of her domain leaking through.

  Could I link my spell? she wondered. Leaving them to tiheir work, she eagerly retrieved her book on are magic that had been stashed in her ring for a while and looked up the marigger, curious to discover if linking her domain to her spell would mess up the signature she had designed into the library locus.

  Aah, here it is, she thought, finding the chapter for the obscure trigger magic. She began trag out the runes carefully while using her minion’s seo avoid tripping and falling on her face as she navigated the stru clutter, returning to where the Guildmaster had said Mieriel would be.

  Oh, iing. It looked like she wouldn’t kly until she tried it, but her personal mana and her own domain should match closely enough. Probably she could get a answer from her mother’s book, or Nevyn Eld’s tome on dungeons. She grimaced at the st thought briefly. But the trigger text suggested that even if it didn’t work, she could update the locus after the fact, so her work wouldn’t be wasted.

  “Oh, hi Ali,” Malika said. “We were just finishing up. I brought Vivian up to date on the rift situation and she said she will work out some tingens with ander Brand.”

  “Did you expin my boss?”

  “Yup,” Malika said. “Also, we got our new rings.”

  “ I see?” Her had been amazing, and she was excited for her friends.

  “Here, this is mine,” Malika said, sharing the ring with a happy smile on her face.

  Gold Guild Ring – level 6 signifying gold-rank membership with the Adventurers Guild. It serves as a key granting access to private areas in the guild hall.Owner: Malika Yu+23 to all attributes.Requirements: Wisdom 210QuestsEliminate undead in and around Myrin’s Keep – 0Mana: Store or retrieve an item. Capacity: 150 / 800kgQuality: RareValue: Soulboued by Giddy Clicksprocket.Ring

  “Wow, all attributes?” Malika’s ring had only a single entment, but it was incredible and perfectly suited for her monk css.

  “I know, I’m going to stop by and thank Giddy Clicksprocket in person,” she said.

  “Share mioo, please,” said, holding up his hand with the gleaming golden ring promily dispyed. Malika did.

  Gold Guild Ring – level 6 signifying gold-rank membership with the Adventurers Guild. It serves as a key granting access to private areas in the guild hall.Owner: Avery+39 Dexterity.+36 Intelligence.+12% movement speed.Requirements: Dexterity 210QuestsEliminate undead in and around Myrin’s Keep – 0Mana: Store or retrieve an item. Capacity: 62.5 / 800kgQuality: RareValue: Soulboued by Giddy Clicksprocket.Ring

  “Movement speed is a great choice for you,” Ali said. Obviously, the two primary attributes for his damage would not go to waste either.

  “Here’s mine,” Mato said, surprising her. Given that he spent most of his time in Bear Form, and occasionally Tree Form, whatever entments that were on his ring would not matter. But when she saw the ring, she realized just h that assumption was.

  Gold Guild Ring – level 6 signifying gold-rank membership with the Adventurers Guild. It serves as a key granting access to private areas in the guild hall.Owner: Mato Bahr+40 Endurance.+34 Strength.+12 Vitality.Mana: Shapeshift.Requirements: Shapeshifter, Endurance 210QuestsEliminate undead in and around Myrin’s Keep – 0Restore blighted farmnd – [plete] Mana: Store or retrieve an item. Capacity: 146 / 800kgCreated by Giddy Clicksprocket.Ring

  “You shift the ring?” she asked in amazement.

  “Yes,” he said with a huge grin.

  With the ability to shift the ring into his Bear Form, he would be able to take advantage of the attribute entments when he was fighting. It was truly a masterfully crafted item, perfect for him.

  “Hey, Vivian. What’s the big hole in the middle for?” Ali asked, pointing back the way she had e. The discussion of everyone’s rings had given her yet another improvement for her idea.

  “It’s a lower level. Ste rooms for the guild store, equipment, and things like that. The dorm will be dowoo. It was cheaper to hire the stone crafters for two extra days than to buy more nd,” the Guildmaster said.

  “ I have a room down there?” Ali asked.

  “What for?”

  “I make a teleportation circle right to the library,” she answered.

  “Are you sure you want that kind of access?”

  “I make it to require a guild ring,” she answered. It should be a simple matter to use a detect trigger for that.

  “ you make it silver old rank only?” Vivian asked. “If the silver old adventurers escort people to the library it would be a very nice privilege for earning that level, and it could eliminate a lot of issues monit access given the number of new recruits we’re getting tely.”

  “How about I make it big enough to take several people, but it won’t activate unless one of them has the right ring?” It would make the entment just a little more plicated, but nothing too challenging.

  “That works.”

  With the Guildmaster’s approval, Ali headed back to the big hole aated herself downward. After expining herself to the two dwarven stone crafters, they suggested an area for her to use, right beside the now-pleted stairwell.

  Reag down, she brushed her fiips along the stone, finding most of the floor infused with her domain mana already, with some of it leaking up into what would bee the new room. Pulling on her mana, she shifted the floor, l it by nearly two meters.

  “Be careful going too low, the sewer is uhere.”

  “I see it,” Ali replied absently, shifting her skill to use her stone imprint and transmuting the entire floor into the extremely hard Aether-fused Obsidian that had kept Naia prisoner for turies. This stone, she knew, would be more than strong enough to hold the floor without crag.

  “Ooh, that’s a thing now, isn’t it?” one of the dwarves excimed, immediately squatting down to exami more closely.

  “Sure you aren’t part-Dwarf?” said the one called Belra.

  Ali smiled at her and then sat in the ter of the bck stone floor, smooth enough to be polished, and began to inscribe her runic circle, first creating each rune in gleaming silvery-yellow irum, and then imbuing the eructure with the mana of her Runic Script. It was quick work as she had most of the runic structures pnned out already, and as the magic circle pleted, she bound it to the domain mana leaking through the floor and it snapped into pletion, glowing powerfully as the magic flowed through the runes.

  Static Teleport – Linked Magic – level 51 (Are)Teleport to a preset teleportation locus.Locus: Dal’mrand Library Ara.Detect: Gold Guild Ring or Silver Guild Ring.Voluntary Trigger.Runic CircleAccept teleportation to the Dal’mrand Library Ara?

  It worked! She smiled happily at the notification, especially delighted at the ‘Dal’mrand Library Ara’ designation for the locus. What an honor! Her circle had detected her g and offered to teleport her back to the library. And the fact that the mana pulsed with power, ready to send her, meant that the locus she had inscribed ba the library was ready to receive her.

  That should make Vivian happy, she thought, deing the teleportation for now. She stood up and surveyed her work – she had lihe triggers so that the person wearing the gold or silver guild ring would be the one receiving the voluntary trigger for the teleport, but everyohin the circle would be sent. Vivian’s idea would help aly her security s – at least initially, the only people who could activate it would be the Guildmaster, Mieriel, and her own group. But she was certain the bronze-ranked adventurers would reach silver quickly, and then they could be responsible for ferrying the recruits in and out of the library as needed – and she appreciated Vivian’s idea for setting up additional guild perks at each milestone.

  “This is beautiful work, ssie.” The two dwarven stone crafters were staring at her stone floor, toug it and examining it with their mana, and studying the runes made from mana-infused electrum.

  “Thank you,” she said, at least a little embarrassed at their overt appreciation for what she had made. Although she did have to agree, the shiny glowing runic circle embedded in the obsidian made a very striking image. She would still have to test it all extensively, but she could do that ter after she had finished up in town. As she watched, the two dwarves quickly erected walls, turnieleportation circle into a room with a doorway.

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