Chapter Twenty-One

  Show and Tell

  Freya darted down the steps of Esselem’s Crown, thankfully she had woken first. If the first thing she heard upon opening her eyes was Lorin needling her about cyber-stalking him, she would have to explain to the others how exactly he slipped and fell out of the tower’s window.

  It was still dark outside, owning to the fact Freya had gone to sleep at only about 6:30. That would likely make her feel like shit when she woke, but it was a bullet she had to take to maintain her sanity.

  The rope bridges were far calmer now than they had been the night previous. The constant swaying still made her consider feeding the fish with her stomach contents, but she didn’t feel as if she was in real danger.

  The horizon caught her attention. The sky brightened ever so slightly, the first hints of dawn. Though sunrise still had to be hours away. Oddly, the sun seemed to be rising in the north. Or at least north according to the handful of maps she had seen of the continent. She took a quiet moment for herself on the next spire, this one holding a thick and short tower.

  The ocean churned lightly all the way to the horizon. Behind her, the rocky cliffs slept patches of grass scattered about shined with morning dew. She closed her eyes and focused on the light breeze on her face.

  This was a dream come true. Even with the troubles, even though she had killed people. The Mind’s Mirror had been the image of a tavern out of a session of Dungeons and Dragons. There she had met so many, who knows how many of them had been authors she had loved and read.

  Sarehole would have fit perfectly into The Hobbit. Now she stood in a picturesque landscape ready to start her first classes at a Magical school. A magical school that was ran by the man who had inspired the greatest fantasy authors of the 20th century. Why did she get to do this?

  Freya hardly had a creative bone in her body. All she did was consume what other people made, and that was fine, readers made all of these stories possible. But clearly very few readers made it through, what was different about her? Her mother loved stories just as much as she did, why hadn’t she emerged into this world? Or Ben? The man loved Sulivar’s work so much that he was on the verge of tears when Freya didn’t share that love. It was The Hobbit that did it, that much was obvious. But why?

  Just then a wonderful idea occurred to Freya. Maybe she could figure out why she emerged. If she knew why, she could get her parents and Ben to emerge too. Freya looked up at Esselem Castle. It was a good thing she was surrounded by all the knowledge she could possibly need.

  #

  “Jesus Christ.” Zora walked along lines of weapon racks. “Are you a Prepper in the Source? You’re probably a prepper.”

  Roman laughed. “No, but here? Certainly. Someone has to do something about Sulivar and I wanted to be able to help.”

  Help was an understatement. Freya hadn’t gotten a good look yesterday, but now it was clear he could probably outfit a small army with all the arms and armor they would need. There was a large rack distinctly different from the simple wood ones surrounding it. The thing was bolted to the wall with large glowing chains keeping the weapons and other assorted items in place.

  A shock ran up Freya’s arm upon touching the chain. She let out a yelp. “What the hell is that?”

  Roman snapped, the chains ceased glowing. “Protection from wandering hands.”

  Perhaps she just should have let him die in the the woods. Freya reached a hand out for a large hammer, but paused to give Roman a questioning look. He gave her the go ahead. The hammer looked just like Thor’s hammer from the Marvel Comics and movies. When she touched it she felt an incredible surge of power, she let out an involuntary gasp.

  “Does this give me Thor’s powers?”

  “I’m not that rich. You can use it to fly just like Thor, and you can harness lightning, but that is the extent of it. Enhanced durability and strength of that level is prohibitively expensive.”

  This was an area Freya was hopelessly lost in. Obviously pages were used to enchant these items somehow, but how expensive was it? What powers could be granted? All of the items on the rack were based in one way or another on weapons from popular fiction and games.

  Replicas of The Sword of Shannara, Glamdring, and Excalibur were among them. Others appeared to be unique weapons not based on any specific fictional blade or staff. Though they were clearly made of exotic materials, or rather their steel was enchanted to give them the properties of those exotic materials. Adamantine, Brightsteel, Cold Iron, and Valyrian Steel. Suddenly her simple sword seemed entirely inadequate.

  “Alright! Enough hanging around. It is time we figure what everyone’s strengths are.”

  “You already know what we can do,” Molly grumbled, obviously still pissed about yesterday.

  Roman gave her a sharp look. “And some of us don’t. You just volunteered to go first.”

  Molly armed herself with sword and her Dungeon Crawler Carl shield. A pair of victorian era spectacles with dark lenses appeared on her face at some point. That figured, she seemed like the kind of asshole to wear sunglasses indoors.

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  “Let’s get this over with.”

  With a queue from Roman, Lorin planted his feet and weaved his arms in the air. The suit of armor in the middle of the room burst with white light. The light dimmed after a moment, leaving a dull neon-like glow coming from the eye slits and gaps in the armor.

  The armor stepped off of its stand and took up a well-used wooden sword and shield. Freya found herself nodding in approval. That was a brilliant idea for training. Is this animation spell something Lorin would use in the field? Or was it used purely for this? Lorin was still planted in place, it seemed he couldn’t move while using the spell. That would cause problems in a fight.

  A haze fell over Freya, it was hard to focus on Molly as she moved on the armor. It felt as if she had just been woken up in the middle of a vivid dream. This had to be something Molly was doing. The armor moved sluggishly, like a child learning to walk. Lorin was being affected too.

  It swung at a blur that was probably Molly. A beam of light similar to Zora’s magic missile shot from her glasses and blew the arm that had swung on her clean off. Before Freya’s altered mind could register what was happening, the armor collapsed in a heap. The haze faded. Lorin dropped his arms and wiped at his forehead.

  “So, who can tell me some of Molly’s skills?” Roman asked.

  Being an obnoxious whine bag. Freya thought.

  “She can cast a fog over herself. It affects our perception of her. She’s a competent sword fighter, but not exceptional. Reliance on the artifact glasses could be a problem,” Zora said.

  “Not exceptional? Who the hell are you to say I’m not exceptional? Did you just see what I did?” Molly kicked at the pile of armor at her feet.

  Freya moved to Zora’s aid, though she seemed ready to punch out Molly without any help.

  Roman beat them to the punch. “Chill out Molly, if we can’t honestly assess each other then this is pointless. If she was able to pick up that you are a middling swordsman in ten seconds with your fog affecting her, I want to see what else she has to say.”

  Zora perked up at that. “She would probably make a far better infiltrator than a front-line warrior.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Roman stepped up to Zora. “I think we just killed two birds with one stone. You have an eye for this sort of thing. I’d like you to assess the rest of us.”

  Molly grabbed Roman and pulled him aside. Freya caught Zora by the arm before she could twist off Molly’s head. The pair started shout-whispering at each other. After only a few moments Roman pulled away.

  Roman clasped his hands and looked around. “That’s settled then!” He snapped his fingers and a blackboard rolled out of what Freya assumed was a pile of junk in the far corner of the room. It stopped just next to the stand of magic items everyone was standing beside. He grabbed a white piece of chalk and scribbled everyone’s names on the board. Next to Molly’s name he wrote ‘Sneaking, crowd control, complaining.’ Everyone except Molly laughed at that. “There we go, easier to keep track of. Who wants to go next?”

  Athena stepped up. “I can.”

  Freya had developed an instant respect for her after discovering the obituary online. She didn’t have another life to escape to if something happened to her. But she was here anyway.

  The air electrified as Athena stepped into the middle of the room, Lorin began to raise the suit of armor, but was stopped with a look from Athena. With a wave of the hands the air began to move in streaks of white focused energy.

  Large streams of dancing light flowed into her from all corners of the room. The wind kicked up as a spark traveled between the torches lighting the room, the spark growing into an inferno.

  The heat was oppressive, Freya shielded her face as the fire formed into the shape of a dragon that danced around the woman in her stunning dress. The dragon spun around her faster, forming wings that beat hot air into their faces. Time seemed to slow as Freya dared to lower her hands.

  The image before her was fit for some fanciful oil painting. Threads of light swirled throughout the room which has been tinted red from the flames. The fire dragon circled Athena who seemed to glow with the green of her dress. She was smiling. With a flourish the dragon shot toward the ceiling before evaporating into a cloud of white smoke.

  Freya felt a cool breeze as the temperature in the room normalized again. How was that possible? Even with tons of page reads, that seemed so far beyond anything she had seen before. The strands of light, it seemed like those symbolized pulling from the One Power like in the Wheel of Time. Obviously Athena’s attire matched exactly the kind of magic she was performing. But that made no sense. The One Power wasn’t real, so how could she pull from it? Zora stood speechless as Athena silently walked back to her spot by Lorin.

  Roman quietly wrote next to her name on the board. ‘The Nuclear Option.’ An apt description. “So, next?”

  Zora stepped up and faced off against Lorin’s armor. The suit moved far quicker now that Lorin had presence of mind. With one of her Witcher swords she danced around, striking a few blows against it.

  After showing off her middling skill with the blade, she backed away and shot off a magic missile which took out the legs of the armor. It began to crawl towards Zora which was thoroughly unsettling. She threw what looked like a fireball, but it wasn’t actually made of fire. It was made of the energy that her magic missiles were. That was intriguing, probably some energy saving measure. Just like how it was easier for Freya to control earth based things now that she had a few abilities that did already.

  “I’m a generalist, passably good at most things, though-” Zora cut herself off, evidently nervous about noting her own flaws.

  ‘Generalist’ went up on the board beside Zora’s name. After a few moments of waiting Lorin stood, volunteering himself. As he walked past Freya she got a complete grasp of just how large he was. Six and a half feet tall, with shoulders as wide as a bull’s.

  She felt like a child beside him. He looked back at her with a smile that made her want to slap it off his face. Lorin reformed the suit of armor and locked it in place in the center of the room. The glow coming from it dulled significantly once he started moving. Lorin pulled a large single-bladed axe from a small hook on his back, it glowed the same red of his cloak when his fingers touched the handle.

  The axe looked just like the Kratos’ Leviathan Axe from the new God of War games. He confirmed that was the intent after he threw it at the suit of armor and recalled it just as happened in the game. A huge rent was left in the armor after the axe returned to Lorin.

  “Hey! Easy!” Roman said.

  Lorin gave him a look that Freya couldn’t decipher. “Athena almost burned the place down, the mundane armor can be repaired.” The way he referred to the armor made her think his armor was enchanted somehow. Did everyone except Freya and Zora have magical items?

  Roman held his face as Lorin charged straight through the suit of armor shoulder first. The suit exploded in a flash of light and sparks. An unrecognizable pile of twisted metal lay on the ground at his feet. He gave Roman a quick nod, then returned to his spot.

  With a longing look Roman turned away from the armor, it was hard not to laugh. He handed Zora the chalk and gestured toward the board. ‘Breacher, strong, fast. Lack of respect for personal property.’ Went up next to Lorin’s name.

  “One left,” Roman said.

  “Aren’t you going to show us what you can do?” Freya asked.

  Roman picked up a second piece of chalk and wrote next to his own name. ‘Mastermind.’ “There you go.”

  “That hardly seems fair.”

  “Nope, don’t much care though.”

  Freya’s head started pounding. He was well and truly obnoxious, even more so because he was right. “Shut up and show us.”

  The fool of a man shrugged. “Alright.” He extended his arm toward the large rack of magical items. “That is what I can do. Near all of my pages are dedicated toward the infrastructure we will use to crush Sulivar. Magic items, safehouses, Dimensional doors hidden throughout the Bluffs. The very room you stand in.”

  “So while your three friends here have been training…”

  “I’ve been paving our way to the Bluffs.”