Supreme Magus

Chapter 4327: Siege Fortress (Part 1)

”To scare Teneb so much, his enemy must have been at least another violet-core Awakened, and this junk wouldn’t hurt a blue core. People like the Invincible King play their cards close to the vest and focus their resources on single, devastating blows.”

After an in-depth scan of the Eyes, Tista’s Mouth, and all mystical senses found nothing, the group switched from walking to flying. Lith kept Full Guard active and Ragnarök at hand at all times to be safe, but nothing happened.

’Seriously? Can it really be this easy?’ He avoided saying it out loud not to jinx his alleged stroke of luck.

They reached the outer wall of the Armory in minutes, and there they had to stop. There was no visible door, only a massive stone slab going from the ground to the ceiling. There was no trace of magic metals or crystals, and no dust or signs of wear either.

Unlike the rest of the maze, the wall was as clean and smooth as if it had been laid there the day before. Life Vision confirmed that the stone slab was heavily enchanted, while the Eyes revealed countless runes and crystals on the other side.

”Does it say anywhere in your books how to open this, dear?” Morok asked.

”No. What about the Eyes, Solus?” She said.

”The good news is that the cloaking runes are so old that I can crack them in my sleep.” Solus replied. ”The bad news is that there isn’t a single empty centimeter on either side of the entrance.

”The arrays overlap so perfectly that it’s hard to understand where one begins and the others end. I don’t recommend using Origin Flames or Warping. There is a battalion of battle-ready golems right past the gates and three more on stand-by.”

”How long will it take to disable the arrays?” Lith asked.

”This many? It would take me days, and at the cost of the headache of a lifetime.” Solus replied. ”Opening the door, instead...”

She placed her hand against the wall, sending several pulses of mana in a specific sequence and rhythm. Once Solus was done, she stepped away, and an invisible hand seemed to carve the outline of a door.

The fissure in the stone became wider and deeper until a passage opened before her, leading through what turned out to be a five meters (17’) thick stone wall, followed by five more meters of pure Orichalcum studded with violet crystals as far as the eye could see.

”Wow, this is amazing.” Quylla said.

”And too easy.” Lith used his keen Tiamat eyesight to study the inside of the fortress. ”If the arrays are so complex and intertwined, how did you activate the opening mechanism so quickly without triggering any alarm?”

”The layout of the arrays is indeed complex, and finding the right runes from the right magical formations that form the lock combination and open the door would have taken me hours.” Solus replied.

”That’s why instead of focusing on studying the arrays, I looked for the lock. Once I found it, I simply injected mana in the nodes of the opening enchantment, and voilà! There was no need to untangle the mess when I could just pull the strings at the end.”

”Again, it’s too easy, even for an ancient fortress enchanted with outdated magic.” Lith pondered. ”Why is there no mechanical trap that has to be disarmed before or after opening the door?

”The whole path that led here was choke full of them, and programming the golems to perform regular maintenance would have taken little effort and risk. Also, how can someone brilliant enough to build such an elaborate labyrinth do such a poor job for the most important safeguard of their fortress?

”When something is too weird to make sense, it usually means you’re missing something. This could be a trap.”

”No, this is a trap.” Menadion said, checking the Eyes’ readings and taking a closer look at the layout of arrays inside the Armory. ”This is a trick ancient Forgemasters used to make up for the constraints of the magic of their time and the lack of decent cloaking runes.

”They split the array circuit for the door into two sides. The one outside is easier to open because it’s connected but not integrated in the rest of the magical formations. The one on the inside, instead, is both connected and integrated.

”Once you enter, you can’t open the door again without knowing the proper sequence of runes necessary to activate the proper sequence of arrays. It’s brilliant in its simplicity. You let your enemies in, but from that moment on, one mistake and they are at your mercy.

”Since the intruders didn’t need to deactivate the rest of the arrays, all the safety measures and alarms are still in place. They just need to touch the wrong thing or move in the wrong direction to find themselves trapped and under the fire of the arrays from every side.

”Silverwing and I stumbled into a place like this back when I was young. We were stupid and arrogant enough to think ourselves smarter than a bunch of dead Awakened that relied on primitive magic.

”We left someone outside to open the door for us, believing that if things went south, we could still escape. We were wrong.

”The safety arrays deactivated the external lock and trapped us inside. The magical formations were old junk, and the safety protocols predictable, yet we barely got out of there alive.

”It was like having been thrown in the middle of a battlefield where the enemy was weak but had spent their entire life preparing for that fight while we stood there like idiots, wondering what had gone wrong.”

”I assumed that something like this might have happened-”

”You did?” Everyone turned to look at Lith in disbelief.

”So before leaving the Mansion, I Forgemastered a Spirit Home Stone.” He ignored them and took what looked like a black pool ball covered in red and emerald runes out of his pocket dimension. ”Dimensional magic is easily blocked, whereas Spirit Magic takes a lot more effort.

”I’ll leave the Home Stone outside and at a safe distance from the closest array. If something goes wrong, we’ll have an escape route ready at a moment’s notice. Yet this also complicates things.”

Lith took everything he might need out of his dimensional pocket and invited the others to do the same.

”Spirit Objects only answer to their maker, so only Solus and I can activate the Spirit Home Stone. Stray too much from either of us, and you might not reach the dimensional passage in time.”

”We are no dimensional mages, but I’d like to spend a few minutes studying this place.” Quylla said. ”If we can memorize the dimensional coordinates of even a single corner of this cave, we’ll have one more contingency plan.”

”That’s a big if.” Nalrond conjured a sphere of light to examine his surroundings carefully and find a corner of the cave that was remotely memorable. ”Everything looks the same to me. Just rocks surrounded by more rocks.”

”Then let’s make something out of nothing.” Morok walked away from the door and to a distant, plain wall.