Rune Seeker

“And this is the first trial,” Odi said, spreading his arms as if to display the enormous room full of moving parts.

On one side of the room was a complicated series of spinning horizonal bars, each only a foot wide, but thirty feet long. Opposite them, a hallway with another long bar swinging within it like a pendulum, though it vanished into a groove in the wall with each swing, only to come back out a few seconds later. Another hallway had what looked like icicles that rapidly formed and melted, over and over and over. Deeper in the room floated completely unconnected platforms, just sort of hovering there in the air, but circling in apparently random patterns.

They look kind of like Platforms of Movement.

Apart from the floating platforms and the vast moving parts, the only other notable feature of the room was the continuing bridge. After passing through the large double doors—which had closed as soon as the last person was inside—the bridge itself continued for almost another thousand feet until it reached the next closed door.

Below it all, still water, very much like the training room up in Fallen Reach.

“You probably already guessed,” Odi said, “but the next set of doors won’t open until we’ve completed this trial.”

“We?” Hiral said. “You’re going to help?”

“Not physically help,” Odi clarified, “though I’ll provide you the information you need to clear it. And moral support. Lots of moral support. Rah, rah, go team.”

“I feel so motivated,” Wule said flatly.

“We don’t have to, you know, figure out the trick to it?” Seena asked, looking at the Lizardman suspiciously.

“Of course not,” Odi said. “This trick, as you call it, isn’t in figuring out what to do; it’s actually accomplishing it. Remember, the forge is a training ground.”

“Great,” Hiral said. “What do we have to do?”

“As you can see,” Odi said, pointing towards one of the floating platforms, “there are six platforms within the room. On each of those platforms is a black sphere, about yea-big.” He held out his hands to indicate something watermelon-sized. “The first task will be for each of you to reach one of these platforms.”

Hiral looked at one platform and the spinning sets of bars at different levels leading to it. Moving quickly, somebody could probably use them almost like steps. Wouldn’t be “easy,” but I bet I could figure out the pattern. That other swinging bar… The way it vanishes into the walls means the person would need to get all the way across in one swing, or they’d get knocked into the water.

“Seeyela can take care of the travel, right?” Yanily said, turning to the woman. “Portal us over.”

Smart.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Seeyela said.

“Six platforms, eight people,” Nivian said. “We’ve got this covered with extras to spare.”

“Ah, I don’t think those two will be able to help much,” Odi said, pointing at Left and Right.

“Something wrong with us?” Right asked.

Odi frowned slightly. “I’m not sure how to break this to you… but I don’t think you have the knack for cycling solar energy. I’m… sorry. I know it’s a tough pill to swallow, and maybe if you keep training, you’ll be able to do it…”

Left and Right looked at each other, then turned to Hiral.

“Cycle solar energy?” Hiral asked, voicing the question on everybody’s face. “What do you mean?”

Odi looked at each member of the party, his eyes widening, then went back to tapping the bottom of his scaled chin. “I specifically checked off the box requesting the assistance of people proficient with cycling energy. What was the point of even filling out…?” He shook his head. “Ah, it doesn’t matter. I can sense the ability in the rest of you, and the whole point of this room is to train you how to do it. I’d just hoped to be through it quickly.”

“Sorry?” Hiral said with a shrug, though he wasn’t even really sure why he was apologizing.

“No, no, no, it’s my fault,” Odi said. “I should’ve put it together myself. If you didn’t know what the Forge of Ur’Thul is, of course you’ve never been here. And if you haven’t been here, how would you know how to cycle solar energy? It’s not an ability you would’ve learned on your own. Probably. Unless you’re geniuses. Are you geniuses?”

“Hiral might be,” Yanily said, and Hiral turned, expecting to find a smirk on the man’s face. Nope. The spearman was being totally serious.

“Can you cycle?” Odi asked Hiral directly.

“I don’t know…” Hiral said slowly.

“Cycling is what, exactly?” Seeyela prompted.

“Of course. Ah, it’s a pity I don’t have my lecturer’s notes, but I’ll have to go from memory.” Odi patted his chest and squared his shoulders. “Normally, this is a full-semester course. Forty hours of intensive study, plus a lab to go with the in-class studies and…” He trailed off at the expressions on the party members’ faces. “But how about I give you the abridged version?”

“Appreciated,” Hiral said.

“First off, you all already use some measure of abilities powered by solar energy, yes?” Odi asked, visibly sighing in relief when they nodded. “Excellent. Unless I’m mistaken, then, you likely passively recharge yourselves by exposing yourself to ambient solar energy, like what you’d get from the sun. That’s a fine way to do it. Very natural. Great if you’re looking for a tan.” He chuckled. “But, slow. Inefficient. Completely reliant on your body’s natural absorption rates.”

“You’re saying there’s a better way?” Hiral asked.

“Exactly. Cycling!” Odi spun around and thrust his arms out towards the huge room of moving parts.

“Nice spin. Good execution,” Yanily said quietly.

“Still didn’t explain what cycling is,” Seena pointed out.

“Or why this room looks like some kind of torture device,” Wule added.

“Cycling,” Odi said, turning back to the party, “is simply the process of forcefully pulling in types of compatible solar energy. It takes practice, dragging it out of the air and pushing it through the pathways within your body, but it can massively increase efficiency. As for this room, the spheres I mentioned on the six platforms will aid you in the process of learning to sense and manipulate ambient solar energy.”

“What’s up with all the moving parts, then?” Hiral asked. “Why not just have those six spheres right here?”

“Our Ancestor was a masochist,” Odi said. “She liked watching people struggle. Also, she wasn’t just giving away the rewards for completing the trials within the forge. She wanted people to earn them. Only the worthy are rewarded or some such thing. As I was saying, the first part of the challenge is getting to the spheres. The second part is manipulating the solar energy nearby to fill them up.”

“Anything else?” Seena asked. “That doesn’t seem so bad.”

“Well, first off, the Ancestor doesn’t like cheaters, so any gear you have with magical properties will be… confiscated by the Urn while attempting the trials,” Odi said.

“Confiscated?” Hiral asked.

“Magically whisked from your person and stored in a place unknown until the Urn deems it appropriate to return it to you,” Odi explained with a smile on his lizard-face. He pointed at Seeyela’s white armor. “I do hope you’re wearing something underneath all that.”

“Uh…” Seeyela said. “Yes?”

“You want a minute to change?” Seena asked, giving the stink-eye to the men in the party.

“It’s fine,” Seeyela said. “I’m decent under this.”

“Why is nobody worried about what I’m wearing?” Yanily asked.

“Because everybody’s seen what’s under your armor,” Nivian said. “More often than we’d like.”

“Why can’t we keep our gear?” Hiral asked, forcing his brain not to conjure images of Yanily in Troblin paintings.

“Like I said, cheating,” Odi said. “Our ancestor wanted to make sure people were getting through the trials on their own merits, not items provided by family members.”

“We get our gear back after we complete the trial?” Hiral asked.

“No. You’ll have it as long as you aren’t actually attempting the trial itself.”

“And abilities… we can use those?” Hiral clarified.

“Of course,” Odi said with a smile.

“Okay, Odi, other than the gear thing, what else is there we need to know?” Seena asked.

“All six spheres need to be full at the same time,” Odi said. “And they quickly lose energy if you don’t maintain them.”

“Meaning we all need to succeed together,” Wule said.

“Correct. It only works as fast as the slowest member.”

Seven heads turned to look at Yanily.

“Hey, now,” Yanily said. “That’s not very nice.”

“Once all six spheres are full at the same time, the next door will be unlocked,” Odi explained. “At that point, you can stop maintaining the cycling, and we can head to the second trial. The Urn will also stop confiscating your gear.”

“What’s in the next room?” Nivian asked.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Odi said seriously. “Some groups have taken weeks to get past this trial.”

“Weeks?” Seeyela asked quietly, looking at the moving parts. “We don’t have weeks. Favela needs us.”

“It won’t take us that long,” Seena reassured her sister.

“Yes,” Odi said, “I’m hoping you’re all a little more adept than they were. I didn’t bring enough food to spend that much time on each trial. Uh… back to my cannibalism question from earlier…”

“Still not cannibals,” Seeyela said.

“And we have food,” Wule said. “Nivian will take care of us.”

“Using these spheres,” Hiral said to Odi. “How will that help us cycle energy into ourselves?”

“The process is pretty similar, really. The spheres are training tools that will help you get the knack for it. They’re naturally attuned to the solar energy swirling around in here. Through them, once you get the feel for it, you should be able to repeat the process with yourself as the focus instead of the spheres.”

“Shall we get started, then?” Yanily asked, slapping his hands together. “Time to break some more speed-clear records. Seeyela, why don’t you send me to that platform over there?” He pointed at the one on the other side of the swinging bar.

“Everybody else ready to go?” Seeyela asked, though Hiral could hear some of the same eagerness as from Yanily.

“Sure, let’s see what this cycling thing is all about,” Seena said.

“Good luck!” Odi said, plopping to sit down on the bridge. “I’ll be right here if you have any questions, need some advice, or a bit of motivation. Rah, rah, you’ve got this.”

Dynamic Quest

You’ve been introduced to the Lost art of Cycling. Can you master it? Yes, you can. Rah, rah.

Complete the first trial of the Lost Forge of Ur’Thul.

“Huh, seems we still get quests in here,” Hiral noted, and the others nodded as they read their own notifications.

“Yanily, you’re first,” Seeyela said, opening a portal. As soon as she activated the ability, her armor and daggers vanished with a small pop, and she jumped as if startled. “Woah. That was… odd. Definitely used gravity somehow, though. I wonder… ” She trailed off—completely ignoring the wrinkled clothes she wore underneath—and shook her head. “Sorry, trial first.”

With that, she pointed towards the matching black doors that had appeared, one on the far platform next to the sphere and the other in front of Yanily. The spearman stepped through.

Or, at least, he tried to step through, flattening his face against the black portal as if he’d just walked into a solid wall. He practically bounced off it, stumbling back as his hand went to his nose, and curses came rapid fire out of his mouth.

“Ow!” he finally finished, his voice slightly different than usual as he turned to glare at Seeyela. “Not funny.”

Seeyela, however, wasn’t moving.

“Sis?” Seena asked.

“I didn’t do anything,” Seeyela finally said. “I mean, I didn’t do anything different. That should’ve worked.”

“Try again?” Seena asked Yanily.

“Maybe don’t lead with your face this time,” Hiral suggested.

“Thanks for the advice,” Yanily said flatly, and he cautiously approached the portal. Reaching out one hand like he was afraid it would bite him, he slowly poked the portal. His finger flattened against the surface as if it were some kind of perfectly smooth black glass. “Seeyela?”

“I don’t know,” she said, walking up to the portal to join him. “It should work like normal.” When she gently reached out like Yanily had, her hand passed right through the portal to emerge on the far platform.

“It only works for Seeyela?” Nivian asked.

Hiral walked over to join the other two and put his fingers against the surface of the portal. Like Yanily, his fingers stopped as sure as if the portal was a solid wall. The surface was slightly cool, and he could feel a small tug on his Rune of Gravity, but he couldn’t push through whatever barrier was keeping him out.

“No cheating,” Odi said helpfully.

“Looks like there aren’t any shortcuts,” Hiral said. “I bet Seeyela can get through because it’s her portal. The rest of us will have to get to the other platforms on our own.”

“And Yanily kept his stuff because the Urn knew he wouldn’t really be attempting the trial?” Wule asked.

“And it wanted to laugh at him walking face-first into the portal,” Right added.

“So, Sis, I guess this one is yours?” Seena asked.

“No, I should do this one,” Nivian said. “If we can’t use Seeyela’s portals to get us around, we’re going to have to match up our abilities to where we need to go.”

“You can get across this?” Seena asked, pointing at the swinging bar.

The bar itself was about eighty feet long and a foot wide, while the hallway was fifteen feet from wall to wall. At the speed the bar moved from one side to the other, that only left about two seconds to get all the way across before the bar vanished into the slot in the wall. If Nivian didn’t make it all the way across, he’d be knocked off into the water below.

“Odi, is the water going to hurt us?” Hiral asked, eyeing the liquid.

“The water? Not unless you’re made of sugar.” Odi chuckled again. “You know, because then you’d melt.”

“It’s not going to melt us anyway or anything, is it?” Hiral asked to confirm.

“What? No! It’s not acid. The Ancestor didn’t want to kill us. Just to make us work for the rewards.”

That’s one less thing to worry about. Even if it takes a few tries, there’s no harm in it.

“Oh, there is one other thing I forgot to mention,” Odi said.

“Of course there is,” Seena mumbled.

“While you’re over on the platforms, your own solar energy will get sucked into the sphere too. If you take too long, or if somebody else does, it’ll drain you dry.”

“What happens then?” Hiral asked.

“You’ll have to come back over to this side to absorb enough energy to try again,” Odi said. “That’s one of the reasons it’s important you can all cycle with the spheres at the same speed.”

“That’s not too bad,” Seena said.

“It’s really not,” Hiral said. “Other than time, it doesn’t sound like there’s a huge risk.”

“Time isn’t something we have a lot of, though,” Wule reminded him, glancing at Seeyela.

“You’re right,” Hiral agreed, the timer to get to Fallen Reach ticking down. They still had more than enough hours to get to their destination, but that didn’t mean they should be wasting any.

“Your movement ability?” Seena asked Nivian, pointing at the bar.

“Yeah, should be able to get me across in one pass,” Nivian said. “May have to push it a bit, but that’s good practice too.”

“Okay,” Seena said, “Nivian has this one. Who else gets what?”

“That one is Yanily’s,” Hiral said, pointing up and off to the side at one of the moving platforms. “Your lightning-jump thing should get you there, no problem.”

Yanily looked up at the platform—way up—and nodded slowly. “Maybe? I’ve never tried to go that high.”

“Can you even do it without your spear?” Left asked.

“Without my…?” Yanily asked, glancing at his weapon while simultaneously looking scandalized.

“No gear, remember?” Left said.

“I… uh… I don’t know,” Yanily admitted. “It’s technically a movement ability combined with an attack. I’ve never tried it without my spear.”

“Now’s your chance,” Seeyela said. “I’ll take that one, then.” She pointed to a distant platform that had no visible path to it, though it moved quickly through the air.

“Makes sense,” Seena said. “Hiral, Wule?”

“Uh… as much as I don’t want to, I should probably do this one,” Wule said, pointing at another hallway. This one had a simple bridge leading about a hundred feet to the platform. No obstacles, nothing swinging. Just a straight walk. Sure, there was water below the bridge, and no handrails, but the walkway was easily wide enough to cross without worry of falling in.

“Of course Wule takes the easiest path,” Yanily said. “Maybe we should trade.”

But it couldn’t be that easy, and Hiral stared at the hall until he saw a shimmer of movement from one wall to the other. Then another, and another. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he saw dozens of them. Hundreds. And, after focusing out the rhythmic sounds of the swinging and spinning bars, there was an almost imperceptible sound, like a whoop.

“There’s something shooting from one wall to the next,” Hiral said.

“Blades of compressed air, I think,” Wule said, stepping up to the edge of the hall. Slowly, like he didn’t really want to do it, he lifted his arm into the hall.

Whoop. Blood splashed from a sudden wound on his hand, and he snapped the limb back.

“Damn, yup, that stings,” Wule said, pulsing solar energy to heal his wound as he looked at Yanily. “Still want to trade?”

“You’d never make the jump up to that platform,” Yanily said, pointing at his original destination. “I’ll do you the favor, this one time, and take care of it for you.”

“So generous, Yan,” Seena said.

“What are friends for?” Yanily asked.

“You sure you’re up for it?” Nivian asked Wule. “I could try…”

“No,” Wule said. “It’ll hurt, but I can keep healing myself through it. Wish I got to keep the armor. Hrm, actually, my defensive ability should help with it. I’ll be fine.”

“Worst-case scenario, you can jump into the water to escape the blades,” Left said. “Looks like they’re only above the bridge.”

“Hope you brought a change of clothes,” Right added. “They’re going to get pretty torn up.”

“That just leaves two more paths,” Seena said, shaking her head at the horrified look on Wule’s face. “Spinning bars and… the ice cavern. I think I already see where this is going.”

“If you had your tome, the ice would be no problem for you,” Hiral said. “Without it?”

“Great question,” Seena admitted. “Maybe I can start the fireballs out here, then take them with me? Set up a few totems to fire into the hall ahead of me? I’ll figure something out. You good with the spinning bars?”

“Yeah,” Hiral said. “Not so different from the Time Trial I trained on up in Fallen Reach.”

He then focused on the way the bars moved. Hrm. I can already see a pattern. This seems too easy. If it was a bit tougher, I might even be able to get that last point of base Atn I need to get me to 20.

As if answering his inner thoughts, the windmilling bars changed orientation when he stepped closer. At the same time his gear vanished from his body—all of it stolen by a pulse like his Rune of Gravity—each axis of the spinning bars moved away from each other. Some even went from spinning horizontally to vertically.

What had been a straight path of windmills now spread out wide to both sides, with multiple tiers and vertically rotating bars that would serve as both obstacles and steps to higher levels.

“This… might take more than one try…” Hiral said quietly as he heard a splash from Nivian’s hallway.