Bog Standard Isekai

Brin climbed, gathering allies as he went. The Tower was bewildering in the variety of uses the mages had for the space. Offices, workshops and laboratories, of course, but also arenas, exercise rooms, theaters, an aquarium, and everything else he could imagine. Few people were on these floors, but those that were, were the serious types who’d rather keep working than participate in the frivolities below, and many of them were more than willing to join Brin’s crusade. He got two [Earth Mages], another [Air Mage], and a few various Life Track pre-[Mages], the [Thorn Sharpener] being the most interesting of those.

He also sent eyes down to the ground floor of the Tower and approached everyone he knew, and everyone who still owed him a favor. He came to them in [Mirror Images] and made his case. If they showed any resistance or fear, he allowed them to beg off, but most of them were ready to prove themselves.

“Tower, how much authority have you granted me? I’d like to shut off access to the remaining elevators to anyone who’s not coming up here to help? Or maybe just anyone with a Common Class. Only let them go down.” He just wheezed it out as he ran, assuming the Tower could hear him.

Tower Message. Suggested alteration: Common Classes shall only be permitted to travel by elevator towards the ground floor.

“Alteration approved,” said Brin.

Tower Message. Elevator access restricted to Tower business or evacuation only.

Brin put his head down and sprinted up the last few stairs to the fifty-ninth floor. It was embarrassing how tired he was–since [Battle Fury] had maxed out during his fight with the Easterlings in the prison he was almost to half of his regular Vitality. His only excuse was that he was out of shape.

When this was all over, he was going to do cardio. Every day, for at least an hour. He didn’t care how busy he was.

He saw a sizable crowd waiting for him there, including Marksi, Rhun, and Bia, as well as all the people he hadn’t brought into the prison and a few new faces.

Cinda, the [Grand Magus of Land’s End] was an ancient woman. She was so skinny and frail she almost disappeared beneath her wizard’s robes, but her hand was firm on her staff and her back was straight.

"Good. You've finally made it. Follow, and I'll explain on the way." She turned and started hiking up the stairs. First, her [Water Mages] followed after her, and then after a short pause, everyone else. She didn't run up the stairs, as Brin had been doing, and no one dashed ahead of her. "The Tower has been attacked by the Motley Shroud, no doubt after having been compelled to do so by the power of the [Witch Queen] Arcaena. You've no doubt heard about the army that [Archmage of the Mystical Elements] Lumina led to quell the rumored rebellion of [Duke] Cobol. Well, according to our reports–"

It was good that someone was bringing everybody to the same page. While she explained, they reached the prison level. The Easterlings' blood was still on the ground, but they'd taken all the corpses of their fallen when they'd fled, so there wasn't anything for Guoncal to autopsy. Guoncal's first Easterling sighting would have to be a living one.

They didn't linger on the sixtieth floor, but turned and went up the next staircase at Cinda's pace. Brin sent his eyes forward, but they were completely blocked after the prison level.

He decided to see if the Tower could hear him with Silent Voice. "Tower, can you deactivate the protections against illusions on the upper floors? It would be nice if I could see what we're heading towards."

Tower Message. Provisional surveillance access granted.

He still didn't fully understand all the implications of the fact that he was suddenly able to talk to the Tower like it was the person, nor the fact that it seemed willing to do anything he asked, but he chalked it down to emergency measures and moved on. The important thing was that his eyes could see past level sixty.

The upper floors were for [Archmages], Circle Masters, and Tower management, and it showed. The top of the Tower was jewel-studded granite and marble, with rich carpets and sweeping tapestries, and enchantments everywhere to be seen. He found that his eyes couldn't get through many of the doors, but the entryways and hallways spoke of wealth and power.

The sixty-second floor was in trouble. Easterlings had broken through the walls, and apparently someone had been storing monsters up there, because even as he watched, an eight-foot tall lion with an Easterling in its mouth burst into the hallway. It flung the Easterling it had bitten into two others, who caught their comrade and then ran, fading from view. All the Easterlings were disappearing now that the beasts were free; they'd never intended to fight them, they were just causing trouble to try to slow down Brin's group.

The group reached the sixty-first floor, treated to what could've been a reception desk in a corporate lobby, if the corporation was run by elves and the desk and all the furnishings were carved from the single bone of a giant. The reception desk was empty, of course. Even the serving staff were down below enjoying the Festival.

Cinda was wrapping up her explanation, so Brin jumped in. "A lot of beasts and monsters are loose on the next floor up."

"That is none of our concern. Our focus is the Focus. Any other questions?" she said.

Sancha raised her hand. "How shall we enter the Master of Magic's inner sanctum, and how shall we unlock his treasure chamber?"

Cinda shrugged. "That is also none of our concern. If the enemy truly has no method whereby to unlock the door, then so much the better! Our mission is to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, not to control it ourselves."

"I love the optimism, Sancha. Way to think positive," said Brin.

Sancha rolled her eyes, but her maid Sanpurana opened her mouth in shock, looking completely scandalized, much more than his off-hand comment warranted.

"We'll still need to plan how to get past all the escaped beasts. Would you mind if I still took the lead in battles? I have a Skill for it," said Brin.

Cinda sniffed. "I don't know about you, but I have no intention of dragging these old bones up ten more flights of stairs. We'll take the [Archmages'] private elevator."

They had more than twenty people with them at this point, so Brin didn't think they'd all fit in an elevator, but Cinda led them to an alcove near the main doors, and he went through, he found a ten-foot wide circular platform that would easily leave room for them all. There was no ceiling, just an open cylinder that went straight up to the top of the Tower. The room was strange, too, because it didn't fit the area. Some kind of spatial magic was making the elevator shaft bigger on the inside than the outside.

Everyone filed in, and the platform started moving on Cinda's verbal command. There were no guardrails or any kind of safety in place to keep them from falling off into one of the passing floors. Brin stayed as close to the middle as possible. He was not excited to be back on a magical elevator again so soon.

Sion looked pale, like he was taking it worse than Brin, so Brin pretended like he was completely unaffected. "You don't look so good, Sion."

"Of a truth, I am not! Why is it that so often when I join one of your adventures, I find myself adopting a new phobia?"

"Oh, come on. That's not true," said Brin.

"It is! Why, after Blackcliff, I could never eat fish again!"

"That's not true," Brin said, this time with more confidence.

Sion chuckled. "No it isn't. But if I ever return to the Wogan estates, I'll be moving my office to the ground floor. And that, you can believe!"

"I have never liked heights," said Rhun.

Brin and Sion both looked at him in exaggerated shock. Sion said, "Did I truly hear Sir Rhun admit a weakness? What about a 'True Man' this and a 'True Man' that?"

Rhun shrugged. "A true man... belongs on the ground."

As if to mock Rhun personally, the floor that they stopped at had glass walls, giving a fantastic view of Steamshield below. Brin wasn't distracted by the view though--he'd seen it coming, as well as the gang of five Easterlings that were waiting for them.

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Even though he was ready, Cinda acted first. In an instant, she summoned enough water to turn the entire room into a frothing ocean, her perfect control keeping it from even letting a single drop touch her comrades. As for the Easterlings, the force of her wave caught them up and slammed them against the ground and walls, killing them all before they could fade away.

Then, as quickly as it came, the water faded, leaving the room completely dry, and probably a lot cleaner than it had been before. [Land's End] was a Water Class. The end of land, as in, the beginning of the sea. He didn't know how she'd summoned so much water so quickly, nor how she'd made it disappear again. Few [Mages] bothered to unsummon their material, if they even could at all. There must've been some benefit for her to do so, but he couldn’t even guess. At her level, Classes were extremely individual.

He had a new respect for the [Grand Magus] Class. Most [Mages] would eventually get to [Grand Magus] if they lived long enough; a life of study and practice could take you there. On the other hand, getting to [Archmage] was extremely rare. If you weren't a genius, and you didn't invent a new field of magic, or risk your life in constant warfare, [Grand Magus] was about as far as you could expect to go. But it was still very far.

The room that Cinda had cleared for them was mostly an observation lounge. Leather couches and other seating areas with low tables dotted the space for those who wanted to look out over the city below. The other side of the room had a single door, plain wood, and no room number and name plate. There was a stone plinth next to the door, looking like the support for a statue, but it was currently empty. He saw no other decoration. Anyone who didn’t know who lived there really had no business going inside.

Brin was tempted to try the doorknob, just in the odd chance that it was unlocked. He used [Wyrdic Inspect] and got “Door” back, but he read lines of authority in the Wyrd that told him it would be best not to touch it at all.

Cinda crossed over to the door, her staff clicking on the marble floor, and then put her back to it. "We believe this is the place the Easterlings will try to attack us. If your magic requires any amount of preparation, I suggest you begin now."

Brin decided to try [Commune with the Elements]. He activated the Skill while closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He felt immediately that this was an area with fantastic synergy with his magic. The top of a wizarding tower was likely good for any [Mage], but the combination of the height, the sunlight, the view, and the glass of the windows gave him a resonance he’d never felt before. In three breaths, his Mana pool was full again.

He pushed some magic into each of the windows. He didn’t move them yet, but filled them with his power so that he’d be able to transform them into Mirror Men in a moment’s notice. With a bit of concentration, he was able to fill his Mana again, so he summoned more glass. A pure glass spear first, then more glass arrows for the [Hunter] they’d conscripted.

For the next half-hour, he focused on preparations, and created a small arsenal. When he had enough arrows, he created a few Mirror Men. After ten of those, he would run out of minds to really get his best out of them, so he focused on giving each of them a glass weapon that was as full of Mana as he could make it. Then he recharged his Mana again until it was full.

All the while, he kept his eyes on the Tower below. A conscious thread with a quarter of his mind was focused on helping destroy Shroudlings wherever he could find them. Cecildis was a great help on that front. She seemed to have a knack for finding the things, and she had the exact right magical energy to snuff them out wherever she found them. He could sense in the Wyrd that she was having a fantastic time, and she was too far separate from a physical body and mind to ever get bored of the task. She’d do this until the Shroudlings stopped, or Chaos empowering her ran out, which would be decades from now.

Hogg was doing a thorough job of keeping the Shrouded monsters contained, and they seemed to have found an equilibrium. Hogg kept them from harming anyone in the Tower or on the road leading from the Alent, but he wasn’t able to push them back or keep them from spawning. The Color Poison he sneakily dumped into the Alent did exactly nothing.

The [Grand Magus of Flame] was leading a team bent on capturing and permanently destroying the Shrouded using Vitor’s instructions, but it was slow going. Each one took them five minutes of careful drying, and there didn’t seem to be an end to these things.

The ground floor of the Tower was under control, but several of the other floors had problems, more than Brin could keep track of. The Easterlings still popped in at random places to cause chaos, and here and there a few Shrouded or Shroudlings reached higher levels to sow discord.

Brin kept eyes on them as best he could, but he also heard Valentin’s voice now and again, warning people that danger was coming or telling them where to hide.

Brin watched long enough that he started to forget they were expecting to get attacked any moment. What was taking so long?

His friends were all done preparing as well. Ares’ magic was all specialized for quickness; there was nothing he needed to do. Sancha didn’t have anything either, and she was mostly occupied by pulling Sanpurana back towards the others when she kept trying to drift off towards the stairs. The silly maid was right that she had no business being up here, but she should’ve thought of that before following her crush, Tonin all the way to the top of the Tower. She’d just put herself in danger trying to leave now.

Rhun simply sat on a couch and closed his eyes. [Knights] knew to rest whenever and wherever they got a chance. Sion had helped Brin portion out his Water and Color Poison evenly in glass arrowheads. He could give them to the [Hunter] or fire them himself. Either way they were ready.

Guoncal had hurried over to the Easterlings that Cinda had killed, and he immediately fell in love with them. But it was the kind of love where he cut them open with a pen knife to coo over all their weird, squishy insides. “They do possess lungs! This is a revelation indeed!” A very Guoncal kind of love. He still maintained that they’d be weak to poison gasses, and he pointed to a spot on their lower thorax where a wound would kill them in one strike.

Only Vitor seemed dissatisfied. He paced back and forth across the room, tense and angry, and tripping over everything because his curse was in peace-mode.

“So the Motley Shroud was corrupted by Arcaena! That’s why they attacked the Tower. Why didn’t you say so immediately?” Vitor said, pointing an accusing finger at Brin.

The real answer was because he didn’t believe that. He still thought that [Duke] Cobol had directed the Motley Shroud to come here.

Arcaena had corrupted the Motley Shroud, sure. She’d made it more monstrous and harder to contain, but he didn’t think she’d directed it at the Tower personally. He thought he was starting to get a feeling for the [Witch Queen], and she wouldn’t be that overt. She was the type to create a dangerous weapon and then leave it laying on the ground, just so she could claim no responsibility when someone else picked it up and used it.

But maybe he should’ve been telling people that Arcaena was behind the attack. It was certainly a more unifying message than the truth, and that was what was important right now.

When Brin didn’t answer, Bia chimed in. “I bet he didn’t want us to lose hope.”

“This is the [Witch Queen] we’re talking about,” said Rhun, eyes still closed but proving he hadn’t actually been able to sleep.

Bia had been lounging nearby, but now she stood stretched out her arms, limbering muscles that couldn’t possibly be more limber, in a way that tugged at her shirt in a very distracting way. “We both fought in the war against Arcaena, but you stormed the city while it was still under her curse. If it’s really her… do we have a chance here?”

Everyone was suddenly looking at him. Even [Grand Magus] Cinda seemed to be interested in his answer.

“Of course we can win!” No one seemed satisfied by that alone, so he kept talking, hoping that his mouth would come up with something good, because his brain certainly didn’t have anything. “I’ve fought against [Witches] since before my System Day, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that you can win. They aren’t invincible. They can bleed, and they can die. They seem omnipotent at first, but what you aren’t seeing are the months or years of preparation. They build and plot and summon their magic, and then let it all loose in one huge show of power. At that moment, it feels unfair, like the System just lets them do whatever they want. But if you can weather that first storm, or better yet, if you can catch them by surprise or change the game, you’d be surprised how quickly all those months of planning fall apart.”

He was trying to be inspiring, but he could tell that [Terrifying] was leaking into his words a little bit. He still wasn’t perfect at switching it on and off. All he could do was try to make his words so unintimidating that the Skill would stop finding purchase. Inspiring! Not scary!

“We’ve endured her first strike. She meant to break us with a tidal wave of Shrouded, but we endured. She led the Easterlings here to chop off our head while the Shrouded took our feet, but we’ve fought them back as well. I won’t tell you that she’s done. In fact, I’d expect one more twist from her. But we’re here, we’re ready, and we will–”

“It’s me!” shouted Sanpurana. Tears were streaming down her face, wide-eyed tears of panic as she looked at Brin in abject horror. He’d thought he’d been doing a good job of tamping down on [Terrifying]. He’d been wrong.

“What was you?” he asked, crouching down to her eye level. He tried to look kindly and understanding.

Sanpurana whimpered, and he noticed several others nearby take a step back. Even Bia flinched away from him.

“Tell me,” he pressed.

“I took something. I took something from [Curator] Freire during the Servant’s Tea. They said all I had to do was take the key and then open the door,” said Sanpurana.

“Who said? And what door?” Rhun pressed.

At the same time, Tonin said, “I swear, my lord, I had no idea–”

Brin snapped his fingers. “Someone help me out here. Who’s Freire?”

“The [Curator] of the Gallery of Exotic Art,” answered Cinda, and everyone backed up to make room for the elderly [Grand Magus]. “Only he and the Master of Magic can open it up to visitors. I never heard of a key being made. Show it to me, child.”

Sanpurana reluctantly opened her fist to reveal a normal-looking key. Brin used [Wyrdic Inspect].

Key to the Gallery of Exotic Art

He traced the lines of authority in the Wyrd, and it was true: that key would open a very important door. A door that led to a gallery exactly one floor below the private apartments of the Master of Magic.

Bedelia appeared behind him, peering over his shoulder at Sanpurana. “There’s a servant's entrance! Oh, shadowed pits, I can’t believe I forgot this!” She hadn’t forgotten anything at all, of course. No doubt Hogg was furiously asking all his [Grand Magus] buddies about it at this very moment, and someone had spilled something they’d have liked to have kept a secret. “Chaos put a backdoor from his rooms to the gallery. There’s a painting that he likes. Sometimes his servants use it, because it’s easier to get Freire to let them in than the gargoyle that usually guards the front door.”

Brin smiled. “This is great! I always factor at least one betrayal to Arcaena in all of my plans. This puts us ahead of the curve!” He pat Sanpurana on the head. “Well done. I’m really glad I don’t have to kill you. Now give me the key.”

With trembling fingers, she released it into his open palm.

That was the moment that Fowler struck. He came from nowhere and chopped down with that stupidly dangerous saber, cutting straight through Brin’s outstretched arm.