‘It’s hard to miss their importance when you see how runes affect the space around themselves and how the order of their activation can change the effects of two arrays when they are composed using the same shared runes’. Lith thought.
“Alas, I’m too old and tired to keep going. The moon is high already. Get some rest. If more creatures attack us tomorrow, I’ll be counting on your protection.” Yondra smothered the fire with a finger snap and entered the women’s quarters.
Lith remained alone for a while, sorting through the newly acquired information with Solus and taking notes on his own papers to store them inside Soluspedia. Soon fatigue gave him a headache and his brain begged him for a break.
‘Fighting is so much easier.’ He sighed.
‘Your body can withstand a lot, but your mind still needs to relax. Go to sleep, I’ll keep an eye on the situation.’ When not in her tower form, Solus was unable to sleep or rest. It gave Lith an edge in many situations, but in the long term, it affected her sanity.
Lith went to sleep near a guard post, ready to act at the first sign of danger. He trusted no one. Morok was too strange and the soldiers too weak for his taste. The Professors were magically strong, some even more so than Lith, but as Korgh had demonstrated, it only took a single shot to take them down.
Paranoia was a cruel mistress but it had served him well too many times to ignore her. Except when it was dead wrong, of course. When morning came and nothing happened, Lith cursed at himself.
‘Hindsight is always 100% correct.’ Solus chuckled.
The members of the expedition went back to study the door and before any of them noticed, dawn turned into sunset. Lith had even tried using Fire Vision at noon to spot hidden compartments.
If a switch was camouflaged under a fake rock, it should have shown a different coloration in his thermal vision when compared with the rest of the rock wall after being heated for hours by Yondra’s spell. Unfortunately, even this attempt failed.
Lith spent his dinner with Yondra and Quylla, comparing notes in the search for a solution. This expedition was Lith’s best shot at getting his hands on ancient Odi technology that might help him solve his reincarnation problem.
‘If we crack this riddle and in the future I find more ruins on my own, I’ll know how to get in. If we fail despite so many wise mages working together, I might as well check the Odi off my list of possible solutions.’ He thought.
During the third day, Lith started to become restless just like the Assistant Professors. The older mages knew that solving ancient mysteries required time, effort, and luck, whereas their aides took failure personally.
After whispering “open sesame” in front of the door, obtaining nothing in return but an awkward echo, Lith asked Professor Gaakhu, the language expert:
“What’s the Odi word for friends?”
“Glavrish. Why?”
After a painful second that shattered his last hopes, he replied:
“No reason. I was just curious.” He said while Solus laughed her ass off at his expense.
When dinnertime came, Lith decided to give a break to both himself and Yondra, spending the evening with his friends. After receiving her own Skinwalker, Quylla’s mood had improved a lot, but she was getting gloomier with each passing day.
“Gods, it’s so frustrating for me. I’m probably the one that knows the most about the Odi among all the Assistants taking part in this expedition since I’ve been researching them for over a year now. Yet my contribution is close to zero.” Quylla said.
“I’d rather not work while I eat. If I hear another word about arrays, I’m going to scream.” Lith said. “But since we are already there, maybe there’s something we are missing. When I taught magic to Tista, I improved my foundations by learning from my own teachings.
“Maybe if you tell us what you know about the Odi, we could better understand their way of thinking.”
“First of all, they were conceited, self-centered bastards.” Quylla said with a voice full of spite.
“Their laws allowed them to have slaves, as long as they weren’t Odi, and they treated the other races worse than their cattle. The Odi would use their slaves as guinea pigs, infecting them on purpose with the illnesses they had yet to cure.
“When healing magic wasn’t enough, they would resort to Body Sculpting, permanently altering their subjects’ physiology in the attempt to make them immune to congenital diseases.
“Once they achieved perfect health, they moved on altering their appearance so that every member of their race would be born with what they considered to be perfect proportions.
“For decades they attained countless feats, uncaring for their cost since they weren’t the ones paying for it. Then, they tried to defeat aging and failed.
“You know the rest. They were obsessed with the search for perfection in every aspect of their life. I mean, look at the arrays.” The word was enough to make Lith’s head throb.
“The spacing between the runes, the way they overlap with each other, and the door at the same time. It’s a seamless formation with no weak points.”
Lith reviewed his notes inside Soluspedia, comparing them with Quylla’s words.
“It’s indeed an amazing piece of work.” He said, his eyes fixated in a blank spot as he examined the runes one by one and forced himself not to puke.
“Even if there are five arrays covering the door, the resulting structure resembles that of a musical score. Each rune is perfectly placed, one flows into another and is reinforced by the other runes surrounding it as it in turn reinforces them.”
“Yeah, it’s almost like… That’s it! I think I know how to open that door!” Quylla stood up abruptly, flipping her plate. Only a well-timed use of spirit magic saved the innocent food.
She dragged Phloria and Lith to Professor Gaakhu’s campfire to share her success with them. Gaakhu was the head of the expedition, her permission was required before making an attempt at opening the barrier.
“We got it all wrong, Professor. There aren’t five arrays, just one and I know how to open it.” Quylla said.
“Nonsense, Mage Ernas. Any of us, you included, can detect five different structures and their unique power nodes. We have even identified the purpose of each one of them…”
“No, that’s where you are wrong. You have identified the purpose they have when you take them separately and that’s why there’s no solution. Please humor me. What happens if you consider them as a single array? What becomes of their runes?”
Professor Gaakhu sighed, using water magic to write down the information about the different arrays on a single page.
‘I can’t just say no to Mage Ernas. At least she has shown initiative and confidence. The morale is already bad as it is. Trying and failing is better than letting yourself fall into despair.’ She thought.
At least until the entire picture appeared in front of her eyes.
“This is amazing! The five arrays actually do combine into a single one with its own purpose.” She blurted out as her colleagues started to huddle up behind her back, looking at the piece of paper in her hands.
