Chương 157: Chapter 154. Fieldwork

A full month passed since Gaius had stood at that rain-streaked window and set the search for Morgana on Adom's shoulders. So far, the hardest part had simply been knowing where to begin. Her trail had gone cold thirteen months ago in a port called Veridian. The few sightings since were ones his people couldn't confirm, and if even half the rumours were true, Morgana didn't want to be found in the first place. Adom had spent the month chasing leads, and most of them had gone nowhere.

Between that, his work as a Magus, and a Xerkes professorship he'd somehow agreed to, busy would have been a generous word for what his days had become. Which was why today's lesson wasn't in a classroom. He'd spent too much of the month indoors, and had decided that if he had to teach, he'd do it outside. So a little after dawn he'd taken the seventh-years two hours north of Arkhos, to a place where the runework was older than anything in their books.

The dungeon was a forest, so, open to the sky, which was the whole reason Adom had chosen it. He'd had enough of ceilings. The students fanned out across the broken floor, picking their way over fallen stone, talking among themselves. They were the oldest students Xerkes had, final-years, most of them eighteen and one or two nineteen, which made them give or take a year exactly Adom's age. He'd mostly stopped finding that strange. Mostly.

There were still mornings when he stood in front of people who could have been his yearmates, waiting for him to begin, and felt the whole thing balance on the edge of absurd. It was a good morning for it, at least. Cool, bright, birds somewhere in the trees, no one trying to kill him. He'd take a day like this where he could get it. He stopped them at a slab that came up to about waist height, broken off something far larger long ago, its face covered edge to edge with worn carving.

He leaned a hip against it and folded his arms.

"You're final-years. You've already sat through every lecture I could give you standing here, so I'd only be boring us both." He looked them over.

"Pop quiz instead. Out loud, first to answer takes the point, and I'll tell you now the points are worth absolutely nothing, so try to pace yourselves." There were a few grins.

"What is a dungeon? And if anyone says 'a hole with monsters in it' — yes, well done, you've described a hole with monsters in it. I want what it actually is."

"A pocket of dense mana," Toller said, fast.

"A point. A lazy point, but a point. So why is there a pocket of dense mana two hours from the city? They don't grow on trees." He paused.

"That came out better than I planned. Moving on." That one got a laugh out of half of them.

"The fae split," said Sela, before Toller could recover.

"End of the primordial age. When the fae realm was pulled off from ours, it took so much power it tore smaller spaces open alongside it. They filled with the mana that had nowhere else to go. Those are dungeons."

"Two points, and you've just made yourself everyone's least favourite person in the group. Lovely work." He pushed on while she was still looking pleased.

"We've got these pockets, then. Sealed up, drowning in mana. What does that do to whatever's trapped inside with it?" He glanced over.

"Eren. You've gone quiet, which usually means you know it and you're enjoying watching everyone else sweat." Eren was leaning against a tilted column and didn't bother denying it.

"Changes them. Creatures evolve into things they've no business being. The ground shifts. And if the mana's thick enough, even the rules go: what weighs what, whether fire feels like burning that day. Depends how deep you are."

"A point. And the one piece of advice that'll actually keep you breathing: in a deep dungeon, read the level before anything. That's what careful people do." He let a beat fall.

"The other people we use as cautionary tales in first-year." More of them laughed at that, though Adom wasn't sure if this one joke had landed quite right. Wait, were they just laughing at his jokes because he was the prof? He pushed off the slab and spread a hand at the walls around them; the oversized blocks, the too-tall doorway.

"Now look at where you're standing, and tell me who built it. Because it wasn't anyone our size."

"Giants," three of them said, near enough together that he pointed at the lot.

"Points all round. When?"

"Primordial age." Toller again, recovering.

"Before the split. When the world was still one piece."

"Good. So why is a giant's house sitting at the bottom of a dungeon?" There was a short silence, because this one was harder. So Adom looked at one of the students.

"Vivian?" Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"B-because it was already here." Vivian's voice quietly came from the back. She'd gone pink the moment the group turned toward her, but she kept going, her eyes mostly on the stone.

"The giants came first. Then the split happened and the dungeons formed, and whatever they'd already built got caught inside when it did. Sealed off from time. That's why their work only really survives down here. Everywhere else, the years got to it."

"Full marks." Adom said.

"Exactly right, Vivian. Better said than I'd have said it, too." She went a shade darker and looked like she'd happily climb inside the slab to escape the attention.

"Show-off," Eren said, from a few feet away, without any heat in it. Vivian's mouth twitched despite herself. Eren had taken it upon himself, somewhere over the month, to be the one who teased her just enough to keep her from disappearing entirely, and it mostly worked. Adom set his hand back on the carving.

"Which brings us to why we rode two hours out here instead of staying in our beds like reasonable people. Last one; and it's the whole point of the day. What am I actually showing you?"

"The original runes," Sela offered.

"The giants' own. Pre-standard."

"Right. And here's why that's worth a morning." He traced one of the marks.

"Look at it next to anything you've trained in. It's crude. The shapes are huge and rough, and one whole line of this does about what a single modern rune does now; badly. And every rune any of you will ever cut comes from it. Seven years of precise syllabary, all of it, is just this, refined tens of thousands of years over." He looked up at them.

"This is the root. Everything you know is the tree that grew out of it. Which is also why most people walk straight past it to loot the lower floors. Adventurers come for the treasure. We come for the walls." He straightened.

"Spread out, read in pairs. Copy anything you can't place exactly as it is, and don't guess, I'd sooner have an honest blank than a confident mistake. Off you go." They scattered along the standing walls where more of the old carving showed through, and the ruin filled with the low sound of students at work. Eren, though, came over to Adom instead of pairing off with anyone.

"Not going to do the assignment?" Adom asked.

"In a minute." Eren stopped beside him and looked out over the others. Adom tipped his head toward the far side of the ruin, where Vivian stood alone with her copybook open, very obviously not reading it.

"She's been glancing over here every few seconds. I think she wants to pair with you. Go on." Eren followed his look and sighed.

"That's the thing, though. If I go over every time, she never learns the other half of it." He said it without any edge.

"She'll do this all year; stand there hoping someone comes to her. She could just walk up and ask somebody. Half of them would say yes before she finished the sentence; they all think she's brilliant, they're only waiting for her to speak first." He shrugged.

"She's got to do some of the walking herself eventually." Adom couldn't really argue. He'd spent the month getting to know this class, and of all of them Vivian was easily the sharpest: quicker than Eren, quicker than any of them, on the rare occasions she forgot to be frightened of being looked at. The shyness was the only thing standing between her and being the best student he had. Across the ruin, Vivian glanced over again, then dropped her eyes back to the copybook she wasn't reading.

Eren held out a moment longer, then let his breath go.

"... Fine. Just this once." He pushed off the wall.

"Hey," Adom said.

"Quick question, before you go." Eren stopped.

"When they laugh at my jokes." Adom kept it mild.

"Is that because the jokes are funny, or because it's me?" Eren seemed to weigh it.

"You're funny. Mostly. But you also joke like an old man." Adom frowned.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sadly, he did know what he meant, but it still hurt a little. Eren was already turning toward Vivian, smiling.

"Gotta go do my assignment, professor." The rest of the day went well enough. They read the walls until midday, then broke for lunch among the fallen columns — Adom ate with them, which seemed to surprise them every time — and afterward someone produced a ball, and a loose, half-ruleless game of Krozball spread across the ruin that ran far longer than the lesson had. Adom played. He tried not to win too obviously, and mostly failed, but nobody seemed to mind. Today was a little special, in fairness.

It was the last day before the summer break, a full month of it. Xerkes had only started giving the long break two years ago, after someone in administration finally admitted the students were drowning in assignments and that nobody learned much while drowning. So the tail end of summer was theirs now. They'd scatter home and trickle back sometime in the fall.

By the time they stepped back through the portal into the ordinary cave mouth, with the real afternoon waiting on the other side, the students were loose, happy and already talking about going home. Adom saw them off at the trailhead.

"Go on, all of you. Rest. And read nothing with a rune on it for at least a week; healer's orders." A few of them laughed.

"Good work today. Every one of you. Go be eighteen for a month." They drifted off down the hill road in twos and threes, and for a moment it was just the ordinary sound of students leaving. Eren hung back, then came over.

"Hey, Adom, can I ask you somethi—" But the crystal in Adom's pocket pulsed. Eren stopped, glancing at the faint light flickering through the fabric.

"... Get it. I'll wait." Adom drew it out, and before he could get a single word out, it was already talking.

"Oh? Oh! It worked. Adom? Adom, are you there? Hello? Is this — Adom?"

"I'm here, Valiant."" Finally. Do you have any idea how many times I've tried you today? Six. Seven. I lost count somewhere around the cheese — which, separate matter, remind me later, because I found a wheel of the firm nutty sort and it has genuinely changed my outlook — but seven times, roughly, and every single time, nothing, just that horrible little dead hum, which I'll have you know is a deeply lonely sound when a person is sitting there holding the—""I was in a dungeon," Adom said.

"Fieldwork. The crystals don't carry through a portal."

"A dungeon. Which one? Was it a good one? What was in it — anything with teeth, anything old, ooh, did you see any of those little glowing—""Valiant." Adom kept his voice even.

"You called seven times. What is it?"

"Right. Yes. The actual thing." And his voice shifted.

"Morgana. The woman you had me looking for, remember?"

"Yes?" Adom said, with more excitement than he intended to convey.

"I think we've got a trail." Adom stood very still on the hill road. A trail? After a month of nothing?

"Please tell me everything," he said.