Braziers lit the vast chamber.
Smashed pots and skeletons lined the walls.
Vines grew through the cracks in the ground.
Their petals glowed with golden mana.
They are the only surviving inhabitants of the place.
Hikari lifted the broken pots.
Spears and plated armor.
The wooden shafts on the spears
She knocked a helmet against her knuckles.
They were made of a metal lighter and softer than steel.
But even after centuries, the metal showed no signs of rusting.
"Treasure?"
A full set of armor plus the sword might trade for a full bear.
But they are not valuable enough to march it the length of a railway.
She compares it with her sword.
Clank! Her sword dents it completely without taking a scratch.
Interesting. They looked the same, but her sword is much harder and denser than the helmet.
"Good sword."
She sniffs through the walls of the circular chamber.
Pots. Skeletons. Armour.
Nothing she hasn't already seen.
One pot was still intact.
It was huge. Bigger than her cauldron back at the estate.
She rested her palm on the cold surface and tried to channel her flames into it.
It retained some of the heat.
"Cook."
It looked promising as a cooking pot.
Too bad it was too bulky even for her to carry back to the estate.
Perhaps it's the one thing she could bring if she found nothing else of value.
She could use the vines growing all around the wyvern peaks to strap the bulky object to her back.
Then, she found something.
A chest. Treasure?
It was locked.
She raised her fist and smashed it to pieces.
It was filled with coins.
For a moment, she thought about all the good food she could buy.
Then she realized coins from a bygone age probably wouldn't buy anything in the marketplace, which accepted only spire silvers.
She pinched a few and dropped them into her harvest sack anyway.
Her lady would be delighted to receive a relic her knight brought back from her adventures.
That seemed to be it.
She felt rather disappointed when the massive gate opened.
The room offered little more than the elaborate murals lining the circular walls.
It was nevertheless an impressive sight.
Carvings stretched the length of the chamber, making even her feel small.
She toured the murals.
A flock of wyverns flew through the clouds.
They started burning down houses.
People started moving to caves.
They built a forge.
The forge produced weapons.
They used the weapons to fight the wyverns.
After slaying wyverns, they studied them.
Then they caught some young wyverns and raised them.
But they couldn't be tamed easily.
Hikari moved to the next section.
The images were rather more disturbing in this one.
Wyvern parts.
Young boys with their parents.
Young wyverns bred in captivity.
Some form of strange ritual.
The middle section of the mural is damaged.
Armored knights. A tower.
Bizzare. Hikari thought.
The last third of the mural was completely smashed.
Shame, her lady would have loved to hear how the story ended.
That seemed to be about it.
Hikari turned towards the gate, getting ready to leave.
"(Flames)"
Her head hurts.
That ringing voice in her head again.
She recovered quickly.
"Flames?"
Perhaps there is more to the room.
She expands her mana sense.
Tiny runes embedded in the walls respond weakly to her.
She looked around.
Nothing seemed to have changed.
"Flames?"
The mana she absorbed from the abomination she defeated.
The tower responded to it.
Channeling it seemed to open the door.
But she had just barely picked up the mana form.
She sat down in the middle of the vast chamber anyway.
Mana began coursing through her body.
It was her usual mana exercise, but with the form she'd acquired from the knight's heart.
Bit by bit, the tower responded.
With her eyes closed, she pictured the room's layout.
The support pillars. Even the details of the murals.
Tiny leylines of mana flowing up from below her, up the tower.
The tower was a place of power, much like the Moradale spire.
But how would she access it?
The mana in the ground was weak.
Weak enough that even her lady would not feel it.
"(flames)"
That ringing force in her head again.
"Fine."
Hikari ramps up, increasing her mana flow.
It was still only a fraction of her telekinesis, her most practiced form.
But the tower was responding to her.
It was slight, but the mana in the chambers was growing.
She felt a mechanism click.
The centuries-old gears cranked.
She made way; the stones below her shifted.
A structure rose from the ground.
It was a bowl-shaped altar containing a strange kind of ash.
"Flames?"
Hikari already knew what the strange voice would say.
She didn't know what to do with it.
Mana. She senses mana building up below the structure.
It gathers in the bowl.
At first, the ashes burned slowly.
Hikari backed away at first.
Anyone would.
Then she watched the flame burn the ash.
It was unnatural.
She studied it.
Mana sense.
She saw mana flow from the bowl's base into the ash.
It was no ordinary flame.
She raised her hand over it.
It was hot, yet it did not burn.
She channeled her mana into her hand.
The flames in the altar responded.
She disassembles her glove.
Her bare skin felt the flames more acutely.
The flames licked her hand.
But she didn't feel the burn.
"Here goes."
Taking a deep breath, she lowered her hand into the altar.
The ash stuck to her hand.
She grabbed a fistful of ash.
It was hot, but oddly, she seemed quite accustomed to it already.
Her hand absorbed the flames.
She felt the mana flowing into her.
It was only a trace amount. Even a single ivory berry contains more mana.
"(Good)"
The voice in her head.
Hikari's ears rang again.
She lifted her hand and dusted off the ash.
"What now?"
She put her gloves on.
Click! She sensed something trigger.
A sudden surge of power ran through the walls.
The runes embedded all around the room glowed bright enough to see with the naked eye.
The ground rumbled.
A square platform emerged, large enough for her to step onto.
"Here goes nothing"
She stepped onto the platform.
Mana gathered below her.
A strange mechanism whirred, lifting the platform with her on it.
She was quite surprised that it could hold her weight.
The ride was short, lasting barely half a minute.
She arrived at a half-open room.
A closed door was at the end of the other wall.
The space was only a fraction of the chamber below.
Above the door, a stick-man carving sat in a meditative pose.
Below him, a single squiggly line.
"Art."
Hikari remarked.
Should she sit down? Is that what the symbol is trying to tell her?
Mana sense.
A trail of the tower's mana on the ground.
They seemed to converge onto a tile in the middle of the room.
Its lighter color and coarse texture set it apart from the rest of the room.
Hikari stands on it.
Her bare feet feel the rough surface.
Mana in the room converges at this point, rising from the tile and surrounding her.
She feels the way it flows and follows.
Memories of mastering the Razenheir flames begin to return.
The mana flow peters out.
The door mechanism rumbles, opening the way to the next room.
She has just cleared her first room.
The symbol above the door reads one squiggle.
The mana intensity it represents feels lacking even for a warm-up.
Onwards to the next room.
If this is what the tower offers, she happily takes it.
The symbol at the end of the room.
The same stick man sits in the middle, but an extra squiggle has been added.
Two tiles placed side by side in the middle.
"Here goes."
Hikari stepped onto each tile.
Mana rose from the tiles, flowing around her.
She absorbed it.
The two squiggles did appear to mean twice the mana.
It was still well below what she could take.
The mana dissipated.
The mechanism rumbled.
Hikari checked herself.
She tried to move the mana herself, visualizing its movements in her head.
The ground responds to her.
She was getting better at it.
It felt similar to the Hearthstone sandbender guilding her mana movements.
Still a long way to go before the mana is usable.