Divine Apostasy Book 7 - Chapter 37

Author's Note - the next three chapters (37-39) are the first draft. I haven't even reread them due to time constraints. That means they will be much rougher than the normal chapters. Thanks for understanding.

Chapter 37

The group on the left had counted one more snail line than the right one, so they all moved in that direction. Forty minutes later, the lines had enough of a bend that Ruwen did his first calculation.

They all stopped and Ruwen sent a group of four Adepts down each snail line with directions to take one hundred steps and stop. He sent another group of four Adepts directly away from their position and told them to stop when they formed a line with the other two groups.

When the three groups had settled, Ruwen turned to Sift. “Does the distance look even on each side?”

Ruwen found judging distances without his map difficult. Probably because he’d relied on it his whole life. Sift on the other hand rarely used his basic interface and had a great eye for distances.

“They’re close,” Sift replied. “Within a couple of feet.”

“Which way is the center?”

“Our right.”

Seeing an opportunity to finish the quest That’s Not a Number, and get Sift to say the word “even,” Ruwen asked about the other groups. “What about the distance between us and the groups on the snail line?”

Sift glanced at both. “They’re the same.”

“You sure? They’re exactly—”

Ruwen waved his hand as if searching for the right word.

Sift frowned at Ruwen. “Your brain fog is back. You should stop adding points to Intelligence. I think your brain is getting too thick to talk.”

“I just want to make sure they are the same distance,” Ruwen said, trying one more time.

Sift glanced both directions again and turned back to Ruwen. “They’re equal.”

“Thanks,” Ruwen said, hiding his disappointment.

Ruwen placed his back to the snail line and turned his body until it pointed just a couple of feet to the right of the group in front of them. He had learned long ago that the midpoint of a line between two points on a circle pointed at the circle’s center when viewed from the midpoint of the arc between those two points.

Tracing an imaginary line from Ruwen’s position, past the group of Adepts in front of him, he found a large cypress tree. Keeping his eyes on the tree, he spoke to Sift. “I’d like you to stay in this exact spot. When I reach the next marker, I’ll use your position and mine to draw a line and pick a new marker. Then I’ll signal you to come to my current location. We should stay on track if we do that.”

“Got it.”

Ruwen and Sift did this for the next hour and then repeated the line calculations. The snail lines had become noticeably tighter, their arcs more pronounced, confirming they had chosen the right direction. Seventy-five minutes later, they found the center, along with Rung One.

Unlike the rest of the swamp, the center’s water remained clear, the bottom visible. Visible in the section that wasn’t covered in snakes anyway.

“Why is it always snakes,” Ruwen muttered.

During the Apprentice trial eighteen months ago, Ruwen had battled an entire bamboo forest of vipers. Most of them had reached an impressive size. The snakes visible on the water’s surface here ranged in size from worms to thinner than his pinky, with lengths from his hand to longer than his arm. After a moment of consideration, he decided these smaller versions were worse.

The clear water stretched a hundred feet across, the dark snails stood out on the surface and their slow spiral to the center was easy to see. They were close enough to see the snails reach the center and turn, beginning their spiral back to the swamp outskirts.

Two members of Rung One stood in bamboo cages no more than twenty feet from the shore, the water up to their armpits. Two more members of Rung One lay unconscious on an island thirty feet away. Echo and the remaining two Adepts of Rung One sat next to their unconscious team members.

The two Adepts with Echo stood and waved at Ruwen and his group. Echo continued to study the water, but she spoke under her breath, knowing his Diamond Fortified hearing would catch her voice.

“Took you long enough,” Echo said.

Echo Fortification remained in Emerald and Topaz, but her body was still Gem and Ruwen knew she would hear his voice even if he spoke softly.

Under his breath, Ruwen responded. “We took the scenic route. It looks like you have a problem.”

The two Adepts with Echo moved toward Ruwen and the larger group. They tried to get Echo to come along but she remained sitting.

“Nothing I won’t figure out. You won’t beat me again.”

Ruwen turned his gaze from Echo and studied the snake-filled surface. Bamboo shoots covered the bottom and from the trapped Adepts, he guessed any disturbance caused them to snap upward, trapping whatever moved above them.

“This is not a competition,” Ruwen whispered.

“The token prize begs to differ.”

“This isn’t about tokens, and you know it.”

Ruwen felt the pressure wave as Echo turned her head toward him and he met her gaze, the thirty feet between seemed both an impassable gulf and irrelevant to their Diamond capabilities. With the slightest effort, Echo could have leaped the distance and attacked him before anyone nearby, except for Sift, could react.

The perfectly round lake had no trees and the breeze high above, finding a hole in the swamp’s defenses, swirled, mixing the rank deadness of the swamp with the clean scent of rain. It cooled his skin and he enjoyed the sensation of something other than heat and oversaturated air.

“Are you sure?” Echo asked. “Philosophy can’t shatter an enemy’s throat or gouge their eyes out. In the end, will the Clan judge your philosophy or your Steps?”

“Can you have one without the other?”

“Infernal hells you sound just like my—”

Echo cut her response short, but Ruwen knew her family well enough to finish her thought. He reminded her of Lalquinrial, her father. When Ruwen had faced Echo’s father in the Infernal Realm, he had been shockingly philosophical even if it did skew toward crazy. Echo’s mother, the Plague Siren that wanted nothing more than Ruwen’s long painful death didn’t give the impression she cared much for thinking and definitely did way more than just skew toward crazy.

The two Adepts from Rung One arrived and Ruwen focused on them. They pointed to the unconscious Adepts near Echo and explained one had tried to outswim the snakes, but quickly found out this didn’t work. The second passed out Adept had tried to float on their back with just their nose poking out, hoping the snakes would think it was just a snail. They hadn’t and he’d been bitten on the nose.

The current in the water had quickly pushed both bodies back to the shore. The Rung One Adepts yelled to their trapped companions, who responded they were not in any pain, just uncomfortable from being stuck in the same position for so long.

The Rung One Adepts described how one of their trapped teammates had tried walking along the bottom and the second, seeing the results of the first, had swum underwater but avoided touching the bottom. It didn’t matter, the bamboo had triggered as soon as it felt a disturbance.

Everyone remained silent as they processed the information. If you couldn’t walk, swim, or float there, what did that leave? He wondered if jumping there would work, although that required a Gem body to cross the distance which almost none of the Adepts had. That made it unlikely as a solution. Out of curiosity Ruwen picked up a branch the length of his forearm and tossed it lightly at the center.

As it crossed the distance, snake after snake leaped upward and sank their fangs into the wood. The branch fell well short of the center, taken down by all the snakes hanging off it. A person would be filled with venom and unconscious before they struck the water. Unless that person had skin impervious to a snake bite.

Ruwen studied Echo. She would have obviously thought of this solution. Had she already tried? Knowing she would likely give him an elbow if he asked her directly, he queried the two Adepts. They explained when Echo pulled the unconscious Adepts from the water she had brushed their skin.

It turned out the venom spread through the body and trace amounts covered their skin, likely from pores, and would incapacitate anyone that came in contact with it. It had taken Echo ten minutes to recover from the tiniest brush.

Ruwen thanked the Adepts and returned his focus to the submerged chest fifty feet away. The snails wound their way around the clear water, the spiral this close to the center fully visible. The snakes swam between the snails but left them alone. He assumed the bamboo didn’t trigger because the snails remained on the surface.

Ruwen had no idea how to reach the chest.

“I have an idea,” Sift said.

Ruwen winced. “Let’s hear it.”

“We tie a rope around your waist. Then you jump. Best case the snakes and their venom can’t hurt you. You grab the chest and we pull you to safety.”

“What’s the worst case?” Ruwen asked.

Sift shrugged. “You pass out, but hopefully not before you shove the chest into your pants.”

“My pants?”

“Or your shirt. I can’t plan everything.”

“And you call my ideas bad?”

“What? That’s a good plan.”

Ruwen frowned. “Let’s call that a last resort. I don’t think the Founders envisioned people throwing their brothers and sisters into a lake like some kind of snake bait.”

“No throwing. You jump. You’re too heavy to throw. Should I explain it again?”

Ruwen held up his hands. “Dear Uru, no. Give me a minute to think of something else.”

Everyone studied the clear water, snails, snakes, and chest. Ruwen turned his attention to the two Adepts trapped in the bamboo cages. One had tried to swim on the surface and the other underwater, but both had triggered the traps just past the first snail line. Something bothered him about that and it took another minute to understand why.

The Adepts hadn’t triggered the bamboo shoots under the snails, only when they passed them.

A frigid spear pierced his mind, as his Cleverness attribute put all the information together.

Ruwen cleared his throat and everyone faced him. “Prythus, you described the water in the swamp as the boundary between active growth and passive death. You likened it to the energy created by doing the Viper Steps and the release of that energy completing the Bamboo forms.”

Prythus nodded and Ruwen continued. “We make it to the chest and we find concrete examples of your theory. Vipers on the surface, bamboo on the bottom, and the water between them.”

Ruwen looked at the distant Echo, who he knew listened intently. “The philosophy embedded in the Steps laid out before us. But how does that help us reach the token?” He paused for a moment before continuing. “How did we find this place to begin with?”

“The snails,” Nymthus said.

“Yes,” Ruwen said. “And I thought at first they had served their purpose. They are the obvious clue. Hard and soft in a spiral pattern that eventually became apparent.”

Everyone remained silent and Echo turned her head to watch Ruwen as well.

“All the components are here,” Ruwen said. “Viper above, bamboo below, and a creature of hard and soft leading you like a literal road to the prize.”

“Will you just spill it already,” Sift said.

“I just wanted to emphasize the worth of philosophy,” Ruwen said without looking at Echo.

Ruwen glanced around the Adepts. “Before training with the Steps, I could maybe hold my breath for thirty seconds. But the meditation and controlled breathing strengthened my lungs, and yours. Breathing is also about balance. We breathe out when striking or throwing, and in while recovering.” He turned to Prythus. “How long can you hold your breath now, as an Adept?”

Prythus thought a moment. “At least five minutes.”

Ruwen nodded and looked back at the swamp. “Exactly so. I believe all of us here could manage that. Our training has ensured it.”

Nymthus pointed to the two Adepts from Rung One. “But one of theirs tried swimming underwater. It didn’t work.”

Ruwen pointed to the two trapped Adepts. “Look closely. It didn’t work once they passed the snail line.”

Three seconds later a loud splash caused everyone to turn toward Echo. She had dived into the water and immediately turned to follow the line of snails on the water’s surface. They watched as she swam around the chest in a slowly closing spiral until, three minutes later, she reached the chest.

Echo grabbed the chest and continued following the trail the snails had created. Now, after reaching the center, they turned and began the journey out toward the swamp’s edges. Another three minutes and Echo spiraled out enough to escape the bamboo shoots on the swamp’s bottom.

Echo stepped out of the water, her clothes sticking to her lean body. Ruwen knew the swim had been trivial for her. With a Gem body, she didn’t need to breathe. As soon as the chest cleared the water, the bamboo cages withdrew, as did all the tiny snakes.

“Why did you talk so much?” Sift asked. “You could have just gone and got it.”

Ruwen turned from Sift and looked at Echo. She stared at the chest, her face a mixture of happiness and misery.

“Now we lost,” Sift said, disappointment in his voice.

Ruwen turned from Echo and faced Sift. He smiled at his best friend. “Only if you wanted the chest.”

Sift looked confused, but before he could respond, Ruwen clapped, and soon the other Adepts joined him. Joy replaced most of the sadness on Echo’s face, but a hint remained.

Ruwen opened his map, found the Fortress, and strode toward it, a grin on his face. It felt good to win.