There was a cylindrical pillar in that section, right between the barghensi. It wasn’t solid stone like the other ones in the previous room; it was some kind of transparent crystalline structure. Maybe just thick glass, but I doubted I’d be that lucky.
Inside the pillar, I could see a sheathed sword floating in what looked like mid-air. At a second glance, I realized my mistake. The sword was submerged in water.
Finally, right in front of the door, an eight-foot tall bronze statue. It had six arms and each arm carried a different weapon.
Its eyes were glowing with crimson light.
Pretty sure that’s a spire guardian.
Spire guardians were deadly monsters that guarded the ways up to higher floors of the tower. I wasn’t supposed to have to face any during the Judgment. They were strong enough to fight fully trained attuned. I knew I didn’t stand a chance by myself.
Vera glanced at the slimes, then back to me. “Switch.”
I understood her meaning immediately, slipping the dueling cane into her grip and lifting the child out of her arms. I didn’t know what level of skill she had with the weapon, but it was our best chance.
Vera swept her arm across the room, rapidly tapping the button on the hilt as she moved. Blasts of force rippled out of the cane’s tip and slammed into an invisible barrier at the boundary between our section and the one in front of us.
Vera grimaced. “Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. I’ll have to get up there to take care of those. Wait here for now, yeah?”
I nodded as Vera crept ahead. She ducked at the border of one of the raised tiles and felt along the side of it. Fortunately, she didn’t press it down, but I had no idea what she was doing.
Something to do with her attunement, maybe? Some kind of trap disarming magic?
I didn’t see any visible effect when she moved away from the tile. She did something similar along the wall, putting her hand right up against one of the sides of the holes. Then, after a moment, she stuck her hand inside. She pulled it back out a moment later.
She turned her head back toward me. “Don’t step on the raised tiles.”
I’m pretty sure I could have guessed that on my own. “Right.”
Then she stepped on the tile closest to her.
She didn’t.
I stepped backward out of instinct, but it wasn’t necessary. The traps weren’t aimed at me.
A hail of arrows fired out from the holes in the wall directly in line with Vera.
She just grinned, stepped forward, and caught one of the arrows with her off-hand as they whizzed by. She tilted her head to the side after the flurry subsided, inspecting the arrow. “Yeah, these’ll do.”
Then she charged.
She leapt onto the next raised section without resistance. Apparently that barrier was only meant to stop magic, not people.
As she landed, the slimes hopped toward her with surprising speed.
She blasted the first one with the dueling cane three times, then stepped backward as it recoiled, triggering another trap.
Vera dodged the incoming arrows again. The slimes didn’t.
The arrows took care of three of them.
The sole slime she’d already bombarded wasn’t airborne, so it was low enough to the ground that it didn’t get hit. Instead, it just sort of slid across the ground toward Vera until she blasted it twice more. Then it vanished.
And the other slimes vanished along with it.
Not bad.
Vera wasn’t done, though.
She walked forward, avoiding the rest of the traps on that section, and came to rest next to the next one. “Move up,” she instructed me.
I complied quickly, but I moved slowly. Both because I was carrying someone else that was almost my size and because I really didn’t want to set off an arrow trap.
I made it to the next section without incident.
“Great.” Vera hopped onto the barghensi platform.
The barghensi charged.
Vera took a couple shots at the lead barghensi, then tried to step back down to where I was to avoid being barreled over by the still-charging monster.
That, it seemed, was not allowed.
The barrier popped into existence and she bounced off it, stumbling backward.
She managed to regain her footing, but the lead barghensi was almost on top of her.
I set the child down and dug into my pack, but I was far too slow to help.
The barghensi opened its jaws as it closed in.
Vera jumped, pressing the other switch on the dueling cane and landing on the creature’s back. It was pretty impressive, but she fell right off. Not a combat attunement indeed.
The barghensi turned as she fell, rearing up to smash down on top of her. I did the only thing I could think of to help: I threw the candle from my bag at the tile closest to them. It wasn’t very heavy, but I hoped...
The trap triggered.
Vera, still on the floor, was still too low for the arrows to hit her. The barghensi, standing tall, was not so lucky.
In seconds, the first barghensi was riddled with arrows. It fell backward rather than forward and stilled as it struck the ground.
The second barghensi, however, was unharmed.
Vera rolled as it approached, avoiding its charge, and jammed the blade of the dueling cane into its side. The creature roared, turning toward her... and she fired a blast of mana into its open mouth.
The creature shuddered and collapsed, lifeless.
Vera pushed herself to her feet. “Thanks for the assist there. That’d have been a lot messier otherwise.”
My eyes were fixed on the second barghensi’s corpse, and my hand drifted up toward my throat. I wondered what it felt like to swallow a blast like that.
I shook it off. “Glad to help. Can you get back down now that those things are dead?”
She tested it. She could. “Guess we can probably move freely in and out of any section we’ve cleared.”
I pointed at the kid. “Should I put him back at the entrance and help you with that guy, then?” I indicated the bronze statue. “He looks pretty mean.”
It might have been my imagination, but I was pretty sure it turned its head toward us when I said that.
That was disconcerting.
“Not sure if that’s a good idea... you still don’t have an attunement. But I’m not going to refuse help if you insist.”