I came out into the lower storerooms of the Hall of Sages of the lugians, with Junzun, an older lugian who had worked here as a caretaker and knew the entire place like the back of his hand, tasked to assist me.
He had brought along two assistants, there to provide extra hands and access more areas more quickly. His white facial Tats almost shone in the dim light down here as I looked at this particular room full of records.
The lugians didn’t use paper for their records, they used fine metal or stone. That naturally meant the records were much harder to make, but they also lasted a very long time without incident, and not much was going to be capable of destroying them. Being heavy was a feature, not a drawback here, indicating age and solemnity.
This area here was filled with some of the older records, things copied over from the homelands, remembered and committed down to gold, silver, or copper, or perhaps sheets of flexible crystal or obsidian. They didn’t need to be referenced, because they were all about the history of things well-established in the trades, like different cooling methods for metals, different carving techniques for stone, or different tanning techniques for hides.
With the main techniques themselves still in use and not needing to go looking for improvements, these records languished in the shadows, kept faithfully if the sages needed to go and look back at what had been done before, the results, and see if there was some other road that might be more promising that had not been covered already.
I could feel the presence of alien magic nearby. There were at least three virindi in the building, who had been going through the lugian records constantly and efficiently, seemingly focusing on the lugian studies of mineral veins, their surprising regrowth, and the interactions with the ley lines that might be involved with the process.
I gathered they didn’t know enough about the mortal plane here to realize that veins of metals and minerals regenerating and growing as if they were organic was actually NOT something that was normal at all. Standard forging techniques were also completely alien to them, judging by their robes, scythes, and the Weapons they’d supplied the Gotrok and Hea for their services. None of such things had been cast or hammered into shape using traditional methods, at all.
That said, they obviously had ways of looking at the world and methods suitable for those ways that allowed them to do some pretty damn strange things to normal materials. There was little doubt that part of what they were going to do here was arrange for some magically-formed exotic materials of some kind or another to be formed here, the old mines under the city saving them tons of time in establishing a Formation to do so.
These virindi I was going to kill. They never received visitors, only leaving occasionally to report to their seniors and then returning. Thus, popping them would only leave a quiet hole in the local hivemind that would likely not even be noticed until a check-in time passed, and even then probably wouldn’t be investigated if there weren’t other things to worry about.
By then, we’d be long gone, and the evacuation of the city mostly complete.
“Start gathering crates to divide the records among, and a suitable room to set up the Tapestry,” I told the retired sage, handing off the roll of cloth to one of his aides. He waved me off with bright eyes, and his second assistant, a rather thin and oddly energetic younger lugian named Morimur, led me quickly through the chambers and ramps towards where the virindi had ensconced themselves.
The lugians did have their Casters of magic, but few of them had remained in the city. Only the oldest, who the Gotrok largely wouldn’t bother, stayed behind to take care of the needs of the people, while the active generation had left with King Kresovus when the Fall came and the Gotrok clans stormed in to take everything.
Their king had shown his uncompromising support for those wielding magic and forging magical items, even when the products of such arts had, in the end, even taken his own weapon arm from him. Given the Gotrok disdain for magical arts, and arrogance over the Making and Mining traditions, Kresovus’ undying support of the sages of his people had won him the unstinting backing of the lugian Casters. Indeed, the next generation of lugians was their largest class of Casters ever, the lugians standing firm in the face of adversity and clinging to the teachings of their ancestors.
That the virindi were plundering all the work and secrets that the lugians had discovered since coming to Dereth enraged the sages the same way that them using the weapons of famous fallen warriors would enrage the Gotrok. That I was going to strike back against them was a huge thing for them, and spiriting their tediously-won knowledge out and away from the city before it fell was as great a feat for them as conquering an enemy keep might be for others.
Behind me, the Mass Disks I’d summoned up after pulling on power from Kris were being loaded down with heavy tomes of non-paper, pushed towards the room where the large cloth that would comprise the Tapestry that the spell would make was spread out, and the records were being set down upon it.
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The records were large and heavy, and despite there being but three generations of them at most, they were still going to take up a lot of room. Happily, that did not matter for the spell. Once it was Cast, they would all be reduced to a picture upon the Tapestry, and it could be transported readily anywhere, or even Itemized itself to an even smaller form for transport.
Everything was coming together, we just needed the virindi gone from the top floors so that we could empty them, as well.
As I walked through the place, I looked at everything, and I painted it all into Visual File, and into The Map. Like the city, I expected the statues and carvings of sages and elders to be destroyed, their works erased by devastation and war… but as long as their names and accomplishments lived on, that would be enough for their descendants, and, I knew, for the ancestors who wanted their people to have a better life than they had.
I could recreate it all with a Permanent Illusion if I needed to, as could anyone who beheld it in the Map.
I didn’t have the time to see everything and everywhere, or at least, that was what it seemed. But a Wizard Eye didn’t need to follow me, and Mira was on that task, zipping the little thing through the place, looking at all the walls and ceilings and floors, impressing every sight into the Visual File, room after room filled with myriad designs of crystalline, liquid, and fiery lights, art that spoke to the soul of magic and the secrets held here… and all the failures that had led to the knowledge that became common use and was spread through their people, bettering their lives.
They would be remembered.
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It was a Virindi Consul in a bright red, severely cut robe, with two Masters aiding it and following orders. I waited patiently until all three of them were together before swinging into the room they were in and lighting them up.
The Chained Slash Vuln was probably overkill, but I didn’t care. The Arcane Fusion went off, delivered my Shards as a Split Ray with a heaping of Silver Whirling Blade on top of it, and the Consul was literally shredded into dozens of crystalline red fragments, going poof as it was torn apart, and its Master underlings were blasted and shredded in similar fashion.
Vivus reduced most of them to dust before it could hit the ground.
“Keep what they were examining to their own crates, we’ll try to deduce more once we pull out,” I instructed Morimur, who was trying to hide how impressed he was that I could take down three powerful Virindi so fast. Some of the Disks that had been following me were parked in the room to take the tomes and ledgers the virindi had brought here and left heaped neatly if dismissively off to the side.
“As you command, Lady Magos!” the lugian historian bowed to me, and bent to his task quickly.
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The next hour was a combination of touring the rooms of the place and heaving heavy tomes via Zeks’ Telekinesis onto Disks, running the set back to Morimus, who hustled them all downstairs, where the other lugians stacked them up on the tapestry.
Soon enough the tomes were stacked more than ten feet high, and the lugians were even using Disks as steps to place new tomes higher. Crates formed corner posts and divisions as the tomes were systematically put in place in the best order possible, and the lugians worked with the tireless endurance and strength of their kind to succor the past of their people.
The first alarm horn going off in the distance was not unexpected. It was almost noon, so this had proved to be wildly successful. The alarms also meant it was time for what elders who could to leave, and those who couldn’t should make their way to the exit to the city in due time, prepared to flee if given the opportunity, even though the Gotrok had sealed the gates.
After all, they knew what was coming, and the Gotrok probably didn’t want to die, either.
There was another cruel fact circulating, too.
Muldaveus and his commanders had already left the city, ostensibly to investigate the news of the Isparians pressing from the east, leaving only the most ill-trained, belligerent, and undisciplined members of the Gotrok behind.
Gotrok who were also prone to believe the words of hundreds of their elders shouting at them that the virindi were going to destroy the city, and they had to get out of there!
Elder Junzun led his aides into the tunnels, towing twoscore and more elders on the Disks, which had no better purpose than transporting them and some precious items from the place. The Tapestry of the Hall of Sages’ Failures was in my Masspack, as safe there as anywhere, and I began to close tunnels around the city so they could not be found as the last of those who were going to use them passed through.
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Tukora Jigbril of the Kahruiin Clan was an arrogant, contemptuous son of an ancient warrior clan, known for hard drinking, hard fighting, and willingness to die in battle. He also had very little restraint for his tongue, regularly cursing loyalists, Isparians, his fellow Gotrok, any clans not vassaled to his own, magic, the virindi, and anything else that came to mind with little hesitation.
Looking down at hundreds of elders drawn up before the gates to the city, little more than sacks of food and water and the clothes on their backs with them, calling up to him to be let outside, was a situation beyond his limited care or imagination.
The problem was that his immediate superior was already out of Linvak Tukal, and so the decision on what to do devolved to him.
He had been ordered to keep the city closed to all except Gotrok forces and supplies moving in or out of it… supplies that had been growing noticeably thinner by the day. He was pretty sure that the stores of the city would only last another day or two before the food ran out, and would probably cause an immediate riot.
The news that the mining forces had vanished from the mines, save for those trusties and overseers who’d been clubbed unconscious and left behind, had him gripping his axe in fear and excitement that an attack was imminent, and he could finally enjoy his true calling.