“You have brought out the true treasures of our people in saving our people,” King Kresovus stated bluntly. “The succoring of our records was a wonderful supplement to that feat, and all of my people thank you for it,” the lugian monarch continued nodding to me.
“The sages and Makers are already at work setting them in their new home, Your Majesty,” I replied firmly.
I’d already been back to the Vesayans, my lived-line extending across the waters after being towed across it a few times by Kris, and thus allowing me to Teleport across the Vesayan Channel and skip any irritable aquatics there, as well as not needing to use the Big Jump at Fort Outlook.
The sages there had been waiting soberly there for me, a whole area to the side of the city of untouched stone ready for me.
They had followed me as I had looked at the stone, and it began to Shape itself into a twin of the Hall of Failures. They had followed as I hollowed out the stone carefully and precisely, matching reality to the image in my Visual File, recreating the sculptures, the statues, the monuments, the carved words and images in exacting detail, if not color or type of stones.
That was the job of the Makers. But I would give them the models to work from and towards, to limn and inlay, to work with tool and hands what I was doing with magic, and give the stone a soul my precise but emotionless work just didn’t have.
It was just a reproduction, not something made with the magical significance of an artist.
But when it was done, they had a new Hall of Failures, based on the old one, but one ready to be customized and added to and contributed to by the artisans and sages of the people.
Also, lots of room for the tables needed to start surveying the tomes and records the virindi were investigating.
“I do not know how important it is, but I am sure they will continue failing until they get to the truth of the matter. If the virindi were still looking, that means they did not find what they were looking for… which means either it does not exist, or they did not look hard enough.
“The virindi’s outlook on the world is very different as beings of energy bound into a hivemind structure. It is likely that what they seek is not something any of us know of… but they are not expecting to find that.”
The lugians looked at one another sharply. “They are seeking our failures and charting them,” King Kresovus growled, as the sages there all nodded slowly.
“Many, many failures, saving them a great deal of time along whatever lines of inquiry they are pursuing. Their expertise in material sciences might be vast, but in the materials here… perhaps not so much.” I shrugged slightly. “We shall see, shall we not?”
“I confess to a delight that at least some of what they learned was lost when you vivified their scholars,” he admitted with a laugh that was anything but funny. “Now we-”
The tent rocked around us, the floor jumping in a sudden jolt that definitely was not an earthquake. Kris and I were on Disks and so unaffected, but the standing lugians were bounced right from their feet, and shouts, exclamations and crashings indicated that the pulse had definitely rattled just about everything. Even King Kresovus was almost bounced off his seat, but he had recovered with seasoned reflexes, down in a three-point stance against the afterwaves coming through, a stance rapidly matched by the lugians around, locking their muscles and in effect being bounced around but not being turned over.
Kris was already heading out the door, dragging me with her.
“Six hours early?” I asked her, over the crashings and shoutings from the soldiers and civilians about. Most of the civilians had already been hurried off towards the Vesayans, and few were inside the chambers I’d hollowed out for them… but I’d made them with the idea of stability, so there was no chance they’d collapse.
That wasn’t true for some of the neighboring hills and mounts, where stone slabs started sliding, knocking other stones loose and beginning the process of launching avalanches down the mountainsides.
We were in the lee of the almost vertical slopes to the south of Linvak Tukal, so there was little chance of such a thing endangering us, although the mountains around us were in motion, stone like streams of ants racing down them. Some weakened stones and even a hundred-foot facing of the nearby mountain let go at the pulse, cascading down the slope, but they weren’t going to be much threat to the camp here, located a good distance from that wall.
“Up top?” Kris asked quickly, looking up at the top of that facing. Like her, I swept my eyes across it, noting a couple sections had fallen free.
Notably, not a damn Gotrok was visible up there.
I pressed at the Veil automatically before trying anything. “No. The Veil is being stretched right now. I’d rather stay my normal dimensions right now. Run it.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She hadn’t really slowed down, so now she turned on the afterburners and headed for the thousand-foot facing of the mountain at full speed.
When you’re a Hag with Rising and Racing Winds taking dual advantage of Hotfoot going uphill, that’s impressively fast.
Things were still falling down the neighboring mounts, and we had to avoid some bouncing boulders and rocks as we headed up. She didn’t slow down as she transitioned to the vertical, and zipped up against gravity, the mists around her heels transitioning to burning flames and literally lifting her towards the sky, not slowing down in the slightest.
A minute after we’d left the camp we were over the edge, pivoting through a 270 degree turn and heading for the edge of the slope down.
We could already see the dust cloud that hadn’t been visible from down in the valley behind us, however. Stuff like that, all pulsing virindi purple and shot through with flashes of whiteness chewing away happily at the alien energies, were hard to miss.
So was the line of Gotrok sentries standing up there, watching what was beyond.
Well, it wasn’t like we were afraid of them.
Kris ran right up between two of them, and we got a good look for ourselves.
The entire side of Mount Tukal there was gone, as was most of the peak and the interior of the place.
Where the city used to be was a massive glowing pit going down a long way, seething purplish energies warring with hungry white mists chewing patiently at them as they tried to surge up from below, and were visibly slowing in doing so.
More mists surged both along and up from crevasses and fissures extending out from the new crater there, presumably along mining paths and tunnels already existing and blown out by the explosion.
Irradiated, glowing dust and rocks doing battle with hungry unwhite mist that was only growing as we watched now covered most of the mountainsides and valley below.
One of the sentries finally noticed we were up there. “Hey! Stunties!” he blurted out immediately, and they all turned their startled eyes on us.
“Don’t,” Kris stated, not taking her eyes off the scene below. “That white mist devouring the purple virindi shit is because of us, and so is the fact most of the city got out so quickly. Don’t you think you’ve done enough stupid shit to start more of it?”
Her accent in their language was exquisite, and the punctuation of Quaver coming out just an inch with ding! clearly audible to them all was enough to give them all second thoughts on starting something.
They knew what that one note meant. I saw mouths open and mutters of ‘Tremble, she comes…’ pop out under the breath of a few of them as they recognized us both, but especially her.
Isparians who could pick up and toss lugians around like children were very impressive, and females who could do it even rarer. As they were ideologically devoted to the arts of war, Princess Kristie had rapidly forced them to respect who and what she was.
“What do you want here, Isparian?” the first one to notice us growled, lowering his morningstar, plainly not in the mood to start a fight with us now.
“I want to know why that explosion took place twelve hours earlier than it was going to,” she growled.
The sentry looked down at the ruin of the place, and even drew himself up higher. “The Tukora.”
That was enough to earn our attention. “Those dumbshits finally acted like a Tukora was supposed to?” Kris demanded to know, her gaze no less hard, but also not so hostile.
The lugians bridled at the words, but the sentry went on. “Commander Jigbril called together all the Tukora and anyone else who wanted to take vengeance for the dead elders slaughtered before us. They pulled out from the armory Weapons made to kill the virindi, harbored for just such a time as this, and he led them off the walls and into the workings of the virindi.”
Kris said nothing back to that for a moment, merely scowling down at the devastation below for long seconds. “I expect the slates to be delivered to King Kresovus before the morning, or we will come looking for them.”
All of the lugians bridled again at that, and the sentry scowled back at her. “What slates are you speaking of?” he demanded to know.
“The slates naming the elders who had to die to get your attention, and the lugians who died like lugian warriors should, to be interred in the Hall of Ancestors as the heroes and martyrs they all are.” She glared right into his flinty eyes, and I was not surprised when he was the first to look away. “Let’s see if this was the lesson finally needed to teach the Gotrok some wisdom… or if the children have to die next time, too.”
None of the Gotrok could muster up a rebuttal to that, looking down there and knowing that if we hadn’t gotten them all out, hundreds of lugian women and children would have died as well.
“Was it worth it?”
The question turned her head as she started to head back. “What?” she asked curtly.
“They were going to destroy everything. Was destroying it early the right thing to do?” the lugian growled, desperate for an explanation to believe in, and not knowing where to get it.
Kris looked down at the devastation, and almost sneered. “Let us ignore that they did what a Tukora is meant to do, and were ready to sell their lives for the honor and safety of the all the lugian clans and their peoples.
“The virindi didn’t get out of there. They had to detonate their device or see it ruined. That didn’t concern them, as they would just rejoin their Quiddity if their construct bodies were destroyed.
“But the vivus took them, as it is taking whatever they decided to do here. Your Tukora, whether they personally took them down or not, threatened them enough they blew the Formation early, and killed themselves, too.
“Your Deathstone was down in the city. I imagine right this moment, if I kill you, you will also die forever, as you could do to me. The virindi also thought they had a Deathstone… and they did not, and now they have paid for it.
“All the virindi who did this are dead, and your Tukora drove them to it, even if the vivus we planted allowed it. We would have stopped what they are trying to do, but the virindi themselves would have gotten away.
“Fighting to the death to bring justice and death to the guilty. The highest ideals of the Tukora since ancient times.
“I will see those slates tomorrow.”
The lugians said nothing as she headed downslope, leisurely gliding at least twice as fast as they could run, and hopped over the edge with my Disk trailing her without the slightest hesitation.
They had things to think about.