“There’s a Ward under this bridge. It’s quite big, and quite powerful. The columns of the bridge serve as anchors for the Shoreward out there. It actually flows under the bridge...”
Princess Kristie Rantha whistled low. “I thought there might be a subterranean river, eating most of the water pressure...”
“Yes. The stonework here is old and strong, self-regenerating, still tapping the ley lines. I imagine all the extra power that fed into it was just dispersed into the Ward for a time. It’s stopping whatever might move up and down the river from doing so.”
“So... those sleeches and remoras and whatever,” Kris nodded. “Possibly blocking the powerful, but not the really weak?”
“Or eggs or larva or something?” I hazarded. “It also means the lake itself is probably much deeper than it appears.”
“Given how shallow the shores are, that would almost have to be a sculpted effect... which somehow does not surprise me at all,” Kris murmured, standing at the edge and looking downriver. “This whole island is starting to feel like it was put together like a child’s playground by something extremely powerful.”
“No comment.” The weather effect was obviously tied to that. “I imagine there is artificial terrain acceleration involved here, too. Multiple types in an impossibly small area, because where’s the fun in not having them all to work on?”
“Now you’re just guessing, but it’s a good guess, if this is indeed a training area.” Kris sniffed the air. “I think that’s a swamp starting to the south of us, if my nose is any indication.”
“Right where a fast-moving river should be. No, no, not messing with the ecology.” I just rolled my eyes.
“Let’s get our artificing for the day done, and move on. You didn’t detect much for salvage, did you?”
“Piddling amounts. This was a clean withdrawal, much like the first town.”
“But still no idea whereto.”
“And hey, wandering Aberrants around make me even less enthusiastic about the idea of using random Scrying to go look for people.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
“Yeah, getting blinded for impertinence is not high on my list of things to have happen to me,” I said. “Normally I could dumpster-dive for a portent or omen or something, see if we’re on the right track, or even do some rough time-sighting through Divination to find a direction, but I’m not even confident of a Commune right now.”
She glanced over at me, frowning. “That sounds ominous. Communes are generally pretty reliable, as I recall...”
“Yes, but we’ve not come across anything resembling a temple or place of worship in any of these towns.”
Her mouth opened and closed as she thought about that statement. It was indeed rather unnatural for most human settlements. “That... is very true. The gods back on Ispar likely aren’t gods at all, given that they don’t respond, and are likely just heroes and legends of the past, or beings aping them. Nobody actually draws on the gods for power unless something dire is planned. It’s just... dangerous.”
“That sounds more like Mythos stuff than gods. And I met one of them when I was incarnated into this body,” I reminded her.
“Fucking Milanteans,” Kris swore with feeling. “Poking their noses into places for power without a damn care for the consequences to others.”
“There’s no Alignment representation on Ispar, so that’s not surprising. I doubt these people got to the level they did paying heed to Alignments. Conflict tends to follow contact with valid deities.”
“Oh, how well we knew. The closest we could get to it at home was the Soul Magic, which at least showed the Color of our souls.
“Your parent’s Orders of the Silver, Gold, and Rainbow were widely admired,” I acknowledged. Known by the Colors at the edge of their Soulbound Blades, of course!
She smiled. “Yeah. That was a damn good idea by the folks. Making a Weapon that ignites with the Color of your Soul was a filter that aspirants just can’t complain about... although those who do aspire are generally Marked, so it’s all about those outside looking on and seeing something they just don’t have, for the most part.”
“There are a lot of people who don’t want to test the Sphere,” I agreed, privately amused at the idea of not knowing your soul’s Color. “They consider it a biased reading in favor of the makers’ own code of ethics, completely dismissing the idea of a greater value code. Why are their own beliefs inferior?”
“Ah, the joys of Neutral and Evil thinking. Personally, I always considered it to be fear of the truth, and being exposed for the hypocrites that they are. The Alignments don’t care what you think, only what you are. In that, they are very, very honest.”
“And you just know there’s people trying to cheat the tests.” Because spellcasters, of course. There’s a problem, try to find the magical solution, just like any smart person.
“Damn hard when you don’t acknowledge Alignments in the first place... and like Mom and Dad aren’t miles ahead of them in that area,” Kris smirked knowingly.
“No, no, there’s no way anyone would ever want to cheat their way into becoming nobles of the Empire just because they make some Tools glow in pretty colors, nopers.”
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“What do you want to do with the place the Aberrants are Warding?” the princess asked calmly, pointing at the, well, Dungeon entrance. “I can walk right through that stuff and not set it off.”
“We don’t know how nasty you are compared to the creatures here yet. I’d say go for it if we both knew, but we don’t know what is in there.
“Get some monstrous atrocity with a zillion health and martial ability, and you’re dead. Get a powerful enough chain-Caster, and even you are dead... and some of those things looked like totally powerful enough chain-Casters.”
Her face twisted. “You are, like, really dumping on my Null awesomeness against Casters, you know?”
“Says the woman who just eavesdropped on a bunch of them and got away with it without them realizing a damn thing,” I sniffed. She was somewhat mollified as I went on, “So you’ve still got to Level. Big deal. Think about the shit we’ve already seen. There’s some hilariously dangerous stuff here, and I’m not good enough to back you up properly. I want to be able to take on this shit, too, but I’m probably six months away from doing so, and that if I Level every single damn day!”
“The Isparian Leveling limits just never seemed to matter back home, and nobody Leveled Power of Ten style,” she sighed. “Ready to blow this place, then?”
“Yeah. Let’s go back, get our daily grind for Gear out of the way, and head downriver. I’m curious to what we’re going to see, with an invisible river under the river...”
------
It was... a floating red-pink crystal, a Fragment, chock full of abjuration and evocation magic. Or, to put it another way, Binding and Elemental energies, complete with self-healing/repair, hostile Bolts of Fire and Force, and animosity.
Kris hacked it apart in a shattered mess as it fell to the ground. We sat there and stared at its remains as the magical energies inside of it leaked out.
“That’s not ectoplasm,” Kris declared. “It’s more like the golums. A shell of real-world material around the magical power source inside.”
“It’s... some sort of self-regenerating magical pattern? I can’t sense any intelligence, it’s more akin to an animated object. I... think it hijacked the Summons system to restore itself?” I Sifted through the remains, saw a gleam of purity, and lifted out a pure, intact crystal from inside it, still gleaming with strange energies.
“’I think we will continue to use weird crystals to control and temper our uncontrolled random magical effects’,” Kris muttered, holding up her fingers in quote signs.
“This is the echo of a very powerful self-regenerating magical spell designed to hold or control something very powerful, repairing itself and inflicting damage upon its prisoner at the same time. I can’t imagine how nasty a prison that must have been.”
“Any uses?” Kris asked, as I tossed the intact crystal on a Disk.
“I have no idea, so maybe? If we find a lot more of them, who knows what they could power? Obviously the prison failed, and shattered the spell. It’s trying to renew itself, but it looks like it dispersed itself into the Summons grid, so that’s basically impossible. The Summons effect means it is constantly splitting up the spell into smaller pieces, instead of rejoining them.”
“Well, good news for whatever it used to trap,” Kris conceded in a dire tone.
There was a fwazap from the nearby Summons point, and a leopard-sized lizard of pale blue color materialized on it. Both Kris and I blinked at the new creature, which shook its head, blinked as well, turned to look at us, and promptly roared to the attack.
It was moving on two legs that looked like nothing less than a grasshoppers, somehow balancing its scaled body between them... and vestigial wings flapped to the attack on its shoulders, little more than useless flippers.
Kris reacted before I did, charging forward to meet it without any hesitation. Completely unafraid as it exhaled some flames from its mouth of minor strength, she batted its head aside with a crunching backfist, and then Quaver was inserted into its eye and ended all of its aggressive tendencies promptly.
It kind of whined as it collapsed to the ground, temporary life cut even shorter by an abrupt death.
“That’s an Azure Gromnie,” I reported to her, frowning. “It’s... a kind of dragon? A really young one?”
“Yeah? Well, damn fragile for a dragon,” Kris reported disparagingly.
“And the meta says...”
She winced. “There’ll be older dragons around...”
“She gets it in one! Who says the savage princess isn’t wise and insightful?”
She promptly applied knuckles to my head under my ineffectual protests. “Obviously not her faithful retainer she’s carrying around!” she stated firmly. I apologized profusely to Her Highness, we watched as the young gromnie broke apart into ectoplasm, and we were on our way again.
----
“Well, something really doesn’t want something coming up from the sea, I’m guessing.”
This was the third set of carved stone columns marching across the river that we’d seen. There was absolute no sign of this place being used as a fishery, although it would have done the job, and the elevated tops of the columns gave no sign of having supported a road atop them or anything, nor could Kris sense the fallen remains of one in the shallow waters between the columns.
The columns, however, went right down into the muck of the river’s bottom, and extended off onto the banks on both sides. I could feel the magic inside the columns, standing despite everything after thousands of years, and making damn sure nothing passed by them.
“Seems like overkill,” Kris murmured. Dusk had passed, Aethra’s Watch was on in the night, and the world was a quieter place.
Also, warmer. It was getting unduly warm for the winter season as we pressed south, and the water was doing the same thing.
“Any relation to those fumaroles?” Kris pointed at the nearest one. They were conical things, coming up out of the ground and venting particle effects into the air, glowing magical energies of yellow, green, or red motes that dissipated rapidly in the night.
We’d gone out to see how far they extended on both sides of the river, and it wasn’t far. They basically paralleled the flow itself, and not much more.