Corvayne glided through what looked to him like stone buildings laced with light, hover bike following a raised strip of marked stone that guided hover traffic through the developing city. Ahead, a black statue of Lythandies nurturing a sapling against her bosom acted as his main navigation landmark and his eventual goal. The sun was still low in the sky, just starting to crest the wastes.
Source Town was something new, so he wanted to see it first hand. It was clear that some magic was going into the structures, with large blue channels threaded like glowing blue veins from the central stone. Mosh had rebuilt the juggernaut and was using it as his home outside the impressive cathedral to Lythandies they had built from the black crystals. It's obsidian gleam caught the edge of the rising sun like a burning knife.
Even this early, there were figures moving about town. It seemed Mosh had recruited from high planes tribes, the empire, and more then a few of what looked like races from the tower itself, though given their clothes and large packs or beasts of burden Corvayne suspected some were in fact traders.
Preshe was in the seat behind him, with Gylwin and Spears riding the next bike back. Bell and Lady Blood Claw took up the rear, gliding at a relaxed pace over the streets. A few of the shops had clatter as they prepared breakfast, and Corvayne was tempted by the smell of cooked meats to stop and savor, but he also knew Mosh had been keeping busy. Thus he with great resolve glided past the sounds and smells of sizzling grills to float to the 'parkland' around the great spire of black rock.
It was still a mystery how he had created crystals that had persisted through a time change. As far as he understood, everything should have been wiped clean when they reset after his unfortunate decapitation. He also doubted that even with Varia helping with earth magic they would have developed the town so quickly. Only a small part of him, perhaps nurtured from hanging around with Wick for so long, wanted to know exactly what was going on that made this spot persist. Most of him guessed that it would be a long explanation that wouldn't enlighten him on principals he could apply to anything else. After all, he felt like he was benefiting from the loop pulling him back from death.
The giant truck, Juggernaut (2?) was parked near a few other dwellings made for 'staff' of the cathedral. Corvanye set the bike down in a spot nearby, close enough to see the arches that had been shaped into the black stone, but not in a position to go in or disrupt the figures following the road from town to go pray to Lythandies.
Mosh opened the cargo hatch on the truck as they dismounted and waved them over. Corvayne had seen the now jet-black scales that covered most of his skin, but it still struck him that his friend was no longer green. “Boss! Finally you came out! How do you like the place?”
“I hope Lythandies likes obsidian as a color.”
“Eh, I think getting her toes onto a new universe has her pretty dang happy with me. Also, there's a floor with white pearl coral that grows slowly in air we're excavating and using to add contrast and detailing. It's a long project, probably going to take twenty years or so.”
He gestured to a pair of railways someone had laid to the source. Varia no doubt smoothed the ground and made shallow bridges over the water. A group of white clad figures were pushing a cart, armed with obvious high tech guns as well as red and blue metal spears. He could see heat distortion around the blue spear heads.
He turned back to the work in progress that had turned a jagged porcupine of black crystal into a statue of the goddess. “You don't think resets are going to mess it up?”
“You know the domain system? Like how ya lawn now tells you people are on it? I think this place is yours too, or somebodies. The weather is more mild close to it now, and look, the rivers are starting to grow plants again... in nearly a perfect circle around this joint.”
Bell sniffed. “You could take some lessons from the fake monk about appearing to be a real holy man.”
“Whatever toots. Cmon in I finished Preshe's hand.”
The truck was more of a workshop, Mosh having cut back on the cargo area as he was able to made rudimentary storage objects. Everything now was organized with cubbies that had backpacks in them, each of them holding about the size of a large crate in perhaps 1/64th the space. The bags and slots had labels. Mosh's workshop now resembled a small factory, with rollers and stations that looked like a spot to refine, a spot to shape, and a paint splattered area that he supposed was finishing. The smell of some sort of oil mixed with burnt copper lingered in the air, mixed with a sharp lemon smell he suspected was the green liquid barrels set up at each station. [[Understanding]] pointed him to the burnt rims around them, and splatters of green around the spots they were at. Probably some sort of fire or explosion protocol.
The hand itself was sitting on the center table, put on a small wood box and under a light to make sure that it's nearly serpentine scales showed up. Preshe gasped at it.
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“It looks so nice Uncle Mosh... I don't think I've earned it.”
“Kid, if life gives you lemons, take them.” Mosh pulled it off the table and gestured for her to come over.
Preshe looked to Corvayne, and he nodded. She had been working hard, and while she was sneaking off once in a while (whenever she could) to go on adventures, she was as bright and responsible a charge as anyone could ask for. She reached over to her wood arm and twisted then pulled on it, the magic appendage coming off with a small pop. She hid her faded salmon colored stump for a moment, then saw that Mosh was gesturing for her to put her arm on the table.
“Put it so your hand will be facing up.” He said, then guided the black artifact to her. A black and green hand with well clipped nails rubbed something on the wrist, and little black shards snaked out. Preshe gasped, then there was a click.
Mosh held up a finger, then twisted the hand a little. He put a screwdriver on the table. “Pick it up.”
She did, then frowned and looked at the hand. “Twist it, uh, what's the word? With the clock.”
Mosh made two other little adjustments before she nodded and he tapped something on it. She hissed a little, but then made the hand flex and wiggled the fingers.
Preshe looked up. “I owe you-”
Mosh stood up. “Nope! Corvayne is a literal money machine. And he'd never ask you to pay a cent back, even if he wasn't.”
Corvayne nodded. “You are a good kid even after having a bad hand.”
Spears clapped, and soon everyone was. Preshe looked bewildered, but hugged Mosh then Corvayne and wiggled her new fingers more, then crushed a soda can.
Spears cleared her throat. “Also, since we are at Mosh's....” She reached under the table and pulled out a cardboard box, then opened it, rustling plastic as she pulled out a plastic wrapped green piece of cloth and handed it to Corvayne.
He accepted it, and saw it was a shirt with something in yellow on it. Unwrapping it, he held it out.
“Spear Bearers?”
“We need a name for our group, and me and someone else-”
Lady Blood Claw rolled her eyes while saying, “I wonder who.”
“Decided they liked the name. Wick agreed too since we're pushing forward.”
“I like the colors at least, though it would be better with black and brown.” Corvayne said as he looked it over. “I won't be able to wear it with armor though...”
Preshe was already carefully getting her horns through the neck of the shirt and pulled it on over her heavily enchanted plain t-shirt. Spears gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up. Bell took the shirt and made a neck scarf out of it to avoid messing up her business dress.
“I'm guessing you want him to hand out a bunch to his class?”
“Of course! We passed out a bunch to old town too.”
Corvayne had a weird feeling Spears had set something into motion far larger then just handing out shirts, especially since he saw there were lots and lots of boxes of them. “You ordered them?”
Spears laughed. “Cost less then a thousand gold pieces. Though the next order is probably going to be much much more expensive, though we'll be able to probably barter for magic items instead.”
Bell was less amused. “That's part of why I've been working late! We need to be ready with something else so that we don't end up with overgrown ruins.”
Mosh gestured to Corvayne. “You haven't paid any attention to what our man has shown!”
Corvayne felt confused. “What did I show?”
Mosh nudged him in the ribs. “You know! Getting strong as hell off low floors! We've basically cracked that there's got to be something down here on big ol' zero! Think of it like a game-”
“I never play games.”
“You need to. Anyway, there's got to be a reason for floor zero aside from just the starting point. You know, that the starting point is also the end point?”
Corvayne didn't get it. “I don't play games, but I see it sometimes in stories that things go in a loop. We are stuck in a loop, or I should say we are marching through one. There's been progress.” He looked at his make-shift family and smiled.
Lady Blood Claw was thinking about it. “The Magus never went into Towers from what I saw. So perhaps there's something to that idea.”
Mosh picked up a box of shirts. “Of course there is! At the very least, to go to the top of the Tower, I bet you also need to have somewhere to go back to. See, that's why I'm here, and it's why you are teaching gym class. We got places we gotta go, I mean, my story is eventually I'll find my way back to the HAF, and you, well, you're going to your village someday to confront your father-”
Mosh's words reminded him to pick up the jerk a black mask with raspy breathing noises.
“But also that you are meeting people from your past, you know. You told me that thing, right Boss?”
Preshe stood straight. “A spear moves forward!” She proudly proclaimed, louder and more confidently then Corvayne was used to the girl being.
“Attagirl! Well, it's likely going to be a fight, because nothing in life is easy. So is stepping back, right, and doing good rather then just climbing and trying to grasp every power.”
Lady Blood Claw snorted a little. “But we are doing that in a different way. The curses are battled by expanding. We still need to eventually go upwards and get better at swinging our swords. Sooner or later, we run into problems we must face.”
As she spoke, Corvayne felt his phone buzz but let it go. He'd see what it was five minutes from now. “We are training for the battles of tomorrow, but also training for the peace that will come after.” He found himself looking at Lady Blood Claw and knew he hoped she was a part of that time after, then saw a second sun rise in the wrong direction through a view panel behind her.
Ignoring that it had overloaded the camera, he slammed all the Adept power he could muster into [[Agility]] and bolted for the front of the truck, shredding every muscle in his legs as he took twenty steps in less then a tenth of a second, shards of black glass erupting as he broke two doors down to get at the cabin of the truck and slamming down the shield button as he saw the approaching shockwave crest the hill like a wave of blurred energy.
All he could think, locked into hyper fast thought that was rapidly being overtaken by pain, was 'Here I go Again'
Then he crashed, and time caught up, and he tumbled and there was darkness.