A burning sensation flowed through Zalia’s mind as the memory took hold. Unlike the memory of the city name that slot neatly back into the place it had left, this one felt incongruous, disconnected even. Knowing that she had a master of memories next to her relieved her stress as her consciousness was transported within to the memory now dominating her mind.
Zalia blinked lightly, looking around at the city before her. She was in Hetheir, only it was not Hetheir as she remembered it. The city was a hive of busy movement, Bathar clothed in vibrant strips of colour with thick fur underneath going about their day. No, they weren’t going about their day. This was just one of many days filled with an unusual level of activity as they prepared the city for evacuation. Everyone had a job to do, people to watch out for and preparations to make. Everyone except for her of course.
She, no, he was a researcher. His work had been deemed more important than the possible manpower he could provide to the evacuation efforts. He looked down at his fur covered hands, turning them over. What had he been doing?
That was right. He quickly set off once more, heading towards the research facility he called home for most of his waking hours these days. The timeline and freedom to research whatever he deemed most important for a reasonable number of hours a week were a thing of the past. No, now he worked far too many hours in the hopes of discovering anything that could help.
He arrived at the research facility and as the guards saw his vibrant orange sash trimmed in Silver, he was let in. He passed through the entrance corridor and moved towards the stairs, nodding towards workmates and friends alike as he descended. Reaching the fifth floor, he entered his own little research room, something akin to a cell these days.
Honestly though, that was how he liked it. Most of his kind scoffed at the lack of reverence he held towards nature and the gods who oversaw it but it and they had never really been his thing. No, the quiet, simple and comfortably solitary confines of his study were the place for him.
Sitting down at the desk, he pulled out his notes from the desk and ordered them neatly before him, tuning the aura reader onto the glove on the desk. He began by reading over his notes from the previous day, cementing in his mind the measurements taken and reactions observed.
Despite the fact he had been assigned to research the glove for its potential to reveal knowledge about portals and the connection between two different planar spaces, it was still interesting work. In addition to that, this particular item had some very unique properties that would make it useful to him now that he had bonded it. Its ability to store memories that were easily and perfectly recalled at any moment provided an excellent tool for any sort of research he would take part in in future.
A few hours later as he was about to begin some more in depth tests of the gloves ability to open portals directly, he felt a… wrongness in the air. A ripping sound loud as anything deafened him as the world shook, the bunker thankfully magically reinforced. From out of nowhere, a powerful force slammed into him.
It was like a… corruption from the very air around him was pushing him down to the desk. He felt his body decaying, the flesh withering and his mind fading. Desperately, he reached out for the glove and touched his hand to it. He could feel his death approaching as the aura pressed into his body, wearing it down. So much knowledge, so much time spent gathering, taking notes, writing, remembering. Surely the glove would take some of it, keep a piece of him alive even as he died.
His last sight was that of the mist leaving his eyes and entering the glove as he felt himself die.
Zalia came back to, breathing in sharply. She stood in the same place she had been, breathing heavily as the memory finally settled in her mind. She sat down heavily against the wall, a sob wracking her body.
She… he had died. She had felt it, the panic, the desperation as his body fell to the corruption. The final desperate actions of a body pumping adrenaline to keep itself alive. The eventual peace.
She shuddered, tears flowing freely now. A calming presence laid itself over her mind and she focused her own healing on herself, taking comfort in the feeling of healing circulating through her body.
“That was hard to experience, yet an important memory indeed,” Delphi said tiredly.
“Y-you saw it too?” Zalia asked, her breathing evening out as the combined effects calmed her.
“I was guiding the memory in a way that would stop it breaking your mind,” Delphi explained.
She remembered the gradual shift from the memory being her perspective to the Bathar’s own.
“Thank you, I see that. It was so sudden and that aura… so strong. There is nothing we could do against that if it were to happen. We would be dead in moments just as that Bathar was,” Zalia murmured somberly, another shudder racking her body.
“... yes,” Delphi said.
“I don’t want this in my mind,” Zalia said.
She reached out to the nearest indent, the bottom right of the furthest shelf in the room and focused the memory in her mind for a moment. She pushed it out and the mist gathered before being closed in once more. As long as she had the glove on she wouldn’t be able to be entirely rid of the memory but she definitely didn’t want it just… sitting there in her mind.
“Thank you for your help Delphi, I appreciate it. I’d probably still be a huddled mess without you here,” she added, looking towards the little frog on the ground.
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“No need to thank me. I… the collective didn’t see this. We had no idea of this place or of these happenings. That is concerning,” Delphi replied.
“Not so all seeing after all,” Zalia said, allowing a small smile onto her face.
At that moment, Boreal decided to bury Zalia in a decidedly uncomfortable metallic hug. She had to hold Boreal still as the flailing metal death machine smacked her head into Zalia’s with a dull clank.
“Yeah, that’s one way to get rid of the memory,” Zalia groaned, holding her head.
“Zalia sad?” Boreal asked.
“No, no, just… tired,” Zalia told her.
“Should hunt,” Boreal said.
“I’m… a little tired of death right now Boreal,” Zalia explained.
“Then should grow,” Boreal countered.
“That’s actually a good idea,” Zalia said.
Boreal jumped off her and dashed through the vault, only smashing into one set of shelves as she took the turn too tightly. For an incredibly dexterous and stealthy feline, she could definitely be chaotic, clumsy and loud sometimes.
“Do you want to go back to our island? I’m going to go stare at plants for a little while,” Zalia asked Delphi.
“No, we will stay with the god and see if we can heal their mind any more than we have. Please do not stay away for too long however. The aura is weak enough down there that we can mostly take care of ourselves but we will not be able to leave,” Delphi replied.
“I won’t be too long,” Zalia promised.
She left the vault with the others, Delphi and Ro going back into the temple. Zalia mentally let go of the portal and the vault closed once more but she could feel the contents in the back of her mind. She knew that the memories, her map and the damaged silver spoon were all still in there.
She summoned wings for both her and Boreal and they began the long flight back to their island. Along the way she received another two levels of flight bringing it to Tin 17. She could definitely feel the effect the rapidly increasing passive had on her flight, allowing her control and speed to both increase dramatically.
Before long, they arrived at the island and made their way into the cave, past the few traps and into the small chamber she had for growing plants.
Quickly reinvigorating the plants, she closely observed the rituals and power flowing through the room and found something weird. Now that the plants were grown and established, there was an almost cyclic feel to the power in the room. In the snow area for example, the rituals she had set up were cooling the area and that was allowing the plants to grow. The odd part she discovered was that the plants had begun fueling that ritual with their own power, as if they knew their survival relied on it or… like they had become a part of a natural ritual.
She stared at the plants for a few minutes, considering what this meant for her powers. Could she set up natural self cycling enchantments or ritual emplacements in the form of living plants?
Inspecting the plants, she could tell it wasn’t accomplishing what it was trying to do very efficiently. So, she decided to try to fix that.
She carefully dug up some of the plants and placed them in a shape that roughly copied the very ritual she had used to create the small snowy biome. She dismissed the original ritual and overlaid the plants with the ritual and watched as they immediately took hold, the ritual becoming a part of the Snow-leaf plants.
Now doing so in a much more efficient manner, Zalia felt like the plants would be able to sustain the ritual almost indefinitely if they didn’t require her to come by every now and then to ensure they didn’t die to the corruption aura permeating the place. What if she could set something up to counter that though?
Her healing was able to prevent the plants from dying and even grow them should she wish and she had a feeling that a ritual born of that power would be able to accomplish a similar thing. That was one idea for something she could set up to stop the aura from killing the plants. The other idea was that she could set up some sort of protective dome to stop them from dying.
That would obviously include Dodge-vine which she could very easily use to create a form of protective dome but she didn’t really have anything to target the aura specifically. The only source she knew of that the aura came from was that creature she had seen flying across, very obviously so due to the massive increase of the aura coming from it. All she could really think the aura could be coming from otherwise would be… the shades.
The shades that stayed away from the solid ground, the ground in which it was safer from the corrupting aura because there it was further from them. Feeling like an idiot not for the first and probably not for the last time, she started a new ritual.
It was very similar to the one she had done with the altered Dodge-vine ritual intended to protect her from their senses. This time however, she tried the original one, the one intended to protect her from attacks. This was a Manifest major and Bitterbalm minor ritual which created the spiritual manifestation element which she mixed with Dodge-vine to create the protection from spiritual manifestation ritual.
As soon as the ritual was complete, she could feel the corrupting aura fade significantly to more of a background noise.
“What that?” Boreal asked.
“I just found a way to block a hell of a lot of the aura,” Zalia said happily.
It wasn’t perfect and even down here still let a bit of it through. It wouldn’t have much of an effect against that monster but it did set a precedent and took some of the strain off her healing ability. Most importantly, it would allow her to set up some protection for her plants.
It took her about half an hour of hard work to place Bitterbalm, Manifest and Dodge-vine in an array that would work. For each point of the spiritual manifestation she required in the larger ritual, she had to make a smaller one from both Manifest and Bitterbalm and form the ritual over it. Then those parts worked as the larger one took form with the Dodge-vine added in, mostly growing around the edges of the room as a vine but some parts needed centrally.
Eventually, she finished the large array and stood back to admire her work. It wasn’t an exact replica of what the ritual was like when she used Herbal magic to create it but it was pretty damn close. The smaller rituals were all already going, maintaining themselves and outputting what she could feel was the element of spiritual manifestation. That was maybe not so good of a thing to just have floating around but she was quickly putting it to use as she activated the larger ritual.
A dome of semi-visible energy formed around the perimeter of the room and closed upwards, blocking out the corrupting aura coming from above. As she felt the rest of the aura fade away, she smiled brightly. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.