Zalia sat in the corner of Hildebrandt’s healing room while Hidey floated by her side. She kept an eye on him out of the corner of her eye as she spoke with Boreal.
The Ancient of War was there too, pretending that Boreal was the only reason for his presence. Despite the casual appearance, Zalia could tell there was some tension in his body. This was the first real possible internal threat they’d had in Nature’s Reclaim and it was the Ancient of War’s responsibility to ensure nothing bad happened. Zalia didn’t expect the ancient to deal with it himself, however, as Hidey was Gold rank. She was pretty sure he was, at least, though not certain of it considering she still couldn’t discern his true rank using her abilities. Even if she could, she wouldn’t be able to trust what she saw anyway. Who knew if it was possible to show a lower rank than was reality?
“We’re going to have to go meet that Astar who wants to talk with us soon,” Zalia thought to Boreal.
“They’re not very tasty,” Boreal explained.
Zalia rolled her eyes, a faint smile pulling at her expression.
“I would rather hope to never find that out for myself, so I’ll believe you.”
Boreal huffed out a breath, obviously disappointed with Zalia’s priorities.
“Always talking, never eating. I guess I can hold back. Only because they’re not tasty, though.”
“Will the Ancient of War be alright to look after the young ones? I don’t think they should come on this particular mission.”
Boreal bumped her shoulder into the large cat standing next to her; the Ancient of War and her partner. She purred at some unheard mental response.
“Yes, though he says Aylie is not so little anymore.”
Zalia shook her head.
“I’d like Aylie to come with us, she is able to see things that the rest of us can’t. Besides, I think she might be able to escape most dangers by entering the Astral anyway.”
Zalia saw the ancient tense and she looked over to Hidey standing over the small table holding the three heirlooms Hildebrandt had won off the Astar. He was staring at the daggers, particularly focused on the one called Starfire.
“Something wrong?”
Hidey looked up at her.
“No, just…” His form fuzzed a bit, like he was shivering, “I’ve some bad memories of these daggers.”
The fear and pain in his voice made Zalia shiver too.
“I’m sorry to ask you to dredge up those memories further, but is there anything you know of that we can do to help Hildebrandt?”
Hidey thought for a moment before shaking his head.
“She fights a battle in her soul, her own strength against that of the starfire. Normally, she wouldn’t struggle so much against even an Emerald rank heirloom like this but I believe she must have used an ability linked to her mace. Both Matthias and I have warned her many times against using it and I know of only one other time that she has. If she survives a week from the time of the battle, I have no doubts that she will pull through quickly. It’s surviving that week that I am worried about.”
Zalia frowned, looking down at Hildebrandt. She had once shared the descriptions of her abilities with Zalia, barring that of her heirloom items. How, exactly, they made Hildebrandt so vulnerable, Zalia couldn’t imagine. Hildebrandt’s defensive capabilities were such that killing her normally would take someone tough enough to withstand Backlash while putting out enough damage to kill her at the same time. Evidently, not even two Emerald rank Astar were capable of that.
“How do we help her during this week then?”
Hidey shrugged.
“I am no healer, Zalia. You would know better than I.”
Zalia stared at Hildebrandt, unhappy. She had been hoping Hidey could help in this. Fortunately, there was one more source of information that she might be able to get some answers out of. When she had left Cormaine, the dying collective had given her the sum of their vast and ancient memory. While most of it was undoubtedly important memories of the past, a good few bits were memories of a divined future. The real future strayed further from the memories each time she used them to learn something, as the act of changing yet to occur history made what was past it more uncertain.
Mentally telling Boreal and the Ancient of War to keep an eye on Hidey, Zalia went up to Aylie’s room and went through the portal there that led to the top of the Ancient of Life. Constructed amongst the boughs of the tree was a place of spiritual connection, a comfortable platform that Zalia had created for Aylie to learn the extent of her abilities.
Preparing herself for the mental pain and soul strain that came with accessing the collective’s memories, Zalia reached into the Ethereal Vault Gauntlet and opened the door between memory and mind.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
As always, flashes of memory from the collective and from her own mind pushed to the front of her consciousness. An image of Cormaine as it had been came first, deep, cool and calm intertwined rivers flowing around islands covered in beautiful wildlife and the homes of the Bathar. It was followed by an image from Zalia’s own childhood, a room filled with stone pews and a lectern at its end, behind which stood a large cross. A stab of pain pulsed through her body before the image moved on to yet more scenes of Cormaine and Endaria as they had been.
The memories came to the present, Hildebrandt laying on the bed overlooked by Hidey and the Ancient of War but with Zalia and Boreal nowhere to be seen. Aylie kneeling in a place filled only with clouds and a huge star before her that pulsed with a blue light, veins extending from the star into the far distance. An expression of pain filled her face as she struggled against an unseen foe.
The present passed by and though Zalia tried to stop the memories there, sure she had just seen a possible solution to their problem, more followed. She saw herself standing in a huge underground space filled with the jagged, alien architecture of the Astar, a city that spanned the horizon. Then she was in Cormaine, surrounded once more by the dark spirits that filled the sky there, yet no longer in the seemingly endless caves that she had been in before.
She finally cut off the memories, doubling over with a gasp, hands to her head, as a migraine pulsed pain through her mind.
Congratulations! Ethereal Vault Gauntlet has ranked up from Bronze to Silver due to your regular accessing of a complex memory.
Ethereal Vault Gauntlet (Heirloom) - Bonded Silver rank.
Tin - You may tear open space to access an ethereal vault. The ethereal vault is a limited extradimensional space that you may enter and store objects within.
Iron - you gain the power to store and retrieve information within the ethereal vault. By concentrating on a specific topic, memory, or piece of knowledge while wearing the gauntlet, you can mentally "record" it into the gauntlet's vault. This information is then stored in an abstract, ethereal form, like a shimmering light. When needed, you can access the gauntlet to "read" the stored information, allowing you to quickly recall facts, details, or instructions you have previously recorded.
Bronze - your control over the ethereal vault extradimensional space becomes more refined. You gain the ability to manipulate the spatial dimensions within the vault, allowing you to efficiently organise and stack stored items without regard to their physical sizes. This ability enables you to store a larger quantity of objects within the same limited space.
Silver - The deep connection between your Druid Groves and the Ethereal Vault Gauntlet allows you to form permanent portals to your vault attached to each Grove. These portals are different in that only those with permission may enter and they will remain even if another portal is created elsewhere, allowing easy access to your Grove’s at any time. Additionally, your vault is now a permanent space, allowing you to close it with people and objects still within the vault but outside its storage spaces.
It took her a minute to recover from the physical pain as Healing Presence worked to counter the mental strain. She knew that the feeling of fatigue in her soul would dissipate soon too, though it would take more time.
The memories of the past didn’t disturb her so much as the ones of her possible future did. To know that she would go to the Astar city and Cormaine once more did not bring her comfort. She hadn’t seen any of her friends or family in either image, which was disconcerting.
She had gotten what she wanted, however. The image of Aylie kneeling before the blue sun was the answer.
Aylie had seen that the struggle Hildebrandt was going through was within her soul, not her body. While the soul did not exist in the astral, normally at least, it was more accessible from there. It was also a place that Aylie could go.
It would be easier to help Hildebrandt from there, to help her fight the strange power off. Zalia would just have to avoid the situation the image had shown her, Aylie by herself, kneeling and in pain.
Before attempting to deal with that however, her attention was dragged to the vault gauntlet’s rank up. With the Silver rank of Mobility, she had gained the ability to mark a place that she could teleport to at will, with a long cooldown. This was a bit different.
Limited only to her two Groves, it was a bit more restrictive in its uses but the ability to go home from anywhere without any cooldown simply by opening her vault portal helped her feel just a bit safer doing what she would have to do. She wished she’d had the ability when going to the Astar town for the first time as rescuing the slaves there would have been so much easier.
After reading through that particular notification a few times, she read through the short list of level ups for skills that she hadn’t checked in a very long time. Knowing that she wasn’t close to any skill rank ups, she hadn’t been too pressed to keep an eye on them.
Congratulations! Kill Shot has reached Silver 6.
Congratulations! Hunter’s Mark has reached Silver 6.
Congratulations! Fight or Flight has reached Silver 6.
Congratulations! Survivalist and associated skills have gained two levels reaching Silver 10.
Congratulations! Hunter class has reached Silver 6.
Congratulations! Natural Matter Alteration has reached Silver 9.
Congratulations! Druid’s Grove has reached Silver 11.
Congratulations! Herbal Magic has reached Silver 12.
Congratulations! Nature’s Wrath has gained two levels reaching Silver 8.
Congratulations! Protection of the Wild’s has gained three levels reaching Silver 8.
Congratulations! Healing Presence has reached Silver 12.
Congratulations! Druid Class has gained three levels reaching Silver 8.
Congratulations! Mobility has reached Silver 11.
With all of that out of the way, Zalia opened up her vault to have a look.
The inside was relatively unchanged, though the walls that were decorated with imagery of her bonds with Ember, Boreal and her two other heirlooms now included imagery of the three ancients as well. The only other change in the space was two semi-transparent portals that were next to each other at the end of the space.
She could see the front of her house as seen from the portal hub in Nature’s Reclaim. While the only portal that had previously been there was one that led to the Grove in the desert, the slightly sideways view from this portal told her that a second had joined it there. The other portal in the vault showed the desert Grove, the view being of the portal hub of that Grove also.
Zalia opened the portal leading to Nature’s Reclaim and stepped through. She turned around and closed the portal again, seeing that it was present there yet unable to look through it to the vault while it was closed. Good.
Feeling more confident with meeting the rebel Astar who wanted to talk with her now that she had a way of getting not only herself but her family out of there as well, Zalia went to find Aylie and Ember.