Marie De’Oiche
This expedition was a disaster. Between the Crystal be damned sea beasts and the lack of support from the city I’m almost tempted to think someone doesn’t want us coming back from this. The island was visible from the coast of course, but finding a ship willing to risk the beasts in the sea on top of supplying her team meant that she couldn’t afford to bring more than two extra hands to harvest the cores in the area. That was the only upside to the expedition though, the cores that grew naturally here appeared to not have been touched in centuries based on how large the growths were. Edward was swooning over the different types he had found growing naturally, he even found a type that was only rumored to have existed during the time of the Exodus and were jealously guarded by the founding families.
“Marie, I almost don’t want to report the findings on this place. The sheer number of Support and Engineer cores growing here completely derails the research into crystal formations. That isn’t even counting the other more common evolutions, all growing naturally,” Steven, my second in command, said.
“You know the rules Steve. We will get at least half the haul, but we have to report the find to the Guild. I just wish we had more hands to bring it back,” I said as I gazed at the large crystal formation within a cave on the island.
Shaking my head I asked, “How are the twins doing?”
“They have the exit covered. There have been a few beast attacks, but nothing they couldn’t handle with the occasional patch up. They have taken to harvesting the cores from the cats before tossing the bodies back; it has slowed down the attacks from the scavenger types,” he reported.
The sound of pick axes hitting crystals continued as I considered how long to push our luck. We had food for another week, and the ship had found a sheltered cove that they could avoid the sea beasts in. However we would be moving slower hauling out the crystals, meaning about a day to reach the ship assuming no attacks. Nodding I said, “Two more days maximum. I’ll help with the refining so we can carry more of the cores with us.”
Steven moved to the exit to inform the twins and give them a checkup, his own healer template a useful addition to our group. I had just picked up one of the broken off chunks of crystal when I heard the clang of metal on metal from the harvesters along with a curse. Quickly moving over to them I barked out, “Report!”
Brett, one of the temporary hires, replied, “I don’t know ma’am. I was breaking it away like we’ve been doing since we got here, but there’s something under the crystal. Whatever it is, it bent the steel of my pickaxe.”
Moving closer I examined where he had been working, channeling aether to my hand to shine a light at the crystal. There was something under the crystal, as if it had grown around it. It was a dark gray color and I could faintly make out a series of numbers. I held my glowing hand in different locations and I could see the silhouettes of more metal cylinders within the crystal. Letting the glow fade I said, “See if you can get to whatever that object is. Don’t worry about damaging the cores if they are around it, but try and be careful.”
Alexander Morgan
Consciousness came slowly and with the sound of miners with pickaxes. My whole body was pins and needles, which was odd. Memory returned in a rush and I almost whimpered. I remembered waking from the sedative to find the pod embedded into the ground, blocking the lid from opening. The decision to activate the transponder and put the six of us into cryosleep was the only option we had as we would have no way to know how long rescue would take. The sound of old school mining brought up a new question though. Why were they using pickaxes instead of mining lasers? For that matter, how long had we been out?
I opened my eyes and looked out the window of the cryo pod and saw what appeared to be the roof of a cavern with crystal stalactites hanging down. Those hadn’t been there when we went under. The angle wasn’t right either, which means that the pod had been disconnected and moved. Odds are whoever was digging us out was still working on the rest. Like on the ship I reached to pull the emergency release and heard the clunk sound of the locs disengaging, but the door didn’t open. I tried pushing on the lid, but my body didn’t want to apply enough strength to the task. I must have been in cryo for a while if it was taking this long to recover from. Banging my fist against the lid I hoped someone would hear me over the sounds of mining.
I was in luck as after less than a minute of trying to get someone's attention I saw a face leaning over the glass. She had red hair cut in a short pixie cut, hazel eyes, and had an odd look on her face, as if she was confused that I was alive, I tapped the glass to get her attention and gave her a look that showed just how thrilled I was to be still in the pod. Her eyes widened before her face disappeared and I shortly heard a snapping sound like ice breaking. Ahh, there must have been crystal grown around the door sealing it shut. It took less than five minutes before I could push on the lid and with more crystal snapping sounds it swung open and I took a breath of musty air.
“Bloody hell,” I muttered, “I think that landing has to top my list of worst ones ever.”
“There is an ancient saying about ‘any landing you can walk away from’ that springs to mind, but first I would know who you are and how you came to be here stranger,” said a feminine voice from nearby.
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Sitting up from the horizontal pod and looking to the source I saw the red-head standing there, her hand glowing a pale blue. No not her hand, it was an ornate glove with a silvery metal woven into it. Her outfit looked like something that was a cross between Victorian England and early renaissance but with worn brown trousers that would not look out of place in the wilderness.
“Name’s Alexander Morgan, and we had a bit of an emergency crash. I’m guessing we didn’t get found as quickly as I was hoping,” I answered.
“How does one have an emergency crash?” she asked, “And how are you alive?”
That wasn’t a good sign. If she didn’t recognize a cryo-pod then something had gone exceptionally wrong. I shook that train of thought away and said, “When your ship is falling apart around you and you take the only option available to reach land in one piece, you get an emergency crash. How far are we from Landing Base?”
“Landing Base? The capital hasn’t been called that in over a millennium,” she said before trailing off, her eyes widening even further and the glow from her hand fading before she stuttered, “You’re from the founding ship. The Excelsior, one of the Lost Founders.”
Placing my face in my hands I spent the next few breaths cursing in every language I knew how to curse in, inventively. When I had that out of my system I looked up to meet a raised eyebrow and said, “Probably, how long ago was the landing and have you recovered the other five pods?”
“The ship that brought the founders crash landed on the other side of the continent almost two thousand years ago, right after the Usurper attempted to take control of what is now the capital city. As for the other pods, you called them, we are almost done excavating two more, but it will take another day if there are another three encased in the crystal,” she answered.
So many questions flitted through my mind, so I settled on an explanation while they percolated, and said while tapping the side of the pod, “Cryo-pods; they keep a body in suspended animation so that the body can survive for long periods of time without sustenance or activity.”
“Ahh, a stasis chamber, but for people. It is smaller than what I have heard of, but I understand the concept,” she replied in recognition.
“Close enough,” I said before cursing again, “Two thousand years, so much for exploring and settling a new home.”
“You seem remarkably calm for someone who just woke up to find everything has changed,” she said.
“Oh I am anything but calm. Raging and cursing won’t help the situation. If there are records I can at least find out what happened to my father, but I came here for a new life. I guess I’ll get that,” I grumbled.
“Was your father on the ship when it came down?” she asked as she sat down on the storage compartment at the end of the pod.
“No, he was one of the Genesis crew that was here before the ship set out,” I answered.
“There might be mention of him in the Archives then. All the names from the time of the Usurper were recorded so that the other founders would know what happened to them,” she said.
“Can you tell me anything about this Usurper?” I asked.
“The Usurper was the first to fall to what is now known as Primal Madness. Too many feral concepts in an evolution will alter the mindset of a person, lowering inhibitions, and encouraging a more predatory mindset. The stories say that the Usurper gathered others and tried to take over the first city before the founders could arrive and instill his own rules to the newly arrived people. As they wouldn’t have any evolution they would have been considered weak to his mindset. No one is sure exactly what happened as the records are unintelligible but it is known that after the founders landed none of their sky ships could go beyond the atmosphere without being covered in a new type of crystal that absorbed energy. All youths are taught that the reason more people hadn’t arrived in sky ships was because of these crystals,” she explained.
“That new type of crystal is most likely what caused the Excelsior to crash. I’m going to assume your statement about evolution has something to do with absorbing the crystal cores?” I replied.
“Right, you wouldn’t have much information about that being from the founders generation. Yes, the crystal cores can be absorbed and depending on the template used your Class Formation will evolve to reflect that,” she said before fishing out a necklace with a metal disc with crystal embedded in it.
“This is a Formation Sigil Identification. It is used by guild members to identify a person’s template and as personal identification for when a person travels between regions,” she explained before a glow came out of the central crystal and an image appeared above it with multiple symbols glowed in groupings, “This shows the evolutions I have been through and the cores I have currently absorbed.”
I recognized some of the patterns from the index in my dad’s journal, but there were some that I hadn’t seen in my brief review. I snorted and said, “It's like a video game level up chart.”
“Those terms were used in the Archive for how the founders first attempted to find evolution templates. I never understood what they meant though,” she said with a curious expression.
“Video games were a form of entertainment. One genre was based around a character or group that would grow stronger as the game progressed and you could choose how to specialize them through the story, such as fighters, healers, scouts, and thieves,” I answered.
“Yes, that is similar to evolution templates. I’m an elemental channeler on my second evolution, which means that I have specialized in channeling the energy known as aether through foci to create elemental effects,” she said.
“What, like throwing lightning bolts?” I asked.
“Not me specifically. I focused on the light and dark element, but there are other channelers that have focused on lightning,” she said with a raised eyebrow.
I groaned and buried my face in my hands again while muttering, “Great, now we have mages.”
“It isn’t magic, though it can be confused as such by the superstitious. It is the manipulation of an energy given off by the crystals found on this world that was named Aether by the ancient Sages. It still follows scientific rules, and does not reshape reality on a whim. Though I can understand how the first settlers would have considered it magic at the time they arrived,” she said primly.
A shout from the pair that was excavating the other pods drew our attention from the conversation and we both moved to help lay out the next two. I decided to wait to ask more questions until the rest of the survivors were thawed out as they would need a crash course in our new home as well.