The vote was a tie. Ceridwen, Odysseus, and Mako all voted no. They could send it to the deputy Archons to vote, but they didn’t have time to take the vote and position someone to execute it if they voted to proceed with the assassination. This meant that Achilles had to decide.
After a moment, he spoke. “I know how Mako feels about this. And while I voted to err on the side of what I considered to be the safer route of killing Theen, I also have to take into account that the 3 full Archons all voted against it. Therefore, I’m changing my vote to no.”
“I think we need to remember; this is the time to make mistakes. If this decision comes back to hurt us in this scrum, then I think we will have a greater insight if we must make this kind of decision in the real world.” Odysseus said. “It’s interesting. Making the decision to assassinate someone in scrum has no real-world effect on the person we are assassinating, but it may affect us. When we make that decision to assassinate, when it could be avoided, I have to think it affects how we look at the world and ourselves.”
Everyone thought about that for a moment before Merlin broke the reverie. “We should consider our next move. How do we protect the Dwellers and ourselves from the Shins? The Death of Theen was only a matter of slowing down the process of what is inevitable.”
“We should consider our options for blocking the mountain entrances.” Ceridwen said. “It will buy us more time to consider a more permanent solution.”
Mako nodded, but pinged Skeet. “Can you maintain surveillance on Theen? I want to see what their response is when they report in.”
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Ceridwen signed off from the conference and sat down. The situation was only becoming more complicated.
“Can you really do it?” Roh’Ovi asked with a look of awe on his face.
She didn’t know he was back. She tried to smile to reassure him. “Do what?”
“Close the entrances to the mountain. To Tedexa Goran.”
“Um,” Ceridwen tried to consider what to say here. “Yes? Given enough time we could do almost anything regarding that mountain.”
Roh’Ovi glanced back at the way leading into their den and back to Ceridwen with a pensive expression. “I will return soon.” He ran off into their den.
“Wonder what that was about.” Harpy mused.
Ceridwen shrugged.
Roh’Ovi came back a moment later. “I had to ask permission for you to pass through part of our home. The elders were hesitant until I told them that you are going to protect all of the Dwellers and try to stop the Shing’risgi from coming out of the mountain. Please follow me. It is some distance away, but it is safe. There is a tunnel which is blocked off by our home on this side and by magic on the other. You might want to see the other side.”
Ceridwen, Harpy, and Faelanx followed Roh’Ovi through the hole that led down into their den. The tunnels at one point had crumbled, but the rock that they moved down like uneven steps was worn by decades of time and thousands of hooves clattering down. At the bottom, they saw a huge cavern. It had some natural features as well as areas that had been carved from the walls.
As the group passed the large entry, many of the Dwellers stood and watched them pass. Several fires were lit in the background. A smaller Dweller that looked like Roh’Ovi’s grandchild waved at Ceridwen enthusiatically.
Ceridwen smiled and waved back. They kept moving and went further down.
Harpy activated a light on a drone as it was now too dark to see normally, and she wanted to record this.
There was a hole ahead. As they closed in on it. They could see that it was a tunnel constructed of the same black stone material used on the exterior and other parts of the tower. They had to kind of slide down into the tunnel where it had collapsed in. The tunnel to their right was blocked with rock and minor debris. To the left, it was open and pristine if not dusty. It had a flat floor with an arched tunnel and telltale hexagons that indicated the now familiar builders. They started walking.
“Why don’t the Dwellers live in here? It seems pretty secure and dry?” Harpy asked as they walked.
“It is not considered sacred, but it is also not our house?” Roh’Ovi looked up to see if they understood his words. “Also, we cannot grow our food here or access water.”
“Huh, no squatting, eh?” Faelanx chuckled.
“Skwa’ahti’ing?” Roh’Ovi asked.
“I guess it doesn’t translate?” Ceridwen said. “In our world, all the places to live are owned. For example, I might live in a place I own, and I also own 2 more places to live. I can’t live in all three places, so I let Harpy live in one place and she, uh, pays me to live there. Does that make sense? Do Dwellers have money?”
“We do not but we have seen the coy’oyns that other peoples use.”
“Yes, like that. I own the place to live, and Harpy would pay me to allow her to live there.”
“And that is skwa’ahti’ing?”
“No, that is renting.” Ceridwen said. “In that example, the coin that Harpy pays me to live in the place I own is called rent. Remember, in my example, I said I had 2 other places to live and let’s say I don’t have anyone renting the other place for a while. Nobody needs to live there, or they don’t have the coin to pay rent. But let’s say Faelanx there figures out a way to get inside the place and she starts to live there without paying rent. That is squatting.”
“Is she not your friend? Would you not just let her live there?” Roh’Ovi considered.
“I’d like to say yes,” Ceridwen sighed. “But in our world, it’s rare that people allow things like that. Plus, even though I’m in control of that property, I likely have to pay someone else to keep control of it.”
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“You have to pay someone for what you own?”
“Sometimes. Well, almost always. I have to pay for someone to provide water, heat, and” She almost said electricity. “And security. And I might have to pay taxes to our, uh, elders.”
“Ta’axses?” Roh’Ovi asked.
“Uh...Tribute?”
“Ah, I see.” He thought for a while. “We prefer to not enter and depend on things that are not explicitly open or for which we have permission. It is too dangerous.”
“I understand.” Ceridwen said. “How long have the Dwellers been in this world?”
“We do not know for certain. It has been more generations than we can count or remember. It has been lost to time.”
“Do you know where all of the other tribes are?” Ceridwen asked. “We may need help to find and protect them.”
Roh’Ovi gave her a side eye. “Will you demand tribute from the Dwellers?”
“No. We don’t do that.”
“But it happened on your world. Why would it be different here?”
“Ah, I understand. Let me rephrase. We will probably build cities and towns, eventually. The people that live in those cities will have to help pay to maintain all the things that make a city work. Like roads and bridges and lights that everyone can use. Those are called taxes. I imagine that someday Dwellers may wish to live in those cities. If they do, they will have to pay taxes. If they choose to live in their own places, they will not have to pay anything to us.”
“So, the tribute is to gather resources and help everyone?” Roh’Ovi asked.
Ceridwen was a little chagrined at the thought. “Ideally, that is the intent. In practice, it is not always so. Sometime people steal and cheat. And they become rich off of the taxes that are paid and in other ways. But we have made tools to help us prevent that.”
“Rich?”
“Uh, think of it like someone who has more coins and food and resources than others. Maybe they gather more and want to keep it all. Maybe they convinced others to give up their things.” Ceridwen shrugged. It was a little shocking that the Dwellers have no word for wealth. “Do you have people like that?”
“Sometimes. They are usually shunned, or they leave and start their own tribe.”
“That works well on a big place without a lot of people and plenty of resources. It gets more difficult when there is not a lot of food and not a lot of places to live.” Ceridwen said.
“We are almost there.” Roh’Ovi pointed ahead.
There was an open, hexagonal doorway ahead. There were several other passages to the right and left that led to other doors that were closed. Ceridwen suspected the doors slid into the frame of the doorway. There was a wall a short distance on the other side of the door ahead.
As they passed through the door, there were stairs to the right. It seemed as good a place to start as any. There was some source of light somewhere ahead. Ceridwen couldn’t see it directly, but she could see the room was a tad brighter.
Up the stairs was what appeared to be a control room except all of the workstations were blank, black panels. Smooth as glass. There were windows that overlooked the area below them. It was too dark to see more than dark shapes. There appeared to be a wall ahead of them and in the upper right corner light spilled through a crack.
The wall itself was smooth toward the bottom but became more jagged and irregular at the top. It looked like someone made it look like a cliff face.
“Harpy, can you get some light out there?”
“Yeah, let me set some drones to scan as well.” Harpy said as she set out 4 drones on the surface in front of her. The drones lifted and moved out of the control room through the bay window that did not contain any glass.
2 of the drones went up and lights illuminated the area. The floor of the room was quite large. It was much like the size of the portal cavern except this didn’t have a city built inside of it. It had a half dome facing a cliff face that had been partially smoothed rather than a portal that opened up into another world. Instead, it was full of destroyed equipment. Blackened hulks and debris filled the room. The were multiple levels with other dead control panels like those in the control room.
Ceridwen walked back down the stairs and made her way over to the wall. She reached out and touched it. It was perfectly smooth but not polished. There were a couple of imperfections here and there, but it was like something sheared the wall in half. She looked up and could see sky.
“Harpy, can you fit a drone through the hole? Let’s see where we are.”
Harpy gave a thumbs up and redirected one of the drones in the process of mapping toward the hole. She lined it up and sent it through. It started toward the crack and stopped. Red Lights appeared in a couple places, and it returned to just inside the ceiling of the dome. Lights turned green and then blinked and turned off.
“What happened?” Ceridwen asked.
“It lost contact just as it was about to pass through the crack. So, it stopped and returned to a previous position.” Harpy tried again and the same thing happened.
“Maybe try a different frequency?”
Harpy tried several frequencies and protocols with no change. “Let me try a LIFI protocol. One sec.”
She aligned a relay drone and set it for LIFI protocols and then set it to communicate with the drone that would be passing through the crack. The trick was they had to keep their alignment so that their LIFI transceivers remained oriented at each other as the one moved. Then, Harpy moved one into the breach.
“Huh. Uh.” Harpy shared her screen.
The view showed a peculiar view. They could see into the dome room they were in and then a horizontal line passed through the middle of their screen and above that, with no transition, was blue sky.
“Harpy, can you give the drone a bit of altitude?” Ceridwen was almost certain as to what she would see.
The drone moved up and revealed a vast forest. But closer to them was a camp of tents they had seen before.
“Is this another camp? Or another portal?” Harpy asked.
“This is the other side of the portal. This dome is the other half of the portal room.” Faelanx jumped in with the sound of wonder in her voice.
Harpy received a notification.
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Quest Updated!
Across the Universes (hidden) – Establish transportal communication.
-You have used a light-based communication system to establish communication across the portal.
Irragen points awarded!
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Another notification followed that gave Harpy 3 additional levels. She didn’t allocate any of her 4 undistributed attribute points as she was still unsure of what she wanted to do with them.
Harpy let Ceridwen know about the quest completion.
“That title. I wonder if it’s really another universe. Like alternate universe?” Ceridwen pondered the question.
“Look at this.” Faelanx was looking down at a shape on the floor. It was parts of a circular frame of hoop that had been broken up and Faelanx assembled the pieces on the floor. It wasn’t all the pieces, but it was enough to get the idea. “I think this might have been the frame of the original portal.”
Ceridwen looked back up to the portal and walked to the edges. An idea was forming, but she wasn’t sure how to execute it. “Take some of those pieces so we can figure out what that material is.”
She went back and grabbed a piece of the frame and bent down she placed the piece on the ground next to the wall where there was a slight indentation from an imperfection in the rock. She pushed it so it touched the cliff wall that a small corner of the frame material was poking through the portal. A moment later, the corner disappeared. She pulled the piece out and saw it was just as intact as she thought it would be.
She stood, “We need to get these pieces back to the lab and report in what we’ve found here.”