Agatha trudged along behind Frederik and his smelly horse when they crested a hill to reveal a stunning view of the ocean below. Gulls cawed in the distance, and a stray breeze brought the scent of salt with it, even though they were still a ways from the shore.
Across the bay in the distance, ships and boats busily streamed in and out of Duskhaven’s harbor. Behind it lay the fish market, and the Slopes beyond that. There, densely packed houses perched along steep, meandering streets that wound their way up the hill and to the city’s center—the temple district. Most of it wasn’t visible from here, but the temple of Vaclar was impossible to miss from any vantage. A tall spire rose from its roof, crowned by a massive light crystal that shone so brightly that it hurt to look at directly, even from here. She’d never seen the place from this angle, and marveled at how picturesque the city was, laid out the way it was in front of her.
Near the top of the Slopes lay the Duskhaven crypt—where the lich would emerge with his army of ghouls and the like. They’d traveled as quickly as they could, not trusting the rider to put the city on alert all on his own. While she’d probably already arrived, there was no guarantee that Frederik’s message ever reached someone who would take it seriously. Rival merchant princes or that annoyingly pompous high priest of Vaclar might just as easily see an uncorroborated message as a hoax, meant to make them look foolish. It was worth a try, of course, but the only true guarantee was for Frederik to go and take charge personally.
Agatha’s eyes turned back to the road. Of course, it would still take hours until they actually reached the city. The road they were on connected the bay’s fishing villages to the city, but while they could see the place from here, they’d have to walk all the way around the bay to eventually approach the city’s eastern gate. Agatha hadn’t walked this much in… ten years? Ever? She’d known that the Deep Paths were rough terrain. Unlike Frederik, she had also prepared accordingly, with good strong boots. At this point, though, she was pretty sure that even her blisters had blisters. Stupid Frederik and his horse. She hoped he’d chafed his ass on the saddle.
“Uh, miss Agatha?” A voice came from behind her.
She looked back to find one of Frederik’s officers walking behind her, scratching at the back of his neck anxiously. His name was… Walter?
Behind him, several other soldiers were muttering to each other. One of them, wearing a seven-pointed star amulet prominently over his uniform, was gesturing in her and Frederik’s direction with a less than friendly expression on his face as he talked. That wasn’t terribly unusual, she supposed. She didn’t know that one’s name, but he’d been making trouble the entire trip already with his constant complaining.
“You know things about crystals and magic. Right, miss?”
Agatha did her best not to roll her eyes. Many of the soldiers treated her as though she were some kind of witch. They were so superstitious, despite the fact that essence engineering had been an established field for nearly a century by now.
“Yes, I do.” She answered shortly, hoping he and his friends would go away quickly. Unfortunately, he didn’t appear to notice and stepped closer.
“Uh. Ok, great.” he said and pointed toward the city. “So, what would you say could cause something like that?”
Agatha looked up and stopped walking, eyes wide. The man bumped into her, surprised.
“Sorry.” He apologized, “I mean, I lived in Duskhaven all my life and I don’t think that’s ever happened before. What happened, would you say?”
The light at the top of Vaclar’s temple spire was dark.
She didn’t know what to say. Essence crystals could lose their cohesion and evaporate if they were left in an unsuitable environment for a long time. For example, a magma or fire crystal could make an excellent heat source, but if you used it to heat a cold environment for too long, it would eventually be spent. In a reasonably favorable environment, an essence crystal could theoretically last forever.
The problem was that there was no better place for a light crystal, than the top of the sunlit spire. For all she knew, it might have even grown there in the first place.
Agatha swallowed. “Sorry. I don’t know. Uh. Maybe something broke it? Was there a flash? Did someone see?”
The muttering grew louder, and Walter cursed quietly.
“Broke it? All the way up there?” The troublemaker scoffed. “We all know what’s going on here. You’re all just afraid to say it out loud.”
Walter gave the man a stern look, trying to silence him, but he glared right back.
“What?” he retorted. “We all saw it. There’s no way that this is a coincidence. Our merchant prince here fraternizes with demons in the forbidden depths and now, the moment he comes into sight of the city, Vaclar’s eye goes dark.”
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Walter sighed tiredly, rubbing the back of his neck again.
“Shut your trap, Ceran. You’re an idiot.”
The troublemaker, Ceran apparently, turned red with anger, veins standing out on his balding forehead.
“It’s a sign! He’s angered the gods and we are making ourselves complicit in his heresy. We will suffer the gods’ judgment with him. We’ve doomed ourselves!”
“Are you done?” Frederick had finally noticed the commotion and turned around in the saddle, halting the column and raising an eyebrow at the offending soldier.
“It’s probably just old Aethelbert.” The merchant prince said, ignoring the high priest’s title. “He’s Vaclar’s chosen representative in our fair city, after all. He can do all kinds of things with light essence.” Frederik turned back to the road and started the column down the hill again.
“...like manipulating dull minded soldiers with a stupid light crystal.” Agatha heard Frederik finish under his breath as he turned back to the road.
The soldier heard it too, grunting something that did not sound like an apology as he exchanged a look with his friends.
Agatha couldn’t wait to get home.
–-------
Bartholomew climbed a steep staircase in the Heavenly Chasm, enjoying the feel of natural sunlight on his face as he made his way toward the university district. There were easier ways up, but he always enjoyed the view here. Amoa’s tower rose out of the depths next to him, up for what felt like forever and almost, but not quite reaching the surface world.
The cliffs around him weren’t uniform. Instead, the city was beautifully carved into the white marble layer at the bottom of the chasm, which transitioned to dark granite nearer to the surface. To Bartholomew, the unnatural configuration wasn’t just beautiful, it was also a stark reminder of the scale at which their existential struggle was being fought. In the cracks and on narrow ledges, plants clung to life, spilling out like tiny green waterfalls to gather light from the sun above and the ever-shining light crystals below.
He’d missed it.
Taking his time, he reached the university district a few minutes later. It was a broad, well-lit complex carved directly into the cliffside. He’d worked here for a few decades—almost a century, really—as a professor. But that was before, when he still trusted that the gods and the Council of Elders had a plan. That their existence was stable. That they weren’t desperate, hoping that solutions to their troubles would simply emerge if they could just hold out long enough.
He made his way across the crowded central plaza, which was bustling with students and vendors at this time of day, and slipped around the administration complex to a less well-traveled part of the university—the surveyor’s and cartographer’s complex.
Bartholomew was not a cartographer himself. He studied and taught history. However, it had been a cartography student in one of his classes that pointed out the discrepancy set him on a new path—an off-hand reference to a place that no longer existed.
That student had remained at the university, and together they’d launched an investigation, finding old maps and scraps of stories, interviewing the oldest immortals and trying to map out the scale of the problem. They’d enlisted the help of other academics, brainstorming for solutions. There were many possibilities, but few offered real hope.
He needed to act quickly. If the lich managed to seriously threaten the guardians, there was no telling how quickly they would be able to muster a response. Worse, if Frederik was to be believed, they would enjoy significant support from within the military. Fortunately, he had built up some organizational support of his own—he could do something, even without the support of the Elder.
Bartholomew entered through a side-door and walked down familiar corridors to an office that he hadn’t visited in nearly a decade. But then, a decade wasn’t so long for a pair of immortals.
He knocked and after a moment, the door was opened energetically to reveal a small, plump woman of indeterminate age.
“Hello?” She said. “Oh, Bartholomew! It’s about time you made it back here, you wouldn’t believe what I heard the other day!”
“It’s good to see you, Eliana.” Bartholomew smiled. “I have something that might be a bit time sensitive on my hands, I’m afraid, but you can tell me all about it later tonight, if you have time.”
“Alright, what’s going on? How is it going with the revenants? I haven’t gotten an update in three years!” She asked, going from concerned to exasperated in moments.
“Yes, it’s about that. In fact, their potential is far greater than we originally thought—incredible really. But that’s something for later," he waved the topic away, "Do you remember how you mentioned that I should take a team out to do field work rather than going to poke around the revenants by myself?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Yes, obviously? You’re an immortal, Bartholomew, but you’re not immune to dying out there!”
She had always chastised him about the risks he took, wandering out into unsettled caverns and speaking to revenants and humans. In polite society, both were considered to be dangerously unstable and violent, influenced by their traitorous gods. That line of thinking had never sat well with Bartholomew, and years of working in close proximity with humans and their undead cousins had proven that they were no more or less inherently dangerous than anyone else—as far as he was concerned, at least.
Bartholomew rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes. That’s not what I meant, but I’m thinking about setting up a sort of secure research location in one of the smaller unmapped caverns. Do you think you can help me put a team together as quickly as possible? I have no idea who is in the city or who else you’ve recruited since I was last here.”
Eliana grinned. “Of course I can!”
“That’s good”, he replied, relieved but still serious, “because I’m going to need everyone we can get our hands on without drawing too much attention.”