As I slipped through the tunnels beneath the volcano, I knew I was running on a clock. The heltharvis knew I’d escaped, and she would no doubt be moving to recapture me as quickly as possible. She also had to guess that I had a mission here, and that I was going to try and complete it, which limited the number of places I would go. If I were in her shoes or paws or whatever, I’d put guards in and around those areas to keep me from reaching anywhere I wanted to go rather than traipsing around, spreading out their effectiveness or making them easy targets for me. I’d just killed two while I was supposed to be paralyzed, so she had to assume I could do the same to four or five with full freedom of movement.
At the same time, she also had access to a SARA, and I had to assume that hers could do anything mine could. I felt certain that Sara could track all the spirits in a valskab I was linked to and tell me if I lost one or one suddenly weakened. Since the heltharvis knew that I’d been travelling through walls before, she’d no doubt have her SARA watching all the earth spirits in the valskab to see if any were suddenly disturbed or displaced. I know I would have. I’d also post guards in the rooms near potential targets just in case my quarry slipped past those detections.
What she probably didn’t know was that I could claim mortal spirits, like those of the guards I’d killed. Since it seemed she couldn’t see those any more than Aeld and Fifa could, she likely had no idea I’d melded some. Those spirits gave me a pretty accurate map of the tunnels here—or more accurately, they gave Sara one—and that meant that I didn’t really have to go through walls, especially without a bunch of wandering patrols. Of course, she’d still probably guard every possible access to the places I might want to go, which meant that I needed to create a distraction or two.
“Sara, can you show me where Aeld and the others are being held?” I asked silently.
“Of course, John. It’s this way.” A passage to my right glowed faintly, and I turned to head down it.
“You’re going to try and free them again?” I almost jumped in surprise as Kadonsel’s voice echoed in my head, the frustration in it obvious. “After you got caught last time?”
“She’s okay, Sara?”
“The energy you took from the high spirit restored her, John. She doesn’t seem damaged. In fact, all the extra energy she’s been getting seems to have made her somewhat stronger.”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Kadonsel answered at the same time, her tone turning soft and quiet. “At least, I am now. When you drew on me, though…” I could almost see her shudder. “It made me less, Outsider. I couldn’t think; I couldn’t remember; I couldn’t understand. Please—please don’t do it again.”
I didn’t bother promising her that since it would have been a lie. Instead, I answered her earlier question.
“Yes, I do plan to free them—eventually. For the moment, though, what I really need is to recharge the crystals I used before. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need them.”
I slipped down the hallway, maneuvering through tunnels to avoid the main routes where guards might be hiding or watching. I stopped at one point and thrust my spear into one of the floating lights, skewering it with Spiritual Strike and then draining it into the crystal in my hand. I did the same a couple minutes later with an air spirit, then again with a smoke spirit floating by. I continued this, moving in an irregular fashion in the general direction of where the others were held. I stopped before a series of tunnels that looped around, bordering the cells the others were held in but not leading anywhere else. If I went inside, the heltharvis could trap me within easily simply by blocking this passage. Of course, my ability to open the walls made pinning me down a little harder, but it would certainly be easier than trying to catch me in most of the other sections of the volcano.
“Okay, this should be far enough,” I said. “Sara, can you work out a path that comes out above the crystal chamber?”
“Of course, John. I should warn you, though, that the ceiling is likely to be a lot thicker than the walls, just to hold up the weight of everything above it.”
“Hopefully, not so thick we can’t get through it.”
“Probably not, but it might take longer.”
I followed the AI’s guidance back into the tunnels, heading downward once more but much more gradually than I had before. The effects of my attack on the spirit of the place were plainly visible as I traveled. The ground shook far more frequently, the heat rose slowly but steadily around me, and faint smells of sulfur wafted in the air infrequently. I could feel the trembling of the stone in the soles of my feet even without my lost Groundsense ability, and it seemed to grow as the minutes passed.
“Is the place going to erupt, Sara?” I asked nervously.
“Eventually, John, but probably not in the next few hours. It’s obvious that the heltharvis no longer has full control over the volcano, though, and I’m guessing that control is the only thing holding back a long overdue eruption. If she completely loses control, then yes, the place will likely go.”
“Great. Another thing to worry about.”
I tried my best to ignore the growing tremors in the walls and floor. The heat in the place quickly grew stifling, though, and if it hadn’t been for my Master-ranked Endurance, I probably would have been struggling to keep going. My fur seemed like an enemy clutching my body, and my head pounded from the heat. I knew that my body was busily transferring heat to my outer layers, but without any sort of breeze to carry it away, I felt like I was slowly cooking in my own skin.
That plus the fact that the path wound about erratically had me in something of a grouchy mood by the time I reached the room that Sara said was my destination. The place looked like a pantry of some sort, stocked with bags of greenish grain, thick sheaves of yellowish moss, and slabs of dried and smoked meat. That made me realize that for the rashi and guards to live here, others had to as well. There had to be cooks, cleaners, laborers, stoneworkers, smiths, and more scattered throughout the volcano. Not that it mattered, but this place had to more or less be a full valskab; the rashi and their guards couldn’t be the only ones here unless they did their own cleaning, cooking, crafting, and hauling.
It took me ten minutes to scratch a circle in the floor and hollow out the stone inside it enough to peer through. As Sara guessed, the stone floor was thicker than the walls had been, and I was leery of small pieces of stone falling into the room below. At last, though, I scooped out enough stone to let me lie down and press my face to a small hole that peered down into the room from above.
The room was much more impressive from the higher vantage point than it had been from below. A single relatively small crystal jutted from the center of the room. I couldn’t judge its height, but it certainly looked much smaller than those around it, and it was probably no more than a few inches across. A triangle of much larger crystals surrounded it, followed by four slightly smaller ones in a square pattern, eight even smaller crystals in an octagon beyond that, and sixteen in whatever a sixteen-sided polygon was called beyond that.
“A hexadecagon, John,” Sara supplied.
“If you say so.” I looked around and activated Genius Loci, examining the crystals. As I’d guessed earlier, the farthest layer I could see was filled with beast spirits—which I assumed meant I couldn’t see the outermost layer of land spirits beyond it—while the octagonal ring held close spirits and the diamond elder ones. One of the three crystals in the triangle held a high spirit, while the other two were empty; I presumed one would hold the heltharvis’ high spirit eventually and the other was meant to hold mine. The center crystal was empty, as well, but it certainly held more interest than the others.
Flawless Henguki Crystal
Capacity: 0/Unknown
“Flawless?” I asked Sara.
“As far as I can tell using the spirit of Lerlauga’s senses, John,” she replied. “Every henguki crystal has minor flaws and defects that limit its capacity and flow rate. This one feels perfect.”
“Why is its capacity unknown?”
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“Because there’s no telling what a crystal like that could hold,” Kadonsel answered in an awed voice. “That crystal—it shouldn’t even exist!”
“Why not?” I asked her.
“Because it’s—it’s perfect! Nothing in this world is truly perfect, outsider. Everything in it is flawed in some way or another. I can’t imagine how this can even exist, much less what it could hold!”
“There has to be a way to tell,” I said dubiously. “I mean, can’t you extrapolate from the rest of the crystals and make a guess, Sara?”
“Not really, John. The problem is that a crystal’s capacity is less a function of its size and more a function of its clarity and flawlessness—which makes sense since the spirits inhabiting it don’t actually have a physical size the way that material objects do and can condense into practically any space like a vapor.”
“Then wouldn’t smaller crystals have more capacity since they probably have fewer flaws?”
“No, the larger crystals have more capacity because while they’re flawed, the flaws take up a much smaller percentage of their overall volume. The smaller a crystal is, the more any given flaw will detract from its maximum capacity. However, the larger a crystal is, the harder it is to find one that’s relatively free of flaws, so larger crystals are rarer and I assume more valuable.”
“Could this Rantala guy have bought this flawless crystal, Kadonsel?”
“No, Outsider,” the ojain said firmly. “Not for any price. A crystal like that would be a treasure of the ojaini, and we wouldn’t give it up willingly no matter what was offered—or what threats were made.” She paused for a moment. “We would give anything for that crystal, Outsider. We would even work as a body to force the Kungas to declare peace if the Menskallin asked for it. We would return much of their land to them or provide them with whatever technology or supplies they desired.”
“Why?” I asked, stunned for a moment at how passionately she responded. “I mean, yes, it probably has a really high capacity, but if it can only hold one spirit at a time, do you really need all that capacity?”
“You don’t understand, Outsider. Capacity isn’t the only meaningful quality to a crystal. There’s also flux, charge, noise, impedance, degradation, and more.”
“Which mean?”
“Flux is like the flow you talk about: a measure of how quickly a crystal can discharge power. Higher flux means more power flow. Charge measures how quickly the crystal regains lost power. Noise is how much the crystal’s structure disrupts the flux of power out of it, and impedance shows how much energy is lost at the crystal’s boundary going in and out. Degradation is a measure of how much the power flowing into and out of the crystal damages it, causing all other attributes to worsen over time.
“The problem is, as a crystal degrades, it loses its ability to contain the spirit within it, and eventually, it becomes unsuitable for that spirit, which can damage the spirit. That means that we can only use a crystal so many times before we have to remove the spirit from it, which can damage the crystal and spirit further.
“A truly flawless crystal, though, would have zero degradation, zero noise, and zero impedance plus perfect flux and charge, and those would never change. We could place any spirit in it, tap it as many times as needed, then remove it and replace it with another spirit when that one was more useful without worrying about harming them or the crystal. We might even be able to entice multiple powerful spirits to share it since its very existence would draw them to it, and we wouldn’t need to place an offering of energy inside to lure them. Even if this isn’t truly flawless, it’s so close that it could last for centuries or longer. It’s beyond the concept of price.”
I gave a mental headshake at the idea that this one crystal was that valuable, although as I heard how Kadonsel described it, I had an idea of what it might be for. To validate that thought, I turned my focus back to the room below. Last time I’d been here, I’d focused on my spiritual senses because I’d wanted to track the people in the room. This time, I activated See Magic and looked not at the crystals but at their layout.
“Tell me what I’m seeing, Kadonsel,” I said after a moment. “What do you make of this pattern?”
“It’s a focusing array, to be sure. See how the crystals of each ring are offset from the ones in front of and behind them? And how if you draw a line from any crystal into the center, no other crystal is in that direct path? Those are essential in a focusing array. If the inner crystals aren’t placed exactly so, they’ll either disrupt the inward flow or be too far from it to keep drawing. It’s extremely well done.”
“It’s not perfectly constructed, though, John,” Sara said thoughtfully.
“What do you mean, Sara?”
“Here, I’ll show you.” As I watched, a series of glowing lines shot from each crystal toward the central one. The lines resembled a sort of spoked wheel, but as they joined in the center, I could see what Sara meant. The spokes of that wheel weren’t quite right. They didn’t line up exactly; many of the spokes had different gaps between them, and a few brushed very close to other crystals. The whole thing looked lopsided, like a poorly made bike wheel.
“Kadonsel, if this isn’t quite perfect, what effect would that have?”
“It would cause the inflowing energy to disperse more than it should. It might even cause the array to stop working; if the power flows didn’t quite meet, they might flow past one another and oppose each other. That’s one reason why that flawless crystal is such a perfect receiver for this array; usually, the receiving crystal can’t perfectly absorb the incoming energy, some reflects back, and it disrupts the inward flow, eventually creating a balance where the inflow and outflows are mixed. That won’t happen for this crystal, though.”
“What if the crystal’s not the center?” I asked Sara slowly. “Assume that the layout really is perfect. Where would the center be?”
“Here, John.” The web of lines shifted in my sight, straightening out and becoming far more balanced. They intersected at a point about six feet from the central crystal, and when I peered at that spot closely, I could see a faint trace of silver paint glittering around it.
“So, Kadonsel, correct me if I’m wrong, but basically, this array will take all the power of all those spirits and condense it all into a single spot. Right?”
“No, not exactly. It uses the energy of the spirits in the crystals to create a current of power, one that will flow toward the center of the array. The energy actually comes from around the array.”
“But it’ll create a concentration of energy that’s stronger than the most powerful spirits in the crystals.”
“Denser, not necessarily stronger. The total energy involved is limited by what’s available around the array, as well as the strength of the array itself. You see, the more powerful the array, the farther it can reach to draw power, and the stronger a current it can create. A larger area of effect obviously means more power is available, and a faster current will compress the energy into a higher density.” She hesitated, and I could almost hear the anxiety and awe mingled in her voice. “In this case, assuming it works, it could pull from all over this plateau, maybe even farther, and create an energy density even beyond what a high ancient could manifest. I’m not even certain what that might mean.”
I had a feeling I did, but I didn’t bother to share my guesses with her. “Does the array have to focus power on a crystal?”
“Well, no, but I don’t know what the point would be if it didn’t. After all, without a receiving crystal to take the power, it’ll just be wasted.”
“Not necessarily. I can absorb free spirit energy—I’m doing it right now with my Aura, in fact, and I did it when I cut off the chunk of high spirit that was enclosing me. The heltharvis is like me, so I have to assume she can do most of what I can and probably more.”
“That’s likely, John,” Sara agreed. “Draining Aura is an obviously useful ability and one that’s fairly easy for me to manage. I’m sure that her SARA would have done the same for her at some point, and if she’s been using it for years, it’s probably heavily upgraded.”
“Then we have to assume that she’s the focus, and that she’s going to use that power somehow—and the flawless crystal. In fact, the presence of both gives me an idea for what she might be trying to do.”
“What?” Kadonsel asked.
“I don’t have enough information to be sure,” I hedged. “Just some guesses. There are only a few ways that she could use this much power that I can think of, and of those, only one has a chance to break the Bargain.” I paused. “Kadonsel, let’s say this array works. What’s the point of the outer circle? Does an array like this usually have one?”
“Well, yes, generally,” she said slowly.
“Why?”
“So that only the energy of the array is being focused. You see, an array like this sets up a current in the realm of spirits, and that current will draw power in from all around, including energy you probably don’t want. If you’re creating a fire focusing array, for example, you don’t want a lot of stone spirits getting drawn into the mix. The outer circle shields against that.”
“So, this array could theoretically draw power from the entire Haelendi,” I mused. “And what would happen if that circle wasn’t complete? Say, for example, if someone killed the crew of the ship supposed to be completing part of it?”
“Well, then outside energies could get in, of course…” She paused, and when she spoke, her voice was troubled. “Outsider, an array of this size and power—who knows how far it could draw energy from? Or what effect that kind of power density might have on the world!”
“Or what someone could use that much power for if they had it,” I added. Something that the woman had said earlier was echoing in my head. She’d threatened to banish my soul to that Enverthen place, but she’d mentioned doing it “along with the others.” If I combined that with this massive array, a flawless crystal that could apparently hold anything, and a nearly endless influx of spirits and power…
“It’s possible, John,” Sara said grimly. “In fact, it answers one of my main concerns about an array like this targeting a person rather than that crystal.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m not sure it would work. Without an outflow, the array here would be sharply limited; eventually, the power density would reach a critical point and rebound. That could stop the inflow, but it could also shatter the crystals around it and ruin the entire array if the recoil is strong enough. If she could provide an outflow, though, technically, it wouldn’t stop until there was no more energy left to flow in.”
I pulled myself out of the hole I’d made and began to fill it back in. I needed to move; I had a lot to do. I had to deal with an uber-powerful sorceress, stop her potentially stripping the magic from this world, and do it in a way that wouldn’t let her simply try again in a year or so.
Yep. Sometimes, I really loathed being an Inquisitor.