“They’re what?”
“Rift dwellers. They came through a few generations ago and stayed,” I repeat myself, wondering if my own expression mirrors the shocked looks on my friends’ faces. I’m not sure how to feel about the revelation. I’ve had some time to process the idea, however. My friends are hearing it for the first time, so I can’t fault them for the unease and disbelief.
We’re in our chambers, gathered for a debrief. Like most of the rooms in the city, it has minimal furniture. The walls are dark green, flecked with silver threads and black dots. Enchantments fairly thrum with power, woven into the walls and floor. Overhead, a thick glass dome keeps the water out and gives us a view of a passing school of bioluminescent fish. When we do move on, I have to admit that I’ll miss the sights down here in Natan.
“I heard you the first time. I just don’t know if I believe you,” Melina says, shaking her head. Her eyes flit over to her notebook, and I know her fingers are itching to take notes and write down her prevailing theories. Her face is glowing, alight with excitement and possibility. I’m happy she still has an outlet for scholarly pursuits.
“They don’t look like monsters,” Mikko says, his confusion evident by his halting speech. He rubs underneath his eye with one finger, staring off into space while he thinks it over. “I kinda like ‘em. Does that make me stupid?”
“Not at all,” I say quietly, too rattled to even tease my brother for once. “Besides, not all monsters are monstrous. The Wraith I ran into in the control room—I still think of what Tem said about him. Maybe he was seeing good that didn’t exist. Maybe the [Viceroy] was right, and Tem’s a plague-bearer and a traitor to the realm. Or maybe the truth is more muddied than that. All I know is that he let us go when he could have captured us. Plenty of people are no good, anyway. Just look at the trouble we’ve run into the last few towns. I’ll take the honesty we’ve received from [Outrider] One over them any day.”
“That’s an excellent point, Nuri.”
“Thanks, Mel. Every once in a while I have a brainwave!” I say, chuckling at how proud she is of me. She looks like a mother hen fretting over a chick, all because I said something that was vaguely smart.
Mikko nods, but he seems reticent to agree. He starts pacing, though there is little space to maneuver; it’s cramped with all of us crammed into the main room. “I see where you’re coming from. I do. It’s just not easy to change my mindset. Rifts have been a blight on the borderlands for generations. Irruptions. Incursions. Full on invasions! If we had actual allies on the other side, then wouldn’t we have found them by now?”
I clear my throat. “Don’t know. I’m not gonna claim to be an expert. Philosophy aside, I might be able to access their Rift if I play my cards right. I think it’s worth a look at what’s under the city. If they’re willing to let me divert mana from the core, then I could use [Vitrification] on the entire dome and seal it off in a single go—I’ve got experience channeling mana, and I know how to do it safely now. Of course, they might not want me to drain the mana they have left.”
As expected, the room is split on that declaration. Avelina and Lionel look sick, like the pair of them expect me to drag them into another life or death situation. I suppose that’s fair, since I’ve been overly casual with their lives before. Melina and Rakesh, ever fascinated by new and fascinating information, look ready to go right this second. Mikko just shrugs his big shoulders at me; he’ll go along with anything I decide.
Azariah and Orav are off in their own world, practicing somewhere in a training facility that [Outrider] One showed them. I’ll have to ask our [Smokeborn Pathfinder] if his Skill leans one way or the other regarding this decision. If he’s finding our way blocked, then I’ll back off pushing us down this path.
“Does this really change anything?” Rakesh asks once the hubbub dies down. “We’re stuck here until they provide passage for us. Making a run for it and forcing open the portal to Gilead sounds like a good way to kick off a skirmish. Quite frankly, I don’t want us to get caught in the crossfire.”
“Right, you’ve got a good point. Fix the dome, keep on friendly terms, and get out of here. We’ll figure out the rest once we’re safe on dry land. Everyone agreed?” I ask.
Nods of assent meet me from all around. Regardless of what we think of our hosts, we’ll have to be practical. Rakesh is being sensible, so following his suggestions is probably for the best. Only a fool ignores good counsel.
“In that case, I only have one question left,” Lionel says.
“Is this about your latest glass animal request?” I ask, preemptively burying my face in my palm.
“You know me so well!”
I groan. “Fine. Let’s do this.”
Squeals of excitement break out. Melina and Lionel both dig through their notebooks to produce sketches of their requests. They jostle for position, laughing as they play fight and try to give me their hand-drawn ideas first. Melina escalates, throwing a wicked elbow while Lionel is busy making funny faces at her. When he wheezes and doubles over, clutching at his chest, the wind knocked out of him, she shoulders by and hands me her picture with a triumphant grin.
“And [Outrider] One thought we weren’t ruthless enough,” I say with a snicker. “All right, let’s see what you’ve got.”
I make a show of taking her paper, turning it upside down, and pretending to squint at it before “realizing” that I had it wrong. Ignoring Melina’s affronted protests, I hem and haw, taking my time reviewing the image. “What is this? A mutated chicken? Hm, no, looks less edible than a chicken. Whew! Those colors. Feathers are garishly bright!”
Melina turns toward her twin, a grim expression on her face. “Ava, I do believe we must team up. This insult cannot go unaddressed.”
Tongues of fire coat Avelina’s hands. “Indeed, sister. The mighty phoenix will not stand for such flagrant humiliation.”
“Oh, is that what it is?” I ask innocently.
“I’ll tell Azariah,” Melina threatens.
“No! I can’t deal with all three of you Phoenix supremacists against me at once,” I say, feigning horror. “I relent, O Great and Terrible Linas. Mercy!”
“More making, less squawking. I want my glorious firebird,” Melina says to a chorus of chuckles. Everyone seems to need the break in tension after the heavy revelations about the Yathawn and their dying Rift.
It warms my heart to see them all laughing together. Despite everything we have endured the last few months, we still have some sense of humor. Huh. Maybe it’s because of what we’ve gone through that they're so tight-knit. We’ve always been friends, but we’ve become family.
“All right, but you’re going to help since I’m tired and my cores need to be refilled. Let me get my back-up glass cores and we’ll work on this together. I shouldn’t need more mana than my old cores have as long as you do most of the shaping and manipulation. I’ll just animate it at the end.”
“You’re the worst gift-giver I’ve ever met,” Melina says, sighing dramatically. “So be it. I will make the body myself. Ava can make the face. We can’t very well leave that to you, after all. Phoenixes are too beautiful for your hand to sully.”
“I’ll never live down Yuuni’s face, huh? All right, let’s do this,” I say, rummaging through my equipment and extracting my old set of glass pseudo cores. We’ve stashed the glass necklaces in separate rooms to avoid any resonance issues, but I can track them all through my Domain without any trouble.
Once we’ve got my original set of glass cores, plus enough glass from the storeroom to complete the phoenix, we settle into the sitting room of the main chamber. The rest of the team is busy with their own projects—Lionel resting from a day of healing, Rakesh writing down new theories about Rifts, Mikko puttering around with bits of wire and metal doing whatever it is that he does.
It’s nice to have some downtime, although I’m not sure if making something with glass is a valid way to relax from making things with glass. Although, in my defense, patching the cracks in the glass dome is grunt work, and has little room for creative expression.
Sculpting glass with a team is extremely different from solo work. Blowing a glass bubble and shaping the hot glass bit by bit is what I am accustomed to doing in the hot shop; with Melina and Avelina, however, it feels more like we’re working with marble or ceramics. The Linas use techniques I’ve rarely practiced, folding the glass in layers and using a rasp for deep cuts and dimensionality.
We heat, fold, shape, scrape, and treat, adding colors and bits of fritz as we go. It’s a fascinating process to me, almost like cooking with spices for flavor—I’m no stranger to adding things to glass, but the bits of crushed crystal taken from our time in the Barrens, tiny metal filings scavenged from Mikko, and paints borrowed from our hosts provide amazing amounts of lifelike texture.
Thanks to their Skills, Avelina’s [Decorative Touch: Fantastical Glassware], and Melina’s [Artisanal Acuity], the bird that slowly takes shape is far more beautiful than anything I’ve made. I’m not bad at glass. In fact, I’ve earned my title of Master. But the Linas have a gift. Seeing just how lovely and intricate the feathers are on the phoenix inspires me to work more on my finesse and fine details. I can do standard, traditional techniques, but they’ve acquired a level of artistry that’s beyond what I can do.
Talons, impossibly sharp, seem to carve the air itself as the twins shape them to a point. Melina is using her [Object Manipulation] to directly sculpt the glass, while Avelina provides a blowtorch with flames from her index finger. She’s got a small pair of jacks in her off hand, and she uses them to add score marks across the glass as she works on the feather structure.
I take careful notes as they work, curious to see if I can apply any of the techniques to my own projects. While I don’t have the flames that Avelina does, and I’m limited in my use of tools since I haven’t found a way to fix my missing hand yet, I can approximate what Melina is doing through my Domain. Of course, that drains me of mana at an accelerated rate, so it’s not currently sustainable. Maybe if I could use multiple sets of glass cores all at once.
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As the phoenix nears completion, I step into the mix, adding a few extra rods of glass to the creation for structural rigidity. Then I close my eyes, focus, and connect to the glass with my newest Skill: [Glass Animation].
The bond snaps into place. My control over the process is growing with practice, and I’m able to feel connections that never existed before. New avenues open up, new possibilities for mana and the higher-order concepts to enrich and enliven. Reverberating along the bond is an intelligence keener than any I’ve managed so far. Yet it’s still incomplete. Something’s lacking.
Beckoning over the two artisans who did most of the work, I gesture for them to place their hands on the bird. “Feed your mana into it,” I instruct, and bridge the gap with my Domain, prioritizing connecting Melina’s mana to [Glass Animation].
Life blooms in the inert folds of glass. As the phoenix cools, mana quickens within it—a neat reversal of the myth. Instead of being reborn in fire, it’s born for the first time as it anneals. Activating the Skill takes all but the dregs of the mana contained within my original glass pseudo cores, leaving me more drained than expected.
It’s worth the trade off.
The mythic bird shakes out its wings, cocks its head to the side, and parts its beak as though trying to speak. There’s a gleam of intelligence in its eyes that far surpasses my crude work with Yuuni. I’m not sure if I could do it by myself, but incorporating Melina in the process turned out to make all the difference.
I let out my best evil-villain laugh and turn toward Melina with a crazed grin on my face. “It’s alive. It’s alive!”
=+=
Back in the main chamber, Melina is showing off her phoenix. It can’t actually fly, to my great disappointment, but I have some ideas for how to fix that in the future. Idly, I ponder what else I can make, which prompts me to get my last set of glass pseudo cores. The rest will recharge by morning, but I hate not having access to mana in the meantime.
Flying makes a breakthrough when Melina realizes that it’s easier to cast her [Object Manipulation] Skill through the bird than it normally would be to use it from a distance. There’s some sort of connection forged between them, thanks to her providing mana for my Skill.
Levitation isn’t true flight, but it works well for Melina due to their partially-shared mana signature. She laughs in childlike delight, clapping as her glittering glass phoenix swoops and dips like a real bird. While it doesn’t do anything yet, there’s something about the joy on her face that makes me rethink the need for pure utility. Happiness is a goal worth pursuing.
The entire world shudders.
“What was that?” Lionel shouts, his eyes going wide. He drops down to all fours to brace himself as the walls tremble and the ground shakes again. All thoughts of play and excitement go out the window. Instantly, he’s on guard, ready to fight or heal.
“Whatever it is can’t be good. We should consider finding shelter,” Mikko growls, gripping the bolted-down table with one hand and Avelina with the other, preventing her from falling over as more tremors make the entire city quiver.
Melina brings her bird back down, directing it onto the seat nearby. She swaddles it in a blanket to ensure nothing breaks it. Task complete, she stands up and folds her hands, looking at us calmly. “We should prepare to leave. Something is wrong.”
[Outrider] One sprints into the room just then, banging the door open in his haste to get inside. His golden eyes are glowing, and the flaps around his neck are lifted, opening and closing in time to his breathing, much like gills on a fish out of water. “The Serpent Matriarch is back! We need to evacuate immediately. The dome has been breached.”
“The main dome?” I say dumbly, although it’s obvious what he means. Nothing else is likely to incite the terror making his entire body shake.
“Yes!” he shouts, seizing me by the arm and bodily hauling me out of the chambers. “The named [Honored Guards] are escorting the [Queen] and her spawn to safety right now, and I’ve directed the [Outriders] to round up civilians. We have to move before the entire city is lost.”
I stumble along beside him, the entire team flanking me. All of a sudden I shiver as a new, chilling thought occurs to me. “What about your young?”
The mention of the Yathawn spawn cracks [Outrider] One’s composure. Agony writes itself across his face; he might not be human, but the emotion of sorrow is universal. He snarls and shakes his head curtly. “We will spawn more. No time!”
Refusal to write them off as acceptable losses burns in my chest. I tug my arm free, turn away from the path, and run past our host. Away from the emergency exits. Away from the ear-splitting klaxons guiding us toward safety.
Instead, I sprint toward danger.
I run toward the main dome, following my sketchy memories of when I visited the palatial chamber with [Outrider] One. I don’t have his sense of direction, but I remember the first several turns. That will be enough; I’ll bet almost anything that he’s hot on my heels. He doesn’t seem like the type to flee from danger, either.
As I run, I sweep out my Domain, sensing for life forms. An immense, ancient presence circles the outside of the city, crashing and grinding against the mana barrier with such intensity that the shockwaves are nearly blinding in my mana sight. That must be the Matriarch. I’m not foolish enough to take it on directly. Unlike the Oletheros, it’s skillful with its aura. Yet I might still be able to save some of the Yathawn.
I have to try at least.
Stranger still is the sudden suction against my Domain, like water draining from a tub. It takes me a moment to pinpoint it, but as soon as I identify the source, it’s unmistakable. Mana is draining from the city, spiraling around a point that I’m certain is their Rift core.
Just like the great cities of Densmore, the sprawling underwater metropolis of Natan is built atop a Greater Rift. Nothing else explains the sheer density of the mana in the environment around us. But what’s happening now? Based on my discussion with the [Queen], I know mana has been slowly draining away for a while, but this is far more intense. Did something cause it to collapse?
Like a labyrinth breaking?
Footsteps slap against the decks behind me, shaking me out of that line of thought. I chance a glance over my shoulder, but I already know who it is thanks to the mana signature. [Outrider] One pursues me, a determined look on his face.
“What are you doing!” I shout, although I knew he’d pursue. He’s like me, I guess: too determined to fix things to consider the personal cost.
“I could ask the same of you, land-dweller! The exit is the opposite way,” [Outrider] One says, catching up to me and latching on with a powerful hand. “I cannot let you follow this fool’s errand. The [Queen] will spawn more of my brethren. We will persist. Your limited biology does not allow for such luxury.”
“Noble of you, but I’ve made up my mind. Let’s see how bad the crack is—I still have one more trick I haven’t shown you.”
Hope sparks in [Outrider] One’s eyes at my hasty proclamation that I might be able to do something. His grip on my arm tightens, and he accelerates faster than I thought possible. He drags me along at breakneck speed, hurtling past Yathawn who are sensibly fleeing the deluge, and soon we burst into the main level of the palace.
Up above us, so high that I can barely make it out without the aid of my Domain, cracks spiderweb out from a central impact point. The enormous snake, a true leviathan of the depths, slammed into the glass dome so hard that it splintered the two-foot thick, enchanted glass dome above the main chamber. It’s hard for me to get a good sense of the sheer scope of the place. If I had endless mana, maybe then my Domain could reach from one side to the other.
I gulp at the extent of the carnage. I don’t think that either my still-emerging concept of unbreakable or Avelina’s basic [Strong as Stone] Skill are as powerful as the multi-layered enchantments that enforced the glass dome. It was laid by a true master. I still want to know the story behind that. But for now, we just have to survive.
Staring up at the destruction, I have a hard time holding on to hope. Unless I come up with something new, the Yathawn will lose their young. I have to get out while I can, although I’m not ready to give up without trying something. I just don’t know what to do yet.
Please, Mikko, make it to the escape pods in time.
The intense pressure of the deep sea forces the dark, freezing water through the cracks high above us. More and more water gushes in, widening the cracks further. Barriers fail all around the city. Mana lamps wink out around us as the silvery traces of mana circuits break.
“Look! The serpent Matriarch," [Outrider] One breathes out. Awe transforms his voice; his words take on an almost reverent tone as he points upward.
I follow his gaze. A deep shadow blots out the horizon, easily three or four times the size of the serpent we saw previously. Coiling around the dome, the powerful body of the beast looks like it could wipe the city off the map with nothing more than a flick of its tail.
“[Outrider] One! What are you doing here? Evacuate immediately, as ordered,” a gruff voice interrupts. A pair of ornately-armored [Honor Guards] charge toward us, holding out their glaives at a threatening angle.
“What’s your plan?” I demand. “I was hoping that I might be able to help, but I can’t patch that much glass. I thought your mana barrier would keep out the worst of it. What happened? The density is dropping like a stone.”
A floating barge with a mobile pool comes into view, bearing the [Queen] and a pitifully small brood beneath her. She gestures for the guards to stand aside and let me pass.
They exchange glances, but obey. One of them growls at me in warning, which seems silly considering our circumstances. What do they think I’ll do, try to kill the [Queen]? We’re all about to die. I stride closer to the ruler of the Yathawn, undeterred by the odds stacked against us. I’ve faced world-ending threats before. What’s one more?
I lift my voice, shouting so everyone can hear me. “I might be able to buy some time if you bring me to your Rift. Give me access to the core, and I’ll redirect the mana. I can wall off the water and buy you time to escape.”
“You’ll doom us all if you destroy our Rift,” an [Honor Guard] snarls, striding forward with his glaive at the ready to disembowel me.
“You’re already doomed,” I snap back, gesturing at the broken glass and water rushing in from the far side of the gigantic dome. “There’s no time for this grandstanding. If you all die, then what’s the point of preserving your Rift? Act or perish!”
The [Queen] waves her guards back—an all too familiar scene lately, I think absently. I’ll need to reevaluate my life after this; I keep getting into trouble with rulers. “Master Nuri, your words are brash. We may have no other choice, however. We are evacuating as many as we can, but the young in the hatchery are at the greatest risk; they need time to mature before they can breathe air like we do. If you have any other glass Skills to stem the flooding and buy us time, then we’ll be in your debt forever. Yet we cannot damage our Rift permanently; we still desire a return to our homeland one day.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I promise, my mind racing to come up with a solution for the problem. “But as you said when we met, don’t expect a miracle. I need far more mana if I’m going to fix anything, and the Rift is the only way to do that.”
“Our entire existence is a miracle so far,” the [Queen] says. Her wide face, reminiscent of a manta ray more than a human, still looks sad in a way that’s instantly recognizable to me. It’s odd how little I think of the Yathawn as monsters, despite their foreign culture and disconcerting habit of offering themselves up as bait for the rest of the spawn to live.
A dangerous idea takes root in my mind. I gulp, realizing that I’m about to do something foolish once more. I hope my team won’t hold it against me if I don’t make it out. I bow before the [Queen], mind made up. “Very well. Then let’s pray for one more miracle. Show me to the Rift. I’ll buy you time to escape.”
Yet in the back of my mind, I can’t help but think that I wish there were a better option. Delving a Rift makes no sense right now. “Where’s Azariah when I need him?” I mutter. For all I find our [Pathfinder] annoying, he always seems to have a way forward. The Rift is tempting, but I know in my heart of hearts that we don’t have time. Besides, it’s too dangerous and unreliable.
There has to be a better way.