“So how long do you think they’ve been here?” I asked in awe as I trailed through the cavern, checking the ice crystals. There were a hundred of them, which was…nuts. There were as many E-rankers in this cave as on the entire planet normally. More importantly, none of us recognized anything about any of them.
Granted, they weren’t wearing costumes or anything, but several of them had VERY noticeable features, and having reached E-rank, we should have heard SOMETHING about them. One guy had wings made of amethyst feathers. Not the color, the fucking GEMSTONE.
It was impossible one of us hadn’t heard about an E-ranker like that. Or the one with flowers for hair. Or the MINOTAUR. Or any of the dozens of extremely unique and powerful Ascendants in these ice crystals. As I was walking through the cavern though, my foot scuffed something under the snow. I frowned, kneeling down, and brushed it away.
“Hey, I found something.” I was kneeling in front of an ice crystal containing a pixielike girl with rainbow dragonfly wings and lilac feathered hair. As I brushed away the snow, I found a plaque set into the ground. “Velliana Summerpeace- Heiress of the Summerpeace dynasty, 19 years old, peak E-rank. Interred- 742 SDC.” I read aloud.
My sister stopped next to me, staring in shock at the plaque. “That’s not possible.” She said firmly.
“You’ve heard of her?” I asked in surprise. “What are the chances of that? Is the Summerpeace dynasty a big deal or something?” Had we found the descendants of some uber powerful lost tribe of fae?
She frowned at me. “What? No, these are random E-rankers, no way they made enough of a splash for me to have heard of them. I’m talking about that date. SDC. The Solemn Doubt Calendar hasn’t been in common usage in EONS. These people predate any of the current factions, and based on the few scattered dates I found when I looked into it, PROBABLY the Aetherbright Empire.”
I looked over the cavern with new eyes. Moving down the line, I stared to clear the snow from more plaques. More names, similar dates, and more factions and families I’d never heard of. All of them were peak E-rank, which implied to me that they’d been stuck below Master just like all the other E-rankers here.
Which was…weird. Planets could rank up. It made sense for Callus to restrain people below D-rank now, it wasn’t exactly ancient, but if it had been a Pseudo D-rank planet for eons…that made far less sense. It should have broken through at SOME point.
“Do you know how big a find this is?” My sister squeaked excitedly. “An INTACT cold storage from the pre-faction era? Do you know how many questions they might be able to answer? The Historical Society would buy this cavern for more money than any of us could spend. You could charge an entire A-ranked planet for this place.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. “Interesting.” I admitted. “But no. I’m not turning Callus into an archeological dig, especially not in the middle of a war. That’ll draw way too much attention.” I reached into my ring. “We can discuss this with the others and figure out a plan. If nothing else it’ll be a trump card to use if we get in trouble, we can trade the info for some help or something.”
Drawing up a quick contract, I passed it around. “I’m swearing everyone to secrecy on this. No one says a word to anybody except Callie, my mom, and Zeke. I don’t want to mess with this place until we talk to them.”
This was a huge find…but it was also a risk. Something about my power had pushed me here, walking the winds of fate, but I didn’t feel like it was time to put this place to use. I might be imagining things, but something in my gut told me to keep this on the down low, and I’d been learning to listen to my instincts.
To my surprise, the others didn’t seem to mind. They all just shrugged, signing the contract. “Well, at the very least, we can absorb the sprites in here right?” Benny gestured around. “The leakage inside the cavern is even more intense than in the aurora.”
He was right, there were dozens of light sprites of varying colors floating above our heads. I’d been so distracted looking through the crystals I’d missed it. I glanced at Chelsea curiously. “That should be fine, right?” She knew more about formations than I did, so I was happy to let her make the call.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Seems fine.” She shrugged. “People have been siphoning the overflow from the aurora for centuries, at least. It doesn’t matter if we take a bit more. As long as we don’t damage the ice. These crystals are laid out in a very specific pattern, directing and shifting the energy in the formation to sustain the cold storage.” Her eyes scanned the place in wonder. “This is incredibly sophisticated work.”
I didn’t know that much about the subject. “So like…a D-rank or C-rank formation?”
“No.” She said after a brief hesitation. “It’s E-rank. It’s just…complicated. It’s like if you built a house out of stone and one out of wood, the stone would be better, but if the stone house is a hut made of stacked rocks and the wood house was designed by a master architect, the former might not be much sturdier. The person who made this was brilliant.”
I sighed. “Great. Well, you heard the woman, don’t touch the ice, but otherwise gobble up as many of these things as you can.” I winked at the others. “Our competition is still on, I suppose.” Then I stepped off the air and blurred toward the nearest purple sphere. I wanted to get as much soul polishing as I could, and if the good luck rumors were true, I wouldn’t mind some of that either.
As I passed through the various orbs, I felt them melt into me. I kept count, but it was almost an afterthought as little by little, my soul was polished. Triggering a Piece of Mind parallel, I let it take over as I tried to focus internally on my soul.
It was a strange thing to do, honestly. I’d looked into my soul multiple times, checking on my Skills and examining their construction, but that was more liking looking OUT from my soul. Trying to study the specifics was a bit like rolling my eyes up to try to look into the back of my skull. It took me a minute to figure it out.
When I finally nailed the technique, I was surprised to see my soul in all its Sapphire glory. But rather than a shimmering wall of blue like I expected, I saw a field of murky cerulean, cloudy and opaque. My soul in its pre polished state. As I watched it, I passed through another orb, and then two more. The energy sank into me, and I watched it strike the surface of my soul and roll over it like a ripple in a pond.
Where it passed, the cloudiness began to clear. Not immediately vanishing, but slowly dissipating as the blue became more and more translucent. It was fascinating to watch. I wondered what exactly polishing a soul did. The clarity was improving, but what effect would that have on me? I could see the necessity, given the journey of the soul found its end in a mirror sheen, so I was betting it had some use.
I tried a few skills, nothing seemed different. On instinct, I shifted to Mephistopheles again and triggered Mephisto’s Waltz.
The world seemed to slow. The energy flowing through my body was smoother and calmer than it had been before. Thinking back, the Waltz had felt a bit more natural during the run, but not to this extent.
I’d questioned for a while how the soul related to Paths exactly. I knew it acted as a way to leverage my stats when I used techniques, but I hadn’t been sure of its exactly role. Now I could feel it. The soul acted as a channel between the Path and stats, including Fantasy, which established the pseudo Domain that allowed techniques to work. The more polished my soul the faster and more easily that power flowed, and the less pressure it put on my soul.
My Waltz unspooled, Ripple Running let me step on air like it was solid stone, and I blurred through the cavern, snagging every one of orbs I could get, enjoying the visible proof of my improvement as I watched my soul clarify.
All too soon though, I was out. I touched down lightly, feeling oddly winded. Between my Piece of Mind parallel and the Waltz, that had taken more out of me than expected. My movement technique was based on using explosions of powerful destructive energy to eat up space, so it made sense it would be an energy hog.
“Twenty seven!” I crowed, throwing my hands in the air. “And half of them were purple! Beat that, nerds!”
Benny cursed. “Fourteen.” He said acidly. “But not so fast. It’ll only be fair if we do this by point value. Reds are one, oranges two, et cetera. Everybody add up your totals.”
“One hundred and thirty six.” I said after a brief recount. Focus really came in handy during times like this. I was confident in my score, I’d hit the violet path the earliest, and absorbed most of my sprites from there.
Sadly, I forgot who I was messing with. “One hundred and sixty!” Squealed Bethy happily. “That was so much fun. Did anyone beat me?”
Gabe raised a hand. “One eighty.” He said with a small smile. “Nobody said we couldn’t use Paths or abilities. My starlight charger was perfectly suited for this.” We all stared at him in shock, he must have waited until we split up to summon it. I had to admit that was clever.
“Cheater.” pouted Bethy. “If I knew we could ride animals I’d have ridden Luggage.”
I glanced at my mentors. “Mel, Abel? How about you? You guys beat that?” I was hoping Mel had used her firepowers to get some extra speed. I didn’t begrudge Gabe the win, but I wanted the locals to represent at least a bit.
“One twenty nine.” Said the red masked woman. “Abel got one forty seven.”
I laughed. “Well, you beat me. How about everyone else?” We took a count of everyone’s scores, and in the end, Gabe took it by a landslide. Bethy was second, and my sister was third at one fifty eight. I was impressed.
We left the cavern together, retracing my steps to get back to the shuttle. I climbed in, laughing with my friends, and settled back to enjoy the ride to the lodge. As I watched the aurora fade away, I enjoyed the beautiful scenery as we descended back down into the valet. I caught something out of the corner of my eye and my gaze snapped over to the shuttle driver.
His eyes were locked on me, and for a second, I felt a sense of familiarity. It wasn’t his face, or body language, or anything specific. I just got this sense that we’d met. It faded when my eyes landed on him though, and his own gaze slipped away. All this travel was making me paranoid. I’d have Zeke check him out just in case, but I really needed to relax.
So I did. Tomorrow was the last day before my wedding. I would be married in less than forty eight hours, and I couldn’t wait. Closing my eyes, I settled in to listen to my friends banter, losing myself in the sounds, smells, and sensations of my home planet and my closest companions. It was a good night to be me.