“Sir,” Quark said, “He’s moving.”
Everyone was on the deck, going over the after battle report, but they all heard Quark. All of them suddenly tensed and all of them snapped toward the sky. ‘Nobody Important’ was shifting one of his siphons, letting it turn toward him, and then, the siphon caught. The golden-mote sun, which had been spilling north and south from its rotational axis, suddenly got drawn into one of the siphons. All of that balanced ejecta whirlpooled into that single siphon, and a grand, brilliant light shone out of the backside of that single, 250 meter tall mithril monk.
It was like a continual, balanced explosion suddenly gained a solid direction.
The entire orrery of sun and statues began moving across the sky in an ‘easterly’ direction, Mark guessed; he wasn’t sure.
Mark asked the Really Big Question, “Is it headed toward the pole, or toward the moon?”
Tartu suddenly relaxed, half of his vector practically falling apart with the drop in tension. He shuddered and sat down on a suddenly-cast Domain that supported his weight, saying, “Toward Luna.”
Derek asked, “Could we have done anything if it went toward the Crossing?”
Lola said, “I would have called for you to warn people, Derek, but since he’s moving away, the warning will be quite less than it could have been, and perhaps not at all. With the immediate danger not occurring, I would call for this intelligence to only be shared with the highest of heads. The Empires, the Pantheon, Memphi, Crystal Tower, and the like. We will include the full report about Mark’s discussion, as well.” Lola added, “Go and tell one of Malaqua’s churches about it right now, Derek.”
Derek said, “On it!”
When Mark had come back with Andria in tow, and with video feeds dispensed through Quark about ‘Nobody Important’, it had set off a bomb of discussion about everything that happened up there. Isoko, Sally, Eliot, and Lola had been alongside Mark, saying that it was a fine thing to give up information to a potential enemy, based on what was gained in turn. Andria was, of course, insensate. She’d be like that for a while, her prismatic glows still bright, even now, as she laid on a bed in a small shack on top of the deck, over there. For now Andria would stay in sight of everyone, just like Isoko had, but she’d also stay well enough away from everyone.
Derek and David had a ‘wait and see’ sort of approach.
Tartu had been almost violently angry with Mark, in an instinctive sort of way. Mark had instantly told Tartu off and demanded that Tartu help figure out all of what had just happened, and that sort of worked to calm the discussion, turning it into what it had become: A discussion involving holographic images on deck, in view of the ‘sun’, but also with a bunch of illusion arrays hiding the discussion from the sun.
Tartu had called such illusion arrays ‘like trying to hide shame from a god’, but they did it anyway. Fig leaves were good for the sanity of the fig-leaf-wearer, after all.
Tartu sighed, “At least it’s not the worst case scenario of having unleashed an apocalypse because we just couldn’t stay away.”
Mark sighed right back at him and gestured at the holograms Tartu had thrown into the air, saying, “Look at all we learned! Demons weren’t always demons. Something called the ‘Endless Court’ once existed and now they are gone. And Nobody Important offered to be an energy source for a magical society if we want to get one up and running. AND! He’s content to do nothing at all but sleep there for several thousand years, at least, and he can move around as he desires.” Mark finished with, “So I think it was a good interaction that could have gone bad, but it didn’t— And Andria got a godly boost, too. So there’s that.”
Isoko asked whoever could answer, “How did Nobody Important know exactly what Mark meant when he talked about everything? It’s the Calling thing, right? Is there any way for Mark to learn how to do that, too? Or were you already doing that, Mark, which is why you spoke so much?”
Tartu waved a hand, saying, “Advanced Aethercalling allows you to be understood without words. Dragons do it all the time with roars that only sound like roars, but which are actually a whole mess of words— probably more like condensed emotion expressed through Calling from one entity which is then understood through many subtle clues by the other. Based on what we’ve seen of the sun kaiju I’m rather sure he just… hangs out and does as little as possible, all the time. But he sees everything, and he knows everything, almost instinctively…” Tartu took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m calm again. Sorry for getting upset.”
“It is upsetting,” Lola said, “It is understandable to be upset.”
Mark said to Isoko, “At first, he seemed dangerous and… maybe angry? Looking back on it, I think he was upset at being woken up. Cranky. I never got close enough to actually Unionsense with him, though.”
Isoko nodded, her voice kinda rambling, “That’s what I was… yeah. You weren’t close enough. But you’re very good about emotions when the target is right beside you.”
“Yup,” Mark said, “That’s Union for you.”
“I’ve actually lost… a lot of that,” Isoko confided, to the entire group. “It’s all so macro now— Anyway! Uh… So Nobody Important is truly nobody important?”
Lola first said, “You’ll get that understanding back with time, Isoko,” and then she said to everyone, “And she is correct; Nobody Important is nobody important, for now. Write it down in the logs. Think about opening up the micro-tear again… but not here. This place seems special, somehow. I suggest we move on as soon as we can.”
Eliot said, “Repairs are a few more hours away and we’re safe enough here, so… Who wants to do some exploring?”
“Me!” Derek helpfully supplied.
Eliot nodded, having expected that.
Mark smirked.
Tartu sighed, said, “I need a nap. And when Andria wakes, I want to commune with Pluta to see about… Verdago.”
Mark said to Eliot, “Where can I help?”
“Isoko is already doing the most right now,” Eliot said, as he looked over to Andria, sleeping in the hut Eliot had made for her on the deck. “Eyes on her, though. The scanner can’t get a bead on her right now, but it can already tell her PL’s are soaring, across the board.”
… Across the board, huh?
Mithrilkinesis was Shaper, and it was all Andria had going into this thing. Prosperity was Natural, and it was a graft through the Chosen System, from Pluta, Goddess of Prosperity. As far as Mark knew, Andria shouldn’t have any other Powers, and a prismatic mana baptism should only have turned her grafted Power into a real Power, but the thing that had given her some prismatic mana was a cat 7 ‘god’ that had powered a civilization. So Andria’s Mithrilkinesis should only be 95, and the only real contributor to her entire PL, aside from the artificial spike in Natural, of something like 85. Her PLs should be rebalancing right now around her Natural becoming solid, and real, and her own. She should be going from something like…
Body 65, Shaper 095, Mind 65, Natural 85, Arcane 15, Arch 30.
To something like…
Body 65, Shaper 095, Mind 78, Natural 085, Arcane 60, Arch 40.
So to say that Andria’s Power Level had increased ‘across the board’ was true, but also weird.
Mark asked, “How much ‘across the board’?”
Eliot said, “She gained an Arch Power, for sure. Arch is already at 70.”
Everyone kinda turned toward Andria, who was still sleeping.
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“Any hint as to what it could be?” Derek asked, excited.
Eliot shook his head. “Still forming. Won’t know until she’s fully baked.”
Mark said, “Let’s stay in this layer until she’s done. Have you sent out any drones yet, Eliot? I want to know what’s here, because I suspect this layer and Nobody Important’s layer were once heavily connected.”
Tartu rapidly said, “Let’s go in the direction Nobody Important did NOT go in.”
Derek smiled, countering, “But if we follow him then—”
“No,” Lola stated, while Sally said, “Fuck that,” and David said, “Fuck no,” Eliot said, “No way,” and Isoko had a full body shiver, sending silver flickers into the sky around the Dreadnought.
“Looks like we’re going the other way, Derek,” Mark said.
“I want to take out the personal craft again in the direction Nobody Important went,” Derek told Eliot, “And can I get it brightspeed’d?”
Eliot said, “Yes. I need to make some brightspeed drones anyway…”
Mark watched over Andria while everyone else went about their duties. Lola made dinner for everyone again, with Derek helping, while Eliot and Tartu discussed, crafted, then sent out some brightspeed drones. One of those drones had Derek on it. Isoko explored the nearby lands, flying high and free on clear skies, but she stayed pretty close. Sally went into seclusion for some Binding work, and everyone left her alone. Soon, Eliot’s drones returned images of this layer and the sun kaiju’s layer.
The ‘Sun Lands’ and the ‘Softer Lands’ were entwined, like separate sides of a DNA strand, in a double helix, for a thousand kilometers in every direction. Probably more than that, too. The evidence was this: The statue/pillars in this part of the layer were heavily degraded, while the pillars further out, after about 600 kilometers, were a lot more intact. Tartu had a theory that the sun kaiju’s motes of light had crossed the dreamland barrier enough over long enough times that the pillars here were disintegrated because of those crossing motes, and with that theory in mind, Eliot went searching for motes of disintegrating gold in the skies, wherever he could find them. He found them as soon as he started looking. Most of the motes simply couldn’t cross the dreamlands, but some could. Those motes of light passed through sky, cloud, stone, and plant, all the way through, killing anything they touched, until they hit the water and fizzled out into something like soot.
Tartu said, “I wonder if Nobody Important even realized he was doing that in his sleep. He’s probably the reason his civilization died.”
“Maybe,” Eliot mused.
“Where is he, now?” Mark asked.
Eliot said, “About 400 kilometers down his layer. Moving fast, too, and speeding up.”
“Where are you now, Derek?” Mark asked.
“At kilometer 1,100 and sailing fast!” Derek said, “This place is fucking awesome.”
“Holy shit,” Eliot said, “Slow it down. The drone won’t last forever at that speed. It’s just a drone.”
Derek smiled and said, “No one lasts forever, but okay! Slowed down.”
Another Derek stage whispered, “Slightly~”
Another Derek moved Eliot away from that point of contention, saying, “And I think you’re right, Tartu! But also that the civilization here knew about that problem, and they prepared for it. That is why there are statues out here instead of at civilization, which I am just now starting to see over the horizon. I think the statues are meant to be worshipers, but also sacrificial things. Once you get past all of that, the wading statues are a lot more intact and soooooo much bigger. I passed a few that are 10 kilometers tall. They’re floating at their waists, in the waters! Fucking awesome things, too. And now there are islands, like archipelagos, with trees several kilometers tall and housing in the trees— well… Crushed housing, fallen bridges, and a lot of artifacts from long, long ago, scattered everywhere, because trees don’t stop growing just because the elves have moved on!”
Another Derek excitedly said, “And they have to be elves, right?”
Another Derek said, “Right!”
Mark felt like his heart should have skipped a beat, but strangely enough, his heart wasn’t beating… when had that stopped? Ah… Shit. Well. Whatever. Elves!
Elves meant Resurrection Magic.
Eliot gasped. “Fuck?”
Derek grinned wide. “I know, right!”
Tartu tried to be calm. “Okay! Okay… Okay. Uh. No.” Tartu shook his head, saying, “We cannot go there and investigate. We’ll mark it down and then… not go there.”
Eliot told Tartu, “I want to go there.”
Mark said, “I want to go there, too.”
Tartu said, “And I want to be able to get back home someday, to lands that are much less crazy.”
Mark countered, “And if there’s Resurrection magic here, then you need to be there to help me understand it. Because we’re going.” Mark stressed, “We’re absolutely investigating the elven lands, Tartu.”
That almost won Tartu over. Mark could tell in his vector and on his face, that he was interested. And yet… Tartu pulled back… And yet, he went for it a little bit, bargaining, “Wait for Andria to wake up, and maybe she can narrow down any potential search to a much smaller area. Maybe she can even tell us that this place is a secret death trap, and that nothing of any worth is there at all. And then we can continue on this grand quest toward Sally’s stop.” Tartu said, “Remember, Mark: All of us can easily die out here, but the more powers we get for humanity the less the kaiju are a problem. That is why we are here. You can handle kaiju all on your own now. Isoko will get better, able to kill bigger things than cat 2s. And Sally! Holy hell. When Sally gets Titan Strength, she’ll be another Titanfist, but better. With some adamantium weapons she’ll be an absolute frontliner. With Eliot empowered with a real Castellan, kaijus won’t be able to break the walls of the settlement. Andria is going to come out of this as an economic powerhouse, making deals and securing civilization across the Two Worlds, with the settlement as her hub of power.” Tartu finished with, “When I get Farmer… I have a lot of plans with Andria and Eliot to do a LOT of good.
“Resurrection magic might be nice to have, but right now I don’t give a shit about that, and especially if it’ll make demons come after us. Remember: The demons don’t like resurrection magic off of the reservation.
“So if Andria says we leave, then I want to leave.”
Mark did not want to find that reasonable, but dammit, Tartu was being eminently reasonable. Mark frowned, and said, “You’re right. But! Counterpoint: If we find Resurrection magic here then it’s better to have it now, rather than later, because it probably works how it works with the goblins, and with the Resurrection Ghost at the end of the Battle For Memphi; the longer a person is dead the more memories they’re missing.”
“… Fair,” Tartu said, though it pained him to say it.
