Lillene

Enjoy!

He was halfway done with the mapping project when something about the small shattered ley line areas attracted his notice: they all emanated from the points where the lines crossed. That didn’t mean anything until he started to notice that none of them crossed anywhere else; they might run parallel to the main lines, but they wouldn’t cross them. That meant they were exactly in the right spots for modifying the ritual.

Serenity took a better look at the one good map he had of shattered ley lines, the map he’d made of part of New York City’s ley lines back at the Wasp Dungeon. It was crude, even with the knowledge that he was missing some of the lines, but it seemed likely that it made a full symbol.

Someone had definitely created a ritual circle from the planet’s ley lines. Someone who probably knew more about them than the Final Reaper had; he’d only used them for power, not for whatever this was.

Serenity thought he could probably do it now, but he couldn’t think of any reason he’d want to. It would be powerful, but even if the power did what you wanted it could destroy whatever you were working on; there was simply too much raw power. Serenity didn’t think it was possible for anyone even close to the planet’s Tier to control that much power. If you were high enough Tier to manage it, he couldn’t think of any reason you’d need to; there were better options on other planets.

That added up to someone who’d been trapped on Earth yet wanted to do something big with the lower energy Earth had available. It didn’t explain why it was happening now; surely whoever it was could go somewhere this was easier? Serenity could understand not wanting to give up long-laid plans, but this didn’t really look like long-held plans; he’d have made certain to own the territory if that was a requirement before moving the ley lines if he were the one doing it. Ritual circles could be adjusted, after all. There was definitely something happening here that Serenity didn’t understand. 

Unfortunately, despite the time it took for Serenity to travel around and manually map out the larger lines, the justice system was even slower. They were still negotiating with Mr. Michaelson for the information on his employer and it seemed like they wouldn’t even start the process against Locust Holdings until that step was done. Russ was frustrated as well, but he could only advise Serenity to be patient.

Serenity was not certain patience was the right call, but there was one other thing he could throw at the problem: people. More accurately, perhaps, a single person. He couldn’t map the small lines on his own in anything approaching a reasonable time frame, but he didn’t have to do it alone. Legion was created using World Core dust; perhaps Legion could sense ley lines the way Serenity did. 

It took some testing, but two days later Serenity knew there were eighteen of Legion’s bodies that had enough raw mana sensitivity to do the job. Most would be a little slower than Serenity, but that was still far faster than trying to do it on his own. 

Three of Legion’s bodies with good sensitivity had regular jobs they couldn’t abandon for the two weeks the mapping project would probably take, but the other fifteen could; seven were simply delving regularly while the other eight were evenly split between making things on their own schedule and doing whatever odd work Legion could find. Serenity hired them and another fifteen of Legion’s bodies to act as drivers; that way, they’d be able to work as quickly as they could.

Serenity didn’t go back out this time. Rissa managed to convince him he needed a vacation. He managed to talk her into spending it in Aki’s dungeon with occasional trips by portal to whatever she wanted to see; he liked that a lot better. It also gave him a chance to share the kobolds’ play about Oro Brightscales with Rissa. She enjoyed it even more than he’d expected.

Cymryn hated Imperial quickships. They were tiny, with barely enough room for their own crew, much less a passenger. They were intended to be used as secure dispatch ships, so very little attention was paid to the comfort of the crew and less was paid to the comfort of any passengers.

This included the food, which was reconstituted crap even when they were less than a day out from their usual port; if you had to move, you weren’t supposed to bring local food with you. Most quickship crews bent the rules, but Cymryn had found that less than half of them would bend the rules for a passenger, especially one who wasn’t part of whichever Imperial branch they belonged to. 

Baron Restali’s “surveyors” had very few quickships; most of the time, they requisitioned them from another branch. There definitely wasn’t one available for a surveyor who was “unofficially” in deep trouble to protect everyone from the Emperor’s ire.

Cymryn was fairly certain the crew of this quickship hated him, too. After all, his survey on Eklimat was the reason they weren’t at a cushy duty station like Siraval or Kresstina, where he’d gotten them from. Instead, they were stuck on Eklimat for months. No one wanted to be on a world suffering from World Eaters; while no one had ever found out what they really were, the combination of years of horrible weather and a massive increase in dungeon breaks that indicated their presence was more than enough to hate having to travel to an affected planet.

The danger of not knowing exactly when a planet would die or what the effects would be didn’t help. Everyone who could would leave as soon as a World Eater outbreak was confirmed and the crew of Quickship A8D17 wasn’t happy that they couldn’t.

They were far happier now, and happier still that the destination was Suratiz. That didn’t mean that they’d forgiven him, however, so Cymryn “got” to spend the entire trip from Eklimat to Suratiz alone in his tiny guest cabin, bored out of his mind by both the situation and the food.

The one good thing about a quickship was that it was fast. Without a quickship, he’d have been lucky to make it to Suratiz in a month; as it was, he was there in twelve days. Ten of them were spent in space.

Suratiz was completely unlike Eklimat. It was also very different from most Imperial Worlds; it clearly showed the influence of its non-Imperial past. The cities weren’t the standardized defensive structures in a standardized walled organization that the Empire always used, with easy-to-navigate roads and periodic large killzones for invading monsters. 

Instead, Suratiz soared above Cymryn. The buildings were colorful, tall, and airy; they reminded Cymryn of the buildings he’d once seen when he visited an Astiir-dominated world. These buildings were clearly not built for the same reason; unlike the Astiir, Suratiz’s residents couldn’t fly. They were human, after all, like most of the Empire’s population. That was why the Empire welcomed them into the fold a few centuries back, after all, or at least that was the propaganda. 

Cymryn knew there was more to it than that. His duty could include convincing a planet’s rulers that welcoming the Empire was their best option.  It wasn’t something he’d done all that often, since there weren’t that many valuable Human-ruled worlds that weren’t Imperial anymore. Most would cost more than they were worth. It was far more common to bring those worlds in one splinter group at a time; in a few centuries, the Empire would win. The Emperor was patient.

Suratiz must have continued building in their old style after they joined the Empire. That indicated more independence than most planets achieved, but Cymryn had to admit that the result was beautiful in a way Imperial architecture wasn’t. It also incorporated the plant life into the buildings themselves; Cymryn had only seen that on worlds outside the Empire.

Also unlike the Empire’s core worlds, people seemed to actually travel through the air instead of staying near the ground like a cheap flyer should. Perhaps that was the real reason the buildings reminded him of the Astiir’s designs; both allowed for exits above ground level. These were simply for enchanted flight devices instead of individuals. Cymryn wanted to think it was wasteful, but Suratiz was clearly a higher Tier than he’d expected. Tier Twelve wasn’t as high as the Empire’s core worlds, but Cymryn was fairly confident there were as many worlds below Tier Ten as above it, maybe more. 

Cymryn couldn’t spend much time admiring the world, unfortunately; he had a meeting to get to and less than two days to get there. The only spaceport on Suratiz wasn’t convenient to Transfer Station Seventeen. He was certain that was deliberate; he must be meeting the World Shaman somewhere that was convenient for him, not for Cymryn, Grand Imperial Warrant or not. 

Politics!

They were important, but Cymryn still felt justified in grumbling when it inconvenienced him. 

Three portal hops, a long walk, and a surprisingly short but at the same time nerve-wracking ride on a local’s flyer later, Cymryn made it to Transfer Station Seventeen. He took a moment to calm his nerves and swore to himself that he was never going to willingly ride with a Suratiz native again. The speed was one thing; the fact that the native didn’t stay at one height and actively wended his way between buildings while climbing and diving to get around other traffic was another. Cymryn had no idea how he hadn’t been in a collision, and he’d only been on one flight!

A stiff drink would be nice right about now, but it was also a terrible idea. There was no way he was about to drink right before meeting the person he was supposed to escort.

A little asking around the Transfer Station revealed that the name “Et’Tart” made everything easy. He was shown into a comfortable sitting room to wait; light refreshments arrived a few minutes after he did. Cymryn had to force himself not to overindulge; whoever put together the snacks was an excellent cook.

Especially the pastries. Cymryn wasn’t certain when he’d last had pastries that were as good. These were even still a little warm from their original baking; the buttery, flaky crust hid a variety of both savory and sweet fillings that balanced each other beautifully, especially with the delicious crust to tie them together. There was also a set that was spicy, perhaps a bit too spicy for Cymryn’s taste. He changed his mind when he followed that bite-sized morsel up with a long sip of his tea; the two were clearly intended to go together, because the tea altered the spice into a refreshing light explosion of taste.

Cymryn had long since finished eating and was fighting off a nap when the door opened to reveal an older man dressed in a colorfully embroidered cream robe. Other than the robe, the first thing that caught Cymryn’s eye was the man’s horns; they looked incredibly familiar. “Serenity?”

No, this definitely wasn’t Serenity. There were some similarities in the face and the horns were almost identical, but this was a far older man. They were similar enough to make Cymryn wonder exactly where Serenity was from. If the rulers of Suratiz were trying to co-opt a new planet, that meant he was walking into extremely deep waters here.

The man in the robe paused just inside the doorway and made an inquisitive noise.

Cymryn shook his head and decided to fish for more information. “It’s nothing; you just reminded me of someone I met recently. It’s the horns, I think.”

“You met someone with horns like mine?” The other man sounded completely surprised. “Where?”

Maybe there wasn’t an official move by Suratiz’s powerful after all. He still might be able to learn something about his second goal while he was here if he was careful.

Lillene

If anyone is wondering what I mean when I try to describe Suratiz, I pulled together a couple of AI art images to give an idea.

Assume that there is ground there; the AI didn’t fill it in. These are more like concept art than actual buildings. The colors aren’t quite right and … well, that’s what you get with AI art sometimes. It’s still better than anything I could draw.