Lillene

Enjoy!

“Weapons?” Serenity’s mind raced as he tried to understand what D’Nehr was asking. “The only weapons I know of on A’Atla are in the Vault, the one Amani called a prison.”

D’Nehr’s head tilted up suddenly. Serenity wished he could read the Guardian’s expression; he thought he might have surprised the magma golem, but he wasn’t certain. “Amani Valles? The Architect?”

How did other people remember names like that? Serenity only remembered Amani’s name because he’d been working with her for weeks recently. Well, that and Aide helped; he wouldn’t have remembered that she was Amani Valles without Aide’s assistance. D’Nehr didn’t have a digital assistant! “Yes, Amani Valles. I don’t think she used the name Architect for herself, though. She called herself a technocrat.”

D’Nehr waved his hand, dismissing Serenity’s objection. “She was never one to like attention. How did she survive? Did she leave a memory encoding?”

Was a memory encoding what Poseidon left behind? Or Mac Lir, or whatever his name was? Regardless of the actual name of the ruler of A’Atla, the term “memory encoding” made sense.

Serenity shook his head. “No, she fled into the vault when the fighting started. She was still there when I opened it.”

“It is good to know she didn’t die in that battle.” D’Nehr seemed to freeze in thought for a moment. When he moved again, it was with a large, overstated sigh. “It is too bad I cannot talk to her, but she would not recognize me in any case. Back to important things; is the Vault intact? Has anything been removed from it?”

Serenity blinked at that. Who wouldn’t recognize a giant magma golem? Was D’Nehr saying he’d once looked like something else? Serenity wasn’t certain he should ask; it wasn’t relevant to the current situation and it kind of sounded like a painful memory. Maybe he should try to stay out of it? “I can introduce you to her, if you’d like?”

Serenity paused for a moment, but D’Nehr didn’t reply. The movement of molten rock around his body seemed to change, but Serenity had no idea how to interpret that. “As for the Vault, yes, it’s fine. Only Amani and I have access and we haven’t removed anything.”

Now that he thought about it, it was likely that Serenity’s parents would also get access if they presented themselves to the Vault; it made sense that if the Vault recognized the Wizard of A’Atla, it would also recognize others who should have access and both the Captain and his second in command should be on that list. He should probably admit that. 

“My parents can probably get in, but they’re busy with other things and would talk to me first. I think.” He was going to have to check on that as soon as he got out of here, wasn’t he? “What should I look for in the Vault?”

D’Nehr looked down. “If you can be confident nothing has been removed, that is enough. The old lord’s weapon … he has several, but the worst is his insect-plague, his Eaters. They are not true insects, but they are close enough; there were millions of them. Wherever they went, everything was eaten. Crops, yes, but also people, animals, even houses sometimes. Dirt, stone, and metal is all they left behind. The land would recover in time, but the civilizations that he destroyed were gone. He could control where they went somehow; I do now know how. You could kill them easily, but to kill millions while they ate you? We lost any who tried. I wanted them destroyed but I was overruled. It was too useful to get rid of; all they had to do was figure out how to command the swarm.”

Serenity could see that weapon with two viewpoints. His past as Thomas saw it as horrifying, a weapon of mass destruction that was if anything more terrifying than a nuclear weapon, because it was so hard to defend against. The Final Reaper also saw it as useful; after all, it left usable land behind. He’d seen things like that used. Some were used against him, usually to little effect; hiding from them worked, even if being dead wasn’t enough.

It was clearly a weapon of terror as well as simple destruction.

“I will check,” Serenity promised, “But I’m pretty sure no one’s been in there so nothing should be missing.”

D’Nehr nodded. “Good enough. Ask Amani for assistance, if you need it.” He paused for a moment, before continuing in a near-whisper. “And tell her that Calu is glad she survived what I did not.”

Serenity blinked at that. Calu? Wasn’t that the name Amani gave to the Guard at the Deep Gate? She’d said something about him being related to wolves, yet D’Nehr was clearly a magma golem with no resemblance to a wolf. It sounded like D’Nehr was saying that Calu was dead at the same time he wished her well; that was even more confusing.

There was no Death mana in D’Nehr. Indeed, even the small amount of Death mana that normally surrounded a human as part of living was missing. Serenity shook his head and frowned at the Guardian. “You aren’t dead. Were you Calu?”

D’Nehr made a large movement of the molten rock that gave him the appearance of having shoulders. It was obvious that he was trying to shrug. “Does it matter? I cannot talk to her. I cannot go to her and she cannot come to me. I might as well be dead to her.”

That was a depressing way to look at it. Serenity was pretty sure that Amani was handling the loss of her civilization and culture by throwing herself into projects because she had no other way to deal with it, but he didn’t think she was truly recovered. She might never fully recover from the blow to her world-view. 

“I’ll tell her you’re glad she survived, but not that you’re dead,” Serenity offered. 

“If you do that, if you tell her where I am, she’ll try to figure out a way to reach me,” D’Nehr objected. “She can’t, it’s not possible. I haven’t been able to leave here in a very, very long time.”

Serenity frowned. That implied that D’Nehr was once able to leave. “Is that because of Earth’s mana level? Were you once able to reach the surface? Maybe you can, now that the mana level is improving.”

D’Nehr blinked at Serenity. Serenity hadn’t even realized the golem could blink; it didn’t have eyes, why would it need to be able to blink? That was definitely a blink, though. “I will try. If I could look outside … it would be nice. I would like to speak to Amani again; she was kind to an old man, and so enthusiastic.”

The golem seemed to shake himself. “That is not why you are here. You are here to ask for help, help to destroy the old lord’s spell, the reason he held these lands for so long, so long ago.”

“These lands? You mean … Apollyon once ruled this area?” Serenity featured towards the map Gaia still showed of the eastern US.

D’Nehr chuckled. “The old lored once ruled this whole world, or thought he did at least. He never ruled the world herself, nor the deep places, but the surface? Yes, he held that, and he reached for the clouds but could not hold them. That fell, with time; he could not protect the small fastnesses of the world as others came. Eventually, even the surface of the world was riddled with other claims. His last holdings were A’Atla and this area. This area was not conquered; he was captured when A’Atla was taken. When he escaped through my foolishness, this is where he fled. His stronghold.”

D’Nehr sighed and turned to fully face Serenity, ignoring the map projection. “You have two ways to draw him out. One is this spell, which has to be his masterpiece or he would not defend it so harshly. To think he would use it now …” D’Nehr slashed the air with his hand. “The other way is his weapons. They might be able to draw him out, as well.”

“Or he could send someone else,” Serenity countered. “He seems to like working through others. I don’t want to miss him simply because he sent someone instead of coming himself; that might warn him. I also don’t want to loose a weapon like that on the world. This spell is bad enough.”

He could protect the weapon, even possibly tempt Apollyon with a fake weapon and appropriate news. Unfortunately, he couldn’t come up with a way to do that and still keep the fact that the Vault had been found quiet; whatever he did would reveal that there were weapons on A’Atla. Weapons that all sorts of people would want, even if they had no relationship with Apollyon. Serenity didn’t want to reveal that to his own government, much less to ones that might someday be hostile. Between Amani’s description, what Serenity saw in the Vault, and what D’Nehr said about Apollyon’s weapon, the Vault was a dangerous thing to admit that he had. The weapons themselves were bad enough; the reactions of people who wanted those weapons were likely to be worse.

“And the spell will force him to come in person.” D’Nehr completed Serenity’s earlier statement with the counterpoint about the gigantic ritual spell. “A quick choice, but reasonable. Very well then, we need to help you prevent the spell from harming Gaia when it triggers. Gaia?”

“You are correct about the dungeons,” Gaia agreed. “You do not even have to go speak with them yourself; they are both dungeons that are happy to help manage the network. I can take care of that part. I cannot move the ley lines that you want to swap; what I can tell you is that I believe I know how it was done. I have seen how the Voice handles Nodes and it seems similar; it requires a focus crystal. The Voice uses something that resembles an artificial monster core, but then it is not trying to actually control the network at Nodes, merely use it.”

Serenity’s mind flipped back to the Crystal Seed he’d gotten back in the Tutorial Dungeon. Was that what the Voice started with? It seemed likely. He didn’t have one. 

He couldn’t really complain; using it on himself had gotten him the ability to act as a Node, which was incredibly useful. It was less useful on Earth than elsewhere, but it had still been useful on A’Atla to at least know that no matter what happened, he had a way to communicate with others. It was still unfortunate he didn’t have it anymore and hadn’t found a replacement. If he had, he might be able to use it here.

“Another could be grown with time, but there is a better solution. A Dungeon Core is somewhere between an artificial monster core and a piece of World Core Crystal, essentially a miniature World Core for the dungeon. If the two ley lines are close enough, I believe you can create a dungeon that covers both; that would give the dungeon the ability to handle both ley lines. It would be difficult, since there is no nexus, but it could be done. I will work with you to teach the young dungeon what to do; you will need to come back and adjust the ley lines to form a proper nexus in time, but the dungeon should have a few years before that is critical.” Gaia paused and shifted the display to show the area in question. A small circle brightened on the map. It crossed both ley lines and had to be where Gaia meant for him to place the new dungeon.

“That leaves the last one to worry about. I fear I do not have a solution for it that is so simple; instead, I have two options. They are both bad.”

Lillene

Is it obvious how Apollyon controls the swarm of Eaters? It’s not as straightforward as what I think of as the “obvious” answer, but that answer still applies.

Oh, and the name Calu is pulled from mythology. There is actually a reason that what was wolflike can also be represented as shadowed, below-ground fire … at least in my mind anyway ;-)