Lillene

Enjoy!

“I cannot permit the ley line to be fully disabled; indeed, even the mana you want to reroute will be bad enough, and I can only allow that because allowing the spell to be cast will be even worse. What you describe would collapse the local ley network; I believe you have underestimated the damage, rather than overstated it.” Gaia paused just long enough for that to sink in before she continued. “There is no way to disable the ley line on command in any case, not without a dungeon at least somewhat nearby, and that ley line is stable. There is no dungeon at the next nexus. That is the first option: bring in another ley line and create a dungeon. Find out how the lines were twisted and repeat it yourself, then use that to your advantage. There are small ley lines close enough that might serve. It would not be simple.”

Serenity nodded. That was a research project followed by something he didn’t know how to do. The advantage was that it was research he’d need to do if he wanted to fix up a nexus for the dungeon Gaia had already suggested that he create. The disadvantage was time; he had to do the research before dealing with Apollyon. It wouldn’t be necessary until afterwards with the existing plan. Serenity wasn’t on a tight time schedule but the longer he delayed dealing with Apollyon, the more risk there was of Apollyon coming up with a plan that worked.

“I know it can be done because I have seen it done,” Gaia admitted. “I did not remember it with these, but I have seen ley lines move against the drift in the past, when there are enough people around. I do not understand it but I do not believe it is fast. You have expressed a desire for speed.”

Serenity nodded. “I’m worried about what Apollyon will do if I give him time.”

“Then look.” Gaia changed the map she displayed to show the last ley line. It didn’t just run a hundred miles with no major nexuses; instead, it somehow managed to run from the edge of the spell due south across the ocean, just off the coast. No other ley lines ran out that far; the next nexus it reached was at the tip of Florida. Serenity couldn’t tell if it connected in at Miami or if it was actually on one of the Keys; it looked to be in between on Gaia’s display but Serenity already knew that her precision was only approximate. “This ley line once ran to A’Atla. That is impossible now; the ley line snapped when A’Atla sank.”

Serenity had to wonder if Gaia had that in the right order. A’Atla dove beneath the waves because it detected severe magical instability; Serenity could only assume that breaking a ley line would cause just that. Perhaps some of the magical discharge Psyche mentioned and the damage Serenity had seen on A’Atla wasn’t from war but simply from a broken ley line?

“Without the ley lines that should bridge the ocean, this line is necessary to catch the magic that is spilled for farther than I would like. If the ley line network were rebuilt, it would not be necessary. That is not the important thing here. What is important is that while I cannot permit the ley line to be destroyed or damaged for a long time, it has no connections; it is possible to weaken it. If you do not wish to build a dungeon to handle it nearby or you cannot find a close enough ley line, there is an alternative. At that point where the sea-line meets the land, there is a dungeon, a dungeon I did not ask you to visit. The dungeon does its duty, but does not talk otherwise. I doubt it would be happy to restrict a ley line at another’s request, but I also do not think it would want the magic that runs through it to be pulled away from it for a spell.”

“You’re telling me that I have to go there in person and ask.” Serenity sighed to himself; he didn’t like asking for favors. At least dungeons were generally easier to talk to than people; dungeons were often clever but rarely interested in fooling him about what their goals were. That made them a lot easier to deal with. He wasn’t always able to convince them to work with Gaia or even to not kill everyone around them, but at least he didn’t have to worry about being lied to. In this case, he could be pretty certain going in that he wouldn’t have to kill the dungeon. That was definitely a plus.

There was a long pause, then D’Nehr asked a question he’d clearly been thinking about for a bit. “Would you help me visit A’Atla? It will not be easy, but I believe you are correct. I should try.”

It took a week to prepare for D’Nehr’s visit. In that time, Serenity was able to check on the Vault and confirm that it hadn’t been opened since he pulled Amani out of it. She hadn’t wanted to visit and no one else was on the authorized list yet. Serenity took the time to look through more of the weapons. 

The least of them were intelligent and self-directed; that was not a good feature in a weapon as far as Serenity was concerned. That covered almost all of the weapons in the room Amani had shown him. The few that didn’t seem to have minds were dangerous to their wielder in other ways; there really wasn’t anything there for him or for anyone else.

When he walked into the next room, Serenity immediately knew Apollyon’s weapon was there. In fact, he could tell that there were at least four weapons wielded by either Apollyon or another demon; they smelled demonic. One was the “swarm” that D’Nehr mentioned. When he thought about it, he realized Amani had also mentioned it; she’d said that a lot of what was in the room was locusts of one sort or another. As it turned out, all of those locusts were one weapon: the Eaters. Some were larger and controlled the others; others were small and flew quickly. Some could actually fight; others were specialized in making more Eaters. The one thing they all could do was eat.

They weren’t demons but they were clearly demon-touched. Serenity could smell Apollyon’s taint all over them, past whatever cleaning had been done before they were magically frozen and placed into the Vault to be stored. Serenity wasn’t certain if he could control them or not, but he wasn’t about to try. They were horribly destructive and not at all useful for him. On top of that, Apollyon could probably wrest control from Serenity even if Serenity could command them at all; Serenity suspected they’d been made by Apollyon.

The other weapons of Apollyon’s were a knife with a blade made of Night Fire, a suit of armor that Serenity suspected was cursed, and a plant. Serenity didn’t try to find out what the plant did; he didn’t really want to know. He wasn’t sure why the knife and armor were in the plants-and-animals room instead of the more normal armory, but he suspected it was an answer he didn’t really want anyway. Perhaps the armor ate people and the knife became a claw and tried to corrupt them; that seemed to fit Apollyon’s preferred habits. 

The rest of what was in the room looked a little less dangerous, but that wasn’t saying much. Serenity wasn’t the right person to try and figure out if anything in that room was useful, but he wasn’t certain he wanted to let Blaze into a room that held relics that might be from the person who designed his species. It made Serenity’s heart hurt to distrust his friend, but it wasn’t really his friend he was distrusting; he simply didn’t want Blaze to be overwhelmed by something Apollyon did to him through his species.

The third room, on the other hand, was something Serenity was qualified to handle. He was no enchanter but he’d used enchanted items for millennia and could recognize misenchantments when he saw them. About a quarter of the items in the room were clearly misenchanted, acting in ways their creator didn’t intend. 

The rock that ate people that Amani mentioned on Serenity’s first inspection of the Vault was a perfect example, because that wasn’t exactly what it did. It was clearly intended to make things stick to it, but it put far too much mana into everything it did. It destroyed anything that touched it by pulling on it too hard. That wasn’t good; what was worse was that when it pulled things apart, it apparently did it at a level that could release dangerous radiation. Serenity was displeased when he found that out, but it definitely explained why the rock was in an active enchantment that tried to keep things away, even air. It definitely seemed like a weapon that was almost unusable by any force Serenity wanted to be a part of, though the Final Reaper could definitely have found several uses for it.

Serenity had to go through the weapons one by one after that. He skipped the misenchanted ones, but the others fell into a few categories. Most were less useful than modern weapons, if for no other reason than because they couldn’t be replaced, though the fact that many of them were designed to fight a single strong enemy rather than large numbers did grant some edge cases that might be useful. Many of the remainder were useless against modern Earth; after all, what good will a temporary magic-disruption beam do when the base technology doesn’t use magic? 

The last few weapons might actually be useful under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, they were closer to reusable spells than anything else and they were weapons designed for an army; as long as Serenity wasn’t fighting an entire horde of people or creatures where he didn’t care about collateral damage, even if he had access to the amount of mana required to power them, they wouldn’t be useful. Serenity had to wonder if he was looking at the weapons used to fight the Eaters; it seemed possible.

Only one weapon actually seemed worth taking. It was a box about the size of a deck of playing cards and it had some odd properties (at least, according to the placard next to it). If he set the box against a magical shield and powered it with his mana, it would cut a hole in the shield so that he could pass through it without taking down the shield. It wasn’t fast and there were apparently some fairly severe restrictions on using it on any magic other than shields, but Serenity still thought it might be useful. He didn’t run into shields where it might be useful often, but when he did they were annoying. It wasn’t obvious why the shield-breaker spell was in the Vault, since there was no threat of harm to the person who used it and it wasn’t massively destructive.

With that, he closed up the Vault. It was time to talk to D’Nehr and probably Amani. Serenity wasn’t looking forward to either talk; he had no idea how Amani would react to someone from her past being alive. She’d probably be happy, but Serenity couldn’t be certain.

The talk with D’Nehr would be easier emotionally but it was going to be a lot of work to figure out what was necessary to get even a projection out of Gaia’s core. Serenity still wasn’t certain how that would work, but D’Nehr seemed convinced that it was either impossible or not that hard; he flip-flopped on that regularly. Serenity couldn’t tell if he was actually worried about it or simply worried about talking to Amani.

Lillene

No, Serenity didn't go through the Vault in detail the first time; he took Amani's word for what was in there. He's looked through it now, though, and he is not impressed.