Lillene

Enjoy!

The sensors on the Death’s Wings were not able to see ley lines. Without the map, that would have caused problems; with the map, it was merely inconvenient. They couldn’t navigate based on the ley lines and had to instead follow the geographic features as they were laid out on the world map.

The world map wasn’t particularly accurate. If anything that was understating the problem; the world map was wildly inaccurate. It was obvious that it was rarely used. Clearly, long distance travel was done by portal.

The lack of roads on the planet was also a good indicator of lack of overland travel. It wasn’t completely accurate to say that there weren’t roads; there were roads. They just only went from the outlying farms to the towns and city. What was missing was all the roads that would have connected the towns together.

The general layout of the towns was more or less accurate, as were mountains and rivers. All of the details were wrong unless they were next to one of the towns, however, and there were not that many towns on the planet; probably no more than a few hundred, each of which held between a few thousand and a few tens of thousands of people. Aide’s best estimate was that the total world population was probably roughly a million and a half people, a third of whom lived in Themrys City. 

The world was empty as far as Serenity was concerned.

The three dungeon towns they were headed for varied widely in size. Fenbury and Reybury were on the small side, while Golemton was double the size of the other two dungeon towns combined. 

Since they planned to land near Golemton, they started the aerial survey on the other end of the irregular five-sided area they thought was the area enclosed by the ley lines. Death’s Wings couldn’t hover, but she could fly slowly enough as she came in for landing to get a good single pass over the area. 

As they got closer, Serenity could feel the pain from the world slowly increasing. It was not even close to the level of pain he’d felt while he was tracing the problem through the ley lines; that felt like the pain being pumped directly into him while this felt more like an external pressure. He could resist external pressure, especially since he was able to just resist it instead of using it as a directional indicator.

There was nothing obviously strange about the sea in the region. As they continued over the marsh, Serenity thought he saw an oddly regular set of lines in the greenery. On Earth, he’d have suspected that the plants covered old buildings, leading to poorer growth and therefore visible lines. That was possible on Themrys, but he remembered Cymryn saying that Themrys was a young world. The only way it was likely was if that was remnants of whatever civilization existed before the Voice’s arrival, the civilization that fell to the dungeons.

The land dried out as they moved past the swampy area, then rose up in a series of bluffs. It wasn’t a smooth transition; there was a tall spike, almost a tiny mesa, that extended well above ground level. Serenity’s best guess was that one of the nexuses ran through that point, but he wasn’t certain. It could well have been farther out to sea, given the accuracy of the map.

With three of the five nexuses tentatively located, including one of the three dungeons, they flew away from the sea and the marsh, trying to fly approximately above the center point of the area so that they could see as far as possible. There was a thin rocky stretch of ground with nothing taller than bushes that wasn’t on the map. It would work as a place to land the Death’s Wings if they had to, but it wasn’t as good as the cleared area was supposed to be. In any case, Serenity wanted to get an aerial view of the rest of the area.

After the rocky area came forest. It rose and fell like foothills to a mountain that wasn’t there, but other than a few slopes that clearly had collapsed the area was covered in trees. They were evergreens, but it was too far away for Serenity to tell more than that. 

It was impossible to see anything through the tree cover. Serenity thought they were going to come away without any idea where to start until they were well past the midpoint of the forested area; in the distance, the green of the trees gave way to a brown area. As they flew past it, all Serenity could make out was blown-over and burnt trees that looked like they’d all fallen away from a central point. The trees farther from the center were damaged but not uprooted or burnt; it looked like whatever fire happened didn’t spread far.

It was by far the most interesting thing Serenity had seen in the entire survey. It was too bad that it was not exactly under their route, but truthfully that was to be expected; the fact that it was only a few miles off the estimated center line was already as much as he could ask for.

There were only two natural things Serenity could think of that would cause that: a sudden downburst or a meteorite that exploded in midair. There were probably other causes, but everything else he could think of offhand was externally caused, such as a teleportation spell that didn’t properly account for the air at the destination. The one that was the most interesting was similar to the meteorite: what if it was something from space? He didn’t know but he definitely wanted to find out.

The rest of the flight was over more tree-covered hills. There were some clearings and a few streams, along with a few more places where the vegetation showed odd growth patterns that looked like they could possibly be the remnants of a lost civilization, but there was nothing else that looked both recent and potentially caused by something from space. 

There were no monsters visible during the entire flight. Serenity hadn’t expected to notice any of the rays or the swamp monsters, but he had expected to see golems. Golems didn’t tend to hide very well, after all. 

The landing site was worse than expected. The ground was soft, so Simurgh insisted on landing on something she called a repulsion field. It was somehow more energy efficient than hovering, even though it looked the same from outside. Serenity didn’t even have to see Tek to know that she was trying to figure out what it was and how it was done along with how to replicate it. 

Aide seemed less interested than Serenity expected. He muttered that he “already had the schematic” when Serenity asked and didn’t seem to want to investigate it. The only explanation Serenity was able to get was that Aide would rather talk to Simurgh.

“So who’s going into Golemton and who’s going to the dungeon and the meteorite with Serenity?” Rissa’s question caught Serenity off guard. He’d expected to have to make nice in Golemton. He couldn’t think of any reason why he would have to go into the town; he’d simply expected that he’d have to.

Serenity kept his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted was to be talked into visiting the town instead of heading directly to the probable problem area. He might stop by the dungeon if it was on the way, but chances were that he couldn’t do anything to help the dungeon until he dealt with the problem.

“I need to go into Golemton,” Lord Cymryn admitted. “If we’re splitting up here, World Shaman Senkovar and Lord Serenity should head to the anomaly. I’ll need a representative of the ship; Lady Rissa, you would be welcome if you wish to take on that role. Beyond that, I believe the World Shaman’s party should take Blaze, as he is the primary healer on this vessel, and both parties will require some guards. They will be mostly ceremonial for Lady Rothmer and me, but should be ready for combat to protect the World Shaman.”

Serenity couldn’t help but smile a little at Cymryn’s clear emphasis on the World Shaman as the primary investigator. He wasn’t certain if that was true or not; while Serenity was the one who found a starting point, Senkovar’s Paths were far better suited for dealing with a world. It could easily be Senkovar’s show from here on out. It all depended on what they found in the spot where the trees were blown over.

“We won’t need guards,” Senkovar stated firmly. “Anything that Serenity and I can’t handle would chew through anyone else here.”

Serenity shook his head. Senkovar wasn’t usually arrogant; why had Cymryn’s suggestion of guards made him overreact? Maybe it was the fact that Cymryn said it like an order? “That’s not what guards are for. They mean we don’t have to look in all directions at once; they can also help against groups, or guard anything we have to leave behind. For that matter, they can guard Blaze if necessary. On top of that, Legion would let us easily communicate between different locations even if the radios can’t reach.”

While Serenity could also manage the backup communication role if Ita stayed with the ship and Rissa went with Cymryn, Legion’s communication had an advantage Serenity left out: Legion didn’t have to tell anyone else for Legion to know what happened in all three locations. Legion simply knew. That could potentially save a few important seconds.

Senkovar frowned at Serenity for a long moment before he shook his head. “I hate it when people disagree with me and have good reasons. Fine, we can take some of your Legion. They should be in a separate flyer.”

Serenity nodded. A second flyer sounded like a good idea and there were certainly enough of them on the Death’s Wings to make that easy. Most of them weren’t the special folding type that he’d bought for himself, since most were Tsarun-made and therefore didn’t have the advantage of easily accessible spatial folding magic, but those had their own advantages. In many ways, they traded convenience for other utility.

The ability to program in a route or call them with Aide was in some ways better than being able to store them. They were also sturdier and had integral weapons, at least if he picked the “combat capable” ones. Access to self-targeting weapons (well, technically Aide did the targeting) that didn’t require mana was more than a minor advantage.

In terms of comfort, Serenity also preferred the Tsarun flyers. They were highly adjustable and had far more comfortable seats. He could even set the seats up to make sitting in them with his wings comfortable. That only made sense when they were designed by a species of slow shapeshifters for a ship where most Tsarun had wings, but it was still something that Serenity wasn’t used to. Human-made seating simply wasn’t made with wings in mind.

Once they were off the ship and started on the wide loop around Golemton, Senkovar leaned back in his seat and gave a long sigh. “Did you have to side with Lord Cymryn? He’s going to use that as a reason to put guards back on me as soon as we’re off this ship. I’m sure the only reason we don’t have guards is that he’d have to ask for permission to bring them onboard and that’s difficult when you have dozens of members of your Legion already filling the role.”

Serenity hadn’t thought about that possibility. Even so, he didn’t think it was a particularly relevant problem. “Do you really think I’ll abandon you before this situation is resolved? We can return you to Suratiz.”

Senkovar chuckled. “It does look like that’s the only way I’m going to get you there at this point. Fine; you have a deal.” 

Senkovar leaned back in his seat with a grin that left Serenity with a very large question: had he just been played? Was this entire argument a scheme to get him to agree to go to Suratiz?

Lillene

For a visual of the blown-over trees, look up the Tunguska Event. This is much, much smaller but the visual near the center point is similar. It’s the meteorite air burst Serenity was thinking of as a possible cause 😃