Azure Dune

by BottledChaos

“-- and you also made this formation with the wrong rune. If you want to do a reverse-summoning ritual, it’s important to –” Trevor continued to prattle as he looked at my and Xeron’s summoning ritual. 

It was a wonder how the man of – usually – few words could flood the room with his lectures and insights when it came to magic. Especially interdimensional magic.

I couldn’t help the fond grin on my face.

We’d had a short chat, explaining each other’s situations but decided that we didn’t have time for reminiscing now. It was as Xeron feared. An offspring of hers, her daughter, had grown in the past few decades and was now causing chaos over in Alyzean. 

In fact, he was in the middle of an expedition to push the corruption back, but because they had underestimated it, they had been separated. Trevor had been about to succumb when we had summoned him.

I honestly couldn’t believe this stroke of luck.

Unfortunately, our intervention aside, Trevor still felt justifiably suspicious of Xeron. For the time being, I managed to convince him to accept her presence, but he kept side-eyeing her, probably expecting her to betray us.

After the chat, and after he recovered enough with the help of our magic, we turned back to the ritual.

As per his instructions, we adjusted the ritual site, and activating it now should send us over to Alzyean, rather than summoning someone from over there to here. Most of the intricacies still completely flew over my head, but that was to be expected. If interdimensional travel was simple, we would have a lot more people like me running around, after all.

“Still, I can’t believe that you managed to tame Xeron,” Trevor said, eyeing the woman off to the side.

“They didn’t tame me,” Xeron refuted with an annoyed frown. “I simply decided to change my ways.”

“Riiight…” he said whilst narrowing his eyes. “Well, let’s get going. I just hope we’re not too late.”

With a round of nods and one eye roll from our resident reformed sentient corruption, we settled ourselves into the ritual circle and used our Aether as Trevor instructed. It took about an hour of adjusting and fiddling around, but finally, after the old magician deemed everything in order, we activated the ritual.

I felt the familiar feeling of being pulled away in every direction and my vision went white despite my closed eyes.

But something was off. Obviously, I didn’t remember the exact feeling of being summoned to Alyzean since it had been so long ago, but I was pretty sure that the dark and sinister outline of the tunnel we were traveling through wasn’t supposed to be there. Worse still, the closer we got, the more corrupt it became.

I quickly realized that this was the connection between our worlds being corrupted by Xeron’s daughter.

It began to seem more and more dangerous as we approached the other world, until right at the end when I felt myself being violently flung in one direction while losing track of the others.

A second of eternity later, the strange sensation of being summoned abated and I blinked my eyes open again.

I found myself inside a luscious green meadow with a large tree in the middle.

My eyes widened.

I recognized this place. Our hero party had stopped by here on our way to stop Xeron once upon a time. The tree was supposedly magical and protected anyone who didn’t mean it any harm.

Then I frowned.

Something was wrong. Two things, actually.

For one, where were the others? A quick look around found nobody else nearby. Worse still, all my Aether senses could spot was the dark corrupted Aether in the distance.

I didn’t even bother trying to call out to them. I was on my own, that much was clear.

It was a possibility that Trevor had warned us about. With this world’s foundations being corrupted, our interdimensional teleport had been intercepted, which had thrown us to wildly different places all over the world. That must have been the sensation toward the end.

That wasn’t good at all. Especially since Xeron still had my pack of necessities.

I stood up from my cross-legged position and looked up at the magical tree. That was the other thing. Despite being sure that this was the same place from our first adventure, I could barely feel anything from the tree. In fact, the outermost branches seemed to be wilting and turning black.

“This looks really bad…” I murmured.

From what I remembered, the tree hadn’t faltered even when surrounded by Xeron’s influence on all sides last time. If even this tree had been affected to this degree already, then the corruption must be at a critical point already.

No time to dawdle then.

Unfortunately, I was alone without any supplies in the middle of a green meadow with no snow or ice in sight. At the moment I was no better than just an old person with back problems.

But that didn’t matter to me. Xeron’s avatar, Trevor, and his companions he had gotten separated from were all out there. Maybe I couldn’t do much on my own, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t try.

I gently patted the tree, telling it to hold on for a little longer, before setting off. 

Even after decades of neglect, my ability to sense Aether hadn’t degraded much at all. The more I focused, the more concerned I became. There wasn’t just a little spot of corruption I sensed. No, it was more like I stood in the only spot lacking the corruption, completely surrounded by it.

It didn’t even matter which direction I decided to go in, since the corrupted Aether spread out in every direction around me and even below me. That might have explained the tree. The corruption – Xeron’s daughter, I suppose – had attacked its roots.

This was really bad.

My expression set in grim determination, I set off in a random direction. I walked all the way to the edge of the meadow where it bordered with the corrupted Aether. I had actually packed a bit of snow into a satchel just in case, which meant that I could use my magic to slowly purify my way through, but it would take ages to get anywhere.

That wasn’t good enough, but what else could I do?

As I pondered on the best course of action, a voice resounded in my head.

‘Azure?’

I blinked.

Of course, Xeron. She had mentioned still being tied to me despite having a physical body now.

‘I’m here,’ I thought back at her. ‘I landed near the meadow with the magical tree. Where are you?’

‘Mmm, I’m not too far away myself. I suppose we must have landed fairly close to each other because of the link.’

I sighed in relief. 

‘That’s good. I was afraid I would have to strike out on my own.’

She chuckled over the link.

‘Don’t you worry, my damsel in distress. Your knight in shining armor is on her way. Just wait by the meadow for me and then we can go and scold my daughter for causing all the trouble.’

I pouted for about a micro-second before bursting into laughter. Both for my former arch-nemesis treating me like a damsel in distress to be saved, as well as the image of someone scolding a world-sized sentient corruption like a misbehaving child.

Over the link, I agreed to meet up and went back to the meadow for the time being. It didn’t take too long for Xeron’s avatar to pop up from the other side and together, we set off.