Towering trouble a litrp.., p.68
Towering Trouble: A LitRPG Isekai, page 68
“Not the assassin, no,” said Garrain. “The news I bring is far more dire.”
Ice trickled into her veins.
They followed the druid to the newly-constructed meeting hall at the edge of Redgrove, where a small group had gathered—elves and dwarves both. She recognised Kveld and Dallim and Nuille and several other faces. When they were all seated, Garrain, spoke. “You may recall the farseer, Ciadhe, went with the dwarrow arborologists to investigate the failed rift. The one beneath Wengarlen.”
“Yeah,” said Saskia. “You wanted to confirm that it no longer posed a threat, and see if you could learn anything that might help us close the Elcianor rift.”
“Indeed,” said Garrain. “As you can see, they have returned.”
“Oh dogs,” said Saskia. “It’s gonna blow, isn’t it?”
Garrain regarded her silently for several moments, before inclining his head. “Yes, Saskia, I fear it is. Thiachrin stopped the shapers from breaking through to the surface. But they were close. Exceedingly close. Now there’s just a thin crust of argnum holding back the inferno. And not for long.”
“We thought, in time, the arbor would heal itself,” said the head arborologist, whose name was Furglewacker (yeah, really). “By the forefathers, we were wrong. The other rift has greatly weakened Ciendil, and now it no longer has the strength to staunch the flow.”
“How much time do we have?” asked Saskia. “Is there anything we can do to stop it?”
“Less than a year,” said Furglewacker. “And no, I ken of no way to reverse what has been done. ’Tis the same problem as the other rift. The arlium burns too hot for anyone to get near, and we have no way to strengthen the argnum around it. One rift may dry up afore we all freeze or suffocate, but two…”
Saskia let out a long breath. “Okay, so what are our options? We already pretty much ruled out getting everyone off Ciendil, and that was when we thought we might have decades to do it. But maybe we need to start thinking outside the box. Or the branch. Airships, maybe? Oh no, that’s right. It’s a vacuum out there.” She turned to Dallim. “You’re a Neil Armstrong buff, aren’t you? Do you know how to build a rocket?”
Dallim offered her a sad smile. “That’s one small step for man. But an insurmountable leap for alvar and dwarrow.”
He was right, of course. The technology base needed to build chemical rockets capable of flying between branches was at least two hundred years beyond their grasp. Even if they had all the knowledge they needed—which they didn’t; they only had fragments—they’d have to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools…on and on for however many steps, each one requiring years of testing and tweaking. And that was assuming physics even worked the same way here as it did on Earth. Which it clearly didn’t, because tree the size of a planet.
Aside from rockets, there was a fairly obvious way she might be able to get herself off the branch. She could do what she’d already done a couple of times: enter the between, and come out at a different location. Teleportation, with a side of tentacles.
Perhaps she’d need a visual on her destination before she could teleport there. Probably not, though. She’d emerged into this world for the first time without having eyeballed it. Her undermind must have some way of sensing the world and choosing an appropriate site for her emergence. It had deposited her right next to a worldseed, after all. That couldn’t be coincidence. She had no reason to suspect there would be any more limitations when teleporting between locations within the same world.
In the months since her last trip into the between, she’d tried to repeat the process a couple of times, experimentally, with no success. She suspected her undermind wouldn’t let her do it unless there was dire need. Surely a slow death by suffocation or freezing would count as dire need?
But that wouldn’t save her friends, or anyone else on Ciendil. She’d seen nothing to suggest she could teleport anything outside of her own body—not even the clothes on her back. This whole line of thinking was probably a dead end.
“If not rockets, how did the dwarrows move between Ciendil and Old Ulugmir?” asked Saskia.
“The old tales speak of many ways, Sashki,” said Ruhildi. “Of these, the only one I ken to be true were the giant lift our forefathers rode up and down the trunk. It were destroyed in the siege of Climber’s Gate. More fanciful tales speak of ships that sailed the skies, and dracken riders, and droplines, and impossible climbs, and a few leaps into the void with naught but the clothes on one’s back.”
“Climb not impossible,” said Rover Dog. “I climb here.”
“From…another branch?” asked Saskia.
Rover Dog bobbed his head up and down. “Grongarg.”
“Grongarg,” she repeated. “You’ve mentioned that before. You thought I was a Grongargian princess.”
“You are princess,” said Rover Dog.
“So just to be clear, you’re saying Grongarg isn’t on Ciendil. It’s a completely separate branch.”
He nodded again.
“That’s insane!” she blurted. “The branches must be hundreds of kilometres apart! How can you possibly climb between them? Is there even air…?”
Rover Dog nodded. “Trunk carries blood. Blood brings air.”
By blood, he presumably meant arlium. Oh, of course! Arlium must flow through the trunk as well as the branches, so the trunk would also have its own atmosphere!
“Many days climb,” added Rover Dog. “Not easy, even for trow. But possible.”
“Interesting though it may be, this information is of no benefit to us,” said Garrain. “A trow may be able to endure such a climb, but the rest of us cannot. And certainly not the entire population of Ciendil. Just getting to the trunk would be an impossible trek for the fledglings and elders. It would take the bulk of a year, and we’d have to cross the scorched lands to the north.”
Ruhildi grimaced. “Aye, I hate to agree with the lea—with Garri—but I just don’t see how we can get more than a fistful of us away, no matter how we do it.”
Saskia’s mind was still whirling as she thought of the possibilities. The fact that there was air around the trunk was another bit of weird physics that she hadn’t considered. On Earth, even if there were something holding the air in place, the pressure wouldn’t be equal all the way up. At the base of the tree, with the weight of hundreds or thousands of Earth atmospheres pushing down on it, the air would be crushingly dense. At the top, it would be too thin to breathe. But she had to assume it didn’t work like that on this world.
That being the case, maybe balloons or airships could make the journey up and down the trunk. Though it would be all too easy for them to drift out of the atmosphere, whereupon there’d be nothing stopping them from…falling off the world, essentially. Maybe they could use tethers?
“There is something we could try,” she said. “I’ll talk to you about it afterward, Dallim. It’s not something that could transport everyone off the branch, but if we have to choose between saving a few of us, or none at all…”
“Agreed,” said Garrain. “As long as we don’t put all our effort into that last resort, and in so doing, miss an opportunity to save everyone.”
“Yeah I get that,” said Saskia. “I’m not giving up on everyone just yet. I think it’s time—yet again—for me to try to get hold of my father. He may be a donkhole, but he seems to know more about this stuff than any of us.”
“You said Calburn has been silent ever since the seed of stone were destroyed,” said Ruhildi.
“Yeah,” said Saskia. “But part of that, I think, is because he only ever visits me inside his old strongholds. The closest one is the Dead Sanctum—assuming you guys didn’t completely destroy it.” She looked at Garrain.
“If you mean your old lair, I fear it may no longer be of use to you,” said Garrain. “One of the survivors told me Thiachrin put his blade through its black heart.”
Saskia frowned in puzzlement. “Its heart? Oh, you mean the keystone! That may not be a problem. We have another one. I think they’re interchangeable.”
“I wish I could join you, Sashki…” said Ruhildi.
“But you’ve got a colony to look after,” said Saskia. “I know. I could go alone, but…” She turned to Kveld. “…I’d like you to come with me. If you still want to be my vassal.”
“I…’twould be a great honour, Saskia,” said Kveld. “You think it didn’t work last time because we were too far from a nexus?”
Ruhildi snorted. “Methinks there were a few other reasons why it didn’t work.”
Saskia’s earlier attempt to make Kveld her vassal had been…awkward. Because he lacked a focus for her to absorb, the only way she knew to do it was the Ruhildi method, as she’d begun to think of it: bringing her would-be vassal into the between, or at least the version of it she entered in her dreams. So for one incredibly awkward night they’d slept next to each other in an attempt to enter the same dreamspace. But instead of entering the between, she’d found herself dreaming of, well, other stuff. Apparently she’d gotten quite noisy and gropey in her sleep, and the poor dwarf had run off in a panic.
Ruhildi, of course, had been mercilessly bringing it up every chance she got.
“I’m not sure,” said Saskia, shooting her friend a withering scowl. “With Ruhildi, we were sleeping in the Stone Bastion control chamber. That might have made all the difference. I think it’s worth a shot.”
They set off later that day. At troll running speeds, it was just a four day journey to the Dead Sanctum, following the route Garrain had taken to and from the surface. On the way, they passed through a large cavern with a staircase running up one wall. Waves of intense heat emanated from a concealed tunnel near the base of the stairs. That must lead to the den Garrain had told her about, where the stoneshapers had been doing their funnelling. She didn’t dare go near it now. It’d be chock full of molten arlium.
The journey ended with a claustrophobic crawl through a very narrow tunnel to a certain bridge and the waterfall behind it. Months had passed since the day she’d last set foot in here, but the memories were still seared into her mind. She remembered arguing with Ruhildi at the mouth of this tunnel, trying to get her to go on without her. If she’d tried to squeeze through the tunnel back then, their pursuers would have easily caught up, and she’d have been stuck there, unable to manoeuvre. So she’d opted to face the elves in a place of her choosing—on a ledge behind the waterfall.
When Garrain had delivered himself into her grasp, she’d tried to bargain for his life, not knowing how little regard the Chosen had for his peoples’ lives. Not the best decision she’d ever made.
Ruhildi had been furious. Saskia still recalled her friend’s words, whispered into her ear after the druid had tried to snatch back his staff: “Kill the slippery shite afore he kills you!”
In the moments that followed, Saskia may have done just that, if she’d had the chance.
She remembered the feel of Thiachrin’s blade searing through her. The shock and the terror. Tumbling down; just like in all her earlier dreams. And then…
“Why have you stopped, Saskia?” asked Kveld.
“Just remembering, is all,” she said. “A lot happened in this spot. I’ll tell you about it someday.”
Turning away from the bridge, they quickly made their way to the control chamber. As Garrain had mentioned, the keystone lay shattered on the floor. But the socket remained intact, just waiting for a new keystone to be inserted. She was only too happy to oblige it.
As the keystone expanded to fill the slot, the patterns of blue arlium around the walls bloomed to life, bathing her in their soft glow.
A message awaited her when she touched the keystone: Site has been compromised. Recommend immediate evacuation.
Saskia let out a snort of laughter. A little late for that, don’t you think?
She entered the message: I wish to make this dwarrow, Kveld, into my vassal. Can you help with that?
Keystone: Analysing…
A column of light appeared around the dwarf, who let out a startled yelp.
“Sorry,” she said. “Just stand still. It won’t hurt you. I think.”
“Your words…they don’t fill me with confidence,” said Kveld.
The light winked out, and a new message appeared.
Keystone: Compatibility exceeds minimum viable threshold for vassal conversion. Do you wish to proceed?
She gave the assent. Nothing happened for several long seconds. Then she began to feel woozy. Kveld’s head lolled downward, and she caught him just before he fell. She lay down beside him on the cold floor, her eyes already fluttering closed.
Sometime later, she awoke to the sight of Kveld standing over her, an awestruck expression plastered across his face.
“Is that…is that what you really look like?” he asked.
The experience had been similar to the one where she’d taken Ruhildi as her vassal. Just without the trip through her friend’s memories, and with neither Abellion nor her father showing up to hinder or help her efforts. From her perspective, it had looked as if one of the vines trailing the winged leviathan—the undermind—had attached to the back of Kveld’s neck. But she knew he had probably seen something quite different, because everything they saw in the six-dimensional null-space of the between was, as Calburn had so often pointed out, mostly metaphorical.
“I don’t know,” she said. “What did you see?”
“A metal…thing,” he said.
“Oh yeah, that was me alright,” she said, grinning at him. “I’m a thing.”
He flushed. “I can’t describe it better than that. You looked big and metal, with wings and spinning blades.”
“Huh. I think you might have been spending too much time around Dallim. That’s not what I saw, or what Ruhildi saw. Actually, I don’t know if she even remembers what she saw. Everything is subjective in the between.”
This led to a discussion on just what the between was. She answered as best she could with what little information her father had given her. Speaking of which…
“No sign of Calburn in that dream,” she said. “I’ll give him a few days to show himself. If he doesn’t appear by then, I’ll assume he’s not going to, and we can head back. In the meantime, let’s see…”
Saskia looked down at her interface. Sure enough, there was a new double-sided mirror with Kveld’s face on it, right next to Ruhildi and Garrain. She activated it experimentally, and immediately started seeing double. So far, so good. She brought up her minimap and some other interface objects for him to see, and explained their purpose to him. Kveld took it all in his stride, and did the dwarven equivalent of geeking out.
“Now…let’s find out if you can do magic,” she said.
Yes. Yes he could.
Lacking a focus of his own, Kveld had been severely limited in his ability to cast spells. He’d done exceptionally well with what he had, becoming a master manipulator of ward magic—a facet of stoneshaping that required very little essence—but he’d barely been able to make a stone wobble on the ground. Now, that had all changed. He had a focus: her—or rather, the network of arlium within her. Now he was a full-fledged stoneshaper; one of only two remaining in the entire world. Kveld only knew a few spells outside of ward inscriptions, and his control of them was lacking, but seeing him levitate a huge slab of stone left her with no doubt as to his power.
Leaving him to play with his new toys, Saskia settled in for what would hopefully be a long snooze. Despite having just slept for several hours in front of the keystone, she remained quite tired. It was just as well, because she planned to be doing a lot of sleeping over the next few days, or however long it took for her dad to give her the time of day.
She awoke feeling refreshed—and frustrated. That had been a nice dream, but Calburn hadn’t featured in it at all. After a quick check-in with Ruhildi and Garrain (just to make sure New Inglomar hadn’t imploded while she was away), she returned to Kveld, hoping he hadn’t managed to blow himself up yet.
Nope. Still there.
Except…
The metal man gave her a sheepish grin.
“How!?” she said, feeling her eyes bulging out of her skull. “That’s an advanced spell, isn’t it? I’ve never seen Ruhildi cast it before.”
“The keystone,” he said. “There were a…library inside it, just waiting to be…”
“A library of spells? And you only just found this now?”
“Aye, ’twere hidden from me until…” He pointed at her.
“Until you became my vassal,” she said. “Does Ruhildi know about this?”
“Methinks not. Far as I ken, she hasn’t spent much time with the keystone after…”
“Oh wow!” she said. “Just a pity we didn’t discover it sooner. If the two of you can access Calburn’s whole repertoire of spells… Is there anything in there that might help us deal with the rifts?”
“Aye—no—mayhap,” he said. “Not stoneshaper magic. But there may be something. The library doesn’t just have… There are other spells too. Necrourgy, aye, but also other strands of magic. Other worldseeds.”
“Other worldseeds? Which ones?”
“I don’t ken. I don’t recognise these spells. It doesn’t say where they came from. I just ken they aren’t stoneshaper magic. And I found one strand…” He was silent for a long moment, gazing into the keystone.
“You found one strand…? Don’t keep me in suspense here!”
His brow furrowed. “It speaks of…binding the…blood of the world.”
“Blood of the world…as in arlium?”
“Mayhap,” he said, giving a dwarven shrug. “There are spells that heat the blood of the world; cool it; make it solid; make it flow. And spells that change other spells.”
