Draith
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Chapter 160 - Back Beneath
🕑 Added 2025-07-13 14:00:10 +0000 UTCDoing the trial with Tamrie at my side turned out to be rather entertaining. Her coordination was…
Well, she didn't spend time on the nets unless she absolutely had to, and it showed.
Yet she didn't give up, or show any sign of frustration other than short and simple nods to herself before trying again.
It took us a while, but we completed the final cliff challenge together, much like Bevel and I had done. Before we could leave, just out of sight of the exit, Tamrie stopped me.
Not with words, but with a fierce kiss.
"I… wow," I said as she pulled away, smirking at me. Wasn't sure what I'd done to deserve that, but it wasn't the first time she'd been so aggressive lately.
"Just a quick reminder," Tamrie said, taking my hand before leading me out.
The others were all waiting, gathered around Tender who was sitting with their legs folded beneath them, petting one of their forest-raptors. Bevel was beside it, petting another of the raptors.
Vaserra was staring out into the darkened waters of the lake, where several glowing fish swam by.
"Oh," Tamrie breathed out when she noticed what the Frost Riven chieftain was watching. "That's… lovely."
I pulled her into my side, nodding as we stood together in silence for a moment.
"It has been an interesting day," Vaserra said, approaching us. "And while the strength granted by these halls would be of great worth, I fear I shall only be able to find time sparingly."
"You're always welcome," I said, extending my arm.
She clasped it, squeezing lightly. "And you and yours are always welcome beneath our roof." Vaserra nodded at Tamrie before leaping up onto Frost Lily's back. "It has been too long since Frost Lily has had a proper run. We shall take the long way home. May your Ice fly true and your blood never burn!"
"May your Ice fly true and your blood never burn!" I called after her as she and Frost Lily tore their way up the tunnel.
"So… she's a full bag of ice on a cold winter's day, isn't she?" Tamrie asked.
"I… have no idea what that means," I said, turning to squint at her.
"It means… nothing, I'm being unkind," Tamrie said, glancing towards where Calbern and Nexxa were standing over Bevel, who was still playing with one of the forest-raptors. She was feeding it bits and pieces of leaves, crumpling them up then tossing them with her magic.
"How so?" I asked, repeating the phrase in my head, trying to figure out if there was some sort of insult buried in it.
"I just… S'pose I'm jealous, is all," Tamrie said, brushing her hand through her hair, hesitating on the hairpin. "She's a powerful woman. Much like you say you need me to be. And I… I won't ever be like her, no matter how much'n you want me to."
I stared at Tamrie blankly, trying to process the very idea of anything approaching romance with Vaserra. And utterly failing.
"It was stupid, nevermind," Tamrie said, turning away.
Not wanting her to think the wrong thing, I pulled her chin back around to face me. There were tears beading in the corners of her eyes. Couldn't let that stand, so I pulled her close and kissed her just as fiercely as she'd kissed me minutes earlier.
When we pulled apart, I said, "I respect Vaserra. She's a powerful ally, and maybe even a friend. But she's not half the woman you are, Tamrie. Not to my heart."
"I… that… I s’pose that'll do, then," Tamrie said, going up on her toes to kiss me again. When she pulled away, she was smiling ear to ear. "That'll do quite nicely, my love."
With that addressed, we joined the others. Bevel was excitedly telling Nexxa about the enchanting work we'd been doing earlier in the day, and Nexxa was asking her questions. I noted more than once when Nexxa seemed surprised at Bevel's ability to answer them, glancing over in my direction, her eyebrows raised.
Bidding Tender goodbye, we made our way to the surface. As we did, Nexxa pulled me to the side, gesturing at Bevel. "Where did you find that kid? She's got a better understanding of enchanting than the rest of our siblings combined."
"Not more than us though," I said, patting her hand.
"Course not," Nexxa said, scoffing. "But we've put in the effort."
"So's Bevel," I said, smiling sadly. "Even before I started teaching her, she was studying Balthum's work, trying to find a way to free her family. She didn’t know enough to put it all together, but she’d figured out how to break them."
"That's… you mentioned he took them from her, but I… she was trying to get them back?"
"Yeah. Spent years running and hiding from him. But she didn't leave. She could've… She… well, she doesn't mention it, but the other villagers. They told me about trying to send her away. Told her there were better places for her. Places she'd be safe. Front, she could've made it to Spellford or a dozen other places and been taken in," I stopped just inside the end of the tunnel, watching as the others loaded into Fang. "Instead, she chose to stay. Cause she refused to give up on them. Refused to stop breaking his work."
Bevel turned, smiling wide as she waved her arm in a big exaggerated motion over her head.
"So… yeah. She knows a lot about enchanting."
…MLI…
The next morning, we visited Tender's trial again, and it took the being just as long to summon the tunnel. Not an instant process, it seemed. Was glad we hadn’t upset it.
If we were going to be doing them daily, it might be worth it to attempt repairing the matching Waygate. It'd require a near total reconstruction, but we had enough material between the other broken Waygates it should be possible. I got Tamrie to take a note of it before we started our ‘walks’ for the day.
Tamrie and I might've gotten a little distracted part way along when she decided to put one of the red lilies in my hair, and I decided to return the favor.
After a brief exchange of another sort, we made our way through the path again. While still clearly struggling with some parts, Tamrie didn't have to pick herself up nearly as often as she did the day before.
Once we were finished with the paths, I cleared off the Waygate, recording everything we'd need to fix it. Then I gave the list to Tamrie, asking her to check how much we'd need to take from other Waygates.
After returning to Mount Aeternia, Tamrie enlisted Banya to help her while Bevel and I returned to the enchanting workshop to finish the scanners.
As we worked, I realized the changes to Bevel were a lot deeper than just the physical. Concepts she’d struggled with before came to her quicker, and she was more confident in her work too.
When we were done, we had seven different versions of the scanner, each of which, in theory, should provide us with at least a partial scan.
I scanned Bevel first, then got a scan of Tamrie, Banya and Calbern.
Just for my curiosity, I asked Inertia if I could scan her. She'd laughed, but allowed it. Tresla had refused, though her tinkling laughter told me she wasn't upset by the request.
Returning to Mount Aeternia, I tried using the memory jade with the central crystal, but it didn't so much as flicker or otherwise acknowledge the crystals when I pressed them to its surface. The beacon went so far as to mention that there were unregistered deep scans within my territory, but again, didn’t register when I touched them to it.
The deep scans being noticed was promising. Except it said there were two thirds of the total scans there should be. Which meant two of the scanners were either duds or didn’t register for some reason. Thankfully, we'd marked which crystals came from which scanners, and were able to set the ones that weren't registering to the side.
After confirming that we were at least on the right track, Calbern, Bevel and I flew out to the Golden Halls.
With Water Jet and Water Breathing slotted in, we descended to the underwater dome over the golden gazebo.
Unfortunately, in my excitement, I'd forgotten that Bevel wouldn't be able to join me in the diagnostic room. The only one open to her was where Balthum was nearing the end of his process, and no way did I want her to have to confront him. It’d probably be a good idea to keep her away from the equipment too.
Not to say Calbern and I weren't going to pay him a visit. There wasn't much time left on his transformation, and given how often the diagnostics said that the timeframe was an 'estimate', we figured it was better to be safe than sorry.
So, with both of us protected by Aegis, we teleported into the golem chamber.
Nothing had changed since our last visit, the chamber still mostly shrouded in darkness. A check of the machine indicated that he still had two weeks left, as long as the mana levels remained constant.
According to Xoth, the mana was supposed to spike near the end of the Howl. It usually did. And when it did, it would bring the worst storm of the season. Whether that'd be in two weeks or six, no one knew.
Still, we were operating under the assumption it would be soon.
Which meant that now that we'd confirmed Balthum was still locked in place, it was time for what we came for. Calbern returned to the gazebo with Bevel while I went lower, golden light swirling around before whisking me away to the Ascension Assistance chamber.
As the chamber lit up, I turned my attention to the diagnostic section.
After a while working through the submenus, I found something that might've been what I was looking for. An interface for reading memory jades.
A sturdy shelf protruded from the wall, just below the interface I was working with, several open slots sitting empty, each the perfect shape for a memory jade. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell if it was designed to read scans from the jades, or just memories.
Still, I figured I should test it, see what sort of response I got out of it. Once I knew what I was working with, I could take it from there.
The moment I slotted a jade into place, a projection filled the room. Banya's figure stood to one side, her still human form holding her hands to her mouth. We were standing in the middle of a burning village, one that had clearly been lacking in any sort of skilled tradesmen, giving the rough construction of the log houses.
For several seconds, I didn't realize what was happening, since I wasn't watching it from her perspective.
But as she let out a cry of, "Senya!" while darting across to a nearby older man lying in a pool of blood, I realized the scans hadn't just analyzed her, they'd recorded memories. Memories she hadn't meant to put inside.
I pulled the memory jade from the slot, and the scene disappeared.
Switching to one of the jades we used with one of the other types of scanners, I held it over the slot again. It was still one of Banya's.
This time I intended to pull it out immediately if it showed another memory, so I gripped the little crystal tight before slotting it into place.
To my relief, it didn't display anything. The results of her scan didn't immediately pop up either.
After some poking around, I got some of her results.
Reaction times : 1.50
Pain Clarity : 1.00
Pattern Recognition : 1.50
They all matched the original settings from when we first found Balthum but the rest of her results were missing. We’d thought it might happen, but it confirmed that the scan had only recorded part of her condition.
Swapping in the next of her memory jades revealed more of her status without playing any memories. Even the jades I'd written off as defunct held partial details.
The only one that didn't was the one that'd recorded the scene in the village.
Several of the scanners had overlapping values, and there seemed to be slight variances between them, but it was a solid start.
It also gave me a lot of reference material for comparison. Even a quick glance told me a lot more than I'd known before.
For one thing, Calbern was even stronger than I'd thought.
[Diagnostic summary of Calbern, Knight Exemplar.]
Diagnostic Category - Current Tier - Ascendancy Status
Body - Tier 4 - Corrected Kinya - Exemplar Rising
Mind - Tier 3 - Deviated Kinya - Exemplar Rising
Soul - Tier 1 - None
"Rags and oil," I muttered as I looked at his overall status. Then I wrote down the details for him to look over later. All the details. I couldn't help but note that all his physical enhancements were close to even, and that they were all sitting at over twenty times multipliers.
His mental multipliers were much lower, barely being more than mine other than his reaction speed, which was… weird. Deviated Kinya seemed to reveal part of the problem, indicating that a lot of his mental pathways were damaged.
That was… worrying.
Still, I wrote it down for him, with a note that I’d be willing to talk about it if he wanted.
With Calbern done, my attention shifted to Bevel next.
[Diagnostic summary of Bevel, Wind Sorceress.]
Diagnostic Category - Current Tier - Ascendancy Status
Body - Tier 2 - Leaf on the Wind
Mind - Tier 2 - Leaf on the Wind
Soul - Tier 2 - Leaf on the Wind
She was a lot more uniform than Calbern. And poking at the diagnostic revealed that she didn't have any of the underlying issues Calbern did. Though it did indicate signs of recent repairs, minor disturbances which could be removed with meditation.
Or by just running a couple more trials.
What I found really interesting was that Bevel actually had spell slots. Not like I was used to, since they weren't standardized. And the main part of her soul was firmly affixed to her Air element. But she could currently fit in three first order spells.
Considering her only affinity was Air, she'd still need a catalyst to use most spells, but I suspected she was going to be thrilled with the news.
When I pulled out the memory jade for Inertia’s scans, they didn’t work. At all. It was as if we hadn’t even taken them.
Tamrie's status didn't hold any surprises. There wasn't a single ascension method listed, or anything else of note. Was glad to see there weren't any hidden problems lurking, at least.
Further examination revealed that, with the obvious exception of Inertia, I could examine everyone's mana-body. Exactly what we were there for.
With my scan already in the system, I pulled all five projections into a line, examining the differences. To my surprise, Tamrie's was actually the closest to my own.
A few small tweaks, and I might actually be able to keep my promise.
The scan of Banya's seemed to be blank at first, but after closer inspection, I discovered that the golem body seemed to create interference. Her mana body was there, and was very neatly overlaid right overtop of her physical body. I'd either need better scanners, or a lot more understanding to do anything with her results.
Calbern's mana body was… well, he was right when he’d told me he’d had no chance of becoming a mage. I wasn't certain, but if I was reading the mess of lines and colorful warnings correctly, his soul was uniquely unsuited for the five-slot method.
On the other hand, Bevel's was very neatly organized. It was just super specialized. When I brought the scan up, I discovered that Bevel wouldn't have to do anything other than keep using her magic to grow. Ever. The diagnostic showed that, as long as she didn't suffer any more injuries to her soul, she'd slowly reach Dragon-souled over the next two hundred years. It did note that reaching Phoenix souled was unlikely unless she felt an unusual kinship with the Air affinity.
I stared at that little note, so simply listed as if it had no great significance.
There was a tier higher than Dragon-soul.
Comments
Druid
Good thought on the utility of the memory scanner, I didn't think of that. However if he does keep it, it would be best if it was guarded very carefully. The potential for abuse is VERY high.
chump1999
@vomits at personal assistant paramour@
Jason Hardman
Hopefully he'll be able to combine the scanner bits he wants to make a full scan output. Perhaps save the memory scanner for special circumstances, such as criminals. Balthum would be a good target, although it'd be uncertain to work in their current state.
