Draith
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Chapter 69 - Memory Shards
🕑 Added 2025-04-08 14:00:10 +0000 UTCOn my way to the workshop, I stopped by the crystal, emptying my mana into it. I'd done so several times already, and the little progress bar along the bottom had barely flickered. The map that had dominated the room when Nexxa used it didn't even appear. Still, long as the crystal kept draining my mana, I figured it was making progress.
Neta raised her head when I entered the workshop, and came over for more scritches when she realized I wasn't just passing through.
While petting her with one hand, I cataloged the materials Balthum had left behind, moving those that weren't being actively preserved into the pendant. It cleared up more than half the benches. There were sixteen separate work benches and each one had a different setup, though the workbenches themselves were uniform.
I knew from Perth's lessons what each tool was. There were an assortment of flasks that were used for distilling, otherwise treating liquid components, or holding ingredients that were used to preserve more precious essence materials.
The most common component, one that was used on most of the workbenches, were the clamps holding the essence materials in place. Most of the clamps were equipped with special stone plates that prevented the materials from being corrupted. Those plates were then padded with non-reactive cloth. Or in some cases with cloth with the same affinity as whatever the clasps were holding.
After the clasps, the next most common tool was an articulated arm that had several handles on it. Most of the arms had needles in them at the moment. Much like the padding, the needles were made of materials that were neutral or with the same essence as whatever was being worked on. In addition to the needles, there was one arm with a larger blade fit into it, which was likely used for bulk separation of flesh.
As I worked my way around the workshop, I realized there were easily four times as many tier one materials stored away as there were tier three materials on the benches. All of them in the shape of tools.
Amongst them were familiar tools; hammers, chisels, punches, and even an enchanted drill. All made of essence materials. Half the workbenches were equipped with stasis fields. None of them were especially big, but the ability to preserve essence materials was incredibly valuable. I could probably use them to keep Magits stable too, if I ever needed to.
Which reminded me of yet another nice thing about staffs compared to other Magical items. Since staffs didn't store mana, there was no chance of them breaking down.
Spatial storage like my pendant and the ring didn't have that issue for a different reason. The active parts of the enchantments were actually inside the storage space itself. It meant you needed someone very skilled in Worlds magic to craft them, though I suspected there was probably another trick to their construction. Otherwise spatial storage would be even more expensive than it was.
With one hand playing over my storage ring, I ran my other over a piece of leather stretched over a round tool I didn't recognize. Perth's family hadn't dealt with leather directly.
Letting out a long breath, I swore to myself. I'd almost managed to forget about Nexxa, between the refugees and the workshop.
I hoped she was alright.
For the first time since she left, I loaded up Memory Palace.
Once inside, I went to the chest, looking for recent memories. Maybe if I watched it again, I could figure out what to say to her to make it right. I found myself wanting to smack myself in the head at the idiotic way I'd told her about what happened. Memory Palace let me replay those final seconds with more fidelity than I expected. And it was in the reflection of the Waygate behind her that I saw it.
Someone else had been there. I couldn't make out their form, but they were bigger than me. And they were blue.
I stared at the form in my memory, willing it to gain clarity. To reveal who had been there with us. It wasn't any of the folk from Tetherfall. Except for Tanis, they were all shorter than me. And if it had been Tanis…
Well, I couldn't see any way that made sense.
The only other people I could think of were Hash and Sarpit. Nexxa didn't know Sarpit and Hash was back in her domain.
Wasn't he?
Unfortunately, I didn't have the tools to solve who it could’ve been. And the only person I could ask had disappeared.
However, despite knowing there'd been an unknown threat present, one that Nexxa had felt the need to blast first and ask questions never, I was feeling surprisingly… giddy.
She hadn't simply attacked me.
So what had happened? What had she realized?
Trying to jog my thoughts, I paced around the garage, my eyes landing on my mom’s old Vette. Since I was there anyway, I decided to take the her for a spin. As I moved out to the empty expanse, thinking over Nexxa’s last words, I was startled from my thoughts by an unexpected thump. The terrain had reshaped itself. The garage now sat on a hill, overlooking uneven ground. Stepping out of the Vetta, I squinted at it, noting a set of really big bumps to the east and west that could’ve been mountains. It wasn't nearly as steep as my actual domain, but the surroundings mirrored it to a degree.
I couldn't actually see all the details, but I knew it was true, intuitively.
Still, it was only a distorted copy. Hoping back in the Vette, I was soon out past the ripples, putting her through burnouts, donuts and all sorts of stunts I wouldn't have dared pulled with the real car.
After half an hour, I pulled back into the shop's yard, the return trip fast as ever.
As I pulled up, I noticed a new neon sign flashing over the shop. It was my Magecrest, the howling Wolf's head glowing in a flickering blue light. It was more than that too. Through that sign, I could feel my connection to the Beacon.
Parking the Vette back in her spot, I headed into the shop. Clearing the staff off the workbench along the side, I pulled on my connection to the beacon. And sure enough, I was able to bring up the crappy mana flow display as if I was standing on the peak with my hand slapped against the beacon’s stone surface. A little more focus, and I was able to get my domain to flicker into place. It wasn't nearly as detailed as I would've liked. In fact, it was barely better than the rough terrain outside.
Yet there were a few notable exceptions. Tetherfall was there in vivid detail, as were Mount Aeternia, Mistvale and the refugee valley. There were a couple other little patches, such as the cliff we'd needed to climb and the crumbling watchtower where we'd made camp on the edge of my domain.
A smile crept onto my face. I needed that spell that would let me transcribe from Memory Palace more than ever.
It was time to go hunting for slips of jade.
When I dropped out of Memory Palace, I was reminded I was still in the workshop with Neta. She'd curled up atop me, practically burying me in her strands, the bulk of which seemed to be resting on my neck. As soon as I started moving, she pulled herself clear, stretching herself out like she was a normal cat who'd just woken up.
I gave the workshop one more sweep, finding exactly what I was looking for in a drawer of broken tools at the far end of the workshop. There were numerous chunks of green jade mixed in with the other tools.
There were also several wooden buckets full of green chips set aside in the central chamber, which had been cleaned up by the Tethered. It was just sitting there, completely out in the open.
Like so much garbage.
Chuckling, I moved the buckets into the pendant then made my way up to Keeper's chamber.
Its violet eyes sparked as I stepped inside, its head cracking as it broke free of the door. "Ah, young omnivore. Have you come to satiate my hunger?"
"Sure hoping so," I replied as I started pulling the buckets out of my inventory. "Don't suppose you have an easy way to tell if one of these is what you're looking for?"
A series of cracks followed my question as Keeper's arms broke free of the frame. Even more pops and cracks sounded out as its lower half broke free as well. Suddenly, I was sharing the room with a very not-connected-to-the-wall behemoth of bone.
Its lower half was a set of four legs, though not of any kind of creature I'd seen before. They all ended in sharp spikes, each movement eliciting another crack from the floor as Keeper skittered forward, stopping as soon as it reached the buckets. One hand reached down, the thin finger bones like razor blades, plucking one of the jade chips from the bucket. Then another. It went through over a dozen chips this way, throwing most to the floor before finding one that caught its interest.
"Here," Keeper said, holding the jade chip towards me. "See the markings? If you find one like this, it should be intact enough for me to retrieve its contents."
I held out my hand, and Keeper dropped the chip into it. The markings were faint, and could easily be mistaken for scrapes if he hadn't pointed them out. In fact, when he'd first shown me what to look for, that's exactly what I'd mistaken the thin lines for.
Keeper continued sorting through the buckets, throwing the majority of the jade chips on the floor. Still, it was accumulating a small pile of them as it went. Once it'd emptied the first bucket, I decided to collect the ones it'd discarded onto the floor into the bucket.
No reason to leave a mess.
When I retrieved an empty bucket from the workshop and set it in place, Keeper obligingly started dropping the useless jade chips in the bucket instead of on the floor.
Seeing as Keeper would be occupied for a while, I took a break to check on the golem attendants's enchantments. The ones I'd added were always meant to be temporary. Which meant that they were already breaking down. They'd last for another month at most, at which point, I'd either need to redo them, or, hopefully, fix them.
Developing a way to fix the attendants would be much easier with access to Balthum's workshop. If the ocean Waygate had worked properly, then I might've already figured out more. Not that I'd had much time, now that we had hundreds of refugees joining us. And these were only the first wave. Who knew how many more might show up as the unrest in Terra Vista continued. We'd need a proper harbor, especially if they kept bringing new ships.
"Huh," I said to myself as I gazed out one of the windows in the direction of the refugee valley. They had ships. I needed to explore the ocean. That… might just work. We did have the rough coordinates of the ocean Waygate. And it couldn't be that deep. Bevel had survived getting dumped out the other end, after all.
With Sculpt Stone, Bloom, and a whole lot of Mistvale trees, I might even be able to build one of those walls. The ones they used to break up the waves. If we had one of those in place around the Waygate, then could we use it even if it was underwater?
It was with those thoughts that my steps took me down the steps, right past Keeper. I made it three steps, before remembering what I'd been waiting on and backing up to see how it was doing. Keeper was on the last bucket, and had accumulated at least thirty jade chips in the keep pile.
I was already rubbing my hands together. A spell to print off my accumulated knowledge was only the first thing I intended to get out of Keeper.
While I waited, I flipped through some of Balthum's records at random, hoping that maybe I'd find inspiration in some of them. And failing.
Once Keeper was done, it sat back, the purple glow in its eyes vibrating with a strange intensity. It flicked its black tongue over its glistening teeth as the head shifted in my direction. "Thirty-four Memory Shards. Of which, seven remain intact."
"Damn, only seven?" I asked, looking down at the shards.
"There is a spell which may restore many of the broken shards," Keeper said, getting my attention. "But it is not a simple one to master. Many who desired to feast have instead starved themselves in the attempt."
"A variant of Sculpt Stone?"
"No. It is Celestial magic. It draws on the memories of the heavens to recover what the earth has lost," Keeper said, as it gazed at me. "And you are not yet strong enough to cast it. It is a third Order spell."
"Damn. How much?"
"That depends on the shards themselves. We will have to first feast on their contents," Keeper explained. "These shards were once as common as bacon on a pig farm. Yet even common memories hold value. For every shard you give me, I promise you at least one first Order spell. For those of true value… well, we shall have to see."
"And what about the spell to fix the shards? If these are all common shards, how many would it cost me?"
"Hmm. Six, if they are all of the least quality," Keeper said, its tongue flicking hard against the inside of its teeth.
"Any chance you can come down on that?"
Keeper's eyes grew dim for a moment, before flaring back to their regular intensity. "The rates are… set."
The way it said the last word was unusually stiff.
"I want the spell to copy memories to books. You said that was one shard, right? So, that and the spell to restore the other jade chips…" I sighed. "That's pretty much gonna wipe me out."
"Do not despair, young omnivore," Keeper said, its voice regaining its usual vigor as it held up one of the jade chips. "The value of this chip alone should be enough to satisfy your hunger. Are you ready to Partake?"
I looked at the chip, held on edge between Keeper's blade like fingers, and I honestly couldn't see anything about it that might mark it as special. "Sure."
When I glanced back towards Keeper, I realized it had moved closer to me. It now loomed over me, and I realized how easily it could tear me to tiny pieces with its massive claws even as it lowered its long sinuous neck, bringing its eyes directly to the far side of the jade chip. Those purple eyes flared in intensity, and for a second I thought I could see lines of purple with flecks of black in them, leading into the jade.
And then, they led into me.
And I was me no longer.
Comments
Noah
He should ask the refugees pay him in stories from their homeland, either historical, cultural, or fiction. He could suggest the exchange of stories/info as “payment” for his land and protection. Balthum probably already exchanged all the cultural stories of the Tethered, but the newcomers will have their own traditions. Then he could trade in those stories for more spells! All while maintaining his Earth knowledge for a later date or emergency. He could even structure some kind of weekly/monthly, group wide storytelling exchange between all of his domains inhabitants. It could start as just reading stories and eventually morph into plays and stuff as the society develops. It’d help bring the two groups together and help them understand each other. He could also use it in order help teach all of his inhabitants how to read, since it was pointed out that education was severely lacking. Heck, he should probably start working on setting up a primary school system for everyone soon. One of the primary purposes of public education is social development. He could hire one of the more learned refugees to teach and it’d help build common ties between the disparate groups.
ThoMiCroN
The knowledge from Earth should be immeasurable, given how prized the knowledge of his own world was.
