Draith
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Chapter 62 - Waygate Repairs
🕑 Added 2025-04-01 14:00:14 +0000 UTCWith Nexxa's assistance, I was soon standing next to my beacon. From what I knew, the design of the beacons hadn't changed in living memory. Considering how old some of the Dragon-souled were, that was… a long time. Roughly the equivalent of Alexander the great, if I wasn't mistaken.
There was only one way Dragon-souled died. Violently.
It was the one thing everyone knew about Dragon-souled.
And despite that… despite the vast timeframes involved, the simple beacon before me had remained unchanged for all that time. At least, officially. I was well aware by now that a lot of what Perth 'knew' growing up was carefully curated.
That said, the one in front of me did match what I'd read about after taking the oath.
I realized I was stalling and forced myself to lay my hand on the beacon.
In my soul, I felt my oath respond. A twisting sensation, not unlike being thrown across the dirt after an unexpected throw, and then it snapped into place, solidifying. I was officially the Magus Dominus of domain Azure Sky, Great Edge.
I blinked, glancing over at Nexxa, who was smiling back at me. "Uh… did you suddenly know the name of your domain?"
"Yep. I'm End of Teleti River, Central Peaks," Nexxa confirmed. "Tried renaming it, but they don't know how to do that anymore."
"But it used to be an option? Wonder if we could figure that out," I said, my thoughts already drifting to the chamber below. The mapping function wasn't something that'd been mentioned anywhere in my reading, but then, it was clear the Ways Between had been lost for a long time before Bevel had found them. Maybe something in the Ways was needed to get the beacon to work.
Focusing, I was able to get the beacon to light up with a simple representation of my domain. None of the detail I'd seen when Nexxa activated the crystal, just a few small swirls of color in Mistvale, representing all of the mana-flows in my domain, and a barely visible line that I suspected was the border.
The puny mana-flows would’ve been depressing if we hadn't had the storm dump huge amounts of mana on us that very morning.
Looking around, I realized I could see my entire domain from where I was standing. Even the ocean to the east, beyond the wyverns. I didn’t need the beacon for that.
A sudden chill on my skin reminded me I was only out here under the grace of Nexxa's crackling shield. Was pretty sure I could modify my own Shield spell to work in a similar fashion, though I hadn't thought to do so yet. Heck, I’d only ever cast the spell a couple times. I made a mental note to add such modifications to my list as I nodded towards the faulty obsidian pillar.
Nexxa took a second to get my meaning, but once she did, she grabbed my hands, barely able to float me back down to the floor below. It was a lot quicker than climbing up had been, but it was unfortunate she didn't have the capacity to carry me with her inherent flight. Might've been able to before I started packing on the muscle.
Before my feet could even touch the stone, Nexxa released me, leaving me to stumble forward a half-step.
With the atmosphere gone, I turned to show her my appreciation for her prank with both middle fingers. Only to find her slinging a pair of lightning bolts down the mountain. When I moved over to join her, I barely caught sight of a wyvern falling near Tetherfall.
Suddenly the shield snapped back into place, the pressure returning almost instantly. And with it, sound.
"Got em," Nexxa said, flashing me a grin. "And that was a rather strange way to thank your sister for watching out for your village for you. What does this even mean?" Nexxa added, holding up both of her middle fingers in my direction.
"Heard it meant hello," I said, thinking back to a TV show I'd watched when my mom was still around. Couldn't actually remember the name, but it had a bunch of farmers who'd struck oil, I was pretty sure. Only part I remembered was them being told middle finger meant hello. Well, that and the oil.
"Sure it does," Nexxa said, proving she wasn’t as gullible as a bunch of farmers from the nineties, pushing my shoulder while nodding towards the sparking obelisk. "You wanted to look at that?"
"Right," I said, turning back. If I could fix it up, then I'd have a perfect place to… honestly, I didn't know what I'd use a super high mountain top for. Not like I needed the very top to look out over my domain. There were more than enough windows. Still, if the beacon did have buried functions, it’d be nice to be able to visit without having to cast a spell.
Inspecting the broken pillar and comparing it to one of the nearby pillars only took us a couple minutes to find the fault. It was a broken step-down rune. Normally, such a rune would function a bit like an electrical transformer, converting the higher intensity mana the obelisks were drawing from somewhere further down and lowering it to something that wouldn’t overload the enchantment. As we worked, we realized that technically the other sections weren't even deactivating. Just having the single section go down was enough to rip the air away in less than a second through the suddenly exposed side. Explained why it always tugged us towards that pillar when it failed.
"Fixing it would take the last of my dust," I said with a sigh as Nexxa and I stepped back inside the atrium at the top of the stairs, where the air vanishing wouldn’t cut us off in the middle of a sentence. "Plus, if we want it to last, I'm pretty sure we need tier two components."
"Oh, right. Brought you something," Nexxa said, with a wave of her hand. Next to me, a large box appeared, alongside a short wooden cask.
I recognized the cask. It was the same sort of cask the captain used for the refined monster dust. And considering the conversation, I had a feeling I knew what was in the second box. Cracking it open, I wasn't surprised to see an assortment of monster parts neatly laid out inside.
"Nexxa these are…"
"I know they'd be expensive if we had to buy them, but you would not believe how many monsters I've had to kill. You'd think I was fighting on the Front, trying to earn my Hydra-soul ascension."
"Your… why would you go to the Front for that?" I asked, unable to tear my gaze away from the neatly labeled parts. Every one of them was labeled by Affinity and Tier. Earth was the most heavily represented, though all the common Affinities had several jars of different components preserved.
"That's how most Ensouled earn their way up," Nexxa said, clapping me on the shoulder. "Not everyone has a Djinn-souled father."
"Not like that's gonna help either of us," I said, pulling out a vial labelled Gazer's tears, a tier two Arcane affinity material. Then I grabbed three Gryphon feathers, which were labelled as tier two Air affinity. As I held them, I looked down at the box again. "Seriously, how many monsters have you killed?"
"Like I said, you'd think I was fighting on the Front," Nexxa said, plucking one of the Eagle feathers from my hand while inspecting the obelisk. "You want me to do this, or you gonna take a cast at it?"
"I'll give it a try, sure," I said, pulling out my scribing pen. Nexxa remained quiet, though having her watch as I attempted to do a patch job on a millennia old rune wasn't the most comfortable experience. Reminded me a bit of having customers insist they wanted to watch me fix their cars. Except in this case, Nexxa actually knew more than I did about what I was doing.
Thankfully, she simply observed as I channeled my mana through the pen. The process was mostly the same as scribing spells, though incorporating the tier two material required using the spell Cut Gem to shape it properly. Even after I was done, I didn't entirely understand what I'd repaired. I'd simply done my best to copy what had been in place.
Either way, the shield wasn't flipping on and off anymore.
"Think it'll be that easy to fix up your Waygates?" Nexxa asked, tapping at her elbow, her arms crossed in front of her.
"One way to find out," I said, packing up my tools and making my way down.
When we reached the central chamber, I went to the crystal first, letting it pull on my mana now that I’d touched the beacon. It barely had time to display the edges of my territory before it sucked my mana dry.
When Nexxa took her turn, the entire map popped back into place. I was able to make out several additional blips of light on the map, but I didn't see the notes she'd mentioned. It cut out when she was about nine-tenths done, much to her annoyance.
I laughed, pushing at her shoulder. "Didn't even get a hundredth on mine. You're lucky."
"Total mana-hog," Nexxa said as we set to work on repairing the Waygate while our mana recharged.
This time, Nexxa and I worked together, both of us trying to puzzle out exactly how the Waygates worked. There were overlapping concepts with spells like Secrets of Telthen and Dimension Step, but that made up a minority of the runes engraved into each arch.
"I can't be certain, but I think there's more than one type of Worlds magic involved," I said. I'd reviewed the Waygates in Memory Palace, studying what I could. There were several different things I'd wanted to try for repairing them, but without materials, none had been viable.
Now that Nexxa had dropped a box of tier two essence components in my lap, that had changed.
Unfortunately, even with Nexxa's help, repairing the Waygates didn't go smoothly.
We managed to get the Waygate to the ocean to activate, well enough. Too well, as it happened.
"Keep it away from the box!" I yelled, waving towards the shark-like creature crashing towards the box of refined essence materials. I couldn't do much about it myself, since I was hanging off the edge of the walkway, fighting back against the pressure of the ocean that was flooding through the locked open Waygate.
Because of course we'd accidentally found a way to lock it open when we were trying to jumpstart it.
"Got it," Nexxa called out as she blasted the shark-thing away with a tightly focused jet of water. Wasn't sure, but I guessed Earth sharks didn't have a pair of tentacles that brushed against their nose like that. Didn’t seem familiar. As it was knocked away from the box, one of those nose-tentacles reached towards me.
"Oh Rift no," I said, casting Water Breathing as I plunged my head under the water beating against me. I shuddered as I felt the tentacle run along the back of my leg, snagging on my ankle.
A quick jerk on my end freed my leg from my boot. I was glad I hadn’t put the heavy weather gear on that morning as the shark-thing plunged into the lower chamber. Of course, I barely had time to celebrate my freedom when the box reared up in my face. I barely thought to snap it closed as it nearly swept past me. And of course, I couldn’t let it fall, not if I wanted to get the gates working. Unfortunately, I didn't have Access Storage slotted, since I'd been using other spells for said repairs, so the box's extra weight swept me along.
"Grab it," I said, regaining my footing long enough to thrust the box towards Nexxa.
She ignored me, flying over to the Waygate instead, hitting it with a blast of lightning. With a final surge the Waygate winked closed.
I lost my footing again, the wave surging up and over the edge of the walkway. I barely snagged the railing with one hand, glad I'd taken the time to start repairs. Still, I was left hanging over the fifty foot drop with only one hand, the other still clasped onto the handle of the material box.
Below me, the shark-thing was still snapping and flopping about, the water already draining through the rubble.
Which implied there was more to explore down there.
Putting that thought to the side, I attempted to swing the box up, but instead nearly caused myself to lose my grip.
"Careful there, little wolf," Nexxa said, her hand wrapping around mine. "Wouldn't want to waste all my hard work." Then she attempted to haul me up.
When that failed, she huffed out in frustration. "Hold still."
"Not really much choice," I grumbled, struggling to keep my grip as she let go then hopped over the edge. Once she took the box from me, I swung my other arm over and started hefting myself up. Was glad I'd been exercising with Calbern. No way I'd have held on like that when I first arrived on Ro'an.
"You know, you really should've just let it drop," Nexxa said, sending the box into her ring while wrapping her other arm around mine, helping me up. "Worst that would've happened was a few parts got broken. Lot easier to replace monster bits than my brother."
"I… yeah, you're probably right," I admitted with a shrug. "But it's a lot harder to get this sort of thing this far out." Then my gaze shifted to the now dormant Waygate. "How bad you think you busted it?"
"We'll have to check," Nexxa said, moving across the room just ahead of me. Even as she walked, she wove her hands in a small circle. Between her hands a dark storm cloud took the form of a crackling bird, complete with moisture dripping from its beak and wings. Then it launched itself to the side, flying down to strike the shark-thing.
"What spell was that?" I asked, even as my gaze shifted to the Waygate.
"Stormfront Menagerie," Nexxa said while frowning at the door. "So, I'm pretty sure this is… mostly fine. Not too hard to fix. But obviously its having trouble dealing with the ocean on the other side."
"Yeah. For some strange reason. Almost like they didn't build it to work underwater," I said, shaking my head. "Guess I'll need to set up something similar to the enchantment on the peak."
"That's a lot more work than just fixing the door," Nexxa said, pulling the box out of her storage, then using it as a seat. "Not something we're gonna be able to do while I'm still here."
"No," I agreed, plopping down beside her, using the Waygate’s arch as a backrest. "But at least we proved they can be repaired. Who knows where else they'll lead."
"True," Nexxa said, looking them over. "You mentioned you've figured out where some of it goes, didn't you?"
"Probably. We could've confirmed the math using the ocean Waygate, but that's obviously a bust…" I looked down to the trail of water leading away from me. Then to the shark-thing below. "Should probably get someone to see if that's edible."
"That hard up for food, huh?"
"It's… not great. And if there are refugees coming? I don't have the land to support that. I need…" I trailed off as my eyes settled on the Waygate to Mistvale. Then back to Nexxa. "Actually… since you're here…"
"Since I'm here?" Nexxa asked, leaning forward.
"Well. I have a bit of a monster problem. Well, more like a giant monster problem," I said, nodding towards the door. "And solving that might just help us stock up our larders while we're at it."
"How about it? Wanna help me kill a thunder lizard?"
Comments
RJD
TFTC. Perry's to do list hurts my brain
Jouni Osmala
If affinity of 13 would make each mana point 2.5 times more efficient than without affinity. Having 51 in arcane and 38 in worlds should help quite a bit if that central crystal thing would use either one of those. That was based assumption that normal mage meant a mage without affinity in it.
Julkur
The lid was open, which counts as a mouth. Of course the box can roar
Jason Hardman
TYFTC! Not sure about the wording here: Of course, I barely had time to celebrate my freedom when the box roared up in my face. -> should that be "reared up" perhaps?
