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EC Book 4, Chapter 44 - The Last Anchor
🕑 Added 2024-04-27 15:37:05 +0000 UTCTwenty-one hours had passed.
Sev and the rest of his party members were housed in a small building in Anderstahl—formerly a small industrial workshop, now converted into a temporary residence. It had originally been for the refugees, but Sev and several others had insisted on taking it and giving the refugees their beds in the Adventurers' Guild instead. No one argued with them. The people of Elyra had lost their homes, after all, and even though they'd escaped, that loss still hung heavily over them. The small bit of relief they felt over having a real bed to sleep in, a roof over their heads and a variety of available food... well, it was worth a day or two in a glorified warehouse.
Ixoryn hadn't been able to help him, but he had confirmed that Sev was the only one that could even hope to link to the Grand Anchor. Velykos was the second closest, but he was far behind still. Years, according to Ixoryn. Sev's connections had been forged not only over this Reset, but all the ones in the past, too. There was a small piece of him that remembered, and that memory forged a connection with the concept of Divinity itself that no one else truly had.
"Fuck," Sev said with a groan. His head thudded into the table in front of him. The Grand Anchor wobbled a bit with the impact, and he clutched at it before it could fall off the table.
Then he just stared at it again, trying to will it into merging with him. He could feel how close he was. He could almost feel that the anchor wanted to connect with him, even. But whatever piece he was missing, it was large enough that even their aligned desires weren't enough to bridge the gap.
He needed to understand Divinity, and the problem was that he didn't. He understood the gods. He understood their domains, even the nature of the relationships they had with the material world. But he didn't understand the underlying power that was divinity—not the same way Vex understood the mana, or the way Misa's skills and constant exploits helped her understand every layer of reality.
He'd tried speaking to Velykos, even. Enough time had passed now that the Elyran refugees had all made their way into Anderstahl, and the other branches of the Guild were slowly filtering in too. Velykos and his team had joined them in the warehouse, the small crew of skeletons citing that they didn't want to scare the Elyrans, and also that many of them simply weren't ready to face their friends and family again. Not when so much had changed about them.
They had been relieved, though, to know that the nobles of Elyra had been stripped of much of their power. It wouldn't stop those nobles from trying to regain that power, of course, but right now, they were all united in their desire to not be consumed by the Void.
Partly because the system had sent out warnings again. It told them exactly how much time they had left. This time, no one doubted it—they'd all seen it for themselves, after all. Sev was privately appreciative that it had given them the sixty-one hour timer and not the three-month one. It hadn't gone out of its way to explain that their time would be greatly shortened by the arrival of refugees from Enkiros, either; he did not want to deal with a war breaking out because people wanted to squeeze out a week or two of extra time.
Especially since a war would only make the Prime Anchor deteriorate faster.
Though a week or two would have helped take some of the pressure off. Sev stared at the Grand Anchor in front of him again, as if just staring at it would somehow lead him to a breakthrough.
"Sev." Misa's voice was quiet. She sat down in front of him, all the usual cheer gone from her face—he saw only concern in there. Concern about him. "You need to take a break. You're not going to figure anything out just sitting there and staring at the anchor."
"I can't," Sev said. "We have—We have forty hours left, Misa. Forty hours! That's not even two days! If I sleep, then I'll only have thirty-two hours left, or even less if I oversleep, and I'm not going to be able to take a nap without oversleeping—"
"We'll wake you up," Misa said. "But you know as well as I do that bashing your head against this isn't going to make it any better."
"Maybe I should," Sev grumbled. He knew Misa was right, it was just...
There was so much at stake. What if the last minute was the one that he needed? Or the last second? If he spent even a single second doing anything else, who was to say it wouldn't be the second they needed to avoid doom for their entire world?
"I should sleep after," he said listlessly. "I can sleep after. I can't just take a break, Misa, the whole world is—"
"Do you even know what you're going to do after you connect to it?" Misa asked—not unkindly, although the words stung. "Do you know what we have to do? Because I've tried to use mine, and it's not exactly intuitive. I can't figure out how to restore things like Vex can."
"Vex can do that because he's anchoring the whole concept of Magic," Sev said. "Magic's supposed to be able to do the impossible. It's not the right use of the anchor at all, but he can strain it to do that."
"And what about Divinity?" Misa asked pointedly.
"I don't know." Sev thumped his head into the table again. "It does the impossible too, I guess. But in a different way. Magic has cause and effect, energy and expenditure. Divinity doesn't. Stuff just... happens. I mean, it uses up divine power, but not the same way magic uses up mana. If Magic's like a battery, then Divinity is like... I don't know, a bag. There's only so many things you can put into it at once, and you need to take something out before you can put in a new thing. Right now the gods are doing everything they can to preserve themselves and the Prime Anchor. It's the reason I'm trying to minimize any divine magic I cast—because it'll necessarily lessen the power they have for their thing."
"Okay," Misa said patiently. "But that understanding isn't enough yet. I know you're feeling the pressure, but bear with me. Let's assume that it is. Let's assume that explaining that to me was the last step you needed to be able to connect with your Grand Anchor. Once you're connected, all three of us will have one. Then what?"
Sev groaned again. "If the point you're trying to make is that I have a lot more stuff to do even after connecting to the thing, I don't think that helps with the time pressure."
"The point I'm trying to make is that you're putting everything on your shoulders, and that's not what the reality of the situation is," Misa said, sighing; she spoke more gently than he was used to, and he folded inward a little at her tone of voice. "We're in this together, remember? You're not alone."
"I know," Sev said. "I—I know. It's just—There's so much relying on this. I don't know if I can sleep. Even if I wanted to. I keep thinking about everything—about what I might be missing about Divinity. Did you need to have some kind of realization about Reality? I know Vex's: magic is about art and expression. Mana is memory. It's a record of everything we've ever achieved, every moment of joy and beauty. But I don't know if Divinity is anything close to the same thing. Or what Reality is supposed to be."
Misa paused. "I don't think Reality is like the other two," she said. "It's not a force that requires understanding. It just is. It's the fundamental substrate of the universe. The bedrock. There's nothing to understand."
"Sounds like you understand it just fine, to me," Sev said with a little laugh.
Misa sounded a little embarrassed. "Maybe," she said. "I don't really think of it that way. But maybe you're right."
"It's that kind of insight that I'm missing about Divinity," Sev said. "Is it just the power of belief? That doesn't feel right. Or, I mean, it doesn't feel complete. It's something close, maybe. I don't know..."
He leaned back in his chair and sighed, gazing up at the ceiling. "You're probably right," he admitted. "I need to get some sleep. And maybe I'll figure something out in the morning."
"Get some food first," Misa said. "You can't go without eating, either."
"Yes, ma'am," Sev grumbled.
—
Forty hours had passed.
Three hours ago, the refugees from Enkiros has entered the protective boundary of Anderstahl's Prime Anchor, along with every adventurer that had been out delving and trying to keep the dungeons stable. Xothok and the Guildmaster were back, too, from what Sev had heard. Max, the guild clerk. Jerome and the partially-recovered Elyran researcher—Kestel. Sev remembered the name, and he felt a pang of guilt for not being able to heal him. He'd brought him back, but between everything they'd learned and had to deal with...
Fortunately, the Adventurers' Guild had picked up the slack; from what he heard, Jerome had gone out to get the mana crystals Kestel needed to be healed himself. And that healing was going slowly but surely.
Sev had to admit he'd been impressed to see Jerome wheeling Kestel in. The lizardkin sat in a wheelchair, tail braced on a sort of plush hook Jerome wore around his waist so it didn't drag on the floor. They were chatting animatedly with one another, and Jerome even gave him a friendly wave when he saw him.
Not a hint of resentment.
"Hey, uh, this is gonna sound kinda weird," Jerome said once he was a little closer. "But... thanks for kicking my ass, I think? I kinda learned a lot. Because I was forced to. Which is annoying, but whatever."
"You're welcome, I think," Sev said dryly. Kestel seemed amused by the exchange—he lifted a hand to wave at Sev, and Sev nodded toward him, glad the lizardkin was doing better.
They spoke for a short while, and the two left afterward. Apparently, they'd only come to see and talk to them—and, to Sev's surprise, to offer him encouragement. Jerome didn't have any particular insights on the nature of divinity, but he seemed confident that Sev would get it.
Sev wished he felt that same confidence himself.
He wasn't any closer to connecting with the Grand Anchor, and the doubt in his heart was only growing. His friends never pressured him, but he could see the worry in their eyes, too. He didn't have another solution. All of reality rode on this. On whether or not he could figure out what he was missing.
And try as he might, for the life of him, he couldn't figure it out.
He'd spoken to the gods. To Aurum, to Tempus, to a few of the other ones he'd made friends with. He'd sat alone in his bed and said a small prayer to Onyx, hoping against hope that his first friend would find a way to respond to him and give him the insight that he needed.
Alas, there was nothing.
Forty-eight hours in, with exactly thirteen hours left, Jerome showed up again. His face was uncharacteristically serious.
"Hey," he said. Sev glanced up at him, his gaze questioning, and Jerome continued, "I was talking to Aurum. The time we have left—the thirteen hours—it's because Anderstahl's Prime Anchor has to support so many people?"
"Yes," Sev said. He didn't see any point in trying to hide it—not if Aurum had been the one to tell Jerome. "It's... it sucks. It's not a good situation."
"So if people leave, you're going to have more time?" Jerome pressed.
"We can't make people leave, Jerome," Sev said tiredly. "We can't—we can't choose who gets to live. I can't make that decision. You can't force people out. And fighting is just going to degrade the anchor even more."
Jerome gave him an affronted look. "What makes you think I was gonna make people leave?" he asked, and then he paused. "...Huh. I guess I would've done that a while back, huh."
"You weren't going to?" Sev asked, blinking.
"No, I just..." Jerome trailed off. "...Listen. The level of the person leaving. It matters, right? Higher levels drain the thing more?"
"That should be how it works," Sev said cautiously. People with higher levels had more metaphysical weight to them; they drew the attention of the Void. Metaphorically speaking. They could withstand more of the Void, too, which was why the system worked to increase that weight. More stats, more weight, more resistance.
"Okay." Jerome took a deep breath, looking a little uncomfortable, and then finally he shook his head. "Don't worry, I'm not going to make anyone leave. Thanks for letting me know. Try to get this thing working, yeah?"
"Believe me, I've been trying," Sev grumbled. "...Thanks, Jerome."
Jerome gave him a thumbs up before leaving, and Sev wondered what that had all been about.
Hopefully Jerome wasn't about to do something stupid.
Comments
Douglas Miller
Jerome's going to leave Anderstahl himself, isn't he? And maybe spread the word quietly to other adventurers he knows, triggering a mass exodus of high-level adventurers who all collectively decided that giving up less than a day of their own existences is a worthwhile sacrifice to buy more time for the people who actually have a clue about what's going on and might possibly figure out a way to fix things.
