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EC Book 4, Chapter 17 - Up and Down
🕑 Added 2024-03-18 16:37:45 +0000 UTCThe revelation that they were most likely in a region of Anderstahl that the Prime Anchor had unwittingly designated part of a dungeon made Sev tense up immediately. Not because he expected to be attacked, although that was part of it — the dangers in any given dungeon were typically unpredictable, and assuming you were safe in any part of a dungeon was folly.
But it wasn't that danger that made the hair on the back of Sev's neck stand. It was the sudden clarity with which he saw the stairwell they were in. The slight change to the normally-sleek stone that made up the walls, rust on the railings that hadn't been there before. Some pieces of the stairwell were broken, and they weren't broken because Misa had broken them. Stone had simply crumbled away at points, weakened from erosion over a long period of time.
"Not just a puzzle," he said. "It's a trap."
A trap meant to catch unsuspecting adventurers off-guard, no doubt. He reached out with [Divine Manipulation] once again, even as Misa prepared her bow, her expression suddenly just as wary. This wasn't exactly her area of expertise, but with the way her skills had grown, she had more ways of dealing with this than he did.
Case in point...
"Freeze," Misa muttered, and fired two conceptual arrows into the walls — one to the left, and the other to the right. "Whatever effect the stairwell's supposed to have, those arrows should slow it down. Some kind of time-related trap, you're thinking?"
"Yeah." Sev leaned down to brush a finger against the railing, frowning at the flakes of rust that came off on his skin. "Is [Intuitionist] telling you anything different?"
"I regret to say that it tells me pretty much the exact same thing," Misa said dryly. "More time's passing on the outside than in here. The reverse of the time dilation you usually get in the dungeons. If we caught it any later—"
"The whole universe might be gone by the time we get out, yeah." Sev cast his gaze around. There had to be something. No dungeon ever had traps that were outright unbeatable; the problem was that he couldn't sense anything here that was divine in nature to manipulate. The standard threads of divinity that wove through all of existence were here, of course, but they were under the claim of no entity; they weren't being used against them. "Doesn't help us with what the dungeon wants from us before it lets us out, though. Any chance you can connect to the Prime Anchor with your own? I feel like we should be getting system messages for this."
"If one of us did know how to connect to the Prime Anchor, it would be you, not me," Misa said, a little dryly. Then she tried anyway: Sev saw her concentrate on the force that was kept nestled somewhere between the system attached to her and her soul itself.
After a moment, she shook her head. "Nope," she said, apologetic.
"It's the Anderstahl dungeon," Sev muttered to himself. "What's the Anderstahl dungeon's theme? You've seen it before, Sev, think..."
"Something to do with Earth?" Misa asked. "It's the Kingdom that represents the planeshifted, right? Made by you guys. All your technology is replicated here, sort of."
"Yeah," Sev answered, distracted. "But I don't have most of my memories from Earth. Most of the time being in Anderstahl just... reminds me that I lost something I can never get back."
"Do you think it was nice?" Misa asked. "Earth, I mean."
Sev frowned. "I don't know how to answer that question," he said. "I'm sure there was stuff about it that was nice. In fact, I know there was, because a lot of the things here in Anderstahl are really cool. But I don't feel excited or anything when I think about Earth. Just... sad."
"I'm sorry," Misa offered.
Sev shrugged listlessly. "Not like we can do anything to change it now," he said, staring listlessly into the stairwell. "I don't think it's missing Earth that gets to me. It's not knowing how my life there shaped me. I don't know if there's anyone that would have missed me, even. Although I suppose if there were, they're probably long gone now."
"You don't talk much about your feelings about Earth," Misa said.
"Because it's hard to think about. Because even if I figured out how I felt about it, I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. And besides, Earth is only a small part of who I am." Sev managed a small smile. "I love it here. You, Vex, Derivan—you guys are my family. I worry about who I might have been, but I don't need my history to know who I am now."
Misa chuckled. "We love you too," she said, staring back into the stairwell.
—
Click.
—
Misa cast her gaze back into the stairwell along with Sev, staring at the ornaments along the railing, the crumbling stone that made up the stairs. Her arrows were still embedded in the walls, actively slowing down whatever temporal effect the dungeon was trying to place on them.
She could feel the reality anchor inside herself now. That was a new development, brought about partially by Derivan attempting to repair her system and reunite the old Path system with the more modern one of stats and skills; whatever he'd done, he hadn't successfully managed to repair it, but it had somehow made her more aware of the metaphysical object that had been bound to her. It clung to the fabric of her existence like a living cloak wrapped tight around her shoulders.
So many people relied on this thing. If the Anderstahl Prime Anchor failed, it would be the last anchor they had left. The last thing holding the existence of tens of thousands of people.
Even now, she could feel it falling apart. Reality shards repaired it, certainly, but it was a near thing; she could tell that the shards repaired a little less every time. Not to the point where she was expecting it to become a concern anytime soon, but enough that it would be a problem eventually. And if it came down to this one anchor to support the weight of everyone that remained...
Well, it would snap in a heartbeat.
There had to be a link between her anchor and the Anderstahl Prime Anchor nearby. Not because there was some inherent relationship between the two, but because it was how reality anchors were built to work. As far as her understanding of them went, anyway. The Prime Anchors did a majority of the work, but the anchors as a whole were designed to network with one another and sustain reality in a grid, drawing from backups that were updated with the mana crystals the system forced everyone to pay as a tithe.
The network around each Prime Anchor was a little frayed at the edges. It was the reason it was so difficult for information to travel from Elyra to Anderstahl, and vice versa. It wasn't impossible, by any means, but the anchors that were near the edge of each set always prioritized the nearest Prime Anchor. That information was least likely to be corrupted, because it had to travel less through the network. Through the Void.
All of that made sense. The problem was that the reality anchor that was tied to her had originally been linked to Elyra's Prime Anchor. It had been disconnected from the larger network and now served as a sort of Prime Anchor on its own, but that made it harder for it to connect with Anderstahl's Prime Anchor, not easier—it was prioritizng itself.
And Misa didn't want to change that. It needed to prioritize itself. The Anderstahl Prime Anchor was malfunctioning; she didn't trust it to take over for the work of her anchor, especially when so many people relied on it. Including her own family.
"You're sure you don't remember what the Prime Dungeon here was about?" she asked tiredly.
She wasn't actually tired. Probably. Part of it was the effect of having nothing to do, Misa wasn't used to this level of inactivity. She was half-tempted to start working out just so she could have something to focus on.
Actually, she was going to start working out. She placed her mace against the corner and started doing pushups, much to Sev's bemusement.
"I'm trying," he said. "And, uh... what are you doing?"
"Pushups."
"You can't train Strength that way at your level."
"I'm not training Strength. I'm just bored."
—
It did look incredibly easy for her to be doing those pushups despite the amount of armor she was wearing. Sev grimaced for a bit, imagining trying that himself—Nope. No thanks. The robes he wore weren't fun to sweat in, and all the solutions for that lay in the notably missing Vex's [Prestidigitation].
"I should ask for a divine version of [Prestidigitation]," Sev muttered to himself.
He couldn't remember what Anderstahl's Prime Dungeon was like. The memory felt like a hole in his head, and it was worse given the fact that he should know; all the memories surrounding the dungeon had been restored. But there was an emptiness in his head when he tried to recall the dungeon itself, and for the life of him, he didn't know why.
Was there a reason for this, even? Or was it sheer misfortune that left a jarring gap in his memories?
Anderstahl was the Prime Kingdom of the planeshifted. It was the kingdom of technology and invention — the things he remembered of it in his memories painted an image of a beautiful kingdom. Not a paradise by any means, but it was a kingdom he was proud of living in, at least.
He remembered the little toy shop he owned in a corner of the street. He remembered working late into the night, repairing one toy or building another. Train sets were surprisingly popular with people among all age groups, though many of them insisted on seeing a real-life version of a train.
...Come to think of it, he wondered if his little inventions had anything to do with the way Anderstahl had later built exactly that — a magically-powered train designed to take its passengers all across the kingdom. There had been plans to make it reach both of the other Prime Kingdoms and across continents, even, before they'd discovered the encroaching Void.
After that, those plans had been laid aside.
It was a pity, really. The train had been an ambitious project, but if it had been built, even just on this continent, it could have been used to help the Prime Anchors stay connected—
Sev's eyes went wide.
"It's a goddamn train," he said, almost hissing out the words. He jumped to his feet, staring at the staircase as if the realization would unveil whatever trick was hidden in this so-called dungeon puzzle.
Misa just stared at him. "What in the hells is a train?"
