Astral Threads, Ch 25: Local Threats (Patreon)

The first layer of the relic was cold, the snow on its slopes matching the silver lines in Jeric’s hair as he looked over the work ahead of him. Sam had left a week ago and since then, teams of dwarves from Highfold had been pouring into the relic, especially the top two layers, where they were working to restore the workshops and some of the living spaces.

Farther down, they were also hard at work rebuilding some of the farms and transportation areas. Those were a lower priority since the relic wasn’t repaired on the respective layers, but the Sky Guard provided enough security that the buildings could be restored. Small teams of the Elemental Order golems were flying through the areas as well, helping to fuse the greenstone back together. In time, some of the enchantments might be activated and the weather would stabilize, which would allow people to settle there and start growing crops.

For the relic to be fully functioning would take years, at least through the next Alignment if the feeling he got from the area was accurate, but they were making progress. The energy requirement for the repair enchantments was simply too large, so it would take time.

Ever since his evolution to Commander of the Frozen Peak, he’d had a strange connection to the relic and the mountain here that he couldn’t really explain. It was his territory and he instinctively knew when certain things were happening around it, including what was needed. It seemed to be part of the Commander’s Presence ability he’d gained that let him see and speak to anyone within his domain. If a monster was a significant threat, he’d feel irritated and want to go examine the borders, and if a particular enchantment was more inefficient than others around it or needed extra attention, he’d be distracted whenever he walked past it.

His class connected him to this place in a way he hadn’t expected. He cared about what happened to it and he wanted to make it the best that it could be. It was more than just a home that they were fixing up. It was theirs. His eyes were as blue as the mountain skies as he looked out across the distant peaks, taking in the layers of snow and ice.

They felt peaceful, as if they were right where they were supposed to be.

He couldn’t say he had a grasp on everything yet, but he could feel the Ice and the Earth here more intensely than he ever had before. It felt like the land would rise up to meet him if he reached out to it.

He didn’t understand everything about a bloodline yet, but fortunately, as a member of the High Council, the relic was willing to explain things when he asked, both about that and about the relic. Its voice was ancient and formal, and despite that it spoke at a normal speed, the words felt slow, as if they were moving through the ages to reach him. It didn’t explain all of the time, nor as much as he thought it should, but it managed to tell him most of what he needed to know.

Aemilia filled in the rest. Her position as the Guide and the Archivist of the Three Moons was an enormous blessing when it came to planning for the relic and the repairs. She could look into a pile of ruined stones and see what it had once been, and with more effort, she could see how it was connected to the rest of the relic. Her ability to project those images let her share that meaning with others, making it easy to see what the relic could be again.

So far, only a handful of adventurers and curious explorers had followed Aemilia’s trail of books and come to the relic, but he could feel that more were on the way. It was a belief in his wife and son more than any ability. Whatever they had planned would happen, no matter how long it took. He’d make sure of it.

He’d begun studying the old layout of the ruins and how the buildings were constructed, learning the crafts needed to repair the place. It gave him something to do while waiting and it added general experience to his Foreman profession.

He cracked his knuckles as he looked toward a pile of broken greenstone in front of him and the wall of the building it had once been. Then he bent down and picked up a piece, pouring his mana and the energy of his new bloodline into it. He felt a flicker of the relic’s power join him, helping him to fuse the stone to the piece that was already there.

The people who were coming would need a place to stay, and this house was one of many that needed to be repaired. Brick by brick, he’d put this place back together again. As he placed another brick in the wall, a thread of Ice in his veins silently flowed outward, merging with the mountain and the snow.

---

“How’s the healing in Highfold?” Lesat tilted his head toward Lenei as he continued their conversation. The paladin was standing next to him in the workshop while he engraved runes into strips of leather and then fused them together into a set of gloves.

For the past week and more, the two of them had been dedicating their time to their respective subclasses. He’d been hard at work learning runes and patterns for his Arcane Leatherworker class, as well as studying the smithing and enchanting manuals that Sam had left for him, and Lenei had been spending her time in Highfold, looking for injured and sick people to treat as a way to advance her Healer profession and to upgrade the abilities for her Blade of Life subclass.

“It’s harder when I’m not using my abilities to power through it,” she admitted. “But doing the work step by step is what’s important for training a foundation. I have to understand each part. The church healers keep the worst trouble away from the city, but there are always minor injuries and things that go unnoticed. I’ve been going door-to-door to check on people, and in a city of a million, that takes a while, although they’re usually happy enough to see a Paladin.”

“I remember those wandering Church healers when I was child,” Lesat said quietly as he gave her nod. “They came by about once a month, looking for ways to help. They’re the only reason I grew up with two working arms and legs.”

“Although they’re after experience, they do good at the same time,” Lenei agreed. “It’s beneficial to both sides and one of the small ways the church has woven itself into the fabric of the kingdom. At least it establishes good will. Everyone likes a healer.”
“It is why cities are often better than villages in the kingdom,” Lesat agreed. “Village life lacks those amenities. Where were you raised? You’ve never said, except that it was at a family home. It sounded large.”

“Just outside the capital,” Lenei said after a moment of hesitation. “The Orison family is one of the smaller pillars of the church in this kingdom, but we have a long presence here. My ancestors helped Queen Laytellis to found Aethra three thousand years ago. Our family crest still bears the trumpet and crown that she granted us when she established the first circle of nobility.”

She opened her dimensional bag and drew out a shield that Lesat hadn’t seen before, which was far more ornate than her normal one. On the front, there was a golden trumpet slanted diagonally upward to the left and a five-pointed blue crown rested on top of the bell. A banner unfurled below the trumpet’s mouth with a motto inscribed in an archaic style: “We Sound the Orison.”

“An orison is a call or a prayer,” Lenei explained. “The motto means we were the first to answer the queen’s call and to summon others to join. We also have an ancient trumpet at home that is a powerful artifact. Legend says it was used in those wars. We’re a large family, but it’s a custom to make our own way with the basics that the church provides. Most of us become Priests or Paladins. The rest usually subclass into one of the church’s branches.”

Surprise was evident in Lesat’s expression as he took in the shield and the obvious differences from the way he’d been raised as the illegitimate son of a city guard in Osera. He’d barely even known who his father was, much less had a family to rely on for support. His mother had been a maid in a tavern. She’d done her best, but her initial class had been as a Housekeeper and she had never gained experience easily. One day when he was fourteen, she’d disappeared and he hadn’t heard from her again.

It took him a moment to pull his mind back to the present and he spent it looking over Lenei’s shield. Despite his beginnings, luck and the people he’d met had brought him further than he’d ever thought was possible and it looked like the future wasn’t done with him yet. Lenei’s heart-shaped face above her shield pulled his eyes back to where they belonged.

“One of these days, I’d like to meet your family.” Lesat looked at her with a smile as he pushed away old thoughts. He reached out and set his hand on top of hers. “They sound like quite the people.”

---

Aemilia’s eyes were a swirl of moonlight and gold as she blinked away the visions of the past. A sense of reverence was heavy on her heart as she stood above the ruins of the ancient Hall of the Dawn on the second layer. The building had once been the focal point of three powerful schools of Seers. One of them was the foundational Order of Battle Seers, a variant of the Seer class that focused on combat knowledge and preparation.

She had just finished watching them train.

They were more like Monks than the Seers she was familiar with. Their class was designed to fight on the front lines against Outsiders and their primary ability revolved around seeing a few seconds into the future, just enough to change the course of a battle for themselves and perhaps for the forces behind them. Unfortunately, their class had never come into its own. They hadn’t been able to stop what was coming and they had all perished here when the relic was destroyed.

Whatever secrets they had held and the way they had trained to gain that class was still lost to the river of the ages, but perhaps one day she would be powerful enough to see those details. As she pulled her thoughts back to the present, she sent a request to the relic and studied the ruins as she waited for a team of golems to arrive.

The Hall of the Dawn was one of the key buildings they needed to repair here. When its enchantments were working, it would be able to augment a Seer’s visions, enhancing their view of the future and enabling them to see over a far greater distance. It would take time for the relic to repair the second layer, but by the time it did, she wanted this building to be ready.

She looked away from the building and into the distance, following the peaks in the direction that Sam had gone. She had watched him during the day until he’d gone out of her range, but now she could only see him at night. Her subclass ability, Vision of the Three Moons, gave her an enormous range wherever moonlight fell. Watching him in battle after battle as he cleared the Flaws heading toward Runekeld made her heart twist at the same time as she was proud of his efforts.

Seeing him forge spells from runes and the elements and then unleash them against Outsiders was something she had never expected nor wished to witness, but at least he seemed to be mastering his new abilities and the skills he’d learned from the relic. He was becoming more adept by the day.

At the same time, she had to acknowledge the greater problem that they were all facing and the fact that without Sam and others like him, the Flaws in the World Seal would quickly grow out of hand. She wasn’t sure yet if it was a problem just in their kingdom or even just in the Western Reaches that were outside the most settled parts of Aethra, but there was definitely something wrong with the number of Flaws that were appearing nearby. Sam had already dealt with more Flaws on his one stretch of road than should have been in the entire western province.

It was a sign that something was going wrong, either with the way the kingdom was managing the nearby Flaws, which could multiply if they weren’t suppressed, or in a greater sense with the seal itself. Either the seal was quickly failing and letting in more and more Outsiders or something else was going on. Even if that was the case, it was still like something was attracting the Flaws here. She glanced up to the peak of Sun’s Rest where the control plateau lay hidden and pursed her lips in thought.

Perhaps something was.

The relic’s activation during the alignment hadn’t been subtle. Sam’s aura had been entwined with it when he activated the pillar and she’d already seen how monsters were attracted to him as if he were a great delicacy. Then there was the relic’s own history. It had been destroyed by a force that she didn’t comprehend, its fall happening within what seemed like a single day. It had been flourishing at its greatest height at the dawn of Aster Fall history and then, suddenly, it had fallen, its shining enchantments broken by a force from beyond the void.

All the relic remembered of that day was monsters flooding out of portals and attacking the slopes. Then the sky had gone dark and a massive claw the size of a mountain tore through a rift as it descended toward the peak. Then everything shattered. The force contained in that blow was so powerful that even brushing against the memory of it left her cold and shaking.

The forces of that long-ago great war should be locked deep within the seal or banished to their own plane of existence, but that didn’t mean they were. Perhaps there was something out there that had sensed the relic’s activation and was trying to reach them even now.

Aemilia’s expression was stern as she turned back to the rubble of the Hall of the Dawn and her eyes shaded to moonlight and gold. She would be no help in repairing the building, but she could at least make sure that she understood how to use it once it was repaired.

---

Sam stood in the air above a deep, twisting crevasse as he studied the Flaw far below, his sight enhanced by a Far Sight scroll that he’d made with Krana’s help. Nearly a mile below the opening, a system of tunnels had been bored into the ice. The Outsiders responsible for it were enormous spike-armored ice worms as long as four wagons put together. With the help of the magic enhancing his eyesight, he Analyzed one of them.

Armored Frostbone Crawler. Outsider. Level 120.

His expression was grim as he turned from the crevasse and sent his vision soaring over the mountain slopes toward the main road far below. In the distance, invisible to even his eyes without Far Sight, the road to Runekeld ran between the foothills of the mountains, its paved surface shining in the sun as it rose and fell. Once they took care of this Flaw and the armored ice worms in it, they were finally going to descend from the mountains and meet it. It was a distance that should have taken them four days. Instead, it had taken them two weeks.

Eleven.

He shook his head as he considered the number of Flaws they’d found. After the first two, there had been five individual ones and then a cluster of four, of which this was the last. They’d been forced to detour from their route and zigzag through the mountains with the help of the Sky Guard in order to reach them all, following the road as only a general guide.

To his left, Krana was being carried by one of the golems, something that she’d become more used to but still disliked. If they needed to do this again, he’d have to look into making some type of Flight scroll for her. He’d never seen one, but there were records of them in the relic’s library and he had some patterns that might work.

He also needed to improve his own abilities with Wind. If these Outsiders had enough essence, he might break through to the fifth layer of his essence constellation and reach Epic for Elemental Manipulation. Perhaps that would be enough to let him fly on his own.

He frowned as he studied the distant grey paving stones of the road that shimmered like pearls in the frosted morning light, hoping for some information to appear from them and explain what was going on. All of the Flaws were within two hundred miles of Highfold, which was practically on the doorstep of the relic.

Most concerning of all was this cluster. The four Flaws had been hidden in a sprawling network of icy crevasses, as if the Outsiders were hiding their forces away as they prepared to invade. Once they’d detected them, they’d cut back and forth across the mountains as they destroyed the first three.

This number of Flaws wasn’t normal.

It suggested that the seal was either on its last legs or that something was making a concerted effort to break through here. Flaws were increasing throughout the kingdom, but this was far more than he’d heard about. If the seal was about to break completely, he would have had more news and there would be widespread destruction and panic. So far, he hadn’t seen any sign of that.

That meant it was something local.

A year ago, or even six months ago, these Flaws would have made him think the world was ending, but from his current perspective, they were only troubling. They had the forces to deal with them. It was strange how much had changed and how quickly. He’d spoken with his mother at the relic and he agreed there were two major possibilities.

The number of Flaws was due to either the relic’s activation or his own presence.

Essence called to essence. Just like he consumed the Outsider’s energy and made it his own, the Outsiders wanted to do the same to him. That possibility paled in comparison to the lure of the relic, however. He was still just one person. The relic was something else entirely. He rubbed his chin as he stared at the road, forced to face the obvious conclusion.

Something knew the relic was awake and it was pushing waves of Outsiders to get to it. Perhaps that was why the Harbinger of War had rung, since Highfold was just as much of a target with its location in the valley.

The only hidden blessing was that these Flaws weren’t that powerful. The one below him with the Armored Frostbone Crawler was only the second with a First Evolution opponent. These were the average type of Flaws found in the kingdom, with monsters at the First Evolution and below. He’d spent long enough talking to Siwaha and others that he’d learned the general layout of the kingdom. She’d given him several very specific warnings before he’d left to make sure he understood how things worked.

Anything at the Second Evolution was rare, something that only happened once every few years or perhaps even only once a decade. Those were the ones the church and the kingdom’s army paid special attention to, and it was also where Second Evolution adventurers and nobles spent their time as they tried to gain levels. The battles to close one of those could take a decade, since the wards and forces that came through were much stronger than normal, and they were often able to establish a foothold before they were located.

As for the Third Evolution Flaws...those were the invasions that ended kingdoms. There hadn’t been one in more than 3,000 years, since before Aethra was founded. There might be a few Third Evolution Outsiders who forced their way through the seal or who stayed here long enough to evolve, but they were dealt with when they appeared. A real Third Evolution Flaw would release an entire horde of monsters over Level 300, usually with commanders that were approaching the Fourth Evolution.

There were native monsters on Aster Fall that were at the Third Evolution, in places with high levels of mana and natural auras, but most of the experience that Third Evolution classes gained was from efforts besides battle. That rank was where crafting and professions became especially important and the drive to succeed there had created many of the rarest artifacts in the kingdom.

Sam frowned as he turned his attention back to the Flaw below. After the first two Flaws with the Entangling Rotstriders, the rest of the Outsiders had all been below Level 100. They had been worth some Marks, but they hadn’t given him much experience or essence. This one should be different.

Flickers of new spell forms flowed through his mind as he prepared to jump down into the crevasse. It was over a half-mile deep between sheer, icy cliffs with jagged edges. If he hadn’t had a blessing of Ice, it would have been terrifying. Fortunately, even if he struck one while falling, it was unlikely to harm him.

He’d had time while looking for the other Flaws to prepare a handful of new spells, but he hadn’t had a chance to try them out yet. He was eager to see what they could do.

“Are you ready?” he asked as he looked at Krana. “There are three of those big crawlers and a handful of smaller ones down there.”

“I see them,” Krana agreed with a grumble. Her arms were folded across her chest as she frowned down at the crevasse. “Did I tell you dwarves don’t like flying? Or being dropped? Why couldn’t they invade on a solid piece of rock instead of in the middle of a glacier?”

“I haven’t made a Flight scroll yet,” Sam said with a grin as he ignored her complaints and handed her a scroll, “but I did make a Safe Fall one. It’ll keep you surrounded by a shield of Wind that will slow your fall and make sure you don’t make a dwarf-sized crater at the bottom... probably.”

Krana glowered at him as she accepted it, but she activated it without any hesitation. She might not like their plan, but her trust in him was obvious. A web of white mana spiraled out across the scroll from where her thumb was touching it and an instant later, the parchment dissolved into a swirl of wind that wrapped around her.

“Let’s go,” she muttered as she tapped the golem on the arm. An instant later, she was falling toward the crevasse as she drew her warhammer. A whistle of wind carried the sound of dwarven curses up to him.

Sam chuckled as he pulled the wind around him and dove after her. Icy gusts split around his horns and a trail of crystal flame burned in his wake like a meteor.