Echoes of War, Ch 13: Gate of Winter (Patreon)

“The Gate of Winter is open,” Siwaha said quietly as she looked into the sky where the Winter rune had been. Thin trails of crystalline blue mana remained in the air, interspersed among the snow that was falling on the mountain peaks. The valley fortress glowed with power, far more than it had contained before. “Twelve great rivers of Ice mana from the mountains intersect in this valley. It is the heart of our old enchantments, our home and origin. It was an ancient undertaking to create it.”

She lowered her staff and a ripple of Ice followed, creating snowflakes. As her magic continued to spread, there was a quality to the Ice that hadn’t been there before, like it could continue on its own and change everything it touched to more ice. It felt alive. The sense of spring was infusing it in a strange way, merging its qualities into it and drastically increasing its power.

“The energy of the gate will pour outward and awaken the remnants of our past that still exist,” Siwaha continued. “I’m not sure what remains, but this was not our only fortress, just the greatest of them. There were others that were strong and some forces might still sleep in their ruins, their memory lost to time but engraved in the ice that holds them. They have been silent since the Gate of Winter was sealed 5,000 years ago. It will take some time, but any who remain will come to us.”

“I look forward to that day,” Sam said, and then he waved his hand at the eleven commanders who were still kneeling in front of them. “What do you want to do with these?”

Siwaha turned back to look at them, and at the anger and fear still on their features, and shook her head once. “At this point, the king has made himself our enemy and these would have destroyed the valley if they could. Letting the army go is enough. There is no need to show mercy to their commanders. The power here is building, but it would strain it to deal with them.”

“Very well,” Sam said as he raised his hand. None of these eleven had tried to stop their fellows or show mercy to the valley when they had the advantage, so he had no reason to show any to them.

A moment later, eleven flares of astral flame occupied the location where the commanders had been. He felt the small wave of experience pulled away by the World Core, reminding him that civilized races here gave none, but his attention turned to the army along the road.

“This battle is over,” he said as he let his voice carry. “Leave within the hour. Your commanders have suffered the punishment for all of you and I will not seek more from you, only from your king. Whoever is next in command, know that I will not be merciful twice. Tell your king, this land is under my protection. Whoever challenges it again will die.”

The army barely glanced at one another before they began to hurriedly retreat, leaving their half-constructed platforms and siege engines behind as they headed down the road. Most of them were terrified into silence, but a few complained as they left.

“I thought the Horned Hunter was supposed to be weak,” one of them muttered as he ran away, moving even faster than his fellows. “We never should have come here.”

Sam watched them go, but he had no interest in following them himself. He would deal with the king and the capital soon enough, once the valley was secure. His eyes flashed with starlight as he looked toward Veritan.

Siwaha touched his arm a few moments later, drawing his attention back. He pulled his attention from the capital as he turned to her, studying the changes the Winter transformation had brought. Her hair was no longer fused into the snow, but it still brushed against the ground. A few lines of age had also returned to the corner of her eyes, but he had the feeling the way she presented herself was as much a choice as reality.

From what she’d said, it sounded like she might have lived since the last time the Gate of Winter was open, which meant she could be over 5,000 years old...but it wasn’t something he planned to ask about. If she wanted him to know, she would tell him. It gave him a sense of great respect for her, but even more importantly, it was comfortable to know that someone here was older than he was, and not by a small margin. He’d been worried about feeling out of touch once he came home.

If she could treat everyone normally, so could he.

“It’s time for me to head back to the relic,” he said quietly as he inclined his head to her. “Will the valley be safe for now?”

“I will arrange everything,” Siwaha said with a smile that made her eyes crinkle, almost as if she could read his thoughts. She had always been like that. “Our home needs attention now that the Gate of Winter is open, so the Ice Sylphs will be busy. I’ll have to teach everyone a few methods of control to access the old magics, including you and your family, but it can wait a few days. Go and do what you need to do. I will be here when you come to find me. And before you ask, your nagas are welcome in the valley. Your people are always welcome here.”

Sam gave her a short bow of thanks before he looked upward at the nagas, considering how best to keep them busy. They were full of energy now that they were awake and if left to their own devices, they would get up to some mischief...probably by conquering a nearby country.

“Sleset, send some nagas to make sure this army leaves,” he said. “Then head for the main peak of Sun’s Rest. Settle on the Third Layer in one of the unused areas and begin patrolling the area. Make sure no one else attacks the valley. Stay alert. We have places to go soon.”

“Yes, my lord.” Sleset’s hiss of agreement followed. A moment later the Ice Drake was gone, heading for the relic where the nagas could set up a new nest.

After he watched them go, Sam’s attention turned to where his family was standing on the wall. They were watching the flows of Ice mana Siwaha had summoned with amazement, their attunement to it almost as intense as the Ice Sylphs. It wasn’t clear what it meant yet, but there was no doubt that things would change again. If Siwaha’s mention of Ice magic meant what he thought, the Blessing of Ice was about to be worth even more.

They were also looking at him, their eyes full of questions. Since he’d appeared, they’d barely had a moment to speak to each other, and it was time to correct that. Their familiar faces brought him back to the moment that he’d left. To them, it had been just over a year, which was long enough, but for him, it had been 182.

It felt like an eternity and much less at the same time. He let out a silent breath as the weight of the past and present merged together and some of his tension began to disappear. There was a lot to do, but it could wait until morning. The most important thing had waited long enough.

It was time to catch up with his family.

A wave of silver covered the area, sweeping them up like a giant hug. When it disappeared, they were gone.

*****

Dawn was rising as Sam appeared at the peak of Sun’s Rest. The warmth of his parents’ welcome and his sister’s voice were with him. It had been a long night reuniting with his family, but they needed to sleep after defending the valley. His parents could have pushed through by relying on their Constitution, but Altey was drifting off, so they’d decided to call it a night.

No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t catch up on an entire year in a few hours, much less 182 years. The important thing was that they were safe and he was home. There would be more time to talk after they were rested. While they did, he could work, just like the old days. There were some things he needed to do that couldn’t wait any longer, including improving the defenses of the area. He wasn’t going to let something like the king’s army come here again.

As he looked across the mountain’s high plateau, the notifications from the World Core pressed on his mind like an ocean demanding his attention, but he did his best to ignore them. He’d already given the Titan Star the job of sorting them into something more comprehensible. Those messages had waited for untold years, so a little longer shouldn’t matter. The star would have some results soon.

Even with the Gate of Winter open and the Ice Sylphs’ power increasing, he wasn’t willing to leave the defenses entirely in their hands. He’d been hearing the relic’s updates in his mind for hours, so it was time to check on its progress and see what repairs he could accomplish now that he had a full heritage behind him. He’d finished comprehending the core enchantment while he was on the Path of Stars, so there was no longer any obstruction to studying it in full.

“Awaken,” he said quietly as he laid his hand on the Moonlight Relic’s command pillar, sending his awareness deep into the structure. Information sprang into his mind. What had once been an uncontrollable flood that threatened to destroy him was now an easy thing to understand, but he couldn’t help but be impressed again by the power of the relic. It wasn’t that far below the World Core in complexity.

Welcome, Architect and High Artificer of Aster Fall. The relic’s voice rang in his mind, more comprehensible than it had ever been before. It lacked the personality of the World Core or even the Titan Star, its voice flat and cold, but there was no denying its strength. Command authority acknowledged. Commencing Status Report:

Age of Relic: 162,419 years.

Structural Integrity: 35%

Stored Energy: 29%

Auric Charge: 2,552,611 / 500,000,000.

Reserve energy is sufficient to maintain core operations.

Core storehouses of Silvas, Caelus, and Amaris are available.

Reserve storehouses 1 through 5 are available.

Self-repair underway.

Primary functions have been restored to the First and Second Layer. The Third Layer is in progress.

Estimated time to restore primary function to the Third Layer: 5.19 local years.

Estimated time to full repair: Unknown. There is a critical shortage of resources to complete repairs. Greenstone supply is limited. Golem production halted due to insufficient resources. Projected timeline exceeds 2,000 local years.

Dimensional anchoring inactive. Auric charge is insufficient to stabilize local dimensional space. Further repairs are required.

Warning: Local dimensional flaws detected. Their presence threatens the stability of core operations.

Warning: A local dimensional surge has been detected. Origin of surge: 1,576 miles north by northeast. Elemental signature suggests extra-dimensional interference.

Recommended course of action: Restore the dimensional anchor.

A deluge of other information and status updates followed on everything from the individual buildings being repaired across the layers to the energy available for the three core storehouses, but the main thing that caught Sam’s attention was the relic’s focus on the dimensional surge it had detected.

The Dimensional Convergence.

It had probably told his parents about some of this, but the type of information it gave him was completely different. He was part of the race that had built it and his ability to communicate with it was much better. He rubbed his chin as he let the rest of the information flow through his mind and organized it. Then he lifted his hand away from the control pillar.

The weight of responsibility was heavy on his shoulders as he looked at the moons in the sky and the mountains shining in the breaking sun. The peaks of the Western Reaches stretched into the distance like a line of shining crystal spears, their tips glinting with frost as streams of mana gathered around them, ready to pour down the slopes to the land below. It was a beautiful scene that struck at the heart and he let his eyes wander across it as he considered his next step.

His mother had detected a gate between here and the capital at Veritan, an ancient one that had something to do with a Breaking, and the relic’s information pointed in the same direction. The arrival of the convergence at the same time as the relic began functioning was suspicious, and now this was related as well. He was already planning to check out the gate, but it seemed like he should move it up.

As he looked across the valley, he noticed that the rune for Winter was still present in the air, but nearly invisible now. It was only because he could see the mana flows that he could distinguish its presence. To most, it would be invisible, but it was even more powerful than it had been the night before when Siwaha activated it.

The flow of ice mana was beginning to stabilize, but it looked like it had a ways to go before it would reach full power. It might be done in a week or a month, or perhaps longer. The Ice Sylphs had tapped into the nearby flows of mana when they wove an enchantment across the mountain peaks, using the geography of the land as the foundation. It was a complex creation, powered by the immense force of nature. It was also like a slowly shifting glacier. Siwaha had only tapped into the first layer of its power when she unlocked the gate.

The full strength of the Gate of Winter was yet to come.

He had to wonder what would happen when it was fully active. The weather patterns here might change, which could affect the Storm Plains to the west and the central plains of the kingdom to the east. Either way, the king had awoken something that would not be easily put to sleep again.

If he refused to bow his head, the days of the kingdom were numbered. Since there were so few Ice Sylphs, the kingdom might not change hands in a human generation, or even in the next century, but the balance would slowly and irrevocably shift.

That was if Sam didn’t kill him first.

A flicker of rage burned at the thought of the king attacking his home. For now, he set it to the side as he turned his attention back to the relic’s repairs and waited for the Titan Star to finish sorting the World Core’s notifications. The king was low on his list of priorities.

He spent the next hour studying the relic and creating a plan. Then he disappeared from the command plateau. A flicker of silver light burned in the dark interior of a cavern as he reappeared in the Chamber of Caelus on the Second Layer.

It was a large cavern lit by the lines of moonlight enchantment running along the ceiling and across the floor. The center of the cavern had once been occupied by waiting ranks of golems, but it was empty now, its vastness echoing as he walked across it to the far side and to the pools of elemental energy waiting there. The pools came in different colors, one for each type of golem, and in front of the dark crystalline pools, there was a rank of damaged Sky Guards waiting for repair.

After all of his years of study on the way home, the relic’s enchantments held few mysteries for him, but the power and history here was unquestionable. He spent a little while just looking into the pools as he studied the runes carved into them, appreciating all that had come before. Then he began to pull materials from his spatial bracelet and cloak.

Some of them were cores from Void beasts and others were their bones, hides, or fangs. There were also metals and stones infused with the energy of the Chaos Wild, essence stones, and more, including strange bits of things infused with essence or mana that he didn’t have any other use for.

Instead of throwing them directly into the pools, which was what his parents had been doing to supply the golems with material, with a wave of his hand, a swirling portal appeared in front of him. One after the other, he tossed all of the items inside. As each one entered, a satisfied chime rang in his mind from the relic as it recorded the material.

Golem material storage at 5%...12%...32%... The amount continued to increase, percentage point by percentage point, until finally the portal closed on its own. Golem material storage full. The relic sounded pleased as a hum of enchantment sprang up across the pools, the energy in them quickly intensifying.

Golem production can now restart. Please assign parameters. Energy density of materials is sufficient for the production of 2,000 golems.

There was still a massive pile of material in front of Sam, enough to fill half the room, and he hadn’t emptied a quarter of his storage yet, but he only nodded and swept it all back into his spatial bracelet for later. They were a mix from the Second and Third Evolution, but nothing too unique. A lot of them had come from killing the Blackscar Destroyers and clearing out that system before he left the Chaos Wild. Even after all the years traveling home and the crafting he’d been doing, he had an enormous amount of such things. They were perfect for this.

“Increase the Sky Guard contingent to 300,” he instructed. “Then focus golem production on self-repair and reconstruction. There’s a lot to fix.”

The relic’s confirmation followed as a hum of enchantment sprang up through the room with a greater intensity than before. The golem formation pools began to glow brilliantly as materials were fed into them from the relic’s storage. In the storage chamber below this one, the relic was already hard at work breaking down the materials he’d given it to their component parts, stripping away the mana and elemental energies.

He looked down at the damaged Sky Guard golems that were lying in pieces near the pools and his hand swept out, gathering them all up as he infused them with aura and plunked them down into the waiting pools. His parents had been slowly feeding the pools with monster cores and other things while letting a single golem bathe in each, but now that the relic was able to restart production, it could do better on its own. The Sky Guard deserved to be repaired as soon as possible. He gave the broken soldiers a grave nod.

There were 120 Sky Guard before, so 300 should be enough for a basic defense force and to escort visitors around the relic. The relic could create more, but they weren’t the only defense he had planned. He wanted it to focus its attention on repairs. Right now, there were only 120 support golems split across several types, from enchantment repair to gardening. If the relic was going to flourish again, it needed more of all of them.

Silver light flashed through the chamber as he left. When he reappeared this time, he was under the open sky on the Second Layer. A wave of his hand sent a hundred large metallic spheres tumbling through the sky in front of him, where they began to hover. Lines of crackling elemental enchantments burned across their surfaces as they began to open.

Lines of feathers appeared first, cutting down the centerline of the spheres as they lifted away from their storage form. Then the sides expanded and the outline of a sharp head and beak rose. Brilliant silver-white eyes glowed from beneath each sharp brow and their beaks were curved and sharp. Talons stretched out at the base of the spheres and clawed at the air as two giant wings unfurled, revealing massive silver eagles.

The eagle in the front was the largest, half again the size of the others with a wingspan of thirty feet. As he spread his wings, he let out a loud shriek that echoed across the mountainside. He radiated a primordial fierceness in every feather as his wingbeats created an icy wind that tore across the sky and merged with the surroundings. The eagle looked around, his eyes picking out details across the relic and the valley, and then he turned back to Sam as he let out an inquisitive chirp.

“Silverbeak,” Sam said with a smile as he sent it a wave of mental instructions and established a link to the relic. “Coordinate with the Moonlight Relic as the aerial guard force for this mountain. Make sure nothing dangerous reaches the slopes. Alert me if something tries.”

With a chirp of agreement, Silverbeak tilted his wings and dived, shooting off toward the valley miles below. Behind him, the flight of other eagles followed, spreading out into a large vee as they started their survey. With an average level of 325, there was little that could escape their attention. Sam watched them go with a grin.

This was why he’d told the relic to focus on support golems.

He still had some other golems on hand, including defensive ones, so he quickly established them throughout the relic as a reserve force. He placed some on every layer, even the lowest, although he concentrated them on the top three. Then he teleported away again, heading for the next thing he needed to deal with.

When he reappeared, it was inside the Chamber of Silvas, the second of the main storehouses, just beside the massive pool that took up most of the interior. This was where greenstone was created. It was a magical, aura-attuned stone with a crystalline structure that was used throughout the relic as the primary building material. There was nothing else like it on Aster Fall. There was a small amount of silvery green liquid at the bottom of the pool, the molten form of greenstone, but it was even less than when he left, with barely any remaining.

The repairs were taking a lot of material.

He rubbed his chin as he studied the enchantments in the room, comparing them to his understanding of the relic’s core enchantment. The core enchantment gave him a basic understanding of the relic’s functions and the command keys to unlock them, but he hadn’t seen all of the parts in operation. The relic was a complex artifact with highly-developed functions.

His hand dipped into the pool as he pulled up a stream of sparkling greenstone, examining the material as he analyzed the chamber and the process that created it. Greenstone was an essential material component that worked hand in hand with the aura that the relic drew from the moons, particularly Silvas. It was a building material that was capable of channeling energy and repairing itself. Studying it now was eye-opening.

The stream of greenstone separated into different flows of elemental energy in his hand, primarily Wood, Earth, and Ice, but there were hints of the other elements there as well for balance, including Fire and Metal, although not as much as he would have expected. He let the strands of energy spin around his hand before he recombined them, turning it back into a silver green stream that returned to the pool below. Then he began to think.

The core enchantment included the process for creating and repurposing greenstone, as well as rendering it back into its constituent parts, so he had the basics needed to restore the chamber and refill the greenstone pool, but the issue was providing the right mixture of materials. It was truly a marvel of enchantment and interwoven elements expressly built to be the base for a gigantic artifact, and it gave him some insights into the creations the Titans had made in later years.

Most of the elements that were needed to make more greenstone he could add directly, either by gathering them from the free elements in the area or from specific locations nearby, like Stone and Ice from the mountains and Wood from the Storm Plains or the mana flows that gathered around the peaks of the Western Reaches. Those were all relatively easy to collect, but there was one element that was going to take a little more work.

The greenstone was infused with the aura of Silvas. It was the catalyst that brought the rest of the materials together to a single purpose and gave it a resistance against Outsider energy. It was a variant of astral energy that he was extremely familiar with, but while he could create a certain quantity of it from his own essence, it was a slow process.

The builders had intended the chamber to be charged during the alignment of the moons every seven years, which would normally give it more than enough aura to create greenstone. Unfortunately, the relic hadn’t been at full strength during the last alignment, which had prevented it from gathering enough aura, and there was still over five years to go until the moons aligned again.

While he considered the issue, he channeled astral energy into the pool. He had 20,758 Intelligence and Aura, as well as some essence reserves that were part of his vitality. Although he had a strand of Silvas and the other moons’ aura in his spirit, which allowed him to weave the concept into spells, his primary essence was pure astral energy. The fraction of his power that was dedicated to Silvas alone was vanishingly small.

The reservoir was designed to hold millions of points of lunar aura in a massive spatial enchantment that was woven into the substructure of the chamber. The greenstone across the mountain was a secondary reservoir, holding some of that energy as well, which was where the relic’s unique aura came from, the moonlight that lit its buildings and interacted with the Ice in the air.

His astral energy poured into the reservoir in a torrent as he worked on filling one small section of the enchantment. The area he targeted was barely even a fraction of the whole and before long he had to halt when he’d channeled over 18,000 essence into it. Then he studied the result as he shook his head, a frown developing.

His astral energy had turned into about 800 points of the aura of Silvas. It shimmered there like a tiny lunar droplet in his mind’s eye, its surface glowing with a soft silver green light. It was more pure than any other moonlight aura he’d ever created, just as pure as the moon’s own energy, but it was small. Nonetheless, he turned his attention to the pool of greenstone, watching to see what happened as the enchantment around the reservoir began to radiate lunar energy.

Slowly, streams of elemental material from the relic’s storage spiraled through the runes along the reservoir. Each of them absorbed a portion of lunar aura and then they began to mix at a point just above the pool. Flows of Wood and Stone were first, merging together into the air to give off the feeling of an ancient forest covering the earth, and then Ice joined in, creating a crystalline structure throughout the nascent greenstone as it wove through the other two. Then other elements mixed in, tempering the material with Fire and giving it the piercing clarity of metal.

The runes along the pool grew brighter, intensifying the energies feeding into the creation, and then a stream of greenstone began to flow like a waterfall into the pool below. Sam watched it patiently, saying nothing as the amount of aura in the reservoir slowly dwindled.

After about half an hour, it was gone.

The stream of greenstone stopped flowing and the elemental currents disappeared as the runes went dark, leaving a pool of greenstone that was about a quarter more than it had been before.

“Good news and bad news,” he muttered to himself as he considered the size of the reservoir. “If it were full, that storage is large enough to rebuild at least half of the relic. Two cycles...fourteen years. It would be enough in normal circumstances.”

Right now, however, it was an issue.

While he could provide some of the aura needed, it would mean doing nothing else with his time, and that wasn’t possible. He could add a little bit here and there, in between other things, but if he wanted to make greenstone quickly, he would need a direct line to the moon. His fingers tapped on the edge of the pool as he considered what to do.

He could try to capture moonlight and channel it here...but then he shook his head. The relic was already gathering moonlight like that each night and it was clearly not enough. After a little while, he decided that there was only one way forward.

He would just have to go to the moon.

Then he would find a way to channel its aura back. He looked up through the ceiling of the chamber, his senses searching for the open Void above Aster Fall. He could feel it there, ever present and filled with the light of the stars. He owed a visit to an old friend anyway, so he might as well do both at once, but the trip would have to wait for a few days.

First, he was going to set up his forge.

A flash of silver filled the chamber as he disappeared, heading for the peak of Sun’s Rest. It was an ideal location to establish a new Titan Hall.