Crimsoncrest (The Weirkey Chronicles Book 10), page 27
Strangely, Theo's gravity sense kept throwing up false signals that must have been figments of his imagination. When he focused, it was clear that the city was the largest source of gravity anywhere in his range, with even large schools of fish barely having any mass. Yet occasionally he hallucinated something much larger, as if a mass of teeth and tentacles would come swimming out of the darkness...
At least he hoped he was imagining that part.
Nothing attacked as he made his way to the gate, and the Fithan guards only inspected him briefly before deciding they didn't want to get in the way of a strange outsider Stronghold. Theo hesitated in front of the spherical gate, a small bubble of green within the black. He'd been through gates hundreds of times and knew it would work, yet still imagined if they turned it off somehow, leaving him flying into the ocean depths.
Well, he might actually survive the crushing pressure even at this depth, now that he thought about it. Theo nodded to the guards, made sure Senka was secure, then floated through.
On the other side he flew into Aathal, though the landscape around him wasn't as lush or gargantuan as he would have expected. There were only standard-sized shrubs within sight, and though the ground was covered in rich green moss, it wasn't particularly remarkable. If not for the mottled sky and pulsating sun, he could almost have been on several other worlds.
Unusual to come out in the air, though... Theo looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened.
The circular portal had been set not in the ground, but in the side of an enormous tree. It was easily the size of a skyscraper, spearing into the heavens thousands of times taller than all the other vegetation. This was the first time he'd ever seen a gate within something growing... except it wasn't. When Theo investigated more closely, he realized that the tree had died long ago and been petrified in this state, leafless branches clawing the sky.
"What happened here?" Theo asked. He'd intended to use his normal tone of voice, yet ended up speaking softly - it felt appropriate, as if this was a grave.
"I don't actually know," Senka answered. "This place was dead even back when I was alive, and it doesn't look like it's grown back much since then. But anyway, we need to fly northwest, so get to it."
He rose further into the air and then pulled the sleigh from his soulhome. It wasn't built to fully support Stronghold cantae, but if he pushed it to its limits, he could make good time without slowing. At first he moved cautiously, alert for any locals who might attack. When it became clear that the place was still uninhabited, he instead looked back over his shoulder at the lone giant tree, which grew smaller at a troublingly slow speed.
"It's still just a tree," Senka said. "Eyes forward."
"Because of the danger here?"
"Because we're here for more exciting blook than trees."
Theo sighed and settled in for the flight. "Didn't you say you were going to tell a story?"
"Oh, right." Senka cackled to herself. "Talking about unusable materials, I have a good one... there was this man, chosen soulcrafter of his clan, who wanted to create an unstoppable sublime material for himself. He decided to make it out of the corpses of his enemies, which he would let decay and condense into a single material. This was his goal for years, gathering up hundreds of them."
"It was a normal thing to just kill hundreds of people back then?"
"Don't bring your moralizing into my funny story! As the bodies decomposed, their power became more concentrated, forming soil that was incredibly rich with violence and bloodshed. He used that as fertilizer, compacting it all into a small stone. The problem was... it smelled like blook. Just absolutely awful. He had a grandiose name for it, but everyone started calling it the poostone and he never lived it down."
Despite himself, Theo snorted at the childish insult. "Did he really avoid using it in his soulhome just because of the smell? You'd think you could hide that."
"Oh, he did, but everyone pretended they could smell it anyway." Senka's unfocused eyes stared into the past and she grinned. "Which is all to say that sometimes no amount of power in a sublime material is worth it. Does it have a place in your soul if you believe it's absolutely stupid?"
"Has this been a long introduction to soften me up to the fact that your cache contains nothing but poostones?"
Senka cackled again, but shook her head. "I don't remember what all it had, I just remember I put more defenses on this one."
"You know..." Thinking back over the story, one detail stuck out. "I'm surprised that your curse didn't disrupt the name."
"Well, it was a deeply childish word, not a profane one. That was part of the insult."
"What tier would you say the poostone was?" Theo asked.
"Seventh or so?"
"So most of you were Ophaon-tier soulcrafters, having just ascended from Dominion?"
"Not exactly. Back then people who had potential or connections were treated differently, given entirely different blueprints and materials." Senka seemed to be looking backward again, no longer so happily. "When you have Immortality Conduits, it matters more what tier someone will reach than what they are for a few years."
"But I imagine, even back then, it was hard to get past Ophaon."
"Yeah, that's where I was stuck."
Theo nodded as if he was simply curious. "I've been talking to Guchiro and it seems like some people treat those tiers as a different world. Did you use terms like aeon-class back then?"
"Those are actually new," Senka said, returning to the present. "Sometimes people used 'realm' categorizations instead of 'class' but the fundamental laws of soulcrafting were the same. There's just a huge difference when you reach those later tiers."
"Did you care about the difference between the first two realms, then? I imagine that ascending to Authority isn't as special if some people can reach Ophaon."
"Nah, Authority is still special, because you can use weirkeys. It was called the first step on the road to Bupplesniffer-"
Senka cut off, irritated... and then she saw his grin. As soon as she understood, she began whacking the sides of his head ineffectually.
"Nlermit, you absolute fumpet! Have you been trying to lead me into that all conversation?"
"More or less," Theo said unapologetically.
"And here I thought you actually cared." Senka flew away and crossed her arms in an exaggerated sulk.
"No, no, I was truly curious about the Ophaon tier. Ophaon is such an important stage, after all. And Ophaon is such a resonant, euphonic word. Ophaon, Ophaon, Oph-"
"You little blook!" Senka tried to shove her fist into his mouth to shut him up, but they both ended up laughing.
They continued flying across the deadened region of Aathal and Theo was able to soulcraft at times thanks to the sleigh. For the most part, however, he just enjoyed talking to Senka about higher tier soulcrafting. Unlike Dave, who knew everything but considered it premature to explain, Senka was fuzzy about most details but happy to discuss them.
From her he didn't learn exact rules for aeon-class soulcrafting so much as the general attitude of her time period. Even if she was unclear on specifics, she could guess why Dave had gotten stuck at Ophaon, or ramble about different builds and their general potential. He wanted to ask her about her own soulhome, but that seemed to be one of the pieces she struggled most to remember.
Eventually Senka cut off and waved a hand to the east. Theo slowed down the sleigh and began examining the area with his gravity senses, but he didn't notice anything in particular. His eyes were actually more useful: there was a small forest of fungi in one distance, apparently thriving in the blasted space. They grew larger than any he'd seen, some of them twice his height.
Unlike most areas of Aathal, however, which were riots of color, the fungi were overwhelmingly a dark gray. Theo was about to fly into them to look further when Senka shook a finger.
"The defenses start here, I think," she said in a low voice. "I should be immune, but you... need to be careful."
"You remember anything else?" Theo asked as he kept his distance, instead circling around one side of the fungal forest.
"I think there were spores... do you need to breathe? I suggest you stop that."
Before Theo got far, he saw something shift in the forest. He reacted immediately, a torsion punch prepared in one hand and a gravitational field in the other. For a moment he couldn't find the source until he realized that it wasn't something moving between the mushrooms...
One of the smaller mushrooms opened dark red eyes and stared at him.
Theo ended up staring back, unsure what he was seeing. Even though he had traveled with an Aathali man in his first life, Aathal was too large and diverse for Theo to have seen more than a fraction of it. Considering everything else that existed in the Nine Worlds, why not a fungal person? This one seemed to have a soulhome, so that was the easiest conclusion, but that didn't mean they were friendly.
"This place isn't safe for your kind, outsider," the mushroom intoned seriously.
"What does that mean?" Theo halted the sleigh and rose to his feet.
"Uh... I didn't mean it that way." The mushroom blinked red eyes and twisted, apparently uncomfortable. "I don't talk to a lot of people. I just mean... there are spores in the area, dangerous ones. They could colonize even an Authority."
"I'm afraid we need to keep traveling," Theo said. "Any advice?"
"I am here to study the ancient sporeroots, so I know a little of the dangers. If you clear a path for me, I can give you the details, one soulcrafter to another."
Theo was a little suspicious, awaiting a subtle attack, but the mushroom soulcrafter appeared entirely honest. It - Theo had no way of knowing what it might be - told him some of the details and asked for a path to a specific point. Senka nodded slightly at the mushroom's explanations and shrugged when it gave the location, so Theo decided that it was fine.
It only took ordinary cantae bolts to demolish a line of mushrooms. Theo had to wonder how the mushroom soulcrafter was going to move there, since it seemed rooted unlike Khaluu, but eventually decided that wasn't his business. He flew the sleigh higher and set to work soulcrafting.
"Do you still not have a chamber that will adapt to anything?" Senka asked, trying to distract him from his soulcrafting. "Those things should be standard, given how many hostile environments you face."
"Hey, I have an acclimatization chamber," Theo responded as he walked down the stairs into his basement. "My blueprint is too tightly designed to have a lot of spare rooms."
"Yeah, keep telling yourself that when you die of mushroom."
Honestly, Theo was looking forward to this in a way he hadn't expected. So much of the time he could adapt with raw power alone, which was effective but not very imaginative. Now he needed to put together something that could completely stop spores, which was tricky without Aathali materials.
Now that he had a full basement of tools, however, he could be much more flexible. Instead of trying to soulcraft some sort of ad hoc immunity like he would have in his first life, Theo fashioned what amounted to a plague doctor mask. He hadn't used the animabladder from the Chasm of Lamentations in years, but he placed it in the beak with some cleansing materials that should actually protect him from threats, theoretically, unlike the historical plague doctors.
He replaced the sleigh in his soulhome, to prevent it getting infected, and then descended into the fungal forest. Senka hovered after him, watching closely for a reaction, but relaxed as they went deeper. She seemed to be entirely immune to the spores, and the flickers of her Ophaon-tier power would probably have protected her anyway.
"There..." Senka pointed ahead, to a thicket of tall and thin mushrooms. "Pull out that one, but be careful."
"This one?" Theo gripped the fungus and tore it out, then leapt backward as he felt a cantae trap burst.
Shards exploded beneath the soil, shooting toward him with intense force. But he had instinctively cast a gravitational field and anti-mass point, so they veered aside and only a single one grazed the edge of his coat. That one did punch through, which suggested the trap was more powerful than he'd expected.
"Manipulating gravity is unfair," Senka said irritably. "I put a lot of work into that trap."
"What, you wanted it to kill me for the sake of your ego?"
"No, but you could have at least gotten injured to be polite."
The explosion had taken a chunk out of the forest floor, wiping out a huge section of soil to reveal bedrock underneath. Except it wasn't entirely natural stone: one part was too smooth, with patterns that he remembered from Noven. It had been a while since he and Senka had explored one of her caches, much less successfully.
"You want to do the honors?" he asked, gesturing Senka forward with a bow. "You can get hit with the next trap."
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, fumpet." Senka floated down to the stone and began running her fingers over the designs in a specific pattern.
Theo didn't understand every detail of the locking sublime materials, but he did memorize Senka's pattern this time, just in case. As soon as she finished, the stone began to rumble, grinding at first and then thumping into gear and pulling away to reveal a staircase. When Senka began to float down it, torches lit up on the walls.
"There's one more defense," Senka said over her shoulder, "in the antechamber. I can't remember what it is, though. Something different, I only had one. Uh... listen, I was joking before, but you'd better be careful. This could potentially be the most dangerous part."
At the bottom of the stairs was a small chamber that contained only a defensive door... and a silk cushion? Theo blinked, unsure what it could mean. It was like someone had set down a pillow in front of the door for reasons that escaped him.
It didn't help when Senka fell to her knees and let out a choking sob.
"Senka?" Theo moved cautiously after her, but he still didn't sense any danger. The cushion seemed ordinary, worn and a bit dusty. There were spheres of topaz-like sublime material on it, yet they didn't feel dangerous - in fact, they felt calmer and more peaceful than just about any sublime material he'd encountered.
"I didn't think... why would you stay?" Senka extended her hand toward the cushion, fingers trembling. "I didn't remember... I'm sorry, I..."
The sublime materials began to glow, and the light melted into a ghostly animal. It looked leonine, with bright yellow eyes and a shaggy mane, which put Theo on edge. Yet it didn't feel like a real sublime beast, just some sort of lingering echo. It didn't seem to notice him at all, just took a step forward and bumped its head against Senka's hand.
She made another choking sound and then the glow began to fade, dispersing into glimmering rain. Senka almost sobbed again, fingers clutching at the remnants. There seemed to be nothing left, as all the peaceful energy had receded into the spheres resting on the pillow.
"I don't deserve this..." Senka breathed.
The vault door was directly in front of them and Theo found himself looking over his shoulder. They might have drawn attention with the explosion, from the local Aathali or worse. Senka's shoulders were shaking but she pulled away when he reached toward her. Should he just leave her to her emotions, break through the door, and empty everything? That would probably be the smartest path.
Instead he found himself sitting down opposite Senka, his back to the vault door. He didn't say anything at first, waiting for her trembling to stop.
"That was Steti. There... used to be a sublime beast called felidays." Senka spoke like she was lecturing again, but her voice almost cracked.
"Steti was your... friend?" Theo asked gently.
"A pet. The little fuzzball barely had the brains to..." Senka sniffed and wiped her nose with her sleeve. "Why would he stay so long? I never imagined..."
"You left him to guard the door?"
"Felidays were solar beasts, strong ones. They took care of children or... or guarded important things. But I... I was never a great owner. I didn't give Steti the attention he deserved, not really. When I left him to guard the cache, I thought he would wander off, or chase something, or... and then I was cursed and never came back. He could have slipped out, but he stayed on guard until he passed."
Theo looked toward the cushion, wondering if the indentations represented the sublime beast seated on it. That left the strange topaz spheres, which Senka scooped into her arms. He decided to wait and let her finish in her own time.
"They leave behind sublime materials called felinesolars when they pass, depending on..." Senka drew in a ragged breath. "Depending on their strength in life, but also... how they pass. They're only supposed to leave them when they pass away peaceful and happy, not... I don't deserve this. I wasn't a good enough owner, but Steti... I didn't..."
She lapsed into silence and this time Theo didn't think she would speak again. He stared down at the peaceful spheres, which almost seemed to be rolling into her touch. It was difficult to imagine the Senka he knew, who had not long ago told a joke involving hundreds of corpses, caring for a cat. Maybe a special sublime cat, but the glimpse he had seen, the way it had bumped into her fingers...
"You don't get to judge yourself," Theo said eventually, "not here. Steti apparently loved you, whatever you thought of yourself."
Senka gave another nearly silent sob and clutched the spheres against herself. Theo sat in silence for a time, then slowly extended his arm. When it neared her shoulders, Senka ducked her head and practically rammed against him, trembling slightly.
So they sat there together, saying nothing and ignoring the vault of treasures.
Chapter 29
How long had Nauda been cleaning up the soul-draining stones? The ordeal of touching each one made it feel like forever, but she knew it hadn't been long in the grand scheme of things. Or perhaps it was just being stuck in an unchanging pastel world while so much went on in Fithe.
Now only a few of the largest boulders remained, still a struggle despite all her training. Some of the Siatans had tried to help her, but the effect seemed even more dramatic on them and their strength withered. She had tried to budge them with cantae bolts or even her old binding technique, but the cantae-draining effect was too potent.
