Crimsoncrest (The Weirkey Chronicles Book 10), page 5
Yet the seven chambers on her fourth floor were largely complete, all filled with appropriate sublime materials. She had finally developed her incorporeality skill on Tatian, then enhanced her lightstorm on Deuxan, just as she had always planned. Now only her two chambers to produce darkness required further polishing, as well as further training since they still lagged.
Fiyu drifted away from that work, instead floating down to her garden of sunlessroses. The ring of them surrounded her soulhome and deepened her foundation, but she had cleared off a circle opposite her entrance. There, she picked up her tools and began to work on her ground.
Tradition stated that basements should be developed at Stronghold tier, but it was just possible at Authority. Relative Guchiro had managed it over many years and had suggested that she wait for ascension instead. Friend Theo had opened his basement, but only thanks to his unusual soulcrafting knowledge. In order to assist her relative and strengthen the kinstone, Fiyu had not used the same technique, which meant her foundation was less developed.
She did not regret that decision, yet now she felt as though she risked falling behind her companions. Friend Theo had carved out a full basement, and Friend Nauda's foundation was strong, even if it was too hard and fused with her damaged soul. While she... had her soul grown enough to have soil beneath the roots of her sunlessroses?
With a careful breath, Fiyu picked up the darkegg that she had carried with her ever since Noven. She brought it down against the earth of her soul carefully, thumping it against the indentation in the soil. Day after day, blow after blow, she pushed further into the soil. The darkegg's true purpose was in her next ascension, but for now she used it as a spiritual tool. She hoped, though she had no guidance to prove it, that this would prepare the way to opening her basement as well.
"Excuse me, mercenary?"
Just when Fiyu thought that she might soulcraft and ruminate for the entire journey, she was interrupted by another Authority. She repositioned her mask as she emerged to greet Associate Hitemo, who was one of the primary Authority guards for the Darkwheel Traders. He was an extremely thin man clad in ragged robes, and like all the traders, he wore a gauzy scarf that protected his mouth from vapors.
"What is it?" Fiyu asked. "I can attempt another deep scan if necessary."
"Not this time," Associate Hitemo said. Instead he floated away and extended one foot forward, pointing where the landscape became increasingly illuminated by glaciers. "I wanted to tell you that our elders are discussing taking a different path. Ordinarily we travel northwest, through a ravine that is narrow and slow, but secure. Instead we will be using the northeast passage through the ice, which is more direct but also more infested with ghostworms. What do you think?"
To be polite, Fiyu stretched her senses northward to examine both passes. Without direct information, it seemed obvious that they were taking a much greater risk, especially because they already struggled to defend against the current frequency of ghostworms. No lives had been lost only due to the layered defenses of guards, shadowlamps, and armored carriages.
"I would never want to contradict your elders," Fiyu said. "I will do my utmost to protect the caravan."
"Of course." Associate Hitemo twisted his long tongue strangely, which Fiyu had noticed the traders tended to do when irritated. Perhaps few of their kind used senses that penetrated their defensive scarves. "But you are here as a consulting mercenary, so might I get your opinion?"
"I am only present due to my capacities, not my knowledge of this area. That is why you are right to call me mercenary, not guide. I can only bow to your wisdom regarding the risks."
Another tongue twist, but the increasing tension in the man's body didn't seem focused toward her. "That may be true," Associate Hitemo said, "but you see the danger, right? If we wish a safe journey, wouldn't the less icy route be safer? If you would say as much..."
Now Fiyu understood: he was seeking reinforcement, and had few enough allies among his own people that he sought a foreigner. Fiyu thought Associate Hitemo was a reasonable man, so she followed him and spoke with the elders to say that the ice-bound northeastern route was a significant risk in her professional opinion.
In the end the elders rejected their objections, actually citing how easy the journey had been up to this point. Fiyu reflected that her success might have led her to greater risks as they headed northeast.
As the light from the jagged glaciers increased, even many of the Authorities began to retreat into the carriages. Fiyu tried to see as her companions would and suspected that even Friend Nauda would not appreciate this light: it offered only sickly and flickering illumination that cast the path in unstable shadows. Worse, the ghostworms blended in almost perfectly, their bodies nearly the same density as melting ice and thus difficult to find even for her.
For a day Fiyu conducted her work as normal, then she was actually attacked by a ghostworm that leapt from a glacier overhead. She turned on instinct and obliterated it, shredding the sublime beast in a flood of light that reflected eerily through the glaciers.
Yet she did not feel secure, because in the time she had sensed the ghostworm before it was annihilated, it had seemed much larger than the others. Fiyu ceased using her lightstorm, instead focusing on her senses and stalking ghostworms.
She managed to find one ahead of the caravan and, before it could turn on her, cut it in half with her cantae blade. As she had feared, this one was larger than her body. Stranger, when she cut a slit through its side, multiple smaller ghostworms fell out. They appeared completely dead, so they could not be young, yet she could not explain their presence.
While returning to the caravan, Fiyu felt a degree of regret. The ghostworms might be unpleasant creatures, but they were just animals in the end, trying to live their own lives. Killing them and leaving the bodies to decay on the ice felt horribly wasteful.
"Hitemo." Fiyu bowed to the Authority as soon as she found him. "I wish to ask you some questions about the ghostworms, for the furtherance of my work."
"Of course," Associate Hitemo said, rising from his carriage. He wrapped his scarves over his eyes to ward against the light from the glaciers around them. "But I must tell you, I know relatively little. They are only a threat for this section of our journey, and I am no specialist."
"Are there any sublime materials that can be gathered from their bodies? They have cantae, so there must be some, yet..."
"Definitely not." Associate Hitemo flew away from the caravan, expecting her to follow, and found the corpse of a mid-sized ghostworm. "Their bodies are sticky, and they get worse after death. Soulcrafting them gums up your soulhome, and using them for armaments leads to infections."
"There is no way the stickiness can be removed, or other surfaces treated to resist?"
"Maybe there is, but the elders say that it isn't worth the risk. They keep sticking together like this no matter what you do and cause unexpected problems."
"I see." Fiyu gave him a thankful bow and began to return. "Thank you for indulging my curiosity."
"It is no trouble. We must-" Associate Hitemo suddenly froze, head cocked, tongue twisting.
She wasn't precisely certain of his senses, but it seemed to be a long range capacity suited for a scout. Fiyu realized that he was searching southwest and cast her own senses out as well. The path behind them seemed largely empty, cleared of threats along their way, yet something was unmistakably amiss...
"Mercenary Fiyu." The other Authority's eyes had begun to widen. "I cannot sense the details, yet I fear there is something behind us."
"I do not sense any concrete threats, only flowing ice." Yet even as Fiyu spoke, she realized that she was mistaken. She instinctively searched for denser bodies, but here the threats were soft. What she had believed was partially-melted ice was in fact moving in a distinctly unnatural pattern.
They flew from the caravan to investigate and Fiyu's stomach sank as she became more certain. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, she gathered herself and unleashed a lightstorm over the horizon, intending to devastate the enemy before it could attack.
Too late. With surprising speed, the soft tissue rose from the ground, avoiding the area she struck with her attack. As it arched into the sky, the shape became unmistakable: a monstrous ghostworm consolidated itself, inner light illuminating the heavens. A mouth larger than her entire body gaped, its teeth gleaming with hostile light.
"Impossible." Associate Hitemo appeared to have frozen up, staring toward the pale column. "They can't grow that large..."
Oh dear. Fiyu desperately wished that she had her companions for this battle, but all she could do was gather herself and fight alone.
Chapter 3
As cantae smashed against her from both sides, Nauda's wards began to tremble and then collapse. She tried to pour more of her strength into them, but there were stones hammering from one side and flames roasting the other, so it was only a matter of time.
There were four Authorities around her: two from the Ruling Cities and two from the Asplundat Movement. Both of the latter were hurling cantae-shaped stones, which she'd grown used to, but the others should have been her allies. One was even from House Blacksilver, not that it would matter in a second when her wards gave out.
The lines on the ground shattered and cantae burst through, but she had already leapt overhead. She swept her warding gauntlet in a broad arc, forming another line of wards between the combatants, which unfortunately left her vulnerable to attacks.
Some of the fighters, tired of her getting in their way, decided to just target her directly. Both stones and flames were hurtling at her and Nauda decided to stop dodging. She managed to kick the next stone out of the sky while the flames scorched her back.
More importantly, the Authorities who tried to keep fighting one another were blocked by the new line of wards. Some tension along the border was to be expected, but if they caused serious injury it would jeopardize the peace, and if anyone actually died... well, she had to prevent that. By throwing her own body between them, if necessary.
If she'd been using her staff it might have been easier. Then again, perhaps restraining Authorities like they were children would just make them angrier. Nauda stuck with her warding gauntlet on one hand and her nullification glove on the other, and it was time to finally use that glove.
She plunged back down to her failing wards, slamming into the ground with the force of her new omphalos, and combined the shockwave with her glove. The result was that, when she struck the earth with her palm, a shockwave of nullification exploded from her.
Just the backdraft suffocated the flames coming at her back, but Nauda focused the shockwave primarily on the Asplundat Authorities. Their earth armor sloughed away and they fell back a step, stunned but unharmed. That was the best way she had of neutralizing them without actually fighting - because she was technically a Ruling Cities soulcrafter herself, so she could start a war on her own if she wasn't careful.
"Enough!" Nauda shouted into the silence left by her shockwave. "Fighting each other doesn't benefit anyone!"
"Out of the way!" The unknown Ruling Cities soulcrafter attacked her from behind, a bloodstained cleaver swinging overhead.
Barely turning in time, Nauda blocked it with her forearm. All her warding armaments lit up at the impact, because the cleaver was a powerful armament itself, but they held. The cleaver cut a line of blood into her skin but didn't penetrate further than that.
The Authority's eyes widened and Nauda's combat instincts screamed to strike him while he was off guard. Instead she just grabbed the side of the cleaver and plunged it into the ground. That threw the Authority off enough that he retreated, no longer attacking her.
"This isn't Ruling Cities territory," one of the Asplundat Authorities called at her back. "You have no jurisdiction here, and anyone should be able to travel neutral ground. What right do you have, standing in our way?"
They both shouted accusations at her, but once they started shouting instead of attacking, she'd won. Nauda might have spent more time fighting the Asplundat Movement, but she had come to appreciate that they would talk - honestly, the Ruling Cities soulcrafters were more likely to try to take her out. She turned to the two of them with a smile on her face.
"I may live in the Ruling Cities," Nauda said, "but I am here today on behalf of the independent Dustwind Plateaus. If foreign Authorities destroy their farmland, they don't care which side sent them."
"But you serve under the Blacksilver faction," the other Asplundat Authority accused.
"I'm seconded to the independent faction, to make sure they stay independent. You may not believe me, but go ask your superiors."
This finally made them begin to give ground. As far as Nauda could tell, the Asplundat Movement believed that the idea of the Dustwind Plateaus being independent was just a ruse, a ploy to keep the Movement out until the Ruling Cities could take over. The fact that she spent just as much time clashing with encroaching soulcrafters from the Ruling Cities was a point in their favor, honestly.
The Asplundat Authorities spoke to one another, then retreated. With them gone, the Authority with a cleaver shot her a dirty look and then fell back. That left the Blacksilver Authority, who looked uncomfortable as Nauda rounded on him.
Tumast was one of the new Authorities who had joined while she was traveling other worlds. He was a middle-aged Fithan man who had moved to Norro Yorthin from somewhere else, so Nauda still didn't know him very well. She'd done her best to meet all the new Authorities, but there were a dozen now and it was hard to keep up. The only reason she remembered that he had a fire-based soulhome was that he'd been throwing those fires at her.
"I expect the others to cause trouble," Nauda said, "but you? Blacksilver is here to help these people."
"I was just defending them." Tumast shifted his gaze like a naughty child even though he was twice her age. "The Asplundat Movement is encroaching, it's obvious. If we just let them do whatever they want, they'll suck up the Dustwind Plateaus like everywhere else."
"Maybe it looks that way, but think about what they said. To them, it looks like we're the ones trying to take over. We need this area to stay independent so we don't start a war again."
"I know, I... I'll go back and help the farmers."
"That sounds like a good idea."
Nauda remained in the damaged wasteland for a time, extending her life senses in all directions just in case some of them tried to return for a rematch. It looked like they'd actually learned their lesson, though, which meant she'd held off violence for another day. And a good thing, because she'd burned a lot of cantae on her wards and she was feeling a little bit scorched.
Could she actually have fought the four of them? No, not successfully. Even though that would have seemed like an absurd goal not long ago, Nauda was a little disappointed in herself. Theo or Fiyu would have tried it, and even newly-ascended Krikree would have given them a good run for their money.
So Nauda returned to her camp and to her soulcrafting. Ever since they'd split up, she felt as though she'd spent all her time either fighting or soulcrafting, pushing hard in a way she never had before. Now that the bridge between her two leg towers was complete, she needed to finish soulcrafting the remaining bricks for her Authority level. Simple enough, except these needed to be curved in different patterns than usual in order to follow her statue blueprint.
She found herself in a strange position these days, both strong and weak. For many of those she fought, the Authority tier was their end goal in life, the point where they stopped accumulating power and started using it. For those beyond, it was just a stepping stone to far greater power, more the entry level than an accomplishment.
As she worked, Nauda reflected that the Nine seemed to divide themselves into different tiers that created entirely different social environments. Even though she didn't spend much time in them, she reminded herself that for the majority of locations, a Ruler was a regional power and a single Authority could become a tyrant overnight. Even most parts of the Ruling Cities and Asplundat Movement were like that, their resources funneled to locus points of power.
Norro Yorthin represented the second major type of region, where Authorities were somewhat common and Strongholds were dominant leaders. There were variations, of course: some were merely gatherings of Authorities from large regions, others had sublime materials that made the Authority ascension easier, and a few simply had a higher level of competition. Theo or Navim might have wanted to develop a complex classification system, but Nauda wasn't interested in splitting hairs.
No, her attention was focused on the next tier: regions where Authorities were nothing special. She actually had more experience with such places than the others, from her childhood in the lower side of Tatian. Back then she had been unclear on the tiers, but she strongly suspected that some of the warlords were Dominion-tier soulcrafters, like a nightmare version of the Ruling Cities.
And beyond that... Theo had introduced them to the term "aeon-class" that still sent a chill through her. Not simply that there were tiers beyond Dominion, but that there were regions where such insane power needed to be differentiated. They couldn't even dream of venturing to such places yet.
Well, Theo would dream of it. Nauda would just have to focus on Stronghold. Her central chamber - the omphalos within the corporealbottle - was the only highly polished room she had. All the chambers in her staff tower were filled but needed a lot of work, while the two largest rooms above her life and death towers still needed materials. She had yet to decide if she continued the themes or merged them, as this level was meant to bridge her power in multiple ways.
The strange thing was that she thought she could actually rush to Stronghold without too much trouble. It would be a test of willpower, sure, but she could ascend and instantly be a powerful force in this war between the Ruling Cities and Asplundat Movement. And yet she hesitated.
