020 - Onwards, to Ashakir
“...Did you hear? Apparently the magic system we thought we knew was just a tutorial layer built over the real one! There's so much more in the official version than there ever was in the beta, [Stormold]. We're gonna figure it out together, and—hey,what's so funny? Why are you smiling? [Stormold]. Stop it! [Stormold]! ”
—Conversation between Player [Ayle] and Player [Stormold], October 8th, 2117
That night, a great feast was held in the main pavilion of Outpost Avna.
Dozens of soldiers clad in their off-duty tunics mingled with Gihn laborers in a boisterous celebration of their new Ve'un. The air was the scent of torch smoke, alcohol, and roasted meat.
In the morning, the Sun would rise on Avna once again, brighter than it had been the day before.
At the center of the hall, dominating the space like some sort of sacrificial altar, was the roast—an entire haunch of a Golga, cut into what seemed to be dozens of slabs of meat, skewered onto a series of massive skewers that turned on their own from a cantrip cast by the cooks.
It had been slow-roasted for the better part of the day, basted in its own rendering fat until the outer crust was a deep, lacquered mahogany. Juices dripped onto the coals with a hiss, sending up plumes of savory smoke that smelled of zansem pepperberries, Gihn herbs similar to thyme, and the rich, earthy musk of the beast itself.
Next to it sat a salad of a plant similar to rivercress (but couldn't be, as grass didn't exist in Varrah yet) the size of a haystack, the greens glistening with oil and fruity vinegar, studded with bright red Hindan berries like rubies in the grass.
Stacks of flatbread, warm and dusted with coarse salt, were piled high in baskets, disappearing as fast as the cooks could replenish them.
Ai sat at a small, circular table near the edge of the space, an island of quiet intensity amidst the sea of revelry.
To her left sat Karravar Benessel, his arm still in its sling, his posture rigid. To her right was Sari, picking at her food with a contemplative frown. Aru was curled under the table, gnawing contentedly on yet another bone he'd been gifted for “being such a handsome Awufyr".
Despite the cheery atmosphere, the group’s minds were still occupied by what happened in the interrogation tent.
“The Burned Men,” Benessel said suddenly, staring into his cup of watered-down wine. The liquid trembled slightly with the vibrations of the party around them. “That is what I shall call them in my report. It seems fitting.”
Ai looked at the communal plate in the center of their table. It was heaped with slabs of the Golga roast, the meat pulling apart into tender strands, flanked by the sharp, peppery greens. She reached out, tearing off a piece of warm flatbread. The tactile sensation—the rough grain of the kalan flour, the heat against her fingertips—helped to keep her grounded, to organize her thoughts.
She used the bread to scoop up a generous portion of the meat and salad, bringing it to her mouth. The flavor hit her instantly. The Golga meat was incredibly rich, the fat rendered down into a savory sauce that coated her tongue. It had a rich, meaty depth, which was then balanced by the rivercress—crisp, watery, and biting with a mustard-like heat—and the gentle acidity of the vinegar dressing. A Hindan berry popped between her teeth, releasing a tart burst of juice that cleansed her palate for the next bite.
This was life, consumed to sustain life. Unlike the Brand, which had consumed Inneol completely, and had threatened to do the same to his victims. And to what end?
“It is fitting,” Ai agreed, taking a moment to swallow her food, “Inneol’s Brand burned itself out the moment he ran dry of, well, him. Whether it's a failsafe or he just lost control of the spell, there wasn't much left after the Brand did its business—I’d say too thoroughly to just be a lack of control on his part, now that I've had time to think on it.”
In A Dirge for the Sun, some guilds had developed contractual magic that functioned in a not-dissimilar way, modeled after the geas of Irish and Welsh mythology, or in one particularly nasty noob-hunting guild's case, after Fae contracts.
They had been absolutely annoying to fight, partly because they never made the same deal twice, but especially because they could inflict considerable damage even after they'd been beaten.
“More importantly, I don't want to risk doing the same to the Gihn boys, not until I can figure out how to safely remove their Brands without them ending up the same as him.” Ai finished.
“There’s no knowing how deep the rot goes,” Benessel murmured, stuck in his own priorities while using his good hand to wrap some meat and vegetables of his own, “Is it a coordinated network? Or are they isolated cells, activated by local leaders like Inneol? How widely—deeply—have they spread? Without the ability to detect the Brands, we would be fighting shadows in the dark.”
He chewed on his food for a moment.
“I intend to recommend the immediate implementation of screening protocols across the Republic. An Academy [Revelation] spell was able to dispel the illusion, but only after you pointed it out for us. Thus, a new version must be developed that can do what you do, then standardized and its logic distributed to every Karravar operating in the Republic.”
He looked at Ai, his eyes intense. “I possess the authority to mandate this testing, but I lack the... nuance to refine the weave. You can sense the Brand. If you could help us develop an improved detection spell…”
“Fine. That should be relatively straightforward.” Ai nodded.
Benessel let out a breath he seemed to have been holding. “Thank you, Ayle. The Republic would be in your debt.”
He took a long drink of wine, then set the cup down with a clack.
He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice below the roar of the celebration. “Despite a critical lack of intelligence, our discovery of the Burned Men and their Brands only confirms the Citadel’s suspicions: the existence of a network of trained mages, coordinating subversive elements across Republic lands. With Bangari activity ramping up along the border along land and sea, such an internal threat is a distraction Varrah can ill afford.”
Sari looked up from her plate, her flatbread halfway to her mouth.
“Master?” she asked, her voice small. “There’s more you're keeping from us—from me—isn’t there?”
Benessel turned to his student. He didn't flinch from her gaze, but his expression softened. He gave her a deep, scanning look, somewhere between the gentle gaze of a parent and the rigid strictness demanded by his office.
“Sarila, dear child, there's always more I'm keeping from you.” he admitted.
Sari’s mouth tightened, but she nodded. If Benessel noticed that she stabbed a piece of rivercress with more force than was strictly necessary, he didn't comment on it.
Benessel turned back to Ai.
“My original orders were to deliver and install Avna's wardstone, then proceed to Ashakir to await further instructions,” he said, shifting gears. “But I believe I know what those instructions will be.
“We will head to Ashakir, as we discussed on the road. Once I make my report to the Karravar offices there, we will be given our new heading. I do not put much stock in providence, but I feel the hand of the Progenitor at work in our meeting, Ayle.” He paused, absently tracing the rim of his cup.
“Though the Burned Men will surely become a high priority for the Citadel, I expect that other Karravar will be assigned to follow up, not I. I instead will likely be ordered to continue on my original mission: to head to Ikkasir to collect materiel vital to Republic security. Time will be of the essence.”
He looked at Ai, his gaze sharp and calculating. “This is why I would know more of your goals, Ayle. You mentioned you had business with the Ikkas...”
He let the sentence hang in the air, a polite but firm demand for more information. Why are you going there? Who are you, really?
A pregnant silence settled over the table, insulated from the noise of the feast. Ai chewed slowly on a mouthful of Golga and flatbread, buying some time.
She obviously wouldn't tell them the whole truth. Even she with her stunted social mores could tell that it was only a matter of time before the truth came out and she would have to deal with Karravar Benessel and his duty to the Republic, whatever that looked like when it came to an anomaly like her.
She just had to get to Ikkasir, and then she'd be on her way to reboot the Glassway. She'd think of further objectives after she tracked down her friends, and whether she'd even stick with Benessel and Sari. The world had changed, and she wasn't sure she liked what they had done with her legacy.
The legacies of her friends.
Her priority remained the Glassway, though she wouldn't turn down any opportunity to hunt down information about her guildmates, should one arise. The exclusive magical fast-travel network her guild had built to connect their holdings.
Everybody else had their mounts, even their allies in the Coalition—which to be fair had gotten incredibly fast by the time Titanomachy had rolled around.
But the Glassway had gone dormant, or fallen into disrepair, over the last seven hundred and fifty-eight years. Getting it operational again would require a specific reactivation sequence, one that her guildmate [Hadrian's_Fyre] had developed into a Player-made Quest.
And because [Hadrian’s_Fyre] had been a chaotic goblin of a man, he had turned the reactivation Quest into a scavenger hunt.
“C’mon, [Ayle], it'll be fun! And it's not like we'll ever actually need to use the feature, right?” The troll had said, in that conspiratorial tone he reserved when he was trying to convince her to do something stupid. She'd been the one to sign off on the design at the end of the day, so clearly his tactics had worked.
She swallowed her bread. What to tell Benessel and Sari? What could she trust them with? Aru thumped his head against her thigh. She thought of her guild, who had, only a few days ago, been right there in the thick of it with her.
She thought of [Stormold], of [Hadrian's_Fyre], who helped anchor her to reality in the months after her parents’ deaths. Even as Ai retreated from the world entirely, it was her connections to her growing guild—her new family—that had kept her going. She was stronger than before, having proven to herself that she could step over her threshold. But she was now once again adrift.
Ai knew in her bones that she could survive alone. Not that she was alone, as she had Aru. But did she want to?
She made her decision.
“I’m looking for my friends,” Ai said, choosing her words carefully. “My... family, you could say.”
She looked Benessel in the eye. This part, at least, was true.
“I woke up in a tomb, just before I met you two,” she admitted. “I’ve been... away. For a long time. I need to know what happened to the people I care about.”
Benessel stiffened slightly.
“So I’m looking for my friends, or traces of them,” Ai repeated, her voice gaining strength as she said it out loud, “We used to spend some time in Ikkasir back in the day—so it’s where I have to begin my search.”
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “But that’s the problem, isn't it? Finding it. Since the city can’t be found unless you already know where it is, and because I've been away for so long...”
She trailed off, expecting a nod of agreement. That was why she had asked for help getting to Ikkasir in the first place—she and her Karravar [kava] had worked with the Ikkas to make their mobile coral island unplottable, impossible to place on a map without specific permission from the Ikkas.
The only thing Ai knew for certain was that Ikkasir floated somewhere in the Tranquil Sea.
Sari blinked, her fork hovering over her salad. She shared a baffled look with Benessel.
“Miss Ayle,” Sari said, her voice careful, “Ikkasir isn’t some hidden city.”
Ai frowned. “Of course it is. That’s the whole point of the place.”
“It’s the regional capital of Kurahl Province,” Sari said. “A week’s voyage north from Ashakir.”
Ai blinked. “What?”
“It’s a Varran city,” Benessel explained gently. “And it has been since the Republic came to power nearly three centuries ago. If memory serves, the city was anchored during the First Expansion, to secure our trade routes throughout the Tranquil Sea.”
Anchored.
The word bounced around inside Ai’s skull. Ikkasir—the homeland of the Ikkas, a tribe, or to be more accurate, a whole species of semi-aquatic lizardmen. The wandering jewel of the ocean, the fleshcrafted city of bioengineered coral that freely drifted the seas, guided by the ancestral songs of its people... had been anchored?
“It... it's supposed to move.” Ai stammered, despite herself. Why was this the thing that struck her speechless? Was the idea of a setback like this so terrible? It wasn't entirely unexpected, either. So why?
“It has long been a hotspot for trade, as well as a hub for magical research,” Benessel confirmed. “The Armada maintains a berth there as well.”
Ai sat back, her flatbread suddenly heavy in her hand. If the city had been anchored for three centuries, what did that mean for the Glassway reactivation Quest? She had been lax with [Hadrian's Fyre] when he went off to implement it, too busy conceiving of her plans for the World Quest that the game had revealed to her—and only her.
She didn't truly know the parameters of the spell design underpinning the Quest because of this, and couldn't know until she saw it in person. What if he had based his spell design on the city's movement? What if the Quest itself had unwoven over the centuries, falling into disrepair like the Glassway itself, and she couldn't find her way back to Karravaran?
And if she couldn't return to Karravaran, what of her goal of finding her guildmates? Her friends?
Her family?
Damn you, Haddy, she thought, a mix of fierce affection and equally biting frustration bubbling in her chest. You just had to be clever. You couldn’t just put a big red button somewhere obvious.
And then there were the defenses. Karravar [kava] had built Ikkasir’s defenses to be impenetrable. Had they been reappropriated? Disabled? Forgotten? There had to be a decent amount of naval traffic if it was a hotspot for trade. That implied safety. There had to be—
Ai forced herself to calm down. She couldn't afford to lose her cool, not with the magnitude of her Semblance these days.
She looked down at her plate. The food suddenly looked less appetizing.
She had been under the impression that she was playing a sort of New Game+ mode, but she was realizing, or perhaps it was that her feelings were finally catching up to what she knew intellectually, that she was instead experiencing a sequel developed by what seemed like a completely different game studio with equally alien priorities.
“I see,” Ai said, forcing her voice to remain steady. She picked up a piece of Golga meat, staring through it rather than at it, “Then I guess it’ll be easier to find than I thought.”
“Indeed,” Benessel nodded, apparently choosing to not comment on her everything. “If there are no objections, we shall depart for Ashakir tomorrow, along with Inneol's remains, such as they are. And—Balala was that Orgawyr’s name, if I recall—neither can remain in Avna. From there, we shall secure passage to Ikkasir.”
Ai nodded, taking a bite of her Golga roast.
She looked under the table. Aru had stopped chewing his bone and was looking up at her, his head cocked, sensing her distress. He whined softly, pressing his snout into her thigh. Ai reached down, burying her fingers in his soft fur.
“Thanks, buddy.” She whispered.
She looked back at her food, then at the celebration, at the people of Avna living their lives under the new Ve’un. Their world had changed, just as hers had. But Ai Kanbara was nothing if not adaptable.
“Onwards to Ashakir, then." Ai said, raising her cup.
Benessel and Sari raised theirs in return.
“To Ashakir." They echoed.
The cups clinked together, marking the end of one journey and the beginning of another.