Chapter 53 - Technological Puzzle

Notes :

Not much to say. Probably going to switch back to The Fallen World after a few chapters. Patreon numbers aren't doing well and my publisher doesn't seem very happy that book 10 isn't moving faster along.

Chapter 53

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Settlement of Astralis

Ramina fidgeted anxiously as everyone gazed at her.

She'd delayed. Deflected. Thrown herself into her work. She'd been trying to avoid being too obvious about it, but, well...

It wasn't that easy when you had so little to do.

"You don't have to tell us if you do not wish to." Said Kalia, and the artificer sighed, visibly deflating.

"Yes, I do. I owe you that much."

Kalia winced.

"I didn't-"

Didn't what? Save the artificer, hoping the favor would eventually be returned?

That would be a lie. But damn it, Ramina was her friend. Long gone were the days when she was a terrified fugitive being dragged before her in chains.

Ramina simply stared at the mage-magistrate, who took a deep breath.

"I won't ask you to break your oaths." She finally let out. "Unless Sapphiria is planning to kill us."

Ramina nodded, relief clear on her face. They both knew that if she did want that, they would already be dead. Thoroughly so.

"Thank you." Her face twisted as she grimaced. "But I am still betraying her trust. I understand why it's necessary, but everything I've seen so far shows that she doesn't deserve that."

"And when we are sure of it, I will take the blame." Answered Kalia, softly. "Because you did it on my orders."

Ramina laughed.

"She doesn't seem the type to take betrayal lightly. But...you're probably the only person who could talk her down from blasting me to ashes when she finds out."

Kalia opened her mouth to protest, and then stopped. Ramina knew fellow artificers better than she would.

"Very well. Let's hope I succeed then. So?"

"Everything I've seen in that...'mining hub', was it? Confirms what she told us. I found the place where she stored the bones of the Bane from the attacks. If anything, she downplayed how hard she got hit. I could see the marks where her turrets got destroyed, and there were just...industrial quantities of bones, piled in the side tunnels."

"That's good to hear. Was the tunnel to the Bane truly sealed?"

"I didn't dare go very far into it, but there certainly wasn't any moving air, and it looked heavily damaged. If it's not down someone knocking against the wall hard enough could make it so."

Kalia nodded, and took a deep breath. Time for the real questions.

"What of her machines?"

Ramina closed her eyes, as if she didn't want to look at her leader as she spoke.

"There's a lot more down there than even I imagined. I thought, foolishly, that she used bipedal golems, but there were several wheeled ones there. Not just carts, they were...like a mobile, automated toolbox. I've never seen the like." She hesitated. "...I honestly don't know why we bothered making anything, honestly. With these things...I think she was deliberately humoring me. They could have done the same work in a tenth the time. I saw them laying rails, it would take an entire well drilled team to keep up with just one."

"That good?"

The artificer nodded.

"That good. Perhaps even better. Laying rails isn't exactly complex after all. It's more or less a brute force task." She rubbed her chin, thoughtful. "Maybe that's why we made that unloading station manually? They can't handle something more complex, more delicate?" She shrugged. "Regardless, she has...more than what she's shown us. A lot more." The artificer hesitated, licking her lips. "It may be that...what she has sent us is considerably different than what she has. Not out of any desire for secrecy, but the things I saw rolling around would have never made it through the forest."

"It would make sense." Said Gregor, shrugging as everyone looked at him. "If you've been living in tunnels for so long, you're not exactly going to be punching through folliage. Unless you're in a Convergence of course."

Ramina nodded. The underground groves, steeped in mana, were famous for their treasures...and how many adventurers entered them, and never returned. And whose left behind equipment, or corpses, if they were unlucky, became part of the riches they'd sought to pillage.

"That's probably it." She looked troubled. "Which only brings further fuel to our theory."

"That everything we've seen so far is new stuff she's come up with?" Asked Malry.

"Exactly. Which is just insane." Ramina leaned forward. "At least I do know where she got her materials from." She smiled. "The mining hub. There was a lot less ore than there should have been. I think she's been draining it."

Kalia's face was horrified.

"What?" Asked the artificer.

"Ramina, the expedition was massacred. If she's been just pillaging what they left behind..." The mage-magistrate stopped, clearly unwilling to complete the sentence.

"What guarantee do we have she wasn't the one to do the killing?" Finished Gregor. "I've talked to the survivors of our expedition down there. Some of the collapsed tunnels had marks, like they had been scoured by great blasts of heat. Remind you of anything?"

"That's bullshit, and you know it!" Ramina jumped up, slamming her hands on the tabletop, making everyone flinch. "I can name you a dozen spells, common spells, right off of the top of my head that do the same exact thing! Ever heard of fireball, legion boy?"

Gregor's eyes narrowed. Or rather, his helmet clad skull somehow conveyed the gesture.

"I have. It may occur to you that I was alive before half the spells you speak of were invented. I was there when those expeditions took place. Something wiped them out. Something big enough that it was scrubbed from the records and silenced for the good of the Empire. A renegade artificer Hero would fit the bill. Sapphiria certainly has demonstrated the power to crush several maniples, within and without her tunnels."

"Power she used to protect us when you and your men couldn't, lest you forget." Spat out the artifcer, and the skeleton jerked, as if struck. "If she'd wanted us dead, we would be. All of us. She wouldn't even have had to lift a finger, just watch us die and become more fuel for your precious Empire."

Gregor twitched, and seemed like he was about to answer, before Kalia's fist crashed onto the tabletop.

"ENOUGH!" She gritted her teeth. "Sapphiria can destroy us if she wishes. She can do so by just withdrawing her support. We've been over it before. So, you two, what the fuck is going on? What's bothering you?"

Both refused to meet her gaze, until Gregor sighed and spoke up, looking her straight in the eyes.

"It's the monsters. She didn't know anything about them. I asked Paul about it. She doesn't seem to know anything about these abominations. And little about the Convergences at all."

"And?" Kalia bared her teeth. "Lest you forget, I probably knew even less when I took up my post."

"And, if she's so ignorant, then where the hell did her mana come from?"

The silence was deafening.

That was a good question. Because...down there, isolated for millenia, Sapphiria would have needed resupply.

"What if she didn't use any?" Asked Malry. "Ramina, you said it yourself, nothing she has requires some to run. They just need to plug into her batteries for the occasional recharge."

"Yes." Ramina hesitated. "But I thought it was drawing power from condensate of some kind. An infinite power source."

"Which would have to come from a Convergence." Said Gregor.

"Would it?"

Everyone froze, staring at Ramina, as she continued speaking.

"She's been making more of these, and giving them away like it was nothing. If her means to make them was so limited, she would be a lot more careful."

"Are you...are you suggesting she knows how to synthesize condensate?" Said Malry.

"I don't see any other solution."

Malry simply slumped back into her seat, holding her head.

And who could blame her? Condensate was valuable. Incredibly so. Materials so suffused in the incredible energies of the abherrations and mana tempests it became permanently twisted by magic.

An enchanted blade would retain its properties so long as it had mana to burn.

An artifact sword, a blade made from condensate, would keep them until the world came to an end.

"That would explain...so much." Finally said Kalia. "Wouldn't it?"

Ramina nodded.

"Yeah, it would." She hesitated. "It might also explain why she's here. The ability to do this..."

"It would do terrible things to our civilization." Said Malry. The alchemist turned towards Kalia. "My lady, this must remain secret. No one but us in this room must know. Steel..." She shook her head. "The industries we built after the Bane appeared and forced us to get rid of soulless as labor already have shaken the Kingdom's society to its core. Merchants and industrialists were powerful before, but now they might as well be a new nobility. If this spread, they could supplant the mage guilds."

Kalia stared at her in silence for a few seconds.

They all knew what she was thinking. What would happen if artificers could just make condensate out of nowhere? Would mana become obsolete?

Would mages?

Finally, she nodded.

"Yes. Discussing anything we've deduced of her would already have been unwise. But regardless of what happens going forward, these...assumptions must stay between us, regardless of any higher authority arguing otherwise. Are we in agreement?" She gazed at Ramina and Malry, in turn, and both nodded. Gregor did as well, but he wasn't the one with grandmasters or monarchs that could breathe down their necks. Kalia smirked. "Good. And hey, at the very least, it's a good problem to have. Look at us, we're making plans and worrying about what happens once we've made contact again."

Malry chuckled softly.

"Yeah. Survival is the assumption, not the exception."

Of course if they died, the point was moot anyway, but while she clearly thought it, she didn't say it.

Kalia turned towards Ramina again.

"I hate to ask this, but...could you prod Sapphiria on the subject?" She really did hate to ask it. The more she doubted Sapphiria, the more uncomfortable she grew. She liked the Hero, and Sapphiria had done so much for them...For payment, true, but she had always been careful to ask a cost much lesser than what she offered. Her people couldn't use mineral rights to heat themselves, and the wood she'd exchanged for the nutrigel vats were a pathetic payment for such wonders.

In fact, sometimes it felt like there was more. She felt genuine warmth when she was near the Hero, as if she knew that as long as Sapphiria was by her side, everything would turn out alright in the end.

But she had a duty to her people. A duty to her nation.

And furthermore...something was off about Sapphiria. Badly, badly off. Not exactly wrong per se, but the way she spoke, the way she did things...

Some of it couldn't just be explained by her being an honored high elder.

And she couldn't say if she found it more worrying...or more fascinating.

"If I start asking about condensate, she might close up." Warned Ramina. "I know I would."

"I was thinking more roundabout. With her tapping you for designing and making that 'snowpiercer', you have the perfect excuse to talk about the Convergence. Ask her about that. Fill in her knowledge, since Paul said it is lacking. And then prod about condensate as part of that."

"I will try."

"I can't ask for more." Kalia sighed. "Now let us go. It's late, and I think we've had more than our fair share of worries and thoughts to sleep on." Gregor coughed, and the mage-magistrate smiled. "For those of us capable of sleep. Dismissed."

Gregor hesitated, but then shrugged and left, while Ramina and Malry went together, the alchemist unobtrusively grabbing the artificer's hand as they exited the chamber.

What a strange couple. The outlaw artificer, and the by-the-rules, stuck up alchemist from another nation.

But then again, opposites attract.

Kalia sighed, and got up. She needed her rest as well. Plus, a good night's sleep might help her process everything that she'd learned.

Ah, who was she kidding. It would keep her up all night.

Synthetic condensate. Ichor, really, since that's what condensate was refined into. One of the ultimate goals of alchemy, just one step below mundane transmutation.

Just who the hell had she stumbled upon in those tunnels?