by Skyler Grant
“Is that really a priority right now? We should be trying to solve this,” Minerva said.
It was a priority. As soon as the message had completed I’d regained my connection to my off-world ships. The distortion of dimensional space that safeguarded this place was gone.
The Graven and the Whimsey reported that they were receiving a copy of Vattier’s message and last puzzle. That was good.
However, the whole world could receive it. That was bad.
180
Vattier hadn’t included any coordinates in his last message, but I couldn’t be certain someone wouldn’t be able to trace the signal back here. I wasn’t sure any of the large factions would even think it worth sending a ship or two to investigate the message of a long-dead—and quite mad—scientist. He did have something of a reputation in his day.
The airships that had been away from the city had spent the months out of contact scavenging for supplies and fighting off threats. My drones in command had done well. I made sure the cookies were plentiful and gave them all upgrades. I jumped them here at once and set them to collecting crystal dust. Jumps left traces and I wanted to get everything I could out of that cavern and leave. Then leave it alone until I had an answer to the puzzles.
I devoted the full attentions of my research staff to the problem as well as assigning Professor, Mechos, Minerva, Flicker, and Blank to the task. Between them they had brilliant scientific minds, dimensional expertise, and an understanding of the science of the old world.
I had to decide just what I wanted to do with the crystal dust. The Scholars commonly used it as a source of power and while my Bioreactors were more reliable, the dust could generate short and high energy power bursts. I could do something similar when I detonated a reactor, but the applications of such power use went well beyond bombs.
Initiating a jump gate required similar power, so did a jump drive trying to generate a larger bubble. It could produce more powerful beam weapons, stronger shields, but all with a finite power supply. Part of the reason that the Scholarium fought so savagely amongst itself was because of this finite nature of their energy.
By studying the sample of the tree and the fruit I had a pretty good idea what was happening. Over generations something beneath the shield in that cavern was leaking power into the surrounding stone. That was manifesting in the cavern as layers of crystal dust, but wasn’t confined to it. Veins of energy-conducting crystal had formed beneath the earth and were being tapped into by the root structure of the tree. That accounted for the unusual growth, the luminescence, and the tree attempting to pass on those attributes to its own offspring through fruit.
The effectiveness and concentration levels varied, most of the tree’s fruit would be similar to consuming dust. Still, some others would be equivalent to standard power crystals, and a rare few provided a power set equal to the Divine.
It was the result of a long-term adaptation to that much power, I couldn’t duplicate it. Yet, if I wanted to however, I could give a low-grade Dust-like ability to anyone who wanted one, even adults. It could prove a powerful recruitment tool.
I didn’t think it was a decision to be made alone. I called my council together and presented them the options.
“Powers on that scale are a mistake. You’ve seen what a large population of Powered has done to the Scholars. Do you wish to replicate that in your own streets?” Blank asked.
Crystal said, “Is it that dissimilar to what Emma and I already do? We make people better with our upgrades. This is a whole new way to do that.”
“You know I love to burn, but militarily a few weaklings aren’t going to win us any wars. Mobility from warp gates is something else,” Hot Stuff said.
“Powers suck. I hate them,” Ophelia said.
I hadn’t even thrown her in a grinder lately, she really needed to stop complaining.
Anna said, “If you can solve this puzzle, doesn’t it become moot? We’ll have the power source that created all the dust to start with.”
“That is the hope. Right now we’re dependent on my intellect, because a dead man thought too much of his daughter and his would-be son-in-law and the rest of you are even more useless. I’ll solve it in time, but we could come under attack tomorrow,” I said.
“People are sick of living under the thumb of the Powered. I’ve raised armies with just my own ability to make people stronger. You’ve seen me do it. Think of that,” Crystal said.
“An army that is dead now because the Powered inevitably turn upon each other,” Blank said.
Their opinions were sharply divided, I’d expected as much. So were my own.
After I’d first been reactivated the ability to give a single individual a dampened ability of a power had been huge. Since then, I had done so for hundreds. Now, this gave me the potential to do so for thousands.
“Let me take the decision off your hands, Emma. You’re torn and this council isn’t helping. I say, get the gates operational,” Anna said.
That drew more than a few frowns around the table, but nobody spoke up against her. All there had accepted Anna as their Queen, even if most weren’t happy about being under the dominion of an unpowered.
“I’ll have them up and operating within the hours. Perhaps if you were actually likable as a monarch we’d have some friends and allies to get in contact with,” I said.
“While not exactly friends, if you’re interested in trade I know the Righteous would consider your latest model of biocells for the beam weapons. They operate even in a reality zero environment,” Blank said.
That must be the term for the environment of old Earth they’d restored in the core.
“If we’re selling things, I can hook us up with some very keen buyers for all the crystal dust you can spare,” Zora said.
“If we can’t have friends, have customers. I like it. Do everything necessary to mask our presence and don’t trade anything we can’t spare,” Anna said.
Aefwal was open for business.
181
A week passed with no answer to the Vattier’s puzzles. We were making progress, I’d thought at first he was simply obsessed with understanding how the Cataclysm had altered the world—that he was focused on grasping the new rules of reality. But I increasingly thought it was more than that. He was seeking a way to define those rules, to craft his own.
The way he’d made this world more difficult to access made me think that Vattier met with some success. It made me feel a step behind, and that was impressive for a monkey with delusions of grandeur.
In the meantime life in the city went on.
Sylax requested my presence at her academy and I sent a drone to see what she wanted. The place was coming along nicely. A small part of Crystal’s district had been given a lot of resources to its construction and it showed.
There were classrooms for the humanities and sciences in addition to combat arenas. Her student body had grown beyond just the scavengers. I spotted some of Magpie’s village children, a few animal hybrids who must have been created by Crystal, and even some Gobbles lounged around on shelves, paying unusually sharp attention as we passed.
“You tortured Magpie’s people for generations and they trust you with their latest one? They’re bigger fools than I thought,” I said.
“I wouldn’t say they trust me. They’re too smart for that. But, like me, they realize that we’re living in a different world now,” Sylax said.
There were art and music rooms. A part of me wondered at the utility and at the same time I was impressed by the sheer audacity of what they were attempting to accomplish. I was trying to put together the shattered pieces of a world and my reasons for doing so were complex. I wished I could decide if Sylax truly believed in all of this, or if she was playing me. The greatest monster I knew was attempting to restore a level of culture long passed.
“This isn’t like you. This is nice,” I said.
“I know, that is why I do it. Come and observe the training arena.
You’ll be interested in this,” Sylax said, as she led the way to an observation window.
Below students warred with combat bots. A girl ducked and waved her way beneath them, brushing them with a touch and transforming them to stone. Next, a young man blasted each apart with sonic waves and another girl followed behind using complex hand motions to weave the dust into stone golems.
“Her touch only turns things to stone for about half an hour. Crippling, but not actually destructive. Add in a new element and it is suddenly fatal, and add yet a third and something new is made. I found the visit by the three Divine to this city ... inspirational,” Sylax said.
I didn’t want Sylax feeling inspired, even a seemingly reformed one. However well she behaved I remembered her first act after having her crystal removed—her murder of James Wolf. This woman might be less insane, if there was such a thing, but murder was still her nature.
“How much of this was Crystal’s idea?” I asked.
Sylax gave me a sidelong look. “You are thinking this cannot be her doing? What do you know of our history? Hers and mine?”
“Rather little. I’m not even sure I’m capable of having nightmares, but your past might be enough to make even a machine restless,” I said.
“They called her the spider because of her web of influence. The old world had fallen apart and she was determined to build something new. Parents couldn’t keep their children fed, but she promised—send them, send them and they shall have a place and a home and I shall make them better,” Sylax said. I could hear the bitterness in her tone.
I’d never heard any of this.
“It seems she kept her word,” I said.
“She did. Instead of growing up on the streets I learned my letters, mathematics, fashion. The Scholarium was growing and she found a place for me inside it. A place I could seduce those useful to her plans, and kill those who opposed them.”
“That seems improbable. Not only are you deeply unlikable, you wouldn’t have had a crystal yet, correct?” I asked.
Sylax gave a dark laugh. “Younger days and the strata weren’t quite as defined as they are now. I had power enough to pass among them and none knew enough to question it. In reality I couldn’t bond to a crystal, none of her children could. Had I absorbed one it would have killed me. The poison touch, she called it.”
If this was true, it cast a far darker view of Crystal.
“It doesn’t seem to have stopped you,” I said.
“I was determined and in the epicenter of an organization learning all about the crystals. I lied and stole and killed for my purposes as well as hers. I found a cure and I found a very special crystal.”
“That amplification would have made any crystal holder who absorbed it enormously powerful. How did you get it?” I asked.
“Oh, it did. It passed through three holders before finding itself with Soldier. He had a power set a bit like Ares. He could use any weapon, and had superhuman strength and agility,” Sylax said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I killed him in his sleep. Best way, really, with someone like that. It finally gave me the power to break the chains that bound me and force Crystal to do my bidding,” Sylax said.
“And we know how that went,” I said.
“Bloody and unsuccessful,” Sylax said, and she glanced towards my drone. “I know you don’t believe me, Emma. But that is why I wanted to show you all this. I’m not changed, not really, but I am still trying to do better. Anna made the right call not giving Crystal the dust.”
This was all a warning couched in a way that I might take it seriously.
I did. There was something sincere about Sylax right now.
182
We made little progress on the puzzles.
And I’d underestimated the interest Vattier’s message might generate. The next week saw visitors to our skies. I was told the exact number of kingdoms in the Scholarium varied at any point in time, but currently eight of them had airships in the area. The Righteous dispatched three heavy cruises. Other, smaller factions or individual scavengers brought fifty-four ships in all.
Not all of those survived long, of course. The Scholarium lost two vessels to various Divine and everyone thought it was open season on scavengers. I’d brought down two of those ships myself that made an attempt to raid Aefwal.
I’d been in enough fights to know a big one was brewing. I had to make sure that Aefwal survived it and that I got what I’d come here for.
With the teleportation gates working trade was thriving. My biotechnological creations were a rarity out there in the world and each of the factions had some use for much of what I could provide. The Righteous perfected body armor well beyond anything I had developed and were willing to share some of their expertise. The Scholars were more varied in what they might trade, but really a significant part of what I wanted from them right now was intelligence.
I didn’t like what I learned. While this city had been under the rule of Sylax it had been assisting King Boreas, ruler of one of the Scholar Kingdoms, against another. At the time Boreas had been slowly losing the war. Lately his fortunes had seen a shift and he was winning.
The reason we were here in this new land at all was because King Boreas had launched a sneak attack that nearly destroyed Aefwal. I didn’t want him to have a second chance.
I called Crystal and Sylax together to discuss the possibility of negotiating a truce.
“Absolutely not,” Sylax said.
“He is a thoroughly unpleasant man. It is why I didn’t seek his aid when Sylax was taken,” Crystal said.
“Can he really be worse than the two of you?” I asked.
“I can only skin a man once. He can go back in time and do it again,” Sylax said.
“Well …” Crystal said, giving Sylax a knowing look.
Sylax frowned. “With accelerated healing I may have technically skinned a few people several thousand times, but my point is I learned that behavior somewhere.”
Crystal said, “You’ve seen the Scholarium. You don’t rise to the top by being weak. You rise to the top by either being immensely strong or terrifying.”
“Keep in mind that, until I ruled Aefwal, even with an Amplification core boosting the benefits of an upgrade core I didn’t even hold a city,” Sylax said.
That was a good fight. When we’d first met Sylax she’d been the strongest thing we’d ever encountered. It didn’t seem there could be anyone stronger. The stronger already had their cities and their kingdoms.
“Is he going to be an issue? While I assume he’d want to skin and debone you both on principle, how serious is he likely to be about it?” I asked.
“I was his subject and you took this city from me. If you had turned right around and sworn fealty to him, it would have gotten you praise. Wolf went right out and found himself a stronger benefactor. But you? You invaded his kingdom, stole a valuable resource, and have no very powerful friends,” Sylax said.
“That is her way of saying yes, he is going to be an issue,” Crystal said.
I’d have no problem pledging ourselves to some larger power, but I knew that would never fly with Anna. From the beginning she’d declared herself the Queen of the World and she bowed her head to nobody.
It wasn’t a fight we could win, not right now. We needed other options.
“Tell me about him? And not about how incredibly delicious you find his handling of a knife,” I said.
“I do actually like that,” Sylax said.
“He has four cities under him. Aefwal made the fifth, and even new and underpowered, compared to the others it really was a big deal,” Crystal said.
“You know about his ability to rewind time. That one is the most publicly known, but he’ll have other time-related abilities,” Sylax said.
“He froze our time to deliver the bomb that nearly destroyed the city,” I said.
“That would be a new one, but I’m not surprised. He enjoys hurting peopl
e, breaking people, yet is fiercely protective of those he considers to be his property,” Sylax said.
“He has a daughter, Princess Simone. They don’t really get along because she doesn’t much like doing what she’s told. She possesses the power of invisibility and phasing through matter,” Crystal said.
That was interesting, someone to possibly turn against him.
“There are perhaps five hundred Powered of various sorts beneath him. Far more citizens, of course. Probably less than a thousand airships,” Sylax said.
The numbers were daunting. I and my allies had accomplished a lot by being smart, bold, and in some cases lucky. I’d been making something of a habit of toppling those that thought themselves unstoppable.
I didn’t have solution to a thousand airships, not now. Eventually with more production facilities and more research, but not now.
We needed friends.
I didn’t trust the Righteous. They ultimately viewed any Powered as someone to be depowered and purified. For all we might be wary allies and trading partners, they weren’t friends.
The other Scholarium kingdoms would likely want our fealty, which made them automatic negatives. Perhaps we could convince the Divine? We’d made some enemies since coming here, but we’d made some friends as well. It was time to see what Minerva could do.
183
It was an odd assortment that Minerva had found to invite to the city. The Divine bound themselves to ancient myths and legends related to their abilities. In some cases this made them stronger, faster, and more powerful than they might otherwise be, and in some it seemed to make them weaker. There was Bootes, the God of Wagons, who had the ability to transport people and objects long distances, Tykhe, who possessed the ability to purify items of corruption, Jarilo, who had some powers of plant manipulation.