Spear of Destiny

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Yes. Magic is not water-tight, Paragon. As time moves, mana decays, and endlessly repeated words of power begin to fade.” Sanayam gestured to the ceiling. “The magic of the shields can last slightly over a millennium before it must be repaired. The Prime Geas, created when the dragon gods willingly sacrificed themselves for their host planet, perpetuates the Greater Shield Cycle. This geas rules that a Triad will appear approximately a century before the Caul of Souls risks failing from lack of maintenance. I believe that you are that Triad, which means the continuation of the Caul is your burden. For another thousand years, Archemi will know a stalemate—if not true peace.”

  “It will know peace,” I said. “We aren’t going to renew the Caul like the others. We’re going to destroy the Drachan and put an end to the cycle once and for all.”

  The Avatar’s expression shut down. “That is not possible.”

  “It has to be,” I said. “You said it yourself. Entropy effects everything, even Drachan. Archemi’s been living in the shadow of this looming crisis for too long. The Meewfolk lost everything, the dragons lost everything, and the Aesari and Tulaq fucking went extinct, pardon my language. It has to end somewhere, and the buck stops here. With us.”

  Gar scratched his head and grimaced.

  “It is not possible,” the Avatar repeated. “The Drachan destroyed every world they passed through, and they nearly destroyed ours. The only reason we were able to stop them at all was because we had two sophisticated, intelligent species with great resources, a high concentration of mana, and the Nine. It was a stroke of luck that the Solonkratsu’s gods were embodied deities capable of taking physical forms. Without their sacrifice, this world would be a lifeless sphere of ash and fire.”

  “Every time the Caul’s been repaired, it’s a little less effective. A little weaker. It might have been designed to be here forever, but the design isn’t working. Souls leak out of it, power leaks out of it, and the damn thing is falling apart,” I said calmly. “And this time, there are more than six Starborn in this world. There’s a couple thousand of us, and a number of them are actively trying to free the Drachan and unleash them on the world for their own purposes. We don’t have a choice: we have to defeat them. If we repair the Caul, we’ll be doing it every other year from this point on, as greedy Starborn go into the Dragon Gates or travel to Rhorhon to look for treasure or power or both. It’s a matter of time.”

  “Then this world’s end has arrived,” Sanayam said simply. “And soon, it will be a grave for all species, all races, other than the Drachan.”

  “Don’t count on it.” Karalti stretched her knuckles, her eyes narrowing. “Suri fought her whole life to survive. I was born dead and clawed my way back to life. The biggest war machine in the world of Earth wasn’t able to kill Hector, no matter how hard it tried. I dunno about Rin and Gar, but I bet they’re just as tough as we are. We have something the Drachan don’t—we believe life has meaning. And we’re willing to fight for it.”

  Suri nodded, her golden eyes as bright and hard as a hawk’s. Rin pressed her lips together in determination. Gar looked away, lost in his own thoughts.

  “Do you know where we can find the other Keystones?” I asked. “There’s still five missing.”

  “I only know the location of two, and a story about a third.” The Avatar shifted slightly, his tail swishing under the train of his robes. “The Bloody Jade of Joyous Pursuit, the keystone of Veela, Goddess of the Hunt, was given to the daughters of the Mercurion Artificer Zarya as a gift by the Fifth Paragon. It is no doubt a treasured relic of that clan to this day. The Prehnite of Boundless Sky is the responsibility of the Songmaster of Tungaant, an abbot who serves a similar function for the Tuun that I do for my own people.”

  [Map updated; New Quests Available!]

  I mentally swiped the notification in, then dismissed it. “Thanks. That’s a huge help. What about the story?”

  “It regards the Cerussite of Endless Longing, which is the Key to Veles’ Dragon Gate,” the Avatar said. “Its last known location was in the Aesari city of Cham Langukan, which fell from the sky into the Grand Ocean between Artana and Daun approximately one and a half thousand years ago. Following the end of the Aesari Wars, the floating island that hosted Cham Langukan left the mainland and fled out to sea to escape the wrath of the peoples they had oppressed. Some magical calamity ensued, and the city—and the Cerussite—was lost over the sunken continent of Orcam.”

  “Fan-bloody-tastic,” Suri muttered. “Seems to me like the Aesari have a lot to answer for.”

  “They were beings of incredible memory and intelligence, but they were arrogant, and they lacked imagination.” Sanayam shrugged minutely. “Their story is a parable of how power leads to madness, if it is not combined with hard-won wisdom. Something to bear in mind as you progress to ever greater heights, Paragon. The Spear of Nine Spheres is indeed powerful, and yet even I—a man fated to be inked in knowledge that slowly poisons him over the course of his lifespan—could not consider the burden of bearing it, yet alone wielding it against the Deceivers.”

  I nodded. “Well… thanks for all that. It’s going to take a while to digest.”

  “Indeed.” The Avatar rose to his feet, and so did we. “You will have time to think as you test the portal to the Chorus Vault of Perilous Symphony. If you wish to travel there straight away, I can transport you.”

  “I think we’d all really appreciate that,” Rin said. “And like Hector said. Thank you for all your help.”

  Sanayam shook his head, reaching up to carefully rearrange his veil over his face. “I have much to tell you about how to repair and restore the Caul… but not to destroy it. I fear your course of action will fulfil the speculation of the sages before me: that the Sixth Age will be our last, not because we have conquered the Drachan, but because they have finally destroyed us utterly.”

  Chapter 45

  True to his word, Sanayam teleported us back to Devana’s Gate, right into the middle of a storm. Warm monsoon rain thundered down like a sheet of water from the low, rumbling sky. The bodies of the Napathian undead were gone: pixelated into nothingness, or eaten by the local wildlife. There was just the stone ring standing there like a stargate, framing the brooding, dim entry to the temple.

  “Okay! Well, now that’s done… as soon as we fire up this portal, I’m going first.” Rin stepped up beside me as I dug moss and mud out of the small pedestal in front of the portal frame: the lock for the Spear. “Alone.”

  “Alone?” Gar frowned. “You can’t go in there alone.”

  “Yes, I can. I can’t drown and I have crush resistance, so if the vault is underwater, it won’t kill me,” she replied, quickly slotting new vials of mana into her spellglove. “Mercurions don’t NEED to breathe. I just breathe to talk, so if there’s no air down there, I’ll be fine.”

  “Well, shit.” Suri said. “I didn’t even think of that.”

  “Think of what?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Still don’t know how to swim.”

  “You can’t swim?” Gar squinted at her. “You got bigger muscles than I do.”

  “I grew up in the middle of the desert. Underground.” Suri said sourly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Gar shrugged. “Texas ain’t exactly a goddamn beach resort. Still learned how to swim.”

  “What do you want from me? A trophy?” Suri asked sweetly. “I can carve you a wooden dick and nail it to your head.”

  “I figured you’d use it to peg your damn hookwing,” Gar retorted.

  “Guys, focus.” Karalti scowled at them. “Rin, you tell us first thing if you need any help on the other side of the portal. Okay?”

  “Sure.” Rin swelled up a little. “Fire it up!”

  Once the activation slot was cleared, I inserted the blade of the Spear. Seams of brilliant orange energy flowed from the Clinohumite of Loving Embrace, pulsing down the blade and haft. The mechanism sucked at it, drawing the mana into itself,
just before the portal ignited with a WHUMPH. The howling maelstrom glitched slightly as it drew the air in like a vacuum cleaner. No water sprayed out, but I could smell the ocean.

  “Okay. See you on the other side!” Rin gestured to her turrets, and hesitantly stepped forward, vanishing into the whirling vortex of energy.

  We held our breaths, waiting for the notification that she’d died. But as the minutes passed, nothing happened.

  “She alright?” Gar fidgeted, flipping a coin over and around his fingers. “It’s been a while.”

  “Hang on: let me check.” I tagged her in our group PM. “Rin? How’s it going in there?”

  Another couple of minutes passed before she replied. “Oh! Sorry! I was using Hopper to scout the corridor. It’s fine! There’s a lot of salt buildup, but the place seems to have held together. It looks like it sunk into a giant coral system, and the coral grew over it. You can come over!”

  “Roger that.” I cracked my neck in anticipation. “You guys all ready?”

  “Me first!” Karalti bounded forward and leaped through the portal before I’d finished pulling the Spear free. I went next, with Suri and Gar following up.

  Warping by portal was a lot faster than teleporting. There was a nearly instantaneous transition between the dark, humid jungle, and the cold, blue-lit cavern. The exit portal was on an angle under a broken archway, its mana conduit pipes exposed to the air. A short set of broken steps led to a waterlogged tunnel that was definitely off kilter. Everything was tipped to the right: the floor, the broken walls and piles of rubble. White, fossilized coral held everything together like duct tape. The only level surface was the knee-deep water ahead.

  “Crap.” Gar groaned, flailing out to clutch at my arm.

  I jumped at the unexpected touch. “What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t much like small spaces underground,” he muttered. “Makes me think of a coffin. Being buried alive.”

  “Finally, something we can agree on.” Behind me, Suri lit a torch, throwing the hallway into weird angles and deep, sharp shadows.

  “Ooh, spooky.” Karalti was in water up to thighs, as was Rin, but they led the way forward. “I smell all kinds of neat stuff, though. Lots of fish, and maybe a dead whale?”

  “Archemi has whales?” I rested the Spear over my shoulders, watching my Stamina run down at high speed. Walking in water past a certain depth caused Stamina to deplete twice as fast as normal.

  “Course Archemi has whales,” Gar muttered. “Whales don’t give a shit about the waves. They just swim under ‘em.”

  “Yeah!” Karalti replied. “Mmm, I bet they’re delicious. All that fat and meat and… nyyargh.”

  “Hungry again?” I asked her, privately.

  “More like, still hungry,” she replied. “I feel like I want to eat all the time.”

  I took a deep, reassuring breath. “We’ll handle your heat better this time. No assassin interruptus.”

  “Shh, don’t talk about that now. I’ll blush.” Karalti giggled. “I’ve got to be on my game here. What if a delicious, tender whale broke in and tried to kidnap you?”

  “Then we’d all drown.”

  There was a dull crack from somewhere far above our heads. Gar audibly winced.

  “It’s fine. This place has been standing for five thousand years. We aren’t gonna be the ones to bring it down,” Suri said. She had unequipped her armor down to her underwear, her axes in her hands.

  The tunnel eventually got wider, opening up into a tumbled ruin of stone, bleached coral, and hills of sand. There was a doorway in the wall, still intact: though it, and the hall beyond, were laying on their sides. The space was utterly dark.

  “Ooh.” Karalti stuck her head in. “This one’s EXTRA spooky.”

  I looked back. Suri had the bland, stoic expression of a veteran soldier on the field. Gar was pale. Rin, surprisingly, looked unconcerned.

  “I’ll take point. I’ve got Darkvision,” I said. “Let me scout down and make sure there’s nothing in the way.”

  “Go for it,” Suri replied. “Try not to get crushed.”

  Gar scowled. “What was that about us not being the ones to bring this place down?”

  She rolled her eyes. “The whole place, mate. A hallway’s more likely to collapse than the whole structure. These Chorus Vaults are massive, because the Warsingers are massive.”

  “Won’t believe it ‘til I see it,” Gar said.

  I ducked under the doorway and crept into the flooded hall. The water in here was shallower, only about a foot deep. The floor twisted back counter-clockwise as I picked my way over broken pillars, and came to what was absolutely a sealed bunker door. It reminded me a lot of the door we’d used to exit the chamber in Lahati’s place, except there was no puzzle. A weak amber light spread over it as I brought the Spear in close, barely illuminating the rest of the mangled room. The wall it was set into looked to be in good shape.

  “Go back out, tell the others we’re good to proceed,” I said. “And if I get crushed when this door opens… well. You know where to find me.”

  Karalti hesitated, but then nodded and backtracked part way down the hall. “Come on, guys! We found a way in!”

  I set the Spear against the metal surface, and the Clinohumite snapped to its slot. This door screeched as it slowly, jerkily rolled into the wall, coming to a stop above halfway.

  “Urgh.” I pressed forward, looking to my left and right. There was a room on the left, hopelessly crushed and full of debris, and another coral tube on the other side. At the end of this corridor was a small round room with a portal dais and a lectern-like counter. It had a small, inset bowl, and an engraved panel with a single paragraph of ancient Meewfolk writing. I dusted a crust of salt off it, but couldn’t understand a word of what I was looking at. “Rin! We need you for this one!”

  “Coming!” I heard her automatons crunching over the rough ground as she picked her way down the corridor behind me. When she entered the room, I stepped aside and let her take the helm.

  “Let’s see here…” Her blue-on-blue eyes scanned it, bright in the gloom of the cave. “Mmm… Oh! It’s a riddle.”

  “Uh oh.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “What’s it say?”

  “I never was, yet always shall be. No one has ever seen me, and yet I am remembered. I am the expectation of all and the doom of many. Some pray I shall never embrace them, yet all life pursues me by its nature. What am I?” She read the last stanza uncertainly. “Hmm.”

  “Hope?” I shrugged.

  “We can try!” She looked up at the portal. “Mah’waan?”

  There wasn’t even a spark of mana in the portal.

  “Bleh. I thought ‘hope’ was the answer, too.” Rin scratched her head, then crossed her arms and re-read it. “Some pray I shall never embrace them, yet all life pursues me by its nature. Time? Aging? Or maybe Youth?”

  “What are we doing now?” Suri had to duck to enter. Gar and Karalti followed up behind her.

  “A riddle. Me and Rin are kind of stumped.” I shrugged.

  Rin read it out again. When she finished, Karalti smacked her fist into the palm of her other hand. “Ooh! I bet it’s dinner!”

  Gar laughed. “It’s ‘tomorrow’, you dipshit.”

  Karalti scowled at him. “You don’t know that.”

  “Sure I do. Tomorrow never was, but everyone thinks about it. You can’t see the future, but you remember it when it becomes the past. Everyone expects to live another day, but nothing’s guaranteed. The folks that made this place were fighting for a better tomorrow. Makes sense that’d be their password.”

  “Oh! He’s right!” Rin turned back to the pedestal. “Irra’ao’oww!”

  The portal spluttered to life with a clear, amethyst purple film of energy.

  “See? Look what happens when you use your damn brains for something.” He shook his head, lighting a fresh cigarette.

  Rin shot him an exasperated look. “I’ll go first again. Ha
ng back—my guess is that wherever this takes us to, it’s probably flooded.”

  We watched anxiously as Rin stepped through, waiting. After a few minutes, she messaged us.

  “Alright: there’s a lot of water in here, but there’s ways to get around. Platforms, things like that. You just have to be, umm, extremely careful. I think there’s a sunken floor, but everything down there looks crushed and I don’t think we’re getting into any rooms by swimming. It’s really different to the Chorus Vault of Withering Rose… it’s almost like a bunker.”

  “Platforms!” Karalti chirped aloud. “I love platforms.”

  “I hate platforms,” Suri muttered, watching as my dragon happily bounded through the portal. “Big old bitch like me isn’t made for cave crawling.”

  “Me either.” Gar grimaced. “I ain’t no damn frog.”

  The portal dumped us out into what looked like a cistern. The water here was deeper, at least six feet, luminous and blue-tinged. There was a great pit in the center of the room, where trickles of water tumbled away into some unknown abyss. There were doorways in every direction in this place—assuming we could reach them. Only two of the doors were walkable from where the portal had deposited us. The other six had to be reached by jumping from platform to platform, or by hanging and going hand over hand along pipes and broken slabs of stone.

  “I’m guessing the Big-Ass Door over there is the one that leads to the Warsinger vault.” I motioned to the dragon-sized gate at our nine o’clock. It was similar in size to the door that had guarded the entry to Withering Rose, sans ornamentation. There was no decoration to speak of in this place. Everything was functional and had been built to withstand insane amounts of force. That fact, and the tumorous-looking coral, were the only reasons it wasn’t a pile of rubble under the water.

  “I’m so excited!” Rin waved her fists under her chin, peering around like a kid at Disneyland. “If we find those schematics, can you imagine all the things we can invent? Telephones! Maybe even radar, and radios!”

  “Yeah, then we can mine all the metals out of the ground, build a bunch of nukes and wreck this world the same way we wrecked the last one,” Gar remarked sourly. “Why do you guys need this thing, anyway?”