Artorian's Archives Omnibus

by Dennis Vanderkerken

He turned to face Artorian, the only person he could ask this of even as his feet tried to move away from Skyspear of their own volition. “I seek permission to enter the mountain’s deep pass and traverse the forgotten depths.”

  Artorian gave a simple nod. “Granted.”

  Cataphron’s feet ceased forcing him away as the ambient Mana in the area accepted the land-owner’s will. The strained C-ranker relaxed. Turning, he walked onto a path only he knew of. A path that had been left untread for years. He’d never shared the location of this particular cavern; the hidden way into the depths. “My thanks. Goodbye, old student. May we never meet again.”

  Silence followed his footsteps as the exiled Headmaster descended into the dark.

  Chapter Forty

  “Now what?” Jiivra stood with her arms crossed atop the open gate. The large entrance way that led to the mountain pass.

  Strongly contrasting their postures as he hunched, the now-official Headmaster locked wrists behind his back for support. They quietly watched the overhauled town as it bustled along. No longer did the Oldwalls smell like a wasteland of earth corruption.

  Artorian rubbed his eyes, taking in the new scent of heated forges and plied metal. His ears focused on the *plink, plink, plink.* The sound of ingots being hammered into shape. A momentary memory of For and Hibiscus came to mind, but he slapped the recollection away.

  New leadership flourished in the Oldwalls, and the name had once again changed. ‘Jian’ was the new official title of the Oldwalls, by virtue of the new main product and export. The constant mining to accommodate living space had left Skyspear with an overabundance of otherwise useless meteoric metals.

  They could do nothing with the massive ore piles that were just taking space. However, everyone and their mother was trying their hand at crafting in Jian. Swords, spears, scythes, and sundry metal products ranged in quality from laughable to Masterful. Fortunately for Skyspear, a shoddy sword needed roughly the same metal as a Masterwork one. They could sell their ore by the basketful, and transporting the heavy ore doubled as training. After all, the ore didn’t make it down the mountain by itself.

  Placing his hand above his eyes, Artorian blocked the glare as he peered into the distance. Endless plains of yellow wheatgrass had once stretched to the horizon. Now he saw only farms and livestock. All that earth corruption was suddenly in demand as farm fertilizer, and all the added work for food production kept the need for new workforce steady.

  Refugees were no longer a problem; they were in demand! Five years of development, and Jian sported the population of a medium-sized capital city. This place wasn’t even a sanctioned country, but Artorian didn’t care. The raiders had been given the boot, and the guard had reformed. So far, Nobles had attempted to either pass through unnoticed, or tried to make their way up the mountain with far less… favorable results.

  New methods were going to be necessary with Cataphron absent. The presence of the Gatekeeper had prevented a great number of problems, and Artorian sighed as he accounted for new factors in the plan. “Now? Now we send some letters.”

  Jiivra raised her eyebrow at the plotting academic, while a tired Blanket landed on her shoulders. Blanket had been having a great time playing in the wind, but it was naptime. Artorian only beamed an innocent smile at her.

  The grin contained that unsettling sub-note that he was absolutely up to something. So the ex-cleric addressed the concern rather than live with it. “To whom?”

  The old man dropped his calculating gaze back down to the town, noticing some townspeople who had stopped to gape up at them. He gave them a pleasant, enthusiastic little wave. When they went on with their lives, he turned to Jiivra and tapped the side of his nose. “The Inquisition, of course!”

  Had she not been entrenched sturdily in place, she would have fallen to the ground from the absurdity of that statement. Her insides twisted, and her face recoiled in horrified refusal. “The Church? Why?”

  Artorian kept the side of his pointer finger pressed to the tip of his nose. “All branches of the Church used to frequent Skyspear in its heyday. Did you never delve into why I considered you to be the Church, back in the Salt village? I can recognize the values and ideas it was founded upon at a glance. What it has become now is not the organization I quite approve of, but there’s no reason I can’t get what I need out of it before something is done about that.”

  Jiivra didn’t even want to know what heinous plans were being drawn up to cause problems for an organization as big and powerful as the Church. She squeezed the bridge of her nose, trying to get the thoughts out of her head. The non-Paladin no longer had love for the organization, so it wasn’t an unpleasant set of musings when she imagined the old man to be standing atop the ashes of the largest cathedral. Perhaps laughing maniacally and doing a dance on the rubble.

  Yup. She could see it. An ordinary person might consider Artorian to be a scion of madness, but she knew everything he did stemmed from a basis of love. She knew that if somehow the Church went down by Artorian’s hand, it would not be because of a personal slight to him, but because of what they had done to her.

  She exhaled her frustrations away. “Okay. Fine. What do we do about the Gatekeeper position?”

  Artorian returned to pensively grooming his beard. “I’ll handle it for a while. Send me down a few students with merchant skills. We really need to move the market off the mountain and down to this section. Why did we even have it up there? It’s logistically illogical, and at best a minor convenience for Skyspear. The traders make a loss just attempting the trip, and I believe business would not be so limited if we catered to their convenience instead.”

  He nodded at his own words. “We’ll set up here and establish a presence. I also need a few of the stealthier sneaky-sneaks to map out that previously hidden path Cataphron went down. I want those deets!”

  Jiivra turned in confusion.“Deets?”

  The Headmaster scoffed with a shrug, “‘Details’. I heard one of the students say it and liked the phrase. Nothing like mangling a language for fun. The youth does it endlessly.”

  Disgruntled, Jiivra held her forehead. Only an academic would consider that ‘fun’. She couldn’t bear it. So she snapped her fingers to mentally push herself back on topic. The suggested source bothered her. “Why the Inquisition?”

  Artorian ceased beard-grooming, starting to Dwarf-braid it instead. “I need information on my kids. They’re not children anymore, but their old man made them a promise. There’s none better than the Inquisition when it comes to information, and now that the land matter is settled, one letter is all I need. I even know a portly man that will laugh his lungs out when he gets my letter.”

  Jiivra leaned back, squeezing her gaze at the old man. “Why do I feel like I know who you’re talking about…?”

  Artorian nodded mid-braid. “You should! Hadurin Fellhammer! Poor sod, I knew from the moment I saw his last name on the documentation. Fellhammers are Inquisitorial smiters. Saw plenty of them come and go in the academy, collating information on targets. Even scribed for a mission debriefing once.”

  Jiivra’s face contorted, and Artorian smiled when he saw she wanted to strangle him. “You knew and didn’t tell me?”

  He quietly tapped the side of his large nose with a smirk. A family passed through the gates below them as they bickered. Jiivra didn’t give the common sight any thought, but a disturbance caught Artorian’s ear. His gut disliked something, and his mind demanded to fill in the blanks. Stepping off the gate, he landed with a *phuf*!

  A pillow hitting the ground wasn’t the sound someone expected when you hit paved brick from twenty-plus feet above the ground. This caused the family to stop in their tracks. Caustic snarls snapped from both the adults. “What?”

  Artorian nodded in agreement. “Oh, I believe that would be my question! You took it right from my mouth.”

  His vision bounced between the mother, father, and daughter. Irregularities made the little girl stand out
as she held something tight to her chest for dear life. The manner in which she held her parent was… off. Specifically, she wasn’t holding the hand of her ‘mother’ at all. The woman tightly controlled the child by squeezing her lower arm. Purple rings around the tiny wrist told Artorian that she was dragged around far too often.

  Both adults wore expressions that they’d been caught in the middle of something… socially undesirable. Their stances were unstable and uncertain, and it wasn’t much of a surprise when the male turned angry, stepping forward to challenge the old man blocking their way. Unfortunately for the suspicious duo, Artorian raised a hand, signaling the ruffian to stop. The information he gathered at a glance filled in the rest of his knowledge gaps, as he noticed the woman glance toward the cobra lake.

  “Throwing your daughter away isn’t a very virtuous action.”

  The mother reeled, her expression betraying that he’d gotten it on the nose. The father spat as their ploy to get rid of something unwanted had come to light.

  “Forget it! We didn’t want one like this anyway! What do you care? Get out of our way!” There were many things in life you could say that counted as fatal mistakes. Sometimes, it was saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Other times, the incorrect statement around the wrong person. Or in this case, you could do both at once by mistreating a child in front of Artorian.

  “Jiivra.”

  The combat instructor snapped her grip around both their spines, lifting both ‘parents’ by the back of their necks. They hadn’t seen, heard, or noticed her. Nor were they able to contend with her might. Her tone was flat, unamused by the behavior of these… was it even right to still call them humans? “Headmaster?”

  He nodded appreciatively, “Now, I tend to make it a point not to strike out against non-cultivators. It’s neither sporting nor ethical. So instead I will leave your fate in the hands of the only one fit to make this decision.”

  He took a knee, and addressed the smallest among them that had gone free when the grip on her arm unlatched. “My dear child. Could I please see what you have been clutching so tightly to your chest?”

  The tiny girl was hyperventilating, vision darting between the different parts of the scene. She swallowed, and realized that she was no longer forcibly contained by the lanky woman’s clawed grip. She darted a few steps away to safety as the pain in her arms acted up. Her wrist always hurt, and she hated being dragged everywhere. The little girl hated the adults. They caused her pain, and she could sense how poorly she was going to be treated just by how the tall ones looked at her.

  Something was different about the kneeled elder in front of her. She didn’t feel anger here, and her feet took her forwards even before her mind did. Artorian was shown a few pieces of vellum with a child’s scribbles on them. “Oh, these are lovely. Did you make this beautiful art?”

  A smile flickered on the tiny girl’s downcast face, and she nodded. The old man switched through Essence sights, and it took but moments to understand why her parents didn’t like the girl. To a normal person, this little one was ‘defective'. Rather than the corruption in the girl, it was the meticulously numbered pages that gave it away. Even so young, something in the girl’s mind craved order.

  He’d read about this topic over the last few years. People were different even if they were the same, for no two people were ever an exact copy. Some people happened to be ‘different’ in a way that made them unsuitable to function in society. Similar to how there was no real room for head-in-the-clouds philosophers in a world of down-to-earth violence, this little one had never truly had a place where her particular differences were accepted. She must have felt so lonely, and isolated.

  “My sweet, can I safely assume that all your life, you’ve had trouble making friends, talking with others, getting on with kids your own age, and have been putting things in order wherever things were chaotic?”

  Her eyes went wide, jaw dropping as the old man read her like a book. The old man didn’t pull his punch on the next question. “Were you aware your parents were about to throw you away?”

  The tiny girl’s mouth snapped shut. Eyes watering, her tiny fingers began to twitch. Artorian returned the precious vellum. Those little well-organized scribbles were her rock, a piece of order to hold tightly anywhere she went. Even if it was but a few measly numbered pieces of vellum. He took her downcast face as a ‘yes’.

  “You’re too young to make this choice, my dear. However, I offer it to you anyway. I will tell our dear teacher over there to let your parents go. You can go right back to them. I won’t stop you. However, I offer you an alternative. A different path. One where what you have isn’t a curse to be spat on, but a gift.

  “You will be treasured by those around you. Where your parents see you as a burden, I see within you a light few others have. I offer you a life at the academy on the mountain with a new family, one that will not mistreat you. One where you can order all you see to your heart’s content.”

  The tiny girl was rooted to the spot, and her eyes—while full of tears—were locked on the old man making the promise. At least… she hoped they were promises. “P-promise?”

  Artorian smiled, and starlight poured from his hands as he opened them towards the little one. Her pain faded, and the purple-ringed welts on her wrists followed suit shortly after. “Of course.”

  Jiivra let go of the two adults. They hit the paved road with a meaty splat, falling to their hands and knees. The large male thundered at his charge, “Come, you little brat! We’re leaving!”

  The tiny girl didn’t move a muscle. *Bwoop*!

  When the raging man took a daring step forward out of sheer irritation, his head bopped against an invisible wall of solid light. The impact sent a wave through the structure, and a soft pop resounded, similar to a drop of water falling into the middle of a calm lake. “It’s your choice, my dear. I know you’re too young, and I know it’s unfair. However, it’s your choice regardless. What life is the one you want?”

  The tiny girl looked at her father beating his fists into a barrier she couldn’t understand. She didn’t need to understand. The tiny cogs in her mind were free to turn, and both her arms shot up towards Artorian in a ‘pick me up’ motion. The academic nodded, accepting the choice and taking her into his arms. “What’s your name, my dear?”

  The tiny girl swiveled her head and just about smacked him with her braid. “No have…”

  Artorian nodded in understanding. “Would you like a name?”

  As the child nodded, the adults screamed and bashed against the shield. Jiivra stood there, feeling no love for either of them. The combat instructor cleared her throat, “I think you saw the child make her choice. It’s time you both leave.”

  The father turned and lunged at the ex-Paladin, blind to what more stable, sensical people would have considered a ‘dumb move’. “That whelp is ours!”

  Jiivra tossed his non-cultivator keister out the front gate with the same casual disdain people had when dumping chamber pots into a sewer. He skipped a few times before popping over the edge of the wall, crashing into a bright blue pond. “For the first time ever, I’m sad there’s no more snakes in those.”

  The mother ran back out the gate, needing no further prompting. Jiivra grunted out a sigh as she watched them go, “Artorian, could you not adopt every struggling child you see?”

  He considered it, lifting the girl up. “That would be difficult, my dear. I see my children in many people, and treat them as such. Besides, you’re going to love her! She’s a natural organizer! Just think, what area in the academy could use a little more structure?”

  The patented flat-lipped expression crossed Jiivra’s face, but then it struck her. She needed to see it. “Race you to the top?”

  She hadn’t finished her sentence before the Headmaster cheated, launching himself upwards. A wave of wind beat her face, and Blanket sprung awake as the celestial cultivator dashed up the stairs after him, passing exhausted and drained students
at full speed. She bounced off walkway walls, a blur of glowing motion that inspired new students just by exploding past them. They would do that too, one day!

  Both of the racers dashed up the mountain like they were fleeing from a wild stampede. Reaching the Outer Courtyard door statue at about the same time, they used the angled stone landmark as a launching platform. The competing cultivators were aglow with active Essence effects, self-empowering their journey as they flew right over the Inner Courtyard like two comets streaking across the starry sky.

  They blitzed through the tunnels, evading passerby by running along the walls and ceiling. New-found shortcuts were discovered and exploited, skipping across the wooden wind-chimes to bypass the Pagoda altogether.

  *Duff*!

  Jiivra landed in the gardens, leaving a several-inch-deep imprint of her shoes behind. She was already charging her body with new stacks of refined Essence to prepare for the next frog-leap launch. She didn’t hear the Headmaster land, and instead heard the unhappy croak of willow wood. Glancing in the direction of the sound, she grit her teeth. That wily old man hadn’t landed at all! He had instead grabbed the top of a tree and used it as a catapult beam, with himself as the ammunition. The gathered force of the pole vault tree springing back upright had launched him and the child up with a “Whee~e~e!”

  She might win this! Jiivra had the advantage of coming in from below, while Artorian would have to skip through a room and skate down the stairs to the first-floor door. She was closer! Celestial Essence revitalized her being, and like a shiny ball she bounced between walls, bypassing whole crowds of classes as she bolted into the academy.

  The students wondered what the fuss was about, but it only gave them ideas for their own races after seeing the highest ranked Master and Grandmaster display abilities that would dance in their imaginations for years.

  She saw the gate! With only a few more steps to go, Jiivra slapped her palm on the black metal door. The Gnomish creation rang out with a *gong* as the glowing combat instructor reached it. Her panting smile grew threefold in size when she heard the reaction.