Artorian's Archives Omnibus

by Dennis Vanderkerken

  Kiwi nodded generously. He was counting on it, in fact. The vellum was delivered, and a small flat surface was prepared before them. As if a small table was a challenge for an entire squad of gifted earth cultivators. “Anythin’ else?”

  The Headmaster folded his hands and pursed his lips. “Maybe… a small little place. For me. Here on the border, overlooking the crater. It’d let me see the progress, and when the time comes… I can slip away without too much notice. The place could be a little shrine for… when I’m gone. Maybe we can gather up all the statues from the mountain path and plunk ‘em here. What an honor it would be to spend my days within the sculpted presence of Woah the Wise, Corey the Mountain, Scout the Succulent, and Danielle the Detailed.”

  Artorian chuckled. “Who knows, maybe one day we could have a whole host of sculptures with personal scriptures from their lives? Why, I remember a vivacious Choir lad who wanted to be a scholar. How nice it would be for him to succeed. I can see it now, the Obelisk of D. Kota, greatest scholar of his age.”

  The Inquisition gave the sermoning old man a nudge and a quill. Artorian blinked and looked down at it like he’d forgotten what in blazes it was. Then he took the implement, dipped it in ink, and began scribing. The Inquisitor had no issue making Artorian do the majority of the writing work; his scribing talent and clarity was impeccable.

  The cohort was directed to proceed and get comfortable by setting up camp. They each smiled as they passed. Their Head Inquisitor was securing their clan a hold! As if to herald the success of their glory, the rain slowly ceased and the skies cleared. Rainbows and additional light peeked through, shining honor upon the birthplace of a new legacy.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Do you think they bought it?” Astrea sat hunched over, hands pressed above her knees as she squinted to the crater’s edge down below. Every now and again she could make out the pinprick that was her grandfather, but that was the best she could do.

  Dawn lounged on a floating carpet nearby. Why bother with rocks as flooring when an anti-gravity hammock was just so much better? Her voice wasn’t salty or sassy in the slightest, confident in her assessment. She’d heard the entire goings on through all the husks of armor nearby. “Oh, they bought it.”

  Students jumped victoriously into the air. They had gotten things set up just in time before needing to flee to the spire to make it look like things had been properly staged without their involvement. “Can we make it stop raining now?”

  Jiivra walked by and gave the exhausted group of water and air students a proud thumbs up. They collapsed to the ground and were glad to be done. She sat in the makings of a hedonistic hotspot, glanced over the ridge, and pulled out her pocketbook when satisfied. Astrea quirked a brow when the quill and ink came to bear, watching the woman start scritching words into it. “Does that pocketbook have a title with your name on it?”

  She nodded slowly, not wanting to interrupt her writing progress. “It does. Your old man put it together for me in the Fringe. I was a different person then, and would have tumbled off a cliff had this tiny thing not made it into my life.”

  Astrea leaned forward to try and sneak a closer peek. “You make it sound like that booklet is your child.”

  The scritching paused, and Astrea’s words were considered. Guilt for leaving it behind in order to live panged into her, and her fingers squeezed the pages. “If it wasn’t before then it certainly is now. This booklet is the closest I’ll likely ever have to a little one of my own.”

  “Hey! You have us!” a student chimed in, and the group around the speaker smiled widely as instead of being rebuked as expected… they heard a chortle followed by the pleasant *bumf* of Alexandria running to tackle into Jiivra’s chest at full speed.

  “No making mommy sad!”

  Jiivra melted from within. She stood corrected, and curled a loving arm around the youngest student of Skyspear; her little librarian. Alexandria giggled as her head was peppered in kisses, trying to weakly push away at the invading face with tiny hands. It tickled!

  Laughter broke all around them. It was good to feel like a family again. Yes, they’d lost much. Yet this was worth the world. They lived, they were fine. They were going to make it and get back up on their feet.

  One of the students, Dame, cracked her back during a stretch. It made a few eyes look in her direction, and a pink flush coated her cheeks from the attention. Given that she had it, she shyly raised her hand into the air. “Can… I ask a question?”

  At a positive response from the people she recognized as instructors, she formed her question. “What do we do now? That part wasn’t in the plan, and there’s a lot of small dots moving down there that are getting closer to the base of the mountain.”

  Frowns replaced the nods, and people scrambled to the edge for another look. Sure enough, there was a great amount of motion in the crater down below. Jiivra snapped her booklet shut and got back to her feet, cradling Alexandria while leaning the child on her extended hip.

  “Everyone up and at ‘em. Start gathering seeds, roots, and re-plantable stalks from all of our plants and food sources. We are moving the entire operation off the top of the mountain and down to the crater. We’re going to shack up on ground level. Expect a large amount of back and forth trips, especially when we get to taking apart the library and other contents in the special rooms. I’m sad to see them go, but that’s the plan and we’re sticking to it.”

  The students each got up, and when their instructor had finished giving orders they got to work. Except for the snoozing air and water students; they were sleeping off their exhaustion. Those young adults would be filled in later. For now, this was fine. She let Alexandria go once the child began to wriggle. “Nobody is doing anything to my library without a proper order of what gets moved when!”

  She smiled as she watched the youngling zip off. The child reminded Jiivra of her own younger days, where she too had carried the flag of valiant zealotry. What a young and gullible fool she’d been. She sighed and turned, taking a few steps so she could clasp her fist and bow to Dawn. “My Saintess, may I ask a question?”

  Dawn came to a jerky stop. She’d been glancing down at the crater, keeping tabs on her friend and the details of the contract being worked out. It essentially abandoned the region of Skyspear to a faction of Dwarves which comprised a good majority of the Inquisitorial branch of the Church. It also solved several problems they couldn’t have otherwise done anything about. “Just Dawn is fine, Jiivra. Please, no more with the formalities.”

  It was a jarring request. A lifetime of having status differences hammered into you tended to do that. “As you wish. I don’t understand why our old man wanted you to remain hidden. That seems entirely counterproductive. Where would you go? You’d be found anywhere in the region if someone did as much as think to look.”

  Dawn twisted on her lounging axis, gently descending so the tip of her foot connected with the mountaintop ground. Since she was blocking the path of the sun, a long shadow extended. “A feat accomplished more easily than one might believe. Why? Well, if I knew I was going into a land where a Saint resided, I would need to go fetch another Saint to handle that encounter. Considering we are dealing with a faction our darling long beard is holding at the pointy edged distance of a blade, that’s not a pleasant endeavor.”

  Jiivra was incredibly surprised. She, in fact, didn’t believe it. “Our Headmaster adores Dwarves. He went off on a whole half-asleep lecture once on how he can’t get enough of their vivacious energy and rambunctious never-say-never spirit.”

  She stopped what might have ended up being a long defense had she not caught the edge of Dawn’s lips move upwards. The Saintess provided a clue. “What has slighted a vengeful human that does not brook harm against who he considers his family?”

  Jiivra squeezed her pocketbook as her hand clenched. “The… the Church. Oh no. Tell me he’s not actually setting up something incredibly foolish down there to go to war with the entirety o
f the Church?”

  Dawn chuckled a pleasant giggle before her dainty fingers slid to seal her lips. Her expression amused regardless. “‘Going’ to war implies the beginning of a process. Have you not seen our dearest is already smack dab in the middle of it?”

  Astrea decided this was a fantastic moment for keeping her mouth shut, and pretended to nap with Blanket. She tried not to stir while listening in with a sharp ear. Jiivra in the meanwhile was kneading her brows with her thumbs. “Abyss, Artorian. Why?”

  Dawn’s finger harmlessly pressed against the celestial cultivator’s skin. Aimed and held at the exact center of her… Center. “You know why.”

  The veiled protections even a Mage possessed to shield their cultivation techniques and internal workings were a pittance to an S-ranker, so Dawn could see the cultivation technique as clear as day. She watched the swirl of the miniature, simplified version of a cultivation technique she had helped put together. Jiivra’s standing had risen significantly in Dawn’s eyes from that detail alone. Astrea had it from the daughter title, Alexandria had it for carrying the flame of knowledge, and Jiivra had it from her Core. For never would anyone risk all they were to save the life of another… if that person wasn’t important to them.

  Jiivra’s response came as a stifled stutter, but both her hands were taken by the Saintess. “It’s alright. Believe in him. As for how I’ll remain hidden…”

  The S-ranker winked, a minor head motion tilting the point of interest to the ground. When Jiivra turned her vision to see, a sprawl of flaming, burning, blinking c’towl eyes filled the entire space of Dawn’s lengthy shadow; spilling out from her foot where she remained connected with the ground. The living flames were being stored in her shadow.

  “I once spent a decade in a forest as a candle; I just couldn’t bear to deal with the world. Reforming your shape is something any basic Mage can do with ease, especially with plenty of practice. The body is no longer entrapping the mind, those positions are reversed for a Mage. For a Mage, their mind becomes the limiting factor. If you can conceive of a concept, and how it would function, you can do it.”

  Jiivra relaxed when all the burning c’towl eyes closed in unison, reverting the eldritch display back to a common shadow. Dawn’s smile held a hint of laughter. “Much like my personal little army of fang and claw, I’ll be residing in an entirely separate layer of existence. Per the limitations my specific concept allows. Watch…”

  The Incarnate of Fire hovered herself over Jiivra’s shadow, and eased herself into it as if it were a portal to another space entirely. When entirely submerged, only Dawn’s eyes remained. She winked, and Jiivra shivered as she felt the interaction, rather than saw it. Another moment, and to the best of anyone’s senses, Dawn was gone.

  Astrea had both her hands sealing her mouth as her wide eyes met with Jiivra’s, who was equally as unsettled. The instructor didn't look too good. “I f-f-feel sick.”

  “I have no idea where she went.” Astrea pointed at the shadow. It was just a normal shadow. Nothing odd about it. “Is… is she in there?”

  A wordlessly mouthed ‘I don’t know’ snapped back at Astrea with barely controlled panic. She took a few more steps, and her shadow crossed with Astrea’s. Neither thought anything of it at the time, but Jiivra went pale when she looked behind her and saw movement.

  The combat zealot going pale was enough for Astrea to silence herself, head slowly turning to find a pair of swirling irises in the form of supernovae hovering next to her face. “Boo!”

  The ‘Nightmare’ didn’t know where the voice had come from, and didn’t care. Reason left her as she yelped out a scream, running at full tilt away from the scene. The laughter that followed her was something she’d have to deal with later. Dawn’s eyes had gone with Astrea’s run for a few meters until her shadow crossed Jiivra’s again. At which point she managed to stay in place, and reform back out of the shadow she’d originally sunk into.

  Jiivra shuddered. “How are you doing that!”

  The Fire Soul ran her fingers through her hair once manifested enough to do so. “S-ranked perk… I just reside on a different layer. I’m not gone, and have perfect awareness of my surroundings. It’s like looking through a window, all that changes is which side of that window I’m on. While my bond isn’t with teleportation, the specific higher Essence I get along well with mimics many of its functions. I’m still figuring it out as I go.” Dawn took a deep, cleansing breath.

  “For the most part I’ll be staying in Alexandria’s shadow. You two can defend yourselves, but the youngest would benefit from an extra pair of eyes. Plus, I would benefit from reading material. It’s boring in the other layer; there’s a whole lot of nothing.”

  Jiivra sighed and nodded. It was good for her little librarian to have extra protection. “So what do we do now?”

  Looking over the edge of the mountain, Dawn smirked. “Now, we just wait for the years to pass… all will come in due time.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Well aren’t ye a sight for sore eyes!” Hadurin Fellhammer beamed a smile so wide it could have illuminated the entire eastward shrine. Situated in the eastern cardinal direction, the ‘small’ shrine sat on the territory edge of Skyspear’s crater border. Three more similar shrines bordered the lands, each in their appropriate cardinal direction. Yet it was in this one where Hadurin had found the long bearded old man from his early days in the Fringe.

  “Look at ye! A spry… celestial pyrite! Yer in the middle of the C-ranks? I saw you a wee few years ago, and ya could barely crawl!” The half-Dwarf’s thick hands shot into the sky, cheerfully swinging around to embrace the old codger.

  Artorian laughed and gave the sturdy rock of a man a good squeeze. Not that it did much to him. “Hadurin! My old friend. What took you so long? I’ve been sitting here and watching the regional development for…”

  He counted on his hands a moment. “Three whole years already!”

  The Grand Inquisitor set his azure jade hammer in the open palm of a nearby statue’s outstretched hand. Artorian raised a brow, and Hadurin had a second look at the statue before hastily removing it and placing it down on the floor instead. “Tha’ coulda been bad.”

  Artorian affirmed the words with a nod. “Indeed, it could have, old friend. Laying any item in the hand of Danielle the Detailed is sure to bring ill fortune upon the item, for it will be lost swiftly as it is broken down into its component parts for study.”

  The Inquisitor picked it back up and cradled his weapon to his chest like a child. “Not me hamma!”

  The old men both saw each other’s half smirk, snickered, and then bent over in mutual laughter as the joke concluded. “It is good to see you, old friend. I was concerned on why there had been no vellum from the Fringe lately. Are my youngsters well?”

  Hadurin reached into a spatial pouch and pulled out a stack large enough for the Headmaster to be taken aback. The Dwarven man snickered as he heard his fellow warrior’s words. “What… what’s all this?”

  “Ooh. Well. Recall tha’ Lu and Wu had a wee one? Well, she’s as bad as ye are. Wee one ain’t even ten, but she causes trouble for twice that amount. Found your old notes she did, most of these here scribbles are ‘notes for granda’. She might not have yer mind, but celestials above does she have yer nose. Specifically when it comes to gettin’ inta things!”

  Artorian rubbed his forehead. He knew about Ra. Lun was going to tear him one. He weakly motioned for the stack of letters. He received the delivery as the first vellum dropped into his hand. No… not vellum. Was this paper? This didn’t feel like paper. It was metallic, and sported a golden trim on the edges. The faint smell of peach and rose hung to the rolled-up scroll, and only then did he see there was a scented wooden log, carefully smoothed on the edges keeping the metal message tightly bound. He stared at it a moment longer in abject confusion. “You got me here. What is this?”

  Hadurin reached over and tapped the bottom coronation, popping it in
wards like a button. The message went *click* and loosened in his grasp, able to be unfurled. “It’s a summons.”

  Suspicious glances darted across the object before they landed on his ‘friend’. “Explain.”

  The Grand Inquisitor looked around, seemingly to check if anyone was listening in. “A summons. A ‘request’ for you to show up at a certain place and time. Personally, I’m just glad I got here before the Don did. He’s got one of his own and I wanted to make sure you got mine first. You’re looking at an eventful year my friend. Hope you didn’t get too comfortable cultivatin’! Speaking of, got all yer wee ones?”

  Artorian gingerly unfurled the oddly light metal letter and started reading. He half responded while his mind remained elsewhere. Some of the text on this document was less than to his liking. “Two to go, they’re just a little difficult to… this is in a year? I can’t make it all the way to the Seat of Sorrows in a year! They can come get me if they needed me in such a hurry. That’s the opposite side of the abyss-blasted map!”

  His friend pursed his lips, silently moving his hands behind his back as his raiment came to bear. Artorian realized that the Dwarf was here on official Church business. This wasn’t a housecall, regardless of how pleasant their meeting had started. “Oh, they’ll be comin’ to get ye alright. Keep readin’.”

  Artorian grumbled and moved his finger down the writ as his face turned ever redder as he read the ever more irritating information. “Mages will come get me if I don’t comply? For what?”

  Hadurin just looked at the floor and cleared his throat. “Keep readin’.”

  The Inquisitor could tell when Artorian had reached the best part, because his jaw dropped. “To bestow the Medal of the Divine Order?”

  His long beard *whooshed* and slapped a statue from how quickly his head moved. “I’m not even a part of the Church. Why do they want to give me this? Why the entire list of threats for noncompliance? This isn’t an invitation to attend, this is a death missive!”