The System Seas

It didn’t take long to get to the capital. On the way there, Elisa shared what she had learned from her father.

“I’ve read most of the notebook now. It’s not really about anything, first of all. They're travel notes of a guy who was setting up temples, so there are a lot of things he wasn’t making clear, since he already understood them. But a couple of things are clear.”

“Let’s hear them,” Marco said. Even if he wasn’t really the knowledge-using member of the party, it couldn’t hurt. He had been curious about it for so long he just needed to know too. Needed to know every bit about these buildings that had cast him out into the unknown infinity. “Anything helps.”

“First for things you know, but in order. The Temples were built by some other race. I don’t know that they weren’t human. They could have been like the elves, or they could have been some entirely different form of being. It almost doesn’t matter, because whatever they were, they are gone now. They aren’t in books. They aren’t in histories. I’ve looked. I’d know.”

“Comforting.”

“It does get better. Because there’s one huge thing that I do understand that comes up in this notebook again and again. This guy was terrified of the power of a temple remaining in one place for very long. Everything we’ve seen, from storms to waves to big holes in the sea, he anticipated all of it. The sea doesn’t like it. The temples don’t like it. They want that energy at the very least in circulation, moving around and doing things. Finding more temples. Expanding networks. It’s not permanent, but doing that buys years. It’s sitting still like Jare’s people made him do that causes the problem.”

“And when it sits as long as the temple energy here has been?”

“No idea. They’ve fooled it for a long time, but that stopped working well a long time ago. They just kept it going. Whatever is happening now is a mystery to me, but I know it’s not going to be a pretty kind of thing.”

They sailed a day and a night, and the next day the sunrise had to fight hard to throw any light through the clouds on the horizon. At the edge of what they could see, the sky was black down to the surface of the world, flashing lightning like it contained the battles of angry gods.

“I’m guessing we found the capital,” Marco said. “Pretty safe bet?”

“I’d say so. What are your orders, captain?”

“Onwards.”

The winds became chaotic as they pulled closer and closer to where the capital should have been. It took much longer than it should have to catch sight of it through the waves, wind, and storm, and then longer to pull close as the winds alternated between helping them, abandoning them, and actively fighting against their progress.

When they did see the capital, it was as if a wind blew away a fog, bringing it from a vague shape in the weather-obscured ocean to terrible clarity all at once. It did not look good. Buildings that must have once been as tall as towers were torn apart, lying as piles of rubble at their own foundations. The docks were deserted as waves brought the water up and over them, threatening to rip the structures from the shore.

As they drew ever nearer, they could see official-looking people leading civilians to shelter as lightning pounded the city like focused artillery. The streets were wrecked. Carts lay in pieces, and here and there people lay on the broken streets, either injured or dead in a way that wasn’t clear even through the spyglass.

“Ughh,” Riv said. “I’ve been gearing up for a big final battle. This isn’t that anymore, is it?”

“No.” Jane leaned over the rail and held the spyglass to her eye, taking in what details she could. “This is a rescue now. We have to find Tatric and a temple as fast as possible, right? That’s the boiled-down version?”

“Yes.” Elisa sparked through all her elemental powers, lighting up each of her palms in turn like she was testing her armaments for an important battle. “We can’t pay attention to anything else. We need to get in, save Tatric, and get that power away from this city as fast as possible. Anything else, we ignore.”

“Is that right? Just to abandon all the people in the city?” Marco fed more power into the ship, hoping to buy the time to do at least a little human-saving. “It feels like abandoning them.”

“I get the feeling it’s either that or there won’t be a city left to save, Marco. You can’t always do anything. Let’s choose the one that doesn’t end with everyone dead.”

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The docks were quiet in terms of the movement of people, a result of nobody wanting to be near a sea that angry. Marco pulled straight up to the docks, confident that his ship would be all right only because it was so sturdy to begin with. If this city was dangerous enough to sink the ship, he and his crew were in bigger trouble walking around it. Leaving the ship felt like betting on a good outcome to all this, so he did it.

The crew jumped ashore and moved through the city at a stat-enhanced jog, turning a blind eye to the rescue efforts around them as they pierced towards the city center. Suddenly, Elisa skidded to a stop, eyeing an injured person and letting her hands flare green.

“I thought we didn’t have time for this,” Marco protested. He didn’t expect Elisa to break first. “That we had to run.”

“This might save time. Just trust me.” Elisa stood above the broken, burned, and coughing woman. “I’ll heal you. Tell me where the temple and Tatric are.”

It was then that Marco saw what she saw. The woman had been through a lot, up to and possibly including getting hit by lightning. Her clothes were torn, scorched, and filthy. Under all that, though, a close inspection showed that they had probably once been temple clothes of a sort. It was hard to imagine that level of ornate embroidering on anything else.

“No. Just kill me,” the woman coughed. It didn’t sound pretty. “Can’t let you make it worse.”

“We can’t make it worse,” Elisa said. “And we are trying to make it better. We know a way. You might not believe that, but look around. It’s the only bet you have.”

The woman coughed again, long enough that Marco wondered if she’d ever come out of it. When she did, she looked up at Elisa defiantly.

“Fine. Heal me. I’ll show the way.”

Elisa’s healing was barely enough. It took a full minute of her putting in all the power she could to close the worst of the wounds and another half a minute to fix enough of the superficial things that the woman could stand the pain of moving. Once she did, though, the woman was true to her word, immediately darting forward in a new direction and waving them to follow.

“Come on, then,” she said. “This still hurts. Let’s make it worth it.”

The crew followed her, moving slower overall than they had before but still whipping through the city so fast they were able to ignore most of the particulars. There was mayhem and danger all around, driven by wind, lightning, and even tremors in the ground that seemed determined to do what the other, louder effects couldn’t.

“Watch out!” Riv shouted, then somehow performed the miracle of spreading his arms wide enough to catch Marco, Elisa, Aethe, Jane, and the temple woman before throwing them out of the way of a crumbling building. None of that left time for him to dodge or protect himself, and he took the full force of the fall directly himself, disappearing under a rockslide of brick and mortar.

“Riv!” Jane, for once, didn’t sound joking or in control of her words. Without seeing Riv in action as much as the others had, she seemed to be assuming the worst. When the rubble started to shift a few moments later and Riv emerged scraped, scratched, but otherwise ready to move again, the relief in her eyes was genuine, tears and all. “I thought you were dead, you idiot.”

“That’s harder to do than you think,” Riv said. “Now come on. We have to get done before the lightning gets worse.”

The lightning was the most terrifying thing of all. It tended to hit high places, which was the only reason they had survived so far. But every now and again when they crossed an open area, they were gambling against fate that they wouldn’t be hit. The strikes were as loud as explosions of gunpowder all around them, and they ran as straight and fast as they could through those areas. Riv even dragged the priest woman, putting an arm around her waist and carrying her like a sack to save time.

And then, all of a sudden, they were there. The temple loomed up ahead of them, big and black. It looked like it had once been hidden by stone walls and roofs, but all that was gone now, ripped apart by the lightning and wind that had been attacking it. The temple was still the focus of a great deal of anger from the storm, like it was targeted and the rest of what was happening to the city was just the side effects of that attack. Lightning struck it almost every moment, missing every now and again and slamming into the ground around it. The wind was circling it in an enormous whirlwind, one that had picked up all sorts of debris and detritus and was now whipping it around and around as fast as arrows.

“We can’t get through that,” Marco said. “There’s no way.”

“There’s a way,” Riv said. “But you have to trust me, and everyone might get hurt.”

“Fine,” Elisa said. “What’s your plan?”

A few seconds later, Riv had dropped low. Marco, Elisa, and Aethe were all clinging to different parts of his shoulders.

“Get out of here, now.” Elisa looked at the priest woman. “You can’t survive this. We’ll do our best.”

“You swore you would,” the woman said. “I hope you weren’t lying.”

Without waiting for any response, she was gone. Riv set himself against the stones, adjusting his body position as someone would adjust a cannon.

“I’m going to kick the ground. I’m putting 10% of my strength into this. Jane, I’m holding you, but keep your head tucked and down. I can’t guarantee we won’t be bashing through some of what that wind is holding.”

“I gained a lot of levels from the clerics and ships we took down,” Jane said. “Don’t worry too much about me.”

“Well, I’m going to, but there’s no choice. We have to get in there.” Riv gathered Jane in his arms, covering every bit of her body he could with his. “On three. Three, two, one. Go.”

Riv glowed for just a moment before he burst forward. Marco knew immediately this was not a true movement skill. He had stomped the ground behind him as an attack, counting on physics to throw him forward. It did, but in a crazy, off-center way that left them spinning through the air and made it impossible to see where they were headed. Marco felt rapid-fire thuds as stones and fragments of wood hit him and truly worried for Jane and Elisa as he realized they were likely feeling the same thing.

They crashed into something hard then, and Marco at first thought it was too dark to see what before he realized it was the pitch-black stone of the temple, pressed against his face.