Broken Lands

Exiting through the glowing doorway was as simple as touching it. This time, it didn’t disappear, creating an opening to walk through; instead, it simply teleported the person who touched it to the other side. It was startling, but Dav immediately told the others that he was in the Moonlit Branches and they followed.

The exit dropped them directly outside the door they used to enter the World Tree in the first place, inside the odd liminal space between the Moonlit Branches and the interior of the World Tree. The corridor to the right looked the same, but instead of dead-ending there, an archway filled with vines had opened to reveal a series of vine steps that led upwards.

It was quite possibly the worst set of stairs Sophia had ever been on and that included some dungeons back on Earth that didn’t even have stairs. Despite the awkwardness of the small space, she summoned her wings so that she could float upwards before she was even halfway up the incline. She wasn’t alone in her opinion of the stairs; they were far better for a flying species that could ignore them than for a landbound species.

When they all landed, the corridor looked similar to the one a level below, with two exits. One clearly led out into the Moonlit Branches, but the other had to lead back into the World Tree - to the third level, intended for people at the second upgrade.

Sophia decided to see what the next door looked like, even though they definitely weren’t going to take it that night, so she turned away from the exit to the Moonlit Branches. The door wasn’t far down the corridor, and it was extremely obvious: a stone door frame stuck out from the middle of the wall. The pattern carved into the door was different but similar again, with a pair of spirals on the top above a descending series of curves, but this time the pattern wasn’t inlaid with sparkly black stone; instead, it was on fire.

Sophia wasn’t sure what that meant.

There was one other difference. Above the door, a pair of images floated in the air: a crested falcon like the one on the door leading out of the second level in front of a crescent moon. They were a clear reference to the Challenge chains they’d completed to climb higher in the World Tree, and their presence made Sophia wonder if which Challenge chains they used to climb actually mattered somehow.

“It looks like it’s really on fire.” Xin’ri sounded slightly puzzled. “All except for that one line below the break. What do you think is going on there?”

Sophia had to take a second look to see what Xin’ri meant. There was a break in the carved panel about two-thirds of the way up, at the same height as the stones in the door frame changed. It seemed to have split the rock all the way across, but Xin’ri was right: only one of the spiraling lines that went through there wasn’t on fire, even though several were cut off by the fracture. “I’m not sure. The fire seems to spread between two lines just above the break, so maybe that’s why?”

“That’s not the interesting part,” Dav countered. “The interesting part is that it’s slightly broken, which means it wasn’t made for us. Does that mean this isn’t a fully instanced area the way we thought it was or does it just mean that the assets are reused when they’re not needed anymore? How would the World Tree know when they’re not needed? Or does everyone get a copy of the same thing?”

“All good questions…” Ci’an turned both of her hands to point in the opposite direction, towards the Moonlit Branches. “To ask in the morning. It’s late, I’m tired, and I want some food I didn’t have to cook and a real bed.”

Ci’an’s words made Sophia realize just how tired she was and she yawned. “Might even skip the meal, but yeah, let’s find a place.”

It wasn’t hard. Just like the level below, there was an inn just beyond the exit from the intermediary space. It had to be there because of the location, but at that point none of them cared if it was a little more expensive; they weren’t particularly short on cash, even without selling the roc eggs.

The next morning, they didn’t even make it out of the inn before an Archon approached them and asked exactly what the egg they were carrying came from. He was pleased to know it came from a roc and offered to buy it immediately.

Xin’ri did not accept immediately. She asked how long the eggs had until they hatched and whether that one was still viable. When the answers were “at least six days, most likely at least twice that” and “cold doesn’t really hurt a roc egg until it’s about to hatch,” she grinned and pulled him to a table to quiz him on exactly what he was willing to pay - and how many roc eggs he wanted. That seemed to excite the young man, but Xin’ri sent Sophia, Dav, and Ci’an away to let her negotiate in peace.

It didn’t seem to be the best option to Sophia - wouldn’t you want an auction? - but she wasn’t the expert and Xin’ri was. Maybe there was a reason not to do an auction. Xin’ri seemed to think that having someone interested was a huge step and that she should sell at least some of the eggs immediately if she could get a decent price.

Sophia shrugged and headed outside. “So what do you think? Should we pick up some more supplies or try to find someone who knows something?”

“Better to let Xin’ri handle the purchases. She’ll get the best prices,” Ci’an said prosaically. “I think we should find out if there’s a Registry Library or, well, something like that. The librarians should know what the symbols above the door mean and…”

A loud CRACK of noise rang out like thunder. There was no storm in the sky and it sounded like it was right next to them, so Sophia’s hands went to the weapon she no longer wore regularly. When her hand missed it, she grabbed for a wand instead as she whipped around to see what was happening.

There was a tear in the air in front of Sophia. It looked almost like a portal, except that the shape was wrong, roughly diamond-shaped instead of oval with jagged edges that looked like they were vibrating in the air. It led into a splotchy darkness, but it wasn’t until Sophia realized that the swirling, brightly lit dust patterns behind it were an even more jagged second tear that she was able to focus on where the tears went.

The Origin. Primordial Chaos, according to some, but Sophia knew there was order there as well as chaos.

She also knew it wasn’t exactly safe for others to be around, so she stepped towards it to see if she could close whatever was happening … just in time to see one of the dots in the distance of the second tear grow a lot bigger very quickly.

She had exactly enough time to realize that there were colorful feathers shaped like spread wings and that they were attached to a very familiar-looking small dragon with crystal horns who was frantically closing the wings to fit through the portal before he fell through it and knocked directly into Sophia.

She landed on her butt on the wooden walkway. The dragon stood on her chest, roughly the size and weight of a moderately sized dog breed.

Which meant he was heavy but not as heavy as he probably was in his human shape. It also meant that he was bigger than Sophia remembered, but it had been years. “Leo? Can you get off me?”

A second loud crack of false thunder pulled Sophia’s eyes up to the tear in space only to see that it was gone. Sophia frowned up at the dragon that was slowly backing off of her. “Leo, how are you here?”

The dragon backed up until his rear hit the railing. “Uh, I wanted to come see you. So, uh, I did.”

Sophia sighed. “What, exactly, did you do? I know you wouldn’t be the first one through if Dad figured out how to create a proper gate, and that was definitely not a proper gate.”

“Uhhh, it wasn’t Dad,” Leo admitted. “Even Dad admits that Xavier’s note spells are better than his, so I, uh, kinda changed some of the parameters and jumped through.”

Sophia clearly needed to check her notebook for a new note, but that wasn’t the most important fact. No, the most important fact was that her brother was a suicidal idiot. Well, not literally suicidal, though the risks he took were definitely not calculated. “You changed a spell you don’t understand and then jumped through the portal it made? Seriously? I know you’re not worried about the Origin, but those tears could have torn you apart!”

“I was going to be fine,” Leo defended himself. “I changed the spell, that’s what I do. If it went wrong, I’d just change that too!”

Sophia gave Leo a look of doubt as she picked herself up off the floor. That was more effective than countering him with words, usually; Leo could twist words but her look made him guess at what she meant and he tended to lose arguments with himself.

Leo wilted.

“What is going on here?” The words came from a bright spot in the sky that looked almost like lightning formed into the outline of a bird with a very long beak. The lightning split off each of the connections repeatedly, almost like a very active Tesla coil, but the sound was a soft crackling rather than the harsh cracks of real lightning. “Wait, you’re the not-an-Archon Archon, aren’t you? What did you do?”

“Do you mean me?” Sophia frowned at the long-beaked Archon. “I’m Suras, not an Archon. And I didn’t do anything except get knocked over by my brother. Who are you?”

The Archon flew to the railing opposite where Leo stood and settled down on it. “Me? Hah. I’m Prelate Varthas. High Prelate of the Way, not that you know what that means. Something happened here that touched on the Way, something important and dangerous. What was it?”

Sophia was pretty sure she knew exactly what got the Prelate’s attention, but she wasn’t going to admit it. Not yet. “What’s the Way?”

Prelate Varthas sighed audibly. “A very, very long time ago, our people fled death. What caused the death is long lost; all that we know is that we were dying. Then came a proud achievement; an ascetic learned how to open the Way. His name is lost, but his achievement remains as long as we live, for we took his Way and fled the creeping death. It was shame as well as triumph, for we left behind our friends, loves, and family; only those who shed their material form could cross the boundary of the Way and come to Arcatiz. From that terrible beginning we have built a society stronger than that which we left, founded on the principles of the Way, with one reminder: never shall we look back at the death we left behind, for only sorrow and destruction lie there.”

“The planet did not die. Not then,” Sophia whispered quietly. She knew enough of the Asuryans’ homeworld to know that, even if most of their history was lost. The Archons were largely gone long before the Suras fled to Suratiz; in fact, she was fairly confident that most Archons were gone before the Voice found the planet, and there were centuries between that event and the war that damaged the planet enough to make it uninhabitable.