Broken Lands

“Revanos often offers help for human lands that want to create their own Ways,” the Prelate added. “Contacting Issvako directly is usually a courtesy because she’s rarely interested, but she is the best. You should ask him for any details you are interested in, but I expect he wished to allow her to gather her thoughts before you reached her, as your request is not the normal one. I am not here to talk of Revanos, however; I am here to speak with you. You all came through the Ways. What was it that touched the barriers that guard the Exodus Way?”

Sophia glanced at her brother. It was really his explanation, not hers.

“I didn’t feel a barrier,” Leo started. “I’m not sure I would have, though. Not after the ritual punched through the wall. Uh, I bet it was because it was Xavier’s ritual instead of Dad’s spell…”

Their tea arrived fairly soon after Leo started talking. It turned out to be not just tea, but an entire Tea Service, with two plates piled high with food and snacks to go with the tea. The server who brought it all out told them that if they ran out, all they needed to do was send someone to the tea house and they’d bring out more.

It took a while for Leo to actually describe what he was talking about because he started at the end rather than the beginning and had to be prompted several times to give more details to make things make sense. Prelate Varthas wasn’t the only one prompting Sophia’s brother; everyone pushed him to give more detail about what he was talking about. It didn’t really matter that they were supposed to be trading information. That was just a pretext anyway; Varthas had already shown that he wasn’t trying to get something for nothing. He was happy to talk and explain things.

A lot of it was things Sophia already knew. Her father had, with Ita’s help, created the notebook that his letters ended up in, originally as a way to prepare as much as he could before she was thrown across universes. Once she was gone, he expanded the spellform he used to add pages, but he missed a few details about how the letters were supposed to leave the Origin, depending only on the copying routine. That only worked when Sophia was in a broken or heavily damaged conduit, so most of his letters were lost.

Xavier found the error while he was trying to learn the spell and created an improved version, but he had to cast it as a ritual because he didn’t have access to the kind of power and casual precision that their father routinely used. It worked well for sending letters; Sophia received them and Xavier could tell they’d made it all the way through to another universe. It didn’t take much of a tweak to add a runescript designed by their father based on Xavier’s ritual that would let a portion of the letter sent return with a short message from Sophia.

What it didn’t do was let them send anyone or give a way for Sophia to return home. Leo tried to present his choices as reasonable given the information he had, but as far as she could tell it was simply a poorly considered impulse. Yes, he knew that she was not only alive but thriving and looking for a way to come home, but that didn’t mean that she’d “welcome his company on the trip.” It definitely didn’t mean that she wanted him to change a ritual while it was being cast without letting the principal participant have input on the changes ahead of time!

No, it didn’t matter that Change was Leo’s draconic Affinity. It also didn’t matter that he had very good control over what his changes did. It was reckless and unnecessary. It wasn’t hard to point to evidence of that; what should have been a minor matter of a letter slowly working its way through the barrier between universes carefully so that it didn’t damage anything and wasn’t damaged itself became a series of unstable rips in those boundaries, apparently including one that the locals didn’t even think could be breached by anything short of the World Tree itself.

Sophia couldn’t resist the need to scold Leo for that one. He deserved every bit of it. Yes, Uncle Althyr could have pulled him out if he got stuck in the Origin, probably, and simply being in the Origin wouldn’t hurt him, but neither of those were the real problem. He could have been torn in half by the magic he usurped at any point in the transit. Yes, having a limb removed was fixable once he got home, but it wasn’t pleasant. Having his head removed almost certainly wasn’t fixable; Leo didn’t have a way to live through that.

Sophia thought she might, but only if she immediately switched into her form that was a field of feathers. It wasn’t something she wanted to test. If her head was destroyed instantly, however, even that wouldn’t work - and Leo didn’t have the option she did.

“You know you’re going to get a lecture from our parents when we get you home, too, right?” Sophia ran out of steam, which left her with only the threat of parental disapproval to try to make her reckless brother a little more careful. “Assuming we can even get you home, which means you have to be alive. I don’t want to take your body home.”

Leo rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mom’s going to complain, but not as much as Xavier will. He’s going to tell me everything that could have happened before he hands me over to Uncle Althyr for the same things. You know Dad’s not going to yell at me; he’s just going to sit down with me and go over exactly what I did and how it could be done better and more safely and the very specific things that would have happened if I’d done it even slightly differently. It’s going to be deadly. It was still worth it.”

Normally, Leo would be right about their father. Serenity almost never told his children they couldn’t do something; instead, he told them what would happen if they did, then followed through on what he promised. This wasn’t normal. “I’m not so sure you’re right. You have to have planned this or it wouldn’t have worked. Why didn’t you go to Xavier at least?”

“He’d have told me not to and probably had Dad set up something to protect the area so I couldn’t get at it. He definitely wouldn’t have let me watch,” Leo answered as if it was obvious.

Which it was. That was why she’d asked. “Right. So what makes you think Dad will let you off with just a scolding when you avoided getting his help because you thought he might stop you instead of helping you?”

Leo didn’t have a clever answer for that one.

Sophia turned away from him to look at Prelate Varthas, who stood there absolutely still. The only thing moving was the lightning that made up his form, and it seemed less active than before. He hadn’t said anything in a while, either. “Prelate Varthas? Is something wrong?”

The Prelate shook himself. “No, no, I was gathering my thoughts. Everything is fine; I simply have so many questions. I believe it’s your turn now.”

Sophia nodded, then took a moment to gather her thoughts. She knew what Xin’ri would want to ask; she’d want to know why they hadn’t found any aurichalc yet, especially not infused aurichalc. It was pretty common in the Maze but not at all common in the first and second upgrade Challenges they’d seen in Izel; Sophia wasn’t sure if that meant it started appearing in the second or third upgrade areas they hadn’t reached yet or if it was simply because of the particular Challenges they’d done. With the roc eggs they’d gathered, though, it shouldn’t be a problem any time soon.

She wanted to know more about the Ways the Prelate talked about and why they couldn’t open one of them to her home, but from what she’s already heard she thought he probably didn’t know the answer. He probably knew more than he’d said, but it didn’t sound like there was enough there to make it worth being the next question. She knew the important part: they might still be willing to open a Gateway to Dav’s home, and that was what she really wanted anyway. They could figure out how to actually get home from there.

Asking about the fourth upgrade might be good as well; while she had the Wanderer’s view of it, getting some more opinions might be useful. Her third upgrade required piecing together bits and pieces of information from a lot of different people; it seemed all too likely that she might get stuck on the fourth upgrade if she didn’t get a variety of takes on it as well. It wasn’t close, though, so it really wasn’t a priority.

No, she needed to ask about what was right in front of them, which was the next region of the World Tree. “What is the third part of the World Tree like? I know the first level is mostly ground-based, but the second level would have taken a lot more time if we couldn’t all fly. I’m not sure we even could have completed it the way we did; I doubt we’d have been able to climb high enough to even see the roc. Maybe we could have taken the baby gryphon with us and found something that way or explored the buried warming station under it?”

There were definitely possibilities there. They didn’t matter now that they’d found a way out of the level and had access to the next area, but now that she thought about it, they’d definitely taken the route that was the most obvious based on their capabilities. She didn’t think it was a bad route, but it was something to keep in mind if they ever had trouble finding a way forward.

“Slow down,” Prelate Vartas said slowly, clearly setting the example he wanted Sophia to follow. “What you’ll see in any part of the World Tree varies. It’s true enough that the lowest level has very little reason to want to fly, but there’s more than one way to complete every Challenge. That’s the story, at least; I don’t know them all. The first level, the roots of the World Tree, is mostly landbound, as you said; I believe that’s simply because it’s among the roots rather than the branches, but that’s only my belief. What is certain is that you are placed into a large area with many zones and a number of other teams. That is what you saw, isn’t it?”

Sophia nodded. She vaguely remembered seeing some people in the distance when they first arrived, and they’d seen some signs of others as they moved through the zones. “There weren’t many, but there were some people.”

“That’s because you came in as a higher upgrade,” the Prelate stated. “The World Tree tends to separate people who don’t really belong from those who are just learning the area. The lowest area is just too populated to have anywhere be really empty. It’s the smallest level and has the most people, so it’s the only one where you’re guaranteed to see other people, unless you run into an Event.”

“An Event?” Sophia hadn’t heard of that yet.

Prelate Varthas shook his head. “You’re unlikely to run into one on the third level, the second upgrade area. The third upgrade area is the most likely place, since that’s what upgrade you’re at; the World Tree rarely ever selects anyone for an Event if they’re stronger than the area they’re in. Basically, an Event is when multiple teams are given an objective. Sometimes it’s competitive, but most of the time it’s at least somewhat cooperative. That doesn’t mean some people don’t make it competitive; some people will make anything competitive. The prizes are good; for you, the biggest prize is that successful completion of an Event with sufficient contribution is the same as completing a Challenge chain: you earn access to the next level up in the Tree.”