Broken Lands

Sophia snagged one of the pastry triangles. She liked the tea, but it was now well into the morning and she hadn’t had breakfast. It might be a bit early for lunch, but it was easy enough to claim that this was brunch.

Her first bite told her that she should have taken one earlier. It wasn’t just a pastry; it was a deliciously flaky crust around a spicy meat filling with a creamy sauce that smoothed out the spice of the meat while providing its own complementary richness that mediated between the buttery crust and the heat of the filling.

As good as the meat pie was on its own, it was even better when Sophia took a sip of the tea to wash it down. The tea seemed to bring out a second set of flavors she hadn’t noticed before; instead of simply heat, there was a taste like oranges and cloves that somehow managed to clear the way for another bite of the pie. It was really good.

The fact that it was very blatantly mana infused didn’t hurt. It was probably a minor healing or mana restoration effect, but for Sophia it was basically just a flavor enhancer. She rarely cooked with mana-infused ingredients, because the effects were generally not worth the extra effort, but she did like the way it tasted.

Maybe she should cook with mana-infused meat more often.

“They’re good, aren’t they?” The Prelate’s question pulled Sophia’s attention away from the food.

She nodded. They were good, a lot better than she expected.

Prelate Varthas’s head bobbed. “The Garden makes excellent food, suited for both ordinary Archons and those who have taken on an elemental body like myself. You are, hmm, closer to an elemental form than you should be. I thought you would enjoy my usual fare, and it seems that you do. Despite that, perhaps you should pay attention to me when I answer your question?”

Sophia flushed. She hadn’t realized he was talking, but he was in the middle of saying something when she reached for the pastry, wasn’t he? “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

The lightning bird bobbed his head. “Some things can be predicted about the World Tree and others cannot. The setting changes, because each level is large and you will be placed somewhere the Tree feels is appropriate. While you weren’t paying attention, your friends told me what you have faced. The Legend of the Single Moon is fairly common in the roots of the World Tree, as it can be attempted once each lunar cycle. More often than not, it is left to the Lapine, but it is a good starting point. It tends to bias your future locations towards dim and nighttime encounters, as well as situations linked to the sky, but that should be no problem for you.”

Sophia nodded. It was interesting that the different levels built on each other; that was something they hadn’t heard while they were outside the World Tree. That wasn’t really surprising when Sophia thought about it; almost everyone they talked to about it was a Professional, usually a Professional merchant, and few had reached above the second upgrade. If you were higher than that, you were expected to sell things inside the World Tree instead of outside, to leave the outside space for younger people.

“All of the Challenge chains are important in some way. I should not be surprised that you saw the Inchoate Mountains on your second trip into the World Tree’s interior; they are related to you, in a way. It is another legend, but a legend from after we arrived on Arcatiz instead of before. When we arrived, it was in a valley in those mountains. It was a hard time, but by the time humans arrived in the same valley fleeing a different threat from across the Ways, we had spread far and wide. They created a settlement there, Mimir’s Refuge. It is there that the Guide was forged by Mimir himself, the humans’ leader. Some say that is where the World Tree was born as well, but there are no mountains here.” Prelate Varthas shook his head. “It seems far more likely that the location is lost as the legend says, lost when we Archons took to the skies after the islands were loosed of their bounds with the death of Mimir.”

Sophia blinked and tried to figure out if she misheard that last sentence. She didn’t think she had, but it didn’t make sense. “Wait, what? Mimir’s not associated with islands or gravity…”

“The two Mimirs fought … oh, of course. I need to tell more of the history.” Prelate Varthas cleared his throat, something that Sophia was pretty sure didn’t make sense for a bird made of lightning but made perfect sense if he simply wanted the pause. “Humans came in two waves. The first wave was peaceful, led by a Mimir who was a builder and a peacemaker. He always chose the long view; this worked well with the Archons of the time and they settled into a partnership. The legends say that the humans filled a gap in the ancient Archons’ Lifeweb. I mention this because you are landbound yet present.”

The Prelate paused and looked at Leo. Sophia thought he was puzzled, but he didn’t ask his question. He was probably saving it for later.

“The first Mimir is the one who is believed to have forged the Guide. The second wave of humans brought the first of the truly Warped, like your companion.” The Prelate nodded at Ci’an, probably meaning her ears. “The tales say that more than half became ravening monsters, inflicting dire consequences upon everyone, Archon and human alike. For a generation or perhaps two, we licked our wounds and rebuilt from the destruction … and then the true troubles began, for there was a second Mimir. He claimed to be the true Mimir, and the people of the second wave, the survivors, all believed him. This brought in many others. Before long, there was a crisis in the faith of Mimir. And yet … the true Mimir, the first Mimir, did nothing. He was intent upon finishing his Guide.”

The Prelate paused and looked at each one of them in turn. “He failed.”

“But the Guide exists.” Sophia wasn’t particularly impressed with it, but she couldn’t deny that it was there.

Prelate Varthas nodded, clearly expecting the interruption. “Yes, it does. It is not the Guide Mimir wanted to build; it is simply all he completed before he was killed by the false Mimir. A great deal is lost from that time, but we know that much. We also know that the Inchoate Mountains where Mimir’s Refuge was … vanished. They became a legend within a generation as we moved to the mountains. There are sagas of the destruction of the War of Two Mimirs. I will not relate them to you, but many of them focus on how the land became dangerous and we moved to the floating islands. Today, the only ground we use is the ground that surrounds the World Tree, and it did not appear until that generation.”

The Prelate paused and glanced down. “I have drifted into the talk of the Way; that is not the answer to your question. You have found a story of the Way for you have crossed it. As you bear a key tied to that story, if you present it when you open the next door into the World Tree, you should see another piece of that story. I do not know if it will be the War of Two Mimirs, the arrival of one or the other, or something else I have not thought of, but it should be related. As you left at the entrance to an ancient temple, I expect you will be inside that temple for the next part of your story.”

That was less information than Sophia really wanted but probably more than she had any right to expect. “So you don’t know what we’ll face?”

“On the third level?” The lightning bird shook his head. “Not beyond what I have said. On a later level, you might see the fight between the two Mimirs or even participate in the War, but that is not really appropriate for the second upgrade. Whatever you see, I would not expect you to have trouble with it. All I can suggest is that you think about the choices you have, as that will certainly influence what you see as you rise through the branches, and your next branch will be aimed at people within the third upgrade like yourselves.”

Sophia shrugged internally. She wasn’t really worried about that one, either; by the time they finished the Maze, none of the third upgrade zones were actually a challenge. She was far more worried about the fourth upgrade areas they’d have to face in the last stretch to reach Archon of Stone Issvako; while they could certainly fight monsters more powerful than they were, they were used to planning for it. They wouldn’t have that option in the World Tree. Walking in blind was a huge disadvantage.

“For my question, then, why are you in the Lifeweb when you do not have wings yet your brother who has wings is not?” Prelate Varthas nodded at Sophia and then Leo, as if there was any question of who he meant. “You are not an Archon, while he could be.”

“I’m Suras,” Sophia stated firmly. It was strangely easy to say; until recently, she’d always claimed to be half dragon, even though she couldn’t shapeshift the way her siblings could. It was still true, her father was a dragon, but it wasn’t the full truth and apparently her Suras heritage was more dominant than she’d always assumed. “That’s … Suras and Archon are Asuryan. I think all Asuryans must have once had the Lifeweb, though it’s gone on Suratiz today. Or at least mostly gone; it might still exist in a pocket I’m not aware of.”

The more she thought about it, the more likely it seemed that some of the Suras on Suratiz probably retained the telepathic link. It was useful … and if it was resilient enough to manifest in Sophia, who was multiple generations away from both her Suras and Archon heritage, it would surely have survived somewhere. Of course, that assumed it wasn’t wiped out in the wars and extinction event that made the Suras flee to Suratiz a few hundred years earlier. Even if it was wiped out, the chances that it popped up here and there occasionally as Suras had children seemed fairly high.

The fact that Sophia’s mother Rissa was an empath and Rissa’s father Russ was a telepath might have an influence, too, though that didn’t explain why Leo wasn’t hearing the Lifeweb.

“Xavier hears planets, not people,” Leo contributed. “So I think we might all have some version of the Lifeweb. Jenna … Jenna doesn’t like to visit Suratiz. She says it’s too loud and that’s the only place she has to actually push others’ minds away. So I think she has the same ability Sophia does.”

Sophia sighed, then demanded, “Is that why Grandpa Russ insisted on teaching me how to defend myself against other minds even though I’m not a telepath? I always thought it was just for safety.”

Leo shrugged. “Maybe? He made me learn, too, but he said I’m more like Mom than Dad. Where you had to learn to shield, I had to learn to be invisible.”

“He always said I was loud,” Sophia muttered. Dealing with active telepathy came easy to her; it always had until she ran into the Lifeweb. She’d picked up Dav’s linkage easily as well. Some of that had to be because of her training, but it apparently wasn’t the entire story. “So, anyway, I guess all I can really say is that I got lucky. Or unlucky, depending on how you want to look at it. Leo got to shapeshift, I get to hear other people think while I’m on Arcatiz. Yay.”

Sophia huffed. She’d answered his question as well as she could, so it was time for one of her own. It was really just a follow-up question anyway, so it was fine that it came after an unsatisfying answer to the Prelate’s question. “You said what happens if we use the key when we go to the next, er, branch. What happens if we don’t use the key?”