Broken Lands

The Prelate blinked, clearly completely surprised by Sophia’s question. “Why wouldn’t you? Using a Challenge item like that lets you progress into the next piece of the Challenge chain. It’s the easiest way to find a way to the next branch, and you’re clearly strong enough. If you don’t use it, you’ll have to search to find another Challenge chain that leads up.”

Sophia shook her head. That was really not much of an answer. “That’s why you think we should use it, not what happens if we don’t. Does it stop working? Why shouldn’t we wait until the branch that we know will be tough to use the key so that we don’t have to search for a Challenge chain?”

The lightning bird opened his beak, then paused and looked down to gather his thoughts. It took him a long moment before he looked back up at Sophia. “That’s how we always did it, unless we were spending time on a branch to gather Wisps. Thread, really; I didn’t see a persistent Challenge item until we completed the third upgrade branch, and we were all well into the third upgrade by then. I envy you, in a way; my team only entered the Inchoate Mountains for one branch, and the Challenge chain was a piece of the War of Two Mimirs. You might get to see Mimir’s Refuge before it was destroyed; we did not.”

“If we go in without using the key,” Sophia prompted the Archon.

Prelate Varthas nodded. “If you do not use the key, you may or may not be in the Inchoate Mountains, but I think there is a good chance that you will be. You will be somewhere you can explore, like the previous branches. The second upgrade areas … well, if you’re not in the Inchoate Mountains, you will probably be above an ocean or large lake, since your last branch was desert. It will be slower; you will have to find a Challenge chain that moves you forward instead of being placed directly in one. As a third upgrade team on a second upgrade branch, you will probably find it without too much trouble; it will only take time.”

“We have time,” Sophia started, then stopped with a look at her brother. “You can’t come with us. Unless you’re higher Tier than I think you are?”

“Tier One,” Leo admitted. “Alteration Mage. I want to figure out how to … um, well, there’s a lot to learn. I can’t seem to access my Status though?”

“Right.” Sophia sighed. “The Guide, that’s the local version of the Voice, thinks you’re a baby. You’ll have to unlock it, and I’m not sure there’s much of a point in that. There’s no way you’ll be able to catch up quickly; it’s taken us years. Um.”

“Rent a room,” Prelate Varthas suggested. “That will give him access to that part of the Moonlit Branches, and anyone can access the lowest level.”

He cocked his head to the side as he turned towards Leo. “You thought you would be safe when you tore a hole in the world. You still don’t think it was dangerous, even though your sister is angry with you. Why not?”

“It’s just the Origin,” Leo dismissed it with a shrug, the same way he dismissed Sophia’s worries. “I’m a dragon, dragons can cross the Origin. I just needed a guide, so I took advantage of Xavier’s ritual, that’s all.”

“Dragons who are a lot older and more powerful than you,” Sophia muttered. She wasn’t sure how to get her baby brother to listen, but he wasn’t ready to be crossing universes. She wasn’t really ready, so he definitely wasn’t.

She had no idea she wasn’t ready until she landed in the Broken Lands. She thought she was until time proved her wrong, and by then she’d adapted. It was only when she looked back that she knew just how unprepared she really was. It was a good thing her family looked out for her before she was thrown across universes.

“What is a dragon?” Prelate Varthas sounded curious.

Sophia sighed. Like everyone else she’d mentioned dragons to in this universe, he’d never heard of them. It was strange; dragons occupied a huge part of the mythos on most worlds, not just on Earth, yet they were unknown here. She couldn’t explain that.

What she could do was explain what a dragon was and why most dragons were safe in the Origin. They were one of the very few species originally spawned there, so it did make sense, but not all dragons were safe. As with most things, it was more complicated than that. Her family was even closer to the Origin than most, so that wasn’t the part Sophia was worried about.

The description of the Origin led to the Prelate describing the Ways and asking more questions about their home universe; apparently, the idea that there was an equivalent of the Guide that was more than a few thousand years old who used a far more straightforward approach was fascinating, and that was before they got into the details about the Suras and Asuryans. The Archons’ history more or less lined up with what Sophia knew, which led to even more discussions and a quick discovery that neither Sophia nor Leo really remembered their Suratiz history lessons beyond the broad outlines.

Prelate Varthas told them about the Archons’ history, of course; he’d already covered most of what came before the discovery of the World Tree, but that led to a description of his own time climbing the Tree in his youth. One of the branches he explored was the birth of the World Tree. The first Mimir might have created the Guide, but that wasn’t enough; the Guide needed a body, and Mimir wanted that body to be living, so he created a forest of trees to hold the Guide. They were perpetually in communication and any tree could take over when another tree was damaged or killed; Mimir thought it was a clever solution.

Sophia suspected it explained a lot of the weirdness of the Guide. A forest made up of what was essentially a set of clones was very different from a mobile person who lived in a society of different people.

The World Tree was not the Guide, even though it was created at more or less the same time. It was a separate effort by Mimir. The City of Stars was supposed to hold “all of Mimir’s knowledge” and allow that knowledge to increase with time. The scale model looked like a pyramid, a lot like both the warming stations and the sketches of the Kestii Tower preserved in the Emperors’ sigils. The World Tree did not look like a pyramid, because it was an accident.

When Mimir was killed, neither the Guide nor the City of Stars was complete. The Guide was closer; the forest existed. The City of Stars was only a model, and the model was destroyed by the same blow that killed Mimir. The Guide found a new place for the knowledge in the only place it could find to place it: in another tree.

Specifically, it placed the City of Stars in a Hearthtree sapling. Hearthtrees were not the trees the Guide inhabited; instead, they were a highly magical species that welcomed residents, growing large enough to provide safe and comfortable resting places for humans as well as Archons and providing fruit that could heal a number of injuries and illnesses; hearthtree fruit still formed the basis for many of the Archon alchemists’ healing concoctions.

The World Tree grew to be completely unlike its siblings, far larger and stranger. The Prelate didn’t know why it developed monsters and Challenges instead of concentrating on the City of Stars that seemed to be Mimir’s focus.

Most of the other Towers were far more literal, built from the ground rather than grown as a tree. The Prelate had only visited a handful other than the World Tree, but he’d been through dozens of Gateways and he could say that for certain. There were a few other specialized Towers, but most of them were literally buildings.

The conversation continued until late afternoon, when the Prelate wished them a good evening and headed down to the lowest level where the Temple of the Way stood for evening prayers. He didn’t invite them to join him, which made it easy to head back to their inn instead.

Sophia and Leo spent the evening talking. They both had way too much to tell each other for it all to fit in a couple hours, but that was all the time Sophia was willing to give. Leo was definitely not pleased with having to stay behind and wait while they made their way through the Tower, but it wasn’t like they had a choice. They couldn’t bring him with them.

Leo grumbled about it, but that was only to be expected. Sophia knew she’d have grumbled if the situation were reversed.

The next morning, Sophia tried not to giggle as Leo bounced off the air in front of the entrance to the passageway that led to the doors they’d unlocked. If he’d made it that high on his own, he’d have been able to enter since he was with them, but he hadn’t. Sophia gave Leo a little extra aurichalc and directions to the first floor marketplace. She was certain he’d have fun there, and he was certainly old enough to be on his own for a few days. The inn was paid for the next tenday; they’d be staying there, where they knew Leo could go, when they weren’t in the World Tree’s Challenges.

A quick discussion once they were inside the passage revealed that they’d all reached the same conclusion: they should hold off on using the key for as long as possible unless they got another similar item. The most important “branch” to shorten was the last one; they expected to be able to fight fourth upgrade monsters, but it wasn’t something they could do repeatedly.

The third floor’s doorway let them out in front of a stream that ran through a heavily wooded valley. The woods were full of monsters, but the water was filled with boats. A short walk led to a large lake where the boats spread out and seemed to search the water before anchoring. Warriors guarded the boats while divers swam through the surprisingly deep water and emerged with all sorts of manufactured goods, mostly made of metal though bone and wood were also pulled from the lakebed. The once-living materials seemed less valuable than the metal; if they were smaller, they were often tossed back in the lake but the metal was always kept.

There were no Archons at all among the warriors or the divers; they were all human, though many of them shared the same sort of minor Warp that Ci’an and Xin’ri had.

They didn’t seem to notice the Flying Stars at all, even when they called out to the boats. At first, the Flying Stars thought they weren’t loud enough, but before long it became clear that the boats and people weren’t actually there. They were a magical memory of an event that happened in the past.

At least, that was what Sophia thought was going on. The “people” on the water were definitely magical in nature, closer to an illusion than anything else, but the mana type being used wasn’t light or mind. Sophia could tell those apart from other mana types and she couldn’t tell if the activity was produced with time mana or something even more exotic, like memory mana.

If this was all supposed to be Mimir’s knowledge, memory mana seemed all too likely.