Broken Lands

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Sophia frowned at Dav. He seemed oddly cheerful as he handed over the latest magma core. He was definitely tired, as he should be after all the time he’d just spent killing the giant fiery rock golems. That didn’t explain the spark of excitement or the huge grin as he handed her another Firestone Potentate core.

Notii could call them Cleansing Golems, but that wasn’t what they were. According to the World Tree, they were Firestone Golems; the small ones were Firestone Pounders while the huge ones were Firestone Potentates. Well, maybe they were based on the legend of the Cleansing Golems or maybe Cleansing Golems simply applied to multiple golem types; Sophia wasn’t certain. Whatever the truth was, the fact that the World Tree called them Firestone Golems as the general category meant that was probably how Sophia was going to think of them as well.

“I’m fine. More than fine,” Dav answered cheerily. “I just figured out how to get new Calls. It’s not at all easy, but if I spin Thread around the effect while I’m manifesting it, it creates a sort of a ghost of an Ability that breaks down if I don’t reinforce it, wasting the Thread. If I do reinforce it, though, especially while using the same Called effect …”

He spread his hands out like a magician presenting a new trick. A fiery glow seemed to start in the middle of his chest, then spread outwards in irregular red lines, just like the lines in the monsters’ cores. Behind the spread came a dark color that cooled into swirling black-and-gray patterns like the ones on the Firestone Potentates. Dav still looked like himself, more or less; he even wore his gear, though a close look showed that it was no longer separate from him. The only remnant of the fire was a glow in his eye sockets, where fire replaced his normal eyes. He pulled his sword out of nowhere and it, too, was altered into patterned stone that dripped fire.

“I can’t talk out loud right now,” Dav said across the mindlink, “But I think this will be useful in the right circumstances. It slows me down a little, but not nearly as much as the golems were slowed, while giving me rock skin that isn’t any weaker than theirs is. I should also spray molten rock when I’m injured like the big guys do, though obviously I haven’t tested that yet.”

Sophia cautiously reached out to touch him, ready to pull her hand away immediately if he was too warm. He wasn’t; in fact, his shoulder felt almost exactly the same temperature as normal. Well, the same temperature as normal if he wasn’t wearing clothing; it was a bit warmer than the outside of his armor usually was. Still, that was close enough. “You’re more or less body temp on the outside.”

Dav nodded, then smiled. As far as Sophia could tell, he wasn’t moving any slower than normal. If he said he was moving slower, he was, but she couldn’t see it. Maybe his reaction time was hampered or maybe large gestures were slowed more than small ones. That was the kind of thing they’d test later, when it was safe.

When he dismissed the Call, the return to normal started in the middle of his chest and proceeded outward, just like the original. Sophia was fairly certain that this was normal; it was simply slower than most of his Calls.

“We should get moving to the next big golem,” Dav said, then hopped up onto the Echo she’d summoned for him. “Which way is the closest?”

Sophia listened to the Lifeweb for a moment, then frowned. “There’s one a little farther away where they seem pretty frantic. I’d like to hit that one first.”

It was a good choice; that Firestone Potentate was actually pounding on the Pillar when they arrived. It was quickly destroyed, just like all of the others, and they moved on to another Potentate.

And another.

And another.

Sophia eventually told Dav that he wasn’t allowed to help with the next Potentate; he was simply too tired, so she was worried he’d be splashed by the magma before he managed to Call it to himself. He didn’t argue, which told her that she really should have put her foot down earlier.

Without Dav, the Potentates were harder to kill. They also didn’t recover all of the cores; while Sophia could tear apart the spellform that shaped the mana into a return projectile and Xin’ri could melt the area around the core, the easiest way to stop the Potentate was for Ci’an to destroy the core. They tried other options; the best way to recover the core turned out to be the opposite, with Ci’an stunning the Potentate while Sophia ripped apart the spellform that connected the core to the golem. When they did that, Xin’ri could melt her way to it and lift it out without physically touching it, which was good because it did still sometimes rupture.

After about an hour, Dav was rested enough to join back in. From then until the last Potentate was stopped, he handled about two-thirds of the golems and rested while the other three handled the remainder. It was a much better pace for all of them.

Spoiler

The Meteor Pillars are Complete!

Current Participation: 3897/4096

Remaining Pillars: 271/256

Reward Rounds Available: 8

Time Remaining: 13 hours, 26 minutes

Maximum Reward Rounds Achieved!

An entrance will open at each Pillar in 15 minutes. You may enter the entrance of any Pillar whose defense you contributed to. You may enter only one Pillar entrance. The Pillar entrances will close half an hour after they open.

Entering a Pillar entrance will place you in a Reward Space limited to those who entered your entrance. You will have 26 hours, 52 minutes to collect your rewards. There will be no monsters in the Reward Space. Some rewards may be difficult to find or recover.

Those who do not enter a Pillar entrance will face the normal eight Reward Rounds, scaled to the number of Pillars whose entrances were not used. Additional information on the Reward Rounds will be provided once the Pillar entrances close.

[collapse]

The appearance of the message confirmed what Sophia was fairly certain of from the feel of the Lifeweb: all of the golems were dead. It was time to head back to their Pillar. They were already on their way back, but they’d gone a significant distance, so they reached it only a couple of minutes before the entrance was due to appear.

“Welcome back.” Notii seemed a little anxious. Sophia had noticed that he got that way when he thought too much, but it seemed to disappear when there was a problem in front of him. “I, uh, Dav. You said we could split rewards evenly? A third for each team? Are you all okay with that?”

“Of course,” Dav answered easily. “We’ll have to figure out what that means, but it’s usually easy enough to figure out a monetary equivalent and use that if there are any problems. That’s the normal division method for teams who work together temporarily back where we came from. If you have a different agreement ahead of time, it holds, but if you don’t talk about it, it’s an even split.”

Notii glanced across their team, almost like he was looking for disagreement.

Sophia didn’t see any reason to disagree; it was the standard arrangement, after all. Sure, they’d collected a bunch of Firestone Potentate cores they’d need to hand over two-thirds of, but they couldn’t have headed out to kill the Potentates without Notii’s team and Bimet’s team defending the Pillar. It wasn’t fair to not share the rewards they’d helped obtain.

“It really is fine,” Xin’ri confirmed with a smile. “Yes, we did a lot of the fighting, but your teams did your part and you knew more about the Event than we did. We’d rather split everything than worry about arguing about contribution. I know that’s common here, that and killer’s spoils, but I think we’d all prefer an even split.”

Her expression sharpened from a soft smile into something almost predatory. “Now, if you want me to make you something from your part, that’s going to have a cost. I’m pretty sure you’re going to, because there is no excuse for some of the shoddy equipment I see. For starters, why does Tellix not have any casting implements? It can’t be that hard to make wing-clips that would give him an alternate way of channeling his mana.”

Oddly, Xin’ri’s demand seemed to make tension Sophia hadn’t realized was there drain out of Notii.

Tellix honked, which seemed to be the equivalent of an embarrassed cough if Sophia read the goose right. “They exist. They’re just really uncomfortable.”

Xin’ri snorted. “That can be fixed. Have you ever had them properly fitted? No, I don’t need you to answer; I can tell you haven’t. We’ll talk after this is over; I’m pretty sure I can use one of those golem cores to let your wind mana spread a flaming hot ball of molten stone across your target. That’s not the only option, but it should be simple and efficient, especially if you can recharge it with fire and earth mana instead of fueling it with your wind mana.”

Notii cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “Before we divide the treasure, we need to finish the Event. I want to go through the doorway over there; there are stories about what happens if you actually earn all of the Bonus Rounds; this has to be what they’re talking about.”

Sophia shrugged and hopped off the Echo. “Sounds good. I think we’d all be happy with some downtime from the fighting. We just want to finish the Event, and we’ll do that either way.”

The other teams had clearly discussed it while they waited, because they immediately started to pick up anything they’d set out that could be reused. It didn’t take long to clean up around the Pillar to enter the portal that had appeared set in its side; for Sophia, the hardest part was properly dismantling the ward so that she could retrieve the wardstones. They’d only flared a couple of times, since very few monsters reached the area around the Pillar and none of those were stealthy, which meant they were in near-new condition, almost like they’d never been used.

The area on the other side of the Pillar’s portal was extremely different from the barren surface of the Meteor Pillars. They stood in a poorly lit square room with a cross-shaped layout that led to four doors. The corners of the room were raised like miniature stages. Each stage held a collection of glowing items on individual pedestals, from something that had to be a golem, probably a combat golem based on the way its form resembled armor, to a glowing frozen flame. The main light for the room came from those items, even though there were dim lamps on the walls beyond a series of archways that lined the back of the stage.

The pillars and pedestals were covered in glyphs in at least three different runic languages. None of them was the runescript Sophia’s father preferred, but one of them looked familiar, like she’d seen it in one of his reference books. That didn’t mean much, unfortunately, because even if it was the language that looked familiar, she didn’t know enough to read it.

No, wait. The language on the pillars wasn’t a runescript at all; that was why it looked familiar. It was Bridge, in an extremely stylized font that was going to take a little time to work out.