Broken Lands

The second treasure at the top of Sophia’s list wasn’t a treasure at all, at least not directly. It was a scroll that could give more information about a single thing obtained in the World Tree. She wanted to use it on the key to the temple, just in case there was something there that was worth going after even though it wasn’t how they were going to reach high enough in the Moonlit Branches to see Archon of Stone Issvako.

It was probably not all that important, but Sophia wanted to know so that she could either head into the temple or continue ignoring the key. It was nagging at her now that she didn’t plan to use it. If the paper wasn’t available, she’d probably have pushed her team to use the key while they waited on Archon Issvako to do whatever she needed to do to build the Gateway; after all, it was only polite to see whatever a dungeon wanted you to see and the World Tree was a lot like a dungeon.

On top of that, she suspected that the identification paper probably wouldn’t be that hard to get. It wouldn’t be here if the World Tree didn’t want it to be, and it was a reward that would cost the World Tree very little. It was probably intended to identify other things that were found, but there was no reason it wouldn’t work on the key.

There was no shortage of other interesting items. Most of them were pretty uninteresting to Sophia; sure, she could replace her wands or get a shield that would automatically orient itself towards threats, but so what? The only really interesting items were the ones that could enhance her armor and the feathers. There were a lot of different feathers. Most of them were essentially reagents, but Sophia didn’t care; they were useful to her as is. The feathers that were incorporated into items or had items built around them were particularly interesting, and Sophia intended to pick up as many of them as she could before she started on the ordinary feathers.

She’d probably pick up two enhancements for her armor first. The first was relatively straightforward, something called glassteel leather balm. It was a putty that could be rubbed into any armor with significant pieces made of natural materials, like leather or most cloth, which meant that it applied to most armors, even the ones with an outer metal shell. It would transform the leather or cloth into “glassteal weave,” which looked clear like glass, could breathe and let the wearer move as though it were an expensively-woven cloth, and yet would harden into something similar to manasteel as needed. It could cushion a blow or block an impact, whatever was needed. All it cost was mana, which Sophia had plenty of.

The second item she planned to use on her armor wasn’t actually an item for armor at all. They were all interested, but Xin’ri would probably pick up several, because it worked particularly well with her Sphere: a Sphere modification called Item Manifestation. It would literally turn an item into an Ability that could be enhanced by spending Thread, as if the item were an Ability. It would remove the need to Attune the item, but the item could never be deattuned to give to anyone else, the way Dav originally got his attuned armor.

Turning her dragonscale armor into an Ability that she never had to fix and only had to spend Thread on to enhance seemed like a great idea. Xin’ri felt similarly about her staves; they were already sort of Abilities but right now she had to put in a lot of effort to upgrade them. She hoped that it would be simpler if she turned them into Abilities. The fact that it would open up more attunement slots was also important to Xin’ri in a way it wasn’t important to Sophia.

The other two teams were less thrilled with the Item Manifestation sphere modification; they seemed to think that gaining enough Thread was already hard enough. Sophia didn’t know what to say to that; she’d gained quite a bit from the Event, and while getting to the third upgrade took years, it wasn’t really all that long.

There was a wide range of items that were specifically designed for avian forms, which Ci’an was exceedingly interested in, as were most of the Archons. Sophia couldn’t use most of them and didn’t want to. She was momentarily tempted by an item that would literally make her grow wings, but the version that turned her arms into wings was definitely not going to work and even the one that added a second set of shoulders and separate wings wasn’t worth it when she had her Prismatic Wings Ability. Sure, she wanted wings, but what she really wanted was to fly and she already had that. She hesitated about the item that could turn one of her Abilities physical, but as tempting as it was, there was no way that having real wings wouldn’t be strictly worse than her Prismatic Wings. She simply had to accept that she already had the best option.

Dav was particularly interested in one that claimed it could alter a Sphere to make switching between Abilities that couldn’t overlap easier, potentially even giving the ability to manifest a weaker version of one Call while using another.

He had to remind Sophia that they were Embodiments now, not Calls, but she knew she was going to forget again. She’d called them Calls for years and they just didn’t seem that different to her.

There were two other items Dav wanted. A Visualization Boost was an alchemical potion that was apparently commonly used at lower upgrades in stable Challenges to temporarily help in gaining the Abilities they often held. Gaining Abilities at higher upgrades required significantly better alignment between the Grand Talent and the new Ability, so it fell out of use at the third upgrade, but a longer-lasting version was used by people trying to reach the third upgrade by creating their Grand Talent.

The version of the Visualization Boost Dav was considering was unusually strong but also unusually short lived and Bimet told them it wasn’t suitable for anyone at a lower upgrade; it was so intense it was likely to be overwhelming for most at a lower upgrade. Anyone who could handle it wouldn’t need it for either of its primary purposes.

Dav certainly wouldn’t have needed it for those uses; with his cybernetics, he already had an essentially perfect visual memory. The only reason he needed it was that he needed to maintain an image without his cybernetics if he wanted to use it with the item he wanted to pair it with and guarantee that the cybernetics were part of the image: a Form-Setting Ritual. Dav was extremely tired of having his body change with new Abilities and upgrades, which was a problem some Archons had as well. The Form-Setting Ritual was their solution.

It was technically something they could buy on the outside, but finding someone who could cast it for someone at the third upgrade with an Eldritch primary element was probably not realistic. It was one of the handful of items that came with a lot more detail even before they completed the Treasure Challenge, probably because the detail was necessary to decide if the treasure was worth the effort or not.

The World Tree’s version promised to adapt to whatever the user needed. It was powerful in its flexibility, which made it perfect for Dav but significantly less useful for anyone with a more common version of the problem. It did mean that Dav had to do the hard part himself instead of having the assistance of the ritual leader and potentially other supportive spells, but that was the reason for the Visualization Boost alchemical.

Sophia wasn’t certain why it was so important to Dav, but she could tell that it was, so she’d do whatever she could to help him with it.

Other than that, the last item Sophia found particularly noteworthy was the very first one Xin’ri looked at. Xin’ri planned to pick it up along with a number of other things that could be remotely controlled. She needed attunement slots for them, but if she could move her staff collection out of the attunement slots, she’d have room and the examples would help her build new things. Her Sphere supported independent items, and she was very happy to finally have a way to make some that didn’t have dark connotations like the Broken Sword that contained her friend Mo’ra.

By the time they finished cataloguing the Treasury and picked out their lists, it was well into the afternoon. Notii called for another night’s rest, which was both disappointing and reasonable. It felt like delaying Christmas, but Sophia knew it was the right call.

She even remembered to check the notebook before bed that night, which turned out to be a good thing: there was a letter in there, the first letter from her family she’d received since Leo arrived along with a note that was too badly warped to send a return message.

This one was intact, including the section she could tear off to send a return message.

Hey, Sis

Leo jumped in the middle of the spell circle the last time I tried to send you a letter. He said he was going to visit you. Aunt Amaia says he’s alive, but that’s all she can tell us. Mom’s pissed and worried, of course. Dad was more relaxed, of course; worried but a little funny and possibly even a good thing until yesterday, when he said something about a dungeon calling him grandpa. He’s convinced that has something to do with Leo but I don’t think he knows what. Did Leo get to you and do you have any idea what that’s about?

Uncle Althyr offered to try to follow the thread we’ve been using for the messages. He’s pretty sure he can find his way home if he gets to you or Leo, but he’s not confident he’ll reach you; apparently he has looked and says there’s some sort of obfuscation in the Origin. The thread clearly goes through it, but he’s worried he might snap it if he tugs on it too hard. I’m trying to figure out what he means, but you know how the Origin is; it’s hard to describe. Knowing that the walls are fake and the thread we’re following heads through a golden keyhole in the darkness only tells me so much.

If Leo’s not with you, I’m going to try to figure out how to send messages to him so that we can find out if he needs help. I don’t want to break our only communication, but it might be necessary. I’ll send a message to you first if we have to.

I wanted to send this letter immediately, but I had to completely redo the ritual space. Not only did Leo damage the one I was using, he also might have created a secondary link with the possibility of a more stable portal. Maybe. So I’m going to try to study THAT and see if I can figure something out from it … which means I can’t wipe it clean and reuse the same space or tools. It’s honestly been annoying to replace everything so quickly.

If Leo IS with you, tell him he owes me big for this one. I know why he did it but there’s a reason we’d have stopped him from being an idiot!

I guess there is one piece of family news I should pass along; you’ll find it just as funny as I do. You know about the Cult of the Death Planet, the group that decided to worship Earth as the home of Death Itself and treats all Earth natives as semi-divine because of our higher tolerance for Death-based magic?

Yeah, them.

They’ve started offering resurrection services. You have to bring your own healer and it only works for a limited time, probably whether or not the soul still lingers though they refuse to say. It’s more like really delayed CPR than real resurrection, but it’s not exactly what you expect of a death cult. All they’ll say is that Death would like there to be more death, and that means more life. They’ve always said that Death didn’t care when you die, so trying to cause it early was not really worshiping Death, but this is a much more extreme position.

No one knows what triggered it - they won’t talk about it - but I happen to know that Aunt Amaia started watching Olympus and the Age of Magic a couple months ago, and their version of Hades is the god of resurrection as well as the death god (which is supposed to explain the myth of Orpheus).

I’m pretty sure she thinks it’s funny. I know I do.

Hugs!

Xavier