Broken Lands

Sophia was glad it worked out as well as it did, but she was very nervous about using another Item Manifestation treasure, even though they had several left. Each one was supposed to make it harder, and Revanos really didn’t like the fact that she’d used five. He told her there was a safer way to reverse the Item Manifestation treasure, something called Crystallize Ability, but it was hard to find and imperfect; at its best, it left a hole behind that had to be bridged with Thread and the crystallized abilities it created tended to be finicky.

Xin’ri was able to locate a few, but Revanos’s information seemed accurate: Crystallize Ability treasures were several times the price of an Item Manifestation treasure. Both only came from the World Tree or high-upgrade stable Challenges, and you had to use a variant intended for your upgrade or higher. Getting to pick items more or less freely the way they had in the Treasury was unusual … but a lot of people had just had the chance and Sophia’s team was not the only group with people who were good at solving the Treasury’s puzzles. That was probably the main reason the Item Manifestation treasures were as common as they were; some groups focused on them and sold their extras. No one seemed to have focused on Crystallize Ability, even though some of the Treasuries had it.

That was the first proof they had that the Treasuries they entered had variability in their rewards. They’d explored the entire Treasury they could reach but Crystallize Ability wasn’t one of the things they saw. They probably wouldn’t have picked it up even if they did see it, but Dav was confident it wasn’t there.

It was also the reason Xin’ri went looking for whatever else she could find that would be useful and either wasn’t in their Treasury or were available in large enough numbers that she could get them for everyone. Most of what she picked up ended up going to Ci’an, but she was able to find enough copies of the Prehensile-Tailed Belt at a price she considered cheap that she gave one to everyone.

Prehensile-Tailed Belt

This belt has a tail that can be controlled by the attuned user.

The description was lackluster, and the tail was clumsy compared to a proper hand, but that didn’t detract from its usefulness. According to Xin’ri, you could never have enough hands. After using the belt, Sophia could admit that Xin’ri was correct.

It helped that the strength of the tail depended mostly on how much mana you fed it. Sophia’s belt-tail was significantly stronger than she was if she was willing to spend the mana.

The last two items Xin’ri gave to Sophia to attune were specifically for her. They’d only picked up one copy of the boots, because Xin’ri thought that one was enough and it was one of the treasures that took almost two hours to earn. Xin’ri looked for more of them, but the price was simply too high; the handful of teams that bothered with them usually had someone who would use them.

Boots of Earthsense

Use the movement of the ground below you to feel things that affect the earth.

Sophia wanted to argue that they belonged to someone who didn’t spend a significant amount of her combat time off the ground or in a form that didn’t even have feet, but Xin’ri’s point was persuasive: she could share the knowledge she gained from the boots with everyone and they were mostly for things like noticing ground-dwelling monsters, not for during a fight.

The final item was the last one Xin’ri made for Sophia. Like the others, it was based on feathers.

Flashflare Wings (Cloak)

The feathers of this cloak can store mana and spells that can be carried by feathers. The stored mana and spells can be discharged in a single event by flaring the cloak into wings. The flare is spherical but will not affect the attuned user.

Unlike the others, Xin’ri thought it would be a bad idea to use an Item Manifestation treasure on it. Sophia wasn’t as certain; she could see where an item that started as a cloak and turned into wings might merge with her Prismatic Wings Ability. She finally decided against it not because she thought it would damage her Sphere the way Revanos warned but because she wasn’t sure she’d be able to fly without discharging the spells stored in the cloak if she did merge them, and she wanted to be able to fly. Having a bunch of spells stored that she could use all at once was nifty, but she’d just have to accept that it wouldn’t be part of her Sphere. She’d be able to use the item for a while, until she outgrew it.

A few days before Sophia finished shoring up all of the upgrades with Thread, Notii invited them all to an assault on one of the large areas ruled by a Branch Lord of the third branch. It was somewhat interesting, but Sophia didn’t see any of the really interesting part where teams stormed the briars that guarded the den of the winged deer they called a peryton. She was kept at the back with her team around her, along with the mage choirs and healers. They were paid well and picked up more Thread than Sophia expected, but the only real excitement was when a flight of winged rabbits tried to sneak into the camp and were repelled by Sophia’s ward.

They were cute until they opened their mouths. Once it was obvious that they were more tooth than fur, it was much easier to kill them.

Sophia didn’t even have to think hard to turn down the organizers’ increasingly lucrative offers of future expeditions. She didn’t need to stay on the third branch any longer. It did, however, give her the chance to bring up the point that she had an Event token she planned to use on the fourth branch so that she could reach the fifth branch where Archon of Stone Issvako waited.

They already knew that she’d reached the fourth branch during the Meteor Pillars Event and how that went, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when they asked her to wait a few weeks so that they could gather people who wanted to participate. Sophia was a little impatient, but she figured she could wait that long.

The day after they returned from the Branch Lord assault, a birdlike Archon with four wings and a harness that supported some large pouches and an icon that looked like a tree in gold on a green background walked into the inn during dinnertime. Silence spread as the other diners noticed the Archon, but when he made his way over to the bar, normal conversations resumed. They were a little quieter than before, perhaps, but it wasn’t a big difference.

Sophia wondered what that was about; sure, the harness was a little unusual, but it wasn’t that different from what some Called used in the World Tree. Maybe it had something to do with the symbol? It was definitely an icon of the World Tree, but that was all Sophia could guess.

There was no bubble of silence when the four-winged Archon approached the table Sophia shared with Dav. Instead, her first warning was when Dav looked up, surprised.

“Are you Sophia Rothmer?” the Archon tilted his head as he asked the question.

Sophia nodded.

“Very good.” The Archon paused as if he was thinking, then seemed to change his mind about what he was going to say. “I am Inspector Ivorha Et’Tart of the Moonlit Branches Watch. I understand that both you and Leo Rothmer are members of Clan Et’Tart?”

“Yes,” Sophia admitted. She hadn’t expected to find another Et’Tart inside the Moonlit Branches; it was surprising enough that she’d run into a pair of them outside the Moonlit Branches. “Has something happened to Leo?”

“We should talk about that elsewhere,” the inspector answered evasively. “If you will follow me?”

Dinner did not look nearly as inviting as it had a moment earlier. In fact, Sophia was pretty sure she no longer had an appetite. She glanced at Dav and found he was already moving to stand. He was clearly just as concerned as she was.

The inspector led the way down the branch towards the Guard station that Sophia went to when she originally reported Leo missing. Sophia’s thoughts whirled around her; what could possibly be wrong? She’d seen Leo that morning; he was in high spirits when he headed out to spend the day with Reko and Arvinn.

It didn’t really help that the inspector was walking down the branch ahead of them. He clearly had practice walking, but even so it wasn’t normal. When she traveled with fully avian Archons, they generally flew ahead and then stopped and waited for her to catch up. Geese were an exception, but Inspector Ivorha Et’Tart was not a goose. He was a hunting bird of some sort, probably a raptor, and those were not nearly as comfortable walking. The only reason Sophia could think of that he might be walking was to be polite to them, since they didn’t have wings, and that meant something was really wrong.

“Are we in trouble?” Dav asked Sophia silently. “He’s not acting like it, but I can’t think of another reason he wouldn’t want to talk about whatever Leo’s gotten himself into.”

The answer to that was obvious, wasn’t it? Well, maybe it wasn’t; Dav wouldn’t have asked if he thought it was obvious.

Sophia shook her head, then answered Dav over the mindlink. “He’s Clan Et’Tart and asked if I am, as well. You don’t send a clanmember to get someone who’s in trouble. The Clan will, but then he wouldn’t have said he was an inspector with the Moonlit Branches Watch; he’d have identified himself with his position in the Clan. I’m worried; it’s much more likely that Leo’s been hurt or…”

Sophia didn’t answer that sentence. She didn’t want to think about the end of that sentence. It would completely explain taking a Clanmember somewhere private to talk to them, but it was very distinctly the wrong answer.

Her nerves were not relieved when they walked into the Guard station, but they were eased a little when they walked into a room that was clearly set up for comfortable interviews instead of a morgue. Leo wasn’t there, which didn’t help, but the odds were shifting from “identify a body” to “get bad news.”

The inspector flapped his upper wings once to hop up onto a perch that put him at eye level for Dav and Sophia. “You can, ah, make yourselves comfortable?”

Sophia shook her head. “There’s not much point, I’m not going to be comfortable until you tell me what’s wrong with Leo.”

The inspector looked away from her, then one of his pouches opened and a notebook floated out. He flipped a few pages telekinetically until he found what he was looking for, still without meeting Sophia’s gaze. “About an hour ago, one of the Moonlit Branches Registrars arrived for her evening shift. She chose to look into the Heartwood to reaffirm her commitment to her office, but when she did, she found that someone was already there, someone who should not be there: a boy. He didn’t move, even when she called for him, so she assumed he was caught in one of the wards and ran for the Watch.”

Sophia was fairly certain he didn’t actually need the notes.

The inspector paused, then shifted to meet Sophia’s eyes. “Imagine our surprise when the World Tree told us that there are four people in there, not one, but that only one has a name. Leo Hale Rothmer, Clan Et’Tart, Heir to the Kestii Imperium.”