Broken Lands

Peaches didn’t even slow as he moved onto the precarious road surface. It was wide enough for the wagon, barely. It wasn’t until the wagon was actually on a thin surface hanging over an edge that Sophia realized just how precarious the road was. She wasn’t about to walk on that area without some sort of preparations to deal with the surface giving way.

Arryn didn’t seem concerned; it was clear he’d been over it more than once.

“Looks like we’re lucky,” Dav said as the wagon passed the overhanging curve. “I wonder how heavy the wagon is?”

“It looks pretty heavy,” Sophia concurred. “It doesn’t look like the roadway is damaged, though. Maybe there’s more to the path than is obvious?”

Dav shook his head. “I’m betting on luck. There’s clearly something to the road since it hasn’t fallen but-”

“Come on you two!” Revina called from the path ahead of them. She was also past the danger point. “Come on, Arryn says we all need to go through the cave together!”

Sophia gave a minute share of her head. “Might as well. Do you want to go first or shall I?”

“Ladies first,” Dav said with a wink.

“Now you’re calling Arryn a lady?” Sophia winked at Dav, then hurried down the path. She didn’t want to spend any longer than she had to without solid ground under her feet. She didn’t have wings, after all. Dav followed a little behind her.

There was just enough room at the tunnel mouth that they all could enter together. It just looked like a tunnel made of gray stone blocks at first, but once they were all inside it started to glow. Colored lines of light raced over the stone from behind them to the exit and turned some of the pebbles lining the sides of the tunnel’s floor into colorful marbles. Sophia glanced back and saw only darkness even though the way ahead was lit by white light where the lines all came together.

“You can’t go back once you enter,” Arryn informed her. “You have to go out the other side. Once you’re out, you can return, but it can take time for the conduit to become available. That’s why we all had to go in at once; as soon as there’s a long enough pause in people entering, it activates.”

It looked like a huge waste of mana to Sophia. The mana streaks showed the sheer amount of loss the spell had, and that was before the basic flaw was even considered. Why did they bother to move an entire tunnel? “Why isn’t it just a portal surface? Wouldn’t that be a lot easier?”

Surprise flickered across Arryn’s face just fast enough that Sophia wasn’t certain she’d actually seen it. “That’s not how it works. Only routes like these allow passage between Shattered realms; teleportation of any sort can’t, and portals are teleportation. If you’re lucky, you end up somewhere else in your current realm, injured or dead. If you’re not lucky … well, no one’s ever been able to find them again, so they probably just got even less lucky on where they landed.”

Sophia didn’t entirely believe that. If she could cross the Origin with Dav to land in a “shattered realm,” there had to be a way to cross between them that didn’t require all this. Admittedly, she wasn’t certain exactly how that happened, but she knew it wasn’t that hard to get to the Origin. It just wasn’t somewhere you went casually; it was too dangerous.

On second thought, if transit through the Origin was how the Guide managed to move people between areas, maybe that was the entire reason for the tunnel?

Peaches moved forward, so everyone else did as well. Sophia watched everything as she walked; her eyes were on the arch over her head, the lights that flickered and moved, even the bright surface that was the way out. The only place she didn’t look was back. She’d seen it once and there was no point in looking again.

She could feel the mana moving around her. It was even building up as it leaked, sort of like a static charge, but one she could only sense with her aura. It didn’t feel like the Origin; it felt like spatial magic with a hint of liminality and quite a bit of something else. She couldn’t tell what the something else was; it wasn’t something she was all that familiar with. What she knew was that if she wanted to replicate the spell, she’d need to figure out what that something else was … and find a big enough power source. This definitely wasn’t cheap.

Peaches paused in front of the exit and waited for it to turn from a lightning-crazed white surface to a view of the outside world before he stepped through. Just like when they’d entered the mountain, there was no feeling of transition; they simply stepped from a tunnel into the outside world.

It was far later in the day when they left than when they arrived, late enough that the sun was hidden behind the mountains but still early enough that the snowy peaks of other mountains were illuminated in the distance. They traveled a little ways, then set up camp for the night. No one was really all that tired yet, but Arryn didn’t want to travel after dark.

Sophia looked back along the trail they’d taken from the campsite and saw that the place they’d come from was a glowing opening in an artificial looking false mountain peak. It was completely different from the place they’d entered even though the countryside looked the same. “Do all links between shattered realms connect places that were once close to each other?”

“Probably not,” was the only answer Arryn had for her. “I’ve seen tunnels that are very different on the two sides. They can also change; remapping the roadways is a common task for injured Called. That’s how I found Old Kestii, back in the day. It wasn’t this entrance, it was one nearer to Hailport, but Old Kestii has quite a few entrances. Most shattered realms do. Now, how much did Aymini and Vramt tell you about Casterville and its area?” Vramt turned his attention to Revina, as if he expected her to be the only one with a useful answer. Sophia had to admit that he wasn’t wrong about that. She didn’t know anything about Casterville other than the name.

“The nobility are spellcasters. Even associated Vocations like elemental mages are valued, but if you don’t use magic you don’t matter to the city,” Revina recited. “Dad hated it worse than Aymini did; he said it was worse being a mage there than elsewhere because everyone hated him. I know you said that’s where you’re headed, but I thought we’d stop somewhere else along the way?”

Arryn shook his head. “That’s an oversimplification. I suppose it’s hard to explain if you’ve only ever really known Fallen Kestii. Magic is both respected and hated in Casterville, that’s true enough. It only applies to Professionals, not Called. Called can’t rule, after all. Your father probably hated it because he hated wearing the Registry’s sigil yet he wouldn’t avoid using magic. Wear the sigil and you’ll be left alone. I’ll be taking you there first to register.”

Revina frowned but nodded. “So why Casterville? You were the Registry Master at Hailport, weren’t you? Isn’t that your home base?”

“It is, but it’s also Hailport. Anyone who even might be Warped isn’t welcome in Hailport. Any one of you might make it, but together there will be assumptions. You can claim what you like, but the only one of the three of you that isn’t obviously touched by some sort of magic is Sophia, and Hailport doesn’t have any Wyld Elves; people might not recognize her as one. Castervill is in another realm, far enough away from Catshold that they don’t really care. In fact, you may see some of the children of Catshold there.” Arryn gave a smile and a shake of his head. “It’s also a good place for low Level people like you three. The high Level threats in the area are all slow; they just redirect them away from the city when they get close and they protect the city from moderate Level threats. It’s a good strategy for training the young.”

Dav frowned at Arryn. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Arryn shook his head. “It isn’t, if it’s intentional. Casterville does it that way because they’re lazy; they don’t see why having all Called leave if they want to grow is a bad thing, or why having only second-rate spellcasters who want power return to rule creates problems. Of course, it’s those very second-rate spellcasters that are making the rules, so maybe it’s not a bad thing for them.”

“You’re cynical.” Sophia shook her head. “Is that something we should avoid saying in Casterville?”

“Not if you’re Called,” Arryn answered with an easy smile. “Or if you’re strong enough in your Profession that you can ignore the rulers. Fortunately, I am.”

Arryn told them a lot more about Casterville as they traveled. Very little of it was something they could directly use, but it gave Sophia a much better idea of what she and Dav would face when they got there.

Sophia found, once again, that she didn’t count Revina as part of her group. That might be because she withdrew the moment her parents weren’t pushing her at Dav and Sophia or it might be because they just didn’t click; either way, it told Sophia that she was going to look at other options for delving partners when they reached Casterville.

Another day’s travel along the old faded trackway brought them to a wide road. A solid fifteen feet in width and covered in smoothed cobblestones, it was clearly made to move large amounts of traffic. Indeed, Sophia could see both wagons and people moving both ways along the road. It was the first overt sign of life other than plants that she’d seen since they left Fallen Kestii.

Even before they stepped onto the road, Sophia could feel the enchantments. They were strong enough that she expected Dav to feel them, even with as little aura training as he had; they were impossible to miss. Whatever they were, they weren’t for travel; there was no hint of Space attunement. “What does the road do?”

“You’ve never been on a Transit Road?” Arryn sounded surprised. “I know Revina has, though she likely doesn’t remember.”

Sophia shook her head. Sha and Dav had told much of their story to Arryn by now, enough that he knew they came from different places a long way away, but he kept expecting their experiences to be closer to his own than they were. “We don’t have enchanted roads like this. We don’t need them.”

“But you have City Nexuses, or something similar?” Arryn still sounded confused. “Transit Roads grow between any two linked City Nexuses. It’s one of the ways to know when there’s a new City or a new route has formed. Or broken, for that matter, though that’s fortunately rare.”

“It’s part of the reason no one believed Aymini when she tried to warn Hailport,” Revina contributed. “The Road to Catshold didn’t break. The Cats used it to attack Hailport.”

“It weakened and changed,” Arryn corrected her. “But no one put it together with the warning by the time it happened. I like to think that I’d have done better if I’d heard, but her story didn’t reach me until it was too late.”

“That’s great, but what does it do?” Dav stared at the road. “I can feel it from here and I’ve never felt anything like it.”

“It limits the power of monsters and of the Called,” Arryn answered. “Just like a Nexus.”