Face of Eternity : The Little Angel

Uncle led us to a cave that had some plants growing around it. Not many, but enough to give you an idea of what the savanna looked like before it was all dried up. Lots of flowery grass, and small trees.

Inside the cave we saw a bunch of shiny rainbow looking crystals growing all over the walls. I could see a haze radiate off of it, like the glow of hot metal.

The air felt so calm and soothing, like a nap after a tea party. The closer I went to the crystals, the more I felt that peace.

“Uncle, what is this on the wall?”

"That is mana that's crystallized from years of flowing through this cave. As it passes through these veins, some of it collects on the bumps and grooves until it spreads all over."

Wow, that was interesting. I didn't even know it could take on a solid form. I guess I did see liquid mana every day because of the arteries running down from my heart. It was my blood. But solid mana was something completely different. Pretty.

I rubbed my fingers against the crystal, it was so soft and smooth. It made me feel very naturally happy.

"These caves are important for transporting mana from Elysium to the surface world," Uncle said.

"The surface world..."

Supposedly, on the surface world, they needed this spirit energy from Elysium to nurture plant and animal life. Humans don’t need it because their spirits produce their own mana.

By the way, Spirit energy and mana were the same thing. They are cinnamons of each other.

Wait, I mean synonyms.

Mana is what makes up our spirit, and it fuels all living things. So you can see why people could call it either one.

Like Uncle mentioned before, the waterfall from pylon 83 should have been making mana water for the environment. But there also should have been mana in the air of Elysium too, so the savanna shouldn’t have been completely barren.

It’s almost like something was blocking the mana from reaching this area at all. Uncle agreed with me.

Uncle and I kept moving forward in the cave, I followed closely. A cool mist filled my nose from a small river babbling by.

The cave was bright when we first entered because of the crystal glowing on the wall, but eventually it got a bit dark once we entered a big cavern.

“Young Mistress, activate your night vision.”

-Night vision engaged-

Suddenly I could see everything around me like it was daytime. The only difference was that the whole environment, and everything in it, was outlined in blue. Uncle had a green outline around him, like with the IFF tags.

The virtual name tag above his head also turned green too, as opposed to its usual navy blue.

Did I mention that people have holographic name tags above their heads for me? If I knew who they were, they'd have their name filled out above them. Otherwise it was a question mark.

“Okay, I see everything now.”

So we were able to keep walking, but we heard some noise a little ways away…

Tink tink tink!

Tink tink tink!

It sounded like someone was hitting a rock with a sword. Uncle told me to keep close in case it was dangerous.

It kept getting louder and louder until we saw a short person in a purple robe, chipping away at mana crystals on the wall with a pickaxe, all the while collecting it into a little burlap backpack.

He had a long pointy nose, mean looking eyes and floppy ears. His skin was also yellowish green. He looked old too, like Methuselah kinda’ old.

I whispered to Uncle, "What is he?"

"A Hobgoblin." He patted my head. "Nothing to be afraid of."

If I wasn't supposed to be afraid, I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask what he was up to by collecting the crystals.

"What are you doing that for?" I asked.

"What does it look like, ya' hockey puck?" He gave me a grizzled tone and condescending look. "I'm gettin' these mana crystals harvested for spirit energy."

He was an angry grandpa goblin…

"So it seems you’re affected by the mana drought as well. I assume you're collecting the crystal because of that?" Uncle asked.

"Hey, you guys aren't as silly as you look." He slung the pickaxe over his shoulder and glared at me. His face scrunched up like a crinkled paper bag. "Yuck. Not another one of you fake angels."

Why was Grandpa Goblin being mean to me? I thought he was supposed to be 'nothing to worry about!'

I started tearing up, and ran behind Uncle's leg.

"Waahh! He's being a jerk!"

Uncle tried to rub my head to comfort me, but it wasn't making me feel much better.

"Hey, kid…" Grandpa Goblin huffed out sincerely, "don't take it personal. You just don’t remind me of very good times."

I slowly stopped crying, letting curiosity take the place of my sadness. Then I tugged on Uncle's hand.

"What's he talking about?"

"Never you mind that." He glared at Grandpa Goblin, all mean like.

"You haven't told her?" Grandpa Goblin laughed. "She deserves to know her own people's history."

"Not until she's older."

I didn't know what they were talking about. As far as I knew, the Exceed were very nice and helpful to all kinds of life. Maybe the Hobgoblins were secretly bad guys and didn’t like us?

I wanted to ask more, but Uncle was too stubborn to tell me anything.

"S'pose you two came to talk to the Tree, am I right?" Grandpa Goblin asked.

"The Tree?" Uncle raised his brow.

Oh, that's right...I totally forgot something about this place. I was here before, but with dad. We actually came to talk to a tree.

That’s right, an actual talking tree. There was something special she needed to do for us back then, but I don’t remember what it was.

When we met her the first time, she offered me some of her fruit. Because I liked it so much, she let us take one of her saplings back home to plant. That’s how we got the Boni tree. I thought Uncle knew about that, but I guess he didn’t know the whole story. He probably only knew dad and me met someone wise here before.

We explained to Grandpa Goblin that we were looking for a new Boni tree, since ours died, and he agreed to take us.

Grandpa Goblin had us walk a little bit further down the cave. We climbed some rocks next to a small waterfall.

Then Grandpa Goblin took us to a chamber lit up with mana crystal of all kinds of colours. Green, blue, purple, yellow, orange, and brown.

If we stepped to close to a crystal, we could feel an emotion associated with it. Orange felt very angery, blue felt calm, yellow felt like excitement, green felt like focus, brown felt like tiredness, and purple made me feel sneaky.

The talking tree was quietly at the very center of this rainbow room, surrounded by a big lake of water. She had brightly coloured leaves, sparkling all over. Her bark was shiny like silver, little pulses of energy radiated up her trunk every three seconds on the dot.

There was a halo of symbols above her, it had a faint pink glow around it, lighting up even more of the cavern. I couldn't understand what the symbols were.

She didn’t look like she had any fruit on her right now, it must not have been in season yet.

There were other Hobgoblins around too, mostly women and children from the looks of it. I counted about forty, but there were more hiding in little holes in the wall. They all looked like they were pulverizing those mana crystals and mixing them with water. That must have been how they were replacing mana water for nature.

Strung up around the cave walls were some clay heads with funny faces on them. Some glowing paper was tagged along next to the heads and read, 'Saharu, anka to maga, ni Xanna, anka to ehom ni gahom. Oiknaka maga ehom hom.'

-Translating Nazalian-

-‘Saharu, god of magic, and Xanna, god of life and death. Please grace us with mana so life may live.’-

I’d never heard of Saharu or Xanna, but I made a note of them in my head as the gods the Hobgoblins worshiped.

To be honest, I don’t know much about other divine, so the list was pretty empty. I only really knew about God, and that was because I heard about Him in a few TV shows. Everyone would always say, 'thank God' when something good happened, so I asked dad who they were thanking. He told me that it was the nice being who let good people go to Heaven.

For some reason, he didn’t tell me much more than that. I found a scripture book hidden in his library, but he forbade me from reading it. It was probably cursed or something. He had a lot of weird stuff like that.

It was really quiet besides the ambiance of the cave and the crushing of crystal. Everyone seemed a little on edge when we entered. I'd try to look at some of the goblins hiding in holes nearby us, but they would creep further in.

A baby goblin was playing with a ball in one of the holes, but the ball bounced away into the lake around the tree.

The ball floated all the way to where we were. I picked it up and brought it to the hole I saw it fall out of.

"Here you go." I smiled.

The baby goblin and his mother were both looking at me with suspicious eyes, inching backwards.

After insisting they take the ball back once more, they did so.

"Thank you for returning this." The mother said in a growly voice.

"You're welcome!" My smile grew twice as big.

Suddenly more children started creeping out from all the corners of the cavern. One girl had cool sunglasses on, no idea why since it was so dark.

They all looked curious, asking if I wanted to play.

"Uncle, can I play with them?"

"We have an objective. I'd prefer we keep to it."

I frowned and got all sad. That was disappointing. I wanted to play.

My head felt woozy for a sudden second, like I needed a nap. But then it felt like I was wide awake and full of energy.

"Let them play." A kind and soft voice, like a grandmother, filled my mind.

This had to have been the talking tree! I remembered her voice from before. She was using telepathy to speak to us.

"You sure that's a good idea, my lady?" Grandpa Goblin asked the Tree.

"Yes. Let the children play."

With her encouragement, Uncle allowed me to hang out with the other kids for a little bit.

"Yay!" I cheered.

"Yaaay!!" The other kids cheered too.

We had a lot of fun playing things like tag and had races around the lake. We even got to swim a little!

~☆☆☆~

Finally after a little while of play, I came back to Uncle. All the other kids had to go eat lunch and take naps. They wanted me to eat with them, but they were making stewed bat. That didn’t make me very hungry, and I can eat rocks.

So now that Uncle and I were back together, we were able to get back onto the mission to find a sapling.

A short boat ride got us to the island where the Tree was. As we approached her, she started speaking to us telepathically again.

"Ahh, the little angel has returned." The Tree’s kind voice spoke. "And you've gotten so much bigger."

I must have been pretty small back then, it was like 4 years ago. I'm still small, but not baby small.

Grandpa Goblin spoke next, "They want a new Boni tree, my lady. They killed the last one."

That wasn't true!

"Grandpa Goblin is lying!" I gave him a mean look and stuck out my tongue. "The tree died because of fate!"

The Talking Tree didn't say anything for a moment, but a few of her leaves started to fall down.

"When my child was thirsty, what did you give him?"

Her child? I guess it shouldn't surprise me that the sapling was like her baby.

Hey, does that mean the one back home would learn to talk telepathically too? That would be awesome!

"We gave the sapling water." Uncle answered.

She asked where the water came from, and we told her it was from a clean lake near The Hive. Then she made a sound like she'd determined the problem.

One of her branches lowered and brushed my head.

"You loved my child, but the water you gave was toxic to him. Only spirit water can nourish my young." Her branch reached back up. “That is why this land has become desolate. The spirit falls have run dry.”

“Has life here developed exclusively around that specific type of mana water?” Uncle asked.

“Yes. All of us need it. Normal water will not do here.”

Uncle was tapping at his chin, considering everything the Tree had told us. He paced a few steps around and had an answer to this problem.

“Towers like pylon 83 are used to produce water infused with mana. They help stimulate positive life growth in several key areas of Elysium. But nothing should have become so dependent on it that they can’t drink regular water…the mana in the air should have sustained them plenty.”

There were lots of places in Elysium that didn’t have spirit water around it and those places were doing okay.

“This is an unintended side effect of the pylon mana distribution. They were not meant to sustain life, but encourage further growth in an otherwise inhospitable lands.”

It makes me wonder if maybe the desert land we were seeing before was the natural state of that place. Like, the mana made it so that life could grow, but now it’s just reverting back without it.

With a little rabbit whole thinking, I realized that the pylon itself would take mana from the air and put it into the water. So if there wasn’t any mana in the air, maybe the systems shut down.

“Uncle, something has to be blocking the mana from getting in the air in this sector.” I theorized.

We already considered that, but I think it was a good idea to bring it back up for the Tree.

“You are close, little angel. The mana energy in this land is not being blocked, but stolen by something, I do not know what it is,” The Tree added.

Uncle nodded. “I figured it was a good idea to visit you first. Going in blind might have been an issue.”

The pylon tower AI was stating that everything was green with its systems and it just needed to be reactivated. But we were still suspicious something bigger was going on. If something was stealing the mana, we needed to know what it was.

“Do you have any idea where the mana is being stolen to?” Uncle asked.

“The tower itself holds the answers you seek.”

Guess all roads lead to that pylon.

“If you can fix the source of this drought, I will gladly give you another sapling.”

We agreed to her terms of getting the tower back online in exchange for a sapling. Not that we weren’t going to do that at some point anyways, but now we had more incentive.

Speaking of incentive…to think, all this started because I wanted cake. What a birthday adventure, right?