“I’m still astonished at how well these papers were preserved,” Shayla muttered as she examined a sheet of blank parchment. The thin material rustled happily as she handled it, examining the finely cut edges and studying the tone of the paper by holding it up to one of her glowing light spells.
I looked up from where I’d been sitting behind the desk, reading out the contents of the logbook. Kassandra, who was coiled up around me for the most part and drafting what I was reading aloud to her onto fresh paper, took the opportunity to massage her hand and groan.
“Remind me to bring you calligraphy pens when I come back next, Nugget,” I murmured into her hair before kissing her temple. “They are a lot more comfortable than quills or charcoal and not as messy.”
“Anything to spare me from quill-cramp,” Kassandra grumbled cutely, rubbing at her nose and leaving a small streak of ink amongst the freckles there while she adjusted her glasses. She continued to grumble under her breath but snuggled into my side, so I turned my eyes back to Shayla.
“Why is the paper’s condition so amazing, Shayla?” I asked the moth girl and her wings fluttered slightly in response before she turned to look at me, her night-black eyes glittering in the light.
“This parchment isn’t even yellowed or dried out. Normally, the weight of time would turn this to dust, or even make it break like a dried cracker.” Shayla waved the sheet of parchment in the air in front of her and it made a rustling wobbling noise. “But these are fine.”
I gave it some thought and remembered when I had opened the door it had given a brief push of air. Glancing around, I checked the room and found a pair of small vents near the ceiling.
“This whole place has been in surprisingly good condition though. I figured there was some kind of preservation spell at work that we haven’t discovered yet,” Jane suggested from where she was sorting through a pile of scrolls.
The nimble mouse-eared woman had her own notebook out and was painstakingly copying over the contents of each scroll, noting down where we’d found it and what the organizational code of it was. When we’d all agreed that we couldn’t take most of the research with us, since this trip was an ‘off the books’ type one that would be our last to this particular facility, Jane had protested. She loathed the idea of leaving information behind, so had settled in to copy as much as she could while the other four of us worked to review the logbook.
“Possible, but I don’t know.” Shayla’s antenna thrashed in the air over her head, the fluffy appendages gesturing like two little arms in their frustration. “How could it endure this long without additional input? Even the air down here is fresh and breathable, though somewhat stale. And the humans have been gone for thousands of years.”
“Unless this facility was one that lasted past their disappearance in the world above,” Rieka suggested from her spot on my other side. While Kassandra was noting down everything that I read aloud, Rieka was making abbreviated notes of important things.
“That would make sense,” I agreed, shifting so that I could wrap an arm around Rieka from behind and pull her hip against mine on the bench we were sitting on. “But her point is still valid. One thing that I’ve seen repeated here on Cortha is that magic is expensive.”
“It’s not…” Kassandra let her protest die off after a moment and then sighed. “You are right. If it wasn’t for Rieka and my families being able to grant us an income, we wouldn’t have been able to summon you nearly as often as we have.”
“I know that I could only afford to summon my previous partner maybe once or twice a week for a few hours,” Jane added in, not slowing down on her transcribing. “The costs for summoning Liam have gone up a little bit, but they are stabilizing. You are an expensive date, Liam.” Jane glanced up from her work to wiggle her eyebrows at me and giggle.
“I promise to make it worth your time,” I replied automatically before I remembered I wasn’t talking to Kassandra. But luckily the mouse kin just blushed faintly and nodded before going back to her work.
“She’s interested, I promise,” Kassandra whispered to me.
“And she also has very good hearing,” Jane prodded back in mock annoyance.
“Also that tail is super soft,” Kassandra added at regular volume, which made the blush coloring Jane’s cheeks rise up to begin tinging her large mouse ears on top of her head.
“Okay you,” I dug my hand into the hair at the back of Kassandra’s head and tugged lightly, getting a contented groan from my mischief-macaroni. “Ease up on her. Let’s get this finished. Most of what's in here is just facility-wide notes about subjects they were studying, but we need to make sure there aren’t references to the entropic creatures here. If there are, I’ll have to turn this over to the DSR.”
“Got it, Liam,” Kassandra cooed happily, turning to nuzzle into my chest for a moment before picking up her pen and dipping it in the inkwell in front of her.
“And I’ve got some more sweets to share to perk us back up. We finish this and give the place one last look over to make sure we didn’t miss anything, then we can head out to the surface and spend a bit of time in the mountains.”
“Cookies?” Shayla’s antennae stood up in excitement.
“Sweets?” Jane’s tail joined the antennae in their perked state.
Rieka didn’t say anything, but I felt her fluffy tail swatting back and forth quicker in excitement.
“We’ll work hard for you, Liam,” Kassandra said in a husky tone. “Now, get back to reading.”
<><><>
The facility logbook didn’t have any references to the entropic creatures. Only some suggestions that they were looking at trying to expand their access to the ‘primal elements’ after the initial success with light and dark aligned creatures.
What it did have though was references to a sister facility ‘to the south-west’ that might have had additional breakthroughs, but they hadn’t gotten any news from them in a while.
Both Jane and Kassandra had perked up at that, since the two of them had been the ones working with that odd copper map from before. After a bit of discussion between the girls, we all agreed that we’d need to look into it and see if there were any records of another human ruin in that area and maybe go look for information.
I fired off a quick message to Cariad, letting her know that we’d checked out the last parts of the facility as well as given the previously examined spaces another look, but found no more compromising information. True to her form, Cariad was quick to respond to my message.
Cariad
Thank you for doing that, Liam. The news that one of the local species not only was experimenting with basically kidnapping entropic creatures but was actually successful was causing quite a ruckus on our side. I know that it sounds like we don’t care about any of the other summoned beings that were captured, but with the DSR’s ‘hands off’ policy there isn’t much we can do about it. The only reason we were able to intervene to secure that location is the danger that it would present to that universe if a predator went wild and started chewing holes in the fabric of reality.
Liam
So no worries that I’m going to do that? Am I not considered a predator? Just kidding, Cari. I’m happy to help out. There was some information about other facilities that were studying similar things, but nothing direct on what they were doing. The girls are excited to go and check those places out as well, so I’ll naturally be going with them. If anything comes up, I’ll let you know so that the DSR can secure it.
Out of curiosity… I know that entropic beings such as yourself have a corrosive effect on reality here. What would have happened if something from the other end of the spectrum appeared? Entropy and Time were both offered to me by the Manipulate Element (Primal) power.
Cariad
Can I just say ‘thank you’ again for not picking time? Polar opposites like that are extremely dangerous. Sure, it could have protected you from contact with a daemon, but it would have hurt. Both parties would have been hurt, truthfully.
Shrouding yourself in entropy allows contact with a daemon without danger, but shrouding yourself with time mana would cause a reaction where your protection would fight a daemon’s nature and likely kill both of you. Time is a chief manifestation of order after all, just as entropy is chaos. They do not mix, not without violence.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
As to your question about if a time-aligned being had been called there rather than the dimensional predator that you fought… Well it would depend on what level of power that it had. It’s entirely likely that the facility would have been pristine and untouched by the passage of time, with the living beings having been broken down into their component elements. They are not friendly creatures and their nature drives them to ‘fix’ that which does not appeal to their sensibilities.
Liam
Good to know. Okay, so with no further signs then the girls are going to turn this place over to the queen for her to study as an archeology site. Did any DSR folks check the other tunnels out by the main landing?
Cariad
Yes. The right-hand one as you come out of the facility leads to a subterranean lake, but is blocked by a rock fall as well. The left-hand one leads to what looked like an iron mine, which I think the local queen will really be happy with as it has several veins of mana-infused metal in it. Give your girls my thanks for agreeing to help with this.
Liam
Sure. Gotta go, we are heading out and I need to do my protective thing.
I opened my eyes as the girls settled in around me once more. We’d been taking a break on the ruined station just outside the research facility to eat before we made the push back outside. We still had some time, but everyone agreed that they’d rather sleep outside given the choice. The oppressive feeling of the mountains crouched over top of us was stifling.
“Well, that’s an additional treat for your mum then, Rieka,” I said with a snort.
My princess turned to look at me, her sky-blue eyes twinkling questioningly in the bright light of Shayla’s spell. I relayed what Cariad had told me about the other tunnels as well as her thanks and Rieka’s curious look melted into surprise then excitement.
“Really?! She said it has imbued veins already exposed? That’s wonderful! I wonder if… no we shouldn’t go check it out. The last thing we need is a cave-in to happen because we are messing around where we shouldn’t be.” Rieka’s tail whipped back and forth excitedly as she barraged me with questions before answering them herself.
“What do you call where we are right now?” Kassandra asked dryly and Rieka blinked at her in surprise. “If not somewhere that we aren’t supposed to be?”
“That’s different. This area is already reinforced and we know what to look for in regards to an unstable ceiling or the like,” Rieka protested vehemently and Kassandra grinned up at her.
“It’s a cave, Rieka. But I’ll give you that we don’t know much about mining facilities. The question is, are you going to tell the queen about it, and if so how did we know?”
That question clearly stumped my wolfish princess, but it was Jane who answered it.
“Liam found a note about it, but it got destroyed in the fighting. The fact that we secured the area for them will earn forgiveness about a memo being destroyed.”
“I don’t like making Liam take the fall on this, though,” Rieka protested.
I let the girls talk, allowing them to work back and forth how they wanted to handle it. Me taking the ‘blame’ on something like this was easy to accept, as I was already well outside the reach of consequences with the fact I wasn’t local. I helped each of my girls drop down from the platform onto the crushed rock of the track before leading them back to the massive iron door that blocked our route back.
“Logically, it makes the most sense. He can’t talk about his contacts after all. Or you could just say that he was told by a fellow Traveler? No, then they’d want to ask that Traveler more… hmm,” Shayla said with a thoughtful hum and buzz of her wings. The brightly-colored appendages stirred up a bit of dust as I laid a hand on the thin stone barrier I’d left in place to seal our route back.
“It’s better to not get caught up in complicated lies,” Rieka said after a moment of thought. “I need to tell her about it though, otherwise it might be missed. And the sooner we can get that imbued iron out and refined, the better. The more mana-infused currency a kingdom has in circulation, the stronger their economy is considered.”
Kassandra began to say something to Rieka, but I had just shaped an opening into the wall, revealing the darkness beyond when one of the shadow-monsters leaped through at me.
Reacting on instinct, I jammed my left arm into the scissoring maw of the creature as scales flashed into place over my skin. It wasn’t quick enough to stop all of the creature’s teeth, but the few that managed to actually dig into my skin were easy to dismiss.
My right hand’s fingers sprouted sharp claws that I quickly hooked into the joints of the creature’s carapace and I tore it open with one quick move even as shadows boiled off the creature when exposed to Shayla’s light.
Shrieks of fury raced out of the opening in the wall. Before I could close the torso-sized hole I’d made in the stone, half a dozen more of the critters surged through. Three of them darted at me while the other three went around me to either side. I felt my Ward Companion ability go off on Shayla and Rieka, so I knew what their targets were.
Turning and throwing the body off my arm now that its jaws had relaxed in death, I sent the corpse spinning at the one heading for Shayla as my moth winged woman stepped back quickly, her spell rod already in hand.
My right arm split at the elbow, the two bones of my forearm forming the base of a pair of thinner, segmented scorpion tails that slapped out quickly at the two angling for Rieka. One of the two dodged out of the way, but the other was caught on the crown of its head with the armored spike and it punched clean through the creature’s head with a sharp crunch.
“Lightning Net!” Rieka barked, casting before any of the others could.
My brilliant wolfish princess produced a sparking cloud of lightning that swept over the dodging monster and picked it up to carry the shrieking beast into its three fellows that had come at me and were preparing to leap.
“Glacial Shards!”
Kassandra’s spell joined Rieka’s as the lightning caused all four to lock up, holding them in one position as the storm of sharp ice crashed into them like a shotgun blast at close range.
I continued into my turn, splitting my left arm at the elbow as well and sent those two whip-like tails with four inch spikes at the sole survivor who was now trying to scramble back away from the glaring moth girl as she raised her spell rod to finish the creature off.
My attack took it first, punching through the side of its head and into its abdomen with a pair of sharp cracks before the two tails pulled and tore it in half.
“Shayla, through the crack,” I barked, and my moth-girl did just as I asked. Instead of sending a concentrated beam of light into a single opponent, she tossed her orb through the hole with a brief chant while her antennae thrashed in anger.
Angry moth noises! I thought with a mental laugh before turning away from the hole and pushing my Manipulate Element power to seal it once more.
I wasn’t able to get the hole closed up entirely before Shayla’s spell went off like a flashbang without the bang, though the pained screams from the shadow creatures that gathered on the other side was enough to get the effect.
Shayla was already conjuring another light spell, and then a second, and a third. The three brilliant orbs orbited her head like a lumpy halo as she glared at the small hole that remained.
I reversed my manipulation of the stone and pushed through to check on the other side.
Judging from the smears of darkness staining the walls and floor, there had to have been a good two or three dozen of the little creatures on this side waiting to ambush us. None of them had escaped the brilliant flare of light that had burnt right through most of their armor to erode the flesh beneath.
Shayla was the first through the hole, a few gestures of her spell rod sent the orbs spiraling out to form a triangle that fully illuminated the tunnel in bright light.
“I’ll sweep the tunnel on the way back,” she said with a scowl. “I should have done it on the way in, but this will leave no place for them to hide. I’m tired of their little attacks.”
“Good call, Shayla,” Rieka said while she came through to join us. “I’ll cover the cost of the mana myself. I can get reimbursed from my mother for it. We don’t know what caused the infestation to show up the first time, whether it was just sitting in darkness for so long or if it was something else, but we can at least stamp them out for now.
The other girls followed soon after and I quickly sealed the way behind us. None of the shadow monsters had made it into the facility for whatever reason, and I didn’t want to give them a bolt hole to hide in.
Consulting with the girls on what to write—since my power to understand things didn’t tell me how to write them—I engraved directions in the wall to explain what I’d done so an earth mage could open the way back up when the queen’s forces came back. I’d do the same thing when we got out of the tunnel.
Setting out, we walked in wary silence for a short while until Jane spoke up.
“That happened… really fast.”
“Yeah. Prolonged fighting only occurs when the fight is even, and with Liam here there isn’t really an even fight to be had,” Kassandra said, shooting me a toothy grin while the light shone off the glass in her spectacles.
I just rolled my eyes down at my dwarf lamia, which made her smile widen.
“I need to get better at my reactions then,” Jane muttered quietly. “I barely had a chance to react before you all had that wrapped up and done.”
“This isn’t the best space for you either though, Jane,” Rieka said reassuringly. “Heck, it's harder for me too. Lightning doesn’t form naturally in caves, and the air isn’t moving down here so your wind has to work harder to form.”
“Doesn’t seem to be affecting Shayla though, and it’s dark as the inside of a pot down here,” Jane grumbled, her arms crossing cutely while her tail swayed in annoyance.
“I’m muscling it too. It’s why I’ve been focusing on the orbs. They are self-contained once I get them going,” Shayla answered while guiding her spells along the corridor ahead of us. “It’s not efficient, but it is important.”
“And we appreciate it,” I interjected. “I really do like being able to see.” The complement got me a shy blush from the winged woman, but her antennae balled up and bobbed happily.
“Still. I need to work harder. I’m not going to slow you all down,” Jane resolved again, her voice firm.
I had shifted my left arm back to normal, so I gently patted her on the head with that hand. She let out an undignified squeak of surprise and batted at my hand for a moment before realizing it was me and shooting me a scowl.
“Don’t scare me like that!”
“Sorry, Jane. Couldn’t help it,” I laughed and her scowl turned into a pout.
“Liam, when did you figure out how to do that?” Kassandra asked to turn attention away from Jane’s surprise and let the smaller girl collect herself.
I glanced at my right arm, which was human to the elbow but it split into a pair of segmented tails that stretched a good six feet before ending in the armored spikes. With a thought, the two curled and moved in sync. I struggled to command them to do something different from each other, but they’d flowed without a problem during the brief fight.
“I dunno. I just ordered Shape-Shifting to give me a weapon to use that could stop both enemies going for Rieka,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll have to practice with this too… having extra limbs is too useful not to.”
“I’ll say it is.” Kassandra’s tone turned salacious and I rolled my eyes at my grinning lover.
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