Chương 16: Den of Snakes

The gorgon with the wand led him up a spiraling ramp to one of the mid-level… things. He wasn't sure how to describe it. Hut? Tree cave? Tree house? It was like part of the trunk had bulged out and wrapped around a room. Several magical fire lamps dangled from the ceiling of the room. The place was full of chemistry stuff. He recognized the mortar and pestles, because that was pretty basic.

He was pretty sure two of the weird glass things were an alembic and a retort, which he knew from playing Morrowind, but he couldn't say which was which or what they actually did. Other strange apparatuses covered one of the tables, while dozens of glass and ceramic jars were neatly organized in rows on two shelves. The shelves also appeared to be growing out of the walls. A steep spiral ramp near the back shelves seemed to lead up to another room. It made sense, given their biology.

Snakes didn't exactly use stairs. Another gorgon was inside. Briefly, they conferred, though Malachi didn't catch what they said, only that the new gorgon said, "Yes, their biology is quite vulnerable to this sort of thing. I used to trade cures for reagents. This should be easy enough." The room didn't have chairs, it just had oversized basket-things with large cushions at their base and one side open.

"May I… uh… sit?" he asked. The mage gorgon shrugged. Malachi collapsed onto the cushion, teeth clenched.

"It's a blood poison and a fungus poison," he said to the ceiling.

"I know," said the alchemist without looking up from her table. A fire crackled under one of the devices, and she'd gotten out several jars full of colored powders. The notice on his interface changed: Health: Bad -> Very Bad"What's your name?" Malachi said.

"Arisone," said the gorgon with the wand. Her amber eyes still glittered in the dark room.

"And this restorationist is the Honored Minera. I am not one for titles, but you will always use the honorific with her."

"Got it," Malachi said. Something in the room began to smell good. It reminded him of his dad's garden. He remembered how much he'd loved digging holes in it and yanking out weeds when they'd worked on it. Now there was a memory that had been buried. For good reason. The garden memory was nice. The rest of them weren't. Then, Minera was shoving a glass vial in his face.

"Drink," she said.

"And don't spit it out, no matter how bitter." Malachi sat up.

"Thanks, Honored Minera," he said. He took the vial. The liquid inside was warm, and glimmered green. It reminded him of one of Malia's kale smoothies. He drank it down. It was way, way worse than a kale smoothie. He involuntarily gagged, then squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed. It was easily the worst thing he'd ever tasted. There was a moment, and Malachi felt tingling all over his body. Then a new notification appeared. Poison cured! The conditions disappeared from his interface. He felt better. A lot better.

"Thanks. Uh, I don't really have anything to… pay." Minera scoffed.

"Coin is for tax collectors and conquerors. Arisone has negotiated a payment on your behalf."

"She… has?"

"Knowledge," said Arisone simply.

"I can do that. As long as you don't ask me how to enslave people."

"We are not slavers," Arisone hissed.

"We bow to no tyrants, and curse both the kings and their obsequious proxies. Even when we are corpses, our ghosts will fight them."

"Oh. Good," Malachi said, thinking, damn, these gorgons go hard. Briefly, he wondered if that promise was literal.

"You are recovered?" Arisone asked.

"I guess so. I'm not used to, uh, medicine, working that fast." He stood.

"I will take him," the mage said. Minera started putting away her supplies.

"Do you want a guard?" The mage scoffed.

"I'm insulted you think I need one."

"So be it," the alchemist said. Arisone led Malachi up to a hut—nest? —house? —near the top of the village. It was nestled near the woven living dome of branches and leaves. To be generous, it was cozy. To be less generous, it was cramped as hell.

"This is your place?"

"No," Arisone said.

"It is a guest house. I am a traveler, passing through. I have questions for you."

"Well, you all saved my life, so answering them is the least I can do."

"Good. What is Earth?" That wasn't what he'd expected her to ask.

"A planet. Mostly covered in ocean, but it has a lot of biomes. Forests, wetlands, deserts, tundras—it's quite a diverse place. I'm not… quite sure how to compare it. All these portal realms seem to have a single biome. Of course, that's a supposition, it's not like we can explore far. Perhaps the realms are all connected…" He trailed off. This gorgon probably knew all about her own realm. Arisone looked at him curiously. Her snake hair, at first alert and hissing, had started to calm and lay down flat.

"What is that?" Maybe not.

"The invasion portals all have different colors, but some people think the realms are connected. Like the goblins come from gray portals in this vast mountainous region, but it wouldn't make sense to have an entire realm of mountains. You need tectonic motion or volcanism to generate mountains, so at the very least there must be—""Not that. What is a 'planet'?" Malachi blinked. He still had no idea how to conceive of the technologies these portal civilizations had.

On one hand, a snake-woman had just made a potion that had instantly cured two different mycotoxins and some sort of blood poison in a few minutes, which Malachi was pretty sure was impossible on Earth. On the other hand, did they not have telescopes? He tried to conjure up his best elementary explanations.

"A very big spherical body—rock or gas—that orbits a star. Uh, we have eight planets in our solar system. Give or take, depending on how people feel about Pluto."

"Curious. I think the System has translated the concept of 'orbit' correctly, but I don't think 'star' has translated. You are speaking of the decorative lights in the sky?" He furrowed his brow. He'd read a lot of discussions about the sky in the portal realms being wonky. The astronomers on the wiki had gotten into several posting wars over it. One side had talked about parallax anomalies, spectral anomalies, distortions, and rotational inconsistencies. The other side had talked about bad data meeting bad models.

Malachi hadn't paid much attention to it until he had to ban someone for death threats. Now, it made him wonder. This was a realm of magic. And he'd just come from a room with a ceiling that was several miles high. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it"Our night sky is full of stars. They appear tiny, but they're actually massive spheres of hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion. Uh, do you know what atoms are?"

"Atoms are indivisible pieces of matter," she said.

"Turns out they can be divided, though that's… hold on. Eighth grade physical science was a hot minute ago. Let me think." SERA, how do you define a planet? Do these people know about 'atoms' in the ancient Greek sense where some philosopher took a wild stab at it and was right, or are they actually starting to put together a periodic table of elements based on data? Still no response. The System Unit had been annoying, but it had also been useful. What had caused the error?

Malachi said, "Okay, my explanation might be better if you told me a bit about your world and what scientific principles you've discovered." Arisone considered this.

"Very well," she said.

"Though it seems we have a similar problem. Each realm is self-contained. If a realm produces a different color portal, no amount of walking will ever lead you to that realm. Each realm is finite, and the environment, relatively uniform. Travel far enough, and you will run into the mystic barrier that demarcates the edge of a realm. This is the way of things, ever since the Great Creator Unala birthed the worlds. How many world-eggs she laid, we are still discovering."

The gorgon paused, seeing Malachi's expression.

"Do you not have metaphors in your own tales of creations? Each world is not a literal egg, but conceptually it is easier to understand that way. Through the principles of alchemy, we have discovered a great many fundamental substances that make up the world. We are content with the dungeons that the God Mareakal gifts us. The gods are finite, the worlds are finite, and thus, life must exist in a cycle as the Goddess Sheothalia teaches. Only wisdom can grow without limit. Does this help you understand our world?"

Malachi nodded his head slowly. If he took what the gorgon was saying at face value, the portal realms were self-contained spheres, only connected by portal magic. That they weren't on a planet at all, and there was a barrier that surrounded each realm. Are we in another universe, then? Is this just connected to how magic works? Or are they living inside some sort of technology beyond what we can fathom? After all, the System Units are translating for us both right now.

That at least implies neuroscience far beyond humanity. Or has humanity just been missing a foundational aspect of the universe all this time? Of course, the gorgon's best understanding of their own world could also be flawed. After all, human history was full of people misunderstanding how the world worked. Malachi started his explanation with the basics. Soon enough, he'd taken a few objects of Arisone's and was trying to show how big the Sun and Earth were, both in absolute size and relative to each other.

It was clear the snake-lady wasn't stupid, she'd just literally never heard of things called 'planets' before. Occasionally, Arisone would interject with something Malachi could compare to. Despite the worlds being contained in a forcefield of sorts, they were still absolutely massive. He wished he had his phone and a 5G connection so he could look up things like 'the surface area of Earth,' but he thought he sort of remembered that the Earth was 10, 000 kilometers in diameter, give or take.

None of Arisone's people had measured the diameter of their own realm, though, so her best estimate was "thousands of kilometers across." That led to a burning question. If all these realms were self-contained, how had the portals come to Earth? It had to be related to the burning glyphs he'd seen in the sky that first night, the ones that no recording had picked up, but what could cause that? Was this really the first planet they'd encountered, or just the first one they knew about? Arisone didn't know.

The Dark Mire seemed to be something of a backwater. Then it came to magic. Explaining that didn't take much time.

"You really have no magic in your world? No dungeons? No cores? No System Units? If you have no portal mages, how do you visit other realms?" she asked in disbelief. Malachi talked for several hours about Earth, eventually getting to the portal invasion.

"One of our scientists said there was some entity behind the invasions. The Maatugivi Empire. But I don't know anything about them." Arisone's hair hissed angrily at the mention of 'Maatugivi,' though her face stayed impassive.

"From what I have seen, they are less like puppet masters and more like a loan shark who insists on his payment. It's not that they demand the violence that follows, but that violence is inevitable. Still, their operatives do come here from time to time. Give them a fig, and they will take the whole tree. We make sure that instead of fruit, they find the destination of a watery grave."

"How big is this empire?"

"That is difficult to measure. Their sheer weight of numbers are oppressive. And each day, the tribute they rake in accumulates. Those that appease them only postpone their doom." She paused. Most of the hair-snakes were looking around in different directions. One, who was looking at Malachi, said, "Bite?" Arisone reached up and adjusted the snake so it was facing away.

"Your realm—this 'planet'—is larger than the smaller realms. How many of your own humans populate it?"

"Before the invasion? Uh, about eight billion." The snake Arisone had just adjusted turned back. Then all the hair-snakes looked at Malachi at once, which was creepy as hell. She smiled, exposing her two upper fangs. They looked more vampiric than snake-like.

"Your world cannot stand against a weapon it has no defense against. But what if it were to gain that defense?"

"Are you offering to help… Earth? We could really use the ability to close portals. Or open them."

"Portal mages are uncommon, but each polis has at least one. If you give a gift to the gorgons, we shall gift you in kind. I have been given a task that is a challenge to my station, and I find myself in need of sentinels. What do you require for me to acquire your services?" Malachi furrowed his brow, not entirely sure what she was asking. All her hair-snakes were still staring at him too, which was giving him the heebie-jeebies.

"You want me as… an ally?"

"In a word."

"Uh… well, I need food and water, obviously. And I could use more information about your worlds. About the creatures and factions that are invading Earth. Who they are, and where they're taking people. And the magic to stop them."

"It is an acceptable price," she said.

"Come, Sentinel Malachi. Servants of the gorgons must be properly attired. Consider it a gift for services not yet rendered." She slithered down the ramp and over a thin bridge of branches to one of the other buildings. What the hell did I just agree to? he wondered. Arisone was already in the building talking with a blacksmith by the time Malachi managed to pick his way across the narrow branch-bridge that was not made for people with feet.

"…base enchantments are fine. She has agreed to be my sentinel."

"Uh, 'he' please," Malachi said. Arisone stopped negotiating and peered at him. Three of her hair-snakes looked too.

"Apologies, human. I forget about your strange biology. The females and males in your society are equal size, are they not? So very curious."

"Yeah. Basically." He noticed the blacksmith was also a female gorgon. He had roughly a million questions. Why do they all have human-like breasts if they're all snake-people? Do the hair-snakes need to eat? Why do the hair-snakes have mouths and eyes? Can the snakes also see? Are they separate from the gorgons? Can they turn people to stone, or is that just our own myths? Why does Earth have myths of a creature that actually exists—does that mean portals came to Earth in ancient times?

The only question that he blurted out though, was, "Are there male gorgons?"

"Of course," Arisone hissed.

"I can show you them before you leave. Part of your bargain was information, no? Besides, they are beautiful to look at. So cute." Malachi grunted.

"Here," the blacksmith gorgon said, shoving a pair of armored pants at Malachi.

"Taken from a Hadaun. Like most enchanted items, it has a limited ability to resize." When Malachi looked at it, information from SERA popped up in his vision. Steel Cuisses (Enhanced) Resist Poison I Resist Mental Manipulation I Durability: 94/100 SERA? he asked. But the System Unit was still silent.

"Thanks," Malachi said, and began strapping on the thigh armor while the blacksmith kept rummaging around. As promised, the armor, which had been a bit small on Malachi, grew slightly as he buckled it on. There was a place where the metal was scuffed just above the right thigh. Some sort of mark had been there, but it had been erased.

"Here, another. The rest of the equipment I repurposed. But these were useless to us." He tossed Malachi a pair of boots. They weren't a proper set of greaves and sabatons, but instead boots that were lightly plated at the shins. Armored Leather Boots (Enhanced) Stability I Waterproofing I Durability: 91/100 Thanks fuck, was all Malachi could think. His own greaves had been dissolved by the magic acid mist and shredded to hell.

The acid had eaten away most of his socks too, but he wasn't likely to find those in a village full of snake-people. He'd have to make do. Hopefully, either the boots resizing or his regeneration would prevent the blisters from getting too bad. Otherwise—he'd have to endure.

"So you have a destination in mind, Arisone?" Malachi asked as he finished lacing up the boots.

"Oh yes," the gorgon said, baring her fangs again.

"I told you, we like to introduce Hadaun to the deep waters. Them visiting our realm is the reason I have journeyed here. A group of them are trying to steal the fruits of one of our dungeons. We will teach them that these lands are not theirs to usurp. And if we succeed, Mareakal might even bless you with a Class." The snake-hairs on Arisone danced about, hissing their excitement.

"Ah," Malachi said, thinking, Just what have I gotten myself into? SERA? Still no answer.

"We leave in the morning."