Chương 502: AF Chapter 501 – Nuhmudira Runs, II

Lord Rytheran seemed to be thinking about what to say to me, a mere Isparian who had managed to work out the magicks to walk between worlds.

"What Patron taught you your arts?" he finally demanded, staring at me from across the distance, as if he wanted to pull my secrets from me with pure force. Well, that wasn't going to happen.

"The Void Phoenix," I stated calmly, and watched his eyes flicker at how dangerous those words were in Necrus. He couldn't blink, his eyelids having fallen off long ago, but since his eyeballs were just orbs of energy now, it didn't matter.

"I… am not familiar with that entity," he confessed after a wary moment.

"It does not speak with undead, Death Magic users, Void Magic Users, and Blood Magic users, among other things," I responded calmly.

"So, that is unsurprising, Lord Rytheran."

"I see." He stared at me, extrapolating easily that it was an Entity that stood against those things that did endorse and wield such powers.

"The Blood Witch had spoken with some of my students about discoveries of the virindi. Perhaps your search might start there." In front of his eyes, I flicked up the Holo of her path here, denoting the Dungeons along the line of her retreat. The Northern Power Forge!, I noted.

"Then I thank you for the gift of your time and wisdom, Lord Rytheran," I responded, and DimDoor'd out of his line of sight.

"Aye, she were here, but not for long, if at all, and anything longer were not recent. A high opinion she has of us tracking her down, she has," the Mick said, twenty minutes later. He and his Roaches had gone through the Northern Power Forge, one of the holdings of the virindi that had been abandoned and later cleansed of fixed spawns, the insides washed with vivus.

No one had gone back afterwards to investigate the place, the entrance wedged tight so shreth or reedsharks or something worse didn't take up the place as a lair. Someone had opened it, cleared it, used it as a base, and then abandoned it hastily. The Scouts and Cloaks had gone through it quickly and found nothing of substance.

"Master Oswald!" everyone heard Aslo call out from down by the beach. The Senior Cloak was waving from the sands, so I joined everyone else in wandering down that way. The taciturn Cloak had squatted down and was looking at the sands. Oswald stepped up beside him, looking at what was there.

"Now, that is interesting…" the Green Hunter murmured at the rather messy sands there. He pulled off his boots and socks, then paced over the sands, not disturbing them in the slightest, and went down into the waters of the sea there. Kris arrived from the opposite direction.

"Huh," she said, looking down at the sands, then out at Oswald wading in the waters.

"That what I think it is?" she asked, while Briggs and his people wandered over, too. Master Ben's Hands generally stayed around him and I, having elected themselves my bodyguards in the field.

"It is mostly filled in, but there was a boat pulled ashore here, the run of its keel deep enough that it has packed the sand yet," Oswald said, stopping his wading and looking out to sea.

"Is that fog out there natural, Ryin?" Briggs asked coolly.

"It is neither natural, nor is it unusual. If you recall, visibility is rarely more than a two miles from shorelines. So unless there's an island out there to set up a second clear zone, the default visibility is exactly what you are seeing," I responded calmly.

"She made good time to get out there before we caught up," Kris frowned.

"Air magic and some hefty oars work, Elementals pushing them?"

"Or all of the above," I nodded slowly.

"The Milanteans are a seafaring people, and she wouldn't be afraid of the water…"

"She can only stay at sea for so long, and she'll be visible for miles, she's the only ship out there. She can try coming in at night, but that just brings her back to where we can find her. It's a temporary thing, unless she thinks she can make it to the ocean and head for a continent in a ship that small." Kris frowned as she considered the woman's options. I looked back at the entrance sharply.

"There's a Southern Power Forge, right?" I asked, just to be sure. It could be Eastern or Western, after all.

"Aye, the Overseers be dropping Forge Essences that once powered up the Crafting Forges, before the Fall. Northern, Southern, an' Western," the Mick confirmed.

"Have any of those places been checked since they were purged?" I asked, looking around. Briggs frowned, glancing at Master Oswald, who shook his head. The Mick did the same.

"Why is that important? By all reports, they were minor Dungeons?" Briggs asked grimly.

"Three locations is what you need to triangulate something… like a power feed from a resonating energy that went to three different Dungeons." This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Eyes widened slightly all around.

"Ye can track us both?" the Mick said, glancing at Master Oswald, then at me.

"If you permit it, of course."

"How long to check this power feed?" Master Oswald asked.

"Ten minutes, tops."

"I've the West. McMikal, take the South. We'll check them front to back before you get there." Cloaks and Roaches converged around their masters, while I turned around and headed for the back of the Southern Forge Essence Dungeon, wondering what Nuhmudira had found here. The two men and their cohorts were off on the wings of magic, while Kris headed off, too. She had a Wagon or two to fetch for us.

"There's a ley line feed coming south from the northern Dungeon, east from the western, and north from the Southern Forge Essence." We were all down south, four teams of hardened fighters committed to a task, probably the toughest group for our size on the island. The lines extended out, and crossed at precisely the same point out in the middle of the Inner Sea.

"Playing devil's advocate. That just means there's a ley line conjunction out there, nothing else?" Kris asked, folding her arms and glaring at it.

"No. A ley line would flow through. All three of these are flowing OUT of the middle." I made the lights pulse with running teardrops away from the central point.

"And then they vanish." I waved my hand over all three Dungeons.

"They come out, and they vanish into the Forges. They don't go anywhere. I couldn't even tell if they went 'down'."

"So there's a SOURCE of power out there, one strong enough for the virindi to tap for whatever reason, and Nuhmudira wants to know what and where it is?" Kris went on.

"It's in the middle of the sea. It could be a mile underwater!"

"It's right across the sea from Yaraq. I call the placement suspect. It might even have another vent in the Festival Stone there, but I'd have to check to be sure."

"She had plenty o' time t' do a read there while the undead held the place, t' be sure," the Mick offered.

"How much do ye think there's something out there, lass?" he asked me directly.

"I'm nearly a hundred percent sure there's multiple islands out there hidden by obfuscation, Lord Mick," I confessed, earning everyone's instant hard attention.

"Well, now," Master Oswald murmured, stroking his chin.

"How so, Lady Magos?"

"The wave patterns." He blinked.

"The center of the sea itself shows absolutely nothing from above or from divination. Just miles and miles of nothing. I've asked Tim before if anything is out there, and he's never seen anything.

"But the waves don't break on the shores like they should." I set up ripple patterns along the shorelines with the winds, and began to move the winds around. The officers and their lieutenants leaned in to watch in fascination as I shifted the winds, and the waves with them. The waves all crossed in ways they shouldn't have, and in doing so broke up much of their own momentum. Master Oswald slapped his leg.

"I'm not a seaman, or I might just have noticed that," he confessed, shaking his head.

"The waves are hitting something out in the middle there, breaking up and their force being shunted off to the sides, before spreading out further. The waves are higher to north and south because they've more distance to build up."

"I don't know if she noticed that, but if she's actually got sea legs, she might have spotted it. In any event, it probably fired her suspicions that something is hidden out there, and they built a ship in the north and launched it to find out what."

"Certainly it couldn't be that easy," Master Ben Ten scoffed.

"If something is out there, it has remained concealed for thousands of years, and even the virindi and the undead have found nothing, yes?" he asked me, playing devil's advocate.

"Yes. The undead have found nothing for thousands and thousands of years out there, like they are categorically unable to. Just like the virindi were categorically unable to remove themselves from this place, or sense the force that was keeping them here. Innately magical creatures subject to vagaries of magic that we can't sense."

"The System," the Mick breathed out ruefully.

"It's right in the middle o' Dereth, really. Ye think the System is centered there!"

"I think it is a high possibility. There's an absolute possibility that something very old and very powerful is there. There's further absolute possibility that none of us spell-wielding magic-flingers can find the place, and that likely goes double for Nuhmudira. If they could, the virindi and the undead would have discovered it long ago, and likely the Deep's servants and other interested parties.

"I think Nuhmudira is right, but she's going to sail around out there, get lost, come out the far side, and think she sailed through open seas. If that place could fool the likes of the virindi and most powerful Empyreans, she's not going to sense anything with magical senses." I pointedly turned to Kris and Briggs.

"Well, now," Briggs murmured, pale green eyes staring at that point.

"Well, well, well."

"You're saying there's going to be illusions, mind-fuckery, and dimensional shenanigans going on there," Kris purred sharply.

"And they just aren't set up to deal with Forsaken…"

"They are using at least Eternal-class spells and dominance over the System here to remain concealed. Nobody who uses the System here has any chance of penetrating it. The only thing you two have done is use it to ape a Mana Pool so you can accumulate magic that you actually generate internally. Our Imperial Princess and Commander are not subject to the vagaries of the System, which is why they can break NPC's out of it." There were deep inhalations all around. Master Ben Ten was the first to speak.

"We're here to follow Nuhmudira, so it's a given we are going out there. Are we prepared for what we might find?" he asked me urgently. I shook my head slowly.

"I don't think any of us Casters will remember anything in there if the powers there don't want us to. The main risk is how they are going to react to two Forsaken walking up there and surprising them."

"You can't defend against them, Ryin?" Kris asked me sharply.

"High Empyrean magic should be at least equal to X's. Clearly that wasn't enough to protect them. The entirety of the Virindi Quiddity couldn't tell it was hooked. I'm guessing XII or higher Valences, and I don't have anything that could shut that down."

"Twelves?" the Mick repeated incredulously.

"Such things exist?" he had to ask. Master Oswald's eyes were burning at hearing that.

"Post-Twenty. Eternal-class stuff. The shit you need when you are messing with Old Gods and Mythos Entities when you can't stack up all the perfect circumstances to help you out."

"Can you get something that can block a Twelve?" Kris asked me directly, looking into my eyes.

"Ehhh…" I muttered, averting my eyes.

"Maybe?" I admitted, as she stared harder. Smiles broke out all around.

"Out with it!" Kris ordered, snapping her fingers at me imperiously.

"Damn Powered with their sickly broken magic schemes and stuff!" She wagged her finger at me knowingly.

"You wouldn't even bring that broken crap up if you didn't have something to deal with it!"