Chương 198: 22. Better Than Nothing

With the seal back in place—and more firmly than we'd ever intended—Talla and I spend the rest of the day checking over the cave and surrounding plateau for any lingering signs of the break. Maggie is a little disappointed by the lack of an actual "dungeon raid" but after our angelic encounter, even her enthusiasm for recklessness has been curbed. For now. In the process, I explain the details of our episode to Talla as clearly as I can.

"You said it was examining me, somehow?" she asks curiously.

"Checking you for 'corruption' apparently. It didn't find any."

"Well, I suppose I should be glad of that," she mutters.

"Though I'm not happy to learn that it was messing with my head. No wonder encounters are so rare—for all we know they could be happening all the time without anybody realizing it!"

"That seems unlikely," Eva comments.

"Or more people would have the associated classes. You've got one available now, right?" Talla stares into the middle distance for a moment, then nods.

"I do. Though I'm inclined to agree that the tradeoffs aren't worth it. Not unless I plan to become a member of the clergy."

"Or perhaps even more than that," Evelyn mumbles.

"Either way, what do you suppose it means?" I ask. Talla takes her time mulling the question over as we explore the plateau in comfortable silence.

"I think it was there to investigate the guardian's malfunction," she finally decides.

"Convergence points are supposed to integrate latent space into the world. If that's a function of the guardian, and it's unable to do that for some reason, then it makes sense that an—one of them would come to investigate."

"I'll bet that's also why our winged friend busted out," Maggie adds. I furrow my brow. As usual, I have no idea how she reached that conclusion.

"How do you figure?"

"No latent space means none of the extra magic monsters need to survive," she explains.

"Without the overlapping regions, there's hardly a difference between a convergence point and regular space. Notice how we didn't see any sign of the convergence point spreading? I don't think we're going to—because that's exactly the problem." Talla halts mid stride, rubbing her chin in thought.

"That makes sense, actually. We're used to worrying about convergence points overwhelming the seals and spilling out into the rest of the world, but I've never considered what would happen if it broke the other way."

"You mean it's shrinking?" I ask.

"Not exactly," she hedges, "but close enough. It would blur the boundary between the convergence point and regular reality, and weaken the seal. And it would be the highest order creatures that would feel the lack of magic most acutely."

"Strongly enough to force their way out the moment they sense a powerful source of magic nearby," I conclude.

"Fueled by desperation and starvation." Another similarity to our own breakout. I almost feel bad for the monstrous bat creature now being slowly digested by Nipper's limitless appetite.

"Precisely," Talla agrees.

"Now the only question is how this happened. And I think the key lies in the last thing you heard from that, er, agent." The override—something we've only seen before when the mysterious entity interfered. Thanks to our earlier conversation, even Eva was able to recall that she'd seen similar messages during her own encounter. What we can agree that none of us have seen before, however, is the "reason" listed. I saw it as a symbol—the Greek letter, Omega.

I suppose we can add "Greece" to the list of places we remember from home, now. More importantly, though, I know that it wasn't really the symbol. There was meaning packed into that letter far beyond anything my mind can hold on to. Omega is just what fits into my memory, and I have no idea what to make of that.

"I don't think we're likely to find out more about that here and now," I sigh.

"The Alchemist warned us that some secrets are out of reach, and we haven't so much as scratched the 'test' he left us with." Talla nods.

"That's always the way with discovery. But even if we don't have the answers yet, we have some idea of what to look for. That's better than nothing." Ever the scientist, our Talla. It's comforting, though—the way that she approaches this as just another mystery. It's a perfect research topic for her class, too. I have a feeling that whatever is going on with the convergence points fits very neatly into the category of learning the secrets of the cosmos.

As expected, we don't find anything out of place, and while it's hard to say that we're satisfied with our work here, there's not much more to be done. The seals are restored and charged, so in theory the tribe is safe for at least another year—probably more, since Talla makes a point of optimizing them beyond what she expects the local priestesses to be able to accomplish. Ultimately, though, we just don't know enough to guess at what kind of threat this new anomaly represents.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it All we can do is pack up our camp and move on. We'll warn Jira and Remi about the oddities we encountered, of course, but short of sticking around to research the convergence point—which Talla says is probably a dead end without a much larger cadre of mages and the resources of the Stebaari college—there's nothing more to do. It feels... incomplete.

Not that I don't accept that there's nothing more to do here, but I find myself wishing that there was. There's a restlessness clawing away at my insides, insisting that I need to do something. My thoughts drift back, as they often do lately, to the letter that Draga left us—how it was his dream to spend his life well. To leave the world better than it was when he entered it, even if those weren't his exact words. I wonder, now, if carrying on his legacy means that I must do the same.

Can I still be satisfied with mere survival? Could I ever have been, once presented with another option? I don't know. But if Draga was willing to put his faith in me—in us—then I have no intention of letting him down. * The rain is less frequent now that we're higher up on the mountain. The trees grow more sparse, and when I can stomach a look at the forests below I see the thick mists gathering around the canopies that are responsible for all that rain.

We're not high enough to be completely above the clouds, but the rainforests make their own.

"This is it," Talla declares as we stumble upon a large, flat outcropping. The plateau is spacious, and sparse enough in both animals and vegetation that we have little to fear from interruptions. It has an excellent view of the northern sky, as we've managed to circle around to the other side of the mountain in our travels. On the southern—or ringward—side, our view is a bit obstructed by the mountain peak, but Talla doesn't seem particularly worried about it.

"The Great Wheel would obstruct our view of the stars," she explains.

"Even when it goes completely dark, it's still there, you know." I politely refrain from telling her I already knew that. Her excitement is infectious, and it's clear that this isn't something she often gets to share with people.

"The equinoxes used to be considered unlucky," she babbles happily while we set up camp.

"The disappearance of the Great Wheel was said to represent the Goddess closing her eyes, and that anyone who died outside of her vision would be denied her embrace unless their souls could be preserved." She chuckles and shakes her head.

"Of course, the Goddess isn't nearly so fallible, and the tragedies that tend to occur around the equinoxes are more easily explained by the darkness. It becomes particularly difficult for sailors to navigate without the rings to guide them."

"I suppose that makes sense," I muse.

"In our world, it was the stars that sailors used. Actually, I've been wondering—how do you measure... what's the word?" In our own language, it would be longitude, but I quickly realize that it would be easier to just describe it.

"Your ringwise location?" I try.

"Oh, longitude?" Talla asks, and I file the word away for later.

"Skills, usually. I think. I'm not a sailor or a cartographer, but a few of my fellow astronomers at the college have been trying to solve that problem. It's part of what makes ocean travel so dangerous." Huh. Come to think of it, I don't actually know how they do it in our world, either. Probably computers or something. Allie might have a more historical answer if we ask her, but I doubt it would be actionable.

"Skills, huh?" I mutter.

"I wonder if skills and magic slow down technological development. Why bother with a generalized solution when skills can fill in those gaps?" Talla frowns for a moment, then shakes her head.

"Maybe I'm biased, since I'm a magical researcher myself, but I don't think so. Generalized solutions can save a lot of time and effort that would otherwise go into training, and often compound with skills." She gestures at the horizon, where we can see the vast expanse of desert that leads to the empire she calls home.

"My people rose through adversity to conquer a land as hostile to life as any we've ever found. It wasn't always pretty, and yes—the Goddess' blessings helped—but we did it through hard work and ingenuity. A skill can lead a canny explorer to water, and allow them to go longer without, but the knowledge of how to find and dig wells can keep an entire clan alive in a place where nothing else survives.

"And besides," she adds, turning to me with a fire in her eyes that I've rarely seen.

"There will always be those for whom the simple answers aren't enough. People who are driven to discover more, not for what they might achieve with that knowledge, but simply out of a desire to know." People like her, in other words. I nod slowly, conceding the point.

"You're right. Sorry, that was a bad assumption." She waves me off with a smile, the fire from moments ago entirely forgotten.

"It's fine! You come from a world where there is no magic, and I can see where you'd get the idea. Technology could certainly fill the gaps left by skills and magic, but I don't think it works the other way around."

"Why not?" I ask. Even though I've already taken the earlier point about why it hasn't, I'm a little curious about why she thinks it couldn't.

"Well, take alchemical arms, for example," she says.

"Saban and Kellah got into quite a few arguments about them while we were traveling." I wince slightly, hearing two of the names on Allison's list from the lips of another. The list of people whose deaths we're responsible for—those we know, at least. There's a much longer list of those we don't—mostly at my hands. I should feel worse about that, but mostly I just feel bad about not feeling bad about it.

"Saban argued that the alchemical weapons are a crutch," she continues, not noticing my discomfort.

"That Kellah was entirely dependent on the powerful weapon, and that it would make his skills weaker in exchange." We'd never heard as much out of Saban, when we knew him. Then again, he wasn't particularly talkative to begin with. I still have the leather soles he made us—even after we got better shoes, I couldn't bring myself to discard them.

"Is that how it works?" I ask.

"Better class quality in exchange for adversity?" Talla shrugs.

"It's hard to tell, but I don't think it's that simple. Kellah certainly didn't think so, and he challenged Saban to a sharpshooting contest to settle the argument. More than once." I laugh, despite myself.

"Doesn't sound like they settled it at all, then. Who won?"

"Saban, every time," she admits.

"But it was closer than you'd think, considering that Saban was a tier higher and measuring his core class against Kellah's secondary." The sound of screaming and the smell of burning fur lingers in the back of my mind, but I sigh and try to set it aside. It doesn't do me any good to keep beating myself up over it.

"If nothing else, there's one point in Saban's favor," I note grimly.

"Oh?"

"You can't forget to reload a bow."