Broken Lands

Chapter 325 – The Eidolon’s Test

Sophia, Dav, and Xin’ri were the first people to arrive at the place indicated by the original seller as the spot to impress the Eidolon. To Sophia, it looked a lot like any of the other open spaces that dotted the edges of the Night Market; the location might be different, but that was all she could tell in the dark. It obviously wasn’t the only place the Eidolon could see, either, since she’d spoken at their last stop.

Well, there was one difference. A slight glow from the side of the area led them to a set of four crates filled with glowing rune-covered crystals. They were definitely in the right place; the crystals the Eidolon promised Dav were already here.

Dav reached down into the box and pulled out a glowing crystal. This one was purple, which didn’t tell Sophia anything. “Should we wait for everyone to get here?”

“There is no reason to wait.” The Eidolon’s voice echoed around them all. “I have already waited long enough.”

Dav seemed to take that as a sign he should hurry, just like Sophia did. He looked down at the crystal he held, then frowned. “Uh, what Ability is this? It’s not labeled.”

“Do you need to know?” The Eidolon sounded curious. “I want to see if you can manage something without knowing. If you cannot, I will tell you the spell it holds. I will tell you a little, however; that may be important. That one requires a target. I recommend targeting yourself.”

Dav tried, but it simply didn’t work. The spell itself didn’t do anything but make the crystal glow a little brighter; when he directed it at himself, Dav didn’t feel anything. It didn’t seem to combine with any of his Calls, either.

After he gave up, the Eidolon admitted that it was a spell used to reduce the weak points in the Shield the Guide provided. The variation included in the spell crystal was not very good in her opinion, but that was what it did. With that information, Dav was able to combine it with his Reflection and make the copy of himself glow purple, but it didn’t give him an additional Ability this time. His guess was that it wasn’t a good enough combination, but no one could predict the Guide.

Dav also felt some resonance from both his Dread Aura and Piercing Chaos Calls, but neither one actually agreed to cooperate. He expected a reaction from Unbreakable, since it was doing almost the same thing, but they didn’t interact at all, not even as much as Dread Aura did.

Before he finished testing the options, the others arrived. Rockfist and Amy arrived first, while Meadow and the others trailed in shortly before Dav gave up trying the options that didn’t work.

The next crystal glowed blue and seemed to create a small amount of water. It easily combined with Dav’s Flowering Firewater Call and let him use the Ability at a slightly longer distance away, but it was a relatively minor effect.

The spell crystals continued like that, producing mostly minor effects when combined with Dav’s Calls; more often than not, the Eidolon had to say what it was before he could get anything to happen. In the end, the entire pile of crystals produced only two more new Calls for Dav:

Mirror Ally

Create a Reflection of an ally with their permission and the use of an Ability Understanding spell. While you maintain the Call, your ally’s Reflection will act as your ally would, including using Abilities as needed, but you must supply the necessary mana.

Reality Anchor

Disrupt a spell with the power of Piercing Chaos and the use of a Precise Mana Manipulation spell. If done perfectly, this can completely cancel the spell and return the world to baseline reality. If it is not completed correctly, there may be side effects. These side effects can be altered with additional infusions of Chaos.

They were both excellent Abilities; Reality Anchor even duplicated one of the major things Dav had been trying to do with his Calls since he discovered it was possible in the fireflower Hollow: blocking spells by Calling them. Technically, Reality Anchor wasn’t the same thing, but the overall effect was similar. The secondary effect of taking on a form based on the spell he Called wasn’t present … if he did it right, as he had the first time he tried. The second time he tried, he went up in fire for a moment after Anchoring a powerful firebolt Xin’ri send his way.

Mirror Ally might well be even more useful than Reality Anchor. Dav often didn’t use all that much of his mana during a fight, so he could afford to spend quite a bit on someone else’s Abilities. It did mean he couldn’t use any of his other Calls at the same time, but a second Nightowl would be quite useful in some fights. 

No one was certain how well a second Xin’ri, Jax, or Sophia would work; Xin’ri and Jax were dependent on equipment they weren’t certain Dav’s new Ability would duplicate, while much of Sophia’s power was in her ability to boost the people around her, which would probably not be doubled. She also had a notably higher Core than Dav, unlike the others, so Abilities would probably not be as effective from a mirror as they were from Sophia herself.

Probably. It was all conjecture until they had a chance to test it, and they certainly weren’t going to take the time here. Knowing he could temporarily duplicate Ci’an if he chose was enough for now. It required enough setup time that it wasn’t something he’d use all the time anyway.

When Dav eventually admitted that he wasn’t going to get a fourth new Ability from the last spell crystal, the Eidolon spoke again. “It was luck that you succeeded with the Cleansing Flame. Luck, or clear vision, I wonder? I could call it vision that you tried with something near to what you could already do and vision that the first thing you tried when you failed was to try an Ability fusion with something you could already do. Do you even know what an Ability fusion is?”

“I can guess,” Dav answered dryly. “But I’ve never heard of it before.”

The Eidolon laughed softly. “I should have expected that. You are only second upgrade, are you not? Few manage them before the third upgrade, even though they are part of the process of the upgrade itself. This version of my Night Market feels weak and your group is split across upgrades; this Tower must be young and still growing into the higher upgrades.”

Sophia blanched. The Eidolon was aware enough to know that she was a copy or version of herself in a “weak” Night Market that belonged in a Tower, but she clearly didn’t know the real situation. This might be the perfect time to find out what the Maze and the Tower that came before it were supposed to be about. She couldn’t pass it up, even if it did mean that she’d have to start with contradicting the Eidolon. “The Tower here fell more than sixteen hundred years ago. All that is left is an area called the Maze.”

“Fell?” The Eidolon sounded doubtful. “No one can break a Tower; you’d have to be as strong as the Guide to do that, and no one has ever managed a spell of that power. Dropping a Tower would require the command of the Tower’s owner. Is anyone truly that stupid?”

Sophia wanted to bury her face in her hands. Not only had people achieved power equivalent to the Guide in the past, she knew some of them back home. Worse, the statement should be obviously wrong to anyone; someone had clearly created the Guide in the first place! 

“It wasn’t stupid,” Jace snapped. Sophia didn’t know the members of team Rockfist very well, but this was definitely the fiercest thing she’d ever heard from the man. “The Broken Lord saw that the Maze spread beyond all bounds and scattered monsters across the country. It grew until only one thing would do; the Tower had to fall, to cease the spread and return the world to peace once more, the peace we knew before the Tower came. The Lord entered the Tower, but he did not return; instead, the Tower fell, as he said it would. Peace returned to the Land after the Broken Lord’s sacrifice.”

Sophia stared at Jace in surprise for a long moment. She hadn’t even realized he was a follower of the Broken Lord, much less that he was a devout one. As far as she could tell, most people weren’t all that devout unless they had a Hallow or were trying to get one.

The Eidolon was apparently less shocked, because the air filled with a light, airy laugh. “And you believed him? Tell me, where are we?”

“We’re in the Maze,” Jace said resentfully. “All that’s left of the Tower that fell is the Maze that surrounded it.”

“And the rest of the world is untouched, returned to what it was before the Tower came? There are people everywhere, building a civilization better than the one that existed before without the need to worry about monsters?” The Eidolon’s tone was as mocking as her words were.

Jace clenched his fists as he tried to find a rebuttal. 

He might have had a chance, until Xin’ri’s cold, clear voice cut the ground out from under him. “It’s been sixteen hundred years and we’re still exploring the ruins of the Empire to learn old techniques that are far better than the modern ones. Maybe, maybe there was an argument a thousand years ago that we were still recovering, but now? I’ve seen the old maps. Eight hundred years ago, there were thriving cities in areas that are now the Wild Lands. We conquer places we used to own, then lose them again, over and over again. The Kestii Empire fell with the fall of the Tower and there has been no Empire since then.”

“The Empire still lives in our hearts!” Jace retorted immediately. “So long as we follow the edicts of the Broken Lord, the Broken Empire holds us all!”

Xin’ri didn’t answer him; she simply shook her head. Sophia glanced between the pair, glad she wasn’t the one who had to speak up. 

The Eidolon’s voice cut through the awkward silence before it really set in. “Does that mean you have nothing more to show me? The boy’s talent with spell crystals is enough to earn them and a little more, but it does not come close to earning what you have asked to be held for you.”

Sophia shook her head. They did have something to show, well, she had something to show, something the Eidolon might not have seen before. “I’m not from the Broken Lands, and I was taught magic very differently. I don’t know what you know or how you were taught, but everyone here keeps being surprised by things I think are basic, so I figured it might be worth showing you.”

“The last person who showed me truly new magic from this world was M’Beja,” the Eidolon countered. “She was spectacular enough that I expect you have heard of her, for all that it was a long time ago. I have seen the magic of over a hundred worlds. Do you truly think that you know something new?”

Sophia did, in fact, recognize the name M’Beja, even without Xin’ri’s gasp. That was the name of the ancient Patron known as the Mage, the one that was reputed to know how to navigate the Maze by reading the magic. Sophia might not have figured that out yet, but she was certain she knew things the Eidolon did not. If nothing else, there was literally no way she could know the runic language Sophia’s father invented. She didn’t think she’d have to pull that out, but it would work if nothing else did.

A grin crossed Sophia’s face as she answered. “Yes, I do. It may not be the first thing I show you, but there are more than a hundred worlds whose traditions fed the ones I know.”