Broken Lands

Chapter 348 – An Unpleasant Surprise

The Eidolon continued in her explanations for several hours. In the end, Sophia gathered a good bit of information about hubs and what they meant in the Tower the Eidolon came from.

A Hub “belonged” to one person, who made all of the decisions about it. That person had to be qualified; in the Eidolon’s case, she had to earn her Court Hub from the ruler of the City of Stars hub and then figure out how to advance it. She’d picked choices that allowed her to learn the things she was interested in rather than focusing on earning wealth from her Court, but there were many different options.

The buildings in her Court were reserved for those who brought the Eidolon new magic; most used them for experimentation or teaching, but some made things or even ran businesses. The Eidolon was particularly fond of one bakery that made delicious enchanted food.

In order to enter the Court during the daytime, you had to have either the Eidolon’s permission to use a building or the invitation of one of the residents. The Eidolon was willing to offer that permission to Sophia, as she qualified, but she wasn’t certain it would work. The process involved her sending both the recommendation and the reason to her original self for approval, but she couldn’t reach her original self.

At night, the open spaces turned into a Night Market. That was one of the Eidolon’s Court’s hub advancements, based on a City of Stars hub advancement that allowed for night-time markets with limitations. As far as the Eidolon could tell, only the nighttime version of her Court was here; she had no memory of a daytime activation where she couldn’t properly reach her original version.

That led to the Eidolon’s explanation of her being a copy. It was nothing more than another addition to the Hub: entering it into the Tower to be used as a standalone area with a version of her and her people. The fact that they all appeared as starry sketches of people was because they were from the City of Stars. It wasn’t what they really looked like, but copies were always obviously different from the originals and that was the method the ruler of the City of Stars picked when he opened up the advancement. 

The City as a whole couldn’t be duplicated, but many of its annex hubs could be, like the Eidolon’s Court, as long as the owners of those hubs chose to pursue it. Many did; the Night Markets were especially popular, since they were a good way to bring in more aurichalc.

That relieved Ci’an’s fears about Marcie a lot. The Library of Monsters probably required a Librarian to own it, and it wouldn’t be duplicated unless Marcie chose to do so. Ci’an wasn’t certain if Marcie would or not, but at least it wasn’t something that would be done to her.

Most Hubs started off with a theme, like the Court the Eidolon owned. It then became unique after she chose which way to develop it. The Eidolon wasn’t certain if a Library of Monsters existed in the City of Stars, but she assumed it did; otherwise, why would the Guide let her talk about the City?

Unfortunately, her lack of knowledge meant she couldn’t give much advice on how to build out the Library. They’d just have to see what the Guide offered. The one thing she could say for certain was that the Library of Monsters was unusual; it shouldn’t be as filled out as it was when it found it. The Eidolon’s guess was that the base Library probably started with a single bookcase, possible even a single shelf. On top of that, the Monster Identification area had to be an advancement. 

That seemed to tie in with the notification Sophia managed to trigger by completing a Task without even knowing it existed. Taking over from a previous Librarian could explain why the Library was partially filled out. That was something the Eidolon could partially explain when she thought about it; there were ways to hand off an existing hub if you wanted to retire from managing it. If you didn’t find a successor, it would slowly return to its original state once you were gone long enough. The time since the Tower fell was far longer than was needed for that, so the Eidolon assumed that the Library’s current state was probably connected to the errors in the notification.

Sophia didn’t learn much more than that before the Eidolon prompted her to display another spellform to “pay” for both the information the Eidolon shared and the stuff Xin’ri picked out for their team and for Mikka. This time, Sophia decided to explain the simple ‘bolt’ spell variant; it was really quite basic but highly adjustable. Sophia couldn’t read the spellforms the Guide used, but they acted enough like the one she knew that she was certain they had to be similar.

Just like the last time, they walked out of the Night Market as the day was starting to brighten the sky but before dawn actually reached the Market itself. 

Sophia wasn’t certain what she’d see when she existed, but from the few things Mikka said, she sort of expected she’d see Mikka’s former team carving up carcasses for their valuables; they preferred to hunt a small group of monsters, pull them outside the zone, then take care of them in the link where it was a little safer. 

That wasn’t what she saw.

Instead, the link smelled of fire and burnt meat. A look around showed the reason for the smell: the tents that hadn’t been taken down when Sophia and her team entered the zone were still there, if “burnt and collapsed” could count as “still there.” 

Well, not quite all of them. One of the tents seemed to have been torn down and thrown across the middle of the campsite, where the fire was originally. That could explain the fire, maybe, but it still seemed odd. It reminded her of the fires set by the flame beavers back when they were traveling from Old Kestii to Casterville.

“Broken sword!” Mikka exclaimed after she stepped through the link-gate, last to return to the link. “What happened? Where is everyone?”

“I don’t know,” Jax answered immediately, “But we’d better look. I don’t like the looks of this. Everyone, keep an eye out; this doesn’t look like an accident and I’m not convinced it was monsters, either.”

Sophia wasn’t sure what made Jax jump to that conclusion, but she wasn’t about to argue. The only thing she could think of in the Maze that would set fires like that but not stick around was a flame skyeagle, and unless there were a lot of them, they didn’t set fires this large that quickly. She could maybe see a flight of skyeagles damaging the tent setup enough for everyone to run and then setting it on fire afterwards, but that was really the only way she could see this happening.

Any chance of a nice explanation like that vanished moments later when Jax lifted the still smoldering partially burnt tent to reveal a boot. A little more work removing the fallen pieces of tent showed that the boot wasn’t empty; Niklaus lay on the ground partially dismembered, more than a little burnt, and very distinctly dead.

Sophia frowned. Something wasn’t right. “I see the fire mana, but what’s that?”

An odd gleaming mana resided in each of Niklaus’s huge wounds, slowly dissipating and partially covered by the fire mana in places, but definitely still present. Sophia bent closer to get a better look. It was familiar, but she was no mana expert and it took her a moment to place what it had to be. It was associated with the wounds, like it was involved in their creation. It was also a solid sort of mana, with definite ties to something material. Sophia couldn’t be certain what it was, but she could guess. “Is that metal mana?”

“What?” Jax turned towards Sophia.

“In the wounds. There’s a little bit of residue from something I think is metal mana. It’s possible it could be from a monster that turns its claws to metal?” Sophia didn’t really believe her own suggestion. It was far more likely that it was something else. She sighed and gave the most likely explanation. “Or maybe it’s from a shapeshifting weapon. That can be done with metal mana too.”

“Not a sharpness enchantment or something like that? Maybe a monster sharpening and lengthening its claws?” Ci’an suggested.

Sophia shook her head. “Not unless they were already made of metal. I mean, sure, metal mana can do that to something already made of metal, but it’s not what you’d pick for an enchantment. Metal mana doesn’t really know what sharp means, you really want a different mana for that. Durability or weight are better things to affect with metal mana, but they wouldn’t leave it behind this way. This really looks like it was being actively used while he was injured.” 

She paused, then added the most gruesome option. “It’s like something tried to grow the metal through where his body was and that’s what cut him up. That would leave residue like this. It’s pretty recent, too, so I’d bet he died about when the fire was set.”

That was pretty obvious, really, even without the mana that remained. He couldn’t have been dead for all that long; they were only in the Eidolon’s Night Market for about twelve hours. The team probably hadn’t entered their own zone for half an hour or an hour after that, given when Mikka showed up in the Night Market; Sophia wasn’t entirely certain of the timing but she knew that much. The team would then have had to hunt something down and then return to the zone to take it apart, which would take more time. Sophia couldn’t really be any more sure about it than that, though.

That assumed they ever made it into the zone, though, didn’t it? “Mikka? Do you know if they stayed in the link or went off to hunt?”

“Th-they went through the link-gate before me, then I used your link-gate instead of theirs,” Mikka answered shakily. She was obviously more bothered by Nikolaus’s death than Sophia was, but that only made sense; she’d known him for years, while Sophia hadn’t.

Sophia paled for a moment as she thought of Nikolaus as a person, then focused again on the body. It wasn’t real; it was more like one of the police dramas Amaia sometimes watched. If she thought of it like that, it was just an interesting special effect. She could think about everything else later.

“Then we’d best find out if the rest of them are here.” Jax said firmly. “Xin’ri, can you help Mikka? Dav, Sophia, we need to clear this off and check the - oh.” He stopped short when his next yank on the partly burnt tent canvas revealed an arm that couldn’t be one of Niklaus’s; it was much too small and Niklaus still had both of his arms. 

Sophia watched as Xin’ri guided Mikka away from the devastation. She carefully blocked the view with her own body, then settled Mikka down with her back against the link’s wall. Sophia couldn’t make out the words, but she could tell that Xin’ri was speaking.

Sophia was immensely glad she wasn’t the one trying to keep Mikka calm. She knew she’d be terrible at it.

She moved to help the rest of her team check for possible survivors. She didn’t expect any, but it would be nice to be proven wrong and some people could survive the strangest things. Having the right sort of Ability would help, and she had no idea what Abilities the rest of the team had.