Broken Lands

Chapter 351 – A New Task

“Describe the place,” Tiwaz commanded. It listened while Xin’ri described something that could only be an Imperial communication hub in its inactive position. Communication hubs did more than send messages, but that was the part that was always mentioned because it was their official purpose. 

Once Tiwaz was certain what she was describing, it pulled on records deep in its memory, records it had archived in the belief that they no longer mattered. As with everything else about this highly anomalous group, it was a pleasant surprise to be wrong.

“The Windows is not a bad translation,” Tiwaz temporized while the records it needed moved into working memory. It knew this much even without the records. “That is what the people who worked in the communication hub called the devices. They were windows onto the world, allowing the Empire to find problems before they happened. In the last years of the Empire, before the Tower fell of course, they were used to find monsters that escaped from the Maze or simply appeared elsewhere in the world before they attacked. All Imperial cities and most Imperial towns had a Window room. Despite the relatively small size of Mazegate, we had the largest Window complex outside of Kestii itself.”

Tiwaz decided not to mention what they were used for before the last few years of the Empire. It could work its way around the secrecy protocols if it wanted to, but there was no need. They didn’t need to know that the large Window complex was originally designed to watch the powerful people who gathered in Mazegate. The efforts to view inside the Tower itself always failed, and efforts to view inside the Maze only worked for links, not zones, but even limited sight into the Maze was a success.

The records finished their transition, so Tiwaz quickly digested them and summarized them for human comprehension. “The last record I have of the Mazegate Window complex has the Windows in an active state, searching for something. The particular configuration in use indicates that they were preparing for a manual transport override, but I have no record of the reason or what was being searched for; it is likely that they were being used for an unauthorized reason, though that reason is clearly undocumented. They were not supposed to be used for nonemergency transit; transit of any sort was highly dangerous, more dangerous than travel through the interspace conduits, and I believe that you experienced that danger for yourselves on the way here.”

“Sort of,” Sophia muttered.

Tiwaz didn’t think it would ever escape the curse of having to teach young officers. Sophia wasn’t Imperial, but she was marked by the Wanderer and very similar to a young officer otherwise. She reminded him more of M’Beja’s mages in temperament, but he couldn’t argue with her powers; they were definitely the sort of odd mix the Wanderer’s Hallowed always ended up with. 

Dav was far closer to the norm for one of the Wanderer’s people in personality, but his power set reminded Tiwaz of the Transcendent. That combination was fine, but Tiwaz was glad it wasn’t the other way around. Transcendent’s Hallowed were useful but they had to be kept on a short leash. A very short leash, sometimes.

Tiwaz was fairly certain the Windows were a collaboration between the Transcendent, the Bard, and the Builder. The Wanderer did not like them at all, but he could not stand against the Emperor any more than the Mage could. If the Open Hand or the Beastmaster had stood with them, perhaps they would have had a chance, but neither the Wanderer nor the Mage had enough power in the Empire to change things.

Tiwaz was confident the Transcendent regretted his contribution before the Windows were even finished, but by then it was too late.That was not particularly unusual for the Transcendent.

That was also ancient history, buried and gone. There were more relevant things to tell the youngsters.

“There is no record of spatial resin monsters emerging from the Windows, any more than there is a record of them emerging from the interspace conduits. That would be in the records, if it ever happened. There is also no record of the Windows ever breaking, so I believe we can connect the two. Unless … I do not have the records to show it, but I believe it is possible that the broken Windows are a result of the lack of maintenance on the interspace conduits. They are supposed to be shielded, but they were broken and some Windows used the conduits to reach farther.” Tiwaz could not justify his guess beyond that coincidence but it made sense.

“We could have ended up fighting goo monsters in the interspace?” Sophia stuck out her tongue in an expression of disgust. “I’m glad we didn’t, but if the interspace is broken and that’s why there are goo monsters here, why aren’t they there?”

“It does not explain everything, but it is the best theory I have,” Tiwaz answered. It was really more like a guess, but it thought it was a reasonable one, even if it couldn’t answer why the interspace conduits themselves didn’t leak spatial resin monsters. “In any case, the collection of spatial resin is fairly simple; you only need to capture it in an airtight container. Sealed glass works well. It must then be refined within two days to be functional; for maximum retention, within fifteen hours is recommended. That brings me to the other piece of good news. My scouts have restored a tunnel connection into the area on the map provided by Bai. I have sent one to connect into the network he maintains.”

“So that you can refine it?” Xin’ri glanced towards the closed route that led to the interspace connections that included Othala. “We probably only need a little resin for your preserved summon, but we’ll need a lot of it if you want us to restore your connections to any other facility-minds.”

Tiwaz liked that name. “Yes. It will require some equipment construction, but it is all equipment I can easily make. Once I have done so, it would be of aid if you were to repair the other conduits. I do not know if any of the others are functional, but as both Othala and I are, it seems likely.”

Tiwaz tried not to reveal how important restoring the connections through the interspace conduits was. It especially needed the one that connected to Ansuz in Kestii. As Tiwaz was the coordinator of all, Ansuz was the commander, the mind of the Emperor’s palace. 

It had told the youngsters about the succession crisis that doomed Mazegate and likely all of the Imperial cities. What it hadn’t told them was that the reason no one could be appointed was the failure of the connection to Ansuz. Yes, technically, the Emperor had to appoint city rulers. In reality, he did that by using Ansuz - and Ansuz could work around his restrictions, the same way Tiwaz could. 

Ansuz was the first of them all, after all.

There was very little chance that Ansuz would be willing to appoint any of these youngsters to a position they didn’t qualify for, which meant they needed to reach the third upgrade before Tiwaz proposed them for anything. Jax was the only one who met that requirement, and Tiwaz was not about to propose him as a candidate; he was perhaps a possibility for one of the more secretive positions, but not city lord. He simply didn’t have Tiwaz’s trust.

Xin’ri was Tiwaz’s preferred choice. That was biased because she created things, but Tiwaz had always liked the Builder’s Hallowed. They were the ones who created Tiwaz and all the others like it. Ansuz would probably choose someone else; he believed that the Builder’s people were better off building things than trying to run a city. 

Tiwaz couldn’t predict which of the other three Ansuz would choose. 

Perhaps it didn’t truly matter. They had maintenance authority from Othala and Tiwaz; that ought to be enough for almost anything. The problem with that was the Imperial hubs; they could well require authority beyond what Tiwaz and Othala could provide. Naturally, Tiwaz couldn’t promise anything, even if they did restore the connection to Ansuz, but -

Oh, yes. It should talk to them about the hubs.

“As for your earlier question, I do know about hubs in the Maze. I even know about the Library of Monsters, though it is unfortunate indeed that there is no Librarian. I do not know when that happened; the last I heard, the Library of Monsters was one of the more accessible annexes of the Imperial City, which I believe is the city the Eidolon referred to as the City of Stars. Before the Maze spread, it filled the lowest level of the Tower and was a combination of a training ground, living space for those attempting to conquer the Tower, as well as everything else that makes up a city. If you did not continue higher into the Tower, you could only stay if you took up a position in one of the annexes. An official position, not an informal one. Librarian of the Library of Monsters was one of them.” Tiwaz stopped there to see what questions the youngsters would have. There were always questions.

“Wait, people lived in the Tower?” The question came from Ci’an, who normally didn’t pay much attention to Tiwaz’s statements. It wasn’t the question it expected, either. 

Perhaps it should have expected the question. The Tower was no longer what it once was, and Tiwaz was certain it had heard them talking about camping in links in the Maze. “Yes, of course. Both Called and Professionals lived in the Imperial city hub, once it was developed enough. That was before my time; only Ansuz would remember the early days before the Gates were opened.”

No one said anything. That was clearly a sign that Tiwaz needed to continue. “The Library of Monsters was one of the major training resources, with accounts of all of the major explored biomes and monsters encountered within the Tower. It also had annexes of its own; I am aware of four. One was for testing your understanding of the material; that appears to be the one you have found. The simplest variation allows an indefinite amount of time to learn about the monster and increasing rewards based on the level of detail provided. It was one of the earliest features added, and proved significantly helpful to the expansion of the Library’s collection, as one of the early expansions allowed the user to select monsters that were in the Tower but not in the Library’s records and provided a higher reward level for providing those resources along with the correct information.”

Several of the team nodded. Good; that meant it all made sense to them. “The other three annexes were, in order, a place where you could see a limited representation of what was in a particular book, though it could not adapt to actually let you fight the monsters, a place where you could fight the monsters, if only in a limited fashion, and an annex where you could learn about the valuable parts of monsters. These three all required the monster to be documented in the library, though the librarians believed there was a way they had not found to expand it to any monster in the Tower like the first annex. It was not the best training area for combat, but it was the only one that could even sort of show the strengths of a number of the monsters, so it still saw a significant amount of use.”