Broken Lands

Chapter 410 – Don’t Beat the Wind

Sophia’s gaze shifted to Ekkiba’s wings. They weren’t solid. The pastel streamers that moved across them also moved across Ekkiba’s body; was that what Kestiben meant when he talked about “giving up solid-ness?” 

It didn’t look like any element Sophia could name, but if she used the word “Affinity” instead of “element,” it made sense. Anything could be an Affinity.

Ekkiba nodded. “It’s not just elements, it’s whatever is the core of who you are. I don’t mean your Signature; Signature’s tied to the second upgrade. Manifestation isn’t. The Guide doesn’t help with manifestation at all.” 

She huffed slightly. “It’s common and I can see why; it’s not just the safety it brings in the Gates, most Archons aren’t Gatekeepers and will probably never go through a Gate at all. It makes some things a lot easier. If I weren’t a Gatekeeper, I’m not sure I’d go through with it … it’s a huge change, and well … I like eating and I like holding my baby with something other than magic.”

“I’m not a baby! I’m a big boy!” Kestiben protested.

Ekkiba leaned back on her haunches and ran her claws through the fur on her son’s back. “Yes, you are. You’re almost as big as I am. You’ll always be my baby.”

“Mom!” Kestiben protested.

Sophia grinned at the pair but didn’t let the byplay distract her. Manifestation was also interesting but it wasn’t what she needed to know about right now. “I don’t have trouble with the Origin; dragons are children of the Origin, Affinities given form, and I’m half dragon.” 

She didn’t know why Affinities took the form of a scaly winged creature with claws, but they did. She also wasn’t sure if the other Four Icons were also children of the Origin, but they almost had to be, didn’t they? No matter whose story of their origin she heard, they were always grouped together back at the beginning of things. That was why it was so weird that the Guide didn’t know what dragons were. 

Okay, she hadn’t heard of the other Icons either, but she wouldn’t have. They were far less common than dragons back home.

Sophia pushed the thought away. There were more important things to think about. 

“Dav can also make it without protection, without stabilization. I can protect him.” She hoped she was right about that. He came through fine the first time, after all, even though he wasn’t a dragon like her. He’d even managed to harness the scars from the experience and turn them into his Sphere while repairing his physical form to its original state. That had to be helpful. “He was fine in the damaged interspace conduits when we repaired them, unlike Ci’an. She probably can’t come safely, and Xin’ri …. Xin’ri wouldn’t be safe, either. But Dav and I can manage it.”

Sophia wasn’t sure Xin’ri would want to go through a Gateway without Jax in any case, so she might be relieved if she couldn’t go because it wasn’t safe. That wasn’t a problem here, but on Dav’s home it might be, especially if the Gateway risked collapsing because it wasn’t stabilized.

“Damaged interspace conduits?” Ekkiba leaned forward again until most of her weight rested on her forelimbs. “Multiple damaged interspace conduits and you repaired them? How? Why didn’t you hire a Gatekeeper team? That’s much easier than making new ones!”

“They don’t go where we need to go.” Sophia paused at a sudden thought. She’d thought of the conduits as broken, but that couldn’t be the case. If they were completely broken, a simple patch wouldn’t have been enough to get them going again … would it? They didn’t run through normal space, so there was no reason to assume they’d still be “next” to each other …or was there? She just plain didn’t know enough about the Origin to be certain. 

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She didn’t know enough about their stabilization to be certain. She knew enough about the Origin to know that if something wasn’t there, they wouldn’t still be connected. The Origin was called Chaos by some people for a reason, even though it wasn’t completely chaotic. There were rules. Things that were once connected were always connected, but unless the rod of metal they used had some special properties she didn’t know about, that wasn’t a full explanation. 

Sophia slowly told Ekkiba about the old conduits in the Broken Lands. She started with the one Othala asked them to repair, then moved on to Tiwaz and all of the connections that came off his complex, including the Windows even though they hadn’t repaired those. She went into detail about what she saw and the material they used, from the long-stored stones and pitcher at Othala’s to the goo they recovered from the monsters that came out of the Windows. 

She didn’t know everything. She didn’t remember all of the steps and she hadn’t worried about the process for making the capture jars or how Xin’ri purified the goo or what the rods beneath it were made of. What she did know was plenty to keep Ekkiba’s attention.

Especially the name she remembered. Archon of Stone Issvako wasn’t just the architect of the interspace conduits. She was a Gatekeeper famous enough that Ekkiba knew her name.

She was also still alive. 

Issvako famously turned down more commissions than she took, and Ekkiba had no idea what made them worth taking. Ekkiba laughed softly. “Not that many people ask anymore. Not only does Issvako reject most people, she makes it hard to ask in the first place. She lives in the boughs of the World Tree and refuses to talk to anyone who doesn’t come to her in person. It’s not enough to be able to fly; the Moonlit Branches only open for those who have flown through the Tree.”

“Have you ever met her? Do you think she’d be willing to help us?” Sophia wasn’t sure if any of the Archons could help, but this was still the best chance she had. The best Dav had done was to learn of the Gatekeepers. They spent a lot of time traveling and he hadn’t managed to find any that were in Arcatiz, even one as junior as Ekkiba. Sophia suspected that the only reason Ekkiba was there was her son.

He was also the reason they met, and Sophia suspected that was confirmation there weren’t many others around. She couldn’t believe that an untrained child would feel something his seniors couldn’t, not when Ekkiba could. Ekkiba was clearly just as curious as her son; she just needed an excuse to come look that he didn’t.

Ekkiba shook her head. “I’m not strong enough to make it to where she lives in the Moonlit Branches and the last time Issvako actually took a request, I was only second upgrade. Too weak to work in a conduit.”

Sophia asked for more details on how to reach Issvako, but all Ekkiba knew was that you had to “fly through the World Tree.” As a Gatekeeper, Ekkiba was a Professional and had never been inside the World Tree that seemed to be Achons’ Tower. She didn’t even know how Issvako made it as high as she did, since she was also a Professional.

It was a possibility. They’d have to find out more about what Issvako thought was interesting and how to get into the Moonlit Branches, but Ekkiba clearly wasn’t the right person to ask. 

Sophia changed the topic back to the damaged interspace conduits in the Broken Lands, rather than the person who made them in the first place. She wanted to know how long the patches would hold; it would be awful if they failed and isolated the crystal minds again.

Ekkiba didn’t know, but what she did know was that the patch wasn’t meant to hold for forever. She thought the fact that the original patch from Othala to Tiwaz had held for more than a year already was impressive, especially since she’d never heard of conduits with the level of destruction Sophia described. “You need someone to look at them and see what they need. I can talk to my mentor and see if he’s available; he’s a junior Gatekeeper and does a lot of repairs. This will probably need a senior Gatekeeper, but he’d know and I wouldn’t.”

Sophia nodded, then turned as a shape in the sky caught her eye. “He should talk to Arryn; he’s in charge of the expedition looking for trade and that sounds like trade to me. He’s also the one with money and I’m sure you’ll need that.”

The shape in the sky was Shaman Venique, who was flying towards them at the fastest speed she could manage. It wasn’t very fast; Sophia had already found out that she could literally fly circles around Venique when Venique was going all out without any trouble. The shatter-winged shaman floated even when she tried to hurry.

Shaman Venique had a huge smile on her face as she touched down on the ground near Sophia. “Sophia! Congratulations, this is the first time I’ve seen you hold a barrier while talking to anyone outside.”

Sophia blinked in confusion. She wasn’t holding a barrier, at least not as far as she knew. At the same time, Venique was right; the mental noise wasn’t overwhelming. In fact, she didn’t even notice it until she looked for it. She was tired, as if she’d been running instead of talking, but her head didn’t hurt. “Taika?”

“You were doing fine,” Taika said without moving out of his curled-up position. “I was watching. You didn’t need my help.”

“Told you!” Kestiben shouted cheerfully. “Ride the wind, don’t beat it. It will work with you if you let it. You were beating the wind. Don’t push it away, welcome it.”

“I’m sorry,” Ekkiba sounded thoroughly embarrassed. “That’s what I told him when he was learning to fly, he likes to help other fledgelings by repeating it. I’m not sure why he thought you needed to hear it.”

“It’s fine,” Sophia waved off the apology. “In fact, I think he was right. I was trying everything I could think of to protect myself rather from an Ability than figuring out what it is supposed to do and working with that. Venique, why didn’t you mention that as something to try?”

“Because that’s not how it works.” The shaman paused, then groaned softly. “That’s not how it works for lost Archons, they need to learn to stand far enough apart to think and then learn how to dive in; few lost Archons ever learn how to work with the Lifeweb well. That’s something their children learn. But lost Archons don’t usually have a Lifeweb Ability; I didn’t even think about how that would change things. I should have; I’ve never seen an Ability interfere before either, and I just told you to suppress it. I should know better than that!”

“You did the best you could,” Sophia told her. “It didn’t occur to me either. So … thank you, Kestiben. You’ve helped me a lot. Ekkiba, thank you as well. Both for letting Kestiben talk to me and for listening to me talk about the interspace conduits I’ve seen. I think I need to go get some sleep now, but I’d be happy to talk to you on another day if you happen to fly past.”

“It may be a little later in the day if I’m not rounding up this rascal,” Ekkiba offered, “But if I see you, I’ll stop in. Come on, Kestiben; we need to see if any resonance echoes have shown up at that Gateway over there.”

She pointed, then leapt into the sky. 

Kestiben followed her hand, then ran several steps and jumped. It looked positively awkward, but he was in the air and climbing before he reached the edge of the island. “Echoes!”

Sophia smiled and waved, then headed inside. Her bed was calling.