Broken Lands

Chapter 412 – Goodbye

Learning to control how she interacted with the Lifeweb wasn’t easy. It didn’t always feel like she was making progress on any given day; sometimes, she did worse than she had the day before. Despite the setbacks, Sophia learned.

Days turned into weeks and then a month, which turned into an entire season. A dozen different Gatekeepers stopped by to meet Sophia, mostly one at a time, but few stayed long once they knew who Sophia was. Two of them offered to take Sophia on as a student when she took a Profession, but none of them were interested in teaching a Called. Sophia turned them down politely; they didn’t know how to make a Gateway or portal to another universe, which meant she’d need to look elsewhere anyway.

Arryn’s team finished their mission and returned to the Broken Lands with a lot of supplies and three Archons: a Gatekeeper, a merchant, and the merchant’s partner. The Gatekeeper was a friend of Ekkiba’s mentor and probably the Gatekeeper who spent the most time asking Sophia questions other than Ekkiba herself. He wanted to see exactly what the interspace conduits held. Sophia wasn’t sure if he was more interested in seeing the damage or in examining something created by Archon of Stone Issvako. Whichever it was, he was willing to pay his own way through the Gateway and evaluate the damage for the privilege of being the first to see it.

Merchant Imvanos Et’Kiel was just as much of a merchant as Arryn was - which meant that while he was a merchant, it was obvious he hadn’t always been one. Sophia got the feeling that his companion was once one of his team members, but it was clear that they were now partners in more than one way. Sophia didn’t think he was sponsored by a larger organization the way Arryn was, but he didn’t need to be. The Archons were far wealthier than the citizens of Mazegate in every way Sophia could think of. The problem wasn’t getting people to be able to make the trek through the Maze. Instead, the problem was finding the ones who could and were also interested in the relatively meager prizes the Broken Lands could offer.

Nissara Et’Kiel was Imvanos’s partner. Sophia thought she might be the real reason Imvanos was willing to take a gamble on the Broken Lands: she wanted to see the Maze. She talked like she was a historian or maybe a cartographer, but she moved like a seasoned warrior. Sophia had the idea that both were true: Nissara was an explorer at heart, and if there was nothing new to explore in her world’s World Tree, she’d happily explore the Maze. It was something she’d never seen before.

Sophia was able to watch them leave. It was a bittersweet moment; Arryn’s mission was a success, but they were still saying goodbye for what might well be the last time. Xin’ri and Ci’an planned to return to the Broken Lands but Sophia and Dav did not.

If Jax and Xin’ri argued about what was going to happen when Jax left, Sophia didn’t see it. All she saw was that Jax went with Arryn and Xin’ri stayed. The fox-eared woman was sad for the first few days after he left, but she didn’t talk about it with Sophia. Sophia did overhear her talking to Ci’an about it a few times, though, so she kept quiet. It was probably best to let the two who were missing their partners lean on each other.

Sophia received infrequent updates from Cliff on his progress on the Tower. The major updates were essentially nonexistent, with the first expansion to additional nodes still incomplete, but Cliff was still very pleased about how the Challenges he built were going and was even more pleased when Taika decided Sophia didn’t need him to hover over her; he could go back to playing with the Challengers and only visit if he wanted to or when Sophia had a crisis. By then, Sophia had very few crises.

The Wanderer continued to visit when no one else was around, but the visits became less frequent and shorter. He had no new clues for them on where the Mage might be and Sophia had fewer and fewer questions about the fourth upgrade. She was going to have to get there before she could really figure out more about what she was doing and that required gathering more Thread, something that was only slowly happening on the floating island.

Despite months of looking, Ekkiba’s information about Issvako was the best lead they had. The Mage’s passage through Arcatiz was unremarkable enough that she didn’t stand out. There were simply too many humans and near-humans that passed through the city that surrounded the World Tree and the nearby floating islands.

The one thing they did manage was to find out what it meant that Issvako lived in the Moonlit Branches. That was the name the Archons gave the city inside the World Tree, their equivalent of the Eidolon’s City of Stars. Shaman Venique didn’t want Sophia to enter the World Tree until she was certain Sophia could handle the stress of moving from one Lifeweb to another, but that didn’t mean the others hadn’t been into the Moonlit Branches. They had, and what they’d learned was that they were at the beginning of a quest.

Issvako didn’t live in the publicly accessible portion of the Moonlit Branches. She lived up high in the boughs. It wasn’t possible to simply stop by and visit her unless you were at the fifth upgrade; that would let you pass through the inner gateways to the region she chose.

For people like Sophia’s team, two upgrades too low to pass through the entrance inside the Moonlit Branches, the pathway was not that easy. They had to pass a series of Challenges in the trunk of the World Tree, Challenges that would escalate in difficulty as they rose. Each set of Challenges would grant access to a higher part of the Moonlit Branches … very much like they were climbing a Tower. It felt incredibly artificial to Sophia, but she could think of more than one reason for the limit. If nothing else, it meant that people were less likely to accidentally be hurt by others who were strong and careless.

It made Sophia glad that the actual administration of the Archons’ government was “among the roots of the World Tree” where anyone could reach, even those without a Sphere or wings. She suspected that many cultures were less accessible. It was all too easy for the powerful to want to limit the time they spent on anyone who wasn’t important enough.

It was something she’d need to figure out how to avoid with the Kestii Tower if she wanted to manage things properly. She still wanted to hand over the responsibility, but that required someone from the Broken Lands reaching the fourth upgrade, which didn’t seem likely soon. Maybe Xin’ri or Ci’an would manage it before they left?

Sophia wasn’t sure if she hoped that would happen or not. If it did, it would be because they were caught in the Broken Lands longer than she wanted. It would also solve the problem about whether or not she needed to return. She might not have wanted to become Empress but that didn’t mean she wanted to abandon it, either. She didn’t have a solution she liked, not yet.

It seemed a long way off until the day it happened.

Shaman Venique met Sophia when she came inside after a long flying sparring match with Dav. They both needed to work off the energy that being stuck left them with; Sophia missed the Arena. “Sophia.”

Sophia turned towards Venique. “Yeah, what is it? Am I leaking too much again?”

The shaman shook her head. “No. That’s fine. You’ve only been spending your nights inside and you haven’t needed any support from Taika or me for the past tenday despite traveling all around the Tree. I think it’s time to admit that you’ve learned as much as I can teach you; experience will be your best teacher now.”

Sophia’s mouth dropped open. She hadn’t expected Venique to just drop it on her like that. What was she going to do now?

Well, she could easily stay with the rest of the team. They probably wouldn’t stop for more than a couple of days, though; all they needed was a few supplies and they’d be ready to start on the Challenge sequence needed to reach Issvako. They were waiting on her, but there really weren’t any other delays. 

“I’m confident you can safely enter the World Tree, now,” Shaman Venique added with a lack of expression that told Sophia she was more worried than she wanted to admit. “Remember that it’s a different Lifeweb; the Lifeweb doesn’t move across the boundary any more than it crosses through a Gateway. It can be disorienting, so a short moment of dizziness or even a small adjustment period is normal but if it lasts longer than that, either return here or send for me; I’ll come to you if necessary. Even stepping into a Challenge can be disorienting for a young Archon. You’ll probably be better off, since you haven’t always been surrounded by a Lifeweb, but be careful anyway. You’re welcome to stay here for a couple more days as you get ready, and remember that you can always visit, but unless you have issues they will be visits, not consultations.”

Sophia nodded slowly. “I’ll take you up on that, for tonight at least. I wasn’t expecting it so suddenly.”

“Of course not.” Shaman Venique flashed a grin at Sophia. “If you weren’t planning to enter the World Tree, I’d have given you some warning. Since you are, though … a surprise is supposed to be the best way to tell if you’re going to fumble your protection. That’s why I told you you’re ready then gave you a couple more days. It’s better to find out now than have a crisis during a fight. Start with easy Challenges first until you’re used to it; that will give you practice moving between Lifewebs, too. If you have any trouble, try joining up with a small team of other Archons; that often helps.”

Sophia sighed internally. No matter how frequently she repeated it, Venique simply never quite seemed to remember that Sophia wasn’t a crippled, wingless Archon. The fact that she’d had to learn an entirely different way to deal with the Lifeweb from the Archons who grew up without the Lifeweb didn’t matter; to Venique, Sophia felt like she belonged and that made her an Archon.

It was a little frustrating and yet also endearing.

“Thanks for the advice.” Sophia tried to keep her annoyance out of her voice. “Is there anything else I should know, anything you haven’t told me?”

She definitely failed. Those last two lines would tell anyone that she was annoyed. At least she might have made it sound like she was only annoyed by the surprise and not Venique herself. Sophia might find Venique’s insistence on seeing her as an Archon annoying, but that didn’t change the fact that she had simply started to help when Sophia needed it and kept being there for as long as necessary. “Are you sure you won’t take anything for teaching me how to deal with the Lifeweb?”

Venique shook her head and repeated something she’d said before. “It’s the duty of any Archon shaman to help the Lost. My grandmother was helped by a shaman of the Et’Zin; it is no burden. It was my turn.” 

Shaman Venique paused, then added something she hadn’t mentioned before. “Four other lost Archons have arrived since you did. One grew up in a small community and simply needed some temporary support; he improved his skills quickly and has moved on. The other three are still less capable than you were three tendays into your stay here. I never had to watch you to be certain you would not leap off the edge of the island to free yourself of the voices. You don’t owe me anything; we owe the people who were never taught how to live as Archons. It’s your birthright.”

Sophia nodded, but she couldn’t help but wonder why she seemed to have the ability yet the other Suras on Suratiz didn’t. She’d been there many times through her childhood and never noticed anything like the Lifeweb. Maybe it was there and she simply didn’t have the capacity to reach it before the third upgrade when the Ability appeared on her Status? “Thank you again, then. I don’t think I’ll be able to pay it forward, but I’ll always remember your help.”