Universe's End

Chapter 257: Atmosphere

When Rory had been offered a ride on the mega-glider proto planes, he’d had thoughts of zipping through the air, much like with the regular gliders.

Not… this.

“I apologize if it isn’t quite what you expected,” Miguel chuckled from his own mega-glider. “I did mention the passion of the skybound materials dictates just how well they can resist gravity. While every component of these mega-gliders is skybound, most of the pieces have only enough passion to keep themselves afloat.”

“It’s fine,” Rory said with a sigh, a little let down that instead of a retro version of a jet, they were more like the duck boats you’d see couples peddling down rivers in movies or shows.

“If they were made purely for speed, they’d be able to manage better,” Miguel continued. “Unfortunately, I had to account for the weight of the weapon systems.”

The weapon systems were nothing more than concentrated-energy focusers. Pump in pneuma, and like a mirror focusing sunlight into a laser, the magical energy would be concentrated into thin, highly piercing beams. Rory had to give the man some credit: while the weapon system was far from advanced, or even that potent, compared to what could be found in Ehkorrus, it was a clever workaround that used a ‘low tech’ solution while still delivering a hefty punch, pound for pound. He could see how eight of the mega-gliders flying overhead in the sky, blasting pinpoint pneuma beams, could dissuade any overly curious tier eights when arrayed alongside their regular tier seven fighters.

All of that was to say, Rory could already see ways to improve upon the system, with one idea, an idea he’d been playing around with for quite some time, finally seeming on the cusp of being truly practical.

Soon. Once I’ve gotten the hang of skybound chanting.

A flying fortress, every young man’s dream. A literal castle in the sky.

Alright, maybe rein it in to begin with.

His plans of a flying fortress, maybe even a flying city one day, were still out there. But a weapon platform he could coast around on, that didn’t require the exhaustive use of pushing, pulling, and general point manipulation, was far more viable for flight than what he could do anywhere aside from Ehkorrus or the Reverse mountains, where he’d already mapped out the local points ahead of time.

Leisurely flying about for nearly three hours, Rory finally broached a question he’d been pondering.

“How much do you know about the Thunderous Lord?”

“Oh, that nasty beast?” Miguel spat. “Too much, and too little. It first came around these parts not long after Lady Trailblazer first left. Back then, it was only tier seven, but it was already far too powerful for anyone here to have a single hope of handling. If you have questions why more efforts haven’t been made to expand, it’s because of it, though not as if we’ve had many issues with limited space given the size of our village compared to all the floating land masses.”

“But it still has to chafe to know even if you wanted to, you’re penned in.”

“Correct. Lady Trailblazer taught the importance of adventure and discovery before she’d originally left,” Miguel said. “We’ve managed well all things considered, but over the years we’ve found ourselves capable of less and less exploration as the tier eights have grown more numerous alongside monsters such as the Thunderous Lord. It’s how the Burrow came to be.”

“Tell me a bit about them,” Rory asked.

“Diggers,” Miguel shrugged. “They dig around the surface, tunnels to avoid the stronger monsters that hang out within the surface forest. Air Riders are explorers of the sky, and the Expeditioners are those who explore the surface itself.”

“No sea exploring people?” Rory asked, half joking.

“Once,” Miguel answered. “There are some rather large landlocked lakes within this region, but every attempt at exploring their depths resulted in teamwide annihilation. It was eventually decided that such attempts would be put on hold until the average tier of our people increased.”

“Ahh,” Rory said, briefly recalling memories of the vicious Queen pursuing him and Zoey as they’d been traveling the depths of a terawa ocean world. Without the proper skill set or equipment, he could understand that attempts to explore the depths of any lake, ocean, or even a deep river would likely end badly.

“Anything else you are curious about?”

“Any internal politics?” Rory raised an eyebrow, thinking of Irene for a moment.

“Hah, yes, of course, that is what being human is about, is it not?” Miguel snorted. “Overall, they all wish for the well-being of our people; that remains true of all the groups, but they butt heads and scheme against one another all the time. Until Lady Trailblazer’s return, their most recent attempt at outjockeying one another was to earn the favor of the Honored Eight.”

“The honored eight being the eight of you that remain who knew Zoey personally back in the day?”

“Correct,” Miguel answered. “Unfortunately, none of us is young enough to be interested in such antics, and our ways are more ‘pure’ of self-interested games. The La, Le, and Li clans are especially pushy, believing themselves the inheritors of the will of Lady Trailblazer.”

“La, Le, and Li? As in, LaRoy, LeRissa, and LiJuanto? I thought they belonged to different families.”

“Ahh, perhaps that requires some explanation of how things work here,” Miguel answered. “Everyone has a true family, their biological. LeRissa comes from the Sorolla, for example, but her claimed family is the Le clan.”

“So, her actual name is Rissa?”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘actual,’ as that changes based on who you might ask,” Miguel said. “She decided to enshrine the Le clan name into her name, thus her identified name is LeRissa, but yes, her birth name was Rissa. Quite the little brat growing up, I’ll tell you that.”

“You know her well?”

“I am one of the honored eight,” Miguel snorted. “So yes, I tend to know promising talent. Same with LiJuanto and LaRoy, those three were quite close as children, even if you might not recognize it now.”

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“And the other seven of the honored eight?” Rory asked.

“Mostly, they spend their time in their own seclusion. I’ve mentioned my slow pace of ascension, but I’ve at least managed to continue ascending,” Miguel said. “Four of the other seven are still tier six, one is tier five, with only two of them actually closing in on tier eight.”

“Quite the group,” Rory noted.

“Talent is not always equal, nor is ambition,” Miguel shrugged from his mega-glider. “I tend to be the most forward-facing of the honored eight. I do reckon once you start giving lessons, you will quickly meet the other seven.”

“Noted,” Rory said. Glancing down, he found himself frowning for the umpteenth time during their trip, before finally sighing. In moments, he held his trusty knife as he began tinkering with the mega-glider's energy focuser. He was hardly about to take up some large-scale project while mid-air and mid-flight, but like an annoying itch, he couldn’t help but see easy adjustments he could make to the focuser to improve efficiency. Only a few minutes later, Rory nodded to himself as he put away his tools, the focuser now scribbled over with carved runes and a single gem.

Miguel, meanwhile, was watching him with an amused expression.

“Apologies if my handiwork was that much of an irritant,” Miguel said good-naturedly as Rory gave a short nod.

“Sorry, didn’t mean it like that,” Rory sighed, understanding how it would come across to the original innovator to see his magnum opus treated like a piece of homework that needed correcting.

“Oh, no, go ahead,” Miguel chuckled. “I’ve dabbled in many areas, but I would never claim I was all that talented in any; it’s just that skybound chanting is the first that actually called to me. If you see things you can improve, go ahead. Though, if I may ask, what exactly did you do?”

“Nothing crazy,” Rory waved it off, answering honestly. “Just a quick and dirty runic array centered on absorption, stability, energy, and acceleration runes. I purposely kept it simple in case it ever needs adjusting in the future, and your people don’t want to be utterly stumped.”

“Hmm, yes, Analissa will definitely appreciate meeting you directly.”

“Who?”

“One of the honored eight. Tier six, she took a liking to inscription work after it was discovered so many years ago. She’s our best in that regard, but without a structured education, she’s largely been flailing blindly in the dark, forced to focus on the depth of her individual rune comprehension rather than the width of runes she knows.”

“That’s not a bad attitude, it’s something I have my own inscription artists do, the more ways you can twist a single rune, the more innovative one can be.”

“I’m sure she would appreciate that,” Miguel said with a half-smile. “Now then, I figure you’re probably getting tired of this leisure ride.”

“I’m not sure I would phrase it that way,” Rory said noncommittally.

“Hah, tact. No need to consider my feelings, it’s not something I’m overly invested in anyway. How about I show you somewhere interesting?”

“That being?”

“A surprise,” Miguel answered.

“Alright, count me in,” Rory said after only a moment.

The ‘interesting place’ happened not to be a ‘place’ on their x-axis, as much as it was the y-axis, as Miguel led the way, guiding their mega-gliders to fly upward.

“Regular gliders couldn’t handle this. They’re made with neutral passion in mind; they can only climb a certain height before they’re unable to overcome the limits of their earthbound belonging.”

“I thought any natural skybound materials were, well, skybound?” Rory asked.

“Yes, but the gliders are made with materials that are earthbound as well, in totality being closer to a horizon-bound item.”

“Got it,” Rory said as he noticed Miguel slowly taking deep breaths. “You alright?”

“Fine,” Miguel answered. “The air just gets thin up here, so I’m preparing myself in advance.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed anything.”

“You’re also tier eight,” Miguel pointed out.

“Ahh, right,” Rory nodded.

Climbing higher and higher, even the surface forest was all but impossible to see, even with his particularly gifted eyesight. Rory wasn’t certain if they were higher in elevation than the Reverse Mountains, but the Reverse Mountains existed more as a mirrored Y axis. Rather than being miles upon miles in the air, it was more appropriate to consider them as ‘zero’ miles from their relative zero position, which would be sea level back on the ground.

Or so he supposed, it was something Rory hadn’t spent much time investigating, given that he’d been landlocked, his personal flight capabilities were far from all-powerful after all.

Eventually, even Rory began to notice just how thin the air was, and yet they continued higher, Miguel having gone silent, locked in. Three hours of upward flight later, the oddest thing appeared in his vision, a single floating island only thirty or so feet across in any direction. Reaching it, Rory was somewhat let down to see that there was nothing on the island, just a random floating rock with gently swaying turquoise grass, a few golden glitters appearing and dying out like sparks from a fire within the swaying grass.

“Here,” Miguel said, speaking in short bursts. “Want. To. Chant? Stay. Listen.”

“Have you spent much time up here?” Rory asked, as thin as the air was, he wasn’t struggling quite as much as Miguel, able to speak mostly normally.

“Little,” Miguel said, shaking his head slightly. “I. Use. For. Breakthrough. Focus. On. Stubborn. Debates. Otherwise. No.”

“Stubborn debates? You mean when you’ve got something hard to alter with your skybound chanting?”

“Yes,” Miguel said flatly, not wasting any more breath than necessary.

“Well, I appreciate you showing me this place then,” Rory said.

“I. Return. For. You. Later?”

“No, that’s fine,” Rory shook his head. “I can make my own way back.”

What Rory didn’t mention was that he planned to simply skydive, flickering atop a floating asteroid once he neared the regular elevation of their village, thus arresting his momentum. After that, he’d bust out the regular glider and sail on back.

“Alright,” Miguel nodded. “Good. Luck.”

Boarding his mega-glider, the man began his descent, the second mega-glider somehow following along even without a pilot.

Huh, going to have to ask him about that at some point.

Alone on the tiny island that was nearly scraping the ‘ceiling’ of Aelia’s lower atmosphere, Rory decided to make himself comfortable. Settling in on the surprisingly soft grass, Rory closed his eyes, shutting off all senses except for his sense of sound.

And now I wait, or something.

All things considered, it was rather anticlimactic. Taking Miguel’s advice to heart, Rory made a point of ignoring physical sounds or magical currents, looking for a sense of something he had no real understanding of.

Novel. It almost reminds me of way back in the day, when I first discovered the feeling of pneuma.

Unlike those first few days, when a few hours of meditation was almost too much for Rory to handle, now remaining seated perfectly still for days on end was little issue.

Which was good, because that’s exactly what Rory did. Remaining there for what in the end amounted to a total of ten straight days –though he didn’t realize how long it was at first– Rory listened.

Which was interesting, given how thin the atmosphere was, and how far he was from anything, there was essentially no sound. At first, Rory had heard some noise, finding it curious, only to realize it was the sound of his own body, any minute activity within now audible to him in the absence of any other noise. Thankfully, that was as simple as submerging himself halfway between the physical world and his mental palace, the senses of his physical body bleeding away without sinking in so deeply that he would lose his sense of the world around him.

With the internal sounds of his body blocked out, the silence was his only companion for some time. It was a good thing that one of the first things proto-Eon had done to the bodies of founders was nixing the part of their psyche that required certain levels of stimulation to avoid going crazy, as ten days of 99.9% silence would have broken even the strongest pre-collapse Earth mind.

Sitting there, Rory waited and listened.

And listened.

And listened some more.

Until at last, Rory finally heard something. If it weren’t for the prior point that they couldn’t lose their minds from something like lack of stimulation, he might have even assumed he’d imagined it.

Faint, ever so faint, it was like hearing a word in a different language and suddenly finding oneself able to understand it; the tiniest micromovement of the atmosphere seemed to let out the tiniest ringing chirp.

Eyes slowly opening, Rory found himself smiling.

It wasn’t much.

But it was a start.