65. Dangerous Ground

Chapter 065
Dangerous Ground

Far to the north of Cyoria, square in the middle of a heavily forested mountain range, there was a secluded valley devoid of any vegetation. Instead, it was covered in sharp, broken rocks of all shapes and sizes. There was no obvious reason for the place to be so lifeless and desolate, especially considering how verdant the surrounding mountains were. As he stood on a cliff overlooking the valley, Zorian wondered about that. Was the valley so rocky and desolate because of what made its home here, or was it the other way around and the valley’s inhabitants had picked it precisely because it was so suitable for themselves? Probably the former, but one could never quite know… there could be some subtle geomantic magic surrounding the place.

“Zorian,” Zach said, interrupting his thoughts. “The view is… nice, I guess. If you like rocks or something. But why the hell are we here, exactly?”

“You have no appreciation for nature’s wonders,” Zorian sighed. Assuming this was actually a natural wonder, that is, and not something the earth elementals had done to make their home more comfy for themselves, anyway. “You were with me when we talked to that hunter community a few hours ago, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Zach nodded. “You told them we’re searching for elementals and they sent us here. Which is fine and all, but why are we searching for elementals all of the sudden? You should know by now that I really hate the whole mysterious act. If you don’t start explaining things right now, I’m starting a wrestling match with you right here on the edge of this cliff.”

Zorian gave him an incredulous look, before pointing at the sharp, spike-like rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

“Don’t think for a second I won’t,” Zach warned. “One restart cut short is a small price to pay if it will teach you not to do this crap anymore.”

“It wasn’t anything sinister,” Zorian sighed. “It’s just that it’s a pretty crazy idea and I didn’t want to bother you with it. I did say you could sit this one out, didn’t I?”

“You forget who you’re talking to,” Zach smiled widely. “I’m the guy who fought the most infamous dragon of our time just to see if I could do it, descended as deep into the Dungeon as I could before dying and took on the entire Ibasan invasion force all by myself. I’m no stranger to crazy ideas.”

“True,” Zorian said.

“Besides,” Zach said, sounding more serious this time. “We’re in this together. Stop trying to do things alone, it’s getting seriously annoying.”

“Fine, fine, I get it,” said Zorian, raising his hands up in defeat. “Look… the point of all this is to try and find where the other primordials are imprisoned.”

“What?” Zach asked incredulously. “We’re having so many problems with this Panaxeth thing, and you want to find more?”

“Yes,” Zorian nodded. “Well, maybe. As I said, it’s a pretty crazy idea. It’s just… I was thinking I might need to set loose a primordial into the world, and I realized that doing that with Panaxeth wouldn’t be a good idea. Panaxeth’s prison is in the middle of Cyoria, and too much attention is already on it. So I thought, why don’t I find my own primordial, then? One that is in some isolated place where nobody is going to disturb us while we work?”

Zach looked at him like he just declared he was secretly a shapeshifted dragon and started sprouting horns.

“You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” he asked.

“What, described the idea in the most disturbing possible way?” Zorian asked back with a smirk. “Yeah.” He shook his head. “It’s true, though – that’s essentially what I was thinking about.”

“Why, though?” Zach asked. “Is this about finding a way for you to leave the time loop?”

Zorian looked at his fellow time traveler in surprise.

“Don’t be so surprised,” Zach scoffed. “You already told me how space itself seemed to collapse when Panaxeth tried to leave his prison. It’s natural to wonder if that kind of spatial hole could be used to fashion some kind of passage out of this place. I’ve thought of it too. Admittedly, I have no idea how you could actually go about doing that…”

“Neither do I,” Zorian admitted. “But it’s the only thing I could think of.”

Zach hummed thoughtfully. “I thought you said the restart immediately collapsed when Panaxeth got out of his prison, though?” he said. “Last I spoke to you, you thought Panaxeth getting out of his box was one of the conditions for terminating the time loop. Did you change your mind about that or do you have a way around that?”

“It’s obvious the time loop can be fooled in many ways,” Zorian said. “As such, I thought that maybe if we enclose the area in a pocket dimension and then release the primordial, the time loop might not detect that as a breach.”

“Why do you… oh!” Zach said, eyes widening as he realized what Zorian was getting at. “Because the primordial is still technically imprisoned! It would have to breach the pocket dimension we created before the time loop would consider it ‘free’.”

“That’s the idea,” Zorian said with a nod.

“Would the primordial have any trouble doing that, though?” Zach asked with a frown. “I doubt we could make a prison anywhere near as strong as these divinely crafted prisons that are currently holding them.”

“We could always layer multiple pocket dimensions around ourselves,” said Zorian. “At least I hope. I don’t know how pocket dimensions work, but they can obviously be stacked on top of each other to some extent. Otherwise, the time loop wouldn’t be able to recreate the various pocket dimensions scattered around the world.”

“You know, this raises an important question,” Zach said. “Where are we going to find someone to teach us how to make pocket dimensions? I mean, that’s one of the rarest magical disciplines out there. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a mage that can create one. I admit I haven’t been looking for those secrets very hard, but still. What’s worse, you’re talking about pocket dimension creation of incredible scale and sophistication – we need someone who is incredibly good at this obscure magical skill, not someone who can barely do it. Finding such a person… I think this could be even harder than gathering all of the pieces of the Key.”

Zorian patiently listened to Zach’s concerns, nodding slightly from time to time. It was all so very true. And yet…

“I’m pretty sure I already know a mage that is very good at creating and manipulating pocket dimensions,” Zorian said.

“What? Who?” Zach demanded.

“Silverlake,” Zorian said, sighing heavily. He really didn’t want to admit he needed her, but…

“The crazy witch lady that sent you to kill the grey hunter?” Zach asked incredulously.

“The same,” Zorian confirmed. “Think about it. Why else can’t we locate her damn hut? I refuse to believe her wards are good enough to resist a systematic sweep of the whole area from both of us. It’s just not possible. And she isn’t editing our memories, either – unless she is a godlike mind mage that makes even aranea elders look like children in comparison, I would at least be able to tell my mind had been tampered with after the fact.”

“You think she hides her hut inside a pocket dimension?” Zach asked.

“I don’t see what else it could be,” Zorian said.

“Huh. Well, I guess we better find a way to get those stupid eggs soon, then,” Zach said with a careless shrug.

As if that would be the end of it. Zorian had a suspicion that even if they brought Silverlake the eggs, this would just be the start of their headaches with her.

Regardless, this was the end of that topic for a while. After a short discussion of the best route to take through the rocky labyrinth, they used a flight spell to float down the cliff and onto one of the bigger rocky outcroppings jutting from the valley. From there, they decided to conserve mana by trying to advance on foot. Also, the hunters claimed that the earth elementals did not appreciate people flying over their home and would hurl rocks at people who offended them in such a way.

An hour later, they realized they had taken the place too lightly. The landscape held no predators trying to ambush them, but it was exceptionally hard and dangerous to traverse on foot. The ground was rough and uneven, with a labyrinthine arrangement of ridges and rocky outcroppings, and it was often far less solid than it appeared to be at first glance. A careless step could easily result in it crumbling away beneath one’s foot, with disastrous consequences – the stones of the valley were very angular and sharp, and sometimes even shaped like knives and caltrops, so any falls or imbalanced flailing easily led to serious injury.

Neither Zorian nor Zach ended up injured, but it did make their progress terribly slow and miserable.

“Ugh,” Zach said, casually firing a weak disintegration wave at the nearby rock in order to smooth it out a bit. Once all the edges and spikes were gone, he sat down on the stone and gave Zorian a long look. “I must say, those hunters we talked to have quite a penchant for understatements. When they said the elementals were ‘a bit tricky to reach’, I expected something easier than this.”

“Well, they’ve been living in these mountains for months,” Zorian said. “Maybe for them, this is just tricky rather than a hard slog. But yeah, this is getting a little ridiculous. At this rate, it will take us a whole day to reach the center.”

“So… do we just fly there or what?” Zach offered.

“The hunters said the elementals fire on people flying over their home,” Zorian said, shaking his head. “I know we could probably survive their barrage, but we’re here to ask for their advice. We don’t want to piss them off before the talks even begin. Let me try something.”

Having said that, Zorian quickly fished out a brilliant red potion out of his backpack and downed it.

Grey hunters had amazing senses. The most prominent of these, of course, was their ability to sense magic, but that was actually just the tip of the iceberg in regards to a grey hunter’s ability to perceive the environment. By now, Zach and Zorian had figured out that grey hunters also had an incredibly acute ability to sense air currents and the vibrations in the ground. Together with their amazing magic perception and other, more mundane senses, it gave grey hunters an almost omniscient awareness of everything in their immediate vicinity. The potions of grey hunter perception that Zach and Zorian had been creating in recent restarts mostly ignored all of these in favor of focusing on the grey hunter’s magic perception. This was both because they were treading new ground and had to prioritize, but also because even if they could condense the totality of grey hunter’s perception inside a single potion, it was doubtful that either of them could process the information without blacking out.

Recently, though, Zorian had decided to experiment a little with the tremor sense part of the grey hunter’s perception and commissioned a potion that would grant this ability from the alchemist they were working with. That was the potion he had just drunk, and this was going to be its first real field test.

About 10 seconds after he drank the potion, Zorian felt his skin tingle before his awareness… expanded. It was muted at first, but that changed quickly the moment Zorian took a step forward. He felt his foot hit the ground in a way he never had before, and the alien sensation almost brought him to the ground right then and there. A strong, vivid pulse emanated from his foot, spreading itself through the rocky labyrinth around him before being reflected back at him. In less than a second, he had a three dimensional map of his surroundings impressed into his mind.

“Give me a few minutes to get used to this,” he told Zach.

After fifteen minutes of pacing back and forth and jumping in place, Zorian was reasonably sure he could crudely interpret what his new sense was telling him. However, even this, which was probably just a shadow of what the real grey hunter was capable of, should allow him to effortlessly navigate through the valley. He motioned for Zach to follow him and they restarted their journey towards the elementals’ home.

Travel was very fast this time. Every step that Zach and Zorian took sent vivid pulses through the ground around them, mapping their surroundings in Zorian’s mind and allowing him to identify which ground was too unstable to support their weight. Zorian felt this was probably how the grey hunter always managed to detect buried traps that Zorian had tried to snare it with, even if they were totally non-magical. Every time it performed one of its damn jumps, the shockwaves generated by its landing would pulse through the ground around it, informing it of not just the layout of the ground around it, but also of its contents.

But that was a thought for another time, because it wasn’t long before they had finally reached the place they had been looking for.

They knew they had reached it because the rocks around them crumbled to pieces and six earth elementals stepped out of them to block their path.

They were a diverse bunch. One was a huge boulder with four stubby legs and a pair of massive rocky arms that could probably crush both of them to paste with a single hand swipe. The other was a six-legged cat-lizard-something carved out of shiny stone, its knife-like scales bristling at their intrusion. The third was a giant elongated human head, soundlessly bobbing up and down through the ground, which rippled and flowed like water in its presence. The fourth was an incredibly lifelike obsidian centipede, looking more like an actual monster than an elemental spirit.

The fifth and six earth elementals, though, were clearly the leaders of the bunch. Both of them were around three and a half meters tall, fairly humanoid in appearance and armed with actual metal weaponry that looked human-made rather than formed out of stone and the like. One of them had a muscular-looking figure and four faces arranged around its head, and carried in its hands a massive sword. The other looked like an old man, with a beard made out of knife-like stones and a long, whip-like tail trailing behind him. This one carried a huge mace in his hands, waving it in the air menacingly.

After a few tense seconds, the four-faced elemental stepped forward towards them.

“Forbidden,” he told them simply. Zorian kind of expected the elemental’s voice to be all booming and gravely, considering its size and composition, but it was actually very crisp and spoken at normal volume.

“We bring gifts,” Zorian countered, bringing out a box out of his jacket pocket and showing the contents to the giant elemental in front of him. Zach proceeded to do the same.

The boxes held a pair of fist-sized red stones, glowing with inner light. The so called ‘dragonheart stones’ were highly coveted by some magical creatures, including earth elementals. These stones were hard to acquire, as they could only be found deep within the Dungeon as a rule, and humans had no real use for them aside from making expensive jewelry and trading them to creatures that coveted them. Thankfully, Zach had encountered an entire cave full of them at one point, so it was simple enough to acquire some.

The moment the earth elementals saw the stones, they quickly changed their tune. The lesser elementals around them tried to scuttle over to have a closer look but the two leaders quickly caused them to stay back with a few menacing movements. After that, the four-faced elemental spoke again, again limiting himself to a single word.

“Come,” he said simply.

The four lesser elementals stayed behind, while the two humanoid giants led them to one of the large rock formations that turned out to be hollow. Inside, they found an interior that wouldn’t look terribly out of place in a human dwelling – there were tables, chairs, shelves, cabinets and even some potted plants. Items of obviously human making were scattered throughout the area, some of them hopelessly broken. Zorian assumed they were battle trophies to warn and awe human visitors against treachery, but it was hard to be sure – spirits were notorious for having very alien sense of aesthetics, so maybe the elementals just found the arrangement pleasing to the eye somehow.

In the back of the chamber, opposite of the entrance, stood the elemental they came here to see. Stonechild, the elder elemental.

Zorian didn’t know what he had expected to see. A massive stone monolith with a giant face carved in it? A miniature mountain? A larger version of the humanoid elementals that escorted them to this place?

What he definitely didn’t expect was to find himself facing what appeared to be a ten-year-old boy. And not one that was crudely carved out of stone, either – Stonechild’s form was incredibly lifelike and realistic, and he looked like nothing more than a real human child, if one whose skin was bit browner than was common this far to the north.

There was only one thing hinting at Stonechild’s elemental nature – his eyes were solid black, devoid of any internal structure a real human eye should have. It was as if someone set out to make a flawless human replica but then ran out of patience in the end and decided to just socket a pair of polished black gems into the eye sockets and call it a day.

“Welcome,” Stonechild said, his voice steady and very natural sounding. He smiled reassuringly at them. “We don’t get many visitors here, so my manners are a little rusty and I have little to offer you with. I apologize in advance for my poor hospitality. Would you like a glass of water?”

Zach and Zorian glanced at each other uncertainly. This… was not quite how they had imagined the great elder elemental would behave towards them.

“I could go for a glass of water, yeah,” Zach said with a shrug.

Stonechild nodded to himself in satisfaction and walked over to a nearby shelf, which held several ceramic jugs and a collection of glass containers of various sorts. Stonechild picked up what was clearly a pickle jar at first, but then hesitated for a moment before putting it back on the shelf. He then picked up a proper drinking glass instead.

Zorian watched as the elder elemental went about pouring Zach a glass of water, shifting in place nervously. Strange as it may sound, Stonechild worried him a lot more than the two hulking elemental guards that stood vigilantly by the entrance of this place. He didn’t look as imposing as them, but his appearance was a dangerous sign all on its own. It was well known that when it came to spirits, the more humanlike they were, the more wary one had to be around them. Not necessarily because that made them more powerful, but because it meant they understood humans well enough to pretend to be one. This understanding, in turn, meant they could counter, fight and manipulate humans in a way their more ignorant fellows could not.

Stonechild’s understanding of human mentality and culture made him a lot more dangerous than he would be if he was just a bit more powerful than your average earth elemental.

It was interesting to see this kind of an elemental here in total wilderness, though. Elementals were some of the most ancient spirits known to man, but also one of the most alien and incomprehensible. The vast majority of them couldn’t even speak in a human-comprehensible manner, nevermind understand human logic and attitudes. This inability of human and elementals to understand one another, coupled with the fact that elementals often occupied land that humans coveted and that elementals typically reacted to provocations by attacking any human within reach (most elementals had trouble telling human individuals apart from one another), led to many bitter conflicts between the two groups in the past. Elementals that understood humanity to the level that Stonechild did were vanishingly rare and usually involved the elemental in question allying itself to a human community for several generations. Most of them served as protector spirits of various Houses or brokered some kind of trade deal with the local authorities in exchange for being left alone.

For Stonechild to live in this kind of isolated location, away from any significant human community, yet still know so much about them… it was weird. Zorian suspected he might have originally lived somewhere in the south, but was driven away from his previous home by something.

“I hear you bring gifts for me,” Stonechild eventually said.

“We sure do,” Zach grinned. The two of them handed their dragonheart stones to the elemental, who accepted them without any apparent excitement or comment. He rotated the stones in his palms for a few moments before setting them aside on the nearby table.

“It is a good gift,” Stonechild said. “But is it really a gift? I would never claim to be an expert on humanity, but in my experience your kind is rarely this generous for no reason.”

“It’s a gift,” Zach said. “We do want something from you, but we’re willing to pay for it. Those stones are yours no matter what you do.”

“Even if I throw you two out right now?” Stonechild asked curiously.

“Even then,” Zorian confirmed.

“Hmm. I think I like you two,” Stonechild said. “So what is it that you want from me? I warn you in advance that I dislike fighting. Me and my kind will not be your mercenaries, no matter how much you offer to pay.”

“We’re only after knowledge,” Zorian said.

“Only knowledge?” Stonechild repeated, his black eyes narrowing slightly. “And yet you’re willing to pay such a heavy price, just for a chance to petition me for it. It is surely not ‘just’ knowledge, then. What kind of forbidden secrets are you after?”

“We want to know where the primordials were imprisoned,” Zach said.

Thus far, Stonechild had been very serene and self-assured in his mannerisms. It was somewhat at odds with his child-like appearance, to be honest. However, when Zach mentioned what they were after, Stonechild actually flinched a little.

“Why would you seek the ancient blood?” Stonechild asked, leaning forward towards them. “No matter what your reasons are, you’re only inviting disaster upon yourself. There is no gain to be had there.”

“You say that, but I heard there are people who gained great powers by binding the blood of primordials to themselves,” Zorian said. It wasn’t something he intended to do, but he still wanted to hear what Stonechild had to say about it.

“Artifacts of forgotten wars at the beginning of time,” Stonechild said, waving his hand dismissively in the air. “Should you find one of these out there in the vast world, unclaimed by anyone, that is obviously a great boon for you. But to tamper with the cages that hold back those of the ancient blood is utter foolishness. Since the time of their imprisonment, no one has ever received gift from their kind.”

“Are you saying they’re actively malicious?” Zach asked curiously.

“Do you hate the bugs eating your crops? Do you torture mosquitos for drinking your blood?” Stonechild asked. “We are all nothing to them – elemental and human both.”

“Right, right, we’re not people to them so they can do whatever they want to us,” Zach said. “It’s fine, though – we don’t really want anything from the primordials themselves. What we’re really interested is those fancy pocket dimensions that hold them.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Pocket what?” Stonechild asked, cocking his head to the side in confusion. Apparently he never encountered that particular term and couldn’t figure out the meaning from the context provided.

“Their cages,” Zach clarified. “The thing that holds them outside our reality.”

“Ah,” Stonechild nodded. “That is… less disturbing. But I caution you to forget the idea anyway. Cracking the prisons is probably beyond you… thankfully… but you might end up accidentally contacting the prisoner or attract unwanted attention. Few such prisons are truly unguarded.”

“We’d really want to take a look at one, anyway. Do you think we could come to some kind of agreement?” said Zorian, motioning towards the dragonheart stones with his head. “There are more stones like that where those came from. And we might have more gifts for you besides.”

“Even if I was willing to help you with this, I honestly do not know where the ancient blood was buried,” Stonechild said. “I cannot help you.”

The elder elemental disguised as a child glanced towards the stones for a second before shifting his attention back to them.

“However…” he said. “I might know a couple of other elementals that would be able to help you.”

“Ah, that’s fine too, I guess,” Zorian said. “I suppose you’d be willing to give this information to us?”

Stonechild smiled widely.

“For a price,” he said.

– break –

“Yes,” Glittering River of Stars said, sagging a little. “We will agree to let you observe us use the Bakora Gate in exchange for… I can’t believe I’m saying this… time travel related favors.”

“Finally. It was about freaking time,” Zach muttered under his breath.

It turned out he hadn’t been quiet enough, because River of Stars bristled slightly at his words and immediately turned to him.

“What would you know? This was a difficult decision for us! Even if you’re telling the truth about time travel, we have no way of enforcing this deal! You can renege on it easily enough, and we won’t even know an agreement existed in the first place!”

“Yeah, and that’s why your elders refused to accept a mere promise alone,” Zach shot back. “We paid you an absurd amount of crystalized mana and other valuables for this ‘favor’. Plus we destroyed that nest of serpent-bearded toads for you as a sign of good faith.”

“And if you’re telling the truth about the time loop, none of that will matter in the long run, will it?” River of Stars asked rhetorically.

Zorian thought about getting involved, but ultimately decided that any words would just be throwing oil into the fire. Truthfully, he understood the doubts and hesitation of the Silent Doorway Adepts all too well. He would feel the same in their position. He actually hadn’t expected this negotiation to succeed at all in this restart – he expected it would take at least two or three times before he learned how to approach them correctly. However, saying that out loud would be the equivalent of shooting himself in the foot. The aranea probably wouldn’t appreciate it much, and Zach would feel betrayed. His fellow time traveler had been getting steadily more annoyed with the colony as they dragged their many feet and the end of the restart inexorably approached, so he probably wouldn’t appreciate Zorian taking their side – even as a diplomatic tactic.

Thankfully, after staring at each other really hard, Zach and River of Stars decided to mutually back down.

“Whatever,” River of Stars said. “The elders have reached their decision, so there is no point in arguing this. Is there anything else?”

“Yes,” Zorian spoke up. “Do you have something that would help us convince your web we’re telling the truth in future restarts?”

“Ah, yes,” River of Stars said. “There was some discussion about that. We have… something. We have no idea how useful it will be to you, since we’ve never actually made any contingencies in case of time travel being real, but you of all people can afford to do some trial and error on this. Hold on.”

She was still and silent for about ten seconds, probably engaging in telepathic communication with the rest of her web.

“Prepare for a memory packet transfer,” she told him, before sending a telepathic probe at his mental shields.

Zorian allowed her to establish contact, and she immediately shoved a small memory packet at him. He quickly perused the contents, noticing it mostly held meaningless strings of numbers (well, meaningless to him at least) as well as some kind of detailed map of the region surrounding their web. He unraveled the memory packet and repackaged the information into a memory packet of his own – that way he wouldn’t have to worry about it decaying on him the way the matriarch’s memory packet did – and then gently pushed at the connection with River of Stars, signaling to her to end the connection.

She did as he asked, but she couldn’t help but take a quick peek at his memories as she withdrew. Zorian didn’t even try to stop her – instead, he simply pushed a memory of him being stabbed to death in one of the earliest restarts at her memory probe, causing her to flinch a little and hastily break contact.

“It’s rare to see a human so well versed in telepathic conflict,” she said, a little awkwardly.

“Thank you,” Zorian said. “Can we see the gate now?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, a little more respectfully. Apparently his little show of telepathic sophistication had humbled her a bit. Huh. He made a mental note to challenge one of their elders to a telepathic duel in future restarts, just to establish his telepathic credentials. Maybe they’d look down on them less if he did that. “I’ll lead the way.”

River of Stars led them down the twisting tunnels of the aranean settlement, far deeper into the colony than they’d ever been allowed to go before. There, in a large underground chamber, stood a circular stone platform that held a familiar black icosahedron that was the Bakora gate. Well, it was familiar to Zorian at least.