Broken Lands

Sophia got a few minutes to chew on how different things were in this place before the first question came. She should have expected it.

“How different is it where you’re from?” Moti actually sounded interested.

Sophia looked around, then found herself laughing for no reason at all and all the reason in the world. “Very different and yet the same at the same time. People are still people, but everything here is so isolated. It’s not just the travel times; we have that too, it’s just between planets instead of cities and villages. No, it’s the communication. I can’t send a message to Fallen Kestii unless someone is headed that way. The only times I’m ever that isolated is in a dungeon or on a spaceship, and even then there are ways to get messages out. It’s also a lot safer, at least on Earth. We know how to manage our dungeons.”

“Wait, you’ve been on a spaceship?” Dav sounded shocked.

Sophia frowned. She knew she’d told him about some of the other worlds she’d visited. “Did you think we just used portals? I know I’ve mentioned some of the places I’ve been.”

“I thought those were on Earth.” Dav sounded hesitant.

Sophia sighed. It was probably her fault; she might not have mentioned where they were. She couldn’t remember if she had or not. “I guess I expect people to know where Aeon and Tzintkra are. Tzintkra’s a planet; Aeon’s the moon above Lyka. There are a lot of routes that lead to Tzintkra, so it’s not a bad trip from Earth, but it’s a lot faster to take a ship to Aeon.”

“Wish I could see that,” Dav muttered. “No one goes to space anymore, at least not to do anything but fight the Dust. It’s not safe to go up that high.”

Sophia gave Dav a slightly horrified look. He’d mentioned the Dust, but she’d assumed it was a threat in the sense that monsters were a threat: always present but manageable. If the Dust was preventing something as common as space travel, it was clearly far worse than she’d assumed. It was too bad they didn’t have magic to help them; it might have allowed them to get ahead of the Dust.

“That’s not what I meant.” Moti sounded a little frustrated. “Why aren’t you worried about too much magic? How do you keep it from Warping everything?”

Sophia frowned at that. She still wasn’t certain what really caused Warping. She remembered that Aymini had referred to Sophia’s horns and Dav’s purple facial marking as Warps, but that didn’t really help; Sophia’s horns were natural and Dav’s changes from baseline human were because of the trip through the Origin and his exposure to the chaotic energy there, which was closer to essence than mana but was really both, since it could be anything.

She also remembered the story of Catshold and how everyone inside the settlement started to turn into catlike beings, essentially monsters. That seemed to really be what was meant when people talked about Warping, but the story made it clear that it wasn’t normal for it to happen to a lot of people at once.

“Magical accidents happen,” Sophia temporized, “And they can have some very odd effects sometimes. I’m not sure that that’s what you mean by Warping; what usually happens when someone is Warped?”

“Warping is unexpected physical or mental changes caused by magic,” Rae answered for her twin. “It happens when you spend too long in an area with a strong magical concentration without cleansing yourself. At least, that’s what the books say. They don’t say how to cleanse it, other than taking time to rest and recover and even then repeated exposure can cause Warps. I think it’s really just what people call you when they don’t know a lot of people like you.”

Sophia frowned. That description made her feel like she should know what they were talking about, like she’d learned something similar before, but she couldn’t place it. She knew she’d never been to a place like that herself. For Dav, the Origin was like that because he had no tolerance for the place, but Sophia didn’t have any issues with it. Her heritage meant that Potential was natural to her, probably because she used both mana and essence naturally, even if she rarely cast essence-based spells.

One thing that was similar but not the same came to mind. Being Warped sounded a lot like the effect of consuming monster cores for power. It worked, sort of, but it corrupted the individuals who tried with the frozen essence of the monster that created the monster core. They were safe to use in making items or in powering enchantments because the enchantments could be built to reject the frozen essence, but most people didn’t have any way to do that themselves.

Sophia hadn’t seen any true monster cores here. They certainly didn’t explain the phenomenon, even if the effects were similar. Could it be the essence that mattered? Something felt wrong about the notion, like she was missing something important, something she should know. It was always annoying when that happened.

She was pretty sure that whatever she was trying to think of was something her greatest grandfather Senkovar taught her. For some reason, a freshly painted room near the top of one of the towers of Suratiz kept coming to mind, like that was where the lecture was. Why couldn’t she remember the details?

Amy snorted. “The magic near a Nexus City like Casterville’s too weak to Warp anyone. You have to go out into the wilds to find a stale pool of magic powerful enough to be a problem, maybe even into the Deep Wilds. Or the Maze, of course, it’s not safe to even approach the Maze without protection and a couple Sphere upgrades.

At the word “stale,” everything clicked into place for Sophia.

“Ley lines should be placed to properly drain the mana from the land and distribute it to dungeons to be filtered and refined to a usable state,” Sophia muttered. No wonder she was thinking of her many-times-great-grandfather Senkovar; he’d taught her the basics of dealing with a World Core. She couldn’t actually do any of it because she hadn’t taken the right Paths yet, but he kept trying to convince her that she should.

Sophia looked up at Moti, since he was the one who originally asked. “I know you don’t have proper dungeons here. Do you have a World Core to manage your ley lines, or is that what was shattered? For that matter, do you have ley lines? I haven’t felt one in the entire time we’ve been here.”

Now that she thought about it, that was odd. Earth was unusually rich in ley lines because of its history, but they’d traveled far enough that the odds of crossing a ley line should have been good. Maybe they were in a ley line desert as part of the effort to keep mana levels low, but that ought to increase the chance of stale mana rather than decrease it. It would explain the lack of a ley line in Casterville but not what powered Casterville’s Nexus.

No, that wasn’t all of it. There had to be something that powered the portal they’d come through on the way from Fallen Kestii to Casterville. She’d seen the magic, not just felt it, but she hadn’t felt a ley line. Was it possible they didn’t have ley lines at all?

“What’s a ley line?” Rae’s puzzled expression matched her voice exactly.

“On the left!” Amy called out. Her words were punctuated by the thwip of an arrow being shot, followed by a crack as it hit the stone building next to an archway partially covered in vines. “Damn it, he’s gone.”

“What did you see?” Sophia frowned at the opening. She was really frowning at herself. She’d managed to forget they were in enemy territory and that she needed to pay attention to her surroundings. It was a rookie mistake and one that would get her hurt or killed if she didn’t start paying attention.

“A man covered in vines,” Amy said grimly. “I didn’t get a good view of him before he ducked back behind the wall.”

“We’re not even that close to the Conservatory yet,” Dav said with a frown. “I wasn’t expecting anything this far out. Surely corpsevines this far out would be more than vague reports of people disappearing.”

“You’re from the Vocational Registry, aren’t you?” A gruff voice came from around the corner where the man Amy shot at had disappeared. “If you say you won’t shoot me, I’ll tell you what’s really happening here.”

“How do we know you aren’t infested with corpsevine or something else equally bad?” Amy called back to the man.

A short laugh told Sophia what he thought of that suggestion. “They can’t talk. That’s the easiest way to tell them apart from real people. Now, do I need to run or are you going to let me talk?”

That matched with Rensyn’s information. His lost friend, Derek, didn’t say anything and Rensyn didn’t think it could.

“Come on out,” Amy said. Sophia noticed that while she didn’t have the arrow actually drawn to fire and it wasn’t aimed directly at the opening, she did have it out and would likely be able to shoot almost instantly if something charged at her.

A man stepped cautiously around the corner. Sophia’s first impression of him was that he was brown, his slightly tanned but with brown hair, mustache, and eyes. Despite his grey clothing, the leather bracers and boots only added to the impression of brown-ness. The harness of crossed vines across his chest and the vine belt wrapped around his waist didn’t help. Both had a significant quantity of green leaves handing from them, but the vines themselves were also brown.

He stood in the archway almost challengingly. “You’re from the Vocational Registry? You don’t look like much.”

Sophia sighed. She got that a lot and most people didn’t get over it until they saw her blow something up. She wasn’t about to do that here, at least not unless she saw a monster.

“Enough to handle you,” Amy snapped. “What are you doing here and why are you covered in vines?”

“Corpsevines leave you alone if you wear vines,” the stranger answered. “Everyone wears vines near the Conservatory. It’s safer. As for why I’m here? I live here. Why are you here?”

Sophia stepped forward a half step. “We were told that people are disappearing on the west side of town, near the West Conservatory. We’re supposed to find out what’s causing it and report back.”

The man snorted. “People have been disappearing out here for years. Nobody believed us. They said it was just monster attacks. Let me tell you, monster attacks don’t make someone just get up and walk away. Monsters leave things behind. Blood, usually. Sure, you all came and killed a few monsters; so what?”

Sophia frowned at that. It sounded all too similar to what Aymini experienced when she tried to report the issue at Catshold. At the same time, it also sounded all too much like the ravings of a conspiracy theorist. Sophia could understand why he’d been dismissed if that was how he approached the Registry.

He was probably one of the people Rensyn had half-dismissed as spreading rumors of people infected by plants walking the streets. In fact, given his appearance, he might even be the source of the rumors if someone else saw him. Whether or not he actually knew the truth, he might know something. She’d have to make sure to confirm whatever he said, but a starting point would help. “Then what is going on here?”