Enmity of Atlas

As Leo was thinking about his misfortune, a strange black cat he hadn’t seen before jumped up onto his lap, laying down in a soft little buddle. Leo stroked it absentmindedly, taking comfort in the companionship that some things in this tower seemed willing to give.

“So,” Rema said, her hands interlocked, creating a platform for her head. Her feet weren’t quite reaching the ground, either, so she was kicking her legs under the table. “Tell me about yourself,” she said sweetly, looking directly at Trenton.

Trenton glanced over at Leo, clearly uncomfortable under the womens scrutinizing gaze, “I’m Trenton. I was the son of the Boulreguard family in Aria. And this here is-” Trenton said, trying to segway off of himself.

“What do you mean was?” Rema gasped, “Was it a tragic breakup? Did they disown you? Did you disown them? You have to tell me.”

“Did you not hear? Aria was destroyed. Everyone’s dead,” Trenton said, his eyebrows knit together.

“What?” Rema turned on Walibeld, who recited the story for her just like he had for Geren. “Oh my. That is…oh dear. I need a moment,” Rema said, walking towards the railing to stare out over the greenery.

Trenton leaned over, whispering in Leo’s ear, “You could just take her chair since she left it.”

Leo snorted, “I would never do that to a grieving old woman, no matter how inhospitable she is. And, my hands are tied, anyway. I can’t get up until the cat does,” he whispered back, causing Trenton to smile in response.

After a couple of minutes, Remma came back to the table, seemingly more composed now, “That is some rather disquieting news. I figure, then, that’s why you’re finally visiting after all this time?” She said, looking to Walibeld.

“Correct. I’m taking them to Era. I’d like to stay here for a couple of nights before we continue traveling,” Walibeld said, calmly sipping his tea.

“I could take you there! Easy peasy no problem,” Rema said, leaning forward towards Walibeld.

“Do you remember what happened the last time I asked you to teleport me somewhere?” Walibeld said, eyeing her with an expression somewhat close to rage.

“Uhhh…no?” Rema said innocently.

“The ocean. You teleported me into the middle of the ocean thousands of miles from shore. Not only did I have to swim all the way back, I ran into Kullisates on my way back,” Walibeld retorted, setting his cup down on the table.

Rema smiled, “Oh yeah! I remember that now. You were all wet and angry…yelled for a while, too. Also very bloody. Huh.”

“Wait, so you can’t teleport people accurately? How?” Trenton asked. A wizard of her caliber should’ve had no problem teleporting people accurately.

“Yeah, I kind of forgot about that,” Rema said, avoiding eye contact with Walibeld, “my aspect is that of randomness. When I cast magic in great enough quantities, random effects start to happen. For example, hypothetically if I try teleporting someone else a long distance, they kind of just go in a random direction the exact distance I try to send them. It doesn’t seem to affect me, though,” Rema shrugged her shoulders, “it is my aspect, afterall, but never you mind that. Tell me what you’ve been up to, Walibeld. As much as it pains me so, we ought to talk business. Era would be upset otherwise. Blah blah blah. Any leads on the city?” Rema asked, starting to dig into the meal in front of her.

“City?” Leo asked, looking over at Walibeld.

“Era is a man of many responsibilities. Namely he works to uncover history and research magic. He mostly conducts the latter with the help of talented staff over at the Academy. The former, then, is left up to field agents with abilities focused on finding or searching. There’s various things that are being done all around the continent, but there’s two main projects,” Walibeld up a finger, “firstly, find the location of the hidden vaults. Documents we’ve uncovered suggest that there are ancient stores of something or another. They’re not really clear. In anycase, Rema heads the team looking into the vaults,” he held up a second finger, “secondly, find the founder's city. Supposedly, there was a city long ago, the very first city founded by the very first king, where the kings of old would congregate. It’s likely that much of the unknown pieces of history lie within this city, so I head the team looking into it. However, for the last millennium, we’ve made no progress. Few documents remain from the time I believe the city was founded and the vaults were created, over two millennia ago. And, the continent is big, so searching it manually is slow work. As for what I’ve done recently,” he turned back to Rema. “I have someone looking into a lead out west. I'm waiting to hear back from them, before going to see for myself.”

“Out west? In Nochturous?” Rema said, raising her eyebrows at Walibeld.

“In Stellus itself,” Walibeld stated simply.

“You’re mad! You sent someone to Stellus?” Rema yelled, standing up from her chair, dropping her fork on the ground.

“Yes, I did. Rather, I allowed it. Garh practically begged me to let him go,” Walibeld said, looking up at her with disinterest.

“Is there something wrong with Stellus?” Trenton asked, Leo thinking back to the maps he’d seen throughout his life.

He knew Nochturous, the kingdom to the left of the Nuvarian, was a wildland, being both hard to get to and hard to traverse through. Supposedly, it alone held dangers far worse than the rest of the world, the Nuvarian and Storm Patch keeping monsters from spilling into the east, but he’d never heard anything about Stellus itself, the only city in the west. And even then, it wasn’t exactly clear what these dangers were. It seemed like few were brave enough to even step foot in the kingdom.

Rema looked over at Trenton, “Stellus, the city of night, isn’t actually a real city. At least, it’s not a city in the sense that no citizens live there. The whole place is overrun with monsters ten times the size of the ones we have over here. That it even has infrastructure still standing is astonishing. Even I’ve never dared to visit the place. Why the hell would Garh want to go there?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Whatever his reasons, they’re his alone. He’s talented, and I trust both his skills and judgment. Now sit. I’d like to hear what you’ve been doing,” Walibeld said.

Slowly, Rema returned to her seat, “Nothing really on my side, either. I’ve got a couple leads, but nothing significant. Every location we’ve tried has been a bust. I thought there was something in the east, something to do with the spirit dwelling, but it fell through pretty quick. At this point I’m starting to think someone’s purposefully hiding them from us, moving them around or something,” she said, stirring her tea with a spoon absentmindedly. “Although, there was this weird guy that stopped by a couple of days ago. He was kind of short, looked a bit like Era but more stunted…oh and he had no eyes. He had these scratch scars all around his eyes and eyelids. Maybe a beast got them or something.”

“Was he just looking for shelter?” Walibeld said.

“No, that’s the weirdest part. He was looking for something, some sort of key he said. I think he said it looked like a square hovering in the middle of something, and it had special runes on every face. Uhh…infinity runes. That’s what he called them,” Rema said, seemingly bored.

“Infinity runes?” Walibeld asked, his face scrunched.

“That’s what he said. I don’t know, whole thing seems like nonsense if you ask me,” Rema said.

“What was his name?” Walibeld asked.

“Kesik,” Rema replied, Walibeld cocking his head to the side in response.

“Sounds familiar, but I can’t place it.”

“Really?” Rema said, looking up at him, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name before.”

Walibeld shrugged, “Maybe I met him while traveling. He doesn’t sound familiar, but I feel I’ve heard the name somewhere before.”

“Yeah, well, in anycase, no progress has been made.”

“I don’t know why you’re upset. It’s been like this for centuries.”

Leo looked back at Rema, now curious at Walibeld’s comment. Of course, he should have realized. Rema’s ears looked human at a glance, but upon closer inspection, they came to a very slight point at the top. She was a half-elf. Leo tried to think back to his race theory lessons, to remember any information he knew about half-elves, but the only thing that came to mind regarding half-elves was the one phrase he would always hear repeated, “half-elves are genetic freaks,” although the reason why was lost on him. Maybe Trenton knew.

Rema sighed, “Alright. It’s getting late, and I haven't exactly received a lot of good news today. You two kids should go take a bath before you sleep. Oh, and take the food with you,” she waved her hand, a spatial servant materializing just before them, “It’ll take you to where you need to be.”

Walibeld looked at them, “There’s some things I need to discuss, so I’ll leave you two to yourselves. This place is well protected. You’ll hardly need me nipping at your heels,” he said, waving them away.

Trenton got to his feet, holding out his hand towards Leo. Leo got up, the black cat nowhere to be seen, handing the chair to Trenton who turned it into a sphere for ease of carrying. Without a word, he nodded his head towards the servant, Leo following behind Trenton as they made their way back to the elevator. The servant, not having a mouth or any notable facial features, didn’t say anything, merely pressing the button gently with its foot to start the elevator. Turned out that the force Rema used to push it was completely unnecessary. The mechanism was actually quite sensitive.

It went down a couple floors, stopping on one which was a shallow room with four doors leading to some other chambers. The servant walked to one of the doors, opened it, and then closed it behind them once they made it through. Leo was right. At least in some sense they were autonomous. It would be impossible for Rema to be manually controlling all of them. Maybe they worked on a command system. If they were given a command, they could reasonably see it through with minor intellectual ability. He would ask Rema about it, but something told him she wasn’t inclined to answer, to him, at least.

As soon as Leo walked into the room, the first thing he noticed was the heat. It was like a sauna in there. And as he looked around, it just so happened that they had walked into a sauna–a solid guess. The room had warm lighting all around the fringes and a tiled floor and ceiling. About 20 feet in front of them were two towels sitting at the edge of a steaming pool, spouts along the edges constantly pumping in freshwater. Rema must have been making good use of the fact that she lived by a lake.