Zeroth Moment: My Cheat Skill Is Stupid, So I'll Just Ignore It

Hana beheld the spire, surrounding them and arcing above them to a dizzying height, and her mouth dropped open. "How are we to handle this?" she despaired into the uncaring void. "This structure could be a spy antenna, or artillery, or..."

"Or both and a dozen other things besides," Topher agreed grimly. "In fact, there's probably more than one out here somewhere."

"Should we attempt to damage it?" She looked up and around at its towering expanse; it was almost the size of a mid-size football stadium. "How could we even do so, bereft of magic...?"

"Does it matter?" Topher growled. His fists clenched again in frustrated rage. "This guy fucked us again. For all we know, this could be a wild goose chase, and now we're fucking stuck here while he rampages around up there -- I don't even know if I could get us off the ground without Feather Fall. And, like an idiot, I left the Augurus back with Quint, so I can't even get a new heading on Nasha." He wanted to wail, but forced it down. No time for self-pity, Dr. Jones.

"Oh." Hana rooted around in a pocket, then produced a large glass object; Topher's eyes bulged. "Perhaps I should have mentioned it earlier."

"Hana, you rock." Quick-stepping forward, he took it from her gently; he was acutely conscious of the fact that if they dropped it, they'd be boned. "How the hell...?"

The young Japanese woman's eyes flicked away, then back again. "The Archmagus expressed a similar concern, so I brought it with me after you, um, left. But will it not be useless in the anti-magic?"

"I don't think so," Topher guessed, suspending it between his hands and starting up his trance. "Skills seem to work just fine in Arcane Nullification areas for the most part, but they still can't do anything with magic; I probably couldn't create a Wyrd here, but just moving akasha around doesn't seem to be prevented." He sent a stream of quintessence into the Augurus, and like before, it flowered with stately grace between his hands; but without a focus, it merely jittered back and forth. "Shit. We need a map, or something."

Quickly, Hana drew her Flux Blade; the weapon wouldn't shift in the anti-magic, but she could at least use it as an ordinary dagger. "A simple drawing of a circle worked before," she murmured, tracing one in the black dust at their feet. "Perhaps another..."

After a moment, the device whirled around, downward and slightly to Topher's left; immediately, a blue point labeled "Zanasha Jones" appeared in the center of the circle, just as before. "Damn it," Topher grunted. "Doesn't really tell us much. That could be anywhere on -- shit, or in this fucking thing."

"Of course," Hana mumbled, biting her lip. "You are right, Bailey-sama. We need three dimensions of perception; latitude, longitude, and depth." Moving quickly and precisely, she sketched curving lines across and within the circle -- a warped cross-hatch of lines around the circumference, and a pair of straighter lines intersecting over the center. Then, with a deft flip of her knife, she scratched out a large tent-like shape at the top, with two little stick figures at its base. "That's us," she confided, and Topher had to suppress a giggle; it looks exactly like the little hieroglyph from Stargate. But it worked; he could tell, based on the relative position of the lines and the waypoint she'd drawn, what she intended. If the dot moves closer to the edge of the circle, she's on the surface, and we can figure out our relative position based on how far it is from the spire; damn. That's really smart. But the dot resolutely stayed rooted in the center of the sphere.

Vexed, Topher frowned. "Maybe it has to recalibrate, or something." He withdrew his akasha from the Augurus, ended the divination, and started it again; but, as before, the dot reappeared in the same place. He groaned. "I shoulda known. She's at the center, where she'll be hardest to reach. We gotta find a way underground."

He cast about for runes or hidden entrances, but could see nothing; he wanted to cast Find Traps And Secret Doors, but the Arcane Nullification still surrounding him rendered all his hard-won Skills useless. He kicked the base of the spire angrily, but couldn't even feel the impact; at least my Arch Shielding is still in place. "The entrance could be anywhere," he fretted.

"Bailey-sama," Hana commented quietly, "there is no guarantee a path to the center of the moon even exists. Perhaps the Infinite King merely teleported past the anti-magic directly to the center."

Topher shook his head. "Even if he did, we can't," he fumed. "We either need to find the door or make our own -- and without spells, I can't do much. About the only Skills I have that'll even work in this crap are Clerk bullshit for documents, Metaphrasty, and my Attract Object Unique Skill."

"Well, my Skills certainly won't do anything impressive either," Hana sighed, "unless we need to serve the moon tea, or charm it with a smile." She sheathed her Flux Blade and sat down in the black dust, tucking her feet beneath her as she frowned at the surface below. "It's really frustrating. We're so close, but..."

Topher sighed. "This is what he does, Hana. Clever little lock-boxes, with the key suspended on a string just out of reach. It makes me sick." He clenched his fists. "I wish I could just blast a hole, or burrow through the rock, or --"

"Burrow. Burrow!" Hana interjected. Reaching into her pocket, she fished around mutely for a few seconds before withdrawing a tiny, twisted twig of grayish wood. Topher pursed his lips. Extradimensional spaces work in antimagic, but potions don't? Or are there different kinds? Maybe Kalphegor's Arcane Nullification was some kind of super-antimagic. As he watched, the young Japanese woman produced a flask of water next, then began to dig a small divot in the dirt with her knife. "This cutting," she commented tersely, "is ironwood -- a rare and highly sought-after material used in the crafting of certain magical items. It roots and grows slowly, with some specimens taking decades or more to reach sufficient size to be safely harvested."

Topher cocked his head. "What, are we gonna make tools, or something?" Then, abruptly, it hit him; like the ents in Lord of the Rings; the roots will --

Almost before he could finish his thought, Hana jammed the twig into the hole, then poured a small amount of water over it. As he watched, she leaned downwards and began to tend the twig -- gently caressing it, whispering words of encouragement, and deftly sifting the soil for the best possible placement. For a few moments, nothing much occurred -- the twig twitched and trembled once or twice, but mostly just sat there.

Then, abruptly, all hell broke loose.

In the space of an eyeblink, the twig began to curl and twist around itself; as Topher watched, it began to grow exponentially, doubling and tripling in size with each passing moment. Steely, determined rootlets quested forth into the dirt, swelling with nutrients despite the clearly dead soil; Topher's mind boggled for a brief instant before understanding dawned. It doesn't have to make sense. It's her Skill. It's Accelerated Gardening, but gardeners can grow more than fruit and flowers.

They can grow trees.

His mouth dropped open as the scale of the growth continued to accelerate; now it was a sturdy shoot, and now a twisting, gnarled sapling. As he watched, awed, it continued to grow and expand -- now a small tree, now a sizable one, now a huge, hulking monstrosity -- and still it grew and grew. The ground beneath his feet bucked and trembled as roots spread and gnawed through the soil and stone, and he had to jump backwards when a long crack in the ground snapped open directly below him. The pylon overhead, its anchor points shifting and crumbling at its base, began to tilt to one side noticeably; still higher, the moon-veil began to tear and split apart in response. This thing broadcasts the moon that we see, Topher marveled. Bet the people back on the ground are probably freaking the fuck out.

And still, the tree grew.

When Hana finally staggered unsteadily to her feet, Topher had to remind himself to breathe again; what had been a flat, unremarkable expanse of black stone beneath the pylon was now a deep fissure, extending downwards beyond the limits of his sight and choked with roots and vines. The ironwood tree, now nearly half as tall as the pylon itself, towered overhead like a ligneous colossus; Topher stared up at it, aghast. "Holy shit," he remarked flatly.

"Bailey-sama," Hana panted, "I need... I..."

"Oh, shit." Stumbling over to her, Topher caught her as she swooned; he lowered her gently to the ground and trickled a little water on her lips. "Take it easy," he murmured. "You're probably out of SP, or at least really low."

Hana's eyelids fluttered, then opened again; she winced. "I... we can't..."

"It's cool." Topher searched in his own pocket for a scarf, then wadded it up under her head like a pillow. "You take a break. I can take it from here."

Instantly, Hana's eyes, which had been drifting closed, snapped open and burned with ire; shoving him weakly away, she dug viciously in her pocket a third time. "Respectfully, Bailey-sama," she grated, "fuck that." Her slim, supple fingers emerged holding a small green vial; with a grimace, she downed it in a gulp, then sat up sharply to hold her head between her hands. "Ngh.... nnnnnngh!"

"Hey, what? Are you okay?" Topher tried to grasp her shoulders, but she slapped him away; the blow bounced off his Arch Shielding, but nevertheless bruised his feelings. "I'm just trying to help, jeez."

The young woman sucked in a long breath, then another; finally, her eyes opened and her head came up. "Revitalizing draught," she snapped, springing to her feet. "I'll be really sore later, but one thing at a time. You are not leaving me here." Ignoring his outstretched hand, she bounded over to fissure and began to descend hand-over-hand along one of the enormous roots, her dainty ankles crossed beneath her to grip the great rhizome like a gym-class rope.

Topher rolled his eyes. "So much fucking drama." He stomped after her, anchoring himself to the root with Attract Object; it was easy to stick fast when he wanted and come loose at will, and in less than ten seconds he'd already climed down past her. "Let me know when you're done being feisty and independent," he commented wryly, then proceeded downwards at speed.

Within a few minutes, he could feel the change in the atmosphere; the ambient temperature rose, becoming more comfortable, and only a few hundred feet down he began to feel his metaphysical extremities getting the equivalent of pins and needles as magic came flooding back into him. "We're under the antimagic," he called up to Hana, who had gotten comfortable enough with the descent to use her Elegant Step Skill to hop from root to root like a gazelle; she was faster than him now, but his lead had been large enough that it would take her a little while longer to catch up, and he still had an advantage when navigating the sheerer sections. "Guess it goes away as we get closer to the core."

"Should we jump down, then? Use your Feather Fall spell?" Hana called back.

Topher grimaced. "Can't risk it. Definitely wouldn't put it past this guy to have another layer of antimagic lower down, specifically to make us fall to our deaths if we tried that. Just keep doing what you're doing."

A short while later, they did indeed pass through another band of antimagic; Topher shook his head in bewilderment. There's paranoia, then there's whatever the fuck this is. But the change seemed to herald another meaningful stratification of the terrain; after the second return of magic, the roots emerged from the tuberous chaos of the fissure into a squarish, sharply-architected hallway. Topher paused a long moment before dismounting his root, willing his Disrupt Illusion Skill to reveal any hidden threats below, but nothing untoward presented itself. Grunting with the effort, he dropped down, landing on the solid surface with just enough force to make his knees creak. "Seems safe enough," he called up.

However, at the sound of his voice, a large section of the stone wall nearest him lit up brightly with emerald lines; before he could blink, several blocks of stone which had been perfectly melded into the side of the tunnel smoothly shifted towards him in complete silence. At first, he thought it was a trap, but even as he jumped backwards, he recognized his error; the blocks, clicking together as though magnetized, rapidly assembled themselves into a rough bipedal shape. A huge crystalline, weirdly trapezoidal eye rotated mechanically to regard him.

Then the creature's left limb whirred forth, and a massive gout of viridian flames erupted out of it.

Topher's reflexes instantly took over; even though he was pretty sure his Wyrd would keep him alive, immortality was a new enough situation for him that he wasn't willing to depend on it in the clinch. "Zoff Xat!" he thundered, swiftly erecting a Wall of Force at an angle between him and the strange stone guardian; the aquamarine fire splashed against the barrier, clinging to it like napalm.

But the shield held; Topher warily crouched down, trying to determine his next move. With a soft whisper of sound, Hana dropped down beside him; he heard the steely ring of her Flux Blade being pulled from its sheath even as her floral scent wafted into his personal space. "Bailey-sama," she commented dryly, "I question your definition of 'safe'."