Savage Awakening 489. Exploding Golems (V)

A/N:

We're back!

//

It was time for another picnic—a nice reunion after so many years away. Evan, Avery, and Reina all made it.

It didn’t feel like twenty years had passed. Twenty years would’ve been a big fraction of their old lifetimes, but it made for a tiny fraction now. It just felt like they were meeting up for the weekend after some time abroad.

This time they picnicked off-earth—on a pretty World Tree canopy Reina sectioned off just for the occasion. Evan arrived just after Zane and Reina did. As they waited for Avery to get there, he engaged in one of his favorite pastimes at the World Tree—getting out a pair of binoculars and doing some kingdom-spotting.

“What’s that one down there?” he gasped. “Look!”

He pointed, and Reina looked. “The one with all the vines, right?”

“Mhm.”

“It’s called the Swinging Kingdom, sweetie.”

“Woah…” Evan did some more spotting. “Is it really just hanging there?”

“That’s right.” She knelt down beside him. “They’re just used to living on a moving kingdom—it’s like living on a boat.”

Evan had been on many boats in his time through the Whale Kingdom. He started happily yapping about it.

Reina ruffled his head. “See those anchors?” she said gently. “They’re there so when a big storm comes, the whole thing doesn’t just flip over…”

Evan took out his notebook and started rearranging his list of World Tree favorite kingdoms. He seemed to be struggling to decide whether to put this one at #3 or #4—he was quite taken with it.

Soon Avery arrived in triumphant fashion. She was sweating and panting quite badly. She looked like she’d just been on a very long run.

“I’ve just been on a very long run!” she cried. Then she keeled over. “….Water?”

“There are teleport portals here from the main square,” Zane informed her as he handed her a bottle.

She hiked up her sweatpants to show weights around her ankles. “I’m getting in the best shape of my life,” she told them.

“Since when?” said Zane.

“Been at it for a week.” Avery looked pleased. “It’s my new habit! I’m turning my life around, just you watch. I started lifting some weights too, see?”

She flexed a bicep and looked a bit disappointed when not much happened.

“Hey, we’ll get there,” she said defensively. “All part of the plan!”

Zane and Reina exchanged a glance.

“Avery?” said Reina. “This plan of yours…”

“Mhm?”

“It goes for the next eighty years, right?”

“Yup.”

“…and the goal’s to beat peak True Gods by the end.”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“It’s just…” Reina hesitated. “It’s wonderful you’ve made it this far! But don’t you think it might be going a little…slow?”

Avery shook her head.

“I’ve got it all worked out.” She pulled out her awesomeness graph again. “I’m making myself 1% better each week, right? See—we’re still right here—right on schedule.” She pointed to a point not far from the start. Not much had changed in the curve.

“But the big gains only come at the end, see? It’s gonna keep building on itself. Like a snowball.”

She sounded quite confident. “I’ma be smashing Monster Kings in no time, just you watch!”

Zane looked at Reina. Neither of them seemed quite sure what to make of it.

Avery squinted. “You don’t believe in me, do you?”

“Sweetie, it’s just—”

“Hmph.” Avery crossed her arms. “I think you’re just a hater.”

“Excuse me?” said Reina, blinking.

“My haters only make me stronger! In eighty years, you’ll be sorry!”

Reina was speechless.

“I believe in you!” said Evan.

Evan, meanwhile, was much closer to finding Chomper. That was his main update. He was currently on the 27th floor, which was one giant train track that serviced a single giant train—a transit floor between the 26th and 28th floors. There were all kinds of odd characters on board, and one, a banker with a very twirly mustache, said he’d seen Chomper running away from an angry mob with lots of baked goods in his mouth—that was a few months ago, though. He knew because he’d tried to catch Chomper for sale and failed.

This banker wasn’t a very nice fellow—he was some kind of Baron, and tons of folks all across the 24th through 28th floors—the ‘Candyland’—owed him debt. Halfway through the train ride, he mysteriously died. They were conducting an investigation, naming suspects, but none of the clues added up. It seemed like a whole subplot—Evan didn’t go into it.

“I’m baking up a batch of his favorite cookies,” said Evan. “I’m just gonna leave them out—like a snack trail, y’know?”

Evan was hopeful.

Reina told him about what she’d be up to next too—the second stage of her ritual. The visions would get even more intense; she had to brew something called the ‘Everlasting Elixir.’

“I’ve got to harvest the raw sap of the World Tree,” she told him. “Then use the World Tree itself as a cauldron. It’s…a lot.”

“How are you feeling about it?” said Zane, munching on a bagel.

“I’ll get it done,” she said, lifting her chin.

She still looked to have a bit of fire in her eyes. Kind of like the last time they’d talked—but she seemed better. He suspected it might be because she’d done so well in the first leg of her rituals. Kind of like him with the Golems—she’d gotten some of that trademark Reina confidence, that pride back.

“This step will involve some higher Concepts of Growth and Nurturing. It’s to do with whole ecosystems,” she told him, leaning into him—she was in her own thoughts. “It’s getting close to Life-Laws…it means I’ll have to take in more Creation, too.”

“Makes sense,” he said. Just like how he took in Destruction.

“The Elixir should strengthen my body enough, so I can take it,” she said. “After that—”

She narrowed her eyes. “Let that snake try me.”

Zane wasn’t particularly keen on that. But he got the spirit of it.

Twenty years.

It’d been quite some time to sit in meditation for. And he’d fought in that time, true. He’d munched a great deal of dreamsteel. He was 48% through unlocking the next System Store tier.

Still—there was a part of him, deep in his chest, that was starting to grow restless again. Something that never really left him. It’d been sated in the war, with the Slayer—sated some, fighting all those Golems.

But he missed getting his hands dirty.

He missed having a good scrap.

That night he did some leveling with Reina—

Level up!

Essence Level 570 -> 571

He said his goodbyes to his friends.

Before he finally made his way off to the Barbarian Sage, though, he had one last stop to make.

**

Noughtfire’s cabin was exactly as he remembered. He dropped by one morning to find the old fellow with tea and an old scroll—just like when Zane had left him.

“Morning,” said Noughtfire, like it was any normal morning. The old master gave a hint of a smile. “Do sit.”

Noughtfire had had him check out some of the bigger battles of ancient history in the Library—stuff that’d changed the course of human civilization, stuff that’d been lost to history. As far as Zane could tell, the old fellow was just curious. There were a few mysteries he wanted to know about—the fall of Ancient Dara was one. There were a few other events—there was a paragraph in an old tome about this one battle called the ‘Duel of Crimson Dawn,’ where the Primordial Roc and the Primordial Dragon, the two great ancestors of their species, battled for nine years straight. It was the Dragon that won through—ultimately making dragonkind the king of the Godbeasts. It’d produced some of the fiercest fires the Galaxy had ever seen. Just rife with Destruction.

“True Hegemons, the two of them. The likes of which the Galaxy has seldom seen,” Noughtfire said offhand.

Zane nodded. He would’ve wanted to see a real recording of it.

“Yes. I suspect they both wielded a variant of the Supernova,” mused Noughtfire. “I would’ve liked to see that in action too.”

“That’s your Law, right?” said Zane.

“That’s right.” Noughtfire gave a thoughtful look. “The Supernova is among the apex Laws. The final destination before true Destruction itself in its purest form…it is the endpoint of all those Laws that deal with fire. Starting from the Minor Laws of Spark. All the way to the end…but even in Supernova, there are variants. Some weightier, some more explosive…each path makes its own kind.”

He stroked his beard. “The Stormfire Supernova, though, has a reputation as by far the most destructive. Something to look forward to, perhaps.”

Zane also gave Noughtfire a rough sketch of some notes he’d found in one of Aiwe’s notebooks. He couldn’t carry out any tomes—or record the Laws, for that matter. But Noughtfire just wanted a few maps and notes.

Noughtfire browsed them, nodded, shuffled them away.

“What are they?”

“Just some notes from Aiwe’s old journals. They’ll patch up our understanding of the System—and of that dungeon—quite nicely.”

“I saw some floor maps?”

“Just in case,” said Noughtfire. “It should not come to that. Should we need to enter those lowest depths—the most treacherous floors of the Superdungeon, where only a handful alive would dare tread—they will prove very useful.”

Finally, Zane gave him the conclusion of the Malzareth story.

Noughtfire didn't look very surprised at all. “The trouble with that serpent,” mused Noughtfire, “is that it would be dangerous enough if it were merely some unthinking force of nature. Say a hurricane, or some other dumb, low-level Monster—by virtue of Law and power alone, it would shake the Galaxy.”

He sighed. “But it thinks it is dangerous because it is so very clever instead…so it is not merely dangerous, but worse—it is also insufferable about it.”

Zane wasn’t a fan either.

“In truth, it is a mean little creature. It simply carries a very big stick.”

That checked out, in Zane’s view.

“Where’d it get all that Law, anyway?” he wondered. It had as much Creation and Destruction as any master he’d ever seen, even in visions.

“Nepotism,” said Noughtfire simply. “Much of it is inherited. Malzareth—or so I theorize—is one of the firstborn of the Original Monster. That is, the First One. It hails from outside this Galaxy…I expect it was sent here to conquer Dragonspire and make it like any of the countless other Dark Galaxies across this universe.”

“Dark Galaxies.” Zane’s brow furrowed. 

“Galaxies fallen to Monsters—Galaxies that become breeding grounds for them.”

Noughtfire paused and grew serious. “As it happens, I’ve visited just such a Galaxy before.”