An Age of Mysterious Memories

Hm, one last thing to make note of, this might not be the most efficient path. Genre senses are telling me that there’s likely a ninety nine percent chance that I’ve missed things with my thermal senses. Stuff like hidden, or secret doors, and so on. I guess we’ll have to keep our eyes out, and I’ll need to correct anything I can on the fly, if we spy ways we could be more efficient.

Snapping back to reality, letting go of the flow of the non, opening myself to existence at the normal rate, I flash a smile at Lil and Teuila before starting, “So, uh, a few things. I do have a path in mind, but I also realized some things. First, this body might have cold powers, which is cool, erm, heh.”

Pausing, I chuckle at the accidental wordplay while shaking my head at myself. Lil and Te both blow silent raspberries by sticking their tongues out at me, and I return the expression. They can tell it was accidental even though I’m currently wearing my psychic-blocking circlet. At least I think they can.

Rattling my skull to get back on track, I continue, “Well, the cold powers would be great, though I don’t think I should test unless we’re in a battle, so I don’t leave any clues around, like random patches of ice. Secondly, it being a new body, likely no longer has a spy within it that my old body had that I’d forgotten about.”

Sighing, recalling how Dawn was still with us, still alive, when I walked into that radiant cascade of disintegrating energy, I bite back tears for a moment before addressing Teuila, “Te, remember um, gosh I hate bringing this up. Remember the Cathedral of Blood? I walked into that light, and picked up a passenger sort of, like a homing beacon or something for the CE. I’d forgotten all about it, since he never seemed to make a move on it. Except, he had been making moves on it. The Damnations kept showing up to *my* offensives, but not yours or Kinzul’s.” When Te’s eyes fly wide at the shock of the realization’s likelihood, I add, “I know, right?”

Sighing, I worry about all the unforeseen consequences that may have come about during the time that I’d had that energy riding along inside me. I’m also a tad worried. I had a vague feeling that a certain world, that was a certain soul, had been riding around with me. Ow, ow, ow, brain. Okay, okay, I get it. Stuff I shouldn’t know about, or believe, or whatever. There was that other conclusion I’d come to in paused time though. I drink in Teuila with my gaze, her impossibly adorable face, its slight freckling, those perfect emerald eyes, that sporty ruby-red side-swept high-fade undercut that flops to frame the right half of her face. Staring at her lovingly, I’m almost positive I’m right about my guess about how all this ends. I can’t help wearing a—, oh well, anyway. I disguise my thoughts as a plotting grin. My expression only passes along seeming-confidence in my planned route to Te and Lil.

Lil tilts his large draconic cranium side to side, cracking his neck, before he rolls his shoulders and wiggles like a bulldog preparing to sit. His wings are furled, yet I’m half tempted to suggest he shapechange them away entirely so they don’t get damaged in any of the battles. I’m not sure if their frailer leathery nature has to somehow transfer to the rest of his sturdier scaled body in order to do that though. Draconic shapechanging is pretty weird stuff. Some of them can make clothing out of their scales, some can’t, some have a fair degree of control and leeway over their human form, and just—. Focus Reggie. Right. Not the time to be trying to puzzle out a type of magic that isn’t going to impact the upcoming battles.

Here’s hoping this works. I’ll just be bypassing one more wall, that being the floor immediately beneath us. At least, when I don’t sense any thermal fluctuations in the hallway below us. And— go. Whew, okay, dropping the spell, allowing it to return the missing matter to the floor, or ceiling, however you want to look at it. Right, right, whew. I flick my brows towards a darkened nook, so Lil and Te quickly take up hiding positions for a moment while I parse everything that I can.

The longer we can go without alerting our foes’ forces that we’re further along in, and deeper into the citadel, the better. This means no witnesses once we start coming into certain clumps of heat signatures I’d had to make note of. That means no mercy. Sighing, I clench my eyes tightly momentarily as my jaw locks up from accidentally gritting my teeth. I’ll try to make up for it in some cosmic karmic fashion someday.

Whether by design, intention, choice, or what have you, it seems I’m destined to pull off assassination missions. We make our own destinies though. Don’t we? I think. But what about time travel, and the primary timeline, needing to keep it unfractured? What about portents of the future? Argh, no time to have an existential philosophical crisis Reggie, get it together. This really isn’t the time to be spacing out and getting lost in unwinnable thought arguments.

None of us are used to stealth missions, and this one is going to be weird even beyond being a type of mission we’re not used to. We’re going to call everything down on our heads intentionally at some point by ringing the dinnerbell as it were even if we do somehow make it to our target undetected. My most fervent hope is that we can drive Al’pa’ca towards his vault, or something similar, that likely only has one way in and one way out. If we manage that, then I’ll hold off the horde at the entryway, while Te and Lil fight the archmage, and I’ll try to keep my eye out for ninth tier magics and the like.

Huff, if only I had my inventory magic and space skill as available as I used to on Can’Z’aas, before things started to go south with my Changeling Fae mana residue sickness. I could scoop out sections of these walls and tunnels, and rearrange them, making it nearly impossible to track or follow us. While we took on Al’pa’ca, if the horde did still manage to catch up, I could flood a hallway with dozens of thousands of knives or spears. Sighing, I know I shouldn’t waste time lamenting such trivial things. I’ve come a long way on Rayileklia. My powers have grown and expanded laterally, for which I should be, and am, grateful. No one else is lucky enough to have the natural growth inclination that we Can’Z’aasians do here on Rayileklia. Not at the rates we’re capable of anyway.

Lil and Te have become monstrous powerhouses of raw strength and physical force. Not to mention their various masteries over certain magical items, or entirely new abilities. Lil’s breath weapon is beyond amazing at this point, and after a bit of ramping up, should make it so that Al’pa’ca doesn’t risk using his own breath weapon any further, lest the ancient Sand end up with his jaw and throat glassed open from the melted silicates. That’s the hope anyway. I also need to hope that Lil and Te can purposely succumb to dragonfright close enough to me that my Honoris Causa can reach into them to negate the signals paralyzing them.

I kind of wish Lucky was here, but Lucky and Luni need to stick together, and there is no way in hell I’d want Lu to have to deal with this mess. She was so upset, just forcing herself to fight a single foe, when we were fighting a handful at once. Fighting off thousands on one front, while trying to face someone far more powerful hemming us in on another front? I don’t want to imagine the sort of trauma she’d suffer, or anxiety she’d put herself through. Plus, sighing, I have to admit that Solace needs Damnation defenses. The SAP can no longer afford to all be deployed at once. We’re the only ones that can keep the Damnations from simply waltzing through Solace and stealing everyone’s souls or dragonforces.

Perhaps kobold and Draconiac ground forces might be immune to having their souls stolen by the Damnations? Could that be part of the reason that Terrorzin has made such an abundance of them? I suppose that could keep them in check, keeping the CE from simply taking the throne of the King of Dragons. Hm. I don’t want to risk any of our Draconiac allies testing that however. It’s better if we handle it as the SAP. Besides, it could simply be a numbers thing, if they take more than a split instant to steal a soul, going up against thousands still isn’t in their best interest.

Taking off my psi-blocking circlet for far-too-short a time, I let Te and Lil know the route I’d like us to take. Of course it’s best communicating telepathically, silently. Hopefully no one can hear thoughts nearby. Plus, I intend to change the route at least once anyway. I’m not intentionally misleading Teuila and Lil, but I’ve just got this sneaking suspicion that we’re going to find ourselves passing rooms with secret exits and entrances. Atter’s was the first domain I really encountered them in.

Hm, speaking of, or rather, thinking of, Atter—. I wonder how the eggs are doing. Heck, I wonder how Atter and Boetah are doing. Now thinking about them, I wonder how Shaylon and Revvy and Greggy are doing too. Their goggles still display absolutely nothing due to the pitch blackness of the ‘Neath. As much as I’d like to be able to check in on any and every friend, not all of them have goggles yet. Also, it’s not like I was going to have Atter wear goggles while she was conjugating. That’s just—. No. Sighing, I rattle my skull, attempting to reorient myself and focus on the task at hand.

Gnawing on my lips, I’m worried that our luck has been too good to hold, lasting as long as it has. We’ve been able to dart by several rooms that were each occupied by large clusters of heat signatures. My plotted path does take us through one cluster however, so we’re going to need to prepare to fight as quietly as we can. I don’t recall ever doing a stealth takedown, but for some reason, sneaking along with the intention of taking lives feels almost second nature to me. I guess I do have a stealth skill from Can’Z’aas. Maybe that’s it. Or maybe it’s all those stealth-action RPGs your brain is filled with from Fakeworld? Meh, kindly screw off with the Fakeworld crap right now. This is too dangerous for distractions.

I— what’s that sound? There’s a skittering, skritching sound, accompanied by clanking. It’s as if—. There are robots, clankers, that don’t put out heat signatures large enough to register on my senses. They’re patrolling the hallways. Crap! I tap Lil and Teuila and flick my brows and forehead forward swiftly, indicating we need to hurry. We still need to be as silent as possible, to reduce how much time we need to spend fighting for our lives as we head down to the Chamber of Storms.

Hm, based on runic fragments, I’m picking up some of the history of this place. So Al’Pa’Ca had ruled it, and it was originally a site dedicated to attunement with storms to begin with, but he’d chosen a vain domain name, and cast aside the old ways, early during Terrorzin’s reign. I guess that’s why Kinzul was surprised that he’d reverted the name sometime in recent history. Of course, she wasn’t going to be fed news about this, without learning it through her spy network, so it makes a sort of sense that it took her by surprise. Still, when she put all of her faith, and trust, in a Worldstorm that she concocted, wouldn’t taking over a seat of power involving storms be one of the first things you do? Or at least, knocking the pieces off the board that knew of its original connections.

I dunno, I don’t want to fault Kinzul, but it’s another one of those things that doesn’t quite add up right for me. What did she need my blood for? Why did she need me unconscious for part of it, when I’d already consented to giving as much blood as she desired? Huff. She was right. There will be things she’ll have wished she’d shared before it’s too late, and things that I probably won’t learn of until it’s likely too late.

My eyes droop wearily as I’m overcome by a sadness at the prospect of losing our beloved Administrator, my beloved wife, Kinzul. It’s fated. We know it is. Being in a war as badly outmatched as we are, it’s likely that it could occur any day, as opposed to being in a time of peace, when it wouldn’t make sense to expect some powerful force to gather against Kinzul. Just—. Just don’t think about it Reggie. Carry on. Forget it for now. It’s a pain that you can’t do anything about beyond ignoring it at the moment.

As the three of us burst into the room leading to the next floor, a floor apparently known as the Nexus of Tempests, I’m sad to say that we brutally, efficiently murder the guardians of the stairwell before they can so much as stand to react to our presence. Drawing a deep breath, sighing, I make certain the door’s latch is mended, and returned. I also bar the door from this side, and set the corpses in the approximate positions they were in when we’d busted in. Hopefully no one is due to check in on them any time soon. Every last second, minute, hour not spent fighting off the thousands of foes as we seek out Al’Pa’Ca could be the difference between victory and defeat, life and death.

Oddly, I feel a strong breeze from the stairwell. I suppose, the next floor is known as the Nexus of Tempests, so perhaps it’s not that odd. Doing my best to make certain we’re leaving as few obvious clues as to our whereabouts as possible, I check in visually with Lil and Teuila. They both nod silently, so we carry on. The mission’s going about as smoothly as it possibly can, but I’m sure we’re about to hit a snag any second now. Heck, I’m curious what sorts of dangers lurk below, awaiting us on the uniquely named floor. I guess we’ll find out in a few seconds.