On Cosmic Tides

The ocean was a flat plane beneath them, looking for all the world like a portal into some dark realm. Not a whisper of wind or a sound to be heard beyond what racket the planes were making. Laurel watched it pass beneath her, alternating between keeping a lookout for ships and staring off towards the horizon. This leg of their journey was equal parts tedious and nerve-wracking. With nothing to do or see, even the ever-inquisitive Leander was looking listless, slumped as he was behind Trip. But underneath the boredom was the constant reminder that if something went wrong, they were stranded in the truest sense of the word. Laurel could fly, and she had a small catamaran in storage they would probably all fit on. The others didn’t have such assurances, and had sniped at each other all morning until Kat had barked across the comm stones that there would be no more speaking allowed.

For Laurel, the danger was tinged with luxury. It was the perfect opportunity to expand her spiritual sense, free of all the noise of the city. The prominence of lead, pure or in alloys, meant parts of any modern city were blurry to her spirit. If she tried to push her perception out to cover all of Lanport in any sort of detail, the headaches would have been debilitating. The capital was a little better, if she leveraged her connection to the Core, but still not perfect. The planes were lead-free and the ocean and open sky were a pleasant tapestry of life and magic for kilometers around to her unencumbered senses. Her mind wandered far into a future version of Verilia, when she could use the glut of excess ambient mana to neutralize the lead through careful infusion. But that would remain a dream until they had secured the region against spirit beasts the size of battleships.

Her observations revealed a telltale shoal of mana signatures approaching from the north. Laurel focused her attention until she could pick out the individuals within the pod.

“Kat, I think you’ll want to break the no-talking rule for this. Look about three kilometers north-northwest.”

“Hostiles?” The normally relaxed woman went tense scanning the surroundings.

“No,no. There’s a pod of uralons approaching from that direction. They’re harmless, but also adorable.”

“Okay everyone listen up. There is a passel of adorable animals off to our right. Our fearless leader suggests you take note.”

A squeal echoed out from Rebecca and Reina simultaneously as they spotted the creatures. Mottled green flippers guided round bodies set on the surface of the ocean. Large eyes stuck out on either side of their heads as the small pod swam by in the distance. Occasionally some of the uralons floated a few feet above the water, moving their flippers as though swimming and still moving forward. The whole expedition watched the harmless critters until they reached an area of the sea entirely indistinguishable from any other. They paused and sank in unison.

“Aww, where’d they go?” Rebecca was half out of her plane, staring at the place the beasts had disappeared.

Laurel was thinking the same thing and she focused on the area, this time pushing her senses far below the surface. She felt the sea floor, two kilometers down, with a thriving ecosystem in place. The uralons reappeared to her senses, sinking towards a dense pocket of mana on the ocean floor. Small specks of concentrated mana had to be a horde of something, though she was too far away to identify it. Martin might have been able to, but she was far more familiar with beasts of the air than the water.

“There’s something down there. Potentially one of the treasures we’re after.”

“That’s great Laurel. But unless you’re looking to drop a grenade and hope for the best, I don’t see what we’re going to do about it.” Maria merrily chimed in from her accustomed lounging position behind her pilot. The anxiety of a long flight over open ocean hadn’t phased the special forces soldier for a moment.

Looking out over her company, Laurel tried to decide the best way forward. Before she could say anything, Kat leaned forward and covered the comm stone.

“It’s a long flight to cross this passage as is. We can’t circle around while you go off on an adventure without wasting time, and wearing down the fliers. As it is, we barely have enough time to get to the shore before dark.”

Laurel patted the major’s shoulder to show her understanding. “How about you all go on ahead, and I’ll catch up. I’m not sensing anything too dangerous, and I’ll be able to go down there.” Kat chose not to comment on this, leaving Laurel a tad miffed. No surprise to hearing she could breathe underwater? Really?

Instead the placid pilot opened the communication back up and issued orders. “Listen up people. Laurel’s going to go have a look and the rest of us are continuing towards Gavroz”.

When no more information was forthcoming, Laurel dove off the side of the plane. In the time it took her to reach the water she had increased the mana circulation to her lungs and nose, focusing on her understanding of air. All around her, all around everything, even underwater, there was air. And where there was air, she could breathe. She barely checked her momentum before hitting the water feet first and plummeting into the depths.

The last time she’d hunted the sea floor she had been decades younger and leagues weaker. Careful adjustment to the pressure and focus on pulling the air out of the water had been necessary to survive. Now she wasted no time. Reaching out to the ambient mana, she controlled it, shaped it, and shot forward through the gloom, towards the mana she sensed. A stream of bubbles trailed in her wake. Reaching into her storage, she tossed a powerful glow stone out into the water, tethering it to her with a strand of mana.

A new world revealed itself. The remains of a shipwreck were the centerpiece of the undersea metropolis. Splintered wood stuck out everywhere at odd angles. Centuries undersea and still the ship’s skeleton remained. Accompanied by many skeletons of the formerly living sort. A few whale carcasses had fallen over the years, bones forming the pathways the denizens traversed. And this was no unpopulated graveyard. Sea urchins carpeted the area. Other crustaceans mixed throughout, with a larger predator or two lurking further away. The gentle green of luminescent coral trees mixed with Laurel’s blue light, painting the whole scene in a turquoise aura. She brought the mana map orb out to take an impression of the place.

It would have been beautiful if every one of the animals wasn’t leaking death-attuned mana. It made sense. A shipwreck, whale falls, even the coral had a million dead pieces, and it was all packed together and feeding off each other. She almost wished she hadn’t come down here. Even a tiny prick from one of the sea urchins would be a pain to fix if it was infected with concentrated death mana. It was only almost, however, because she felt a triangle of natural treasures anchoring the little world in place. Something water attuned off to the north, not surprising based on the location, and not worth harvesting yet. A potent death treasure in the center of the largest carcass. Useful, but not something she was willing to risk carrying around on the rest of the journey.

To the east lay the true prize. She drifted towards it, away from the roiling mass of death. A ledge of bedrock reached out over a narrow trench. The inside was jet black, even the light from Laurel’s glow stone was unable to penetrate it. With senses pushed out as far as possible, she stepped off the ledge and began to sink. Her left hand kept contact with the wall as she went deeper, always careful to keep a clear path to the open ocean. The crevasse was only a couple of meters wide, but it went another two hundred deeper into the rock.

Her feet touched down. Eels slithered through the darkness, and some predatory fish were lying in wait for a foolish morsel to slip past. Nothing moved towards her yet. Her techniques were giving off enough power to make most animals hesitate, and these beasts were hunters of opportunity or ambush, rather than anything willing to attack outright. She stepped forward. The treasure tugged at her perception like a lodestone from a few dozen meters ahead. The darkness kept her moving slowly, inching forward one step at a time, but only a few minutes later she was in front of it.

A jade box popped into existence from her tattoo. The enchantments, etched in gold, flared at the presence of so much mana, before becoming inert once more. Predators of the deep circled. None of these beasts was strong enough yet for anything resembling thought, but they knew something important was happening. The stranger in their midst was a threat to their home.

The box in one hand, a silver knife in the other, she felt around the edge of the treasure, where it was anchored to the rock with tendrils of crystalized mana. Roots ensured that something with the same aspect would regrow. And quickly, down here with the other anchors and so much mana infusing everything. Slipping the knife into the juncture with the roots she sliced carefully. A puncture here would ruin the effort. When it was no longer attached and started to sink she quickly snapped the box closed around it. The inlaid symbols once more flared with light but Laurel didn’t stand still to watch the seal form.

Hurriedly she backed up a few steps and shot herself out of the trench. Picking an angle that avoided the death garden, she pushed herself away from the seabed and into the open ocean. Her glow stone was still trailing behind her. That was the only thing that allowed her to see the tentacle coming towards her and swerve out of the way. She swore, but the creativity was lost to some bubbles, trailing up to the surface.

An octopus bigger than her was jetting back towards her after the evasion. No longer a simple animal, it had evolved into a spirit beast with enough stealth to evade her senses. She dodged again. Its next approach was more cautious. Alien eyes stared at her with a hunger for what she was carrying. Laurel took the moment to glance around. Nothing else was nearby. Better for her, though still not ideal. Underwater was not the arena most suited to her attacks. Blades were slowed, lightning diffused, and air blunted by the water.

The octopus faced no such obstacles. When she had glanced away, it had taken the opportunity to re-camouflage itself. Even nearby it was hard to pick out in the gloom of the depths. Tentacles wove around her, attempting to trap and pull her towards its maw. A well placed dodge gave her some distance. A deep pull on her will cleared a tube of water between Laurel and her foe. Water refilled the space immediately, but not before a lightning bolt streaked through the opening. The beast seized, tentacles no longer reaching for Laurel. She pressed the advantage and jetted in close. A sword appeared in her hand and a few quick strokes later, the octopus was no more.

The battle had attracted more predators, they circled outside the ring of light Laurel’s stone produced. She efficiently harvested the core and the ink sac and returned to her ascent. The sharks could have the corpse.

*********

The first true breath after surfacing was the sweetest Laurel could remember in a long time. The air welcomed her home and she rose entirely out of the ocean to start flying in the direction of Gavroz and her team. When she was a sufficient distance from the mana biome, she swooped back down to the surface and dropped her small vessel. Sodden clothes went into storage, a new outfit was brought out, and the sails set to not need her active control. A brush of her mana filled them with wind and she was off.

Twilight had descended while Laurel was underwater. The perfect setting to watch the seal finish forming. The golden light shimmered through the box as the lid fused to the sides, forming one hollow piece of jade. The boxes were the work of master enchanters from her sect, infused with spatial mana. Neither she nor Martin had the ability to craft such an object, but they had both kept a few dozen in their tattoos for chance encounters. When she decided on this trip they had taken a risk and sent her with almost their entire combined supply. It would be worth it, though, since it meant she could store it in her tattoo without ruining the usefulness for the City Core.

But first, she pressed her mana into one of the runes on the lid and watched as it became transparent. A translucent white orb sat nestled in the jade. More inscriptions kept it from moving, but she could see air inside the orb swirling chaotically, a thin strand of silver battered around the bubble but never able to pierce it, or even indent the membrane. A Tension Vesicle. Because sometimes the first person to find something decides on a gross or pretentious name that everyone else is stuck with forever. Formed in areas of sustained high pressure, a rare find for a random encounter in the middle of nowhere. If she absorbed it, her sense and control of air pressure would increase to an incredible degree. Any blade formed out of air would have far more power behind it and be almost effortless to form. Or she could force the power to infuse her body, making her impossible to crush, even for other master cultivators. More importantly, it would bring her that much closer to merging her lightning and air aspects into her true goal of a storm attunement. It was so close. She had spent decades seeking out storms in her free time, meditating in mid-air to better understand the true nature of a tempest. There were no storm-attuned mana wells to seek out in her time, and progress was slow. Storms simply moved too quickly. Mana storms would be better, but those were rare and impossible to predict.

She stared longingly at the Vesicle for a few more minutes. No one else would know. She could tell them the treasure wasn’t formed yet and everyone would believe her. Laurel envisioned lying directly to her students face and put the jade box in storage. As much of a boon as it would be for her personal cultivation, it would be even better for the city. If she combined it with more elementally-attuned treasures they could have a scythe of hardened air or water keeping the cliffs clear. Or they could have the plumbing of the city working at peak efficiency. If she still needed it she could come back in a decade and get another.

Lying back, she used her control of air to steer the boat, and relaxed for a tranquil nighttime ride.

It was nearing midnight when she reached the coast. An orange speck in the distance stood boldly defiant against the darkness of the untamed countryside. Laurel’s catamaran angled towards the only occupied patch of beach. As the boat approached the small lagoon, it ran ashore on the shallows. Laurel popped up and sent it back into storage, gliding over to the beach and the rest of her teammates.

Kat was sitting up awake by the fire with Maria. Trip and Reynard waved at her from where they were standing watch, keeping an eye on the hills beyond the beach. Everyone else slept on, not noticing her arrival. She saw no need to wake them. Laurel pulled the box out and waved it around before putting it away and joining the others by the fire.

“Didn’t doubt you for a minute.” Maria stood to give her a hearty backslap and then plopped back down on the driftwood logs they had dragged in to circle the fire.

“Any trouble on your end?” Laurel said, joining the others.

“Nope.” Kat said. “A few more of those bouncy turtles but nothing else. Had the kids scouting around a bit and it doesn’t look like anyone else has been in the neighborhood recently. We covered the army insignia on the planes too. Not a great defense if someone sees us but it gives us deniability. Elgin and Merista are on friendly terms but we didn’t exactly ask permission to be here..”

They talked further into the night. Laurel found herself reveling in the familiar excitement of once more adventuring into the unknown with friends.