Broken Lands

Chapter 421 – What Happened Back Then

Sophia wasn’t sure what to expect the Moonlit Branches to be like, but whatever she expected, it wasn’t for it to seem ordinary. The city was literally built on the branches, branches that were easily wide enough to hold fairly large buildings, as long as they were wider than they were deep. It reminded Sophia a lot of other places she’d been, even though the branches were all from a single tree unlike Serenity Settlement and the Great Trees of Berinath were smaller.

Given how large Berinath’s Great Trees were, with crowns that sheltered an entire dome, it really made the point that Arcatiz’s World Tree was huge.

Like Berinath’s Great Trees, it was clear that the Moonlit Branches were shaped to more easily hold the city that formed under its boughs. In Berinath’s case, the shaping was done by the dryads that were the primary residents. For the Moonlit Branches, it had to be done by the World Tree itself.

Or possibly by the Guide through the Hub menus. It was probably a combination of both when Sophia thought about it, the Guide … well, guiding the World Tree’s growth based on the Hubs it needed to make.

Unlike the name, the Moonlit Branches were currently lit by sunlight. It was softened by the leaves it went through enough that it was a cool green light, but it was still clearly sunlight and not moonlight. Breezes swept through the branches but they didn’t sway at all; they were simply too sturdy. 

The area they stepped out onto was quiet compared to what Sophia had heard about the ground level or even the markets outside. Archons flitted from branch to branch and people of many shapes without wings walked along them, but it was more like a strip mall in a suburb in the middle of a weekend than Times Square on a workday. 

It was pretty similar to the bustle around the Adventurer’s Guild building back home, really; there were people around and quite a few of them seemed to be out having fun with friends while others were clearly focused on what they needed to do. Many of them moved in armed groups, but no one was worried about attack. This was clearly a safe space for people climbing the Tree.

Sophia wasn’t sure why she wasn’t comparing it to the Registry in Izel; that was pretty similar too. It seemed like she was thinking about home more and more lately, probably because she was actually getting close to heading home. It wasn’t like she’d gotten another letter …

…

She hadn’t checked for a letter since she arrived on Arcatiz. She was an idiot. 

The first building they encountered was a restaurant, but the one after it was an inn that was clearly there for people who only intended to spend the night. They even recommended another place farther into the city for those who needed recovery time when Dav inquired about rooms.

The moment they made it to the room, Sophia started digging in her pack. She hadn’t gotten the notebook out in quite a while, but she knew it was there, which made it easy to use the pack’s enchantments to pull it up to the top.

There wasn’t one new letter from her family; there were three. The paper for two of them, the first and the third, looked different. It was as if it had warped slightly, but Sophia didn’t pay much attention to the paper. She cared about the contents.

Hey, Sis

I’m pretty sure this will make it to you … it had better. If it doesn’t, all the effort I’ve been putting in about learning about cross-Origin travel is totally wasted.

Well, not totally. It turns out that understanding the Origin helps immensely with understanding and working with world cores and ley lines. Magic moves through the ley lines in exactly the same way as it moves through the Origin; in fact, some of it does move through the Origin even when it’s on the same planet. Uncle Althyr says that the first World Cores were like the Four Icons, born from the Origin itself.

He’s been the one teaching me about it since I passed Grandfather Senkovar’s test. I’m trying to pick up a related Path, Origin Walker. If I get there, I might even be able to come visit.

I think you’ll be home before I manage it. Mother is worried, of course, but she says that she’s still getting flashes of you coming home, though she can’t see when yet. In most of them, you have company - it had better be someone who deserves you! Or maybe a group of friends and allies? She won’t say who it is, no matter how much I ask.

Anyway, I’m not sure which of the letters you’ve gotten before this, but I doubt you’ve gotten any of mine. Uncle Althyr was pretty upset when he learned I was trying to send letters without asking for help and said that the method I was using would only work for Dad. I thought I was doing it right, but apparently there’s something about the filament branching curvature of the carrier spellform that I can’t even see, much less replicate. He was really impressed when he saw the design, too; he called it “an elegant solution even if it depends too much on mana and too little on essence for the Origin, your father is certainly living up to being a magic dragon” and you know how much of a compliment that is from him.

Sophia grinned. She could almost hear Uncle Althyr say that. He might not be their biological uncle but he was closer than Jacob, their mother’s brother. The fact that Althyr could make his home wherever he wanted and stayed with them on his frequent visits to Earth helped, as did the fact that he was perfectly happy to spend time with the kids as well as the adults.

Althyr’s teaching me a completely different approach, though it does still hook onto the link to the notebook. If it works properly, it won’t just copy the words; it will actually send the entire thing, paper and all. That’s really important for the next step, giving you a way to write back. I’m not good enough yet for the nested spell to work, but all of the trials of this spell worked so I’m pretty sure this will make it to you.

So, uh, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to give you an update on what’s happened while you’ve been gone, but if you got any of the previous letters I’m sure Mom filled you in on what’s happened with the family. I think the big thing to tell you about is something she wouldn’t think to mention, since she never remembers to talk about what she does.

She knew you disappeared before anyone else even knew there was a problem. I’m pretty sure she knew you were gone before you actually vanished, by the fact that she arrived at the Adventurer’s Guild building before the first phone call from the ejected delvers. She’s the reason it wasn’t a real disaster.

Oh! I guess you wouldn’t know what happened outside, would you? The dungeon cracked apart. ALL of the instances broke. About half of the monsters were dead, either in cleared instances or in ones that were actively being delved like the one you were in, but the rest poured out all at once along with everyone who was inside. That wasn’t enough people to deal with the monsters, but Mom sent enough Adventurers to handle it. She had to do a portal override to get them there in time, but they made it.

She also sent Legion. That’s what made a lot of the Adventurers who were hanging out at the Guild building decide to hop first and ask for a Quest second; they might not know who Rissa Rothmer is but they all know who Legion is.

Legion was famous, but Sophia knew that wasn’t the point. The member of Legion that was almost always at the Guild building was Carl Taylor, usually called Legion Carl by the Adventurers. Everyone knew Legion Carl, just like everyone knew Questgiver Becca, his wife. Legion Carl was easygoing and cheerful until things got bad; more importantly, he was the person who usually handled the response to dungeons that were near overflowing.

They were usually notified by Serenity, not Rissa, and with days to answer instead of minutes, but that was enough to make the precedent clear. If Legion Carl said he needed people for an immediate dungeon break suppression, people would answer.

It was a little depressing that Xavier thought he had to explain that to Sophia when Sophia had more time with the Adventurers than her older brother did, but she guessed it was because he was her older brother. He’d also been gone for most of the five years before she was sent through the Origin; she’d only seen him when she visited Suratiz. It was good that he was home but annoying that she wasn’t there to greet him.

It was the biggest break in a US city ever, at least according to the news, but the monsters were all low Tier, nothing above Tier Three. The Adventurers rescued the people who were spat out of the dungeon and then had to track down the monsters. Father got involved for one particularly sneaky Tier Three Invisible Wind Slicer, but I think that was mostly because he was too angry with the Adventurers’ Guild CEO to deal with him. 

Sophia snickered. Her father was the one with the reputation and name recognition, but her mother was the dangerous one for anything that wasn’t literal combat. Serenity was a bit of a pushover; Rissa wasn’t.

Mother won’t tell me the whole story, but I suspect it involves a lot of yelling and a few quiet words to the people who actually know what makes the Guild work. The result of whatever she did is that Larry Carrollson isn’t the CEO anymore. It turns out that he was taking bribes from some offworld mercenary groups to funnel people through Earth’s dungeons without the normal fees. 

That’s not something Mom and Dad would normally care about beyond removing him, but apparently one of the groups figured out how to break a dungeon and get the full destruction award by destroying a single instance crystal, some sort of nasty spreading enchantment on the weapon they used on the crystal. I can’t tell if that pissed Dad off more than the fact that you were missing but I think it did. This wasn’t the first dungeon they killed, it was just the first one on Earth.

Sophia didn’t have any doubt: her father treated all dungeons almost like they were his kids. He didn’t have much of a relationship with most of them, but that didn’t change the fact that he considered them more or less family. Someone going around killing them for a simple linear increase in the reward for clearing the dungeon would absolutely piss him off. They’d expected her to get thrown into another world for years and prepared for it; that had to be less problematic than killing multiple dungeons.

Maybe she was underestimating how much her disappearance mattered. She wasn’t sure. It hadn’t bothered her too much because of the preparation; it was more like going on a long-anticipated trip. It might have been different for her parents.

That mercenary group no longer exists. Dad didn’t even take care of it himself; he contracted the Rising Phoenix Company to handle them and recover the enchanted weaponry. It took him most of a year to take it apart and figure out a countermeasure, but the weapons will no longer work on any dungeon anywhere.

Carrollson isn’t the only person kicked out of Adventurers’ Guild management. It seems that he and most of the staff he brought in forgot that the Guild is a privately held nonprofit dedicated to the support of Adventurers, preventing dungeon breaks, and clearing out surface monster infestations. They were treating it like a public business and Mom put a stop to that. Legion’s the CEO now; they’re accepted enough that it seems to work. 

I’ve been on a few delves since then and the only thing I’ve noticed is that the entrance fees are back where they used to be. It turns out the problem was greed, not increasing costs.

I can only enchant a single sheet, so that’s all I’ve got room for. Everybody’s doing well; take the time you need to get back to us safely. I’ll send another letter when I’ve figured out the loop enchantment Althyr’s trying to teach me.

Hugs!

Xavier