Chapter 169: Lighthouse (Patreon)

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Leaving Mel, Hinako, and the lightly dressed Finella to guard the entrance, Amelia and Serena climbed the winding staircase. Each step was solid stone, a single slab embedded into the wall, twisting precariously up the lighthouse’s interior. The steps were chalk-coloured; they must have been quarried from somewhere else centuries ago and brought here.

“Diego said the Surians built this,” Amelia began, running her hands along the wall as they ascended. “I thought their kingdom was on the other side of the mountains?”

“They had influence in the Salaban Bowl,” Serena replied. “Vassal states. Although it wasn’t called the Salaban Bowl before the Long Discordancy, nor was the concept of statehood so rigidly defined then as it is now in modern times. Suria raided across the mountains, subjugating and controlling the demon tribes it found.”

“I suppose it wasn’t all desert back then, either.”

“No.”

Serena had previously described the vision the Vengeance had shown her in Ishaq; a memory of Anathor’s from when he was alive. He and his colleagues had been transporting who must have been the Empress herself to the Temple of Pyrinn. It was their final journey before Anathor and the others became Formless. A price they paid to stabilise the Empress and enable her to bond with her shard. They were likely near where the vision took place, but what Serena saw was a lush and tropical environment, completely different from the harsh desert the Red Sands was today.

She hadn’t yet told Serena all the information Diego had given her, or her deductions. They hadn’t time and Amelia had focused on the most important information first. Poor Finella might have burned alive if they’d waited any longer to leave.

“Diego said some other things I should tell you,” Amelia said. “About the past.”

“Once we’re settled.”

“Sure.”

They reached an opening in the ceiling, stepping up into the lighthouse’s next floor.

“Whoa,” Amelia muttered, feeling her eyes widen. “Is that usually found in a lighthouse?”

“No,” Serena replied, frowning at the sight. “That is not standard, or expected. Did the Formless say anything about this?”

The lighthouse was as tall as a five-storey building, but it didn’t have five floors. The floor Amelia and Serena had arrived at was an enormous open space, reaching all the way to the top of the lighthouse. What had caught their eye was the enormous pendulum that hung through the space. A cable held up a diamond-shaped block of white stone, about the size of a curled-up Amelia.

The bottom point of the weight stopped precariously close to the floor, hanging a mere few inches away. It wasn’t the only oddity. Dusty metal plates lined the walls, all the way to the top of the lighthouse. Some had broken away from their rusted couplings and lay flat on the floor.

Amelia ran a finger across one, wiping away the layer of dust. “They’re brass,” she said. “Mirrors, perhaps? For what purpose? Wait—” She felt the hard rigidity of something embossed on the metal. She traced it, recognising the runic script. “There’s Writing on the metal,” she said. “There’s no aether coming from them.”

“Not just the metal,” Serena said, bending over and examining the pendulum's weight. “The stone is Written as well. This stone must be special. Writing doesn’t work on common material. I suspect…” The demon pointed at the system of brass plates, tracing them to the top. “They’re supposed to catch the moonlight. Look, you can see where the roof opens.”

Amelia followed her girlfriend’s finger. Serena was right; the lighthouse’s roof was circled with heavy gears, hiding some old mechanism. Perhaps a lever somewhere above would open it. They could reach the roof; the stone stairs continued winding upward. They had broken halfway up, but it was nothing that either of them couldn’t jump.

“There’s graffiti,” Amelia said, spotting a series of scribbles on the walls near each stone step. She moved to get a closer look. “I see Hakian and Treki,” she said. “Some other languages as well. Is that Jimari? And—oh!” There were some scribbled in Imperial. She leaned forward, reading it out loud.

“Samuel Champlain stood here,” she read, “in the summer of 582 A.V.” There was something scrawled underneath that must have been the man’s signature. While the majority of messages were in Southern languages, about one in ten were Imperial.

Marko P was here, hiding from desert spirits. 520 A.V.

Here I, Ibn Battuta, sheltered in 571 A.V!

Damian was here in 611 A.V! Tremendous moonrain! Troublesome djinn!

“Let it be known,” Amelia read, tracing another message. “Here I, Anious Tasman of Pitten, took Lucia of Ennstal to bed for the first time—pfft!” She couldn’t help but giggle. She tapped the message, looking at Serena. “Someone was very proud of themselves in… 631 A.V.”

Serena shook her head, but the subtle curl of her lips betrayed her amusement. The demon strode over, reading a few of the messages. “They mostly stop after the early seventh century. That aligns with when the South lost their communion with Suijin and the Red Sands expanded. If I remember correctly, the Salaban Bowl rapidly desertified once the rivers dried.”

“Mmm,” Amelia hummed. “Think we’re the first here in a long time?”

“Not that long,” Serena said. “Look at this.”

She guided Amelia to the pendulum, where she ran her hands across the cable holding the white stone. “This is braided steel,” Serena explained. “It’s heavily rusted, but I can see traces of grey zinc in the recesses. We use the same cable on the Vengeance. It’s galvanised steel.” Serena tilted her head, looking up the length of the cable. “This can’t be older than a few decades. Someone’s maintained this place.”

“I take it they haven’t been back for a while,” Amelia mused, gesturing to the fallen brass mirrors. “It could do with a good cleaning.” She spooled up a bit of magic, vanquishing the layer of dust that had built up over years. The brass mirrors gleamed, and with the floor cleaned, it became apparent that the pendulum was hanging over more than plain stone.

“It’s a mosaic!” Amelia exclaimed. She backed away and scrambled up the stairs for a better view. “It’s a map!” she called down to Serena. The colours had faded, but thousands of painted stones formed mountains, rivers, and forests. It wasn’t anywhere Amelia recognised straight away.

Serena followed her up the stairs. 

“It looks familiar, but I can’t quite figure it out,” Amelia said. “Can you see it?”

For almost half a minute, the demon looked down in silence.

“It’s the Salaban Bowl,” Serena said suddenly. “It took me a while to recognise it, but if this was made by the Surians, it makes sense. Look…” she pointed to the mountains that surrounded the map on three sides, “the Salaban Mountains. Southern cartography only became reliable in the last century, so things aren’t quite to scale. See that river? That’s the Muhyi, the life-giver. The dried riverbed we stopped in the other day would have been one of its tributaries.”

“Then…” Amelia pointed to the eastern side of the room, where a green land lay in painted stones across the other side of the Salabans. “Is that…?”

“Yes,” Serena said, nodding. “It’s Suria before it was destroyed. Now it’s Rhaknam’s domain.” She pointed out a few more spots. “They’ve marked Shiloh,” she said, “with white stone. Hakim and Treki too. But what are these crystals for…?”

Across the mosaic map, there were more than a dozen red crystals embedded in the floor. Now Amelia looked closely; there were even more spaces, but someone must have taken the crystal for themselves, leaving only an empty setting. They marked seemingly random points on the map.

“Other cities?” Amelia asked. “Or towns, or villages, or something like that?”

“None of these places looks familiar,” Serena said, frowning. “I’m not—”

The answer came to Amelia’s mind like a sudden surge of aether.

“I know!” she exclaimed quickly. “It’s the temple we’re looking for! It must move!”

“Can ancient temples move?” Serena questioned.

“I bet this one can,” Amelia said. Something deep in her told her that her guess was right.

“Well, if so, I suppose that this pendulum is supposed to point the way to one then,” Serena mused. The demon turned, looking up at the roof. “We should hurry. Peak moonlight is near.”

They climbed the steps. The broken slabs halfway served no obstacle for their aether-enhanced bodies. After jumping the gap, they finished climbing, reaching the top where a padlocked hatch awaited them. 

“One moment,” Serena said. She pulled out her sword, cutting the rusted padlock with a smooth swing of aura-enhanced swordsmanship.

Amelia peeked downwards. The map seemed so small below her, as if she was the Red Moon itself gazing upon the South. Did Ryn the Dragon see something like this?

Being this high up no longer bothered her. She’d been so scared jumping from Hotel Highguard, but after the Asamaywa Fire, where she’d leapt from the academy’s tower, she no longer feared heights. Her mind was getting used to her magical strength and durability.

“Here we are,” Serena said, swinging the hatch open. The moment she did, the outside heat pushed its way in, bombarding them without mercy. “Seven hells,” Serena muttered. While the demon pushed her aura into yellow, Amelia strengthened both their wards in preparation.

They exited into a Southern hell. There, a great red crystal sat in a brass setting. It stood almost two metres tall, coloured a deep crimson. It was the biggest crystal Amelia had seen since coming to the world, and judging by the low whistle coming from Serena, it was the biggest Serena had seen.

“How much do you think it’s worth?” Amelia asked.

“A crystal this size, of this quality?” Serena shook her head. “You could trade this for a ship. A luxury yacht, perhaps. No, more than that. This could buy a private island.” The demon shook her head. 

“Why hasn’t it been taken?” Amelia asked. “There have been so many visitors, and it’s worth so much. Even if the steps have been broken for a long time, people would have seen the crystal.”

“This crystal?” Serena reached out and tapped it. “Two metres high, shaped like this? This would weigh about four tonnes, maybe more. Red is the heaviest of the crystals. You’re not moving this anywhere anytime soon. A Speaker might be able to make it work, but you wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret. Technically, this would belong to the Southern Overlord. Still…” Serena stepped back. “Can you feel the aether?”

“Yeah,” Amelia said. The crystal pulled in the surrounding aether, bending the aetherfield with its presence. The aetherflow inside was complicated, guided by the crystal’s flat faces and sharp edges. It wasn’t a cut Amelia knew, but it was familiar. “It reminds me of the crystals I’ve been cutting on the ship,” she said. “Those were cut to focus and react to light, but this is different.” She focused her senses, tracing the aetherflow through the crystal, decrypting its mysteries. “It must be for moonlight,” she said. “I think it—”

“Moons,” Serena said. “Look at that.”

Amelia turned away from the crystal. Her girlfriend was gripping the hilt of her sword, her posture still. She was watching their surroundings, and when Amelia looked at the desert around them, she couldn’t help but swallow.

Wyrms.

Dozens, no, hundreds of them.

They were churning the desert, ripping through dunes, running over and under each other, fighting over crystal. They were feasting, consuming what they could from the Red Moon's bountiful harvest. They were a writhing mass of predators. The desert muffled the noise, but Amelia could pick up on a distinctive chittering that grated on her ears.

“Well,” Amelia said, placing her hands on her hips and doing her best to sound cheerful. “Looks like they’re having fun!” She winked at Serena, receiving only a dry look in return. “What? We’re safe here, aren’t we?”

“I’m more concerned with how long they’ll be here. We can’t leave until they settle down,” Serena said. “And I’m concerned about what happens if we meet one when we do leave. We should train the skimmers, get them used to our aether. I don’t want us all to be thrown off and eaten because you Spoke a Word.”

“Good idea,” Amelia said. For a minute the pair watched the writhing desert.

“They’re bigger than I thought,” she said. “And they move so quickly.”

“The crystal sustains their bodies,” Serena said. “Some have organs that can burn the crystal and derive energy for growth and power. The wyrms are one class of species that can do so. Arcwhales, too.”

Arcwhales, wyrms… Amelia thought. I really hope there aren’t giant spiders.

She looked at her girlfriend. Serena’s focus was entirely on the feasting wyrms. Eventually, the demon sensed the look and turned her head, meeting Amelia’s crimson eyes with her own.

“I have some things to tell you,” Amelia said.

“Yes?”

Taking a breath, Amelia explained what Diego had told her. She spoke of the god that had shattered herself as a desperate sacrificial act to gain the needed power to end the Long Discordancy. She relayed of the need to stabilise the Empress and her shard, and how it created Anathor in his current form, along with the rest of the Formless. She spoke of Serena’s vision, and how it fitted in with everything. And, last of all…

“Esmeralda,” Serena echoed. The wind picked up, snatching the name away as if it were forbidden. “I’ve never heard of any god, demon or human named Esmeralda, but if that is the name of the Vengeance’s soul…” Serena sniffed, saying quietly, “It’s a pleasant name.” The demon turned, shielding her face against the sun. She peered into the horizon, watching for danger. “At least we’re getting more answers,” she said. “After having you around, I fear I’ve been infected by your love of unravelling mysteries. Let us hope we meet another Formless who is as forthcoming as—” Serena cut off as the crystal began to glow.

Amelia wasn’t sure why it had chosen that exact moment to activate. Perhaps the surrounding moonlight had reached some exact frequency that resonated with the cut of the crystal, but whatever it was, something changed, and with it the crystal began to suck in the surrounding light, hoarding it all for itself.

“Quick, the roof!” Serena said, pointing to a nearby wheel. “Open it!”

Amelia grabbed the wheel's handle and began turning it. It started slow, the rusted mechanism groaning in protest after being woken after so many years of peaceful sleep, but eventually momentum built, and the floor underneath cracked open. The crystal brightened further; a moonbeam erupted from each of its faces, throwing moonlight into the space below and the sky above.

When the moonlight hit the brass mirrors, the runic Writing glowed. The moonlight was reflected, but condensed, narrower. Each beam reflected into another mirror, refining itself until it became more of a laser than anything else. Finally, they were redirected onto the white stone, whose own Writing started to brighten.

But not all of the moonlight reached its destination.

The fallen mirrors meant two pathways were broken.

And that wasn’t their only problem.

“Djinn!” Serena shouted. “Get ready!”

Dozens of djinn tore their way through the desert sky, descending towards them like a horde of locusts. Amelia spooled up her magic, pushing straight into third-circle. She was about to preemptively strike when Serena interrupted her.

“You’re messing with the aetherfield!” Serena pointed to the crystal. The aetherflow was distorted, affected by the pull of Amelia’s magic. “It’s interfering with the crystal! I think…” The demon looked down the hole before meeting Amelia’s gaze. “I think the pendulum is gathering the energy!”

What is it, some kind of battery? Amelia thought.

“Fix the mirrors,” Serena said. She drew her firejade sword. “I’ll hold them off. Aura won’t get in the way.”

Amelia nodded. Turning, she jumped down the hole. There was the briefest sensation of vertigo, of air rushing past her ears, and the rapid beating of her heart before she slammed into the stone floor. A normal person’s legs would have broken from the impact.

But Amelia wasn’t a normal person.

She was Amelia!

Just as she landed, Hinako appeared, a note of panic in her expression.

“Djinn coming!” the demon shouted. “Officer Bright saw them, there’s—” The mage stopped, spotting the field of laser-like moonbeams. “What in the Seven Hells is—”

“Officer Aikawa!” came Serena’s voice from above. “Instruct Officer Bright to hold the door! Then help Amelia fix the mirrors!”

“Aye… aye aye, Captain!” After taking a moment to collect herself, Hinako passed the order down the stairs, quickly returning to Amelia.

“Take that one,” Amelia said, pointing to one of the mirrors.

She picked up the other one, and together they started climbing their way up the wall, using earth magic to carve handholds. She found the spot marked by a snapped iron bracket, lit up by a moonbeam that had no mirror to reflect it. With a dash of magic, she teased out the white stone, willing it to mould itself and weave through the broken iron, holding the mirror tight. It took a few moments to align the moonbeam to where it needed to go, but before long Hinako had hers placed as well, and the Writing on the pendulum’s weight flashed with sudden energy.

And then, it started to move.

There was something unnatural about it. A part of Amelia’s mind found it strange to see such a heavy stone move under such circumstances. A person from Earth would find it impossible. How could mere light generate so much energy? But this wasn’t Earth, and it wasn’t mere light. The moonbeams, refined and focused, had aether woven throughout. And what was aether, if not untapped, malleable energy in primal form?

The first few arcs of the pendulum were small, but it rapidly built momentum and soon swung the breadth of the floor. As it moved, the mirrors did so too, tracking the pendulum in a manner that in Amelia’s old world was only possible through electronic sensors. That kind of technology hadn’t yet been developed here, but somehow the ancient Writing kept the moonlight focused on the pendulum all the same.

“I need a hand!” came Serena’s shout. “They’re trying to destroy the crystal!”

“Keep an eye on it!” Amelia shouted to Hinako. “I’ll be back!”

She kicked off from the wall, landing on the stone steps. Taking them three at a time, she reached Serena in seconds, returning to the lighthouse roof just as the demon slashed away a hissing djinn.

“Is it fixed?” Serena asked, twisting away into a Shimokan stance.

“Yeah!”

“Good!” The demon ducked another djinn and slashed an incoming fireball, her aura-coated sword cutting through the magical fire’s formation, extinguishing it. “They’re rather upset!”

That was one way of putting it. The djinn were chattering away, throwing out all kinds of threats.

“Death!”

“Go back! Back!”

“Let her rest!”

“Go no further!”

“There’s too many!” Serena said. “Is it working below!?”

Amelia looked through the hole in the roof. The pendulum was swinging, moving now in a figure of eight pattern. It seemed to be doing what it was meant to do, but whatever that was…

“It needs more time!” Amelia said. “I think…”

“We don’t have more time! Watch out!”

Amelia sensed an incoming attack, reflexively blocking it with a ward. The action sent the moonlight into a distorted mess, recovering only when her manifest ward stopped.

Screw this, Amelia thought. If she couldn’t use her magic because she was too close to the crystal, then all she needed was to make some distance, right?

“Back in a second!” she said. She looked upwards, eyeing the blazing sun and glistening Red Moon, both shimmering through the desert atmosphere. She bent her legs and launched herself upwards, tearing a path through the djinn. As she rose, she folded her aether, feeling it surge in delight as it formed a now familiar Word.

When she reached the peak of her jump, she pushed against the aetherfield, holding herself in place. Confident she was far enough away from the crystal, she let the Word form its communion.

“Taranis,” she Spoke.

Aetheric lightning crackled around her, a surge of energy radiating out. Taranis’ signature horns formed on her forehead, sparking magical energy between them. Ghostly claws layered themselves above her hands, like an ethereal pair of boxing gloves. She felt her energy surge, her aether being replaced by the pure, divine aether from the realm of the gods.

No, not just from the realm of the gods.

From herself as well. 

Amelia could feel her own aether manifesting, filling up her titanic reserves. How it worked, she wasn’t sure yet, but there might have been more divine aether created from her own body than that which was being supplied from Taranis. No, there was more coming from her. Much more.

Does this explain why my aether capacity is so huge? Amelia thought. As far as she understood, she—

“What are you waiting for!?” Serena shouted from below.

Oops!

She turned her attention downwards. The djinn were swarming like flies. As much as she wanted to cast something huge, to blow them away with Taranis’ Downpour, she couldn’t risk damaging the crystal.

So she began sniping.

If she could Speak a human Word such as Luhran, that would have been perfect, but constrained by her talent and will, Taranis’ aetheric lightning was good enough. Amelia formed the spellwork within her and began swatting the djinn out of the sky one by one. With each activation, a thunderous boom rang out, and with it, a precise branch of lightning would burst outwards, curving through the sky and annihilating a djinn.

Like shooting fish in a barrel, Amelia thought after her tenth branch of lightning cascaded below, cutting off a djinn just as it was about to launch a fireball at her girlfriend. Or… like hitting sardis in the sky? No, that was a terrible idiom. To most people, it would mean the opposite of what Amelia intended.

Still, it was fun to let loose a little. The days in the desert had been short so far, but they had felt stifling and restrictive. Even with Amelia’s magic keeping the worst of the desert away, even breathing carried with it a sense of discomfort that wouldn’t go away. 

After two dozen djinn were struck, they shifted direction. It was as if a silent signal went out. One moment, they were assaulting the lighthouse, throwing fireballs in every direction, and in the next, they were flying away, speeding above the writhing wyrms.

Serena's voice sounded soon after.

“We have it!” her girlfriend shouted. “We have a location! There’s—”

The demon paused. A fraction of a second later, Amelia sensed why. A deep rumble sounded, and with it, an incoming distortion in the aetherfield. It came from somewhere below. Amelia turned her attention downwards as the sandstone next to the lighthouse split open.

A wyrm breached upwards, arcing to the top of the lighthouse. Serena froze only for a fraction of a second before diving into the hole in the roof, shouting something to those below. The wyrm wasn’t after her.

It was after the crystal.

It engulfed the crimson fortune within its maw. It consumed not just the crystal, but a chunk of the lighthouse as well. It was enough to collapse the roof. Amelia tore downwards, pushing against the aetherfield with a surge of aetheric power. She followed her connection to Serena, flying like a golden bullet past the wyrm. For the briefest of moments, she made eye contact with the alien creature before passing it.

A second burst of aether was enough to slow her down, coming to a sudden stop beside Hinako and Serena. The former was already weaving her magic, trying to form a protective shell against the debris of stone and torn-apart mechanisms falling towards them. The demon, as talented and amazing as she was, wasn’t going to be fast enough.

Amelia reached out and vapourised the closest chunk of rock. It was effective, but the sudden blast seemed to only accelerate the lighthouse’s collapse.

“Get us below!” Serena shouted. “Protect the skimmers!”

Amelia didn’t need telling twice. She blasted a hole underneath them, dropping the trio to the floor below. Mel and Finella were by the buried Skimmers, bracing against the wall.

Sorry, Barq, Amelia thought.

She spun up a fifth-circle ward, coating the space above in a dome-shaped protective barrier. It wasn’t a moment too soon. The ceiling collapsed, the force of the falling debris too much for the millennia-old construction to withstand. Rock, iron, and the remains of an ancient map collided with Amelia’s ward. She pushed more aether into it, just as the Skimmers started to let out frustrated meeps and angry clicks.

“Stay together!”

It was Serena, gathering the squad.

They huddled around Amelia while the lighthouse collapsed around them. The world shuddered, becoming dark—the falling rubble blocking out both sunlight and moonlight. Only a few rays of light broke through the wreckage, illuminating the impromptu shelter. One by one, the rays went out, until there was only one remaining.

Then, with a final rumble of shifting rock, that went as well, plunging them into near complete darkness, only the crackling energy of Amelia’s lightning horns keeping the void at bay. The shifting rubble stopped, but the Skimmers continued their protests.

“Hold it, Amelia,” Serena said. “Officer Aikawa, start melding the rubble together. Make it solid, quickly now.”

They stayed silent while Hinako got to work. Within minutes, she confirmed it would be okay to drop the ward. Amelia did so carefully, holding her breath, ready to react to any sudden collapse. None came. Hinako had shown her talents once more.

“Amelia. Is that…” Finella said quietly, “Is that your Taranis?”

“Hmm?” Amelia replied reflexively. “Oh. I suppose. Do you like it?”

“It’s… quite something.”

“Heh.” Amelia puffed her chest up. “I look cool, don’t I?”

“Cool?” Finella’s voice took on a note of confusion. “You mean… cold?”

“No, like, amazing,” Amelia said. She waved a hand, tracing a blue streak through the air with her ghostly claws. “Don’t worry about it. Karligard expression!”

“...Right,” the Northerner replied.

“Let go of the Word, Amelia,” Serena said. “For the skimmers.”

“Oh, sure!”

With a bit of focus, Amelia let Taranis slip away, and with it, the divine aether that flooded her body. Only this time, a little remained. A fraction of what her body had generated. Perhaps it had always been like this, and now was the first time she noticed? Either way, she was conscious now that not all the aether inside her was merely atmospheric.

In the darkness, the skimmers seemed to relax and began settling down.

“What happened?” Mel asked quietly.

“A wyrm,” Serena said. “Went after the crystal.”

“Is it coming back?”

“Amelia?”

Amelia stretched her senses.

“I don’t think so,” she said. She would be ready if it did.

“We’ll give the skimmers some time to recover,” Serena said. “Then we’ll get out of this mess.”

Everyone murmured in agreement.

For a dozen seconds no one said anything else.

Then, a thought came to Amelia’s mind and she giggled.

“What are you laughing at?” Serena asked.

“Just…” Amelia trailed off, giggling again. “Not the first time we’ve been in this situation, is it?”

“What? Oh.” There was a pause. “No, it isn’t.”

A few seconds passed, and Serena started chuckling.

Then, breaking through their mirth, came Finella’s voice.

“Stop giggling like a pair of softhorns!” the Northerner cried. “What’s so funny now, huh? Tell me! You’re alluding to something, aren’t you!?”

That only made them laugh harder.

Amelia grinned in the dark. How best to hint at the time she and Serena were buried under the rubble of a destroyed cafe in Kenhoro? Could she reveal it was where she had her first kiss?

“A secret,” Amelia intoned. “A Jimari-coffee-induced secret.”

Serena snorted.

Finella wailed.

And then everyone else laughed.

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