Chapter Five Hundred and Ninety-Nine

“So... what are we going to do about Rainnewt?” I asked.

“What do you expect us to do?” Tristan asked. It wasn’t asked in an unkind way, he sounded genuinely curious. 

I had to think about it for a moment, then I shrugged. “Probably jail? Maybe some community service.”

“Community service?” Rainnewt asked.

“Like, cleaning parks and stuff?” I tried.

An ugly expression crossed Rannewt’s face, like he’d just bitten into a lemon and discovered that it was an extra-sour sort of lemon, then the expression disappeared as he controlled himself. “I’d really rather not. After all, I may have committed some crimes. I’m not so arrogant as to deny that, but it was all in service of a better future.”

Amaryllis, Desiree and Caprica all snorted at the exact same time. 

“I don’t think, uh, that’s entirely true,” I said.

Tristain hummed. “No, I think it is technically true. I believe that it just so happens that the better future that Mister Rainnewt is seeking is his own.”

Rainnewt stared at Tristain for a while, then glanced over to all of the others. “Ah, I see. A choice was made.”

“It was?” I asked.

Rainnewt openly sneered at me, and a lot of the smugness and false-kindness he’d been displaying melted away. Had he done something? Turn off a social skill or something? It felt like with a click, he’d gone bad, “Indeed. And here I thought I could convince you not to see me as a foe,” he said. 

He was talking to Tristain directly, though the rest of us were still around.

“You tried,” Tristain said. “I’m afraid to say that I had never truly considered you good. Not in the way that Miss Bunch here would consider someone good. Unfortunately, I am not as righteous of heart as some. I have worked with bad people before and may well do so again. It is as you suspect, the Black Avatars are willing to do much to save the World when it is at risk. The morals of the living and the just are... ephemeral.”

“Sad, isn’t it?” Viviane asked. She kicked one leg up over the other to sit crosslegged and placed an elbow on her knee as she leaned forward. “Once you live a lifetime or three’s worth of time, you start to notice that some things are only important because people make them out to be.”

“Yeah, but some things are always important,” I said, putting my foot down on the matter. Being a good person wasn’t hard. You just had to not be bad and do to others what you’d want them to do for you. “Does this mean that you’ll put Mister Rainnewt in jail?”

“There’s a hefty reward for him in Sylphfree,” Caprica hastened to say. “We don’t mind splitting it in half.”

“There’s a reward for him around Port Royal as well.” Amaryllis said. “And some dragons want to have a... chat. For that matter, I suspect that there’s a smaller reward for him around the Harpy Mountains, and likely the Snowlands as well.”

“Busy guy!” Viviane said with a laugh.

“There’s no need for that,” Rainnewt said. “In fact, I know you won’t be arresting me at all.”

“Confident, are you?” Tristain asked.

Rainnewt simply nodded, then leaned back and crossed his arms. “I have information that you need, and you will be requiring my assistance moving forward. Call it my trump card. I hate that I have to use it this way. Honestly, I was planning on using it to gain several concessions from the Black Avatars. Thank you for that, Broccoli. You’re making me waste one of my better cards.”

“Huh?”

“Well, what is it?” Guinevere asked as she crossed her own arms.

Rainnewt glanced off to the side for a moment, then started to explain. “A bit of background first. The Evil Roots are a problem, yes, but I have resources, power, and I can be rather charismatic when I want to be. I could find followers and steal the funds needed to at least start to take care of the issue.”

“Sure, that’s somewhat plausible,” Guinevere said. “Your point being?” She flicked her tails while otherwise standing still.

“My point is that I chose to approach the Black Avatars. I needed powerful individuals on my side, because things aren’t as they seem. Given six to nine months, I can raise a decent task force to handle the Evil Roots with devices such as the one we made here. Mass produced, they’ll be of lower quality, but with some governmental backing and a few incentives they could be spread about rather quickly and they’d theoretically stem the tide.”

“Theoretically?” Tristain asked.

Rainnewt grinned. “It wouldn’t actually work. Ah, the trump card... the Evil Roots aren’t a natural occurance.”

There was a sudden rise in the tension in the library. I glanced around, catching the faint feel of magic rising then lowering in the air as a bunch of powerful people reacted. Only I didn’t get it. “Uh, can someone explain?”

Amaryllis, as usual, was quick to do just that. “He’s implying that if the Evil Roots aren’t a natural problem, then they’re artificial. They’re created. Which further implies intent.”

Rainnewt nodded. “The overgrown pigeon is correct,” he said.

“Albatross,” Amaryllis hissed.

He waved her off. “Up-jumped seagull, at best. But in any case. You are right. Do you mind?” He pointed to the map still on the low table we were all sitting around. When no one protested he moved up to it, then frowned. He drew a little circle in the air, and a small disk of glowing magic appeared. The cast had a few moving hands onto weapons, but it didn’t look like he was casting anything greater than that. “The pattern looks something like... this. Yellow-to-red, with red being the most recent.”

He started to place little dots over known dungeon locations, and over some other spots as well. It was clear that there was a pattern forming relatively quickly. It started a little to the east of the Harpy Mountains, down by the forest along their southern border. Then the yellow deepened to orange around the north of the Harpy Mountains, near Sylphfree, and around the Darkwoods and into Mattergrove. 

The reddest parts were along the southern shore of the Moonstruck Sea and into Pyrowalk. There were, in all, maybe thirty points across the map.

“These are the dungeons I was able to visit myself,” he said. “And the colouration indicates the approximate time, as best I can tell, when they were infected.”

“Impressive dataset,” Tristain said. “I presume you’re going somewhere with this?”

“Of course. One of the earlier dungeons I observed, I decided to... only observe. I sat within it as the Evil Roots spread, then returned every few days to observe the spread and study their impact on the dungeon. Eventually, the dungeon broke. That took nearly two months.”

How long has Rainnewt been on Dirt for? I was only here for a couple of months. I knew he was stronger and all but... well, that much longer was concerning.

“Did you learn anything?” Mathew asked.

Rainnewt nodded, and his smugness faded. “I did. Two things of note. First, the roots will destroy a dungeon core eventually. What happens at that moment, I still don’t know, but I have a suspicion, and it’s related to the second fact. Miss Albatross, you have one of those nice banking rings, don’t you?”

Amaryllis moved a taloned hand up, then glared. “Yes?” 

“Did you know you can transmit raw mana through it? The efficiency leaves much to be desired, but still... that same principle was something I noticed that the roots did. I initially thought it was like... a signal in a nervous system? Something the roots did casually, especially since they’re such a large organism. After a while, I realized that it wasn’t the case. They’re sending magic, raw mana, to a specific location.”

He waved his hand around and created an ovular disk a little ways above the surface of the map and moving.

I sat up. I didn’t like where this was going.

“The Evil Roots are artificial. They’re created by someone, or curated at the very least, and spread purposefully. The person or persons responsible are using them as a means of sapping a small, but consistent amount of magic from every infected dungeon. And small is relative here, as much magic as a lower-tiered magic specialist could output consistently, at least. I also suspect that, as the one responsible in the end, they are reaping the reward for each dungeon break.”

I swallowed.

Rainnewt clapped his hands, then dozens of new, glaringly red disks appeared and spread across the map. The oval moved in a big circle, and more spread. I think he was just guessing at dungeon locations, but... the image was stark when there were hundreds of dots on the map.

“By now, we’re dealing with someone, or someones, with an exceptional amount of magical energy, and likely dozens if not hundreds of general skill points to spend. And that is why you can’t do anything but help me, because if we don’t do something, Dirt will be destroyed, and whatever ‘evil’ I may have done, is nothing compared to this.”

***