H - 111: Everything is Connected (Patreon)

Easier said than done, as it turned out.

Fortunately, he had decided to take the preliminary step of verifying details before teleporting over to the dragons’ lair, and this turned up the problematic complication that Ar-Kaln Zelekhir was not there.

Shadrach had a much better scrying setup than was customary for a mage not specialized in that. Some time back, a specialized scryer had had the goddamn temerity to break into his tower and steal something from his library. Shadrach wasn’t much for killing, so he had placed her on a tiny tropical island to contemplate her decisions. There was a coconut tree, she was probably fine. And then there had been all that lovely scrying equipment, just lying around, unclaimed…

He now leaned upon the extremely powerful and sophisticated scrying table, scowling down at the topographical map of the region formed of colorless mist, with layers of glowing spots and convenient sigils labeling them to identify concentrations of divinity. Fortunately he’d had the forethought to use this back when Kaln had first hired him to build that portal, simply because it had seemed wise to check out what a godling looked like to the scrying table. Neither Atraximos’s wards on his lair nor Emeralaphine’s on the whole complex had attempted to block divinity, because that was asking for unwelcome attention from actual gods, and godlings were too rare for most people to factor into their calculations.

Shadrach wasn’t sufficiently versed in either divinity or scrying to work out much meaning in the sigils and visual effects surrounding the various points of godhood he was now looking at, but he well remembered the distinctive emblem and aura of a godling with a dragon-related aspect, and it was currently nowhere.

He had zoomed and panned meticulously, finding much that he expected to and a few things he had not. Regions overseen by ancient and powerful territorial deities had layered glows across them; this thing didn’t helpfully provide names, but Shadrach had enough general knowledge of the world to know what was signified by the blankets of colored light covering the areas of the Vale states, the Hiiri Reaches, and the Rhivaak Empire. He had no business with the four, the Nine, or Hii-Amat, so he ignored them as background noise.

Much more interesting was that there were a lot more small gods wandering about than he’d expected. Over a dozen here and there across the continent, glowing beacons of concentrated divinity whom he couldn’t quite identify. Most were equally of no interest to him, except the one presently accompanying a large cluster of humanoids in Dragonvale moving on the lair.

Probably the one Emeralaphine had mentioned. That looked like the Dragonvale bandits; well, best of luck to them, dealing with three drakes and who the hells knew how many angry ghosts. Shadrach considered intervening in that since his new…sigh…employer had mentioned it specifically, but she had even more specifically said she wanted him to help her husband. So it seemed much more pertinent that Kaln was not in that lair.

He was not, as far as Shadrach could tell, anywhere.

He had accidentally verified that this thing was properly calibrated to pick up godlings, as there were more of those in the world than he had imagined. Well, presumably throughout the world, but also just on this continent Shadrach had checked. One off in the Nourdells, one deep underground below the central Evervales, one down in the jungle regions of southern Rhivaak. Even one on an island off at the very edge of the range he was studying.

They were faint, shifting presences compared to the actual gods, even the small ones—half-formed islands of divinity, each with a distinctive and unique corona of energy forming half-comprehensible sigils and flickers of iconography. None would be easy to mistake for any other, and none were the equally specific shape of Ar-Kaln Zelekhir’s dragon godling aura.

Also now, just to be the cherry on top of this aggravating day, someone else had started bombarding his wards with sendings. After Emeralaphine, Shadrach had very nearly decided to pay attention this time, but these weren’t at a fraction of the power of hers, and also were coming from much closer by, in the city of Boisverd. A provincial little cowpat of a town whose only significance was its accidental proximity to Dragonvale. Nobody and nothing in Boisverd was important enough to deserve a moment of his attention.

Shadrach stepped back from the table and began to pace.

Was he dead? If so, it would have happened in the last few hours at most, since Emeralaphine embarked with the other consorts on whatever the hells they were up to. Godlings could and usually did die, but it wasn’t easy to kill them, usually involving the direct action of another god. Since that seemed to be what that one little god in Dragonvale was trying to do…it probably wouldn’t still be doing it if the job were finished. Besides, if a godling had died within the last few hours, there should be leftover energies the scrying table would pick up.

Couldn’t be conclusively ruled out, but it was heavily counter-indicated. So, most likely Zelekhir was either hidden behind an effect that blocked scrying and/or divinity, or was no longer on this continent.

The second was less far-fetched. Obviously, teleportation across such distances was trivial, but only for the very few people capable of doing it, and Shadrach had a good idea of who those were. None were anywhere nearby, except Emeralaphine herself.

There just was not much in this world that could block divinity, because gods tended to destroy things like that when they found them. Maybe Timekeeper tech?

No, now he was just purely speculating. That would lead nowhere.

And that pinging against his wards was getting outright distracting. Whatever idiot this was, they were more persistent even than Emeralaphine had been.

Absently, he conjured his exercise bar and affixed it horizontally in midair with tiny gravity wells at each end, then began doing pull-ups. Not counting reps or anything, the exertion just helped him focus past the distraction of some fool pestering him with sendings.

Okay, so immediately, it seemed the first step in his task was to find Zelekhir, whom he had not known was missing. Had Emeralaphine known that? Impossible to say; it was equally in character for her to send him on a job like this without telling him crucial information, or to do so without bothering to acquire that crucial information herself.

He hadn’t exhausted purely magical resources, but Shadrach decided applying more obscure and arcane measures was now past the point of diminishing returns. The problem was that investigating in person would mean going to the dragons’ lair and asking around, and the problem with that was it was either a necessary step in Emeralaphine’s job or a complete distraction from it that would lead to failure, and he had no idea which.

What a catastrophic fucking nuisance. Why was he putting up with this?

Oh, right, Planes of Plentitude. That, unfortunately, was worth it.

Well, he didn’t hate talking with Pheneraxa. Unfortunately, her thuggish idiot siblings were also there. Not to mention that Percy girl…who, he had to admit, was also not bad. A bit high-maintenance, but she got credit from him for not being so on purpose. More to the point, the lair was under attack, which meant if he stepped into it…well, he could help them, but the problem was he would have to before he could get information out of them, and there was no telling how long that would take. If they didn’t know where Zelekhir was, it would be a huge waste of time, and a risk of the godling’s situation deteriorating.

Shadrach slowed his pull-ups, then stopped entirely, hanging from the bar for a moment before dropping to the floor.

Percy…princess of Boisverd. From where those sendings were originating. Who had been forcibly abducted by a dragon but now voluntarily lived with them. Boisverd was a tiny and impotent little disorganized shell game of a kingdom, like most of the Vale states, but it was a kingdom. And he wasn’t the only portal mage alive. The resources of a crown could do surprising things. Could one somehow abduct a godling from Dragonvale, out from under the noses of dragons?

Maybe…if those dragons were distracted by being under attack.

What ultimately made the decision for him was that if he was wrong, putting a stop to the sendings would be a lot faster and less complicated than dealing with whatever was happening in the dragons’ lair if that ended up not being the answer he wanted.

Shadrach summoned his staff to hand, focused the necessary math through it, and was able to triangulate the exact location from which the sendings were coming. Odd—there were no wards over it at all. Why would a sending mage be doing business from such an undefended place?

He ripped open a portal and stepped through it.

“What the hells do you want!” Shadrach bellowed.

He was standing in a lavish, even opulent bedroom—extravagantly furnished and adorned, but not expensively. In fact, it looked like—

Oh. Yeah, this was a brothel. Or something in a closely related field of entertainment.

At his abrupt arrival, a portly, middle-aged Valefolk man let out a girlish squeak and went scurrying away to hide as much of himself behind a nearby folding screen as could fit.

“Shadwach Meshabedan?” purred the other individual present. “How gwacious of you to obwige my wequest. Pwease fowgive my fwiend, thewe, he was kind enough to hewp me contact you. We vawue pwivacy hewe, you undewstand. Fwiends of the estabwishment do not expect to be weckognized.”

Shadrach’s right eyelid began to twitch violently.

The Nhiyah woman in front of him, holding a long-stemmed pipe to her lips and wearing a gauzy robe that was open halfway down her ample chest, regarded him languidly through her eyelashes. Every movement was sultry, inviting…promising. She definitely matched the room.

“Look.” Shadrach held up one hand, closing his eyes for a moment. “Whatever in fuck’s name this is about, is it possible you can get through it without talking?”

She blinked slowly, like an affectionate cat, her triangular ears twitching adorably, and then puffed lightly into her pipe.

A few soap bubbles emerged, floating upward to the ceiling, and Shadrach audibly ground his teeth.

Fucking Nhiyah.

“I am, of course, happy to accommodate you, good sir,” the courtesan continued in a throaty voice with no trace of a lisp. “I recognize how highly you value your privacy, and greatly regret having importuned upon your time. Please take it as a sign of the urgency of my request that I dared disturb you, and let me promise that I am committed utterly to making it worth your while.”

Shadrach forced himself to stop, to breathe, to think. Two of those were helpful; breathing in the years-old layers of perfume, incense, and musk that had settled in this room weren’t ideal, but if anything, they added important context.

His master had not only taught him the craft, but made sure to coach him in as many cheap tricks and useful bits of trivia as she could, cautioning him that getting by in the world was a matter of working the angles, not trying to bull through it with magical force. Among the eclectic facts Shadrach had learned was a good bit about the Nhiyah.

He knew enough about Nhiyah never to let them know how much he knew—because he knew how they valued their secrecy, and what they were capable of doing to secure it.

He also knew how they aged—which was to say, not outwardly, like elves—and knew that white hair was not part of their natural coloration, and that this woman’s lovely blue eyes meant she wasn’t an albino. He knew exactly how difficult it was for them to speak without that lisp, how much effort and outright pain it caused their tongues.

The white-haired woman before him might at a glance have passed for twenty years old, or even less, but this was a clan matriarch. Someone cunning, ruthless, and mercilessly effective, who kept her people safe and prosperous in a foreign country.

He might actually be in over his head here. Shadrach had zero respect for magical practitioners who half-assed it or acted stupidly, but he had long ago learned the hard way to respect people who got by in life without magic, and succeeded anyway.

“Look,” Shadrach said, deliberately moderating his demeanor more than he had even for Emeralaphine, “I’m sorry about…whatever your problem is, and for startling you. But I am not for hire, okay? Not just because I don’t like taking on jobs—I am currently on one, and it’s not going well. I simply do not have time, so best of luck with—”

“Are you by any chance looking for a lost neighbor?” she asked innocently, batting her eyes.

Shadrach stared down into those pretty blue eyes, clenching his teeth so hard the muscles in his jaw flexed visibly.

“Someone your…other neighbors will soon notice is missing, and overreact in their…inimitable way, to all our detriment, perhaps? Perhaps it is best for everyone, especially those of us who prefer not to be bothered with explosive, fire-breathing distractions, if this matter is quietly resolved as quickly as possible. Do you not think so?”

For once, he found himself at a loss.

“This…is more complicated than I realized, isn’t it?” he asked morosely.

The teenage-passing little bundle of tits and malice undoubtedly older than his grandmother gave him a warm, coquettish smile and puffed a few bubbles from her pipe.

“This is the Vawes, my fwiend. Evewything is connected, especiawwy when that makes it mowe annoying. I think you and I both wish to quickwy and quietwy…disconnect a few stwings, and weave the weavews twisting in the wind.”

Shadrach sighed heavily and rubbed at his temple.

“Where is he?”

***

This thing had clearly not been designed to contain people.

As with most Timekeeper artifacts, it wasn’t clear what it had been meant for, but containing live subjects was clearly not it, since it was possible to open from the inside.

Possible, not easy. Kaln had to wedge himself as far into the neck of the bottle as he physically could, strain with his arm fully extended to slip his fingers into the metal grille of the cap, and painfully exert the tiny amount of leverage he could manage from this position to twist it a miniscule bit at a time. He was making barely iotas of progress with each attempt before the strain in his arm and pain in his fingertips forced him to pause and recover. But he was making progress. It was possible, because there was no mechanism in here to prevent it.

It was going to take forever to get it off at this rate. And it wasn’t as if he could crawl out through it once that was done; all he could hope for was that one of the dragons would fly close enough to Boisverd that he could sense and teleport to them, which didn’t seem like much on which to hang his hopes.

But it wasn’t as if he had anything better to be doing. He’d already gone through all of Emeralaphine’s meditation exercises and was now going thoroughly stir crazy.

Just as he started to reach again for another attempt, a hole opened up in midair outside his prison and Shadrach stepped through.

“Well, fuck me running,” Kaln exclaimed, “that little cat actually found a portal mage?”

“Zelekhir, if you ever see Nhiyah getting into something it doesn’t seem like they should be, my advice to you is to immediately forget about it. They’re cute and annoying right up until you make them mad.”

“Considering I clearly owe this one a big favor, I don’t think I can follow your advice, but thanks anyway.”

“Something to think about. Hm… Why can’t I teleport you out through that thing?”

“It allegedly blocks both magic and divinity. That cap on the end comes off if you twist it; you’ve got better leverage from out there.”

“Oh, I see. With those filaments and alternating materials, it’s like a transistor.” Shadrach made his staff disappear and grasped the Timesteel cap, easily twisting it off.

“A what?”

“A structure of non-conductive materials regulating the flow of energy. Usually used for electricity, but you can build ‘em for magic. I guess Timesteel would do it. I admit I never imagined that would work on divinity, though. There we go.”

He carelessly dropped the metal cap, creating a deafening clatter, and in the next second Kaln was flopping awkwardly to the ground outside the bottle.

“How’d you get into that in the first place?” Shadrach demanded, not offering him a hand as he clambered stiffly to his feet. “If there’s another portal mage operating around here I wanna know about it.”

“It was not a portal mage,” Kaln said, wincing and stretching. “A conjurer. And man, I do not recommend that experience.”

“A conjurer?” Suddenly, all of Shadrach’s customary grouchy insouciance vanished and he whirled to stare more intently at Kaln than Kaln had ever imagined he could. “You were conjured into that fucking thing?”

“Uh, yes. I gathered from the ensuing conversation that you’re not supposed to use that on people. The conversation and how much it hurt, I mean.”

“Motherfucker!” Shadrach spat, and for once, he looked genuinely angry—truly outraged in a way that was ominously distinct from his normal irritability. He produced a small bottle out of midair and thrust it into Kaln’s hands. “Here, drink this. What absolute fucking asshole conjured a whole-ass human being into a bottle? Whoever would do such a thing needs to be turned inside-out! I’m more than slightly tempted to do it myself!”

“I think it was the Court Mage of the kingdom of Boisverd, so maybe don’t,” said Kaln, pulling out the cork. “Is this a healing potion? Thanks, man.”

“It’s a restorative tincture—standard healing potion is one of its ingredients. It’ll also help repair your decimated gut flora and stave off neurological damage, which are both things that can happen to people who get conjured, which is why you don’t fucking do that! You should also eat some cheese and honey at the first opportunity to help fix your digestive system.”

Kaln immediately had more questions about that, but was forestalled by the sudden opening of the chamber’s door.

It wasn’t the royal family again, but a powerfully-built man with well-kept light armor atop his uniform. He took one look at the situation before him and drew his sword.

“PRISONER ESCAPE! Get in here—”

The guard broke off in confusion as the sword vanished from his hand. It reappeared in Shadrach’s; the mage gave it one contemptuous look and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Turn around and walk away, little tin soldier,” he sneered.

Instead of walking away, the guard surged forward, creating space for two more soldiers to crowd into the room behind him. Kaln finished downing the potion and began skittering backwards. These two had crossbows—loaded, primed, and aimed and them.

“Hah!” Shadrach barked, and made a sweeping gesture with his staff, which Kaln hadn’t even noticed him re-summoning.

Two small portals opened in midair directly in front of the new guards—and then moved as they tried to aim around them. In fact, it became clear from the ensuing seconds of their attempts to get a clear line of fire that those portals were somehow affixed to the ends of the crossbows themselves.

“Figured it out, have we?” Shadrach sneered, grinning malevolently. “Why don’t you try firing anyway? I mean, what’s the worst that can happen, eh? I wonder where those portals lead! To dinner hour at the orphanage? The Queen’s own throne? Maybe your own blissfully slumbering spouses, hmm? Pull the trigger and roll the dice, vermin.”

“Enough,” growled the first guard, who despite now being disarmed, took another aggressive step forward, putting himself closer to Shadrach and Kaln than even the crossbow portals. “I serve the crown of Boisverd and I was charged with keeping this man secure. Either cast a spell or stand down, boy, because I’m not about to do either.”

“You,” Shadrach snarled, “can thank whichever sad little deity isn’t too ashamed to accept your prayers that you’re a piddly little nuisance not worth doing the math it would take to rig up your entire digestive system to run backwards. You have no power here. You have nothing. You’re going to walk away with your tail between your stubby little legs and live with your own fundamental, constitutional, ontological impotence, and if, the next time you’re fucking your sister, her entire torso explodes because someone replaced your tiny little prick with a mammoth’s, you’ll know it was me because I will personally shit your pants at her funeral. Now tuck that tail back where it belongs, turn around, and get. Out. Of My. Way.”

Absolute silence fell, everyone in the room staring in shock at Shadrach.

“Our way,” the mage corrected himself after a moment, glancing over at Kaln. “Actually…mostly his. I’m just hired help here.”

“Are…are you okay?” Kaln asked hesitantly.

“Son,” the lead guard said in a gravely tone, “I’m real sorry about whatever a man in uniform did to you during your apprentice days or whatever, but this is not the time or place to be working through that.”

Shadrach straightened up from the combative stance into which he’d fallen, planting the butt of his staff against the floor. “Yeah, you know what? You’re right. All of this is beneath me. Pfeh.”

Holes suddenly opened in the floor beneath his and Kaln’s feet, then snapped closed the second they had both dropped through. Shadrach landed lightly in their new environs; Kaln, caught unprepared, went tumbling to the ground and had to pick himself back up again.

“Thanks for the heads up,” he said irritably.

Shadrach shrugged, turning to look around. They were now standing upon the flat roof of a tower in the city of Boisverd; the battlements and spires of the palace rose off to their left in the near distance. Not having seen the city from this high up and this close before, Kaln noticed that there were a lot of bell towers. It was probably one of those upon which they stood.

“So, what’s our next move?” Shadrach asked, still looking away and avoiding his eyes. “Just for reference, the Nhiyah did help me find you, but my involvement wasn’t strictly their idea. Emeralaphine came busting into my tower out of nowhere and bribed me generously to see you though…whatever it is you’ve got going on right now. Apparently there’s something with a revenge god?”

“Wait, Emeralaphine came to you? When was this?”

“I dunno, about an hour ago? Little bit less, I think.”

Kaln narrowed his eyes. “That means… Shit, they got delayed in Shamissar. Okay…”

At that, Shadrach turned around, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Wait, they’re actually in Shamissar? What, did you not buy enough dresses last time?”

Kaln ignored this, thinking rapidly. “I…hm. What I want to do is go right home and reassure everybody that I’m okay.”

“Perfect, I’ll get us—”

“But,” he interrupted loudly, causing Shadrach to heave a dramatic sigh and roll his eyes, “if I actually have the best portal mage on the continent paid to be at my disposal…I think there’s something more important I need to do right now. The royal family helped with this plan to snatch me—I mean, they provided the prison and all—but it turns out it wasn’t their idea. I strongly got the impression the Queen was taking advantage of the opportunity to press me for information but didn’t have an actual plan that involved me being in that bottle. I need to deal with the much bigger problem I didn’t know I had, or it’ll just rear up again in the middle of…whatever else happens next.”

“You should know that that tiny little revenge god was heading for your lair with what seemed like most of the bandits from Dragonvale,” Shadrach said. “Spotted ‘em while I was trying to locate you.”

Kaln sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth. “The Entity and…bandits? Anything else that looked dangerous?”

“I wasn’t exactly looking closely, but not really. My impression was that it wasn’t anything with any business going up against three dragons and the Phantom Legion, but either your enemy is phenomenally stupid or they’ve got more cards yet to play. You’d know better than I which it is.”

“It’s not stupid,” Kaln whispered, clenching his fists. “Damn it. Damn it. I… As much as I want to go help them… I’m going to have to trust them to handle it. There’s something else I need to do to protect my family that they can’t. Shadrach.”

He turned to directly face the mage, who made a long-suffering face at him.

“A god encompasses a personality, aspects, a system of magic, and a domain,” said Kaln. “The latter is often an alternate dimension of some kind. You’re one of the best portal mages alive. Can you get me into a god’s private domain?”

Shadrach stared back at him in silence for several seconds, his face uncharacteristically neutral.

“Which god?” he finally asked.

“Anessima the Shepherd.”

The mage heaved a sigh which turned into a growl halfway through, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Zelekhir, do you have the slightest idea what you’re asking? This is not like slipping through someone’s wards, we’re talking about defenses made out of the consciousness of the most powerful class of entity in existence. I would have to—”

“Shadrach,” Kaln interrupted, “is this long diversion into how hard it is leading up to you telling me you can’t do it, or just because you want me to be sufficiently impressed when you reveal that you can? Because I don’t really have time for either right now but I extra don’t have time for the second one.”

Shadrach glared at him for a moment, and then his face broke into a grin, which Kaln kind of wished he wouldn’t do. That grin on that face was…dangerous.

“It’s the second one,” Shadrach admitted. “Yeah, I actually think I could get into a god’s personal domain if I had enough time and effort to spend on it, which it sounds like you don’t. Let me be clear I am only entertaining this because Anessima is a big ol’ softie; there are more gods than otherwise who I would not risk antagonizing, even if it meant antagonizing Emeralaphine. You should be aware that the Shepherd being one of the more easygoing of her kind doesn’t make this not a huge waste of time, Zelekhir; she’s just going to toss us right back out again. But if you think it’s important, then you’re in luck: I know a shortcut.”

“A shortcut?” Kaln demanded. “How do you just happen to know a shortcut into the personal domain of the Shepherd?”

“I don’t, that would be weird. What the hells does she have that I could possibly want? No, I mean I know a universal shortcut into anywhere. And if you think about the implications of that for just a moment, I think even you will recognize why something like this needs to be kept strictly secret, especially from any nosy dragons you might know. We’ll just have to go through the Insulting Atrium.”

“What does that mean, even me? I literally grew up in a library, I’m not stupid!”

“Uh huh.” Shadrach turned and ripped open another portal in the air in front of them. “Whatever you say, man. Off we go.”

“To the…Insulting Atrium?” Kaln asked plaintively, but Shadrach had already stepped through. He heaved a sigh and followed. “You know what, yeah, that sounds consistent with how today is going.”