Oracle of Tao

CHAPTER 15: In which a large amount of time is spent underground and/or underwater.

 AMBROSIAAnyway, the cave was fairly dark, but our lantern helped. At the entrance, we found a number of rocks blocking our way. Using the Gigas Gloves, I carefully pushed boulders out of place to create a path. The next room had a swarm of bats flying around, and a dwarf mining off to the side. I had never actually seen a dwarf, but they are easily recognizable.

In the old Earth, people decided to make a distinction between dwarves and midgets, declaring that midgets were healthy and just shorter than normal, and dwarves had a body deformity. They also declared the term midget offensive. Let me clear a few things up. Besides the subliminal impression that being normal is somehow offensive, this is completely false. A dwarf is simply a runt, a creature smaller than others of its species, there is nothing in the term that declares that something which is a dwarf most have limbs that are not in proportion. In fact, there is no such thing as a “midget”, the term was slang that P.T. Barnum came up with. Dwarves were simply shorter people.

I say were. Under political correctness, people pretended to care for such folk. But as years went by, these same people kept dwarves apart from the general population as a so-called special interest group. They told them that it was to protect their minority status but their real thoughts were closer to wanting them to breed with their own kind. Gradually, through repeated breeding and inbreeding among other dwarves, they actually became a separate race. Eventually, one ruler decided that short people “ain't got no reason to live”, and declared that they be hunted down. In desperation, many of them took to hiding in caves. True to the Lamarck's laws, the dwarves living underground began to develop night-vision of an advanced degree, their diet changed to include mushrooms and insects, and because of their constant exposure to land mana, they developed a thick extra layer of skin which was capable of screening out incoming magic. Dwarves could be subject to magic cast indirectly, but unlike the atheists who had an antimagic field around them, they could not be blindsided. Someone could cause an earthquake under them or wrap them up with vines, which would not happen to an atheist. But unlike atheists, they can be shot in the back with a Fire spell and not notice.

This dwarf was male, and clearly quite distracted by the process of mining with pick and shovel. He ignored several calls to him, until finally he stopped and turned around, “Did ye call me, lass?” I asked him what he was doing. “Why,” he answered, “I'm building a railroad here!” I shook my head, “A railroad? Travel is usually done by ship. It's better for the most part. True there's all sorts of storms, but still...”

Railroads and other such large machines had largely taken a hit in terms of usage. About the only ones who even still knew how to make such complicated moving parts were the dwarves, and the same for the steam engine. Most people simply couldn't work moving parts, so they couldn't make this. The closest equivalent used were called ley sleds, a large sled-like device that predictably traveled along the ley lines, using an elf to move the device. The dwarf grumbled, “For years, those derned seafarers have lorded over us, with their 'ships.' But if I finish this here railroad, people will have to depend on dwarves instead!” I nodded, humoring him, “I see...” He continued ranting and mumbling, as I slowly walked away, shaking my head. “Oy,” he called out, “I'm looking for me girl. If you see a dwarf lass mining down yonder, tell her I'm this way.”

The next area had a section of rock that was loosely forming a gate. We peeped through, and behind the wall was a large treasure chest. Looking around the room there was a small metal door with no keyhole, but two slots for a block to be placed. The area nearby had a number of small blocks with numbers on them from zero to nine. I realized that this gate was keyed to a puzzle, and probably would not open without the correct numeric password. So I decided to read the plaque. «I am a number below 100. I can be divided by any number up to 6, except for five. Two different sets of these numbers mentioned above can be multiplied together to make me. The square root of myself is not a whole number. Most importantly, when I am multiplied by myself, I become a number that is truly gross. What number am I?» My math skills have always been horrible. I tried some random number. For some reason, I believed 64 was the perfect number.

But it wasn't the case here. A boulder dropped from the ceiling, and chased after us, until finally we dived to a side passage. Uhhhh, let's try this again. Elias offered, “Try 12.” I picked up the one and two blocks and slid them into the plate. To my surprise, they clicked in neatly, and the gate opened. I looked dumbfounded at him, despite all of us having evidence that he was brilliant and scholarly. He explained the puzzle for about ten minutes, while we opened the chest. We found a series of old-style diving suits. They had some alterations, particularly made to the back, to make it convert water into air, but they were more like diving armor from the 1880s than they were like anything made by modern alchemy. We decided to hold off putting on these things. Instead, we opened up a tent in a nearby save point.

ELIAS

It is well known that party tents have no physical weight beyond maybe that of a normal tent, since they are basically operating under warped space, and can potentially be the weight of an entire town pulled basically out of one's pocket. Essentially, I travel into the space of the tent, I don't summon the space outside the tent. Because of this, we were able to exploit this to the absolute limit, opening the tent and shoving massive amounts of diving suits in, then closing it behind. Well, to be fair, the tent already had a full-sized bed inside, and in Galaxia, we had hired a banker and a priest to handle stuff like keeping our accounts straight and helping us revive. Oh, maybe I didn't mention that there we people living inside this tent 24/7. I'm sure they won't mind tossing stuff into the tent.

Azrael asked to borrow Ambrosia's knife. “Why,” she asked her, “what will you do with it?” She mumbled the word Apport, and then she carved a small square in the ground where the save point stood. She then carved a series of arrows. They seemed to need to be in a direct path from each other, so it was tricky. As we wandered through the cave, fighting off bats and goblins and all sorts of other creatures (such as the dreaded giant flatworm), she paid none of us any mind, her concentration wholly focused on the effect. In the beginning there was no sign that what she was doing was amounting to anything, but lately these arrows had taken to glowing. When we finally got to an underground lake, she was sweating hard, and her eyes looked bloody. Not bloodshot, she was bleeding from her eyes. Whatever she was doing was strenuous enough to not do as a regular feat. At long last, she carved another square in the path of the arrows. Up went the small patch of land with the save point etched on it, and down went Azrael.

AZRAEL

Soulfires are not the only ones who can use psionic abilities, there were talented wonder-workers who had learned to do some of these, but most were basically something that normal people required concentration enough to trigger nosebleeds, or worse. A Soulfire had a brain designed to tune psychic energy without damage. This is what happened here, I used an ability that didn't really suit me, and as a result, I strained my body and mind greatly. But I had little time to think this as I collapsed in a heap. I awoke much later in our tent with a splitting headache.

I had two psionic abilities, my Apport, and my Sensory abilities, specifically the ability to see and talk to ghosts. But because I had an affinity for spirits and because the latter was a passive ability, only the former ever caused me strain. I awoke after some effort, before laying down again with intervention from outside. “Shhhh,” said Zoe, “rest now. You overstrained yourself.” Zoe and Elias looked exhausted from caring for me.

After we had fully rested, we began to unpack the diving armor. As we helped each other into it, we stumbled towards the water, walking down a long and winding underwater slope. It was very slow progress, as these atmospheric suits were not built for movement but rather protection against all manner of pressure and current. Even underwater, it was absurdly difficult to move. Aqorm would not have needed them at all, except that as we descended, eventually the water pressure became more and more severe. She had decided not to wear one, and it looked like she was in some pain because of it. Several hours later, we descended to the deepest depths of the sea. Thankfully, the suits provided limitless amounts of air without the need of old-fashioned external pumps or limited scuba setup, or all of us would have met a watery end, possibly being noticed in the Afterlife by Elder Formless who slept below. According to rumor, this is what happens to all who die under the sea. I shudder to think about this. In any case, the underground and underwater cave opened into a much larger space as we exited the rock walls. We saw urchins, stingrays, lanternfish, and the weirdly cute scotoplanes (originally called “sea pigs” but then some showed up on land, and they couldn't be called “land pigs”) as we wandered through different depths. I was not so thrilled to leave the cave section, once I saw what awaited us. At the gate towards Aquamundo, the underwater metropolis floated a Gate Guardian, a serpent dragon apparently made of glass. I did not like our odds. Not one bit, I tell you.

Most people believe glass is fragile. In actual fact, most glass breakage is due to poor crystalline structure, or because of stress-fracture. It actually has much higher hardness and strength than many materials, but it appears fragile because of these issues. The Kool-Aid Man would indeed be able to smash through a wall, given weight proportionate to size, and a thick body with good crystalline arrangement. Oh yeah! As we could see, the dragon's body appeared to be made of some sort of flexible glass, so I was going to wager that our chances of attacking this with weapons was basically zero. Oh no!

Sure enough, when Ambrosia tried to slash at the creature with her First Material knife, it simply shattered. Nevras told her, “Push the broken bits together!” There were internal communicators in each suit, so conversation was possible here.

Sure enough, fitting the knife like a jigsaw puzzle, she was able to piece together two pieces, then another two, until it was whole again. Similar to a wound closing about itself, the blade fused itself together. After fusing, the material healed even more cleanly that a living thing. I couldn't see any sort of scar. First Material was truly incredible.

Nevras decided to rely on techniques rather than risking his weapon as well. But the glass was simply too sturdy. Elias said, “We need a strategy!” Now, Elias is more of a bookworm for many things but I understand metaphysics, the paranormal, and elemental theory better. The latter was immediately useful, as I remembered how glass behaves when exposed to sudden heat and cold. “Zoe,” I called out, “use Fire, and keep it coming! I'll delay an Ice spell.” Delaying thaumaturgy was dangerous if someone didn't know what they were doing, but allowed one to charge up a high level of power. But I needed to time the spell properly, so I decided to delay. Zoe did indeed try to build the Fire runes in a consistent pattern, but the heat kept getting reduced by the sheer amount of water. All of this effort only managed to create boiling water. She cast over and over, but the dragon was unfazed. I called out, “Zoe!” She turned. “Do you know how to use Druidfire?” Druidfire, or aether, was a combination of the five elements. For many casters, it was impossible without years of experience with all the elements. This was why being able to cook food with aether was a career-builder. Druids, however, were supposed to have this ability as practically their birthright. Apparently not, though, as Zoe started to sweat and shake her head. “Nah, I didn't learn it,” she admitted. I called out to Ambrosia, “Can you use your new powers from Chronos to slow this thing down?” She nodded, “I can do more than that, I can freeze it in place.” She did an elaborate dance, and the dragon was coated with a greyish film. Still, she told us, “It'll only stay until I run out or energy.” I called back to Zoe, “Alright, now is your chance to learn! Keep trying until you get it.”

Lest there be any confusion, since earlier I said rain disrupts runes, it is possible to use runes underwater. If it were not, countless people would have died trying to refresh a Water Breathing spell. It's just a matter of properly using the runes. It's like this, there are runes big enough to be seen on the visible level. There are smaller runes which form those runes, made from mystic power, those which can only be seen with a microscope. These coexist with atoms and molecules, and are sometimes influenced by them. That is, with rain, the water molecules hitting a series of runes moves fast enough that it manages to knock them apart into smaller runes. This is not the case for a body of water. The runes do get damp while forming together, but the motion is gradual so there is little danger of dispersing runes. Elemental affinity is still an issue though. It is absurdly hard to use fire runes while surrounded on all sides by water, just as water magic is difficult in the desert.

Zoe cupped her hands and tried to draw several different runes into the same space. No sooner did she try to push them in proximity than the runes began to attack each other. The effect fizzled out. She tried again, but no matter what she seemed to do, it fell apart.

Ambrosia's trigram was slowly fading in its glow. It couldn't hold this creature much longer. Soon the dragon would be free to attack us once again...

ZOE

I'm not quite as sharp about using my mystic power as Azrael. I can barely scribe silent runes, I could counterspell, but mainly only by casting elemental spells, and my reflexes weren't good enough to not cast the wrong counterspell once in a while. Combining five elements into one magic? I was not that confident. When I tried to do this, it felt vaguely like juggling, I was trying to keep the fire runes from getting consumed by the water all around us, and the water or air runes would simply blend in with our surroundings. I tried stringing the runes together in an array, to join these elements together so they wouldn't be canceled out by our surroundings.

This didn't work either. The elements began to interact with either other, and basically wound up forming hot mud. I was totally at a loss what to do. Not that I had much chance to think about it. The temporal stasis thing around the dragon was beginning to flicker and fade. As the grey receded around the beast and it stirred, it glanced around until it noticed Azrael. She was still gathering energy for her big spell, and it wouldn't do much good unless I hit the creature first. Oh crap.

The dragon sucked in water to fill its lungs, preparing to spit out a mix of glass at its target. I had to get in front of Azrael before she got hit, but with the heavy swimming armor I was moving too slowly. I waddled towards her making it just in time to push her out of the way. Her armor flopped over, and while she lay prone, her hands continued to be cupped, building her runes yet further. What concentration! On the other hand, I was now directly in the path of the shards of glass.

My life began to flash before my eyes as I saw the shards move closer and closer. Of course, with my many reincarnations, this was less of a panicked moment and more of a long film. I suddenly became aware that many moments of flashback had passed, yet I was not impaled by thousands of tiny shards. In fact, it was nowhere to be found. In its place was a pillar of flame extending inches around me. What was happening?

AZRAEL

“There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.” I thought about that saying when I saw what happened. The aether came out not because of any skill, but directly in response to her actions. Her eyes glowed golden for a second, then the pillar of aether spouted at full blast, before it gathered toward her hand and it settled to a manageable size.

Aether was supposed to be incredibly easy to manage once formed, as a type of energy which had all the elemental characteristics. A person could freeze something or make plants grow just as easily as they could burn something, and while it definitely had the traits of fire, it didn't get snuffed the same way as fire. In fact, the only thing said to be able to stop Druidfire was to run out of mystic power.

The flames glowed a deep green, evaporating the water nearby. It wasn't being snuffed at all, instead the water was being absorbed, parting the water with the intense heat. I called out, “Throw it!” Zoe tossed the stuff at her target, coating the dragon in such heat that its glass turned solid red. I followed up with the ice attack I had spent such time on. “Absolute Zero!” I incanted. Of course, it wasn't real absolute zero, but the spell created a powerful beam of ice. This beam was cold enough to strip heat from the nearby air, scattering outward and freezing whatever it touched. Elias had prepped us some by casting a protection against cold so the extreme temperatures did not freeze our metal suits. After the aether dissipated, the water came rushing in, only to be stopped once again by the extreme cold.

The sudden change of temperature created a hairline crack, which in term created tension that spread all the way to the core of the glass. The glass shattered with a high-pitched sound, leaving only the naked wyrm. The Gate Guardian was still a tough creature but Aqorm and Nevras lunged and stabbed at it. Ambrosia tried once again to slash at the dragon with her knife, but it was too late. The dragon's soul left the body as a small glowing orb. “Awww crud,” I said, speaking in an uncharacteristically casual manner. Ambrosia's mannerisms were beginning to rub off on me. I explained, “if we do not stop the departure of that dragon soul, it may attempt to reanimate itself.” Dragons, unlike other living things, had no Afterlife set aside specifically for them. Instead, they had a ball of spirit known as the dragon soul, which they decide what to do with. If the dragon was soundly beaten, the spirit would be weak, and often becomes part of the natural world, since the energy of so-called “dragon lines” had a vitalizing effect on the land nearby. On the other hand, if the dragon still had some fight left in it, it might often come back in a weaker form, or attempt to reincarnate. We hadn't seen the last of it.

The ice was melting, so it was time to head out. The water began to creep in, clearing our path. As it did, more of the ice melted until we were walking through ice cold water. The open areas narrowed through a stretch of natural rock, leading us to a small city.

This must be Aquamundo, the second underwater city, and the first to be built underwater. I imagine people have heard about the first one. Atlantis began as an island filled with great civilization. It used to be as big as a small continent, then one day, it disappeared. Nobody above water knows why. Aquamundo was slightly less impressive in comparison. As a town, Aquamundo was basically a libertarian paradise. It had no laws to speak of, and police only interfered to enforce personal squabbles such as unpaid loans or faulty products. The only other real government interference I saw at all was that many of the young virginal men were fed to the dragon (something about wanting to appease it). Like I said, Aquamundo was a wonderful town with no state oppression.

Without government, this meant everything (especially the houses) was privately built. It was Aquamundo's belief that everyone must be an architect of their own life, so houses built from coral and underwater rock littered the streets. The better places had no windows or those made of a metallic glass somehow made to be incredibly transparent and just as strong, and were built with floors designed to drain water away. Those that... weren't the better ones were flooded with water all the way up to the top, had dangerous animals like sharks inside the houses, or were just uncomfortable to humans that didn't have eight legs for traction.

Having met with some heavy resistance getting here, we decided to purchase a fair amount of items and equipment. Neither I nor Ambrosia really needed anything, but Nevras arranged to have his blade tipped with fused obsidian for some added sharpness. Obsidian normally is sharp enough to cut more sharply than even steel, the problem of course being that as a ceramic blade, the edge chips easily and becomes blunt, if not outright shattering. After many centuries of work, alchemists effectively managed to obsidian fragments into a sort of rock glass, allowing the keen edge to retain while also preventing shattering if the sword was dropped. So to summarize, he now had a Fused-Obsidian Durasteel Katana. The diving suits were armor enough, so we opted out on that, but we were relieved to not have to wear helmets indoors. We spent much of the rest of the time shopping for food and recovery items, and then spent time in the inn.

Elias found an alchemist's Mixing Pot at one of the shops, suitable for larger scale projects. While resting, he worked tirelessly and managed to convert our items into high-grade recovery tools. We now had five Jade Elixirs (a potion which recovered general health and mystic power on multiple targets), ten Ruby Elixirs (only enough for one person yet able to heal completely and remove multiple ailments including death), a few servings of Phoenix Meat, and some Healing Herbs. Elias made an extra Ruby Elixir and Jade Elixir, then he showed up with some plant he called a Level Root after

She mumbled and fidgeted, “H-hi...” Ambrosia asked her, “You wouldn't happen to be looking for another dwarf, would you?” Her look of surprise mixed with a slight blush. “You...” she paused, “you met him?” I nodded, then spent the next half-hour explaining how the dwarf was on the other side of the cave, but the path itself led straight through the water. I asked, “Would you like to take one of our diving suits?” She shook her head pointing to her petite frame that wouldn't fit properly. She asked me instead to elaborate on all the details I had seen concerning the rock walls. I hadn't noticed it before, but come to think of it, even the open portion where we fought the dragon did seem to have a cave far above us acting as a sort of ceiling in places. Picking up her pickaxe, she expertly cleared away the rocks in her way. I noticed how she seemed to have a lot more energy to her swings than the other dwarf had about building a railroad. In a few minutes, she had managed to build a tunnel, and I no longer saw her.

We continued on. The cave that had been filled with mushrooms and mycozoe near the edge of the water was starting to feel increasingly cold the closer we came to the opening of the cave. We stepped out into the open snow. The area was coated with permafrost, broken occasionally by alpine forests or mountain ranges, yet the snow and ice never receded until the shore. There were three large structures nearby: to the southeast was a castle that I never wanted to enter if I could help, let's call this the Castle of Fear; the direct south had a mansion surrounded by trees which Aqorm pointed out was her own; and the western coast had the thriving walled city of Kushiyama.