Chapter 501 – Ekkru Realization

It was easy enough to stay closer to the key, even if it did require digging a second latrine. They also wouldn’t be able to hunt without all of them heading out together, but that wasn’t a problem yet; they still had plenty of meat from a deer-like ruminant they surprised while flying up the mountain. Sophia wasn’t sure how much hunting would be possible in any case; she hadn’t seen much wildlife on the mountain at all and even less than before once they came past the peak. There had to be some or the forest wouldn’t be as healthy as it seemed, but it might well be hard to find.

Sophia didn’t have to deal with that, at least not for now; her responsibility was figuring out how to deal with the temple. That didn’t mean it was easy to ignore the fact that the key was their only protection against something that could bring up the past and completely fool them about what they were doing. Sophia didn’t like it at all. She also didn’t like the fact that she didn’t understand why the key had the range it did; she didn’t see any magic coming off it that should have that range. 

The problem almost had to be caused by the workshop. At the same time, it shouldn’t be caused by the workshop; none of the poems that were part of the runescript talked about confusion. It wasn’t an effect the Eidolon mentioned, either, so it was a mystery.

Sophia didn’t find the answer to the mystery that day or the next. It kept niggling at her while she tried to understand the stasis runescript and its spellform and she kept pushing it to the side. 

She thought of it every time they had to all move closer to the river to collect water and every time the entire group went into the forest for any reason; they had supplies but there was no reason to use them up if they didn’t have to. They didn’t know how long they’d be here and it was several days’ journey to get to the World Tree and then travel back to the workshop. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but when they all had to go it was suddenly very important. They had to treat this like a Maze expedition and gather what they could from the land around them. 

Sophia spent nearly all of her time working on the runescript with breaks only for her regular daily exercise, food, and sleep. On the third day, Dav recommended that she take a couple of hours to do other things. Sophia halfheartedly tried, but she knew that the sooner she figured out the runescript, the better.

On the fifth day, Xin’ri and Revanos joined in the recommendation. Sophia tried to take the time and relax, but the puzzle pulled her back after a couple of hours. She didn’t feel relaxed; she felt impatient.

On the sixth day, they didn’t ask. Instead, once the morning chores were done, they held an impromptu game day. Xin’ri pulled out a set of ekkru tiles and they started to play three-person ekkru and talk. For all that ekkru was a gambling game, they didn’t bother to gamble; it was entirely possible to play for points instead or even just winning a board by getting rid of all your tiles first, and that was the variant they chose. Sophia knew that was because it was far easier to add another person if there wasn’t a running score.

Knowing that they were deliberately trying to get Sophia to come join them without an invitation didn’t make it any less distracting. After a couple of boards, Sophia gave up and pulled a set of tiles for herself.

Before she knew it, Sophia was sucked into the game, matching tiles and creating the bridges that made a proper ekkru flower. It always looked more like a starburst or maybe a long, leggy spider than a flower to Sophia, but it was called a flower and that was what mattered for the game.

Sophia lost the first two boards she played but managed to win the third. As they started the fourth, Dav asked her what she’d figured out about the runescript.

“Not much,” she had to admit. “The spellform is really complex, but it’s nothing like the ones I know. There’s no overarching structure protecting the whole thing, for starters; that makes it a lot harder to figure out because there’s no single access point. Each thing you can affect is in a different spot, not grouped together. It’s like it was built in pieces and then assembled like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces matched properly and others just made of glue formed to fit the pieces it’s trying to join. I can’t figure out which ones are important. Well, that’s not quite true; I did figure out that the inscriptions on three of the walls are supporting the broken walls to keep them working. Protection, distance, and luck are all there somehow.”

“Protecting the walls? I guess that makes sense,” Dav said as he played a tile in exactly the spot Sophia wanted to use next. It was a good thing both Revanos and Xin’ri went after Dav. If they didn’t play something she could play off of, Sophia was going to have to draw.

Sophia shook her head. “Protecting the workshop’s integrity. I think … I think that if the slow inscription weren’t there, the workshop would only have a few holes because the walls would be protected enough to hold except for a few distant spots where the explosion luckily concentrated. I mean, I can’t see the damage moving and concentrating in a few small spots, but I think it is. It might be spreading out too, across lots of distance so that it’s not too much for the wall to take except in those spots. That’s all really really slow because of the stasis but … I think that’s what it’s doing. It would explain a lot.”

Revanos picked out a tile and crossed it over one of the existing tiles, joining two of the flower’s petals in a bridge. If they were counting points, it would be worth a lot, but as it was it simply got rid of a tile … without giving anyone else something they could play on. It was a good move, especially late in the game when others were low on tiles.

Xin’ri tsked and drew a tile. “One.” 

She looked at the tile and examined the board carefully. A nod said she’d found a split for her new tile. Once she placed it, Sophia examined her hand again and let out a breath; she could play! It wasn’t a particularly good play and wouldn’t have been worth any points if they were playing for points, but it got rid of a tile.

“Does that mean the building is healing itself?” Revanos inquired.

Sophia shook her head. “No. Well, sort of yes, but really no. It’s changing things so it was never damaged; we’re just seeing it in the middle of the process. At least, I think that’s what’s going on. Luck magic is weird, but this really looks more like time magic, I think?”

Sophia knew a little about time magic since both of her parents used it, but neither of them used it the way this seemed to work, where it picked timelines that were just slightly better than they should have been. Her mother was an oracle and her father looked backwards instead of forwards, but they both avoided using time magic when they could do things another way. 

This was the opposite. It was using time magic to achieve something incrementally. It wasn’t rolling time backwards or looking forward in time; instead, it was controlling things at the time in a way that led to what it wanted, something that was almost both at the same time. It wasn’t something the Eidolon predicted, but it matched up with what Sophia saw well enough that she thought she was probably at least in the right ballpark.

“The protection piece seems to use time as well, but differently; it remembers what it was and what it’s supposed to be. That makes more sense to me, really, but it’s still a weird implementation. Assuming I’m right about what it’s doing anyway.” She really wasn’t sure about it. She couldn’t make an effect like that, and while she was certain her father could, she was also certain that he wouldn’t do it the same way.

“That makes sense; Mimir was an expert in temporal magic,” Revanos said slowly. “Both Mimirs were, though the one that built the Guide, the one that I think we’re looking for, was supposed to be better. At least, that’s what the Archons will tell you. I was far more interested in the fact that he was the creator of Gateways, but that’s an art that the Waykeepers refuse to teach unless you give up your body, and I’m not willing to do that.”

“I thought you weren’t around until long after the War of Two Mimirs?” Sophia was pretty sure that had to be the case; Revanos wasn’t from Arcatiz and the World Tree and its Gateways didn’t exist until after the War. “Unless there were Gateways before that, Gateways the Mimir built?”

“There were, but they were all lost in the war,” Revanos said with a frown. “Some went to other worlds, but not to mine. It’s hard to separate the myth from the truth, but I did manage to find dormant Gateways that weren’t on a Tower on both Isana and Memnos. Isana’s was in a ruin but Memnos’s is in the same city as their Tower. That usually means it was created after the Tower … but it’s broken and they actually have records of it from before the Tower existed.”

“It’s your turn,” Dav told Revanos.

“Oh, right.” Revanos casually picked one of his tiles and laid it on the board as the start of a new petal. With his move, Sophia knew she was going to be able to play; there were now two spots she could place a tile on and they weren’t possible to bridge with a single tile.

“Did you figure out how to extend the key’s range?” Xin’ri asked as she considered her choices. “You were muttering about that this morning.”

Sophia shook her head. “I haven’t managed to figure out why the limit is where it is. It doesn’t line up with anything I can think of. There’s nothing reaching out to the key and nothing emanating from the key. I’d normally guess that it’s piggybacking on my aura, somehow marking me as authorized along with everyone else with me, but you’re well outside my aura when you start to have issues, almost twice as…”

“You just thought of something,” Xin’ri accused Sophia.

“What if it’s the aura overlap? You’re fine as long as your aura touches mine. That would make sense of the distance.” Sophia hadn’t ever measured their auras, but she had helped Xin’ri with controlling mana with her aura, so she knew that Xin’ri’s aura was noticeably smaller than Sophia’s. Sophia was pretty confident that was because of the difference in their Cores; despite Xin’ri’s lean towards magic, she simply didn’t have as much as Sophia did.

“We could test that,” Dav noted. “Have someone else hold it and see if the distance changes.”

“Not much point if it doesn’t help extend how far apart we can get.” Xin’ri set a tile down , then turned it as she realized she’d placed it backwards. 

“I’m still not sure where the confusion’s even coming from. I mean, we know the key is needed to find out way across the mountains, and the key has to be why we didn’t have the problem earlier, but there’s nothing in the runescript on the workshop that would do it. The enchantments are for protection, clarity, stasis, luck, and distance.” Sophia shook her head. “The Eidolon was able to help me with several of them; she just couldn’t really help with the luck wall. She thought the protection wall was mostly disabled while the stasis is running and that makes sense I guess; it’s playing into the explosion but everything else might not be needed if the protection was running properly.”

“What about the clarity wall? Wasn’t there something about that and the confusion effect?” Dav asked. “Also, it’s your turn.”

Sophia shook her head. “Clarity’s the opposite of conf … I’m an idiot. I totally forgot. The Eidolon told me that the clarity wall’s inverted with the stasis running. She said M’Beja told her that. It is the cause of the confusion.”