Chapter 8: Chapter Eight: Of Princesses, Dragons, and Bizarre-Ass Spiders

            Leo climbed the riverbank and walked slowly into the forest, which, aside from a decent number of ruins, still felt so idyllic that he expected an animated rabbit to come hopping by at any moment.

            But Leo had learned there was danger even in this sunlit forest, and so he did his best to carefully sneak eastward from the riverbank where they’d stopped and rested.

            He had gone a mere five hundred feet when he heard soft gasps and sniffling—someone was crying.

            Leo crept up and peeked around a tree. He saw Lily sitting on a broken rock wall segment that was a mere few feet high, with a tree’s roots half-collapsing it from below. She had her head in her hands, and her body was shaking. Occasionally, tears would fall into her lap.

            Crap. I don’t know what to do here… She was clearly trying to display a stiff upper lip before, but I feel like I should console her… I mean, she just lost her fiancé, her mentor, and some other dude, who all died for her.

            In the end, Leo respected the decision that she had made—if she didn’t want to be seen having a weak moment, he wouldn’t acknowledge having seen her cry. He backed away quietly and then shouted, “Lily!” before walking heavily and slowly through the undergrowth, making a racket.

            Halfway to Lily, he winced, remembering he had been silent in the first place to avoid enemies in the forest.

            As he entered the tiny clearing near the broken wall, he saw Lily, still in ripped and bloody apparel, with red eyes, standing to receive him. Besides the red eyes, there was no sign at all that she had been crying.

            “Oh, sorry,” Lily said, a cheeriness to her voice that rang false. “I fell asleep after taking care of nature’s call. It’s been a long and exhausting day.”

            “No problem,” Leo said. “Glad everything is okay and you got a bit of rest. Shall we head back now?”

            Lily nodded regally. “Of course. And again, my apologies for delaying us and possibly worrying you.”

            Such a perfect princess when she wants to be. I wish she would let it all out, but I guess I can respect her for not burdening others with her problems.

            The two of them headed back to the river’s edge, Leo leading. It was still only the late afternoon somehow, despite everything that had happened, and despite Leo himself being mentally and physically exhausted.

            As they arrived, Hugh climbed up the riverbank.

            “Where to now, buddy?” Leo asked.

Hugh pointed to a broken cobblestone path along the side of the river. “This road will lead to the palace, which is where my sire kept his lair.”

“The Larae Gimel Azasi,” Lily said, and Leo’s mind translated the High Averian name automatically. The Crystal River Road.

“The elves called this ‘the Crystal River’?” Leo asked, motioning to said body of water.

“No, but a poet named the road,” Lily said, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, the first indication of a sense of humor Leo had seen from her. “Poets named nearly everything in Calasti. It gives everything such a romantic air, which I like, but the reality can disappoint sometimes. The river is just called the Blue River.”

“Why the Blue River?” Leo asked as Hugh started south along the road, heading toward the glistening, white spire in the distance that was the top of the Royal Palace of Calasti, the once-lair of Chao the dragon.

Lily’s voice became a touch lighter and faster as she talked. “Because only the wyrms call it ‘the Storm Vale.’ The elves, and the other proper empires before them, called it ‘the Blue Lands.’ It’s a reference to the magic in that region. It’s shifted so that all the nodes are Water nodes, and moisture gathers there at an unusual rate, creating an interlocking series of small rivers that eventually flows into the lakes of the Havi Imperium… and this river comes from there. It makes for an absolutely fascinating ecology, with numerous unique magical beasts and plants. I’d love to discuss that with you at some point, I’m sure it would fascinate you. But, the upshot of what you asked is that’s why we call it the Blue River.”

That was a lot to process. Hope it doesn’t come up on any tests soon. I really will need to learn the geography of the region soon, however.

“So where do you come from? Before now, I mean,” Leo asked.

“Me?” Lily replied.

“Yes, sorry. I already know Hugh’s story.”

“I come from Lakusi, the Lakeside City, most recently,” Lily said. “I was raised there, in the capital of the Havi Imperium, my home-in-exile. I loved my family and our few retainers, but it was still a very hard place to grow up. It’s a nice city, but it’s far too dirty and frantic for a noble elf with taste, such as myself. And the human nobles were all extremely difficult to get along with, quite frankly. They wouldn’t have accepted us at all but for the generosity and wisdom of King Jason Haviden the 2^nd, who is a sterling ruler. The nobles were uncouth and rude most of the time, and many refused to acknowledge my own noble status, claiming it was lost with the kingdom. Such bores. I suspect since most elves in the Havi Imperium are slaves, that also contributed to the stigma against me, unfortunately. As I said, it was a difficult upbringing.”

“Slaves?” Leo asked. “Most of the elves are slaves?”

She nodded. “Yes, our brethren, the majority of the High Elves, are now slaves to either the Blood Tribes, the Havi imperium, or the various city states around the Inner Sea, rather than the subjects of Averia as they should be.”

Ouch.

“And people are okay with just enslaving elves?”

“People are okay with enslaving anyone too weak to remain independent, or with too few friends,” Hugh said, tilting his head at Leo—a gesture that reminded Leo of a confused dog. “That’s the way of life—the strong make an easier life for themselves off the sweat of the weak.”

“Others profited incredibly from the pain of our people,” Lily said, her voice rising as she spoke. “The orcs and goblins of the Blood Tribes came through, and then the Dragonflight and Chao. They gutted our kingdom and sold the majority of us into slavery! Destroying an ancient and beautiful nation that had brought peace, prosperity, culture, and beauty to these lands for thousands of years! There were none as high as us!”

“Sure, whatever,” Hugh said. “But your people held slaves too, elf. Including dragon slaves. So don’t act all innocent. Everyone does it when they’re on top. You’re just mad that you aren’t on top of us right now.”

That’s what she said, Leo’s traitorous mind inserted.

“Foul dragon, you know nothing!” Lily said, her cheeks reddening. “We were the center of learning and culture on our entire continent of Beldin until you came along. The heart of wisdom and beauty!”

“Hey, the dragons didn’t start the fall. The Blood Tribes were wrecking you—and had mostly done it—long before my sire and the other dragons got involved, exactly like you just said!”

“Perhaps you are right,” Lily said, her voice tight. “I dub thee not ‘Storm Dragons,’ but rather ‘Vulture Dragons.’”

“Look here, you little—”

Leo, who had—once again—been desperately searching for something to distract the other two, noticed a giant spider, about half the size of a man, in the trees a few hundred feet from the road. It had thick, black fur across its abdomen and most of its face. Two huge fangs, dripping poison, could be seen underneath it.

The spider was watching them from between two trees, the web behind it glittering with motes of light. All of the plants near it were far thicker, and seemed more vibrant, than those in the rest of the forest.

“Guys, danger!” Leo said, grabbing Lily’s shoulder and pointing at the three-foot-wide spider.

She whipped her filigreed dagger from its sheath and held it out, eyes wide. Hugh also immediately turned in that direction, baring his teeth in a gesture that seemed more canine than reptilian.

Then Lily relaxed, pushing her dagger back into the sheath at her belt.

“What are you doing?” Leo asked, wishing he had a dagger or sword of his own.

“That’s a Mystic Orb Spider,” Lily said. “They’re common—well, common for a magical creature—in the Averia forest, although they’ve spread to most nearby realms with powerful nodes. They’re actually magivores—they bear little actual connection to most spiders. Their webs slowly gather some of the magical energy that’s leaving a node and concentrate it into the plants around them, making them more and more magical as time goes on.”

“They aren’t a threat?” Leo asked.

“No, quite the opposite,” Lily said, her voice lighter and slightly higher-pitched. “They’re actually fairly pacifist, unless you attack them directly, in which case they brutally swarm whoever hurt them. And if you saw the one, I assure you there are quite a few others around.”

“That’s a relief, I guess,” Leo said. “Although a three-foot-wide spider is giving me a complex whether it’s actually dangerous or not.”

Lily laughed, a musical sound, and play punched Leo’s shoulder. “Ah, you don’t like the cute, wittle spider? It’s harmless, I assure you. They have low aggression and fairly high animal intelligence, so you can even pet them.”

She walked toward the web slowly, ignoring Leo’s hissed, “Lily!”

“Well, we might be rid of the elf quite soon,” Hugh said, his voice dry. “A pity. I liked her.”

Glaring at the dragon, Leo followed after Lily.

She went up to the spider. It moved with short, fast, jerking steps as she approached, retreating from her but not as fast as she moved forward. She crouched, holding her hand out, and walked even more slowly, crooning to it in a stylized High Averian song that was hard for Leo to parse out.

After a moment, it stopped retreating, and Lily reached out and pet the fur over its face.

Leo shuddered.

The spider didn’t move or make any sounds as she pet it, but shockingly, its fur turned rainbow-colored where she stroked it. After a moment, Lily stepped back and stood. “See? No problem here.”

“How do you know all that?” Leo asked.

“I studied at the Lakeside University. I took classes in Flora, Fauna, History, Magical Research, and specialized Wyld magic courses. Plus, my sister taught me a lot. And we do have some of the better books from our library left to us.”

“Huh.”

Lily pointed to a mushroom growing at the foot of a thick bush, about six inches tall with a deep-red cap, almost the color of blood. “This sinister-looking little fella is actually a mild healing mushroom, and with the right tools, any decent apothecary can make a weak healing potion from it—it won’t cure bone or organ damage, but it will heal flesh and replenish blood quite well. Even just eating it will restore one to two health.”

“Can we take it without being eaten?”

“Yes,” Lily said. “The Mystic Orb Spider will literally only attack when directly threatened. Having a nest on a farm, back when the empire was at its peak, would usually make the farm about twice as productive as normal in monetary terms. There were attempts to create larger colonies, but past a certain point, the spiders leave, and if forced into close proximity in larger groups, they stop breeding.”

“I wonder why?” Leo asked.

“Not sure, but people think it has to do with magic density near nodes. They were one of the creatures that every village wanted to complete the trifecta of magical beasts and beings—to get a colony of mystic orb spiders, an emerald beehive, and a dryad. A village with all three tended to be very rich for its size. The dryads have all disappeared, of course, and the Crone of Averia no longer answers. But the mystic orb spiders and emerald beehives can still be cultivated, I suppose.”

This is fascinating stuff. If Audrey lives, I hope that she’s seeing as much wonder in this world as I am. I would love to be able to talk to her about it when we get back.

Leo bent down and carefully extracted the mushroom, digging out the dirt at its base with his hands and slowly removing it. He saw a few more of the fungal specimens around and decided that having a bunch of healing mushrooms was a good idea. He also saw a few with blue caps.

“Don’t touch the blue ones,” Lily said. “Those release poison gas clouds with spores, and they grow on the bodies that die near them.”

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“Glad I have a native here,” Leo responded. “I would hate to have tried to fend off a spider that wouldn’t start a fight with me, or died to a cute, little blue mushroom.”

“A native?” Lily asked, frowning. “As in, someone local with knowledge of the area? I’m a cultured and learned noble of this region, so of course I know it well.”

Oops, that has a bit of a pejorative connotation. “Yeah, that.”

“Well, glad I could be of help,” Lily said, beaming at him. “I love this forest, even though I’ve only been able to spend time in its northern reaches before now.”

Then her face fell. “I just wish Ilothulin could have been here with us. He was in most of my Flora and Advanced Wyld classes, and he loved this stuff as well.”

“I’m sorry,” Leo said.

“It’s not your fault,” Lily replied, staring off into the distance and absently playing with her hair.

“It was a sympathetic ‘sorry.’”

Lily stared for a bit longer, then shook herself. “Well, shall we get back on the road? I think we’ve looted the local Mystic Orb Spiders enough for now. We have a slightly better chance of surviving to the vault, so it was time well spent, but we still have distance to cover.”

And on that reassuring note…

***

A couple of hours of walking later, Leo saw a glowing, green tree outline in the distance, like someone had doodled a tree across the horizon and then made glowing panes form inside the outline created.

“What’s that?” Leo asked, pointing.

Hugh and Lily, who had been arguing again, stopped and stared over at the glowing-tree outline.

            “The node?” Hugh asked. “Are you referring to the node?”

            “I have no idea,” Leo said. “Non-magical world, remember? I’m talking about the glowing, green thing.”

            “That’s what it is,” Lily said. “The famed Calasti Node, one of the sources of power and wealth for the Kingdom of Averia.”

            “Elucidate, please,” Leo said, bowing slightly to her. “Remember, I come from a world without magic.”

Let’s see if she can explain things a bit better than Hugh can.

            “Of course,” Lily said, blushing slightly as the three of them walked along the broken cobblestone road toward the palace. The trees were becoming less prevalent and the broken buildings more common—and more intact—as they went. He was starting to get a sense of the style of the city. Statues, many intact, showed the art of the elves of Averia as they walked south, and once or twice, he saw a miraculously intact stained-glass window with a beautiful design on it. Most of the buildings were built of marble, which surprised him. It didn’t fit with his preconception of elves—Leo would have assumed they were huge fans of wooden buildings, but the concentration of stone ruins made him think he was wrong.

            Lucy started talking, her shoulders relaxing. “So, nodes are fundamental upwellings of magic. They usually form on the surface of the earth at a rate of roughly one every fifty to one hundred miles, and below the surface of the earth, in the under-realms, at the rate of one every two to four hundred miles. No one has actually figured out why those distances. Perhaps it’s the will of the gods, or perhaps it’s a natural condition of magic, but our greatest scholars have not solved the enigma.”

            “Gods, plural?” Leo asked as they walked.

            “Of course,” Lily said. “Merdrek, whom your friend swears by, is the draconic god of battle and victory, and Iluvin Eteria is the mortal goddess of Wyld magic, commonly portrayed as an elf and frequently also treated as the patron goddess of the elves, even though there are weaker deities dedicated to our species in its entirety. Of particular note if you aim to get home, Asnandi is the goddess of the way between worlds and Travel magic.”

            Asnandi! That other elf woman told me that she couldn’t let Asnandi’s Key fall into the enemy’s hands. Was that related to an actual god of dimensional magic?

            “Tell me about Asnandi,” Leo said, excited.

            Lily laughed, her voice musical. “In time, friend Leo, in time. And I’m glad to have an enthusiastic student. But for now, let us return to the lesson about nodes—we can learn of the gods together another time.”

            She seems happier than I’ve seen her over the last couple of hours—like she forgot all the horrible things that just happened. Perhaps she just loves teaching, or maybe magic?

            “So, back to the nodes. Each node represents an upwelling of a single magic. Each node forms an aura around it, in one of three strengths. The node’s aura pushes out with the square of its strength, but the effect is reduced by the square of the distance—this is the magical law of the double square. The point between two nodes at which the strength of each node is equal is the point where the auras touch. For reasons we don’t understand yet, the auras never overlap.”

            That’s kinda complicated, but it makes sense—I mean, it’s not that different than gravity, I suppose, with the effects increased by mass and decreased by distance, or light received being a divide-by-distance squared formula.

            “So, what do auras do?” he asked.

            “Well, every node’s power goes to four different things. Some to create magical beasts, some to create familiars, some to create crystals and shards, and some to promulgate a magical aura. It appears to be random what percentage goes to each, and sometimes nodes become corrupted as well. I’ll skip corruption effects for now.”

            Yeah. I’m extremely bright, but this is a lot of information to process.

            Lily was continuing, genuine enthusiasm in her voice. “The effects of the node also seem to be stronger according to the nodes tier, squared. A tier-three node creates roughly nine times the effects of a tier-one node.”

            Leo nodded along with her words, communicating to her that he understood and was ready for the next piece of information. “What effects, exactly?”

            “Again, it’s different. But it always reflects an aspect of the magic. Take the Calasti node, ahead,” Lily said, gesturing toward the glowing, green tree in front of them as they walked. “It’s a Wyld node. It puts out an aura that makes trees far more productive, including magical trees. Making plants stronger is something that can be learned by Wyld magic users—the aura reflects the magic.”

I wonder if a node could put out a static Toughness aura? Leo thought to himself, already calculating how nodes would affect the world he was in. Probably it makes a lot more about the world random. A death node in a fertile valley might render it worthless, but an agricultural node away from water might make the land livable.

Lily was still talking. “The aura region around this node can support magical trees normally only able to be grown on far more magical worlds, and normal trees grow about twice as fast. The Averian empire was famous for its orchards and fruit, especially its magical fruit and the potions created from them. Because of the aura.”

            “Know your auras, Mom always said,” Hugh chimed in. “They can make some places wonderful, and others hellholes. Woe be to the person who finds themselves in an Entropy node aura!”

            Lily gave him an irritated glance. “Don’t interrupt. But, your mother is essentially correct. Back to this node, which also produces a decent number of magical beasts in the region. Sometimes, hives become Emerald Bee hives, and the Ghost Wolves, Sun Eagles, and our once-high concentration of dryads were well known throughout the continent of Beldin—those three were the once-allies to the Kingdom of Averia. Also, we sometimes find Wyld crystals growing on trees around the area.”

            “So, nodes are generally a sort of uncontrolled magical pollution that alters the environment?” Leo asked. “Like, the magic just leaks from them into the surrounding area?”

            Lily’s eyes widened. “I suppose that’s an accurate, if dark, way to look at it.”

            “Huh,” Leo said. “So why is the far side of the river so devoid of trees if the main, powerful, node is merely miles away?”

            “Well, I did say ‘usually,’” Lily responded. “The opposite river has a different node, a Light node that concentrates the sun rays. The Lightbearer node is only a tier-one node, but it’s located about eleven miles from the Calasti node. The barrier between the two forms between the eight and a quarter and eight-and-a-half-mile point between them, in the middle of the Blue River, and then happens to match the curve of the river for a bit.”

            “Convenient,” Leo quipped.

“You’ll see a sudden small grove of trees on the south side as we get closer to the node itself, here where the river empties into the Inner Sea, across from Elgin Isle.”

            “We’re about to hit the end of the river?” Leo asked. “And there’s an island in the middle of it?”

            “Of course,” Lily said. “One of the things that made Calasti such an important city was that it was the trade hub for most of the continent. It controlled the mouth of the Blue River, which links the empires and city states around the ten lakes—not least my home in exile, the Havi imperium—with the civilizations of the Inner Sea and the Split Sea beyond. It is also closest to the passes into the middle lands and the dwarven city of Stonehaven. Combine that with its powerful and beneficial aura, and you can see why we elves made it the seat of our empire.”

            Fascinating. I would love to learn more about this world—heck, even just this continent—but I have to learn how to save Audrey and get home first.

            “Boring,” Hugh said, drawing out the word. “So boring. At least talk to us about what you know about what we’re facing ahead!”

            Lily frowned. “Speaking of corrupted magic, the wards that kept the woods out of Calasti have obviously failed. We haven’t run into any yet, but I know that the magic has been creating horrible and terrible beasts, abominations of normal magical beasts. They’re throughout all thirty-one districts of Calasti, stronger the farther you get from the palace for reasons I don’t understand yet.”

            Lily shuddered. “There might be serious danger ahead.”

            “How do you know about the magic failing?” Leo asked, kicking a small marble fragment that lay on the road they were traveling into the sparse underbrush.

            “The same way I knew that Chao had left. We had divining magic in place, left during the collapse of our empire to aid in our return. Unfortunately, some of those have failed as well, and I can’t see what is happening in the throne room. But there are no dragons present in the city currently, according to the more general divinations that remain.”

            “Does magic normally fail?” Leo asked.

            “No.” Lily wrapped her arms around herself as they walked, her voice suddenly soft. “It’s normally of infinite duration and effect once created. That, more than anything, scares me. Magic slowly failing across Calasti speaks to something terribly wrong. I checked, and it’s localized to this area, so it’s not a greater disaster. But it still really worries me.”

            “Huh,” Hugh said.

            “Wait, how did you know your dad was missing, Hugh?” Leo asked. “I thought you barely saw your dad.”

            “My sire was supposed to come visit Mom and me. I was really excited, but he didn’t show. Mom used her Air magic to cast windborne words, and the magic couldn’t target my dad. So he’s either more than a thousand miles away, dead, or inside an area that stops magic. Any of those would imply he wasn’t here.”

            “Maybe he packed up and left?” Leo asked. “Took his hoard with him?”

            “Dragons don’t tend to move once they have a good lair,” Hugh said. “We’re a possessive and territorial people.”

            “Well, we’re about to figure it out,” Lily said as they rounded a corner of the riverside road they followed. Leo stared at an ornate, ten-foot-tall stone wall running from the river’s edge deep into the forest. The path headed right to a twenty-foot gap in the wall.

            “Welcome to the central district of Calasti,” Lily said. “Once inside that gate, we’ll be inside the city proper, and only a half-mile from the palace itself, the node—and Chao’s hoard.”

            There was a brief pause as everyone stared at the gate.

            Leo was tired, physically and mentally. He was sore. And what he really wanted was to find Audrey, find a way home, and rebuild the life they had lost.

            But he couldn’t deny to himself the thrill and the sense of excitement coursing through him. He felt that his three days here in this incredibly strange world had been leading him to this moment, and Leo was excited about what they would find.

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