Chapter 64: Ch.59: Interlude: Seeker Part I

Before the beginning, was the Nothingness, a great primordial soup of power without intent. There was no firmament and no realms, no light, no darkness; an eternal State of unlight. From the Nothingness, came the First Primordial Goddess, Thea. The Mother from whom all things began. Then Thea Split the Nothingness, into the Vastness, the Aether and the Nether. Thus the Firmament was born, an anchor of Form. A scaffolding upon which the Realms and Time would exist. On the other hand, Aether begat the First Creations, the four daughters. Goddesses Oonaris, Ceralisa, Yrcinthe and one other.

-Excerpt from The Book of Records: Beginnings, Church of Thea.

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“Hmm, a new Mage Crafter right under my nose huh?”

”Yer tellin’ me?” the woman shrugged.

The elder dwarven aersmith shook his head and wiped off the beer foam from his beard. He regarded the dwarmaiden across from him who was twirling her finger around the rim of the glass stein and grumbled.

“Naught to it then,” he let out a tired sigh as he drew another pull from his own stein. “ Heard one of my shop attendants was saved by an [Artificer] of sorts, “ Yondouk paused. He regarded the female companion of his race still brooding over a busted job and gave another weary exhalation. “Perhaps yer right, we've rusted if I have to have heard it from the rumour mill”

“ There was no way to tell; he was heavily obfuscated with an artefact that was at least a Rare . Think the Guild’s meddling?” [Seeker] Holly laughed deprecatingly.

”Yer think?” Yondouk's caterpillar-like brows quivered as he scoffed. He scratched at his bald head, a bit shiny even under the soft illumination of dimmed chromastone.

“That [Quartermastresse] took a shine to him,” Yondouk shrugged, “wouldn't 'ave looked out of' place as a breech licker workin' his way up the town circles bein' young an' all. Maybe we’re judgin' him harshly.”

“So...ties with the sylvani?” Holly asked, finally sipping her own drink. The drink had gone a little flat from losing some of its fizz and the ice melting had diluted its taste. Holly grimaced, pushing away the watery honey mead. She was still on the job, so she didn't have a chance of getting inebriated.

Not like she could anyway, like any [Seeker] she always had a Potion of Rejuvenation to shake off the hangovers and [Deep Cleanse] was always at hand to reclaim her sobriety. And she was a dwarmaiden for Eog’s sake! Those large livers were not for show.

Yondouk nodded grimly,” The sylvani don't treat their favours lightly. The lad must be acquainted with someone powerful,”

“It's a pity he's not one to go around showing off; It would have been easy to follow his trail.” Seeker Holly added.

“By Eog, he's a wily one alright. ‘eard he didn’t even flinch when the [Guard Sergeant] brought him in. 'e must be at least o' the second step on 'is path,” Yondouk pointed out.

“And you didn't think to [Chronicle] that?” Holly asked with an exasperated sigh.

“Bah, lass. My [Seeker] days are well behind me, 'sides I was dealing with aership repairs down at the Port,” Yondouk said as he took another swig of his beer and slammed the stein onto the table between them

They were in a private bar; Yondouk's own private bar underneath his business premises. Having underground installation was not just a fad; besides, what's a dwarf without a subterranean structure? They were well at home beneath the ground.

“Well then, that's another dead end I suppose. I could go to the Lalilabs but that would just alert him that we're nosin’ ‘round.”

“Hoh? ye needn't get ahead o' yerself, the Vermillion Company might go after 'im too if they hear there’s a Mage Crafter in Aldmoor. ”

“Rust the Mercenary charter; they can snap up any specialist they want. ” Holly scowled, swirling the glass stein as if trying to coax some bubbles from it before she put it down.

“Did you know that the Magocracy was here?” Holly remarked.

“Truly?” Yondouk inquired. The aersmith got a kerchief to wipe off the rest of the foam from his beard before he turned his attention to his conversation partner. “ I am now just hearing of this,” he grunted.

“ Your informants are sleeping on the job Yondouk,” Holly said, slumping on the tabletop.

“Hoh, aren’t yer one to talk?” Yondouk said with a quirk of his brow. Suddenly the door to Yondouk’s private bar slammed open. The two occupants whirled at the new entrant. A dwarf with a well groomed Van Dyke beard and handlebar moustache blitzed in fiddling with a mageslate-sygnum assembly.

“ Hadrac, yer better have a good reas―” Holly started, squinting at the sudden influx of more illumination.

“ Manaseism, tier two on the Svenric scale,” Hadrac blurted dumping his arcane assemblage atop the table with no regard for the bottles and glass steins. Yondouk fumbled a curse as he tried to shield his drinks. Heedless of his acquaintance’s reaction , Hadrac continued flicking through the mageslate’ thaumionized display. He pulled up a dioramic visual with his custom made arcansygnum gauntlets. A greyscale map of Aldmoor hovered above the mageslate, an ethereal projection whose edges diffused into the surrounding air.

“ Chronicled two days ago was a manaseism that appeared as a spike on the thaumoflux array. I didn’t catch it until I brought up [Logs] from the shard,” Hadrac said. Holly went to speak, but Hadrac held up his hand.

“ But wait, this is where it be getting interesting,” Hadrac said. “ At around the same time, that new Mage Crafter is rumoured to have made his way to the Cornieva Manor—”

Yondouk hummed, giving Holly a one-arched-eyebrow look.

“Yer think he brute forced the wards? Hah, didn't some upstart take a steam cannon and runeheads but the aegis ward didn't budge?” Holly snorted.

Hadrac gave her an exasperated look and sighed pulling at his beard.

“Nawh, I quizzed the centaur that took them in a cab a fortnight ere. Told me that a magical pillar of light engulfed the whelp. He didnae stick long to find out what happened but by my beard, I be swearin’ the manaseism was tangentially related. Do yer knoweth what this means?” Hadrac spouted, literally out of breath. He grabbed Holly’s half drunk stein , rapidly chugging it. Holly winced―

“ He’s done it,” Yondouk voiced their collective thoughts.

“ The Citadel will want a record of this…” Hadrac said,pulling at his beard with fervour. “ We must be ready to bid on the manor’s artefacts, we cannot let them fall to the Kingsfellian League of Mages nor the Xzerion Arcanaeum, do ye understand?”

“ Will he want to talk to us?” Holly asked, looking towards Yondouk. “ Erring on the side of caution, we could entice him with magitech. He is an Mage Crafter after all is he not?”

“ Doubtful if there's anything of ours that he’d want,” Yondouk said. “ That house alone is at par with any legendary class artefact that we could give him.”

“ Because of the mana source,” Hadrac murmured.

“ Aye, we been digging ‘round for some inkling of what it be for decades after its appearance.” Yondouk hummed, grooming his beard. His brows were furrowed in thought. “ Some say it were an ancient Illvarian artefact from their flying cities…”

“ Haaah,” Holly sighed. “ I’ll have a record to return to the Citadel concerning the dungeon break in the Dust and this Void Syndicate debacle. In the grand scheme of things ‘tis naught but a detour. None of the factions will make overt moves inside a sovereign town.”

“Eog’s beard ye be too hopeful.” Hadrac grumbled. He had a softer baritone than the other dwarf he sat beside which spoke to his age; he was only three decades old. Holly was not so old herself but life as a Seeker had wisened her to the going ons above the Underneath.

. “ ‘Tis the subversion I am worried about, I request to remain behind while you go; The chrysalflier could make do with one [Helm].”

Though Holly was nominally in charge of their operations, the first tier [Sygnumeric Artificer] deferred to her. Sygnumeric artificers run operations behind the scenes when Seekers were in the field. Their numbers were in the thousands, out of the several hundred thousands of dwarves per hold and deemed a strategic class.

However first tier artificers were not desk jobbers who wrestled with quillwork; rather, they preferred plunging head first to outside encounters which was encouraged. After all, they had to level and pairing them up with Seekers was a prudent way of doing that.

‘It’s just a town, should be fine to leave him for a while,’ Holly thought with a sigh. The Dreimarch stipulated that memory crystals had to be delivered in person. A [Message] or a [Farspeak] spell by arcansygnum was simply not enough. The Underneath could sometimes made the spells decay en route the further one was from the recipient even if they had Relay obelisks. And those too could fail; their mana signatures sometimes attracted monsters like stone trolls who had a penchant for pillaging and hoarding crystals.

“ Aye then, I shall leave you be,” Holly sighed looking at the younger dwarf’s earnest eyes. “ But yer stipend is halved,” she said.

Hadrac’s face fell as the tips of his ears burned. Holly knew too well how younger dwarves had a proclivity to blow up their gold on decadence when they were not engaged in their craft.

While the Underneath did not lack for such avenues, there was a different kind of ambience outside their dwarven holds. Aldmoor’s Sojourners Quarter did not lack for them and dwarves were generous patrons at such establishments. It was a merchant town after all.

“ Is the chrysalflier ready to go?” Holly enquired.

“ Aye, had to call in a Murid to muck out the boilers and fixed yer gaskets,” Yondouk said furrowing his brow. “ Leavin’ already?”

“ Ma gut’s tellin there’s going to be a bit of a storm coming. Better I be here soonest,” Holly said, levelling a gaze towards the [Sygnumeric Artificer]. “ I trust you won’t make moves aye? Any approach could be easily construed as having found something interesting.”

“ Aye, aye I heed yer,” Hadrac grumbled, fiddling with his magelate-sygnum assembly. Holly levered herself off the seat with a grunt

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“I'll drink to your pleasant journs' then,” Yondouk said, pouring another stein for himself. Holly gave him a wobbly wave as she exited the bar through the ladder stairs that opened into Yondouk's private workshop.

The smell of oil, metal and forge fire met her as she walked across the workshop. Half finished projects lay in vises or gem holders, ingots were locked away in warded chests and multifarious tools hung on the walls. The arcane forge was cold, but the mundane one was still crackling with fire, keeping some molten silver ready for the next task.

The doorway opened as she approached and she crossed an antechamber that connected Yondouk’s quarters with his front office. She took the private passage that led to the outside of the aersmithy and stepped into the afternoon. For a moment, she was taken aback by how quiet the space was until she realised that Octi’s day aboveground was a rest day. Squinting against the Aestas sun, she sighed and turned towards the only vessel sitting on the maintenance berth.

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The chrysalflier was a classification of Seeker vessels outside of the normal Aer Skiff, Aersloop and Aership tiers. If one were so inclined, it would have fallen into the Aersloop category but it was vastly different in both construction and functionality.

For one it had the appearance of a jaegernfly, known to others as a swamp skimmer . Flying against conventional ship architecture, the vessel had a helmpit situated at the front, a geodesic bubble of reinforced obsiderite on a dwarven steel frame. Half of the helmpit was ensconced by the main hull, an aerodynamic oblong body right behind it.

The stern was a long tail of contra rotating screwvanes interspersed at intervals along one main axle while a quadruplet of stubby rudder sails capped the end of the stern. Its wingsails were also short, slim and articulated to furl or unfurl when not in use and one could just spot the circles of mana collectors like false eyes on a moth.

However, rather than deriving its name from the protective encasement of insect larva, it got its name from the golden sheen of its brass coating which was as much a matter of functionality as it was aesthetics. The entire hull was a giant mana collector.

It might have seemed like the height of extravagance but the chrysalflier had a high rate of casting for the artillery lances mounted right beneath the helmpit that were used as the primary armaments. The secondary armaments were mostly enchanted runehead bolts, ballistas with enchanted heads that could punch through troll hide or explode into shrapnel.

The Aersmiths had forgone the inclusion of heavy armaments like cannons to keep down the weight .Besides, cannons would have just added to the crew complement which was unnecessary since it was an exploratory vessel, not a battlesloop.

Despite its spatial expansion, it only carried an average of three dwarves and a carriage-scow which contained supplies for long haul missions and a Seeker’s most important companion, the Gandr. Today however, Holly was going to be the sole occupant of the sloop sized craft.

It was through the hatch that opened upwards that Seeker Holly Embersteel embarked the vessel. She groaned as she sat herself between the two levered yokes on either side of her seat. Pulling up an articulated arm connecting a see through mageslate to the ship’s own arcansygnum, she began her pre journey checks.

The ship’s own arcansygum was a Type I and was a large artifice that cut between the right and left seats before diverging into two arms at the front. It had been what the arcansygnums had been before the dwarves could miniaturise them into something that could fit on a wrist.

The artifice serving as the control centre for the chrysalflier was easily awoken using a prompt from her mobile sygnum, runes and foci lit up in the helmpit as all the workings activated. The heart of everything was the orb shaped psionic crystal set in the middle of the artifice, a memory crystal more complex than the one on her sygnum.

It stored a myriad of spell matrices , one of which was [Diagnostics] that she was using to inspect the vessel for anomalies. The mageslate’s thaumionized display used minute particles of lodetone, shifting like sand to show the [Status] of the chrysalflier.

“ Propulsion, mana source, internal regulation, communication, offensive and defensive arcanery,” Holly hummed, going down the list. It was tedious but nothing could be done about it, especially for a long haul voyage to Zentrahl, the Citadel’s hearth hold. The smallest inconvenience could strand her in the midst of hostile territory and the Underneath was not exactly child’s play. Even veteran Seekers knew better .

“ Aye all good,” Holly murmured. She unfastened the first two fasteners of her leather suit and let out a relief through pursed lips as the rune workings of the helmpit lowered the heat. The sun’s glare was blunted by the obsiderite panes whose interior was also floating with runes denoting the vessel’s [Status]. If Arthur ever saw the level of sophistication inside the chrysalflier, he would have flipped outright.

Satisfied all was well in hand, she buckled the harness and wrapped her hands around the yoke sticks. Channelling a bit of intent into the yoke sticks that had rune tracery wrapped around the grip awakened the chrysalflier with a hum. Holly registered a slight lurch as its quad wingsails stretched out to fill their articulated frames.

“[Cloak of Obfuscation],” Holly murmured. A gem focus lit up showing that the rune working had been cast as she pulled back the controls. She felt a sense of weightlessness as the aerofloats within worked to lift the vessel off the berth.

Whoever looked towards the direction of Yondouk’s aersmithy would have just seen an incongruous blur and thought it a trick of the light as the obfuscation enchantments turned their gaze away. Then Holly orientated towards the port of Chasm Edge, flaring [Detection] at full capacity. An ethereal construct depicting a gyrocompass floated on the control artifice with an imitation of the vessel in its middle. Two rings orbited the spherical projection, showing esoteric readings and mana signatures that registered as wobbly blips on the periphery as [Scry Map] worked.

Watching the levels of magicore in a vial-like protrusion on the artifice, Holly depressed the shifters at her feet and the vessel thrummed forward, darting like the swamp skimmer it was modelled after. The sky was clear, scenery blurred in a panoramic view that encompassed the helmpit’s geodesic bubble.

Steadings, bales of wheat, hay and barley being harvested, bellowing auroch in ranches, wagoneers and their cantering muldyr and brunhorn fell away as Holly’s chrysalflier zoomed past the Moorhill woods. A [Detection] ping at the periphery registered the Moorhill dungeon before it fell behind. In less than 15 pars, the small vessel was already approaching Chasm Edge.

Sending off a courtesy [Message] spell, Holly alerted the port master of her arrival for the sake of it and caught the reply as she flew over the dwarven outpost. The streets were not as congested as on workdays. Banking left and pitching down, she felt like she’d swallowed her tongue as she zoomed past the steel girders, their barge carriages, moored aerships and sloops docked on the platforms.

Ahead, the Misting Rapid’s ubiquitous mist beckoned. The vessel’s airframe rattled with its entry into the Chasm’s turbulent winds as it caught the air currents on its wingsails. Holly let out a grunt as inertia knocked her into her seat with the chrysalflier's acceleration. Then she breached the mist.

As usual, the Misting Rapid’s spray was a smothering blanket of precipitation even in Aestas. It only hung tens of metra above the actual surface of the river itself and there, was a grand sight of the rapids and crepuscular light diffusing into rainbows right above the river .

However, fewer aerships would ever deign to skim the fastest gap winds which blew close to the surface of the foaming waters. The river was equally treacherous, and unnavigable because of the igneous pillars that had resisted erosions over the years. Their softer material was washed away to reveal the sturdy volcanic core sharpened to a point and it was not uncommon to witness an old ship run afoul of them. On the other hand, the chrysalflier was built for such precarious journeys as it used the fast blowing winds called the Skimmers to expedite its way.

It saved on magicore to just coast off the air currents towards her destination. After all, its steam engine did not run on pyrstones nor wurmcoal. Rather, it run on a mixture of magicore diluted in crystal slime essence . Magicore was a very finicky thing to store but it was lighter and easier to store than carrying along a load of aertherite. Magicore was also a better attractor than crystals which took longer to gather replenish from the ambient mana.

After what seemed like an eternity of dodging pillars reaching from the river’s bed, Holly arrived at a fork where two tributaries of the Misting Rapids, the Blue Rapids and the White Rapids met. She readied herself for a plunge and tilted the chrysalflier ever so slowly.

The wings swivelled in response, flushing back like a seal wyvern before a dive. Right before it hit the cliffed fork separating the two tributaries, the chrysalflieger’s [Cloak of Aegis] flared.

The impact with the water barely registered as the craft slammed dived into the river. Holly pitched the yoke sticks up and the chrysalflier emerged into a cavern above the water. Passive pulses of [Detection] fed back mana signature of rocks, minute traces of crystals and ores, small vermin and predictably, monsters.

“ Thus begin the Underways,” Holly murmured as [Dark Sight] enchantments overlaid the geodesic bubble.

---

‘No trolls…good,’ Holly untensed her muscles as she passed a relay obelisk for the umpteenth time. But she remained alert, artillery lances charged with [Pyro Bolt], [Pyro Blast] and their Nivalis equivalent. She didn’t want to get into an encounter with a clan of trolls if she could help it. The stony bastards were hard to kill and in concert, would easily overwhelm any hapless seeker.

Terra scorpions were also another stony shelled monster that she’d have to watch out for. Alone, she couldn’t help but clench her stomach in trepidation. In the Underneath, higher tiered terra scorpions had stingers made of iron deposits that could easily punch through a hull bereft of shields. Holly had only fought juveniles in her Gandr and knew just how troublesome they could be compared to their Dust cousins.

The dwarmaiden would have rather fought a swarm of rock mites any day instead. Terra Scorpions easily hid their mana signatures with their rocky exoskeleton, making it hard to distinguish them from their terrain. [Sense Heat] didn’t pick anything from them either.

For once, luck seemed to be on her side as kilia of leagues rolled by, scenery changing from bare stone to reinforced ancient tunnels. Entire subterranean forests of flora and fauna began to show themselves.

There were bioluminescent critters and moss that shone, fungal outgrowths and bracket ferns the size of trees waved in the nonexistent breeze of the caves while ashstone pillars rose out of the ground like majestic columns as they connected to the cavern ceilings. Rivers and waterfalls and glistened beneath the sea of stars that were some sort of glimmer worms nesting in the stalactites above. Holly never tired of the entrancing vistas of the world below but she was rather weary of the journey.

“By Eog’s beard, It’s going to take forever just to get home; I hope Seria is on her best behaviour ,” she murmured as she thought fondly of her niece. It had been three moons—three whole moons above ground, saddled with the assignment.

From her Dwarven Hold in Zentrahls to above ground, was a several days long trip at a decent clip, fewer if she was willing to push the chrysalflier to its limits.

Holly’s recent posting had come out of the aether after their magical detectors picked an anomalous reading of a self-sustaining magical reaction. It just so happened she was the nearest Seeker and therefore she had drawn the shortest straw of all.

Added to that, they were short on hands because most of the Seekers and Sentinels were busy chasing leads concerning a certain dungeon incident and troublesome void mages. Even some low tiered enforcers had been called in to pick up the slack much to their own chagrin.

The magical detectors, thaumoflux arrays , were surreptitiously placed around some areas of the top dwellers’ towns and cities to detect manaseisms much like one would detect seismic waves in the ground.

One reading from one of the dungeons monitored on the farside of the Humpbeast Ranges had culminated in her flight across the Faeriwealds, through Lysfall. She couldn’t help but feel there was something about an encounter she’d forgotten in the sylvani city.

For the next couple days, she passed her time in monotony. She was running on a Potion of Rejuvenation to keep alert, not that she needed it. As a lone operative, any lapse in attention in the Underneath would spell her doom. The detectors on her chrysalflier could warn her outright, but every split heartbeat was a hair breadth away from a death that could be avoided.

The closer she got to the Dwarven Hold, the more her detectors returned readings of mana signatures and manaseismic disturbances. They could either be monsters or mining rigs; she hoped it was the latter.

Again, luck smiled her way. She passed an expanding mining post on the third day of her journey. As per regulations, she provided readings of her detectors concerning all manaseismic activity in the vicinity.

Attuning the onboard the psionic crystals from her vessel to the giant crab-like mining rig called the Krabbenwandlr for a map update took a while. The Krabbenwandlr was a squat mobile mining rig sitting on walking struts, one easily as thick as her craft. They were anchored to the ground as its pincers containing enchanted helical augers worked on an ore vein of black iron.

It was big as a small fortress and had docks for carrying mining frames, a civilian version of the Gandr which swapped artillery lances for augers, picks and scorch lances.

The Krabbenwandlr also had supply carriage-scows and housing units for miners on its broad underside.

“All clear,” the [Mine Overseer] in charge communicated through the short range [Farspeak] connection.

“Yer are welcome ” Holly said, pulling away.

“Safe ‘journs Seeker, “Holly heard as she entered the final leg of her journey.

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