Wild Arms: The Dee Legacy
By Robin “JChance” MacLachlan
Chapter 2: The Unsung Memorial
They had only needed two horses, after it became obvious that Connie couldn't ride. Of course, in Anne's opinion, William couldn't ride either. He didn't fall off, or irritate the animal, but he sat woodenly in place on the saddle, straw hat bouncing around on top of that haycock hair and every few minutes tumbling backwards to dangle by the strings that she couldn't help suspecting his mother had originally tied. He'd be lucky if he could walk when they arrived, let alone dig. Of course, the youngest member of their party would probably have enough energy to make up the slack--she was almost literally running rings around the horses, and, for one scary moment, underneath Anne's. She'd also dashed off in the direction of the first mountain stream they'd encountered, to look at her reflection in the cowboy's hat she'd...found somewhere on the ranch.
Anne refused to think about the exact circumstances of that, instead looking ahead to steer them out of the way of the horse-laming burr-bugs that infested the trail. There was one of their monstrous big brothers ahead too, looking like a chitinous hedgehog grown to piglet-size. Anne urged her horse ahead and drew her sabre, poking it down to spit the territorial creature as it made its rolling charge, then flicking it off into the young trees that had come to carpet the mountain in the last fifteen years. It landed with a rustle of spines...and then the rustling didn't stop. Duras Drum's striped backside, they must be surrounded. William must have heard it too--he'd stopped his mount, and held out his staff across Connie's path. The city boy was doing better than she expected.
Six of the big bugs rustled out around the three travellers. Anne dismounted, sword still out. No point risking the horse's legs. A loud “ka-chank” announced that William had opened his bow, and he started drawing a bead on one off to his side. Connie...ran back along the path, and kicked one onto its back in an impressive show of trust in her boots, then slit its plated belly open before it could roll up. Then she went up a tree. Lots of help, that kid.
One of the bugs launched itself at Anne, flying off the ground as it hit a root. She swung her blade to meet it in a shower of ichor, and spun out of the way of the two still-spiny half-bugs that resulted, letting them land behind her. She thrust the sabre into another one as William nailed his target to the ground with a bolt. The holed bug was still advancing, so she dispatched it with a downward slash. Another one was going at full roll for William's mare, who in turn was skittering sideways in an attempt to escape, but he batted it away with the butt of his staff, his other hand gripping the saddle horn for dear life.
Then there was a sound of chanting from up in one of the trees. Connie held tightly to one of her beads as she spoke the incantation, and no sooner had the batted creature righted itself than flames engulfed it, leaving behind smouldering leaves and a crisped shell. Another arrow took care of the second-last one, and Anne threw her rope over the last bug, yanking it towards her and into the air, then spearing it through.
William dismounted and retrieved his arrows, as Anne cleaned her sword. Connie stayed up the tree, watching. Anne put the sword away, wincing as the inexpertly welded piece the ranch blacksmith had filled the chip with caught on the scabbard, and turned to her employer. “Looks like you've handled monsters before, even if you're kind of slow. And that Baskar hoodoo...lemme guess, that's what you hired Flynn for.”
William made a wry face. “It's...a long story. I suspected, with the necklace, but...mostly, the main difference between theft and archaeology is documentation.”
“I had his suitcase,” Connie added unhelpfully before jumping down.
They continued onward and, slowly and windingly, upward until they found another stream as the light began to fail. To everyone's relief, the sky was clear and the tent stayed packed. Connie may not have known how to ride, but she was a dab hand at unsaddling, and required only a little guidance from the cowgirl in the matter of brushing and nosebagging. The horses were soon rolling in a patch of grass where the reddening sun shone through, their burdens laid beside the humans' own packs. William stiffly but gamely took a hatchet from his pack and set off in search of firewood, staff still open and ready though they had seemingly left even the small bugs behind.
He returned with the staff closed and laid atop an armful of fallen branches cut to a manageable length--a few with blasted, splintered ends where he had lost patience with the hatchet and used the other tool available. He dropped them in a barren spot near where the three bedrolls had been laid out, waking Connie. She had flopped across her own and Anne's, displacing some of the spare set of clothes that were laid out on the latter. She lay back down and closed her eyes again as William bent to retrieve his staff. He stood back up...and froze, face turning bright red. Anne was standing in the stream wringing out her shirt, the rest of her clothes laid to dry on a stone on the bank. All of them. Her wet black hair, released from the hat that now lay on her bedroll, fell to between her shoulder blades. Below that...
Although she kept her back to him, he could practically hear the raised eyebrow. “See anything you like?”
He covered his eyes and sputtered. “No! I mean, of course, but...”
Anne snorted. “Modesty don't count for much when the North Plains are your privy. Those things' blood itches like a bastard.”
William let the hand drop from his eyes and, after perhaps was longer than was strictly necessary, turned his back and seated himself firmly, back to the stream, on his own bedding.
He stood the first watch, then he slept. He dreamed, of a place much like the one he had found in Arctica, a round room full of books and strange instruments. He felt the presence of the Falling Star, but it did not appear to him, and while the first dream had clearly led him to the site, this one began and remained in the same location, simply letting him explore and examine. The holy presence grew stronger as he approached one of the smallest books, scarcely more than a pamphlet. He touched it, and heard the Guardian's strange voice. “Others remember, and do not forgive. You must find the truth before the sins of the past are repeated.” Then there was a pain in his back, and the scene melted into incoherence. He woke to find the sun dawning, and Connie poking him with the toe of one boot.
After a flurry of repacking and saddling, the three were on the trail again, and shortly came to a split in the way. The new trail was somewhat steeper, but new-blazed and free of anything spiny and ill-tempered. Not too long after midday, they came in sight of the ruins.
It wasn't much to look at on the surface. The Elw built mostly in unfinished wood, and a thousand years' neglect left only a complex figure of raised circles to attest to their presence, with the occasional metal structure, most the size of a single room at most, poking above the soil. The site was a hive of activity, though; three separate teams were already present, the heraldry of their sponsors brightly printed on the canvas of their clustered tents. Each had staked a claim at a safe distance from the others', and the sound of voices, shovels, and more delicate tools filled the air. Two well-armed Wanderers sat on camp chairs where the trail emerged onto the site. They looked quickly at William's credentials, and somewhat longer at his companions, and waved him on.
Anne tended to the horses as William proceeded to the largest tent, Connie sticking close behind him. Inside was the expected organised bedlam, charts and sketches piled on folding tables alongside tin cups full of cooled coffee, eager students copying from one to another as older researchers supervised and discussed the finds. It was a class operation, certainly--there were even a couple of totable computers in the back of the tent, tape reels clicking away, wired to a numeric wireless powerful enough to send and receive pictures. “Excuse me,” he said, first quietly and then louder, the latter time raising a hand and popping up on his toes. Connie, meanwhile, stared at a chart of the site, tracing over the lines on it with a finger.
A bespectacled man with a short grey beard looked up from his work, lifting a dirty bit of machinery away from where he had been holding it against a drawing of a more complicated device. “What is it this...” He focused on the young man, and his face grew milder as he saw that he was facing a new arrival. “Sorry, we're up to our eyeballs here...What do you need, Mr...”
“Valeria. William Valeria.”
“Ah, Emma's boy. She sent ahead to say you were coming. I'm Dr. Henry Jones.” He walked over to the master chart, sweeping off several pencils, a straightedge, and Connie's hand in the same motion. One of the pencils didn't hit the ground. “You can see where we're all working here, here, and here, but this side's open,” he said, making looping motions over various regions. “You can have about four by four, in the big grid, I mean--we've got two more groups coming up this week.”
William considered it. He pored over the chart, looking for any indication of where the place he had dreamt might lie, pointing at first one circle, then another--Elw buildings were always round, so no help from the shape alone. He struggled to remember more clearly. There had been doors here and here, he thought, which meant that the structures would have to be clustered just so, and only three buildings matched its diameter if he could trust dream-distances... “From here to here?” he asked, pointing and silently praying he had chosen correctly.
The rest of the day went more smoothly than he would have expected with his untrained assistants. He and Anne shared the heavier work, and Connie dashed down into the resulting holes, extracting and brushing off various objects after noting down their location and depth. The only disturbance came when he made a comment in perhaps too surprised a tone about her facility with writing. “I could read an odds board at five!” came the indignant response from down in the excavation, and a whizzing Gimel Coin knocked off his hat.
The artefacts were mostly building fragments, broken devices, and things small and easily lost--more or less what could be expected from a scene of deliberate abandonment. The Elw had departed the degenerating world for an other-dimensional retreat after the end of that first great war, lest the planet's sickness creep along their bonds to it and destroy them as well. Scenarios spun in William's head, though; the finds, in their variety, painted a picture of a life far less quiet than what he expected from his aunt's tales of the long-eared people's removed green paradise. An impatience burned at the back of his mind, though, and he felt guilty for it. When would they find the truth that was so vital to know that the spirits themselves guided him?
Then the
building fragments started coming up burnt, and they found weapons. None were those of the demons; there were the
power-enhancers of the Elw, and ARMs
of human make much like those pieced out across
The inconcievable began to seem very possible. Elw culture respected the tragedies of the past; if the demons had been here, and so thoroughly crushed the town that none among them had so much as had to drop a knife, doubtless it would have been left as a memorial, and not built over with the later layers his crew had already seen. Here, the two civilisations of Filgaia had fought each other.
Meanwhile, the Curan team had found bones. Again, none were the strange alloys of the demons' bodies, but among them were human skeletons and the delicate and oddly-structured ones of the Elw, all of them scarred from battle. An unease prevailed around the fires at the site that evening. Even Connie seemed subdued--particularly her, William thought, watching her stare into the flames, idly playing with the beads of her necklace.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “I know, partner. It doesn't make sense to the rest of us either.”
Her face grew pinched, and she shook the beads. “I didn't steal this, you know. I grew up in the Baskar Colony. The Elw...they're like saints to us.”
Saints are people too, and they make mistakes. Horrible ones sometimes, he thought. But he didn't say it. There weren't pat answers. He knew frustratingly little himself, and wasn't sure if the truth he was supposed to find would make it any better. He wasn't even sure if they would even find what they were looking for at all.
There was a clashing sound from a short distance away. Some minutes ago, Anne had stepped away quietly, only the departure of the smell of cheap tobacco marking her exit. Now she was fencing with one of the dayshift guards, her sabre and the Wanderer's glinting orange in the firelight. William was struck yet again by her fortitude. After half a day of riding and the other half spent digging, he ached everywhere, and he knew that a night's sleep would only deepen the stiffness, making the next day--especially with the mood around the camp--an exercise in sheer will.
Even as he admired the spare grace of Anne's fighting, he could see that the day had taken some toll on her as well--but not enough to keep her from winning two engagements out of three, the last time hooking the Wanderer's blade from his hand and sending it arcing over his head to land point-down in the earth behind him. As he turned to retrieve it, she noticed young Valeria watching her. “Hey, boss--William, you ought to get some practice too.”
“Hrm?”
“Business you're in, folks get in almost as many scrapes as mine. You're a dead shot, but you need to stop acting like...like your body's a mule, and you're a flea. All you expect it t'do is twitch when you give it a jab.”
“How do I do that? Stop, I mean. Retrain myself.”
Anne sighed somewhat frustratedly and lifted her hat, shaking her hair out from under it. “Great. Time to teach the greenhorn. Swordmaster gets a lot more than five hundred a day... Best I can say for starters is, be there more. Don't keep pulling back from Force, let yourself go with it.”
“Like me?” Connie asked, some of her usual cockiness creeping back into her voice.
“Pff. Kid, you've got the opposite problem. You let the monkey in you do what it wants, and just laugh at it a second later.”
“Fine.” Flynn crossed her arms and turned back to the fire.
“I'm not just giving you crap here. I don't want to lose another boss, or the kid who's adopted 'im.”
“We're business partners,” the young girl said flatly, still staring into the flames.
“OK, I don't want to lose either boss. My point is, you know the way it feels when you do that Baskar magic? Hell, I don't know really, just heard from the regular books-and-circles-and-math kind of sorcerer...anyway, the kind of focus you've got there, try keepin' a little more of that the rest of the time.”
Connie actually looked at Anne this time. “I'll try. But...” She puffed herself up, arms still crossed. “I'm doing pretty good already.”
Anne put away her sword, and let herself relax completely for the first time William had seen that day. “Don't think about it too much, we're all about as tuckered as tuckered gets.” Other people seemed to have the same idea, and there were only a few still seated around the various fires. William rose and went into his own unmarked tent, and came out with his bedroll on his shoulder.
“The two of you can have the tent, I'll sleep out here.”
Anne smirked. “Ladies first, huh. I'll give you points for gallantry, but if you've got to be all proper, one more night outside won't kill me.”
“Don't have a problem with me, right?”, Connie asked as she walked around the fire and into the tent.
“Of course not,” William answered, “you're just--”
“Fifteen,” came a voice from inside.
He blinked and shook his head. “I thought you were younger.”
Anne arched an eyebrow. “Only..three, I guess...years different. Guess this means you have it your way, Mister Manners. Or you can stop worrying.” She headed in after.
“Four,” William said automatically, then shrugged. Even in summer, the nights were cold in the mountains. “I think everyone here has more on their mind than who's in my tent.” He carried his bedding back in.
Apparently, some of the younger students involved didn't have enough to occupy their thoughts after all. The three had no sooner stepped into the mess-tent line for the next day's breakfast than the young man in front of William turned to him with a congratulatory smirk. “Looking pretty worn out there, Valeria. Those two keep you up--” William cut him off with a hard stare, though he still blushed brightly. “You really should stop being rude, before my assistant decks you.” Just great, he thought, hide behind the woman. Really mature. But at least he'd said something. There also seemed to be some titters in his direction from the uniformed students in the Curan group, but...some of them were no older than Connie. It was to be expected.
This was all quickly forgotten in the face of much bigger news. The Elw had arrived before sunrise, without coming up the path. One of the guards on duty claimed that the visitor had descended into the camp on a set of glowing, unmoving wings, which he had then removed from his back--the other, though, answered this by miming the enthusiastic quaffing of a glass of liquor, and rolling his eyes.
The new arrival was a tall, slight man in robes of white and green, an almost girlishly beautiful face between his grey-furred ears topped with long pale hair held by a green ribbon. Doubts of the previous day ignored, Connie stared at him as if she were trying to convince herself the figure was real--although she couldn't resist a comment that “He's prettier than you, Anne”, which earned her a finger-thump behind the ear. William also opened his mouth to disagree, but shut it again, cheeks pinking.
Dr. Jones seemed far less pleased at the stranger's arrival, but the humanoid, who introduced himself as Lully, allayed his concerns. He was only there to ensure that the Elw bones, after examination, received the proper burial they hadn't so long before; any goods abandoned there, even by still-living Elw, were fair prize to those who found them. The long-lived people did not claim anything left unretrieved and unmarked for over a dozen dozen years. More than this, Lully would assist with the identification of any puzzling artefacts, which was a great relief to the harried head-researcher.
As the day wore on, Jones's relief diminshed thanks to the Curan students' newly-developed habit of finding any pretext to drop into the main tent and catch a glimpse of the visitor, but overall the operation continued smoothly. Late in the morning, William's shovel struck stone. He let out a victorious cry as a bit of further exploration revealed the stone to be part of a circular wall slightly off-centre to the building-outline he had originally picked as the location he had dreamed. This turned several heads, and brought Lully at a near-run, drawing stares from both of William's companions, although Anne turned away with a self-mocking expression. The long-eared man seemed almost as excited as Valeria. “I had heard that Johndee”--he said it as one word--“had a studio here, but this is the first solid evidence I have seen. That is definitely human construction.” The elegant Elw even took up a shovel himself to speed the work, and soon the four had exposed another sliding door.
“I hope to be blessed as you have been one day,” Lully said, smiling at the find. William looked curiously at him. Was it a figure of speech, or... “We can sense the Guardians' presence, wherever it may manifest.”
“I...I hope you get that honor too.” And I hope that Elw perception makes what they want clearer for you than it is for me, he thought. It quickly became clear that William's blessing extended only to finding the place, though--the door was frustratingly inert, but still well enough shielded from magic that Lully's first few attempts budged it not an inch. Then, as the two men still stared at it frustratedly, there was a chinking sound from above. Connie was standing precariously on the lip of the hole, chipping away at the stone above the door with a pick-mattock. The others caught on to the idea and joined in, and soon they had exposed the levers which operated the door. Anne and a prybar quickly got it about half open, and Lully slipped inside. William stayed long enough to ask Connie how she knew.
“Daddy was a grifter, sure, but he did some proper exploring too,” she answered, and William followed the Elw.
The studio was exactly as had it been in his dream, but he could read the writing he saw now--there were more Peacemaker papers on the tables, which Lully busied himself in reading, but William went straight for the small book. It was hard to miss, really, sticking out from one of the shelves as if he were meant to see it immediately. He pulled it gently from the shelf. It was bound in deep blue leather, and the silver lettering on its spine was still readable. It was “The Emigrants' Manifesto”, by one Dr. Emilio Vasquez. He opened it gently, hoping it would hold together--but his fears were unfounded. It was of the best materials, and would likely last another thousand years. It was written in the ancient language of the Green Book, and though William, unlike his aunt, had been ten instead of three when he first read that work in the original, it was quite clear to him.
“The dragons have given us a great gift, and we have squandered it,” it began. Curious--the metal dragons had been too often assumed to be yet another weapon of the demons, but the abundance and age of their remains on Filgaia spoke against it. William read on. “Though the very rules of our universe condemn them to slow wasting, they have taught us, without thought of recompense, a science which reaches into the depths of being itself--not merely the fulfillment of Clarke's dictum, but a true magic, the technology of the soul. And we have repaid them by using it as a crude tool, and granting them a stay of their doom at the cost of freedom. I have spoken often of the responsibility that their knowledge must bring, the attention that must be paid to the meanings which the dragons' wisdom touches. And too few have listened.
It saddens
me, but it does not surprise me. The
very spirit of our native Terra has been corrupted, bent towards the rule of
main force and blind power, and I have felt this around me and within me even
as I have struggled to bring us to another way.
Therefore, you who read my words, or your ancestors, have chosen with me
to rise from humanity's cradle and sail to another world, the one within the
sphere of our explorations which can support our lives without being bent to
the image of soiled Terra, either in small habitats or over its entire
surface. This jewel, this Far-Gaia, has
been passed over for closer worlds, attended to only by those who see it as a source
of precious metal and the dragons' own flesh.
However, I see in it something far more precious--not a perfect
Here ended the foreword, and William's mind reeled. In this slim book was proof positive that the human race, like Rigdobrite, had come from far away and joined themselves to the planet by choice. But this was not enough. Certainly not enough to absolve either race from the scene of war being unearthed just outside the room. Had Vasquez been misguided in his optimism about the Elw? Had the idealistic star-travellers in the end forced themselves on Filgaia, brutally displacing their predecessors until the demons' invasion compelled them to make common cause?
He was interrupted in these thoughts by Lully's mellifluous voice. “I suspect that you will wish to see this. It matches the one which you hold as a personal treasure.” The Elw held another journal, the lines of a seal again allowing it to open only at one point. Valeria didn't ask how Lully knew he held its companion--he had begun to suspect that the entire world was as open to the Filgaia-born race as an unsealed book was to him. He took it, and read. Unlike the first journal, it was open to an entry somewhere in the middle.
...“formula for peace has worked fully, binding the Elws' hearts to those of the Immigrants through the very weapons they levelled against us. The scales have fallen from all our eyes, if I may sound like a tiresome old “vasqua” for a moment, and the cruel manipulation of the demons has been laid bare as the two peoples, ashamed, join in alliance again. And my work has swept away its own footprints, leaving only the impression of a miracle, lest it be twisted into the weapon I never intended it to be.
I should
find myself elated--I have done the seemingly impossible, and ended the last
decade's obscenity. But my mother's
birthplace”... Here William stopped and thought again. He hadn't even been sure humans and Elw were capable of crossbreeding, but it would certainly
explain
The rest of the page was obscured by a solid block of seal-glow, and William closed the book, feeling simultaneously relieved at the revelation that the war had been brief and the result of the demons' manipulation, and frustrated at the way Dee seemed to drop mere crumbs of information, as if he were trying to direct later searchers in some particular, maddeningly obscure direction. He unbuckled one of his jacket pockets and thrust the journal in alongside its mate--and a sound like a high bell echoed through the stone chamber. Like the sound a sealing spell made as it opened.
He pulled both books out again. The second remained sealed, but the first had lost the slipperiness of the magic, and it opened freely--as long as he kept it within arm's reach of the other volume, he quickly discovered, having to touch the books together again after he walked away in search of Lully, only to find the Elw had been called away to identify a particularly strange device. He sat on the floor and absorbed himself in the diary, often going to the bookshelves to identify a reference that puzzled him. Time passed unnoticed, and the sun had long set before a sound of singing drew William out again.
A bright, clear voice with an amazingly broad range was coming from near one of the fires, and nearly everyone in the camp had crowded around
to hear. The language was unfamiliar, but the song--Lully's song, William saw as he grew closer--spoke eloquently of sadness and hope, and an almost unbearably strong love for something. Somehow, he knew it was for the world itself, scarred but resilient Filgaia. As he came to stand at the back of the crowd, someone produced a guitar and began to play a simple accompaniment. William wished he had brought his own violin. Transported as he was, he still noticed a small figure standing in the first row. And he could hear her singing quietly as well. It was Connie, and as he made his way through the taller figures, he could see that tears ran down her face as she sang.
Though Valeria burned with questions, he waited until the song ended. Then he asked, “You know this song?”
“Every Baskar knows it,” Connie replied, still sounding far away. “It's the hymn of Zephyr. But...I've never heard it like this...” She looked at her sleeve, found it dusty down to even the silver cufflink, and wiped her eyes on William's. He looked to her, concerned. “Are you...”
She shook her head and smiled. “Fine. I feel better than...I don't know. Before. It just got me.” Than she had since her father died, she thought. William nodded. Maybe he got what she hadn't said based on comments she'd dropped in the meantime--Connie wasn't going to go walking around trying to be all tragic with an unspoken burden on her shoulders. Maybe he just understood the power of the Elw's song.
“I feel better myself,” he went on. “I'm close to some real answers about what happened here, and before.”
“Lully already said it was the demons' fault, and that a...what'd he call it...'miracle of understanding'...ended it right here,” Connie replied, only half curious.
“I think I know how that miracle happened, and I'm close to the rest of the story. Maybe I'll even figure out what we have to do next.”
“Next?” Connie figured that the partnership of Flynn and Valeria would go on to more of the same--more investigation, and some real treasure.
“You said it yourself. It looks like we've been picked to play the hero this time. So either I get it myself, or...I'm pretty sure...Rigdobrite will give me another push.”
“The Guardians talk to you? I'm jealous. Still...sounds exciting.”
“I'll
probably be in
“OK,” Connie agreed. The guitarist had started another song, a normal, sentimental human one, and Lully joined in. Connie remembered seeing a harmonica in one of the guard-Wanderers' packs, and ran off to get it. She'd put it back, though. She'd hate to see William's face if she got them all in trouble.
William
returned to the journal and his notes, and continued piecing together the
story.
What they did not know, and indeed Dee had only figured out during his Arctican hermitage, was that the metal invaders were capable of rending space on a small scale as well as a large--so when three strangers came among the human populace, an old man assisted by a younger man and woman, they thought nothing of it. The strangers claimed that they had learned how, despite their carbon-based bodies, to use the mysterious weapons that had been found in the few crashed demon vessels, and even build ones like them from the remains of the metal dragons. The latter actually seemed the easier--a strange infusion of tiny machines was necessary to grant the ability to synchronise with the living-metal devices.
The
strangers soon began spreading a message along with their gifts--that the Elw knew of the humans' potential to use the demons'
technology, and had grown fearful; that once the threat from beyond was no
longer a consideration and human assistance no longer needed, they intended to
drive all the “aliens” from Filgaia. This was little credited until the man's two
aides were found dead, cut to pieces with Elw
scythes. Only Dee and a few others had
looked beyond the obvious--and among them,
Those connections, for their part, availed him nothing, his half-caste nature making him barely tolerated among Filgaia's adopted children. And what would he tell either side? That two dead people walked among the Elw, and were somehow demons though their nature registered as entirely human to the perceptive immortals? Soon, the two were dead again, shot with the strange “Articles of Matricide”, as the demons' weapons had been dubbed in fear of their ability to damage the planet itself. The tiny machines in their bodies too easily passed as those needed to use the demon devices. Dee himself, though suspicious, had been baffled by the method of their imposture...until the male demon, somehow having heard of those suspicions, had appeared once more, in his true form--a bizarre steely bird-man. The metal creature had then dissolved himself into a mist of nanomachines and attempted to possess the half-breed. The magician defeated the invader in a close-fought inner battle, and the demon at last truly died.
Meanwhile, tension had erupted into war. At first, the Elw's magics had held the edge, but soon a terrible truth became apparent. The planet and Guardians made no distinction between native and Immigrant, and, pulled by strong faith on both sides, ground against themselves and weakened. Decay and dry desolation spread across Filgaia's surface as her races battled, and as the Guardians' power failed, so did the Elw's. The humans' soul-guns suffered no such impediment; empowered by sheer will, they grew stronger as their wielders gained ground and confidence. In desperation, the Elw broke with their ancient code, and combined their limited knowledge of the demons' bodies with common robotics to plan giant machines of war, terror weapons which, once set loose, would carve a swath through everything in their path.
It would enable the Elw to bind their minds, from any distance, to the very weapons that had begun this debacle, and through them to their wielders' hearts, whether the weapons were in hand or simply near. But it would have hidden aspects woven through it, ones which would not become apparent to less-talented magi on cursory examination. First, every use of it would cross with every other use--if it were timed correctly, a majority of those fighting on, and leading, both sides would find their knowledge and feelings open to each other; the deception could not long survive. Second, and Dee was not entirely confident of this when his Arctica journal ended, its pattern would destabilise once it was cast; as the link dissolved, the dissolution would spread, making the formula itself pass from memory.
The second
book, in its one visible entry, held the conclusion--everything had worked as
planned, and the demons, on their return, had faced a unified planet again,
albeit a weakened one. William would ask
Lully what he knew of