Wild Arms: The Dee Legacy

By Robin "JChance" MacLachlan

Prologue 1: History on Ice

Fifteen years after the Second Demon War...

William Valeria quickly did up his heavy coat around his gawky frame as he emerged from one of the warm tunnels beneath Arctica into the shattered greenhouse. Snow lay thick on the ruined hydroponic beds; he idly swept it aside with the butt of his square staff, but found nothing but the wilted and frosted remains of vegetables, preserved by the cold from over twenty years ago. Could the dream that led him here just have been a dream? He banished the thought. The Guardians lived in dreams as much as they did in Filgaia, if not more. It was never “just a dream” when it came to them. Absorbed in these thoughts, he didn't notice the sickle floating up from the ground until it swung at him and nearly took his head off. He leapt back, crying out the name of Rigdobrite, and pointed the head of his staff at the ghostly figure in farmer's clothes that had appeared behind it. The two curved arms at the top snapped out on their hinges to become crosspieces. There was a wire bowstring between them, threaded through a slot in the device; the object now looked like a weapon rather than the True Worder's staff that it usually resembled. A faint white glow appeared around the string, and it began to pull itself back, but William wasn't yet quite ready to resort to force.

He reached into his coat, and pulled out some papers, holding them out in the ghost's direction like a talisman. He spoke in a shaking voice. “I have permission to be here, see?” The signature of Knight Viceroy Jack Stampede at the bottom seemed to make little impression on the spectre, though, and it floated implacably towards the young man, drawing back the sickle for another attack. Its mouth moved; most of what came out was an unintelligible moan, but Valeria could make out the phrases “demon weapon” and “never again.” His eyes grew wide and his breath caught in his throat, but his aim stayed true; as the spirit approached, the glow grew brighter, and the string quickly drew itself to the end of the slot. As the tool began what looked to surely be a lethal arc, the wire snapped into place behind the bolt hidden in the staff's head, and the light, now bright enough to exceed the dim illumination from the grey sky above the shattered dome, jumped for a moment to the bow itself and the ARM's projectile before said arrow leapt out, persistence of vision turning it into a bright streak straight through the ghost and into the ice encasing a water tank behind it. The apparition vanished like a popped balloon, and the sickle, moments before reaching Valeria's throat, spun harmlessly off to clank against the glass behind him.

The staff now returned to its usual purpose as he leaned on it to recover his breath. Not for the first time, he mentally thanked his Aunt Emma for her creation; of the modern ARMs, only an original Hetfield could have responded so well despite its wielder's terror. Soon, William returned to his search. He wouldn't find what he was looking for in the beds; he had seen their construction orders from only two hundred years ago, and the strange meteor-Guardian had spoken of “ancient truth” in his dream. Instead, he tapped on the floor, looking for any sign of an older structure that had been built over. For a long time, he only heard the dull sound of solid stone, but just as he began to doubt his vision again, he was rewarded with a hollow and distinctly metallic report. Sweeping aside the snow with his boots, he saw a rusted steel cover just the right size to hide a much older tunnel. His heart leapt--the secret he was looking for had to be underneath. Equally rusted bolts secured the panel on all sides, though; they looked like they would be difficult to remove at best. He was too excited to let this stop him, though; he'd simply have to make a way in, the way his aunt would. He took a step back and reversed the staff in his hands, aiming the bow at the centre of the cover. Focusing his whole mind on destroying the obstacle, he loosed another glowing arrow; it streaked through as if the plate did not exist, and lines of light shot out from the small hole it had left, splitting the metal into wedges, then with a flash parting the bolts that held them to their mountings. They fell into the hole beneath, and an awesome crash, loud enough that Valeria involuntarily dropped his ARM, a moment later announced that they had found the bottom.

In his excitement, Valeria let the weapon lie where it had fallen; his mind was only on what lay below. Light shone up from the tunnel; only the lost technology of ancient times could have provided it so plentifully to a place so long disused. He pulled a coil of rope from his pack and tied one end to a support belonging to one of the planting beds, then tossed the rest into the opening. After a quick look to ensure that none of the cover fragments had landed dangerously upright, William took hold of the rope and quickly scrambled down. The passage went straight down for about twice his height, oddly with no signs that a ladder or moving platform had ever existed; after this, a broad, straight hallway proceeded some twenty yards towards a shut double door with no visible handles. The illumination he had seen from above came from globes hanging in the air with no visible support, lined up along each side of the passageway. Each had some sort of machinery at the top and bottom, and what seemed like a tiny star in the centre; however, Valeria hardly noticed them, and strode boldly, at least for him, towards the door. Then, as he came close to it, another transparent figure appeared.

This one did not have the misty half-reality of a ghost, though; it looked more like it was somehow made of light. It was of a tall man in complex but stained and much-mended robes of light colours, and bore a face that anyone on Filgaia with any pretension to scholarship would recognise, with a sharp nose, oddly elongated ears for a human, and an air that all the cares of the much-abused planet had fallen on its owner's head, all topped with lank shoulder-length black hair. It was the face of Magus John Dee, the greatest magician and alchemist Filgaia had ever produced. Dee's image spoke, the voice both echoing down the tunnel and seeming to penetrate directly into the young searcher's mind. “Pardon the impersonal reception, but my work here must be completed before the giants walk if Hope is to sweep this planet instead of despair. You may enter only if you also come in the name of Hope.” Valeria's mouth worked silently for a moment. What do you say to a legend, even his recorded image? Finally, he formed words. “Of...of course I do. I've seen what the West Wind's done for Filgaia since I was a kid, and...”

The figure cut him off. “Nice try.” Then it vanished, and he felt an irresistible force lifting his feet off the floor of the tunnel, and whisking him back along it towards the shaft he had entered by. This couldn't be happening. Ancient secrets, the secrets of a great and mysterious figure, ones important enough that a Guardian itself had directed him towards them, and he couldn't get in. He had to know how to get in, the Guardians didn't make mistakes like that. Something came to mind...Hope had a name. One very particular and holy name. He spoke it, half password and half prayer. “Zephyr. Zephyr!” The image flashed back into existence, and his movement stopped. The voice rang out and within yet again. “You speak the name of Hope sincerely. Enter, one who has faith.” The figure disappeared again, and William ceased to be weightless, almost losing his balance as he touched down. The door parted in the middle and hissed open into the sides of the tunnel.

William frankly ran into the room behind it--and stopped himself before he ran straight into a piece of crumbling paper hanging in the air like the lights, with a note written on it in an older form of Filgaian. A quick mental translation yielded its contents. “Pardon my not changing the message, but I don't have time. My work is not done. Now that the formula is complete, I must get them to use it. If you got in, you can borrow the books, but remember that I can find them wherever they go.” He stepped around it, and looked around the room. Bookshelves lined the walls below more light-globes, and a single door led to another room. Most of the space was taken up with tables; they were covered with papers, notebooks, glassware, odd machinery, and...ARM parts? Several seemed to have been disassembled here. Some were simple guns and some were the strange weapons the metal demons themselves had used, bulging and oddly-curved obscenities that seemed to have been torn from the bodies of monsters and forged to man-portable shape against their will. The slick machines that scholars suspected to have Elw involvement in their creation were nowhere in evidence--did this prove their later origins? The whole scene, both in its disorder and its perfect, nearly dust-free preservation, looked as if the researcher would return at any moment--only the dried remnants of strange potions in the glassware put paid to this impression.

Even if the note hadn't said what it said, the books would ordinarily have drawn William like a magnet. But something about the urgency in the recording and the note carried through, though the crisis that prompted them must have passed long before any human alive was born, and he looked over the research instead. Much in the notes was far over his head in the magic department--it would doubtless take a Curan nun to make heads or tails of it. However, what he could make out was tantalising. The heading on all the pages was simply “Peacemaker”, and as far as he could tell, it concerned applying Elw connection techniques to synchronise with ARMs at a distance. Perhaps he intended to make remote weapons that could attack the demons while their operators remained safe? But there was no evidence that anything more like this than the seven great golems had ever existed, and Dee's note had explicitly stated that his research had borne fruit. More than this, ARMs sufficiently complex to be so used were nowhere to be found here. And why had Dee felt that he was in a race with the golem project, if those were the “giants” he had intended? Perhaps this had been intended to overcome the lack of sufficient intelligence that had made them a failure as a weapon against the demons. This very failure spoke against it, though.

Maybe, Valeria thought, it had had nothing to do with ARMs' obvious purpose as weapons. Old Gepetto Roughnight had believed that they also could be used to link together people's hearts and minds, and several notable incidents had proved him very right. Perhaps Dee had the same dream over a thousand years ago. But why would it be necessary when the planet was united against the demons? Then Valeria's eyes fell on an open book smaller than the scholarly tomes that littered the tables. It was handwritten, in the same writing as the note. A journal of some sort? There was only a little writing on the pages he could see--”...my mother's people still trust me, and I regret that I must deceive them, and present an olive branch as a club. But if Fargaia's native children and her adopted ones do not cease their struggle, she will die.”

Adopted children? What could he mean? It couldn't be the demons, their very composition was inimical to the planet. Gingerly, hoping the ancient paper would not crumble, he tried to turn the page back--only to find his fingers slipping off, and a complex net of glowing lines covering the book. It was sealed, and William didn't have a magic key, even if one would work on a seal of Dee's. Then something occurred to him...something impossible. It had been Rigdobrite who guided him here--the soul of a falling star, who had joined with Filgaia to protect it. What if humans were the same way? It seemed impossible, but...he simply didn't know. Far too few students of the past looked back further than the first demon war. If that were true, who would the “struggle” be with? The Elw? If the first idea was impossible, this was inconceivable. The two peoples had fought side-by-side against the demons. There must be some other people lost to history who were either the aliens or the natives.

There was no point speculating further on so little evidence. Perhaps the answer was elsewhere in the laboratory. If it was, he would find it much faster with help--and a find like this couldn't just be left alone. It had to be properly documented, packed, and brought back for all the best minds to see. Dee's books alone would doubtless make huge contributions to magic and science. Before he left, though, he closed the journal and slipped it into his pack.