Subrsed in potential, Rain floated, his avatar’s hair waving with the current as he directed the flow. Walls materialized around him in seconds, a cube of solidified soul that captured a Whale’s mouthful of the dwindling sea. With only a minor additional investnt of will, the entire thing rose, lifting both him and the captured essence. Below him, he was aware of potential rushing in to fill the bite taken from the ocean. Before long, there would be none left, but that was only a minor concern. His core rested in the empty shell below those waves no longer.
A tremor ran through the liquid. The cube ca to a stop, crashing into a larger structure. With an unneeded wave of his hand, the wall in front of Rain slid upwards, and potential surged forth in a deluge, roaring into the gargantuan holding tank. Space twisted, and his avatar vanished from the flow, reappearing perfectly dry in a brightly-lit room.
Here, a rapidly-running conveyor was firing newly minted refinent cells into a pile that had overtaken the collection bin. The cells were perfect cubes, no larger than his avatar’s fist and labeled with the number ‘1’. Inside each, printed directly into the structure, were yet more tubes, valves, and channels, leading to the hollow cylinder at the center. No rod drove the piston head within, animated instead by his automated will. Stroke by stroke, the cells would draw in level zero essence, flash it to level one with the pattern in the resonant chamber, then expel the result.
Designing them had been straightforward. Designing the machine that made them, however, had been a challenge.
Flipping his palm to face upward, Rain lifted his hand. Gravity shifted, and the mound of tier-one purifiers clinked ceramically as they rose. He turned, facing a yawning airlock on one side of the room, then let himself fall toward it, the cubes chasing after him in a swarm. Bursting through the shimring field holding the simulated air within, Rain plumted into the airless void, though the space outside was not entirely empty. A cloud of diffuse potential surrounded his growing station like a nebula—one from science fiction, not reality. Here and there, bolts of blue lightning flashed and flickered. Because it looked cool.
Guiding his charges around to the other side—for while he’d mastered space enough to teleport his avatar, he still struggled to disregard geotry entirely—he ca to a gradual stop, looking at the side of the holding tank where he’d been not a minute before. He thrust his palm forward, and it was not gravity that moved the cubes this ti, but his direct will. Dozens at a ti, they shot past like volleys of arrows, thudding into the tank and installing themselves into the structure that awaited them. Tier-one essence began dripping through almost imdiately, and with another thread of his will, Rain spun it into pipes of tier-one soul. Those, he lded into the existing network, forming the circulatory system that would pipe the potential to the next tank in line.
It had been little more than a day since the Warden’s lesson, but already, Rain was up to tier four, with automation up to tier three. He’d have progressed further had refinent cells been all he’d needed to design. Most of the potential in the tank beside him ca not from his shrinking planet, but from freshly purified chaos.
Space twisted, and he reappeared in another brightly lit room beside another pile of cubes. There were even more of them this ti, the numbers on the sides reading ‘0’. Annoyingly, there still weren’t enough. He needed more printers.
Or a printer that prints printers... #todo
Rain smiled, fully aware that he was losing the fight against optimization hell. He was tracking the glacial approach of several souls in the real world, and even with as slow as they were moving, he wouldn’t have ti to reach a stable configuration before it was ti for the eting. That was fine. He’d designed everything here to tolerate both stall and overflow.
The real bottleneck at this point was not raw production, but his mind. In yet another room of the station, his computer core was growing. Built from rack after rack of processor cores, it was massively parallel and expandable in design.
Rain snorted, lifting the purification cores and guiding them toward the airlock.
Much better than so stupid liver.
Each core was a perfect cube, much like those for purification and refinent. Rather than any internal machinery, they functioned through intent alone. That, he siphoned from his first image—the gemstone heart now sitting in a sad puddle at the bottom of the tier-three essence tank—then forged into sothing new using the highest tier of potential he could muster.
He hadn’t found a way to automate processor core production yet, but he would, hard enough to make AMD cry. Each unit he installed made his mind stronger, more able to see, more able to direct his will. Inside, anyway. It was only a matter of ti before he was strong enough to find the next pattern.
Having been falling away from the station for a short ti now, Rain plunged through the transparent bubble that held back the roiling chaos, following spreading veins of pipework that branched out into the haze like the roots of so massive tree.
[Rain-King!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!] Dozer sent excitedly, suddenly there chasing after him as he rocketed through the swirling filth.
Rain smiled, slowing as he reached the grasping tips of the intake manifold. He flared his will to create a bubble of free air so he could guide the new cells into position without interference.
[Hi, Dozer,] he sent as the sli was revealed. [Coming with to the eting?]
[Rain-King! Race!]
[Really? You don’t want to clean instead?]
[Cleaning race!]
[Oh,] Rain laughed as he worked. [No, Dozer, no race, not right now. Did you hear what I asked you?]
[Yes!]
[And?]
[No!]
[You’re overdue for your nap, actually, now that I think about it.]
[No want!]
Rain smiled. [You have two options, Dozer: eting or nap. What’s it going to be?]
[...]
Rain waited patiently.
[Aliah-Queen eting?]
He chuckled again, done with the install now. [Yes, she’ll be there. She’s already there, technically, from the last one. Tallheart, too.]
[eting!!!!!!] Dozer sent.
[Good choice,] Rain sent, warping his avatar inside the station and tucking it safely into bed. The temporary bubble of order was already collapsing, bringing chaos into contact with the new intakes. [Co on then.]
Opening his eyes in Terity’s conference room, Rain took a deep breath, then gently squeezed Aliah’s hand, which was clasped in his own. She stirred, having been occupied much as he had. She opened her eyes to look around just in ti to catch a sli to the solar plexus.
*pop*
[ALIAH-QUEEN!!!!!!!!]
“Oof!”
Rain chuckled, getting to his feet and laying a hand on Tallheart’s shoulder. “Ti for our next eting.”
“Mmm,” Tallheart said, opening his eyes. He’d been in his soul too, though under instructions to nap rather than to work. Rain wasn’t sure his friend had slept since the other cervidians had arrived.
[TALL-BROTHER!!!!!!!!]
“Stop that!” Aliah said, laughing, launching herself after Dozer and snagging him out of the air before he could bounce off Tallheart’s forehead. “Calm down! You just saw him thirty minutes ago!”
Not from our perspective, but still.
Still smiling, Rain flipped open his visor, then walked around the table to where Vanna was reaching for the doorknob. He opened the door to reveal her grasping fingertips. She jumped back, saying sothing like, ‘Ooh!’, the exclamation smothered by the wards.
[Vanna-Princess!!!!!!!!]
[Dozer, we’ve talked about this,] Rain sent, looking over his shoulder as he beckoned Vanna inside.
[Princess Vanna?]
[It’s not the order that’s the problem. Just because she’s second in command, it doesn’t an— Oh, never mind.] Rain smiled, sure that the corner of his eye had to be twitching. “Hey, Vanna. Dozer says hello.”
“Hello back,” Vanna said, smiling as the others followed her in.
Soon, the room was packed, the chairs all taken by the heads of Ascension’s councils and the others they’d invited. By the ti everyone was seated and had coffee or tea as they wished, Dozer had cald down from his overstimulation. Secure again in Aliah’s lap, he’d be out within the minute.
Tarny, whom Rain had been chatting with near the door, nodded to him and pulled it closed. He’d stand guard and handle any administrative issues that ca up while the rest of them were occupied.
After finding his own chair and taking a sip of his coffee, Rain cleared his throat. “Thank you all for coming. Let’s get right down to it. This eting is classified at low-council level. As there are three non-council mbers in the room, Aliah, Sana, and Halgrave, I exercise my right as captain to grant them temporary council-level clearance for the duration. However, as Halgrave and Sana are not Entrusted, I need further approval by a unanimous vote of the high council. Before that, Sana, Halgrave, please vow that you will not discuss anything said in this room once we leave.”
“I agree,” said Sana firmly, clinging to her teacup.
Halgrave grunted, crossing his arms. His hamr rested beside him, the long haft poking up above the table. “I swear to keep my mouth shut, just like I did last ti and the ti before that. Do we really have to do this every ti you ask to co to this stupid council thing?”
“Yes, we do,” Rain said. “It’s in the codes. Councilors, hands, please.”
Six hands went up, belonging to each of the council heads: Samson, Vanna, Atyl, Tallheart, Ror, and Slt.
“We could fix this problem, you know,” Slt said, wiggling his fingers.
“How?” Vanna asked, glancing at her brother. “Only Entrusted can join councils, and you know why we can’t promote them.”
“I an change the clearance rules,” Slt said, lowering his hand. “Formalize the exception. As head of logistics, it’s my job to point out inefficiencies. Halgrave is right; doing this every ti we need him or Sana is a waste of ti.”
“I’ve actually been thinking about the codes a bit,” Aliah interrupted, taking Rain by surprise. “ Could we make a formal ‘specialist’ position or sothing? We could make it co with low-council clearance, or at least make it so council heads could grant it to specialists as needed without a vote.”
“Is this for you, Aliah?” Vanna asked with a straight face, though her soul was playful. “Aren’t you the opposite of a specialist?”
“I didn’t an for ,” Aliah said, nodding at Sana and Halgrave as Rain and a few others chuckled. “I ant for them. In my case, I was thinking of joining the Defense Council.” She looked at Samson. “If you’ll have ?”
“Of course,” Samson said, raising his eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t want any formal responsibility? What changed?”
“Nothing,” Aliah replied, giving the now-100%-unconscious Dozer a squeeze. “I just needed ti to stop lying to myself.”
Rain grinned, though what he really wanted to do was hug her. He could do that later, in private. “Any objections to Aliah’s proposal?” He raised his hand. “All in favor of altering the codes to create the ‘specialist’ position?”
Six hands went up.
“Seems like a simple enough concept,” Ror said. “I’ll write up a draft for the change, and we’ll review it next ti before we call the Entrusted to vote on it.”
“Leave that to ,” Vanna said. “I know you wrote that section, but that’s what the Administration Council is here for now. You’ve got enough work to do helping Tallheart.”
“Thank you for the excellent segue, Vanna,” Rain said, turning to Tallheart. “First on the official agenda, Tallheart has news. Go ahead, Tallheart. I wouldn’t want to steal your thunder.”
Tallheart rumbled, much like thunder, and Rain had to fight not to burst out laughing. Everyone else just looked mildly confused, but the atmosphere beca excited as the smith laid out the details of his breakthrough. So had already known he’d cracked the rune—or at least suspected from the flurry of activity around Engineering yesterday—but the longer Tallheart spoke, the more clear it beca that their titable had just been moved up. Already, production was nearing industrial scale—limited by Myth’s ability to produce argon, apparently.
“How long until the ship is seaworthy?” Vanna asked when Tallheart finished speaking.
“Four days,” Tallheart said. “Enchantnt will not be necessary if I use the Adamant’s alloy. Our tests showed that the combination’s resilience has little to do with the muddling effect binding their version of it. Furthermore, the muddled and un-muddled materials are happy to ld with each other. Repairs will be straightforward.”
“Can we make the ship bigger?” Slt asked, and Rain knew why. Recruiting was another thing they needed to talk about.
“Not significantly,” Tallheart said, shaking his head. “The stealth cores protect a fixed volu.”
“Is that what we’re calling them now?” Aliah asked.
“Do we even need them?” Atyl asked, interrupting Ror’s response. “Normal ships do fine in charted waters. We have Shu to keep us on course.”
“Normal ships don’t carry thousands of people,” Vanna countered. “Everyone knows Whales are drawn to life.”
“And to magic,” Ror said, nodding. “We have too many mages to risk the open ocean without the stealth cores or so other form of protection. Rember, the Adamants seed to think it needed four of them. We’re already operating at reduced capacity.” He turned to Aliah. “And yes, that is what we’re calling them. While you were gone, I did yet another study of the runework on the pillars, comparing it to those lining the cradle in Mlem’s cart. Both networks are far, far beyond my capability to understand, but so parts are uncannily similar. Most likely, the stealth cores are modified lair sub-cores, just like those the Foundry forges journey-cores from.”
“What you say makes sense,” Halgrave said unexpectedly, and everyone turned to look at him. He didn’t usually offer up information at these etings unless asked.
Slt rubbed his chin. “That’s right, you’ve been in the Great Delving, haven’t you? Do you know much about the Foundry? Their headquarters is below the city, right?”
Halgrave scoffed. “Hardly. Lightcore controls three layers entirely, and that’s considering how far they’ve expanded beyond their official claim. I couldn’t guess at even a quarter of what they get up to down there, nor would I suggest you let them find out you’re feeling curious.” He reached to the side, grasping the haft of his hamr. He rocked the absurdly heavy crystal head against the floor, making it creak alarmingly.
Rain winced.
“My hamr contains a sub-core,” Halgrave continued. “Most gold-tier equipnt does.”
“You’re just ntioning this now?!” Rain demanded, his worries about hull integrity forgotten.
Halgrave raised an eyebrow. “Was it relevant before?”
“It was!” Rain shouted, then paused and sighed. “At a eting you weren’t at. Sorry. Anyway, if you’re willing to tell us who made it, maybe we can—“
“Karamaugin,” Halgrave interrupted.
“Oh,” Rain said, then muttered a curse.
“What’s the problem?” Slt asked. “If there is a crafter who works with cores and contracts for the Guild, then maybe we can hire him to take a look?”
“Karamaugin works for the Bank,” Atyl said. “Havenheild, specifically.” He turned to Halgrave. “I don’t even want to imagine what that cost you.”
“You do not,” Halgrave agreed.
Rain rubbed at his eyes, then looked up. “It’s the sa problem, regardless of whether the stealth cores are like journey cores or if they aren’t. Any crafters who could help us are going to have other loyalties. The Watch...probably has soone, but until we know who’s going to end up in charge, going to them would be dangerous. Sana, what’s the latest from your friend in the outpost?”
“Things are getting worse,” Sana said, shaking her head. “There are three factions now, and, well... I don’t think we’ve got much ti left before guardians show up and start asking questions.”
“Why haven’t they shown up already, actually?” Aliah asked. She raised a hand when everyone turned to look at her. “I’ve missed more etings than Halgrave. Just saying.”
“The Warden left orders with Guardian Nem to leave us alone,” Rain replied. “We only found out a few days ago. That’s not going to last once he stops suspecting she’s dead and actually starts believing it. He’ll co calling. Him, or a guardian from another faction once he loses what little control he has.”
“Could be any day,” Sana said, looking down.
“Ah,” Aliah said, putting her hand down. “I suppose I won’t bother asking why we aren’t considering just staying here, then.”
“We did consider it,” Vanna said, shaking her head. “The facts haven’t changed. Ascension needs a place we can lay low. This camp,”—she gestured around—“right on the edge of a shipping lane? This is not that. If not for Halgrave, we’d have been subjugated by Birdman and the rest of the DKE leftovers by now. Whether it’s them, the Watch, or the Guild, upset about competition, we need to be elsewhere yesterday.”
Rain clapped his hands. “Decision ti, then. Any objections to leaving in six days’ ti?”
Tallheart rumbled. “I said four days would be sufficient.”
Rain shrugged. “I was giving you margin.”
Tallheart blinked at him. “My number included margin. I do not require more.” His eyes flicked to Vanna, then back to Rain. “My people also need to be elsewhere yesterday.”
“I take your point,” Rain acknowledged, turning to Aliah. “How are they doing, anyway? Do they have everything they need?”
“They’re keeping to themselves,” Aliah replied. “They won’t let anyone but Tallheart and into the section of the camp you set aside for them, and I honestly don’t bla them for it. I’m going over there once we’re done here to try and help them feel less...isolated, I don’t know. It would help if I could tell them where we’re going. It would also help if you could get people to stop staring at them whenever they peek out.”
“Damn rubberneckers,” Rain said, digging for the map he wanted in the crate of them beside his chair. “I’ll do sothing about it. Not sure what just yet, but sothing. Slt, how many people do we have, including the cervidians and everyone else who’s been sponsored?”
“Nine hundred and forty-four as of this morning,” Slt replied. “Three hundred and thirty-seven of which are mbers.”
Aliah inhaled sharply. “Depths, are you serious?”
“In four days, we’ll have a hundred more if we don’t put a stop to it,” Vanna said. “Especially if the clouds don’t break or if the Empire starts moving again or if so other ridiculousness happens. People want to get off this continent, and we’re looking like a great option. We need to close our doors, outside special circumstances.”
“As I’ve been saying,” Slt said flatly.
Vanna nodded. “We should stop new sponsorships, too, though anyone who’s been sponsored already and wants to beco a mber, we’ll consider. Any objection, Rain?”
“No objection, though I hate turning people away who deserve to get in,” Rain said, rising with the map and tossing it on the table before diving back down for a pencil.
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