Redirection

Redirection

They escaped the crowd and crossed the dock at a pace Anderix described as efficient and Blena described as fleeing. Alster led them into a narrow public house built between a sailmaker’s loft and a warehouse of dried seaweed.

A weathered sign above its door depicted a small round silver fish drinking from a cup. The fish appeared deeply unhappy about the arrangement. It was called the Cup and the Sleeping Puffer.

Inside, the room was dim and pleasantly cool. Nets, cracked oars and glass floats hung from the beams. Somewhere behind the bar, a kettle whistled while a cook struck something repeatedly with a wooden mallet.

The place smelled of malt, dampness, fried onions and the faint sourness of spilled drink that had become part of the floor several generations earlier.

They claimed a table near the back.

Blena sat first. Alster took the chair beside her and placed his satchel carefully beneath the table. Anderix began to sit next to Alster, stopped halfway, and looked toward Tajan.

“Alster.” Alster looked up.

“Yes?” “Would you object to relocating to the chair on Blena’s other side?”

Alster examined the empty chair, then looked at Tajan. “No.”

“No, you will not relocate or no you would not mind? Please provide a clarification.

“I was told how hard this might be.. .No, I do not mind.”  he provided as clarification for the sake of diplomacy.

“And Tajan, could you sit here?” Tajan raised one eyebrow.“Is there a technical reason?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

Anderix remained silent for slightly too long.

“It will improve the distribution of relevant information.”

Kaelen looked down at the table to conceal his smile.

Alster moved without comment. Tajan sat beside Anderix, close enough that their sleeves touched when she rested her arm on the table.

“What will it be?” Asked a server who saw the group were now settled

Kaelen looked at Anderix.

“What did you have at the academy?”

“You do not remember?”

“I remember you criticising almost everything we drank.”

“That does not narrow the possibilities.”

“The soured quat juice,” Blena said. “The one that smelled like a boot left in rainwater.”

“It is fermented,” Anderix replied. “And nutritionally efficient.”

“One soured quat juice,” Kaelen told the server.

“For him or you?” the server asked.

Everyone looked at Anderix.

“For me,” Anderix said. “Apparently.”

Kaelen ordered a Virielian brown wheat brew. Blena and Tajan each requested sweet water, while Alster asked only for a cup of hot water.

The server stared at him.

“Just hot water?”

“I have my own leaves.”

The server looked offended on behalf of every drink in the establishment.

“We have tea.”

“I saw it.”

“Hot water, then.”

Anderix shifted his chair less than a finger’s width away, then appeared to reconsider and moved it back.

Before anyone could comment further, the door of the public house opened and Drue entered carrying the unmistakable smell of raw fish, griffon feathers and hot afternoon air.

“My apologies,” he announced. “She was hungry.”

Blena looked toward the doorway behind him.

“The griffon is outside, correct?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I wanted that confirmed before the smell reached the kitchen and caused a misunderstanding.”

Drue laughed and crossed the room. His expression brightened when he saw Tajan, then changed almost imperceptibly when he noticed Anderix sitting beside her.

“Tajan,” he said. “You found us a table.”

“We all found it,” Blena replied. “It was a remarkable display of cooperation.”

Drue rested one hand upon the back of Tajan’s chair.

“And you must be Anderix.”

Anderix looked first at the hand, then up at Drue. His optical lens narrowed with a quiet click.

“Correct.”

“Drue of the Emberwild Dominion.”

“I am aware. You transported the group from Kefar.”

“Across the Solaryn Sea,” Drue said. “It was a difficult crossing.”

“Tajan said the journey was remarkably fast.”

Drue smiled.“She said that did she?”

“She stated that griffon transport had reduced the expected travel time by several weeks.”

The smile weakened slightly. “That does sound like Tajan.”

Anderix studied him with the same concentrated expression he might have used upon an unfamiliar engine.

“You were also posted in the Solaryn Reliquary for one year.”

Drue pulled an empty chair from the next table.

“Tajan has told you quite a lot about me.”

“No,” Anderix replied. “Kaelen did.”

Kaelen suddenly found the grain of the tabletop extremely interesting.

Drue placed the borrowed chair on Tajan’s other side. Its legs scraped loudly across the floor.

Anderix shifted his own chair closer to the table.

Drue did the same.

Tajan looked from one man to the other, apparently unaware that anything unusual had happened.

Blena could see the moment and immediately felt left out. “Oh, excellent,” she said. “For a moment I was worried one of you might look in my direction and ruin what has otherwise been a perfectly peaceful afternoon.”

She delivered the remark with such easy indifference that everyone laughed and Blena laughed as well.

Still, when she reached for her drink, she held the cup a little more tightly than necessary. She did not care where either man sat or whom they watched. She certainly did not care that Tajan could attract attention merely by occupying a chair.

The fact that she had noticed it at all was merely vigilance. Guardians noticed threats, even exceptionally irritating ones with nice hair.

Alster quietly took out another leaf to prepare for his cup and wisely said nothing.

A server arrived carrying five cups of different sizes, Drue looked at him and said, “I’ll have what she’s having.” as he pointed to Tajan.

“I’ll have what she’s having.” Blena mimicked under her breath while tilting her head back and forth.

After the drinks were placed on the table, Alster shook the prepared leaves that he had taken from a folded packet from his satchel and added the several dark green leaves to his cup. Within moments, the sharp fragrance of woodland mint and violet blossom lifted above the smells of the room.

Tajan leaned across Anderix to inspect it. “That smells better than mine.”

“You chose sugar,” Alster said. “Sugar smells like sugar.”

Anderix took a cautious drink of the soured quat juice. His face tightened.

Kaelen watched him.

“Just like the academy?” “No,” Anderix said. “This is worse.”

“Then exactly like the academy.”

For the first time since leaving the ship, Anderix laughed.

It was brief and surprised, as though the sound had escaped without authorization.

Then Kaelen opened his notebook and the laughter faded.

“We did not ask you here merely to visit.”

“I had concluded that.”

Kaelen began with the disappearing river in the Alfadin Mountains. He described the first tower, the hidden channels and the evidence that the river may have once passed through mechanisms buried beneath the stone. Alster added what they had observed about the water’s altered path. Blena interrupted whenever Kaelen’s explanation became too tangled to follow, which happened with increasing frequency as he grew excited.

“We think the river may have driven part of the system,” Tajan said. “Not just carried water through it. Actually powered it.”

Anderix set down his cup.

“Water-driven mechanisms?”

“Yes.”

“That was among the earliest forms of controlled mechanical energy used by the pre-Ascendancy settlements.”

Everyone stopped.

Anderix leaned forward.

“Falling water turns a wheel. The wheel transfers rotational force through an axle. Once gearing is introduced, the rotation can be increased, divided or redirected. According to Mechanum histories, the first reliable water engines began the Mechanical Renaissance.”

Kaelen’s eyes brightened. “Then the towers could be machines.”

“They could be components of a machine,” Anderix corrected. “A watercourse of that size might supply continuous power to several systems at once. Grinding, lifting, pumping, crystal alignment, perhaps even...” He stopped and tilted his head. “You said the river disappeared?”

“Completely,” Blena said.

“And then returned farther on the other side of the mountain where it runs to the ocean,” Alster added. “But wider and weaker.”

Anderix pulled Kaelen’s notebook toward himself without asking and began sketching channels, wheels and interlocking circles in the margin.

“That would imply diversion, storage or transfer. Unless the water is not the primary power source. It may regulate temperature or maintain the position of the crystals while another system—”

“There was also a glowing man,” Blena said.

Anderix stopped drawing.

“A what?”

“A being made of light,” Tajan said. “He appeared above a crystal pedestal inside the second tower.”

Anderix stared at her.

“You saw a projected image?”

“We saw a person,” Blena said. “Or something shaped like one.”

“He called himself Kahleen,” Kaelen added. “He said he had been reconstructed in our dimension for interaction.”

Anderix’s optical lenses clicked into a tighter arrangement.

“Repeat that.”

“That is what he said.”

“The exact words?”

Kaelen turned several pages in his notebook.

“His present photonic state lacked sufficient gravitational resolution to be dynamic.”

Anderix went completely still.

Blena took a drink of sweet water.

“That was roughly our response too.”

Kaelen continued.

“He said his dimensional reference frame was unstable. He spoke about a quantum crystalline lattice falling beneath a harmonic threshold and baryonic resonance failing to maintain interdimensional phase coherence.”

Anderix pulled the notebook closer.

“He used the word baryonic?”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“I wrote it down immediately.”

“What is baryonic?” Tajan asked.

“I do not know.” Blena leaned back.

“At last. Something he does not know.”

“But it is a classification,” Anderix continued, ignoring her. “It must distinguish one form of matter from another. And photonic clearly relates to light. He was describing himself physically, not magically.”

“That was what Kaelen thought,” Tajan said.

Anderix looked from one to the other.

“This being understood matter, light and gravity as parts of the same system.”

“That was the impression,” Alster said. “Although the impression was mostly confusion.”

Kaelen read the next passage.

“He said, ‘Energy cannot be created. It is transferred. It flows. It resonates. It remembers form, shape and pattern according to Crystalline Lines and atomic frequencies.’”

Anderix rose halfway out of his chair.

“frequencies?”

Several people at nearby tables turned to look.

Anderix sat down again.

“Did he say Crystalline Lines?”

“Yes.”

“Not channels?”

“Lines.”

“Not conduits?”

“Lines.”

Anderix reached for Kaelen’s pencil and began writing beneath the earlier sketch.

“What if they are not physical lines? What if they are relationships between crystals? Patterns of energy maintained over distance?”

Kaelen leaned closer.

“That would explain why the towers do not appear to be connected.”

“They may be connected without touching,” Anderix said. “Gravity operates across empty space. We understand its effects but not its mechanism. Mechanum observatories have recorded minute movements in suspended instruments during certain stellar alignments. The official explanation is atmospheric pressure, but the pattern repeats when the same stars or one of the moons occupy the same positions.”

Tajan watched him.

“You think gravity has patterns?”

“I think gravity may have waves.”

Kaelen stopped writing.

Anderix’s words came faster.

“Some of our scholars presume stars possess enormous gravitational influence. If that influence moves or fluctuates, it may create repeating patterns across great distances. A network calibrated to the stars could use those patterns to establish position, alignment or timing.”

“The being mentioned stellar calibration,” Kaelen said.

Anderix looked sharply at him.

“What exactly did he say?”

Kaelen found the line.

“‘Direct universal containment fields. Stellar calibration synchronisation exceeded. Try resonansial triangulation.’ Then he said it was too late.”

Anderix whispered the unfamiliar phrase to himself.

“Resonansial triangulation.”

His fingers tightened around the pencil.

“Three reference signals could locate a fourth. If the towers are calibrated against stellar patterns, and the crystal network has fallen out of alignment...”

He looked around the table.

“You said there were two towers?”

“One that is well known to Kefar up in the Alfadin’s and one that we found,” Kaelen said. “I think there are more that we don’t know about.”

“And the being?”

“He was losing power,” Tajan replied. “Before the projection failed, he told Kaelen to stop the Water Mage. He said unity is a source of power.”

Anderix turned toward Kaelen.

“He knew your name?”

“Yes.”

“That is not possible.”

“I think after witnessing the event we found out that is completely is possible.” Blena said.

“He also said that Aethorian infrastructure was degrading,” Kaelen continued. “That dimensional transfers required equilibrium to be restored.”

Anderix’s expression changed.

The excitement remained, but something colder moved beneath it.

“Aethorian infrastructure?”

“That was his phrase.”

Anderix looked down at the diagrams.

“What else has changed?”

Kaelen glanced at Tajan.

She answered.

“The Heartwell Crystal in Kefar is not regenerating client crystals as it should.”

The sounds of the public house seemed to recede. Even the cook’s mallet stopped for a moment, although that was probably coincidence.

Anderix’s voice became quieter.

“How do you know?”

“The Council has been monitoring it,” Tajan said. “Crystals placed in the charging patterns around the Heartwell used to become fully aligned within a predictable time. Now they take longer. Each cycle is slower than the one before it.”

“How much longer?”

“At first, scarcely enough to notice. Now long enough that the keepers can no longer pretend the measurements are wrong.”

Kaelen turned his notebook around and showed Anderix several copied figures.

Anderix studied them through shifting lenses.

“The Heartwell supplies aligned crystals throughout Kefar.”

“And beyond it,” Tajan said. “Healing halls, libraries, exchanges and regional power stations across Aethoria depend upon crystals charged or calibrated through the Heartwell in Kefar.”

“If the delay continues,” Kaelen added, “they will begin drawing power faster than it can be restored.”

Anderix looked from the charging figures to his sketch of the towers.

A disappearing river. Ancient mechanisms. A failing crystal lattice. Stellar calibration. A being unable to maintain its projection because the system had fallen beneath some unknown threshold.

He finally understood why the High Council had requested him by name.

“This is not a local failure.”

“No,” Tajan said.

“It may not even be a crystal failure.” Anderix spoke slowly now, testing each thought. “The Heartwell may be one part of the same infrastructure as the towers. If the network has lost alignment, then each surviving component would be forced to compensate. Charging would slow. Transfers would become unstable. Systems that once shared power would behave as though isolated.”

“Unity is a source of power,” Kaelen said.

Anderix looked at him.

“That may not have been a metaphor.”

Nobody spoke for several seconds.

Then Anderix stood.

“I require paper.”

Kaelen slid his notebook across the table.

“Not that paper. Official paper.”

The server was summoned and, after objecting that the public house was not a correspondence office, produced a slightly stained sheet from beneath the bar. Anderix placed it on the table, rejected the first side because of a ring left by someone’s cup and wrote rapidly on the other.

Blena tried to read over his shoulder.

“What are you writing to them?”

“That I have completed the initial consultation.”

“That was fast.”

“That is why it is initial.”

He continued writing.

“And that the matters presented constitute a possible threat to Ascendancy energy stability, foreign power systems and pre-Sundering infrastructure. Further investigation is required before an accurate report can be completed.”

Tajan smiled.

“You are staying.”

Anderix did not look up.

“I have not yet written that.”

“But you are.”

He stopped.

Through the public house window, the upper towers of the Mechanum ship remained visible above the warehouses. White steam drifted from its vents in precisely measured bursts. The crowd still there gawking in amazement.

His orders had been clear. Determine why he had been summoned. Learn what the Council was so concerned about. Return to the Ascendancy and report directly to Subordinate-Leader Rolix.

He thought of the figures moving behind the dark portholes.

He thought of his father and the special permissions that had allowed him to leave the Ascendancy once before. He thought of the investigation that might follow if he deliberately refused to return.

Then he looked at Kaelen’s diagrams.

He remembered the words photonic state, gravitational resolution, atomic (a euphemism for small) frequencies and stellar calibration. Each phrase opened a door onto an entire field of knowledge the Ascendancy did not possess.

Finally, he looked at Tajan. She was still waiting.

The tingling had spread through his arms and into his fingertips.

Anderix returned to the message and added one final line.

“I am remaining temporarily in the Solaryn Reliquary to assist with the technical investigation.”

Blena grinned. “Temporarily?”

“The duration cannot yet be calculated.”

“Of course not.”

Anderix folded the paper.

“I need to deliver this before the ship departs.”

They walked back toward the dock together. The crowd had thinned only slightly, and several determined spectators still waited beside the berth in the hope that another Mechanum might emerge. None had.

The mechanical gangplank remained extended.

Anderix stopped at its base. A small brass panel opened in response to his approach, exposing the passage into the ship from the deck.

He walked up the gangplank and dropped the rolled and tied message into the deck below nervously and immediately turned and walked back down the gangplank to the dock and waited. After about .2 of time Anderix heard a sequence of gears spinning up. One of the dark portholes opened. A severe face appeared behind it.

“Citizen Anderix,” called a voice from within. “Prepare to reboard. Departure will occur at the end of the present quarter-time.”

Anderix straightened.

“I will not be reboarding.”

There was a pause.

“That instruction is inconsistent with your travel authorization.”

“I have submitted an amended technical report.”

“You do not possess the authority to amend your travel authorization.”

“The potential threat to Ascendancy energy systems requires immediate investigation.” Anderix responded with some urgency.

Another porthole opened. Then another.

They were all watching now.

Anderix swallowed.

His mechanical optical made a tiny adjustment over his eye.

“I will remain until I can determine whether the failure described is capable of reaching Mechanum crystal infrastructure.”

The face behind the first porthole disappeared.

Metal shutters closed over the glass one after another.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

The gangplank folded upward, withdrawing its brass supports and locking itself into the hull. Its final scrap of stone on the dock as it lifted sounded one final time.

Blena looked at Anderix. “I do not think they took that well.”

“They did not.”

The ship released a deep metallic note. Steam erupted from its towers, and the great paddles began to turn as long metal poles were thrust from holes in fore and aft pushing the ship away from the dock.

Churn. Hiss. Clank.

Churn. Hiss. Clank.

Anderix watched the vessel move away from the dock, carrying his report and any easy route back to the life he had known.

Kaelen stood beside him.

“You realise this could cause trouble.”

“Yes.”

“You stayed anyway.”

“Yes.”

“For the Heartwell?”

“The threat to Aethorian infrastructure is significant.”

“For your friends?”

“The continued survival of familiar individuals is also desirable.”

Tajan stepped beside him.

“And for the chance to learn what resonansial triangulation means?”

Anderix watched the Mechanum ship disappear beyond the breakwater.

“Resonansial triangulation ......that was the deciding factor.” Tajan smiled.

“That and others.” Anderix glanced at her.

It had not been the only deciding factor, but the present moment did not seem mechanically suitable for explaining the others.

Thy Quest: Design the Ancient Network
Create a labelled diagram showing how you think the Heartwell Crystal, the mountain towers, the disappearing river and the Crystalline Lines might be connected. Show how energy or information could travel through your system. Include at least four labelled components and use arrows, symbols or a colour key to explain how your proposed network operates.