Follow the Stars

Follow the Stars

The narrow passage opened into a vast chamber hidden within Ruodoon.

A tree stood at its centre.

Its trunk was broader than a house, its crown spreading into darkness far above. Colourful plants crowded around its roots, while threads of light flitted between its branches like living sparks. A crystal grew within the trunk itself, half wood and half mineral, and luminous roots disappeared through the stone floor.

Kaelen stared. As an earth mage, he had studied forests, caverns and the stubborn ways life found purchase in impossible places. Nothing had prepared him for this.

Alster entered behind him with his head bowed because of the low passageway. When he looked up, he stopped.

“Whoa.”

For once, the single word spoke adequately for all of them.

“How does it grow without sunlight?” Alster whispered. “Or water?”

Kaelen approached the nearest root without touching it. “And how far does this chamber descend into the mountain?”

No one expected an answer.

“I have never seen such a healthy aethoria tree up close,” Alster said before continuing they are the oldest and most prolific on the planet you know.

Tajan smiled. “Then you have never been inside the Library of the Astryx Arcanum?”

She was the only person anyone knew that had been permitted to visit and enter the Library of the Astryx Arcanum, a fact she had mentioned more than a dozen times to most of them.

Anderix turned sharply. “You have been inside the Astryx Arcanum Library? I thought foreigners were forbidden.”

“It is a long story. I will tell you when we are sitting somewhere comfortable.”

“I would very much like to hear it,” Anderix said.

“I would also very much like to hear it,” Drue said, ducking into the chamber. “Dasher is fine. I tied her with two knots this time.”

Tajan looked between them. “It is not that interesting a story.”

“No,” Alster continued, “I have never had the opportunity to enter the centre of an insular society and stroll through its most sacred building. Is it anything like this?”

“A little. At least as I remember it. I was twelve.”

Alster walked around the tree, one hand hovering near its heavy bark. “Veylborn have a special connection to the plants and crystals of the Virielia Bloomlands. They are drawn to the energy the crystals absorb, and somehow that energy allows them to appear. At least, that is what the books say. Gertina was the first Veylborn I had ever seen.”

“No wonder she was so determined to enter the tower at Alfadin,” Blena said.

A flare of light moved among the branches.

Alster pointed. “Up there!”

They looked into the canopy. A vague figure flickered between the leaves, surrounded by spiralling sparks.

“So Kahleen was merely a Veylborn energised by this tree?” Drue asked.

“Perhaps,” Kaelen said. “But the things Kahleen says are unlike anything we have heard from other Veylborn. I think there is more to him.”

Tajan examined the semi-luminous roots. “And that still does not explain the tree. The aethoria tree in the Astryx Arcanum is fed by a waterfall and receives sunlight through an oculus in the centre of the library. Did I mention that I have seen it personally?”

Her smile confirmed that she knew exactly how much this annoyed them.

“Can we summon a Veylborn and ask what all this is?” she continued.

“They require the power of life and the energy of crystals,” Alster said. “They also need an Aethorian with whom they share a connection, or a very powerful mage. They do not simply appear because you want one.”

“Who made you the Veylborn expert?”

“I have spent considerable time in libraries other than the one you visited.”

Tajan narrowed her eyes. “You know I’ve been to the Library of the Astryx Arcanum?”

“You were twelve,” Alster said, closing the discussion. “In any event, I lack both the training and the words required to summon a Veylborn, so...”

The figure above them suddenly sharpened.

An elderly man appeared among the branches, partly solid and partly transparent. His voice warbled, rising and falling in volume.

“I am Deppyoa. You are in need?”

Everyone froze.

Drue opened his mouth. “Is that a....”

He stopped and tried again. “Are you a.....”

“I am Deppyoa, tasked with lava-flow modulation and patterning. I am permitted to answer your questions.”

Although most of them had met Gertina, the sudden appearance of a translucent man in a tree still proved difficult to greet politely.

Kaelen found his voice first. “What happened in the tower?”

Deppyoa looked down at them. “The crystal feeding this tree absorbs energy and life from the lava flows beneath. It is receiving excessive energy. The overload has disrupted the flow from earth to crystal. This is an unnatural imbalance created by the bipedals. The original system operated under the care of its maintainers. Since the caretakers ceased their work, imbalance has increased. Do you understand?”

“I think we are the bipedals,” Tajan whispered.

“If the imbalance is not corrected, the last operating crystal will fail and the system will shut down permanently,” Deppyoa continued. “The system permits direct transference. It requires signal and pattern from all transmission points in synchronization for clear and complete transfer. Modulation must be maintained at four hundred kilojoules per hour.”

Alster rubbed both hands over his face. “Now the Veylborn sounds like the tower boy.” He looked at Kaelen. “Are you understanding any of this?”

“No more than you are.”

“I thought you were supposed to be helpful,” Alster called up to Deppyoa.

“Glad to help. If you require pressure frequencies or capacity modulations, they have been left for me to pass on. Remember to follow the stars.”

His image faded as he spoke. The last word lingered after he had vanished.

Alster pointed commandingly at the empty branches. “Deppyoa. Appear!”

Nothing happened.

“It was worth trying.”

They searched the chamber, but the vast roots vanished into stone and the upper branches were beyond reach. With no sign of Deppyoa and no other exit, they returned towards the tower.

Near the end of the passage, Kaelen noticed a dark branch in the tunnel that they had missed on the way in.

“Ow!” Blena struck her head against the low ceiling. “Were people shorter back then?”

Drue folded himself awkwardly beneath the rock. “Some people are shorter now.”

Blena commiserated with him.

The new corridor was long, narrow and completely unlit. It ended at a tall, thin door with two heavy stone handles.

“This is not claustrophobic at all,” Alster said. “Give it a push. Jiggle something.”

Kaelen tested both handles. “It is locked. Without a key, this is a dead end.”

“Perhaps an accomplished mage might try magic,” Blena suggested, smiling at Tajan. “If your instructors neglected special door-opening spells, perhaps you could look one up the next time you are at the Library of the Astryx Arcanum.”

“I was twelve.”

Tajan squeezed to the front and clasped her power crystal. Pale light surrounded the door as she spoke a simple spell to send energy into the lock.

Nothing happened.

“Apparently I do need to hit the books.”

Blena laughed.

“All right, great guardian warrior,” Tajan said. “Use those muscles and break it down.”

Blena braced both hands against the door and pushed. When it did not move, she stepped back and charged it shoulder-first.

The door remained entirely unimpressed.

“Alright, get back I am going to kick it in,” Blena said, rubbing her shoulder.

Alster had noticed a small rope and metal ring hanging beside the frame. With exaggerated delicacy, he tugged it using two fingers.

The doors swung inward with immense theatrical grandeur.

Alster looked at Tajan and Blena. “Or we could go through the door.”

Kaelen punched him lightly on the shoulder as he passed. Blena did the same, considerably harder.

Alster rubbed his arm. “What was that for?”

Drue looked at Anderix, lowered his head and shook it slowly before following the others.

Anderix remained in the corridor for a moment. “I feel that I should have solved that. It was mechanical.”

The chamber beyond was filled with brilliant blue light. Blocks of crystal had been chiselled into precise geometric forms, while rusted tools lay scattered between worktables. Some pieces curved in ways that seemed impossible to cut by hand.

They searched the workshop but found no instructions and no explanation of the stars Kahleen had told them to find.

As they prepared to leave, Tajan hurried towards a scrap of fabric lying in one corner. She lifted it carefully, but the ancient wool unravelled between her fingers.

“This crest is old,” she said. “It came from a Solarynite mage, or at least from our history. It must have been part of a robe.”

“Let me guess,” Blena began. “You saw it in the...”

“No. I did not. The badge belonged to an order of water mages that no longer exists. We studied them in school.”

Anderix crouched beside her. “How long ago did the order disappear?”

“Centuries. Many Centuries”

He looked around the ruined workshop. “Then how has this survived? And how did it come to be here?”

No one answered. Even Kaelen could only shake his head.

The crest bore a six-pointed star with the outline of a valley at its centre. Around it, nearly lost beneath age, were the words Lava and Water.

A line of blue light slipped through an opening at the rear of the workshop. They followed it into another corridor whose walls were almost translucent. Beyond them, liquid rock flowed through the mountain only metres away. The stone felt hot beneath their hands but did not burn them.

The corridor opened into a domed chamber.

Points of light covered its black ceiling and walls like stars in a moonless sky. Across a floor made from the same glass-like material, blue lines and symbols formed an elaborate glowing design.

“Those must be the stars the Kahleen told us to find,” Drue said.

“It is just Kahleen,” Alster corrected, tapping him on the shoulder as he passed. “That’s his name.”

Alster crouched over the nearest cluster of light. “Some points are brighter than others. And these shapes…”

He traced a coastline without touching it.

“This is a map. I am certain of it. This is Aethoria.”

Everyone gathered around him.

“Look at the six-pointed star. That is the Helios Spire.” Excitement tangled his words. “And here, along this line of lights, is the Alfadin Observatory in the Alfadin Mountains. There are the Medics’ Gardens of Virielia. This third point must be Mount Forge in the Verdant Expanse.”

He looked up at the others, suddenly speechless.

“Now this,” Kaelen said, “is something.”

He began assigning tasks. Anderix measured the distances and angles between each marked location. Tajan copied the symbols. Drue counted the brighter points. Blena held lanterns, sharpened charcoal and reminded everyone when they had recorded the same line twice.

Alster remained kneeling beside the map.

“Whatever we are meant to do, I do not think we can do it,” he said quietly. “This is too much. It feels beyond anything I can understand. I just…”

Kaelen knelt in front of him and placed both hands on his shoulders.

“Look at me. It is a lot. But we are clever, we are capable, and no one expects us to solve it all while sitting on this floor. Right now, we copy everything. That is all.”

Alster took a slow breath and nodded.

For more than an hour, they reproduced the illuminated map and every highlighted place in Kaelen’s journal. They charted the false sky above them using the constellations they knew and argued over three they did not. When their hands cramped and their crystals began to dim, they finally prepared to leave.

“We should speak to the Veylborn again before gallivanting between capitals and libraries in search of…” Alster gestured helplessly at the map. “I do not even know what.”

He adopted a stiff walk and mimed approaching a stranger in the streets of Kefar.

“Excuse me, madam. Could you help me find something? What is it? I am not sure. Is it this way?”

He looked towards Kaelen, hoping for a smile.

Kaelen gave him one. “The Veylborn seemed as confusing as Kahleen is. Even if we could summon Deppyoa again, I doubt he would tell us anything clearer. He would give us “pressure frequencies”, make us feel inadequate, and vanish into a tree.”

“That is true,” Alster admitted.

“His instruction was clear,” Kaelen continued. “Follow the stars. These are the stars.”

“I agree,” Blena said. “We know the imbalance is affecting the tower, the tree and Kahleen. The nearest marked site is the Helios Spire. That is where we go.”

Tajan studied the six-pointed star glowing beneath them.

“Fine. We return to the city and investigate the Helios Spire. If it teaches us nothing, we try something else.”

Anderix looked down at the lines connecting one distant point to another.

“And what if the map is not showing us where to go,” he said, “but the order in which these places will fail?”

The mountain rumbled around them.

No one suggested staying longer.

Thy Quest: Design the Crest
Design the crest of the ancient Helion Mage order according to what they discovered.