That All May Be Made One

That All May Be Made One

Felib led them through Amaryn by the lakeside path, choosing streets that narrowed as they approached the old city. Whitewashed houses leaned over the paving stones, their upper gardens spilling green vines and late-season blossoms into the warm morning air. Beyond the rooftops, the spire of Veritas Temple rose beside Lake Vera. The ancient temple had been closed to ordinary citizens for generations, but the Auxiliary Hall beside it still held public meetings and, on its upper floor, the oldest surviving records of Virielia Bloomlands.

As they walked, Kaelen and Alster told Felib what had happened at Helion: the remarkable growth, the altered roots and the etheria tree inside the mountain. Felib listened without interrupting, which for him was a sign of considerable alarm.
“The growth in Helion and the tree in the Medic Gardens cannot be coincidence,” he said at last. “Could we obtain a sample from the Helion tree?”
Kaelen exchanged a glance with Blena. “Returning to Helion may be difficult for a while.”
“There may be a warrant,” Blena clarified. “Possibly several.”
Felib stopped walking. “You neglected to mention that.”
“We were working towards it,” Kaelen said.
“Slowly,” Tajan added.
Felib resumed walking, but his pace had quickened. “Then we should find Elder Tawn. She knows more about Virielian history and botany than anyone in Amaryn. Do not share the legal portion of your story unless necessary. As an Elder, she might be obliged to act upon it.”
“That is reassuring,” said Drue.
“It was intended as a warning.”

The path curved along Lake Vera, whose blue-green water lay calm beneath a silver haze. Across it, the arboretum climbed a gentle slope in careful terraces.
“More than a thousand trees from the southern half of Aethoria,” Felib said proudly.
Alster looked across the lake. Movement passed through the highest branches. For a heartbeat he thought he saw Gertina’s pale form between the leaves, but sunlight flashed on the water and the shape was gone.
“Lake Vera is said to be bottomless,” Felib continued. “Its deepest waters warmed by Aethoria rise and move the waters. Warm minerals rise through that cycle and make the lake exceptionally fertile.”
“Beautiful and bottomless,” Kaelen said. “Remind me not to go swimming. I hate it when I can’t see the bottom and then the water is all dark.” He shuddered at the unsettling combination.
“How much longer does Elder Tawn have?” Alster asked.
“About two years.”
Kaelen’s expression changed. “Oh, is she unwell?” He looked concerned by the short time she had left.
Alster laughed. “No, no,” he chuckled. “In her term. Virielia’s scholars gather every five years and choose Elders for their wisdom and public service, at least that is the ideal.”
“They often choose younger representatives as the law requires them to stand throughout every meeting,” Felib added. “It prevents speeches from becoming intolerably long.”
Drue glanced at Kaelen. “Sounds like a system Kefar would never want anyone to know about.”

Before Felib could continue with the tour, the ground trembled again. This time it slipped backwards, then forwards, with such energy that it caused all of them to stumble.

They made ungainly steps in an attempt to regain their footing. A rumble swelled under the street, louder than ten thousand gulathers charging through a valley. Walls groaned. Tiles vibrated and slid from roofs. Beside them, the upper storey of a narrow house swung left while its foundation shifted right. It continued the process over and over, but with more violence each time.
“That doesn’t look stable,” Kaelen said.

Blena seized his arm and pulled him towards her. “Close in. Now!”
She drew the last power crystal from her pouch and thrust it overhead. In that instant, she closed her eyes and recalled her childhood bed, the straw guardian doll beside her and her father bending to kiss her goodnight. Safety. Shelter. Home.
Blue light sprang from the crystal like a fountain and curved over them in a shining dome. The house folded. Brick, straw and red tile crashed onto the shield, slid down its sides and piled in a perfect ring around their huddle.
Inside the shield, Drue felt a sensation of time slowing down. Sound became distant and muffled. Outside, the city broke into panic.
When the trembling faded, Blena lowered the spent crystal. Noise rushed back: children crying, people calling names and thousands of birds sweeping above the rooftops. Cracks divided the street. Dust spilled into their now unprotected position.
Drue looked at the others, all of whom had plainly experienced the same event. “Did you feel that?”
Tajan stared at him.
“It’s just the question that comes to your mind after an experience like that,” he explained.
Blena looked across the damaged street. “Not sure what is going on, but I get the feeling this is on us.”
Tajan looked at the lake. “Oh, my Veyl!” The lake had dropped at least a metre, and the ring where the former waterline had been was evident. “How could...”
Drue finished her incomplete thought. “And so quickly?”
Alster saw a woman sitting beneath a tree with a rudimentary bandage on her head that needed replacing. He ran to her.
Kaelen watched him go, then turned to the others. “We help here first. The library can wait.”

By the time they reached Veritas Square, the graceful public space had become the centre of a rescue. Healers tended rows of injured citizens lined up safely away from any structures. Workers carried buckets towards smoke rising from Kalfa Alley. Others dragged shattered stone away from roads leading into the lake quarter. Drue returned to the stable to check on Dasher, while Alster disappeared among the wounded.

Elder Tawn stood outside the Auxiliary Hall directing the response. She looked younger than Kaelen expected, with shoulder-length black hair and a face untouched by age. A plain white tunic edged in red fell to her knees, and a narrow golden circlet was the only mark of her office.
“Send another crew to the lake quarter,” she told an adjunct. “Keep the northern road clear for healers. Move the fire brigade to Kalfa Alley before the wind changes.”
A guardian blocked Kaelen as he approached.
“The Elder is occupied.” His gaze travelled over Kaelen’s clothes. “Find somewhere else to be useful, Thalorian.”
“We have information about what may have caused the quake.”
“And I have a square full of people with information.”
Felib stepped forward. “I will vouch for them.”
The guardian recognized Felib Skan and looked at the other guard for approval. He nodded and said, “All right, in you go.”

Tawn greeted Felib with tired warmth. “It is good to see you, though your timing feels too precise to be fortunate.”
“These travellers helped save the Medic Gardens,” Felib said. “What they know may matter here.”
Blena frowned as she got close enough to see Elder Tawn clearly. “You’re a little young to be an Elder?”
“Blena!” Kaelen reprimanded.
“Sorry, I thought it would lighten the mood and... it just came out.”
Before Tawn could respond to the poorly timed humour, a messenger interrupted.

A dishevelled man, dusty and breathless, hurried directly to Tawn and spoke quietly in her ear. Before she could respond, an older man swept across the square in a dark ceremonial cloak and spoke directly to Elder Tawn, ignoring her present audience. Fear sharpened Elder Swati’s voice.
“There is a grave omen, a message for us all. The quake dislodged stones from the old temple wall. There are carvings beneath them. I beckoned some of the other Elders to gather in the Hall, and I fear I must pass the message on,” Elder Swati explained. “You should stay here and tend to the most urgent needs, or you can come and speak with us about the message on the temple if you desire.”
Elder Tawn stood for what seemed like an awkwardly long time, staring at Elder Swati. “Go on without me. I will attend to more urgent matters here. I believe that our guests may have some information of great import. Perhaps you could hear from this entourage of young foreigners and our trusted Plant Master Skan.” She beckoned them to go with Elder Swati and present to the Elders.

Five Elders had already gathered in the Auxiliary Hall and murmured amongst themselves.
“It could be time,” one was saying.
“A message, you say?”
“What could it mean?”
They stopped talking as soon as Swati approached and turned expectantly to listen to any news he might bring. Inside, Swati delivered the message he had heard was revealed by the quake with growing determination.
“Elders! A message has been revealed to us. I believe it is an omen. It is not by chance that these words have appeared at this time.”
“What message do you speak of, Elder Swati?”
He continued with urgency. “Behind the facade of Veritas Temple are these words carved in stone... fire, water, earth and air... and words in the ancient tongue.”
“What words?” Elder Gar asked.
Swati looked towards the closed temple doors.
“That Each One May Be. You know that our debates weaken us. Virielia must be united beneath one leader strong enough to make the necessary decisions.”
Felib translated Elder Swati’s delivery. “This is the time to unite the Crestrealm under one leader. Someone strong enough to make decisions that are right, not just good. Someone who will take control of the problems and, with an iron grasp, strangle them.”
“Strangle them with an iron grasp?” Blena questioned.
“I am sorry, my translation of metaphor is poor.” Felib continued, “I missed that bit, but Swati is saying that the long meetings and discussions are slowing down progress in the Crestrealm, and he thinks that this earthquake is an omen that should rouse them from the sleep of a thousand eyes. Again, sorry, that one doesn’t translate at all. He said that they should realise the lumbering system that exists needs a single strong leader and the old ways must end.”
Anderix had been studying a crack in the plaster when he interrupted the Elders, stopping the conversation and its translation. All eyes turned to him. “Earthquakes are not messages. Pressure builds beneath the ground until one mass slips past another, like two bull fersealons pushing until one loses its footing.”
Felib translated.
Swati’s face darkened upon noticing that Anderix was not even Virielian and, worse, was a Mechanum. “You come from the hermit Crestrealm and call the Elders of the world’s greatest traders and the breadbasket of Aethoria ignorant?”
“That is not what...”
“You strongly arranged the words around it,” Tajan murmured.
Anderix pressed on. “If you want an omen, consider it an omen that you should learn more about the continent beneath your feet.”
“Guardians!” Swati shouted.
Kaelen saw things headed in the wrong direction and started speaking. “Ordinarily, what my good Mechanum friend is trying to say is true, but we suspect the earthquake in Amaryn to have a different cause.”
“There. See?” Swati seized the moment again. “They agree with me that it is not natural and it is an omen. We must act to solidify our leadership around one Elder. Remember, ‘That Each One May Be.’ It’s what the ancients intended.”

“Is the ‘one leader’ you, by any chance?” Tawn asked from the doorway.
The room fell quiet.
She crossed to Swati without hurry. “Our people are suffer injured and homeless while you turn fallen stones into a campaign speech. The carving deserves investigation. It does not deserve your ambition.”
“I have said my piece. Elder Fanse, Elder Yuna, what do you say?”
The other Elders saw the moment had passed. Two of them scurried off to see what they might do in their districts. Fanse and Yuna stayed to demonstrate support for Tawn.
Swati fastened his cloak at the throat. “You should be more wary of omens.”
“And you should be more wary of interpreting history to your own favour.”
He left wearing a smile that held no humour.

“You will have to forgive my fellow Elders. The earthquake has shaken us all,” Tawn apologised to Kaelen and the guests on the Elders’ behalf.
“Some more than others, it would seem,” Felib added.
Tawn turned to him. “Now tell me what you can about this quake, Felib.”
Felib described the accelerated plant growth, the disturbed water table and the root growth beneath the Grand Plaza. He explained the vision beneath the etheria tree only as a sense of linked places, carefully protecting the tomb’s secret.
“These young scientists believe the disturbance may extend across Aethoria,” he concluded.
“We are not actually scien—” Blena began.
Tajan elbowed her. “Blena, don’t interrupt him. That might not help right now.”
“Preposterous. No such large system exists. We would have learned about it already,” proclaimed Elder Fanse.
“I think that one said they are not scientists. What data are their reports based on?” asked Elder Yuna.
“I told you not to say anything. That one is pointing to you, and he doesn’t seem to like us as much anymore.” Tajan elbowed Blena as she spoke.
“What evidence is all this based on?” asked Elder Yuna.
Felib’s patience finally broke. “The roots beneath the streets are evidence. The drop of Lake Vera is evidence. The water drawn from the Medic Gardens is evidence. I saw all those, and I am a scientist you already trust. You ask for facts while Swati offers omens, then question the facts because foreigners carried them through the door.”

The Elders listened.
“If the lake has fallen and this growth has reached the city,” Felib continued, “then the danger is underground. Another upheaval could destroy Veritas Temple and every record inside it.”
He stepped back and gestured towards Kaelen. “All right, Kaelen, they are listening. Tell them your plan.”
“Yes, Kaelen, tell them your plan,” Tajan echoed, and she pushed him forward.
Felib stood waiting for Kaelen to come up to his side. “I’ll translate.”
“Oh, um. Right...” He swallowed. “I...”
Just then, the doors opened again as Elder Gar called for help in the lake district. The meeting dissolved into action.
“Oh, thank the Veyl,” Kaelen breathed.
As Tawn passed between them, she lowered her voice. “This is all connected. Meet me here at first light tomorrow. There is something beneath the temple you must see.”

They spent the night in Veritas Square with hundreds of citizens afraid to sleep beneath damaged roofs. Drue returned before dark with food and blankets. Alster rejoined them after the last of his patients had been settled. Small aftershocks disturbed the paving stones, and every tremor silenced the square until people were certain it would pass.

At dawn, Tawn was already at Veritas Hall, busy giving more directions to a few adjuncts around her, when she saw Kaelen’s company arrive. “Come. Come with me.” She talked to them as they walked towards the original Veritas Temple structure. “My good friend Elder Swati was chosen in his district after a considerable expenditure, so understandably there are things I don’t share with him and some of the other Elders. But when I heard your information yesterday, I thought that you should see something known to only a few, and with the message now revealed on the temple wall, it may mean more than we thought.”
“Can we see the message first?” asked Alster, who considered himself well trained in Old Virielian. Botanical names were written in a version of the ancient Virielian tongue, and that was a forte of Alster’s.
She led Felib and the full company first to the temple facade. Rubble from improvements made over the years sat on the cobblestones, thrown off by the quake. Behind what remained of the facade were the symbols and words that had almost spawned a coup.
“Those are the old symbols for water, fire, aethoria and air, but they look like they were carved at the same time. The message is not exactly ‘That Each One May Be.’ The word for ‘one’ here means ‘united,’ as it does there, but there is no ‘individual’ here, so instead of ‘each,’ it actually says ‘all.’ I think it says... ‘That All May Be Made One.’”
Elder Tawn thought for a moment and responded, “Well, that is certainly different from what our misinterpreting friend would have us read, and it would give the phrase a very different trajectory. We will need to study this further, but for now it may have even more impact on what you are about to see. Come.”

At the rear of the temple, broad steps descended beneath the entire eastern wall. Cool air smelled of mineral water, metal and ancient timber. Blena raised her eyebrows at the others.
“Yes,” Tajan whispered. “Another mysterious underground chamber. We have all noticed.”
“Watch for gas,” Anderix said.
“And statues,” Drue added.
“And stairs,” Felib said, gripping the rail.

The stairs opened into a vaulted chamber where silent gears crowded the darkness. Oak wheels taller than houses interlocked with bronze and iron gears. Thick axles vanished into the walls, and enormous levers rested in stone channels polished by long-vanished hands. Along one side ran a dry spillway, broad enough to carry a river.
“This mechanism predates every structure above us except the temple,” Tawn said. “No living Elder has seen it move. Veylborn have appeared here, and as they are spiritual beings, we regard the chamber as sacred.”
“Photonic projection is my most current hypothesis, but they are definitely not ‘spirits,’” Anderix said. “Although their ability to affect physical matter remains inconsistent with—”
Blena looked at him sternly. Tajan stepped on his boot.
Felib did not translate. Anderix, concerned that he might have been censored and that science might be taking a back seat, asked, “Alster, could you translate?”
Alster feigned spotting a rare plant root. “Oh, look, a selon root,” he said as he walked away.

Tawn sat cross-legged on the floor, closed her eyes and began a low, steady hum.
Anderix, who was never one for religion, asked Felib quietly, “Should I look at her while she has her eyes closed, or should I look away?”
Tajan silenced him with one finger pressed to her pursed lips.
Blena’s mouth twitched. Tajan’s severe shushing expression made it worse. Many very funny comments about the situation were flashing through Blena’s mind, and she was dying to share them with Tajan and have a good laugh, but she was proud that she could keep them all to herself. “I guess this is what inter-Crestrealm relationships are all about,” she thought, but a smirk still sat on her face. She was thinking about how hard it was not to laugh when you were supposed to be quiet, like at temple, or when your teachers were talking about something serious and your friend did something ridiculous, like blowing up their cheeks and crossing their eyes, and you were forced to let out a humph of laughter. As she thought all that, her smirk grew to the point that she let out a little stifled giggle. Tajan suddenly turned to her and signalled with a silent shh. Tajan’s scrunched-up face and bulging eyes made it almost impossible to hold in. Thankfully, Kaelen saw what was going on and, with a stern look, took away any of the comic value of the moment and returned her to an awkward silence.
After several quiet minutes, Tawn opened her eyes, clapped three times and pointed through an arched doorway.

The second chamber was partly constructed and partly natural cave. At its centre stood a vast wheel connected to the first mechanism through the stone wall.
Anderix forgot every attempt at reverence.
“Twelve teeth driving sixty. Five turns here for one there. No...wait, the smaller crown gear changes the direction of force.” He climbed onto the frame. “This brake shoe would hold the gate against the full weight of the flow. These ratchets prevent the wheel from reversing. That shaft must lift a sluice somewhere beyond, perhaps outside.”
“A sluice?” Kaelen asked.
“A gate holding back water. A very large gate.”
Anderix ran beneath the axle, talking faster as the machine revealed itself. “When the gate rises, water—which I presume comes from Lake Vera....enters that channel. The descending water turns the paddled wheel. The wheel drives this shaft, which spins the bronze rings around....” He stopped before an empty cradle of black stone. “Around something that is missing.”

He scraped green corrosion from a groove and held it beneath his lens.
“Copper. Iron. Traces of a black metal that holds a pull even after the pulling stone is removed.” He took a small compass from his pack. Its needle swung towards the cradle. “These rings would turn through that invisible pull. The motion was not merely opening the waterway. It was being converted.”
“Into what?” Tawn asked.
Anderix looked at the empty cradle. “Power. The missing object was a vessel large enough to receive it. A crystal, perhaps....larger than any power crystal. Something like the Heartwell.”

For once, no one teased him.
“Can we use it?” Drue asked.
“No.”
“Can you repair it?” asked Tawn.
“Also no.” Anderix climbed down. “In the southern mountains, Mechanum scholars have trapped a little of the lightning that leaps from storm clouds. Sometimes we can direct that force to remain in treated metals, and we use it to crudely charge crystals, but it is inefficient. The metal allows energy to escape quickly and injures anyone careless enough to touch it. The crystals fare much better. You have felt a smaller cousin of it. Rub dry gulather hide against wool, then place your finger near iron. A spark jumps the gap although nothing visible crossed it.”
Blena nodded. “And it stings.”
“That sting is a speck. This machine could turn a lake into a storm that never reaches the sky.” He looked over the immense gears with open wonder. “It is beyond anything my people can build. If our scholars worked with yours instead of hiding every discovery, we might begin to understand it.”
Felib smiled. “A Mechanum asking for cooperation. The earthquake has produced one miracle already.”

Alster crouched at the edge of the channel. Pale new roots had entered cracks in its floor.
“The etheria tree,” he said. “Its roots are following the watercourse.”
Kaelen studied the stone walls. “Where does the water go?”
Tawn pointed to old maps carved into a bronze plate. The lines beneath Lake Vera divided, curved beneath Amaryn and then stretched north and west through the continent.
“The maps call them lava tubes,” she said. “We assumed the mechanism controlled irrigation and the underground aquifers.”
Anderix traced one line with his finger. “Natural lava does not turn at equal intervals. It does not divide into matching channels and reunite without losing depth. These are fitted like pipes.”
“Are you saying someone dug them?” Tajan asked.
“Not necessarily. The stone was once molten. Someone may have directed the lava while it cooled.”
Kaelen thought of the Helios Spire and the mountain tower above Alfadin, where heat, water and crystal had belonged to one system.
“Fire shaped the tunnels,” he said. “Ground held them. Water moved through them.”
Drue looked upwards, towards a temple they could no longer see. “And air... or whatever power moved with it... carried something onwards.”
Felib whispered the words revealed by the quake. “That All May Be Made One.”

“The river beneath Mount Pinault,” Alster said suddenly. “When we first travelled together, we followed a river that disappeared straight into the mountain. We thought it fed ordinary caves.”
“The water entered the mountain,” Tajan reasoned. “And the tower used it somehow to create heat and power a crystal.”
Kaelen looked from the map to the empty cradle. “They may be parts of the same network.”
“May be,” Anderix cautioned. “A pattern is not proof.”
“You climbed an ancient machine before breakfast and now you advise restraint?” Blena asked.
“Physical enthusiasm and intellectual restraint are entirely compatible.”

A tremor passed through the chamber. Dust streamed from the arch, and somewhere beyond the wall water boomed against stone. The new roots tightened across the dry channel.
Tawn looked at Anderix. “You said the gate cannot be used.”
“I said it should not be used. Those are different statements.”
“If pressure is building beneath the city?”
He glanced from the buckled gears to the roots and then to the map. “A partial release might divert enough water to reduce it. Or it might break the gate and flood every tunnel beneath Amaryn.”
“Comforting,” Drue said.
“Accurate,” said Anderix.

Anderix examined the controls again, calling measurements while Felib and Tawn searched the old Virielian markings. Blena braced a warped lever as Drue cleared stone from its base. Alster followed the roots to a narrow inspection channel and found fresh water pushing upwards through the cracks.
“It is rising,” he called.
“Then we do not have time for certainty,” Tawn said.

Anderix divided them between the two chambers. “Blena, hold the brake lever. Drue, take the locking bar and do not remove it until I say. Tajan and Kaelen, go to the first wheel. Turn it exactly one quarter when Felib calls. Alster, watch the gate and warn us if it begins to fail.”
Kaelen smiled at Blena. “This is right in your wheelhouse.”
She stared at him.
“There are brains here too, Thalorian, but you are right. Time for some muscle.”

They took their places. Tawn and Felib translated the faded instructions while Anderix climbed above the central axle.
“Ready!” he shouted.
Felib raised his arm. “One quarter turn!”
Tajan and Kaelen threw their weight against the spokes. Nothing moved.
“Again!” Tajan said.
The wheel groaned but stood firm. Tajan took out her last power crystal took it to Blena who grasped it tightly. Blena realised what she must do. She summoned thoughts of an ironroot bear, a giant snowbat and her Guardian comrades at home. She imagined the might of all of them flowing into her arms and legs. Her hands glowed blue, and her body surged with energy as she gave an almighty shove. Rust broke loose in red flakes. Now returned to the next chamber, Tajan’s boots slid across the stone as the brake lever pulled against her.
“Drue!” Anderix called.
Drue released the locking bar.
The great gear moved one tooth.

A roar filled the earth. Another aftershock.

Water struck the paddled wheel and drove it forwards. Every gear in the chamber shuddered awake. Bronze teeth caught oak; iron shafts turned in sockets silent for centuries. The rings surrounding the empty cradle began to spin, slow at first and then fast enough to sing.
Blue-white sparks ran between them.
“That is the storm-fire,” Anderix shouted, delighted and terrified. “It still works!”
“You said it could not!” Blena yelled.
“It has no receptacle, but this is an excellent development!”
“It is throwing lightning at us!”
“Then a complicated but still most excellent development!”

Water poured into the ancient tubes beneath Amaryn, but instead of violent shaking, the deep aethorian noise eased into a low vibration and then faded. The machine slowed as Drue replaced the locking bar and Blena forced the brake into place.
At last, water only trickled through the darkness.

They sank onto the wet stone, breathless.
Alster rested a hand on one luminous root. “The trees are carrying some of it.”
“Water?” Felib asked.
“Water, certainly. Perhaps something else.”
Tajan looked at the empty crystal cradle. “The machine made power, but there was no vessel to receive it.”
“So the roots did,” Kaelen said.
Anderix shook his head. “Possibly. We observed only a few moments of a system designed by people who understood forces we have barely named.”
“You are saying the ancients were cleverer than you,” Blena said.
“I am saying they had a considerable head start.”

Elder Tawn stood beneath the four elemental signs carved into the archway. “Fire shaped the passages. Earth formed the channels and the machine. Water drove it. Air carried the storm-fire into a crystal.”
“That All May Be Made One,” Drue said.
Kaelen thought of the Heartwell, the Helios Spire, the tower above Alfadin and the river vanishing beneath Mount Pinault. What had seemed like separate mysteries now resembled fragments of one design.
“Our ancestors did not build isolated wonders,” he said. “They built parts of something that crossed Aethoria.”
Felib looked at the glowing roots disappearing into the channel. “Then perhaps we have not discovered a lost machine.”
Tajan followed his gaze. “We have discovered one piece of a broken world.”

Tawn placed one hand on the ancient stone. “A broken thing can be repaired.”
Anderix looked towards the tunnels, where water carried their questions into the dark.
“Yes,” he said. “But first we must learn where all the pieces lead.”

Blena reached into her pouch and drew out the blue power crystal she had used to shield them from the collapsing house. Its colour had faded to dull grey.
Across the chamber, Tajan opened her hand. The crystal that had lent her its strength was just as lifeless.
They looked at one another.
“That was my last one,” Tajan said.
“Mine too,” Blena replied.
Kaelen glanced towards the dark tunnels ahead. Whatever waited at the next part of the broken network, they could not face it without power.
Before the company could move on, they would have to replenish their blue crystals.

Thy Quest: Evidence or Omen?
Elder Swati and Anderix interpret the earthquake in very different ways. Compare their explanations.