Respite, Debrief

John landed in a pile of ash, followed by four other impacts near him.

Quest Complete - Mis-Trial

Got out of that with a lifeline from the outside. Sometimes splitting the party doesn’t end up badly. Hope you picked up on some clues about what’s going on.

Rewards: 10 Ireaon Shards, 1500 EXP, Vial of Forge Ash

John felt a wave of relief as he wiped ash off his face, an act helped by Candle as the fox spirit bounded at him, licking his cheeks clean. Familiar mana signatures raced towards them and John **** himself up, seeing Senka, Rowan and Tok doing much the same. All of them were battered, but they had made it out of the fire.

Beth was the first to reach them, her magic letting her skate across the ground and around the piles of inert ash with ease. She crashed into John, arms wrapping tight around him.

“You okay?” she asked, backing off after a second.

“No worse than any other time I’ve been effectively kidnapped,” John joked, his laugh a bit hollow.

“I’m getting kind of sick of this happening,” Aeolia remarked as she landed next to Senka.

“It’s a life,” the spirit said, her eyes sweeping over the area. “I’m guessing the attack hit here too?”

Aeolia nodded. “Yeah. Had more than enough fire power to keep them from being a problem. The respawning was a pain, but we dealt with it.”

“What did Kiera, Vivian and Estelle do?” John asked. “I felt their mana right at the end.”

“I think answering that should be done after we can properly regroup,” Vel’s voice washed over the group.

“Dad,” Tok said.

Vel put up a hand, the other resting on the hatchet at his waist. “We’ve been attacked, Son. The time to discuss the particulars can wait until we’re sure everything’s secure. Plus, there’s no shame in resting a bit after a hard fight. Collect your thoughts.”

Tok nodded, a distant look on his face. John wondered what he wanted to tell the elder dwarf. The nature of their enemy, their interaction with Gep’kes Ani, Rowan’s sword? Probably all three. He wasn’t planning to keep anything secret.

John idly rubbed his wrist, the sensation of phantom fingers still present on his mind. Was there someone else in that weird interconnected state, or was that some call for help from some buried part of Rita’s psyche? The flashes looked like a child **** to conform, under threat of punishment, to some hellish beliefs.

“Lots on your mind?” Anita asked, the mushroom girl getting close while they were being led to an out of the way chamber to rest in.

John nodded. “There’s a lot that happened.”

That got a snort from Tok. “That’s an understatement.”

“Want to talk about it before we tell everyone else? Get all our facts in order and theories in place?” John asked, looking between Tok and Rowan. “There’s a lot to go over.”

“We haven’t really had a chance to talk about what each of us experienced in that vision,” Tok said in a serious voice. “And what she said to me is probably important.”

Rowan nodded. “There were a lot of revelations today, and they need to be addressed.”

“I’ll say,” Tok muttered, his eyes drifting to the sword on Rowan’s back. “That ash chick said some interesting things.”

It was clear that Tok was putting together that the Relic Blade could be connected back to his ancestors’ homeland. It was, after all, fairly obvious.

“I feel that John’s in a better position to explain that to start,” Rowan said, her tone flat.

John nodded to assure Tok he was going to do that as they filed into a decently sized room. John found himself collapsing onto a comfortable enough couch, Anita quickly joining him. As if to make a John sandwich with matching bread, Aeolia took his other side, her wings brushing up against him in a grounding way.

Beth muttered something under her breath. John only caught something about not being fast enough, then Senka dragged the slimmer girl down onto her lap as the spirit slipped into a plush armchair.

“Suppose I should say something like ‘make yourselves at home,’” Tok chuckled, “but it seems you already are.”

“We’ll keep it PG at worst,” John fired back, drawing more laughter from the dwarf, along with Aeolia and Beth. Then the mode shifted back to serious. “Suppose I should start. Want the story with Rowan’s sword, or what I got from the ash lady?”

“Sword first,” Tok answered. “I’m sure Dad and the others can make better use of that info. Probably this info too, but I want to know if what I’m thinking about it is true.”

“If your thoughts are it’s some weapon from your old home land, then you’re right,” John said, casting an Observe at the blade, which Rowan had rested against the wall as she took her seat.

Tok read the display, his eyes narrowing.

“Lah’men,” he muttered, reading the word aloud. “That’s, that’s an old name for the clan our ancestors decided to leave. And the Vel’tsh was the clan they were dead set on fighting. It got so bad that our ancestors decided to leave. It wasn’t an easy break. They had to abandon the clan name entirely. How exactly did you get this?”

“The quick version is that my magic gives me thematic rewards in barriers I make,” John explained. “Yes, I know that things spawned in barriers usually aren’t something with lasting substance, but I seem to be the exception.”

“Having Gaia plugged in helps,” Aeolia remarked.

Tok looked at her, then to the rest of them, even Rowan, skepticism giving way to confusion.

“Wait, you’re serious about that?” he asked. “I mean, that’s crazy.”

“You get used to it,” Aeolia said with a shrug. “Besides, do you know any other being that could make it so actual items are dropped in a barrier? Especially ones that have tangible history?”

“Can’t say I do,” Tok admitted. “Just a big pill to swallow, you know? Suppose if anyone was to be able to have that power, it’d be the guy already working with one goddess and who could conjure up meeting a second one.”

Sensing the confusion from his lovers, John explained what happened in the trial barrier.

“Of course that happened,” Beth remarked, leaning her head back against Senka. “Why can’t we have a normal day?”

“Must be the trade-off,” John answered. “I got magic from Gaia, or something close to it, but now my life’s insane.”

“But it's been a good insane, right?” Anita asked, looking up at John.

“More good than bad.” He smiled down at her, squeezing her in a hug.

With the question about how the blade had been obtained settled, Rowan took over.

“I’m not sure if it means anything to you, or your people, but one of the powers of the sword is a number of stored memories, combat memories in particular,” she said.

Tok frowned. “I can’t think of anything like that in the old stories. But, there was some time between when our ancestors left and them coming to Earth. And they weren’t exactly getting regular updates.”

“Nothing in the Observe gave a time frame, so it could have been made long after the split,” John said.

“The endless war bit implies the conflict is still ongoing,” Senka remarked. “Which fits with what just happened.”

“And now we’re on their radar,” Tok muttered solemnly.

“Sorry,” John said, almost automatically.

“I really don’t think anything you’ve done made this happen,” Tok said. “From the hints I got from Goe, most of the barrier was set in stone before we met. I think they only increased the number of enemies and stuff like that.”

Anita perked up. “I heard something about that! Your dad was a bit upset about it being a bit, um, what’s the word? Overleveled! Yeah, that’s it. The people who made the barrier didn’t have the time to get everything made right. They just sort of tripled things.”

“If that’s the case, then it stands to reason that this attack could have happened without our involvement," Senka said.

John caught a flash of guilt cross Tok’s face and he quickly said, “It’s not your fault.”

“Feels like it,” the dwarf sighed, leaning back in his chair. “I wanted this trial to be like the old days, and I’ve dragged the clan back into the war they took dishonor to avoid.”

“I don’t think it's dishonorable to choose life over ceaseless war,” Rowan interjected. “And from what little I know, I doubt your ancestors elected to walk the path of exile lightly. How long had they been fighting before they left?”

“It was a while,” Tok muttered. “We don’t like to talk about it, but it was at least a few generations.”

“Decades of war is enough for anyone to crave peace,” Rowan said softly.

“Dishonorable or not, I’ve still dragged us back in,” Tok circled back to his first point.

“Do you think they just happened to find out we were doing this after the scope expanded?” John asked. “I don’t know much about scrying magic, or prophetic visions, but would just planning to use a barrier based on a shared cultural location be enough to get their attention? Or could they have been looking for any trace of their enemies?”

“I think such ruminations aren’t going to serve us much good right now,” Vel’s voice sounded from the door as he opened it without knocking. The elder dwarf looked like he’d aged a decade in the hours since their departure. “Nor are pleasantries. We’ve set up something of a command center. Come, there’s a lot we have to untangle.”

---

The room Vel led them to was a spartan chamber. The furniture had been pushed to line the walls, leaving the center of the room open for a number of people, most of them dwarves, to crowd around a large whiteboard. Vivian and Estelle were among them, the pair working seamlessly with who John assumed were the clan’s aethersmiths in an attempt to unravel what had happened today. Kiera stood a little away from them, looking more than a little tired.

Rowan snapped to attention the moment she saw Ramirez and Gaunt approaching them from the far side of the room, where Verida was talking to several older dwarves.

“At ease, Donnelly,” Ramirez said, her voice clipped and devoid of any emotion. “You conducted yourself well today and I’m sure you maintained that standard when we lost contact.”

“Thank you, Ma’am,” Rowan said curtly.

A bit of Ramirez’s military air faded away, a weariness settling in. “I’m afraid we can’t relax yet. We’ll need a full recounting of everything, especially what happened after you activated the archway.”

“The wicked won’t rest and neither can we,” Vel remarked as he ushered them forward. “Let’s get this started. Don’t leave anything out. Any weird vibe, any odd feeling could be a clue.”

John, Senka, Tok and Rowan began to relay their experiences, most of the room gathering around them. For the most part, it was John doing the talking. Between Observe and his greater attunement to magical energies, he was able to give more detailed information.

“So you felt something hot begin to bleed through right after you fought the cephalodile,” a serious looking dwarven woman named Hwe Gov Baz, one of the aethersmiths, reiterated once John had finished summing things up. She shuffled some of the papers she was holding, a rough timeline of events. “Yes, we had a small fluctuation in the barrier integrity then. Nothing beyond the normal sort of fluctuations.”

“That could be how they slipped past your notice,” Vivian suggested. “They had the smarts to key their breach to the activation of a pre-established transition spell. It stands to reason they could hide their infiltration under normal barrier shifts.”

“And now we know to keep an eye on those sorts of things,” Goe added.

“It’s a bit presumptive to think this will happen again,” Gin interjected.

“Your enemies have found a way to reach you, and have proved you’re here,” Ramirez spoke up. “It would be unwise to assume they won’t try again.”

“I understand you have a more militant view of things, Dame Ramirez, and being prepared for the worst is not a bad policy,” Gin said in a diplomatic tone. “But to say that we’re at risk of more attacks after one, one that had extraordinary circumstances that allowed it to happen, is a bit alarmist.”

Vel shot Gin a look. “These aren’t just some enemy, Gin.”

“Yes, yes, they are the Vel’tsh, or their descendants, the mortal enemy of our forefathers’ forefathers. I’m not saying that they aren’t dangerous, merely that we have no evidence that they’ll make another attempt, or that they know where we even are.”

“Mother does have a point,” Goe admitted, drawing a few nods from her fellow aethersmiths. “The most likely way they found us was the thematic link made using the Karsahcan Strip and the Temple to Gep’kes Ani. Without further points of reference, they may not have been able to trace back here.”

“That ‘may’ is holding a lot of weight,” Vel said in a clipped voice. “If the Vel’tsh are still an aggressive power, which seems to be the case, then there’s no reason to believe they won’t try to find us.”

“Them having a means to know you were crafting that barrier does point to them having the capacity to track down this location,” Ramirez added.

Gin opened her mouth to counter Ramirez’s point but she stopped herself. After taking a breath, she said, “My point has been made. I think that going all in on the idea of our location being compromised is a waste of time with the information we currently have. I am not against being vigilant and shoring up our current security methods.”

“Getting back on track,” Vel said, drawing things back to the most important topic of the debrief, the debrief itself. “Anything else of note before the attack happened?”

“Nothing I can remember,” John answered before going over the Observes of the various bits of the temple, just in case anything there was there that spoke of interference. “When we dialed in what we figured was the exit command, the ash and smoke came out with the same sensation of heat and my head began to hurt, like something was clamping onto my head.”

“I felt it too,” Senka added. “Not some sympathetic pain but an effect on me independent from John.”

“You felt that too?” Kiera spoke up. The bluenette had been quiet, half asleep and conserving her energy to keep Verida’s manifestation stable.

A sinking feeling began to pool in John’s stomach. Senka’s assumption that they felt the headaches as a symptom of the temple being attacked and they felt it because of their own deific connections. But if Kiera felt the same thing here, was there some other reason?

As if to compound things, Ramirez suddenly brought her hand to her ear, a simple cell phone in her still armored grasp. She didn’t speak, and John couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, but whatever was relayed caused her face to grow even more serious.

“Lord Brighton wishes to join this summit.”