Legends said little of the fall of the realm. As mana drained out and all withered, the humans gathered what they could and left. I had learned they had crafted their own place of exile and kept it in the realm itself.
I had learned it was there, in the plains of Alunra.
In the old golden days those plains had looked nothing special. Now they were part of the dry desert, a flat landscape of broken rocks stretching endlessly. The name itself would have been forgotten.
But black columns billowed all over, carried by a swirling wind that touched no other. That black dust in itself was not void; its source had to be. The plains were ravaged, still not recovering after the years and years of decay from whatever happened there.
In other words, Alunra had endured as a battlefield.
The ship's hulls grinded into the rock to a full stop. Even from a kilometer away, a full kilometer, some burning force still pressed on the wood and threatened to crack the vessel like a twig.
And yet, magic was scarce here.
I climbed down on the nets, on the ship's side, touched down and gestured for the menilis to stay put. The cat-rat monster went back and forth then rose up, trying to find some courage to follow.
"Guard the ship." I told her. "If I don't come back, it's yours."
"But! But I said I would help!"
"Do you see this?"
My armored hand pointed at the billowing smoke afar.
"That's void magic. I need you to stay here and preserve the ship."
She knew I was making excuses but her heart wanted to believe it and so, after bending, the monster nodded and stayed behind. And to be honest? I think it calmed me, to believe her presence would prevent the Parao from vanishing on me.
As for me, I was confident. My assets were a broken clay body in pristine iron armor. I had survived the kingdom of Wekel with less than that.
I scratched the gorget a bit, then walked ahead.
What smoke we saw from the outside was just scattered pits that grew denser as I crossed between them. The dusk above was fading, turning to a starless night. It took magic for that to happen but still, I could feel there was almost none around.
Ridges appeared, hills and mounds, eroded and sharp. Beasts and airships alike were indistinguishable under the mana drain.
Void magic burned, for lack of a better term, devoured their shapes. Fractures where the realm ended, leaving nothing, scarred the fields of calcified remnants and corpses. Where the void wasn't encroaching, the warp of anti-magic turned those rough carcasses into nightmares.
At first I did my best to not approach anything. I had to conserve my strength.
But the dozens of remains persisting in that mad state had me wondering and I had to search as well for any trace of life here. So I approached a small heap nearby.
Touching it alone would do little but sap what mana I had.
Yet my armor had been imbued with time magic. I could use that. Look into the past and find alterations to guide me.
The coat of silver on my arm brimmed with magical lines. One pulse and reality changed around me. Memories brought to life. A hazy, almost indiscernible mess of shapes breaking apart, ghostly whirlwinds that made me reel.
I felt like I was disintegrating!
And when I let go in an instant, I had to accept that the spell had worked. The folly I had sensed was not caused by distance or error; it had been a glimpse of the actual experience.
And I would have to plunge into that again, and again, to collect the alterations and cross them until a path opened. Until I could discern a trail of life in all this.
So a quick jump with a small beast would not do it! If I wanted to minimize exposure, I would actually have to stay longer with the giants.
The landscape was littered with them. Sharp broken hills by the dozens, endlessly consumed where they fell. Even without seeing the past I could tell, whatever battle had occurred there had been in the sky, with the land neglected.
Which made sense. Just like fortresses, airships could force their enemy to meet them, prevent passage above and under. But still. Land armies were the norm, were they not?
What did it matter!
I was not here to figure out whatever the humans had done in their last days of glory. Any of their ships would do and whatever the past would show me would be irrelevant. Only traces of the present in there counted.
So I approached the tallest ridge, one the void had left mostly alone. There was pressure on my armor, nothing too bad. Just a few seconds. Time magic flared again.
Again I felt torn apart! The haze hurled mad, the silence screamed. I could feel an impossible wind erode the iron. Just a few seconds was all I needed!
I was on the first deck of a trireme. Glass plates above held it in the air. Glass ones below, barely perceptible, served as oars and shields. The second deck had broken into a melee. I could also sense a slow drum, two beats per second.
Giant crystals on the deck's bulwark had magic raging inside.
They told me what was happening. The haze I experienced was a furnace. The humans had cast an explosion that engulfed the entire battlefield, a deflagration that lasted for hours and they were casually fighting in it.
Archers in plate armor fired a volley, then fell back in a wave as two ranks took their place to offer a wall of pikes over the parapet. Behind them stood three meters tall colossi. Spirits? Monsters? The closest looked cladded as well and held two swords whose runes seared me.
I never got to see what mass had tumbled on them. I had stepped back.
Just looking at those past memories was destructive. I now had the useless knowledge that this had been an escort to the actual warship holding the line. I also had acquired the useless knowledge of their crew's record.
We said: You will give us refuge or die! The fleet said: Know your place.
With Earth crafted, the glass fleet had carried it there, in Alunra, to be buried deep. Entire kingdoms in pursuit sought to stop it and gain a place in that last refuge. So they battled furiously for survival and the first line had broken.
But the only knowledge I needed was the pulse of life that faded further ahead.
A human.
I could not run after it. The furnace the humans had fought still raged with what little magic the realm could offer, still devoured the fields. Mixed with the void and anti-magic, it created a chaos in which just moving was painful.
Yet from what I had sensed the human had flown through it all, carried by magical wings.
What foolishness.
By now I had lost the trail again and still tried to postpone the next dip into the past. It was draining and if the human had flown straight ahead, there was no need. But the risk to to lose him raised with each step.
So, reluctantly, I turned to the only peak amidst those fallen masses. A bow? A beak? Who cared. My hand approached it and time magic flowed.
This was a room clad in iron, inside the ship. Slaves in chainmail were ordered to turn six wheels in unison. They were steering the trireme starboard to ram. The drum above had gone to six beats a second.
It wasn't slaves by cruelty. Yes, you could steer a ship with crystals or spirits, with glyphs or alchemy, but those would be brittle. In the raging conflagration outside, they would utterly fail. Those monsters pushed on the bars, turning the massive stones but slowly.
A massive harpoon crashed in with a shower of splinters. The furnace flowed in. Then the metal head deployed into a grapple and fixed itself. The entire ship listed.
Those slaves had been battered by the shock, most wounded or killed outright. They got up, ready to attack the grapple but their overseer, a slave himself, ordered them back to what weels still functioned. To starboard and ram, so they obeyed.
I let go. The trace was clear now. I left that wreck behind.
We said: We helped craft Earth! You will allow us in! The fleet said: You served your purpose.
It wasn't the enemy's relentless attacks that had finally overcome the glass fleet. After three days of fighting, the kingdoms were exhausted, their best lying dead on the field. No, it was the mana drain itself. Three days of warfare had just made that curse all the more potent.
Their ships had plummeted from the sky before a weaker enemy.
There was no eye of the storm, no center for that maelstrom and that was exactly where the human had been headed. So I could just go. No more looking into the past.
But the thing was, there were no chains. When the battle raged, and Earth got buried, there were no chains to stabilize it. Those came after. Which meant they could only come from the survivors. From those left outside.
Did I understand?
Having failed to reach the shelter in time, the abandoned had built the chains and the locks. They had ensured the construct would stay stable. Perhaps to not have it destroy them while they sought other resorts.
And those that had taken shelter in it had just picked a gambit. They never thought their refuge was unreliable, or ignored it. Or bet their foes would have no choice but to do it for them.
They had run out of time! They had all improvised during the hurried, confused last days of humanity!
Masters of the realm!
Yes, there was no need to look back, because beyond the human's trail was another. No matter how distorted and broken the fields of Alunra could be, I could sense that monster. She was not even hiding. She was waiting for me.
I emerged from the hills. She was waiting on top of another ridge, the back of a fallen giant. Not a hundred meters separated us.
The humanoid bird was standing still on one leg, her scepter behind her back.
No ritual, no chant. There was no way to cast much in a place so depraved and ravaged. If we were to engage in a magical duel, it would have to be in melee.
No, this would be solved the new way, with brute strength.
She watched me approach. Her priestess' dress had suffered from the fields. It was flowing along with that invisible furnace. The wards on her eyes still intact.
"The master meets the apprentice." Her steely voice met me. "But those days are long gone."
"Where is he?!"
"This is where humans chose their fate. An armada fought for three days against the realm. It knew that it too would be left behind. And still it fought, to protect their noblest, their strongest. Their wealthiest."
"If you won't help me find him, you will be gone from my sight!"
I had let the polearm melt to shape in my hand. I was climbing the ridge, step by step. My iron armor handling the waste far better than her frail body could.
"They called that honor." She finished.
The stelae of Hashal deployed on her back. All the secrets humans had left behind, about Earth, and all the arts she had learned from them.
Why even show me that?! Did she think I would stop?
She knew the human was here. She would not be standing in that spot otherwise. And right here, right now, only the human's safety matter.
She lowered her head and braced for the fight.
"Kaele."
I was only meters from her, the badger helmet fixed on her.
"Nadjal!"
Our weapons swung to clash.