Chapter Twenty: A Promise Across Time
Eberron, Sharn, City of Towers, January 22nd, 1392 a.c.
Night had fallen on the City of Towers. It was time to find out why the Thief had shown an authentic ambassador's license from Breland to the Zakharan caliph. To do this Quel had come up with a simple idea: raid the the City Council's offices, then using the information from that to find out who had issued the license to Dusk and track them down for interrogations. It was a desperate plan that went far beyond the boundaries of the law and could land them in the depths of the City Watch's dungeon if they got caught.
Sharn, the City of Towers, was as unique as a city can get. Arguably it is the most populated city on the continent of Khorvaire, if not the entire planet of Eberron. It rests on a plot of land that was tied strongly with the plane of Syrania, the Azure Sky. A plane of levitation magic and elemental affinity with the air. This plot of land is known as a manifest zone and this particular zone increases the potency of levitation and flight magics, thus allowing much of Sharn to float in the heavens, defying the laws of physics. Sharn can be divided into six areas, depending on the level each zone resides as a whole within the city. For instance, the highest area is Skyway, which floats upon magically sculpted clouds, then comes the Upper City which is the highest of the monolithic towers that make up Sharn's main city, followed by the Middle City, then the Lower City, then even farther down, is the Cogs, where the industrial sections of the city are crammed underground, in the bowels of the city. Finally, underneath all of this are the Lava Pools, which the great forgeries of the Cogs use to power their work. Some say there are levels even farther down, but this is unproven and pure speculation. Sharn was built on the ruins of not only the old Sharn that was mostly destroyed in the War of the Mark, but also the ancient human city of Shaarat and the even more ancient city of Ja'Shaarat, the hobgoblin empire of Dhakaani's greatest city that bore deep into the cliffs that Sharn now rises from. Yes, there is much of Sharn that goes unseen.
In the darkness of the night Quel led them from district to district until they arrived in the Central Plateau, and from there the Highest Towers civic district, all of this in the Upper City. This was a place that was at the top of the vast city, with many arching bridges and high daunting towers. Power leaked out of the stonework in this place like water did in the lower and less well-to-do sections of the city. This was the heart of the city's government and only the blind couldn't see that.
To the Sun Tower Quel took them. On a stolen skycoach they ascended to the top floors and smashed their way in through a tall stained glass window. They landed the skycoach in the center of the room and split up. Saida, Flau, Dong Dong and Chuldo were there for the raid, with Abir opting to stay behind and guard their rooms. After ransacking three rooms they finally found what they wanted at the bottom of one filing cabinet in one of the classified storage rooms. The Thief had been issued the license in much haste by the Brelish Parliament and oddly enough the man who had issued the license lived in Sharn part of the year and his family had vast holdings in the city. The man who had issued the license was named Hass ir'Tain.
The ir'Tain family was one of the most powerful and influential clans in the city. It was their wealth and influence that had built the first towers in Sharn and their fortune and power had endured even until the current age. It was 992 Year of the Kingdom, or YK. The whole of Khorvaire was in the midst of a century long war. Young Hass ir'Tain had issued the license in the fourth year of his service to the Brelish Crown, some seven years ago.
With much caution and hesitation, Quel guided his party to the Tain Mansion in the Brilliant section of the Skyway. They grabbed Abir along the way and filled him in on what they had found and were planning. It was not wise to cross such an influential family, but they desperately needed to know why the license had been issued. Of course disheveled miscreants like them wouldn't be let past the front gate, so they broke their way into the mansion of Sharn's most powerful family with much trepidation and a devil-may-care attitude combined. They met little resistance and managed to find and corral all of the servants, and family members in short order. Understandably angry, Dalian ir'Tain, the head of the family, and his wife Celyria ir'Tain, gave scathing glares to their captors. That was until Quel began to tell them why they were bound and tied in their kitchen at this ungodly hour of the morning.
"We aren't here for your money, or to use you as political hostages. We have no intention of hurting you now, or in the future. All we want is for your son Hass to tell us why he issued an ambassador's license to a psiforged barely after its construction. A psiforged that has gone rogue and is posing as a Brelish Ambassador to commit crimes on other worlds. We do not represent the lawful arm of any of these governments, this psiforged wronged us personally. Now, are any of you willing to talk?"
Over the course of his little speech they had sobered slightly and now it was the lord of the house, leader of the ir'Tain family himself, who spoke up.
"These accusations—" began Dalian ir'Tain.
"They're far from accusations Brelander," Saida interrupted with a perfect combination of amusement and scorn.
Dalian gave her a small glare, like her very existence bothered him, before continuing. "Yes, well our son is here in town. He's at a friend of the family's party at the moment and won't be back until later tonight. I'm sure if you will allow one of our servants to go fetch him he will be more than willing to answer any of your questions."
"No," Quel said simply, abruptly. "We wait together for your son until he returns. One night in bad company won't kill you."
The ir'Tains seemed to slump at that news and time crawled by very slowly. Quel had them quartered off, with all of their servants, in the dining room of the mansion. Chuldo and Abir guarded them, while Saida, Flau and Dong Dong watched for the son, or signs of trouble. Quel simply stared into space, trying to think of how he knew the Thief and willing himself to heal faster. Hours later, when the night was just beginning to truly blossom, Hass ir'Tain arrived home to discover a big unpleasant surprise. After he was tackled to the ground and tied up next to his parents, Quel put the same questions to him that he had his parents and Hass reacted very differently.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he lied.
"We broke into the City Council's archives you moron, we know everything," Quel said with annoyance. "Telling us what we want will make us go away."
"You wouldn't want me to tell you," Hass said in a low tone.
"We aren't your normal run of the mill thugs. I've got a score to settle with the psiforged and I won't tolerate you standing in my way. Talk." Quel punctuated his words by causing a gust of wind to blow through the house spontaneously.
The ir'Tain family looked ruffled a bit by Quel's display, especially since he hadn't spoken a word of power, let alone a spell.
Hass sighed, resigned. "I don't want any trouble, okay? He came to me with a lot of money and a letter of authentication from House Cannith. I just did what I was told to do. If you want someone to blame, look to House Cannith. He's their creation in the first place!"
Next they went to the Dragonmarked House Cannith, the House of Artifice. House Cannith had originally created the warforged and psiforged, which was what their Thief was, had supposedly come from the Mournland as well as Sharn in recent years. It would be far more difficult to break into House Cannith. For one thing the ir'Tain family's guards had been all human. In a Dragonmarked House the guardsmen could be virtually anything. House Cannith had invented the warforged, which was a living construct of metal wood and leather in the form of a man, and sometimes rarely of a woman. Warforged were designed for the Last War and fought in it tirelessly, until they were destroyed. Literal Fighting Machines. Knocking on the front door and asking to be let in would be useless, so Quel crashed their stolen skycoach through the roof of one of the House's upper towers. Almost immediately the alarm was raised within the House. To understand the severity of invading a Dragonmarked house it should be mentioned that a Dragonmarked House possessed it's own military might and had power and influence second only to the Five Nations of Khorvaire, the ruling bodies of the continent. Invading this stronghold was akin to invading an embassy to a country, a country that was also a corporation with its own unique technology.
Warforged carrying varying types of weaponry swarmed out of every seeming direction and charged them in the Cannith House, which was opulently furnished with luxurious furniture and cold fire sconces along the walls, bathing the rooms in blue flames. They fought when they had to, but mostly avoided any conflict, Quel leading the way, with Chuldo at his side and Flau and Dong Dong in the center with Saida bringing up the rear. They relied on the element of surprise coupled with their own mobility and speed to rapidly traverse the compound. Rounding one corner they, and their pursuers, spilled out into a courtyard where multiple warforged titans stood in daunting silence. A warforged was basically the size of a tall human. A warforged titan was the size of a frost giant and usually had weapons grafted into it, like axes for hands or some such thing.
What made the situation worse was that a warforged juggernaut, a more fearsome and bulkier version of a warforged, though no way near the size of a titan, seemed to be commanding this ambush.
"SEIZE THEM!" cried the juggernaut.
A wall of ironclad warriors charged them, rows of shiny, sharp metal weapons gleamed in the moonlight.
"STOP!" commanded a voice. Looking up on a balcony overlooking the courtyard they were currently in, Quel and Co. saw a man in his late thirties, early forties glaring down at them all. The warforged had all ground to a halt almost immediately and stood like statues while they waited for their master's next command. The effect was eerie.
"I'm not foolish enough to think you thieves, but are you really a band of saboteurs sent to destroy my valuable work? Speak now."
"We demand to know about a black psiforged that was allowed to become a Brelish Ambassador," Quel said, his voice echoing in the sudden stillness.
The man on the balcony looked troubled, his ire immediately forgotten. "So it has happened," he muttered, Quel and Saida both picking up his words easily enough with their adept hearing though he didn't know that. He looked up and spoke more loudly. "Why have you come foreigners? What is your purpose?"
"To stop the psiforged you made and put an end to his schemes. Nothing more, nothing less," Quel proclaimed.
The man regarded him for a while, then looked from one companion to the next and finally sighed wearily, yet also somehow angrily. "Very well. Javelin! Guide them to my receiving room."
"Yes My Lord!" cried the warforged juggernaut.
A few minutes later they found themselves in a small meeting room. There the man introduced himself as Merrix d'Cannith.
"So you are after a black psiforged," stated Merrix. "And this search has led you to me."
"Psiforged are supposed to be your area of expertise," Quel said. "Besides, we know you were the one who bankrolled the appointment of this psiforged to become an ambassador."
Merrix pondered them all for a moment. "He was more powerful than any psiforged I have ever seen, from then to now. He excelled beyond all of my expectations and had more potential than I could imagine."
"But something went wrong," Quel stated more than guessed.
"Yes," Merrix sighed. "He started to remember things he hadn't ever done. Places he'd never been before he was able to perfectly describe. At first he was elated and shared what he'd seen with others, but then he started to change. He became strange and reserved. He stopped conversing with the other members of his enclave. He came to me shortly thereafter and asked to become an ambassador so he could go to other worlds and discover himself as he served House Cannith's interests abroad. I believed him.
"A few months after he left I started to receive reports from our contacts on other worlds: he wasn't appearing where we sent him and he wasn't doing things in the interest of the House. I finally had to terminate his license, so he could never use his ambassador's badge on any connected planet.
"I take it he used his badge somewhere relatively obscure when you found him?"
Quel nodded in the affirmative.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you anything else about him. His name is Dusk, he left no possessions behind."
"You've helped us enough, I think," Quel said.
"Good, now get out of my house before I call the Watch and make you pay for that damned hole you put in my roof."
The trail had run cold, but Quel refused to give up on his search for the Thief, Dusk. That night they slept in the Broken Beak. The next morning everyone gathered together at the city's airship dock and waited for the courier ship to take them up to the space station where their ship was docked. Even though Eberron was a very advanced planet it was still protected by the Developing Planets Act.
While they waited, a young girl of no more than five years of age played with her mother next to them on the landing platform. Her young precocious attitude and impish smile made Quel grin back at her despite himself. She came trotting up to him at one point, her blond locks waving in the breeze and her green eyes dancing with delight.
"Mister didn't the moon look odd to you last night?" she asked out of the blue.
"Why no, I hadn't noticed it." He supposed that meant Dusk had come and stolen another moon goddess, or god, from Eberron then. While they hunted him he continued unabated. If only they knew which planets he was going to target.
"Do you think the elves know how to fix it mister?" she asked.
"I wouldn't know," he smiled.
"I bet they would cuz they're real smart and know all sorts of things,"
Her mother came up at that point and smiled at Quel. "Pay her no mind good sir, she's only a wee child." The mother guided her sullen looking daughter away by that point and Quel lost track of them. He had a brilliant idea spark to life in his mind anyway and it was at the fore of his thought processes.
"I know what we need to do next," he said to his companions.
"What's that?" Flau asked for them all.
"We need to go visit a friend of mine. She can help us pinpoint the Thief, this Dusk."
"Finally a bit of good news," Saida said happily. "What made you think of this friend?"
Quel turned to point at the little girl and her mother. "Why this lit—" he broke off as he noticed the very large landing platform was empty of the mother and daughter duo. He knew they couldn't have gotten off of the platform even at a full run since he last paid them any attention and they weren't hiding behind any of the other few travelers on the platform besides his companions, so they could only have vanished into thin air.
Looking at his confused posture, mouth hanging open, his pointed finger slowly drooping down, Saida walked up next to him and looked in the same direction.
"Wasn't there a mother and daughter here a couple seconds ago?" she asked, realizing what he must have been pointing at.
"Uh-huh," Quel answered. His mind raced, trying to think of a reasonable answer to what just happened.
"Meh, we've seen odder things recently," she declared before turning back to go stand with the others.
It was then he recalled the stories about a god on Eberron, the only one said to inhabit a physical form. The Traveler, the god of change who hid in a multitude of guises and forms, giving out gifts to adventurers and guiding them from the shadows in such ways they'd never be able to tell they'd been helped. But it was also said to beware the gifts of the Traveler. Contrasting and dangerous, the Traveler was not one to meet. Ever. Quel hoped his paranoia hadn't just made a monster out of that little girl, if little girl she had been.
Quel explained to his companions how he had an old friend who was a genius, with connections throughout the Circle and beyond. He hadn't seen her in years and felt it was time to call on a debt she owed him. From Eberron, he took the Yahosun to a world in the Outer Ring of the Circle, and one mostly excluded from the political affairs that plagued the rest of the Circle. This was planet Chrono, a world protected under the Developing Planets Act and steeped in a myriad blahness that protected it from the interest of travelers and invaders alike.
Quel set the ship down in the one dinky, and run down, space station that floated above the world. From there they all took a courier ship down to the city of Truce, on the Zenan Continent. It was a lovely and verdant world in the late Summer. They decided to not waste any money on purchasing transportation and opt to walk the whole way to Quel's friend's house a few miles beyond the town. She lived in a nice villa, he said.
A few hours later, they crossed a large bridge onto an island off the coast of Truce. Green grass and rolling fields were all around them. Two more hours of walking later and they came upon the ruins of a large house. Quel was at a loss for words. His friend's house, which she had been in the process of converting into an orphanage the last time he had seen her, had been burned to the ground. He walked through the wreckage aimlessly for thirty minutes before he remembered something. Then he stopped, oriented himself in the middle of the charred wreck of a home and began to walk towards a large hill with a lone elder tree atop it.
Everyone else left him to his business. They stood back and watched as he trekked up the hill, dug with his bare hands at the base of the tree and found something. Then their curiosity broke their hesitation and they all climbed up the hill after him. He was holding a capsule in one hand and a crumpled note in the other. The note had been inside the capsule, sealed perfectly and untouched by the ravages of time.
My dear Quel,
How long has it been since I saw your smiling face? Hopefully I will have seen it again before you read this, but if something has indeed happened to me, as I fear it might, then I want you to listen carefully to what I have to say. I have always felt a dread in my heart over the future that we destroyed to save our own, the lives we killed to preserve our timeline. I fear someone may travel back in time to try and kill my friends and I for what we did. You were there Quel, even if just for a little while. You know what we did to save our planet, the price we paid. This is why I hope you forgive me if I am not here to personally pay you back what you deserve for your help so long ago. But a promise is a promise. In my place I have left a scan of my brain, which if you place into a computer, or artificial intelligence—boy would I love to get my hands on one of those!—would give you the next best thing. I know this letter isn't like me, but I fear I have grown overly cautious in my adulthood. But don't let this letter fool you! I, the Great Lucca, still have a reputation to uphold! Whatever comes my way better watch out, because I am prepared for the worst. Don't worry for me Quel, I have lived an amazing life and if the worst befalls me I know whatever happens was meant to happen. Hopefully we are talking over tea at the moment and laughing about this.
Until we meet again,
Your friend(no matter which timeline it is!),
Sincerely,
Lucca Ashtear
P.S. If I do not see you before you read this letter and the worst has happened to me, please find my "little sister" Kid. I worry about her, she's entirely too much of a tomboy. She needs to realize what a beautiful woman she is! Thank you Quel, for everything.
Lucca had been a good friend of his and her apparent death threw Quel into a deep shock. It was with surprise that he felt tears streaming down his face. He hadn't realized he had been crying. Two of them managed to hit a corner of the letter before he tucked it safely away. Reaching into the capsule he pulled out a data disk that no doubt contained Lucca's brain scan. He held it to his chest and stood there a little more. It was always such a painful shock to find out someone he cared about had died. There had been too many to count in his long years and he knew there would probably be many more. But Lucca... she had been special, a luminous being who cared deeply for orphaned children and pursued amazing paths of science for the betterment of the world. Her death was a sin. Anger began to bubble forth from the pit of despair he had been in.
Conflict gripped his soul at that point. He was faced with two impossible choices: give up the hunt for Dusk and look for Kid instead, or leave the planet and continue hunting the Thief while Kid suffered through who knew what. He struggled with this inner turmoil for quite some time, until Saida shook his shoulder gently. Looking up he was shocked to discover the sun was setting: he had been fighting with himself for most of the afternoon.
"It's time to return to the city Quel," she said gently. "We need to rest and plan on what to do next."
He had made his choice long ago and wouldn't turn aside now when they were so close. He would return to Chrono when this quest was over, or failing that, send someone in his stead. But he refused to fail. Kid could last another year he hoped. Couldn't she? Well she'd have to at any rate. It was in this frame of mind that he tried to find a new way to track down the Thief. Lucca's brain scan wouldn't be able to help them until they could activate it inside a computer. Until then they had to track Dusk down on their own. On board the Yahosun Quel brought up a large three dimensional map of the Circle for them to ponder as they all discussed paths along which the Thief was traveling.
He was staying in the Mid Ring of the Circle, moving from planet to planet. But which planets possessed moon gods or goddesses? Quel was uncertain he knew of any besides the ones that had already been kidnapped. He also knew in his bones there were still other deities of the moon that were in danger and targets of Dusk, though he himself couldn't think of any.
It was Dong Dong who hypothesized he was going in a circle within the Circle, making a ring of some sort. Once they had that figured out, which wasn't hard for them all to see. From there they hit another roadblock: which planets bore moon deities on them? A search on the Circle's extranet, a Circle wide version of the internet that was highly staticky in places of strong interference, revealed nothing either.
It was then, amid their desultory discussions, that a horrible realization dawned on Quel.
"I know where we must go," he said into the silent galley.
"Where?" Saida asked a few moments later when Quel wasn't more forthcoming.
"To a dead and forgotten world," he said cryptically.
"Yes, but where exactly?" Saida said impatiently.
He was clearly debating what to tell them, or not tell them. But he finally sighed and made sure he had everyone's attention before continuing.
"We will have to go to what passes for my homeworld."
"Is that all?" Chuldo asked in confusion. "Why is that bad?"
Saida gave him a stare.
"What?" Chuldo asked in surprise. Then he remembered how Quel had described his homeworld. "Oh..."
Quel gave them a ghost of a smile. "Soon you all will have a better picture of my unspoken past. What you see will be hard to take in."
Without another word he got up and went to the bridge to prep the ship for takeoff. Ten minutes later Saida joined him in the copilot's seat. He reflected she was getting comfortable in it, always traveling with him from world to world. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. She didn't say anything for many minutes and just watched as he warmed the engines up, made sure the ship's bubble was airtight and the life support systems were operational.
Finally, though, she broke her silence. "Where are we going Quel?" she asked.
He turned and looked into her luminous orange eyes the color of a deep amber and told her the truth, without hesitation this time. "To planet Kotimaa, the world I was raised on."
"Do you really think we'll not be able to handle what we find there?" she half teased, half asked in trepidation.
He looked at her. "Only if you don't understand what it is you are seeing."
She didn't quite know how to respond to that.