Chapter Sixty-seven
Astral Stones
The king took the Stone from Ari'yasa's hand. He turned it over a few times, then waved his hand over it, an arcane spark glistening in his eye. "Interesting. This seems to be..." He looked back at Ari'yasa. "You have elemental blood in you, yes?"
"Yes, I'm an air genasi."
"This appears to be one of the elemental Astral Stones. It was said that they were lost from time. They were given as gifts to the Ashari people, the leaders of the Druidic people who guard the gates to the elemental planes. But most of them believe that they were lost to time.
"But from what I know..." He flipped forward a few pages in his notebook. "Yes, they were originally created by the deities and an ancient council of wizards and sorcerers and clerics to separate the planes from the other planes. They can be used to cause rifts and tears in the Astral Plane and the Divine Gate, which is why they were given to the leaders of them, so that they would not be abused and misused. But it appears that this one has..."
He flipped back a few pages. "Yes, my research says that the Stones were either given by lineage or somehow the Stones chose their keeper. Do you ever remember, as a child, being given something like this before, and then did it do anything? Did it glow? Did it change?"
"No, it was given to me by the druids. I like, passed some kind of weird test. The Stone chose me."
"That is what the legend says, that the Stone is either passed through bloodline or through another ancient tradition of the Stone choosing them."
"It was like, seven years ago that I was given this Stone," Ari'yasa said," and ever since then I've been trying to figure out what it is. All I know is that it's extremely rare and powerful and I'm supposed to guard it."
"That also would be true. The keepers of the Stone were also its guardians, to keep them from being used for evil purposes. But this is only one of four. In order to do this, the other three Stones would need to be collected."
"Do you think your mom has the other three Stones?" Ari'yasa asked Sephra. "I feel like a huge target was just painted on my back."
"I don't think she would," King Moonfeather said. "The Stones are required to close the rifts, not open them."
"But she could collect them to stop it from being stopped," Sephra said.
"Possibly," the king said.
"If she's smart enough!" Jörgen said with a chuckle.
"She may have her minions out protecting or searching for them as well to stop the healing process," Melima said.
"I imagine now, more than ever, I should not be showing the Stone to anyone else." Ari'yasa had stiffened up a little bit.
"Is there greater protection you can provide, Dad, for that Stone?" Melima asked.
"Well, by themselves they are relatively inert. They do not have an innate power by themselves, when gathered together and used in this counteraction ritual, this closing of the gate, that's when they become powerful. So, until then, I would definitely say you'd want to keep it secret.
"But the materials and things that are needed for the rituals I believe she is trying to do are rare, even more rare items. Nine are needed in total, three for each ritual. The tear of a celestial being, the blood of a demon, there are needed three soul stones from beings of pure heart, a large amount of pure diamond dust, the tooth of an ancient dragon that is still alive, a drop of her own blood, some water from the Water Elemental Plane, a unicorn horn, the heart of an earth elemental— very rare and hard to find things that probably would have taken a couple of centuries to find."
"Like, five hundred years?" Ari'yasa asked.
"Possibly, yes," the king said with a grimace.
"So..." Melima started.
"We're doomed!" Jörgen exclaimed.
"...we don't have a century to find these things." Melima finished.
"I could die in like, five years!" Jörgen said.
The king shook his head. "These are the things she would have needed to do these rituals on the three different planes." He pulled a couple of pages from his notebook. "But I believe I have found the proper ritual to counteract this."
"Do we know which objects would have been used in the Feywild?" I asked.
"I believe it would have been water from the Water Elemental Plane, the heart of an earth elemental, and the unicorn horn."
"But we need to find the Stones," Melima said.
"We do need to find the Stones." He handed the Stone back to Ari'yasa. "If this one is from the Air Ashari, then you would need to find the three other Stones from the Fire Ashari, the Water Ashari, and the Earth Ashari. It is said that the Air Ashari kept their Stone in an amulet of some kind, or was kept inside a necklace of sorts, which is why I believe the Stone is loose. But the other Stones I believe were made into other things, and maybe we can do a little more research, but I believe they were put into other things like a sword, a gauntlet of some sort, and a headband of some kind by the different tribes. But we would need to do some more research or find someone who is of even more ancient knowledge than I have."
"Does that exist?" Ari'yasa asked.
Sephra gasped and nudged Ari'yasa. "That guy! The one we owe favors to!"
Aurel had mentioned he was not as old as King Moonfeather, and had been hesitant to talk to us about it. The king had probably discussed at length with the dragon already. But another being we'd met before came to my mind. "Would a gynosphinx potentially have that knowledge?"
He turned to me with a cocked head, curious. "How do you know of those creatures?"
"We met one!" Melima said.
"We kind of ticked one off. It's all good now." I replied.
"We solved its riddle," Melima said. We had, and we owed a lot of that to Naidaroe. I was sad that she had to go away so soon.
"You truly have had some amazing adventures."
"You don't know the half of it!" Melima said.
"Well, if you know where this creature is, that would be an excellent source of knowledge," the king said. I remembered too, it had asked us what we most desired before it opened the door for us to find Kima. Maybe it could help us get to the Stones.
"I do not know where these artifacts currently lie," the king said, "but if there is a way to find them, that would be one way to find them. The other thing you would want to do is travel to the other Ashari tribes." He nodded towards Ari'yasa. "Hopefully with your friend's help, and her connections, you might be able to find or be transported to those locations and speak with the leaders in those locations. They may know where the artifacts currently reside."
"Do you have a portal?" Melima asked. "We spent a long time getting back to this continent."
"If there is a particular place you wish to go, there are ways we can get you there quicker from here. I know it's not the easiest getting here, because of the protections we have in place, but we can definitely be able to get you to different places if need be."
"Can someone learn that?" Melima asked. "Is there anyone close, Dad, to acquiring this skill of teleportation, so we don't have to rely on other people?"
"Um, well... There are some ancient arcane spells that are known." He looked at Jörgen. "I'm not sure where you are back up to in your training and your memory, but there are some spells that could possibly be available given some time and training."
"Do you have any spells to help him with that? Any scrolls or something? Meditation?" Melima asked.
"Um, we might be able to provide one scroll... I think that might be able to be procured. Something that is a single use so that you could—if need be—escape back to a particular location."
"Not only that," Melima said, "but something to heal his memory?"
"Uh, that..." The king gave a nervous chuckle.
"I've lost my mind!" Jörgen said.
"...that is something that is just going to take—from what we know, and from I've heard from Allura Visoren—that is probably just going to take some time. Just because of the nature of the accident, it's just going to take some time.
"For the moment, I believe the best course of action is to find these Stones. Luckily, you have one of the four, so it seems that you have some choices to make. I think that maybe tomorrow, or maybe later today, I will speak with some of my other researchers in the library in the city and see if we can come up with any more possible information about these ancient Stones, to see where the best place to start might be. Whether to start with the Fire Ashari, the Water Ashari, or the Earth Ashari."
"We should also discuss what to do about this mage," Melima said.
"That would be a good source of information," the king agreed.
"What to do, where to put him..." Melima continued.
"Yeah..." I said, "I don't really want to let him out on accident."
"Tell me more about this orb that you have. How did you trap him in it?" The king seemed really interested. Of course he would be, he was a wizard.
"Um, well..." Melima started. "We don't understand it fully..."
"He touches it," Jörgen said, "and he goes in."
"...I've been inside of it," Melima continued, "and that is an experience I never want to relive again. From what I remember, I touched it, and I completely lost all sense of time. I lost all sense of physical realm contact and was just inside my mind for what felt like a split second, but I had been in there for several minutes. They were able to bring me back out of the orb by having it touch something or someone else."
"I have a theory for a plan," Sephra said. "But I have a question. Is there any kind of locating spell that I can try to locate my mother? And I can use my connection to my mom to find out what she has and what she does know and report it back to you guys to stop whatever she's done."
"Well, unfortunately," the king answered, "One of the things that— When we were off adventuring, one of the items that she found was a ring that— She found many things. She had several rings, and I believe she gave you one of hers. It was one of her favorites, to hide her appearance. One of the other rings that she had was a ring that made it so that no one could spy on her, which is why it has been so hard because even I cannot—"
"But she has her blood in me. Isn't there some kind of blood spell that I could potentially use?"
"I know there are some magics, but you have to already be close in order to find the thing that you are looking for. With the ring that she possesses, it blocks her from all of the divine magics of scrying and being able to look at a person from a distance and spy on them without being close. There are some spells— there is a spell that allows you to locate an object, but you have to be within about a thousand feet or so of it in order to locate it exactly. So, unfortunately, there is no way really—that I know of—to access, or to really know exactly where she is at any given point."
"There was a man that we met on the way up," Sephra said, "coming to you. Very mysterious. He said that he knows you and so a few of us exchanged things for favors. What was his name, guys?"
"Aurel Goldleaf," I answered.
"Oh, Goldleaf, that's right," Sephra said.
"Yes," the king affirmed. "He is an old friend of mine. Yes."
"Would he happen to know a good spell?"
"Or have any good magical items?" Melima asked.
"Well, again, that is the problem. The ring itself is... There's not really a counteract to that object. The whole point is so that someone can hide from being found. But, I think the more important thing is now finding these objects so that we can stop her from whatever she's doing. Once we have these, then we can locate her and find what she wants and possibly stop her. Either through persuasion or force."
"I'm assuming she's a sorceress," Sephra said.
"Oh, yes. Of course," the king replied.
"So, these Stones," I said. "Would the other Ashari tribes be reluctant to let us have those?"
"Well, to be honest, because I don't know where they are you'd have to talk to the leadership to find out where they are, because they might have been lost and they might only have a vague idea of where they are, or they might have to— I don't know, the leadership may want you to prove yourselves in order to get the Stone, I don't know."
"Can I have a minute to talk to you after we're finished here?" Sephra asked. Now that it was no longer a secret, I was sure she wanted to talk to him about her parentage.
He agreed, but asked if we had any other questions about what was going on. I did. "Has anyone determined if our other Elven abilities are being affected? Like, do charming spells affect us now? Or would magic now be able to put us to sleep, now that we have to sleep?"
The king thought a moment. "Well, I personally haven't had anyone try a charm effect or try to put me to sleep, but— I mean, it is a possibility. But I don't think that would possibly happen unless she's able to complete the other pieces of the ritual. And I fear that if she is able to complete all three... One, she'll be able to unleash Loltha into the world, but two, most of the Elven abilities will be lost, the Fey ancestry and the kind of abilities and what came with that. But for now, it just seems to be the trancing ability and our ability to connect with the Eternity Tree is the main thing that is being affected. Unfortunately, our connection to the Tree and how it affects our abilities hasn't been studied much, if at all."
"Do you think unity between the elves has anything to do with it, or do you think it's totally separate? Because what I keep getting from Bahamut is something about unity. And obviously, rifts in the planes is an issue, and is disunifying, but..."
"The nature of the gods is unknown. A lot of them can have abilities that we do not, to be able to see and foresee the future. But this... I imagine that creating unity between the elves has been much wanted for centuries, but has been not as easily come by here in the mortal plane. But I believe that you yourselves, as a party, as adventurers, doing this together may—with your unique abilities—may be able to conquer this and we can gain some peace—at least between the nations—and we can maybe even open borders from what we don't have now. But I believe that it is in the best interest of everyone to work towards unity. I don't necessarily believe it has anything to do with the magics involved. I mean, other than unifying the four Stones together to do it."
"Where do we start in finding these Stones?" Jörgen asked. Ari'yasa also expressed interest.
"Well, I believe I can reach out to the— I have a connection I can get. I don't know them directly, but through one of my friends—one of my associates—I believe that I can get in contact with the Earth Ashari and see what they possibly know. It may take them a day or two to get back to me—even using magical means—but I believe with some research, and now that we know that you," he said, pointing to Ari'yasa, "have the Air Stone, I believe that we can locate the others."
"What about the mage in our ball?" Melima asked.
"Well, it would definitely be a good source of information, but I don't know exactly, if what you say about the time dilation inside, I'm guessing only a few moments would have passed by inside for him, and I'm guessing he'd be a bit upset about where he is and that he's been captured."
"Well, we want to keep him captured," Melima replied, "but we also want to have our ball back. We use it often in situations like that, so if we can liberate our ball, but somehow keep him captured... That's my question, Dad. Do we keep him in the ball and sacrifice that tool of ours? Or do we have a way to keep him as secure as we do in the ball?"
"Do you have a prison for magic people?" Jörgen asked.
"Keeping magical captives is hard, for the mere fact that depending on how powerful they are, it's fairly simple to escape a regular prison. But if you are willing to wait around a few days, I think we may have somewhere we can keep him safe. I know someone who can cast the spell to get him out, though we may need a few people to keep him in the room to keep him from trying to escape or casting something else to try to injure those who are there."
No one else had any questions, so we got up to leave. I lingered a moment to talk to the king to the side. "As you've been able to tell, I'm of the Lussanen line, but because my mother disappeared I don't know anything— I've just gleaned a little of what's happened the past fifty to a hundred years or so. Do you know what happened to the Lussanens, if any of them are still alive? Besides Tiriana at the Tree?"
He answered in a low tone, meant only for me. "The things in the Wood Elves, we don't get a lot of information on, and things were very hush-hush. From what I have learned is that the Lussanens, most of them are in hiding of some kind. I do not know where, but most of them when the coup began escaped from the city. I don't know specifics. I know one or two of them were killed—a better word is probably 'assassinated'—why, I do not know exactly, other than the other royal families wanted more power. They didn't like the structure they had there, they wanted a council rather than a matriarchy. If we get more time later, maybe when this is all closer to being done with, I can talk to you more about that."
Sephra stayed behind to have her conversation with her father, and the rest of us waited outside the closed doors. It wouldn't do to have her wandering around the palace by herself now that her disguise for the day was gone. The conversation took a while, but I was willing to wait, I knew what it was like to finally get to talk to someone about your family.
Twenty minutes later, the doors opened again and Sephra came out. Everything seemed normal, though the king warned us that Sephra shouldn't leave the grounds for the day, and should probably stay inside the palace. He called over a nearby guard. "Please inform the internal guards here that this woman here is fine to be within the palace and is not a threat."
The guard nodded and left, and we returned to Melima's room.