Chapter 2: Lemuria
When going through Tolbi and heading for Babi's residence after asking some of the townsfolk about its location, Lune wasn't really expecting anything special about it. He had guessed that, despite the difference in wealth and size between his hometown and Tolbi, their ruler's home would be pretty much like any other in Tolbi, as the same was true for Vale and their elder. Of course, the elder had his sons and grandsons living under the same roof - one of those grandsons being little Garet, he mused to himself -, so their home was made big enough to accommodate all of them. From what Kraden had told him, Babi didn't have any family, but he said that his fellow scholars lived there. He also mentioned something about his home being guarded by soldiers, which Lune didn't quite understand at that time. He would have to go with what Kraden ended up telling him at the end.
'I'll apparently understand when I see it, according to what he said, but...' Lune thought to himself as he went up a staircase that led to a hill standing higher than the rest of Tolbi. A couple of trees placed at the sides of the last steps blocked his view of some kind of structure behind their leaves. When he reached the end of the staircase, he could see that the difference between Babi and Vale's elder was much, much bigger than he thought.
The structure he had seen glimpses of when he was climbing up was, indeed, a house. But it was a really large, multi-story building, several times bigger than anything he had seen down in Tolbi, so Lune felt that the correct term for it would be a 'palace', which he had only read about in stories. The roof was painted teal, the walls were made of gray stone and the windows' frames were golden colored. Each of the building's corners were replaced with observation towers, making it look even more impressive. The front doors were made of oak wood, but were painted the same color as the walls, probably for aesthetic purposes.
There were also two men standing by said doors, both wearing similar leather armor with an iron helmet that partially covered their faces. They each carried a spear as well, with the bladeless end touching the ground while they kept their weapons in a vertical position. Maybe these were the 'soldiers' Kraden was talking about, Lune thought.
It was then that he made a short bow in apology, he had been standing in front of the palace and the men, just staring without saying a word. One of the soldiers had even raised an eyebrow, probably wondering what was wrong with the Adept. "S-Sorry, I didn't mean to stare." Lune said.
That same soldier stepped ahead, addressing him. "Are you from outside? You seem a bit lost." He asked.
"Yeah, I... I was looking for the residence of Lord Babi." Lune replied.
"Oh?" The soldier blinked, surprised by the response. He pointed back at the palace. "As a matter of fact, this is where Lord Babi lives..." He trailed off, lowering his tone. "But that's strange... I'm pretty sure he wasn't expecting a visit today."
"I was sent here by Kraden. Just a moment..." He quickly started rummaging through his backpack, pulling out a small note that the scholar had put amongst the scrolls. He showed it to the soldier, who took it and gave it a quick look.
It didn't take him long to nod. "Ah, yeah, this is definitely Master Kraden's handwriting." He gave the note back to Lune. "Please, follow me inside." The other soldier opened the doors, allowing them to head on in.
As the first soldier and Lune entered the building, the latter took a look around as the former led the way. The palace looked as big inside as it did from the outside, with wide hallways decorated by stone statues and various other ornaments carved in the walls. After going up some stairs and reaching the end of another hallway, the soldier opens a door at the end of it, where a long, red carpet shows them the way to the center of a big room. There, a man was resting on a throne, observing the two as they entered.
This man had medium-length purple hair and beard, dark red eyes and wore a black trench coat with golden lapels. The soldier took a few steps forward, kneeling down before speaking. "My Lord, this young man here was sent to you in behalf of Master Kraden."
The man stood up to take a better look at Lune. His neutral expression didn't seem to faze as he nodded and glanced back at the soldier. "You can go back to your post." The soldier stood back up and left the room, closing the door behind him.
During that short exchange, Lune pulled out the scrolls he had been given by Kraden, but before thinking of stepping ahead like the soldier did, he noticed that the man was already in front of him. Despite not being as tall as the Adept, there was something about the man that infused respect. "Are you from Vale?" He asked.
"Oh, uh, yeah." Lune replied, confused by the question. "Why?"
Instead of answering, the man extended his hand for a handshake, smiling a bit. "Glad to meet you. I'm Babi." He said as Lune shook his hand. "Kraden said he would send a friend once he settled down in your town. Thank you for taking him in."
"Ah, it's no problem. And I'm honored to meet you, Lord Babi. My name is Lune." The Adept introduced himself as he handed out the scrolls to Babi. "These are what he told me to bring you."
"You have my thanks." He said, opening one of the scrolls. As he did, a small note fell to the floor, which Lune recognized as the one he showed the soldiers to allow him in. "Hm?" Babi had already noticed the note and picked it up to read its contents. "What could this be?"
"Oh, Kraden told me to show that note to the soldiers in case they didn't allow me to enter." Lune said. "I guess he told you of my coming here, but did not specify when you should expect me, so he wrote that to avoid confusion." After a pause, he added. "...That's what I'm guessing, at least."
"Well, you've got a pretty good intuition then, I must say. It is very much like Kraden to do that." Babi chuckled, slightly amused as he flipped the note to check the back. "...Oh."
"What is it, Lord Babi?" Lune asked, perplexed. He had read that note when Kraden gave it to him, and he was pretty sure he hadn't written anything on the back. Instead of answering, Babi folded up the note and stuffed it in his coat's pocket.
"It's nothing important." He eventually stated with a disinterested shrug. "More importantly..." He pointed at the scrolls in his hand. "Before we take a look at these, would you be interested in having a little chat with me about Kraden's research so far?"
"Yeah, no problem! I have studied with him for a while. But..." Lune was a bit hesitant about what he was about to say, but he eventually spoke. "...in exchange, could you tell me more about that land you visited? About... Lemuria?"
Babi blinked a few times before answering. "Hmm, Kraden must've put a lot of trust in you if he told you about something like that." Regardless, he nodded. "Alright, I'll tell you about Lemuria. But first, let us grab a seat." He walked to the wall that stood right of the throne, where there was a table with various chairs around it. On top of the table, there was a map of Angara, but not much could be seen from it after Babi put the scrolls over it. Both him and Lune took a seat on the same side of the table, but turned the chairs to face each other.
"Before we start, mind telling me how much Kraden told you about Lemuria? I don't want to bore you with things you may already know." Babi said with a tiny smirk.
Lune nodded and started to tell Tolbi's ruler about both his conversations with Kraden about Lemuria, and the ones about Alchemy.
Meanwhile, outside Babi's palace, a familiar blonde woman with a parasol stood on the building's roof, unnoticed by the few people that scouted the surroundings from the observation towers.
A small, unnatural gap in the roof delimited by purple ribbons allowed her to listen in on the conversation taking place in Babi's throne room. 'He might provide some fun after all.' She smiled as she observed and listened to the two, her gaze focusing both on Lune, and Babi's coat pocket where, unknown to both Adept and ruler, the note the latter had pocketed started glowing a faint purple just as the ruler struggled to remember something in his story. The woman, however, did notice the change. 'Curiouser and curiouser...' She tilted her head in a mix of puzzlement and amusement.
A few hours later, Babi was concluding his story about Lemuria.
"...And that's when I came back from Lemuria, taking two of their ships and the mystic draught with me." He finished.
"I see." Lune nodded slowly before realizing something. "Wait, two? How did you take two ships with you?"
Babi blinked a few times. "Huh? Oh..." His expression turned into a troubled one as he tried to remember. "Ah, right. Lunpa. I never told you about him, did I?"
"It's the first I hear of this Lunpa." Lune pondered.
"I guess... I should start from the beginning then. From before I came to Lemuria." Babi took a deep breath as he began to recall the events. "Before all that happened, he and I were good friends. He was known as Lunpa, the Righteous Thief. He collected treasures across the world, but he always made it look... honorable." A smile made its way onto Babi's face as he spoke.
"It sounds like he's a dear friend to you." The Adept commented with a smile to match Babi's.
"Yeah, he was-" Babi stopped abruptly, trying to remember something again. "...He is. Lunpa even founded a town named after him. In fact, it should still be on your map."
"Is that so...?" Lune muttered, taking out his map to take a look at it. "Where?"
Babi pointed at a dot northeast of Kalay. "This is it. Lunpa, named after its founder, the Righteous Thief. And I was on good terms with him back then."
"Amazing..." Lune said, before slowly folding up the map and putting it away. "So, what about this Lunpa and... Lemuria?"
"You see, there was a great flood a century ago, across the Great Eastern Sea." Babi explained. "It claimed many lives, and many more were forced to flee from their homes by boat to save themselves. Lunpa and I shared the same boat that time."
"Oh? Did something happen then?" Lune suspected the story would go like that more or less.
"Indeed. The waves and currents took us deep into the Eastern Sea, and by chance, we found ourselves in the middle of the Sea of Time... where Lemuria was." Babi said. "That's how we reached Lemuria."
"Oh... I think I sort of get what you wanted to say about when you left Lemuria." Lune said slowly. "You each... used a different Lemurian ship when you eventually departed, right?"
Instead of answering right away, Babi seemed to be thinking about his answer for a while. "...Yeah, that's exactly what happened." He replied. "Sorry, I think I forgot about that for a moment. I wonder why..."
"Lord Babi...?" Lune asked, slightly concerned.
Instead of answering right away, Babi stared blankly at the wall for a few seconds before blinking twice. "...Hm?" His gaze turned to Lune, as if suddenly remembering he was there. "Oh, my apologies. I was... reminiscing about the past for a bit." After a short pause, he continued. "Yes, both Lunpa and I left Lemuria with two ships. After we got back, Lunpa entrusted me with his ship and went back to his town. Right now, one of the ships is docked in Lalivero, far on the eastern side of the continent. The other one is hidden in a cave near Gondowan Cave, which can be found if you hug the coast of Karagol Sea heading east from Tolbi."
"Hmm..." The Adept stared intently at his map, trying to calculate the distance between Tolbi and the small mountain range east of Karagol Sea, where he assumed that cave would be. "The ship I took traversed the sea from north to south in three days... So if one were to walk around the coast, it would take..."
"Around a week and a half." Babi finished for him. "Considering that the Karagol Sea is longer from east to west than it is from north to south and that it would take longer to reach there on foot than by boat, maybe even two weeks."
"That would be an awfully long walk." Lune commented.
"Indeed." Babi nodded, then his face lightened up, as if remembering something. "...Ah, please wait here." He said, walking back to the throne and into a door in the wall behind it, which Lune completely missed when he first entered the throne room. Moments later, Babi came back out with a small box in his hands.
"What's that?" The Adept asked.
Babi opened it, revealing a pitch black orb in it. "This small trinket is the key to controlling a Lemurian ship, and it can only be activated by someone who can use psynergy. Without it, the ship cannot sail."
"Oooh..." Lune stared with amazement at the black orb. 'This must be the technology based on Alchemy that Kraden told me about.' "I wonder how it would be to sail on one of those ships..." He unconsciously muttered.
"Well, you can find out if you wish."
Lune broke out of his little trance and brought his attention back to Babi. "Huh? What?"
"Tell me, Lune..." Babi said. "Would you like to visit Lemuria?"
A few weeks of travel later, Lune was standing in what looked like a dead end cave near Gondowan Cave.
"This must be it." He muttered, carefully inspecting the rocky wall until he noticed a slightly-out-of-place stone that looked much more round than the others.
He tried pushing it as if it were a button, triggering some sort of hidden mechanism that resonated around the cave, as if something heavy was being dragged around. Eventually, the stone wall on Lune's right slowly sunk into the ground, revealing a new path.
This one looked man-made, as the walls and ceiling were covered with bricks, making a semicircular shape, and various torches had been placed on the walls as the path went on further ahead.
Shortly after entering, the stone wall was raised back up behind Lune. "Well, there's no going back now." He muttered with a soft chuckle.
Admittedly, he felt it was nice to have this little extra adventure to go on instead of just going back to Vale, but the circumstances that led to it still lingered in his mind as he walked through the dimly lit road.
A few minutes after the conversation that took place in Babi's palace, Lune was listening to Tolbi's ruler while holding the black orb in his hands.
"So, that is all you need to know." He finished.
"Hmm..." Lune thought for a while before speaking. "Are you really sure I can keep the Lemurian ship, Lord Babi?"
"Of course you can!" Babi laughed. "It's a small price for me to pay in exchange for you going to Lemuria for me and doing that little favor in my stead."
"I guess so..."
Before he could think about his conversation with Babi any further, Lune was already at the end of the tunnel.
"At least I wrote a letter to Vale telling them about this new journey... I hope Isaac and the others won't mind too much." He muttered to himself with a small sigh as he exited the tunnel and found himself in a small pier inside a partially flooded cave. There was an opening beyond the body of water, which would likely lead to the sea, Lune thought. But that was not what caught his attention at first.
In the pier, there was a ship unlike the one he had used to get to Tolbi. This one was smaller in general, so it was probably built to only fit a small group, instead of being used to carry a large number of people, like the Tolbi ship. The bowsprit was also strangely shaped; instead of being a simple pole, it looked more like the head of a dragon, a mythical creature he only read about in books.
But the most shocking aspect of the ship was that it had no visible sails, only a top supported by what he could only describe as a really thick, rectangular mast, with rope ladders on each side that led up to this crow's nest.
Lune took a few minutes to thoroughly explore the ship, both outside and inside. The ship had a few cabins that could hold at least four people for a long trip, as well as a well-maintained storage area. "This ship has supplies to last a long journey..." Lune muttered to himself. "I should have more than enough here to last a trip to Lemuria and back, maybe five trips!"
Moving on, he walked deeper into the ship's interior, reaching the bottom docks and walking through a lone hallway, leading to a large room. "This should be the room where I put the black orb..." Lune pondered aloud as he approached the room, his voice unexpectedly echoing a bit in the hallway.
Then he heard it. A high-pitched squeak coming from the room ahead.
Lune frowned. 'Vermin...?' He cautiously approached the room after hearing the noise, taking a moment to scan the surroundings for any movement.
The room was dim, but Lune saw there seemed to be black lines along the ground and walls, all converging on a single pedestal in the middle of the room, with a slot on the top that seemed like it would fit the black orb.
'This must be it.' Lune thought as he scanned the room one more time, but found no trace of whatever made the sound, so he decided to put the black orb on the pedestal.
After a couple seconds, the black orb seemed to faintly glow, and the lines that converged on the pedestal started to glow golden, quickly illuminating the room.
"Aaaah, too bright!" He heard something squeak out from behind the pedestal. Suddenly two little creatures floated from behind it, looking around the room in a panic as the ship slowly hummed to life, then froze upon meeting Lune's confused stare.
The two creatures were fairly small, one with brown shades and deep blue eyes, the other with red colors and teal eyes. The latter floated closer to the former as the brown creature awkwardly waved with its fin-like tail. "U-Uhhh... hello there!"
Still perplexed, Lune couldn't help but return the gesture with a wave of his own. "You're... floating, and talking..."
"Ahaha, y-yes, we sure do that…" The brown one nodded nervously. "Look, uh, we just sort of got stranded here, I swear we weren't trying to steal the ship or anything... please don't tell Babi!"
Lune raised an eyebrow. "I sure hope not... he gifted me this ship, I wouldn't want to-"
Suddenly, the red one spoke up from behind the brown one. "Oh! You're an Adept, then?" They asked with a tinge of excitement, waving their flame-like tail around.
"Well, yeah... how did you know?" He asked the red creature.
"Oh... you see, this ship can only be piloted with psynergy!" The red creature seemed to puff out their chest with pride for a moment, slowly floating a bit closer to the pedestal. "The orb you brought here is what channels psynergy into the ship to make it sail through the seas!"
Lune nodded slowly. That matched with what Babi had told him. "You seem to know a lot about this stuff... what exactly are you?"
Both creatures made a tiny "Oh" and went quiet for a bit, before the brown one spoke up. "We are Djinn. We're entities aligned with the four elements of Weyard. I'm a Venus Djinni, my name is Pewter." Pewter then motioned to the red one. "And they're a Mars Djinni, their name is Glare." After the introduction, Glare bowed their head.
Lune nodded with a tiny smile. "I'm Lune. Nice to meet you, Pewter and Glare." The two Djinn nodded, but remained somewhat quiet afterwards. This prompted Lune to ask. "Is... something wrong?"
Glare was the one to speak up this time. "It's just... we have been separated from our friends for a very long time... There were a lot more Djinn like us once, but one day, the others just... vanished without a trace."
Pewter continued the tale from there. "We were visiting Lemuria at the time, the two of us. One moment, we felt the connection with all our fellow Djinn, strong as ever... the next..." They seemed to shudder. "It was gone... like they never existed... We were both so scared, we have been hiding in this Lemurian ship ever since..."
Lune reached out and gently patted both Djinn, who seemed to relax a bit from his touch. "I'm sorry to hear you had such a rough time. Hmm..." He paused for a moment as he thought of something. "You know, they could still be out there... What do you say we partner up and search for them together?"
Both Djinn's eyes lit up at the offer. "R-Really?" Glare asked, their tone hopeful.
"I want to look for Lemuria, so we could be sailing for a while. Maybe we will find your friends along the way!" Lune grinned.
Both Djinn twirled in glee and floated around Lune's head. "Thank you so much, Lune!" Pewter beamed. After a moment, they settled on each of Lune's shoulders. "Actually... we could teach you a few things in return! We Djinn can bolster an Adept's psynergy!"
Lune arched an eyebrow, curious. "Oh, is that so?"
"Yep!" Glare nodded enthusiastically. "By joining forces, we can do exactly that! We just need to..." After a pause, the both glowed their respective colors, and seemed to go into Lune's body.
"Whoa...!" He exclaimed, surprised. After checking his body for any trace of them, he heard a voice in his mind.
'Did that surprise you?' Glare projected in his mind. 'We can merge with Adepts like this!'
"Wow... that's a bit weird, but also pretty cool." Lune said, and after a moment, he felt his psynergy flare up just a bit, empowered by the Djinn. To test it out, he opened his palm in front of him and conjured a tiny spell, producing a small geode enveloped in flames, finding it much easier to concentrate thanks to the Djinn within him.
'That is... incredible.' Pewter observed after staying quiet for a little while after entering Lune. 'I wasn't sure what to believe when I felt your psynergetic alignment, but now I'm almost certain...'
"What do you mean?" Lune inquired.
'You're a Sol Adept, aren't you?' Pewter asked. 'You could control both Venus and Mars psynergy before you met us, didn't you?'
"I... yeah. Is that what I am? I've never heard of a Sol Adept before..." Lune observed the flaming geode floating on his palm, rotating it in the air slowly.
'You don't see Adepts able to control two elements often, even when their parents are of different alignment...' Pewter continues. 'I have only heard of such Adepts twice, and that was many centuries ago!'
"Wow..." Is all Lune could say. He thought it was weird that he could wield both Earth and Fire psynergy, and even the people back in Vale thought nothing of it and figured he would simply show more proficiency with one over the other and become a proper Venus or Mars Adept after a few years.
'That is just perfect, then!' Glare chimed in. 'A Sol Adept with a Mars Djinni and Venus Djinni, I'm sure we can help Lune even more!'
Lune chucked at that, dispersing his psynergy at last and turning around to leave the black orb room. "I'm sure we'll get along well! Now, let's start working on getting this ship to sail. We have a city and a lot of friends to find!"
'Yeah!' Both Pewter and Glare cheered, ready for adventure.
Back in Babi's palace, the ruler sat alone in his throne, observing the note he had pocketed during his talk with Lune. The back of it had a strange, eye-shaped glyph written on it, and it was glowing faintly. It seemed like little more than a meaningless scribble when they were talking, but he was feeling something strange from it while looking at it now. Psynergy, maybe? And the strokes making out the eye were nothing like Kraden's usual drawing style, so who could have drawn it? Lune himself?
Then, suddenly, the glyph stopped glowing, and a realization hit Babi. Lunpa never returned with him from Lemuria, and he only took one ship from Lemuria, the one docked in Lalivero. He didn't quite remember how he got the second one, but he distinctly recalled having a hidden dock be built close to Gondowan Cave... Babi frowned, he had wanted to keep hold of the ship a little longer until he found its exact origin. But what was done was done, he thought. Perhaps Lune could find Lemuria for him.
To be continued...