Disclaimer: Kirby belongs to Nintendo and HAL Laboratory.
As soon as everyone finished their slices of cake, they all filed onto the designated dance floor. However, Meta Knight simply stood on the sidelines while Vesa stood next to Fransisca near the door. They watched as the band leader of the Deedly Dees raised his arm into the air.
"Heya," the Waddle Dee announced, "are you ready to party hard, wanya?!"
The Squeakers jumped up and down with excitement. Kirby stood on the tips of his feet while Elfilin did a happy backflip.
"Then let's get rolling, wanya!" the Waddle Dee guitarist proclaimed.
With that, the Deedly Dees began playing their music, thus most of the guests began to dance. Magolor let out a little sigh, the party wasn't exactly how he had pictured it in his head but it has been mostly okay so far. Honestly, that was just poor planning on his part, not really intentional at all. Marx might have noticed it, though, and just chose to ignore it. Still, the newlyweds stepped in and danced together.
All the while, Vesa scanned her surroundings for a brief moment before turning her head to her left.
"Hey," Vesa called, "Fransisca?"
Fransisca blinked twice before she turned her gaze towards Vesa.
"Yes?" the ice mage paused while she was fiddling with a sphere made of ice she was using to keep her hands busy, waiting for things to start wrapping up.
Vesa raised her index finger.
"If I remember correctly," Vesa reminded, "you mentioned something about a larger fragment of Halcandra being pulled into an alternate dimension, right?"
"Yes, I believe that came up before," Fransisca nodded, "why do you ask?"
Vesa watched as Fransisca started making the ice ball in her hands float, the shape turning into a sharp cone, growing longer and thinner, before morphing into a more spiky sphere, and then something almost akin to a saw-blade.
"If it's not too much to ask," Vesa requested, "would you mind showing me around this place?"
"Yes, it's fine," Fransisca sighed, "come with me."
The ice in her hands dispersed into water particles, seeming to vanish in an instant.
"I'll show you around a bit," the ice mage continued.
Vesa followed Fransisca close behind as they left the reception hall.
"Does this building have data archives of some sort?" Vesa asked.
Fransisca paused for a moment.
"Hmm, I imagine it does. I can't say what condition they would be in, though. It's been quite a while and they're unlikely to be enchanted," she frowned, "we can try to pull something from them, however. They might have non-technology based storage, but I'm not entirely certain."
Vesa tilted her head slightly.
"Unlikely?" Vesa paused, "what do you mean by that?"
Fransisca pressed her forehead into her hand.
"Most mages stripped their enchantments from anything they worked on before they were exiled, as they were angry and spiteful," Fransisca clarified, "plenty simply had anti-tampering mechanisms in their magic spells that they triggered and caused whatever machine it was working on to misfire, destroy itself or simply stop working. Many magical defenses were broken as well. The only magic that remained functional was magic cast by dead mages or mages who were weak and submissive enough to the technocracy's rule. It's no wonder that Galacta Knight managed to destroy the planet, it probably took the sacrifice of hundreds of their mages to properly seal him away again."
Vesa took a deep breath as she clasped her hands together.
"Then lead the way," Vesa suggested.
Fransisca spent a moment of silence in deep thought. Vesa nervously shuffled her feet while she waited. After a minute, Fransisca returned her gaze to the human.
"Very well. We are going to need to go deeper however. What you are looking for is considered classified information. Before we go, we should grab Zan, she is good at disabling automated defenses, which might trigger if we go there."
Vesa immediately nodded in agreement and sprinted towards the door to the reception hall. Pushing the door open and peeking inside, she scanned the room in search of Zan Partizanne. She spotted the thunder mage in a grumpy expression as Daroach leaned over a counter, acting suave as he made attempts to flirt with her.
"Hey!" Vesa shouted, waving her hand, "hey, Zan!"
Zan let out a sigh of relief before she zipped across the reception hall in a bolt of electrical energy, appearing before Vesa and Fransisca.
"Yes?" Zan raised her eyebrows.
Vesa gave a slight bow.
"Fran and I are about to look for some data archives in this capital building," Vesa explained, "would you like to come along?"
Zan huffed as her face reddened.
"Yes," Zan nodded, "honestly, anything to get out of here. I'm…not used to social interaction of this variety."
Vesa smiled softly.
"Thank you!"
"I should thank you, though," Zan pointed out, "Daroach's smooth talk was giving me a bit of a headache."
With that, Vesa followed Fransisca and Zan Partizanne down the corridor.
"I'll take point," Zan barked, "Fran you watch out for any traps that trigger behind us."
Fransisca straightened her back.
"I don't expect things to be too bad," Zan continued, "given how much time has passed and how shoddy the techies make their craft without us, but be on your guard just in case."
As they turned at a corner, Vesa pulled out her wand from her pocket bangle. Before long, they stopped at a large set of double doors.
"Okay, Fran, I need you to breach," Zan instructed.
Fransisca stepped forward, pushing water into the door frame.
"Everyone step back, please," Fransisca insisted.
Vesa and Zan backed away before Fransisca flash froze the door. The ice mage used her control over ice to force as much as possible into the hinges and lock, breaking the door off its hinges and causing it to collapse to the ground with a thud. As she did so, an almost invisible hatch opened up in the ceiling, causing everyone to tense, but the turret built into it didn't come out, instead all that fell down was some flecks of rust and dust. Zan destroyed it anyway.
"They couldn't build anything right towards the end," Zan scowled, "they used our magic to have their machines automatically self lubricate, to have parts of the machine phase through other sections, to have them be powered almost forever. But, once they cut us out, they weren't able to do even a quarter of what they could with us around. It's clear who needs who more…"
Vesa slowly nodded as she peered through the opening in the doors.
"Kinda reminds me of how my people exploited Elfilis for their technology," Vesa commented to herself, a part of her cringing at the thought.
"It's not that different," Zan rambled, "but the biggest difference is that we were supposed to be a team. We tried to perform a Coup D'etat on them towards the end, but it didn't work out. We weren't able to unite enough, too many mages thought that they would be perfectly fine. Too many mages didn't think that they were strong enough to even be able to help, and mages in general tend to be isolationist in nature, preferring to work on their magic in peace and spurning other people. We weren't able to gather enough of a force to even put up much of a fight in the end."
Zan dragged the tip of her spear across the ground, causing sparks to fly as the metal scraped against more metal, the spear actually digging into what seemed to be a steel floor.
"We had a few powerful mages who did some damage," she continued, seething with anger, "some mages waited until the last moment to cause their enchantments on crucial infrastructure to backfire, but it wasn't enough. In the end, most of us were executed, and we got turned into crystal by some turncoats working for the technocracy who thought they were gonna be big heroes for doing it. It was a little satisfying to get a front row seat to their own betrayal as the technocracy executed them. They tried to break the crystal to do the same for us, but our prison ended up keeping us safe enough and they were forced to just launch us into space so we weren't their problem anymore."
Zan didn't seem to care as her consistent striking the floor ended up cleaving the floor apart. Still, Vesa kept her gaze fixated on the doors, taking a single step inside. Zan paused before she beckoned Fransisca to follow.
"Keep an eye out," Zan instructed, "but it should be safe to keep moving for now."
Shifting back into position, Zan and Fransisca caught up with Vesa before the thunder mage took the lead again.
"Vesa, please stay behind me," Zan chided, "if you die here because you ran into the line of fire, I think Elfilis would literally destroy the planet."
"Let us handle this," Fransisca added with a nod, "and please don't enter rooms we haven't cleared yet."
Vesa lowered her head as her face reddened.
"S-Sorry," she stammered.
Zan proceeded to scan the room for more potential threats. She placed her hand on the ground and emitted a burst of static electricity. A camera attached to the wall sparked and the glass exploded from the lens as she short-circuited any electronics attached to the metal walls.
"That likely won't have gotten everything, but it should clear the path a bit," Zan commented.
Vesa stayed close to Fransisca as they continued to venture deeper. The thunder mage disarmed a few more traps before they reached the data archive.
"Here we are," Zan proclaimed, "the data archives. I don't know how much of it will be usable. I imagine most of the servers are fried from magical backlash, but we can try and pull something from them."
Little did Zan know, the first three words of her sentence caused Vesa to flinch, her thoughts flooded with reminders that phrase triggered the most painful memories from Elfilis to resurface. The thunder mage rummaged a bit before pulling out a strange looking disk covered in runes.
"This is one of the ways we used to store data," Zan continued, "I have a few storage disks on me from before we got kicked off planet."
Vesa watched as Zan slowly moved her hand from server to server with the disk. Eventually, one of the servers caused the disk to gently light up.
"Ok," Zan announced, "here's a working one."
Zan set the disk on top of the server and moved her hands slowly before a hologram appeared above the disk like a screen. The thunder mage went on to rummage through the storage files.
"Well," Zan rambled on, "this one has some traditional Halcandran folk stories backed up on to it, some alchemical recipes, secrets of necromancy and a tutorial to lichdom…"
Zan made an annoyed expression as she deleted that file.
"These are sorted rather poorly, I suppose," the thunder mage huffed, "jamblast it."
Vesa and Fransisca glanced over the other servers. Zan paused for a moment and glanced over her shoulder.
"Fran," Zan instructed, gesturing to the server she floated in front of, "you take this one and search for anything interesting and pull it from the servers. Try to find something Elfilis will like."
"Will do," Fransisca nodded.
Fransisca started rummaging through the server while Zan went to examining the other servers in the archives.
"Vesa," Zan told the human, "you can keep an eye out if you'd like. We should be safe in here."
"Thank you," Vesa smiled.
With Zan and Fransisca busy with the servers, Vesa began wandering through the room, observing how the servers were arranged and shelved. The silence continued on until Fransisca picked up on a particular file.
"Hey," Fransisca announced, "I've got something. They should like this, right?"
Fransisca frowned as she pulled out a file on some kind of research of space time, disappointed that the author seemed to have erased themselves from time trying to meddle with chronomancy. Zan returned her gaze to her sister and examined the file's details more carefully.
"Hmm, I suppose it would interest them…if only for the theoretical aspects to it," Zan agreed, "although time travel is never something to mess with. It should keep them busy for a couple of hours if we leave all the math involved here and let them figure that part out on their own."
"They do like to keep busy," Fransisca nodded.
Vesa examined the nearest server, taking the note of rust all over it. It wasn't surprising they were all in poor condition due to being unmaintained for millennia. Taking a step back, Vesa examined the cracks along the floor, where dirt was visible along with strained metal. The large slash she noticed went through almost everything for a long distance, so she figured it didn't start in the data archives. At least the slashes were razor thin, thus they haven't compromised the building yet.
Vesa returned her gaze to Fransisca and Zan Partizanne as they continued to examine which servers were still working.
"There isn't all that much more which is useful or recoverable," Zan sighed in disappointment, "there are some spells recorded on here still, but all the information on them has been scrubbed other than what they do. Seems like for the most part, they deleted any information on magic that wasn't useful to them specifically after they got rid of us."
Vesa lowered her head a little.
"Not even the details of Halcandra's fate?"
"There is some of that," Fransisca answered, "but it's pretty much just confirmation of what we guessed and not much else."
Vesa checked the servers again to find which one had the least rust. One particular nonworking server had only less than half the amount of rust over it. She held out her wand and concentrated her mana, recalling the moment she cleared rust off of the incense burner. Zan Partizanne and Fransisca noticed what she was doing and kept a careful eye on her. Seconds passed before Vesa's concentration paid off as all the rust vanished from the server. With the spell complete, Vesa hunched over and pressed her palms onto her thighs, taking some time to catch her breath.
"You need to work on your magical stamina," Zan pointed out with a frown, "you should be able to clear most of these servers before getting winded like that."
After a moment, Vesa straightened her back while she brushed a few hairs out of her eyes.
"I'll be sure to get back to practice after the holidays," Vesa told the thunder mage, "this is the second time I did the rust removal spell, after all."
Vesa went back to the other nonworking servers, taking a moment to feel her mana flowing within her body. Zan went to work rummaging through the files in the server. After sensing that she still had plenty of mana to go around, she concentrated it into her wand as she prepared to remove rust from the next nonworking server.
"You should be practicing every day," Zan chided, glancing over Vesa, "Elfilis coddles you. If you don't practice, you won't have the reserves needed to actually become functionally immortal later in life. Did you forget you're on a time limit for that? Your reserves won't keep growing forever, so the best time to grow them is now. You have to stop treating magic as if it's some kind of hobby. This is a way of life, and if you die one day from not focusing on it, Elfilis will lose their sanity and none of us want that. That's why you need to shape up!"
Zan's blunt words caused Vesa to stiffen, as she briefly reflected on how her chronic illness used to limit her lifespan. Had she never met Elfilis, had she never volunteered for the program at Lab Discovera, she would've died before she turned 21. As Zan went back to work on the servers, Vesa kept up her effort at removing rust from the next nonworking server, concentrating her mana into her wand as she could.
"Honestly, I'll need to talk with Elfilis about being more strict with you," Zan grumbled, "you are their apprentice after all. What have they been teaching you lately?"
By then, Vesa finished removing rust from a server.
"Apart from this server?" Vesa paused, "Elfilis did teach me about runes, enchantments and spells related to my affinity as a healer. They even taught me how to sense mana outside of me."
"With your current reserves," Zan added, "I cannot fault them for not teaching you more, as they have been dealing with quite a lot, including experiencing higher levels of emotion for the first time."
With that, Vesa moved onto removing rust from yet another nonworking server. This allowed Zan and Fransisca to rummage through the purified servers for any useful files. This routine went on until Vesa completed removing rust from the last nonworking server half an hour later. By now, she was visibly sweating from quite the mana workout.
"Good work," Zan praised nonchalantly, "if you need more ways to practice, ask Elfilis. They can teach you a few other ways to drain your mana. Just dumping your mana until you're almost out once a day is enough to help grow your reserves."
Vesa nodded as she examined some files in an activated server.
"I'll…keep that in mind."
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