Rune Seeker

“Figured out may be a bit strong,” Gauto said, and Hiral just raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s a theory, without hard evidence.”

“We’re used to listening to Hiral’s theories,” Seeyela said. “Can’t be any crazier than what he usually comes up with.”

“Knowing Hiral, this is probably less crazy and more accurate. I’ve always had a bit more rigor than fantasy in my hypotheses.”

“Ouch,” Hiral said. “To both of you.”

Seena just patted the top of his hand and gave him her ‘there there’ face.

“You too?” he mouthed.

She shrugged helplessly, like she couldn’t argue with fact.

“As for what I suspect I figured out.” Gauto used air quotes as he said it. “It comes back to something Hiral asked me – and other Academics – to look into with the Bonders and Growers.”

“About why we haven’t really done anything in the last six-thousand years?” Hiral guessed.

“Exactly that,” Gauto said. “Now, before I outline my results, I’d like to talk a little bit about the potential clues that led me to my conclusions.”

“Are we going to need math for this?” Seeyela interrupted. “Cause, I get stabby when it comes to math.”

“… unlikely?” Gauto offered.

“Just tell us,” Hiral urged his friend.

Gauto nodded. “So, first, based on Hiral’s achievement when he forged Blight’s Mercy…”

“Take Pride in Your Work was the name of the achievement,” Hiral offered.

“That one,” Gauto said. “It indicated that sword was the first A-Rank item crafted in almost six-thousand years. With that information in mind, we can assume Fallen Reach has been in the sky nearly that long.”

“How come?” Wule asked.

“Well, we know through what you learned in the one of the lost dungeons, The Buried City, I believe, that A-Rank items were crafted during Dr. Benza’s time. S-Rank sounds like it was reserved for things created by the Progenitors.”

“That’s right,” Hiral said. “Dr. Benza – or was it Fenil? – said they could make A-Rank items, but they couldn’t use them to their full potential, because the users could only get to C-Rank.”

“And, we also know nobody on Fallen Reach has been able to craft an A-Rank item – aside from tattoos, which I believe are a special case,” Gauto said. “In fact, any B-Rank, crafted items have been very few and far between. More a miracle than a regular occurrence. C-Rank seemed to be our average limit.

“I also checked with the Growers and Bonders to see how they were doing, and it wasn’t any different. C-Rank was largely the limit of what they could craft, with the B-Rank items becoming almost legendary in their own right.

“With those facts in mind, I think it’s safe to assume that the last crafting of an A-Rank item predates Fallen Reach’s launch,” Gauto finished his first point.

“Makes sense to me,” Hiral said. Gauto’s reasoning just ‘confirmed’ what he’d already believed, but, yes, maybe it had a bit more rigor to it.

“Next, I’d like to go back to something Left mentioned you were told during the Rise of Fallen Reach dungeon,” Gauto continued. “While there, Dr. Benza said that nobody older than twenty could be on Fallen Reach when it launched, or there would be consequences. One of the consequences talked about was memory loss.”

“You think that’s why Bonders don’t leave the Hanging Garden, or Makers don’t really try to go down to the surface?” Seena asked.

“Other than to hassle us,” Seeyela said. She still – rightfully – didn’t trust Olimpas any more than Hiral did.

“That was my first theory,” Gauto admitted.

“Was?” Wule hooked on to that word. “It’s not anymore?”

Gauto shook his head. “Left mentioned something else…”

“When do you find all the time to talk to him?” Hiral asked his double.

“Somebody had to keep in touch with your friends while you were busy being in a coma,” the double said.

“Okay, I can’t argue with that,” Hiral said. “Sorry, continue.”

“Thank you,” Gauto deadpanned. “Where was I? Ah, yes. During another lost dungeon, this one the Lost Refuge of the Lost, Dr. Benza said something about crystals. Recordings made by the same people who were expected to lose their memories.”

“Riiiiight,” Seena said. “I remember that now. We were wondering how that was supposed to work… but if they knew they were going to lose their memories…”

“And prepared a solution for it,” Hiral picked up Seena’s sentence. “That can’t be the consequence Dr. Benza was worried about.”

“Exactly,” Gauto said. “So, let’s quickly review. We know Fallen Reach has been in the sky for around six-thousand years, and that Dr. Benza suspected launching it with people possessing what he termed ‘old magic’ had potential memory-consequences. We also know he expected people to lose their memories – regardless of old magic or not – immediately upon launch.”

“With you so far,” Nivian said.

“Good,” Gauto said when the others agreed they understood. “The next thing I want to talk about are the historical records found on Fallen Reach. Or, more specifically, the historical records that aren’t on Fallen Reach.

“Hiral may or may not have mentioned this to the rest of you, but it seems records on Fallen Reach don’t last much longer than three-hundred rotations. Three-hundred years. I don’t mean the paper breaks down or anything, either. They’re purposely destroyed or thrown off the island. And, I only know this because I found an old, forgotten-about storage room that had somehow avoided several purges.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Why would people destroy records? Wouldn’t there be important information in there?” Wule asked, clearly aghast at the thought of anybody damaging a book. He even held his novel closer to his chest, as if Gauto would rush over to claim it.

“Excellent questions,” Gauto said. “And, I can guarantee there was important information in the volumes we found. Other Academics are, in fact, still studying them and learning a tremendous amount about Fallen Reach in past centuries. But, do you want to know the most interesting thing?”

“It hasn’t changed…” Hiral said quietly, catching on to where Gauto was going.

“Exactly,” Gauto said. “It hasn’t changed. Not really. Fallen Reach is almost the same place it was when it launched, six-thousand years ago. The people are different, of course, but not the customs. Not the way people behave.

“Now, before you blame this on stubborn Makers, I want to say I talked to a number of Growers and Bonders. Romin connected me with an excellent historical society in the Hanging Garden. One that had been around for nearly two centuries…”

“Two hundred years?” Nivian asked. “That’s a historical society?”

“I asked them the same question,” Gauto said. “And, it wasn’t until I asked them, that they realized it was strange. They even assured me they were the only one. That their founders broke the mold to study the history of the Bonder people and the Hanging Garden. Interestingly, he also noted that interest in the group had been waning recently, with members no longer showing up. Work going undone.”

“What does it mean?” Seeyela asked.

“Almost there,” Gauto said. “Ilrolik, please pardon me mentioning this, but you’re near on two-hundred years old now?”

The woman stopped, spoon halfway to her mouth, then slowly looked up and glared at Gauto.

“You look good for your age,” Wule said from next to the woman, only to wilt under the same glare she’d directed at Gauto.

Truthfully, it wasn’t a lie. Since she’d come down to the surface – since she’d been running dungeons – even Hiral could see a difference in her physique. When she’d judged his final Shaper test, her skin had sagged – slightly – from her large frame. And, now that he was looking, she’d gotten bigger. Her skin had tightened around muscles she’d hadn’t had.

The experience – the solar energy – she was getting from combat was revitalizing her body. Restoring some of the glory of her youth. It was impossible to say how far it would take her, but she definitely didn’t look two-hundred years old.

“What’s my age got to do with anything?” Ilrolik said.

“Just that you weren’t born yet during the last purge,” Gauto said. “In fact, I’ve only met one person who was.”

“Grandmother,” Seeyela guessed.

“Exactly,” Gauto said. “Though, it sounds like she was only a toddler when it happened. However! She vaguely remembers a very odd time. A year, or so, where people madly… cleaned. That’s what she recalls. Her parents scrubbing everything down. Throwing out everything they didn’t need, and almost starting fresh. She thought it was because of the brother they were expecting, but…”

“You don’t think that’s the case,” Seena said. “Are you ready to tell us what’s going on yet?”

“There are two last pieces to this puzzle, actually,” Gauto said. “And that comes from what the Custodian of Tomorrow recently told you about our world. About its cyclical nature. How it resets, but doesn’t. That our ‘time’ – if we can even call it that – goes in constant circles based on the rise and fall of runic energy. At least, it sounds like that was her theory. I can’t really confirm or deny it, as I’d need to study a significant amount of…

“Gauto,” Hiral interrupted gently before the Academic could really get going.

“Sorry,” he said with an embarrassed shrug. “The second important thing Tomorrow mentioned was what Amin Thett did with the runic energy. How he set up a kind of framework for the PIM to follow.”

In his head, Hiral took all the pieces Gauto had identified, and began putting them together.

“Aaaaaaaaand,” Seeyela prompted.

“And, I think Amin Thett’s effort connected the PIMP to the cyclical nature of our world,” Gauto said. When nobody really responded to that apparent bombshell, he continued. “What I mean is that our cultures – because we all possess PIMs linked to the PIMP – follow a similar cycle. Without us even realizing it.

“We are what we were nearly six-thousand years ago because that is our… default. The point in our culture we continuously return to, whether we want to or not. Sure, we make small progress here and there, slightly building on what we were before, but it doesn’t make any real change. It may even be that if a big enough disruption occurs, something in the PIM system will manifest, pushing us back to our default positions.”

“Grandmother’s memory of the big cleaning?” Seena asked.

“Exactly,” Gauto said. “Two-hundred-and-fifty’ish years ago lines up with the last purge, as far as I can tell.”

“Any idea what triggered it?” Nivian asked.

“We may have a bigger problem than that,” Hiral said before Gauto could answer. “Think about it. A big disruption. Like, say, losing one of the Fallen. Is one of these resets coming for us now? Are we… suddenly going to be compelled to undo everything we’ve done recently? To give up on the Cradle. On stopping the Enemy or the Raze?”

“To go back to Fallen Reach and pretend like none of it even happened? Or, more likely, that it somehow didn’t matter?”

“To forget the progress we made in getting along?” Seena asked quietly, first looking at her hand on top of Hiral’s. From there, her eyes went to the small crowds around them all happily sharing in Nivian’s meal, Makers, Bonders, and Growers all mixed together.”

Then, all eyes turned to Gauto.

“You said the purges happen every three-hundred years,” Wule said. “Grandmother is two-fifty. We still have fifty years to… do… I don’t know. Succeed?”

Gauto shook his head, slowly. “Three-hundred years was the longest break I found between purges. The records I found only went back about a thousand years, and there were four purges mentioned in there. Whenever, it seems, something significant enough happened to warrant it.”

“Can’t we just… not do it?” Seeyela asked.

Again, Gauto shook his head. “That’s the worst part about this. I don’t think we’ll even notice we’re doing it. The records I read, none of them made this sound like a bad thing. Or, even anything really out of the ordinary. It happened as naturally as falling asleep and waking up.”

The proclamation ushered in silence to the small circle seated by the stew pot. Around them, the small groups happily eating continued to chat and laugh, like nothing was the matter.

Hiral had thought the only time limits they had were unlocking the other half of the Cradle and the Raze arriving. And, even if they didn’t get ahead those timelines, they could ultimately fight them if they had to.

But this? It wasn’t something they could fight. Wasn’t something they could even see coming. He might literally wake up one day back in Fallen Reach, back in his old bed. Find his sisters and father eating breakfast down at the table, then head over to Arty’s for work.

No Seena. No Yanily, Seeyela, Romin, or Gran. No Wule or Nivian, or their quest to save the world. Which meant the Razewould come and destroy everything.

“The PIMP won’t let that happen, will it?” Wule asked. “We’re doing what it wants. If we… reset or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t it lose everything it invested in us?”

“It may not even have a choice,” Gauto said. “It’s irrevocably tied to that framework Amin Thett set out. Admittedly, he probably didn’t intend for this to happen, but it might be that in combination with the consequence Dr. Benza foretold.

“At least, that’s my theory,” Gauto said, sitting back with his empty bowl in hand.

Hiral’s hand turned on Seena’s knee, entwining his fingers in hers while he looked at Gauto. The Academic was often a lot of things. Flighty. Focused. Loyal. Stubborn. Hard working or lazy, depending on the day.

The one thing he rarely was, was wrong.