With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

17th February 2013
14:48 GMT

Blinding, blinding bright! It's the sun and the light and burning! I can feel my face melting-!

Back up, back up, back away until my 'zone' and his aren't overlapping any longer!

"What-?"

Two beams of fire strafe the landscape, melting statues and-. Block! Shield!

"Kon, turn it down!"

"I don't know how!"

The beam of sunfire slams into my shield and starts melting it, orange light… Dripping..? Onto the sandy ground.

"Try pushing the feeling away a little!"

Lord Aker, I pray to you, in the name of Teth Adom, please help my teammate turn down his sun.

"I-! Ah. I think-."

The beam cuts out, and I breathe a sigh of relief as Kon does the-.

"Aagh!"

Flames roar out in all directions as his aura expands! I strengthen my shield as the ground melts into glass, the superheated pseudo-air pushing me back! I see the ground beneath the statues sag and cause them to tilt towards him as the flames cut out, and beneath them I get a momentary glimpse of a Kon-shaped mass of brilliant white sun fire.

"Kon, try to-!"

"Ah, a new sun."

I half-turn to see a pair of male lions approaching us. They look identical to each other and move in synchronicity with the same gait. But more than the feline outline I see yesterday and tomorrow, and… They're either Aker's body or his servants.

Duaj looks at me. "He's making quite a mess. Bast will not be impressed."

"Then we will make our apologies when we see her. Please, help him."

Sefer tilts his head to the right a little. "They can hardly repay us if they're dead."

"Aghwgh!"

Kon flares again, waves of flames shooting into the sky! The moment they dim, Kon curling up on himself in the foetal position in the middle of a glass pit, they dash forwards, stopping on either side of Kon and-.

And the sun goes down. It's still there, but it's… Only weakly visible. Kon looks left and right, smiling at them.

"Ah, thanks."

Duaj looks away dismissively. "You are in our debt. And Bast will want those statues rebuilt. This place is precious to her."

Ah, yes. The newer parts of the statues have survived just fine, but the older parts are wrecked. Several are partially submerged in the cooling glass while others are broken and thrown back. Some of the oldest have exploded, sending red hot stone fragments in all directions.

"Oh."

Except… No. The statues are… Echoes of monuments in the real world, magic energy forced into shape by the echoes of the devotion of mortal worshippers. I move closer, encompassing one pile of rubble in my domain bubble. Yes, I can see the strands of desire that were binding it together. With a little effort…

It doesn't move back into position. The statue parts don't melt down and flow back into each other. Instead, the pieces are pieces one moment and whole the next. Large pieces one moment and a restored statue a moment later. Can't do anything about the sand, as that doesn't have any particular desire-associations. But the first statue, the second… I go down the line of Kon's swath of destruction, pulling them out of the glass and making them…

The ones I restore don't maintain the damage they had when I first got here. Curious, and something which means that Bast shouldn't have any grounds for faulting me.

When they're all back in place I turn to the lions.

"Good enough?"

Sefer tosses his mane. "Good enough for us."

Duaj regards me levelly. "Whether it's good enough for Bast is another matter."

"Cernunnos, in your-"

I look around and can't see him. Kon's burning… Sunset orange… Huh, we nearly match. Walks over, keeping just far enough away that we don't overlap again. He looks around too. Then I try detecting the trail of his desires-. Yeah, Cernunnos isn't a big god. I guess that the sort of power someone like Helios can throw around would actually be a threat to him. But his trail goes there and then…

Cernunnos emerges from his own domain, shining with the concept of 'burrowing' and 'hiding'. He looks at Kon warily, then nods at the lions.

"-opinion, how irritated will Bast be?"

He takes a moment to check what we've done with the place.

"I doubt that she will be angry at all. You've made the place more whole. She might ask you to repeat what you did in other places."

I don't mind fixing the place up a little. I'd do that just to thank them for sponsoring Adom. I turn to the lions.

"Please take us to her."

They look at each other and then turn and head off down an avenue lined with statues. We fall in behind them, Cernunnos keeping his distance slightly while I perform a visual check on Kon.

"Are you feeling alright?"

"I feel.. weaker, but that's probably a good thing."

"What happened?"

"I just thought more was good? And then I didn't know how to turn it off." He raises his right arm slightly, looking at it. "But I couldn't-. It wasn't too much exactly, it was just-. I didn't know what to do with it. Did you get hurt?"

I shake my head, which is a much bigger motion for a snake. "No, that was fine. Do you have time for extra magic-related training?"

"Not right now. And after we deal with the Anti-Life I'm gunna have classes to catch up on."

"Fair enough. But this is probably something we should include in future training schemes. You never know when you're going to have to enter the realm of the gods."

He nods, and in the distance I can see the outer wall of the city we're approaching. Duaj turns his head towards me.

"Welcome to Bubastis. Try not to make a mess."

I consider my history to date.

"No guarantees."

 

4th Sigmarzeit 2512
Early morning

"You just want a jug?"

My early morning visit to Yousuf's coffee house in Zandri has attracted a small crowd. I've been here a few times, but not enough to be known above the level of rumour. Being so far from the polar gates, Arabyan magicians making use of bound elementals are a common enough sight, but they don't usually glow orange and they certainly don't have my complexion.

Yousuf just takes it in his stride as I nod, and starts pouring freshly brewed coffee into a jug. The crowd on the other hand are keeping back a little, just in case.

"How are things going with the honoured dead?"

"Pretty good, thank you for asking. The canal continues to widen, though it'll probably be a couple of months before you see a significant increase in shipping here."

"That will be nice. Do they drink coffee?"

"The Tomb Kings? Ah, not yet, but we're working on giving them a sense of taste. At the moment, the best we can do is have someone else drink for them and transfer the sensation over to them with magic."

"Is this for them?"

"No, we’ve been limiting them to relatively tasteless food. Crackers, ship's biscuits, things like that. It's been such a long time that anything with actual flavour might… Have regrettable results. But so soon as we know it's safe, I'll bring a few guests here."

"Thank you, sir. I've never served a dead customer before." He turns towards the kitchen area. "Zurafa!"

"I have them, father!"

A young woman emerges, a small bag of coffee beans under each arm. She then lays them on the counter next to the lidded jug.

"Excellent, thank you."

As this is a port city which pays host to travellers from just about everywhere, just about every currency is accepted locally. Old World currencies haven't undergone decimalisation, and the Empire has a weird conversion of 12 pennies to 1 shilling, and then 20 shillings to 1 crown. A peasant earns about a crown a month before taxes or expenses, which puts an interesting spin on the earnings of an adventurer in Warhammer Quest where a single goblin spearman paid out 20 gold if you killed it and even a mid-level magic item would be twenty times that.

Nice work if you can survive doing it.

I put down two silvers for the counter and slide them over. Yousuf picks them up and taps them against each other, listening to the sound they make. Then he smiles, sliding them into his apron.

"Thank you, sir! Come again soon!"

I smile back, grasping the bags and jug with construct hands and walking towards the exit. Everyone gives the crazy foreign wizard plenty of space as I exit the building and then fly upwards. There aren't many flying monsters in this part of the world -it's far too hot- but the local sultan employs a small number of carpet riders and most viziers maintain a powerful bound spirit in case of emergencies. None of them have taken a special interest in me before, but it's always worth keeping an eye out in case things change.

And now, north.

A little later

"Good morning, Esteban."

Esteban nods calmly as I appear at the gate to his farm, gesturing to the bag of oranges and jug of milk leaning against the wall with his walking stick. He's long since handed off running the orange grove to his son, but he seems to find my visits amusing. I get another nod as I float one of the coffee sacks over to his chair, and take the oranges in their place.

"Same time next week."

Another nod, and then homeward bound, cooling the milk and cleaning the fruit as I go. The sack of oranges go next to the juicing machine. Dwarfs don’t actually need a plan approved by the Guildmasters for everything. For mechanical devices, it's enough that the general principles are approved and no part of what they're making is disapproved. A simple hopper and mechanical crusher was basically just a smaller version of what they use for crushing ore in the mountains, and so didn't present a challenge at all. My coffee paraphernalia… Well, if anyone likes the drink then I'll buy something.

Coffee on the table with ceramic mugs, pitcher of water, bread… Is done, so I take that out of the oven. Bowls of dried fruit, nuts and honey join them, and… Well, there are eggs and bacon in the cold room. No sense in getting it out unless someone wants it. The Empire is a few centuries away from developing the microwave or freezer, but dwarfs aren't foolish enough to try burning wood or coal underground for any purpose where it's not strictly required and I purchased a rune oven early on.

"Good morning, Sir Paol!" Sir Mallobaude strides in, his hair still wet from his post morning exercise shower. "Ah, peasant fare again! Martrud of Montfort surely smiles upon us from the Lady's realm!"

"You're welcome to get something else if you want it."

I walk over to the porridge pot and ladle out a scoop. Setting it down on the table and turn my attention to the juicer. "Orange juice?"

He frowns as he lifts the lid on the coffee pot and takes a sniff. "Ah. You think that we should drink poison, to train our bodies to resist it. Wise indeed."

"It's called coffee. It's from Araby. I assure you, it's not poisonous."

"What is not-?" Lady Richilde walks in from the direction of the guest room, stopping as she sees Sir Mallobaude. "Poisonous?"

"Fresh coffee, direct from Araby. There's milk and honey if you want to dilute it." I pull three oranges out of the sack and load them into the hopper. "Orange juice?"

She's still staring at Sir Mallobaude. Right, no tabard.

"Sorry, it's usually-" I deposit a smock on him from subspace. "-just the three of us."

"Will Lady Aranei be joining us?"

"No, she's abjuring my bed at present."

Sir Mallobaude shakes his head. "You give that filly too much rein. I tell you, she wanted you to demonstrate the strength of your ardour after she felt threatened by the presence of Lady Richilde. Letting her leave indicates a truly heartless callousness."

I crank the orange-crushing handle, feeding the oranges into the mechanism as the juice begins to flow through the spigot and into my glass. Lady Richilde watches the process curiously, clearly finding it more interesting than Mallobaude's chest now that it's covered by a layer of wool. The gearing makes it easy to use but slow to fill a glass, the skins of the oranges making quiet plopping sounds as they fall into the pig swill hopper.

"I don't like treating people like petulant children, even if they're behaving like petulant children. Lady-."

"Sir Paol the Heartless, the bards shall name you! Lady Richilde, you know the minds of women better than he, tell him that I speak the truth!"

Lady Richilde pours herself a mug of coffee, takes a small test-sip and then adds a small spoonful of honey. "Were I in his place, I would be more concerned for the feelings of my betrothed."

Glass filled, I cease cranking the machine and wait for the last of the juice to run out.

"In Queen Khalida's country, it would be perfectly normal for a nobleman to have several concubines. And possibly even junior wives, if the situation warranted it."

I don't think the fact that the same technique that has allowed her to taste for the first time in millennia can also be used to share other sensations is really a topic for the breakfast table.

"Where is her country?"

"Nehekhara. She rules the city of Lybaras."

"That's where you began the canal. Your betrothal gift?"

"Not how I originally intended it. I thought she'd be interested in a ceremonial marriage with.. a suitably armigerous second son. But it seems that I was the outstanding candidate. Oh and.. we're… Ah, I'm not a skeleton fetishist, we're-."

Her face falls. "I had assumed it was a ceremonial…"

"We're planning to restore them to life, but no. Not ceremonial."

"I think it might be best if we spend the day going through all of your plans, so that I can properly… Summarise them for my uncle."

"Sure thing. Orange juice?"