Fyre Fly: Chapter 37 - Surveillance

Sandro is… a handful.

The Shroud, at least, pretty much leaves everyone alone; it’s too busy tripping Sandro up by wrapping itself around his body at every possible threat. Threats include, but are not limited to: loud sounds, bright colors, Ollie, and people walking into the room. Though I can’t entirely fault the Shroud for being so nervous with the Dungeon Core’s presence persistently looming over it, wondering if today is the day I’ll let it eat the cloak.

Sandro himself, meanwhile, is almost more clingy than his cape. He keeps close to whoever he’s with, bumping up against or even nervously grabbing the arm of whomever is closest. He’s a never-ending stream of questions, which normally I wouldn’t have a problem with, but in his case it’s less curiosity and more along the lines of “Who is that? Are they dangerous? Is this place safe? Where are you going?”

Mirzayael keeps Salvia on Gardi, which Salvia actually appears relieved about, once Sandro’s anxious attachment style makes itself apparent. Zakaiya and Rei are the two unlucky guards who get assigned to Sandro, who I suspect were chosen by Mirzayael because of the gestating soul they’re still cultivating. While Sandro is emotionally draining, the job lets them conserve their mana.

Before our fortress leaves Hetopolis, I take advantage of Shirasil’s parting advice and look for a bestiarian. This city isn’t big enough to have anyone so specialized, but I purchase a couple bestiary books and scrolls that include at least a passage or two on dragons. In about two weeks we’ll be crossing over a major capital city, and there I’m sure I’ll find someone who might be able to help. Sandro’s Sanity stat should only decrease from eighty-five percent to about eighty percent in that time. Hopefully, it won’t be an issue.

More pressing, however, is Blair’s threat of other gods finding us and discovering The Dungeon Core. I’ve considered rearranging the throne room to move the Core somewhere more secure, but I’m not sure that would make a difference to a god.

Mirzayael and I talk through these concerns while we separately go about our daily tasks. Dizzi is giving me an overview of all the watchtower findings, while Mirzayael is doing drills with her guards.

“Perhaps if the gods do find us and sense something, they will attribute it to Sandro’s Shroud and target him instead,” Mirzayael suggests.

I don’t try to disguise how aghast I am with this idea.

“It’s better than them taking the Core and killing all of us,” she objects.

“I know.” But that doesn’t mean I want Sandro to be stuck in that semi-conscious, semi-frozen state the gods alluded to. How many people have they already caught?

“We’ll just have to focus on finding somewhere to land,” I reply. “Any word on viable settlement locations yet?”

“We gathered as many ambient mana and geological surveys as we could find,” Mirzayael says. “Chert is working on it now. The mana maps are less useful, due to these Ruins that appear to be scattered over the world. Their high mana-concentration obscures the more subtle mana-ore locations. But he seems to think with the geological maps he’ll be able to find something, in time.”

I wish time was something we had.

Once more, I glance at the new option in the corner of my vision. Blair unlocked some portion of the System I previously didn’t have access to. It’s not much, but it’s something:

[Contact List.]

[Current Contacts: Blair.]

It’s not a mystery why she gave me this capability. I recall the last thing she told me before she left. “It is a mercy. If you can find no solution, there always remains another option.”

“Fyre?” Dizzi prompts. “You with me?”

“Sorry, yes,” I say, turning to her. “How’s the progress?”

“We’re ready to hook this one up,” she says, gesturing to the ground. We’re in the second tower, which contains the mass-surveillance type spell. The defensive spell in Tower One, and the weapon spell in Tower Three, are already connected into the circuit. Tower Five’s circle appears to not only be damaged, but incomplete, so it’s unlikely we’ll tie that one in anytime soon. Dizzi is still puzzling out Tower Four with the other researchers, which appears to be the most complicated circle yet.

Chalk markings cover the spell carved into the floor, filling in damaged portions of the circle and detailing how I should alter the stone to repair the floor.

“What can you tell me about it?” I ask.

“This one creates a field,” Dizzi says. “I know I said I thought this one was some kind of surveillance type spell, and it is, but it’s less about tracking people within the city, and more about setting up alarms for people crossing the barrier in or out of the city.”

“Interesting,” I say. “What sort of things could trigger the alarm?”

“It’s a bit tricky to pin down without activating the spell,” Dizzi says. “But it seems pretty flexible. Like, it could alert someone in the throne room every time, say, a harpy passed into its range. Which I wouldn’t recommend, because then you’d have the spell triggering constantly. I think you can set it to alert for individual people, too, but they would have to have previously been in the field before for it to log them.”

“Interesting.” I step up beside her and take her hand, activating Psionic Touch.

Dizzi laughs giddily in my head. “This is so cool. I feel like a spy.”

After the gods’ latest visit, Mirzayael and I had decided to loop Dizzi, Nek, and Torim into what was going on with Shirasil and Blair. They can’t act as our advisors if they don’t know what’s going on. I performed a group Psionic Touch with them at the time so we could discuss things freely without the gods eavesdropping on us. The revelation had made Nek and Torim extremely concerned—with good reason—but Dizzi only seemed disappointed she’d missed it. I warned her to be cautious around Lisari, if she showed up disguised as a human again, but I suspect Dizzi will be anything but.

“Do you think this spell can work on the gods?” I ask her.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “We might have to turn it on first, and have at least one of them come back. Then once they’re in the system, we’ll be able to see if we can set it to alert on any future visits—and if we’ll be able to set it broadly to alert to gods, or if it will only pick up on the individual.”

I think back to the stats I’d witnessed with Blair and Shirasil. “In my System interface, both of them still had species, like anyone else; felis and human. But they also had a Title, that I haven’t seen on anyone else, and that was what designated them as a God. Perhaps we could set this alarm system up to activate if anyone with a God Title enters.”

Dizzi shrugs. “You could try. Will this spell even ‘know’ about this System of yours? I guess we won’t know until we flip it on.”

“Then let’s do so.”

[Psionic Touch ended.]

I let go of Dizzi’s hand to crouch down and touch the floor instead. I call the Dungeon Core’s attention over and point out the chalk marks and tell it what it needs to do. It’s happy to comply, and sets about fixing all the runes and snapping all the breaks in the circle shut. Dizzi walks around, inspecting it all, then gives me the all-good.

I step back and Check the repaired circle.

[Check: Greater Detection Spell. Mana requirement: 1 mana per second.]

“Wow,” I say aloud. “That’s a much better magic consumption rate than the others. One mana per second.”

“Probably because the defensive and offensive shields are temporary,” Dizzi muses. “They also need to be able to expend and absorb a lot of energy on a much higher scale. Meanwhile, this spell would need to be in effect at all time for it to be of any use. And what is that…?” She pauses, her finger flicking through the air in a mental calculation. “Still almost a hundred-thousand mana a day to keep it active around the clock.”

I have Echo do some math for me as well. “Over thirty-million mana to keep it going for a year.”

“Ouch,” Dizzi says.

“Indeed. We really need to find to find some mana ore to settle on.”

I double-check how much magic the Dungeon Core and I still have to run on.

[Bonus Mana: 199,838,512]

That’s down from about two-hundred and forty million that we first launched with. Theoretically, that will keep us aloft for another four months, but we almost certainly can’t wait that long. If I started this spell today, then it would only shorten our flight time by two weeks. That’s more than worth the risk, in my eyes—especially since we need to be landing sooner rather than later, anyway.

“Ready to see it in action?” I ask Dizzi.

Her face lights up with glee. We haven’t activated any of the other spells due to their high mana cost. “Would I ever!”

I grin, confirming the spell circle is connected back into the throne room. Then I tweak the Bonus Mana flow rate dripping into the Core, adding just one more mana per second, and I activate the spell circle.

The floor illuminates with magic, casting a red glow around the rest of the room. Dizzi would have to go back to the Throne Room to access the spell, but since I’m mentally linked into the Dungeon Core, I can start looking through it remotely. I offer my hand to Dizzi once more, and when she takes it, I activate another Psionic Link, so she can experience the new spell’s capabilities with me.

“This is so weird,” Dizzi says, grinning.

“Keep any remarks in our head,” I remind her. Not that the gods probably couldn’t figure out how these spells worked on their own, but I’m learning not to tempt fate.

“It seems to be in effect,” I note. The spell itself is populating a mental list of the city’s inhabitants more detailed than the Dungeon Core’s Map. It doesn’t tell me the location of each of these individuals, but it does provide a list of populations which can be ordered by qualities such as species, attunements, and age. “I didn’t feel anything. I never would have known.”

“Age,” Dizzi immediately says. “That’s what you can use to filter for the gods. They’re all, like, what… thousands of years old?”

“Great idea,” I say. “What’s the oldest age a mortal species on this planet could be?”

“Uhhhh… Hm.” Dizzi tips her head. “Good question. For Fyrethians, dwarfs are the longest living species. They can go up to one hundred and fifty, but that’s pretty rare. I’m not totally sure about some of these new people we’ve met.”

I ask Echo the same question.

[On Lusio, the longest-living mortal and sapient species is the dryad, capable of living up to two hundred years,] she says.

“Oh my gosh,” Dizzi cries. “I heard that! Woah! I mean I knew you had a voice in your head, but I had no idea it was so literal. Hey. Echo! Echo! Can you hear me?”

Echo does not reply.

“Awww,” she thinks, radiating disappointment for roughly two seconds before it snaps back to excitement. “Well, it was worth a shot!”

“Two hundred, then,” I say. “Let’s do two hundred and fifty, just to be safe.” I don’t want the klaxons going off on an elderly dryad visitor.

The spell accepts the age parameter I set, and that seems to be it. I guess we’ll find out if it works the next time Blair or Shirasil pay us another visit.

I once more release my Psionic Link spell. “Okay,” I say. “That should do it.”

“Sweet,” Dizzi says. “Did that do anything for your Role Range?”

Good question. It’s funny how the others seem more worried about my range than me, these days. I guess I don’t see much point in being able to head miles from the city when we’re already miles in the sky, and everything I care about is right here. Still, the freedom to leave if I need to is useful. If any gods do ever come for the Dungeon Core and me, would my Role Requirement activate if I’m whisked away to the heavens? Are the heavens even on this plane of existence? If they’re not, how would distance from the Fortress be determined?

I suppose none of that really matters; as long as my Role Requirement activating puts Ollie in danger, I need to make sure it never happens.

[Check,] Echo says. [Role Range: 245.7%]

“Holy shit,” I say.

“What?” Dizzi asks, alarmed. “Are you okay? Is it Ollie?”

“No, no,” I quickly say. “It’s just the Role Range.”

“Oh.” She looks relieved. “You never swear, so I thought it was something big.”

“My range is almost twenty-five kilometers,” I tell her. “It must be because the detection spell is currently in effect.”

Dizzi stares at me. “Holy shit.”