Ignite the Sun
Chapter 60: Foreign power

Chapter 60: Foreign power

"It’s not the only book of his we know though." Martha noted.

"It’s not?" Joel scratched his head.

"History of spellcasting, multi-purpose rune thesis and magic circle experimentation, to name a few."

"Right, I haven’t read those." Joel smiled sheepishly.

"Our work would be quicker if you would..."

"We’re not going to discuss that now, not when we have guests." He swiftly changed the topic. "What about that wyrm of yours? How does it feel to be travelling alongside a mythic beast?"

"I’m afraid Auren isn’t even half as interesting as you think he is - he mostly sleeps and eats, I don’t think he did anything more than a regular cat could do since we’ve left Greenheart." Calen paused. "...you do know what a cat is, right?"

Joel laughed and even Martha’s lips quirked up slightly.

"Yes, we do know what a cat is." Joel chuckled. "In fact I’m surprised you haven’t noticed yet."

"Noticed wha-"

Then it hit him - unlike the streets of Greenheart, the ones here were filled not only with people, but also domesticated animals. He didn’t think about it since it was a normal sight for him, but with the context provided by Koravel what he saw was supposed to be impossible.

"You’ve found a way of purifying corrupted creatures?" He asked in shock.

"Not all of them, only domesticated animals, and even then there are some limitations." Joel explained.

"Plus we can’t do anything, the actual purification is done with Lady Sylara’s power." Martha added.

’I bet this means I will also be able to purify corrupted creatures when I grow stronger.’

"Anyway, I have more or less inspected the blade, if I could get your attention please?" She coughed. "The dagger is an extension of a single Pathseeker, which explains its space related powers. Unlike most tools we manage to scavenge from the Blightborn, this one contains actual power source."

"...which means we can extract whatever provides the raw energy and use it to shield ourselves from all similar powers." Joel concluded

"Aren’t their powers based on Blight?" Calen questioned.

"Only a small subset of them, the rot can only twist and destroy, everything else comes from a different source that was corrupted and reused."

"At least that’s our working theory." Martha noted. "It’s our first time with direct access to one of their power sources, so it’s pretty much impossible to tell for certain how it works"

"Do we know what kind of power they might be using?" Cassian asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine - we know it can’t be magic because of how it interacts with Blight, but other than that it could be anything, divine power, something from outer space or even a hidden energy that has always been there and we just never noticed it.*

"How do we extract the power source?" Caken questioned.

"We have to destroy the dagger and contain whatever is inside before it dissipates - and fortunately we can use this to do most of the work."

She produced a glass sphere the size of a melon situated on a metal tripod.

"Are you sure a Case will hold it? They’re designed for spells, not mysterious powers from other dimensions." Isara pointed out.

"We tested it on quite a few things, including a small sample of Blight." Joel asserted. "The container will hold as long as the energy isn’t too overwhelming."

"Alright then, do you have a space to draw a circle?"

"We have something much better ." He smirked.

Joel approached one of the shelves lining the walls - unlike most it wasn’t filled with books, but rather dozens of thin wooden plates, each about a meter long and wide.

He browsed the plates a bit before letting out an ’aha!’ sound and grabbing one of them.

"Behold!" Joel said presenting the thing he found to everyone.

On the wooden surface a pattern of masterfully carverd grooves could be seen, creating a nigh perfect magic circle.

"A prefab?" Isara looked surprised.

"Yup, there are so many circles that we use daily that it simply made sense to make those."

"But why make them from wood? They would get burnt on the third use unless they’re-" Her eyes widened. "Don’t tell me these are...?"

"Indeed, they’re made of pure Rune-oak, quite fancy isn’t it?" Joel sounded very smug for someone with almost four centuries of experience.

"How did you get enough of the material to create all of them? The only time I’ve even held Rune-oak was when some noble wanted to play mage and ordered a wand." Calen sighed.

"Ah you see, it is our most guarded-"

"Lady Sylara can grow it and provides us with ample supply." Martha cut off her co-worker with an annoyed expression. "We have an entire storage full of it, you can take some if you’d like, and I’m sure our leader would be more than happy to provide you with any other plant-adjecent material."

"We have to go through her trials before she helps us unfortunately." Isara admitted.

"Is that why you’re here? Interesting..." Joel nodded slowly. "Let’s get this stuff set up."

They put the wooden circle on the floor and placed the glass orb in the middle, securing it in special grooves on the panel, and tossed the dagger right next to it.

"Right, we need something to destroy the knife..."

Martha walked away and rummaged through one of the cabinets built into the workstations, she pulled out quite a few random tools before finding what she needed and approaching Cassian.

"You seem like a strong lad, once we activate the circle use this to smash the dagger."

She handed him sledgehammer which seemed far too heavy for her to handle this easily.

"Joel, light it up." She ordered.

The man snapped his fingers, and the wooden surface lit up with the familiar glow of magic.

When Martha nodded Cassian brought the hammer down, hitting the dagger on the border between the blade and the handle.

For a second nothing happened, but then thin cracks began to appear everywhere on the blade - soon it shattered into a million pieces, leaving nothing but dust.

In its place a dark blob of... something appeared floating a couple of centimetres in the air. When Calen looked at it he felt sick and uneasy, as if he was seeing something he wasn’t supposed to.

The orb spasmed and twitched, before it started zooming around the dome created by the magic circle, bouncing off its walls while trying to escape.

"Come on, come on..." Joel mumbled.

When the ball of malicious energy finally hit the sphere in the center it got sucked in, and stopped abruptly. It wobbled a few times inside the glass before finally settling into a calm pulse.

"Great, we can retrieve it now."

Joel reached to grab the orb, but his hand got slapped away by Martha.

"We will wait for fifteen minutes before touching it, just like the procedure says - for now we can observe."

They stared at ball in silence for a while.

"Does anyone feel weird when they look at it?" Isara asked.

"That’s the effect of the Blight, it’s the main reason why finding anything else in these rot infested things is so difficult." Martha explained.

Calen took a deep breath and pushed past the uncomfortable sensation emitting from the orb - there was something else in there, and he was going to find it.

The surface of the sphere was slimy and shiny, yet at the same time intangible and smoke-like. It looked like the concept of illness given shape, something that shouldn’t exist and yet it did.

He looked for an opening, a place where the blight is thinner or an anomaly, anything that would allow them to identify the power at play here.

And then he saw it - briefly, but he did - a single strand of a brilliant purple energy threaded through the filth that appeared for a second and then disappeared one more.

The energy felt familiar but strange, a piece of this world that was always supposed to be there, but was missing all this time for an unknown reason.

He shared his observations with others, who all reported variations of the same things he saw and felt.

"It’s definitely something that originated on our world, but for some reason none of us recognises it." Martha mumbled massaging her temples. "This brings much more questions than answers - if this is a power Pathseekers use, how did they find it? Did they visit our world before?"

"I think we actually got quite a lot from that." Joel stated. "The biggest clue was that Calen was the only one to feel something familiar about it, and we know a one big thing that separates him from the rest of us."

"The domain piece..." Martha looked thoughtful. "It would make sense, if we assume that the Blight can corrupt domains themselves."

"At least pieces of them, but yes, I think that’s what happened here" Joel nodded. "It would be great if we had a way of confirming whether it’s an actual domain, then we could do a lot more with it."

It just so happend Calen had a perfect way to test that.

"Leave that to me."