020

The Lineage of Kroan

The Kingdom of Kroan was quite large, especially compared to what came before. It extended all the way from the Ocean to the Nawr Mountains—the proper name for the range that ran North-South along Kroan’s Eastern border and which contained Mount Cascade. Across the mountains laid the so-called Wild Kingdoms—a loose collection of societies that still tended to divide along racial lines and form Kingdoms of only a handful of cities. Surprisingly, the Nawr Mountains were considered a peaceful border, for no Wild Kingdom was stupid enough to try to invade and Kroan had no interest in playing the game of war as it was much better for trade to be on their good side. All the Crown had to do was find a citizen of the same race as a Wild Kingdom and suddenly they were willing to talk.

There was nothing to the South—not even a defined border. The forest went on and on until it became desert. Kroan was slowly expanding in that direction, though it was not through any act of the Crown, but rather people moving to new places all on their own.

The Western border was the Ocean, which technically was a very loose boundary with the undersea anglers, but that was a little hard to think about. Across the sea laid the Tempest, The Mikarol Empire, Vraskal, and a handful of small island nations, all of which were part of a loose treaty that kept them tied together via commerce with the anglers—who had no name for their nation, and if they had to be specified, were simply known as the Hegemony.

Also part of this treaty was the country to Kroan’s northern border, the Kingdom of Shimvale—though, technically speaking, the word “Kingdom” was a bit of a misnomer. The border between the two was best described as “completely neutral.” Trade was minimal and selective, people rarely moved from one to another, but there was no hostility. They more or less just agreed to stay out of each other’s business.

“And does anyone know why that is?”

The man who had spoken was an aged human with a hunch in his back, but he wore a very finely made blue suit that made him look distinguished, nonetheless. He was the Professor, and his goal in life was to teach these students. His beady eyes surveyed the three charges of his; all gari, all various shades of blue, all siblings.

The eldest son raised his hand—he was effectively a man now and had no business still being in here, but he wished to keep his sisters company, so the Professor let it slide.

“Wyett, I know you know.”

“Then, my good man, why did you ask for anyone?” Wyett said with a coy smirk. He was considered handsome for his race, but by human standards he lacked the usual masculine features—gari did not develop as large of muscles and their frames were always angular, unable to ever form the sought-after feature known as the “chiseled jaw.” Their own standards of beauty sought the pointiest of ears, flattest of feet, and, in men at least, narrow eyes. Wyett had all of this in spades and a good mind to boot, though one more suited for politics than mathematics.

“Well, to not make your sisters feel called out,” the Professor said.

“Oh, I don’t feel called out!” the youngest sister said—though she was still the equivalent of a teenager by gari terms. “Because I don’t know the answer!”

“Viaballosii Kroan, you are a princess!” the Professor huffed. “You should know the state of our relations with our neighbors!”

Via laid back in her chair and giggled, not at all fazed by his outburst. Unlike her siblings, who were currently dressed in rather casual clothes, she looked like a princess. Her gauntlets were adorned with glittering jewels, her dress was made of the finest gold-brushed fabrics, her face was colored slightly purple with makeup, and her hair had been heat-treated into the shape of some kind of exotic bird. “Professor, we all know Wyett’s the next king. I’m just a princess. My duty is to go to some distant land and marry a handsome prince…” She pressed her hands to her heart and let out a sigh.

“Grandma would be quite disappointed to hear you say that,” Wyett said.

“I know, but like, she’s old, and she lived in a different time.” Via waved a dismissive hand. “Also I’m, like, just kinda plain dumb, soooooooo I’d probably just suck at it. Right?”

“I…”

“Don’t lie to her, Wyett,” the third sibling said—the quiet middle child who always had her head stuck in a book. Her color was a significantly darker shade of blue than both of her siblings. “She is stupid. At least she has the decency to admit it and not be ashamed of it.”

“Right!” Via said, clapping her hands. “You said it, Tenrayce!”

“Her strengths lie in her optimism, bubbly personality, empathic response, and, of course, her loyalty. The Kingdom needs those who don’t ask as many questions as you and me—I do believe Dad is beginning to grow quite anxious over my refusal to let anyone even try to court me.”

Wyett shook his head. “Just because it is the truth does not mean it isn’t rude.”

“Wyett. We’re family. What are we gonna do to each other?” Tenrayce rolled her eyes. “Loosen up. That trip to the Ocean has gotten you all concerned about how to act around us.”

“Yeah, Wyett!” Via said, jumping up. “Insult me all you want! Catch up on lost time! I’ll start—look at all this makeup I spend an hour every morning putting on, isn’t that just absurd?”

“Ahem!” the Professor called. “I am trying to teach you here…”

“Big mistake,” both Via and Tenrayce said at the same time. Wyett just put his hand to his temple and sighed.

The Professor frowned. “Oh, so do you know everything you need to know already?”

Tenrayce looked up from her book and cleared her throat. “The current state of the border with Shimvale is due to the memory of the Sheer War one hundred and twenty years ago, when Grandma was but a child. Both the Kroan and Shimvale Crown were tired of war, but the hatred ran deep within the people. So when the treaties were signed, the borders were closed absolutely to keep any violence from spontaneously breaking out and reigniting the battle. Now, the border restrictions are mostly lifted, but there’s still an unspoken rule about not going to Shimvale.”

The Professor leaned in. “And do you know why the Sheer War started, Tenrayce?”

Tenrayce froze. “Uh…” She absent-mindedly reached for one of her books.

“Don’t look it up.”

“Er…”

“That’s hardly a fair question,” Wyett said, interrupting. “The cause is not widely known or taught for a reason.”

“But she should know. All of you should know, as you are the keepers of the Memory. The Memory that must not be forgotten.”

Suddenly, Via was paying rapt attention. “Oh, the Memory… Tell us about the Memory again, Professor, it’s such a good story…”

Despite himself, the Professor smiled. “Oh, all right, maybe hearing it enough times will drill the history into your thick skull.”

“I sure hope so! But I wouldn’t count on it.” Via chuckled.

“I need to meet Hyrii at ten…” Wyett said, glancing out the window at the sky that was already getting dark.

“Ooooh, loverboy has a date!” Via let out a sigh. “She’s so lucky… I wish I could get dates…”

“Both of you, focus,” Tenrayce said, folding her arms together. “Or else the Professor might deny us… a really good story. And Wyett, you’re not too old, nobody is.”

“History is of great importance,” the Professor said. “More so to this family than most. Of course, it is hard to say where to begin, for the beginning of history is lost to us. All we have before the First Cataclysm are religious writings which, while they may contain great truths, do not give many details on what led us to where we are today. What happened to the Great Crystalline Ones? Are we still in the Great Work, or is it complete? So many questions, so little time… and then the era after that is also just as much a mystery, for the Second Cataclysm destroyed most of the records. But from the ashes of the latest unknown tragedy… a Memory of something emerged…

~~~

She was a blue gari. She emerged from the ash and dust, trying to breathe, but choking on the noxious fumes. Black smears ran all along her pale body, giving her an almost striped appearance.

She looked up and saw the moon, blood red. There was just so much smoke… so much ash… so much destruction…

Why had it happened?

She… couldn’t remember.

She needed to remember.

It was the most important thing in the world, but it was just gone. Nothing came to her.

She didn’t even know her name.

With that realization, she started to panic. She checked herself over, looking for any sort of clue as to who she was. Most of her clothes were black and made of very fine fibers, and she had a thin white coat over top of that. Her pockets were all empty. On her face, she found a strange wireframe object—it had two metal parts that hooked around her ears and held out two circular sections in front of her eyes. It looked like those circular sections were supposed to hold something, but they were empty.

She put them back on her face. They were something. Even if she didn’t know anything about why they were there, they were there. It was a memory of something.

Absent-mindedly, she reached into her hair… and grabbed hold of something. Its edges were sharp enough to carve away at her gauntlet's plast coating and draw blood, but she ignored this in her excitement. She pulled the object out of her hair and beheld a Yellow crystal.

This. This was what she was supposed to remember.

…But what was it?

She didn’t know why, but she burst into tears.

~~~

“Mommy?”

Leslii looked down at her son as they walked through the forest, scavenging for food. He was a small child, barely old enough for his gauntlet spikes to start forming. It was the age where gari started to ask questions, and lots of them.

“If I came from you… where did you come from?”

“I… presume I had a mother, but I don’t remember where I came from,” Leslii said with a shake of her head. “My name is just a play on words with ‘nameless.’* I’m sure I had one… I just don’t know what it is.”

*They are not speaking Karli, they are speaking a language that has no official name and is long dead by the time of the Wizard Space Program.

“Oh…”

“All I know… is that this is important.” She took out the Yellow crystal and showed it to her son. “This… is the lost Memory. One day, I will probably pass it on to you for safekeeping. You must never use it for magic—it is special. I don’t know why, but it is, and it must be protected.”

“Okay! I’ll protect it, mommy!”

“Good boy.”

~~~

Leslii was old now; wrinkled. Bones creaked with every motion. She slept more and more each day. Even her children were considered old by the people of the village.

“I’ve got it,” her son said, holding the Memory in his hand. “I’ll keep it safe. And then your grandchildren will keep it safe. And then…”

“I… hope we… one day… know what it meant…” Leslii said, sighing.

“We will. If not one of us… someone down the line.”

Leslii smiled weakly. “Yes… yes, that’s good. One day…” She took off the metal frames she had kept on her face all these years. “They never did anything…”

“Maybe they weren’t supposed to. Maybe… it was like a hat.”

“Maybe…”

~~~

“…And so, little ones, that is why we protect the Memory,” a blue gari woman with rainbow-colored feathers in her hair said. “It is a relic from before the Cataclysm, and until the day comes when all is revealed, we shall protect it from anything and anyone who seeks to use it.”

One of the children raised his hand.

“Yes?”

“Why are we listening to the wish of a woman who died three hundred years ago?”

The feather-wearing gari used all of her self-restraint not to punch the child in the face right then and there.

“That woman was my direct ancestor, and yours too. She is the reason we are all here. We owe it to her to honor her memory.”

~~~

“Honor her memory, bah!”

The boy was now a man, and he had grown to hate his tribe. Hate it so much that it was easy for a woman from a neighboring tribe to win him over… and set him on a path of betrayal.

“Their most precious treasure…” He opened the box that contained the Memory. He did not know it, but the marks inside the box were correlated with dates, and each one measured how much the Memory was growing in size over the centuries.

To him, it was just a Yellow crystal. And all crystals could be shattered with direct application of a gauntlet spike.

He lifted up his hand…

An arrow pierced his neck. He flopped over, dead.

A child no older than ten lowered her bow and started bawling.

~~~

“What are you?” she shouted.

“Guardians!” The gari shouted back, many of them older than her.

“And what do you guard?”

“The Memory!”

“From who!?”

“Everyone!”

“Even family?” She turned to them with wild eyes.

“Even family!”

“Good.” She folded her arms and nodded. “Follow in my footsteps.”

~~~

“A girl can’t join the guardians!” a mean-spirited boy laughed. “It’s men’s work!”

“But… but wasn’t the founder a woman?” a girl asked, wiping her eyes. “Can’t… can’t I protect the Memory as well?”

“That’s just a legend! As if a woman could ever do any of that!”

“Is… is Leslii just a memory too, then?”

“Probably. I think it’s just some story we tell to make sure we keep protecting the Memory.”

“No… no it’s not!” The girl stomped her feet. “We have those things she wore on her face! Those are hers!”

“Pfft, right.”

~~~

“There are few who remember the full story, these days…” the old gari woman said. “You say… you say you can make markings on stone… and everyone will always be able to know it?”

The bright red gari nodded, touching his hand to the cyan triangle pendant he had around his neck. “The written word is all we have to connect us to the past, whatever it may be. I can teach it to you. And the origin of this Memory of yours… will never be in danger of being lost again.”

“…Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, thank Dia. She sent me here to keep your story alive.”

~~~

“You’re an excellent wordsmith, boy,” a gari with an eyepatch who was missing one of his arms said. “You’ll do… you’ll do.”

The boy beamed. He was master’s seventeenth apprentice—he had tried to train so many it looked like he might not be able to train another one. But today, the torch was finally passed.

The Memory glowed behind the two of them as they performed the ceremony of passing the office of wordsmith. It was roughly the size of one of their heads, and was vaguely shaped like a lotus flower.

The master handed the boy a chisel. “Now… make a new tablet. But this time… add to it.”

“Add to it?”

“Wordsmiths must not write of their own work. That is for their apprentices to do.”

~~~

The wordsmith tower was burning.

A lone girl ran out of the tower, numerous scrolls stuffed into her back—stuffed so as to hide the fact that she had the Memory in there, safe and sound.

“Where is it!?” an angry voice rang out—the voice of a human. “The Yellow wind will not be denied!”

The girl kept running, crying all the way. The Yellow Seekers had come to them in friendship… but then they saw the Memory, and they demanded that it be taken back to their Yellow Goddess to be… consumed.

Master and all the other students had been slaughtered… only she got away…

She ran away, deep, deep into the night, until she was completely lost and had no idea where she was.

So she sat down… created a fire…

And recorded the last stand of her master in the burning wordsmith tower.

~~~

“Get everyone in the boat!” she shouted, herding her thirteen children and her husband onto the ship they had chartered.

“You can’t get away from me!”

The gari woman looked up in fear—there was a human man in yellow robes running right at them, with numerous other men, all with their blades drawn.

No… we’re so close to escaping…

“I’ve got it, mom, go!”

She watched in horror as her eldest son jumped off the boat and pulled out a Red crystal.

“You ca—”

“JUST GO! Love you!” he gave her a thumbs up… and then burned the very ground beneath the Yellow Seekers.

“Get us out of here!” Her husband shouted to the boatman—an orc who knew when it was time to run. The boat sped off into the Ocean, leaving the battle behind…

~~~

“We came from across the Ocean to protect the Memory,” a tall gari woman said, her hair styled into two swirls that wrapped around her body. “…We must continue to keep it secret.”

“Agreed,” the rest of the family said at once.

“From here on out, only the direct lineage of Leslii and their most trusted friends and family are to know of it.”

“Will we not tell the legend to our children anymore?”

“Only those who are to grow into it. We must… be vigilant.”

“Then what are we to call ourselves? We were the Keepers of Memory…”

“The locals do not know our language. Let us just call ourselves… Memory. We will take it as a last name, as those here have. In time, we will just be another tribe in the forest.”

And so, the family name "Kroan" was born. Soon, it would be forgotten what the name meant.

~~~

“So… you are the Kroan.”

“That we are, Emperor Hiro,” Adlii Kroan spoke the human’s title with obvious distaste but made no move. The Emperor was not one to be trifled with.

“Where are your leaders?”

“It may be the men who take charge in your land, but here it is the women. I am the chief of the Kroan.” Her left eye twitched. “So, please, do you mind telling me why you’ve brought one of your armies to our doorstep?”

“It is simple. The borders of the Empire now extend beyond this forest.” He crossed his arms and glared at her. “You have the option to become my subjects… or declare your independence.”

The gari behind Adlii started to whisper amongst themselves, a lot in panic. Sure, they had warriors, but they weren’t a large enough community to have a standing army. They knew the Emperor’s reputation; they were not the first community to be offered a “choice” and then wake up to have their houses burned to the ground.

“What exactly does becoming your subjects entail?” Adlii asked. “See, if it involves becoming slaves to be dispersed throughout the land, we’d rather just get it over with and die by your soldiers’ blades right here and now.”

The Emperor seemed shocked by this response.

“What, never had anyone say it like it is to your face before?” She shook her head and sighed. “Look, I’m reasonable. You not only have a bigger army and are a major threat, but if we’re on your side we’ll be much safer from the Wild People. Just because I don’t like you doesn’t mean I don’t think this is a good idea.”

The Emperor nodded slowly. He snapped his fingers and a servant ran over with a scroll. “The charter is in here. Read it. It contains your responsibilities and ours in the new partnership.”

Adlii opened the scroll and started to read it.

Part of her had hoped it wouldn’t be reasonable, but it was.

It even offered the Kroan leadership a royal title.

I’m going to have to accept this…

“We will have to discuss… but this seems very reasonable.” Adlii visibly deflated.

~~~

Nord hated the humans.

They walked around their city, the city of Kroan, like they owned the place. Which, due to some dusty old treaty somewhere, they did. But there was only one of them for every ten gari, yet no gari was willing to do anything to them.

Everyone was cowering in fear.

No more, he thought as he approached the human man who was kicking around a teenage gari and laughing all the while. No more!

He threw a knife into the man’s neck.

He hadn’t noticed the other human standing nearby—the man took out a Red crystal and burned the gari to a crisp.

~~~

The young Emperor looked down at all the gathered chiefs, kings, and lords of the Empire, gaze falling upon the lone woman in the crowd, Eridanii Kroan.

“It has been over two hundred years since your indoctrination,” he said. “All the other gari peoples have fallen in line… yet your people insist on presenting me with… this.”

“The first Emperor had no qualms about our ways,” Eridanii spoke with calm dignity. “And the specific right of our women was included in the first charter. Unless you wish to undo the… agreement.”

The Emperor scowled. He wanted to, but the Kroan gari had spread far throughout the Empire. It would cause a civil war—one he could win, yes, but the Empire was already at war with the numerous border territories.

He would just have to live with this insult to his way, for now.

~~~

A little gari girl polished the Memory. It was about the same size as her. These days, it was hidden deep beneath the ground in the city of Kroan, where few knew it even existed. Through a nearby closed door, she heard hushed whispers.

“Our spies have confirmed it. The Emperor has begun a subtle large-scale operation to discredit Kroan.”

“Surely we can fight this…?”

“He’s being too smart about it. No treaties are being violated, but our people in key positions are being moved down the ladder one step at a time.”

“What does he hope to accomplish?”

“I don’t think he hopes to accomplish anything besides making our lives harder. He just wants to.”

“How despicable…”

The little girl finished polishing the Memory and then proceeded to do her best not to think at all about that conversation.

~~~

“Our people will help you.” Hyrass Kroan said, hands locked behind her back.

The Blue Seeker—a cat standing on top of a stone pedestal—laughed. “You? One of the most devout Aware clans in existence, want to help Seekers conquer the Empire? Ridiculous. Get out of m—”

“Hold on,” the Blue Crystalline One said, sparkling. “I believe she speaks the truth.”

“O-of course, Azure-Cobil. As the Blue reveals…”

“You will be marked in history as a traitor, Hyrass Kroan. Are you sure that is what you want?”

Hyrass smiled. “If my clan knows anything, it is that history is so long and convoluted that such labels will disappear into dust.”

“Wise words. Very well. You are the last piece we need. The Empire shall fall. The reign of mankind ends now.”

~~~

The Emperor fell to Hor Kroan’s feet, dead.

He kicked the human away with distaste. “You have killed so many…”

“The war was not meant to take this long,” Azure-Cobil said, rising from the battlefield with numerous cracks in her multifaceted form. “I am afraid… afraid that my own people will not be able to keep themselves up for long.”

“The evil is done. No more shall we be under their thumb.”

“…Large-scale civilization has its benefits, Hor.”

~~~

To be a gari traveler in those days was dangerous.

No matter which tribe or kingdom one entered, the people would remember.

Remember those who fought on the side of the Blue "barbarians."

“A room, please,” a gari said, holding her cloak as tightly as possible, hoping nobody would be able to identify her race.

The tavern keeper was an electric slime, and he pulsed with a yellow spark. “Not for you.”

“I’ll pay double.”

“Go outside and freeze, traitor.”

“…Very well.” She turned and left.

The townsfolk found a frozen gari in the morning.

~~~

Kroan was burning.

“I suppose this is the punishment we receive for our ancestors’ actions,” a man said, taking a deep breath on a cigar wrapped around some pink plant.

His wife nodded slowly. “How did they ever think it was Dia’s will to wage a war of treachery and deceit? They had it so much better than we do now… and yet, they thought it was unbearable.”

“Well… there’s one thing we have to see to.” He glanced at the large crate they had tied up to a carriage. “…The Memory needs a new home.”

“We are spread far and wide. Somewhere, there will be one to take us in. The Memory has gone on too long to be lost now.”

~~~

The great black dragon known only as the Shadow stood atop his mountain, glaring downward at the execution platform.

A qorvid stood tall and proud, a massive scythe in his wings. “You have one last chance to redeem yourself in the eyes of the Shadow, infidel. Renounce Dia as sovereign. Pledge yourself to Cora, the goddess of the people.” On cue, banners unfurled, showing large, black squares surrounded by complicated lines of all seven colors representative of magic. “Power will be yours… or death.”

“Hmm, tough choice…” Anders Kroan clicked his tongue. “Perhaps you should consider adding a third option.”

“What?”

“Last-minute-rescue.”

Suddenly, there was an explosion, and the execution platform fell. Anders jumped and did a backflip, narrowly avoiding the qorvid’s scythe. He landed in the arms of a gari with red bracelets on her wrist, indicating her as a Red wizard.

She held out a hand and cooked the qorvid from the inside out while the rest of the gari army charged the Shadow himself.

The Shadow was having none of this. He opened his mouth and unleashed his breath—a spew of pitch-black darkness. It was his attribute, and they were ready for it—Magenta wizards began to scramble to jam it.

They could not have predicted the darkness erupting in a multicolored fire that turned most of the army into nothing more than dust in a crater.

But Anders survived. He was near enough to the edge to be thrown away.

One day, dragon… your reign of terror will end.

~~~

Garnet Kroan broke the Yellow connection with the Shadow.

While they had been communing, the Orange wizards of many, many races had chopped the Shadow’s head off.

He’d never been given a chance to retaliate.

Garnet immediately fell to the ground, bawling her eyes out.

She had just spent thirty years of her life working her way up the ladder to be next to the Shadow in this moment. She was mute, so the best way for her to communicate had been with Yellow. That had been instrumental.

He had not trusted her. He never trusted anyone. He had often considered eating her in the middle of their communing sessions. But he had never thought she was part of such a long-term, brazen plan.

And now it was done.

All these years of pain… done.

~~~

“The Free Peoples of Dia’s Light have come to agree… we were too weak when we were separated,” a white dragon said, standing in front of a large gathering of leaders, politicians, and war heroes. “When the Empire fell eons ago, we went our separate ways, and so we fell to the Shadow one at a time, bit by bit. We have come here to confirm… never again. We will stand together as we reach out into the future. And to do that… we need a leader.” He chuckled softly. “And while I am sure everyone in this room has been expecting the Kroan to take charge, Garnet has expressed that the new leaders be of a tribe that is neither hated nor loved. And so… it has been chosen that the gari of Riges Flats form the new rulers of this Kingdom.

“However, we couldn’t give Garnet and her people nothing for their efforts. The name ‘Free Peoples of Dia’s Light’ is quite a mouthful, wouldn’t you say? And so… the name of this newly formed kingdom will take the name of the city they lost so long ago. Today… marks the day of the founding of the Kingdom of Kroan.”

Cheers erupted from the crowd. A single tear fell from Garnet’s eye.

~~~

The Memory was in the basement of a secluded Sanctuary near the edge of a desert, far from the vast majority of civilization. Hidden, in case any wars or calamities might arrive and damage the precious heirloom.

It was here when the Memory finally achieved enough mass to awaken into a Yellow Crystalline One.

Surrounded only by the elite of Kroan, she formed with the knowledge of all she had been through, to what extent the extended family had gone through to protect her, and the absurd chain of events that led her to where she was now.

“I… I am the Memory!”

The dozen gari that had been examining her all let out a collective gasp.

“I… I have awoken! At long last, here… here I am! Before I was ever born, you cared for me, generation after generation… I do not know why, but I feel as though I owe you a debt greater than I can ever repay.”

“If… you truly are the Memory…” an old, wrinkled gari with a peg instead of a leg stepped forward. “What…?”

“What was it that Leslii protected oh so long ago? …Give me a second, I’ll try to find it. I’ll—aha!”

She flashed, and filled their minds with what was stored within her.

An arrangement of stars that didn’t exist within the night sky.

A fractal pattern of the seven Colors of magic intertwining in ways more complicated than any had ever seen before.

A strange symbol composed of two triangles arranged in the shape of an hourglass, with a single line coming out of its base that cut through a circle, what looked like an eye, and then ended at a stylized image of Ikyu itself with stars sparkling around.

“Do… you know… what it means?” the old gari asked.

“No… I do not. I… cannot even begin to comprehend…”

~~~

Prince Horv pulled his lips away from Sanroi Kroan’s. A breeze blew through the royal gardens, throwing pink petals into their faces.

Sanroi blew the petals out of her eyes, smiling innocently.

“Sanroi… at this rate, you’ll get the Kroan’s into the Crown.”

“That’s the idea, Horv.” She carefully walked her fingers up one of his arms. “And why shouldn’t I?”

“I can’t think of a single reason why not. When I become King… I want you at my side.”

“Oh, already? I was expecting this to go on for a bit longer…” She grinned. “But of course, where else would I go?”

~~~

The Memory was moved into the basement of the royal palace under the watchful gaze of King Ream Kroan, the first Kroan to ever be a proper King—and he would not be the last.

The Memory was getting close to the size of a full-grown gari.

“Welcome to your new home, old friend,” Ream said, smiling softly. “What a journey you’ve had, huh?”

“It… is certainly something.”

“We have resources now. Perhaps, with time, we may uncover exactly what the First Memory is.”

“Work on stabilizing your Kingdom first. I have persisted for three thousand years with your lineage. There is no need to rush.”

“…Of course, old friend.”

~~~

In those days, to be a gari was to be given great respect. No relation to the lineage of Kroan was even required—gari were associated with heroism, trustworthiness, and empathy. Many were the people that truly thought the race was better than them, that they were the perfect guardians and protectors of the Kingdom.

This attitude even extended to the northern states, where a red garilend rose above the many tribes and united them together.

“You have done great work,” King Iscobil Kroan said, grinning as he walked into the freshly built royal palace of Shimvale.

“Thank you!” Nifriirii said. Rather than bowing or giving any sort of further formal pleasantries, she grabbed a giant hunk of meat off the table and tore it off the bone with her teeth. “Say hello to Shimvale, Kingdom of the Rising Sun!”

“I do quite like what I’ve seen so far, though clearly you struggle with the cold this far north.”

“It’s how we’ve always lived. But the Red has protected us with its heat, as it always has.”

“Well, perhaps you would like an easier life?” He folded his hands together. “We are more than willing t—”

“Nope,” Nifriirii chuckled. “There won’t be any incorporating us into your territory. We are Shimvale, not Kroan. Now… you gonna accept that, or do you wanna fight?”

Iscobil shook his head. “There will be no fight. Long ago in our history, when Kroan was barely even a name, we were forced to join an empire against our will. We will do no such thing to you. Carry on as you wish, respect our borders, and perhaps we can be great friends in the coming generations.”

“Sounds awesome!”

How full of spirit, she is… so young.

~~~

An Orange Crystalline One came into being, surrounded by anarchists.

This has the exact result they had been hoping for. The power of Orange itself immediately launched herself into the air and charged directly for the Royal Palace, all the while flattening anyone and everyone she saw on her way.

It was a massacre.

The Palace was reduced to rubble by the time she was shattered by the current Prince, riding his dragon mount Villa. His lifelong companion perished in the battle, ending her over a thousand years of life.

The Kingdom of Kroan wept.

“…My kind are too dangerous,” the Memory told the Prince. “We cannot allow something like this to happen again.”

“I will see to it. Every Crystalline One must be cataloged. Every single Seeker temple will need to be watched. The threats… will be destroyed.”

And the people rejoiced that further tragedy was averted.

~~~

“You are the elite of the elite!” King Yvenii declared, slamming his fist on the podium. “You have been hand-picked from the line of Kroan for the greatest task of all—to protect the Memory and the Kingdom! There are many dangers that lie in our borders, and not just the Crystalline Ones that my father identified! No, there are threats hiding behind every corner. There are Seekers plotting our downfall, Gonal denouncing Dia, and demons ready to tear down civilization itself! You… are here to combat that. From this day forward, the Ordo Orsissus is hereby formed. Use any means necessary to defend this kingdom from its enemies.”

The chosen leader of the Ordo Orsissus raised both of her hands to her ears in what would become their signature gesture of respect. “We live to serve, your Highness. May the Unknown Stars shine their light on us in the dark paths we walk.”

“May Dia bless your efforts.”

~~~

“A new invention just came out of the highlands,” a man said, walking up to a Kroan Princess. “It might help you see better.”

“Eh?”

He put a pair of glasses on her face.

She gasped, and immediately tears started rolling down her eyes.

“That’s… that’s what Leslii wore…”

“Who…?”

“Nothing!”

~~~

“You want to be a general?” Urvik Kroan asked her friend, a human man by the rather simple name of John.

“Yeah! I want to defend the Kingdom from the skeletons of the East!”

“Pretty sure those are just a myth.”

“Who cares, I’ll lead the charge!”

But… John… you’re not a gari.” She shook her head. “Everyone knows that those jobs are only for gari.”

“…I’ll prove to them! I have what it takes!”

Urvik giggled. “Silly little man…”

~~~

“King Navri! King Navri!”

Navri looked up from his audience with the Memory. “Yes, what is it?”

“The explorers have found the homeland, the continent across the Ocean! You were right, the Mikarol ships were from an Empire all the way out there! New lands and new people are open for trade!”

“Excellent news!” Navri declared with a hearty laugh.

“The homeland… I do not remember it, I only have knowledge from the records. Yet I know it was where I was found… Has anyone asked Mikarol about the origin of the Second Cataclysm?”

“Afraid not,” the Messenger gari shook her head. “They’re just as lost as we are, in that regard.”

Navri nodded, pondering this for a moment. “Well… be sure to write up a full report for the meeting tonight.”

“Will do!”

“And do remember, the Memory is a secret.”

“Yes, your Majesty, I know…”

Navri chuckled as she ran off. “With luck, she’ll be my daughter-in-law soon.”

“One can hope.”

“Anyway, what do you think of my plan?” He unrolled a massive scroll with the word Axiom labeled at the top. “A new capital city, founded with the express goal of furthering the knowledge of magic.”

“Are you sure it is time?”

“We finally have the resources to spare, Memory. We can devote ourselves to learning more so we can understand what it is you hold within yourself. The Academy will bring the brightest minds together to uncover the great secrets. The best part is, they don’t even have to know about you to do it!”

“This… I have been waiting my whole life, and part of me is nervous to finally do something.”

“Perhaps take a hint from those of us who do not live as long as you. There is such a thing as taking too much time to think.”

“You are the King… you do not need my approval to act.”

“But I seek it!”

“…Then go. Build this city of magic. Let us see what we find.”

~~~

Axiom was built, and the Memory moved to a new location, in a new palace even grander than the one that had been destroyed in the Great Crystal Tragedy.

The towers of magic flourished and the familiar-colored robes with pointed hats started to become greater in number.

However, few were those who were not gari, and no matter how skilled at magic the other races were, they were always pushed to the side. Neglected.

“It is the way of Kroan,” the King said when a free leaf dryad came to him. “You have great skill, and I will personally see to it that you are accepted into the Academy for it, but I am not going to upend centuries of customs just for one woman. You will be an exception, not a rule.”

“…In your own histories, it used to be the women who were in charge,” the dryad said. “And now it is the men. Did you not allow your culture to be upended then? Why not now?”

“None of that was by choice.”

~~~

“You are not supposed to be down here,” the Memory said. “Who are you?”

The red gari ran her guantlet’s fingerpoints along the edge of the chamber. “So… this is the big secret of Kroan… hidden so far away that not even the people know about it… a Yellow Crystalline One. I was expecting something more.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“You aren’t at all. …There’s more to you than meets the eye.” She looked up at the engraving of stars above the Memory’s form, and the unusual symbol. “…This means something.”

“Something you are not allowed to know.”

“Perhaps… but I’m sure I can convince your little Prince to tell me eventually. He is quite enamored, you understand.”

“You have more people to worry about than him.”

King Bastiron descended the stairs, an exceptionally large and muscular specimen for a gari.

The red gari’s smile faltered. “Ah, your Majesty…”

The King drew his sword.

“Are you really going to kill me? Just for snooping around? Think of how your son will feel. Think of the fallout, the consequences. I am a Princess of Shimvale.”

“And you have extended beyond your diplomatic authority,” the King said, cold, breathless. “I found the members of the Ordo Orsissus you killed to get in here.”

“Killing a few of your personal assassin guard? You think that justifies regicide?”

“He is justified to act simply from you being in this room,” the Memory said.

“You really aren’t free people at all…” she hissed. “You’re just servants of this… Yellow One!”

“Incorrect,” the Memory said. “I am their servant.”

“Oh, so you’re absolved of all blame here?’

“No. We make this decision together.”

“Your life is forfeit, Princess Shira,” Bastiron said.

“May Dia ease your soul’s return.”

Shira’s confidence melted away in an instant. “You… you can’t!”

Bastiron ran her through.

The war started the next week.

~~~

Princess Ursulii had been born in the midst of a never-ending war.

With the suicide of a brother she had never known, Bastiron had rushed to get a new heir… and once she was born, decided he could no longer avoid marching to war personally—the war he had caused.

The great, bloody war.

Ursulii was twenty-two when the war ended. Neither side had won. Bastiron and King Nyress simply couldn’t afford to continue the bloodshed anymore.

The end of the war came with the anger of the people. The hatred had grown as the years went on, hatred that had made both Kroan and Shimvale extremely worried for the state of their population. With no winner, riots broke out in both nations.

Bastiron, once tall, strong, and proud, became sickly and weak as his own people turned against him. He was unable to produce a male heir in the little time he had left before the sickness took him.

And so, for the first time in history, the Kingdom of Kroan was ruled by a lone Queen, given a Kingdom with so much pain, anger, and violence. Her father had told her to be strong, to stand firm, and to never give in to any demands no matter how reasonable they were.

The moment she took the Crown she proceeded to do the exact opposite of that.

She was to be remembered as the Great Reformer. Immediately, money was diverted from the Academies, the Crown, and Axiom itself to one thing: the people. She specifically started handing out positions of power to non-gari with the agreement that they would help keep the rebellions down. While the Academies of Magic saw their greatest budget cuts in this period, they also saw their greatest influx of non-gari students, and they were allowed to rise through the ranks for Ursulii took a personal interest in making the prestigious occupation of wizardry representative of the actual people in Kroan.

It was a chaotic time, but she kept the Kingdom together.

“How did you do it?” the Memory asked her.

“I studied history,” Ursulii said with a smirk. “People resisted change in the past, and yet it always came for them anyway. Everyone was stuck wanting to get their own way. We call ourselves the Aware, but we are terribly blind when it comes to looking at our own minds.” She tapped her head. “So I stopped listening to myself so much and started listening to them.”

“They wanted war.”

“And that is why you need a ruler, Memory. Rulers… exist for the people. If the people want something that will destroy them, it is our job to refuse it to them. But it is also our job to give to them what they need to thrive.”

~~~

“I’m disbanding the Ordo Orsissus,” Queen Ursilii said.

The current High Deliverer of the Ordo Orsissus, a blue gari who had erased her name from existence, adjusted the collar on her white robes in clear disgust. “You deny the path of the stars?”

“This kingdom has no more use for a group of professional assassins.” Ursilii shook her head. “While I find your work distasteful, the truth is that you have served this kingdom and only this kingdom for generations. Those of your order who wish it will be given noble titles, land, a—”

“Many will take it, and many will be happy.” The High Deliverer bristled. “Those of us who are true to our goal will be and are livid.”

“If you continue your work, you do so as criminals.” Ursulii glared. “Unchecked assassinations should never have been part of a nation that claims to serve Dia.”

“Funny, coming from the woman who’s let the Seekers and the Gonal come out into the open.”

“And your order has gone so sideways it borders on a star-worship heresy.”

The High Deliverer lifted her head. “You are the Queen. Your word is law. I shall inform the Order. I will not hold them to any course of action.”

“You know what that will cause.”

“Yes. I do. But you won’t execute me for wanting to give my people the choice to listen to you or not.”

Ursulii scowled. “I have half a mind to… but now is not the time for such things.” She took in a deep breath and extended a hand. “You can still be a valued member of this family.”

“…I believe the Memory chose wrong. We are the lineage that should be protecting it, not yours.” She took out a Blue crystal and, before Ursulii could do anything, accelerated herself away fast enough to leave a trail of smoke.

Ursulii did not pursue.

~~~

“Let the Summit of the Sea officially begin,” an unusual squid-creature said from a tank of water. “Let it be known that the sovereign nations represented here…” the squid then went on to recite the names of the two-dozen or so nations which were present, most of which were small island nations. The main reason the summit had been called was because Shimvale, Kroan, and Mikarol had started sailing ships continually through the oceans, often stopping at the island nations and cutting through their aquatic territory, making some quite happy, and others (usually those with a large population of aquatic races) quite annoyed.

The meeting was being held on an uninhabited island near the Tempest—the eternal storm that raged above and below the sea but never moved from its spot. It was an excellent landmark for sea-dwellers and land-dwellers alike, hence why the island had been chosen.

“I am sure many of you are eager to return home,” the squid continued. “There is much to discuss and a great deal of bad blood to smooth over… but we shall get to all that in time. For now, this first day of the Summit is all introductions. Feel free to wander around the premises—a huge thanks to the Kingdom of Kroan and the Mikarol Empire for gathering so many resources to build our meeting space and providing translators…”

Ursulii decided the squid was the perfect choice for a neutral speaker. Nobody had any clue who he was and he was dreadfully boring. She no doubt could have given a much more enthralling speech… but boring was better, in this case.

“Mother, what’s so funny?” her son, Prince Redmind, said. Despite his name, he was blue just as every other Kroan gari had been since recorded history. He was easily old enough to have been a king himself at this point, yet he had taken no wife—much like his mother, in that regard, waiting for the right time. Though in his case he claimed it was for the sake of “waiting for the right person” rather than Ursulii’s own “well I need an heir at some point so I guess I have to.”

“Just thinking about politics,” Ursulii eventually answered him, giving him a wry smile. “Also looking around, seeing some familiar faces. It looks like a few of the Wild Kingdoms listened to our invitations and actually showed up.” She gestured at some lesser and greater unicorns dressed in animal furs that were looking around nervously at the wide range of races on the island. “They are a bit out of their depth, it seems.”

“Not all of them,” Redmind said, gesturing at a bunch of green gari who were not only talking amongst the other peoples, but also having a great time. They definitely didn’t care about appearance or subterfuge—they laughed, shouted, ran around, and yet were afraid of nothing and spoke pointedly to everyone, including an elder blue dragon from Mikarol.

“You’ve always had an eye for the strong and defiant,” Ursulii said with a chuckle. “Yes, it is true, the Wild Kingdoms are as varied as the people within our borders, perhaps even more so. Remember to treat them well, Redmind.”

“Naturally. Peaceful borders are to be maintained, I remember.”

“That is just what I say, Redmind, you are free to make your own decisions when the time comes.”

“I know. I choose to side with you.”

Ursulii chuckled. “Very well.”

She noticed a cat in blue robes walk up to her, the red mark of Shimvale emblazoned on his outfit.

“Hmm…” Ursulii frowned. “The Shimvale Crown couldn’t show up personally?”

“The Shimvale Crown was deposed a few years ago,” the cat said.

Ursulii’s eyes widened. “Well… on such a closed border…”

“I did not expect you to know,” the cat said, left ear flicking in the wind. “I am Minister Byro, representative of the Council of the Kingdom of Shimvale.”

Ursulii bowed to him. “Kroan recognizes your authority.”

“…Good. That is a good step.” He sighed.

“May I ask… what happened?”

“The people would not stand for peace. We fractured inwardly. The Council took control in order to prevent everything from falling into chaos. We… believe we are stable, now, but the people are demanding their voice be heard. The result is… a bit experimental, I must admit.”

“Experimental?”

“A representative system… ah, but I am getting ahead of myself, that will be discussed later.”

“Consider me intrigued. Though I believe most here are more concerned with trade agreements, sea passages, what to do about the fact that there are anglers deep beneath us…”

“I myself am most interested in the Tempest,” Byro said, glancing at the storm clouds that rested eternally on the horizon. “There are islands in there. A land to be explored. The Riders of Niln have proposed a joint exploration effort.”

“Dangerous…”

“Did someone say dangerous!?” A green gari from the rowdy Wild Kingdom shoved her head into the conversation. “We like the sounds of that!”

“You like the sounds of that!” one of her countrymen called over to her.

“I’ll convince the others, shush!”

Ursulii found herself laughing again—only laughing harder once the more refined noble types started glancing at the wild gari in disgust.

She felt hope for the world that day.

~~~

“And today…” Ursulii said, addressing the people with a sparkle in her eyes. “I abdicate the throne to my son, Redmind Kroan. Most of my lineage have served until they became too old to do anything or fell in battle. I think differently. I have had my time leading you; new ideas need to come into our great Kingdom. My son has proven himself capable time and time again in his treaties with the Wild Kingdoms and the managing of our side of the Tempest Joint Exploration Expeditions, as well as proving himself to be a good father.” She gestured with a smile at her son, his wild wife Riikaz—the green gari still refused to wear anything aside from furs of animals she’d killed herself—and three rather young children scrambling around their feet. “Listen to him as you would have listened to me.” She gently took off her crown and set it upon her son’s head.

“Make the people proud.”

“…I shall make you proud, mother.”

Ursulii wiped a single tear from her eyes. “You’ve already done that, Redmind.”

~~~

Riikaz was a bit of a crazy woman, the Memory had to admit.

But she loved to hear her stories.

“Okay, so, there I was…” Riikaz said, holding her hands up in the air. “Hiding in the tallest tree in the forest… when the thing I thought was a bear turned out to have wings!”

“It was spirited?”

“Surprisingly not!” Riikaz said with a shudder that made her hair rattle—her hair was exceptionally long and she made full use of it, heat-treating it into corded braids that wrapped around her body while leaving four small “horns” on her head. She somehow managed to still retain enough range of motion to jump around and act out the story as she continued. “The beast jumped up the tree with a roar—I was sure it had to be some kind of magic or curse from the gods, you know, back before I knew better about the nature of things. I couldn’t run anymore, so I rammed my elbow down, YAAAA!” She rammed her gauntlet’s spiked end toward the floor. Then she let out a loud noise meant to be an explosion.

“It exploded?”

“Popped right like a bubble!” Riikaz said, grinning.

“Fascinating…”

“You tell the best stories, mom!” Tenrayce said, grinning. “You should write them down!”

“You know… maybe I should…” She glanced at the Memory. “Don’t worry, I know the agreement. You’ll stay out of it; don’t you worry your pretty little secret head.” She patted the Crystalline One on one of her faces.

“I don’t have a head, though.”

“It could just be secret! Hidden in those facets of yours… you might not even know!”

“True… we have been searching for many years and are no closer to understanding any of what I hold means.”

“How can you know that?” Riikaz asked, tilting her head to the side. “I know I’m the new girl here and all, but if you had no progress for thousands of years, who’s to say you could even tell if what you’re doing now is progress?”

“Hmm…”

~~~

King Redmind folded his hands together.

He stood on the prow of the Arkrim, flagship of the Kroan navy, staring out into the Tempest.

“We aren’t sailing into that, are we?” the ship’s captain said.

“We may have no choice,” Redmind said. “The last communication we got said the situation was deteriorating.” He shook his head. “To think, this place I helped chart… has become a lawless free-for-all that no one understands.”

“I say explore it again,” Riikaz said, grinning. “It was fun the first time around!”

“We are not as young as we used to be, Riikaz.”

Riikaz frowned. “And Wyett is still a young child…”

“We must remain until he and his sisters are ready to take up the torch. Which means… we do not charge into that whirlwind for the sake of adventure. There must be greater reasons.” He gave her a sad but understanding smile. “We had our time, did we not?”

“Yes… we did.” She gave him a quick kiss. “And at least you were willing to sail all the way out here.”

Redmind’s face became serious, turning back to the Tempest. “The world is holding its breath.”

“Not the whole world.”

“True…. Still.” He frowned. “We need to go in. If the reports are tru—” He spotted a qorvid suddenly pop out of the Tempest’s swirling clouds, flying to them as fast as he possibly could. He landed a bit too hard on the deck, cracking one of his ribs, but he pushed through the pain and handed the King a message.

“…It is already over,” the King said, lowering the letter.

“Did we win?” Riikaz asked.

“…We didn’t lose.”

“Oh. One of those, eh?”

“Exactly.”

~~~

“And the chronicle ends there,” the Professor said, closing up the story. “For it is not proper for a chronicler to write her own story unless she has no choice.”

Tenrayce nodded. “I will leave behind drafts of our actions, but it is our children who will write of our deeds.”

Via let out a sigh. “It must be nice, to have lived in the old days…”

“Which era?” Wyett asked.

“Any of them! Back on the other continent… under the rule of the Empire… in the early days of Kroan…”

“You wouldn’t last five minutes there,” Tenrayce deadpanned.

“Well, uh, probably not! But it would be cool to actually see all these things, right?”

“Yes, it would,” Wyett admitted. “I too have a love for the ways of the past… it almost feels as though we have things too easy, these days.”

The moment he spoke these words, the night sky lit up with a burst of purple.

They all stared out the window, and then a second one came.

The group of four remained in silence for over a minute.

“Dad will be calling a meeting,” Tenrayce said, suddenly. “We should get re—”

“DID YOU KIDS SEE THAT?” Queen Riikaz punched the door in, bending one of its hinges. “Please tell me you saw that!”

“Yes we did!” Via said, beaming. “It was really pretty! And… big.”

Riikaz could barely contain her excitement. “It’s something new! Oh, I can’t wait to hear the wizards try to explain this one!”

“We should get dressed for the meeting,” Wyett suggested. “I should find Hyrii…”

“Smart move,” Riikaz said. “Never stand a girl up, even if you suspect a national meeting is about to be called.”

“That’s not wise, Mom,” Tenrayce said.

“It is if you actually ever want to have a shot with a girl!” Riikaz said with a wink.

“What about… a Prince?” Via asked.

“Pfft, I don’t know anything about how to court a man, I was the one who was caught, you and Tenrayce are on your own.”

“She is on her own,” Tenrayce corrected.

“You’ll change your mind eventually,” Riikaz said.

“I doubt it.”

Wyett decided he was done with waiting for the conversation to complete and ran out of the room to find Hyrii.

“I should probably grab my wizard robes,” Tenrayce said with a sigh. “Get official, and everything.”

“And I’m already dressed up!” Via declared with a grin. “I bet you’re regretting walking around casually now, huh?”

“No, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Formal wear is for morons anyway,” Riikaz said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “…That said, I’m thinking the silver panther skin will look great tonight. What do you think, Via?”

“I think it’ll be gorgeous!”

~~~

High above Ikyu, something fell. As it fell, it burned. It should have burned to absolute nothing long ago, but the fire never ran out of fuel. It grew no larger or smaller, maintaining a constant brightness in defiance of the currently rising sun, its tip just barely peeking above the ocean horizon.

Still, the object fell. The people who lived on the ground pointed up—some in confusion, some in awe, some in fear. No one was able to go to where it was going to land, however, so none would witness the crash. The land that received the honor of impact was a large sandy beach that a bunch of crabs were currently migrating across.

While the object had, at one point, been moving at absurd speeds, this was no longer the case as the cushion of air had slowed it considerably. However, it was still ridiculously hot—when it hit the ground, it immediately vaporized the water content of the sand and sent plumes of steam into the air. There was not enough force behind the impact to make a crater, but a few unfortunate crabs were split open.

The object was not completely destroyed on impact—but it was nothing more than bones, bones that had somehow managed to keep feeding the fire all the way down. The impact had broken almost all of the bones into shrapnel and spread them across the beach, but this mattered little. The base of the neck reformed first, and then slowly the entire skeleton was reborn. Only a handful of the original bones were in the new skeleton, as most of it manifested out of seemingly nothing. There were onyx-black circles on the fingers and the back of the neck. Flesh quickly sewed itself over the skeleton, completely hiding it from view. Organs shifted into place, and the circulatory system formed already beating. Skin wrapped over the flesh, and pale teal hair formed on her head.

Just as enough skin was forming to perhaps be considered indecent, fabric started to generate, weaving microscopic black fibers around the hips and flat chest, with a single streak of teal-blue along the side.

At the tips of the hands, two crimson gloves formed.

And then Jeh opened her eyes.

“I would have preferred to have been awake so I could actually have felt all that was going on up there…” she groaned, slowly sitting up. The first thing she noticed was the fact that she was sitting in a bunch of dried-out sand. The next thing she noticed was the smell of partially cooked crab.

She let out a low whistle.

With a quick hop, she jumped to her feet. She held her hand up to her eyes, intending to get the lay of the land…

But she froze upon the sight of the gloves.

She let out a bestial scream of panic and ripped the gloves off her hand, throwing them into the crater. She scrambled away from them as quickly as she could, eyes wide with fear.

She didn’t even know why she felt like this, she just knew she did.

She could still see them in the dry sand, sitting there, taunting her with their bright color.

Without warning, she ran away as fast as she could, tears she didn’t understand streaming down her face. She did not care which direction she was going and she wasn’t even able to think properly.

She just knew that she needed to get away. To get far, far away.

Naturally, this resulted in her running headfirst into a large tree trunk, knocking herself out cold.

She came to under the very same tree she had hit her head on. It was night, now. She could hear the Ocean somewhere nearby.

With a sigh, she ran her hand through her hair, examining the pale teal strands. While it was hard for her to discern the color in the starlight, it was far too pale to be what she wanted it to be.

“I need to make you brown again… but I’m all out of nuts…” She looked down at her body, sighing. “And all out of bear furs… and magic crystals… and notes… everything.”

The world was silent.

“No… not everything. I still have my words!” Jeh jumped to her feet and shouted at the stars above. “You hear that, universe!? I still have my words! You can’t take those away from me!” She shook an angry fist at nothing.

Only then did she make any real attempt to figure out where she was. She deduced that the Ocean was to the East. Which meant…

…Oh boy. She was so far from Kroan that the only real maps of this area had been taken by her from space.

This would be fun, in both the literal and sarcastic sense of the word.

With a smile, she turned to the stars once more.

“I’ll be back, you watch me.”

Then she saw it. A very faint white speck moving gradually across the sky…

“Well, would you look at that! Mission accomplished!”

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT.

I was kind of dreading doing this Science Segment since this is a chapter about history, not science—I toyed with the idea of doing a bit of archeology, but I don’t really have a clue about that. I’m no expert in history either, I just find it fascinating.

Then I thought about doing a little segment on reentry, but quickly realized that, whoops, we’d already talked about things lighting on fire due to friction/compression with the air.

So to put it simply, I’m stumped. Can’t even do what I did in the last special chapter and make a “creation myth of our science!” Trying to examine human history would be ridiculous, and trying to examine universal history I already did!

So…

Uh…

Speaking of falling from space, there’s a curious thing about falling objects in air. We already know that when they fall, air pushes back against them and, if they’re going fast enough, the air will ignite from the compression forces between them. However, what we haven’t talked about is why this doesn’t happen for things we drop from high places—even dropping a bowling ball from Mount Everest won’t result in a flaming ball by the time it hits the ground!

See, when things are dropped in air, the air pushes back. The faster the falling object goes, the more the air pushes back—until the pushback of the air is equal to the force of gravity and the object can’t keep going any faster! This speed is called the terminal velocity, and it’s different for every object.

The only ways to surpass terminal velocity are to have some force propelling you forward (as Jeh did in the Skyseed on that first trip) or to already be moving fast by the time you hit the atmosphere. Which is the case with meteors—very rarely will a meteor ever hit Earth without enough speed to ignite, as Earth itself is moving through space at thirty kilometers a second, which makes that more-or-less the average speed of a meteor.

Jeh was not a space rock and was actually moving more-or-less in line with Ikyu. She just also happened to be pushing the drive to its maximum in the downward direction, so she had given herself a lot of forward momentum, enough to overcome terminal velocity by the time she hit enough atmosphere. However, she was a very light object, so while she was going fast enough to light on fire and gather a lot of heat (and she couldn't really dissipate the heat from the laser either), the air was still pushing back against her and it eventually reduced her speed to terminal velocity. In fact, were it not for her... special situation, she should no longer have been on fire when she hit the ground.

Actually, in reality, she should have burned up to ash long before reaching the ground.

Aha! See? I ended up talking about reentry anyway!

…And that would have been it, but in-between the last chapter and now, there has been a lot of discussion about how the “level” works in space. Some of you readers may not know this, but originally the level did work in space! I was wrong, and misjudged the situation. However, the reason as to why it doesn’t work is a bit complicated, so here we go.

The fundamental issue here is that the force of gravity and the force of the drive are not the same kind of force, at least when felt by the occupants. When we draw free body diagrams of forces, we draw gravity as one big arrow acting on the center of mass of an object. In reality, gravity acts in a continuum--think of it as every single atom in the entire object being pulled on at the same time in the exact same manner in the exact same direction. This means that, without anything to hold a reference to, you cannot tell you are accelerating. (This is not the same as relativity, by the way. In relativity, you can't tell if you're moving no matter what, but you CAN tell if you're accelerating based on how things around you appear.) If you're being pulled in the exact same way across all parts of your body, you actually can't feel it.

So then how do we feel gravity? The answer is we don't, we only feel reaction forces. The force you feel right now "pulling" you to the ground? That's actually the GROUND pushing up against YOU. This is also what provides the sense of 'gravity' in the Skyseed--the bottom of the Skyseed is pushing up against Jeh, giving her a "ground." This is only because the force the drive exerts itself is NOT a continuum, it is acting only on the drive itself and everything else is being "dragged along." This "dragging" is what provides the sensation of weight and gravity. The reason we can feel THIS and not the force of gravity is because the pushing force is acting on one part of us and not all of us.

We feel the force of the ground on our feet, but not on our head—because it is pushing on our feet. The force DIFFERENCE between the different parts of our body is what creates the sensation. You may note that you can also feel your arm hanging--but this is because your shoulder is resisting your arm being pulled down, ultimately because your feet are on the ground. If there were no point of contact, you would be in free-fall and there would be no force differential. The sensation of falling comes entirely from the air pushing against you.

Now, the Skyseed is not in freefall, which I thought was the saving grace here: surely you can tell the difference between the forces at the surface of a planet and at an orbital height? Well, you can, but not just by "feeling" it. Even though the force of gravity is lesser up there and the total force on the body is actually increased, the dragging force remains the same. If the drive is set to 9.8 m/s (hover mode), it will always provide a sensation of 1G no matter where it is or what orbit it's in (barring the really extreme cases such as black holes). This is because the force of gravity, acting at all points, produces no discernable difference between the points. A force acting on a single point and dragging all the others along with it causes a "differential" which can be detected easily.

Thus, Jeh definitely should not have been able to feel the lesser gravity in orbit. Which, while this makes me definitely wrong, is actually a good thing for the story because they still haven't the foggiest idea that gravity drops off with distance. This realization, in turn, brings us back to the level problem.

This effect also means the level has no way to feel the direction of gravity. Yes, it is true that the vector of acceleration changes dramatically if the drive is not in line with the gravitational field. In fact, this is very obvious close to the ground: try to go slightly left instead of straight down and you lose elevation. But in space, yes you're losing elevation but how can you TELL? The space program (and I myself) thought that "well obviously the direction of down will change based on how the drive is pushing against the craft." This turns out to not be the case. Gravity acts as a continuum, so the water, the bubble, and everything in the level will only know gravity exists based on the reaction forces around it. And the only source of a reaction force is the drive itself, which is pointed in a single direction.

There were still a few things I tried after this. After all, the drive is only aligned with the center of mass along the line of radial symmetry, surely the mechanics of rotation will induce a noticeable difference? The problem is that while, yes, the ship is unbalanced slightly, it's unbalanced in the wrong way--being topheavy does not help us because the top and the bottom are affected the same by gravity, and the drive is perfectly in line with the central axis, so it cannot produce a torque force on the craft. And even if it did, the force of gravity would not make the internal spinning any different than if it were completely in the depths of space.

So, ultimately, the level does not work. It is still useful for telling which direction your DRIVE is pushing you, but that's not what it was designed for.

Some notes: around black holes the gravity differential is strong enough to be noticeable. The strength at your feet is so much stronger than the strength at your head that it can rip you apart. There won't be any confusion as to which direction you're being pulled THERE. But the differential on planets is so minor that basically nobody can detect it. I considered running calculations for the possibility of precession providing a way to tell, but I was ultimately able to reason out that that wouldn't work either, as the precession of a top is ultimately driven by the reaction force its tip feels with the ground.

Krays is gonna be so mad.

tl;dr: level doesn't work because you can't actually feel accelerations/forces, you can only feel acceleration/force differentials.