WSP 041

The World Moves on

The astronauts returned home via the very sky they left it, though naturally not by the exact same method. One of the royal dragons had been personally charted by Tenrayce herself the moment she’d been told about their arrival on the West Coast. It was not simply a matter of convenience—something needed to carry the Moonshot, and a balloon whale would have been slow.

When the great silver dragon blotted out the sun, the inhabitants of Willow Hollow only tensed slightly—they were getting used to this kind of thing by now. Granted, the dragons that showed up weren’t generally the house-sized behemoth that was visiting them today, but it was no longer reason to fear for one’s life.

The dragon set the Moonshot down on the launchpad. The great spacecraft had clearly seen better days considering all the dings, cracks, and rust all over it. It most assuredly was never going to be spaceworthy again, it had simply taken too much of a beating on both the “landing” and trip home.

But it had made it back. And all of its occupants were alive.

Vaughan, Blue, Jeh, Keller, and the Sourdough Twins descended from the dragon’s back onto the launchpad. They were somewhat surprised to find a small crowd waiting for them.

There was an awkward silence. This hadn’t exactly been a planned gathering, it was just that the dragon was obvious and word had come that the astronauts would be returning soon. However, there was no itinerary, no plan, no speeches, and pervasive nervousness cut through the crowds due to recent events.

And then Krays started clapping.

Then another set of hands joined in.

Then another.

Vaughan couldn’t help but smile. He tipped his hat to the crowd and bowed. Jeh and the Twins eagerly followed suit. Blue was startled for longer than the rest of them but gave into the pressure eventually, taking her own extravagant bow while levitating her hat into the air. Keller did not join in the festivities beyond having a smoke.

“Jeh! You’re back!”

Jeh looked up, surprised to hear the voice of Ashen in her head in the middle of town. Then she saw Ashen, sitting near the edge of the forest right in public view. She had shaped herself into some kind of hand-like shape, with the tree growing out of her a bit like a wrist. A small dryad sat in the tree, sleeping.

Jeh stared at Ashen, slack-jawed.

“Much has happened since you left,” Ashen said, leaving the treeline and approaching the platform. The crowd was wary of her, but nobody screamed—and in fact they purposefully parted to let her through. “I have become a public guardian. This is Scurfpea. She’s my gardener.”

“Soon, carrots!” Scurfpea said, gesturing at some sprouts growing out of a section of dirt contained within Ashen’s many facets. “Fire garden fun!”

“That’s amazing!” Jeh said, jumping up and into the branches of Ashen’s tree. “Wow, you actually got it to work, that’s… wow!”

“Um. Um… Jeh?” Blue asked, raising a hoof. “How do you know…?”

“Ask Suro about it,” Jeh said, waving a hand.

“Suro!?”

“Hey, Rina, Rona!” Jeh called. “This is one of my other friends, Ashen!”

“I have heard much of you two,” Ashen said. “Both from Jeh and the people of the town. Quite the local legends, sneaking off like you did. And back in one piece, too.”

The Twins jumped up into the tree after Jeh. “Pleasure to meet you, miss Ashen!” they said in unison. “I’m sure this is the beginning of a great friendship!”

“I’m scared,” Vaughan said.

“I assure you Vaughan, I am no threat…”

“No, not you, them.”

“Oh. …I am afraid I do not understand…?”

“Don’t worry about it,” one of the Twins said.

“Yeah, we can explain it later if it matters.”

Scurfpea tilted her head. “Why?”

The twins looked to her with eager eyes. “To keep everyone…”

“...on their toes!”

“...Toes? Everyone with toes is on toes. Maybe? Hmm…”

“I think we should go on an adventure!” Jeh said.

“You just got back from one,” Ashen pointed out.

“I’ve been on a dragon’s back for over a day, doing nothing. It doesn’t have to be an adventure for you. How about you show me around town, tell me what’s been up with everything?”

“Well.. er…”

“You may,” Lila said, finally walking up to the crowd. “Try to have a good time, Ashen. We’ll come get them at lunch.”

“...I will, Lila.” With that, Ashen carried off the kids to go explore town.

“...Something’s happened,” Blue observed.

“You’ll hear all about it soon enough,” Lila said with a sigh. “I think we should grab the entire Space Program today for lunch and just… go over it all. It… will be a lot.”

“Geez, now it’s just going to gnaw at me while I wonder what it is.”

“Hence why I told the kids to have fun, give them some time before… I almost wish we didn’t have to tell them but they’ll find out anyway.”

~~~

Willow Hollow had certainly changed while they’d been away. Several new buildings had been built, and old buildings had seen new additions made to them. The most impressive of these was the bar—it had been transformed into a proper tavern with multiple floors filled with rooms for travelers to stay in, and now employed a full staff of waiters and chefs. Everyone’s favorite bartender was still in charge, though, much to the older citizens’ relief.

Some of the tents of the tent city had not left when the Moonshot didn’t return quickly and had become more permanent fixtures. Several were in the process of being replaced by brand-new buildings, giving the carpenters a lot to work on. One of these was a new restaurant that was already so busy that there was no way to get a table for the rest of the day, despite Jeh all but begging for a taste of the buttery goodness she could smell.

The largest new construction was the barracks, a structure that served as a watchtower, housing for Kroanite knights, storage for weapons, and training in the art of combat. There were a few knights in full armor outside of it at all times, and at the moment Ashen and the kids passed by one of the knights was teaching some cats how to dodge attacks. Jeh noticed one of the cats was one of Suro’s and Lila’s many children—not that she knew his name, there were too many to keep track of.

Underneath all these changes, though, the town was still clearly Willow Hollow. The same people Jeh always saw were walking around, the more adventurous of which would wave at the group when they passed by.

It was still home.

Jeh let out a sigh of relief and flopped back into the chair-shaped protrusion of Ashen she was sitting in. “It’s good to be home.”

“You weird,” Scurfpea said, rolling her eyes.

“You’re the weird one.”

“Yes!”

Jeh stretched out her arms and turned to the Sourdough Twins… who were deep in thought.

“What’s up with you two?”

“Contemplating changes,” one said.

The other nodded. “You’ll probably be told about what we’re trying to figure out soon.”

“You two really are observant,” Ashen commented.

“Not really that hard to tell, this time,” one said with a shrug.

The other sighed. “People can be open books sometimes.”

Jeh blinked. “What are you guys talking about?”

“They are right, you will be finding out soon, as it’s lunchtime.”

“Ooooh, yeah, good point.” Jeh blinked. “Though now I’m a little nervous…”

At this point, Alexandrite dropped out of the sky. “Here to pick up Jeh.”

“Aaaaagh not more dragon rides…” Jeh whined.

Alexandrite raised an eyebrow. “You can walk to Vaughan’s cabin if you want.”

“Oh, another dragon ride, yay!” She jumped off Ashen and onto Alexandrite, hitting his neck a little harder than he would have liked. “See you girls later!”

“Bye weirdo!” Scurfpea said with a wave.

“You too, wackjob!”

“Whack job…?” Scurfpea scratched her head, deeply confused by this.

Jeh laughed as Alexandrite took her into the air. There wasn’t really much time for conversation, Vaughan’s Cabin wasn’t very far away.

They landed in the front yard in front of the main doors. Vaughan and Suro were standing there, looking at the doors.

“Well…?” Suro asked.

“Hmm. You know, this door is almost exactly as I remember it. Some of the wear and chips are missing, and I thought those gave it character, but the wood grain is just right, the hinges are properly lustrous, and the knobs are nearly identical.”

Suro sighed because he knew what was coming.

“In fact, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed a difference if it wasn’t bright blue.”

“Why are the doors blue?” Jeh asked, tilting her head as she walked up.

“Had to replace them,” Suro said. “Went through a lot of effort to make it look identical. Realized we didn’t remember what kind of paint was originally used. Decided to give up on making it identical and just paint it blue.”

“Why blue though?”

“Had a lot of it.”

“...Uh-huh.”

“Ready to face the music, Jeh?” Vaughan asked.

“...Isn’t that phrase usually used when you’re about to be judged?”

“Um. Well. You’re right…”

“Hah. I know Karli better than you.” Jeh crossed her arms and gave him an extremely smug smirk.

Vaughan chuckled. “You’ll probably know everything better than I do at some point.”

“I’m not good at math at alllll.”

“You have forever to learn!”

Jeh blinked. “...Good point.”

With that, they entered the Cabin and went to the dining room. The food was already prepared; Mary had apparently gone all-out today with homemade pastries, salads, roasts, and everything else she could get her hands on. All in all, far too much food, and this was considering the tremendous size of Alexandrite’s stomach.

Everyone was already there. Krays and Seskii were chatting with Blue. Big G was leaning against a wall as he usually did, while Keller was sitting down and slowly glancing around the room with a careful eye. Lila was actually on top of the table trying to arrange one of the dishes properly, while Mary was scrambling with the drinks. Margaret had her chair turned slightly away from the table so she could work on her current painting: a very large, mostly-black canvas with a few stars peeking through here and there, with a white humanoid figure crouching in the middle, hands gripping tightly to the figure’s head.

“That’s everyone,” Big G called.

“Right, right, we should stop fussing…” Lila cleared her throat and sat down in her chair. “Lunch, everyone!”

Everyone sat down and quieted down. Lila gave a very quick word of thanks.

Normally, at this point, everyone would dig in.

Instead, everyone was just staring at her.

She sighed. “Okay… look, I know there’s a lot of things that need to be done and said, and we will do them, but please eat the food while I do it, it would be a shame to let all of Mary’s hard work go to waste.”

“Oh, good, I was afraid we were going to be all somber and tears today,” Krays said, taking a chicken leg off a roast and biting into it. “And that’ll just make things so much worse.”

“Krays, I swear…” Mary started.

“That I have no tact? Incorrect, I have some. Just very little. Microscopic, maybe.”

Mary shook her head with a sigh, but nonetheless started spooning out some casserole for herself.

As everyone slowly started taking the food, Lila began the story. She spoke clearly, concisely, and tried her best not to let her emotions dictate how she said anything. She was a reporter today, a reporter of what had occurred.

A reporter of the attacks on Willow Hollow.

A reporter on the demon that had attacked them.

A reporter on the attempted assassination of Princess Via.

A reporter on Jeremiah, what he’d done, and what happened to him.

A reporter on the assassination of King Redmind.

It was distasteful work, to be a reporter on such things. Horrors. Tragedies. Pains. And none of it was good news besides the fact that they’d survived the encounter, that the darkness had been defeated in the end, that the town was more tightly knit as a result.

SIlence fell over the lunch. Everyone had stopped eating well into the middle of the story. No one said anything.

The first noise came from Jeh. She scooted her chair back from the table and stood up. With a determined expression, she walked all the way around the table, coming to Margaret. There was a moment of hesitation in her eyes, and confusion in Margaret’s, but it faded quickly as the immortal child pulled the black gari into a hug that was somehow both forceful and gentle, both demanding and generous, both pained and pleasant.

Margaret broke into tears, but she did not reject Jeh; rather she tightly squeezed her as close as possible, as though afraid that she might stop, that she might run away, that she might vanish again. But it was not to be; for now, at least, Jeh had no intentions of going anywhere.

But a hug cannot be maintained for eternity, and this one was eventually broken off. Jeh did not return to her seat—rather, she sat upon Margaret’s lap and turned with her to face the others.

It was Blue who would speak the first words.

“L-Lila?” Blue asked. “Do… do you know how Tenrayce and Via are doing?”

Lila shook her head. “I have some idea of Tenrayce, for she is managing much of the kingdom now and is primarily who I’m reporting to, but I can only check on her through her letters. She is well enough to do her job and do it well, that is all I can say. I have heard nothing about Via.”

“O-oh…”

“I’ll check in on ‘em for ya,” Keller said. “I have t’ give my report t’ them anyway.”

“...Thank you, Keller.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Once again, silence fell over the table.

“...It will take all of us some time to process all of this,” Lila said. “Those of us who were here when it happened haven’t fully recovered, and those of us who just came back are… going to be reeling for a while. I suggest everyone not do any work for… a while.”

Seskii frowned.

“Don’t worry, Seskii, I won’t let us stagnate and do nothing again. We will return, just… not now. And…” She sighed. “I am sorry Vaughan, but I am going to have to ask you for what happened to you out there and in the Tempest.”

Vaughan nodded. “Might as well get it out of the way…”

Vaughan was much more disorganized with his story, and he was not the only one who spoke. Jeh, Blue, and Keller would occasionally chime in with a segment of their own. Unlike Lila, he did not take the role of a reporter trying to relay information, but rather a storyteller. There were emotional moments, there were laughs—especially when Blue went on a rant about how stupid they were they almost crashed into the moon—and despite the many harrowing things of the journey, there was a sense of whimsy and adventure to it.

Their story was, ultimately, one of triumph. They had gone to the moon and returned. They had learned so, so much. But they had new obstacles to face, and the dark mystery of the nameless society hung dark over the last parts of the tale.

But in the end, their plan was foiled, and the astronauts got to come home.

And here they were.

Home.

Not exactly as they left it, but home nonetheless.

Big G let out a large breath at the end of it all. “Sounds like all of us have gone through the wringer…”

Suro nodded. “We’re trying to do great things. It’s only natural.”

“And it’s going to keep happening,” Seskii pointed out, tossing one of her bottles of juice into the air and landing it on her head. “We’re on a true adventure, everyone. Right now, that’s making most of us nervous and uncertain. But on another day, it’ll be exciting.”

“...I’m kind of excited right now,” Alexandrite admitted. “I’m thinking about all the things you learned up there, how to travel in space without magic…”

“I’m sure we’ll have a meeting on that rather soon, Alexandrite,” Lila said. “But some of us… need time.”

“Of course, of course…”

“I have a suggestion,” Keller said, standing up. “I have t’ go t’ Axiom t’ give my report t’ the… new King, I s’ppose. Wait ‘til I get back?”

“...That sounds like a good deadline,” Lila said. “Unless there are any objections to not working until then?”

Blue looked like she might be objecting internally but she knew better than to listen to that part of herself.

“Good. Keller, you try to find a way to get some rest too.”

Keller tipped his hat up. “While I appreciate the sentiment, this ain’t my first time around the block. I’ll be fine, don’t ya worry.”

“All right, Keller, I won’t. May you have a good trip.”

“I’ll be relaxing,” Alexandrite said.

“Wasn’t gonna ask ya for a ride.”

“Oh. Well. I’m still going to be resting.”

“Course.”

“Anyway…” Vaughan cleared his throat. “We probably should eat some of this stuff.”

Krays looked up from the steak she was currently cutting into. “And you finally catch up with me. About time.”

“You weren’t eating there for a while either,” Suro pointed out.

“Then I got really hungry.”

“...I’m hungry too,” Margaret said, with some amount of shock in her voice. “I’m hungry. I… I haven’t been actually hungry since…”

Jeh shoved a plate full of roast chicken into her face.

“...Maybe not that hungry.”

“I’ll eat what you don’t.”

Margaret paused for a moment… and smiled. “Deal.”

~~~

Once, the family of Kroan had created great tombs for their Kings and Queens.

This had not been the case for a few generations. King Redmind was not buried in an extravagant tomb with gold and silver and miniature statues of himself, he was simply given the place of honor in the royal graveyard. The tombstone was made of quality marble, but had few excess details. It simply listed his name, birthdate, date he ascended the throne… and the end.

The service had been a week ago. That had been far more what one would expect for a king—a tremendous parade of mourning with thousands of attendants that marched all around Axiom. Most citizens of Axiom would remember that.

But the royal family would remember this moment, right here, standing over the grave. They were all there. Via. Tenryace. Wyett. Hyrii. Riikaz. Even the elderly Ursulii.

The sky was overcast, but it was not raining. The wind was chill, but not enough to demand a coat. Aside from the wind there was only one other sound: the tears of Via. There was not a dry eye among them, but her tears were the only ones that could not be controlled. She was on her knees, hands gripping the ground as she let out sob after sob.

Tenrayce had a book open. If there had been an observer from outside the family there, they would have probably thought her cruel, indifferent to the passing of her father. But everyone there knew otherwise—she had not turned a page in several minutes. She was not reading, the book was just there.

Hyrii clung to her husband’s arm, concerned deeply for him; her own emotions were secondary at the moment. His eyes were almost hollow, and he had lost several pounds since the day the King was found. Almost all of his anger and fire had left him that day. Hyrii could hardly get him to talk about anything, not even the political issues that had gotten him so fired up before. And amidst all this, he was expected to take charge, to do something incredible as the new King…

She could not know that it was not sorrow, but guilt, that tore him to such shambles.

The old Queen Ursulii looked down at her son’s grave, a deeply grim and contemplative look on her face. None knew what was going on in that head of hers, the head that had changed Kroan so much during her time that she was a figure of history; watching what the world did with her legacy.

Riikaz had not unclenched her fists since arriving.

“...It is sufficient,” she said, suddenly.

“Huh?” Hyrii said, confused.

“Mom, no…” Tenrayce warned.

“I have mourned the way of Kroan long enough. There is another way I must follow.”

“Mom…”

Riikaz ground her teeth. “Tenrayce. I know… I know you mean well. You have a good head on you, you’ll do this Kingdom proud.”

“The Kingdom needs its Queen,” Wyett said, with enough feeling behind the words that it made Riikaz look at him.

“It already has one,” Riikaz said, turning to Hyrii with a nod. “She’ll do well by you.”

“I… I don’t understand,” Hyrii said. “Are you… leaving?”

“I don’t think what I must do will be quick.” Riikaz turned back to the grave. “My highest mortal calling is not to this Kingdom, Hyrii, it is to him. My husband. My King. He has been wronged. I will return to my tribe to perform the rite of vengeance, and then I shall hunt those responsible to the ends of Ikyu.”

“Mom, they were probably puppets,” Tenryace said. “Whoever…”

“The woman or man with the blade is not my concern,” Riikaz said. Wyett let out a sharp breath. “My target is the one truly responsible.”

“We don’t know anything about them…”

“I know.” Riikaz shook her head. “It is a fool’s errand.”

Via looked up at Riikaz, sniffing. “M-mom… would… would Dad have wanted that…?”

Riikaz turned to look back at the grave. She patted the head of her youngest child. “No, Via, he would not. But had too kind a heart for his own good.”

“It was his best quality,” Ursulii said with her old, creaking voice.

“...Are you going to try to stop me?”

“No, I know what sort of woman you are, and I know your ways.” Ursulii paused. “Go in peace, Riikaz.”

“But…” Tenrayce stopped herself. “...Okay, Mom.”

“I don’t want you to go…” Via said.

Riikaz helped her daughter up into a standing position and put her hands on her shoulders. “I intend to return, Via.”

“B-but… but what if something happens to you?”

Riikaz grimaced. “I can’t promise that it won’t. But while this is a fool’s errand, I don’t intend to die out there. I intend to bring justice.”

“We’ll do what we can to help,” Tenryace said. “These nameless people… they are the enemy of Kroan. You should take one of Benefactor’s devices, so we can keep a repository of information on what we find, even over long distance.”

“That’ll certainly make it easier to write,” Riikaz said with a chuckle. “My children… the three…” She glanced to Hyrii. “No, four of you. The four of you… have been build up for this moment. It may not seem like it, but the four of you are strong. This Kingdom is in good hands with all of you. I know it.”

The four of them nodded in understanding, even Wyett was locking eyes with her.

“But I do have to go. I made a promise to him. He would not ask me to keep it… but I must.” She pulled them all into a powerful hug.

“...Good luck,” Tenryace said.

“Thank you.” With that, she released them and kneeled back down to the grave. She kissed her fingers and laid them on top of the tombstone. “Until we meet again…” With that, she stood up and walked away.

There was silence once more.

A few minutes later, Tenrayce walked off, dragging Wyett—and by extension Hyrii—away by the sleeve.

Via and Ursulii remained, alone.

Via fell back down to her knees, looking down at the ground. She was essentially out of tears, but she couldn’t tear herself away. She did not know how long she remained there, only that she didn’t want to leave.

The bony, but gentle hands of her grandmother came to rest on her shoulder.

“Come, Via, rise.”

Via slowly rose to her feet. “I’m… I’m okay, Grandma… I just…”

“I know you are, Via. Little one. Precious, precious little one… the one to inherit your father’s gift.” Ursulii carefully turned her around until the two of them locked eyes. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a burden.”

“Wh… what?”

“I… do not have the faith in your siblings your mother does.”

Via was surprised. “They… they have the skills, Tenii has been…”

“They can run a kingdom, Via. But their hearts, their hearts… They…” Ursulii shook her head. “They are being seared with deceit.”

“Grandma…?”

“It will be hard on you, but I will be with you every step of the way.”

Via blinked. “Way to what…?”

“To being a leader.”

“I… Grandma, I’m an idiot. I can’t be trusted with… all this. Or any of this.”

“That is why I said it would be hard. But it is not impossible.” She turned her head to the sky. The dark, gray sky. “Come with me, Via. We have much to do.”

“...Okay, Grandma.”

~~~

“I… I guess I live in the cabin now,” Margaret said, sitting on the bed she’d been using. “I… I didn’t want to go back to… the house after that day and… well you weren’t here and…”

“Vaughan’s letting you stay, right?” Jeh asked.

“I barely even asked the question and he said ‘of course, by all means!’ “ Margaret let out a short chuckle. “I don’t even think he had to think about what happened to me or anything…”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time painting,” Jeh said, walking around the room, observing the very large number of canvases that showed images of space—stars, blackness, tiny figures dwarfed by the majesty of the cosmos… and the moon.

“It’s… how I dealt with things. Some of it.” Margaret kneeled down at one of the pictures which had a dark claw shape surrounding the moon, lit only by the moonlight.

“What’s that claw? Is it… is it the demon?”

“...That demon could never hold the moon in his hands…” Margaret said, suddenly short on breath.

“...Eyda?”

Margaret traced her finger across the edge of the moon. “Jeh… what… what does it mean when everything you’ve ever known was a lie?”

Jeh frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Y-yeah, I…” Margaret trailed off, continually studying the strokes of paint on the canvas.

While she studied her own work, lost in thought, Jeh studied her. Jeh wanted so, so badly to do something for her. To help her, to give her an answer, to do… something. But she couldn’t think of anything. She was small and powerless.

Except… maybe that wasn’t true…

“...I could be living a lie,” Jeh said.

“Eh?” Margaret turned back to her, confused. “Jeh, you take life as it comes, you’re living it very honestly. You don’t even hold to any beliefs very strongly.”

“...I might not be… ‘Jeh’. “ She swallowed hard. “I… might be someone else.”

“That… other girl?”

“She’s… not some other girl though, is she? I just… don’t remember being her.” She looked at her hands in their bear mitts, suddenly feeling a wave of sadness. “It… it hurts to think about… her? me?” Jeh shook her head. “But she might be who I actually am and she’s the real one and Jeh is just… just…”

“Hey, hey…” Margaret put her hand on Jeh’s cheek. “You are who you are. If you used to be someone else, if you didn’t, it doesn’t matter.”

“B-but what if I stop being me? What if… she comes back?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“How… how can you know?” tears started rolling down her face. “What if… the moment I remember anything, I become… someone else?”

Margaret stared at her long and hard. “You’re… right. I can’t know. We can’t know.” Struck by the heaviness of the thought, she sat down on the bed, staring at the wall. “We can’t know… so much.”

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Jeh blubbered, wiping her eyes. “I’m… I’m trying to help you and I’m just…”

“I think we can help each other,” Margaret said, giving her a sad, but genuine, smile. “Neither of us knows anything. Life is… confusing. And scary.”

“Scary…” Jeh nodded. “I… I don’t like scary. I… I liked it when I wasn’t afraid of anything.”

“But that really was a lie, wasn’t it? There are things to be afraid of.” Margaret turned to the claw holding the moon. “There truly are…”

“If Eyda tries to hurt you, I’ll… I’ll try to stop her.”

Margaret chuckled. “I… you… you really will, won’t you?”

“I’ll protect everyone I can.”

“You are a little small for that…”

Jeh crossed her arms. “I’ll do it anyway!”

“Well, in that case… I’ll protect you so… so…” Margaret suddenly felt her heart start beating faster and faster as she continued talking to Jeh. “Jeh…”

“Hmm?”

“Please… please don’t go.”

“Um… what?”

“I… don’t… don’t.. If…” Margaret’s eyes were welling up. “I can trust that nothing can take you from me, right? You’ll… always be here, one way or another.”

Jeh beamed brightly. “Not even lava can take me out.”

“Good. I just… thank you.” She pulled Jeh into a hug. “I’m… I’m only sorry that I can’t return the favor.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll make sure you die in space like you want!”

Margaret let out a laugh. “Jeh, you realize that sounds like a threat, right?”

“Oh, uh…” Jeh flushed red.

“I like it, I like it!”

“Oh! Great!”

Margaret clasped her hands around Jeh’s. “We can do this, Jeh. Whatever came before, whatever comes after… we can do this.”

“Yeah! Nothing can stop us! We’ll stop those demons, we’ll stop those rigids, we’ll stop those singers, and we’ll stop those weird mysterious secret guys! All of them don’t know what they’re messing with!”

~~~

“...And that’s most everythin’,” Keller concluded.

He stood in front of the King’s throne, currently occupied by the recently crowned King Wyett Kroan, a man who looked far too small for the seat he was in; and unlike most in his position, he looked like he knew he was too small.

Queen Hyrii sat in a chair at his side. She was paying only half-attention to Keller, the rest of her focus was laid on her clearly troubled husband. He, however, had been hanging on Keller’s every word… but had said nothing the entire time.

Keller didn’t like that. He knew who Wyett was; a paranoid man, and half of the things Keller had mentioned could warrant a threat to Kroan. Yet here he was, remaining silent.

Tenrayce was the one doing all the talking. She wasn’t even sitting down, and was furiously scribbling everything down in a notebook rather than doing her usual of reading a book. She wasn’t even having a scribe do it.

It was obvious to Keller who the new reigning monarch really was.

Not that he said anything about it. That would have been stupid.

“I have noticed that you said most everything,” Tenrayce said, not looking up from her notes as she scribbled them down. “Given your tone, I expect you have left out one extremely major detail specifically to leave it to last. Considering that your report talks of the Guardian Spirit, an Orange Crystal on the moon, and the nameless organization that seeks our downfall, I for one am very curious what this last thing may be.”

Keller reached into his pocket and pulled out a spherical orange crystal. “This is th’ only sample Wanderlust sent back with us that isn’t still in Willow Hollow. This is a piece o’ th’ sun.”

“Fascinating…”

“It was hard t’ judge th’ demonstration we got on th’ Moon, but I think this little ball has more destructive power than our largest Red Crystalline Ones. If ya broke this casing Axiom might cease t’ exist.”

Tenryace stared blankly at him.

Wyett finally spoke. “And you brought this into the city!?”

“Who else was I gonna tell ‘bout it?” Keller asked.

“We would need to store it here anyway,” Tenrayce said. “Highest possible security… my goodness, I had never even considered that you could harvest the sun…”

“Ya can, ‘parently.” Keller shrugged. “It’s the same stuff Wanderlust used to harvest th’ atmospheres, just crystals, immune to heat and all.”

“It will be a long time until we will be able to do this ourselves…” Tenrayce gingerly took the sunfire crystal out of Keller’s hands and into her own. “It doesn’t feel like a weapon of mass destruction… it’s just a crystal ball in my hand.”

“Don’t drop it.”

“I have no intention of doing so.” Tenryace quickly stored it deep within her green robes. “I am sure this will either be a great boon or a great burden, Agent Keller. You have outdone yourself.”

“I still let th’ kids on.”

“And they turned out to be useful, did they not? Count it as a blessing from Dia that you had a lapse.” She returned to her notebook. “And now, a question in return. Do you wish to keep working with the Wizard Space Program?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Then continue doing so, return to them as soon as you are able, within reason.”

“I will wait for Alexandrite t’ complete his obligations with the anglers.”

“...It is probably too late now, but it just occurred to me that what he writes may be considered a security breach.”

Keller raised an eyebrow. “Someone like him doesn’t know th’ protocol?”

“Excitement overrules reason often.”

“Ah. Seems I should go check on him…”

“As I said, it is probably too late. At least it is highly unlikely the anglers have anything to do with our enemies, secluded off as they are.”

“Of course.” Keller sensed he was about to be dismissed, so he snapped his fingers. “Question for you, Your Highness.”

Tenryace was visibly surprised. “Yes?”

“Blue sent me here t’ see how ya and your sister were doin’. Poor girl’s worried sick, I have t’ say.”

“Ah…” Tenrayce visibly smiled. “You can report on my mental health to be sure. Via is taking it hard, but she will be on track—I will be sure to encourage her to take a vacation to Willow Hollow to see Blue, as I am likely to be indisposed for the foreseeable future. Will that be enough for her, you think?”

“Honestly, Your Highness, only a visit would be sufficient for that unicorn.”

“Alas, she would have to come here, and I do not wish to subject her to that again. Perhaps in time… You can tell her I appreciate her asking. And Keller, I admire your willingness to push social constructs aside for her sake. Do not be afraid to ask me such questions in the future, understood?”

“Understood.”

“You are dismissed, Agent Keller.”

Keller bowed and excused himself from the room, thoughts swirling around his head.

He’d had no issue at all with King Redmind, the man had been worthy of absolute trust and fealty. But what he had just seen in that room gave him doubts; could he trust the missions he was given, anymore?

He decided before he left the palace that, at least for now, he could--for the mission he was on had not changed.

He would help those crazy idiots go to space and uncover the secrets of the universe.

Maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to save Kroan in the process.

~~~

It was night, and Lila wasn’t sleeping.

Suro had been sleeping, but in his rest he had rolled over, reaching for his wife, and found nothing. This prompted him to groggily rise and see her sitting at the edge of the bed, looking out into the darkness.

“Lila?”

“Yes, I am having trouble sleeping.”

“Look, Lila, I know you, you are going to be able to handle this, and even if you make a mistake—”

“It’s not that, tonight,” Lila said. “...They found things out there, Suro.”

“Yeah…?”

“Things that… make the world seem… different.” She flicked her tail side to side. “The moon is old, Suro. Older than the earliest dates ever interpreted from Dia’s Word. Older than any dates inferred from any texts. There were things up there.”

“Ah…” Suro said, moving to sit down next to his wife. “Yeah, it’s all so… big. I can’t think about it either.”

“I keep coming back to what I know about life,” Lila said, lifting up a paw, trying to look at it, but unable to see any details in the darkness despite her night vision. “And what I know is all about… the small. Even the Guardian Spirit, she’s just a person who helps her island and does the best she can, and even she’s beyond my ability to fully grasp. Then there’s the size of the world itself, then the universe, and then so much time…” She paused.

“I kind of think it doesn’t matter too much,” Suro said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, really, there are always going to be things bigger than us. We can never know Dia’s full plan, for instance, but even ignoring that there’s also the entire nonsense conspiracy with all these sides going on in Kroan. We keep ending up in the middle of it but we really can’t do much beyond take what’s thrown at us. How is knowing the world is millions and millions of years old any different, practically, than having a conspiracy surrounding us?”

Lila let out a soft chuckle. “I suppose that’s one way to look at it… but in a sense, that conspiracy, that is our doing—the fault of the spirited. The age of the universe… that’s just a brute fact, whatever the actual value may be.”

“And…?”

“And I’m finding myself wondering how much we aren’t told. How much is hidden from us. How… how we make decisions based on knowledge that might be very, very wrong.” She put her paw to her chest and took in a deep breath. “Trusting Dia may be the ideal, but you know as well as I do that we still make decisions based on our understanding. If the world itself is fundamentally not what we think it is… then… what then?”

“What exactly are we going to do about it if it is?”

“I… well…”

“ ‘Just live well.’ ”

“You know hearing you quote me back to me—”

“Never gets old?”

Lila turned to him and gave him a look. He didn’t even need to be able to see to know exactly what her face was doing. He couldn’t help but snort.

Lila huffed playfully. “You’ve grown bolder over the years, Suro.”

“You rubbed off on me.”

“See, now if only I could figure out how to give myself my own advice, then everything would be golden.”

“Pretty sure that’s not how we work.”

“No… of course not.” She gave him a quick bap on the snout. “You truly are exactly what I need, aren’t you?”

“I sure hope so!”

“You have to hope…?”

“Well, one word from you could banish all doubt…”

“In that case…”

“DAD!” one of their kids called from down the hall. “NIRF THREW UP ON THE CARPET!”

Suro twitched. “Maybe I can just igno—”

Lila shoved him off the bed. “She’s calling for you.”

Suro sighed. “Very well, my queen…”

“Ooooh, royal treatment today?”

“Yep! We’ll see if it lasts through the chore I have to go do. I’m expecting you’re getting a sourpuss when I return.”

“That’ll be fun.”

Suro laughed awkwardly. “Sure it will…”

~~~

“So!” Blue said, slapping the chalkboard with a spoon held in her magic. “We’re all back and I’ve had IDEAS!”

“Blue you were told not to work,” Lila said.

“I have written none of this down!” Blue said with a mad laugh. “You have no proof of anything!”

“...We will have a talk later, but you are right, Keller and Alexandrite have returned it is time. That said… maybe finish your breakfast first?”

Blue whinnied in amusement. “I can eat and talk at the same time!” She dove her spoon into the oatmeal and scooped out a bite while also drawing on the chalkboard. “So, first of all, I wish to get it in everyone’s head that ‘down’ is a relative idea. Ikyu has a down. The moon has a down. Qi has a down. The Sun has a down. Everything big pulls things towards them, thus making down. In fact, that’s probably why everything out there is largely round, the force of gravity pulls anything that deviates too much down. Make a large enough overhang and it just crumbles.”

“Why aren’t we round?” Jeh asked.

“We’re too small to have our own gravity,” Blue said.

“Oooooh. What does size have to do with it…?”

“We’re… not sure, all right?” Blue sighed. “Wanderlust had a lot of information about relative gravity strengths, and while the biggest things have the largest gravity, Talu has far more gravity than Chonker despite being basically the same size. One of those questions we’re just gonna have to figure out.”

“Dangerous,” Big G pointed out.

“Yes, but at least we know what the gravity is. You can assign a number to each planet or moon and use it to calculate the orbit trajectories. Unfortunately, we aren’t as precise as Wanderlust so we can’t just throw rocks at these objects and hope they come back. Wanderlust loses a lot of them anyway… so we need to go there ourselves!”

“Which is the Big Problem!” Seskii said with a cheer.

Blue raised an eyebrow. “Why is that worth cheering about?”

“Because it’s so exciting!”

“It’ll be exciting when we think of ways around it. I’ve been fumbling for a while. See, for anyone who forgot or wasn’t paying attention or had other things on their minds…”

“Which was most of us,” Mary said.

“...there’s this thing called magic not working past the orbit of the moon.” Blue drew a very simple diagram on the chalkboard that showed Ikyu, the moon, and a little bit of distance further out. She then drew a line that represented the magic level, dropping off to nothing a fair distance beyond the moon. “Magic just… stops here. I wouldn’t be able to do anything with my horn. Crystalline Ones wouldn’t be able to see outside their bodies. Creatures that rely on magic to live will die instantly. Jeh won’t be able to regenerate.”

“Oh yeah forgot about that…” Jeh said, eyes widening.

“Any attributes or… ancestries…” Blue clicked her tongue, trying out the word. Look at me, using a new magic concept in a sentence like that… “Simply won’t function out there. Crystals… I’m not entirely sure, Wanderlust was still able to use Colored crystal properties to harvest things out there, she just couldn’t use spells. She told us a little about how she felt trying to do magic out far from Ikyu, but there’s no good data on it. We need good data.”

“Gronge’s experiments are probably the best data we have so far,” Alexandrite suggested.

“Yeah, I should spend some time on those…”

“They are quite an interesting read,” Vaughan added. “I wonder what he’ll make of ancestries…”

Keller grunted under his breath and Alexandrite shifted awkwardly.

“Ooooh, did we have a security leak?” Seskii asked.

“Hah!” Krays slapped her knee. “Just told the fishies everything, did ya?”

“Not… everything…” Alexandrite said.

“I’m hopin’ Gronge has enough sense about him not t’ blow this all up,” Keller said.

“He is quite rational. Until he gets a crazy idea. Then he doesn’t sleep. Apparently, this is more normal for anglers than us surface dwellers… but still.” Alexandrite paused. “Actually, now that I think about it, you are quite similar to him, Vaughan—at least what I’m able to glean from his letters.”

“He has to be quite different,” Vaughan said.

“How?”

“He has the patience to wait for letters to sift through the ocean depths,” Vaughan chuckled.

“If you lived on the ocean you would totally be willing to do that,” Suro pointed out.

“But I don’t!”

“I mean… yes.”

“AHEM!” Blue coughed. “Can we?”

“No,” Krays said. “We have to carry this absurd tangent out to its absolute finish, to the ends of the earth, to th—” For her trouble Krays got a spoon to the head from Blue. Seskii held up a card with a ‘9’ on it.

“I thought it was a pretty good throw…” Suro said.

“Eh, didn’t have a perfect windup,” Seskii added with a shrug. “I could be convinced to give her a nine-point-five.”

“Seskii, if I had another spoon…” Blue muttered.

Seskii threw a spoon at Blue, which she immediately caught in her telekinesis. There was a cute little smile drawn on the spoon. Blue stared at it for a moment before slapping it on the chalkboard. “ANYWAY! We can’t use magic out there. This is terrible, but not as bad as it sounds. For instance, we can still launch using magic, so the big problem of escaping Ikyu’s gravity is still solved. But there are some big issues.” She tapped her hoof. “Those would be steering and living.”

“I think if we do it right we won’t even have to steer,” Vaughan pointed out. “Wanderlust did send us back to Ikyu without much, if any, control, and it worked out.”

“That requires an extremely precise launching calculation and sometimes it doesn’t work. Moon to Ikyu is fine, but there’s magic there. Go further out and sometimes probes get lost. We’d need to be able to deal with unforeseen complications.”

“If it’s just tiny rocks flying through space…”

“Can’t assume we understand anything, Vaughan, there could be space dragons out there for all we know.”

Alexandrite tapped his chin. “You know, air dragons might be able to sustain themselves up there…”

“Until they left the moon’s orbit.”

“Good point.”

“So, steering without magic is a big issue,” Blue said. “Ideas?”

“Air,” Jeh said.

“...Okay?”

“Whenever you make a hole in a spaceship, the air rushes out, pushing. Right?”

Blue blinked. “That… that actually would work, there’s no resistance in space… but that would be a lot of air and it doesn’t have very much force…”

“If we just need to steer and not get out of a gravity well…” Vaughan contemplated.

“It’d keep you from landing,” Big G said. “Releasing air won’t get you off the ground once you’re already down.”

“And we might need the air,” Krays said. “The air recycler won’t work, remember, we rely on magic for that.”

“That’s problem two, we’ll get to that,” Blue said.

“I want to get to it now.”

“Screw you, we’re on steering.”

“A thought,” Big G said. “There exist explosives that do not rely on magic to operate, useful when mining Magenta crystals in particular.”

Jeh gasped. “The fireworks! They still burn but they weren't pretty! But there’s still energy there!”

“So strap a bunch of bombs to the ship?” Blue laughed. “That’s ridiculous. Who would do that?”

“Us,” Lila pointed out.

“Okay if we don’t think of anything better but that’s just asking for disaster to happen.”

“And what we’re doing now isn’t?” Krays asked.

Blue scrunched her nose. “Okay, fine, air and explosives, any other ideas?”

“Gyroscopes,” Krays said.

“Krays we don’t need any more of your cra—”

“I’m serious, gyroscopes. Spin up parts of your spaceship, get the spaceship to turn. Make it so your ship can adjust its shape and change how it spins.”

“That wouldn’t actually change the trajectory,” Blue pointed out. “All objects behave the same under gravity, no matter their shape or size, you’d just be changing orientation.”

“Might be enough to dodge incoming problems though. Or, or, I totally just thought of this, stop the ship from tumbling! How are you gonna do that without magic, huh?”

Blue blinked.

“You have to admit, she has a point,” Vaughan said. “That is a good idea.”

“Okay, fine, we’ll need to do more investigation on spinning and how to control it, fine,” Blue grumbled. “Any other ideas on how to steer ourselves in space without magic?”

“...Sail on sunlight?” Seskii suggested.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Light doesn’t push things.”

“All right, just an idea.” Seskii giggled.

“There’s nothing out there t’ sail on,” Keller said, tipping his hat up. “Ya got a real problem. Ya just drift unless you got some way t’ move yerself.”

Blue nodded. “Yeah. Without magic, you have to carry something with you in order to change your trajectory. Now that I think about it it doesn’t have to be air, air’s just easy to compress, it could be anything. Rocks, or whatever. But you have to lose something to move…” Blue paused. “Actually we lose Orange crystal mass when we move so that’s not actually any different, is it?”

“Nope,” Seskii said.

“Great… well, I guess that gives me something to work with.” She scribbled down the ideas. “So now onto the other problem… Living. The air restorer doesn’t work without magic. We’ll also need long term food storage. And water. The last two things can be solved by just making a really really big ship which… is actually feasible if you launch from the moon. But the air problem. That’s… that’s a big one.”

“We know plants can recycle air,” Vaughan said.

“Yes, but over the long term? In proper health?” Blue shook her head. “And not all of them do it, and they could change it, and relying on a bunch of daisies to breathe might take up even more space than the air itself for the journey would! And they need food and water too and who knows what else!”

“Oooh, Scurfpea!” Jeh blurted.

“Eh?”

“We have a dryad in town now! She really wants to go to the moon, she might be able to help us!”

“...I’m not sure how I feel about experimenting on a dryad kid’s ability to breathe,” Lila said.

“We have Green down here, though.”

“Still, suffocation isn’t pleasant…”

“Can I at least ask her?”

Lila looked at Jeh and frowned. “I’d want her to be able to explain to me, in detail, what she thinks she’s getting into and have it make sense.”

“Is that a yes?”

“...It is, but it’s conditional. Don’t get too exci—”

“All right! Hear that Margaret? We’re getting a new pilot!”

“That’s not what I said…”

Margaret put her hand to her chin. “Do you know if she has any crystal experience?”

“Nope! But if she recycles air, just having her around should be enough for one of us, right?”

“Maybe. To be in space without having to worry about the air restorer… that would be nice.”

“I still think we need viable alternatives,” Blue said. “Relying on plants or plant-spirited is probably just… I don’t know, it seems unreliable.”

“You’d need to come up with a restoring machine,” Big G said. “And you don’t understand why air restoration works in the first place.”

Blue twitched. “...Watch me.”

“Something tells me you don’t even know where to start with this one.”

“Well. Um. Clearly, there are different kinds of things in the air and uh… surely there must be a way to tell them apart… Um…”

“Pepper’s been doing some cooling experiments,” Vaughan said. “Liquids come out of the air at different temperatures. You might want to talk to her.”

“Pepper and Gronge… got it…” Blue scribbled down some notes. “But seriously does anyone have any other ideas on how to breathe out there?”

“Get a rigid who doesn’t need to breathe?” Jeh suggested.

“Probably won’t work,” Alexandrite said.

“Why not? Many of them don’t breathe.”

“Terrestrial rigids do drown, though, and aquatic ones also tend not to last long on land. Clearly, they need something.”

“Hmm…”

“And anyway, if we used rigids…” Vaughan put his hands on the table. “I wouldn’t get to go to space anymore! And that’s ridiculous.”

“Oh? Hungry to go even further, old man?” Krays asked.

“Just because I’ve lived my dream doesn’t mean I don’t want to keep going!”

“Oh, we’re going to keep going all right…” Blue said, chuckling somewhat ominously. “We’re going to go so far Wanderlust will be stunned speechless…”

~~~

Once Alexandrite finalized the message to send to Gronge, it started a long, treacherous journey, beginning before he and Keller left Axiom, and ending well over a month later.

The message was first given to a scribe whose entire job was to replicate the message as many times as possible onto specialty, expensive paper* derived from plasts. These stiff, wobbly, but extremely white sheets would then be sealed in several reinforced metal containers. The size of containers varied based on what was being sent down, but if it was just information the containers were generally the size of small books. The symbol of Kroan was etched onto these boxes—other nations had their own symbols on the boxes, so the anglers would know the origin of each box.

*This probably shouldn’t be called paper, as it’s not made even remotely the same way and has vastly different properties. The plast sheets are hard and unwieldy, and most types of ink don’t stay on them, requiring specialty writing implements. But the major benefit is that it’s completely waterproof, once a message is on the plast “paper” it’s not getting washed away by water, and it’s even resistant to decomposition. However, it is not entirely immune; the people of Ikyu are not generally aware of microorganisms but there are many species that can metabolize plastic.

Dozens of these cases, all with identical contents, were then shipped to the West coast where they were loaded onto a barge with lots of other boxes of similar make. Most were also book-sized, but there were a few larger ones that contained goods of various kinds. Goods were by far the riskiest things to send—information could be duplicated endless numbers of times, the cost was only as much as the paper they were written on and the scribe labor, which was pricey but not absurd. Goods suffered far more, as sending just one container down essentially guaranteed it never reached its recipient, so copies were always needed, driving the cost of the operation up significantly. The treaties had a lot of regulations on how, where, and when to cover the costs of excess goods. As such information was the primary commodity shared from above and below the waves.

The barge sailed out into the ocean, making sure to stop directly over the anglers’ biggest city. Then it dropped every single box on board into the ocean.

Virtually none of them would actually fall straight down to the bottom. One of Alexandrite’s boxes in particular would be thrown to the side by a surprise current, hit the flipper of a leviathan, get gnawed on by a particularly dumb fish, and even get caught in a nearly invisible slimy creature.

The slimy creature held onto the box for a long time, unable to realize that the box wasn’t food as the creature had no brain. Fish swam into it and were dissolved over the course of several days, but the box remained unfazed by the honestly rather pathetic digestive powers of the slimy creature.

Eventually, though, the slimy creature’s natural predator showed up—a school of fish-like rigids that cut into the invisible creature with their needle-like bodies, tearing it to pieces; allowing the box to fall once more to the depths below.

This time, it actually landed, coming to rest on the flat and nearly featureless seafloor, surrounded by the white “snow” formed by the death and decay of all layers of the ocean above.

It stayed there for days. Crabs walked over it. Abyssal worms pushed their dark heads out of the ground and poked the box, and, finding it not tasty, returned to beneath the ground. A dead fish fell on top of the box, and a frenzy of feeding crabs came from kilometers around just to feast on it, leaving nothing but bones an hour later. The crabs dispersed, and the box was alone with the fishy skeleton.

Then there was light in the distance. Seven lights, all flickering in various colors of the rainbow, casting little searchlights on the ocean floor.

If the box had ears, it would have heard a language, spoken with gnashes and trills through the deep, pressurized waters of the sea. But it heard nothing, for it was a box.

Fortunately, it was very shiny and the decay falling from above had not completely covered it yet, so the moment one of the lights flicked across it, the box’s position became glaringly obvious. With that, the lights all rushed over, excited, for they knew exactly what they’d found.

It was always a good salvaging run for the anglers when they found these boxes. They were paid extra for them.

The anglers themselves were sheep-sized creatures with massive, toothy maws. Their mouths did not bend to speak the way most other races’ did, as their teeth made it impossible to bend their lips. Rather, their speech was dictated mostly by their highly adaptable tongue moving through their immense jaws; clips, slams, and rushes of water were all possible parts of words—one of the most interesting sounds they made was when they ran their tongue along the inside of their teeth, making a rattling noise.

Their forward fins looked small when they were swimming normally, but at any moment they could extend the bones in the fins like fingers. They were surprisingly strong, though it still took two anglers to lift the heavy box off the seafloor. Fortunately, they didn’t have to carry the box very far under their own power—they had a floating cart (more of a sled, really, if a sled only rarely touched the ground) that was pulled by two very large but tame viperfish. If they were fed one crab a day they would do essentially anything the anglers asked, and today they had already been fed two crabs.

This particular salvage crew continued on their expedition for quite some time—working continually for multiple days. Of course, they knew nothing of the way the surface measured time; there was no sun down here, nothing ever changed unless something or someone put their mind to it. As such, people worked until it was time to stop working, and sleep was grabbed randomly and wherever. There was usually one angler sleeping in the cart at any given time as the salvage operation continued.

Eventually, though, they had to admit they’d collected enough things. They had a few of the boxes from the surface but had also grabbed chunks of Colored crystal, broken ship parts, particularly interesting dead creatures from the sea levels above, and any shiny rocks they found. It was almost never difficult to find such things, the world above was always supplying more and more loot.

The return trip was quick. A bunch of anglers and two viperfish can move even a very heavy cart extremely quickly. They passed over mostly featureless, empty terrain with hardly anything growing or living that didn’t subsist on that which fell from above. However, there were a few exceptions. Black smoking mounds of heat that drew in strange creatures that were alien even to the anglers; worms, entities of flame that did not extinguish even deep beneath the waves, rigids that glowed red from the heat, and even a strange species of pristine white jellyfish that rippled with waves of heat.

Then, of course, there were the cracks. Parts of the seafloor that led directly to the molten, fiery interior of Ikyu. Only rigids lived deep in these cracks, and nothing lived at the bottom where the heat was simply too oppressive for all aquatic beings—except for Crystalline Ones, whose sparks could sometimes be seen from far above.

The anglers’ destination was actually overtop of one of these cracks, not that anyone would be able to tell it even if they were right on top of it, for the great angler city of Crawnwf completely sealed it, using the heat to power itself. It was a truly spectacular sight, the only light in the dark seas that could be seen from almost a kilometer away. No single entity could make this much light, and it drew so many to it.

What was a white dot in the distance became a brilliant rainbow of colors with numerous spotlights that shone into the dark ocean. Each spotlight had its own unique color. In theory, each spotlight was searching for potential threats to the city, but nothing had dared attack the city since the early days and they were now just for show.

Around the great city, there was enough light for farmlands, including seaweeds and the most important of angler livestock: crabs. There were entire hills covered in multiple layers of crabs. The anglers had long ago mastered the art of crab breeding and now had so much of an excess that the once nearly starvation-inducing ecosystem of the seafloor produced so much that they could afford to throw crabs to pets on whims.

The city proper was composed mainly of plast, for it was the easiest material for anglers to work with—while there was plenty of stone around, their fins were not suited for moving around large and heavy objects over significant distances, but many plasts were barely heavier than the water around them and could be moved effortlessly. The heat from the crack beneath the city gave all the energy needed to melt, shape, and fuse the plast into various shapes.

Someone from the surface who entered Crawnwf would have difficulty orienting themselves, because aside from the general upward flow of steam bubbles powering the city, there was no way to orient oneself. Anglers could swim upside-down, sideways, or even in corkscrew patterns. As such it was hard to identify individual buildings in the city, everything was kind of lumped together in a smooth blend. And all of it was bright. Notwithstanding the light produced by the anglers themselves, they also kept extensive amounts of bioluminescent creatures everywhere in their city of all colors, and that was ignoring the great Purple arcane devices.

Deeper within the city the angler salvagers started to see other races. Purple Crystalline Ones were given places of great honor, sometimes even being permanent fixtures of the blended structures of the city. octopus and squid spirited moved through the glowing tunnels, communicating with the anglers using gestures as none of them would ever be able to speak their toothy language.

One of these octopi was the salvagers’ boss. She usually kept her color a bright blue and had Green crystals embedded in her tentacles so healing was never far from her. She went through the haul and used her significantly stronger tentacles to pick out the metal boxes and carry them right away to the post office. She claimed the bonus for turning them in and kept more back for herself than she was legally supposed to, but the salvagers didn’t know this.

With that, the boxes sat in a government warehouse for a few days, forgotten about.

Eventually, though, an angler secretary with proper credentials started going through the boxes. He opened up Alexandrite’s and found the pages within, quickly identifying the address and where it needed to go. Fortunately, it was within the city—regularly he would have to ship it elsewhere, and he hated organizing shipments to other cities.

He packaged the papers in large seagrass leaves and sent them away. They were swiftly carried by a squid courier to the Arcane Institute. Like with most sections in the city it was hard to tell where it started and where it ended, but the center of the Institute was as obvious as it could possibly be: the very walls themselves were lined with Colored crystals shaped into the flowing, loopy script of the anglers. The courier dropped the papers off in processing to an angler student who was taking a nap at the moment. This was normal.

The papers proceeded to sit in processing for a week.

This was also normal.

But, eventually, an inventory catalog was done, and the papers were, at long last, sent to the intended recipient: one Wizard Gronge, who lived near the very center of the Institute.

The papers arrived in his office when he wasn’t there, set among a bunch of other papers and, perhaps more interestingly, models. Models of the Skyseed and the Moonshot and the Ikyu-moon system and even some designs of Gronge’s own. Schematics and notes were scrawled on every square inch of the room, including the “floor” and “ceiling” if the room could even really be considered to have such things.

Gronge came in. He was a large angler, with fangs more fierce than most, and with blue, bulging eyes indicating that he was getting on in years. He sifted through the pages with his fins, getting more and more excited the more he read.

He particularly read as much as he could about the nature of magic. How it got lesser and lesser the further away from Ikyu one got…

HIs lure suddenly lit up so bright that it made it impossible to read any further, but he didn’t care.

“I’VE GOT IT!”

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

Everything massive enough in space is round.

Why?

Well, first, let’s forget that solid things exist, consider everything to be liquid. If you have a bunch of liquid in space that is being sucked to a single point, what shape will it make? Each individual molecule in the water wants to go “down” to the point itself. However, only one water molecule gets to actually do this, the second one that arrives at the point can’t push the first one out of the way, but it is still pulled toward the center. Every water molecule goes through this same thing, trying to get as close to the center as possible with all the other water in the way. Any molecule of water that is on top of a “lump” would get closer to the center by moving off the lump, so it does. And so the best the water can do as a whole is form a sphere around the attractive point.

For liquid bodies, such as those that are completely molten, this is almost exactly how it works. There are a few complications with the fact that the molecules in the center provide more gravity to the exterior molecules, but it works out to be the same spherical shape either way. Gas giants also work like this: though they don’t have a defined edge, they still take more or less “round” shapes.

One might be tempted to think that since most if not all planets formed in hot conditions and were molten at some point, that this explains why solid, hard objects are round. While this might explain some of it, there is a bit more here since even cosmic-level changes don’t break the spherical nature of solid planets.

So let’s try to, by force, make a planet not round. Take Earth. Place a mountain on it the size of Mount Everest on it. Then keep making that mountain bigger and bigger and bigger. Our goal is to make it large enough to be seen as a massive point sticking out from Earth that scrapes space itself. We will not get anywhere close to this big. As the mountain gets larger, it gets heavier, and eventually, it gets so heavy that its weight is beyond the strength of the rock it is sitting on. At this point, the mountain will break the Earth’s crust and sink into it. Now, all the rock beneath it has to go somewhere—it is either pushed aside or compressed beneath the mountain.

If we keep trying to make the mountain bigger we end up with the same problem every time. The mountain gets too heavy for the Earth to handle and it falls into the Earth. Any significant deviation from the spherical shape will result in this problem. Objects that are large but not large enough to destroy the ground they stand on (or the rocks they are made of) can remain, but over time they will be flattened out by surface processes such as rain on Earth. (Other planets do not have this and can have far more extreme topography).

​"But wait, the Earth isn't very smooth!" It is VERY smooth, on the same order of magnitude of smoothness as a billiard ball. The mountains we have are nothing compared to the sheer size of the Earth.

Just to make sure there’s no confusion, strictly speaking, the shape planets “want” to take is called the geoid, and it’s usually an ellipsoid, not a sphere—it would only be a perfect sphere if the planet in question was not rotating at all and was far away from any other major sources of gravity. Earth’s bulge at the equator is stable and not in danger of cracking the crust anytime soon