“Why did we leave Bastion?” groaned Leonis. “No feasts, no heated pools, and now we’re going to race?”
“Think of it as training,” said Scorio. “Saturate your Heart and go. It’s what I’ve been doing.”
“The Golden King is built for power, not for speed,” said Leonis, but then Scorio sensed a great mass of Copper mana disappearing into his friend’s Heart. “But very well. The faster we go, the sooner we’ll get there.”
Chapter 15
The Farmlands began to break apart. More and more of the fields looked abandoned and overgrown. There were more bell towers in evidence, and the Traveler’s Barns looked ever more fortified. Word of attacks by powerful fiends grew, and farmers worked in large groups or not at all.
It wasn’t that the land itself was changing; if anything, the encroaching wilderness and small copses of trees looked verdant and vibrantly green. They’d simply passed beyond what the Houses could safely protect.
All the while the huge curving lines of Copper flowed through the upper reaches of the sky, but now they began to bunch, as if gathering toward a common point of origin. Walking with the others, Scorio continuously raised his gaze toward their terminus and was finally rewarded with the sight of his first island.
It emerged from the sparse clouds like a ship sailing around a headland, trailing wisps of mist behind it. The island was easily a mile across and shaped like a molar, great, tapering stalactites descending from its verdant top. The rock was creamy white, and bushes and trees enveloped the surface, growing thickly around the base of a huge, ruined castle whose elegance even the passing centuries had failed to obscure.
But even as Scorio saw the island sail into view he felt a pressure mount, washing over him like heat from an opened oven. For a moment he couldn’t figure out why, but then he summoned his Heart and saw pure glory flowing up from the ground like a reverse waterfall into the base of the island.
A torrent of Gold mana, hundreds of yards wide, endless, streaming up in a continuous column of blinding power.
“By the ten hells,” whispered Leonis.
They’d all staggered to a stop. The island’s shadow drifted across the land, and from the castle’s tallest tower emerged a great flood of Copper which slowly parted itself into the great curved bands that swept across the sky, spreading out ever wider as they flowed toward the far distant Rain Wall.
“Wow,” breathed Zala. “I’ve never seen so much mana in my life.”
“It’s quite the sight.” Davelos smiled bemusedly. “That much power, carving up the Rascor Plains. Somebody go ahead and ask me: why are we all subsisting on Copper with that much Gold in plain sight?”
Scorio glanced at Lianshi, who went to raise her hand then caught herself in time. “Because we don’t want another Fiery Shoals?”
“That’s right,” said Davelos softly. “Tampering with an island’s Gold stream is a crime that will get you Red Listed. It’s better to die and be reborn than try to siphon that Gold. It might look like a ton of power to us, but it’s carefully calibrated to each island. Even a light dip into its stream can destabilize an island, cause it to start sliding off its orbit, bring it crashing down.”
Scorio’s questions dried up before the majesty of that Gold mana stream. The curtain of power simply rushed up from the ground, endless, torn from the very earth.
“But how?” he whispered. “I thought there was only Copper mana on the Rascor Plains?”
“Nope,” said Evelyn. “Copper mana is the most abundant, but there’s some Iron, and if you delve deep enough into the Chasm, you can find all types.”
“The islands tear the Gold right out of the depths,” said Davelos. “There are ancient artifacts in the castles that pull it up. And no, nobody knows how it works, nobody’s been able to duplicate it, and trying to remove the mechanism is what caused Fiery Shoals to crash and carve a furrow two hundred miles long right to the very edge of the Plains.”
Scorio watched the island burn its passage across the land before them. It moved as fast as a galloping horse, but given its immensity, it seemed to crawl. The Gold flowed up some five hundred yards, a coruscating wall of power, and lit the undersides of the island in endless blazing light.
“So many questions,” was all he could say.
“So many classes you should have attended,” said Lianshi sweetly. “But never mind. I’ll fill you in as we go. Mostly? We just don’t know.”
“The islands date from the beginning of Bastion as well?”
“Yeah.” Lianshi sighed and clasped her hands beneath her chin. “But look how amazing it is. There are six islands. They’ve all been extensively explored, the castles picked clean, but still nobody really understands who built them or why. Without them, though, there’d be no Rain Wall, and thus no Farmlands.”
“So… maybe the original Imperators built them to help irrigate the Plains?”
“Maybe,” said Lianshi, then shrugged. “Most people think that was but a side effect to their original purpose, though.”
“All right,” said Evelyn. “Let’s continue. But stay on your guard. The passing of an island has been known to draw fiends, and there’s always the chance of a goldyolk swarm. They release a poisonous gas if punctured, so hold your breath, run for it, and don’t channel the ambient mana.”
Davelos strode on. “Just mind our lead and do as we say.”
The island had cut its way far enough left that they could proceed. Scorio couldn’t tear his eyes from the floating mass of rock and greenery. The dull roar that resonated in his Heart slowly faded as the island receded. They strode forward, the power in the air lessening by the moment.
But the circuit that the islands followed was amazing in and of itself; no fields had been built under them, and even as they stepped onto the island’s path Scorio saw great mutated trees wilting, bursting, collapsing in a swathe easily a hundred yards deep.
“The Gold mana supercharges the growth,” said Lianshi, hooking her arm through his. “But nothing can survive without the Gold mana, and everything dies once the island moves on. Each island is tracked by a commensurate area of supercharged growth, its own island of endless greenery.”
Scorio gazed to the right, the direction from which the island had come. A broad trail of wilted brown dreck curved across the land and out of sight.
“Probably best to not stand here and wait for the Gold mana to wash over us then?”
Lianshi laughed. “Only if you want to explode.”
“Hold,” shouted Davelos, raising an arm.
They all froze.
“All around us,” said Evelyn, turning in a circle and staring at the ruined vegetable matter. “And damn, it’s a big one.”
“Too late to retreat?”
“Far too late.” Evelyn looked up, her expression tense. “Bad luck, everyone. This one’s bad. Run to the far side. Don’t channel the mana. Davelos and I will see what we can do.”
“What’s happening?” asked Juniper, turning in a circle.
But Scorio had eyes only for the earth, where pockets were starting to boil all around them.
Hundreds of pockets, each the size of the cart.
“Really? This is happening every time now,” complained Evelyn.
“Goldyolk swarm, everyone.” Davelos Ignited his Heart and turned into his Copper form, but instead of Coal streaks, there were slivers of bright Gold running through him. “Run fast and try not to fight them.”
Scorio inhaled deeply. The air was saturated with Copper, but yes, there—fading traces of Gold. Most of which he sensed being pulled by Evelyn into her Heart, snatched away even as he tried to grasp some.
Copper then.
Desperately he drank deep, turning to find a way through, trying to keep the boiling pockets of earth in sight, but there were too many.
And then they began to explode.