Impact

The shockwave from whatever had just landed had left Lynia in a daze. She first attempted to reorient the ground beneath her, rather than above her, and then struggled upright to a sitting position. All around her were soldiers of the Caynean Guard, having similar problems to hers. Most were either on their backs, or flat on their faces; a handful had pushed themselves up to a kneel. The red stains along the grassy plains indicated the ones for whom help was too late. Not a single one continued to fight. Somewhere along this horizon would be the Caravan, she knew, but she could not find it from here. Propping herself up with the Cloudbreaker, she turned around - slowly, so as not to dizzy herself again - to find that the horizon was no longer unbroken.

Now in front of Lynia was what looked like a massive seafaring vessel; a great galleon or dreadnought, she figured, but this was even larger than either of those. Even mostly dug into the plains from its impact, the part of the ship above ground level must have been several hundred yards tall, to say nothing of its length. Port holes and windows were dotted all around the outside, but which end was the top, Lynia could not determine. Maybe there wasn't one. But there was also no obvious means to climb aboard... not that she, or anybody else on the battlefield, would want to climb aboard something that had just fallen out of the sky. Lynia continued to hobble around the imposing vessel to see if she could find the Caravan behind it, or if it had been crushed.

Before she had crossed the bow, Lynia happened upon a man in a strange uniform, seemingly woven from threads of rare and precious minerals. He was lying on his stomach, in the middle of a pile of broken glass that must have come from above, from the large panoramic window that would have stretched across the bow if it had not shattered from the landing. The man on top of it was not stirring. Thinking that the fall had killed him, Lynia once again surveyed the horizon in search of the Caravan, but a tug at her dress caught her attention.

The man in the uniform - bleeding badly from dozens of cuts - looked up at his discoverer's face, and gave a weak but definitive smile of relief. "Aliana..." he rasped, "Lady Archmage...You're...here..."

Lynia lowered herself to a kneel, still supporting herself on her staff. "Hold on," she urged him. "I can get somebody to help you!" She looked back and forth for anybody within shouting range, but saw nobody close enough. She pointed herself towards the bow, and shouted, "Over here! We need a curate!"

"I'm...not going to last, Lady Archmage...but..." The man in the uniform gasped for breath. "I'm... so glad I could be... of use." With this, his grip on Lynia's dress went limp as he expired.

Lynia did not move. Her face did not process any visible emotion. The man beneath her was a stranger to her, but he had mentioned her mother's name. She could do nothing but stare at him; the questions she could have asked him were now no longer worth asking. Of all the dead and wounded from the great battle that had been raging around her, this man's death was the one that hurt Lynia the most. She continued to not move as footsteps approached her from behind.

A solemn, aged voice spoke above her. "I knew this man," came the tired and crackled voice of Fortune-Giver, to which Lynia did not reply. "Before I came here, he was the one left in charge. The only one left. We were already a dying breed, and the great task before us would never become any easier for how much we lost. To this conflict in particular, most of all."

Lynia, still staring at the glass-ridden man, felt her tears beginning to brim. "He called me...Lady Archmage."

Fortune-Giver's hand upon her back felt jagged and cold. "I can tell you, this man held the greatest of respect for the lady. A lady which you have come to resemble very much indeed, through both your appearance as well as your deeds. The last Creator Archmage to serve aboard this vessel... Aliana."

"My mother was...?"

the Chief Magineer's POV

One could not blame me for being antsy. The Vessel had never been so empty as she was now; every person who had been elected Archmage (or otherwise fell into the role) had made a point of descending to the Fourteenth Planet; the planet around which the Vessel had orbited for the past several hundred years... give or take a century or two, perhaps. The Vessel had been running so low on her PCM reserves that her basic systems and instruments were beginning to fail. Never mind her primary purpose, to create astral bodies; the Orrery hadn't functioned since the day of Archmage Kasiell's exile. But the problems were beginning to run deeper than that. Our time-compression engine could not operate without a certain minimum level of PCM in reserve, and we were well below that, so my waiting around had to be in real-time. Aliana... Lady Archmage... had sworn she would find a way to signal the Vessel again once she'd found any trace of her predecessor, Kasiell's exiler, Archmage Gregor. And Journeyman Thayer - he could have served as an Archmage, but left before he could be bequeathed the role - I could not say where he was. All that was left aboard, now, was me: the Vessel's Chief Magineer.

Something had to happen, eventually, I thought.

Restless, I ran another surface scan on the Fourteenth Planet from the Science Magineer's station. The results were the same as they had been the last few hundred times. I supposed that, without the time-compression working, it was pointless to scan over and over. Not much had been changing on a day to day basis. I was used to scanning every few engine cycles, back when that meant a few centuries-to-millennia of planetary growth or change. But now, a day was just a day. The life signs would not grow or shrink. No anomalous matter, no beacon signals, no signs that a Creator was operating down there. There wouldn't be, after what Gregor had us do. I was still unconvinced that Gregor could have survived being fired upon by the Vessel's main cannon, but clearly Aliana thought otherwise, or she would not have gone looking for him. I could not say what Thayer thought about it, but he wasn't still here to ask, either way.

A bell from the other end of the Bridge caught my attention, near the Missiver's post. I had not heard this kind of alert for a very long time - the Bridge, active again? I sprang from the seat and rushed across the floor. The Missiver's post was reporting distress signals. Not just one, either; several. All of them from the Fourteenth Planet, and amazingly, all within feet of each other. It registered on the viewer as a small cluster; small, but intense. I tried to identify the contents of each one's signal, but the Missiver's post was not one I had ever had a reason to use before. What signal was coming through was a mess of overlapping messages, impossible to decrypt this close to a planet. But one of them did contain a self-identifying code.

It was Gregor's beacon.

Before we ran out of PCM, when Gregor went to the surface to stop the ex-Archmage from destroying what Life remained in the Universe, his plan was to drop a locator beacon for the Vessel to fire upon with the matter beam. I argued with him for an hour straight over whether this was truly the right thing to do - his target was Kasiell, after all, and we could not be sure what would happen if he had become PCM-infused - but orders were orders. I hated every instant of it, but I was the one that had pushed the button. I had fired on that beacon. And somehow, the beacon was still out there, and it was sending a signal again. Was Gregor still alive down there after all? Was Kasiell still alive? Did he need help again?