Savage Awakening 345. The Third Planet (V)

Level up!
Essence Level 472 -> 473

Level up!
Essence Level 473 -> 474

Zane slept well that night. He woke up with Reina still fast asleep on his chest, a little smile on her face. A spread of sunlight peeked through the windows, brushing over her face.

He took a moment to blink at her. It hadn’t been all that long since they’d last met. He still got a bit stunned at times.

Sometimes he wondered if it was just him.

Then he remembered just how many men he’d had to fight off the past year.

…Probably not.

It was a nice thing for Zane personally—her taking charge of the World Tree. After that one elf-prince, no one dared try her anymore.

She yawned and woke not long after he did, and wondered what he was staring at her for. He told her honestly and she seemed pleased and proud at once.

He’d been a bit concerned when he first came through—she’d seemed rather wound up. But things worked out, to his relief. All the tenseness in her body had melted away as the hours passed and they leveled more—she’d gone to sleep quite satisfied. He got the sense it was the first time in a while.

It was nice to see, he thought.

They stayed there for a bit, relaxing, before they went for breakfast. Poached eggs and these sweet, tart white berries Reina had picked from their own garden.

She was glowing with her usual warm smile; the dark rings under her eyes were gone.

“What was that all about, last night?” he said through a mouthful of egg.

Something seemed to be bothering her earlier.

“It’s nothing,” she said brightly. “It’s all well now.”

Zane knew he wasn’t the best at picking up on these things. But by the look on her face, he got the sneaking suspicion it had something to do with him.

He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing right—he was pretty sure he was doing the same things he always had. He resolved to keep doing them.

After breakfast, she led him on a long walk—a little trail snaking around their estate, which sat on the highest bough of the World Tree. From up here they had a glorious view of the kingdoms below—Zane saw magnificent wood-and-vine palaces jutting up from the lower boughs. Those boughs were like floating islands of branch and leaf, larger-than-life.

Each of those boughs was home to hundreds of millions.

The ruler of it all currently had her head nestled in his chest.
She pointed out a crop of frostberry bushes along the path—she’d been growing them lately. They’d just had some for breakfast. Zane had quite liked them—they were just bursting with essence, more than some essence elixirs he’d taken. He’d been surprised the little things had so much.

“They’re heaven-grade treasures,” said Reina, looking up at him.

They were strange plants, she told him. They devoted their entire lives to making those berries; all their life force and essence went into them. If left untended, the whole plant would wither, giving all its life to its berries. It needed trimming and watering with a treasure called ‘Dew of the Weeping Glacier’ twice daily, as well as daily fertilizing. She’d planted a whole crop.

It sounded like a bit of a headache to Zane.

He found it a bit strange at first that she’d take on more stuff, on top of all her other responsibilities. If he were to plant these crops, he was pretty sure they’d be dead within a week.

But as she talked more and more about it, a little sparkle in her big warm-brown eyes—knelt down to inspect a few by hand—he got it.

It was one of the more remarkable things about Reina to him. It wasn’t a hassle for her. It calmed her down.

She wasn't the type to sit still. He knew how much she was taking on with this galactic war looming. It did seem like a Reina thing to do to start taking on more responsibilities to distract her from the things she was already doing.

She just seemed to like making things about as much as he liked breaking them.

He knelt down, poked a frosty petal curiously.

Zane had an alarming thought just then.

Now that he thought about it—watched as she bent down to work one of her plants, saw the warmth in her eyes—that was sort of how she looked at him. Only less intense.

Was he just another thing she liked to do?

He thought about it.

…Probably not. He hoped—was pretty sure—she liked him more than that, anyway.

Soon she came back to him, and they were back on the trail, just strolling. They passed over another bough, far below, nearly hidden by a stand of clouds—this bough had its branches all spread out. Giant vines snaked between them, making bridges—he saw pinkish dots all along them, folks with carts ambling along.

She asked him what he’d been up to.

He gave her a brief rundown, and she nodded wisely.

“It’s a good idea,” she said. “Training both your body and your Law equally. I went through the records—you’re one of the only men I could find following that path.”

Usually, folk specialized in one or the other, depending on their Faction’s specialty, she told him. No one else got a deal as good as his, that she could find.

He was pretty sure no-one had a Reina to get a deal like him in the first place.

Besides that, it also seemed a rather tough thing to pull off, she figured, unless you had a certain kind of soul and body.

She did feel it would give him the strongest foundation he could have moving forward. As he grew stronger, his ceiling would rise higher. Maybe the highest the Galaxy had ever seen, once he realized his potential.

She seemed pleased at the thought.

*** 

Halfway through their walk, Zane sensed two auras hiding behind a stand of bushes a few hundred feet ahead. They tried muffling their auras, but they might as well have been beacons to his senses. He stopped, frowned.

“What is it?” said Reina.

“…Not sure.”

If they were assassins, they were quite poorly trained ones. They were still a bit suspicious. Just in case, he stood in front of her.

“Show yourselves,” he ordered.

He heard twin squeaks.

Then two young elf-women in white robes stumbled onto the path. Both were carrying armfuls of tomes, and both were rather pink.

Reina seemed to recognize them. “Oh,” she said.

“Pardon, Mistress!” gasped the first elf-lady. “We – we weren’t certain if you were… in a fit state… to receive us—we were merely trying to assess the situation—”

It was Reina’s turn to go a bit red. “I’m ready,” she said tightly. “Go ahead.”

The elf-lady looked at Zane, uncertain.

“Anything you can say to me, Zane can know too,” said Reina. She’d crossed her arms and collected herself quite quickly.

The elf-lady nodded.

“We were coming with reports on the state of the alchemy Institutes,” said the first elf-lady, jostling her tomes. “But on our way up, the Scryers’ Guild gave us more important news…”

“Another Tier-3 dungeon has broken on the frontier, in the quarantine Zone—‘the Crystal Wastes’!” squeaked the second elf-girl. “If our aura readings are right, the final Boss—a True God-level crystal dragon—has broken loose, and will be encroaching on our outskirts in three days’ time… the Faelon guard stand at the ready, Mistress—just say the word!”

Reina instantly snapped to attention. She pursed her lips. Then—

“Tell commander Telios to take two teams,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I want it contained by sundown. Leave the reports on my desk. I’ll review them before the next High Council meeting. Thank you, Aelin, Syriel. Do leave us.”

“Yes, Mistress!”

The two elf-women bowed and shuffled off.

Reina took a deep breath.

“What’s up?” said Zane.

She blinked, looked up at him—she seemed to relax a bit.

“It’s nothing we weren’t expecting,” she told him, putting on a brave smile. “The forecasts said the Crystal Wastes might blow any day now—we’ve trained specifically for its Final Boss. We’re ready for it. It should turn out just fine.”

She was nibbling on her lip a little, though, which was a tell-tale sign to him. He took her by the hand, brow furrowing.

“Tell me what’s happened since I’ve been gone,” said Zane.

She did.

These past few weeks had seen some serious escalations. Tier-3 dungeon breaks were actively occurring on the frontier; she’d had to dispatch their elite strike teams a half-dozen times now. The First Wave was fast approaching.

“Oh—you don’t know what that means,” said Reina. Then she rattled off a few definitions at him—it seemed to calm her down a bit.

Tier 3 dungeons meant that the Bosses were strong enough to threaten an entire galactic sector—some of their Final Bosses could match True Gods in combat strength.

If a Tier 2 dungeon broke, it could threaten an entire Faction. You’d need Elders and Ancestors to put that down.

A Tier 1 dungeon could threaten the entire Dragonspire Galaxy.

But there were very few of those around, and they weren’t predicted to break until the Final Wave.

So far their Scryers’ Guild had been getting unstable readings from certain Tier 3 dungeons, which was an early sign they’d break.

But the Faelon Guard—Reina’s elite troops, made up of mostly Core Disciples and Elders, True-God level warriors, were enough to contain them. They did lose a handful of True Gods, though, which seemed to worry her quite a bit.

Each True God was a sizable chunk of a Faction’s power.

Zane was pretty certain she was doing all she could, by the sounds of it. Folk all around the World Tree were saying so.

She seemed to think it was sweet of him. Then, hesitantly—“It could’ve been worse, I suppose…”

She was fairly confident she could keep things together. Up until the First Wave hit, at least, and the bulk of the Monster hordes broke loose. Then she felt no-one could be sure.

“There’s something else,” said Zane, looking at her face.

She hesitated.

“There’s one dungeon,” she said. “Its codename is Dungeon X—it was sealed almost a Chaos Cycle ago by an unknown Empyrean. It’s wrapped in these planet-sized lodestone chains carved with golden runes, but they’re disintegrating fast, and… it’s just a few light-hours from Earth.”

Zane frowned at that.

“Our best projections say it’ll blow just a year or so before the First Wave starts—but by that time, the World Tree will have its hands full putting down a Tier-2 dungeon break… I’ll try to spare some troops, but it could be tough—and we don’t have teleporters that can carry True Gods those distances just yet…”

“There’s no need for that,” he informed her. “You said its Final Boss will be True God strength.”

She nodded. “At least early True-God, but it could be even stronger—”  

“I’ll take care of it.”

He had about a half-decade’s time to get there.

She had a weird expression on her face—something like surprise. Then she sighed, and smiled, and put her head on his chest again.

“You always sound so sure of yourself when you make these promises,” she said.

“…I am,” he said, blinking.

“I know,” she said happily. “I believe you.”

It did seem to take some weight off her. 

He’d take it.

That afternoon, Evan and Avery arrived.