Abyssal Road Trip

Amdirlain's PoV - Material Plane

Amdirlain smiled sheepishly at the others. "Do you think they'll join in again if I find more Eldritch?"

"That was quite the risk you took flipping its Teleport, Móðir. Minerva and Týr ended up out of position." Livia stored her spear and crossed her arms. "I would not gang up on you with them, but was there anything you didn't share before?"

"That could have turned into a full-on invasion. There were millions of Eldritch at the other end of the conduit."

"We could have called on others for help. What if you hadn't been able to return?" Lerina asked. "You take far too many insane risks, Amdirlain."

"I checked with Gideon first, so it was a calculated one. The longer the conduit stayed open, the higher the probability that something we couldn't handle would come through. The other issue was that, having done that once, if one slipped away, things would go downhill."

Livia tensed up. "Whatever gestalt they performed to open it might be something they could duplicate?"

Amdirlain nodded. "It might have been how they got those reinforcements."

"How did you take enough damage so quickly to be sure of obliterating them?" Sarah asked, her face a mask of serene composure.

"My Enduring Flame dropped."

Sarah tensed fractionally. "You went out there defenceless?"

"The Power is based on this realm's rules. Now I have a powerful motivation to develop my Primordial Will. I had to localise the rules for Phoenix's Symphony inside myself to get that Power to work," Amdirlain grimaced. "Can we leave it at that? Lots of lessons learnt."

"Okay. Are you planning to train, or are you off on another trip?" Sarah asked.

"I planned to see about regaining my oldest memories." Amdirlain caressed her cheek. "I'm sorry for worrying you."

Livia and Lerina exchanged glances, and Amdirlain caught the barest sense of their silent conversation.

Sarah moved closer and kissed her forehead. "Use that lightning-fast brain of yours to come up with safer schemes."

"I'll try. Did Gideon pay up for your contributions to the battle at least?"

"We received a surge of energy," Lerina confirmed. "Far more than I'd expected, so it seems Gideon provided a thank you for us coming to help."

"That's their business. I'm glad I didn't kill steal on the team."

"Will you come by your old Domain?" Lerina asked. "Now that you've got a bunch of new worshippers."

"I will, but I'm not sure when. I'm uncomfortable with anyone praying to me, so I wish I'd put precautions in place before I went to the plinth."

Lerina patted Amdirlain's back. "It's under your control now, so it's your choice if you'll stop allowing connections from new priests."

Amdirlain poked out her tongue. "As if I'd let people down that way, sis. Since I missed out on Gail growing up, if I had a little niece to come visit, I'd drop by Laurelin so often you'd get sick of me."

With a laugh, Lerina vanished.

"I figured she'd run away from that."

"I'll leave you two to catch up shortly, Móðir," Livia said. "There is something I need to ask you now that everyone else is gone. I'm worried about the exposed state of your Domain. There don't seem to be any defences."

"It's okay. The army that secured Hades is ready. On the topic of protection, those barriers you released from your spear were an interesting Ki technique. Any chance of me learning it?"

"That depends on your understanding of protection. If you come by, I'll spare some time to teach you. Though that offer doesn't include visiting grandchildren," Livia winked and vanished.

With the two of them left floating in the darkness between stars, Amdirlain held Sarah's hand. "I love you."

"And I love you, sweetie. I know you'll end up going to places I can't follow. Just come back from time to time," Sarah gently kissed her.

Amdirlain sighed when Sarah finally drew away. "Will do. Let's go to our resting spot. After I make up for all that worry, I want to bring that world to life before we go anywhere."

"Your presence makes any barren world alive enough for me." Sarah opened a Gate to the hillside overlooking the now green-tinged sea. "But I'll hold you to that."

♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫

Once they eventually emerged from the bedroom, Amdirlain knelt on the front porch and considered the progress of the simple life forms she'd seeded. Sarah caressed the back of her neck and moved to stretch out on the porch swing seat, unheeding of the cold, erratic breezes that brushed her naked body. With a slow exhalation, Amdirlain allowed essence to flow through Soul Seed, meditating on the potential of the blank souls as a stream of them sprang from her hand. A tiny Gate before her provided them with a route to the Outlands so they could rest in her Domain until the opportunity for life drew them forth. Each shifted through ephemeral forms, their raw potential for growth unchained to species. Their unmarked state contrasted with her own scarred essence. While she was now whole, the ridges and gouges from the lives she'd lived mixed with the rough return of the set aside potential. Where scar tissue filled in the wounds, it emphasised rather than diminished the past.

Balance. It was part of Orhêthurin's nature, but I need to balance the progression of my natures.

With souls continuing to be born in a steady rhythm, Amdirlain divided her attention between them and her surroundings. Where before she'd been using the True Song melodies as a guide while creating, now the insights from using Primordial Will outside the realm's rules shifted that focus. The goal was the result rather than all the steps in between. She held the patterns of simple lifeforms in her mind and propagated them around the world. Her efforts to match the creation of life with the stream of souls strained at her developing Primordial Will, and her understanding of it grew in fits and starts. The difference from True Song caused stumbling blocks as mental patterns she'd utilised with her music now obstructed her, or lured her into simplistic routes. Around her, the world's life had moved on from the microbe.

The world's life had progressed through the ancient single-cell life forms: prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and onto an array of archaea. The single-cell organisms that thrived in extreme environments were easy to establish in the deep ocean trenches and around volcanic vents. Sterile topsoil became populated with an array of microfauna and flora as she settled the foundations for living ecosystems. Here she tested her limits and stumbled. Hundreds of square kilometres of more complex plants she attempted to grow too early died off in droves. Yet their death and decay provided nutrients that fed the micro-lifeforms.

I don't yet know enough about evolution. I understand the two ends of the scale, as well as what makes up healthy biomes and the components of a living planet. What I don't know is the transition from the microbe goop to the multicellular lifeforms.

Her attention poked at volcanic vents, causing them to rumble and emit more materials, while she studied the reactions of the surrounding microbes. Their chemistry and that of other simple lifeforms held her attention for hours as she improved her knowledge. Throughout the days of effort, she hadn't shifted position despite Sarah moving to stretch out in Dragon form. Her body extended across the undulations of the coastal hills to allow her faceted eye to rest level with the porch. The crimson scales were a bright patch in the now moss and lichen-covered rocky landscape.

"Such a gamer," Sarah rumbled. "You got yourself caught up with your new toy. Not that I object to watching over you, but did you lose track of time?"

"Yes." Amdirlain blushed. "I was just playing my new life sim. Like all of them, it offers a constant temptation to do a tiny bit more. This world is like my lifetime. I know the beginning, and I know where I am now, but not all the parts of how I got here. I'm trying to work through the evolutionary chain but stumbling with bits I don't know."

I need to understand everything that happened, and stop pretending I'm whole. Yet I don't know how long that would take.

A flexed wing cast a shadow over a hill. "You've made this world green, but I don't think it's quite what you meant."

"I need to recover my memories."

"Orhêthurin's?"

"Before that, starting with my time as Phaedra. I'm going to see what Lethe thinks is the best approach."

Sarah's snout edged close to the front steps, and she transformed into her Human form. "I'll watch over you."

Reaching inwards, Amdirlain consciously focused on entry to the memory vault as the place solidified around her consciousness. Lethe appeared in Orhêthurin's form.

"You feeling up to starting on her memories?"

"I've been working on my other lives and getting connections formed using their common ground, and I saw so much as Orhêthurin." Amdirlain paused and shrugged helplessly. "How can I continue to ignore the memories from her life?"

Lethe bit her bottom lip. "Are you going to be multitasking when you take in her memories?"

"I wanted your perspective."

"You'd want a place that grounds you yet also relates to the memory."

"What I assume you mean is similar enough to invoke the memory yet different enough to ground me in the present." Amdirlain nodded in understanding. "How about different worlds that match up with some key locations?"

"If you're going to take that approach, I'd suggest creating a world that matches each of her hops before creating this realm." Lethe placed a hand on the vault door. "I can retrieve the songs from them. Shall we take it a millennium at a time and see how long it takes to experience them?"

"I remembered a world where Nicholaus was rebuilding the forge room they used to move between realms. Did they always pick worlds to stop off on?"

"Yes, and to your next question, it was a world where she slew the autumn and winter courts and not a Fey Plane. Are you seeking to learn melodies as well, or just events as they transpired? If I removed all the background themes, it would dramatically reduce the amount you'd live through."

"Mostly what occurred in her immediate surroundings, unless it was something distant that directly contributed to decisions or promises."

"So, directions, overhead conversations, or someone's suffering song?" Lethe asked knowingly.

"If she took them into account."

Lethe disappeared into the vault, and Amdirlain experienced songs echoing from it. Their complex harmonies teased at memories deep in her essence, but Amdirlain didn't seek them out; instead, she merely memorised the songs.

Time enough for that shortly.

When silence returned after hundreds of songs, Lethe reemerged. "Those were just the places they stopped before creating the realm. Did you want the world locations for all the major events within the realm?"

"How many locations would that entail?"

"I believe it would depend on your definition of major. From tens of thousands to millions."

"I'll start with the worlds outside, and then maybe if you can gather the location songs needed for a few million years at a time."

"In the first billion years, before the creation of True Song, she skipped from world to world and was still strengthening her Primordial Will. It's very different from yours, and while True Song is based on its expression, there isn't an exact match."

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"Perhaps times when she was interacting with other beings," Amdirlain proposed. "I'm seeking to learn all the interactions I had and promises made, explicit or implicit. Times when I was being a workaholic buried in creation aren't the priority, though I should learn from them later."

Lethe pursed her lips. "I'll see what I can do. It will take me some time to prepare them."

Amdirlain tapped her ear. "I heard plenty of places to start. Thanks, Lethe. I'm going to see about creating these locations."

"I didn't give you one location as it wasn't a world," Lethe hedged. "If you follow the flow of memories after Nicholaus and Phaedra left Earth, you'll meet them for the first time."

"Them?"

Lethe shifted nervously. "Maker."

"Are you worried about them?"

"You've already paid them for their first help, though I'm worried about what they might have asked to take the souls from their observation platform."

"Why do they make you nervous?" Amdirlain beckoned her to spill, yet Leth only shrugged.

"I'm unsure if their strength fits on Gideon's Primordial scale."

Amdirlain nodded. "I'd like to know about them since I've an unknown debt, and I'm missing so many years of memories when I met them."

"I don't think the debt will be malicious, but you'll have to judge that for yourself."

Reality returned with the usual snap once Amdirlain relaxed her focus from her essence.

Sarah's eyebrows lifted when Amdirlain hopped to her feet.

"We've got a plan. Do you want to join me? Not that there will be much to see besides me sitting around playing Gilorn, if she'll help me."

"If you believe she'd ever pass up creating worlds with you, then I think you're deluding yourself."

With a laugh, Amdirlain pulled on her robes, and Sarah's playful pout prompted her to laugh harder.

"I'll come along with you. I'm able to handle my divine duties and enchanting practice anywhere."

Amdirlain opened a Gate beyond the last lot of worlds she'd made, and Sarah followed her through into an atmosphere-filled sphere in space.

With the few glimmering stars visible through one section of the dome, the alienness of the setting promised to reduce the familiarity of any world they made.

"Gilorn, I need to make a few particular worlds. Would you care to perform together?" Amdirlain released the Message with her coordinates.

Gilorn appeared by her side in her floor harp form, black crystal brightened by shooting stars. She dispatched a flurry of messages, delegating tasks and work to various individuals and choirs, even as she exchanged greetings with Amdirlain and Sarah.

"Hello, Gilorn," Sarah replied. "Amdirlain thought you might not want to create any worlds with her."

A discordant clang from Gilorn, and the stars within her frame froze in place. "When have I ever given you that impression, Amdirlain?"

"She's teasing you. I had just meant I didn't know if you were too busy with other projects," Amdirlain reassured, and patted the neck of Gilorn's harp form.

"How many worlds will we create this time?"

"I've got a few hundred to start, but this time we'll be doing the biomes as well."

"Is there a reason you're not leaving them to the others?" Gilorn questioned, her ringing tones sharp with surprise. "Did they not meet your expectations?"

"See, you're not the only paranoid one around," Sarah commented.

Amdirlain rolled her eyes. "That's not it, Gilorn. I'm trying to recover some of my memories, and Lethe suggested a technique that involves experiencing the memories from similar places. I'm just impatient to get started, so I thought we'd do all the work this time. Though we can create some more afterwards for the choirs to populate."

"They'll be glad of more chances to prove themselves. That aside, what worlds will we be creating?" Gilorn asked.

"We'll start with just one, then we'll create the others to help ground myself, while reliving memories."

The notation for Earth's song shone in the blackness before them. Gilorn started eagerly, and soon Earth with its multitude of biomes, along with duplicates of the rest of the solar system, hung in the void.

The unpopulated world was without barriers, and Amdirlain stepped directly onto it. She emerged on the edge of a cliff above a crisp blue sea and settled with Sarah and Gilorn on the rocky ledge. The wind that whistled along the coastline carried a chorus of seabirds' mating calls and the thunder of the rolling waves.

"Alright, Lethe. Whenever you're ready."

Amdirlain provided the following songs before her, and they began creating more worlds. Sarah sat beside Amdirlain as another wave started curling towards shore. With it came a rush of memories that mingled through her thoughts—the stream of experiences filled in the gaps of Phaedra's early years on Earth. Her early childhood had a complete absence of illness, even scraped knees, which Phaedra took as normal. The buzz of excitement that filled her at being a big sister made Amdirlain's heart ache for the innocent child she'd been. Besides the segments she'd already experienced, there were no shocking surprises. Helpfully, the details of some occurrences were fleshed out, such as Nicholaus' removal of his eldest son's divinity, to avoid the attention of deities and to set him on equal footing with his wife.

When Kronos's conversation with Phaedra in the cave came up, she tried to focus on the memories that followed Kronos's revelation of her power. This time, Amdirlain could feel how the temporal windows that showed so many dead had etched sorrow and guilt deep into her psyche. Wincing at the self-inflicted wounds of guilt she'd carved, Amdirlain let the memory run through to the last point she'd recalled.

Sorrow, regret, and determination warred in Nicholaus's gaze. "Bahamut."

The chamber walls rippled with silvery light, a soft shine akin to a catch of bream reflecting the morning light.

A giant fish's eye suddenly regarded them from the rock. "Nicholaus. This is not where I saw you last. What happened to your home?"

The words reverberated in the small chamber as shards of meaning and concepts flickered deeper through them. It rocked the exhausted Phaedra, and she fought to control her fatigue and grief. The watery light invoked the wave in Phaedra's imagination, and she swallowed hard, re-igniting the pain in her throat. Her emotions surged higher as Nicholaus recounted the events that led to him calling out to Bahamut and finally asked him how to travel between realms.

"It would do you no good for me to advise you about how I would travel between realms, because your nature is too different from mine." Bahamut blinked slowly.

"Yet my father advised Phaedra that I needed to seek you out to learn how to craft a way to travel between realms. I seek a way to learn to make one of my own."

"Yet I can't tell you how you might do either."

"My father is a schemer, and while disinterested in me, I've not caught him in any lie," Nicholaus declared.

"Perhaps that's why he approached Phaedra and not you."

"She said his words rang true. If he'd spoken to me, I might have held him accountable for not warning me of the danger that Ourania and the boys were in. Or I might have felt what he seeks to craft by providing this advice. Yet why would he send me to bother you if not for this purpose?"

"You are a crafter, whereas it is my nature to support the rules." The silvery aura in the air shifted as Bahamut swirled around the cave walls; his rippling scales had Phaedra thinking of the fish feeding on so many dead. "It is for this reason that I can't tell you; not because I'm unwilling, but because we're just too different. The means that work for me won't work for you."

Nicholaus's hands balled into fists before he let out a slow exhalation and rested a palm atop his anvil as if letting the heat drain into it. "Is there no guidance you'll give?"

"Perhaps a suitable material that you can craft as your imagination sees fit. It's one you are familiar with, though you couldn't have understood the extent of its flexibility."

"Where is this miraculous material?"

"You built your maze around a chamber of strange stone. Examine it now, but do not take the material from that chamber, or you'll invite their ire."

Flickers among the lights showed an image of a domed chamber with a circle of standing stones, two monstrous many-armed figures arrayed at its centre. It matched the tales that Mḗtēr had told Phaedra of her Patér's old home.

"A volcano exploded under it. Would it even be intact?"

Bahamut chuckled. "Those stones are a special material of theirs, which can contain and resist many energies."

"Theirs?" Nicholaus asked.

"Unlike what your relatives would tell you, many powers contributed to crafting this realm and then claimed pieces of worlds to place their faithful or experiments. Yet it was a Primordial referred to only as Maker who guided them in the creation. Their only fee was to be allowed to set such chambers on any world that would harbour mortal souls. We've learnt they're recording events but nothing else," Bahamut said. "You've great potential, yet your inexperience and low expectations block the use of both your strengths. I would support your efforts to be something more."

The shimmering on the wall felt like she was underwater, and Phaedra buried her face in her arms, caught in the moment of her family's drowning. Fear and sorrow pulsed in the throat, the lump of emotions hard and uncomfortable against her injured throat. Determined to keep silent, she lost herself in the drowning guilt, missing the context when, occasionally in the following conversation, Bahamut mentioned her name. Worn out and still not recovered from her efforts creating temporal windows to witness the gods' slaughter of the coastal villagers, Phaedra fell asleep.

She didn't know how long they talked, but when she woke, Bahmut was gone.

When she stirred, it was to the smell of tagenites with honey wafting from a pan set by the slumbering forge. While their texture wasn't as smooth as Mḗtēr's, this time he hadn't burnt them. As if he knew what she was thinking, Nicholaus gave her a sideways glance before he flipped them. She inhaled innocently, pretending to enjoy the aroma even though knots tied her stomach into an unhappy ball—Mḗtēr would never be here to make them ever again.

They went through the quiet morning ritual of eating and readying themselves before packing up the camp gear. Nicholaus's forge vanished into his internal vault, and he picked up the giant pack with everything else stored within. Rather than taking the only path to the surface, Nicholaus approached a short dead-end tunnel spur in the cave that had sheltered them. At the start of the passage, he carved a picture of a mountain range on the right and an image of the hillside that held their cave on the left. Across the top, he etched the Greek word "path" into the roof. Where there had been a narrow passage, a distant cavern now showed.

When she stepped through, she could barely hear the remains of home; it was now far to the south and east of the mountains they hid beneath. She stretched out, and the music of the cove snapped into focus. Curious to see how far she could hear, Phaedra pushed further and listened to the sands across the waters, and then beyond them, she found a mountain range. Far ahead in the direction they'd travelled lay a colder land, where a bitter chill held onto the earth, and solid water clung everywhere. Deep beneath the mountains, stone liquefied in a region hotter than Patér's forge, and even metals flowed like water. She took in with curiosity the way the little pieces inside them buzzed with energy and pushed their neighbours away in their fury. Unbothered by the number of songs, she stretched further, gradually extending her reach until her attention took in the entire world with all its species and places.

"What's solid water called, Patér?" Phaedra breathed in wonder. "There is so much of it."

"There is snow and ice on some mountaintops. Is it a loose powder or clinging together?" Nicholaus's attention turned to the doorway they'd stepped through, and the path changed. Instead of a single step, it became a three-dimensional maze that was as long as the sea and twice that in depth. At the entrance were warning signs, but after that came the unforgiving traps filled with her Patér's rage and grief.

"What if it's solid and deep, sitting on the water far in the direction we've travelled?"

"If they are floating freely, they're called icebergs; otherwise, they're part of the Arctic circle of ice."

"Who taught you about the world?"

"Hestia's priestesses taught me many things, and others I just knew. Why don't you talk to me while I prepare?"

Phaedra's questions flowed forth while Nicholaus altered the cavern floor, columns, and stalagmites, which he melded back into the stone, and flattened the floor. Among the molten metals, traces of minerals rose in a column. His will changed the material, adding echoes that sat out of sight, and soon blocks of an unfamiliar stone lay across the cavern. She found echoes of it near the still-burning fire mountain by Patér's old mountain. There was a strange shift of energy in the chamber, and the standing stones Bahamut had mentioned vanished, but the chamber itself and the statues remained in place.

"Should I set up a pallet for you to lie down again?"

She shook her head firmly. "I'm going to listen for the approach of our enemies."

Nicholaus's will created metal posts, and the strange stone bent and curved, moulded to his desire. As the day progressed, a peculiar nested device took shape. The first step involved creating the framework of a cube, which he then supported on gears and wheels inside a wire sphere. With the outline completed, he floated panels around, twisting them in through the gaps to secure them on either side of the framework until everything was closed up tight. A lever pull caused a clanking noise to echo out, and the gears lifted the upper half of the sphere and cube together, letting them swing freely at his touch. He weighted down the base of the cube with hundreds of kilograms of rock, then spun the outer shell wildly about. Her contribution was to confirm that the cube stayed upright, and no air shifted from within.

"What if something goes wrong?"

Nicholaus offered her a pair of rings, which shrank to fit around her middle fingers. "These will keep you safe and bring you back here."

"They'll find me here."

"I'll be here as well."

When he set up everything inside, Nicholaus sat by her pallet trying to hum, and Phaedra shushed him with a little finger to his lips. "Patér, the liquid rock inside the Earth is calmer."

"Should I leave the lullabies to you?"

Phaedra sniffed back tears. "There is no one to lullaby now."

"The rocks." Nicholaus offered awkwardly.

"Now you're just being silly," Phaedra leaned against his side, and he tucked the furs under her chin. "I miss Mḗtēr. Will the twins be safe with her?"

"She'll do whatever she can, I'm sure."

"I should have-"

Nicholaus rested a fingertip against her lips. "Don't do that. If you start, then I would have to point out all the things I might have done differently, and my list is centuries longer. Indeed, with some things done differently, I'd not have met your Mḗtēr, and you would not have been born. Then I would have missed the joy you've added to my life in having a daughter so wonderful, my little songbird."

A few times she woke during the night to hear him working on different parts and dozed off again, reassured by the constant base theme that ran through him. When the sun was rising above the mountains, Nicholaus's Forge sat inside the cube, its weight at the midpoint, and its power flowed through the strange stone.

They had breakfast inside with the roof sealed closed, and Patér's power kept renewing the air. Once he had everything tidied up, he struck a ringing note against the anvil, and the room felt like it had hopped sideways. Suddenly, a torrent of energy spun the exterior, but suspended within Nicholaus's framework, the forge room stayed steady despite the exterior's wild motion. She heard the last vestiges of the familiar tunes of their home swept away from them. Amidst the riotous noise around them, she heard beings whose themes were unconstrained by any set form. Their music shrieked and cackled in wild fashions, trying to expand in countless directions at once.

"There are lots of things out there." Phaedra tilted her head, taking in the screech of the Eldritch notes. "They sound funny."

"Be careful," Nicholaus cautioned. "We don't want to attract attention."

Phaedra moved to the closest wall and pressed her hands against the plate, which Nicholaus had textured to give it a stony appearance. "There are so many."

"Are any close?"

"It's hard to say, they feel near and far simultaneously," Phaedra frowned.

"We've a long way to travel, so don't go poking at any of them."

With that, the sphere started rolling along, no longer simply being tossed about by the wild current.