Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

"So, what's next for you then?" Dante asks once they settle back down inside, sipping from a glass of red-hot whiskey with the late evening sun dipping below the horizon, lighting the room in a warm orange glow. "You said something about The Glade, right?"

"Yes." Emily nods, sipping her own drink and feeling it dance like fire across her tongue, melting into her body and giving her a warm burst of mana. "We're going to pay a visit to The Abyss again to restock on materials and take a look inside."

"You're diving into the death pit?" Tom questions with a raised brow, wincing as he sips from his own glass.

"Only her and the fish," Pod chirps, catching the stray tooth Mensacus throws at him between two fingers and dropping it into his empty glass. "Personally, I'd quite like to keep as much distance as possible between me and the thing that spawned him."

"That's smart," Juliana mumbles lazily, lying on a sofa with Silica curled around her and dozing peacefully. "I never want to see that thing again."

Emily notices Ivor's hands twitching with hesitation and sends out a spark of machina to catch his attention.

"What's up?" she signs, tuning out the surrounding conversation.

Ivor doesn't respond for a few moments, glancing towards Juliana and catching her eye before looking back after receiving a small nod.

"If you wouldn't mind, I'd quite like to come," he signs, watching Emily raise a silent brow without moving to respond. "I'd quite like another look at the death pit, especially if you're going in, and it's a good chance to stock up on materials. Mantolyc shell worked well and stabilised my potion, but I'll need more if I'm to perfect and sell it."

"Sure." Emily nods after a moment of deliberation.

"Where to after that?" Enzo asks Emily, noticing the end of her silent conversation.

"I'm not sure exactly. I'd like to pay a visit to the volcanic region of the Lerus Isles, and the mountains of Morzea, before we leave the planet."

"Wait, what?" Tom exclaims. "What do you mean, leave the planet? You're going to space?"

"Yes," Emily responds easily, blank in response to her friends' surprise. "Did I never mention? I believe there are entire civilisations spanning the stars, and I've already set in place the technology to reach out to them. It's just a matter of time till I'm proven right."

"Of course it is," Dante says, barking out a laugh at her blistering confidence.

"I can't even say I'm that surprised," Tom relents, shrugging away his shock to take on a cheeky grin. "I should probably start writing a book about you now. I could gain a lot of recognition for being the first to accurately record your impact on our society."

Emily rolls her eyes but nearly spits out her drink when a system window pops up in front of her.

¯¯¯¯¯

Quest generated: Legacy

[Legacy]

[Rank:] E

[Description:] How you're remembered is important. They say history is written by the victors, so get to it!

Requirements:

-Spread a written history of your existence (Not Complete)

Rewards:

-Skill Upgrade: Shooting (Basic > Intermediate)

_____

Emily easily shrugs off her surprise, finishing her drink before holding the glass out for Dante to refill.

"If you're serious about that," she says, fixing Tom with her gaze. "I'm happy to answer any questions you need to perfect your account. Just send me a message on your communicator whenever."

The man, who hasn't grown since she last saw him, still only coming up to her chin despite the orange fluff growing on his, nods excitedly at the suggestion. He sets down his half-finished glass and leans forward.

"I'll hold you to that. I have so many things to ask about."

Hester elbows her brother and gives him a look, while Dante takes advantage of their distraction to make a request.

"Can my dad and I join you when you head to the Lerus Isles?"

"You're interested?" Emily asks with a raised brow.

"A little." He nods. "Seeing volcanoes up close will probably be good for our magic, and Dad wanted to talk to you a bit more about your spellwork."

"I see. Well, you're welcome to join then. We'll likely head over there a month or so after returning from The Glade."

"If you're taking people with you," Enzo says, setting down his glass of water. "Could I join you when you head to Morzea's mountains? I'm not sure if it'll be helpful for my magic or not, but I've always wanted to see them."

"Sure," Emily agrees easily. "I'm not sure when we'll do that though. I still need to ask Arthur about contacting the republic's leaders to request peaceful entry across their borders."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"What if they refuse?"

"I doubt they will, but that won't stop me. It'd just mean we'd get to test Mensacus' new playthings properly."

***

The next day, after accepting rooms offered by Virgil and sleeping on the estate, Emily and Ivor say goodbye to the rest of their friends before setting out on a floating platform of plasma. They fly towards Elisime, looming at the edge of the city where she arrived in the middle of the night.

"Are you sure you want to come?" Emily signs as they fly, having just watched the mute man have a worryingly-long conversation with Juliana before finally tearing himself away. "I'm not sure how long this is going to take, so you may have to fend for yourselves in the depths for a while."

"I'm sure. I just-" Ivor signs back before sighing and running a hand through his hair. "I feel bad pursuing my own goals. I owe J and her family a lot for all they've helped me, so I just feel like I should be doing more for them."

"And how did J feel about that?" Emily signs back with a knowing glance.

"She thought it was stupid, and I've already done enough."

Emily smiles at him: "She's a good person."

"She is," Ivor agrees. "How was it, seeing her again?" he signs, curiosity overtaking his nervousness at probing Emily's seeming detachment.

"It was good to see her again. I'm glad she's happy," Emily responds casually, patting his shoulder and leading him in through one of the ship's entrance hatches.

Mensacus and Pod head to the bridge while Silica follows her mother as she gives Ivor a tour of Elisime, showing him the ship's facilities and the remnants of her army still loaded and waiting at the ready. They reach the bridge not long after the ship slips into The Glade's airspace, entering thick, stormy clouds that endlessly drop water on the forest below.

The air is relatively stable, with only a few strong gusts breaking against the large ship as she cuts through the sky towards the spatial marker Emily left deep beneath the earth last time she was here. A few flocks of birds fly too close for comfort, some carrying pop frogs ready to bomb the aircraft, but they're all shot down by Elisime's defences and collected by her flying drones before they can cause any damage.

"How do we get down to this Abyss?" Pod asks as they glide along just below the clouds, watching the trees roll by beneath them. "Are we looking for an entrance to the caves?"

"No," Emily shakes her head, pulling up a tracking program running on the ship's Logic Core and beaming it across the bridge's windows for the others to see. "We're getting close to the spatial marker I left in one of the tunnels leading straight to the depths of the Waters. I'll warp us all down, and it'll just be a case of following the stream from there."

Pod nods and watches the blinking indicator of their position and the marker slowly growing closer together. A few hours into the morning, before the sun has even reached the centre of the sky, their position freezes hundreds of metres above the second marker on the window.

"I'm leaving Elisime in defence mode," Emily says while gathering mana to weave into a Teleportation spell. "She'll deploy troops as needed to prevent her own destruction, but I'm setting her to alert both of our communicators in case of disaster."

Pod nods, scanning through the ship's defensive protocols as Emily writes them.

"If it does happen, and I'm still in The Abyss, it'll be on you to get a signal up here and deal with it. The room I'm about to teleport us into should be close enough to the surface for our active relays to work still."

"Got it." Her apprentice nods confidently while Ivor looks between them with interest, hovering at the edge of the room as Emily works her magic, filling the space with glowing purple runes.

After a couple of seconds, tendrils of purple mana burst out, wrapping the room's inhabitants and binding them together before pulling them down through distorted space and depositing them in a confined chamber with glowing crystals embedded in the ceiling and a murky, mist-filled pool in the centre. A steady flow of water enters the chamber from a connected tunnel along with a stream of mist clinging closely to the floor. Emily and Ivor look around with familiarity as the others take in the space, and their attention is quickly drawn to the shifting patterns emerging from the centre of the pool.

Emily pulls the Spitter from her belt, raising the sleek coilgun pistol and squeezing the trigger, sending a burst of sharp metal projectiles down into the submerged enemies still rising. Two piranhas, both leaking crimson into the water around them, float to the surface with large holes through their heads.

"We're going down there?" Pod questions, his hands drifting towards his holstered pistols as Silica leans out over the water, batting at the surface and trying to catch one of the fish corpses. "Do you have any of those aqua bullets going spare?"

"You won't need any." Emily shrugs off his concern, conjuring a bubble of water and air and extending a platform for Silica to use to walk out onto the water's surface. "I'll clear the way, and we'll reach the surface on the other side quickly enough."

"If you say so." Pod hums, relaxing the grip on his weapons and following the fox out onto the water without a moment's hesitation.

"He trusts you a lot," Ivor signs with a hint of amusement in the quirk of his brow as he steps onto the familiar spell that carried them out of this same pool years ago.

"He knows me well," Emily signs back with a small grin as she begins to lower them into the water, letting Silica chew her way through the piranhas' soft scales.

Their bubble of air sinks into the misty murk, taking away their visibility and almost immediately plunging them into darkness. Emily counters it with a cast of Invisible Light, marking her companions to allow them to see without immediately alerting the water's other inhabitants to their position. It takes dropping a few metres for them to leave the thickest of the underwater mist, entering a thin stream of the stuff flowing down into a long passage lined with dotted holes supporting a variety of aquatic beasts.

Unlike the first time she found the passage, Emily doesn't see any archite, with piranhas, electric eels, and a few other weaker species taking their place. She raises her gun, forming a blue and green spell at the tip of its barrel before squeezing the trigger and releasing a flurry of bubble-coated bullets that rip through the fish blocking their path.

"Do you need any of these?" Emily signs to Ivor, who doesn't bat an eye at the brutal display as blood begins to fill their pathway.

"I wouldn't mind a few eels," he signs back, watching her conjure a water current to guide several subjects towards him. "Thanks."

Emily sweeps the rest of the remains up into her belt, and they reach the end of the passage not long later, rising up into a wider pool with barely any activity. There are only a few more piranhas to add to Emily's collection, but when they rise to the surface, they find out why as they meet a Mantolyc hunched over the water's edge, eating a dead eel speared on one of its blades.

It's only second circle, so Emily makes quick work of it with a few slashes from her palm-embedded blade, claiming the dark, empty cavern as her own. It's exactly as she remembers it, with oppressive darkness pressing in on all sides from the black-tinted rock making up the cavern's walls, and only a single pathway out, following the water's flow towards the depths.

"I see what you mean about the chill," Pod muses as he steps onto the dark shore, and Emily releases the spell that was carrying them. "It's like being forced to stand next to Mensacus."

The chimaera in question hums in agreement, reaching out to trail his metal tendrils through the darkness that seems to react to his touch, eagerly curling around his thick limbs.

"It'll only get worse the closer we get," Emily says, stepping towards the only path out. "Come on, you can analyse The Abyss when we actually find it. It shouldn't take long."