Melody of Mana

First thing was first, I needed to talk to Selene, and I needed her reports. Those had been put to the side for the moment, but that was going to change in a hurry. I began to move towards the door, dragging my brother along for the ride. Then I stopped, and looked back at Ulanion.

"Break it. The only way we can be sure it can't be reactivated."

He didn't even hesitate as he turned towards the gate, taking a war-hammer off of one of the guards, they'd had them just in case. I forgot sometimes just how strong he, and other physical users were, but it only took him a couple of hits to crack the magical item Sadly that was the only way to make sure that it never activated again, and with the clearly missing safeguards, I wouldn't have it doing so.

"Alana! Are you insane!?" John said as the bits of stone crumbled and fell. "You can't just destroy that! It's a captured piece of enemy artifice!"

"You'll find I can. I need to investigate what they have, and that thing potentially activating would stop that." While it was a stretch, I was sure the emperor wouldn't mind too much. Sure, I destroyed it, but the danger to all of us made that menace to magical craft more dangerous than useful. "First I want to look over what you've gotten from Selene, then we'll go see her."

John looked stunned that I was giving him orders, but complied. I was sure that he would be going on about it later, but for now he knew why I was here, and that he needed to help me get on with it. He led the way back to the makeshift headquarters and found me a side room where I could go over the paperwork.

They'd not gotten much information out of Selene, but they had managed to get her to write down the rune sequence. I ran it over, and was glad that she'd provided exactly what was on the gates. She'd also told us that she'd made them only three pairs total. That was impressive feet dragging, even to me. The other two pairs were smaller. It was a system so that pair two was just small enough to fit through pair one, and pair three would barely fit through pair two. They'd not gotten out unfolding gates at least, one of the few good notes today.

I pretended to rub my temples while I retreated into my core. There I opened up the debugging menu and tossed in Selene's sequence. It came back telling me that it would work just fine, no obvious failure points. Because of course it would, the damn thing could be written on my palm, but confirmation was nice. I was a bit surprised that it also came back with a warning that there were no controls added in and the item would default to on if powered, off if not until that was done. Didn't know that was a part of this menu.

"Alright, let's go see her," I said as I stood up.

When I exited the room I found a line of people doing their best impression of a bucket brigade with sacks of something through the portal. I stopped briefly to look at them and then at my brother.

"This city's in bad shape little sister. That many nobles have 'expectations' and they want those met. Practically starved the common folk. All this is from back home, standard practice," he explained.

"That's generous," I said, a bit awed.

"Not really." Brother was an idiot sometimes, but he also had a good feel for things. "The expense with how our farms are now is really minimal, it's mostly just grain. For that we buy the city being loyal, because you'd better believe everyone is going to remember who starved them and who fed them when they needed it. Sure, it's the right thing to do, but it's also the 'right' thing to do."

I thought about that for a few moments, ruminating on the past.

"Yeah, I suppose if someone had come to Orsken, driven out the soldiers and fed everyone lots of people would have loved them forever," I observed.

"It's why they loved you Alana." I turned to look at him and he continued. "Maybe mom kept you from hearing or seeing most of it, but you were loved. How many mother's children didn't starve because you gave them food? How many sons and daughters had something, anything in their bellies because you worked every day for it?"

I could see a few of the guards I'd brought along looking at me. In particular was a certain elf. He knew that my childhood home wasn't around anymore, and that I didn't really like talking about it, but I'd never gone into all the details with him. I didn't really like thinking about that time in my life, so he hadn't pried too much.

"We have things to do," I finally said. "Please lead us on."

Selene was in one of the nearby areas being used for the injured. She'd been assigned her own bedroom, and I was told she'd fallen asleep recently. I considered going in and waking her up even against the suggestion of her caretaker, but passed. I could wait for a bit, it would probably give me better results if she were calm and clear headed when we spoke. At any rate I had most of what I needed, and plenty of work to do preparing the basic outline of my report. I could even draft it, so long as I didn't learn anything groundbreaking from her, it shouldn't change much.

I made sure that someone would come and tell me when she woke and began the paperwork. I also began composing designs for testing these new gates. It was pretty easy to rule out some things with the models that we used, but without safety features there were things I wanted to test, no matter how much of a hazard it would be. All of my ideas got added to the list while I started to make up the basic safety guide we'd need for this. I was pretty sure Emperor Durin would want these done, if for no other reason than that he might use the results as weapon ideas in the future.

A couple of hours into the work I was joined. Father came down and pulled a chair opposite me, plopping down in it. He had a rather tired look to his features. At least he came bearing gifts, pushing me a bowl of the standard stew that ended up at any military base soon as things started to settle. This was often enough served at Durin's fortress, and it wasn't bad, mostly vegetables and whatever meat could be found in a thick goopy soup.

"You know, I shouldn't have to tell you to eat at your age Alana," he commented.

"Not like I've been here that long," I responded, setting my work aside and pulling the bowl close. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until the food was right in front of me.

"The sun went down a few hours ago, you do realize that, right?" He took a bite at the same time I did.

"I did not. How are things out there?"

"I've seen worse, but not in awhile," he said and I could feel the exhaustion in it. "I hear you had that gate destroyed, care to explain?"

"No, but it was necessary, trust me on that," I responded.

"Maybe, but several of my subordinates are in a bit of a fit over it. Claiming you had no right, and I've only not had you held because of our relation." There were types like that everywhere it seemed.

I pulled the paper Durin had given to me and handed it over to him without a word. Dad's eyes got bigger as he went down and I could see my own reaction from when I'd received it mirrored in him. He blinked a few times and reread it, as this wasn't something one saw every day.

"That's some paper dear," he finally said as he passed it back.

"Don't I know it. I don't suppose you got any documents about the gate from our enemies?" I asked, hopeful.

"No, sadly they seemed to have evacuated everyone and everything important well before we took the place. Think they were a bit jumpy because you'd not been brought back or taken out and were halfway out before the attack started."

"They didn't take Selene though, why?" I asked.

"Nothing confirmed yet, if it all fell apart and she escaped then they'd have burned both of their bases if they moved her. It's also not easy to make the wards they had on those cells, stuff like that is planned out well in advance. At least that's what my advisors tell me, and they know their stuff better than I do." He took another bite while I thought.

"They planned to kidnap us well in advance then," I observed.

"Or planned to take any prisoners they could, we're unsure on that. Those cells were started at least a month before though."

We ate in silence for awhile before another individual joined us, one of the medics. He was a bard, as were most of the medics for the army, at least on missions like this. They wanted priests to join, something that would be really helpful for these field hospitals, but the orders had just been told about the gates not too long ago, so that didn't seem to be organized yet.

"The young lady just woke up," he informed us.

"How is she?" I asked.

"Physically? Bit malnourished, but nothing too bad. Mentally though, fragile I'd say. Can't say I have a lot of experience with people being tortured miss, but it looks like the kind of shock you see in soldiers after battles sometimes."

This world didn't yet have terms for things like post-traumatic stress disorder, but that didn't mean that it didn't exist. There were plenty of ways to be in situations that would leave you very messed up, and magical beasts, or spellcasters in battles could do that kind of thing easily. There was some discussion if it was magically induced, or just stress, as one normally only found explosions and unstoppable monsters when magic was involved, but it didn't matter to most people either way.

"Let's keep it to Ulanion and I. She knows both of us, so it shouldn't be too bad," I told everyone before we set out to her room.