Chapter 720 - Ants

For once, Zeke’s arrival was unheralded.  There were no great monsters to fight, no new tortures to experience, and only a few passing glances following him.  The people in the Shattered Hold had seen it all before – or so they thought – and the arrival of one ship out of millions was nothing special. 

And surprisingly, it left him a little frustrated.  Or tense, at the very least.  Clinging to his arm, Talia noticed.  “Relax,” she said in an even tone.  “We got away clean.  Noone knows who you are.”

That was the problem, he wanted to say. But that would’ve come off wrong.  Did he want every moment to be filled with conflict?  No.  The fact that it wasn’t was a bit of novelty he hadn’t expected, though. 

“I’m fine,” he said, striding down the gangplank and onto the dock.  It swayed just like it was in water, but there was nothing below but open space.  Not the Void, but rather, mundane space.  The entire dock vaguely smelled like a smithy – hot metal with a hint of gunpowder, of all things – and it was sparsely populated.  Only one other ship occupied one of the berths, and it was a relatively small vessel manned by gnome-sized creatures with bat-like faces. 

Glancing at Tucker, who followed behind, he asked, “Is it always like this?”

Tucker shook his head.  “No.  Usually, it’s difficult to find a berth,” he answered.  “I suppose it’s all the unrest keeping people away.”

“Unrest?”

“Did you think that three greater gods dying alongside their entire populations wouldn’t have repercussions throughout the realm?” he asked.  “The consequences echo across every world.  Here more than most.”

“Oh.”

Left unsaid was that what Zeke saw before him was a direct result of his own actions.  Sometimes, it was easy to forget that the prosecution of his own plans had wide-ranging effects.  Everyday people lived at the whims of the gods, both greater and lesser.  Killing those lofty beings was a disaster for most commoners.

“Don’t worry about it.  Everyone’s fine.  They’re just staying away from the Shattered Hold unless necessary.  They don’t want to be here if the wars spill over into this territory,” Tucker stated.  “Business as usual, just with a little caveat.”

“I see,” Zeke said as they reached the dock itself.  The material from which it had been made looked like wood, but it felt like metal underfoot.  Above, a crystalline overhang shielded them from sight, while the entrance was relatively small.  It was as if they stood in the center of a cave made of crystal, with multi-colored lights dancing along the interior. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Talia said, leaning closer.  “They call it aether.  Mostly worthless for making anything, and it tends to fall apart if it’s separated from the whole.  But so long as it’s attached, that crystal is one of the most durable substances in existence.”

“Where did it come from?” Zeke asked, in awe.  It wasn’t often he got the chance to enjoy a great view without being distracted by one fight or another. 

“No one knows.”

“Not true,” Tucker interjected.  “We know.”

“Rumors,” Talia said with a roll of her eyes.  She truly had changed.  She was so conversational.  Well-adjusted.  Was it a role she’d learned to play?  Or was it real?  Zeke had no idea.

“Not at all.  I have it on good authority that –”

“This is not the eye of some proto-god from before the Creator existed,” Talia said, releasing Zeke’s arm and turning to face Tucker. “That’s ridiculous.”

“After everything we’ve seen, how can you discount anything so easily?” Tucker demanded.  “Can we rightly call anything impossible?  Or is it better to simply say that we don’t yet understand?  Or that the world is more complex than any of us can imagine?  I am comfortable admitting that I don’t know everything.”

“You’re comfortable believing in fairy tales and myths, equating them to reality.”

Zeke got the feeling that they’d engaged in the same argument many times before, and they didn’t stop as the group strode down the dock.  For his part, Zeke wanted to believe that the hunk of crystal had more than mundane origins.  The notion that powerful beings had existed before the Creator was oddly comforting. 

Probably because it suggested that, regardless of what path he took, existence would continue.  Perhaps not in the way it had so far, but it life would go on.  That gave Zeke peace of mind, though he couldn’t help but wonder if it was all an illusion.  After all, just because something had come before didn’t mean something had to come after. 

He wanted to believe it, though.

Regardless, the trio soon enough reached the end of the dock, where they were met by one of the administrators of the Shattered Hold.  They were a blue creature with four long, spindly arms and an elongated neck that ended in a praying mantis style head.  When they spoke, it was in a serious of clicks that Zeke only vaguely understood.  Tucker had no issues with the translation, though, and he soon passed a handful of beads the creature’s way. 

That allowed them entry.

For the next few minutes, they followed a long, narrow tunnel cut through the crystal.  It sloped gradually but twisted back and forth often enough that Zeke remarked on the inefficiency.  “Why did they build it like this?”

“None of the caverns or tunnels were built, Zeke,” Talia said.  “They’re pre-existing.”

“Some say that they’re the result of a great battle between proto-gods,” Tucker interjected.  “I think they came from parasites.  You know, eye-worms.”

“That is disturbing,” Zeke admitted.

“Eye-worms usually are,” Tucker said with a grin that revealed one gold tooth.  When had he gotten that?  Was it part of the pirate aesthetic, or did it serve some other purpose?  Zeke had no idea.  “Gives you the willies, right?”

“You could say that,” Zeke responded as a shiver went up his spine.  He didn’t truly fear such things, but he couldn’t escape the natural human aversion to the notion of tiny parasites burrowing through his eyes.  However, given the size of the Shattered Hold – and the tunnels – the parasites were anything but small. 

In any case, he was soon distracted by the view at the end of the tunnel.  He gasped.

“Right?” remarked Tucker, his voice carrying with it a knowing tone.  “I had the same reaction the first time I saw it.  Every time, actually.  Never gets old.”

Zeke could believe that.  The bulk of the city was contained in the center of a perfectly spherical chamber that stretched at least fifty miles across.  Maybe more.  The main cluster of crystals upon which the city’s structures had been built were comparatively smaller, but they were absolutely crawling with people.  The same was true of the subordinate clusters which floated all around it.  Each one was connected via a tenuous-looking thread of lacy crystal, and when Zeke looked closer, he saw that they were bridges. 

In all, the entire thing looked a lot like the models of an atom he’d seen in high school, though instead of colorful plastic, everything was made of crystals.  Mana and divine energy rippled through each surface, casting the chamber in a subtly changing rainbow of light.  It wasn’t a strobing effect – indeed, it wasn’t nearly so distracting as that – but it was noticeable when Zeke focused on it.

At the end of the tunnel was the beginning of one of those lacy bridges.  Upon closer inspection, Zeke saw that the material from which it was made seemed like it had almost been woven, rather than built. 

“Was this all here before people settled the Shattered Hold?” he asked, kneeling for a closer inspection.  When he ran his hand over the surface, he felt a tingle of divine energy. 

Tucker confirmed that it had been, adding, “The story is –”

“Myth,” Talia interrupted.

“Fine.  They myth is that these were like nerves,” he said.  “I like that idea.  It makes the whole thing seem more real.”

For his part, Zeke was beginning to believe the myths.  Not because of the structures themselves, which were incredibly complex and impressive.  Rather, the merit he assigned to the legends came from the presence of so much divine energy.  It didn’t just suffuse the entirety of the Shattered Hold.  It flowed through it, reminding him of a core. 

If this was the creature’s eye, then not only had it been enormous beyond Zeke’s scope, but also extraordinarily powerful.  The echoes of its divine energy were on par with a greater god’s.

“How long has this place been settled?” he asked, standing.

“Eons,” Tucker answered, his hands on his hips as he stared out across the expanse.  A smile decorated his face.  “Longer than most remember.  Maybe someone like Oberon could say for certain, but I think it was here well before his time.”

Zeke frowned.  “The Waymaster would likely know.”

And if he didn’t, then only the Creator would.  Zeke didn’t think he’d be up for answering his questions, though.  Not about the Shattered Hold, at least. 

Regardless, if the divine energy was still so strong millions of years after the creature’s death, then, in life, it must have been powerful beyond measure. 

Or maybe it was as Talia had said, and just a naturally occurring hunk of crystal, rather than the remnant of some ultra-powerful proto-god.  Zeke knew which one he preferred to believe, though. 

Zeke looked past all of that and focused on the population.  There were tens of thousands of people moving along the bridges and through the clusters of crystal.  Each of the subordinate islands contained a hundred or more structures, all built in a wide variety of styles that likely represented a host of different cultures.  The largest cluster was like a city on its own, and it was dominated by a series of spires that jutted toward the ceiling. 

“How many people live here?”

“Permanently?” Tucker asked.  “Probably a million.  Maybe two. But at any given time, at least triple that number are here.  Most of the population is transient.  They come and go as they scour the Shatterbelt for treasure.  Some go after salvage.  Others natural resources.  But they all bring them back here, either for transportation back to more settled worlds or to the brokers who live here.”

Then, he went on to explain that some of the natives had been there for dozens of generations, and they were well-established in their customs.  Thankfully, there was nothing complex about those cultural norms.  According to Tucker, the key thing to remember was that money always came first.  They were an entirely capitalistic society without even the most basic governmental safeguards. 

“If you can’t cut it, you shouldn’t be here,” Tucker finished.  “If you fall on hard times, it’s probably your fault.  And it’s your responsibility to pull yourself out of it.”

“A cruel way of living.  There is more than enough to go around,” Talia stated.

“Don’t look at me.  I don’t think it’s the best way of doing things.  I just know how they think,” Tucker responded. 

However, there was a gleam in his eye that said he was far closer to thinking like a Shatterbelt native than the alternative, utopian ideal that Talia clearly preferred.  The tower functioned on a similar principle, though with the caveat that the most capable received more opportunities to prove themselves and gain power. 

Thankfully, kobolds were uniformly hard workers.  The notion of laziness just wasn’t in their lexicon. 

Other people who called the tower home had different ideas, but the culture of effort had clearly rubbed off on them.  Or maybe the ones who couldn’t hack it had simply found other places to live.  Whatever the case, Zeke truly had no opinion on such things.  So long as people were happy with the way they were doing things, he saw no reason to intervene. 

The idea of justice just didn’t come into it.

Regardless, it brought to mind just how disconnected Zeke was from the rest of the realm.  For all that the Shattered Hold was a wondrous place – and it definitely was – he couldn’t escape the reality that the population looked like nothing so much as a swarm of ants to him. 

And he cared about as much about those people as he would the tiny insects who’d once populated his yard back on Earth.  In a vacuum, if someone asked him whether those people should live or die, he would’ve said that they should have the opportunity to live however they wanted. 

But would he go out of his way to help them do that?

The answer to that question haunted him, because he definitely would not.  He had bigger things to worry about.  The world – or multi-verse, he supposed – was his concern.  Not the people in it.