The Third Step: Chapter Thirty-Eight

The Isle of Fitiavana was entirely unlike any other nation I’d been to before. To be fair, that was true for all of the countries I’d visited, but I found that Fitiavana was more extreme than most in that regard… though admittedly, a lot of that might be the climate. On the boat, I’d mostly been within the enchanted rooms, and Dusk’s climate was similar to Mossford’s. I’d experienced several places colder than Mossford – Crysite was much more chilly, while Dragontooth was in a near-perpetual winter. 

This was my first time visiting a country that was hot. We were so far south that we’d gone past the equator, but we were still close enough to be right in the path of the sun’s rays. The broad sea combined with the brightness and heat to create an incredibly humid climate. At sea, it wouldn’t be nearly so bad, but in Fitiavana wasn’t contained to just the ocean, as I’d seen when we approached. 

The entire Isle of Fitiavana was a swamp, dominated by a single clay mountain that jutted out of the sea beneath. The top of the mountain was a geyser, one large enough that it apparently completely changed local weather patterns every time it sprayed, which was once every two to three hours. The explosion of water into the air would quickly condense into rainclouds, which poured back down onto the island, creating dozens of pools that linked to the same source of fresh water that the geyser drew from… wherever that was.

It was a matter of some debate, apparently. Some geologists thought that it was a natural array sucking in lunar energy and condensing it into fresh water, while others thought a truly ancient elemental slept within the clay mountain, and others still thought there was a spatial gate that brought in new clay and water from some mysterious, unknown other site. I chose to believe in the ancient elemental theory, as it sounded the most fun, even if the array was the most likely. 

Whatever the source was, if it had been in the middle of a desert, it would have been a miracle. But the surging tides and the strange power of the geyser caused the ocean around the mountain to draw upward, flowing into the fresh water that the geyser emitted, rendering a solid third of the mountain’s streams and lakes brackish. As such, that entire portion of the island was absolutely dominated by thousands of mangrove trees, sucking the salt from the water and secreting it out onto the leaves, where telluric mages gathered it and compacted it for sale. 

In the skies above Fitiavana, strange shapes flew. I at first thought that they were animals, but as I used Surveyor's Eye to get a closer look, I realized they were gourds. They looked like calabash gourds, grown large enough for two people to comfortably sit within. 

“Ah, the sky boats?” Meadow asked, a small smile on her face. “They’re quite nice, aren’t they? The influx effect makes the air filled with enough lunar energy that a few simple enchantments into the sea-gourds is enough to let them ‘swim’ through the air.”

A short while later, our boat docked and we spent the ages it took to get through customs, until I finally was free to enter. Once I did, I took a deep breath. The air here was different. It was even more humid, for one, and the salt scent was purer than the ocean’s mixture of animals and water and salt. There was a crispness, despite the humidity, borne of all the trees, and they also provided cover from the sun. More people were riding gourds, and I thought that there was a complex pattern to it, an elegant sort of dance that was both similar to navigating a sky full of brooms, and entirely different. 

Meadow stepped up next to me as I contemplated, and I turned and looked at her. Then I turned and looked at Meadow. Then I turned and looked back at Meadow.

“Primes, I knew you could make simulacra. I’ve seen you collapse into a spell anchor briefly. But it’s one thing to know it, and another thing for there to be two of you in one spot.” 

“You did fight that one girl who had a Combat Echo,” Kene pointed out. 

“You also have a dog and a mathematician living in your brain,” Hannah said. “That’s kind of the opposite, though. Multiple minds in one body, rather than multiple bodies with one mind.” 

“Bah, that doesn’t count. She only lasted for a minute. This isn't going to fade,” I said, before mentally adding to Hannah that ghosts didn’t count either. Ghosts were just a part of the natural life cycle. This was weird. 

“It does take getting used to,” one of the Meadows said, before the second Meadow started speaking. “But since you’re going to Deepfall, I thought it might be interesting to show Kene, Dusk, and Dawn around Fitiavana. If you end early, you’re welcome to join us.” 

“I mean, I’d like to go with Malachi, but if I can’t…” 

“Unfortunately not,” Meadow One said. 

“The wards will stop anyone alive without an amulet from entering,” Meadow Two concluded. “That includes familiars.” 

“Alive? So I can bring Hannah and Arthur?” 

“You can,” the Meadows said in unison. 

“Do you want to go? Or would you rather go with them and explore?” 

Hannah appeared, then gave me an apologetic smile, while Arthur didn’t even bother manifesting.

“Sorry, I think I’ll go with them,” Hannah said.

I said my goodbyes to everyone, then hailed down a gourd. I was fairly certain that the woman I paid to take me to Deepfall Cemetery was dramatically overcharging me, but I also didn’t know the area, so I accepted it as the price of doing business. Especially since, unlike in Obsidian Forest, Fitiavana didn’t have long stretches of empty road for me to teleport up and down.

A part of me had expected Deepfall Cemetery to be at the very peak of the mountain, basically right next to the geyser. It was a site of a lot of cultural importance, and important things tended to be built high up. The geyser itself was also of great import, so lumping them together just seemed like the logical thing for me. 

The cemetery was still high up the mountain, but it actually wasn’t near the geyser. The area right around it was kept clear, since the drops that were sprayed at were almost boiling hot. As a result, Deepfall Cemetery was located about a mile and a half below the peak, in between a pair of massive rivers that rushed down from a lake behind the cemetery. 

Even from the air, I could see the perpetual nature of the Cemetery in motion. It wasn’t sinking fast enough for me to really see, and even my senses had a hard time picking up on it unless I was really noting. 

“Makes sense,” the woman steering the gourd said when I commented on it. “It sinks about a third of a millimeter an hour. Not exactly the most noticeable.” 

Despite the fact that the sinkage itself wasn’t the most obvious, the aftereffects were. Three stories of fired terracotta bricks were arranged in a complex circular pattern, an elegant piece of wardwork that kept death energy largely focused inside. At the top of the third story, there wasn’t a roof, but instead the progress of another layer to the same complex spell weave being placed on top. 

The gourd landed in a small lot amongst others, and I began walking to the funerary complex. As I did, I noticed a handful of others entering and leaving from an archway presumably, paying their respects. Those who were entering had calm, contemplative looks on their face, while those who were leaving were laughing and chatting. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but with my enhanced senses, I could catch snippets of discussion around the lives of the dead, stories about the lives they had lived, and even some raucous tales that seemed to be something of a big fish story.

It was a strange mix. Utter seriousness for the entrance, but laughter and celebration of the dead. In Mossford, there tended to be a lot of seriousness around entering and leaving a cemetery, but also to less of an extreme. We were serious about it, but kids would still sometimes vandalize graves and leave the spirits angry. I wondered if that happened here. 

I took a breath and martialed as much seriousness as I was capable of, then entered the complex. The complex, which I’d been able to see as a ward form from the sky, now felt much more like a maze made of death. Each of the walls was actually large shelving units, with dead wrapped in cloth shrouds and placed on a shelf with a description of the person on the outside. The descriptions were all in charcoal, ink, or something else, so I assumed they were added by the families of the deceased. 

Finding the tenders of Deepfall wasn’t particularly difficult – most of the people visiting were wearing bright colors, especially yellow and pink, which I assumed was the style around here, and kept their power either veiled or restrained. The tenders, however, radiated their death magic openly, and wore actual, old-fashioned robes of deep blue trimmed with white. They circled through the complex, speaking to families, saying benedictions over the deceased, and occasionally channeling a ghost or shade. I waited until one wasn’t busy, then approached one and held up the amulet that Meadow had given me. 

“Excuse me. I am an ectomancer who was granted passage to the deeper levels. I’m sorry if I’m in the wrong place.” 

The tender of the cemetery, a kindly looking old man at the peak of fourth gate, smiled and took the amulet, then handed it back to me. 

“Ah, very good, I can see the seal within. Yes, you may come this way.”

He began to lead me in a loop that wove through the complex maze of passages, until we arrived at a wide spiral staircase in the center of the circle. Practically speaking, it spiraled up to the level above, where the newer dead were carried, as well as access below. Magically speaking, it acted like a reverse water screw, using the flow of magic to draw death energy deeper down into the ground. 

“We keep the top three levels open to the public and actively tended, in addition to the lower five. That gives people eight years to visit their loved ones and attempt to complete any unfinished business,” the man said conversationally as we took the staircase down. 

“How far down does it go?” I asked. Aerde’s report said nobody knew, but Aerde was also a spirit living thousands upon thousands of miles away. 

“Nobody knows. The island has been inhabited for at least four and a half thousand years. Does that mean the cemetery stretches more than eight miles down? It seems impossible for the swap to descend that low. And yet, the building keeps sinking. Perhaps the lowest levels are being destroyed? It’s hard to say. When you get more than a few miles down into the earth, magic becomes too dense to parse.” 

“Like space,” I said, and the man raised an eyebrow, so I briefly explained some of the strangeness of the space as we walked down the five flights of stairs. As we neared the bottom, though, we both grew quiet, until eventually we stood before an artifact set into the stairwell. It was a golden block, covered in spell formula, and radiating seventh gate ward magic. Beyond the barrier of magic created by the block, Deepfall Cemetery was silent, still, and above all dark.

“I, or another gravetender, will wait for your return,” the man said. “Luck be with you.” 

I gave the man the most formal bow I knew, then strode into the darkness.