acaswell
patreon
Chapter 246: Field Trip (2) - Markets and Multiverses
🕑 Added 2024-05-17 08:35:24 +0000 UTCThe next day, our class walked to the Zelyrian history museum. A security guard from the school came with us. Anise seemed very excited about it, and had a little excited bounce in her steps as she walked. It almost made her look like a real kid. Vance seemed almost as excited as she was. Knowing that Vance had a thing for swords and this world’s version of the middle ages, I wasn’t surprised.
I was also excited about our trip to the museum. After all, the Zelyrians had clearly studied space in far greater detail than I had. Even if they had failed at the last step, they had still created a massive pocket dimension. I still had a lot to learn about space. I hadn't given up on figuring out the strange state I entered when I used 3 spatial runes at once. The odds were slim, but I might get lucky and find a clue in the museum. Even if I didn't find any information, I could have a fun day hanging out with my friends. That was also a good outcome in my eyes.
After fifteen minutes of walking, the class reached the Zelyrian museum.
“Welcome!” said a tour guide once we arrived. She looked to be in her late twenties, and had platinum hair and a bright smile. “My name is Mary! Nice to meet you! You guys are a few minutes early, so you’ll have to wait until the last group finishes their tour. While we’re waiting, can I get you guys anything to eat? You can’t eat once we start visiting the exhibits, but you can have something before the tour starts!”
Mister Delmont nodded. “How much time do we have?”
“Approximately ten minutes, last I heard.”
“Do you have light food that we can finish quickly? I don’t want to rush the kids, but I also don’t want to delay the next group.”
“We have options for that,” said Mary. She led us into a small café near the entrance of the museum, and we were given several small cakes and snacks to eat.
As we were eating, we saw another group of people make their way to the exit of the museum. Much like our group, they appeared to from a school. Mary also noticed them, and grinned as they walked out.
“The last group is done. You can start now!” Mary said. We finished our last bites of food, before we got up and made our way out of the café. Mary started leading us through the museum.
The first fifteen minutes were nothing special. The museum seemed to have dedicated specific exhibits to each caste in Zelyrian society. The first room was focused on normal Zelyrian citizens. In other words, the lower class that had done farming, mining, and metalworking. They were the natives of this dimension who had been conquered by the Zelyrians. Since I wasn't that interested in normal history, most of Mary's words went in one ear and out the other.
The second area managed to grab more of my attention. It was focused on the Zelyrian ‘nobility'. Naturally, I was much more interested in the outsiders than the natives of this world. However, as I listened to Mary's description of the Zelyrians, I started to feel that something was very... off.
Mary first talked about Zelyrian ‘spellcasting,’ which she believed was the precursor to ability potions. She stated that the Zelyrians must have had some special form of ability potion. This was her explanation for why Zelyrian spellcasters could use multiple 'abilities'. She also mentioned that many historical sources said their essence felt wrong. Enemy kingdoms had believed the Zelyrians had made pacts with 'evil gods' to get their power.
I had to try very hard not to laugh at this description. Mary's descripttions were probably the mainstream beliefs of scholars in this country. But since I knew more of story, Mary's explanation made me chuckle. To the people of this dimension, who only had binding essence and absorption essence, the underlying complexity of different essences would seem unintuitive. But for the three of us, the idea that different magic systems had different rules was much more normal to us. At the end of the day, the scholars of this world had done their best, but they were missing a lot of information.
Mary’s introduction to Zelyrian spellcasters ended with a description of the ‘unholy parties’ that they held at night. Enemy kingdoms had believed that these parties were meetings with their dark gods.
“Most of the descriptions of these ‘evil parties’ were written by enemies of their kingdom, sadly,” said Mary. “We may never know what the Zelyrians were really doing when they met at night. Perhaps they were ordinary parties, to discuss politics or deals. Perhaps they were some sort of religious rite. Maybe moonlight was critical in allowing the Zelyrians to use multiple abilities,” said Mary. “Unfortunately, the Zelyrians never recorded the true meaning of their moonlight parties. A few of their books for children reference starlight. Those books all seem to be nonsense though, and talk about things that don’t work. We’re uncertain why these books were written in the first place. Perhaps they're mistranslated, or we're missing a subtext of religious descriptions. Either way, their spellcasting textbooks for children clearly aren’t meant to be taken literally.”
I saw Felix eye Anise from the side.
“Well Anise? Do you feel any desire to worship strange, evil gods while working on your nonsensical spellcasting?” he whispered. "Preferably at night while consorting with the moon?"
Anise giggled at Felix's words, and had to clench her jaw to prevent Mary from hearing her.
As we continued going through the exhibit on Zelyrian Society, I noticed that Anise started to perk up in excitement. Finally, she gave me a wide grin.
“Miria! Even the ancient Zelyrians don’t seem to have had anything like star paper!” she whispered. “There wasn’t a single mention of any equivalent object or artifact in the museum! You and Felix really created something new and amazing!”
“True,” I said, before I frowned. “I wonder why they never made anything similar. You would think that they would want to create an artifact like star paper the moment they had the option. It makes training vastly more efficient. And honestly, if three kids can make it, it can't be that hard to figure out.”
“It’s probably because of class differences,” said Felix. “During the golden age of the Zelyrian empire, the natives of this dimension were treated as second class citizens. Without the extensive systems that support alchemists today, native alchemy was weak. It took hundreds of years for alchemy to develop into the pillar of civilization it is today. Back then, they couldn’t do transmutation, and affixation was inferior to Zelyrian artifact creation. The Zelyrians probably thought of the natives as inferior item craftsmen,” he said. “Who would ask inferior craftsmen to create new, revolutionary ideas?”
I nodded. Felix’s words made sense.
In the next room, we saw more ‘religious’ icons about the ancient Zelyrians. I realized, with some amusement, that the Zelyrians apparently worshiped the flaming giant with dozens of eyes. From the murals we had found in the pyramid, I knew that the flaming giant had driven the Zelyrians out of their home dimension. Rather than worshiping it, the Zelyrians probably hated it to death. But in the eyes of the natives, the flaming giant was a Zelyrian god, instead.
The tour guide, Mary, even told us that the flaming giant could broach the gaps between worlds in Zelyrian mythology. Mary believed that the ‘gaps between words’ referred to the worlds of the living and the dead. The flaming giant was apparently some sort of grim-reaper style religious figure.
Finally, after a few more rooms, we found an exhibit that made me much more excited.
Because I learned that I wasn’t the only one to study souls.
The ancient Zelyrians had clearly had some of their own studies on the subject. Those studies were faithfully recorded on a stone tablet in the museum. Only a third of the stone tablet was present, and it was fuzzy from age. Even with how much of the tablet was missing, I could see a few things on it.
The first picture was a study of the souls and abilities of worldstriders. It looked like the Zelyrians had been studying how souls and worldstrider abilities interacted, and a comparison between Zelyrian souls and worldstrider souls.
The picture showed a worldstrider’s soul, right next to a Zelyrian soul. It compared the two, and noted that both souls had 4 layers to them. More importantly, the Zelyrian tablet showed that the worldstrider souls had something… extra to them. Something I had never considered before.
The souls of every single human I had ever studied was pretty firmly locked into the brain it inhabited. It used the brain as a sort of control panel, through which it operated the rest of the body.
However, the innate ability for worldstriders to flee from one dimension to another had fascinated the Zelyrians. It looked like they had been trying to figure out if this ability came from the worldstrider's souls.
The Zelyrians had found something interesting. When a worldstrider was preparing to use spatial magic, their souls would sort of ‘pop out’ of their body for a bit. It almost looked like worldstrider souls turned into a sort of tunnel for a few seconds when they moved between layers of reality. After they finished teleporting, the soul would return to its normal state, as if it had never changed shapes in the first place. I was sure that my soul didn’t do anything similar, no matter what spatial abilities I used.
After that, the next few lines of pictures and text were missing, so I couldn’t see anything else. But I realized something as I looked over the tablet.
I finally had an idea how to progress my own spatial studies.
Author’s Note:
Join my Discord! (I’m much more active there than in the comments section).
Comments
Rain
Nice!
Bryan D
Excellent world building
Arkeus
I'm liking the history drifts there
