The hot springs around them had brought a familiar mist, but considerably more pleasant in every aspect than the fog they had left behind.
'How is it possible for hot springs to exist when the Depths do too?' Kael stepped over a fallen tree. 'If the Depths are network-like, as I suspected, it could work. But then there's a second depth, and a third after that, and a fourth. How does magma exist with that much open space beneath the surface? Could—'
"Could we pause here for a while? It's been too long since I've bathed. And the temperature is almost tolerable."
Kael stopped beside a spring and crouched down. "Yeah. There's something I want to check anyway."
Yvette pumped her fist and disappeared into the mist. "I'll come find you when I'm done. No rush?"
"Take your time."
This area was known as the Warm Lands, translated from the Smolten language. According to their tradition, Smolten ancestors who had lived in the north for generations had begun to freeze to death. But the north was their god Hemlith's favourite creation, and they refused to leave it even as their numbers declined. As more and more died from the cold and extinction brushed close, they did something that had not been done in generations. They prayed.
And because of their long and unbroken devotion, Hemlith answered.
With a flick of his wrist he cast sapphires toward them. They crossed the sky in streaks like falling stars and shattered where they struck the earth. Sharp cracks spread outward from each impact and from those cracks hot water poured upward. Years passed. The cracks widened and softened and filled, and eventually became the hot springs now surrounding Kael.
'Benevolent god, that one.' Kael mused.
This wasn't actually what he had come to check. The reason people knew the Smolten had been here at all was because of the ancient texts and artefacts that had survived in this area.
'Shouldn't these springs technically connect to the first layer of the Depths? Or do they not go that deep?' He kicked a rock into one. 'I know too little about them.'
He walked for a while before finding his way to an old cedar. Its trunk was as thick as a house, its surface ridged and folded like compressed cloth, layer upon layer of bark built up over what must have been an incomprehensible number of years. From a distance it could have been mistaken for several trees grown together into one.
'It's said Hemlith planted this tree as a reminder to the Smolten of his benevolence.'
As long as it stood, the Smolten were supposed to thrive and eventually conquer the world. And they had come close. If not for humans awakening as Luminaires the outcome might have been different.
From a human perspective the Smolten reign was either the most humiliating period in human history or the greatest triumph humanity had ever produced. It depended entirely on whether you considered the suppression the story or the breaking free from it.
"It shouldn't be far from here…"
And it wasn't.
A few steps later a ruined building came into view. A log house with empty squares where windows would have been on a modern structure. The door stood half open and the wood had gone frail from the moisture that had worked at it for lifetimes.
The interior had decayed almost completely, leaving most of what it had originally been to guesswork.
As far as historically significant sites went this was one of them, well known particularly among Luminaires with an interest in history, referred to in most texts simply as the first known structure built by the Smolten.
Kael split his consciousness and entered his inner realm.
The building fell away, replaced by blinding white and the golden scars of his soul. His river of Will sounded a deafening roar as its current moved through it with violent force.
Compared to his inner realm at rank one it was like looking at two entirely different worlds. At some point along his cultivation the river had begun producing sound, and he could have sworn he occasionally felt a faint breeze moving through it. For the first time in his life his own inner realm had started to hold mysteries he hadn't put there.
He walked to the crimson and studied the tendrils swimming through it.
"No reaction..."
Part of him had hoped the eye would respond to something in the Smolten building so he could narrow down what was influencing it. But nothing had happened. It never entirely left his mind, the way the Amber Dew had reacted to the eye when he brought it close. Or had it been the eye reacting to the Amber Dew? The direction of recognition had never been clear.
Something red flickered at the edge of his peripheral vision. Kael extended his hand and waited.
A ruby-red butterfly settled on his fingers and began grooming its antennae without any particular concern for where it had landed.
"Hi there, buddy." Kael said, petting it gently with one finger.
The Crimson Arc mote was by far his most social mote. It sought him out every time he entered his inner realm without fail.
"Is your friend here?"
As if in answer, another mote emerged from the river in the shape of a firefly and landed in Kael's hair, nestling itself comfortably. The rank one fire mote he had used to start the previous night's fire.
"There you are."
It was an unexpected observation, but after accumulating more motes Kael had started to notice behavioural patterns. His initial assumption had been that rank alone determined how much personality a mote developed. That was true, but it wasn't the only factor. If a mote took the shape of something living, the Crimson Arc butterfly, the firefly, the Golden Horned beetle, it tended to develop more personality as a result regardless of rank. The form itself seemed to invite it.
But there was something else worth considering. Even motes with personality retained their instincts. Under normal circumstances a mote would do everything it could to avoid being claimed by a human. The prevailing theory was that they resisted control, that they preferred hosts who couldn't exert will over them. This was why wild motes sought beasts and Dreadbornes as hosts rather than humans. Mona was the clearest example, a host so dominant that motes were drawn to her as a safe haven. But the relationship between a mote and a beast or Dreadborne was fundamentally different from the relationship between a mote and a human. Beasts and Dreadbornes couldn't cleanse motes. They couldn't impose their will on them. What they offered was proximity without control, which from the mote's perspective was closer to symbiosis than the parasitic arrangement humans offered.
But something had changed after the primordial eye rebuilt him. Motes had started treating him differently. Not like a human host. Something closer to a beast, or for lack of a better description, one of their own.
Back in Velthoria, and everywhere before that, every mote he had claimed retreated into his inner realm and stayed there. The exceptions had been Point Blank and Point Aegis, but those were exactly that, exceptions. Now they sought him out instead. The butterfly. The firefly. Both of them coming to him without being summoned or compelled, simply because they wanted to be where he was.
Kael returned to the log house and collected a piece of wood, sending it to the Stone Coffin before walking back out.
'I should bathe too.'
He removed his military cape and folded it over a nearby rock, then undressed and lowered himself into the spring with a slow exhale. He leaned his head back against the warm stone and closed his eyes.
His hand moved absently along the rock beneath the water until it found a sharp jutting edge. He closed his fingers around it and pulled it loose.
"Cinnabar?" He lifted it clear of the water and turned it over. "And crystallised?"
Cinnabar was one of the oldest known gemstones, used for as long as records existed. Because of its striking red colour it had often been used for paintings, dyes and decoration. The name itself translated roughly to dragon's blood depending on which tradition you pulled from. But cinnabar didn't form without mercury. And mercury meant the water might not be as pleasant as it felt.
He stepped out.
'I need a defensive mote for poison.' He considered it as he dried off. 'So far I'm reasonably resistant to physical harm. But there are considerably more categories of danger than that.'
The gap was starting to bother him in a way it hadn't before. The corrosive blood on the ship had held the eye back long enough to matter. The cinnabar was a smaller version of the same problem. What healed him against impact and blade struggled against what entered through the skin or the lungs or the stomach.
He picked up his cape and glanced at the crystallised cinnabar still in his hand for a moment, then he sent that too to the stone coffin, before making his way to Yvette.