The Union of the Sun
The Temple of the Gates
"I couldn't have done it without your assistance. Thank you once again," he said. She was the only one who knew the language the scroll was written in. Tenra wasn't relevant enough that anyone would want to learn it, except to translate ancient texts. Since the texts other than the Scroll of Arrival did not mean much in the way of history, only the High Priestess of the Temple of the Gates learned it as a part of her duties.
"After you left, I had wondered. If you were in such a horrible condition, why come here yourself?" she asked, pouring him a cup of vibrant green tea.
"You wouldn't have agreed to translate the scroll otherwise," he answered. Watching something through a screen did not give the impression seeing it right in front of you did.
She raised a single eyebrow. "Manipulating my willingness to help people?"
"More like showing you that I actually needed help.
"It is a good thing you returned," she admitted. "I can't believe I am saying this, but it was better when the scroll was lost. A part of our history or not, having it returned is only going to cause more trouble for everyone. I must insist that you take it back."
Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow for a different reason. He hadn't been in a state to consider the consequences of the revelation of the scroll. If she thought having the scroll wasn't worth the trouble, he would take it back.
"As you wish. Is there any other way I can pay you back?" he asked. She was one of the rare people he respected. Honest, moral, and quick to adapt. Her beliefs in helping those in need were not mere words either.
She actually had coordinated several rescue and aid missions to disaster areas struck by hazardous material and dangerous creatures through the dimensional tears.
Yumiko was what she appeared to be without any duplicity.
"The temple accepts donations for charity."
"That is easy to arrange, but I don't think any amount of wealth could compare to the scroll," he said, sending thirty billion aurels to the temple's charity accounts.
"If you are so adept at finding long-lost relics, perhaps you can help us with something else." She left the table, returning with a box containing several papers.
The Scroll of Arrival was lost during the Great Betrayal, but it wasn't the only one. The Arlex, the necklace of Kenlan, a man known for traveling the land to offer help to those in need, was stolen in the chaos that followed.
Kenlan was a selfless figure who had fought against corruption, protected the weak, and spread the goodwill of the temple across the continent.
Arlex was seen as a symbol of his selflessness, a cheap necklace of copper gifted to him by his village.
Its theft was a strange affair. The one believed to be responsible for it, Leten the Fool, had left a clue behind, but the temple never had the resources to follow it. No one wanted to chase after a necklace without a reward in return.
"The latter half is written in Tenra, but I have no idea what the first part means. Reach the edge of the world and find what is hidden inside mankind."
Thairon scanned the letters, cross-referencing them to the languages in his database. Each paper contained the same writing. A prudent measure to keep the clue intact.
It wasn't anything among the hundreds of languages that had arrived with people through the breaks in dimensional barriers.
But his databases were extensive.
It was one of the unnamed languages that a small village of fifty people used to speak before the Great Betrayal. Noah Reyes had all languages across the empire recorded, but finding them could be quite difficult.
For anyone else.
"It says, 'Reach the edge of the world and find what is hidden inside mankind," he explained. There were several locations where people who had arrived in this world described it as the end of it. The one in the Union was the Eastern Cliffs.
Rocky, desolate, and cold, it was a lifeless place.
"The edge of the world? The Eastern Cliffs," she echoed what he was thinking.
"Yes. It appears a trip there is in order," he said. He rose from the cushion, stretching.
She shook her head. "I can't ask you that. Your help is more than enough."
It would no doubt be dangerous, and she couldn't ask that of anyone.
"Honestly, I have nothing to do for now, and I want to move around now that I can do so again," he replied. Treasure hunts like these were fun because of their unexpected nature.
"Excuse me, my lady." A priestess entered the room without knocking. She walked with a hurry in her steps and whispered something to Yumiko.
She grimaced and whispered back. The priestess nodded, leaving just as quickly as she had come.
"I might need a translator, though, in case he did not just stash the necklace somewhere around the cliffs." Tenran was not kept in any digital database since only the Temple of the Gates had any need for it.
"My daughter, Tomoe, knows Tenran enough to help you," she said.
Thairon waved his hand. "It is unnecessary. I can just send you a photo."
He didn't want to drag anyone else with him.
"I have an important guest arriving. I won't be able to assist you. It is best if you take Tomoe with you," she implored.
Thairon shrugged. If her guest was someone she didn't want her daughter to see, he saw no reason to deny it.
A young woman around his age entered the room. She was a carbon copy of her mother, with the same eyes, face, and hair, though it was short, coming down to her neck.
"Mom, what is happening?" She glanced at him, and her shoulders straightened.
"I wasn't aware we had a guest," she said, giving him a nod. The worry in her voice gave way to a flat tone.
"This is …" Yumiko started to introduce him, realizing she had never asked for a name.
"Thairon," he said.
"He was able to translate the first half of the clue left behind by Leten. I need you to go with him to translate any more clues written in Tenra," she said to her daughter.
A quick glance showed that she was military, an unusual occupation for the daughter of a high priestess. She had arrived at the temple yesterday on a one-week leave.
Mother and daughter shared a glance before Tomoe agreed.
"Quick, follow me," she said, pulling both of them along.
—
Yumiko took them to the back of the temple, where a less-used path would lead them down. She handed him the container of the scroll, along with provisions and clothing for her daughter.
"What the heck is going on?" she muttered.
She was just lazing around in her room when the whole temple became abuzz with activity. Before she even could ask what was happening, she found herself out here.
"Your mother is having a guest. From the way she wanted you out of the temple, it must be someone you don't like," he explained.
Checking the security cams, he saw who the guest was.
Tomoe narrowed her eyes. "Now it makes sense. That bastard is here again."
He raised an eyebrow. To call the chairman of the union, her supreme commander, a bastard went beyond mere dislike of the man's handling of the military.
It almost seemed personal, something that he wouldn't pry into.
"Great, now we have to walk all the way down," she groaned.
Either she didn't see any harm in being so open due to her mother's trust in him, or she didn't care.
"Where exactly did the clue point?" she asked.
"The Eastern Cliffs."
She furrowed her brows. "We can't go there in a day. Not without a plane anyway."
It was simple to see that was the exact reason Yumiko sent Tomoe with her. They wouldn't be able to reach the cliffs in a meaningful timeframe under normal circumstances. Her daughter would be out of the temple without spending her vacation running after a missing artifact.
Unfortunately for both, he did not fit the mold of the normal circumstances.
"Can you hold this for a second?" He handed her a wristband. She took it, inspecting the silver metallic band, and opened her mouth.
In that moment, both of them disappeared.
—
The Eastern Cliffs
"What for?" she asked.
Her reflexes were quite fast. She realized the change in location and, instinctively, reached for her sidearm. Halfway to her hip, she remembered that she didn't have her pistol. She instead took a couple of steps back, throwing the wristband down.
All within three point twelve seconds.
"What the heck? What did you do?" She took a hostile stance. Her turquoise hoodie and pants weren't exactly fit for fighting, but she compensated for it.
"I teleported us here," he explained, taking the band from where it lay on the ground.
When you could travel to anywhere within the planet instantly, taking the plane sounded like torture. He could have retrieved it later, but today was the only spare time he had.
His work was on hold long enough, and he would meet his brothers at the beach on Azure.
"Again, what?" Seeing that he didn't mean harm, her stance relaxed, though she was still on guard.
"Do you really want to spend days chasing after this necklace?" he asked.
He most certainly did not.
She narrowed her eyes. "I don't care about that. I care about the teleporting part."
"I am a genius of unparalleled intellect, and I have a machine that can teleport me anywhere across the planet."
Tomoe looked at him as if he were an idiot. "Why would a genius like you even reveal this to a person you just met?"
She would be right, except for one thing.
"Who is going to believe you except your mother?" he asked.
The idea of a man who appeared out of nowhere with the technology to teleport himself anywhere he wanted sounded like the plot of a sci-fi TV show. No one except her mother would take Tomoe seriously.
She tilted her head, looking down for a second. "Huh, good point."
Even if she was a patriot who would inform her superiors of this discovery, they would either reprimand her for lying or retire her on grounds of deteriorating mental health.
She would never tell this to anyone and risk a war over a groundbreaking technology. It wouldn't be the first time either.
"You are quick to adapt, good. Now, what does that fool mean by finding what is hidden inside mankind?" he asked.
"I think he means the anamorphic human sculpture," she said, pointing straight ahead.
"What?" he asked. He walked next to her, and looking from a certain angle, some of the sharp, angular rocks jutting out of the ground created a rough sculpture of a human.
Thairon took a deep breath to calm his nerves. "I don't get it. Why not just destroy the necklace rather than hide it for a treasure hunt?"
"Kenlan was selfless. He would never agree with anyone chasing after his necklace, which could be fatal. Leten hid it so people would try to recover the Arlex and die in the process. The ultimate insult to his nemesis," she explained the history.
Leten was jealous of the attention Kenlan had received and made it everyone else's problem. He had never tried to kill the folk hero, but his attempts to make Kenlan look like a villain always backfired.
Hence, the Fool.
There was even a cartoon inspired by Kenlan's tales.
"If he wasn't already dead…" he muttered.
Careful to not fall down the narrow cliff top, they approached the chest of the human sculpture. It was roughly carved, and the stones were moved here.
Leten had gone to great lengths in his spitefulness.
"What now?"
"There is something inside it," he said. His scans showed that there was a small cavity inside the chest section, containing a small capsule surrounded by pebbles.
Geten had dropped the next clue inside and sealed the opening.
"We should hurry; this cliff doesn't look stable."
Squeezing his hand, he punched through solid stone. The noise and the act rattled Tomoe, but she didn't react beyond raising her guard.
Pulling his hand back, he took the capsule and walked away from the edge of the cliff. Just as they had left, the section with the chest of the statue went down.
"I hate that guy," Tomoe muttered. A couple more seconds, and they'd be dead.
"It's in Tenran, here."
"Find the entrance at the skirt of the womb of fire? I have no idea what that means," she admitted. The words were easy to translate, but there was no context to decipher the meaning behind them.
"Womb of Fire volcano in Heketh, and the skirt means base of a mountain in Re-jen."
"Leten must have picked those words while trailing Kenlan."
"Possible."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "The only volcano close to the union is Mount Masu, and it is filled with mud men."
"What?" That was news to him. He didn't really have a reason to snoop through military channels; that was more Nax' hobby.
"He is right. The union tried to weaponize them, but it backfired. The entire island is one giant mud pit."
Mud men were creatures of living mud. Tall, dark, and impervious to anything except explosives, the higher-dimensional fungi that controlled nutrient-rich mud through psychic waves were dangerous.
The soil of a volcano would be an ideal breeding ground for them.
"Right, how much X-57 do we have?" he asked the AI. In one of the lower levels of his laboratory, he had contingencies against the previously encountered specimens that presented a danger to the world.
Exo-organism Countermeasure Number 57 was created against the mud men. They were canisters filled with the dust of a synthetic radioactive material that blocked psychic waves. Without it, the fungi could not feed and died within minutes.
It was extremely useful against these pests.
"Enough. Drop vectors for maximum dispersal coverage were calculated. Give the order, and I'll clear the island."
"Do it."
The conversation had taken less than a second. He turned to Tomoe, who was no doubt cursing the brass of the Union Military in her head.
"The mud men won't be a problem anymore," he said. Cleaning up the mess of a country was not something he would ever do unless it presented a direct threat.
Too bad he could not bill the union a couple billion aurel for the job without causing trouble for himself.
"More of your superior intellect at play?" she asked, a corner of her lips lifting.
"Again, who would believe you?"