The Laws Of Elios (Book 2) (17 page)

The overland glided away from the station silently and smoothly.  Ava increased the speed until she was comfortable that she could stop in time if she saw that she was running out of track.  While the car was traveling at a significant speed it wasn’t traveling at anywhere near it
s optimum.  Ava soon grew tired of continually staring ahead waiting for the moment of when she would be out of track.  She had to keep thinking of ways to pay attention and not be distracted by the ever increasing forests and the large trees.  Finally she decided that she could use the location finder on her portal device as a long range viewer.  She quickly set it up so that she had a bird’s eye view of the farthest edge of the forward track plus several milos beyond.  This gave her a cushion of nearly twenty minutes or so before she would run out of track and when she would need to stop to begin her repairs.  Feeling comfortable she began to take in more of her surroundings and less of the track – only glancing at the portal viewer periodically.

The trees seemed to fly past and they grew taller and taller
, appearing as if they were meant to shade giants.  Although most of the trees were deciduous she periodically passed groves of monstrous reddish brown barked evergreens towering two hundred or more cubits high with massive trunks that were the size of houses.  All of the trees in the now thick forest appeared to be larger than the norm.  Turning back to the front of the monorail she was amazed at the way the overland was able to maintain a straight line of travel through the random trees.  The canopy was growing thicker and to her astonishment the forest didn’t seem to be darkening all that much.  Soon she discovered why.  Among the ferns and other growth there were gigantic mushrooms of various colors; from browns and tans to pale yellows.  Mixed in was a number of a bluish green variety, not unlike that of a robin’s egg, which seemed to be speckled with a white fluorescent camouflage pattern.  The white dots and blended swirls glowed giving the appearance of softly lit pathways through the forests.  The more she observed, it seemed to still appear as if it were still summertime and not approaching winter.

As she watched the mystical scenery flash past her she glimpsed a platform not unlike the one she had found near the gorge on the route to Valee.  Quickly she reached to the control panel and decelerated the monorail.  Pulling the control downward she began
slowly backing up until she was even with the platform.  When the monorail came to a halt the doors opened and she stepped out onto the platform.

The first thing she noticed was the earthy smell of the forest mixed with a gentle smell of evergreen. 
Initially everything sounded quiet, but as she stood taking it in she was soon aware of a myriad of sounds; mostly a blend of birds and insects and that of the swaying branches high above her dancing in the scarce breeze.

Seeing the platform controls with its familiar glyphs she stepped up to it and began examining it to see if it had been disabled or if it too was malfunctioning do to age and lack of maintenance.  As with the prairie platform near the gorge the glyphs on the plate were worn and no longer complete. Carefully she used her scribe and soon had the glyphs restored.  In short order she imbued the glyphs and a small projection appeared in a language that she hadn’t heard before.  “Infin please,” she stated and the image
s and audio immediately changed.  She was soon made aware that this station had been down for over five hundred years due to pathway failure further down the track and to please contact Yllyan or Coh Y Nord records center for assistance.

“Hello Lumen Master!” rumbled a deep voice from behind her.

Ava shrieked as she turned with a jump; nearly falling over. To her surprise what she found was pair of men with curious expressions dressed in leather trousers and vests with plaid cloth shirts.  Contrary to their gigantic voices they were only three quarters her height and nearly twice as wide.

“Sorry, we didn’t mean to startle you, but you seemed busy and we didn’t want to interrupt,”
spoke one of the short men wearing a red shirt and a wide friendly smile.

“Aye,” offered the other who was wearing a green shirt, “When you flew past in
… your…” The man paused, then with a perplexed look scanned the monorail cars and then glanced at his companion with a shrug, “…giant metal worm?  We hurried here as fast as we could.  We haven’t seen one o’them since we were knee high to a short sheep. Way back when our great grans and gramps used to travel to the fisher-lands and to the gateway centers. Droddy has sworn for years that the lumen masters would come by to restore things as they were before the sky fell; her be’n a mage and all.  You
are
a lumen master, are you not?”  The green shirted little man asked, his glance narrowing with the appearance of looking down his stubby nose while still looking up at her suspiciously.

“Of course she is, Edgar.  Don’t be such a
pinecone.  You saw the way she redrew them magical scrollettes – or whatever Droddy calls em, and the lumen that flowed into them,” chimed in that redshirted man. “Not like that red mage years back; he couldn’t put lumen into a light stone on a sunny day – some mage he turned out to be.  What a dungus, I still remember that one, tried to take life-lumen from the glungus stools.”  Both of the men burst out laughing, slapping each other on the back.

The green shirted man evidently named Edgar was near tears.  “And
Droddy was there begging him…’ no please don’t take the lumen from the glungus’ like they were a poor defenseless mushrooms.  You never saw such a sight.  If Droddy hadn’t a called em off he would have been fungus food fer sure. O’course he did Kill D’reason’s Giant Spruce with his red orb… it’s probably a good thing he was a mage or I think D’reason would have chopped him up for fertilizer.  Just as well he ran away like he did.”

Ava held up her hand as the green shirted man was about to
continue.  “Just a second, s'il vous plaît messieurs,” Ava said hurriedly as she began to get an idea that the little men were no strangers to magic but having questions of her own and feeling that the comical pair of short husky forest folk were likely to continue talking if she continued her surprised silence.  “First introductions if you please.  My name is Ava.”  She held out her hand.

The two men attempted unsuccessfully to stand taller as they took turns shaking
her slender hand with their own disproportional large calloused thick fingered hands.  “Please forgive our rudeness rumbled the red shirted man contritely.  My name is Rogg and this is my brother Edgar.  We are of the forest tenders of The Red Oak Glen.  We have a cone seed farm up the hill; we were fix’n to do some harvesting when ole Edgar here sees the worm fly’n through the forest and says, hey Rogg take a look at that giant metal thing.  You ever see anything that fast go through a forest and not crash into a tree?  Then all of a sudden it stops and starts a back’n up so we clum down d’tree and got here just as you was a fix’n the scrollettes,” the short man nodded towards the platform panel.  “And here we are.”

“It’s nice to meet the both of you,” Ava replied.  “I
’m sorry to have disrupted your work.  As you have surmised I am indeed working on restoring the infrastructure between the cities of Yllyan and Coh Y Nord.  When I saw the platform I stopped to see if it needed repair. As it turns out it did so I have taken the liberty of repairing it.”

“That’s fine and all that you repaired it, Miss Ava,” Spoke E
dgar, “but I don’t think Droddy is going to like it much see’n how she was the one that wrecked it the last time?”

“What?” Ava said in disbelief.  “Why would anyone disable the overland?”

“Ah,” both of the brothers looked at each other as if everything made sense.

“What,” asked Ava?

“I told you it wasn’t a worm,” Rogg chided Edgar.  “It travels over land so it obviously be an overland.”

“You never told me that,” Edger retorted.

“Well I would have if you would have given me time before you nearly dumped us to the dirt; free fall’n the hoist like ya did.”

“Guys, guys,” Ava raised her voice.  “Who is
Droddy and why did she disable the platform panel?”

Both of the little men looked at each other.  “You tell her,” said one. “No, you can tell her,” deferred the other.
  Finally Rogg sighed, “Droddy is our older sister; she’s kind of bossy, if you catch my drift.  Ava raised her brow in irritation and the short man continued, “She was a ride’n the conveyance… err… overland… back when the sky fell.  It was late and about the same time a great fire fell from the night sky and struck the ground creating a great hole causing the world to shake for miles.”  The men seemed to shudder from the memory.  “Anyway, the overland continued over the massive hole and then suddenly began to fade as the golden track ended.  All of the passengers - Many who were forest tenders fell to the fiery ground below and died a fiery death for sure.  Droddy being a smith mage was able to take the fires and while a bit worse for wear from the fall, she came back and told what happened and warned the entire glen not to ride to the fisher-lands anymore.”

“Then,” continued Edgar as Rogg seemed to stop for a breath, “
Some young’uns decided that they could ride it a ways and stop before they got to the drop off; they were wrong.  The good news was that the molten ground had cooled and there weren’t any heat left from the sky fall.  The bad news is that the fall was steep and the rocks left behind were sharp as glass – Long story short not all of em came back.  Droddy was so angry I thought she was a fix’n to explode.  That’s when she went to the platform and pulled the lumen from the glyphs and then filed em off with a rasp and said no one was to touch it until a Lumen Mage showed up that could fix it all the way to Coh Y Nord.”

Rogg jumped into the conversation once again. 
“Seeing how you are a Lumen Master and have it all fixed up now we can stop caravanning to the fisher-lands.”

Ava wasn’t sure what to say.  She was more curious than ever at the story that the two loquacious brothers had just conveyed, at the same time she didn’t want to get them started on another tangent of conversation; she was really hoping to get the new monorail disks positioned before the days end.  “Tell your sister not to tamper with the platform until she talks to me.  I’m going to disable it just to be safe but
hopefully by the days end, at most in a day or two, I should have it repaired all the way to Coh Y Nord.”  Walking back to the panel she activated a new glyph sequence and the audio and the display showed that it was again disabled.  Then on gut feeling she etched a hide glyph on the side and activated it causing the panel to disappear.

Placing her scribe back into her satchel she caught the two brothers whispering to each other.  “I told you she was a lumen master; you see the way she hid that? 
Droddy should be fine with how things are now.”

“It was nice meeting you gentlemen,” Ava smiled as she stepped back on board the front compartment.  “I need to get going if I’m going to get to the crater before it gets too dark to work.”

“The pleasure is all ours, Miss Ava,” the men rumbled enthusiastically.  “We’ll let everyone know that you are going to have things running soon; the clans will be thrilled that we will soon be able to ride to the fisher-lands again.”

Ava activated the controls to the monorail and the doors
slid shut.  Moving the control forward the long carrier shot forward leaving the platform quickly behind.

“Do you think we should have mentioned the firebirds?” Edgar asked his brother as the monorail disappeared from view.

“Nah, she’s a Lumen Mage I bet she has creatures like them for pets,” replied Rogg.

“Last one to the Glen is a rotten egg,” bellowed Edgar
as he bounded off the platform and the two stout forest tenders were off, crashing through the brush like badgers through the hedge in their race to spread the news of their discovery.

It was a
half an hour later that Ava saw that she was approaching the crater.  She slowed the overland down and began to concentrate on the track ahead watching for the point when it would run out.  Shortly the forest seemed to thin and spread like a fortress wall as she approached the large crater that she had often viewed in the portal viewer.  Cubit by cubit she inched the monorail forward and soon she was suspended in the air on the single golden glowing rail.  She was about two hundred cubits away from the edge when she saw the end.  Ever so slowly she backed off the forward control until she was two cubits away from the edge; then she halted the device and deactivated the movement controls.

Moving forward to the front she opened the front doorway and looked over the edge of the front
walkway platform.  The crater was enormous.  Unlike the descriptions that the two forest tenders had mentioned the bottom of the crater was not rocky at all; at least not that she could see.  The ground was as she had seen it in the portal viewer; lush and green –
odd
she thought to herself – given the time of year it was.  The giant conifers that surrounded the depression accentuated the depths but the forested basin of the crater was impossible to penetrate due to its density.

I best get started;
Ava thought to herself as she went back in and opened the oversized pack and removed the three large disks.  After the disks were set aside she retrieved a harness and a large coil of rope that she had packed in the bottom.  Buckling on the harness she threaded one end of the rope through a pair of ‘D’ rings on her harness; pulling it through in a weaving fashion then fastening it securely to the handrail inside the car.  Casually she tossed the coil out the front of the car letting it dangle to the ground far below.  Next she extending her hand away from herself pulling tight on the dangling end of the rope, she slowly backed up until the end tied to the handrail was taut.  As a test she lessened the tension on the dangling end and the rope began to slide through the ‘D’ rings.  With very little effort she re-extended her arm retightening the coil end and the rope halted. 
Perfect
, she thought. She picked up the first disk and using a clip she latched it on to her harness.  While keeping a slight tension on the rope she stepped out of the front and walked out on to the platform.