Chapter 156: We Taught Crystals to Scream

Dragon’s Lair. Central Cavern. Local Time: 2245 Hours.Emma

The cavern echoed with the raspy words of a dead man, his staggered ‘breaths’, and the stillness in his eyes contrasted against the sheer turmoil that had taken hold of his puppeteer’s features.

Fundamental systemic incongruency had just gripped the dragon.

And it was clear we needed an off-ramp, and .

“I believe there’s been a misunderstanding.” I spoke with a firmness but respectful clarity, nipping the insidious vine of miscommunication at the bud, before it had a chance to take root. “This is most likely due to a lack of clarity on my part, so for that, I must sincerely apologize.” I ran through the rehearsed motions, as diplomatic de-escalation training subsumed the otherwise adrenaline-ridden brain that was still just grappling with the battle’s… repercussions. “So allow me to set the record straight.” I continued, maintaining eye contact all the while. “My kind are not part of a ‘crystalline legacy.’ We beings of flesh and blood, and while we do not possess magic or draconic heritage, we possess the capacity to breathe life into… , so to speak.”

more or less caused Thalmin’s already-worn features to evolve into an all-out look of incredulity, as he seemed completely taken out by the one-two punch that was; A. The dragon’s bold and confident proclamations of humanity’s draconic ancestry, and B. The basic preemptive explanation of electronics. However, only a second later did he seem to ‘get it’, his hand reaching towards his earpiece, and the conversation we had weeks ago on this very topic.

The dragon, however, wasn’t so receptive, as her pupils narrowed even further into a strained look of distrust.

At which point, I decided to cut through the song and dance, unlatching my datatab and gesturing towards it in one swift motion.

Once more she knelt down, her gaze lingering and her expressions now… , as a sort of reptilian poker face took hold. Every ounce of attention was instead diverted to the handheld tablet, her eyes following the small animated login screen composed of a rotating IAS emblem, transitioning in true gov-style to the GUN’s seal.

She continued, closing her eyes, and once more letting loose a series of mana radiation spikes; all focused towards the tablet if the WAND sensors were to be believed.

A series of wing flutters followed, as Kaelthyr quickly stood up, taking slow and measured paces around me. “I now see. I now feel. I now… fathom… your impossible claims. So now—” The dragon came to a halt, settling on her haunches once more. “—I wish to know. Tell me how this is possible. Show me how you breathed life into ‘rock.’ And explain to me how it is that a race of, composed of flesh and blood, was able to animate life through crystal and sand.”

“It is our inability to harness magic, and our inherent lack of inherent advantages in heritage — be that draconic, elemental, or otherwise — that led us down this path.” I began with a confident smile. “While I am not at liberty to divulge the specifics, as there are limits to my diplomatic catalogue of good-will info-packages, I am happy to impart the basics.” My eyes soon shifted to one of the notifications on the EVI’s list of endless updates, towards a report of unauthorized interactions with the missing SUR drone — specifically at the third-party charging events in its logs. “And I believe you may already know of how this works.” I pondered openly, causing the dragon to tilt its head, if just by a degree.

“It begins with rocks and stone.” I opened with an excitable flourish. “Relatively common minerals, harvested, refined, and then processed until they are pure enough for our purposes. From there, we carve and print what you can call… manaless — paths so small that you’d be able to put a city map into a space smaller than a speck of dust.”

I maintained eye contact, never once wavering from the dragon’s gaze.

“Then it’s a matter of harnessing lightning. We generate it, leash it, and constrain it, forcing it to choose between paths of our design, again and again, at speeds beyond mortal perception.”

Kaelthyr, for her part, never flinched as well. In fact, she did quite the opposite, instead becoming more engrossed the more and more I spoke.

“By observing which paths the lightning is permitted to take, and which are forbidden, we derive patterns and formulate meaning. And from meaning comes decision, memory, and a form of basic ‘thought.’” I soon gestured to my tablet, and the drones docked in my backpack. “In a way, my opening statements were entirely inaccurate, owing to their reductive nature. Because we do not breathe life into stone per se. We instead shape these stones into a maze-like prison, carving rulesets into matter and imposing laws for lightning to obey. So from this labyrinth of impossible complexity, restrained by the logic of our design, a form of emerges. We call this… computation.”

Kaelthyr’s features never once shifted.

Though her eyes conveyed all I needed to know.

Incredulity hit first. A sort of dismay that shifted naturally into disbelief, and subsequently into an unwilling acceptance that all culminated in a sooty huff and a sharp glance up towards the ceiling of the cave.

“Yours is a mockery of Resonance.” The dragon spoke dourly. “A dark harmony. A twisted symphony of shackled bards forced into an unnatural chorus.” She raised a clawed finger, pointing at both my docked drones and my tablet. “Your crystals, in forced emergence.”

Kaelthyr halted, causing my breath to hitch and Thalmin’s nervous gaze to darken.

“A fitting facsimile, and a testament to the darkness from which you hail.” She finally grinned.

Tentative relief washed over the both of us; Thalmin in particular however seemed increasingly unnerved at our back and forths, his eyes glancing towards me with an uncertainty I’d rarely seen from him.

“I would say the sentiment goes both ways… but I have neither the data nor context with which to reach such a conclusion.” I offered with a sly lilt to my otherwise diplomatic front. A fact that Kaelthyr seemed amused with if her dark and bassy warbles were anything to go by.

“The young matriarch wishes to negotiate so soon?”

“Reciprocation is the foundation to any healthy bilateral dialogue. Or at least, that is the assumption my people carry in these sorts of dialogues.”

“Yet you have avoided my second query. You have told me how this is possible. But you have yet tome.” Kaelthyr leaned in once again, rising back from her haunches as if to bring her mass to threaten me. “By what right does flesh and blood, without magic of any kind, attain the perfection of draconic craft?”

“By right of will.” I shot back without hesitation, standing my ground, not once budging or flinching.

Kaelthyr, despite her more forward conversational stance, brought back her ‘lips’ in a toothy smile.

“As for precisely ? I refer to my preamble — there are matters that I am not at liberty to discuss. is one such matter.”

The dragon took a moment to regard that first response. Raising a scaled brow, then once more returning to rest on her haunches, as if treating my retorts as a test of will rather than a true challenge of conditional clauses.

“Then so be it.” She responded ominously, though half of that vibe probably came from the nature of her broken and battered mouthpiece. “We speak without kneeling, avatar of the void.”

That latter sentiment, more specifically the conclusion to our back and forth caused to stir within Thalmin’s gaze.

Though that thought would be quickly shelved, as I pushed for end of the dialogue before dead air took hold.

“I’d have it no other way.” I acknowledged. “So tell me about your crystals, about . Exactly is it? And precisely how does this all work?”

“Truth, when spoken without comprehension, is but another form of falsehood.” The dragon began in earnest. “It is to explain sight to a molerat, sound to a deafspiral, and taste to a golem.is why I first doubted the veracity of your claims. As resonance is the realm exclusive to that of crystalline draconic heritage,mortals of flesh and blood.”

The dragon paused, her claws reaching for my backpack. Not to poke, but merely to point.

And despite her insistence to the contrary, she started to explain with eager breath.

“Ours is a pattern, an artform that beckons beauty. It is resonant, structures of grand design in a microverse that coalesces meaning not through structure but wave-like harmony. It is a transient state, a liquid that harbors the potential of structure, but is neversolid. Our patterns, our design, they do not exist in structured permanence. They instead form when called upon, echoing a distant note as a tuning fork calls upon a chord.”

My eyes widened as waves upon waves of realization slammed into me with the force of a dragon-shaped freight train.

“Whereas you build unyielding prisons — caging lightning and interpreting its suffering as meaning — we nurture worlds, and allow each state to remain at rest until harmony brings forth resonance. We don’t…we

“You’re talking about the crystal matrices.” I blurted out excitedly, eliciting but a brow quirk from the dragon. “W-we’ve observed this very phenomenon! In the labs! This… this is the very foundation that our understanding of applied exo-reality communications is based upon. B-but sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Ahem, we’ve observed, from what little we’ve been able to discern through our methods, that there exist these… of exotic-matter microfilaments that, for lack of a better term… ‘float’ within your crystals. being a rather reductive descriptor, but I digress. Erm, these microfilaments trend towards three discrete states, repeating a cycle that’s observable without fail and replicable with statistical significance.” I quickly brought up a diagram, complete with annotated exotic-spectrum imaging assays, all highlighting the phenomenon in question.

Kaelthyr’s eyes lit up almost immediately. First out of confusion, then, a sense of visceral disgust and recoil; her features darkened to the tune of a steady and unnerving rumble.

Her eyes darted back and forth, starting at the first diagram that showed the interior of a crystal in a region that, unlike most, still held a degree of transparency. Within it, microfillaments were arranged in a tetragonal lattice, structured and in perfect symmetry. Then, she shifted her eyes rightwards, towards the second diagram, complete with annotations of various catalysts and variable initiators all contributing to the staggered, structured, and intentional of said structure.

Her tail lowered at this, as that grimace entered into a threatening aura.

Finally, her eyes glanced at the ‘third’ state, as the microfilaments reoriented and regrouped, all without outside intervention, spontaneously on their own accord.

This diagram would loop, an arrow circling back around from the third state back to the first state, highlighting the sheer time it took for the ‘realignment’ to fully take place.

However, instead of immediately addressing me or the diagram, Kaelthyr merely glared, urging me to explain, if not for her sake than my own.

“We’ve observed that these crystal matrices possess an innate tendency to return to what we’ve come to define as their ‘prime’ state. Moreover, we’ve observed that across the volume of the crystal, there exist identical patterns replicated along inexplicable and seemingly random points. However, upon further study through the selective disassembly and gross disunion of the crystal, we uncovered that these identical patterns are not mere physical mirrors, but in a way… patterns. Structures that align and fracture along the same lines, regardless of time and space. This is a phenomenon we aware of and make use of, but not in such an exotic form of matter. It is because of this that we determined that we could assign meaning to the controlled and purposeful disassembly of the prime state, thereby relaying concepts, messages, and ultimately, entire lines of communication based on this entanglement. A single pulse, carrying with it limited but viable information, across dimensional lines.”

A creeping silence descended following my whole tirade, as the dragon’s eyes descended on the pouch which held her crystals before once more landing those unyielding slitted pupils against my lenses.

“Your people… your mages… are blind clockmakers.” Kaelthyr muttered out not only in disgusted vitriol, but with a sense of shock that bled into utter incredulity. “You stumble in the dark, looking withouttouching withoutand observing without The dragon breathed heavily, letting out huffs of steam as her supply of soot had since run dry. “How can you be soHow can you stare so brazenly into meaning without once entertaining its presence?! How can intelligence preclude wisdom so thoroughly?!” Kaelthyr’s visage snarled with the words that escaped the shatorealmer corpse… before finally, she relented, letting out a staggered breath through her own vocalizations.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Is the void really so dark that all light fails to reach it?” The dragon pondered out loud before finally letting out a cracked grimace.

“Tell me, Emma Booker, is this truly what all your people see?” Kaelthyr once more pointed at the diagrams.

“I’ve… more or less given you the rundown of what we’ve been able to observe so far, yes.” I acknowledged bluntly.

“And yet you build impossibilities with reckless abandon. Forging abominations from our crystals with the precision of a craftsman, but the knowledge of a peddler. The prose of a wordsmith, but the comprehension of a farmhand.” She responded promptly. “You create and design, whilst blind and impaired.”

Kaelthyr started to pace around me again, her footstomps light and brisk this time around. “I’ve seen, human. The small and frail biped, manaless yet unblighted,and incapable, encased in impossible craftsmanship.”

“You are a wraith, a thing that should not exist.” The dragon stopped, coming to a rest on her haunches in front of me. “Yet here you stand. Defiant against all known conventions.” Another pause came, as if the dragon needed a moment to commit to these next few words. “A fact which I am… grateful for.”

“The sentiment goes both ways.” I finally responded, following Kaelthyr’s train of thought. “It is my hope that despite our differences, some mutual thread of understanding can be laid. A thread that, in time, can hopefully grow to become a tether between our peoples.”

Kaelthyr responded with a bemused huff. “Is hope yet another axiom yet to be crushed in your realm?”

“There were times when its light flickered, but those times are long behind us.” I offered in earnest.

“Then keep your light. The only thread to be laid is one between our two persons. Whatever grand dreams of stately friendship and imperial camaraderie cannot be forged here. At least not with myself.” The dragon paused, her eyes narrowing, before landing firmly on Thalmin. “, on the other hand… I urge you to pursue. For there is hope yet in forging a second Nexus.”

Both Thalmin and I locked eyes for a moment, confused, dazed, but most of all, utterly dumbfounded by the dragon’s angle.

“I’d still very much wish to maintain some sort of a friendship, even if it is between persons and not states. You know as well as I that survival in the Nexus is…”

“Possible.” The dragon interjected. “It’sin dignity that is improbable.”

“Right.” I acknowledged with a nod. “Which is precisely why I propose that we forge something tangible here, Matriarch Kaelthyr. We clearly see eye-to-eye in a variety of matters. And to be frank, you are quite possibly one of most receptive people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting yet.”

“Do you assume this to be a result of mutual alignment, or the effect of some misguided friendship?”

“Perhaps a little bit of column A and column B.”

“To fail to delineate is deadly, young matriarch.” The dragon warned with a sly lilt in the shatorealmer’s voice.

“The fact I’m even means I’m one to take risks, Matriarch Kaelthyr. Who says I’m not ready to take another in the long line of crazy choices?”

“Hmmph. The misguided brazenness of youth.” Kaelthyr tsked before finally nodding. “Very well, assume what you wish.”

“Of course.” I nodded politely. “Though there a few matters I can’t just assume without being a complete fool.”

“I carry similar sentiments.” The dragon acknowledged, before letting out another grin. “Another round then?”

“Let’s.” I responded eagerly.

“What do you wish to know?”

“You’ve described resonance as sort of an emergent property, something that’s very inherent to dragon-kind. Yet the elves who… these crystals rely on them for inter-realm communication. That’s… kinda asking for it, isn’t it? As in, this carries with it a info-sec risk, doesn’t right?” If these crystals are still an extension of you, couldn’t you interpret what’s being sent between them?”

Kaelthyr’s features stiffened as she let out a series of ominous warbles. “They… hijack our lattices in a manner outside of our understanding, defiling their structure with their own design. We… cannot interpret what is sent, as a result. Further, you misinterpret my meaning. While a dragonpeer into the resonance of our crystals, it must be an intentional action. A crystal removed is no longer part of our lattices… but it is still capable of returning to the fold, provided we wish to reconvene.”

I nodded along slowly, my eyes darting between the dragon and the EVI’s transcripts, before suddenly, a third voice entered the scene.

“You aren’t facilitators, but unwilling interlopers.” Thalmin muttered out under a shaky breath.

The dragon’s attentions were quick to shift as Kaelthyr’s head slowly and ominously towards Thalmin’s direction, taking the floating shatorealmer with her.

“To the former, yes. The elves possess their own machinations of communication which we are not a part of. To the latter… Iclarification.”

If Thalmin could sweat, I swore he’d be sweating bullets down his brow right about now. In lieu of that though, he still stood confident, albeit with a look of acute fear that was difficult to hide from his gaze.

“Warging.” He stated bluntly. “Mages… more than likely planar in rank, could potentially hijack your minds, no? This would allow spymasters to peer into your lattices, intercepting and monitoring untold numbers of confidential communiques?”

Kaelthyr paused, her eyes narrowing and practically burrowing into Thalmin’s.

“Yes.” Was her only reply, as it was clear she refused to go further into it.

Though by that admission, that single word of acknowledgement… There came a of implications the likes of which I simply couldn’t tackle all at once.

Kaelthyr was quick to turn away from Thalmin, turning back towards me with her full and undivided attention. “He should do well as your first realm.” She stated bluntly and with a disconcerting amount of confidence. However, before I could ask for some points of clarification, Kaelthyr was quick to hit me with a reciprocal question. “My turn. Tell me, why do you wish for my crystals?”

“Oh. Well… you know how I told you about our tentative forays into interdimensional communications using some of your crystals?”

The dragon nodded slowly, urging me to continue.

“Well, prior to my arrival, we managed to create the first working prototype. We did this through the careful and selective disassembly of one of your crystals, dividing it in two, and installing it in two devices.”

My features continued to grow sheepish by the second the further my explanation went on. Kaelthyr’s gaze narrowed accordingly, as I could feel her patience drying by the second, after hearing about the science we pulled on her crystal.

“One remained in my realm, whilst the other was sent here with me. However, as a result of extraneous circumstances and bad faith actors, this device was stolen before finally being destroyed as a result of our anti-tampering countermeasures. This is why we to find a suitable replacement, to hopefully realign and retune it, so that I can re-establish contact back with Earth.”

Kaelthyr took into consideration each and every word, her eyes soon narrowing once all was said and done.

“By what means was your… artifice… destroyed?”

“Erm… an explosion. The same one that freed you from the Life Archives, in fact.” I acknowledged nervously, rubbing the back of my neck in the process.

It was at that point that the dragon’s features shifted towards something I hadn’t yet seen — a look of complete and utter satisfaction. This joy was quickly reflected in the shatorealmer’s features, albeit in the most macabre way, as Kaelthyr let out a series of guttural bellows.

“I cannot say if it is fate, the spirits, or the Great Mother herself that has formulated such a convoluted path for our meeting. But what I can say is that this is aYou and I are destined for great things, young Matriarch. Wondrous… incalculable… unfathomable things.” Kaelthyr moved closer, the shatorealmer puppet now pointing at my pouch. “Allowto do the honors.” She offered with an excitable zeal.

“W-wait. Really? That easily?”

“When fate herself has forged a path of inevitability, you would do wellto resist her calling.”

I couldn’t believe it.

Thalmin’s expressions more or less reflected the disbelief welling beneath my helmet.

“Right then.” I nodded, grabbing the crystals and stepping towards the shatorealmer.

Only for the draconic puppeteer to hiss before reeling back the body so fast, I could hear bones snapping, the corpse-puppet’s head forced to gaze at me. “Leave them at my feet, girl.”

With a wince, I obliged and carefully placed the crystals down on the ground beside Kaelthyr. “So how is this going to wor—”

“Shh.” Kaelthyr hushed before raising a claw to shoo me… afterwards she pressed her claw onto the ground and quite literally… the crystals back into her form. “This will take some time.”

I nodded warily, glancing back at Thalmin who simply shrugged his shoulders in the most expressive gesture I’d seen him pull so far.

“In the meantime… was there anything else you wished to discuss, young matriarch?”

“Erm… yes, actually. This more or less ties back to what you mentioned earlier. You… said you were able to ‘see’ me through the armor, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Right, so… was that because of the anomalous mana radiation burst you hit me with?”

“... elaborate.”

“The — and I to say this word given the negative connotations given to it by the Nexus — magic you used.”

“Yes.” Kaelthyr acknowledged. “As a point of disambiguation,as a term has existedbefore the rise of the elves, young Matriarch.”

My heart skipped a beat at that revelation.

There had been… assumptions before. The latest of which was with the back-and-forths with Thacea during the WAND calibration.

We’d assumed that despite taint being an unaccounted for ‘manatype’, that it was perhaps either inert and unreactive to the armor or shielded by way of the armor’s mana-resistent materials.

This was completely thrown out the window courtesy of the dragon’s admissions.

A chill ran down my spine as I attempted to rack my head at the implications of all of this.

Thalmin in particular cocked his head back and forth, as if doing double takes at the dragon, who simply ignored his silent urgings for clarification.

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Didn’t you say that taint was dangerous to—”

“To all of the elven domain, yes.” Kaelthyr interjected. “Which you are assuredly.”

I shook my head, outstretching both hands in front of me.

“But what does that ?” I frantically urged. “If taint can just go through the armor… how wasn’t I liquefied? wasn’t I affected? How could you be sure I wouldn’t just up and die—”

“I wasn’t.” The dragon admitted casually. “But you are an enigma, Emma Booker. I simply assumed, given your void origins and the susceptibility of your armor to taint, that you simply were immune from its effects.”

“So you sure?!” I doubled down.

“Correct. In the end, I was right, and you were unharmed.”

I felt my breath hitching into an uncomfortable, uncontrollable pace, all while the dragon regarded me with a degree of cocky assuredness.

“But fear not. From what I was able to discern, you are no child of taint.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You are… a blank. A wraith. A ghost. A flesh heap with no aura. Your presence was defined by an absence, and I saw you only by your physical presence, imprinted in negative space. A void-silhouette, if you will.”

…

“You are not afflicted, if that is your concern.”

“No, that’s. That’s not…” I shook my head, once more staring at my hands as I flicked them to and fro. “I don’t how I just didn’t…”

“Perhaps you are resilient to its machinations.” The dragon pondered. “Or perhaps you simply are voidborn, invisible to its dangers. I cannot say, for I have never met or heard of anything like you children of the void.”

I could feel my breaths finally hitching up out of my control, my hands twitching, as I reached for the HUD not only with my pupils, but my hands out of muscle memory.

“EVI! Perform suit integrity checks!” I shouted urgently.

[SUIT INTEGRITY: NOMINAL]

“Full scan, full survey, I want a full repor—”

[SUIT INTEGRITY: NOMINAL. NO BREACHES DETECTED. NO SURFACE DAMAGE FOUND. NO MANA RADIATION LEAKS NOTED.]

“Again.”

[SUIT INTEGRITY: NOMINAL. NO BREACHES—]

“Scan vitals, full body scan, full medical—”

[V/S Report: Elevated BP, HT, HR, RR. Preliminary Diagnosis congruent with Acute Panic—]

“SCAN FOR ACUTE RADIATION SICKNESS!”

[No Signs or Symptoms congruent with Acute Radiation Sickness noted.]

[Operator is advised to follow panic de-escalation protocols immediately.]

“Emma.” I heard a voice from behind me. “Emma… are you okay?” Thalmin urged, as he placed a hand on my shoulder.

“I… I think I… I am. I just don’t understand how—”

“Hey, hey, calm. Calm down.” The prince managed out sternly. “Listen to me.” He continued. “ at me.” He commanded, forcing me to shift my gaze towards him. “We aren’t dead yet. are still here. And so long as we’re not dead, there’s always time, and the opportunity, to shine light on the dark.”

I nodded slowly, taking in deep breaths at the urgings of the EVI’s pop-ups and keeping my gaze on Thalmin’s amber-yellow eyes.

“Right.” I nodded. “Right. Okay. One thing at a time.” I managed out, prompting Thalmin to pull back, as I quickly turned back to face the waiting dragon.

“The lupinor speaks the truth. There are… mysteries to this reality we dwell in, Emma Booker. One such mystery being your kind and their—”

“Not now.” I put my foot down. “Let’s get some other things out of the way before my crystals are ready to go.” I continued, garnering a glower and a nod from the dragon. “Starting with your affinity for . Tell me how you’re performing and harnessing a mana-type that, as far as I can tell, isn’t second nature to Nexian beings. Tell me what exactly your backstory is. And finally… tell me how all this fits into the greater narrative.” I let out a deep breath, steadying myself, and crossing my arms firmly.

“I’ve heard about this reality, the reality I mean. But it’s time I heard a second opinion, another perspective. I want to hear take on Nexian history. And exactly happened to your kind.”