Auranosa Walled Gardens

[Jackie Cat]

"Wait... Auranosa?"

"We're in Auranosa?"

The Koraidon nodded.

"Indeed. It is a sparsely-populated Commonwealth state, recently incorporated. Its major population centres are the so-called 'Adventure Towns', located in the east and home to various guilds of explorers and delvers. It is notable for its abnormally high density of mystery dungeons, and for its abnormally high density of ancient Aurichalcan ruins. Some speculate the two facts are related."

From her tone, Sada wasn't being cryptic – just infodumping.

"Why the interest?" she asked, as an afterthought.

He then began to inspect the area more thoroughly, looking for any signs in the ancient construct. Or depressions or switches. Maybe the key was with the water, but it was hard to say.

“Cool. Do we think this is a puzzle dungeon, or one that has something to say? Or’d we just miss the entrance to the heart somewhere… Nah, one of those first two. Maybe there’s a thing we gotta get the water to somewhere to open a door? I dunno, never was a dungeon crawler.”

"—the figures depicted here are the ones who constructed this place?"

The closest pillar bore a stylized canine silhouette that kind of reminded her of Powehi. The figure had its arms up, holding a staff with a symbol at its end. Sort of like a cross with a loop at the top. Jade glanced back at where Sada was investigating the glowing control panels, and the paths that the aqueducts took throughout the garden.

"Is it possible to make the water flow in certain paths but not others?" she asked. "Like to make a specific shape."

Sada nodded. "Yes, I suppose so. You believe that this would constitute a kind of shibboleth, or passcode?"

She caught Jade and Virga examining the carven Lucario-like figures.

"It's not a field in which I have much expertise, but my understanding is that those engraving depict members of the Gnostari, or priestly class, who can be thought of as oracles, scientists, or architects. The staff bears a symbol associated with their order."

 

[Ambyssin]

"We think a mystery dungeon in this neck of the woods holds something that will help us in... fixing whatever problem Betel brought us here to solve," Nova replied. Since, well, they were still here, meaning their job wasn't actually done yet. The shadier parts of the Covenant were no doubt still up and running. And after the Mesa, probably going to be more aggressive.

"Any particular pattern speak to anyone?" Nova eyed the channels. "I don't think we can make a lucario out of these. But maybe an Aura Sphere. Out of water."

 

[Phoenixsong]

Logicking out puzzles had never been Leaf's strongest suit. Even when she was just at home playing video games, fiddling with all the options over and over until something finally clicked had been less annoying than struggling to draw weird connections she just wasn't seeing. Might've been fun to try that here, honestly—sitting in a gorgeous garden, watching the water swirl and shift in all sorts of different directions, maybe see how many different kinds of pictures they could make—but Beetle needed them now, not after wasting hours tweaking some made-up shape.

They'd talked about dungeon puzzles some during ranger training, at least. It'd mostly been the specific kinds of challenges the dungeons around the Soja' were fond of issuing, since those were the ones the Soja' Rangers actually had to deal with all the time; there wasn't much you could prepare for when you were talking about a total unknown rift god knew how many miles away. There were usually hints to look for, though. Patterns, stuff that gets repeated a lot, things that look like they're trying to draw your attention toward or away from something...

There are a lot of those statues around here, hummed the voice in the back of her head. There were several back where you first found the meowth, too. If those are so important...

"What about that cross shape?" She inclined her horn toward the statue's staff. The same looped cross shape in multiple places. And this was... "This plaza's a big circle, isn't it? What if... if the water changed to loop all the way around here first, then go down and out to the sides? Are there enough paths for that to work?" Just a guess, but maybe a decent one, maybe? Hopefully they could just try again if that was wrong, and this wasn't one of those dungeons that basically went 'BZZZZT, nope, sorry!' and then the consolation prize for screwing up was one hundred phantasms raining down on your head like confetti.

They had to try something, anyway. Worth as much of a shot as anything else. She turned to the professor. "What do we have to do to change where the water goes?"

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"Why the interest?"

"Oh, it's a promise I made to a friend of mine. She's looking for Auriga, so that she can get home. Got missummoned by..." (Huh, actually, given the faction Sada had worked for she might actually know this already.) "Wait, the name Leona Lycas mean anything to you? Got missummoned when Cipher was hunting for Seth Lycas. She's hoping Auriga can help get her home, and in Blackrock Caldera we were told by a memory of Auriga to come seek her out at a temple that was here some four hundred years ago, where the walls of the world is thin enough for her to speak to people."

While he spoke, he looked over the holographic displays. One of the them seemed to be some sort of guidemap to the flora where all the gardens were covered in text he couldn't read and diagrams of the leaves of plants within, but which also showed him the outline of the aquaduct system.

Gladion didn't know what to do in terms of shape drawing, so once he finished talking, he wasted some of his precious remaining time on Forlas looking to see if it would be possible to draw something silly or obscene. This plaza was round, and then if you went down from there you could take three lefts get a roughly square shaped second ball. Then there was a big straightaway down the middle. The parts weren't really at the right angles and one side of the square was fused to the straightaway but if you squinted a little it kinda worked. He felt somewhat childish for being amused by this when he was supposed to be an adult solving some of the ten thousand ongoing actual problems.

Then, the funny little venus sign thing on the staves was pointed out to him and he realized he was actually a decent chunk of the way there already. If you just took a right instead of the other lefts to form the square and mirrored that to both sides you got the right shape. It wasn't really that hard to see once you were looking for it, so hopefully no one would ask how he'd spotted it. If they did he could always deny everything.

Unfortunately, his garden hologram didn't show what state the junctures were in or how the water was currently flowing. He psychically reached out to Virgo and imaged them the solution that he was thinking of. "Hey, do you think you could fly up high enough to tell us which junctures we'd have to flip to make this shape?" If not, they'd have to actually backtrack to check or find a different hologram that gave them the information they needed.

Spoiler: really shit ms paint drawing in case it's hard to wrap your head around whats going on in Gladion's head visually

 

[Chibi Pika]

Virga shook her as the psychic impression of abstract shapes suddenly flashed through her mind. It reminded her, bitterly, that her own psychic abilities were out of reach so long as she held this form.

"I suppose it may be possible to assemble this marking," Virga replied. The whole exercise still felt terribly arbitrary, but she was not about to argue with the only foreseeable way out.

At least this body blessedly still bore wings, and adequate eyes.

As Virga took off, Jade heard the Rookidee's voice, in her mind: 'I will relay my findings to you.'

'Eh... right.' Even if there was a part of her that wasn't opposed to being difficult on purpose, figuring a way out wasn't the time or place. So she walked over to the professor so that she could relay instructions.

'The left side of the straightaway is flowing presently, we will need its mirror—'

'No. That diverted the flow elsewhere, reverse it—'

'Not flowing, why isn't it—'

'Now it is is looping back to the center. Shut off the flow to the—'

'Try that one again, the right wing might be open now—'

It was a lot of trial and error, but it seemed like they were making some measure of progress, at least.

 

[Jackie Cat]

"We think a mystery dungeon in this neck of the woods holds something that will help us in... fixing whatever problem Betel brought us here to solve,"

Sada hummed pensively, her draconic crests rippling.

"I see. Well, I do hope that goes well for you – though I suspect Betel summoned you all in response to a request made by a Torracat by the name of Starr Sakari, several months ago. That incident took place in the CDE facility beneath the Shining Congress, so I doubt her intentions for you related in any way to deep Auranosa."

Sensing that something about her response was insufficient for Nova, she rumbled thoughtfully and continued.

"I'm afraid there was no log kept of her request. Immediately following the interaction, Betel went offline. Indefinitely, in fact. At the time, we believed that Sakari had committed a straightforward act of sabotage – or murder, if (like me) you believe Betel to be a person."

There wasn't a great deal of emotion in the Professor's voice, but she'd tensed up a little, which would be perceptible to an observant 'mon...

"Wait, the name Leona Lycas mean anything to you? Got missummoned when Cipher was hunting for Seth Lycas. She's hoping Auriga can help get her home, and in Blackrock Caldera we were told by a memory of Auriga to come seek her out at a temple that was here some four hundred years ago, where the walls of the world is thin enough for her to speak to people."

Sada nodded. "Yes. The Seth Lycas summoning request was a valuable test. It is rare that anyone on Forlas actually knows the identity of someone who exists in another world. We couldn't pass up the opportunity to see if it was possible to identify and summon a specific individual. At first it appeared that we had specified the target soul too imprecisely, but it became clear that this is expected behaviour for summoning attempts directed at a soul that already exists on Forlas."

She continued to interface with the control console as she spoke, her tone conversational and polite, as if she were holding a tutor group seminar.

"Of course, our next objective became to determine Victini's current plane of existence."

 

[Ambyssin]

"Yeah, uh, what I'm looking for here is tied to her." Nova shrugged. "So, in a sense, everything is tied together."

He looked at the water and, seeing what Virga was trying, did his best to pitch in to speed up the process.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Leaf tried to keep her attention on helping with the aqueducts. And she did! Really! It was just that unfortunately that left no attention for thinking in a tone other than icy sarcasm. "Good to hear the test was so valuable. Gotta make sure your magic multiversal kidnapping machine's in perfect working order!" Open that valve over there, stop the water getting caught in a loop. "I'm sure the person you stranded here against her will can find her own way home. Not your problem as long as it gets you closer to doing the same thing to Victini, right?"

God. How Beetle turned out as sweet and selfless as they did when people like Lizard Bitch and the guy who'd tried to shoot them with an entire airship had designed them, she had no idea.

She gave the next valve an extra-violent wrench, just to be certain it wasn't stuck, definitely, and entirely unrelated to that felt very slightly better. "If Victini wanted to be found then he wouldn't be hiding in the first place, but it sounds like Auriga doesn't even know where he is. No one in the Coven reads that as a giant neon 'LEAVE ME ALONE' sign?"

Leaf sighed and gave the professor a tired look. "What did you actually want him for? What's so important that it's worth all of this?"

 

[Shiny Phantump]

A foul grimace crossed Gladion’s face. That was it, then? Everything that had happened to Leona, it was all… just a chance to calibrate a machine to them.

“And then Neo, what, sold her to Cipher alongside Sage for use in shadow experimentation?”

And Neo… Neo was, Matthias had confirmed it. There was another iteration of him on Forlas, and it was Neo.

Gladion felt rotten. Personally so, like he’d unknowingly betrayed Leona’s trust by befriending her. He hadn’t meant to do anything that would hurt her, but in her position? If he had been the one sold off by some fuck to get tortured and a copy of that guy had even inadvertently used the fact he didn’t know who’d done that to him to befriend him, it would probably leave him feeling like trust was pretty fucking violated.

Should he tell her? Wouldn’t she probably end up hearing about it either way? Maybe he should just stay out of her fucking way as if they’d never spoken at all. Could he avoid further participating in her quest to speak with Auriga without it being weird anymore? Probably not.

This sucked.

“Whatever. Guess it doesn’t change any of our next actions. Let’s just get out of this dungeon.”

 

[Ambyssin]

"Okay, I think everything's in place?" Nova looked around at the water. But it wasn't like he knew how the dungeon would respond to this.

 

[Jackie Cat]

"Good to hear the test was so valuable. Gotta make sure your magic multiversal kidnapping machine's in perfect working order!" Open that valve over there, stop the water getting caught in a loop. "I'm sure the person you stranded here against her will can find her own way home. Not your problem as long as it gets you closer to doing the same thing to Victini, right?"

Sada actually looked up from her work, her ridged brow creasing in a frown.

"No, not exactly," she said, but there was little chance to offer a full response.

“And then Neo, what, sold her to Cipher alongside Sage for use in shadow experimentation?”

The Koraidon shook her head, blinking owlishly at Gladion.

"Is that what you would have done in his position?" she asked, with a touch of confusion, as if she was guessing at why Gladion had asked such a question.

So, was that not how it had happened? At least, as far as Sada believed?

"If Victini wanted to be found then he wouldn't be hiding in the first place, but it sounds like Auriga doesn't even know where he is. No one in the Coven reads that as a giant neon 'LEAVE ME ALONE' sign?"

Leaf sighed and gave the professor a tired look. "What did you actually want him for? What's so important that it's worth all of this?"

Sada met Leaf's gaze without any fatigue of her own. Her eyes were bright, eager, determined.

"I do not believe that Victini is 'hiding', actually. Rather, I believe that he is stranded. There have been various anomalous findings in the course of CDE research into Radiance, and from these, I have drawn the conclusion that Victini exists in a liminal state between the Forlasan material plane and the Astral Plains. Indeed, that he has been trapped in this way for thousands of years."

Sada smiled brightly. Whatever her faults and failings, she was undeterred from her mission of discovery.

"I plan to rescue him."

She turned back to the console.

"I understand that other members of the Covenant regard him with religious reverence and intend to petition him to accomplish various goals of theirs. That is not my concern. My objective is only to recover him from his predicament, and so rectify the anomaly in the fabric of this reality."

“Whatever. Guess it doesn’t change any of our next actions. Let’s just get out of this dungeon.”

"Okay, I think everything's in place?" Nova looked around at the water. But it wasn't like he knew how the dungeon would respond to this.

Sada's eyes widened.

"Oh! I see it, now. Ingenious."

With a few deft taps and turns of her claws, the irrigation pathways were arranged into the Gnostari symbol. The water flowed. The console flickered, then gleamed, then issued some kind of greeting in its ancient language.

Looking around, there could now be seen another exit to Cistern Control – one that shimmered with the rising heat of the desert outside the Walled Gardens. A route out of the dungeon.

"Excellent," remarked Sada. "That appears to have worked as intended."

 

[Ambyssin]

"Wonderful." Nova's cheek bolt hissed at it opened up to eject the Psychic Memory. "And it seems like the translator's working again. So, that's nice."

He swapped Psychic to Fire Memory. Pink glowing parts turned to bright red as fire-type took over and better readied him for the desert heat. Nova marched out through the exit.

 

[Phoenixsong]

Rescuing Victini, huh. Fine if he really was stuck, somehow. (How had he gotten stuck? How would you even know?) Would it kill her to show some actual remorse or concern for what had happened to Leona, though? Or at least explain exactly why it wasn't her fault?

Whatever. Right now, the stuff she'd helped the Coven do—whether or not she'd technically meant it—wasn't what mattered. None of them would be any help to Leona or anyone else until Beetle was okay, and this lady was the only one who could fix them.

Leaf nudged Beetle's floating shell toward the exit that'd opened up, bracing herself for the heat beyond. "Fine. Let's go, then."

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"Is that what you would have done in his position?" she asked, with a touch of confusion, as if she was guessing at why Gladion had asked such a question.

Gladion recoiled. Sada asked it so casually, like the question carried no weight. To her, it probably didn't. She didn't seem to find Neo too objectionable, given she'd worked with the CDE. He didn't feel the same way about it, though.

"What? No way!" He sputtered out those first few words reflexively, then took a breath to gather his thoughts so he could clarify.

"But I wouldn't have done a lot of the shit Neo has. Lovrina, one of the Cipher people, she told us she'd traded the ARK Unit with the CDE for some tech. And they also got Leona from the CDE somehow. Was the Leona part not transactional? Neo just give her to them for shits and giggles?"

(In his eagerness to condemn Neo, he'd overstated what he really knew. There was a difference between hearing something had been transactional, and knowing that everything between the two groups was an outright transaction. That nuance was lost on him in the moment, as was the fact that this question saw him shifting the goalposts from the latter position to the former.)

The conversation was making him kind of antsy, in a hard-to-stand-still kind of way. He'd be more than content to walk and talk. He didn't really want all the other Wayfarers to have to sit and listen to his grievances.