Tree of Aeons (an Isekai Story)

330. Alka and Darkgard

“Lord Alka, this way.” Desonian, one of the thirty or so Delvegardian leaders, led him deeper into the city. The City Guardian of the oldest known city of Darkgard III, Grand Mine, was present at the large meeting room. It was lit with glowing orange gems, though for the dwarves, it was more of a convenience. 

Darkgardians were used to their eyes seeing in the dark, and quite a few Darkgardians had developed some kind of seismic sense or vibration sense, so they could maneuver about freely. The City Guardian stood to receive him. “Lord Alka. The thing you requested for.”

There were three chests that looked like they were truly ancient things. But what was inside were not artifacts. Instead, they were the records of the earliest histories of Darkgard III and from a time when they were known as Grandera. 

The chests were magically protected, and Alka looked around. “Are they magical?” 

The City Guardian of the Grand Mine shook his head. “No.”

Precautions. He withdrew his magical energies as far as he could. For an alchemist and explosion expert, it was something he did all the time. One could never be quite sure when one’s own magical powers could interfere with whatever concoction they produced, especially someone with a domain. The chest revealed hundreds of old books. 

“Desonian, call the historical scribes and mages in. We’ve got work to do.” Desonian nodded as the Order’s official historical experts and researchers got to work. They were elves, treefolk, humans and dwarves. 

The City Guardian still wasn’t used to seeing the other races, so he still stepped back. Alka assured him anyway. 

“Do not worry, City Guardian. They are my people, and they will handle these documents with utmost care.”

An elven mage and [Archivist] immediately checked it for any inherent magical protections. Once the mage was sure she didn’t detect any, she placed a pile of blank papers, wooden planks, ink, and a random assortment of materials, and then she activated a series of spells. [Preservation],  [Book duplication], and [Book transcription]. 

The ancient books glowed and truly like magic, the pile of papers, wooden planks, and materials started to reshape itself. It began to replicate the old books, one part at a time.

“What’s in them?” A few of the City Guardian’s elders were there, and one of them could not help but ask the City Guardian. Even the elders didn’t know of the existence of such records. 

“Old books, elder. Historical records from our world’s ancient past. From a time when we were very different.”

Alka nodded. “Some days, I find dwarven habits of recording every transaction down extremely painful to work with. But when it comes down to it, dwarves are amazing at preserving ancient history and knowledge.”

“What better way to remember a grudge than to have it minuted down in detail?” The city guardian smiled. “I honestly never read them. I thought it was too fragile of a thing to ever touch, and as far as I know, most of my predecessors thought so too.”

The mages would need a few weeks to fully create an almost exact replica of these historical records. 

“This will take a while.” Alka pointed at the archivists at work. “Come, City Guardian, we have other things to discuss.”

***

“What do you think of the blessings?” Alka posed the question to the dwarven council. They were seated at a rare round table. Dwarves, as far as Alka knew, did not like round tables all that much. They were creatures with a fairly strong emphasis on hierarchy, something common across all the worlds.

But today, they gathered around in a rarely used meeting room. Multiple City Guardians across Darkgard III, all came to talk.

“The realm wants us to grow and replenish our strength, that is what we understand at a simple level. But is there all to it?”

“I hear from my people that your men have been talking about some Great War. That this is a war to free the captured dwarven worlds.”

Some things just happened organically. The Great War was supposed to be a war against the demons, but the minds of people invented their own stories. The Dwarves had taken a more specific stance towards the Great War.

A war to liberate the captured dwarven worlds and restore their place in the multiverse. 

It was not ideal, since there was a chance that dwarves would not participate in the larger war, and Alka knew that dwarves were fairly insular people who did not like mingling with other races. In other words, there was a risk that dwarves as a whole might not want to help the other races.

In the end, Alka focused on what mattered.

Outcomes. 

A coalition formed from multiple worlds, of different races, of different backgrounds was bound to have disagreements, but just because things were not perfect, didn’t and shouldn’t stop something good from happening.

Compromises were always made, and as much as some of the earth-origin folks hated to admit it. Divide and conquer, or in Aeon’s case, divide and manage, was horrifically effective.

Alka sat in the hall as multiple others talked, and then, the door opened. A few of the Delvegardians walked in, among them were the Block Master from the Delvegardian Yards of Ruthfyord. There were seats around the round table still empty, the room was fit for a 100 dwarves, and the room itself was so ancient that there was a time when every nation only sent one person to sit around this table. 

It was perhaps a miracle that there were still 20 left to occupy what was left. 

“Our focus should be on our blessings! These blessings want us to repopulate our destroyed worlds. Expansion shouldn’t be the goal.” A dwarven city guardian stated. The man likely never left his city and its surrounding regions in his entire life, so this trip was his furthest. “In our glory days, we had cities that covered so much of the surface.”

Alka inwardly sighed. He heard this argument so many times. Dwarven insularity. Dwarven selfishness. Dwarves and their cities built into the mountains so they could hide away. Dwarves could be extremely generous in some ways, but their affections were reserved only with friends and other dwarves. 

All these other worlds were people they didn’t know. 

There was no reason to care. 

The dwarves shouted. It was their normal way of diplomacy. 

Alka nodded, “As the Order’s representatives to the Darkgards, I must repeat that we do not impose this duty on the cities. But, we will ask for volunteers, we will recruit from the talented. The Great War against the demons is our chance to take the fight back to the creatures that reduced your worlds to a fragment of what it was.”

For the Delvegardians, diplomacy was a show of strength. The strong imposed, and the weak followed. But once they were freed of the shackles of their world, there were other ways.

Alka went on the usual pitch, it was a well practiced one, honed by priests and matriarchs. About the Great War, about how the fires burned even the dwarves. About thinking long term. 

To win over dwarves, it needed to be seen as profitable in the long term and also, appeal to the underlying dwarven need for superiority. 

“I have spoken to some of your warriors.” A City Guardian countered. “But I wonder, what is in it for those who join this battle?”

Alka didn’t have to answer, because another city Guardian answered on his behalf. “Levels. Have you been hiding within your city for so long that you’ve forgotten this is a great opportunity for our people to gain levels? We become stronger, and we learn how to make better weapons and tools. These are dwarves from another world!”

“And our way of life?” That first City guardian asked, but the way they talked was rough. Brutish. “I understand the need for levels, but our finest warriors will be sent to hellworlds, and what is left of our home?”

“Our home is no longer in danger!” The second City Guardian countered.

“That sort of thinking is why so many once-glorious dwarven cities fell into ruin. Who knows if the demons return tomorrow? If they want our warriors, I permit them to only take our youngest and freshest. Our experienced warriors must stay with us.”

Alka smiled, that played right into how the Order liked things. The Order was very much an institution that favored internal promotion. Young warriors he could train were perfectly what he wanted. With the Blessings of Darkgard, there would be many such young blood over the next few decades to feed the Order’s insatiable need for warriors. “As the Order’s representative, I am agreeable to only recruit those below Level 40. But as always, we ask for full access to the dwarven cities so that we can reach the weak and the young.”

The entire room was silent, as their minds tried to wrap their heads around it. These cities were so used to competition for the best that Alka’s deal stumped them.

They were not stupid.

“Wait, wait.” The first City Guardian realized a little too late that they had played right into Alka’s preference. “You want our young?”

“Yes. Talents that we can train and fit into our existing Order is exactly what we want.” 

***

The planet was rotating once more, though it was still slower than it once was. Darkgard III took five times as much time as it once did before the demons. The sun also no longer burned with the hostility it once did.

Instead, with each passing day, it was as if the sun grew milder. Softer. The presence of Dwarven Druids from Treehome helped the surface regrow the trees that had once lived. Many of their seeds were dormant, dried out, and desiccated deep in the hot, dried rock. 

Water also began to flow once more. The stopped planet caused water to freeze on the dark side of the world, while on the light side, the harsh sun evaporated all remaining water and turned them into clouds. 

“What do you think?” Alka smiled as he watched a group of dwarves leave their old cities and out into the surface. The surface was so alien. So many of them had not seen the surface, and even then, the harsh, still healing surface was a real sight.

“Amazing!” 

“It could be much better.” Alka said. “You have old paintings that depict these old sceneries. In a few years, the land will heal and those scenes can be seen once more.” 

“The sun is sooo bright!” The dwarves blinked heavily. Some were not used to the sun that they turned away. A few used ancient parasols. They would need to start making more of those soon.

For the Delvegardian warriors, this was their reward. A few cried quietly, and tried to hide it by drinking some strong rum. The former Block Master watched. “Do you see this when you help the other worlds?”

“I’m not usually here to witness it.” Alka nodded. “I have many places to be, though now we are merely waiting for time.”

The block master understood. This sort of joy and satisfaction was something that would stick within the warrior’s souls. A reason for why they would fight when needed. A reason to push harder even when the demons throw everything at them.

“A pity that so many of these folks that share our blood do not see it.”

“Our experiences form the basis for our actions, even if some of them are random.” Alka smiled, as the mages sent him a message. 

The archives are ready.

***

“So, what do we find?” Alka rushed to the room where his little army of archivists and historians were busy. There were hundreds of notes and walls filled with diagrams and charts. They’d been really busy.

“The three worlds used to share a single star. Darkgard I was the outermost world, and Darkgard II was the middle world. Whatever the Cores shared, it’s true.”

“I expected that. What else?” Alka prompted the researcher to continue.

“They used to worship Eras and a god called Sulya. Eras is the god of knowledge and creation, while Sulya is the god of earth and the flesh. Some of these books speak of a tale where the death of Sulya caused a great madness to spread amongst Sulya’s earthly creations and that turned them into demons.”

“How reliable is this thing?” Alka picked up the replica book and reread the ten or so pages over and over. “This is a book on the creation myths of Darkgard...”

“We don’t know. It doesn’t seem like there was divine touch on it, so we cannot be sure. No, no, what’s important is these three.”

The researchers flipped to a part where it spoke of an ancient great machine. A creation of the god Eras, forged from the floating metallic rocks of the great star sea. 

A Sun-Ring. 

“Eras created the Sun-Ring?”

“We are not sure if this is the same Sun-Ring, since the descriptions are vague and the design seems rudimentary. But it seemed to suggest that the Sun-Rings are layered, with people living within them.

The domain holder frowned. “We didn’t detect anything- But it is possible that the materials used to create such a powerful object also prevented us from finding them-”

“Maybe we should explore the Sun-Ring?” The archivist countered. “At least, before we break it.”

“Hah. True.” Alka nodded. In the first attempt, Aeon was attacked by two demon kings. This time, they could most likely take on two demon kings and win. Exploration of the Sun-Ring should be possible. “These descriptions say there are hidden chambers within the Sun-Ring-”

“It matches up to Aeon’s experience. Aeon could only place a clone where there was soil underneath, and yet, that was only in certain parts of the Sun-Ring. There must be other pockets with other things inside.”

Alka walked and paced the room. It was true that the domain holders did not explore the entirety of the Sun-Rings. It was such a massive object that it would take a really long time to reach all the parts. So, it was entirely possible that there were other hidden chambers. “In other words, there may be relics left behind from Eras or the Gods that created such things. But the demons were able to repair the barrier even when we cracked it.”

“Repair is not the same as creation.” The archivist theorized. 

“True, true.”

“It looks like I have to convince my fellow friends to go for a Sun-Ring-sized dungeon exploration.”

“A dungeon dive.”