Mist shielded the docks as the dawn rays sloughed through them, obscuring Welden's passage. He stashed a cloak in a nearby hidey-hole this time, as he should be back during daylight hours, and didn't want to rely on rain moving in.
The city wouldn't be near his destination for well over an hour, but waiting till later to dive would reduce his chances of setting out unobserved.
With a final check that he was, in fact, unobserved, although with this mist he'd have heard anyone near enough to see him, he dropped into the water, a bubble of air securely about his head. The gemstone would only allow him to take so much air with him, and given the task ahead he may well need to resurface a few times to replenish his supply, but he should have time. He'd take as long as needed.
He summoned the water, folding it around himself, and wasted no time sending himself plummeting toward the depths. The gemstone allowed him to make amazing speed through the water, although he did have to keep the air in a firm wedge ahead of him to brush aside the smaller sea life which got in his way, and he slowed as the light diminished, eventually opening his lamp to provide some extra illumination.
The sea bed arrived soon enough, and he'd been slowed enough by that point that he didn't have to make an abrupt stop. Pressure had been building up on the sheathe of water protecting him, but his shell allowed him to keep it from his body, although it remained a constant feature, and he didn't want to think what would happen to him if he lost control of his own water.
Cutting a wide zigzag path towards where he believed Terevuss to be situated, he had to rise slightly when the land jutted up, but this required little enough of his concentration that his mind still managed to wander.
He didn't feel the same fear from being surrounded by water this time, or at least not as dramatically. Maybe because he didn't have such a large obstruction directly above him, even though it'd have been faster to swim clear of it than to swim back to the surface from here. But the fear didn't appear to be there. Maybe because he was returning to his first love, archaeology. Going where no man had been for centuries, to uncover lost lore. Would that be enough to erase his fears? Or would his mission be overriding it?
He allowed memories to return of the terror he'd felt at being buried alive in the mines, with no light, and no sound of anyone nearby, just that faint trickle which had threatened to become a flood. But it hadn't. A part of him had been ready to accept it. Zienna had been lost to him over a year before, taking his hope with her. But he'd stumbled down the new tunnel the collapse had opened, and after what may have been a day, or only an hour, he'd spotted a faint glow, the fungus which now grew in his lamp, and discovered the remains of a city he'd never worked out the name of. Standing at an angle, it appeared to have subsided, collapsing into the hole which had sealed it tight against the elements.
His attention returned to the present as he made out what appeared to be a road, covered now by undersea vegetation, but still distinguishable. Adjusting his route to stay with the road, he felt sure Terevuss would be ahead. He felt a relief when he spotted the marker alongside the road. He couldn't easily decipher the markings through the growth, but could tell they faced him, so he was headed in the right direction.
The writings in the unnamed city had taken him some time to decipher, the years having eroded his knowledge of the old languages, but he'd eventually managed to understand enough. The trickle of water he eventually discovered had tasted odd, and the fungus had returned a couple of times, but they'd kept him alive long enough to learn what he could, and to uncover the cache of gemstones which had let him escape his tomb. Some books he'd managed to peruse before Narvon's men had discovered him in the library had filled some of the gaps in what had happened to the world, and now he had to travel to Terevuss for a few final details necessary for his plan.
Terevuss had been home to one of the more prestigious universities of magic, and where the magic behind the Stoneweaving had been created. He'd always assumed, as everyone seemed to believe, it had been a naturally occurring phenomena. But he'd questioned how only certain materials could be controlled. The supposition had been that all substance could be controlled, but finding the right gemstone and word to activate them was the hard part. Apparently this was false.
Stoneweaving had been designed as a means to harness the inherently chaotic energies of magic. The great sorcerer-scientists of Terevuss had harnessed these energies to alter the fundamental natures of some gemstones, attuning them to allow control of certain common substances and... non-substances maybe, he wasn't sure how to class them, and the translation hadn't helped. Regardless, the gemstones, with the correct word spoken, allowed control of a quantity of these substances.
But what had been achieved with them was far beyond the simple weapons they had now become. And the sorcerer-scientists had pushed at the limits of what could be achieved. Too far. The world had been facing the danger of drought, so an artefact had been devised to utilise a dozen gemstones, more than any one person could reasonably control, to counter the problem. There had been little detail on how the process had gone wrong, but obviously it had.
Narvon had used this knowledge to provide him his dominant role in the world, a knowledge he couldn't afford to have widely disseminated.
Welden had entrusted the knowledge to reliable scholars in other cities, who'd wait to reveal it, so even if he failed here he'd still gain a measure of revenge. But he wanted more than that. And now that the outskirts of the city came into view, he felt confident he could achieve it. Or at least managed to convince himself he did.
The sight of the decay which had overtaken the buildings caused a brief surge of concern, but these would have been less sturdy than the ones he needed, so the fact something of them remained standing should be a reassurance.
As he continued along the large main road towards the centre of the city, Welden took stock of how much air he had left. Less than a third, and he must have taken close to an hour to get this far, so he may need to resurface if the information he needed proved difficult to locate.
The university turned out to be harder to locate than he'd hoped. He reached the centre of the city, but the surrounding buildings proved too uniform in their decay identify, so he'd travelled part way down a few of the surrounding roads before he found a recognizable landmark. Even with that, it took time to locate the university, and, given the size of the place, he considered it wiser to replenish his air before venturing inside.
Removing a portion of the fungus from his lamp, he placed it atop a spire. Heading straight up, at speed, it still took a good few minutes before he surfaced. Only as he took a few breaths of fresh air did he realise how stale his had become. Releasing what he'd taken, he animated some more, and prepared to dive again. A quick search of the horizon located what could have been Melmyrn, and he noted it's location in relation to the sun.
With a last deep breath of non-animated air, he dove again. The descent took a bit longer, but he located his glowing marker, and recovered it before swimming inside the nearest building.
While he'd been able to find maps of the university's location within Terevuss, the locations of the particular schools had eluded him. He'd considered looking for the richest looking building, but given the conditions down here that appeared a matter of perspective. So he settled for starting with the largest.
The search took a while, until he finally recognized the writing on a partially visible sign within the second building. Energized by the find, he moved with a careful haste to examine the rooms, but the one he wanted should have been bigger than those he was finding. A dull panic had nearly overtaken him by the time he found the room, near the top of the unnaturally tall building. Unnatural to him, anyway, as he'd rarely seen any building higher than four floors, and those were seldom places of knowledge.
He spotted the wall he wanted, still standing and apparently sturdy, but with a few distressing gouges visible as he approached. The information he needed should be carved into that stone. Uncoiling a strand of his water avatar, but keeping enough surrounding him to protect from the pressure, he stretched it out to gently clear the layer of flora which had grown over the structure.
He felt some relief as he found words still legible under the layer of growth, although the gouges, and the few cracks being revealed, had done some damage. But he took in everything he could find. Some of the words he knew, both base words and the descriptions of what they commanded, but by the time he'd cleared what seemed to be all of the words, he stared at the wall in shocked disbelief.
There were really fifteen. He knew six, and was aware of another three, two of which he needed the base words to, but for there to be that many. They seemed to be arranged as the base word, what it controlled, and what he presumed to be the name of the gemstone needed. He didn't recognize any of the last category, and wasn't sure any remaining lore existed which could help translate those. But the two which interested him he knew the gemstones for.
Three of the words and uses had been damaged, but one had enough remaining for him to recognise he knew it. That left two damaged sections which could be the ones he wanted, so a tension remained as he worked through the list. The first few he recognized. The next had the base word obscured, and the description of what it controlled he couldn't decipher. The word bore slight similarities with ones he knew, but not enough to make sense of.
The next one appeared more likely. He didn't recognise the base word, 'nya', but the translation of what it controlled seemed to be... colour? Was that right? It could work. The more he thought about it the more likely it seemed, although he grew less confident in the accuracy of the translation, and not understanding exactly what it was might cause problems in controlling it. But deactivating it should be easy enough.
A couple more he already knew. Then he reached a new one, which he had to translate a couple of times to reassure himself he'd gotten it right, and even then he remained doubtful. While it might not be relevant to the mission, it could explain some things about Narvon.
The next damaged one had the description too badly defaced to read, and he didn't recognise the base word. If nothing else matched then he may have to try that.
But the next entry seemed to be what he wanted. The word didn't appear to translate directly to temperature, but it got close enough. He memorized the base word, 'nab', and finally allowed himself to relax.
Glancing over the remaining words, he tried memorizing the unfamiliar base words, but not so deeply that they'd dislodge the ones he needed.
Then his gaze slipped to the right hand side of the wall, a section he hadn't uncovered yet. It seemed odd that all the words had been clustered near the one side.
Checking he had enough air left, he began clearing the rest of the wall, finding more writing, which he quickly recognised as the suffixes used for controlling. But as he cleared away the growth he realised there were more than the three he knew. Another three, at least, appeared there, but the bottom of the wall had a large crack lancing up which had obliterated all but the top one, and even that was cracked enough that he couldn't be sure.
'Or' served as the simplest suffix, for reshaping the substance. You simply thought of the shape you wanted it in, and the substance morphed to match your thoughts. It remained like that unless the gemstone was removed, with no need to concentrate on it.
'Thor' was the most common among Stoneweavers, allowing them to assume ongoing control of the substance.
'Duor' allowed a set of commands to be assigned to the animated substance, which required no further concentration to maintain. But few today could manage more than simple commands for such animations.
'Eth' he'd never heard of before. If that was a 't' in the middle of the word, and the cracks could have altered it. The translation of the words next to it didn't help. Inhabit seemed the closest he could come, but even that didn't quite work. What would inhabiting entail? Did your consciousness move into the avatar? That didn't seem right. And it didn't have the 'or' of the others, so was it a completely different strand of controlling?
It didn't really matter anyway, other than to his scholarly instincts. He had what he needed, and his air would soon be dangerously low. With a final sweeping glance of this archaeological wonder which would have so enraptured him mere years ago, he departed.