That was probably appropriate. Berinath was Tzintkra’s moon.
Tzintkra was far more impressive. The view from Berinath was impressive, but the view from space was somehow even more majestic. The planet had deep scars, larger than any Serenity could think of on Earth. It seemed likely that any that were on Earth were covered in water or vegetation, but there was less water and far less vegetation on Tzintkra. The scars were probably also newer, though Serenity knew that they were still old enough to have become overgrown on a more fertile planet.
Past the scarred surface that showed its history, Tzintkra was a giant beacon of Death. It attracted Serenity’s eyes in a way that Berinath’s more modest appearance simply couldn’t. There were almost certainly more people on Berinath, but Tzintkra was more likely to shape the destiny of the area. Even if some of that was because Berinath’s dryads were still scarred by their past.
Serenity watched Tzintkra through the landing until it disappeared into the sky.
He felt no pain or itching from Berinath. That was good, in a way; it meant that the World Core wasn’t under assault from a White Tiger yet. At the same time, it meant that they didn’t have an easy way to find the Near Point that was under assault.
It was even possible that there wasn’t one. The White Tiger and her cubs might not even be on Berinath. It was the likely next target from World Shaman Senkovar’s analysis, but it wasn’t the closest planet to Eitchen. It might well be elsewhere, despite the prophecy.
The first day back on Berinath did not make Serenity feel better. Foremost Elder Omprek had no idea where the White Tiger might be or how to find her. He put a request out to the other domes on Berinath to ask if they’d seen a great white cat, but it would be days before the farthest domes would get the message and longer before they could respond.
The second day started with the news that the Dreaming Tree hadn’t foreseen anything new, at least not anything that Elder Jinsa thought was related. There had apparently been several prophecies since then, but other than one about the murder of an Elder, they were all related to the management of the various domes. Serenity was surprised to find out that the Dreaming Tree mostly produced prophecies about species balance and resource availability, but when he thought about it, it kind of made sense. What else would a tree care about?
World Shaman Senkovar ensconced himself in a ley line nexus to search for Near Points. Unfortunately, he expected the search to take weeks to find even one; they were at least somewhat hidden and Berinath was unlikely to want to help him find them, whether or not she could.
Serenity had to wonder how the White Tiger mother was able to hop from one to another so easily. She couldn’t have spent much time searching on Eitchen after she left Themrys; Serenity didn’t know how long she was on Eitchen but it couldn’t have been all that long.
The most likely reason was that she scouted them in advance so that she wouldn’t have to corral her cubs and move them around while she searched. That might explain the long gaps between shorter (if still decade-long) series of World Eater attacks. Of course, it was also possible that she scouted each world as she went; that would explain why the series took so long. She would have had to get lucky on Themrys, but Serenity had to admit that the bottom of a gigantic crater was probably a decent first place to look.
With none of those avenues helping yet, Serenity decided it was time to do something he didn’t do often and set up a divination ritual. He had the cub; that was all he needed to search for the White Tiger mother or the cub’s siblings. Since the search would have to cover the entire moon and wasn’t limited simply to the ley lines, it would be both difficult and expensive to set up. When he cast it, it would take time to work, as well.
If he made Ita the primary ritualist, he could take advantage of her connection magic to reduce the power requirements. It would require planning; more importantly, it would require some fairly distinct changes in the materials and design of the ritual and the incorporation of some Sterath iconography instead of the variants Serenity preferred, which tended to draw on geometry and images popularized on Earth.
Well, technically, it didn’t require that. Any properly designed ritual could be used with an appropriate Affinity, no matter what the cultural background was. Matching the cultural background just made it smoother and easier. It was a noticeable improvement, but without knowing the culture it was hard to meet. Fortunately, Serenity did know enough about the Sterath culture. He also knew enough about Ita herself; she was no longer baseline Sterath. He’d do better to incorporate some of his normal symbology, because she was his Shameless. It would be an interesting balancing act.
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It took a couple of days in the markets to gather everything he needed that he didn’t already have stashed away in his Rift. While he was at it, he picked up the supplies he might need for Blaze’s ritual. That way he’d have time for his Rift to enhance them to increase their potential effect. If he didn’t use them because he found out better information, that was fine too.
All of the news was negative, so the divination still seemed like the best path forward. Unfortunately, there was a problem. It was a problem he should have anticipated, but it always caught him by surprise: maps.
He was too used to using divination only on either very small scales, where maps did exist, or very large scales, where he didn’t need high precision and a very basic diagram could work. This was neither; it needed accuracy or he’d end up tens or even hundreds of miles away from what he was looking for.
If all he was looking for was “which dome is the White Tiger in,” the maps were fine. Similarly, if he was searching within a particular dome, they would easily work. Unfortunately, he expected her to be outside a dome, and all he could find for a world map was a sketch of the routes between domes. It was very clearly not to scale because journeys of only a few hours were roughly the same length as journeys that were marked as taking multiple days. Serenity couldn’t even be certain that the locations were correct; they probably weren’t. There were reasons that traveling between domes needed guides.
Serenity’s initial reaction was that he’d have to make the ritual map enough of the world near the White Tigers to be able to find them. That would take a lot of time and complicate the ritual significantly; he’d also need some new materials and probably a couple additional test rituals to balance the thing out. A simple divination ritual didn’t really need that much pretesting, but mapping was intensive enough that Serenity wanted to make certain he had it right before combining it with another piece.
A glance at the sky reminded him that he was being an idiot. He had the best mapping tool possible available: a spaceship with a sapient AI. A detailed map was probably too much to ask for, but he could certainly overlay some space-based photography with the maps he did have to make a sort of functional collage that would be sufficient for the ritual. He wouldn’t have perfect accuracy, but it should be close enough to give him a starting point. He could probably get it close enough that the White Tiger’s own movement was more of a problem than the map.
Serenity placed his last order with Lervi, the blacksmith who’d introduced him to Klari’s material supply shop before he headed offplanet. From what Klari said, Lervi wasn’t the highest Tier smith in the dome, but he was certainly good enough for everything Serenity needed done and some return on the help he’d provided was reasonable.
Rissa stayed on Berinath, but Jenna was still on the ship. Serenity had mixed feelings about leaving Rissa behind, but at the same time he couldn’t turn her down when she said she’d rather talk shop with Elder Jinsa. Rissa rarely had the chance to talk to other oracles.
Simurgh was more than happy to help. Being parked at Berinath’s space station was apparently extremely boring for the ship’s AI, so she was surprisingly eager to start a task Serenity thought of as boring. It apparently wasn’t at all boring to her; it was an opportunity to “properly calibrate her orbital cameras and image enhancement software.”
Serenity stayed with the Death’s Wings for the first few hours of the survey, but when they came around Berinath and into clear view of Tzintkra for the third time, something came into focus for Serenity. He needed to talk to Tzintkra and probably also to Stojan Tasi.
The story he knew about Stojan Aith’s assault on Tzintkra itself made more sense now that he knew about Near Points, but in a way it also made less sense: the small chunk of World Core Stojan Aith removed shouldn’t have broken Tzintkra badly. It was less than the damage to Eitchen and far less than the damage to either Lyka or Themrys.
It wasn’t that long of a detour to Tzintkra, either; he could be there in a few hours. Two round trips, to drop him off and pick him back up again, would add most of a day to the time required to map the planet. As far as Serenity knew, he had the time and this was a good way to spend it.
Perhaps there was more to the Dreaming Tree’s first prophecy than he’d thought. Serenity pulled it up and went through it again; he might not like prophecy and he knew it wasn’t destiny, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t information hidden in it if you had enough clues to decipher it. Incorrect interpretation was alway a concern, but all he needed was a starting point.
‘Norn-twisted fate laughs as youth’s safety brings joy for the mother and dread from all else. Death’s kind hand can halt the trade yet the price is peace and that will not be paid.’
Norn-twisted fate was the hand of the Mimir. Serenity still didn’t know what they’d done, but at this point it was merely a mark against them, not useful for solving the problem. He was already more than unhappy enough with them for the attack on Rissa. They were probably not actively directing things now, but they’d clearly done something.
The second part of the line was probably the cubs eating the World Core; that certainly caused dread for others on the planet. Serenity didn’t know how it helped the cubs’ safety, but he had to assume that the mother White Tiger thought it did. Again, that wasn’t helpful for this, but it seemed likely that he was on the right track.
Death’s kind hand was probably Serenity himself. Rissa was certain of that interpretation and it made sense that he was involved in the solution, which was probably what ‘halt the trade’ meant.
The last line was a problem. ‘The price is peace and that will not be paid.’ Serenity had no idea what that meant, other than guessing that it involved Tzintkra somehow. After all, he couldn’t think of any other interpretation than Berinath’s Elder Dryads refusing peace with the planet they fled from. What he didn’t know was why that mattered.
Yes, there was certainly a reason to head to Tzintkra.