Chương 495: 495

Mark asked, "Are you hiding information about a visit to the sky palace at the top of Kabberjaw?" Mabi kinda paused. Wakka had responded to Mark's message that he was ready by escorting Mark down the hallway and across the branch, to the 'canopy side' instead of the lake side, to a building just off the main path. It was a meeting hall for many people, and there were about 30 people in that room, sitting around.

One person rushed in behind Mark, rapidly asking if she was too late, but then she had seen Mark and turned rapidly deferential. From there, Mark had gone to the back of the meeting hall, to see Mabi in a separate room while Wakka waited outside. Mabi unpaused, her vector a little pissed but more wary than anything, as she asked, "There's a sky palace at the top of Kabberjaw?"" Oh… You didn't, uh… know— Yes. I didn't get to visit it, but Derek went," Mark said, gesturing to Derek, standing to the side.

"Apparently it has lots of statues and a big tree in the middle." Mabi strongly asked, "Please tell me more. None of the expedition ever heard about this, or if they did it was expunged from the record." Derek added, "The sky palace at Kabberjaw is basically the highest point in the place, existing above the nighttime nightmare line, where the night never gets higher.

The sky palace is basically a giant castle, with pillars, a bunch of human-sized stuff, and no dragon-sized spaces at all, but the tree in the middle courtyard is big. Not as big as this tree, or even a kaiju, but about 150 meters tall. The entire place is filled with a bunch of anti-outsider warnings, like the warnings at the Softer Lands and at the ice wall with the kaiju-trees. Based on the statues here at Vaka, the statues at the sky palace of Kabberjaw could be the Language, but no way of knowing right now."

Another Derek clarified, "I am on my way there right now, but it'll take a while and I might die a few times getting there." Mabi was terribly interested, her focus splitting in ten directions at once as she stared toward the side, at nothing at all. Anger, worry, disbelief, and then finally anger again.

She came back to the moment, saying, "There were only two survivors, both dead now, and Sela Vonn was a monster, planting ideas for them to follow and then get themselves killed when the dragons didn't like where they were. If the expedition ever saw this 'Sky Palace' then the record of that venture was erased more thoroughly than should be possible." Mark had a sudden question.

"Can the others use the Blessing against you?" Mabi burst with disbelief that turned into deep, worried anger. She was diplomatic as she said, "If they have, then they will regret it." She bowed a little, being even more diplomatic.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention." She stood.

"Will you be Skilling my people, now?" Mark had places to be, too, so he moved on, saying, "So I have a lot of Dynamo, some Smarts, 3 Tactician, 5 Tinkerer…" What ended up happening was more complicated than Mark had expected. Many of the people waiting in the next room over were elderly, grandmaster-types, who had skills that they wanted to pass on to the next generation but the next generation had never Awakened to the specific Powers of the elders. Many of the younger generations had Awakened to lesser versions.

It was not a 'Man-made Manipulation' or 'Sky Shaper' scenario, like what had happened to Eliot's grandmother and then him, and what had failed to happen between Aeri Kanno and every member of her entire family line, but it was close to that. In Aluathan parlance, all of the 'noble houses' here were in danger of complete collapse, due to a lack of generational power. So Mark fixed that.

Mark also had lots of Healthy Bodys to go around, so it wasn't like the elders were simply losing themselves; they were 'retiring', as Mabi put it, before she spoke to all of them and told them how it was going to be. Mark pulled the Mind Power 'Machine Conductor' from a man in his 90s, one of the First Generation who woke up as a child in the Reveal, here on Vaka.

His story was similar in scope to Hearthswell, who made a castle and protected everyone with her Castellan, but his story was lost to history, here behind the Blessing of the Picory. Mark didn't get to hear much of that history, except for the small words he said to his chosen heir, a young man who had the Arcane Power of Charge, which was a variant electrical power that arose years after the Reveal. Charge allowed a person to keep electrical devices functional.

That new guy also got a Healthy Body, just like his grandfather, and they hugged as both of them cried tears of joy while they were surrounded by other members of their family. It was touching, but Mark had work to do. He pulled something that System Prime called 'Naturalize' out of an older woman who was done with fighting. She did not care who her Natural Power went to, but she wanted whoever got it to keep up her plants in her home.

Mabi organized all of that, and some young woman got Naturalize, which was a power that turned machines into living things. As Mark put Naturalize into the young woman, he knew that the Power could do a lot more than what the older woman had done with it, and he told the recipient this much. This caused the older woman and the younger woman to have some fierce talks. Mark moved on. Dynamos went out to a lot of people. The Mind Powers he had stored up went first, along with Telekinesis.

A few people did actually want True Brawny, but Mark encountered a weird cultural thing when he gave those out. Those recipients were kinda shunned by the Khava. Mabi privately told Mark that those people had plans to leave home, though, and True Brawny was truly useful outside of the mists, so they weren't shunned that much.

Healthy Bodys went out to everyone who wanted one, and Mark had 250 of them to give—" Sir," Quark said, interrupting Mark between patients, "You will now have to move at 50% maximum speed if you wish to get to the Lightning Spires by daybreak."" Fuck," Mark muttered, looking away and alarming the woman he was about to Skill. Mark rapidly told her, "Nothing is wrong but… I gotta wrap this up." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Derek was there, saying, "Mabi offered a brightspeed hoverskiff for the trip. You'll get there in 30 minutes, and I'll drive, and maybe this time I won't get skewered by a spider." Another Derek added, "Hopefully!" While another Derek said, "But you never know~" Mark turned to the woman he was working on, glanced at her name in Quark's overview, and said, "So Atwani? Healthy Body, yes?" The woman steeled herself, nervous as all hell, but she had seen a lot of people go through this before Mark had gotten to her.

She said, "Please sir, yes. Healthy Body." Mark got to it. An hour later, Guardian Mabi hovered a sleek, wooden skiff with a flickering gold/purple rim around the base, down to the edge of a walkway near Mark. She handed him the keys, saying, "Thank you for your assistance, Inheritor, traveler. I'll work on the other guardians and try to get them to let you take the book when you get back." Mark grinned a little, took the keys and handed them to Derek, as he said, "Thank you, Mabi.

And good luck with the remnant goblins. With any luck I'll be back by sundown."" I look forward to it!" Mabi snorted, adding, "And I especially look forward to Kei and Lani's faces when you actually do manage to show up and that you remember them completely." Mark smiled a little, and then he got on the skiff. Derek drove. Soon, the small vehicle burst out of the mist, high into the skies of Vaka. For a little bit, Mark got to look down at the glowing lake that surrounded the tree of Waysoff.

The lake itself was maybe 20 kilometers across, and the tree top was half of that. It was beautiful. Crash's tree was about the same size, but located much further into the island of Vaka, in a separate freshwater lake. Mark could see all the way to the lake floor below Waysoff, like it was daytime down there, and all the tree canopy in the water was like a dark cloud, nestled in the mists. And then the mists coiled and flowed, hiding the glowing waters and Waysoff.

Soon, Mark and Derek were high in the clear sky and flying south, fast. The Forgetting flowed out of the mists and joined them in the sky, not touching them, but still right there… It was touching Derek a lot, actually. It hadn't been doing that back down on the island. Mark asked, "You remember everything?"" Yeah. It can't touch all of me. You?"" Yup. It can't touch any of me. I guess both methods work to keep it away?" The mists coiled a bit tighter."

But it'll get stronger if we talk about it outside of the islands…" Mark hmm'd. Derek asked, "Silence?"" Yeah, probably should." It was kinda nice to just sit there on the passenger seat and watch the aurora-filled night sky zip by at an almost-speedster tempo. They were moving so fast, but everything seemed slow at these distances. And then Derek hit the brightspeed button.

It was like some god, stronger than any Mark had ever witnessed, had gripped the ocean, the world, the sky, and then turned it, rotating it underneath and past Mark and Derek and their little, very fast hoverskiff. Soon, the pair of them were over the ocean, and still, the hoverskiff sped up." Holy shit," Mark said, "This is fast. Right? This is fast?" Well… Mark was faster when he was speedster'ing, but that caused the world to burst into flames.

The space beyond the private shield of the hoverskiff was simply air, flowing freely. No burning at all! Derek enjoyed the speed, saying, "And the ship is still holding together! That's the really amazing part. Like sure, Eliot could make this, but this is something that the 1% of the 1% would still have trouble even buying. The Khava really got it together after the Reveal!"" You should bring it back to them, though."" Oh yeah, I will."

Mark glanced back to Vaka, to the mists that covered the island that was already hidden beyond the curve of Daihoon. He wondered if Tribe Khava had some truly high technology in their enclave. And then he had a new thought about their expedition to Kabberjaw, saying to Derek, "It's kinda amazing that they got to Kabberjaw and back at all, isn't it? How many people can do that?"" Even the great empires would struggle, but the Picory had the Forgetting to help them."

That Forgetting curled around the hoverskiff tighter, almost blocking the sky. Mark hmm'd, then went silent. Derek followed suit. They didn't want to be surprised by an unknown ambush, if they could help it. Mark was already walking into one ambush, after all.