Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

Breeze led me along a catwalk suspended in large fig trees. This was north of the shrine, near the old tower. She’d been acting a bit strangely since the storm. Well more strangly than normal. It was as if she was worried about something and always thinking about things that were far away. We came to a small tree house and jumped the several meters to the ground. I’d been here before but I couldn’t see anything unusual. The only sounds were birds chirping and the humming of an irigation pump that was half buried in the ground. The pump was one of several identical devices, part of the drip irrigation system which kept the plants watered without using much water.

“Well can you see it?” Breeze said, handing me a magic detector that took the form of a circular panel of geodeserine in a gold frame with a handle.

I held the magic detector in front of my eyes and turned around. This place was full of associates and bindings but that was true of much of the Vineyard.

“Are these associates bound to the relic?” I asked.

“Some of them. I think I’ve hidden it very cleverly so even a magis will find it hard. Mind you, I don’t even know where the Vineyard’s relic is. The Astrigis relic just fitted right in like it was meant to. I think the Mechanism must have meant it to be moved here.”

I knew that the Astrigis relic was quite big and I wasn’t sure how she’d got it here. Maybe at least one other person knew the hiding place, she’d moved it with magic or it was light for its size.

“So have you broken the tether spell?”

“No. The relic is very complicated. The Love Priest cast the spell using the manual. The relic choose the associate to bind Lishrashic to and the priest doesn’t know which one. The manual is badly damaged and the page saying how to break the spell is missing.”

I looked around, with and without the magic detector. I couldn’t use dowsing because I had nothing to connect me to the relic.

“What do you mean, the Mechanism brought it here?”

“When I was trying to find out what to do about it, I saw a lot of the Mechanism. I know it can manipulate people, they think they’ve made decisions for their own reasons but they’re really doing what it wants. It must have been designed by somebody who was good at foreseeing the future. It’s been activated and is trying to bring all the relics together to reassemble the starship.”

“Won’t everybody die if the relics are removed from their Holy Sites?”

“No. Well if too many of the relics are destroyed or removed prematurely, the Mechanism won’t be able to reassemble the starship and then it won’t be able to save us from the Prophesied Ruination. There are a couple of problems that I know about. Firstly I think something’s gone wrong. Maybe the Mechanism wasn’t designed to handle Old Magic, maybe something else has happened, perhaps both. Secondly, the largest relic, which can’t easily be moved, is the sub-light drive, which is in Rendamar Temple. The Nuharas can’t be allowed to control the starship. You understand that?”

“Yes but I don’t know what I can do about it. I thought this Mechanism could influence people.”

“There seem to be limitations on that. I’m worried about it and I’m not sure why.”