When Professor Atkinson and Dolores continued on their way to the Bastion of Gwai-Mon following the lead of Lin’Er, they had two bags of much better food made by the local elementals, which included actual pancakes and honey buns made from some kind of special local flour and honey full of fire and life magic energy. s
“How’d those honey buns taste?” Lin’Er asked with her gentle and pleasant voice while she was leading the way: “I believe they’re actually made from the old age recipes, passed down from some of our earlier traders.”
“They’re much better.” Dolores chuckled as she took a big bite off the honey bun in her hand, then she couldn’t help but laugh out loud: “I mean - it’s getting funnier and funnier now that I’ve thought about it - oh my god, why can’t I stop laughing about this?! How come this is so funny and not at all weird or disgusting?”
“I think it’s something in these honey buns?” Professor Atkinson only took a small bite and had to look at the bun closely: “Is it because of the life magic energy or something else in the honey? What’s in it?”
“They’re from a kind of mutated bee that were once endemic to your world.” Lin’Er answered with a very human smile on her face: “At one time, a human trader brought some of them here and sold them to a local water elemental merchant. They ended up dying, but the merchant was quite impressed and she bought more bees, and eventually some of the bees mutated and adjusted to the environment of the Edgelands. Quite ironically, though they were bred and nurtured by a family of water elementals, they grew an affinity to fire magic aside from life magic.”
“And the life magic energy in the honey - it’s the reason that we experience the feelings of joy and funniness when we ingest them?”
“That would be up to you to find out.” Lin’Er said: “It never had that kind of effect on us - we elementals, though we’re blessed with longer life and natural gift of wielding certain magical powers, we don’t have the same physiology as humans or any other flesh based life, thus we don’t experience stimulus to our emotions like you do.”
“Stimulus - that’s a funny word - ahahahahaha ...” Dolores laughed out loud again and said her laughter gradually became uncontrollable.
“Okay, that’s enough honey buns.” Professor Atkinson stopped and took the almost eaten bun away from Dolores, as well as the bag she was carrying: “You may eat when the effects die down a bit, okay?”
“Hold it together, we’re almost there.” Lin’Er helped Professor Atkinson take over the bag of food from Dolores: “Just around ten to - to forty earth minutes.”
On top of a hill not too far away stood a tall bastion built with long and sharp grey stones. There were around twenty large plates of stone and earth floating in the air around the bastion, with some smaller buildings built on each of them. Some of these smaller buildings seemed to be defensive watchtowers, while others seemed to be gateways or portals. There was a giant transparent force field surrounding the entire area, with which the badges given by Paulo Chang to Professor Atkinson and Dolores seemed to be gently resonating.
As they advanced closer, Professor Atkinson and Dolores could see that there were pulses of energy coursing through some specialized markings on the walls of the stone bastion. And surrounding the hill on which the bastion stood and still within the protective force field, were many smaller buildings, some residing on concrete land and some floating in the air.
“Here, use your badges.” Lin’Er stopped in front of the edge of the protective force field.
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Dolores, who finally stopped laughing due to being forcefully deprived of the honey buns, took out her badge and extended it towards the forcefield along with Professor Atkinson. The two badges shot out two beams of bright blue light at the forcefield, then a round entrance opened up for them.
“Follow me.” when they were past the edge of the force field and the entrance closed up behind them, Lin’Er nodded at Professor Atkinson and Dolores, then leapt in the air towards some of the small buildings around the hill on which the bastion stood.
As Lin’Er led them through some tall buildings, pillars and fountains, Professor Atkinson and Dolores couldn’t help but find the design patterns, the features of the pillars and fountains, and the design of the pathways extremely familiar.
“Um, Lin’Er?” Professor Atkinson stood beside a pillar, which was decorated with gems and light golden metal linings and relief sculptures: “I’ve got a question - this is your temple of knowledge?”
“No, this is a rebuilt replica of the Temple of Wisdom.” Lin’Er walked towards the pillar Professor Atkinson was observing: “You would find some of the other rebuilt temples here - a lot of our old temples, like the Temple of Wisdom, Temple of Blessings, and Temple of Sight were all lost long time ago and we only had some rough blueprints left. Historical records and legends said that they were lost in the rupture. But it is also theorized that some of them were actually lost during the wars between the different elemental realms after the rupture.”
A very brief but extremely bright flash of light exploded and disappeared from the sky, Professor Atkinson and Dolores instantly felt a jolt of lighting and pressure striking them from almost all angles. Dolores fell onto the ground, writhing in pain, and Professor Atkinson started coughing like he caught the most severe lung disease in the last second, and he had to sit down on the ground to relieve himself of the unease.
“My goodness.” Lin’Er rushed to their side, prepared to cast a healing spell on them: “What happened? Are you alright?”
Lin’Er’s healing spells were quite potent, Dolores’ skin was all red and swollen and looked like blisters were ready to burst, until the gentle flame washed through her body soothed her anguish.
Dolores gasped then coughed, then she grabbed the honey bun passed to her by Lin’Er and almost swallowed it whole.
“This is crazy.” Professor Atkinson and Dolores exchanged looks.
“What? Why? This is not common knowledge, sure, but I wouldn’t think it would be weighted like this at all.” Lin’Er asked.
“We know who caused the rupture.” Professor Atkinson coughed some more and said: “Or at least - we know who had almost everything to do with it.”