Chapter 3965: Desert Heart (Part 2)

"Yet even razing our first village to the ground changed nothing. At that point, we tried every possible shape and combination for our buildings, but things only got worse!"

"Is this the reason the layout of your current village is so... peculiar?" Lith measured his words, not wanting to start the conversation on the wrong foot.

"That’s a very polite way to refer to that jumbled mess, but yes." Rem sighed. "After we tried and failed everything we could on the Sea Heart, we checked if at least one of the many buildings Overlord Salaark showed us resonated with the Sea Heart.

"We hoped that at least one of them would have turned that ear-piercing noise in the song it was supposed to be. When that failed as well, we got creative. We tried many combinations of buildings, and what you see today is by far the one that sounds better."

"Fascinating." Lith didn’t dare ask how terrible the previous villages sounded. "Yet you are wrong about one thing. The phenomenon does make sense. Listen to this prototype."

Lith activated his spell again, but this time on the first version of the Desert Heart. The sound it produced was unpleasant and jarring, but Rem could distinguish the underlying vibration merfolk used to express trust.

"It’s amazing!" She said. "Can I give it a try?"

"Sure, but it’s nothing much." Lith handed the prototype to her. "I don’t even know if it works with any other merfolk song."

"Even if it doesn’t, it’s still better than anything we’ve achieved so far." Rem tried different tunes.

They came out worse than the first, but she could always recognize them despite the many flat notes.

"Sea gods, this is beautiful." The contours of Rem’s eyes turned blue and scaly from her own tears. "How could you craft something like this so quickly?"

"Because I’m not a merfolk." Lith’s reply flabbergasted her. "Let me rephrase. I know nothing about your customs or the rituals involved in making a Sea Heart. I studied the song of trust a merfolk taught me and used it to create a tier zero spell, Mimicast, to reproduce the song.

"After that, I fiddled with earth magic until I obtained the thing in your hands." Lith pointed at the initial version of the Desert Heart. "I mixed together sand, pulverized rocks, and soil without a care for their provenience.

"Also, I kept in mind that sound travels in air differently than in water. If you take your finger off the replica, it produces no sound at all."

Rem tried to transmit her song through the air, but it failed even from one centimeter away.

"I see." She sighed heavily. "Thank you for your effort. It seems that having a Sea Heart on the surface is impossible."

"True, but you can always make your Desert Heart." Lith replied. "Observe."

He touched the stone shell again, turning it into Solus’ stone Fire Orchid. When Lith used Mimicast to play the merfolk song of trust, each one of the various petals resonated at a different frequency, producing a much clearer and stronger melody than before.

Lith then took his finger off, and the song didn’t stop. He took his hand away slowly, and the melody got softer as his finger moved further away. Yet it didn’t stop. Even now that Lith’s hand was by his side, Rem could still feel the song of trust resonate throughout her body.

"How did you do that?" She looked at the Desert Heart as if it were a miracle.

"Disregarding everything but results." Lith scratched his head. "Also, don’t forget that I created my Mimicast spell to work on the surface and that, unlike a merfolk, I can turn up the volume of your song just by using mana. Here, let me show you."

He placed his hand on her shoulder and then lifted it. Even from that distance and without the Desert Heart, Rem heard the song of trust coming from Lith with the same clarity as if they were in the ocean’s depths.

"If you and your people are willing to create different versions of Mimicast to amplify and transmit your songs, you can still hear each other. Moreover, I believe that if more than one person uses Mimicast at the same time, the Desert Heart should be able to transmit and amplify the song of trust as well."

Lith needed but a few seconds to teach the spell to Rem. She knew the song of trust like the back of her hand, and anyone could use chore magic. The Desert Heart’s growing hum marked her success.

"It works! By the sea gods, it works!" Rem said.

"It still sounds off and works only for one of your many songs." Lith shrugged. "I don’t know if there’s a better shape that can relay them all, nor what materials should be used. This is far from a success, but it’s as far as I can go.

"I’m no musician and-"

"Thank you!" Rem hugged him with all her strength, feeling as though she was holding a mountain. "You are right. This flower-like thing you gave me disregards millennia of merfolk traditions, but it’s a start!

"Just like in Jiera, you have revealed a path others couldn’t even see. Giving up on the Sea Heart and working on the Desert Heart will be a challenge, but so is life on the surface. We merfolk won’t last long in any country if we can’t adapt.

"Maybe we need to change as much as our Sea Heart. Our roots are important and must be preserved, but we can’t let them chain us to the past. Maybe the Desert Heart can be the link between our past and present."

"It will take a lot of work." Lith replied.

"Anything worth having in this life does." She nodded. "Now, with your permission, I have a lot of work to do."

***

By the end of the celebratory banquet, Rem had already informed the other merfolk of Lith’s breakthrough with the Sea Heart and requested Salaark’s help to assemble a collection of all tuning instruments known to man, beast, and plant folk.

The Overlord delivered several tuning forks, xylophones, bones, and animal sinews that produced specific pitches, which the merfolk used to study how the different sounds traveled through the air.

The merfolk’s natural affinities were water and earth, the only two abundant elements in the ocean’s depths, but the merfolk were also masters of air magic.

All forms of communication and perception in the absence of light were based on the merfolk’s sonar-like organs that allowed them to use the vibrations reverberating inside their bodies to assess the shape of objects and marine creatures, measure distances, and express complex concepts.

Once Rem gave up on shaping the Desert Heart like a seashell and removed all restrictions about what materials could be used in its crafting process, the progress of the merfolk’s research improved by leaps and bounds.

The best Songsters of Zhen had already moved to the Starry Lagoon village to help the surface merfolk with their problem with the Sea Heart. Soon it became clear that a solution was not only possible, but also quite simple.

The Songsters carried the mastery and expertise of countless generations of merfolk. Their knowledge of oceanic stones could be easily adapted to the materials found on the surface with a bit of practice and study.

Moreover, they discovered that the value of Lith’s Mimicast spell went beyond the crafting of a Sea Heart.

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