Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Sevren Denoir
The second floor of the Relictombs was a portrait of controlled chaos. This was usually the norm near the ascension portals. With so much of Alacrya's economy relying on the constant two-way flow of ascension and descension, ceaseless foot traffic was an inevitability.
But now the normal back-and-forth routine was knocked off-kilter. For every ascension team entering and leaving the relictombs portals, there was a hesitation in their steps—covert glances this way and that at the many, many projection artifacts—before they passed on. It seemed that everyone wanted to run from the images. They wanted to run from the terrible truth.
People's movement seemed more forced in its normalcy. Perhaps the ascenders thought, deep in their minds, that if they did everything they usually did, then things would be okay. They could go up and down through the Tombs, pretending that their loved ones hadn't been turned to ash by an asuran assault. If they put one foot in front of the other—if they never stoppedmoving—then they'd never have time to consider what it all meant.
They wouldn't have to acknowledge that their gods would throw them away. They wouldn't have to consider that their lives were simply mulch to be ground beneath deific boots. So up they went again, not even giving themselves time to mourn for the family they'd lost in the war.
It was a pitiful response to the disaster in Dicathen. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that the Sovereigns weren't reacting at all. It was almost as if the calculated touch of the Vritra were gone, and everything presented on the projection artifacts all around was humanity's pathetic attempt to push propaganda. Everywhere I looked, the blurry images of dwarven tunnels and burning smoke in the recordings were nearly impossible to avoid.
The videos repeated on a constant loop. One of the few survivors of the entire Dicathian warfront stumbled through a collapsing Darvish cavern, fleeing from a nondescript form as they tore through the man's companions.
And the screams. The screams, followed by deafening silence, were what stayed with me the most.
Thankfully, my companions and I were sitting far enough away from the panes that we couldn't hear the words beamed directly into our heads by the artifacts, but as the videos of mages fleeing like rats trapped in a barrel from shadowed figures continued to loop, I could fill in what was said from memory alone.
"The asura lash out in a cowardly attack!" the idiotic announcer would say. "Fearing an Alacryan victory, the spiteful asura of Epheotus break their word in their assault on the—"
"So let me get this straight, boy," Alaric rumbled beside me, his busy brows furrowed into an uncomprehending scowl, "Scythe Melzri showed up on Darrin's doorstep."
I watched another group of ascenders try and ignore the truth of the Dicathian war as they were quickly ushered into the portal by a nervous attendant. She caught my eye, before hastily looking away while fiddling with her armband.
"I've said this before. Yes. She did," I replied irritably, still staring at the purple portal.
Alaric nodded slowly, his face pinched as if he were trying to pass glass shards through his colon. "And so you sent the Milview girl running back to us in warning. Perfectly logical. That all makes sense."
"Yes," I said, more annoyed at having to repeat this for the dozenth time. It was only the return of my sister and Naereni from one of the nearby booths dispensing information about ascents that kept me seated. "I told her that I wasn't going to take her offer. What about this is so difficult to understand?"
Alaric groaned in exasperation. "Kid, you did not just deny her offer," he said, running a hand through his well-groomed hair. "You emptied a Vritra-forsaken magazine at a Scythe! You saw what was left of those mooks across the forests. And if the Scythe were to just—oh, I don't know—take offense at the prick firing weapons at her after she so generously offered you a—"
"I didn't empty the clip," I grunted, standing up as Caera and her friend approached. "I left one round in it."
"That was reckless, stupid, and could have gotten everyone killed. I don't even understand why you're still alive after you… What, told a Scythe to off herself?!" Alaric snapped from where he still sat. "Do you not think before you act, Lord Denoir?"
I turned to look down at the old ascender, already beginning to regret suggesting bringing him along on our next ascent. The powerful remnants of his muscled ascender's physique showed beneath the leather armor he'd been stuffed in, but it couldn't entirely hide his beer belly. His gray hair wasn't trimmed yet, but it was bathed and properly brushed away from his blocky face. He would have almost looked presentable, if his eyes didn't constantly dart to the shadows while his hand groped for a bottle of whiskey that wasn't there.
I needed to remind myself of this old oaf's benefits. He was an accomplished spymaster—someone Toren put his word on. He'd demonstrated exceptional expertise in managing information networks and contacts, a trait entirely hidden beneath the bloated gut and alcoholic exterior.
And if I wanted anything to change—if I wanted to progress with trying to fix this broken system—then we needed someone on the inside who could properly manage all the knowledge me, Caera, and Naereni were slowly accumulating in the Town Zone.
Wade's teacher had been unwilling to entertain the idea of going into the Relictombs at all when I'd insisted at first, even when I'd hinted at how important it was. He'd claimed that he'd stick his head in a dozen holes, but the Relictombs wasn't for him anymore.
That was before I'd mentioned what Melzri had offered at our doorstep and a stern talking-to from Darrin.
"You nearly got everyone in that house killed, boy, and you don't even care," Alaric grumbled, staring off into the distance at something. "I'm the only one with common sense here. I need a drink. It's too much right now."
Caera sat down heavily on a nearby bench as she returned. She flourished her hand and withdrew her large, ruby sword: one of her last gifts from Scythe Seris. Without another word, she ran a whetstone along the edge in deliberate, vigorous strokes. Her eyes were quiet bottles of pent-up anger as she did so again and again and again. Her silver Cat half-mask hung haphazardly on her forehead, almost forgotten.
The Rat returned a moment after. Unlike my sister, she was more conscious of the Rat mask hugging her forehead. Hearing Alaric's last comment, she gave him an undisguised scowl of discomfort.
"Go get your drink," Naereni scolded. She crossed her arms, looking down with irritation at the overweight ex-ascender. "We can get Wade instead. He'd actually recognize the importance of this and not brush it all off like you."
Alaric grumbled, opening his mouth to respond, but he was cut off by a sudden shear of sharpening metal.
"Wade's too weak," Caera said bluntly, her eyes fixed on her ruby blade. "We talked about this, Naereni. With everything that the Relictombs can throw at us at our strength, taking in a sentry with barely any combat experience is a recipe for death."
My sister punctuated the last word with an exceptionally forceful pass of the whetstone, making the Rat wince.
I knew that Naereni disliked Alaric. Something about addicts who didn't want to drop their fix or improve. But for this singular occasion, the washed-up ascender had left his drink behind.
Caera gave Alaric a critical eye filled with that contained anger that made the old drunk recoil slightly in unease. "He won't die easily, even with our strength."
—
I hauled a cursing Alaric Maer back with me, just barely out of range of the whirling aether beast. The massive turtle—easily four times my size and spinning with enough force to kick up a tornado—slammed into the place the old ascender had been a moment ago. Like some sort of demented top, the spinning reptile cut through the platform with the sound of splintering wood, before arcing into the darkness beyond and out of sight again.
"Why the hell is the nasty little bugger after me?!" Alaric yelled into the endless chasm. In the distance, the boss monster of this zone roared in anger and annoyance.
The platform wobbled dangerously as it lost its base of support, the bumbling old man trying to keep his balance as I shoved him behind me. "You hit it head-on with sun flare, then helped Naereni rip out its eyes," I snarled, trying to sense the maddened, gyrating disc of an aether beast as it whirled about these endless towers of wood and stone. "I'd hold a grudge, too. And you're loud."
This was the final monster we needed to fight in an endless expanse of strange platforms, rope bridges, and never-ending dark ceilings of this zone, but it was making things difficult. My eyes flicked to Caera where she stood with Naereni on a faraway spire. They each clung to the edges like spiders, their magic poised. My eyes caught on the blue-black rune hissing on their platform, one of Naereni's graveice chain traps.
Caera, in turn, stood with her soulfire-coated ruby blade at the ready, one devastating strike building from the depths of her core. Her horns drank in the night as her rage churned with her basilisk-coded fires.
I deduced their plan immediately, my eyes locking with Caera and the Rat. I just needed to give them an opening.
Alaric said something caustic, which was punctuated by another deafening roar from the blinded aether beast. I couldn't sense it directly, but I knew it was spinning around for another attack, cutting off our escape routes one severed platform at a time.
I aimed my handgun into the darkness, before engaging the newest module in my soulmetal arm.
Electricity danced along the nerve endings in my shoulder, before lancing up toward my spinal cord and to my brain. My teeth clenched from the sudden pain as electricity sparked behind my eyes, but at that moment, my reaction speed heightened with the force of internal lightning.
The world ground to a searing halt, my perceptions rising to a searing crescendo for a split instant. And as my overclocked brain caught on the darkness, I caught a glimpse of my target.
The blurring wind turtle, as every other time, was spinning toward Alaric and me. It turned slowly in my bullet-time perception, the four limbs like razors as they thrust from a nigh-impenetrable shell. A gale of wind swirled around the beast, making it nearly impossible to aim at.
That had been the trouble we'd had so far. The gales of wind coating the massive turtle brushed off most attacks already, but those that did make it through were ineffectual against the creature's tough shell.
The best luck we'd had so far was when Alaric had managed to catch it with his emblem, Sun Flare, before Naereni managed to land a dagger in one of its eyes. That dagger was still there, lodged and leaking winter's malice into the aether beast's veins.
That dagger is an anchor point for Naereni's spell, I thought, my arm steady even as the time limit for this painful spell approached. I just need to… disrupt the monster.
In this space between heartbeats, I lined up my shot at the raging monster's remaining good eye, exhaled a breath, and pulled the trigger.
I released Bullet Time a fraction of a second later, groaning in pain as I leaned over. The electricity tracing from my soulmetal arm winked out, leaving me to suffer the aftereffects.
My shot was successful, though. The turtle's eye exploded in a mess of pulped flesh, splattering purplish blood everywhere. The monster's angry gyration snapped out into a catastrophic tumble as it roared, no longer able to maintain a solid flight path.
That was when Naereni acted, slamming a palm into the gleaming rune on her spire. Chains of graveice shout out like writhing serpents toward the tumbling aether beast, wrapping it like a vice before cinching shut around the dagger in its eye.
The strange turtle had been blurring toward Alaric and me at impossible speed, but now that its body was suddenly anchored somewhere else, that forward momentum was ripped sideways as it was caught in a centrifugal spiral. It crooned in terror as it whipped around Naereni's platform, the chain wrapping around and around and around the pillar.
And as the aether beast came closer and closer, hauled onward by its momentum, Caera's eyes gleamed. She roared, her Vritra-fire sheathed ruby blade less than a streak as it snapped upward.
The poor turtle never had a chance. It slammed sideways into Caera's elongated sword, before separating neatly in two. Soulfire and an angry, sharp edge cleaved through shell, flesh, and bone all at once, before streaking away in two separate, gorey halves.
My sister was coated in a spray of that purplish blood as the two halves of the boss monster tumbled into the abyss below. Her expression was almost feral as she exhaled a breath.
The cavern was silent for a few moments, the abyss no longer inundated by the monster's howls. Caera was breathing heavily, her teeth gritted and knuckles white on her sword.
Then a rumbling crash echoed from far, far below as the monster's remains hit the ground.
Alaric whistled appreciatively. "Does she always do that, all flashy-like? Don't think I've ever seen someone turn an aether beast into past tense so, uh… Effectively."
I pushed myself back to my feet, the ache of using my Bullet Time mechanics drifting away for a moment. I'd studied the needed mana flow and targets for the theoretical module in my arm extensively using the asura's goggles, but it was apparently still imperfect.
Though this was a good test run, I thought, blinking the haze from my eyes. Spell components do work as expected when slotted in, and the Bullet Time one will likely be a staple.
"No," I said as I stared down into the endless abyss below. "She's just got some anger to work out."
Alaric's eyes lingered for a few moments on Caera's horns, his brow furrowed in thought. Before this ascent, he hadn't known that my sister or Naereni had manifested their Vritra blood. When we'd entered our first zone, we'd rather bluntly explained to him the gist. "Aye, I suppose she would. With her Scythe mentor gone and all."
Naereni was quick to leap from platform to platform, before scurrying with remarkable agility over to where we stood. Caera wasn't as graceful or nimble when she made her way closer, but each of her leaps was imbued with more power and surety than the Rat. Both of them had little difficulty reuniting with our makeshift party.
"That one's down," Naereni said sharply, her eyes casting about the cavern. "But I still can't see the exit, Doubouir. Where's the ascension portal, Mister Expert?"
It was a thinly veiled attempt at her usual lighthearted mannerisms, but in the darkness of this cave, the Rat couldn't hide her anxiety and sorrow.
"Down, probably," I responded with a grunt, staring into the abyss far below. "We heard the impact of debris whenever it fell from the platforms and pillars, which means that there is a bottom. And considering that there isn't a portal showing up here, then my bets are on the floor."
Caera was uncharacteristically quiet as she stared into the abyss far below, her eyes still smoldering with something familiar. She didn't seem to care about the monster detritus coating her clothes.
"So it's down we go," I continued, already trying to calculate a way to scale down the pillars to the floor. Naereni, Caera, and I were nimble enough to do it on our own. "Alaric, do you have any way to—"
The gruff Badger huffed, adjusting the mask he kept on his forehead. I thought he kept the namesake Menagerie mask as some sort of joke or gimmick at first, but he seemed strangely intent on keeping the silver half-mask on. "Don't underestimate me, kid. Experienced ascenders always come prepared. I've got a length of rope and climbing gear stashed in my dimension ring for just this sort of occasion."
As if to prove his point, the stocky old man trundled to the edge of the platform, then withdrew a grappling hook from his dimension ring. With old experience, the man anchored it to the rocks, his arms moving in old patterns.
We fell into silence as we waited on our companion, each of us taking a moment to think. In truth, part of me wanted to do anything but think, because there were only so many I could think about.
But just like all men, I was bound by routine. And Caera—right when we'd started on our ascents together—had forced all three of us to do a group reflection whenever there was a break in our fighting.
Something about learning our weaknesses, figuring out where we could improve in each fight, and taking steps forward in strength and teamwork. Apparently, Seris Vritra had emphasized this sort of work to my sister for forming strong mage teams in general, not just ascenders.
And loathe as I was to admit it, they worked. Through those little after-meetings, our Menagerie had better learned our individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as how each of our skills complemented the others in battle. It allowed us to create plans and strategies on the fly simply because we knew what we were working with.
But right now, none of us were in the right frame of mind to do our 'reflections.' At least not together.
"I didn't ask yet, ya know," Alaric finally muttered near the edge of the platform. His arms trembled every now and then, even as he cinched the rope tight around the grappling hook. That was something that never happened when he was sober. "The horns, manifestation of Vritra blood… Hiding it is treason. All of you could get carted off to Taegrin Caelum on a rack, and picked apart for research or whatever."
I snorted lightly. "Treason," I said disdainfully. "Treason is just a word the Supervisory Office uses to keep their power." I ground my teeth a little, staring at the aged ascender's back. "You've taught Wade plenty of things that would be treason. You've accompanied the rest of us on a dozen missions that skirt the line of treason, and you've heard how we talk. Is this so surprising to you?"
Alaric stayed kneeling at the edge of the platform, still staring down into the darkness. He groaned, scratching at his grayed hair. "Whatever. I'm just wonderin' why ya think I should be dragged into all this. You're all inexperienced idiots that will get yourselves killed eventually. And now I'm gonna be dragged along with ya whenever Lord Denoir here decides to… I don't know, punch a Sovereign in the face or something."
"Toren recommended you to me before he left," Naereni piped in, strangely solemn. The usual bite in her tone when she spoke with Alaric was gone. "He usually had the right of people. If you're asking about trust—"
"For all this Toren kid's virtue, it didn't save him in the end, girlie," Alaric heaved out with a sigh that seemed to contain his soul. "Darrin had the right of it. You're all young, still. Ya think things can change, but the system takes. Doesn't matter who you are or what you do, it'll take from you. The sooner you make peace with that, the happier you'll be."
Naereni didn't respond for a few heartbeats. "Are you happy with that, Badger?" she finally asked.
Alaric was quiet, still staring into the abyss.
"I think Toren knew what Vritra took from you," Naereni said slowly, crossing her arms in front of herself. "I think that's why he pointed me after you. I mean… I don't miss how you look at Wade. As if he's not real, or he's something that might escape you if you're not careful. I know what those looks are. They took from me before, too."
"Then what're we going to do, Miss Rat?" Alaric asked, not turning away. "Are you kids going to get yourselves killed for some idea of rebellion and defiance? Is that why I'm here, followin' ya through old Tombs?"
It was Naereni's turn to be silent at that. Because the truth was, she didn't know. Neither did I. Neither did Caera. Right now, taking Alaric into the Relictombs… It was a sort of last-ditch attempt. A proclamation that we could do something in response to all that had happened.
But as Alaric placed that understanding squarely in front of us again, it became harder to look away.
"I don't think I really got it," Caera said quietly, looking down at her sword. "This hatred of the system. I got it, yeah, but I didn't get it."
Her fists clenched around the hilt of her blade as she marched toward the edge of the platform. "Seris always made me think… I don't know. She made me think that things weren't that bad. I couldn't see all the misery because of how she stood in front of it."
Caera's eyes flicked to Naereni, then to me. "But then I started going on ascents with all of you, and it didn't just seep past me anymore. I saw the things that were kept from me in the Denoir estate. The miseries of Fiachra, the tools of control… It was suddenly all so obvious without that shelter in front of me. And now that shelter is dead, and I can't ever pretend again."
My sister stared down at Alaric with a gaze that could weather black diamond. "I don't know shit about what we're going to do in the end, Alaric Maer. But I know that I'm not going to let my mentor's attempts to fix this rotten continent go to waste. She was trying to do something, hiding Naereni's and my heritage. I'm going to find a way to keep doing that."
Caera adjusted her navy hair as she walked to the very edge of the platform. "If you don't want to be dragged into that, then fine. Whatever. But I, for one, will not let it all die with my mentor. That means they win."
My sister dropped from the pillar we were standing on, before slowly making her way down into the darkness like her feline namesake. A silent Naereni followed after, giving Alaric one glance.
I was last to meander to the edge, gazing into the empty abyss. "Think you can manage making it down?" I muttered, not in the mood to talk.
Alaric snorted halfheartedly. "Yeah. Just go on your way, brat."
—
In the end, it didn't take very long to reach the bottom of the abyss. The floor of the cavern wasn't entirely solid, though. In fact, it was littered with holes, each of them opening into an endless void below. Our group was careful to not tip over the edge anywhere, considering it was unlikely we'd ever make it back.
I was suddenly grateful we'd forced Alaric to be sober for this. If he was constantly swaying and struggling with every step, then he would've fallen into the abyss ages ago.
"The reason we really needed to take you on an ascent can only be shown here," I said to Alaric, retrieving an item from my dimension ring. One of the carapace tracking orbs, dimensionally linked to a stake driven into the soil of the Town Zone, settled neatly into my palm. The violet runes etched into its surface glowed brightly. "We needed to go through at least one zone for this to work."
Alaric's eyes darted from the carapace shell in my hand, to the effervescent portal in front of me, then to something else that I couldn't see. "And the glowing purple ball is special how?" he said, sounding genuinely intrigued. "It wouldn't happen to have a lot of alcohol in there, would it? I'm… really needing a drink."
Caera was using a knife to dissect something from one of the lingering halves of the turtle aether beast, cutting and sawing with regimented discipline. "That's one part of a tether-tail," she grunted, ripping something free from the corpse and inspecting it. "They're little aether beasts that hide in pocket dimensions, nestling inside that carapace. The only thing that keeps them anchored to the dimension is their tail, which they anchor into the ground."
I nodded slowly. "There's some sort of magical link between the shell and the tail that can transcend dimensions. Like simulets, it keeps the two connected despite distance, but it is stronger than the High Sovereign's linking technology."
"That's really wonderful, kid," Alaric grumbled, scratching at his beard. "But I still don't understand how this warranted dragging me down to—"
"Imagine you could place the tethers wherever you wanted in the Relictombs," I snapped, cutting off the ex-ascender, "and keep the carapace shells separate? That would be really, really useful, no?"
Alaric's mouth opened—no doubt to say something snarky—then it closed. Then it opened again as his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "Kid, you're telling me you've found a way to map the Relictombs?"
Naereni laughed at the flabbergasted expression, but Alaric wasn't done. "If this was known… Damnit, if this was known, you all would have a personal date with Agrona himself. Vritra's horns, you've been doing this for how long?"
"Nine months or so in real-world time," Caera commented, strolling to the purple portal beside me. In her hands, she held a little section of the turtle's shell. Probably a trophy of some sort. "A lot longer if you account for time dilation here. And now you're going to help us manage all of it."
Alaric's eyebrows shot up high enough to scrape his hairline. His voice was still disbelieving as he laughed. "Vritra's horns, girl, next thing you'll tell me that you met one of the ancient mages yourself!"
Caera paused, looking a little guilty as she spared me a sideways glance. Alaric followed her gaze, his eyes slowly becoming more and more bloodshot.
"It wasn't me that the mage showed up for," I said, already uncomfortable with the attention. "Toren was the one who poked him and made him act. I didn't have anything to do with it."
Alaric's eyes slowly grew more and more hazy as he stared past me. "I need a drink," he whispered. "Why did I let you take my booze?"
I scoffed in annoyance, turning back to the portal. The old man fell back into old habits far too quickly for my taste. "I'm going through. As long as your simulets are keyed, you'll be able to follow to the Town Zone," I grumbled, wanting to be somewhere familiar. "Don't touch anything without my explicit permission."
I stepped through the portal, already longing for my tools and workbench. I had an idea of what sort of module in my arm I wanted to implement next, and the long time in close quarters with other people was wearing away at my patience.
But as space shifted, throwing me into a familiar place, I froze.
The Town Zone lookedhow I'd left it. The long street stretched into the infinite distance, weaving and winding to who-knew-where. Rows of identical houses lined each edge of the wide street, and at the end of the houses, two portal frames hovered demurely. One to ascend further into a convergence zone, and the other to lead back into the wider world.
The few trees I saw were still the same, too. No apparent change in their structure. No changes anywhere.
But for some reason, goosebumps tingled along my neck, the hairs on my singular arm rising on end. Adrenaline oozed across my veins, the heightened alertness so much different from Bullet Time.
Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong, and I couldn't tell what.
Naereni was the next to step next to me, before Caera and Alaric phased through after. While Alaric's wide eyes traced along the arrayed homes, the man whispering some curse to the Great Vritra, I still searched for something out of place. Some justification for why my instincts were nearly ready to burst in my skull.
"Wait," I said, raising my soulmetal arm in front of my sister as she started to move forward. "Wait. Something's wrong."
My sister looked at me askance, before her face slowly paled. Something in my expression conveyed all that needed to be said. She called on her mana core, drawing her ruby blade from her dimension ring and peering around.
Naereni was quick on the jump, lowering in stance as she conjured knives of graveice. "What's wrong, Doubouir?" she asked, her eyes darting about and looking for discrepancies.
"I don't know," I said quietly, my handgun phasing into my grip. "It's just a feeling, but… Can you see anything? Anything different from our last visit here?"
Mana coursed through my limbs as the Rat slowly swiveled her gaze across the Town Zone, her inquisitive eyes keen to every detail. This was one of the things she was truly good at, something that came from her long experience as a thief. Naereni could pinpoint discrepancies and deviations better than anyone I knew.
"Your blue mana thingamajigs," she hissed quietly, her gaze focused on the distance. "They were full the last time we were here, weren't they?"
I followed the Rat's gaze, then cursed. It was slight, almost too subtle to be noticed, but Naereni was spot on. My prototype mana storage tanks, which utilized a modular system for scalability, were ever-so-slightly drained.
Each of those tanks could contain an absurd amount of mana. The method I'd invented to concentrate the mana within into an electric blue liquid made it trivial to store unreasonable quantities of energy, and because of that, I'd made a habit of allowing them to passively refill whenever I wasn't present and using their energy for experiments. I'd never run out or have issues with reserves if I timed everything right.
But right now, one of the tanks was ever-so-slightly drained. Perhaps only about a fifth was gone, but that was a fifth too much.
My eyes traced the connecting pipe anchoring the tank to one of the suburban homes. I felt my heart rate rise as my hand clenched around my gun.
"We have an intruder," Caera breathed, her eyes narrowed. She was already poised for combat, sensing a coming confrontation. "Should we do a perimeter sweep? Make sure there is only one before moving in?"
For the first time in over a week, though, I felt a swell of hope instead of fear or worry. Slowly, hesitantly, I lowered my gun. "No," I said quietly, beginning to walk toward that distant house. "No, I don't think this is an intruder."
Could it be? I wondered as my legs carried me forward. Could it really be possible? It would make sense, in a way. There was only one person who could come to this zone at will: the person who had brought me here in the first place.
I reached the front door of the house quickly enough. It was only when I raised my hand to the doorknob that I realized it was shaking.
I glared at my hand, forcibly stopping it from the unreasonable action. But as I did so, I tried to figure out what I'd say to the person that might be inside. If Toren was really there…. If he was somehow alive…
If Toren had somehow been in the Relictombs, then it made sense why Circe Milview couldn't contact him. The djinn's ancient Lifework interacted strangely with all sorts of magics, and I wouldn't be surprised if it blocked whatever connection they had.
What do I say to him? I asked myself. What do I ask him? Hell, is he even the same person that left for war?
Before I had even finished asking myself those questions, however, my body acted on its own. My hand had turned the handle and pushed open the door, revealing my workshop inside. I walked inside slowly, still feeling the anxious tic in the back of my head that something was wrong. The ambient mana didn't tell me anything was amiss, but for some reason…
I swept my gaze across my workshop, noting the clutter. Immediately, my gaze focused on one of the resonator tools. I'd left that on my workshop table, but for some reason, it was now above one of my filing cabinets.
That sense that something was wrong slowly returned, seeping into the back of my head as I entered the house. The tee vee was the same. So was the couch, the scattered implements, everything else…
Except things were out of place. So many things were not where I'd left them. Apparently, somebody had rifled through my things. My earlier paranoia was slowly replaced with a roiling sort of anger as I noticed more and more and more things that were not where they should have been.
I sensed Caera and the others approaching the door a second later. I turned to call to them and tell them to be back on guard, because the Toren I knew wouldn't have rifled through my things, when my gaze caught on something new.
One of my mana-silicone vials—designed for containing dangerous chemicals and reagents—was sitting all by its lonesome on a nearby table. That alone was odd; for all my clutter and disorganization, I always made sure to keep the dangerous reagents far from normal experimenting space.
I slowly approached the vial, my senses on full alert as the rest of the Menagerie loped in cautiously after me. Caera stuck to my side, her sword at the ready as she scanned everywhere for threats, while Naereni and Alaric went in the opposite direction, toward the tee vee, couch, and other strange implements of another land.
The material inside that vial… It looked like ashes. But the bone-white ashes in the glass moved and twisted, as if possessing a lingering life of their own. Like a pit at the bottom of a desert dune, the dust swirled and settled, before rising again.
There was something about them, though… Something haunting and terrifying that I couldn't place.
"Sevren," Caera whispered, one of her hands rising to her head and brushing against her horns, "what the hell is that? It feels… wrong. My horns hurt just staring at it."
"I don't know," I replied in turn, unnerved. "But it's not—"
My words were cut off as Naereni yelled in surprise, so loud that it nearly pierced my eardrums.
I whirled on instinct, my gun raised and my muscles tensed as I prepared to empty another magazine into whoever had intruded on this Zone.
But despite the commands I was sending to my body, I froze.
Naereni had apparently been poking at something on the couch with a graveice dagger. What I'd initially assumed was a mess of rumpled blankets and pillows had snapped back out at her like a viper's bite. The Rat was now nursing a reddening welt on her arm as her dagger clattered to the floor, her eyes darting from her skin and back to the couch in obvious fear. And as the bundle of cloth slowly unfurled like a snake shedding its skin, I felt the blood drain from my face.
A young woman rose like a ghastly specter from the blankets, silver hair in utter disarray. A black turtleneck hung loosely about the pale-skinned woman's body as she stretched her arms, groaning in obvious dissatisfaction. A book of some sort was clutched in one of her hands as she twisted about, trying to work through some sort of ache.
She didn't seem to mind that we all watched in stupefying fear. She only blinked blearily, pupils a terrible, terrible white as they coasted apathetically across the room, focusing on each and every one of us with an underlying, tired calculation.
Sweat beaded along my hands, my palms slick with fear. I couldn't move. I wanted to move. I needed to move. But some inborn instinct in me kept my finger from pulling the trigger as I stared at the demon unfurling from the couch. The same instinct that made me stop the Menagerie from attacking that asura in the sewers so many months ago clawed at my throat and lungs, holding me—and everyone else in the room—hostage to their whims.
I hadn't been able to sense it before, but the ambient mana itself… It coiled and writhed about us, testing and inspecting.
And this silver-haired asura… They had horns. Horns so brilliantly white that they appeared to be forged of solid moonlight, before being sculpted into place like a crown atop a woman of perfect marble.
Somewhere in the terror, my mind caught on those horns. The horns and the eyes. Because they were the wrong color, but… but they were familiar.
"Never wake me up with the tip of a dagger again," the woman said, her voice an exhausted slur. She pressed the book to her chest, blinking sleepily as she pinned Naereni with an admonishing look. "I'll only say it once, Miss Rat."
And the voice, too… The voice was familiar as well.
Fuck.
Scythe Seris Vritra swept sunken eyes over to me, a knowing smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "I've been waiting for you all for quite a while. It took you terribly long to arrive."