Retribution, p.22
Retribution, page 22
“Ellie told me about Rinia’s visions,” I said, using Realmheart and my own innate ability to see aetheric particles to track the magic’s flow through the artifact. “Has Gideon looked them over?”
Virion burst out with an indelicate snort. “Took one look at them and said he agreed with ‘the old bat’ and promised to vote against using them.”
Regis shifted, no longer pretending to be asleep as he ogled the artifact hungrily. ‘If we’re not going to do anything else with it, I could always absorb that aether. You know, deactivate it, for safety or whatever.’
Curious what would happen, I attempted to draw on the aether swarming the artifact. The artifact was exerting its own force on the aether particles, which flowed down the handle toward my hand only to waver and draw closer to the crystal again. Focusing, I pulled harder. The aether trembled, and the mana seemed to quake and ripple, small plumes of mana escaping the artifact and spraying out into the atmosphere.
If we take the aether, the artifact will break. With this much mana, the explosion might be pretty violent. Besides, I added thoughtfully, I’m not convinced yet that we can’t make use of these.
“They resist being placed into a dimension device of any kind,” Virion said, watching me with his brows creased, clearly confused about what I was doing. I realized that to him it must have looked like I was having a staring competition with the rod. “I don’t want to just cart them around, but I’m not sure what else to do with them.”
Twirling the artifact like a baton, I returned it to its case, closed and latched the lid, then imbued aether into my dimension rune.
The box vanished, drawn into the extradimensional storage space controlled by the rune on my forearm.
“But, how…?” Virion glanced at Bairon questioningly, but Bairon only shrugged.
“Here,” I said, reaching for the other two boxes. Bairon gave them up gladly. In a moment, they too were gone, and I could sense them within the extradimensional space, along with the items I’d collected in Alacrya.
I held up my forearm to show Virion the rune. “I have an original, not an old relic that’s been hacked apart ten times over. Must make a difference.”
Virion chuckled again, his brows rising all the way up into his hairline. “One of these days, I suppose I’ll stop being surprised by you, brat.”
“Let’s hope not, Gramps,” I said earnestly, then looked at Regis. “I think I’ve lain around long enough. Ready to get out of here?”
He yawned and stretched, sticking his rump up in the air like an actual puppy. “I’m ready to find a real source of aether, because I don’t relish the idea of being stuck like this for a week while we drip-feed off the atmosphere down here.”
With the Compass, I could return to the Relictombs at will, and mentally agreed that we should go replenish our aether reserves as soon as possible, but first I needed to check on Mom and Ellie.
After adding Valeska’s horn to my growing pile of artifacts within the dimension rune, I wished Virion and Bairon farewell, then made my way through the labyrinthine halls of the Earthborn Institute.
Regis stayed inside my body while we walked, hovering near the stump of my hand instead of my core. It eased the pain of the regrowing limb, but the healing was slow—at least, slow for me. I’d become so accustomed to losing entire limbs, it made me genuinely worry for my sanity. There was something distinctly inhuman about watching my hand regrowing in real time.
‘Are you really human anymore?’ Regis sent, knowing just what to say to further agitate me, as always.
I don’t know, I answered, then cast the thought aside as I approached the door to the rooms where my family was staying.
It opened as I reached it, and Ellie was half through it before she noticed me and jerked to a stop. Her face lit up, then her focus shifted to my hand. “Oh, Art, that looks…”
I took her by the chin and turned her face up toward mine. “I’m fine, El. I’ve healed from worse.”
She gave me a single decisive nod, then pulled back. “I was just coming to check on you, so you saved me a trip. Mom is asleep.” She continued talking as she turned and led me into the rooms. “She was awake for about thirty hours straight, and she put herself into backlash trying to heal you.” She flinched and looked into my eyes. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” I said, ruffling her hair like I’d done when she was little. It drove home how tall she was, how much she’d grown. And how much I’d missed.
“Arthur?” a wispy voice said from somewhere deeper in the suite. I heard feet hit the ground, and quick but uneven footsteps. Mom appeared in the hall, her hair disheveled and dark bags under her eyes.
Still, when she saw me, she smiled. “Oh, Art, I was so—”
Mom wobbled, her eyes losing focus. I was at her side in an instant, supporting her and leading her to the closest couch.
“I’m…fine,” she mumbled as I eased her down onto the soft cushions, but it was easy enough to tell she wasn’t.
Activating Realmheart, I looked more closely, seeing the mana particles moving in her body and sensing her core strength.
“Oh, you’re glowing,” she said, her eyes crossing as she tried and failed to focus on me.
She had clearly pushed herself way past the point of exhaustion. Her core was so strained that it was struggling to start processing mana again, leaving her in a fatigued delirium, not to mention the intense full-body ache she would have been feeling with such severe backlash.
I let Realmheart fade away again.
“You’ve got extreme backlash. You need to be more careful. You’re—”
“Lucky?” she said clumsily, cutting me off. “I do feel quite fortunate, you know. Not everyone gets—how many chances are we on now? Four? Five? Anyway, not everyone gets a second, second, second chance to make things right.”
I winced at the mention of the past.
The regrets that I had from telling my parents the truth about me, and the solace that I felt from finally coming clean…the emotions all came back, forming a knot in my throat that I forcefully swallowed down.
Giving Mom a somber smile, I pulled a loose blanket over her lap. “What do you mean? You made things right a long time ago, remember? After Dad died…”
She sobered, shaking her head and squeezing my hand weakly. “I may have said it, but I was never able to act on it. I never got to just…be your mom. But I want to be. I will be.” Her eyes fluttered closed, and she sank deeper into the couch. “I suppose that’s kind of what it must be like being you, huh? Like…being reborn. Trying again to make it right.”
I knew it was the delirium talking, but still, hearing her so casually and calmly mention my reincarnation made my insides squirm. “Yeah, maybe. We can only just…keep trying. To learn, and do better.”
Softly, the breathiness of her tone telling me she was drifting back to sleep, she said, “I made you some porridge, Arthur. I know it’ll take time, but…I hope you can slowly let me be your mom again.”
Turning toward the kitchen, I could just see the small round table, and on it, a wooden bowl with a spoon laid neatly beside it.
And suddenly, the armor of callousness and apathy I had donned in order to survive my time in the Relictombs and Alacrya crumbled.
My throat tightened, and my vision blurred.
A part of me resisted getting up and walking toward the table. With Agrona’s swift counterattack, I knew I couldn’t stay here much longer. I knew he would attack again, and I knew it would only be worse.
But I let my heavy legs drag me toward the bowl of porridge, barely noticing as Regis led my sister out of the room.
Slowly, I took up the spoon and took a mouthful of the cold, tasteless mash. As I did, I gave in to the weight of it all.
Tears spilled freely as I took bite after bite. Alone in this little kitchen, far away from anywhere I’d ever called home, I wept silently as I ate the first meal my mother had cooked for me in years.
395
PREPARATIONS
The scalding metal sizzled against bare bone, charring it black as the flesh around it melted. Water hissed as it hit the black iron, sending up a cloud of steam. I cursed and pulled back.
Ellie slapped my hand away from the pan heating on the stove. “Just let me do it already! Who mixes water and hot grease, anyway? Have you ever even cooked before?”
I dipped my fingers into the saucer of water I’d cooled the pan with and flicked several drops into her face as she struggled to flip the slab of meat I’d burned. “This coming from the girl who's been eating nothing but fish, rats, and mushrooms for the last how many months?”
Regis was sitting in the middle of the table, watching with interest, his nose twitching with every waft of meat-scented air. “You know, that looks pretty much irreparable. Just toss it over to me.”
Ellie dropped a handful of cut-up mushrooms in with the meat and grease, humming with irritation. “I can do more with rat and mushrooms than you can with the whole royal pantry, I bet.”
“I’m not sure that’s something to brag about,” I pointed out, laughing.
Ellie’s leg shot out and thumped against my thigh. I grabbed her ankle and yanked her leg out from under her, holding her upside down with her hair pooling on the tiles beneath her.
“Hey, not fair!” she shouted, swinging her arms as she tried futilely to land a punch.
The whisper of soft turnshoes on stone tiles drew my attention to the kitchen doorway.
“Good morning,” I said, waving with the hand suspending Ellie upside down so that my sister bobbed around like a rag doll. “It’s not much, but Ellie and I tried making some breakfast.”
“I tried making breakfast,” she grumped, her arms crossed. “Arthur was mostly just in the—ow!” she yelped as I let her tumble to the floor.
“Oh,” Ellie mumbled quietly. “Mom, what’s wrong?” It was then I realized there were quiet tears running down Mom’s cheeks.
“Huh? What do you—oh.” She wiped at her cheeks with the back of her long sleeves. “Why am I crying?” she asked herself with a laugh.
“I guess it’s just…waking up to something like this…it’s been a long time.”
I pulled out a chair for her, and she eased into it with a grateful tear-streaked smile. Her motions were still slightly sluggish, but her gaze was much steadier than it had been just the day before. Regis scooted back so that he was directly in front of her, and she began petting him behind the ears.
Ellie and I pushed and shoved at the stove, but in the end I let her claim victory and grabbed a handful of wooden plates and utensils to set the table. Ellie delivered stacks of slightly burned meat, eggs, mushrooms, steamed greens, red beans, and a coil of some kind of eel—caught from a nearby underground lake—that Ellie insisted was delicious, and together we filled up three plates.
Mom cut off a burned end from the slice of meat we’d given her and fed it to Regis, who took it right off her fork.
“He's going to keep asking for stuff like this if you spoil him, Mom,” I said around a mouthful.
She waved my words away. “Oh, it's fine. Don’t you think with everything he's done to help out around here, he's earned it?”
Regis’s oversized puppy eyes gleamed as he stared up at my mother like she’d just given him an award. “Would you believe this man never feeds me?”
“You get plenty of aether,” I mumbled as Mom held out half a mushroom.
Regis eyed it uncertainly, then said, “Maybe some more of that meat instead?”
Mom’s brows rose. “It’s important you eat a healthy, balanced diet, Regis,” she lightly scolded.
Regis blinked cartoonishly, then leaned forward and gingerly took the mushroom from her hand, chewing it with such clear dejection that Ellie took pity on him and tossed over a chunk of her eel, giggling when he pounced on it and swallowed it with a single bite.
Truly a magnificent sight to see from the very manifestation of Destruction, I thought.
“Anyway, how are you feeling this morning?” I asked Mom as I speared a chunk of my own eel, keeping my tone light but watching her carefully.
“So much better,” she said. Her bloodshot, tired eyes squinted in appreciation. “Thank you, Arthur, but you don’t have to worry about me. You have so much on your mind already.”
Ellie scoffed and opened her mouth, but paused when Mom shot her a look. My sister took a moment to finish chewing and swallowing, then said, “He let us think he was dead for months, didn’t he? Let him worry.”
My mother’s soft smile wavered, and I reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “I do have a lot on my mind. But you and Ellie are always at the top of that ever-growing pile.”
Mom’s eyes fell to her plate, but I still saw the moisture shining in them. Ellie watched her, a small frown on her mature features. I slid most of my burned meat over to Regis, who chewed loudly, oblivious to everything except the warm food in front of him, although I could feel how he thrilled at sharing a family meal with us through our mental connection.
We ate in silence for a while after that, but it wasn’t the kind of quiet that was awkward or tense. It was comfortable. Easy. Easier than it had been in a very long time, since the attack on Xyrus.
The thought that it felt like another life flashed through my mind, but I knew that wasn’t really true. I had lived another life on Earth, and then, in Alacrya, I had pretended to be someone I wasn’t, reviving a part of me that had died when I’d been reincarnated in Dicathen. I had needed Grey to survive there, and as much as I wanted to just be Arthur, living as Grey again had reminded me why I’d become him in the first place.
Until this war was over, truly over, I couldn’t let Grey go. Not yet.
“…thur?”
“Sorry?” I asked, realizing my mother had said something.
“I was just saying that I really should go check in at the medical center now that I’m feeling a bit better.” She looked slightly embarrassed as she nudged her half-full plate toward Regis. “There are only a couple of emitters in the whole city, and they were relying on me to be there. Besides, I’m sure you have your own business to attend to.”
Before I could respond, there was a gasp from Ellie. “Oh! That reminds me! I told Saria Triscan that I’d help relocate the elven refugees today. Most of them were temporarily housed on the lower levels, which were pretty badly damaged in the attack. We’re going to start moving them to more permanent places to stay,” she added by way of explanation as she pushed herself away from the table.
At the same time, there was a faint pop, and the sudden presence of a large furry body shoved the table aside, nearing knocking Regis to the floor.
“Boo!” Ellie said, exasperated. “I’m not freaking in danger! And I’ve said not to poof into the rooms!”
The guardian bear grumbled, and Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t blame me. You interrupted your own nap by being so overprotective.” The bear let out a humming grunt that shook the plates on the table, which were pressed against his side.
Mom squeezed around Boo, who was taking up a large percentage of the kitchen, but stopped to lean against the doorway arch and look at us all, smiling brightly. “I’ll see you both back home for dinner tonight, okay? I’ll cook.” Her smile faltered slightly, her brows knitting as her expression became apologetic. “Something hot this time.”
“Sounds amazing,” I said, giving her the warmest smile I could muster.
She returned it, waved, then vanished behind Boo’s bulk. I heard the suite door open and shut, then turned to Ellie. “Do you think she’s okay?”
Ellie was scratching Boo between the big mana beast’s eyes. “I haven’t seen her smile like that since Dad died.”
Without looking at me, she put her shoulder into Boo’s side and shoved. “Come on you big goof, we need to figure out how to squeeze you through the front door.” She stopped and threw a tentative look over her shoulder at me. “Do you…want to come with us? The refugees…they’ve had a hard time. Seeing you might make them feel better.”
I gave her an apologetic smile before shaking my head. “I would, El, but I have duties of my own to see to.” Things that need to be taken care of before I can leave, I almost added.
She rolled her eyes, but her smile was both good-natured and understanding. “Yeah, yeah, I know, there is so much saving the world to do right now, and only one big brother. Well…see you, then.”
Ellie slipped around Boo, who turned to inspect me thoughtfully, his face scrunched between his shoulder and the wall, before grunting and turning to follow her. He nearly overturned the table, and then had to squeeze to fit through first the kitchen doorway, then the front door into the Earthborn Institute’s sprawling series of interconnected tunnels.
My smile slipped away. I looked longingly around the suite, wishing I could stay for a while. The time with my family had been a much-needed reprieve from my duties, but time was against me, and there was still too much to do.
I’d spent most of the evening studying the empowering artifacts while my family had slept. The interplay between aether and mana around them was unlike anything I’d seen before, but it reminded me of the soul realm within the aether orb, where I’d trained with Kordri for so long. The artifacts didn’t contain an extra-dimensional space, but they weren’t simply containers for massive quantities of mana, either. It was almost like Kezess had drawn in and contained potential, and by using the artifacts, that potential was expended into a living being.
It was a difficult concept to wrap my head around, but I was only at the beginning stages of understanding. I needed to see the artifacts in use, but without activating whatever power Rinia had seen destroying the continent.
“So,” Regis said, interrupting my thoughts. I could sense his contentment with his belly full of home-cooked food. “Relictombs for a top off, then back to being the Triple Ds?”
“I…” I sputtered, rubbing a hand down my face, then turned to scowl at my companion. “What?”
