Cobalt did her best to manage her roiling emotions. It would do no good to her image if she lost control of them, if she let slip the tumultuous nightmare that were her feelings around her father, and to hurt her own image was of course to hurt the Sects. Because she was of the Sect, she was at its beating heart, and she was reminded at every step what that meant for her. Still she did not manage to resist the urge to let out a sliver of her spite towards her father in the form of an angry glare, if he had realised or cared he had shown it neither in his voice nor his actions, but this small act of rebellion did salve her sour mood some. A salve that was quickly washed away by the disruptive not-quite noise of a psychic message.
Cobalt! Come quickly to the hidden cave system. There is something urgent we need to discuss. The frantic foreign thoughts of Magni jabbed between the thoughts racing through her already messy head, nearly causing her to trip over on the spot.
This better be fucking important. She growled in her head, or at least she thought very hard about growling.
Just come quickly… I don’t think I should explain all this alone… Magni’s response ringed in her brain. She had to admit, that was a worrying thing to say.
Fine i’ll be on my way. She replied finally, resisting the urge to put in a mental sigh.
Telepathic communications were admittedly useful, but they were in her honest opinion pretty hard to get used to still even after growing up around psychics all her life. She was never one for this psychic dox-shit, and to be truthful never quite picked up on how any of it worked besides the most rudimentary of defensive techniques and the fundamentals of feeding her Si into formations.
Another thing so terribly like her father…
Shaking aside that particular thought she turned around to race across the Sect, dodging guests and celebrating champions of the first round alike. The air cracked as she sped up once less squishy mortals were around to get caught in the thundercrack of her footsteps before she slid over to a tiny crack in the wall. One that remained by virtue of being an insignificant part of an underused hallway of the Sect which really led to nothing in particular. Beneath notice, beneath care.
In a way that was what she wanted for herself wasn’t it? Free from the shackles of duty and free to be well… even useless was good as long as it was her…
Shaking aside the traitorous thoughts she stepped past the threshold, guiding herself through the pitch black with inhuman senses and years of experience. Finally she finds herself with the men, well in truth boys, of the hour. Magni was poking at the various eyes lining John’s arm, and her curiosity as well as worry piqued as the eyes seemed to blink in response to the stimulus. She wasn’t always paying attention to the Aurelium boy’s freaky Relic to be completely honest, but she didn’t think she had ever seen it blink by itself before. A new mutation? So soon?
“What’s going on with John?” She asked, keeping her voice impressively neutral for all the strangeness of the scenario.
“Well, that’s what we have been trying to figure out. See, you probably can’t notice, but it spoke.” Magni answered, uncharacteristically straightforward, the situation was really serious then.
“Spoke? What do you mean spoke?” She asked, equal parts cautious and intrigued.
“Like a person it did, not like a machine or one of them ‘primitive intelligences’ mentioned in the old dusty books of the Sect, but something with a mind of its own…” Magni explained, not letting his eyes off the arm. Given the glare of a dozen eyes illuminated by the purple light of the geode towards the arm and the nervous look on John’s face she picked up there was likely a second conversation she wasn’t privy to.
“There’s no need to be so concerned really. This isn’t that much of a difference from back bef-” John hastily tried to defend his… thing… before being cut off by Magni’s irritated growl.
“The fact you don’t see anything wrong with this… forget it, I wanted an extra opinion for a reason. What do you think Cobalt?”
“Ah, it is concerning… so you want me to tear it out then?” She offered.
“WHAT! NO! YOU AREN’T TEARING OUT MY ARM!” John screamed, pulling the metallic limb close and hissing.
Magni sighed in defeat. “Trust me, the psychic signatures of both of them are too intertwined to suggest removal will be anywhere that easy. In fact, as far as I know taking it off will probably kill John as is.”
She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “What do you expect me to do then?”
John’s glare told her that he likely had this conversation before.
“I wanted to bring this to the Elders if anyone honestly.” John spoke up. “But with your father around…”
“No need to remind me.” Cobalt sneered, lip quivering more than she would like.
“-But we trust you Cobalt, if anyone would know more about this than us it would be well, a Core Disciple like you. And if you don’t have any ideas then that’s alright, I agree with Magni that if anyone other than Alexander and him would have the ability and the goodwill to help us figure this out it would be you.” John continued, unheeding of Cobalt’s little interjection, a wide, goofy smile on his face.
He doesn’t pick up on how Cobalt’s gut twists at the declaration of trust divorced from her expectations and titles. Something that spoke of a trust in Cobalt not the Phagos heir. Magni probably did but he stays silent, something tells her however he only brought her here because he felt a similar way. An ugly, unfamiliar emotion bubbles its way to the surface as she thinks of her father’s ultimatum and she chokes it out in her mind before it could reach the top.
“I’ll do my best…”
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Shortly after the meeting in the cave Cobalt found herself stopped in the middle of one of the twisting hallways criss-crossing the stony interior of the Sect by a familiar titanic psychic presence. Turning around she saw Cinnabar in all her glory scuttling around on a hundred legs, with a serene yet distinctly serious expression on her otherwise pristine face.
“Hello Cobalt, had a good time in the cave today?” She asked innocently, and Cobalt’s usually red hot blood turned to ice in her veins.
“I- you knew? F- how long-” She stammered, taken uncharacteristically off guard.
Aunt Cinnabar laughed a rather undignified snort, face splitting in two revealing briefly her true maw thrumming with psychic energy visible even to one as blind to it as Cobalt. “Your father only doesn’t know of that little hole because he barely spends time in his own Sect! Aurelium and I are not so blind, but such candid entrances serve their purposes while we allow them to remain… and raise fewer questions than a secret door. Rest assured however you are not in trouble, I just have something I need to discuss further with you in private. Is that alright dear?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Feeling her usually smooth chalk-white skin grow mottled and red with embarrassment she nodded along and followed closely behind the closest thing to true family she had in the Sect.
Soon they entered a currently unoccupied meeting room carved into the stone cliff-face of the hill and she felt a pop in her ears as Aunt Cinnabar sealed the heavy fungus-wood door behind her with a flippant demonstration of what Magni would likely consider an incredibly inefficient waste of psychic energy just to lock a door. Cinnabar gestured for her to take a seat at the long stone table and began to speak.
“I understand your fool of a father has taken it upon himself to drag you off to war personally after the Tournament?” Cinnabar asked, though it wasn’t much of a question. Still Cobalt nodded silently and prompted a deep sigh from the senior cultivator.
“And naturally he didn’t deign to consult the rest of us- Spirits of the Founding Fathers if he weren’t so stupidly powerful I would choke him myself!” Cinnabar huffed before continuing. “I would have liked to leave this talk for later, but given you will be rather occupied soon either training for the tournament or dealing with Agammemnon’s clumsy attempts at family bonding I suppose there is no better time than now. How much have you explored the caves under the Sect?”
Turning her head in confusion Cobalt answered hesitantly. “Not much, but I know one tunnel goes all the way to Greywater Quarry.”
Cinnabar nodded and extracted a small device from her pocket, a piece of reverse engineered Relic known as a remote used for interfacing with specific Relics from a distance if memory served correctly. She pressed a button and the stone wall opposite her opened up revealing an illuminated map of a truly sprawling network of underground caverns, tunnels and waterways. Pointing towards several key sites she explained. “This is the true extent of the Lead Caves. A natural cave system first expanded by our ancestors to hold caches of Si rich waste for fuelling their bygone wonders, the vast majority having been long since used up, extracted under the rule of the Khan or the era of the Empire and sometimes simply sealed up and lost to time.”
“And why is this important?” Cobalt asked, perhaps less respectfully than she could have.
Cinnabar pressed a button and the projected image panned down revealing a truly massive water basin… and beneath it a massive complex of strange shapes that honed instincts recognised as one thing. “Is that a ruin deep beneath our Sect?”
“Astute observation Cobalt, indeed it is, and it is one of the reasons why we hold such favour in the Empire. Very few know of its existence, even those who know of the caves tend not to discover it as only the foolhardy would risk diving into a seemingly mundane underground river for no reason. Indeed my own father only discovered this by accident, a few months before I was officially adopted. Slipping into the water while on an expedition and coming across this…”
Several more images appeared of a surprisingly pristine complex of shining steel, long since fallen into disrepair, but still echoing a glory long since lost to time. One of the pictures that caught her eye was a massive archway of black metal and obsidian, carved with strange eldritch runes which hurt her eyes to look at even through the picture. “This is the true secret of the Lead Cave, a cache of ancient Relics none understand, certainly not us. I actually got my inspiration for my teleportation formation here, having spent a week examining the runes on the arch… nearly killed me but it did accelerate my cultivation significantly. Whatever it was truly meant for however is a secret the Ancients took to the grave…”
Cobalt fought to push air into her lungs. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“When I was off fighting the Machines on the Eastern Front we found some very interesting data in one of the biggest machines I helped put down. The machines are after specific pieces of technology apparently, esoteric secrets which can alter the very balance of the world… and of course one of them happens to be right beneath our feet.” Cinnabar explained gravely. “We have been keeping this secret for a long time now, but given the circumstances now I believe it is time for the Lead Cave to finally make a choice. Let it out for all the world to know so that we may find someone capable of understanding it before the metal bastards do… or destroy this doubtless priceless cache of ancient knowledge before the Machines get to it. Naturally I would prefer the former and am drafting an announcement to be made at the end of the Tournament, but as my protege I think you deserve to know as well the secrets you are involved in.”
Suddenly nothing else mattered as Cobalt’s mind zoomed into the last sentence. “You think I am your protege?”
Cinnabar nodded with a small smile. “I was never one for getting a kid of my own, but I like to think I have been in your life much more than that idiot Agamemnon. I was mad at him for dragging you off to bully the southerners without so much as a word in advance, and I managed to negotiate a deal. After you get back I will take a position as your official mentor. There are many similar sites to what is buried beneath our feet across the continent, some already on the precipice of being claimed by the Machines, and if you agree to this I will have you ready for whatever trials surely wait ahead.”
Suppressing her emotions as best she could, Cobalt let out the slight smile befitting of a Sect Heir, and then practically jumped on her aunt in a deep hug. She knew of course the gravity of the situation, it was just that wasn’t the thing that mattered most to her at this moment. Perhaps there was a light at the end of the tunnel after all.
She would not let Aunt Cinnabar down, she would prove her judgement correct. This year she was actually going to try for the pinnacle of the tournament, the Golden Tempest Badge.
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“Cobalt seems to have missed dinner today, though I suppose I could do without the crowds as well.” John noted, taking a bite of the succulent roasted meat being served to contestants in the bustling Sect cafeteria. He could spot a few of the failed Aspirants from his Trials balancing what would probably be nigh ridiculous loads of plates and cutlery back and forth from the kitchens, and felt no small amount of pity. Sure all of them chose to do this for a chance at being accepted into the next set of Trials but usually the place was only ever a third as busy at its fullest, he was feeling tired just looking at them running around even with his superior cultivation.
Magni nodded silently but his eyes didn’t leave the opposite corner of the room. A corner John found disturbingly he could only remember was occupied by a person, but not by who. Some sort of psychic bullshit he guessed.
[DATA CORRUPTION DETECTED IN PRIMARY DATA CORE, VISUAL COGNITOHAZARD LIKELY CULPRIT. PLEASE CONSIDER AVERTING YOUR EYES BEFORE SIGNIFICANT NEURAL DAMAGE MAY BE INFLICTED.] The completely not reassuring voice of ARTOS rang in his skull, prompting him to jerk his eyes back and focus on Magni again.
With no small amount of concern he asked his many eyed friend. “You alright dude? I understand why you are nervous about my arm and… uh… that… but you have hardly touched your food and while Inner Disciples and above won’t start their second round until the day after tomorrow I don’t think this time is a good time to make bad habits.”
Sneering and adjusting his blindfold Magni replied. “Oh so you are allowed to make bad choices all the time but it becomes a problem when others do it…”
John tried to put in a rebuttal but decided against it, instead opting to huff to himself and turn his focus towards the food. Fine by him if Magni didn’t want any help, that was his problem.
[MAGNI’S STATEMENT IS NOT ENTIRELY UNWARRANTED.] ARTOS chimed in.
“Ah fuck off traitor.” He said out loud, slapping the metal plates of his arm with a dull clunk.
Continuing his meal mostly in silence now his enhanced hearing picked up on some of the background conversations as his mind drifted.
“I hear the south has gotten real quiet lately.” A Greenhouse Outer Disciple said to a Wolf Creek girl of a similar rank.
“New warlord focusing his war to that side of the border is fine by me.” The Screeching Swarm pelt clad girl responded between bites of roasted tuber.
Regardless the boy continued, gesticulating his arms with dramatic flair. “They say he rides a real Dragon! I thought those were only myth! And he has already conquered and united all the major tribes in the South besides the warlord states right at the border… who's to say he isn’t coming for us next like the Red Star did too!”
“Ya should find a better crowd than drunkards and street theatre orphans. Everyone says any new warlord who conquers more than one city is the next coming of the Red Star, and besides Dragons aren’t even real. Musta been some big scaly spirit beast that scared the barbarians into thinking nonsense!” The girl concluded.
His mind found itself drifting towards the warning left behind by the Capitana of the Toro Rojo and suddenly he felt his appetite leave. Quickly finishing off the rest of his plate, wasting food was more taboo than cannibalism for those who lived through the Great Famine, he fought the urge to eavesdrop more and instead on the calming cycling of burning Si through his meridians.