Toren Daen

Sevren set me down near the top of a nearby building. The searing pain in my core had only intensified the longer time went on, the sensation like the ramping increase of a blowtorch along my nerves. I fought off tears as I groaned, biting my tongue hard to avoid screaming. If I screamed now, I knew I’d attract all the undead in the area.

It was a constant battle to restrain myself. I was feeling slightly delirious from the pain, each movement coming in choppy spurts. Compared to what I felt from my core, the cut across my thigh was closer to a bee sting.

But I was still vaguely aware of my surroundings, even if my consciousness was iffy. The moment Sevren sat me down, I reluctantly forced my attention inward.

What I saw made my panic rise even higher. The runes scrawled across the outer layer of my core, which usually glowed the color of simmering coals, were so bright it hurt to even look at them. It felt like my core was being branded by these glyphs, each taking their time to scar the surface.

I sluggishly began to pull mana from my core. I still had a little over half my reserves available, and considering my core was solid yellow, I had a significant maximum capacity. The mana complied haltingly, slowly dispersing into my body as I’d done for months now.

But it wasn’t enough. That was in the nature of assimilation: you could not do it alone, no matter your skill. Just as a mage must learn to act in tandem with their Will, they must learn to accept the assistance of others.

“Do… do what I’m,” I tried to say, before groaning. Each inhale sent more ratcheting agony through my body. I tried to say ‘doing,’ but all that came out was a strangled moan.

Sevren seemed to understand what I was trying to say regardless. I felt his hands on my back, his mana streaming from his palms.

He recoiled almost instantly once his mana came in contact with my own.

“Merciful Vritra,” he cursed. “That… my mana felt like it burned. What-”

The mage seemed to realize I was slipping. He put his hands on my back again, and then restarted the process. His own mana hovered around my own, acting as a stabilizing force. My mana wanted to disperse; vanish into the atmosphere and break down into smaller particles.

It took all of my willpower to fight through the agony. It was as if I was trying to move a muscle that had been sent through a woodchipper. Every twitch and pull tugged on my consciousness deeper into the abyss. Every sharp rise in heat made my willpower falter, chipping away at it slowly like a chisel.

But as the hours wore on and the familiar process continued, the pain began to decrease. In turn, I was able to increase my output of mana. I slowly, agonizingly, pulled myself away from the brink. One day, I might succumb to such pain. But it was not today.

I recognize vaguely that my body was almost fully assimilated. Between the regular use of my Will speeding up the necessary processes and the utter mastery of Lady Dawn’s mana control, what had taken Arthur a couple of years was almost done in a matter of months.

When I finally opened my eyes, I was soaked through with sweat. My breathing was ragged, and despite the constant regeneration of mana from the feather floating in my core, I was nearing backlash so soon after suppressing the rising of the Phoenix Will.

I could still feel my Vritra blood. Like the will, it felt like its own semi-conscious… thing pulsing in my mind. Yet this one was dark. It was a shadow as much as my Will was light. It was hungry, but not for anything in particular. It just sought to break things down. Break anything down.

I could not afford to use my Acquire Phase again any time soon. If these two opposing forces met, I did not know which would triumph.

But I would lose.

Sevren slumped to the floor, lying sprawled out over the cold concrete. He didn’t look much better off than me. His teal eyes were blown wide, a glazed expression over them as he stared up at the ceiling.

“Thank you,” I said between gulps of air. “I would’ve… would’ve died without your help.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sevren said lamely. “Saved me from that titan thing. Evening the score.”

Without the searing pain from my core, the aching cut in my leg was a lot more noticeable. I looked down at the wound, my face twisting in concern.

It was not a clean wound. The zombie that had acted as the nexus of that titan had drawn Promise across my leg, and true to form, the deformed dagger did not leave a neat cut. It looked closer to the jagged tear of a beast’s jaws, making random divots into the flesh in a chunky manner.

I used what slivers of mana I had left in my core to prod at my dimension ring, withdrawing several items. A long, crescent needle, a spool of thread, and some of my spare bandages.

I took a deep breath, steadying my breathing. In the past few weeks of ascending, I’d built a large tolerance for pain as I relied on my healing factor.

But this was going to suck.

I held the curved surgical needle over my wound, clenched my teeth, and then drove it through. I grunted in pain as I drew the spool of thread through. Not willing to let myself think, I drew the needle through another part of my ragged thigh.

This wound needed suturing. Regardless of my healing factor, leaving such a gnarled wound exposed would only open me up to infection, worsening the damage and more. I needed to close it fast.

I worked quickly, ignoring the exhaustion in my arms. I’d done this plenty of times with Trelza, but I had never expected to stitch myself closed.

Never let your hands waver, the stern surgeon’s voice echoed foggily in my head. Never.

I drove the needle through my thigh one last time, pulling it up before beginning to tie it off. I looped the surgeon’s knot slowly, before severing the excess thread.

Sevren was still splayed out on the floor. When I wearily looked to the side, I noticed he had probably been watching the entire time.

“Do you just not feel pain?” he asked, his jaw slightly agape. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone perform surgery on themselves.”

I started gently wrapping my leg in the bandage, noting how it had already begun to look a little red. “Considering what I was going through just a few minutes ago, I’m surprised you even asked that.”

I looked down at my wound. Absently, I wondered when I’d last felt this weak. This drained of energy and power.

Not since Mardeth used me like a plaything. Thinking of the Vicar caused a surge of anger in my chest, but it was diluted by my exhaustion. I was worried that if I simply laid down, I’d fall asleep and never wake up.

Sevren’s mouth closed slowly. Then he smiled, an unfiltered thing on his untrimmed beard. His teeth were possibly whiter than his hair. “You really are the reason the Relictombs have been acting so strange. That power in your core… it burned me to even touch. My mana still feels warm. I never thought my mana could feel warm.”

I felt my shoulders slump. I was so tired. Tired of playing pretend. Tired of carrying the lives of all these people on my shoulders.

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And of course, I couldn’t keep a measly secret either, could I? I couldn’t even fight off this zone.

“You really think so?” I said sourly, looking at the ceiling. “What makes you think that?” I said, not really expecting an answer.

Sevren pulled himself up, slouching forward. He put a hand inside his ruffled teal cloak, then pulled something out. It looked like a gold pocket watch, except when the ascender flicked it open, the inside looked closer to a compass. Complex runes were scrawled on every surface inside, each flickering faintly.

But on the compass’s surface was something I didn’t expect. A bright, burning purple dot sputtered in and out in time with the runes.

Sevren oriented the compass away. When it shifted, the purple dot shifted in turn. It looked like it was tracking towards…

“That thing tracks me,” I said, my blood running cold. The implications rushed through my head immediately, drowning out all other thoughts. If any of the Sovereigns got their hands on it, I’d be unable to hide. I remembered Arthur’s sheer panic at the discovery of Caera. I thought I understood him then, just a little. “You’ve been using that to follow me somehow!”

“Not intentionally,” Sevren said, noticing my panic. He brought the flickering compass to his breast. To my surprise, a smaller pinprick of purple popped up. “This thing I made? It’s able to detect aether. It uses a combination of powdered djinn bone, some materials that are known to interact with aether, and…” The ascender shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. But everybody has a little bit of aether inside of them. I don’t know if you know what aether is, but-”

“I know what aether is,” I said, cutting across the man impatiently. “Just tell me!”

“Okay,” he said haltingly. “Well, this device is able to detect that. But I usually have to put it right up to a person’s chest. Except not with you. You have an absurd amount of aether inside of you for some reason. And I wanted to know why.”

I slumped forward, rubbing my head in my hands. If I was so easy to track, how long before somebody else figured this out? “That’s why you wanted to go on an ascent with me,” I whispered. “To see what effects I had on the tombs.”

Another thing occurred to me. It seemed impossible, but Arthur had never run into something that could so reliably detect aether, either. “You did track me here, didn’t you?” I said quietly. “I don’t know how. I thought it was a coincidence at first. Nobody’s ever been able to do it, but-”

A look at Sevren’s face told me all I needed to know.

“That card I gave you,” he said quietly after a moment. “It emits a signature that I’m able to follow. Not of mana. I can trace you through the zones you’ve already been through, as long as I’m only one zone behind.”

It happened before I was even consciously aware of it. My mind lashed out, my telekinetic emblem snatching Oath and Promise from the ground. My weapons lurched into the air, blurring around me in a poise to strike.

I lurched to my feet, stumbling as I put weight on my legs. My body trembled with each movement, unwilling to go through more abuse.

My weapons pointed themselves at Sevren Denoir. He didn’t move, staying slumped on the floor. His eyes were trained on my weapons, but he didn’t even react. After a moment, I realized I could barely sense any mana from him either.

He was just as exhausted as I was, if not more.

“What did you see?” I snarled, thinking of the zone that mimicked an American town. This was exactly what I was so terrified of: somebody realizing my secrets, and then handing me over to the Sovereigns to be picked apart. “Tell me!”

“You have a unique effect on this place,” Sevren said, not moving. It wasn’t so much that he was arrogant, just confident. “Something I’ve never seen before. Something I don’t understand. Don’t you wish to explore it? Find a way to use it?”

I laughed a raspy, broken laugh. “I’m the reason all these people are stuck in this zone,” I hissed. I thought of what the maddened djinn said. ‘They were making a trial for me,’ they said. And the strange lifeforce I saw, the constant usage of intent across the undead. I was more certain than ever this was because of me. “Alun is dead because of me. His wife died because of me. And who knows how many more! All this has done is prove why I refused to let you join me on an ascent in the first place!”

I didn’t even know if the Unblooded Party and the rest were still alive. I’d gotten the sense that the death of the flesh titan, and by extension what used to be Alun’s wife had negated that intelligence boost the undead had used to such a deadly degree. But I hadn’t seen the aftermath. For all I knew, all of them had been changed like Alun’s wife.

Sevren’s face took on a strange twist. “There has to be more to these tombs,” he said quietly. “There’s something our Sovereign isn’t telling us. And if we can figure that out, then.” He took a deep breath. “You care about these people, don’t you? If you could find a way to make the lives of others better, wouldn’t you? If the Vritra didn’t need to be such cruel masters?”

The way he said Vritra, with such open malice, took me aback. I’d never heard it said with such bitterness outside of Lady Dawn. And doing such a thing was dangerous. Even for a highblood.

Sevren looked at the floor. “And my sister wouldn’t need to be a pawn in the Vritra’s games,” he mumbled quietly.

I felt my control of my weapons slipping. His mention of his sister made something in me soften.

I turned away, looking at the wall. Anywhere but the man who had somehow tracked me here. The truth was, I did want to make the lives of Alacryans better. I wanted to see a semblance of Earthen generosity and kindness once more. But the longer I spent in this zone, the more I felt it was gone forever.

“You’ll fail in your quest to discover this tomb’s secrets,” I said with tired certainty. Sevren Denoir would die in the Relictombs, consumed so only his dagger and cloak remained. And Caera Denoir, Sevren’s sister, already knew well the horrors of the world; the truth given to her by her mentor. He would not become a part of that social change he desired so deeply. “You can’t change this world. Can’t make it any better, no matter how you try.”

“Are you telling me that?” I heard Sevren ask. “Or yourself?”

I turned around, looking down at the man who had saved my life not ten minutes ago. And even before that, I would have died to what was left of Alun’s wife if it weren’t for his intervention.

A deep, brutal part of myself whispered it would be wiser to simply kill the man. Nobody would be able to trace it back to me, and the others would simply assume he’d been claimed by the Tombs.

But his offhanded, seemingly thoughtless comment a moment earlier continued to ring through my head.

“And my sister wouldn’t need to be a pawn in the Vritra’s games.”

I’d reasserted a vow at Norgan’s grave, hadn’t I? To try and make this world a bit better? I looked at Promise, the warped metal proof of my current weakness. Would I let another promise be lost so quickly?

My weapons shakily sheathed themselves into their scabbards. I fell slowly to the floor, the effort of putting weight on my injured leg too much to bear.

“I wasn’t supposed to ascend alone,” I said after a tense moment. “My brother was supposed to join me. But he was taken from me for an act of selflessness.”

I thought of the reasons for Kaelan Joan’s brutal butchery of my only brother. It was for saving Duena from Lawris Joan’s beating. Simply protecting a middle-aged woman from abuse resulted in death. And the system protected her. There were no repercussions for Kaelan’s murder of my brother under broad daylight.

Sevren gave me a sympathetic look, still slumped on the floor. “This world just takes and takes, doesn’t it?”

I sighed. “Does anybody else have a way of tracking me through the Relictombs?”

Sevren shook his head. “No,” he said. “What I made here was loosely based on simulets and my own research. I haven’t given it out to anyone.”

I blinked, refocusing on the Denoir heir. As I thought about it more, the implications of such a device began to mount in my head. “Nobody?” I queried again. “Not even your Scythe?”

Sevren’s face took on a repressed sneer. “No. It's my own invention.”

With one hand, I reached into my pocket, retrieving the metal card containing the Denoir’s contact information. The possibilities for this technology were far, far greater than just tracking me through the Relictombs. If a man put this card down in a zone and then went through the Relictombs again, he’d be able to reliably enter the same zone twice.

“You could revolutionize exploration of the Relictombs,” I said quietly. “Make charted, predictable paths. And this incredible technology… you didn’t present it to your Scythe?”

Sevren’s face became more guarded. “This was a prototype. There’s no reason to bring it up to my Scythe yet. Not until I have reliable tests, of course,” he said a bit defensively.

I looked into his teal eyes, seeing the lie for what it was. This man never intended to present this technology to his Scythe at all.

I chuckled slightly. If Sevren withheld such revolutionary technology from the Vritra, not even his highblood status would protect him. It was like keeping critical information secret during a military operation. Tantamount to treason.

Again, I thought of Arthur’s first meeting with Caera. The Vritra-blooded Lady Denoir was right about one thing: if you couldn’t trust somebody, mutually assured destruction was a close second.

I stowed the metal card back into my pocket.

“What?” Sevren Denoir said, raising a pure white brow. “Not going to destroy the bug I planted on you?”

“I’m not,” I said, resting my head against the back of the wall. “Because if you tell anyone about what you’ve seen regarding me, I’ll show them this card and what it might mean.”

Sevren sighed, standing slowly. He plodded over to me, looking down at my prone form for a moment. Then he held out his hand. “You have my word that I’ll keep my silence,” he said.

After a moment of deliberation, I reached my hand out, clasping his own and hauling myself to my feet. My leg immediately buckled, but thankfully, Sevren was there to support me. He spared a glance down at my leg. “Are you sure you can walk?”

I huffed. “Just move,” I said, tired.

Sevren rolled his eyes, but soon we were making our way through the building, hopefully toward our companions.

I hoped they were safe.