I instinctually froze, pinned from the almost physical force of Honoka’s fury. I felt like a small animal trapped beneath the gaze of an angry tiger, keeping still to try and escape their attention. I turned my head slightly to look at the door I had just come through and considered just bolting for it.
Honoka didn’t like that.
The older woman snarled and lifted one finger to point at said door. A bolt of white-hot flame lashed out and impacted the bronze handle, instantly melting into an unmovable mass of molten metal.
Before I could even speak, Honoka crossed the distance between us in an eye blink. She grabbed the collar of my shirt and yanked me down to eye level with her own comparatively shorter height, Tlazo’s staff clutched tightly in her left hand.
“Don’t even think about it,” She whispered in my face furiously. “First you fail to protect Sylvia, and now you think you can get away from me? Think again. Now answer my question. Where. Did. You. Get. That. Staff?”
I tensed then, anger growing in me myself. I roughly shoved myself away from the woman, my core a bit surprised that I was allowed to by the much stronger woman. “I didn’t fail anything,” I spat at Honoka, stalking around the woman to get some distance between us. “There was more, much more going on here than anyone knew about. If you’re so fucking angry about Sylvia, then where were you, Honoka?”
Honoka sneered at me. “Watch your tone, you little shit,” She warned me. “I was busy dealing with the largest monster surge this planet has ever seen. We trusted you to look after Sylvia, and now look at her!” She flung one hand in the direction that Sylvia was lying comatose on a bed, almost looking like she was sleeping peacefully. “She’s never been this hurt in her life! I don’t even know what to do to fix this! She’s not like you and me, and someone,” She said with a sharp glare. “Incorporated foreign material into her form! You’d better hope Grey can fix this, Hart. Or you’ll regret it.”
I grit my teeth, my rage surging out of control with the loss of my middle ring. I slammed one hand down on the surface of a nearby table, barely caring when it splintered in half from the blow. Honoka didn’t even flinch from the crashing of the table onto the floor. “I did that to save her life, you old bitch!” I shouted at her, shaking in rage. I held up my pointer finger and thumb at Honoka, nearly pinched closed. “She was inches from death! I had to make a call on how to keep Sylvia alive because nobody else could! Grey wasn’t there! You weren’t there! I was! You’d think a goddamned Healer would understand how triage works, but apparently not!” I clenched my hands into fists tightly enough that I felt my flesh knuckles pop from the strain. “I had to give my arm to do it, Honoka. My arm. You know, the one that was already made from a dead Sculped in the first place?!”
That finally seemed to pierce Honoka’s rage, as I saw the older woman close her eyes and take a deep breath. She opened them and gave me a short, jerky nod. “Fine. Fine. We’ll…talk about what we can do for Sylvia later,” She said reluctantly, before glaring at me again. Her eyes lingered on my newer arm, almost looking puzzled for a moment, but she didn't comment on it. “But that doesn’t answer my original question. Where did that staff come from? I know the Mana coming from it as well as I do Grey’s. But that man is dead.”
I spent a few moments trying to calm down from the unexpected accusations that Honoka had levied my way. I almost wanted to weep in frustration at how much I missed my middle ring right about now. You truly never knew what you had, until it was taken away. “It was from a dead man,” I said wearily, already sick both mentally and physically from the day. I swear, it felt like I might have caught something from the exertions over the last few days. “He called himself Tlazo-” I mentally fumbled for a minute, trying to remember the full fake name that the Lich had given us those weeks ago. I eventually gave up and just went with the name that Anima had referred to him as. “But I think his real name was Rafael. At least, that’s what I heard a Spirit refer to him as. He was a Lich that had taken up residence underneath Tlatec.”
Honoka deflated then, in a way that I had never seen from the powerful woman. She staggered her way back over to the chair I had seen her sitting in when I entered the room and flopped into it. She gently set the staff down on her legs and gazed down at it mournfully for a moment. “A Lich, then,” She whispered almost brokenly. Slowly, she brought her hands up to face and buried it into them, hiding it from sight. Her shoulders started to shake, but I heard nothing from her.
I sighed, my own anger and rage evaporating away from Honoka’s obvious distress. Tiredly, I grabbed a nearby chair and dragged it to rest next to the sitting woman, right in front of Sylvia’s bed. I slumped into it, making sure not to look at the softly weeping form of a woman magnitudes more powerful than I was. I stirred after a moment, wincing from the roiling of my stomach. “He said he was an old ‘colleague’ of yours and Grey’s,” I said quietly. “But I’m guessing there’s more going on here.”
That seemed to snap Honoka out of her misery, as I heard the woman snort into her palms and then raise her snot-covered face. Wordlessly, I grabbed a nearby rag from a bedside table filled with various medical supplies and handed it to her. She took it without a word of thanks and scrubbed furiously at her face, and when she was done, just tossed it into the nearby fireplace. “Colleagues my bony ass,” She finally said, bitterness heavy in her voice. “That man was our comrade for centuries. Myself, Greycton, Rafael, and a Gnoll by the name of Arlock. Arlock died some years ago from Core Collapse, and Rafael…” She was quiet for a moment, before getting up from her chair and starting to pace. The staff that had instigated this whole thing was sent clattering to the floor, as Honoka grit her teeth. “I was there when he died, gods dammnit. How is he back?”
I eyed Honoka as she tried to wear a hole in the singed floorboards of the room. “How did he die?”
Honoka cut her reddened eyes my way but didn’t stop her pacing. “It was an expedition that went wrong into the high Aether zones of Indiqua,” She said shortly. “This was back in the days that our little band was still chasing Paragon. But we got in over our heads, and Rafael paid the price for it. We…tried to retreat, but he succumbed to his wounds despite my best efforts. It just gets so hard to Heal someone in our level range. We’re barely flesh and blood anymore.” She started to breathe heavily. “I don’t…understand how he can be a Lich right now. Unless…” Honoka went still then, coming to a stop. In fact, she was completely motionless, not even looking to be breathing.
I waited a moment and then spoke up when it looked like she wasn’t. “Unless…?”
Honoka stirred then but didn’t look at me. “Unless he had already decided to become a Lich back then,” She said quietly. “He just…wasn’t the same, after the death of our daughter.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
I lurched forward at that, incredibly startled. I nearly fell out of my chair. “Wait, what?” I said in shock. “Your daughter?!”
Honoka finally turned to face me then. She had a mirthless smile across her thin lips. The older woman gave me a short, sharp nod. “Oh yes,” She said, old, old grief evident in her voice. “I don’t expect you to know, but…Rafael was my husband. For a long, long time.”
I gaped at Honoka for a moment, forgetting myself in my shock. “But…but, you and Grey…” I said in confusion, before abruptly shutting up when Honoka actually started laughing at me.
She shook her head then, her chuckles dying off. “You and everyone else thinks that these days, but it never happened. Well, not seriously,” She amended. “There was a short, girl-hood fling that happened before you were a sparkle in your great-grandfather’s eye. It never went anywhere, once he became enamored with the moon. Instead…it became about me and Rafael. I won’t bore you with the details, plus it’s none of your damned business,” She said with a sharp look. I held up my hands in surrender before Honoka continued. “But yes, I was married for…a long time. We had our problems, but more importantly, we had our daughter to hold us together.”
“I’ve never heard anything about this,” I said quietly. “Honoka…I’m sorry, I had no idea.”
Honoka rolled her eyes at me, softening. “Of course you don’t. You’re not even from this planet, Hart. Let me tell you something. If you’re interested in starting a family one day, you’d better do it when you’re young and weak. It becomes a flat-out impossibility once you get up there in levels. The organs you need to do it….well. Let’s just say they stop working, the more powerful you get. Because of that, Rafael and I…we only had the one. Our little miracle child. And then we lost her.” She finished bitterly, walking back over and slumping into her chair next to me. “She was…wonderful. She was becoming a real mover and shaker, a true classer. She wasn’t exactly young when we lost her, you know. She was well into her third century at the time and then…gone. She got cocky and wandered into the wrong nest and that was it. The fate of a true classer. Lost to dumb mistakes.”
The bitterness in her voice was deep enough to curdle milk.
Well, if there had been any in the room with us.
I was tempted to lay a hand on her shoulder in comfort, but then I remembered how she had accused me of failing Sylvia. I…understood now, intellectually, that there had been more about that than she was letting on. But I was still a bit bitter about it.
I stayed my hand.
I wasn’t perfect.
I don’t think she noticed as she continued talking, staring off into space. “She died some hundred and fifteen years ago,” She said, almost absentmindedly. I’m not sure she was even talking to me anymore, more than herself. “It…broke Raffy. It broke us, really. We weren’t the same after that, and the both of us threw ourselves into our work in response. It was Grey and Arlock that tried to keep us together more than we did, which is where the expedition came in,” She finally remembered I existed, looking at me from the corner of one orange eye. “If you’re right, and your ‘Tlazo’ is what remains of my husband…then maybe he was planning to die on that expedition. He’d talked about the mechanics of it, you know. Years before losing our daughter, he told me that he knew how to transform himself into a Lich. He just wasn’t interested…at the time.” She sighed then, picked up the staff she had sent clattering to the ground. She rolled the wood of the staff around in her hands, gazing into the amber crystal. When she spoke again, her voice was cracking from long-suppressed grief. “That bastard…how dare he leave me alone like that…”
The room fell into silence once again. I didn’t want to break it, but I did feel an obligation to continue my story. I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “Well…he was dispersed by Rhazal-The Calamity,” I corrected myself, doubting she knew that asshole’s name. “I…briefly spoke to him in the Concord through that staff, and he said he’d be back in a few years. So…he’s not really gone. Just…sort-of.”
Honoka looked up at me, startled out of her grief. She had an incredibly confused look on her face. “The Concord? What the hell were you doing in there? How were you in there?” She asked me, baffled. She abruptly shook her head. “Oh, whatever. You’d better start from the beginning, Hart. Fill me in.”
And that’s what I did.
For the next half an hour, I talked endlessly.
About how the campaign in Elderwyck had been doing.
About the assault on the warehouse HQ by Longstripe.
About Nerexxa, and Rhazal.
And how they’d been killed.
I tried to include every detail about Tla-Rafael that I could, but there wasn’t much I could say. The Lich hadn’t exactly been talkative about himself.
“…I kind of think his phylactery isn’t here in Elderwyck,” I finished, voicing a suspicion that had been lurking in the back of my mind. “He never said anything about coming back here, while I was in the Concord. It makes sense that he would have stored it somewhere safe away from where he could have been in danger. Even if he had a contract with the Empire, better to be safe than sorry for an immortal bone man.”
Honoka sighed but nodded. “Yes…that sounds like him,” She said tiredly. “I have…suspicions about where he could have stored the damn thing. But, they’ll have to wait until he manifests once again. And I’m going to have questions for that bastard,” She said, glowering down at the amber head of the staff. It might just be my imagination, but I swear I saw a brief green glow in the core of it. Honoka snorted in disgust, before abruptly shoving the staff into my chest. I instinctually took it before looking up at her in startlement. She smiled slightly at my confusion and shook her head. “I don’t want the damn thing. If Raffy entrusted it to you, then you can keep it.”
I blinked. “Uh…he didn’t exactly say I could keep the staff, you know,” I pointed out.
Honoka scowled off into space. “Well, I’m the man’s wife, and I say you can. If that asshole has anything to say about it, then he can damn well speak up about it.”
The both of us looked at the staff for a moment, almost expecting the Liche’s dry voice to come echoing out of the crystal.
Nothing.
Well, alright then.
New weapon acquired, I suppose.
Honoka sighed then, and then looked at me closely for a moment. I resisted the urge to fidget under her assessing gaze. “Well, one good thing happened from this shitshow, at the very least,” She finally said. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re more than ready to break past the first barrier. You’re definitely at least level one hundred.”
I sat bolt upright in my chair at that, having completely forgotten about even checking my gains with…everything.
Honoka cracked a small smile. “Don’t tell me you’re surprised,” She said, almost teasingly. “You killed a damned Calamity after all. That’s worth more than a few levels. Go on. Go ahead and check.”
I smiled back at her. “Ah…yeah, sure. Just give me a second.” I said, leaning my new staff against the bed Sylvia was resting on.
I then focused on Hidden Amidst the Spheres, pulling up my Status. Something felt…off for a moment, but the mental blue box popped up all the same.
You have gained 31 levels! You are now level 100 (122)-
That was as far as I was able to read before something welled up inside of me.
I abruptly stood up from my chair, my eyes widening as I hunched over, clutching my stomach in pain. My breaths started to come in short, sharp gasps as I tried to process what I was feeling.
It was like the entirety of my being was suddenly on fire. A greasy, smoky feeling was threading its way through something intrinsic to me. The sickness and queasiness which had been lingering since I had woken up in Renauld’s clinic had reached a flaring peak, and now I couldn’t focus on anything else. Dimly I was aware that Honoka was trying to say something to me, but I couldn’t even parse the words.
I slumped to my knees, letting out a short, weak scream of agony as I did so.
It was too much.
And then everything...
Broke.