~March 5th, 140 AH~
~The Caverns, Living Quarters~
As Zelen’s consciousness rejoined the physical world, his headache stayed behind in his dream. He opened his eyes and was met by darkness, broken up by the faint glow of a lamp that trickled in from the hallway.
He couldn’t tell if it was day or night. This was the one aspect of Cavern life that he found hardest to acclimate to. He had enough trouble separating himself from his dreams as it was, without having to stumble his way over the borders of yesterday and today.
He sat at the edge of his cot for some time, until his senses attuned to the rhythm of a new day. Shouts and thuds echoed from the dimly lit hallway that served as his conduit to the outside world. Members of the Apfel Alliance were already up and about. Yet no one had come to wake him.
He’d slept in again. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. Not since his half-remembered days as a fledgling proto-Reiter had he spent so much time thinking about and craving sleep. Despite that, he rarely felt well-rested.
This ‘morning’ was no exception. Even after he confirmed that the time was long past for him to begin his day, Zelen continued to sit on his cot. It wasn’t so much inertia that kept him rooted to the spot. Rather, it was a sense of displacement—the illusion that he’d yet to fully occupy his own body.
In his half-remembered dream, he’d been an old man. Older than anyone he’d met in Akropolis. That old man had also spent most of his waking hours inside the cockpit of an Eidolon. That old man had also been in search of something. In search of the same thing Zelen himself was looking for.
He just couldn’t remember what it was.
Hesitant footsteps echoed from the hallway and grew louder. The sound stopped, followed by a beat of silence, followed by an equally hesitant voice.
“Zelen?”
The voice immediately filled Zelen with alertness and drew him back into the present. Back into himself. Was this it? Was this what both he and the old man in his dreams so desperately sought, so much so that they’d scour every corner of the planet to find it?
Yet, with alertness came the realization that the voice belonged to Asena Shiranui. And that realization was accompanied by a pang of disappointment.
He took a moment to collect himself before answering, “Yes?”
“Oh, good, you’re up.” Asena’s disembodied voice filtered through the open doorway. “I… just needed to pass on a message. Akash would like a word with you as soon as you’re able. You can find him in the armoury.”
Zelen waited. Asena hesitated.
“Zelen? Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll head down shortly.”
Another moment of hesitation, then the footsteps resumed their march, quickly gaining in confidence and purpose as they faded away from the hallway.
Oddly enough, Asena’s departure produced in Zelen another pang of disappointment, though somewhat duller than the first one. By now, he was alert and self-aware enough to recognize the ludicrousness of his own seesawing emotions. It was bad enough that he had trouble telling dream from reality and night from day. The last thing he needed was to confuse lies with truths.
At last, he got up from his cot and reached for his clothes: the black-on-white fatigues of the Apfel Alliance. The time was long past for him to join the world of the living and make himself useful.
The armoury bustled with activity, giving form to the noises that Zelen had heard from the hallway earlier. Men and women in Alliance uniforms moved rusted crates from one pile to another, while others knelt beside open boxes to handle their contents.
As if by instinct, Zelen scanned the gathered personnel for signs of Asena. Finding none, he felt a distinct measure of relief, tinged with more disappointment. Then his attention drifted over to a different young woman, one that was apparently among the movers of crates.
The woman was notably slight of build, far shorter than Asena but just as slim. The box she’d just picked up was clearly too heavy for her, and even as Zelen watched, she teetered on her feet, with her load threatening to slip out of her grasp.
Without thinking, Zelen rushed over and placed his hands underneath the crate, helping to steady it. Then he eyed the startled woman.
She was someone he’d seen around the encampment but never spoken to. Her scrawny physique and timid demeanour made him suspect that she wasn’t of a military background, and her first words to him confirmed as much.
“I’m so sorry, um, Mr Athelstan, sir! I’m alright to take it from here.”
“No need,” Zelen said, having already wrested control of the crate. It was heavy, even for him. But he’d lugged hundreds of boxes like these back in his half-forgotten days as a fledgling proto-Reiter—often for no other reason than the whims of his instructors. “Just tell me where to put it down.”
The woman looked mortified for a second, then managed to wordlessly point to a corner of the room where a new pile was being formed atop the traces of an old one. From point A to point B and back again. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.
Zelen dutifully added his crate to the growing pile and glanced to the side where one of the crates had been opened for inspection. Stacks of service rifles. That explained the weight.
Zelen found himself momentarily fascinated by the rifle’s appearance. It looked nearly indistinguishable from the TF-3 carbine that was standard issue in the Reiter Regiment, save for the shape of its front sight and length of its barrel. Just another in a long list of ways the Cavepeople had been so remarkably similar to Akropolitans, yet different enough to be utterly foreign.
He snapped his attention back onto the woman and said, “I’ll help with the rest. What else did you need to carry?”
The woman’s mortification turned to sheer terror. She was, however, saved from having to make what in her mind was an impossible choice, when a third voice called out from the other side of the room.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Zelen! There you are. Would you mind stepping in here for a moment?”
Akash Varana had poked his head out from a side door to wave Zelen over. Zelen hesitated for a moment, annoyed—as though Akash had interrupted an important task. Ludicrous. He quickly quelled his seesawing emotions and obeyed the ‘leader’ of the Alliance, but not before turning to the young woman with an apologetic shrug of his shoulders.
The side door led into a darkened room with rows of large storage cabinets. Again, Zelen recognized the general appearance and function of the room, and was left with the eerie notion that the quartermasters that once manned this armoury were long gone, by means and for reasons that were now impossible to ascertain. He vaguely imagined an Akropolis that was also bereft entirely of its population… and was disturbed by how easily the pictures materialized in his mind.
Akash shut the door behind him, which also muffled much of the outside noise. It also made their surroundings even darker, but the Gaertner strode over to a desk that housed the one light source in the room, and beckoned for Zelen to follow.
The two men sat down on either end of the desk. For several moments, they merely stared at each other and at the shadows that drew themselves across a dim blue glow.
Akash broke the silence, “How do you think you’re settling in, Zelen? I like to think I’ve gotten to know Asena rather well over the last fortnight or so, but I admit I haven’t been as diligent in picking your brains.”
The older man’s speech was as endlessly polite as always. It was also practiced and sterile—easy to swallow but hard to digest. Zelen flashed with more annoyance, but he kept his own voice neutral as he said, “I’m settling in fine. No complaints.”
“No complaints. That’s it? That’s all you have to report on your new life in the Caverns?”
“What else do you want me to say?”
“Well, maybe at least a bit about your living situation, to start with. Are you comfortable? Getting enough sleep? Getting along with your… housemate? If you’ve got any concerns, don’t hesitate to—”
“I’m fine,” Zelen cut in, more forcefully than he’d intended. “No complaints. What’s this really about, si—Akash?”
The shadows around Akash’s lips shifted into something that might’ve been a smile. After a beat, he went on, “I hope you don’t mind me saying that you do remind me a lot of the Reiters I used to work with. They also weren’t too fond of small talk. In which case, I’ll get right to it. I called you in to ask for your honest opinion. On what we the Apfel Alliance are trying to achieve. And how I’m doing as its… leadership figure, as much as I hate to think of myself in those terms.”
Zelen sat in silence and frowned. If you call yourself a leader, then why are you asking for my opinion? Just lead.
But he understood (or at least tried to understand) that the people that made up the Apfel Alliance were what most Akropolitans might call ‘eccentrics’. Akash himself was a perfect example, with his peddling of flattened hierarchies, his belief that all Sehers had the potential to pilot Eidolons as effectively as Reiters, and, apparently, this notion that a leader ought to ask his subordinate for advice on how to lead.
When Zelen had followed Asena out of Akropolis some nine days ago, he’d been convinced he was doing the right thing. Asena was family. The woman he was meant to marry. The Kurator who brought him back from the brink. His voice of reason. What could be simpler than to fight for her cause, to eliminate the enemies she pointed him to?
He’d since discovered that things were far more complicated than they needed to be. Asena’s ‘cause’ was ill-defined at best and downright farcical at worst. She also didn’t seem to have a clear idea of who her enemies were. And as for her being family…
“How honest do you want me to be?”
“As honest as you’re capable of, Zelen.”
Even that was an eccentric turn of phrase. Zelen let out a sigh that he’d been holding for more than a week, then began, “You need to clarify your objectives from the ground up. Right now, your activities are guided only by ideals, rhetoric, philosophy. I understand that you want to win more Akropolitans over to your way of thinking—especially the Reiter Regiment, who hold all the real power in Akropolis—but it’s not enough to just have a goal. You also need a plan. And half-heartedly sabotaging Joint Forces missions while trying to show that ‘your way is better’ isn’t a plan. It’s wishful thinking.”
Zelen paused, wondering if he might’ve gone too far (or not far enough), but the shadows on his companion’s face hadn’t moved. He went on.
“The Joint Forces might be willing to let you be for now, while they themselves adjust to a new reality, but sooner or later, you’ll only annoy them into taking real action. Sooner or later, they’ll come down on the Apfel Alliance as decisively and viciously as they would the Syntropy. What then? The people here aren’t ready to defend themselves. Not when I’m the only Reiter here. Not when you’ve got—”
Zelen swallowed his next words, grimacing at the taste they left in his mouth. He was about to say something truly unkind, and about people he barely knew.
When it became clear that the younger man had said his piece, at least for now, Akash’s maybe-a-smile widened a touch. The Gaertner spoke again, his endless politeness having shed some of its practiced veneer.
“That’s more honest than I expected you were ready to be, and for that, I’m glad. Truly, I am. I hear what you’re saying, Zelen, and I freely admit my own inexperience and naivety when it comes to leading what is increasingly looking to be a military campaign. In exchange for your honesty, I’ll also share a nugget of truth about me. Which is that I never expected to be leading this coup in the first place. At least not like this, and not so soon.”
Zelen kept his own shadows completely still, waiting for the other man to continue.
“I thought I’d have more time to prepare. That we the Apfel Alliance would have more time to gather our strength and mature. But when I learned about you and your… situation, I knew that this was an opportunity I couldn’t let slip by.”
With this, Akash flicked his eyes toward the door, as though indicating the members that were stacking and inspecting crates just outside.
“I saw you talking to Lucinia earlier—and the look on your face tells me you didn’t even know her name was Lucinia. So, you also wouldn’t know that she’s a Gaertner like me. But I know you’re observant enough to have seen that she’s never been in the Joint Forces. In fact, she’s never been Sehermensch. Remained an Essential all her life, at least until she left Akropolis and shed herself of all such labels. Now, how do you think that came about?”
Zelen couldn’t help but deepen his frown as he pondered the question. How indeed? All Sehers would’ve been identified and allocated at the age of ten. Unless—
“She Ascended later in life?” Zelen murmured, disbelieving. “Unbeknownst to the Ascension Standard?”
“Exactly right.” Akash nodded. “The people in her neighbourhood used to come to her for healing. Until word got around and drew unwanted attention. I helped her escape. Because… you realize what the authorities would’ve done with her, don’t you?”
Zelen thought he did. And the answer caught in his throat, too sickening to be given voice.
“Because the Tetrarchy have fed lies to the people of Akropolis for a century and more,” Akash said, now with just a hint of emotion. “And what they fear above all is for those lies to be laid bare, for the power structure they so meticulously built and maintained for 140 years to come crashing down. More than the Syntropy. More than death. What they fear is for the people to rise up and prove that there’s nothing special about the Tetrarchy. So they descended from the first four families of Sehers. So what? Every new generation since has without fail produced more and more Sehers, from every corner of the three Akras and irrespective of parentage. Ones the Tetrarchy didn’t even know about—like Lucinia—as well as ones they did find and proceeded to exploit, in the most inhuman ways imaginable.”
By now, anger well and truly shook the Gaertner’s voice. Even Zelen was moved, though he couldn’t say if it was by Akash’s words or by fragments of half-remembered dreams. Reality or dream? Truth or lie? In any case, his chest now roiled with a blackness that felt distinctly his own.
“That’s why, ready or not, we cannot fail.” Akash besought Zelen with eyes that gleamed in shadows. “If my ways are inadequate, then help me, Zelen Athelstan. If this should become another war, then be the general that guides humanity onto the right side of history. For we are many, while they are few. If we should throw away our lives for an endless war, then let us do so with dignity and of our own volition. The Tetrarchy do not own us. For we are all the Nexus’s chosen.”