After returning to his own body in the palace of Ichormai, Euryphel had a thousand and one things to worry about. While dealing with Achemiss and the Infinity Loop were the most important, another issue demanded his focus. He needed to handle the fallout of forcing Selejo’s capital, Cunabulus, into a locked down state.

There was a cold irony that his political standing would be much stronger had Ian and Achemiss appeared in Cunabulus rather than Chemissa. If the defenses of the city had defended its citizens from the wrath of an evil ascendant, all would have been well with the world. Nobody would have grounds to criticize him. No–they’d be forced to sing his praises.

He was so tired of the ingenuous political posturing. It was one thing to quibble over inane things like taxation on liquor. But in this case, the lives of thousands of Selejans would have been forfeit had Achemiss descended in Cunabulus. With an approximate 50% probability of that occurring, how could Euryphel not force Cunabulus to hunker down?

How could the people who used the present situation to besmirch him look at themselves in the mirror with good conscience? He couldn’t blame the reporters–they only knew what they were told. But he had trawled over the news in Regret scenarios and seen interviews with notable Selejan officials–all of whom knew the severity of the situation, knew that an ascendant might be coming, and still lambasted him.

If those were the kinds of snakes Maria had to deal with, he understood why she had concentrated power into her own hands.

Rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration, Euryphel used his secure glossY to reach Zilverna.

Euryphel: Can you call?

The young man answered almost immediately.

Zilverna: It’s a madhouse. Why do you want to talk to me?

Euryphel: Two reasons. The first is about this mess with Cunabulus. The second I won’t put into writing.

Zilverna: I just went outside.

Euryphel: Go to your room, at the very least–somewhere more secure than outside!

Zilverna: Trust me, it’s fine.

Euryphel ground his teeth but let the matter drop. He started the call with his glossY and Zilverna’s upper body appeared before him as a projection. Behind him was a body of water–most likely, the Bay of Ramsay.

“See?” Zilverna said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m flying over open water. That’s even safer than my room.”

“Your room has arrays, though,” Euryphel pointed out.

Zilverna opened his jacket, revealing the interior fabric. Sewn into the fabric were multiple circular discs inscribed with arrays, though Euryphel couldn’t see their details.

Seeing that Zilverna hadn’t come entirely unprepared, Euryphel conceded the point. He jumped right into the crux of the matter, saying, “You need to do a better job handling your officials.”

Zilverna snorted. “They don’t respect me, even if they publicly call me Selejo’s prime.”

Euryphel knew that was a sore point–his mother and grandmother had unique titles, the Eldemari and Sezakuin, respectively. As the first ruler of Selejo after joining the Selejo Imperial Federation, Zilverna had been bestowed the title of “prime.”

Euryphel didn’t forbid the Selejans from bestowing upon Zilverna another title in the style of his predecessors. The Selejan officials simply deemed the practice “unnecessary” as Zilverna came into power.

The whole situation was comical–the Selejan elite seemed to spit on everyone involved in the Selejo Imperial Federation, including Zilverna. But if they made everyone their enemy, their cause was doomed. Euryphel knew that they must have a larger goal, but he simply didn’t view their ill-advised machinations as important enough to sound out. Let them scheme–he’d take their worst.

At least that was what he told himself. But with Ian and Maria’s return, he might get the chance to quash their scheming sooner than planned.

“It doesn’t matter if they respect you or not in private. You can’t let your politicians discredit the SIF–it undermines your authority, too.”

“It’s not like they ask me for permission before they take interviews,” Zilverna retorted. “I can’t afford to make policies I can’t enforce, cousin. It’ll just weaken my influence further.”

“I really thought the court would have more respect for you on account of your mother.”

He laughed bitterly at that, his cold expression making him look five years older. “They never saw me as more than my mother’s mistake.” He looked like he wanted to ask something, but held his tongue.

Euryphel figured he’d danced around the real reason that Zilverna had agreed to the call long enough. “Now, for the second topic–”

“It’s about my mother, isn’t it?” he blurted.

“Yes.”

Zilverna’s eyes were manic. “Is she here or not?”

“She’s in Shibaria.”

His hands were visibly trembling in the projection. “The Chemissa incident?”

Euryphel’s lips curled into a smile. “And they say you don’t pay attention to the news. Yes, that was her and the Skai’aren.”

“That was, like, three hours ago,” he stated, his brow furrowed.

“She’s currently indisposed,” Euryphel explained.

Zilverna’s eyes widened. “What? Indisposed? What happened to her?”

“She’s fine,” Euryphel assured him. “She’s assisting the Skai’aren.”

Zilverna calmed down, but his brow remained furrowed. “How do you know? Did she call you?”

Euryphel shook his head. “I spoke with the Skai’aren.”

Zilverna looked a bit like a sad puppy.

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“She’ll call you,” Euryphel assured him.

“I want to see her.”

“Talk to her about that.”

Zilverna grit his teeth. “She doesn’t want to see me. I already know.” His eyes were filled with inner fire. “Help me see her, and I’ll smooth this situation in Selejo over for you.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“Whatever it takes.” His grin was without humor. “I can be persistent when I want something.”

—

Ah, finally, Euryphel thought as he snapped back from a scenario, his focus sharpening. He had twenty seconds to get back to his room before Ian called him. Plenty of time.

The door of his office opened with a gust of wind, revealing his bedroom. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

He counted down the seconds as he fell onto his bed, his hair fanning around his head.

Three… two… one.

Suddenly Euryphel was back in Lindabet Zhuram’s safe house. Ian was sitting cross-legged off to the side, his body hovering two feet off the floor, his eyes closed as though in meditation.

“Welcome back, Eury,” Ian said, though his voice sounded gravelly. He was dressed in a simple tan t-shirt and jeans. A dark cloak lay across his back and a circle of embers burned above his head.

“Is he healed?” the executor asked, turning to Linda.

“Mostly,” she said quietly, her expression hard to read. Her eyes drifted to the ascendant. “He was truly on death’s door when he came here.”

“Hey,” Ian interjected, “you don’t need to scare him.”

Linda’s countenance was severe. “You reconstructed most of your body with flimsy panes of flesh, as though covering yourself in a mask. Imagine my surprise when I got to work and realized much of you was a hollow shell.” She turned to Euryphel. “He was missing an arm and most of his face was gone. No eyes, no ears, no nose, most of his neck and throat eaten away…”

“Flesh wounds,” Ian insisted. “And I was right. You healed me well enough.”

Euryphel blanched. Ian hadn’t looked anywhere near that bad. Euryphel thought he would have noticed if the man had been missing an arm, but he supposed it would be hard to tell if Ian fabricated a fake limb for himself. After all, as a projection, Euryphel could only rely on his eyes.

“I needed to reconstruct twelve major organs,” Zhuram continued, “along with much of his nervous system. Do you have any inkling how hard that is to do?”

“You’re acting like you did that all alone,” Ian said, “but I took over the last steps.”

Zhuram smiled. “Yes, because you’re the only one between us who remembers what your body looks like on the surface.” She kept her gaze on Euryphel. “If he wasn’t a decemancer, given how much I needed to reconstruct… he would never be able to get back his old appearance.”

Euryphel was torn between his desire to strangle Ian and wanting to wrap him in a hug.

He settled for walking to the decemancer and flicking him on the arm. “Linda, if he’s mostly healed, what’s left?”

“His eyes. I had difficulty healing them.”

“It’s to be expected,” Ian added. “Since ascending, they’ve become a bit odd.” Suddenly, Ian opened his eyes, revealing two pale orbs like iridescent pearls. There were no pupils. “At least I can see souls like this, even if I can’t actually see.”

Euryphel flinched at the unnatural, pupilless gaze. “Is that what you’re doing now, fixing your eyes?”

Ian chuckled. “Not exactly. Zhuram is still planning to fix my eyes, she’s just taking a breather. I’m focusing on something else.”

Euryphel could take a guess. “Your soul?”

Ian smiled. “I used to think you always had the answers because of your Regret loops, but the truth is much simpler. Nothing escapes you.”

The Crowned Executor barked a laugh. “If only.” He turned to Zhuram. “Sincerely, thank you for helping him.”

“Of course–it’s for the common good. But don’t forget, I didn’t do it for free.”

“True.” He crossed his arms. “I put Cunabulus into lockdown because there was a chance that what happened outside of Chemissa would happen there.”

“Why did this happen?”

Euryphel considered how to best explain. “When people ascend, they become almost immortal. The only way for them to die is to descend.” He knew it was a bit more complicated than that based on his conversations with Ian, but those details were irrelevant. “There are only two ways to descend­–to physically depart Eternity and fly through the cosmos, and to take a return beacon. The return beacon option is instantaneous, but it can only return an ascendant to the world of their birth.”

Zhuram nodded. “I’m following. I presume the Skai’aren took a return beacon.”

“Yes.”

“But he didn’t come alone.”

“There is an ascendant from our world named Achemiss,” Euryphel continued. “He ascended over a thousand years ago. He sees our world as a vulnerability and aims to destroy it.”

Zhuram frowned. “He wants to destroy this world… but you brought him here?”

“It sounds quite bad when she puts it that way,” Ian transmitted into Euryphel’s mind.

“He doesn’t need to be here physically to interfere. He has numerous powerful artifacts. Principal among them is an artifact that allows him to send nonliving matter to other worlds, including our own. This includes Death constructs.” Euryphel’s lips pressed into a thin line.

“So why hasn’t he just destroyed this world, then, if he can send an army of constructs through?”

“Because,” Ian interjected, “ascendants police one another, to an extent. If he destroyed his home world in such a blatant manner, there would be consequences that even he would balk at.”

“At least I think so,” Ian added mentally, speaking only to Euryphel. “I don’t see why the Hall of Ascension couldn’t kick him out of Eternity if his crime was grievous enough. They could force him out of the amber and kill his true body. In theory.”

“So, his goal is to destroy our world subtly, over time,” Zhuram guessed.

“Right,” Euryphel said. “Our plan was to kill him before he could succeed.”

“By bringing him to the mortal world, which is how the Skai’aren ended up half dead. Okay.” Zhuram tapped her foot. “Let me guess, you knew that if you used the return beacon, the Skai’aren and Achemiss would return to one of the places that they ascended. For Ascendant Dunai, that would be Cunabulus. For Achemiss, it was Chemissa.” She paused. “That’s why you put Cunabulus in lockdown.”

The wind elementalist bobbed his head. “Yeah.”

She winced. “I haven’t been following the matter too closely, but even I know that they’re smearing your name in Selejo right now.”

Euryphel groaned dramatically, giving her a wounded look. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Zhuram didn’t react to the attempted humor. “So… I take it that the Skai’aren won against Achemiss?”

“Ask him yourself,” Euryphel said.

Zhuram turned to Ian, her head cocked expectantly.

“I defeated him, destroying even his soul, but he isn’t dead,” Ian admitted.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re serious.”

“Completely.”

“A man who did this to you is at large, and seeks the end of our world?”

Ian snorted. “Unfortunately.” He inhaled deeply. “I have nothing to blame but my own incompetence. But now that you’ve helped me recover, I’ll be able to track him down much faster and end him for good.”

“You know,” Zhuram began, “I thought the Darkseers was about destroying the Infinity Loop.”

Euryphel looked at her quizzically. “It is.”

She chuckled softly. “No, it isn’t. You said that this was Darkseers business.”

“Well, it’s somewhat related,” Euryphel argued. “Once he kills Achemiss, the Skai’aren will help us erase all traces of the Infinity Loop.”

“You asked me to save Dunai–you weren’t thinking about the Infinity Loop. You were thinking about the threat posed by Achemiss. Your goal has always been bigger than simply eliminating the loop tech. All along, your goal has been saving our world from an untimely end.”

You’re wrong, Euryphel wanted to say. When he’d called Zhuram asking for help, Achemiss had only been an afterthought, the Infinity Loop doubly so. But he couldn’t voice the truth out loud, so he nodded along. “I take it you don’t think that’s a bad thing?”

“It gives me hope that we can continue to do good even after the Infinity Loop is done with.” She averted her gaze. “Anyway. Dunai, are you ready for me to work on your eyes again?”

“Please.”