Echos Chapter 6
Juni pushed the weight slowly, letting his muscles contract and letting himself enjoy the strain.
Racking the weight, he sat up and looked around.
Albert was still running on the treadmill.
Juni knew his friend well enough to know that he was still trying to run from his problems, but once more hoped he could reach a destination. Or at least, a realization. Something, anything to wake him up from the funk he had fallen into after the disaster that was the vassal war and the war where his sister jumped ship.
When they had fled the Kingdom after the vassal war and King Brice stepped down, the two of them had delved like madmen, wanting to increase their Tier. Albert had been determined to reach a Tier where he could reclaim his kingdom from the infighting that was tearing it apart, and they had delved until they reached Tier 12. But then the Empire stepped in to stop the budding civil war, removing the entire ruling dynasty and installing one of the local dukes as the new king.
Suddenly, there was nothing left for Albert, and he had fallen into a deep depression.
A depression Juni hadn't been able to shake his friend from in the last thirty years.
Something needed to change, but Juni had already tried everything, and it was taking everything he had to just keep them afloat.
Life was expensive on a Tier 15 world, especially when you weren't actively delving. Thankfully, they had had a nice nest egg saved up for trying to buy a Tier 13 rift, and the few occasions they had run into rough times, he had been able to tap into it.
He was more worried about his friend, as no amount of therapy had seemed to wake Albert up from the fog he was under.
Juni looked at the time, stood up, and wiped down the equipment, which was Albert's cue for them to get going, and his friend met him at the door.
Turning to Albert, Juni asked for the third time, “Do you want to come to the bar and watch the Ascension while I work?”
Albert shook his head, not saying a word.
Six weeks.
It had been six weeks since he had heard Albert speak, but he hoped to get him to come to the Ascension. Maybe being around people who were having fun could wake up something in Albert.
He tried a few more times, but when nothing came of it, he patted Albert on the shoulder, and after making sure he showered, he left for work where he showered himself.
Juni just didn’t know what else to do. Being nice hadn’t worked. Being understanding hadn’t worked. Being mean hadn’t worked. Nothing he had done had worked.
Albert was just numb inside and was becoming more and more unresponsive.
Thankfully, his job at the bar kept him busy enough that he wasn’t able to sink into his own mind.
Jen, the owner of the bar, was nice enough to close the taps for the actual reveal, which allowed Juni a break and the ability to actually enjoy the Ascension.
It was his second, but he was still filled with energy seeing the monumental achievement that others had managed. He was good, but he knew that he wasn’t that good. No one he knew was.
Elizabeth Moore.
Matthew Moore.
Aster Alexander.
It took a moment, but it was the last name that caught his attention and memory.
Aster. He was pretty sure that he knew an Aster. She had been a bond to Matt… A Matt who had a partner, Liz.
Matt… Matthew.
Liz… Elizabeth.
Aster… Aster with a fluffy white tail and slightly rounded ears.
Juni nearly choked on his food, but the shock didn’t pass as his blood pounded in his ears.
He knew them.
They hadn’t really been friends, unfortunately, or enemies, thankfully. But Juni had talked to these people.
That thought shocked him to his core.
For the first time in decades, he was grateful he was trained in court politics and was able to keep his expression in line with the rest of the bar's patrons after his initial shock. He didn’t think anything bad would happen if anyone found out that he knew the Ascenders, but he didn’t want to take a chance.
And he had a job to do as people resumed their celebration.
His shock numbed him, but not nearly as much as the shock he got from the alert that pinged his AI half an hour later.
Albert had bought a delving slot.
***
Princess Sara sighed as she looked at all the documents in front of her.
As her mother, Queen Diana, intended for her to rule in her place once the Queendom was finished integrating into the Empire, Sara had been taking over more and more of the Queendom’s affairs.
She wanted to say she had been perfect, and every policy she made had no flaws or loopholes, but that just wasn’t true.
Far from it, but that was why she had advisors and her mother to look over the policies she wrote before they were enacted. Her mother had even let one of the less harmful but flawed systems go into place while forcing Sara to fix them.
It had only been a minor change to the tax system on a single planet, only to test the waters. The change was meant to give lower Tier companies a better economic standing through a small tax break, but she hadn’t considered the actual law that determined a company’s Tier. When her law went into effect, nearly every company on her planet reported handing their businesses to the controlling interest’s children. They all were suddenly only able to pay that greatly reduced tax bracket, even after they paid the fees to transfer their companies to someone so much lower of a Tier.
The Queendom would fall apart with that drastic of a tax reduction, and she had panicked, but her mother had stepped in and saved the situation. Diana didn’t reverse the law, but instead paid the difference in taxes herself while making Sara fix the situation she had created.
Sara was still paying that debt off to her mother; once a month, she had to scrub her mother's entire suite by hand with no assistance from spells or helpers, but she didn’t complain. She had fucked up, and a little manual labor was a small price to prevent a widespread economic collapse.
Her slip-up had even created a small economic boon with the increased revenue so many companies suddenly had. Some had simply hoarded their money, but the smart ones understood the loophole was a once in a lifetime slip up, and would be fixed in the coming tax year. So instead, the proactive companies invested those profits into their business expansion so they would become tax deductible next year. That meant a lot of money entering the local economies and getting sent into the average person's pockets through the new jobs which had been created.
Sara would love to repeat the incident if she could do so without creating massive inflation or a dozen other problems, but even her mother couldn’t afford to cover such a mistake again.
The incident had taught Sara an important lesson about being a ruler that no number of academic lessons could teach.
Looking at the time, she decided it was close enough to the Ascension that she could get away with ignoring the rest of her work to get ready. The documents would still be there when she got back.
None of them were really time-sensitive.
But if she didn’t finish this, she would have an even larger pile of work to do tomorrow, and she had worked too hard to keep her pile of work reasonable.
She could do it tomorrow. She had a party to go to.
Buttttt….
Groaning, she walked to her dressing room and continued to go through the documents with her AI. She didn’t like doing that, as it set the precedent that work could and should be done at all times, but she didn’t want to fall behind.
As she stepped into the gathering room, she nodded to the other Queens before drifting to her mother's side.
She kept quiet, but listened as the Queens were talking. Nothing pertained to her directly, but each of the Queens had their own sectors of governance, and Sara wanted to hear how they were doing.
Unless they were lying, the Queendom was doing well, and the integration with the Empire was going smoothly. Their people were accepting the changes to the laws they needed to enact to bring their own laws closer to imperial law without too much push back. And there were a number of trading companies and clans who had started visiting their planets from the Empire proper. That brought in new and exotic goods that stimulated the local economies, while some of the goods the Queendom took for granted were being bought at a markup, as the traders thought they would sell well in the greater Empire. Whether they were correct or not, only time would tell, but it was a good sign.
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A smooth integration that didn’t cripple their local economies was everything they could hope for at this stage. It had happened before, but the laws that governed the integration of vassal states had been changed after each incident to try and prevent just such issues.
From her mother's side, she felt like few people saw her, but that gave her a special advantage. She was able to watch people without drawing too much attention herself. She was able to see the nobles who didn’t care for her mother or one of the other Queens, but smiled and flattered them to their faces. She was able to see the nobles who cared more for the food and drink than sucking up to the higher ranked nobility. She was able to see the nobles more interested in the Ascension rather than the Queens. She was able to see the nobles who distrusted Cori.
That last one irritated her; she liked her newest Aunt, and seeing those who believed that she was nothing more than the traitor daughter of the former King Brice grated on Sara’s nerves.
Cori didn’t seem bothered, despite getting the brunt of the hateful looks.
Thankfully, the Queens weren’t the focus of this event, as the Empire's newest Ascenders were.
And as a vassal state near the border of the Republic, they were all keenly interested in the outcome of the war.
If the Empire lost, they might find themselves deposed with nothing left to their names but their cultivation, while their people were forced to accept a new set of rulers.
Sara clapped along with her mother as the masks fell away, but froze as she recognized two of the three people walking down the purple carpet.
Elizabeth Moore.
Matthew Moore.
Aster Alexander.
He must have finally married Liz.
The thought was almost as shocking as the fact she had known and fought against Ascenders.
Her stomach dropped to her feet as she tried to remember if she had done anything to piss the Ascenders off enough to want revenge, but she didn't think so.
Her mother lightly touched her chest, and Sara gulped.
She remembered the wound her mother had received when she tried to peer out of the greater war, and hoped that there was no lingering animosity with whomever had delivered that blow.
From what Diana had said, Queen Mara and King Leon hadn’t seemed to hold a grudge, and had even given Cori some advice, but that didn’t mean anything when Matt and Liz were friggin’ Ascenders.
Old grudges could be settled, even if the other party didn’t know there was a grudge.
More than anything, the sight of them reminded her of Prince Albert.
She looked at her messages and the long string of unreplied to messages.
Reaching out once more, she sent him a message.
***
Albert looked at his AI and the message that Princess Sara had sent him.
He wanted to reply, but he felt like he wasn’t good enough to warrant such attention.
He was a fallen prince.
A failure.
Looking at Juni's chair in the empty kitchen, he wished his friend was there with him, but knew his friend had taken all the effort of taking care of them after he fell into his depressed state.
Everything had just seemed so empty. So what was the point of going on? He hadn’t been able to find a reason.
Standing up, he took a deep breath and looked around the simple apartment.
They needed to make a change.
It was hard to care, but Albert forced himself to push through the apathy that clung to him like a cloak.
So what if he lost a kingdom? So what if his father was an asshole of giant proportions? So what if he wanted to fall into an endless spiral of apathy?
He might have lost a lot, but hadn’t lost everything, even if it sometimes felt like that.
He had Juni. A best friend with dedication that few could ever even hope to match.
He had a woman who was still interested in him and his well-being, despite his fall from grace.
Looking down at the ratty clothes he was wearing, he was disgusted with himself.
He needed to do something. Change.
Not just his clothes, but everything.
These walls had turned into a prison, and he needed a change.
Before he returned to his apathy, he checked his and Juni’s joint account and felt a small smile creep onto his lips. Despite everything, Juni had hardly touched their delving fund.
Looking at the amount, Albert bought a ticket for two to the nearby Tier 16 planet and bought a rift slot for a Tier 12 rift. They had had enough for a Tier 13 rift before his depression struck, so there was still more than enough for a Tier 12.
Even then, Albert knew they would struggle initially. They would have to take it slow as both of them returned to a combat-ready state. That didn’t matter though. Albert knew they could do it.
He just needed to take the first step.
And buying the ticket and slot was that first step.
Grabbing their belongings and throwing them into a ring, Albert exited the apartment and stopped at the cheering crowds.
After a moment of shock as the wave of noise almost sent him back into his apartment, Albert grits his teeth and pushes forward and through the crowds.
He could do this.
One step, then another.
That was all he had to worry about.
He had his next step planned, and now he needed to do it.
He didn’t go to the bar that was Juni’s work, but instead to the teleporter station.
Albert didn’t need to tell Juni to meet him there, and so he wasn’t surprised to see Juni there with a massive grin and tears in his eyes.
That hurt Albert. He had caused those tears, but he was determined to fix it.
One step at a time.
As Juni hugged him, he whispered, almost to himself and not Albert, “Thank you.”
As they sat in the pod that was going to be sent to the connecting planet, Albert remembered the crowds outside that had seemed unusually big, and he turned to Juni. “What is going on outside?”
Juni cocked his head. “Are you saying the news didn’t shock you awake? I had assumed…”
Albert shook his head in the negative. “No Princess Sara messaged me and I —” pausing, he looked at the message on his AI. “Didn’t respond like I should have. While I figure out a way to not sound desperate, I would appreciate it if you fill me in. I’ve missed a lot but no longer.”
Juni's grin turned wicked. “You won't believe this, but do you remember the Pathers Matt and Liz, with the fox bond Aster?”
***
Brice looked out at the bustling city below him. A decade ago, he would have been gnashing his teeth in anger and plotting his revenge, but now he was empty.
He was tired.
Fifty years on a work crew had been rough, but he was a Tier 36 and had more than enough mental strength to persevere. He had left full of vigor and determination for his revenge, but the realities of being a Tier 36 hadn’t quite hit him yet.
He had expected some things to change when he was no longer the king of a vassal state, but he hadn’t known things would be so different.
In the higher Tier circles, he was the lowest lifeform, a puny, freshly Tiered up Tier 36. With his carefully crafted allies and acquaintances having left him after his lost war and fall from grace, he had found himself unable to advance.
Part of his punishment meant he lost access to all the ‘hidden’ accounts he had created while King. He had thought he was clever, but Mara had been relentless in her pursuit of utterly ruining him. She’d held some kind of personal grudge, hunting down every last cache he’d hidden and even hiring a delving team to ‘stumble onto’ one particular vault in the middle of untamed wilderness.
It was that which made him realize it was a conspiracy, nobody could have found that without her all-seeing help. It was subtle in comparison to the wrath those who had earned his ire had faced, but no less terrible for it.
He was almost more insulted that most of the wealth was returned to his old kingdom instead of being confiscated. That had been a blow to his pride and a wake-up call on how dramatically the economy scaled in Tiers at the highest levels of the realm. Millennia of hard work wasn’t even worth the Empire's time.
How he wished for those resources now.
Everything was expensive.
Rifts were expensive.
Lodging was expensive.
Weapons were expensive.
Armor was expensive.
Skills were expensive.
He mourned silently, refusing to allow his despair and desperation to show upon his face. He would never allow Mara and Leon the satisfaction of knowing how deeply their ruination of everything he’d built up was affecting him. And he could never know when they were watching. It had been less than two centuries since their grudge had begun, and for such capricious and ancient powers to hunt him and harry him for all that time would have been scarcely a blink of an eye.
Simply losing his crown had been a massive blow when he had expected it to only be an inconvenience. Even his personal wealth that hadn’t been touched had only lasted him for so long, and was the only reason he had been able to establish himself at all.
He had tried to get onto delving teams, but few people were willing to allow him into their established teams, and he had found it almost impossible to buy out an entire Tier 36 rift slot himself.
It had only been a single instance a team was selling, but he had managed it. The worst part was that it would be another century before he would be allowed to delve, and he was growing weary of having nothing to do but wait.
There were no schemes to manage. No plots to weave. No bids for power he needed to crush.
What he had once taken for granted, he now longed for.
He just had to hope that his weapons and arms would be enough if he played it slow. He was pretty sure he could manage to delve up, despite the lack of equipment, if he took it slow.
He could even make a decent return on his investment if he took the time to strip mine the rift himself, instead of allowing an outside company or guild to do so in his place. He had nothing but time and a severe lack of anything else.
Brice looked out a window for another year and a half before he noticed an uptick in the amount of people in the busy streets. The city usually had a steady stream of people moving through its arteries, but this seemed to be on another level.
Accessing his AI, he found that there had been an Ascension.
He had missed the Ascension of Light and Shadow thanks to his incarceration, but he had been alive for Duke Waters’ Ascension, and he remembered the feelings of pride and drive it had inspired in him.
Flipping through the public channels, he found one of them that he had heard of before and tried to find that feeling of joy he had once had.
Hearing the Emperor's speech and letting it resonate with his memories of Duke Water Ascension, he felt new life start to enter him.
Then the masks fell away, and he felt the world drop out from under him.
Elizabeth Moore and Matthew Moore.
Ascenders.
The daughter and son-in-law to Mara and Leon Moore.
He remembered Queen Mara’s words, that she had taken such umbrage with him because the planet he’d enacted his plan on had been special to her daughter. If the mother hated him for his actions, then the wrath of her daughter must be tenfold.
Feeling a cold chill pass down his spine, he expected an assassin to plunge a dagger into his back at any moment, but when that didn’t happen, his mind started to churn, looking for some way for him to survive.
When Brice remembered that there was an AI verification at the end of an Ascension, he prayed that they would fail it somehow. It was incredibly unlikely with them having gotten this far into the ceremony, but it was his only hope.
His hope crumbled as the three of them rose.
Despair.
All-encompassing despair hit him like a mountain.
He wanted to run to another Great Power, but he knew that, if nothing else, it would earn him a knife in the back.
Flipping through the local rift auctions, he sold his Tier 36 rift slot and bought a Tier 35 rift slot that would open up next week. It was a Tier below him, which meant using the Essence to advance was less than ideal, but he didn’t care about that. He just needed to escape.
On his way to the rift location he downloaded every movie, show, and book he could find while buying out a few restaurants worth of food of all Tiers.
A hundred thousand years should be sufficient. Ascenders rarely stayed in the Realm for more than half that, but he would need to be certain that any orders of the mother, of the daughter, of her inevitable disciples… All of them would need to pass beyond the Realm for tens of thousands of years before he could be certain of his safety once he emerged once again.
He knew what he would do, were their situations were reversed, and he was not so fool as to believe that an Ascender would be any more merciful.
His life was the most valuable thing he had.
To that end, he made one last purchase, even though it forced him to sell his staff.
He just hoped that anyone who was watching him saw his actions as a surrender and didn’t decide to kill him.
The moment he entered the rift instance, he cast a dozen spells to alert him of someone else entering the rift, fearing an assassin, but no one disturbed his wards. And while a Talent of sufficient strength could have bypassed his workings, it was unlikely.
He was alone.
He was safe.
Now it was just a matter of waiting a hundred thousand years and exiting the rift with a new identity, thanks to the new [AI] he had bought.
How much could things change in just a hundred thousand years?
Surely not much.