XIX.

Target

"Kogar, Kogar, my darling, for what did you design it? Why did you design Everlasting?" Her voice rattled him to his core. Familiar, yet so unfamiliar.

"That I could make this moment with you become an eternity." he sneered. His eyes were closed. He couldn't see.

A laugh filled his head. "Surely not. Surely you did not create such a monster for such a foolish endeavor...

You've yet to comprehend the weight of this error."

×You doubt me?×

His vision filled with burning colors of every shade. The chromatic hell that was Etheria, the abyss, the pit… it surrounded him.

He wasn't impressed. It was far from the first time—far from the last.

"What do you think of this picturesque hell?" asked the disembodied voice of a man, though higher in pitch than a great many.

×Jirtu…?×

As though summoned, the black robed man hovered down from above. He was upside down. Or, rather—×am I?×

Jirtu spun to face him. He was young, with normal blue eyes and a more filled-out face, not the gauntness of the nigh-undead form that Kogar was so used to.

×You hideous bastard. Treading in my realm. I should gut you here and leave you to bleed out eternally, with all of your toys and mimic powers.×

"And now, Talek, my friend… you learn the fate of the not-so-humble pit miner."

×Talek? Who...?×

And the ceiling seemed to stop supporting him.

His dark eyes shot open. The visual burned away into nothingness.

×And yet I still dream…×

The black void around Kogar dissipated. His armor glowed as Haketh's meeting chamber formed once again—teleportation from his own bleak corner of Etheria.

Rykaedi was the only one there. She was fumbling with something at the table, toying with a small black ball while boredom filled her face. Her thin fingers grabbed the ball and twisted, then spun it hastily in place.

"Nothing with the followers, today?" Kogar asked her.

"What's today?"

Kogar sighed.

"Oh—I've got that event at the Hall. Ah, no—you killed everyone there."

She spun the black ball again.

Kogar's face constricted in disgust.

Rykaedi stopped the spin and lifted her eyes to him. "Why?"

"Why? Since the end of the Third Era, we've lazed around like dogs. The men do not fear us. The Alisars think themselves capable of holding us down. The Aeonics think of us as nothing other than mutated men and damnable portal-bound hellbeasts. The elves and fae don't regard us with but a thought." Kogar stomped over and stuck his face near hers. "We are gods and we hide like mice."

Rykaedi sat back as though finally engaged by his presence. "Much like the false gods of the Aeonic people. They do not interfere, but merely watch over and influence fate when it befits them."

"You want to be an Aeonic god? Be my guest. But I am a true god. Hemah is truth. Tartys is truth."

"Then why do you linger in Haketh, Kogar? With men like Jirtu and Ivalié, who do little to hide the truth of their manhood?"

"Give me your prize and I'd leave this place for good. I'll catch Castelbre eventually—and then Dyosius is mine. Evra can be reawakened—or destroyed."

She smiled, then returned to playing with the sphere.

Kogar pulled himself back.

×Tell me your secrets, Rykaedi.×

The leylines warped. Rykaedi stopped the sphere again.

×What do you know that I don't?×

And her mind spoke back: |trying to dig around?|

Kogar's face twisted again into frustration.

"Surprised? You're not the only one who knows a few secrets." She winked.

"What is this?" Kogar spoke through grit teeth.

But Rykaedi only answered with a sinister grin.

"Tell me."

She stood and took his cheeks into her cold hands. She rubbed a finger across his jaw and said, "This is Redirection. Your ability? Cedric's ability?"

Kogar's eyebrows went up. His surprise was laid bare for only a moment before his scowl returned. He called for his scythe...

But his hand came up empty.

She smiled again.

He called for it—and the second time, it arrived to his hand in the familiar swarm of black and white butterflies.

There was no need to hesitate beyond that.

×Everlasting.×

Two thousand times—two thousand times did he dash his blade through her flesh, all in the span of a second. Two thousand times—until she was a pile of dry, bloodless chunks on the floor. Maggots writhed in her fallen pile of flesh, in the slabs of meat, in the gray, rotten mound of death.

Kogar panted in complete frenzy. He gasped and growled, and nearly started drooling in his absolute rage.

Then he took a deep breath, and ran a hand through his hair.

"Satisfied?" Rykaedi's disembodied voice asked.

"No." He turned.

There she was—Rykaedi's true form: a torn black robe like Algirak's, with the hood lowered to reveal a pale, purple-stained skull, with a violet-gemmed crown jutting out of the bone.

She placed her bone hands over her robed body as though exposed, then clattered her teeth in a vicious, echoing laugh. "That thing was old and tired, anyway. Throkos is hard at work finding me a new one."

"You're disgusting, you who rely so heartily on your impurities."

"More disgusting than he who tries to hide them?"

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"You think I'm insecure."

"Think?" the skull clattered out another laugh. "Find yourself a mirror, love. We'll be forever locked in stalemate until you reach humility."

His offhand opened. A ghastly pale glow filled his cupped palm.

×Soulrend.×

Another laugh. She grabbed the front of her robes and pulled them open. There, laid in the center of her bare ribcage, was a beautiful platinum lock. It was etched in fantastical otherworldly detail, detail which far surpassed the works of man, far surpassed the realm's finest arts.

"Nihilem Maxim…"

"It's fragile, you know. Should my soul be rent, it would shatter forever. Irreplaceably. And then?"

"You're a damn poor liar, Rykaedi. Her lock wouldn't be so weak—"

"You'll take that risk?"

He flinched.

Then she laughed, "I didn't think so..."

Kogar was locked in place, his glare affixed tightly to his eyes. Nothing could be done at that, lest he take the risk of forever losing his path to Evra. A path made possible only by the once-living Liara's schematic for the lock and key. Or rather, a lock made to fit the key of Dyosius.

Rykaedi smiled—she knew, as ever she did, that she'd won.

Twenty-Seventh of Dectis [5], 207th Year of The Calamonian Age

Rithi stood in the doorway that led from outside into the messy, sloppily-constructed kitchen as though confused.

Cedric beckoned, "Come in. Hurry up, before all the damn mosquitoes get in."

The masked man chuckled and shut the door behind himself. "Thank you. My, what a… place you've taken to."

"It's a work in progress."

Rithi only smiled and reached into his coat. He pulled out a tall bottle of red wine and placed it in the center of the crooked kitchen table.

"You're an alcoholic."

"I am many things—"

"Alright, alright, no more riddles. I've got a headache just thinking about it…" Cedric shook his head as he took a knife to the bottle's cork.

Rithi laughed at the futile gesture.

"So? Where are we on the Ivalié lead?"

"Pour me a glass first, then we'll talk the job."

"You are an alcoholic."

"Not in the slightest. I need you to loosen up."

"Huh? You trying something sketchy?"

"I'm trying to get you to relax yourself. You made yourself more than vulnerable in the alley—it's a good way to build trust. Especially among allies."

"Is that what we are?"

"We've a good working relationship. I see no reason why Thelani and The Hunters' goals are not the same."

"Chaos, order…" He mimicked a scale and shifted the balance between his open hands. "How could they be more dissimilar?"

"You drank with the Sylvet. You know the feeling."

He scowled. "I drank for different reasons than building trust. Lucky for me, I could afford the continued habit with my Relistar alone."

"A crystal that kills any who come in contact with it... and you used it for booze?"

"It's not as if I knew the consequence."

Finally, when his hands went back and pushed his knife down—the broken cork split and fell into the bottle. Cedric looked to Rithi in dismay.

The man only laughed again and pulled down his mask. "Not a big wine drinker, eh?"

"Never had a whole bottle. Thelani can afford this much?"

"This bottle was… three cromers. And I paid for it myself."

"Three cromers…?" Cedric did the math on his fingers.

"Cheap. Not much more than you'd pay for a gryphon dinner. You have glasses?"

Cedric stood and opened a musty cabinet above the basin. From there he found two glass cups and placed them onto the table.

"They're, uh… dirty?"

"If you wanted them clean, we should have met at a tavern."

"Surely Faunia doesn't drink from such cups."

"Oy, the lead." He snapped his fingers.

Rithi cleared his throat and poured some wine into his and Cedric's cups.

He raised for a toast, to which Cedric begrudgingly complied and they both drank from their glasses.

Rithi placed his glass down. After pause, he said, "I'm sorry. I apologize for what happened at the Third Petal."

"It's not as if you could have predicted that Kogar would show up."

"But still—that it happened at all… I still have nightmares…"

"A lot of people died." he said. Something that Evra could have prevented.

"Entire homes were swallowed whole. I went there once, recently. It's like the world forgot that it exists in that one place, like you can see through everything and into the etheric sea…"

"You can. That's raw esera out there, a hole burned straight through. If you fell in, who knows where you'd end up."

"Yeah…" Rithi trailed off.

"Okella went into that museum, you had said. And Ivalié?"

Rithi nodded. "Indeed. Faunia thought it to be a planar portal. She may be right, though I have no way of knowing. I've seen Okella go there a few more times as of late, usually alone. Usually paranoid. She's seen me once or twice, but so far as I can tell, she can't read me."

"Any thoughts as to why?"

"Perhaps it's the same as when you hit Kogar with that magical attack... Perhaps they're only focused on their own ley."

"Could it be so simple?"

Rithi shrugged.

"And Ivalié?"

"He hasn't noticed me."

"Have you read him? What about his powers, his fears, anything we can use to get the jump on him?"

"He has an affinity for leyline magic. He was once a mage within The Hunters, by Akvum's side. They attempted to stop a man named Tovas Strolcerth in the Second Era; the man who apparently ripped Kylinstrom from the land."

"Tovas ruled Kylinstrom during the bloody Third Era. Then that makes Ivalié over two-hundred years old. A perk of Etherian magic, most likely. He'll at least be more tactically advantaged than us."

Rithi drank from his glass, and grimaced when some of the dirt hit his tongue. "Not to mention the unknown of his Etherian. He doesn't have any fears that I could read, but he does have regrets."

"Oh?"

"He's upset about Liara. That he couldn't protect her. It's possible he loved her."

"Though, how long has Liara even been dead for? Is it about her or Skalla?"

"Feelings are too vague and complex for me to say. But she plagues his mind. And his ire is pointed at Kogar."

"They really are turned against him. I wonder why they haven't just killed him themselves." Cedric sat back and looked at the damp ceiling in thought.

"Ivalié is too weak. He would lose such a bout, so say his nightmares."

"He's afraid of him. Perhaps the same could be said of all the Twelve?"

Rithi shrugged. "I prodded his mind for thoughts of Kogar and received only the dream, no surface-level fear. The better term might be worry—he worries that Kogar might kill him before his goal is complete."

"And his goal would be...?"

Rithi shook his head.

"For someone who can read people's pasts, you don't get a lot out of them."

"I'm sorry. The chances to read him are not plentiful."

"When he arrives at the museum? That's the only time he's visible? And what about others, who else goes in?"

"Throkos. He's the only other one I've seen enter."

"They should be our first targets, working with the assumption that those who use the front door are the least Etherian-inclined."

Rithi nodded in agreement.

"What of his mind?"

His face turned somewhat somber. He said, "I couldn't get much. It's similar, nothing of particular note yet. Should I spend some time reading him, instead?"

"No. We need to focus. We need a win."

"And soon, we should have one."

Cedric stood and went to the umbrella rack by the door. He took his sheathed sword from it and held it in his hands. "Tonight. We should make a move tonight."

"Are we prepared enough? Should we not wait for Faunia, fetch Marisol?"

He shook his head. "Marisol is no good against a real Etherian threat. Faunia and Tirolith are... I don't know. They didn't do well the last time we faced Okella."

"Hm." he grunted and placed his hand at his chin.

"Let me at least follow you to your vantage point tonight. I want to see for myself—get my own read on him."

Rithi hesitated, but in the end could do no more than nod along in agreement.

*