Chapter 220. The Dagger’s Return (Patreon)

[ sorry this chap is late! ]

Maria, Karanos, and I crouch beneath an outcrop of a slick, mossy geode. Its crystalline interior is violet and glows softly from within. Cool rain patters over ferns and mulchy ground.

We’ve been in the lost quadrant for two days now. While Karanos has led us through all kinds of spaces, the first plane beyond the gate–the one with the floating skyscrapers and invisible dome–remains one of the most memorable. We’ve taken some short breaks, but Karanos has been working us hard, shuttling our group between planes and pushing Maria and I to improve our veil-piercing capabilities, not to mention our scouting acumen.

“This next plane is tricky,” Karanos warns. “It’s likely we’ll be split up upon entering.”

“Is it another aberrant?” Maria asks.

“Yes. It can be a time sink, but at least it’s a dilated plane.”

Dilated planes are fine, but a dilated plane described as a tricky time sink doesn’t sound particularly appealing, especially if I find myself alone.

“You may feel like you’re wasting time within, but impatience and recklessness will only prolong escape,” he continues. Karanos isn’t speaking in absolutes–phrases like “it’s likely” and “can be” pique both curiosity and concern.

“What does this plane have in store for us?”

“There’s a puzzle with a prize at the end,” he replies. “If it weren’t such an annoying plane to reach, it might be more popular–surefire rewards are few and far between. But most of the time the prize is junk.” He sighs. “I’d normally skip this plane, but if you both come back to it later without my help, Eternity might throw you some luck for your efforts. You can access this one through a veil vulnerability, so you both should be more than capable of carving the way.”

I pull out my planar compass–the one Holiday gave me back in Vizier’s Crown–and wave it in front of me. The needle aligns itself forward and to the left. I dart forward and channel ascendant energy in my hand. I’ve gotten better at internalizing the energy flow, but blue sparks still dance around my fingers as I grip the veil and tug. The air tears apart, revealing a wide hole with blinding radiance on the other side.

“Can you see through that?” I ask, closing my eyes and turning the Karanos. I can’t sense anything beyond the hole.

“There’s nothing to see,” Karanos replies. “At least not until we enter.”

“If we held hands, would we still be split up?” Maria asks.

“You can try it.”

Maria’s gaze shifts to mine, then back to Karanos. “Sounds like you’re not interested.”

His expression remains impassive. “Learning through experience when time isn’t an issue is valuable. I’d be doing you both a disservice if I intentionally accompanied you.”

I sigh and hold out my arm. Maria strides forward and grabs it, the rain falling on her already-wet skin. Karanos holds back–he’s waiting for us to go first.

As I step into the plane, the world swirls around me. I find myself in a taiga, evergreen trees blistered with ice and snow. It’s freezing, but looking around, I see a log cabin.

Maria’s hand is still on my arm, her back edging into mine. I sense a flash of unease over our bond. The blue circlet bobs over her head as she turns to face me.

“I wonder what this place has in store,” she murmurs. “I suppose we should go inside?”

I swallow and incline my head toward the cabin. “Suppose so.”

A kernel of dread settles in my gut as I fly over and let myself in. A row of windows and a fire in the fireplace illuminate the room. I walk over to a bureau covered in a table cloth and wrap my hand around a familiar ornate dagger–the one from the final loop layer.

This plane must somehow have a mechanism of reading my thoughts and manifesting different realities, I thought. Perhaps it was influenced by Remorse ascendants.

I hold up the dagger and the light reflects off it. Angling it to the side, I see my face in the steel. My eyes are bright green, like Soolemar’s, and I’m grinning. I rotate the dagger and notice that whatever reflects in its blade appears distorted. The fireplace becomes the mouth of a hellish dragon, the windows a cold portal into a twisted forest.

I bet I’m supposed to use it to find something. Perhaps the dagger is telling me that my sense of reality isn’t to be trusted–but what is illusion versus reality?

“Do you recognize this place?” Maria asks, breaking my reverie.

“I do, unfortunately–from the Infinity Loop.”

She frowns. “So whatever forces govern this plane plucked the memories from your mind?”

I nod. “I suppose so.”

“I don’t remember a place like this,” she says, walking over to the fireplace.

“It wasn’t in the recording. This was where I went for the final loop layer, when the loop started to break down and I escaped.”

“Why do you think the plane brought us here?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No clue. But something’s different from before–in the loop, this dagger made people from my past appear and disappear, like phantasms...like they had never been present in the first place. Now it’s serving as a warped mirror of reality.”

Maria comes over and peers at the dagger, her brow furrowing. “It’s making the trees outside look burnt, old. Like those in Vizier’s Crown.”

Since we’re looking from different angles, the two of us see different reflections.

“Stand in front of me so we see the same thing,” I suggest, though the words come out more as a command.

She gives me a low chuckle as she sidesteps and leans into my chest, her diadem floating down to her hair to avoid my chin. She’s obviously trying to tease me by coming in this close, but I’m used to her antics after a few months together. I ignore the sensation of her body on mine and hold the dagger in front of us.

As the dagger reflects the right side of the cabin, I notice a door-shaped hole in the wall.

“Do you also see that hole?” I ask.

“Yep.”

Frowning, I send a piece of bone to prod the wall, scratching at the wood. “Doesn’t seem like it’s real.”

Maria hums. “You said that before, the dagger made things disappear. It had the power to shape reality.”

“What are you thinking?”

“If the dagger is a window into an alternate representation of the world...perhaps it also has the power to make that world manifest.” She twists away and holds out her hand. “Dagger, please.”

“Be my guest.”

She flashes a grin, then proceeds toward the wall, dagger in hand. “I used to train with daggers, though I haven’t had one in my hand in quite a while. This is one of the finest I’ve ever held.”

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

“A masterwork, not only with respect to its beauty, but its balance and forging.” She stares at the blade, then plunges it into the wall. Reality splinters around it like broken ice. Maria grunts and drags the blade down, flames coursing over its surface. The wall shatters and reveals a hole like the one we saw in the dagger blade reflection.

She’s dead, Ian, I remind myself. But damn if that isn’t sexy.

Maria kicks aside a chunk of smoking wood and steps into the hole. Now that it’s actually manifest in reality, my vital vision allows me to inspect the aperture’s contours.

It’s a tunnel–of course. Almost like a mine shaft, the tunnel goes straight for about twenty feet, then turns sharply right. The tunnel’s presence doesn’t make physical sense–the wall of the cabin is above ground–but this plane seems to operate by its own set of rules.

I enter the tunnel shaft and raise an eyebrow at Maria. She’s facing the way we came, her eyes fixating on the blade’s reflection as she waves the dagger back and forth.

Rather than standing behind her like before, I slip in between her and the dagger, leaning against her chest. My head rests beside hers, her hair tickling my cheek. Our eyes are close enough that we should still see the same image reflected back in the dagger blade.

“Can’t see much when the tunnel’s so dark,” I point out.

Maria’s off hand suddenly erupts into flame, bathing the tunnel in glow. I flinch as I behold the reflection in the blade, but Maria is unperturbed. Looking behind, the tunnel is mundane, but in the dagger...the tunnel is transformed. Rock and dirt shift into a web of shadows. And at the junction where the tunnel turns right, a shadow-wreathed head spans the wall from floor to ceiling. At first glance it looks like a statue, but then the head’s mouth moves and the shadows shift to reveal a familiar countenance. Its eyes are pinched with laughter.

“Achemiss,” I whisper.

Maria lets the fire die out and wraps her free arm around my hips, squeezing once. I can feel the warmth of the limb through my jacket.

“It’s not him,” she says.

“Clearly.”

“I’ve never actually seen what he looks like until now,” she admits. “Looks like a crazy bastard.”

I chuckle.

“What does it mean that he’s trying to eat us?” Maria wonders out loud. “This place reeks of symbolism.”

“Maybe it’s less him trying to eat us, and me feeling like I’m being swallowed alive,” I murmur.

“Wonder what would happen if I plunged this into his head.”

I shrug. “You’re free to try it.”

Maria disengages and trots to the back of the tunnel, gaining speed. When she’s almost at the tunnel’s right turn, she dashes forward, ascendant energy curling around her legs. She plunges the dagger down without making a sound, giving me the impression of an assassin.

Suddenly laughter spills out, a terrible, ominous music drifting through the darkness.

I feel his vitality, see the graying of the flesh around his massive skull where the dagger sinks in. But with little effort, Achemiss shakes off Maria and expels the dagger, his skin healing around the wound. The only trace of the injury is wet blood trickling down his cheek.

As she careens back, Maria’s hands burst into flames, illuminating the tunnel once more.

“Hello,” Achemiss says, his eyes wide with excitement. “What have we here? Two little ascendants? Or...ah, an ascendant and his lich. And a pretty one.”

He doesn’t recognize me. Once again, I’m reminded of the final loop layer–Germaine and Eury didn’t have their full memories. Eury didn’t even remember who I was.

“You’re Achemiss,” I reply, trying to school my expression. If he isn’t the real Achemiss, and he doesn’t know who we are, then perhaps I can try to learn something. I’m not sure if this reality is only pulling from my own memories, but something tells me it’s more than that.

“You know of me, how interesting,” the man replies.

Perhaps Achemiss came here in the past, Maria transmits. We know that it’s likely an artifact that allows him to send minions beyond Eternity and reap the souls of peak practitioners. But where did he originally find that artifact, the one that started it all?

I see where she’s going. According to Karanos, if there’s one place most likely to give out powerful artifacts, it’s the lost quadrant. Since Achemiss isn’t more than a thousand years old, while it’s possible he could have stumbled upon a potent artifact elsewhere in Eternity...it’s more likely he would have found his here.

We could be wrong–this is just speculation–but it’s an interesting prospect.

“Do you know where you are?” I ask.

Achemiss sneers. “I’m clearly stuck in a wall. Can’t move. I also seem to be quite a bit larger than the two of you–either that or you’re miniaturized.”

“How did you know that I’m a lich?” Maria interjects, frowning.

The necromancer’s expression grows uncharacteristically pensive. “That diadem that hovers over your head, it’s rather good,” he admits. “It makes you look alive. Even makes you breathe. But the way it tries to fake your vitality isn’t good enough.” He looks at me. “I’m sure your master understands what I mean.”

I grit my teeth.

“You don’t like to think of yourself as her master, do you?” Achemiss says, his eyes flashing to me with interest. “Let me guess, you raised her because you cared for her, not because you wanted a minion. As I said before, she’s a pretty little thing. I can see how you’d get attached.”

“She’s powerful,” I snap. “A peak practitioner.”

Achemiss tries to nod his head, but only moves about an inch, his skull stuck in shadow-webbed rock of the tunnel. “Sweetening the deal further. But regardless of what you think about her, you are her master. It is an absolute bond that cannot be broken. She will never be as she once was, even if you dress her up as a human with that diadem.”

How does Achemiss manage to be so incendiary even when he’s not trying to destroy our world? I can see why Soolemar wasn’t friends with him.

I take a deep breath. “Achemiss, what brings you to this place? We’re looking for artifacts.”

He just smiles at me and doesn’t respond, the shadows flickering across his mouth.

“This is pointless,” I state coldly. “Maria, give me the dagger.”

She obeys without a word of protest, the hilt sinking into my fingertips. I ignore Achemiss and plunge the dagger into the wall on my left. The wall cracks and shadowy tendrils ooze out like tentacles from a sealed jar.

I stick the dagger in again, slashing it downward through the center of the darkness, and the tunnel wall cracks like glass. The shadows evaporate and the original wall reappears, undamaged.

I hover myself over to Achemiss, my feet trailing just over the dirt floor. I stand before him and feel as though I’m looking at an animated monument, his eyes nearly as big as my skull.

“Planning to kill me?” Achemiss asks, a grin splitting his face. “Many have tried.”

I smirk. “Kill? How about banish.” I haven’t fought with daggers, so I don’t have Maria’s elegance. That doesn’t prevent me from swinging the dagger down on his face, stabbing right between his eyes.

His cackles resound.

Unnerved, I dig the dagger in deeper, enforcing my body with ascendant energy and channeling Death energy where the blade meets flesh. Though Achemiss naturally resists Death energy, his skin begins to rot. His laughter suddenly cuts off, his face splintering like thick, cracked ice. I recoil as his face shatters and unleashes a flood of darkness.

When I turn back, man has reverted to wall.

Y’jeni. Karanos said that people usually skip this plane–I can see why.

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