Chapter 295. The Second Round (Patreon)

The second round is somewhat similar to the first.

The half-step ascendant is the same woman as before, though part of her backstory is slightly different. She isn’t based in one city, but rather lives on a yacht that navigates the world. Even if we knew the ship’s planned schedule, we doubt she’d abide by it now that her ascendant hunters are here.

“We could take your wyrm,” Red suggests. “Brute force it.”

I frown. “We don’t know what her ship looks like.”

“Yet.”

“It’ll take too long. Maybe if I had Beginning, I’d be able to look through an entire dock in a minute and pick out the yacht, but without it?”

“I can use my Regret affinity to cover significantly more ground,” he points out.

“There’s a smarter way to do this,” I murmur. “Holiday wouldn’t design this challenge to be insurmountable to other ascendants. Perhaps we should think about this from a completely different perspective.”

Red crosses his arms and switches to speaking mentally. “What are you thinking?”

“How would someone with no affinities solve this challenge?”

“I don’t think they could,” he replies. “A normal person couldn’t subdue a half-step ascendant.”

I smile. “Not powerless–there’s always ascendant energy.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Holiday would have played his own game. All he has is Beginning and his ascendant energy. How would he have cleared these challenges?”

“In a similar way that elementalists might,” Red replies. “He’d make use of this world’s mortals to find the half-step ascendant. He might not use the threat of annihilating a city as leverage, however.”

—

“Got it,” Red says. The two of us are leaning against the wall of the International Maritime Organization’s headquarters. The organization tracks every commercial vessel using a system of arrays in prominent ports, marking their arrivals and departures. Kyla Bresnir’s yacht is registered as such because the status gives the ship superior access to commercial-only sections of port, a necessity given the yacht’s size and how often it moves from place to place.

“Where is it located?” I ask, holding up a paper map of the world. We can’t understand the local language’s writing system, so Red and I painstakingly went through each major country and city and annotated them on our own personal maps.

“The ship was last marked arriving in Port Venta Malia,” he says, holding out his own map and pointing with a finger.

Red broke into the Maritime Organization’s building in a scenario; it was amazing he managed to get useful information with only a minute to work with. I find the port on mine and nod. “How long ago?”

“Seven hours ago,” he says. “So right when we arrived.”

“I doubt it’s a coincidence. Holiday meant for this challenge to be solvable; it would suck if her ship were underway in the middle of an ocean.”

“We’d still be able to find it if we recruited Beginning practitioners to help us,” Red says. Recruit is probably a euphemism for coerce. “This plane is advanced enough to have overhead imaging of the oceans. We’d be able to search every square mile of ocean with some basic algorithms that identify ships. Then we could pass those off to Beginning practitioners, who would identify whether the ship is Bresnir’s.”

“But that would take time,” I reply. “Besides, how often are those images taken?”

“Daily.”

I shake my head. “That’s not frequent enough. That yacht can cover a lot of ocean in a few hours.”

“By samsara… Who knew being an ascendant was so challenging. My world makes it so straightforward.”

I give him a look. “That’s the point of all this, you know. The factions treat a position in the Hall of Ascension like a trophy. It’s a way for them to grow their influence. Most times the job is straightforward.”

Red sighs. “Until it isn’t.”

“And the longer we remain outside of Eternity, the more likely we are to die.” I flick my arm. “It’s not hard to kill me with the element of surprise. The same goes for you.”

“You think we’d really need to worry about assassination? Ascendant energy can ward off most attacks, and I can see incoming dangers coming with Regret.”

“You’d have to sleep eventually.”

“True,” he concedes.

I recall Karanos’s request to retrieve Ari’s body when I return home. He seemed convinced that people had taken her corpse away for experimentation. Euryphel didn’t know what happened to the body in the aftermath of our fight; an outside party likely stole it. I could easily see the same thing happening on this world. “Moreover, why wouldn’t outside parties assassinate you, if given the opportunity?”

“Well…” He pauses. “I had never heard of an ascendant dying. They were always considered indomitable.”

“Do you think that would save you from determined killers? Legends of indomitability?”

“No.” He appears as though deep in thought. “No, it wouldn’t.” He stalks off in the direction of the beach where I’d buried the bones of my wyrm.

Do you know what Discardia means, Ian? Maria asks as I follow Red.

I thought it was a fancy name, I reply honestly. Why?

It’s meaning is obvious, she says. Discard-ia. Discard.

I mull that over. It hadn’t stood out to me, but now that she’s pointed it out, it does seem obvious. Discard what, stale ways of thinking? Preconceptions regarding descents and testing half-step ascendants?

I was thinking more along the lines of bad habits learned in Eternity. Death means nothing here, fostering a society of sorts where brute force wins out over cunning.

An extremely powerful person who can’t die is only limited by their stubbornness and ability to escape capture, I state in agreement.

Consider that in Eternity, End and Remorse are two of the least useful affinities. Ascendants put up mental shields, curtailing Remorse’s power, and End affinity works poorly when people are strewn across different planes of existence and use death to sever oaths.

Yet here, on a real world, the affinities are immensely useful, I conclude. Y’jeni, how would someone like Ari ever succeed as a member of the Hall of Ascension? All she had was Light affinity and her hammer. She had no way of tracking me down when I hid in Cunabulus.

A question for Crimson Teeth, Maria says, though I suspect his answer will corroborate his decision to change the format of the competition.

—

We find Bresnir’s yacht 150 nautical miles from Port Venta Malia.

Don’t just kill her this time, Maria suggests. If she’s going to show up in each round of the competition, we’d benefit from interrogating her.

I pass along her advice to Red. The two of us sit within the ribcage of my wyrm, gazing down at the ant-sized yacht below.

“That’s a good point,” he says. “I thought she was a one-off character in the last round, but if she’s a recurring enemy, it can’t hurt.”

I send the wyrm down, its length undulating like a serpent. Multiple practitioners on the ship deck respond, sending plumes of fire and bulwarks of ice to intercept the wyrm’s descent. Several turrets rise up from the deck, each manned by a practitioner.

“Drop them,” Red tells me.

They all die as they enter my range, their brains turned to nonfunctional mush.

Again, how did I think going up against you was a good idea? Maria wonders.

Delusions of grandeur, I joke, making light of the situation.

Red turns away from the deck and gives me a scrutinizing look. “Is that guilt I sense? It’s just a sim.”

This is a simulation, but it feels real. It feels probable. This is part of the job of being a descendant but it doesn’t feel right. “You saw some of my past,” I say. “You should know that I don’t like to kill people.”

“That hasn’t stopped you from doing it.”

He squeezes between the bones of the rib cage, runs across the crest of a large wave frozen into a makeshift barrier, and hops onto the deck. Within, the form of a single woman is quivering in the captain’s quarters, her back pressed up against the wall. Three subordinates are dead on the floor around her. I sense her racing heart, her frantic breathing, the instability of the energy circulating through her body.

She knows she’s been spared, that my attack could have killed her as easily as the others. Had she transitioned to be incorporeal, I couldn’t have killed her, but she hadn’t seen the attack coming.

Now she waits, alone on her yacht in the middle of the ocean, for death.

I follow Red onto the ship’s deck, gliding an inch over the surface, weaving around the fallen bodies. When we reach the woman, she’s insensate. Red cocks his head like an inquisitive bird and walks around her. He cradles her chin and lifts her head slightly so that she peers into his eyes.

If she were in her right mind, she’d be resisting. Bresnir is a peak practitioner at the head of an infamous international criminal organization.

“What are you showing her?” I ask.

Red doesn’t break his eye contact with Bresnir. “I could show you, if you want. It’s not that exciting.”

I don’t give him my assent, but the memories stream into my mind, messy, hard to comprehend without my Beginning affinity. Bresnir is drowning, but not in water. In earth. She’s being buried alive while incorporeal.

In the memory, she’s also no older than fourteen, a short, undeveloped child.

Sinking, sinking… sinking through the floor… no one can hear, no one is alive, everyone is dead… sinking…

It reminds me of the kind of memory I’d dredge up from someone’s soul, a fear deep at someone’s core, indelibly marked on their psyche. Hidden, but lurking.

“Are you getting anything useful from her?” I ask.

“Even when I have her like this, she’s tricky to break,” he admits. “Every answer she gives me in scenarios is different. I can’t trust a thing that comes out of her mind.”

There’s a necklace around her throat, Maria says. Can you grab it?

I step forward and grab the pendant between my fingers.

Ah, Maria says, there’s an oath that shackles her mouth and mind; it reaches from the necklace. I can barely sense it because it’s already activated, leaving only traces behind. She’s broken her own mind.

Red, hearing Maria’s thoughts through me, frowns, finally breaking eye contact with Bresnir. “Damn. It’s a suicide fuck-you to Remorse practitioners–a way to pass along false information. Without my Regret, I wouldn’t have noticed she was lying. Usually people are honest when you reach into their minds, but if they’re ensorcelled, that changes everything.”

It’s smart, though probably wasn’t put in place to foil Red. Why would a descendant care about the thoughts and secrets of Kyla Bresnir? They wouldn’t.

Red’s hand is still cradling her chin when he brings forth his other hand. He sighs and twists her neck.

“Round complete. Ascendant Red killed the half-step ascendant Kyla Bresnir by using physical force to break her neck. Returning to the lobby now.”

—

Holiday is in the classroom when we snap back to our bodies.

“No way,” Red mutters.

“What?”

“We’re first.”

Holiday begins to slow-clap, his lips curling back over red-tinged teeth. “Bravo. Surprise, the team with the most versatile affinities wins.”

I take in a deep breath through my nose, then exhale silently. “For us, this isn’t much of a challenge,” I say truthfully, my voice cold. “This trial was constructed to favor some affinities over others. We happen to possess affinities well-suited for the task of finding a hiding practitioner.”

Holiday’s smile doesn’t falter. “So far.”

I’d have goosebumps if I wasn’t controlling my body’s physiological reactions.

“What now?” Red asks, looking over the room.

“We wait,” Holiday says. “When five teams have completed the second round, I’ll commence the third.” His grin widens and he gestures to the floating observation platform. “Until then, refreshments?”