Chapter 364. Unidentified Object (Patreon)

“You’re not worried about Maria at all, even now?” Euryphel asked, his hands clasped behind his back. Before Ian’s return, even that much would have caused him pain. Now... He was more certain than ever that his preternatural recovery must be Ian’s intervention.

Ian didn’t bother to avert his gaze from the vibrant rose bushes. Zukal’iss was blessed with mild weather year-round, so even in the winter months the gardens were naturally verdant without the touch of Sun and Life practitioners–though their presence was clearly felt in the immaculate perfection of the greenery.

“If Maria really needed to contact us, she could,” Ian pointed out. “She doesn’t need to be as stealthy, now. Don’t forget that she has a glossY–a burner, one she can just call us with then throw away. Since she hasn’t... we have to assume she’s doing fine.”

Euryphel tilted his head. Or so harried by Achemiss’s constructs that she can’t afford to retrieve the device from her storage and make a call. “And if she failed... if she died...” He paused. “Would you feel it?”

Ian sighed and cupped one of the roses in his hand, its sharp thorns unable to pierce his skin. The petals were a deep crimson–a very classic rose.

“I think I probably would,” he finally said. “We didn’t test that before sending her away.”

“And are you ever worried about her?” Euryphel asked again, delivering the words with a different emphasis, referring to a different woman.

“Germaine?”

Euryphel nodded.

“Sometimes. Not as much as I probably should.” He released the rose and continued walking. They both wore disguises–for Euryphel, simple makeup and color changing mud for his eyes, along with a change of clothes. Ian just wore a sweatshirt and jeans, with his margarita logo hat casting his face in shadow.

“You should visit her,” Euryphel suggested.

Ian chuckled softly. “When all this is over.”

Eury frowned. “There’s nothing stopping you from visiting her earlier. You can see her more than once before you return to Eternity, you know.” He deliberately chose not to jump into a scenario, despite his desire to do so and tease out the nuances of Ian’s hesitation. “Either the idea makes you uncomfortable, or afraid. Maybe both–why?”

“I don’t really know. Beginning doesn’t mean I always have the answers.”

Euryphel realized they’d come to the original part of the gardens where he’d first met Germaine after leaving his room while unable to sleep. It felt like a short eternity ago.

The Crowned Executor sat down on a stone bench, reclining with his legs up, arms wrapped around his shins. “Would it help if we brought her here, instead?” Otherwise, Ian would probably need to go to the Dunai family enclave in Feather.

Ian joined him on a separate bench, laying down flat, his elbows splayed beneath his head. “Maria brought this up before you... Because I didn’t want to even tell Germaine I’d come back. I wanted to wait until everything was finished.”

“That behavior is definitely within expectations, but still disappointing,” Eury said. “You should have told her immediately. She knew you were going into danger.” He stared at Ian, focusing on the drawstrings attached to his hood. “You did tell her, eventually?”

Ian didn’t respond.

Euryphel groaned. “That is inexcusable.” How many days had it been since his return? Nearly two weeks?

“Maria pesters me about it frequently. But I just... I think I want the compartmentalization. Right now, I’m still acting as Eternity Ian. I’m fighting an ascendant, just on a different playing field than normal.”

“So you want to wait until you can be... regular Ian,” Euryphel supposed, though he thought Ian’s train of thought was ludicrous. “You called Germaine while you were in Eternity, though, using the transmission artifact.”

“That’s different,” he said. “When I use the artifact, I leave my body behind. In some ways, it’s the purest distillation of me, or at least my mind. But if I actually see Germaine in person... she’ll see me as the brother who left her to become more. Ian the practitioner. Ian the ascendant.”

For someone so talented and intelligent, Ian could be so, incredibly, dense. Euryphel resolved to bring Germaine over as soon as possible.

Suddenly, Ian’s glossY buzzed from within his pocket. He withdrew it, frowning.

“Maria?” Eury asked, already half out of his seat.

He shook his head. “No–it’s Zilverna.”

—

Zilverna had been minding his business as ruler of the Selejo, poring over documents on his glosscomp, when his mother’s favorite helper burst into his room.

“There’s an unidentified object rapidly approaching from the southwest,” Kaiwen Chowicz stated formally, her posture rigid. “I’ve sent two teams to investigate. I need to evacuate you, now.”

Zilverna choked and burst into a coughing fit, his cold tea sloshing over the side of his cup and dribbling onto the desk. “Why?”

“Because my job is to keep you safe,” she replied, her demeanor as expressionless as the ice she wielded.

He rolled his eyes and lowered the cup to the table. “No, why is there an incoming potential threat?”

Chowicz looked like she wanted to drag him away by the ear. “We have absolutely no idea, which is why we need to go now.”

He sighed and covered his face with both hands, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sorry. I won’t make you worry.”

Chowicz waited for him, not saying anything. A few seconds later, he stood, his back aching. The Regret and Moon dual affinity practitioner was in professional mode, but she still squeezed his hand reassuringly as she led him away.

Neither of them were earth elementalists, but they didn’t need to be. Chowicz led Zilverna to his mother’s old room, which still lay unoccupied. Even her favorite ratty rug was there.

It was the room where his grandmother, the Sezakuin, had originally stayed as well... and it was where she’d placed the secret passage that descended deep underground. The Eldemari, lacking a Mountain affinity, had developed a more creative way to use the passage with her End affinity.

When Chowicz placed her hand on a specific part of the wall, hidden arrays glowed and the wall opened up, revealing a gaping chasm and a rough earthen platform. They stepped onto it and descended through the Cuna.

The passage was black, completely devoid of light. Zilverna made a small flame to see by, but all it revealed was the featureless red earth. They rode the platform until it stopped on its own. There was only one way forward, a small room that was well lit by simple overhead rectangles fixed to the ceiling. The small room didn’t have any furniture, probably because his mom always disdained basic comforts. An ergonomic chair? Too indulgent! A soft bed? Heresy! She’d rather sit rigidly on a stool and sleep on the hard floor. He swore that the imposing leather office chair she’d practically lived in was the most uncomfortable abomination of a chair ever made.

Why he insisted on sitting in the same chair now, he had no idea. Idiocy, probably.

Chowicz stared intently into nothingness, though she held a glosspad in her hands. Zilverna knew better than to complain and distract her when she was obviously running through scenarios.

He’d brought along his own glosspad, extracting it from the glosscomp dock on his way out, but the lower reaches of the Cuna didn’t have any connectivity. At least he had the documents he’d loaded upstairs, so he busied himself by looking them over. It wasn’t long before he felt like his eyes would fall out of their sockets from fatigue.

After rereading the same paragraph for the third time, he placed the glosspad on the ground and sat up against the wall, uncaring that the unfinished reddish surface would dirty his taupe shirt.

He closed his eyes.

Ever since his mother’s visit several hours ago, he’d been barely able to concentrate. Why had she been so... so... impossible? No, not impossible. Unwilling. Like she hadn’t even wanted to visit him, like she’d only done so out of some misguided motivation. She’d pretty much confirmed that once she went back to the ascendant world, there was a good chance it would be the last time he ever saw her. And she wanted to choose that–choose going back–over living here with him.

The easy explanation was that she had, in fact, been brainwashed by the Skai’aren, and she was detached because she was unable to emotionally care for anyone but her master. It gave him a simple and easy enemy to hate while removing any culpability from his mom.

Zilverna had always liked easy explanations, easy choices–black and white. He and his mom against the world. Selejo versus the SPU. In this simple world, he only needed to work harder, grow stronger, and do his best to live up to the long shadows of the Eldmari and the Sezakuin, even if those shadows often felt more like one big dark, inescapable hole. He had always been in such a hurry to act, to prove himself, but there had also been a feeling that he was still young and had his life ahead of him.

If his mom’s disappearance had killed that rosy dream, her reappearance had killed something else, something he had no words for. Something even more precious.

But he hoped, before she left... maybe they could find a way to repair it.

A few minutes later, Chowicz shook Zilverna’s arm, rousing him from an unintended nap. “It’s your mother,” she said, her lips tight.

Zilverna wiped at his eyes, face blushing from the wetness he found there. “What are you talking about?” he said defensively.

She blinked. “Your mother is the unidentified incoming object,” she clarified.

His jaw dropped. He patted down his shirt and jumped to his feet. “She’s back? Already?” Was she here because she’d changed her mind? Because she wanted to apologize? Because she really did love him?

He waited with bated breath for an explanation.

“I had to call off the teams I sent to intercept her before they actually made contact in reality. I’m going to meet her and escort her down. She needs a highly secure room to work in. I’m planning to bring her here.”

“To... work in?” Zilverna asked.

“This is Darkseers business.” Chowicz took a long exhale. “She doesn’t want to involve you. I told her you were still in your own room.”

“She’ll see my End arrow long before she reaches this chamber,” Zilverna pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter. She’s coming with me–she has nowhere else to go.”

Zilverna fidgeted with his hands. “I’m already involved somewhat, just by sitting in on that meeting in the Federation, but... is she right? Should I not be here?”

Chowicz gave him a small smile. “The fact you’re asking that question gives me confidence you’re the most ready you’ve ever been.” And with that, the dual affinity practitioner left the room.

Chowicz returned five minutes later with the familiar, eerie form of his necromanced mom, who was dragging along some kind of horrifying puzzle of shorn flesh. It looked like someone had diced up a human body, then shuffled the pieces and glued them back together in the wrong order. The pieces of body didn’t bleed, but they were still incredibly uncanny to look at. They looked real.

While the patchwork monstrosity looked terrible, to say that Maria looked disheveled was an understatement. She looked like someone had taken scissors and tough nails to all her clothes and cut them to shreds.

“Zilverna,” she said, hoisting the monstrous body over and throwing it into the corner, “long time no see.” She singed a circle into the floor around it, then started inscribing. “I didn’t want to involve you any more than necessary, but since you’re here”–she gave Kaiwen Chowicz an accusatory look–“you might as well just stay. I’ve picked up new arrays in Eternity–anything you can learn now should be of great use to you in the future.”

Zilverna just numbly nodded.

“Also, please call the boys,” Maria said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “My glossY didn’t quite make the journey.”

Zilverna didn’t have Ian’s number, but Euryphel was one of his most frequent contacts. He waited for the Crowned Executor to pick up while watching his mom’s array come to life.

The call went through. “She’s fucking here! With a thing!” He wasn’t particularly concerned with eavesdropping on his end–he was deep underground in a claustrophobic room–but he didn’t know where Euryphel was. He didn’t dare say specifics when the topic was his dead mother and... the patchwork thing she’d dragged in with her.

“By here, do you mean Cunabulus?”

“Yes. She’s, uh, tying the thing down. Metaphysically.” They should know what the thing was, right? Because he certainly didn’t!

He heard some unintelligible back and forth discussion. Then, Euryphel said, “We’ll be there as soon as possible.”

“How soon is that?” Zilverna muttered.

“Sooner than you’d probably like,” Euryphel added. “You have time alone with your mother–make it count.”