Chapter 43: Broken (Patreon)

Odenna’s words were like a punch in the gut, knocking the life out of me and I sagged back in my chair.

“Elana! Elana, I don’t care what that old elf says,” Adalinda said angrily. “We are one. Things are the way they are, and I would not want them any other way.”

I didn’t raise my head. I heard Adalinda and knew her words were heartfelt. She probably even believed what she was saying, but I knew too, how much the celestial’s missing memories troubled her.

“That’s harsh, Ode,” Maragret chided. “You can’t blame the girl.”

“I don’t,” Odenna replied heavily. “But it does not change facts. The early binding damaged the celestial.”

“Stop speaking in riddles, Odenna,” Soren said, shooting me a worried look. “Can’t you see she is hurting? Lay it out plain? What went wrong?”

What went wrong. Not: what did Elana do wrong. Even now, my dear brother was protecting me.

“Lay it out, plain, you say?” Odenna growled. “Very well. The binding should only have been enacted after Elana completed the Hatchling’s Trial—assuming she managed the feat in the first place. Something, mind you, that no one has done so in hundreds of years!”

“Be fair,” Eoman admonished. “That’s largely because the Trial has been lost to us.”

Odenna shook her head stubbornly. “The archives are clear. The Trials are dangerous. Few survive, even with the best of preparations. If Elana dies in the Trials with the celestial bound to her, Shanasyn’s Legacy would be lost to us forever, and the bloodline would be irreparably weakened!”

Soren threw up his arms. “But I still don’t understand. What difference would the Trials make to Adalinda’s memories?”

Silence.

“Well, Odenna?” Maragret prompted.

“I don’t know,” the elf muttered.

“What?” Tommin asked disbelievingly. “Did you say you don’t know?”

“That’s right. The old records are incomplete. Deliberately so.”

Eoman laughed. “Oh, Odenna that’s rich. Here you are berating the girl for her ignorance when we ourselves are little different!”

“It’s not the same thing,” she snapped irritably.

“Ah, but I think it is,” Eoman replied.

The elf scowled at the Raccoon leader, and he glared back.

Maragret rapped the table with her knuckles. “Enough, I think we’ve ventured far enough afield as it is. And need I remind everyone, time is still of the essence.”

“I agree,” Tommin said. “Let’s back to the matter at hand.”

“Elana, can we move on?” Maragret asked.

I didn’t raise my head.

“Elana?” Soren prompted.

Still, I said nothing.

“Stop sulking El.”

“I’m not sulking,” I muttered.

“You are. You made a mistake–unknowingly, mind—so what? It doesn’t change facts. They need you. I need you. Let’s move past this.”

I sighed. “I hate you sometimes, you know that right?”

Adalinda laughed. “Of course, you do.”

I raised my head. “Yes?”

“Can we move on?” Maragret repeated.

I couldn’t help a pointed stare at Odenna. “As long as there is no more talk of theft and my incompetence,” I muttered.

“I never said you were—” Odenna began.

Maragret laid a hand on her on her arm.

The old elf took a calming breath. “You’re right, sorry. I should never have broached the topic.”

“Thank you, Ode,” Maragret murmured before turning back to me. “Now, I think we’ve clearly established who you are. Now for the what.” She turned to the gnome. “Tommin, if you will.”

“Gladly,” he replied. Closing his eyes, he gathered his thoughts. “Elana, have you ever wondered what the Forever Kingdom was like before the Powers?”

Thrown by the obtuse-seeming question, I stared mutely at Tommin. Opening his eyes, he met my gaze. Clearly, he expected an answer. “Uh… no.”

He smiled. “That’s alright. Most don’t. Before the Powers, the Primes ruled.”

“Primes?” I asked, confused. “What’s that, some special kind of Power?”

“In a way yes,” Tommin replied. “In fact, you could even go so far to say the Primes were the original Powers. Some called them ancients, others old Powers. Now, I can imagine you’re wondering why I’m telling you this.”

I nodded disinterestedly, not really keen on the idea of a history lesson but knowing there would be a point to all this—buried somewhere.

“Because,” Tommin went on calmly, “the Primes’ passed down their powers to their descendants. Old Primes died and new ones rose to take their place, in an endless cycle, that had at its heart: blood.”

I sat up attentively. “Blood?”

Tommin eyed me shrewdly—he’d not failed to mark my earlier disinterest. “Yes, blood. Shanasyn was one of those Primes and you are of her bloodline.”

I stared at him, wondering if he was joking, but the gnome only met my gaze serenely. My gaze flitted across the others. No smiles there, either.

“You’re saying I’m a Power?” I asked, aghast at the very notion.

“Could be a Power,” Eoman corrected. “But in essence, yes. You could, if you survived long enough you, become as much of a goddess as Arinna is.”

Groaning, I lowered my head in my hands. This was much worse than I thought.

“And you’re telling me, that you, you, and you—my finger stabbed at Odenna, Soren and Eoman, I didn’t know the others well enough to know the strength of their convictions—“that you three, of all people, want to replace Arinna with another Power? After all we’ve suffered at their hands?” Never mind that the Power in question was me—supposedly. “Have you lost your minds?”

Eoman chuckled. “Actually, we don’t.”

“What?” I asked, perplexed.

“The Primes were the past,” Maragret explained. “Their time has come and gone. The Powers are today’s evil. The future will be something uniquely different. Primes and, if you pardon the word, proles, working together.”

I stared at her skeptically. I didn’t know the woman well, but I’d never have marked her as the gullible type.

“You doubt,” Tommin said, “which is only natural. But with the proper checks and balances it can be done. It has been done, in fact. With—”

“—your mother, for instance,” Maragret finished for him. “She worked in harmony with the Insurgency, and every day, followed our orders without protest or bitterness.”

“And what if I’m not inclined the same way?” I challenged. “What if I refuse to follow the orders of a ‘prole?’”

“Oh, please. I know you too well, girl,” Odenna said. “You can’t even say the word ‘prole’ without your mouth curling in self-disgust!” She chuckled. “I know this much: with or without us, you will fight for the rights of the poor quarter’s downtrodden, and others like them in the rest of the world. And trust me when I say if I didn’t wholeheartedly believe that, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she finished grimly.

“She’s got you there.”

Ignoring Adalinda’s remark, I turned back to Maragret. “If it’s that easy, why don’t you recruit more players? Why come to me?”

“We will, in time,” she replied placidly. “But in the meantime, there is the small matter of those ‘checks and balances.’”

I frowned. “Meaning?”

“Meaning you’re our one of our checks,” Eoman explained. He grinned wolfishly. “Once you’ve grown some more into a proper player that is.”

I stared at him stupidly for a second. “So, I’m to be what? Your enforcer?”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

“I prefer something with a bit more of a noble ring to it,” Tommin murmured.

“Hmm,” Eoman mused. “Like say Paladin of the people? Guardian of the weak? Champion of justice?”

“Any of those will do nicely,” Tommin replied with a sleepy smile.

I slapped my palm to my forehead, not sure if the pair were mocking me.

“On a more serious note,” Maragret said, throwing both men stern looks, “We need you, Elana. We can’t do any of this without someone like you by our side.” She took a deep breath. “And now that the Hatchlings’ Trials have been rediscovered, we have a unique opportunity before us.”

My brows creased. “The dungeon. What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has everything to do with it,” Tommin said. “Level for level, any scion—” seeing my perplexed look, he quickly amended—“or bloodline player, rather, will outclass an ordinary one. But to become a bloodline player you first you have to awaken your blood.”

“And the Hatchling Trials is the means of doing that.”

I rubbed my temples. “Right. For now, I’ll take you at your word and pretend everything everyone just said made sense. Setting aside all that—” I would come back to the matter at some point, I vowed—“I assume that the dungeon is the real reason for all this… unseemly haste?”

Eoman nodded emphatically. “You saw Cantos’ notes. You know what that means?”

“That two different groups of players are fighting over control of the new dungeon?” I asked.

“Two different groups that we know of,” he amended. “We can’t let either group claim it, or for that matter, let word of the dungeon’s existence spread.”

“You think that it hasn’t already?” I asked, just to see if his own reasoning meshed with mine.

“It hasn’t,” he said firmly. “Or the poor quarter as we know it would no longer exist. Players would overrun the area, killing anyone in their way in their haste to get to the dungeon.”

“And that’s only the lesser threat,” Odenna added.

“Oh?”

“The much bigger danger is Arinna,” she said tightly. “If the goddess found out about the dungeon, she’d level the entire city to stop you from getting to it.”

My eyes widened. “An exaggeration surely, but I take your point.”

Everyone around the table, including Soren, shook their heads, near-simultaneously. If what it boded wasn’t so dire, it would almost have been comical.

“It’s no exaggeration,” Soren said gravely.

I stared at him.

“The Powers fear the Primes that much,” Tommin added quietly. “They’d never allow one to rise again if they could stop it.”

“Especially one of your bloodline,” Odenna added cryptically.

Their certainty more than their words scared. Feeling in need for confirmation, I looked inward. “You’re buying any of this Ada?”

“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “They seem to believe what they say.” She paused. “And…”

I waited patiently for her to go on.

“And the word, “Prime,” sings in my ears,” the celestial admitted. “I don’t how I know, but I am certain you must become one.”

I sighed. “Right,” I said, turning my focus outwards again. “You’ve convinced me.”

“Excellent,” Eoman said. “Now, we can—”

“Hold on,” I cut in. “Before we move on, I have to know: have you told me everything?” I asked the question of the table at large, but it was to Soren I looked specifically.

“Not entirely,” he began carefully. “There are still the matter of—”

“‘Not entirely’ doesn’t quite cover it,” Tommin replied bluntly.

I turned his way. “And how would you put it?”

The gnome grinned. “We’ve touched the tip of the iceberg—just about. If we had to pass on the full sum of what we know about the Primes and the Houses, we’d be here for days.” His smile faded. “And sadly, we don’t have time for that now.”

“House?” I frowned. “What are—”

I shook my head, knowing the question would probably lead me down another rabbit hole. “Never mind, you’re right, I don’t need to know any of that just yet. Let’s deal with the players first.”

Sitting back, I addressed the table. “Tell me what must be done.”