Chapter 20
The Factory Cathedral
By nightfall Amira, Roach, and I had escaped Mnemon Rai's remaining men and were heading in the direction of Nexus. Mnemon Rai certainly could have caught us himself if he'd chosen to, but he gave up pursuit surprisingly quickly. Still, I expected that we had not seen the last of him.
Some hours later, Roach declared that he would not move another step. He collapsed near a little stream and within minutes, he was snoring. Amira dipped her toes in the water, and stared out into the trees. "This looks like where we first met," she said.
I immediately thought of a place that no longer existed. I eyed Amira suspiciously. "Mm. I'm not seeing Desmond's hanging garden," I confessed, speaking in Old Realm. "Without the celestial ivy, it's not the same."
Amira punched me in the shoulder. "You remember Desmond? And you speak Old Realm? Oooh, I can't believe you!"
"I wanted to tell you before," I admitted. "For some time, I just wasn't sure what was real, and what I'd imagined.
"I've come back once myself. I know what it's like," she sighed. "Although I wasn't talking about meeting you in Meru!" She laughed. "I was talking about the river! You were looking at your reflection, and you thought you'd been possessed."
"Which is now very embarrassing," I sighed.
"You called me some unkind things," she reminded me.
"I was afraid," I confessed. "I'd seen you in my dreams."
"Were those good dreams?" She smiled slightly and snuggled close to me. Her elbow caught on one of my vambraces, and she grimaced. The armor I was wearing made an irritating barrier between us. Amira started untying one of my spauldrons, and then she began working on the buckles of my breastplate. When most of my armor was off, she began to massage my shoulders. The tension I'd been carrying melted away.
"Spectacular," I replied. "You can keep doing that forever," I told her.
Her hands started to wander, and I could feel her breath on the back of my neck. Although it was nice sitting where I was and letting Amira work her magic, I didn't want to keep my hands to myself. Amira's armor didn't cover much. It left very little to the imagination, but I wanted to see all of her.
She leaned over and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. Our eyes met. The moonlight made her tattoos flicker. Her face was flushed, and her heart was obviously pounding, but she was still trying to compose herself. Before the battle, I'd pushed her away. When the day was won, I'd kissed her. Obviously, she wasn't sure where we stood.
Amira inhaled sharply as I turned around.
She gave me a wary look. "Loren?" She asked, as if that was a question. In truth, I wasn't feeling much like myself at all... or at least, not my present self. I didn't say a word. I kissed her the way that I wanted to, and she collapsed into the soft grass.
"I'm probably going to kick myself for asking this, but are you sure this is what you want?" Amira whispered.
"Damnit, Amira," I said. "Take off your clothes."
Amira took hold of the collar of my shirt, almost ripping it in half as she pulled it over my head. Her armor wasn't as cumbersome as mine had been, and it was easy to get her out of it. I threw it over my shoulder, and Amira giggled as it almost hit Roach. He snorted and rolled over.
"Shh," I warned her. "Don't wake up Roach!"
"Oh, he'd better sleep like the dead!" Amira laughed.
Fortunately, he did.
I awoke before sunrise. The moon and stars slowly faded from view as the horizon turned a pale lavender color touched with rosy gold. I expected to feel the tug of destiny, something to tell me that I'd chosen the right path, but there was no consolation there for me… just a very pretty morning sky. It was around that time that I started to feel sick.
I'd never been in real trouble before and suddenly I was a wanted fugitive! I'd always thrived in an environment built upon rules. You might laugh to think that I was the sort of child who always asked before having a second cookie… but that was how I was. How would I survive with no orders to follow?
There was Amira, of course, but the more I considered how I'd come to know her, the more I began to suspect that her plans for our life together were quite different than my own. And as for Roach… if I wasn't certain that I could protect myself from my own lover, then what hope was there for him?
I considered running away, but then I scoffed at myself. Amira would find me wherever I went, and Roach would follow me into Malfeas and back as he had so many times before. There was no sense in hiding and pretending that nothing had happened. I'd singlehandedly cleaved my way through hundreds of goblins and slain a faerie queen. Thousand year old treasures from an age beyond memory came to life with my touch. And as Mnemon Rai had professed, many people seemed inclined to follow me wherever I led, as if I had a sign on my head that said "I am in charge".
I stood up slowly, retrieving Amira's armor and my own. I picked up my sword and glanced at my reflection in its lustrous golden blade. My Caste Mark was still flickering. I turned in the direction of the rising sun and took a deep breath. I would have liked some time to meditate, but I felt sure that Amira and Roach would be waking up soon. For the briefest of moments, I felt a hand resting on my shoulder, a hand I knew wasn't physically there.
Over the past ten years I had dwelt continuously on all of the things I might have done wrong. I'd become obsessed with understanding why I'd been cursed so terribly. Perhaps I was not spiritually enlightened enough to have been honored by the Dragons, but I could think of no shortcomings that put me in the same company as the mad, murderous Forsaken.
But if I was destined to save the world, then perhaps I had been asking myself the wrong questions all along. If I had been Chosen to resurrect the glorious lost age that I remembered so clearly, what had I done right?
Heaven help me. I don't deserve this.
"Deep in thought?" Amira teased. She slipped up behind me, making no more sound than a mouse. Maybe she had been a mouse, scouting around to make sure that we were safe, but her shape-changing still unsettled me and so I said nothing of it.
"I can't help it," I admitted. "I have a lot on my mind."
"You're still glowing," She kissed the top of my head.
"Am I?" I laughed uneasily. "Should we move further away from the road?"
"Oh, most people wouldn't even notice," Amira replied. "You glitter in the sunlight, that's all. Like some absurd, pining lover in a pretentious bit of court poetry."
"Was that a compliment?" I wondered.
"After a fashion," Amira smirked.
"How sweet of you," I replied, in a tone that I suspected she would take offense to.
"I try my best," She leaned her head on my shoulder. Her right hand traced the stitched pattern on the leg of my breeches and I noticed for the first time that she was wearing a little orichalcum ring. I touched my own hand reflexively, but of course… there was nothing there.
"I never found it," Amira admitted, touching my palm with her fingertips. "I did look."
"It would be strange to wear someone else's wedding ring," I admitted.
"I suppose you're right," She paused. "Although sometimes when you look at me... I swear that it's him I'm seeing. And last night… rowr." The sound she made was definitely not a human one.
"I know, I know!" I cut her off a little more sharply than I'd intended to. "Look, Amira... three days ago I was about to get the promotion of my life! Now I'm a target for the fair folk, a traitor to the Realm, dead to my family, a god to my best friend and…"
"Playing naughty late-night games with Anathema?" Amira winked.
There was nothing I could say in response to that. I sighed heavily and buried my head in my hands. "Amira, please! I need to think. I can't afford to make any more mistakes."
What I meant was that running from Mnemon Rai had been a stupid thing to do, particularly since our Lunar allies would have provided us with food and shelter if we'd stayed with them. Amira obviously misunderstood me.
"What do you mean, mistakes?" She demanded.
The pain in her eyes reminded me of the stray dog I'd tried to befriend when I was a child. I'd spent weeks offering the poor creature scraps of food and almost convinced it to take some meat from my hand. But when my cousins saw me trying to feed it, they all started throwing rocks until they chased it off. When my father scolded them for what they had done, they claimed that they were afraid that I might get bitten. I still remembered the look the dog had given me in the moment before it ran away. It hurt so much more than I had ever hurt in my entire life.
While it may sound crude to compare an undeniably brilliant, powerful woman to a garbage-eating mutt, I had begun to wonder how much of Amira was really human, and how much was… something else. Like the dog from my childhood memory, she was looking for a little kindness in a world that had been unimaginably cruel to her… and if I started throwing rocks in her direction, I realized that I would probably never see her again. That thought cut straight to my heart. I didn't trust Amira. But for some reason, I loved her anyway.
"I don't mean you," I sighed. "But it wasn't smart for us to leave Silvermane and the other Lunars! We don't have any food or supplies! I've never been a fugitive before! I don't know the first thing about being on the run."
Amira nodded. "I've gotten that impression. I'm sorry."
"And as for my former life… to be honest, I think I need some kind of closure," I admitted. "Would you tell me what happened?"
I knew it was a delicate subject I was bringing up, but it seemed like it was time for me to hear the truth. "How did..." I hesitated. I'd been about to say "Alexander", but it didn't feel right. I was Alexander, and there was no use pretending otherwise. "How did I die?"
"I don't know," Amira confessed, tears welling up in her eyes. "I was alone in my room when Perfect's manse came crashing down from the sky. Dragonbloods were in the halls. Some of our servants were with them. Anyone who was defending us, they grabbed them and beat them to death. I didn't know what to do. I'd only taken Heart's Blood three times. All the Charms I knew were silly ones. I'd never had to fight for my life before. You always protected me. I was convinced that you were invincible... and so I jumped out the window and flew away."
I pulled Amira close and let her rest her head on my shoulder. She seemed so fragile. I knew that I would have told her to run if I could have.
"Four days after the Usurpation, Silvermane found me. I escaped with him into the deep Wyld. It was the only place the Dragonbloods wouldn't follow us. They couldn't survive it," she sighed. "We almost didn't. Elders I had looked up to, idolized even… they became monsters. We had to put them down. We killed our own out of mercy. And then, when we finally clawed our way back into Creation... there was nothing left. We were stewards over a corpse! A fitting reward for our despicable cowardice!"
"I don't know what to say," I replied. The words sounded helpless as I spoke them.
"Don't say anything," Amira whispered. "Just hold me."
That was when Roach woke up. He yawned and rolled over onto my foot. "Am I interrupting something?" He asked, looking up at me.
"We're fine. We should probably get moving though," I replied, glancing in the direction of the sun. Amira nodded. She squeezed my hand.
Roach slowly rose to his feet. "I wish we had some breakfast," he admitted.
"You and me both," I agreed.
"How far is it to the nearest town?" He wondered.
"Well, I'm not sure that we should go to Nexus," I admitted. "At least not until we can do something about our uniforms," I gestured to Roach and then myself.
"What about your girlfriend?" Roach demanded.
Amira was wearing her silver armor and absolutely nothing else.
"If Amira doesn't want to be seen, she won't be. She is a shapeshifter," I reminded him.
"Yeah, I noticed that," Roach grinned broadly. He was staring at Amira's tail.
"Roach!" I hissed, glaring at him. "Don't! Not a word!"
He said nothing, but he still looked smug. My face must have been absolutely scarlet. I didn't even want to imagine what kind of thoughts were rolling through Roach's head. He'd teased me mercilessly when he thought that Amira was a married woman I was having an affair with. Now that he'd actually met her, I expected I would never have a moment's peace again.
"If you two are done, I have a plan," Amira declared.
"Oh? All right, let's hear it!" I replied, thankful that she had changed the subject.
Amira whistled and the wind whipped up suddenly around us. I thought a storm was approaching until I caught sight of a white cloud moving towards us at an impossible speed. A surge of Essence swirled around the strange phenomenon. As it broke through the trees, Amira leapt onto it as if it were a solid thing.
"What is that?" Roach demanded.
"A Cirrus Skiff," I replied, recognizing the spell Amira had cast. "Sorcery. You've never seen one?" I glanced at Roach suspiciously.
"I thought only Dragonbloods could do that," Roach admitted.
"Anything they can do, we can do better!" Amira replied in a sing-song voice. "All right, hop on!"
"Oh, I don't think so!" Roach protested.
"Relax!" Amira laughed. "I know exactly what I'm doing!"
"That's what worries me," Roach replied.
"Honestly! Loren, have I ever steered you wrong?" She pressed. "Besides, I bet neither of you have ever ridden on a cloud before. It's really fun!"
When neither Roach nor myself responded, Amira knew she'd won. She grinned victoriously.
I slowly climbed aboard the Cirrus Skiff, knowing that Roach would follow suit. The cloud felt cold and soft but somehow solid underneath me. Out of curiosity, I gave it a bit of Essence and blinked in surprise as I realized suddenly that I could actually see the structure of the spell that moved and shaped the cloud. I could feel the energy flowing through it.
Did that mean I could work sorcery myself? It was a reasonable assumption, but I'd never considered such a thing before. Even if I had Exalted as a Fire-Aspect, I did not doubt that I would have remained a soldier. Perhaps I would have served in my father's Scarlets instead of with the Ravenous Winds, but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined studying at the Heptagram. I always thought of sorcery as a messy and manipulative thing. I'd never considered before that it might be inherently logical, like mathematics.
It took Roach a long while to muster up the courage to climb aboard Amira's cloud. When we did finally rise up into the sky, I was so surprised I almost fell off. The sorcery Amira had worked did not sit well with me. Though I didn't think it right to critique, the entire spell felt unsteady. Despite her bravado, sorcery was clearly not Amira's forte. Not for the first time, I found myself worrying about her. I gave some more Essence to the Cirrus Skiff, wondering if Amira would notice that I was trying to help. She smirked in my direction and I began to suspect that I was being played yet again.
Roach buried his head in my cloak and looked about ready to faint.
I didn't push him away. I remained as stoic as I could, not wanting to give Amira any cause to make fun of me. A few hours later, the cloud we were riding on deposited us on the ground and then dissipated into nothingness. The scenery hadn't changed much... in fact, I rather suspected we were in a different part of the same forest.
"How was that fun?" Roach coughed, obviously glad to be back on his own two feet. "I think I've still got bugs in my teeth and I feel like I've been wrapped in a carpet and beaten with a broom for the last three hours!"
"How very Southern!" Amira replied. "Oh, he's cute! Can we keep him?" She demanded, elbowing me with a mischievous wink.
I glared at Amira. She had a tendency to treat Roach as if he were a servant or a pet, just as many of my Dragonblooded relatives did. I'd always hated it when they lorded their status over me. Even if everyone did know that I was a Solar, that behavior was not something I planned on picking up.
"Where are we?" I asked. Whether I was about to admit it or not, I did feel a little like Roach myself, disoriented and out of my depth.
"Look around," Amira pointed. "See anything familiar?"
I turned slowly in the direction she indicated and stared. Half-sunken into the ground and covered in vines was a solid lump of orichalcum about eight feet square with no visible markings of any kind.
"It's a box," I observed, absolutely certain that I'd seen it before.
"This is the secret entrance of a factory cathedral which once belonged to a woman called Perfect Mechanical Soul." Amira recited. "She was one of the craziest, scariest sorceresses of the First Age, right up there with ol' Bright Shattered Ice. By the time of the Usurpation, Perfect was essentially the last Twilight you'd ever want to mess with. And I feel compelled to tell you this, but my friend Silvermane? He was her Mate. Let's just say I know things about miss "Perfect" that no one should!"
Roach laughed slightly. He still looked uncomfortable and I didn't blame him. I said nothing about what I remembered. The Perfect that I had known was nothing at all like Amira had described her. I would have called her obsessive, perhaps… but not crazy.
I knew that Solars in the First Age had formed Circles, a kind of sworn brotherhood, and that Perfect and myself had been members of the same Circle. I wondered if the "others" that Madame Marthacine had spoke of were the present incarnations of my former companions. I was sure I'd seen Perfect's work in Nexus, and ever since I'd stumbled upon her water purification machine, I'd felt certain that we would soon be reunited.
"All right. So why are we here?" I asked Amira.
"Well," Amira grinned. "This box has toys inside!"
I rolled my eyes. "Toys" was Amira's way of describing artifacts of any kind. She was inordinately fond of them and always got excited when her eyes lit upon something from long ago. I remembered the golden ball that the two soldiers had brought back to the Imperial City from Chiarascuro and realized that I felt the same way myself.
"All right, I'll believe that. But I don't see any way in," Still a little uneasy, I reached to touch the smooth golden surface of the box. There was something about orichalcum that I found irresistibly attractive. It beautiful by any standards and it always felt warm to me, like a nice cup of tea or a fresh clean towel.
"Give it Essence," Amira suggested, sounding impatient.
"Why don't you do it?" I demanded.
"Because I can't, numbskull! I shouldn't have to tell you this, but orichalcum only responds to Solar Essence. And Perfect never liked Lunars much. She considered us to be insufficiently sophisticated," Amira rolled her eyes.
"This thing is dangerous?" I pressed. "You think there's a trap, don't you?"
"We won't know until we open it," she replied.
"That sounds a bit reckless, don't you think?" I demanded.
"I'm with Loren on this one, lady," Roach added. "I'm all for staying out of the demon box."
"You're no fun at all!" Amira pouted. "Fine, let's start walking to Nexus!"
I sighed heavily and glanced back in the direction of the orichalcum box.
"Boss..." Roach began.
Very deliberately, I placed my hand on the smooth surface. I focused for a moment. I knew instinctively how to fuel Essence into something. I'd done it numerous times before, when Amira had thrown me my sword on the battlefield, and when I'd caught Perfect's tiny flying machine.
Or... Resplendent Whirlagig? Was that what it was called?
I put a mote of Essence into the box. It seemed to respond, and so I gave it more, as much as I guessed it would take. It wasn't until I saw a familiar flickering beginning around my hand that I realized how long I'd been standing where I was, staring at the thing and feeding it my Essence. I pulled away.
"What?" Amira demanded. "What's wrong?"
"I'm... flickering." I couldn't think of a better way to put it, and was a little annoyed when she laughed at me. It felt very strange to touch the mark on my brow when there was Essence bleeding from it. Such a gesture made me even more acutely aware of the fact that I carried a spark inside of me that did not originate anywhere within Creation. Celestial, I suspected, was the proper word for it.
This must be how gods feel all the time. I thought to myself, but I said nothing.
Amira groaned, gesturing to the trees all around us. "So?" She demanded.
"Nothing is happening!" I protested, gesturing to the box. "This thing is probably broken!"
"Yeah, and it might explode," Roach quipped.
"You're not helping!" Amira snapped.
"Well, what do you want me to do?" I demanded. "Wave my arms in the air and say "Stupid box, I command you to open!"
There was a sudden crunching, grinding sound behind me. I didn't have to turn around to see what it was.
"That'll do," Amira smirked. Roach stared with his jaw dropped as she bounded past me and disappeared down the dark stairs. After a few minutes, Amira poked her head back out and gestured in the direction of the two of us. "Come on, slowpokes! Don't you want to see what's inside?"
Roach hesitantly followed her when he saw that I was right behind him.
The moment I stepped through the door, it closed behind us.
"I want to take this opportunity to remind the both of you that I thought this was a bad idea from the beginning," Roach announced. "So that when we all die horribly, I can at least say "I told you so."
"No one's going to die horribly!" I sighed. Roach turned slowly and stared at me as though I were a stranger. The only light on the stairs was coming from the mark on my brow, and though Roach had known what I was since before our fight with the Alabaster Duchess, he still didn't seem entirely comfortable in my presence.
"Look, the door closing is probably just some sort of automated thing. There used to be doors like this everywhere," I clarified. "I'm sure Amira knows how to fix it."
"More light, Loren," Amira ordered. I didn't see what she was poking at, but she was looking at the wall to our right.
"Can't you?" I demanded.
"Remember what I said about Perfect not liking Lunars much? I'd better not do anything. If there is a trap here, it might have been set for Silvermane. Which means it could be activated by my Essence," Amira replied, as if there was nothing particularly unusual about Perfect attempting to kill her Mate. "What is your problem anyway?"
"You obviously don't understand, and I'm not going to explain," I snapped, a little more sharply than I'd intended.
"Ooh. Soft, squishy feelings hurt?" Amira poked me.
"You're horrible," I informed her, and she beamed as if she'd just been given a compliment.
Just as I'd instinctively understood how to fuel Essence into an object, I also knew that I could do other things with it myself. With little more than a moment's concentration, I could know the precise time of day, make a light bright enough to read by... or glow brilliantly enough to momentarily blind anyone standing close to me.
I hadn't tried to do such a thing before, precisely because it was so ostentatious and undeniably Solar-like, but with Amira's nose in my face, I decided to give her exactly what she'd asked for.
Amira shrieked and almost fell flat onto Roach, who shielded his eyes and stumbled down a few stairs. I walked directly past them both. Even after ten years of being what I was, it still felt odd to me, descending into the darkness without a torch or lantern.
"Yikes, that's bright!" Roach grimaced.
"I know! And so pretty! See, I knew you could do it!" Amira chirped.
"Are you making fun of me again?" I glared at her.
"You're an easy mark," she retorted, swishing her tail at me. She grabbed me by the collar and kissed me. I almost fell down the stairs.
"She's got you whipped," Roach cackled.
"Stop it!" I warned him.
I lost count of how many flights of stairs we went down, but it took us a long time to reach the bottom. I knew without a doubt that I'd come to a place that I had visited before, and felt a little twinge of nervousness. Immediately, I muted the glow around me as much as I could.
"Little more light, Loren," Roach muttered, tripping over the last step.
"No, I'm trying to stop glowing!" I argued.
"Why?" Amira demanded.
"Well, because if there's someone down here, I don't want the first words I hear from them to be "Aaah, Anathema!" I protested.
"What makes you think there's someone down here?" Roach wondered uneasily.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I just have a feeling."
Amira snorted. Obviously she knew something herself, but she wasn't being forthcoming with information. The three of us stood before a massive orichalcum door. Like the outer surface of the box, the door was seamless in its construction, appearing like a massive golden mirror set into white marble foundation. It had five symbols on it that I recognized immediately. The first was the same mark that was currently flickering on my own forehead. Someone looking might still see it from a certain angle, but it no longer marked me as it had before.
"I don't like this," Amira muttered.
"You're the one who brought us here," I reminded her, reaching out and touching the Dawn symbol. The door opened with a whisper.
The room we had entered was enormous and like nothing I had ever seen before, at least not in my current life. The ceiling was as high as the stairs we'd come down and the shadows above us looked like some great birds of prey, roosting undisturbed for so many centuries. I knew what they were immediately... warbirds, they were called. There were tools that I didn't know the names of scattered everywhere and in the center of the room was a massive furnace, burning brilliantly and filling the air with the smell of... was that liquid orichalcum?
That was when I heard a faint "click" sound and realized that there was a weapon pointed at the back of my neck. The air was filled with sharp, alchemical smell and I recognized the distinctive crackle of a lightning spear. I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender. Amira growled, looking slightly more wolf-like than usual and Roach went for his sword.
I turned around very slowly.
There was a man standing behind me. It wasn't easy to tell how old he was in the strange forge light that filled the room, but I suspected he was somewhat older than I was, perhaps by five to ten years. His clothing was disheveled and covered in stains, his short red hair stuck out in every direction, and his eyes were hidden by a set of peculiar glasses with several different-colored lenses. The beautiful First Age lightning spear he held was certainly an intimidating-looking weapon, but it was overshadowed by the aura of gold that surrounded him, emanating from a very distinct, unmistakable mark on his brow.
He was a Solar!
"Anathema?" The word escaped me before I realized how bad it sounded. After so many years of serving in the Ravenous Winds, I suspected that it was going to be very difficult for me to purge such terms from my vocabulary.
The Twilight Caste pointed his weapon at Roach, who seemed about to draw his sword. "Both of you where I can see you, right now!"
Both of us? He obviously meant Roach and myself.
But where was Amira?
"Now how did you get in here without tripping my alarms? Are you working for those damned Sidereals?" He demanded, using a strange word that was definitely familiar to me. I glanced to Roach who only shrugged.
"Calm down, we don't want any trouble!" I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender.
"Yeah, we were just looking for... treasure," Roach finished awkwardly, realizing belatedly just how bad that sounded.
"Nothing I have would be useful to you, Dragonblood," the Twilight snapped, glaring at me. "Even if you did miraculously become "Enlightened" with advanced knowledge of Wyld Cauldron technology."
I was still dressed in my lamellar armor, and though I lacked good breeding, I wasn't entirely surprised at the Twilight's mistake. "Oh, I don't know. You might be surprised," I smiled slightly and illuminated my own Caste Mark.
For a moment there was something like a spark of recognition in the Twilight's eyes. "Well now... that changes everything!" Without a moment's hesitation, he whirled around and shot a burst of energy from his weapon into the ground so close to my foot that I felt the heat through the leather of my boot.
"You almost shot me! Are you insane? What was that for?" I demanded.
"I don't like to kill people, generally speaking," the Twilight replied. "But you've just proven to me that you're not a Sidereal. I've learned that they can impersonate Solars, you see, but it's exceptionally difficult for them, and they can't keep up the deception if they're startled."
"But what if I'd moved? You could have killed me!" I protested.
"Oh please! You're Dawn Caste! You're not going to go down unless I shoot you in the head, and even then I'd probably have to do it twice!" The Twilight laughed.
I did not bother to protest. I knew a few things about my own durability. He was not exaggerating.
Roach seemed ready to run, but after being shot at, I wanted some sort of explanation or at very least an apology. From the way I'd seen things in my dreams, I'd started to believe that if the Solars were all returning to Creation, they would at least treat one another with a little respect!
"Have you considered that shooting at your visitors is a very good way to convince people that you are a mad demon who needs to be put down?" I scolded him.
The Twilight hesitated. He looked a little unsettled for a moment, the expression on his face immediately reminded me of what my Aunt Garel used to call "someone walking over his grave."
That was when I caught sight of Amira. Only her yellow eyes were visible in the light of the furnace. She was in her largest wolf form, bigger than a horse at the shoulder with a thick mane of moonsilver spines covering her shoulders and back. Her tattoos glowed, making her look exactly like what I had once believed that all Lunars were... what Amira had admitted that she feared she was becoming.
A monster.
The Twilight dropped his lightning spear and cursed incoherently as Amira flicked her tail across his shoulder, giving away her location. He almost fell over when he did see her, grinning toothily at him.
"You shot at my Mate. I should rip your head off your shoulders," she whispered, the tone of her voice making it very obvious that she would be willing to carry through with her threat.
"Your Lunar?" The Twilight glanced nervously over his shoulder in my direction.
Amira chuckled.
"All right, who are you? What do you want with me?" The Twilight demanded, not sounding nearly as sure of himself as he had before.
"My name is Cathak Loren," I replied automatically, before I realized that I probably should have used an alias.
I definitely noticed the Twilight's reaction to my name. He'd heard of me before?
"I'm Roach," Roach added, jerking his thumb in my direction. "I'm with him."
"They call me Heartsblood," Amira growled. The Twilight paled. Of course, he was pale already, probably from spending so much time in his cavern of a workshop, but his skin lost the little color that it had possessed prior to that moment. Amira held her teeth bared only a few inches away from his neck until he was obviously sweating. For a few minutes I wasn't entirely sure what she planned to do with him myself. Even though he'd already shot at me, I felt that letting Amira kill the first Solar I'd ever met was probably a bad way to start my new life.
"Boo!" Amira shouted.
The Twilight jumped a foot in the air, and Amira began giggling uncontrollably. Somewhere in the middle of her fit, she changed back to her human self, still rolling on the floor like a hyperactive child who'd just consumed enough sugar to bake a dozen cakes.
I sighed in defeat, knowing I should have expected as much. Amira could sometimes be vicious, but she had a mischievous streak a mile wide.
"You started this!" I informed him. "I certainly had no intention of making trouble for you, and you attacked me before I had the opportunity to tell you why we came to this place!"
"Save it. I already know why you're here!" He snorted. "Sidereals, Lunars, Dragonbloods... it's always the same story! Why go through the trouble of making something when you can steal it instead? Go ahead, take whatever you want!" The Twilight dismissed us.
"I told you already, we're not here to rob you. What's your name?" I asked.
"I don't see how that matters," He retorted.
"Well, what I want is information!" I paused. "Where are you from? How long have you been a Solar? Do you remember things about the First Age?" Questions simply poured out of me. If it wasn't for Roach's blank stare, I probably wouldn't have stopped talking until I was blue in the face.
"You're certainly nosy," The Twilight snorted. He seemed to have relaxed somewhat, but he still evaluated me with a suspicious glare.
"I can't help it. This is all new to me," I admitted.
"Ah," the Twilight observed. "Just Exalted, eh?"
"Oh yes, ten years ago!" Amira rolled her eyes.
"What?" The Twilight blinked in disbelief. "Ten years? You've been Exalted for ten years and they haven't caught you yet?"
"You mean… the Wyld Hunt?"
"The Wyld Hunt? Oh, if it were just the Ravenous Winds or the Scarlets, things would be easy!" He threw his hands up in the air. "But no… I'm talking about the gods-damned Bureau of Destiny!"
"The Bureau of what?" Roach asked.
The Twilight sighed heavily. "Sit down. You're going to want to sit down for this."
I did as he recommended. Amira and Roach stood behind me. Neither of them looked impressed, but I gathered that was because Roach had absolutely no idea what was going on and Amira already knew exactly how things would turn out.
I could not take my eyes off of the Twilight. The longer he ranted, the more certain I became that I had known him in my previous life. "I don't know if you've heard this already or not, but we Solar Exalted are the rightful rulers of Creation. It was given to us by the Gods, which is why you will find in all of the oldest texts that Solars are referred to as "Lawgivers". It's why our government was called the Deliberative. The Dragonblooded were bred to be our soldiers, to fight in our armies against the enemies of Creation. But they rose up against us and destroyed everything that we had built."
"Why?" I wondered, an uneasy sort of feeling in my stomach as he spoke those words.
"Oh, all the usual reasons! We were corrupt, they were oppressed!" The Twilight continued. "It's irrelevant. What is important is that with the help of certain ambitious Sidereals, the Dragonblooded conspired to kill us all and hold our Essence in something they called the Jade Prison. This is why, for many hundreds of years there were no Solars. But about fifty years ago, the prison was discovered to be cracked. The Sidereals themselves don't know when it happened or who did it. Not that it matters. The point is, our souls were freed to return to the cycle of reincarnation and now we're all coming back. And while most of the other Solars that I've met so far still think that the Realm is our biggest threat, that's only because they've no idea how dangerous the Bureau of Destiny can be. The Sidereals are watching us constantly."
"How can you tell if you're being watched?" I asked. I didn't like what he was proposing at all, but it felt true to me.
"Well, it's almost impossible," the Twilight replied. "Sidereals can look like anyone, you see. They might be some insignificant person following you all day, trying to sell you trash or trinkets. The bartender at your favorite tavern. Your lover. Your lackey." He gestured to Roach. "The only way to be safe is not to trust anyone. Or, if you happen to be in the possession of a Ninefold Harmonic Essence Tracker... you can submit them to a very invasive, sophisticated scan. They really hate that," he added, as if he were an authority on the subject.
"Wow. You're paranoid," Roach observed.
"Feh," the Twilight snorted. "Paranoia is the fear of the unknown. I am quite knowledgable and rationally prepared. There's a difference." He paused for a moment, studying me. "So I take it that you've... resigned from the Ravenous Winds?" The Twilight folded his hands under his chin in a distinctly condescending fashion.
"I didn't have a choice," I said.
"You didn't have a choice?" He echoed incredulously.
"The fae had to be stopped. But Mnemon Rai is not my enemy. I don't hate the Realm."
"Fair enough," the Twilight paused. "I don't have any real problems with the Immaculate Order myself, except of course that they're wrong about everything."
"Were you a monk?" I asked.
He didn't answer me, but the expression on his face led me to believe that the answer to my question was "yes".
"Well, I was a soldier. But that doesn't matter now. When Mnemon Rai gets back to Nexus, there will be a full-fledged Wyld Hunt. And I doubt we've seen the last of those fae either."
The Twilight raised an eyebrow in my direction.
"He killed the Alabaster Duchess yesterday," Amira replied. "The Red Queen watched the whole thing."
"Damn. Although now I'm curious. According to my friends, the Alabaster Duchess has been terrorizing this forest for centuries. How did you kill her?" The Twilight pressed, seeming to recognize that name.
"I taunted her until she charged me, and then ran her through. Nothing especially creative," I confessed, reaching for my daiklave. It was still wrapped in canvas and must have looked a little silly strapped to my back, but I felt a lot safer having it close.
"Hm. An artifact?" The Twilight observed. "It must be, or you wouldn't bother hiding it. May I?
I set the blade before me and slowly unwrapped it. In the red light of the plasma furnace, the orichalcum glittered even more brilliantly than it had in the sun. The Twilight immediately took a step back. He cursed aloud in Old Realm, using a word I didn't remember the meaning of.
"Faeslayer?" He whispered.
I nodded.
The Twilight's demeanor changed. He immediately brought me a chair. In fairness, what he actually did was snap his fingers and command a chair to move in Old Realm. It came trotting up behind me, and I slowly sat with some trepidation. He was obviously a sorcerer. That didn't particularly surprise me, but the ease and grace with which he worked Essence certainly caught my attention. I wondered how long he had been Exalted himself.
"Is Alexander here?" A familiar voice wondered. It sounded like a young woman and I wondered for a moment if the Twilight had an assistant or a lover hiding somewhere nearby.
"Come out, Godchaser," the Twilight sighed.
From behind the plasma furnace a white cloak emerged, a limbless phantom with tendrils of moonsilver and orichalcum, and an ivory mask for a face. It took me a moment to realize that I was looking... not a person, but an extremely sophisticated construct, of the kind that had been rare even in the glory days of the Deliberative. Roach nearly went for his sword, and Amira blinked in disbelief.
"Oh Luna's blessed tits! Godchaser?" She exclaimed. "You're still running?"
"Ugh. I thought I smelled wet dog!" The construct snorted, sounding extremely put-off.
"So we do know her?" The Twilight asked his unusual companion.
"Unfortunately," the construct replied. "She's Alexander's Mate."
Amira wrapped her arms around me in a possessive manner. Her ears were pinned back, and the hair on her tail was standing straight up. She growled slightly and curled up her lip, and expression that would have suited her better if she'd still been a wolf.
"My apologies. Godchaser can be rude, but I do depend on her. I don't have many memories of my past life. Most of what I know has come from these old books," the Twilight gestured up, and I stared in disbelief at the impossible size of the library which loomed over our heads. My eye caught a box of parts labeled "Water Purification Machine" and I realized belatedly who I was speaking to.
"Perfect?" I blinked in surprise. "You are Perfect, aren't you?"
The Twilight did bear an uncanny resemblance to his predecessor. His hair was the same color of coppery red, and his nose was just as sharply pointed.
The Twilight smiled.
"I thought Perfect was woman?" Roach eyed the Twilight suspiciously.
"Do you have any idea what a Solar is?" The Twilight demanded.
Roach shrugged.
"We're divine souls. Essentially, gods in mortal bodies. When we die, we reincarnate. Well, everyone reincarnates, but we do it in a very literal fashion. As Exalts, we inherit the knowledge and the skills of our predecessors. So yes, Perfect was a woman, and yes, I am Perfect," Veritas sighed. "Sometimes I dearly wish I could go back to that life."
Roach snickered. "You'd rather be a woman?"
"Are you an imbecile? We're hunted! Everyone thinks we're demons! Do you realize that we bred the Dragonblooded? Like livestock! They were meant to be slaves and cannon fodder!" The Twilight threw his hands in the air. "It's an absolute travesty what's been done to us! Our whole world has been destroyed!"
Roach grimaced and took a step back. Evidently he realized that he'd touched on a nerve.
"What's he talking about, Boss?" He asked.
"Something that happened a very long time ago," I admitted.
"So you remember it?" Roach wondered uneasily.
I nodded.
"You remember?" The Twilight asked eagerly. "You remember the First Age?"
"Yes. And I also remember the War," I replied. I didn't have to say which war. To those who had survived it, there had only ever been one.
"I'm not sure if I should be jealous... or if I should feel very sorry for you," the Twilight admitted.
"My Maker has had a very difficult day-week-month-year-day," the construct quipped, hovering over The Twilight's shoulder. She looked down at him with an expression of concern.
"That's an interesting measure of time," Roach observed.
"It's all thanks to those Sidereals!" The Twilight snorted. "I'm beginning to understand why Silvermane thinks they should have been put in the Jade Prison instead of us!"
"You ought to set them on fire next time!" The construct chimed in, obviously trying to be supportive.
"Oh, I will!" He replied with an expression I knew too well.
"Watch who you bite, Recluse," I replied, speaking in Old Realm. It seemed appropriate to call the Twilight by his predecessor's infamous nickname. As the Dawn Caste were commonly called "Bronze Tigers" for their battle prowess, the Twilight Caste bore the sobriquet "Copper Spiders" for their artistry and industriousness. Perfect herself had been a very particular kind of arachnid, a solitary and extremely venomous one.
My Circlemate grinned very broadly. "Nonsense! I've been provoked!" He informed me.
"Oh dear," Amira observed. "Here we go again..."
"So how do you actually know this guy, Boss?" Roach demanded.
Recluse ignored him as if he were not even in the room, let alone sitting between the two of us. "I can picture what you used to look like," I admitted. "Apart from the physical, I don't think you've changed very much at all."
"Nor have you," Recluse nodded, smiling just slightly. "So tell me, Faeslayer… do you remember hearing about something called a protoscemaic vortex?"
"A what?" I blinked at him in confusion.
"Hm. That was… a rather personal project of mine," he observed. "Have you heard the name Himitsu before? He might have appeared near the end."
"If it's the Usurpation you're interested in, you should be bartering with me," Amira interrupted us.
"Maybe so. But as I see it, you're one of two things… either the real Heartsblood or a Sidereal powerful enough to pose as a Lunar. In either case, I don't trust you. At all," Recluse snapped. "If you are Heartsblood, you were only fifty years old at the time of the Usurpation! You were a child, a non-entity! You only escaped because you weren't a threat." He gestured to me, and then to himself. "Our names were on the top of the killing list."
I was a little shocked to hear such a thing. In all my dreams of the First Age, I'd never gotten the impression that anyone should have wanted me dead. "Recluse, that's enough! There's a lot that I don't remember and you've already admitted that you know less than I do! So let's put this all behind us for right now and focus on the problem at hand!"
"Which is?" Recluse pressed.
"We have two armies chasing after us, and we need to make it to Nexus before they do," Amira explained. "And while I could exhaust myself expending all of my Essence to take us there with sorcery, I would prefer to be in fighting condition when we arrive. If you can get us to Nexus ahead of Mnemon Rai, you can pick Loren's brain as much as you want and I won't butt in. You can also ask me anything and I swear I won't use a single Charm against you."
"Well, I could get you to Nexus in less than an hour, but that would mean taking one of the warbirds. And neither of them are ready to fly!" Recluse protested.
"You haven't fixed one yet?" Amira demanded with her hands on her hips. "Are you sure you're Perfect?"
"I haven't been down here very long. Only a few weeks if you want the truth," Recluse paused. "Though with the way Fate has been all mangled around me by those meddling Sidereals, it's beginning to feel like much longer than that." He sighed in defeat and gestured to a warbird a little below the others. Its exterior was well-polished and more than a few tools were resting on the rigging just below its berth. "I suppose we can take that one."
Roach looked skeptical. "It's an airship? Do you know how to fly it?"
"Well, I haven't done it in a long time, but I'm sure it's like riding a bike," Amira admitted.
"What's a bike?" Roach frowned.
"Godchaser?" Recluse turned to his construct.
"Yes, Maker?" The construct quipped.
"If any Sidereals should be poking around, you have my permission to paradox them!" He informed it. "All the way back to Yu-Shan if necessary!"
"Will do, Maker!" The construct agreed. Humming cheerfully, it hovered off.
"All right," Recluse sighed. "We should be safe for the time being, and I'll get you to Nexus well before Mnemon Rai. But first, I want to hear your story."
Not sure of where to begin, I told Recluse about my brother's death and how I'd Exalted, explaining how my first few dreams had led me to Amira. When I got to the dreams of the Usurpation that I'd had while training myself at my father's hunting lodge, he seemed particularly interested.
"I had to find something more challenging. It wasn't enough, just reading about things! I needed to be doing something. Nobody would play Gateway with me after I beat Ledaal Kes," I explained.
"Hm. You should take up sorcery," Recluse remarked.
"I don't think so," I shook my head, though I immediately thought of Amira's shoddy Cirrus Skiff. "I already have a difficult time keeping my focus on the present."
"Feh! If you're a good Gateway player, then you've got an eye for patterns. And if you're the military strategist that I know you are, you can think quickly on your feet!" He laughed.
"What does that have to do with sorcery?" I demanded.
"Everything. The Dragonblooded don't understand it. They never have!" Recluse rolled his eyes. "Sorcery isn't supposed to be convoluted and messy! It's more... mathematics."
I blinked in surprise. That had been my thought exactly!
"Spoken like a Devonian," Amira gave a wry smile.
"Guilty as charged," Recluse smirked.
It occurred to me that there was a reason why Perfect and Alexander had often called each other by the nicknames "Recluse" and "Faeslayer". They, we… had been members of a certain exclusive club. The term Devonian fixed itself in my mind. I immediately associated it with myself, as easily as I might have claimed the name "Cathak". But what did I remember about sorcery? Less than nothing!
"Sorcery is ruthless, Faeslayer. Those Emerald Circle Spells you've probably seen your Mate playing with are nothing compared to what you and I were once capable of," Recluse paused. "The first spell I ever cast was every bit as terrifying as it was liberating. Now, well... I'm beginning to understand why there are three Circles of Sorcery." He paused. "Emerald Circle Spells are like the first forms you learn when you're studying a martial art. They're good for building your foundations, and they're excellent for practice… but after a while they're just not hard enough."
"I understand," I nodded, absorbing that little bit of information. I had never thought to associate sorcery with martial arts, and when I did think of it that way, I found that the concept itself no longer made me feel sick as it once had. "I spent years training at Paisap's Stair. I studied Water Dragon and Tiger and bits of anything else someone would teach me. I made two of the Dragonblooded in one of my lessons look like idiot children without even thinking about the consequences."
"Heh. I studied Snake myself. You know, I'm beginning to think that I was wrong about you," Recluse admitted. "You're not quite the ham-fisted sword bunny I expected you would be."
"Is that some kind of backwards complement?" I frowned.
"Take it for what it is. An invitation for you to come back and talk some more. I'll even open the front door for you. The warbird's ready to fly. I had her charged up in case those Sidereals came back. Nosy bastards. They want to know what I'm working on."
"And what are you working on, Recluse?" I pressed.
He gave another wry smile. "Wouldn't you like to know? I am sorry that I shot at you earlier. It's just been a very difficult..." He hesitated. "Day." He decided on that measure of time. "And as I believe I've already explained, I simply don't trust anyone. Can't be too careful with all of the Sidereals around here." He still did not bother to explain what Sidereals were and I decided not to admit that I didn't know.
Amira shoved Roach through the hatch of the warbird. She put both of her hands on the hearthstone in the console and the airship roared to life, shaking the whole laboratory. I hopped into the seat closest to Amira. Recluse watched us with a look of grim satisfaction on his face, as if he would not admit that it greatly pleased him to see one of his machines taking to the sky.
"Recluse! What's your name? Your actual name, in the present?" I shouted down.
He smiled slightly. "Well, I don't suspect that you'll be using my name, Faeslayer," Recluse replied. "But your friends can call me Veritas."
Veritas glanced around his manse, seized a bag off of the nearest table and then effortless leapt up to join the three of us inside of the warbird. He pushed Amira out of the pilot's seat and she pouted.
"Wait for me, Maker!" His construct, which apparently had not flown very far away came zooming after him with an incoherent, gleeful squeak. It hovered over his shoulder and watched me with a mischievous grin that made me very nervous.
I can't describe the feeling that came over me as we rose into the sky. Flying in the warbird was far more satisfying than being dragged aboard Amira's awkward Cirrus Skiff. When Veritas finally agreed to give the airship a proper test, even Roach threw his hands in the air and cheered. I remained somewhat more composed, but I did smile the entire time despite myself. Perhaps it was the sheer impossibility of such flight that made me feel so liberated, or perhaps it was only the warmth that I felt with Amira resting her head on my shoulder, and Veritas sitting across from me glowing only faintly, his caste mark mirroring the design of the ostentatious hearthstone circlet that he wore. As with Amira, I'd only just met him and I already felt certain that we would be friends. Tempting as it was to give into such comforts, I was also worried.
I'd learned more than a few things from my dreams about the way Creation had once been, and the longer that I spent surrounded by people who genuinely believed that Solars weren't monsters, the easier it became for me to forget the one thing that I knew to be true. It had taken me a long while to accept that being Anathema did not make me inherently evil – and not only because I'd believed in the teachings of the Immaculates since childhood. I remembered the First Age as I'd lived it, both the good and the bad. With great power came great consequences, and if someone with the gifts that we possessed did not tread lightly...
I watched Veritas. The way his hands gracefully and swiftly moved across the console of his warbird made him look very much like his predecessor. Of course, when Perfect Mechanical Soul had worked with such focus centuries ago, she hadn't been attempting to pilot a little airship.
She'd been preparing to tear Creation in half.