I know this was a slower update than the others, but life and mild writer's block happened.
Fourth Chapter: Questions
"Are you sure you're ready, Seiryah?" Liris asked.
"Yes, I am. I want to go home," Seiryah said simply. She no longer wished to be in the room with the beeping machines, even though she now knew what they did, or anywhere else in the 'hospital'. She knew now that the hospital was a place of healing, she was still sensitive enough to the pain and death of the place that she wished to leave as soon as possible. Even if there really were… thousands… of people in this city, Daisra. She was used to thinking in terms of hundreds at the outer end. Thousands was… mind-boggling.
Liris took her arm, and they stepped outside…
People swarmed. Swarmed was really the only term to describe it. They were everywhere, Like insects. Buildings reared into the sky, ten, twenty, fifty stories high, casting shadows that shaded the entire street. The noise of the city was a dull roar that filled her ears and made her head ring. Some trees had been planted along the sidewalk, to give the artificial monster a feel of life. The trees had red and gold leaves. Seiryah wondered if that was natural, or if it was simply autumn. It was certainly cold enough to be autumn, and she was grateful for the coat that Liris had loaned her, even if it was clearly too small.
"This is the New City. The Old City isn't as crowded or noisy."
"Is that where we live?" Seiryah asked hopefully. There was enough noise here for the entire world put together. People were talking to each other, and sometimes into little devices in their hands, as if they couldn't stand to be alone and think for a few minutes. Cars – metal contraptions made to transport people lumbered along in the road, although traffic was dominated by special yellow cars called taxis that were just for transporting people within the city for cash and trucks – which carried supplies, like food.
She only knew this because Liris had told her, of course.
"No, you have to be really rich or of noble blood to live in the Old City… Don't look at me like that, Seirie, you were the person who wanted to see what it would be like to live like a commoner so badly. That's why you moved in with me. Seiryah? You okay?"
"I'm fine…"
"Seirie!" exclaimed a little girl, no older than four, with enormous blue eyes and red-gold braided pigtails. She was dressed in a red sundress and a pair of white shoes. "Piggie back ride!"
"Really?" asked a younger Seiryah with a grin, kneeling down to allow her sister to clamber onto her. "Well, if that's what my lady commands…"
The small child, Alvira, giggled as she climbed on her sister's back. "You soun like Cousin Van'el."
Seiryah's smile turned wry. "I suppose I do. Guess I'm spending too much time with him…"
Alvira laughed again, and Seiryah decided that it was one of the happiest sounds she had ever heard…
"…just fine…"
Liris looked at her skeptically. "Are you sure? You went all spacey on me for a few moments."
"Not a big deal. Just a scrap of a memory," Seiryah replied, shrugging her shoulders. "It was about Alvira," she added, noticing Liris's curious look. "Say, Liris?"
"Um, what?"
"Do you know anything about Alvira? About where she might be now, I mean?"
Liris stared at Seiryah for a few minutes. "Alvira is dead, Seiryah. No one found her body, but she's dead."
Seiryah shook her head. "No, she's alive. I'm sure of it."
Liris snorted. "What makes you so certain? Don't tell me it's that dream, we don't even know if that really ha…"
"What dream?" asked a familiar male voice. Both women rounded on the speaker as one, but Arvel held up his hands and smiled disarmingly, "Woah, I come in peace! Take it easy with the evil glares!" He was dressed in much the same manner as he had been last night, a black trench coat and dark slacks, with the coat hanging open to reveal a rumpled white shirt. Seiryah wondered if he'd slept in his clothes.
Seiryah's expression softened. Of all the people to drop in on them, Arvel was one of the ones she wanted to see most. "Ah, Arvel. I actually wanted to see you."
A slow smile spread across Arvel's face, and Liris glared at him a little. "Well, that's what I ditched work to do. Have any more questions, Seiryah?"
Seiryah bit her lip. He seemed so happy… no. I need to know this.
"What do you know about my accident, Arvel? What did you mean about House Sheyol, last night?"
Arvel's face darkened. "So you were listening in. I was wondering how you got to all the trouble so quickly."
Seiryah simply stared at him.
Arvel sighed. "Fine, I'll tell you. But not here." He jerked a thumb at the general area, and the two girls noticed that people were beginning to stop and stare at them. Seiryah blinked. One of those people staring at them had rather large cat ears. She made a mental note to ask Liris about that later on. "Liris, if you would be so kind…?"
Liris scowled openly at him. "Oh, very well. Back to our place it is." She then turned to Seiryah, "Don't listen to everything he says. He's crazy, as far as I'm concerned. And irresponsible. And…"
Arvel let the tirade wash over him as they walked. Something in the way he carried himself said that he thought he deserved it.
Rage. Rage filled his mind, warmed his blasted soul. It anchored him, kept him whole. It consumed him slowly.
The girl. He hated the girl, her pale skin, her false innocence, and how thoroughly she had deceived him, manipulated him. She had cost him everything.
He hated the Raven, the boy that never should have existed. The failure that had risen from fire and ash time and time again to haunt him, and eventually to kill him.
To a lesser extent, he hated the sun-haired thief, the witch girl who had posed as a maid and made a mess of his plans from the moment she laid her grubby hands on the Earth Sphere.
He also hated the Spirit. He had not been aware of the Spirit until after his second birth, when he had joined with the earth and risen from the lava as something far greater than human. As a spirit himself, he had been able to see her, a flame-haired woman dressed in bandages and rags. He hated her from the depths of his soul, the almost holy being who had shielded his murderer, strengthened the filthy Raven. Surely without her help the malformed brat would have died long ago. She, at least, would not escape him. He had her name now; he had followed her home, where she was weak, mortal, and alone.
He may not be able to strike back at the others, but he would have his revenge against Seiryah.
And then, from across the void: "If it is Seiryah Veranen you seek, I would be happy to help you…"
They had traveled on the 'subway', which was an underground 'train'. A 'train' had been described to her as 'something like a bunch of compartments linked together and dragged on a set of tracks by an engine.'
Frankly, she had been less confused before the explanation. It looked like some sort of Imperial contraption, and it would take her where she wanted to go. That was all she needed to know for the moment. She could figure things out for herself later.
They walked into the cars, sat down in uncomfortable seats, and Seiryah spent the next several minutes watching as the concrete tunnel passed her by at impossible speeds. It was fascinating, and a little frightening. Now that she had seen a bit of Daisra, all it had done was underscore how little she knew of her own homeland. Looks like getting used to living here again is going to be every bit as much an adventure as anything I did in Kalas's world. As she reflected on what she had overheard from Arvel's rant the previous night, she had to add, if I survive long enough, that is.
The train came to a halt and the doors opened with a hissing sound of released air.
"This is our stop," Liris announced, her cheeriness sounding only partially forced. "Come on! I can't wait to show you everything!"
Seiryah followed as Liris half-dragged her off the train, with an amused Arvel following. Seiryah looked around and saw another person, a woman, with cat ears and this time a tail as well, dancing as a man with enormous ears of some animal she couldn't recognize played a stringed instrument. People would stop to look and listen for a while and sometimes drop coins or pieces of paper (sena, Seiryah, sena. That's money here. Remember that.) into a rather battered hat that sat at the man's feet.
"Um… Liris?"
"Yeah, Seiryah?"
"What are… those people?" she asked, jerking her head over in the direction of the performers.
"Huh? Oh, they're Yena. Explaining exactly what they are would take a while, but they're basically people with some animal blood in them. I'll tell you about it in detail later on. After all…" she continued, her voice turning acidic, "I'm sure Arvel is very, very busy. He should probably be heading back to work soon. If Mihkal keeps covering for him, they're both going to lose their jobs. Although why Arvel still has his, I'll never know. One wonders what he must have had to do to keep it, what with his wild fantasies. Perhaps…"
"Liris," Arvel said calmly enough, his green eyes hardening. "I would like you to stop insinuating…things. Please." It sounded more like an order than a request with the way he said it, but Liris snarled something incomprehensible at him, and changed the subject again, ignoring him pointedly. It was clear that the short blonde woman blamed Arvel for Seiryah's condition. Seiryah briefly entertained herself with the idea of telling them about Melodia, just to see what would happen. She continued to entertain herself with images of Liris and Arvel kicking the stuffing out of the Miran duchess as they made their way to a particular glass and stonemonstrosity, not as tall as the others she had seen before. Even though she had helped to save Melodia, it was hard for her to let go of her hatred for the other woman, the one who had manipulated her by erasing her memories and had turned Kalas against her.
Melodia shuddered as she looked at the massive pile of paperwork She hated paperwork with a passion!
But damage needed to be repaired, even in Mira, protected though it was by the warp in dimensions that surrounded it. And in order to repair damage, one had to pay the various people who repaired that damage; the carpenters, the masons, and thousands of other miscellaneous costs. All of which needed the duke's approval before gold could be taken from the treasury to finance it. And since her grandfather needed some time to recover from the strain of the war, Melodia had volunteered to help with the work. The paperwork.
What on Earth had she been thinking?
She felt a burst of malicious intent before it faded again. Like someone was glaring at her back and wanted her dead. Which was understandable, probably almost every person outside of Mira, and a fair number within, had harbored that sentiment at some point in time. But this was the feeling of someone hating her personally…
Shoving the feeling out of her mind (probably her imagination and her conscience, both of which had been annoyingly overactive lately) she ran through the numbers. Damage to Mira itself had been minimal, compared to other countries like Diadem and Alfard. In fact, most of the damage to the island had been caused when the continents returned to the Earth, not by Malpercio's minions. The war had disrupted trade, however, and Mira was running low on any food that did not contain sugar. Even in the manor itself, meat was rare. At the rate things were going, the people in Balanicore were going to find out what Hograt tasted like. Although people had already begun to cultivate the new lands, food would take some time to grow. They desperately needed to import food from somewhere. Probably Sadal Suud, the only continent that had been largely spared Malpercio's wrath.
Melodia rubbed her temples. It was about five days since Malpercio's defeat and a little less than three since Seiryah had left for her own world, and already the problems were cropping up like Mirage Weed in Detronue. A rather apt comparison, as well. Mirage Weed was almost possible to kill...
The young duchess raked a hand through her now teal hair and smiled bitterly. If the only consequence of trying to destroy the world was paperwork, than she must have gotten off easy.
A smashing noise drew Melodia's attention to the other side of her bedroom. A perfume bottle had fallen off her dresser. Her only bottle of perfume had fallen off the dresser and shattered on the floor. A strong smell of lilacs permeated the room as the perfume soaked into her carpet, blanching it to an almost-white. She sighed. Now she was going to have that replaced too, sooner or later. The manor servants hovered over her like mother hens ever since she had returned, and they wouldn't allow her to keep a stained carpet, even if it was only one small spot in a room that no one entered but her. She wondered if she could drag a chair over to hide it without being too obvious…
Melodia blinked, suddenly remembering that she had put the perfume bottle nowhere near the edge of the dresser. The only way it could have fallen off would have been if someone had picked it up and dropped it. And since she had gone nowhere near the dresser for at least an hour…
Melodia drew a magnus from the holster attached to her leg and hidden beneath her dress and a black fluted staff appeared in her hand. She pulled out several other magnus, a pair of Dark Flare level IV's, an Aqua Burst V, as Sacred Wine, a Sleet Shawl and a Chronos Blow V as her eyes darted around the room. Surely there had to be someone there. Bottles did not get up and throw themselves onto the ground.
"Hello?" she called out hesitantly, still scanning her room. No one was there, not that she could see. She stood there for several more moments, feeling more and more foolish as the seconds inched by. Could she have been mistaken about where she had put the perfume bottle? No, impossible. She wore no makeup, the things that she did have out were there only so that her grandfather could pretend that she was a normal teenage girl. The single cosmetic that she did wear was that perfume. Ever since finding out exactly how she had survived the plague that killed her parents, she had worn it. It helped to cover up the (imagined, she was nearly positive) faint reek of a corpse.
Melodia relaxed slightly, the fluted rod she used to focus her magic while fighting lowering a few inches. Maybe she was jumping at shadows…
A crunching noise brought her right back to full alert. Someone had stepped on the glass. Her reaction was instantaneous, with only the tiniest tinge of regret as her practical side thought of exactly how much it was going to cost to fix her room once this was over…
"Chronos Blow!"
Liris's apartment… her apartment… seemed nice enough. A brief glance told her thatthere was a kitchen, a sitting area, two bedrooms and a bathroom. Even though there was a counter with stools instead of a table for dinner, and the sitting area had a boxlike machine called a 'computer' and what she thought was supposed to be a piano crammed in with the couch and the 'television', there was a feeling to it that she could only describe as 'home'.
Arvel took a seat on the couch, a massive overstuffed but comfortable looking piece of furniture. Something in the way he sat there told Seiryah that he had sat there many times before, which didn't make sense, given Liris's attitude towards him. She filed this away in her growing mental box of 'things to investigate on my own'. Something told her that neither party would respond well to the question of 'Why do you two hate each other so much?'
"What do you want to ask about first, Seiryah?" Arvel asked.
She considered this for a moment. "How did I meet you, anyway?"
A small grin flickered across Arvel's features. "You were working as a waitress in a café not far from here. Although your hair was dyed brown and you were going by Kaisa." Seiryah opened her mouth to ask why she had hidden her identity, but Liris answered instead.
"After turning eighteen, instead of going to the University, you decided that you wanted to see how normal people lived. You worked a number of odd jobs… and used several different names."
"Really now…" Seiryah tried to picture this, but failed.
"After we met, I ran into you several other places… and you saved me from getting my head beaten in after I started asking the wrong questions. When I told you what was going on, you decided that you wanted to help out."
"And what was 'going on' as you so aptly put it?" Seiryah asked.
"Nothing much," Arvel said sarcastically, glaring at Liris. "Just a conspiracy to overthrow our government."
Liris rolled her hazel eyes. "Spare me the melodrama, Shida."
Seiryah ignored Liris's skepticism and turned her attention fully to Arvel. "Tell me more."
Arvel sighed and raked a hand through his black hair. "I suppose it all started when my brother… he works as an auditor, someone who goes over the accounts of businesses or individuals to make sure they're accurate… was given the job of assessing house Sheyol's finances. The job was too big for one person… I think the idea was that he was supposed to clear them. That wasn't enough to stop Reisen, he's always believed in getting a job done. Anyway, as Reisen processed the accounts, he noticed an irregularity. Someone was siphoning a fair amount of cash out of the house coffers and not recording what it went for. And, since the money wasn't being recorded, it wasn't being taxed, either. When Reisen went to his supervisor, the man threw a fit and told him to keep his nose out of places where it could get bitten off along with his head. So Reisen, being Reisen, decided to find out where this money was going to."
"My, my, doesn't this sound familiar." Liris interjected sarcastically.
"Where was the money going?" Seiryah asked, ignoring Liris's comment.
"It was financing a training faculty located in the badlands between our country, Misel, and what used to be the Empire of Sadinra. House Sheyol had raised several thousand soldiers. No house is allowed to have more than one hundred armsmen in their service at any time, and it's been that way for the last century and a half. Shortly after he discovered that, Reisen was fired. We think House Sheyol blacklisted him as well, he hasn't been able to hold a decent job for a while now."
"What about these soldiers? Didn't you try to warn anyone about them?"
Arvel grimaced. "The next place Reisen went was to the authorities, but by the time they went, the whole place had been cleared out, and Reisen was threatened with jail time if he didn't stop spewing out his 'foolish slander'. So he came to me, and I started investigating with help from a few friends and contacts. What we found was alarming. Not only was Sheyol trying to put together an army, there were – still are – planning to corner the market with foreign gold… I haven't been able to figure out where that's supposed to come from, all I know is that they don't have it yet… and they're also attempting to find the six lost Artifacts from the Great Arcana War."
Liris dropped the glass she had been about to fill with milk. "That wasn't in the article you published, Arvel."
"What's the Great Arcana War?" Seiryah asked.
Arvel sighed. "The Great Arcana War started about twelve hundred years ago and lasted for about a century. By the time it was over, the world had nearly been destroyed, and civilization had been set back a few hundred years. Things had gotten so bad that no one knew what year it was anymore by the old calendar, and they had to make a new system for marking the years. Anyway, the six Artifacts were weapons made by the ancient civilizations during the war as they struggled for an edge. Sheyol has already found and claimed one of the Artifacts: The Sphere of Risile. Luckily, the Sphere isn't a weapon, but it does generate a potent shield. It might also have several other abilities that we don't know about."
Liris raised an eyebrow. "Really now. Most people think that the Artifacts are a fairy tale, Arvel. You're even crazier than I thought you were. It's probably better that you didn't publish that too, or you would have been institutionalized!"
"You believe," Arvel said, pointing at the broken glass strewn around Liris's feet. "Or why did you drop that? And why haven't you cleaned it up yet?" Liris glared at the glass, glared at Arvel, glared at the glass again, then whipped around and grabbed the dishrag that had been sitting next to the sink and wet it so it would pick up the glass.
"Then they're planning something big. World domination. World freaking domination. Again. The Geldoblames of Misel, and I'm freaking related to them." She muttered under her breath.
"What was that?" Arvel asked. Seiryah blinked. She hadn't realized that she had been talking out loud.
"I asked… what is this article that Liris keeps muttering about?" she said, too startled to think of a decent question.
Arvel grimaced. "After we found out about the Sphere, I convinced my editor to let me run everything I had found so far in an article… everything except the information about the Sphere. Like Liris pointed out so eloquently earlier… I didn't want to be thrown in a mental institution. Saishra Sheyol herself had me jailed for slander. It's not every day that the leader of the Council of Eleven – those are the most powerful nobles in the kingdom, they advise the king directly – calls you a dirty sneaking rat and accuses you of fermenting discord. I was thrown in jail for six months.
"You were already helping by this point, Seiryah. It was thanks to your… skills… that we were able to find out about the Sphere at all. You were looking for the connection between the Artifacts, the soldiers, and this foreign gold that house Sheyol seems to think that it can get its hands on. I don't know what happened exactly, I was still in jail at the time, but you called Mihkal the night before the accident and told him that you'd found something. Twenty-four hours later you were missing, and your apartment had been broken into. According to the police, only the computer had been taken… that's a new one, by the way… Liris came home to find your papers strewn all over the apartment. They probably took some of those, too."
"So… are you saying… that my family was murdered, along with hundreds of people because of something that I knew?"
Arvel's eyes were clouded by this point, and he hung his head in shame. "I'm almost certain of it. Mihkal told me that you were frantic on the phone, and that the only thing that you would tell him is that the conspiracy went 'all the way to the top'."
Seiryah's eyes darkened. "Is my gran… is Saishra Sheyol involved with this?"
"Most likely. If Sheyol had something to do with the subway explosion, she almost certainly gave the order."
Seiryah stared at nothing. She'd been home for less than a day, and was already neck deep in a conspiracy. 'I'm sorry, Seiryah," Arvel said softly. Seiryah opened her mouth to tell him that he had nothing to be sorry for… how could he have done anything while imprisoned?... but the words died on her tongue as her mind focused on something else Arvel had said.
"What did you mean when you said that I was missing?' Seiryah asked, fragments of her dream flashing through her mind.
"There are no authentic medical records on you for three days after the accident. You just… appeared, one day, in a hospital on the opposite side of town from the area where… where it happened. No one knows where you were before that, or what happened to you."
Seiryah sat there, the wheels in her head turning. If she'd been found after being missing… couldn't Alvira be somewhere too?
The somberness was interrupted by a loud ringing sound, and Arvel fished a small metallic-looking object out of a pocket in his pants. He had a brief conversation with someone who sounded like his boss from his responses, and excused himself.
"So…" Liris said, trying to break the silence. "Are you interested in some lunch?
AN: So, you finally get some answers. And things are finally happening on the Baten Kaitos side, although I don't think they're going to progress too quickly. Actually, the bits with Melodia and Geldoblame were the easiest parts of this chapter to write. Special thanks to Rebbe, Toki, and Luv2Game for reviewing!
Next Chapter: Seiryah learns how to use a phone. Liris explains more things. And Maisra is… Maisra. Oh, and other things, as usual. Can't tell you everything, can I?