232 - Epiphany

Vacek nodded, accepting Lexie's demand. "We'll go to him first thing tomorrow. You'll need to work quickly, because I get the feeling we're getting to the end."

"The end of what?" Lexie asked.

"The Alchemist’s ultimate goal. I think he caused all that commotion to bring the Fae to Earth and get them to attempt to enforce order."

"Why would he do that?"

“Veneration and vindication,” Aiden said. “The Alchemist justified his illegal human experimentation by stating that he was trying to create a new human order.”

"What does that mean?”

“The Fae are the ones who ultimately control the magic system that humans use, and they can very much take it away whenever they want. We don’t know for sure, but it’s a good enough guess. Also, seeing as how the human system is based on the Fae's system of magic, there will never be any way we can surpass the Fae, who have had that system for millennia. If war were to break out, for example, we would never win.”

“What about Lightlarks? That’s why the Fae need them, right? Because their magic isn't found on the Fae planet."

“Yes, but that’s a different thing that we won’t get into right now. Apart from a few, most of the magic we find here is only inferior versions of what the Fae already have. The Alchemist thought this was unwise.”

“And so he wanted a new system? Magic that we create ourselves?"

“Something like that. It was the entire motivation for Alchemy. Magic that was not created by the Fae. Magic that was wholly human in nature. However, there have only been a handful of alchemists over the decades, and none have been as powerful as the Alchemist himself, so it was hard to believe that something like that could be widespread. But the Alchemist was insistent on it. After the Association cut off his research funding, believing he’d gone too far, he began to conduct illegal experiments to prove that he could give humans magic.”

“Did it ever work?” Lexie asked.

“No,” he said. “Not yet anyway.”

But it would in the future, Lexie knew.

In the future, the Alchemist would be able to make minions, the first of his new world order.

He might already be making them now.

"So what was the plan? He wants to provoke the Fae to attempt to colonize Earth? Isn’t that against his goal?"

"No,” Vacek said. “I don't think he plans to actually have the Fae colonize us; I think just the threat is enough. He’s trying to show the limitations of the Fae system. He wants the support of the world leaders, wants them to lose faith in the heroes, and believes that only alchemy has the power to protect them. If he can prove that his system works, then they will voluntarily provide him with test subjects that he can use. He would create a new system for the world."

"And he thinks the Fae will just let him?"

"He must believe he's protected in some way."

Lexie nodded, wondering vaguely if and how Neqal played into this. After all, it was Neqal's dungeon that had been used to control all the other unstable dungeons, and Vulcan seemed absolutely chummy with the Mountain.

“We do have a lead for Vulcan," Vacek said. "A bunch of lowlives died a week before we put out our APB on him. They all died in very strange ways. Vulcan's MO, though he must have been in a hurry to get rid of them because he wasn't as clean as usual. If we were to guess, I would say he was working with them. We need more than that, though."

“I can get that. With Dewie's help."

Vacek nodded. “Thank you. That would help us a lot.”

They chatted for a few more minutes, Aiden made some more muan tea, and then it was time for Lexie to go back to bed.

She couldn’t sleep, though.

Because she couldn’t stop thinking about everything she had to do, everything she wanted to do. 

Maybe it would help if she organized it in her mind. It looked like she was staying on Earth until the Fae threat was over, at least.

Ultimately, Lexie wanted to go back and pass her Eldritch test, but for now, she couldn’t leave Earth as it was. She had to prevent the Fae from doing to them what they had done to countless other creatures. She had to get rid of the instability, which meant finding Vulcan and killing him, and also cleaning up the mess he left behind.

She sighed. It seemed like a lot of work. But more importantly, she had to figure out what to do with her mana. Every time she used a lot of magic, she felt worse. It was like her arteries were constantly getting stiffer, or more calcified, and one day they would just stop working, and she would die. 

Or something. She wasn’t really clear on what would happen yet, but it couldn’t be good. 

She wondered what exactly they did to the mana-poisoned land that made it so easy for her to use magic? Was it just the disruption of external mana? But then again, she was using magic the Eldritch way, and it hadn't hurt?

Had the mana poisoned land fortified her human body? Made her more Eldritch?

It didn't matter. It wasn't like she could go around poisoning the entire atmosphere just so she could use mana freely, could she?

She thought about it for a few seconds, but shook her head. No, that wouldn't do.

Should she make another land card? Would that work? She doubted it. It might only exacerbate the problem.

She had to use her brain here.

Using magic the human way was a combination of internal and external. mana.

Using magic the Eldritch way was mostly internal.

Could she use magic that was entirely external? Would that solve the problem?

Yes, but it was also an unrealistic solution.

Her brain also went in another direction. Naem had mentioned that the Fae external mana environment had limits, but it hadn't stopped Alchemy yet. How did they manage it? Was their relationship to the magical realm different in such a way that it allowed them to bypass the Fae system entirely? How? And why hadn't the Fae stopped them?

If she could do something similar, then it might help her condition. Lexie would look into her father's pathways tomorrow.

She heard a sound from outside her door that distracted her from her thoughts.

Alarmed, she immediately rushed out of bed and popped open the door, catching Tate as he turned to the wall across from her, which led to his room.

There was no door, and it did not show a physical protrusion out of the home. It simply existed, almost like a pocket dimension created by Aiden. Lexie didn't know how he was sustaining it for so long.  

Tate turned around and eyed her with apprehension. He had a plate of lamb and potatoes that Aiden had set aside for him. A bottle of water was in his other hand.

"When did you get back?" Lexie asked. Aiden told her he had gone with a healer.

"Just now," he responded.

“Oh,” Lexie said, then, as he passed through the wall, she decided to follow him in.

His new room looked similar to hers, but with a different color scheme and a distinct lack of florals. It was also much sparser in decorations, though Aiden had taken the time to hang up pictures of Tate and also what looked like a movie poster on the wall.

"You went to a movie with my dad?" Lexie asked.

"We did a lot of things while you were gone," he said. "Although most of it was for work."

"What work?"

"Finding you."

Lexie pressed her lips together.

"You haven't decorated much, have you?" she asked.

“Nope.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be here.”

“Because you’re dying?”

He flinched and turned to her with an incredulous look. 

“Sorry. Was I not supposed to say that?”

“No, it’s fine.” The corner of his lips wriggled like he was trying hard not to smile. “And yeah, it’s because I’m dying.” He sat on the bed and put his lamb on the bedside table, cutting the meat into tiny pieces and then chewing methodically. 

Lexie went to sit beside him. “How come you have powers now?”

“Your dad didn’t tell you?"

She shook her head. "Is it a secret?"

Tate shrugged. "Your father found a way to make the last few years of my life more pleasurable. Basically, he gave me a temporary body that has strength and magical skills and put my other body in a coma.”

Lexie’s eyes widened. “So…you’re not…”

“No. I’m not really here. My body is…somewhere else.”

“Is that where you went? To check out your body?”

He nodded. 

“Why would you tell me this?” Lexie asked. “About your body, that is. Isn't it supposed to be a secret? I mean, my dad didn’t tell me.”

“I trust you." He stabbed a potato and popped it in his mouth. “Why are you here?”

“Why not?”

“It's midnight. You're supposed to be asleep.”

"You too."

He shook his head and kept eating.

“So you don’t feel different? After the burning?”

“No,” he said, as he chewed. “I feel fine.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Lexie chewed her bottom lip, her mind feeling like ants were biting it. “I’m Eldritch, by the way.”

Tate stopped eating for a second to stare at her. 

“Well, half Eldritch. That’s my secret. That’s where all my weird powers come from, and that’s probably why the whole chosen thing and the system aren’t working well for me.”

“Wait, what?" He was hit with a brief coughing fit, and a small piece of potato fell out of his mouth. "You’re serious?"

"Yes. I'm terrible at lying, also because I'm Eldritch."

“Wait…hang on.” He shut his eyes, sticking both hands up in a staling gesture. “You became Eldritch from staying in the dungeon for too long?"

“No. The dungeon just made it worse.” She sighed. “Basically, when my dad fused Lexie Sparrowfoot and Lexie Evans’ souls, he needed to stabilize it with some Eldritch essence. Just a tiny bit. It didn’t make a difference to my powers at first, and it was supposed to eventually meld in with my soul and not even be noticeable. But then the Eldritch part of me grew bigger, and that was basically what happened during the fight with Diana."

“Why did it grow bigger?” 

“I’m not really sure. It might have to do with my dying so many times. Anyway, in the dungeon, most of my humanity was stripped away, and I lived as an Eldritch for some time. Then I slowly regained my humanity, and now I’m some in-between thing that is both human and Eldritch. Both and fully neither."

Tate blinked. His jaw had dropped somewhere during her explanation, and it didn't want to go back up.

“So that’s my secret,” she said. “Are you scared of me now?”

“No,” he said instantly, and he sounded honest. “More so, shocked and really fascinated. How does it work exactly? Do you feel like…I dunno. Eldritch urges?”

“Yeah. But I also have human urges. It’s really hard to explain, but somehow I’m balancing both sides, even though it should be impossible. I wouldn’t have it any other way, though.”

“Yeah, I bet. I mean that kind of power…” He shook his head. “No wonder. So many things about you make sense now.”

“You’re really not scared?”

“Surprisingly no." He smiled. “Actually, if there’s one human in this world that had to be Eldritch, I’m glad it's you.”

“How come?”

“Well, you don’t seem like you’d go power-hungry maniac on all of us.”

Lexie bit her lip, some of the guilt leaking out. “I was though. I mean…for a long time in that dungeon, when I was my most Eldritch, I would say I was a power-hungry maniac. I killed more creatures than I remember, and I really didn't feel any remorse about it. Still don't." She shrugged. "I guess that's part of the Eldritch in me."

"Oh." His smile dimmed.

“I’m not really human,” she told him. “So it would be kind of dangerous to see me as such. I'm working on rebuilding my humanity again, but I don't always think the way humans think or feel the way humans feel."

“Why are you telling me all this?” 

“Because I trust you," she said. 

He stared at her, and she stared at him. She felt something click between them when he nodded.

She then watched him chew some lamb for a few more seconds before she continued, "The Fae want to take me to their planet and do God knows what with me. They're trying to blackmail me because they think I might need their help.”

“Why would you need their help?”

“Well, my powers are weird. I’m half human and half Eldritch. My body is mostly humanish, including my pathways, but my magic is Eldritch. I’m also existing in a world with a human system of magic. What that means is that while using magic on Earth, the Eldritch mana rips apart my pathways, and the external mana essentially prevents me from using a lot of mana as a human. So I have to figure out a new system of using magic, as alchemy does, that doesn’t give me as much damage.”

"So it hurts you every time you use magic?”

“Not all the time, just when I use a lot. It hurts my body, and I heal fast, but I’m not immortal. I’m also not soul-based, which means I can’t exist as just a soul. So if I die…"

“Then you die?”

“I get denatured.”

"Ah. And there's nothing you can do."

"Well, not until I figure out this new system. But for now, it helps me not pull so much of my Eldritch mana and only stick within my human limit. Which is really irritating because some of my cards won’t really work within my human limit.”

Tate rubbed his chin. “Why not just use mana externally without any internal mana use at all? So it wouldn't register as using human magic or Eldritch magic; it would just be magic. Shouldn't cards be able to do that?"

“Yes, but card magic still relies on internal mana."

“It wasn’t always that way. There was card magic in the past that only used external magic. I heard something like that when I was looking for ways to use magic."

"Yeah." Elvira had told her something similar while she was still in elementary school. "But it ended up damaging the users' pathways, because essentially, pathways are needed to control the mana and make magic, and internal magic acts as a control for how much external magic you can pull in. So without the internal, the external would rush in without a limit and damage the pathways."

"What's the point of card pathways then?"

"Card pathways are just, I guess, the middle point? The meeting between both."

"And... is there no way that the card pathway itself could simply substitute for the internal pathway?"

Lexie opened her mouth to dispute that, then realized that she didn't have a definite answer against it.

Instead, an idea hit her.

Hang on.

What he's saying could work. She couldn't have done it before, but knowing what she knew now...maybe.

And if it worked for her, then it would work for mundanes, too

She would be killing two birds with one stone.

Huh. Interesting how things worked out.

“Tate,” she said. "I think you might be a genius.”

“Obviously,” Tate said. He was done eating, so he drank water, belched, and lay back on the bed. "Are you going to go back to your room now?”

"No. I have trouble sleeping.”

"Yeah. Me too.”

Lexie also lay down beside him.

For the rest of the night, they spoke to each other once in a while, but they mostly stayed there silently, staring at the roof, and thinking their own thoughts. 

***

The next day, Lexie went on campus bright and ready to meet Dewie.

And a few of her other friends.

Vacek managed to sneak Lexie in before classes officially started, but she guessed word still got around that she was here.

Dewie and Xena showed up and said, "Jett and Jace said they would be very hurt if you left without seeing them."

She glanced at Vacek, who nodded.

"I'll see them later. Right now, Dewie, I need you to try to use your powers. Do you see anything in this room right now?"

He glanced around, then at Lexie. He nodded.

"The guillotine. Is it still there?"

"Yeah." He looked apprehensive. "It's lower."

"Okay. Now I want you to focus on it, and Xena, use your powers. Quickly."

"Is it just me, or did she get bossier?" Xena murmured to Dewie, who shrugged.

Once they started, Lexie closed her eyes.

She took a deep breath and activated DECODE.