The Restored: Chapter Sixteen

“Does it matter?” I asked after another long, silent moment. 

Rhys looked at me like I’d entirely lost my mind. Kelly’s head whipped around to stare at me. Jin’s eyebrow arched in confusion. 

“Does it matter?” I repeated. “Sure, she wants to un-sunder a Throne But we already knew where she was going to strike next. Does it matter if that’s her goal? To me, it seems like it doesn't matter if her goal is to sacrifice the city in order to bake the world’s greatest puffed pastry. We would still need to stop her.” 

“I… well, I suppose that in a broad, technical sense, you’re correct,” Rhys said. “But still, it seems… I mean, she’s aiming for one of the Sundered Thrones. That’s a big deal. It’s like trying to become an Archangel, to upstage Titania, or to become the next Dreaming Judge.” 

“Sure, but if she was aiming for any of those, we’d still have to stop her, wouldn’t we?” 

“Yes, but…” 

Rhys trailed off, then shook his head and let out a long, aggrieved sigh. 

“You’re right. We have to stop her, regardless of her goal. And we know generally where she’s aiming.” 

“Yep,” I agreed, “but that begs another, far worse question, at least to me.” 

Rhys and Jin looked confused, but Kelly’s eyes widened. I didn’t know if he’d skimmed my surface thoughts, or if he’d just put it together himself, but he let out a soft curse as I hopped out of my chair. I walked to the copper bookshelf, where I withdrew the papers that Nexus had sent me, then turned to Rhys. 

“Do you have a map of Elderglass’ street city?” 

“Two shelves down, near the back, I have a bunch of folded maps,” he said, his voice still a bit numb from the shell-shock. I grabbed the map I wanted and brought everything back, spreading them on the table, then began placing bullets as markers. I would have used a red ink pen, since that was what it seemed like detectives always used in novels, but I didn’t have one on hand, and I didn’t want to ruin Rhys’ map. 

“Alright, so I’m putting down a bullet at the location of the three attacks that we saw happen.” 

“You saw four attacks,” Jin said, and I waved my hand. 

“We’ll get to that one in a moment. For right now, we’re focusing on the three that the Arenamaster made before I had my deal with Nexus.” 

I then pointed to the bundle of papers that had a list of possible locations that the Arenamaster might hit, as provided by Nexus. 

“If you look there, they had Cipher Nightclub listed, as well as several other potential locations.” 

I put down a bullet on top of roughly where I thought the nightclub would be. It was a general estimation, since the club was underground. I then started putting markers down at all of the other locations that Nexus had pointed out to me – a department store, an anchored airship that had a constant flow of tourists in and out, one of the city’s memory banks, and more.

All of them were clustered within a block of one another, until it reached the point thatI was basically just piling shells on the same space. I then pivoted and turned to the other area that Nexus had laid out, the one that was the final point of the Arenamaster’s star and started putting down points as well. Once again, all of them were aligned within a block of one another. 

“I don’t get it,” Jin said when I finished. “It’s the points of the big ritual circle, but we already knew that.” 

“But how did Nexus know that they were going to be the points of the star?” Kelly stressed, voicing the question that I’d been building up to. “And if they knew that she was going to be using it for her big magical ritual, why in the Eleven Thrones didn’t they tell us? Were they just afraid we’d want to hijack the ritual for ourselves?” 

“They would have dug into Axel’s psychological evaluations, and would have known it wasn’t true,” Rhys said. “They also know me, and even if they didn’t like my father…” 

He trailed off again, and I thought the corner of his eye got wet. It was difficult to conceptualize for me at times, given how rapidly everything had happened, but it had still only been a few weeks since Horse and Egress had worked together to kill his dad, and now we were working with Devi, the woman under Egress’ metaphorical mask. It was a lot for him. 

I was already standing, so I shuffled over and put my hand on his arm, squeezing gently to reassure him. I knew how hard and how randomly grief could hit. Days, weeks, months, even years after losing someone, it could hit you out of the blue, and hard. That initial ache might fade with time, but it could still sneak up on you, and it hadn’t been all that long. 

“Sorry,” Rhys apologized, and Kelly stood up and hugged him. I took a chance and wrapped my arm around him as well. He took a moment to pull the kerchief from his pocket, dry his tears, and take a breath. But as he was doing that, I noticed that Jin was staring at us, with a complex mix of emotions on her face. 

I was no master of reading body language, and even most body mages admitted that there were lots of nuances and differences that changed the meaning of people’s body language depending on their culture, background, personality, and more. 

But I knew this look. As complex as it was, and even with some minor differences due to her being raised in Saxum, not Elderglass, I could read it plain as day. 

There was confusion at our reaction to Rhys’ breakdown. 

The Arenamaster encouraged the kids to not show weakness, and to punish the members of the group that did show any. She told us it made us strong and competitive, but I thought it really just made us broken. 

But more than confusion, there was envy. 

It was easy to say Jin had never had any support from failure, and just couldn’t understand, but even that wasn’t entirely true. The Arenamaster might hand-select teachers for their skill and ability, as she had with Aniseed, my own teacher, but even she couldn’t monitor every moment of every day. There had been a few times where a teacher had shown compassion after a moment of weakness, either because it was needed to stop us from dying in our training. 

That envy both came from, and created, pain.

If it truly was something entirely new and foreign, completely unheard of, it wouldn’t hurt. It might be confusing, but it wouldn’t cause a deep ache, a longing, and that longing wouldn’t hurt. A viscous feedback loop. 

And the olive at the top of the volatile cocktail of emotions was shame. 

Because on a purely intellectual level, she was aware that she wasn’t in the Arenamaster’s hands anymore. That if she was able to put down the walls that she’d been forced to put up by her environment, allowed herself to break down crying, she wouldn’t be rebuked the way she would have been. She might not know Rhys or Kelly all that well, but she knew I would understand, and that I had done something very similar when she first escaped. 

She knew, intellectually, that she did not need to envy Rhys. But despite being intellectually aware of all of that, she couldn’t do it. She was too used to walling herself off from the world and acting strong. 

And so, because she hadn’t shaken those old instincts, hammered in through endless abuse, both mental and physical, the jealousy still burned within her. 

I reached out, took her arm, and pulled her into the hug. She stiffened for a moment, the walls still flaring. But they lowered a moment later, and she hugged onto Rhys and onto me. 

It wasn’t perfect, of course. It would take a lot longer to undo the damage. There was still a large difference between acceptance of being pulled into something, and being able to initiate it on your own. 

But it was a start. 

The moment went on for a while, until we each returned to our chairs. Rhys gave us a sad, tired smile, and picked up the thread of conversation again. 

“I doubt they think we want to take it for ourselves,” he said. “I think it’s much more likely that they want to use it. And I have some evidence for it as well.”

“I can see it,” Kelly said. “Big spooky organization trying to pull the strings. They’d want to be able to use the power. It’s a lot of power.” 

“I suspect they want to take a longer method. Do you remember what the Nexus contact we spoke to at your trial said? It was something like: We planned to use a far more subtle method, and the small amount of extra power that the Arenamaster is pulling in.” 

He paused and shook his head. 

“I know that’s not the exact quote, but it’s all I can remember, and it gets the spirit of it right. They were planning to use a much slower method, and thought the power of the aura sparks she was collecting was basically a rounding error.” 

“There’s no way Nexus would drain the entire city,” I said. “The enchantments that conduct heat into the earth so we don’t all die of heatstroke, the metal reinforcement holding up buildings, the air circulation, and probably a dozen other things would all fail.” 

“They could try to collect power over time?” Kelly suggested. “They’re all old, even older than you and Rhys. If they were able to embezzle enough sparks, and kept the drain incredibly low…” 

“It’s possible, I think,” Rhys said. “We need to speak to Hadiya. She knows more about planar magic than I do…” 

“We also need to speak to Nexus,” I said. “I have a phone line that I used to get access to Devi. I’ll call it.” 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jin asked, looking at me sharply. “I mean, they’re all involved in this too, and Abraham was the one funding her.” 

“It’s not a good idea,” I agreed. “But I need to know what they know, and we need clearance to get into the Central Aura Depository, if we’re going to catch her in the act, or at least stop her from draining it dry. They can get us those.” 

There was a bit of debate back and forth at that, but eventually we agreed that we were flying too blind here – we needed Hadiya, and we needed Nexus.

“I’ll go into the floor’s telephone and call Hadiya,” Rhys offered. 

We split, as I headed into the office and picked up the telephone and picked it up.

“Operator!” a cheerful young woman on the other side said. 

“Put me through to…” I glanced at the paper, then read off the number I’d been given. “Tell him Axel Font is calling.”

After a few long moments, the line clicked, and the chairman’s voice came through. As always, he sounded unusually clear and clean, as if he weren’t speaking through a telephone at all. 

“Mister Font,” he said. “I do hope you aren’t calling because you need the services of Egress again so soon. She is quite in demand, you know.” 

“It isn’t,” I said. “I’m calling because I’ve been sorting through the papers that I stole from the Arenamaster’s realm. I believe she’s conducting a city-wide ritual.” 

“Using hundreds of aura sparks gathered across her little terror attacks, all in an ill-fated attempt to usurp the Throne of Greed,” the chairman said dryly. “I did not free you to ask why. I freed you to stop her.” 

I actually hadn’t considered that she might just be trying to take an existing Throne. It was possible, I supposed, but it didn’t matter. Not really. 

“How certain are you that she’s going to stop at hundreds?” I asked. “Because… have you looked at the enchantments she set up in her Arenas? All of them were massive funnels that took in everything. And do you know what’s in the center of her ritual?” 

“Elucidate labs,” the man answered in an instant. 

That was suspicious to me. There were a lot of things there – why would he jump to the labs?

“And the Central Aura Depository,” I said. “Have you considered for a moment that she might try to break it and drain all the aura for her challenge? Then harvest an entire city’s worth of sparks.” 

“That’s not the plan…”

“Because she’s not gone rogue?” I asked. “Listen, I realize –” 

“I’ll check,” he cut me off, his voice still lazy. “But you don’t need to worry. None of the security protocols in underlying magical infrastructure have been breached. We aren’t dunces, Mister Font. We’ve set up significant warning systems that alert us if our infrastructure is tampered with. We have protections in place that prevent that sort of mass draining, since the ambient aura is so low already. I assure you, her mass circle might have the empowerment of a great area’s worth of power, and hundreds of collected sparks, but it’s no more than that. It’s barely enough power to establish a credible Throne, let alone take over Greed.”

“Look up what my sister’s demonic bond gives her the ability to do, and know that she’s mimicked our abilities.” I urged. Jessica’s demonic bond ability to activate parts of a spell without the aura triggering anything that made it seem to be activated would be perfect for disguising this sort of thing, and she was a competent ritualist. 

“All you need to do is stop her, Mister Font.”

The line went dead, and I spat a curse.