Chapter 113: Like Clockwork

Toren Daen

I cradled the metal bird in my hands, looking from it to the asuran shade at my side and back again. "Aurora?" I asked uncertainly. My vision was coated in the misting layers of the Unseen World, revealing her to my sight just by my shoulder. That helped me relax. At the exact second I'd finished imbuing the relic with lifeforce, all my communication with her had shut off for a brief moment. Feeling that reassuring tether to my mind allowed my shoulders to slump.

My bond twitched her finger, and the bird stumbled slightly. "This is strange," she said, both the ghostly shade and the little clockwork relic emitting the words. "As if I am in two places at once. To influence this craft…"

Aurora bore a look of extreme concentration on her dusky purple face. Her finger twitched again, and I could swear I heard some sort of humming as the bird shifted again.

"What's going on, Toren?" Sevren said, staring intently at the little bird in my hands. "Is it… Your bond? Is it in there, somehow?"

"Not quite, Artificer," Lady Dawn replied. "Though your supposition was close. You are still ever the scientist with your observations."

My bond clenched her hands, and the bird finally stabilized itself. The eyes of the little steampunk sparrow mimicked those of my bond, and the unique color of my lifeforce bled through the tiny cracks in its burnished metal. "I am merely puppeteering this relic. Guiding it along strings."

I honed in on that strange buzz, finally sensing the connection my Bond had made with the little bird. I raised a hand, brushing it through the open air.

When my fingers passed through where I heard the rhythm, I got flashes of sensation. Wispy vision, heightened mana senses, and more. I saw myself from a tiny perspective, looking upward with sharp eyes. I looked into my own eyes.

I got a flash of what Aurora sees through the relic, I realized after a moment, the strange split perspective of seeing two separate and conflicting images making me nauseous for a moment.

As Aurora tested her tethers, she gradually became more adept at making the little relic move. From what I'd sensed, she didn't have a sense of touch, but her other senses were heightened in the little construct.

The bronze sparrow flapped its wings, rotating its neck to turn around. "It has been so long since I could affect the physical world," the little bird said, sounding almost mournful. With an effort of direction, my bond directed the little sparrow toward Sevren. "You have given me much, allowing my Contractor to brush this relic. More than you may know, Artificer."

I thought of how Aurora was forever condemned to watch from the sidelines. She could never speak to another besides me. I was essentially her one and only keeper. And I could never imagine living such a sheltered existence.

From how her emotions fluctuated, I knew Aurora herself was struggling to truly reconcile this new situation. She could affect things now. She could talk to people. Have a life outside what she watched like an absent spectator.

Sevren looked at me, a strange pinch to his face, before orienting on the bird in my hands. "That relic isn't yours, asura," he said quietly. "It's mine. And I never agreed to give it to you."

The clockwork bird stopped abruptly. The only sound I heard was the faint whirring from within the frame, puffs of purple mist exiting a small valve. "You will keep this from me?" she said, her voice restrained. But I could tell Sevren's words had struck a nerve. "What would you ask for in return?"

"I want to know," the Denoir heir said after a moment, "What you want. I've been told that I won't succeed with my own methods. But you're… asura, aren't you? Where do your loyalties lie?"

He presumes to demand answers of me, Aurora said over our bond, a hiss to her voice. To hold such a valuable prize before my eyes. The audacity of this lesser…

His concerns are valid, I replied. He knows so little of us.

The asuran shade huffed. Very well, Contractor. I shall answer him. But if he continues to leverage this against me–

He won't, I replied. He can't afford to lose this avenue of aetheric research.

The little bird Aurora was piloting managed to stand on its own two feet, then tested walking forward and backward. "I wish for those I love to survive," the clockwork said. "To continue as you are. For my family and those I hold dear."

Sevren looked a bit uncomfortable. "And who do those loved ones serve?" he said. "Indrath? Vritra?"

"This is why you fail in your pursuit of aether, Artificer," Aurora said, a regal, mocking note to the voice echoing from her clockwork beak. "You think in terms of black and white. Is and is not. Yin and yang. But there are always more choices. More nuance than you wish to perceive, Artificer."

"That doesn't answer my question, Aurora–" Sevren started, but my bond cut him off imperiously.

"You will not call me by that name, Artificer," she said, a snap to her tone that clacked with her beak. "I am Lady Dawn. Few are allowed to use my true name. You are not among those privileged."

I looked up at Sevren uncomfortably. The Denoir heir's assertion of his ownership of the relic had–for lack of a better term–ruffled Aurora's feathers deeply. She thought she would finally have a mote of freedom, only to quickly realize even this had strings attached.

The white-haired striker's brow furrowed, his teeth gritted. He didn't like the arrogance in my bond's tone. "Okay. So you're saying you don't serve Lord Indrath or the High Sovereign?"

"I serve none but myself and those I love," Lady Dawn bit back, the little bird glaring up at Sevren. "I care not for Lord Indrath nor your petty High Sovereign. Does that satisfy you, Artificer?"

"It might," the Denoir heir said. "But if you want to use that relic, I'm going to test and observe the effects it has on aether. That's my condition."

The clockwork bird's feathers ruffled, a sound like knives being sharpened echoing across the room. The fire on the TV popped. "You demand conditions," Aurora stated, quietly angry.

"You asura walk over us constantly," Sevren said, though he looked more nervous as the little bronze construct glared at him. "You claim to be different from Lord Indrath and the High Sovereign, but I only have your word. Actions make people, not words."

I felt Aurora's anger simmer down at that final statement. The truth was, Lady Dawn herself had acknowledged the asura's treatment of 'lessers' was to justify their own relative tyranny. Visible only to me, I watched as my Bond's face morphed into something far more uncomfortable.

Sevren was bold.

"Your point is made," Aurora said. I got the impression the brows on the little bronze construct were shifting, too. "We will catalog the effects we understand."

The white-haired striker looked surprised for a moment. Absently, I wondered if he expected Aurora to deny him. And if he had asked before my First Sculpting, she probably would have.

She's changing, I thought as Sevren began asking questions about the asura's control of the relic. My Bond gave short, curt answers. No, she wasn't actually inhabiting the thing. It was like a puppet on a string. Yes, she was using tethers of lifeforce to direct it somehow. No, she didn't know exactly how she was doing so. It was instinctual. She's becoming more… more human.

The realization almost made me smile, but my Bond was already worn emotionally thin by the events earlier in the day. She was enduring Sevren's probing questions as he devolved into what could be called 'engineer mode,' but I could sense that patience was reaching its limit.

"Hey, Sevren," I said, cutting him off before he could ask another question to the little bird in my hand. It was still strange that I heard Aurora's voice from two places at once. "My Bond could probably use some time to adapt and test her control of this relic before answering any questions about it."

The Denoir heir looked at me, his mouth open and ready to protest. But the warning flash in my eyes told him the unspoken message. Later.

He exhaled sharply through his nose. "Alright," he said, standing stiffly. "I'll explore this zone for a while instead. If you discover anything, come find me."

I watched him walk out of the house with a grateful wave. His shoulders weren't as slumped as they were before. He'd entered this house feeling defeated and aimless. I hoped these interactions had given him back a sense of purpose.

I didn't know if Sevren could truly unlock the secrets of aether, but I hoped he'd find a way forward. The djinn claimed he was no longer Fated to fail. But that didn't narrow down his true future.

"I am grateful for your intervention, Toren," Aurora said. "My patience was waning in the face of his enthusiasm."

I looked from the clockwork bird to the asuran shade at my side. "Which one should I respond to?" I asked, a slight smirk on my face. "The bird, or the bird?"

To my credit, Aurora cracked a slight smirk herself. It looked alien on her normally stiff features, but all the same, it was a beautiful sight.

I need to help her smile and laugh more, I thought. She needs it. Maybe even more than I do.

"This is still my true form," Lady Dawn said to me from the ghostly apparition I knew so well. She shifted her fingers, flexing in a way that made the air hum only to my lifeforce-attuned ears. The little clockwork bird flapped its wings, then jumped onto my shoulder, settling itself there. "Though amusing, I would find it highly rude if you gave this little trinket more attention than I."

A silence stretched through the room in the aftermath of those words. There was a nervous weight to my bond's emotions that needed to be addressed. After watching the last djinn of the tombs die in her arms and all the heated exchanges between them beforehand, there needed to be release.

"You said to the djinn that your husband gave you his body after he died," I said, breaking the silence like scissors through twine. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I knew what it was like to restrain one's grief. To bottle it up. And my Bond was clearly far from working through her own sorrow. That same mournful note stretched over our tether at every mention of her djinnic body and her late husband.

Aurora walked closer to me, her orange robes shifting. She slowly knelt, settling into a seiza position by my side. She kept her eyes forward, even as she reached out an arm toward me.

The little clockwork bird, following her command, hopped from my shoulder and settled into her own waiting fingers. She inspected it with those blazing eyes of hers, two sets of simmering suns locking together.

"I never understood why your kind changed so often," Lady Dawn said, caressing the bird with one hand. It appeared to lean into her touch, the movement of the metal far too smooth for something so mechanical. "Every hundred years, your cultures become unrecognizable from what they were before. So much to keep up with. For all that you accomplish, it seems petty to us who live for so long."

Sensing the emotion churning under the surface, I laid a hand on my Bond's shoulder. I hoped it came off as comforting. A sign that she wasn't alone.

"I didn't even realize my husband was aging until it was nigh the end," Aurora continued. "For me, our relationship was a blink of an eye. The most wonderful, beautiful flash of color in a world that had gone gray, but still a blink. And when he lay dying, only then did I realize what I stood to lose." The little relic crooned, a puff of orange-purple mist leaving a valve on its back. "I offered the arts of my clan to him. I could reforge him. Build him up again, so he may never feel the weight of his mortal lifespan. We could live eternally. Together, ready to explore the stars."

"But he denied you," I said, seeing where this was leading. "He wished to die."

My bond shook slightly. I clenched my hand on her shoulder. "He did," she said, her voice near cracking. "He said that his finity was where he drew his meaning. He would not risk living forever. He saw it as a curse. It was something he pitied me for, I think. It was strange." Lady Dawn cocked her head, her deep red hair shifting to cover her face slightly. "We asura look down on you for your limited existence. And the greatest of you pity us for our nigh eternity. What a paradox that is," she said, quietly thoughtful. "But he wouldn't leave me alone. Even if we could never see the stars together, he would still grant a part of himself to live with me in that eternity."

"He gave you his body to reforge yourself with," I said quietly.

"But I failed to see any light in the aftermath," Aurora said, her breathing starting to become less controlled. "Even as I remade my Fire, the flame of my own passions withered and died. I had a piece of Andravhor always with me. But the greatest thing he'd left me… I wasn't there for him when he needed me."

A single, molten tear streaked down Aurora's face. Like liquid flame, the fiery dewdrop trailed heat down her cheek. When it fell into her hand where the bird still sat, it sizzled on contact. "I was not alone in my grief. Little Chul hurt so much. Wonderful, honest, passionate Chul. He needed me in the absence of his father. Needed his mother. But every time I saw his eyes, I saw Andravhor's reflection."

My bond visibly shook, more tears streaming from her face as her emotions released. I moved closer, wrapping the shade in an embrace. I closed my eyes, trying to convey the fullness of what I felt. I was here for her. I didn't judge her for her past mistakes. She needed a shoulder to lean on, and mine was always open.

"I avoided my own son," Aurora said, weeping. "The day for his First Sculpting came and went. His rites of passage–which I should have been there for–were ignored. Left to dust. And when my brother asked for an envoy to contact Agrona, I was the first to volunteer."

I felt as the lifeforce I'd imbued into the clockwork relic finally faded away. The strings Aurora had tied to it fuzzed out as the animatronic began to morph and shift, gradually shrinking once more into a feathered brooch. The phoenix at my side didn't seem to notice.

"I think I knew even then," Lady Dawn said. "I knew I wouldn't be coming back. I was running. Running from my own son. Running into the waiting arms of a tyrant who would slowly kill me. But I went anyways."

The gaping void where my Bond's heart used to be bled anew as she wept, tears like red-hot magma mixing with crimson blood. Through it all I cradled her close, determined to support the distraught phoenix in any way I could.

—

Sometime later, Aurora had thoroughly wrung herself dry. The asuran shade had practically fuzzed into incorporeality as she bled away her built-up tension, resigning herself to further rest. In my hands, I held the bronze brooch. It looked old and elegant, like a fine wine that had only grown more flavorful with age. It wouldn't look out of place on the coat of a suit jacket from my old world.

I turned it over, feeling the divots of the metal under my skin. If it weren't for the slight heartbeat I heard from the metal, I would have never guessed it to be a relic.

I heard the door to the house closing, Sevren's steps plodding toward me warily. I looked up at him as he approached.

His hair was slightly disheveled, and I saw distinct bags under his eyes. He'd clearly done more than simply scout the zone in the time I'd comforted Aurora.

"It changed back to the brooch?" Sevren asked, his voice hoarse. He adopted an expression of interest, which helped to mask the redness around his eyes.

Considering how ragged his voice sounds, I think he was probably screaming outside. It was strange how both the people accompanying me needed to release their stress at the same time.

"Once the lifeforce I imbued into it waned, it reverted on its own," I said, turning the feather over again. It was smooth under my skin, almost like touching the surface of a still pond. "My Bond is resting now. When she's awake next, I'll have her tell you about what she experienced with the relic."

Sevren slumped against a wall, just as drained as I. In the past few hours, we'd gone through so much.

Watching J'ntarion die hurt something in me. It was like watching a man from the Roman Empire lamenting the fall of his own dynasty, before withering away. It was sad. Sorrowful.

Yet it was distant from me. My experience of multiple worlds–and my own perspectives–set me apart from the Relictombs to a degree. I could empathize with the tragedy of what I witnessed, but it wasn't personal. It was like watching a play.

But for Sevren, watching the djinn die killed something inside of him as well. I didn't know how long he'd been searching for answers about aether, but it had to be a significant portion of his life. I'd merely watched the play, yet Sevren was one of the characters on stage.

We'd buried J'ntarion's body on a nearby hill just outside the range of the thunderstorm. I wondered if Sevren buried a part of himself alongside the djinn.

"I'm sorry I brought you here," I said quietly, clenching my hands around the relic. "I thought you'd benefit from learning more; from having your questions answered. But all that happened was that I took your hope from you."

Sevren closed his eyes. "Don't be, Toren," he said quietly. "I'd… I'd rather know my efforts to be pointless and change tactics, rather than continue on with the same false hope for eternity. Maybe I have a chance now."

I smiled sardonically. Even if the sun on the outside burned his skin, the Denoir heir was glad to have left Plato's Cave. Perhaps the flickering shadows on the walls gave him a sense of direction, but they were but reflections of what was true. A mimicry of understanding.

I stood, holding the relic open in my palm. I took a deep breath, trying to settle my emotions. "Are you ready to go?"

Sevren exhaled lightly. "I am," he said, pushing off the wall. "Is there any place you want to descend from? I think I'm going to test this strange spellform on the descension portal. See if I can actually control where we exit from."

I tapped my finger against my leg, thinking of my future plans. "I need to go to Aedelgard," I said after a bit of thought. "I have a businesswoman to meet and a concert to plan."