Chapter 100: Descent

Toren Daen

I froze as I saw Darrin Ordin, feeling a wave of apprehension. How much had he heard of my revelations? Not much, I was sure. I'd turned to gauge Sevren's reaction earlier in my demonstration and Darrin hadn't been there. In channeling my lifeforce and focusing so intently on the slight thumps from the stone, I'd inadvertently tuned out the other sources around me, allowing the mage to approach without my notice.

Darrin looked from the portal, to me, and then back to the portal with wide eyes. "You activated it?" he said questioningly. "How?"

I didn't respond. Truthfully, I'd acted on instinct and impulse in the heat of realization. I'd understood the djinn's intended insight in this zone; at least part of it. Without the constant intent threading every heartfire, I wouldn't have been able to see the right path to call on my own. So, realizing that I needed to use that new insight in some fashion to push us onward, I activated the portal.

Darrin walked toward the portal, ignoring Sevren's worried glances. He looked it up and down as I had before, a strange sort of weight settling on his shoulders. I took the moment to examine the leader of the Unblooded Party.

His clothes were burned and caked with blood and grime, torn in countless other places. His blonde hair, which he kept in a windswept sort of part, was drenched in the blood of his lover.

"You figured it out," he said, his voice seeming distant. "How to get us out of here…" He paused. "No, not just that. The food as well, back near the start. You knew immediately where to go to get us fed. Knew how to use those elevators. How to use all those strange appliances in our base."

I clenched my fists.

"Is this place…" Darrin seemed to choke on the words. "You're familiar with it. More than any of us were when we first entered."

The broken striker turned to me, a silent plea in his eyes. "Why?" he whispered. "Why did the Relictombs do this to us? To Dima? You know so much of this place."

I opened my mouth to respond; to formulate some kind of lie or excuse. But no words came out. I tried and tried to force myself to give the desperate man some kind of answer.

Darrin's eyes slowly widened. "No," he said quietly. "You don't know of this place. This place–somehow–knows of you, " he said.

I shut my mouth slowly, turning back toward the portal. I tried to focus on the rhythm of my heart. It would calm me; bring me back to tempo. Except the thundering thump-thump-thump of Darrin's accelerating heartbeat tugged at my ears, demanding attention.

Then the man said something that made me feel as if I'd been punched. "The Relictombs adapt to those ascending," he said with a stutter, seeming to say the words as they came to him. "Stronger enemies. More complex puzzles. Maybe an extra boss. But you're not just a stronger ascender."

Piercing green eyes seemed to stare into my soul. I saw it there out of the corner of my eye. Darrin's face begged for me to deny him. "Tell me I'm wrong," he whispered. "Tell me you're not the reason this zone was hell. Please!"

I closed my eyes, welcoming the darkness that my eyelids gave me. I wanted– needed –Aurora right then. I needed the warmth she brought to my every thought. The calm, certain surety she gave with her every sentence, as if she were an unweathered stone standing strong in a hurricane.

But only silence greeted my unspoken plea. 

"Merciful Vritra," he cursed. "You don't deny it," Darrin said breathily. Sevren stepped forward, tension to his shoulders as he sensed the storm brewing. "Your presence here… it caused all of this. I don't know how. But it did. "

The Denoir heir wasn't fast enough. Darrin launched himself at me, grabbing what was left of my collar in a clenched fist. I saw what was coming next: even exhausted, my new physique heightened my reflexes and perception beyond what it had been. A sloppy uppercut was approaching my jaw. I could've dodged it.

My teeth slammed together as the leader of the Unblooded Party cracked his knuckles against my chin. I saw stars as I toppled backward, falling to the concrete below. My body creaked in protest as I hit the ground, but Darrin was fast. He straddled my chest, raising a bloodied fist over my face with a savage, bestial snarl.

"All those people!" he cried in anguish, only half a man. He brought his knuckles down on my face again. My vision flashed with red as my own blood sprayed. "All those ascenders I tried to save!" Another blow. "All of them ripped apart by those undead!" My cheek cracked to the side as the leader of the Unblooded Party laid into me. I dimly registered Sevren trying to wrench the maddened mage off of me, but he was just as exhausted as the rest of us. He didn't have the strength.

"Alun! Jameson! Mralka! Did they mean nothing to you?!" a voice said from above me, Darrin's usual playful tone stretched thin from sorrow. "And Dima!"

The next blow made my head crack against the concrete. My own red blood sprayed over the stone, coating it crimson. My consciousness flashed; the instinctual urge to fight back rising in my chest like the basilisk Aurora had purged not long ago.

But I shoved it down.

Then the punches stopped. I coughed up a mouthful of blood, feeling dazed.

"Get off of him!" a familiar voice screamed above me. "You crazy bastard! Leave him alone!"

Jana stood guard over my battered body, warding off the broken striker. Sevren and Jared worked in tandem to haul Darrin away by his arms. Beside the one-handed shield, the Frost twins glared icy fury toward the leader of the Unblooded Party. Darrin thrashed at the mages holding him.

"Don't you understand?" he yelled in a shattered voice. "It's his fault this zone was so wrong! That's why we lost so many people! Every commander–every dead mage–it's because of him! Dima is nearly dead because of his selfish ascent!"

I groaned, feeling the aches in my face. There was a cut over my brow that bled a steady stream down into my eye, tainting everything I saw a shade of red. Once Jana was sure Darrin was safely away from me, she knelt down beside me, an expression of utmost worry stretching across her bronze-kissed face. "Toren, do you need–"

I waved off her help, standing with difficulty. My vision swam from the movement, but I forcefully reoriented. The Frost twins kept their pale blue eyes focused on Darrin's near-rabid form.

"By the Sovereigns, Darrin," Jared said, the paunchy shield grunting from the effort of holding back his leader. "What in the hells has gotten into you?!"

Darrin wrenched his arm free of Sevren and Jared, whirling on the shield with clenched fury. He jabbed a bloody finger at me–one that was clearly broken from beating me into the ground. "Toren Daen caused this zone to be so hellish," he snarled. "He's already had knowledge of so much here. An instinctual understanding of everything here. But then he just lit the portal! "

Darrin's words seemed to snap most of these people from their stupor, their eyes darting to the portal with expressions of shock.

"That doesn't prove anything," Sevren said, out of breath from trying to keep Darrin back. "It doesn't make sense how those things correlate, Ordin," the heir to the Denoirs continued, lying through his teeth. "It's true the Relictombs adapt to those who go through them, but that's only when people enter. There's never been a zone that adapts in advance. That's foolish."

Darrin straightened, staring down the white-haired striker with contempt. "So that's how it is, is it?" he said, dismissing Sevren's argument. "That's all it ever boils down to. Highbloods kicking those who are weaker and protecting the perpetrators. I thought you were different, Lord Denoir. But you saw it too, didn't you? Saw his guilt? And you're defending him. "

Sevren visibly flinched.

Darrin turned to me again, condensed hatred in his eyes. I knew that fury. I understood it.

Hadn't I directed that same righteous fire toward Kaelan Joan?

"And now the highbloods are defending you, too, Toren," Darrin said, staring down the Frost twins. "You've picked your side, then."

Jared looked at me apologetically, seeming unsurpassingly uncomfortable. If that scarred eye of his could wince, I'm sure it would. "Look, Darrin, we've been through a lot in these past few days," he tried slowly. "Maybe we just need to wait a bit to–"

Darrin scoffed, shoving past the shield. Alandra was watching everything with shell-shocked eyes, tears gathering at the edges of her vision. Darrin ignored her as he knelt by the camp, scooping up Dima's body into his arms. He turned back, and some of that anger had quieted. Not extinguished; but it became more focused.

"I'm leaving," he said through clenched teeth. "Follow me if you want. But I'm done with the Relictombs." He marched up to the purple portal, sparing me one last hate-filled glare before stepping through.

That seemed to shock Alandra and Jared into action.

"I'm sorry, kid," Jared said apologetically, hastily trying to pack up. If they waited too long, their simulets wouldn't allow the entire party to exit from the same descension portal. "He's been cooped up here for too long; fighting too many battles. The stress seems to have finally gotten to him. I'll send you some funds to treat those wounds he gave you, yeah?"

I shook my head. "Don't worry about it," I said quietly. "I heal pretty well."

"He'll come around eventually," Jared said as Alandra mutely shuffled him toward the portal. "Okay, kid? I'm sorry."

I'm sorry, too, I thought numbly, watching them vanish into the flat disc of purple.

Jana turned abruptly once the entire Unblooded Party had left, looking me up and down. She raised a hand to my face–her only hand–but I gently pushed it away. There was a complicated expression on her face as I did so.

"It's fine," I lied. "It will heal."

"But you should at least get a bandage for that cut," she tried. "It's bleeding badly."

I sighed, withdrawing a few items from my dimension ring. I separated myself from the rest of the mages, settling myself down on a nearby stone as I began to bandage my head.

Hraedel was the only man who hadn't jumped to split up the altercation between Darrin and me. He was sitting around an old campfire, staring mutely up at the desecrated skeleton of the serpent.

Sevren sat next to me a moment later. "You could heal yourself with that… insight you gained, couldn't you?" he whispered. "Vivum."

Once I finished taping a small pack of gauze to my forehead and wiping the blood away from my face, I reached down to the ground, where a discarded hand mirror lay. Alandra had probably forgotten it in her haste to leave.

I looked into my own reflection for the first time since my Sculpting. There weren't that many differences, actually. I had a single tuft of hair that was a deeper red than my normal golden shade, which then tapered to a silvery pink. And my eyes had changed, too. Instead of the old hazel I had known across my entire life, now my pupils were the same burning orange that they took on whenever I engaged my Will. Despite how they looked like they might contain a bonfire, the light inside was closer to a candle.

"I could heal it all," I acknowledged solemnly. Parts of my face were bruising, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected. Despite still being mostly human, my new physique held up well against a beating. "But then it wouldn't scar."

Those words cut off Sevren's next question. We sat in solemn silence for a few more minutes as Jana and the Frost twins prepared to leave, packing their bags into their dimension rings. I caught a few disgruntled mutters from Bered about the lack of relics, but it didn't have the heat I might've expected.

Once they finished, the twins surprised me by approaching Hraedel. The old caster was mostly unresponsive as they prodded him to get up and move, his mind broken in a fundamental way. They led him toward the portal with surprising care.

The twins gave me solemn thanks for figuring out the portal before stepping through the shimmering pane of purple. Jana's eyes lingered on me for a few moments longer, some undiscernible emotion there, before she finally stepped into the portal herself.

Now it was only Sevren and I alone in this zone.

"Why do you want to know of the Relictombs?" I asked. I suspected I knew the answer, but I needed to have my own thoughts and ideas confirmed for once.

Sevren spared me a glance, then looked forward. "I told you once of my sister, didn't I?" he said.

"Caera?" I replied. "You mentioned her once."

Sevren ran his hands over his knuckles, a quiet fear suffusing his bones. "I do all I do because of her," he said after a moment. "She's adopted, you see. Supposedly, she might manifest Vritra blood."

His words seemed to derail his own thoughts for a moment, causing him to look at me. "Wait, when that being possessed you–"

"My Bond," I filled in.

"--Your Bond," Sevren continued, "You used soulfire. Or at least it looked like you did."

I huffed, hearing the unspoken question. "I don't have Vritra heritage. Not anymore. It was purged. " I tapped my chest, my fingers tracing over the messy scar over my heart. "With your dagger as part of the catalyst." I'd pieced that much together about the First Sculpting.

Those words seemed to buoy Sevren's mood more than I expected. "That tainted blood can be removed? "

I closed my eyes, feeling a measure of sadness for what I was about to say. "It's probably impossible to do for your sister," I said. "My circumstances are very, very unique."

Furthermore, my basilisk manifestation had been partial and recent when Lady Dawn had cast her spell. I suspected the manifestation hadn't 'set in,' so to speak, like a pot of clay that hadn't yet dried and was still malleable. That likely made it easier to affect. But for Caera, who had manifested her blood years ago?

The Denoir heir's shoulders slumped slightly, but he forged onward anyway. "Caera is no more than a pawn," he said quietly. "And that's all she'll ever have the chance to be in this world if I don't find a way to give her something more. And with aether, anything is possible."

I forced back the urge to smile. At first, I thought Sevren's story was one of innate tragedy. He would fail in his quest to decipher these tombs, consumed by a massive millipede in a zone. But the more I learned of this man, the more I realized he would've been overjoyed with his sister's journeys with Arthur. So what if he didn't accomplish his dream? She would fulfill it in turn, making herself more than a pawn. I thought the young man would find that comforting.

There was a quiet that stretched across the still balcony overlooking the lake. Without the constant undead tainting everything they touched, it was almost beautiful. I could imagine a perfect piece of art being painted from this solemn scene: two ascenders with more on their shoulders than they ever wished watching an otherworldly urban sprawl.

Sevren's next words shocked me to my core. "I have a relic," he said quietly, as if the words would condemn him. "I smuggled it out of the Relictombs a month or so back. I'm making progress–real progress–in understanding its workings. But if I worked with you, maybe I would finally achieve something noteworthy."

It took me a moment to recover from my surprise. To steal a relic from the Tombs was punishable by death in Alacryan law. No, it warranted more than just capital punishment. One's entire Blood could be executed to set an example.

And the fact that Sevren was telling me this…

I exhaled. "It's a possibility," I allowed. "My understanding of aether, however, is very, very limited in scope. I cannot change anything in the air or water, only what resides innately within myself. And even then, I don't know the full extent of these abilities."

I turned to the Denoir heir. "But I'll try. You're right about something, Sevren Denoir. With aether, the impossible becomes possible."

Even reincarnating a man into a world he believed to be fiction.

—

Not that long after, Sevren and I stepped through the portal. There was a chance we'd arrive at some random descension portal in the middle of nowhere, as Arthur had after his first ascent, but ninety-five percent of the time, an ascender wound up exactly where we did.

I stepped back into the second layer of the Relictombs, the familiar bustling noise calming me in a way. I had made it through that ascent alive. My limbs were all attached, my core was nearly silver, and I'd gained an understanding of lifeforce I wouldn't have otherwise thought possible. This should have felt like a victory.

Instead, my descent was soured by the knowledge that I'd hurt one of the only good men I'd met in this world. Darrin Ordin deserved better than what my actions allowed him, and I would need to live with the consequences of my changes.

Sevren stepped out behind me a bare moment later, inspecting the lobby. After a woman came by with an inquirer to scan us for relics, we were allowed on our way. With a nod, we began walking toward a specific line near the middle of this specific platform.

The white-haired striker and I settled in to wait at the end. It moved forward at a tired pace, mages depositing their accolades into specialized cutouts which retracted further into a building, where mages would eventually gauge their worth.

As I settled in to wait, remembered what the inquirer looked like: almost like a dark pocket watch, which the mages then hovered over our bodies like an old metal detector from my previous life. The connection formed in my mind a moment later.

"Say, Sevren?" I asked, genuinely curious. "That detector compass of yours looks an awful lot like an inquirer, doesn't it?"

The Denoir heir shot me a look. "It did ," he said a bit sourly. "Except after what your Bond did, it exploded in my hands. Probably from… energy overload," he said, using a careful choice of words when there were so many mages around.

"Oh," I replied, feeling guilty even though I shouldn't have. "Can you make a new one?"

Sevren sighed, crossing his arms. "Maybe. The ingredients were rare and expensive. But I think what I gained was worth that loss at least."

I turned my eyes back to the line. We were almost to the front.

That was when several familiar mana signatures popped into my perception, moving in a rigid formation. I turned toward their direction, feeling surprised that they were all together.

Vaelum was near the front, the spear-wielding striker moving with steady purpose. Beside him was his godfather, Aban, the mage walking with surprising deftness despite his age. His graying hair seemed to have a vitality I couldn't remember.

A few other mages I remembered marched in a half-circle formation behind those two. I recognized the shields that had saved me in my last attack against the Joans amidst them. Near the very back was a familiar mossy-haired mage who had a bad habit of 'accidentally' following me.

All of them wore a light grey surcoat over their armor and clothes. Emblazoned across the breast was a simple round-bottom beaker that looked partially filled.

The sigil of Bloodstone Elixirs.

And at the center of this formation was an unfamiliar woman. The moment my eyes landed on her, she seemed to sense it, her serene gaze snapping to my own and holding it like a vice. While the mages around her marched in perfect formation, this woman glided across the ground as if it were a cloud. It reminded me eerily of Lady Dawn's regal bearing.

Mages moved out of the way of the formation as it sheared through the crowds, the group slowly but steadily parting the sea of people. All the while, my gaze stayed locked with the dark eyes of the mysterious woman at their center.

Soon enough, the group reached us. Aban and Vaelum stopped first, the former giving me a grandfatherly smile and the latter a stern nod before they parted like a curtain. The woman they escorted stepped forward barely a moment later.

Now that she was closer, I was able to get a better look at her. Her hair was a midnight black that stretched down to her mid-back, streaked through with splashes of navy. Her skin was almost deathly pale, and if it weren't for the fullness of her petite form, I was certain she'd look like a corpse. Instead, she radiated an aura that felt hard to describe as she scrutinized me.

"Toren of Named Blood Daen, I presume?" she directed to me, her deep red lips barely curling at the edges. The woman wore a conservatively elegant dress as dark as her hair, which made her seem even more like the reaper come to take her due.

"I am he," I said slowly, my mana thrumming at some sort of perceived threat. I couldn't explain it, but this woman felt dangerous in a way I'd never experienced before. "Though I'm afraid I don't know your name," I added, squaring my stance to something solid instinctively.

The woman's demure smirk widened the barest of fractions as she observed my tense shift. "It is unseemly to not introduce oneself first when approaching a stranger, so I must apologize." She tilted her head, savoring my anxiety like fine wine. The only jewelry she wore was deep silver earrings bearing the familiar round-bottom beaker symbol. "My name is Renea Shorn, leader of Bloodstone Elixirs." Her eyes narrowed into piercing slits as she held my full attention. "And I believe we have much to talk about."