Aetherios System: Whirlwind

Chapter 26 – Divided Paths

The weeks that followed blurred together in a near sleepless blur for almost all of them.

Each sunrise brought new noble event summons, new obligations, but most of all, new stresses. All of them made attempts for new breakthroughs or advancements on their path to power. Some came out the other side with triumph, and a few with failures.

Work with mentors, the mad dash for merit, the soirees and public appearances. It was a lot.

Worries and tension were mounting for all of them, and every one of those pressures seemed to pull the squad further apart. What had once been a tight-knit unit forged in blood and hardship was beginning to fracture under the weight of opportunity.

And Alex could see it.

Devon was the first to splinter.

He’d been practically dragged away by his obsession with his crafting and enchantments. Devon’s eyes had shone like stars when he’d shown the rest of the squad his new workspace he’d purchased. A small building inside the city, with work benches lining the walls, stacks of rune formulas, various metal scraps, and incomplete golem limbs.

“I can finally do real research!” he’d said, almost breathless. “Do you have any idea how many enchantment arrays these people just… throw away?”

Alex had smiled for him at the time. But, every day Devon stayed longer and longer in his workshop, fingers trembling with exhaustion, his mind surely burning with invention. Alex understood why Devon was doing it, of course.

Just like Devon, Alex had his own obsessions, ones that kept him busy for hours, or days. But he had learned some time ago that he couldn’t just push the others away and only focus on one thing.

Devon was a bit different. He was more anti-social than even Alex, and he was truly engrossed in the magic. Like a reclusive program developer, Devon just spent his days alone, working his craft.

Henry, by contrast, had vanished into calm serenity.

He spent his days in his gardens, tending to rows of herbs and flowering aether-plants under the heat of day and the chill of night, both. A lot of Henry’s plants were grown for ingredients to sell, or for Allie to use in her [Alchemy].

But mostly, Alex thought Henry just enjoyed being alone, with the quiet and the space away from the fighting. Which seemed so contrasting to his appearance of a large burly man built for violence and conquest.

After everything they’d lost, after Eric’s death and the chaos of their arrival, Henry was the only one who had decided to slow down. His small, earthy garden just an oasis in a desert of violence.

Garret and Lance found their calling in the forges.

Every night the clang of their hammers echoed through the barracks, sparks scattering like a constellation of fireflies. Along with Doran, the two had struck an odd friendship with a dwarven smithing family nearby, the Kurreins, and were learning how to shape Aethersteel.

“You wouldn’t believe how this stuff rings when it’s hot,” Garret told Alex one night. “I swear it hums a tune when you strike it. It sings like it wants to be made into something new.”

Lance had laughed beside him. “It’s like working with bottled lightning. Makes normal steel feel like clay.”

They were happy. But Alex saw what it meant, every moment they spent forging was one less moment they spent training, getting stronger.

Kate, of course, flourished.

The nobles adored her. She had that rare combination of charisma, beauty, and confidence that made her seem born for the courtly halls. She laughed with duchesses, traded witty barbs with minor kindom princes.

The House of Vethiana, one of the oldest and richest families in the Empire besides the Royal family itself, offered to sponsor her training. She took the offer without hesitation, and no one blamed her for that. Everyone understood.

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Zach followed soon after, though not into politics. He spent nearly every waking hour training under the martial sects inside the city. The Jade Fang Masters, the Immortal Cinder Guard, anyone who would test his spear.

He was focused around nothing but combat training to the point even Alex was impressed.

Holly was different.

From what he could see, the nobles’ banquets and flattery made her visibly ill. She refused invitations, scoffed at “sponsors,” and argued openly with Lady Xhiu’s attendants when they tried to get her to take meeting with guests.

“They think they can own us,” she’d snapped one evening. “Like we’re weapons they can polish and display as a conversation piece. I’ll do what I want to, no more. Maybe Kate’s fine with being a prize, but I’m not.”

Her bitterness was plain to see, even without her words.

The eventual breaking point came during dinner one night.

The team gathered rarely now, but that night they had at least tried. It was an awkward reunion in a candlelit hall, with cold food and colder smiles. Conversation drifted like between them all uneasily, and thin.

Garret tried to joke as he usually did, but he barely even got a few pity laughs, and even those eventually died. Kate barely looked up from her crystalline glass. Devon was distractedly sketching a rune diagram on the tablecloth instead of talking to anyone. Everyone was distracted, focused elsewhere. It seemed not a single one of them was really, present.

When the meal finally ended, half the squad left without saying goodbye.

Alex sat long after they were gone, staring at the empty chairs around him. Places, spots where his friends had once sat, and laughed, and spent the day with.

He could feel the invisible distance widening between them, the forces of ambition and fear pulling them all apart little bit little. He assumed everyone still wanted to go home. That this world just wasn’t for them, never would be for them.

I have to hold them together. He had told himself over and over.

But lately, every time he reached out… no one was there to reach back.

Later that night, he found himself in the courtyard, sitting on the outer wall overlooking the lower terraces and the city beyond. The air was cooler than usual, the distant roar of Athrastas’s volcano quieter than normal.

A small shadow appeared beside him.

He smelled Holly before seeing her. He would know her scent anywhere, even sitting over a volcano.

She said nothing as she came and just sat beside him, before pulling her knees to her chest. Her white training robes was half untied, and her hair was messy from drills. She looked just as beautiful tired as she did all primped up.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” she asked softly.

“Not really.”

They sat in silence for a while, and Alex continued to watch her, the glow of molten rock in the distance painting her face in flickering gold.

“You’re thinking about them,” she said quietly. “They’re changing,” she went on. “We all are. This place does that. Maybe it’s supposed to, designed that way by the Heavens.”

“I don’t think so, but even if that were true… I don’t like it,” he muttered.

“I don’t either,” she said. “But it means you can’t stop it.”

His brow furrowed at that. She was saying he can’t stop them from falling a part from each other. That some of them just, wouldn’t make it?

“We can’t just, give up.”

Holly shook her head. “I’m not saying that you need to just give up, Alex. You know that.”

“So then what, what are you saying, Holly?”

“You’re burning yourself out chasing perfection, Alex. You’re obsessed with that Technique thing. You think if you just figure it out, everything will make sense again. That all the pieces will fall in place, and the world will be right. But it won’t.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again.

Holly leaned back on her hands and exhaled softly. “You don’t need to be the strongest. You just need to be there when they need it. Right now, they don’t need it. They are trying to do things their own way. And some will flourish, and some won’t. But either way, they’ll need us again when the time comes. But pushing it, trying to do everything so them. It won’t work.”

The words hit harder than he expected. But he knew she was right.

He looked away, his eyes tracing the stars above them. “I just… don’t want to lose anyone else.”

“You won’t,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “Not if you remember what we’re fighting for.”

Alex gave a small nod. “You’re pretty wise, you know that?”

“Know what, that I’m pretty, or that I’m wise?” she grinned.

He chuckled. “Both.”

“I do have a particular set of skills, you know,” she leaned closer.

“Oh I know you have skills, in all sorts of places.”

“Is the bedroom one of those places?”

“Hmm, can’t remember, maybe I need a refresher.”

She scoffed, and jumped off the wall, moving quickly across the courtyard.

Alex smiled and followed after her.

***

The city of Athrastas had never looked so busy.

For weeks after the Empress’ announcement, the capital had pulsed with a feverish energy, but now it was practically boiling over. The outer facades of the buildings were filled with floating banners of light, glowing market signs, and more.

As Alex walked the roads in the area, he barely kept his attention off the bustle and hustle that swam around him almost nonstop.

The streets were packed beyond belief, not only with the city’s many resident citizens, but tourists that were forced practically shoulder-to-shoulder with nobles, soldiers, and magi from every corner of Dawnlight, all drawn to the same singular event.

The opening ceremony of the selection tournament for the Inheritance Dungeon was tomorrow.

The Festival of Steel.