Chapter 93: The Heart of the World
The white barrier had come undone. One moment it was an impassable wall, and in the next, it had retreated as if it had never been. And there was the Hero, lying face down on the white.
I had rushed to Ash. Had propped her against my thigh. She was breathing. The breathing came slow and soft, like a woman in deep slumber.
Ash's face was peaceful, and it was her face. Steel, but soft besides. Nothing like the face of the man whose corpse I had studied in that false world. And she had been crying. It was no more than a single streak across the right side of her face, mostly dried. I reached down and brushed it away with my thumb. I did not like it when Ash made herself small. I liked this even less.
And I waited for her to wake. The Hero took her time. Long enough that I began to wonder if she might ever wake at all. This thing that had been done to us -to condense a lifetime of memories so- could not come without its own risk. Perhaps Ash had not been able to-
No. I banished the thought. If it was Ash, then she would. This was the Hero who had slain me, after all.
Then that steady breathing hitched. I watched as the Hero's two Lines lit up and pulsed. Even as I watched, they split, and grew. The purple Veil changed first. The Line extended, and curved to the right in three split strokes, like the branching of a river. The black Line of the Sever split next. It extended past her elbow and up her shoulder, and thin branchings split from it, reaching in every direction. Then her marks went still, and their light dimmed. They still pulsed, but that light was nothing to what had been.
Ash coughed once. Her lips trembled, and then her eyes opened. And then those blue eyes were staring up at me. They were clouded, but I saw the life return to them.
"You took your time, Hero," I said. My voice was even. I had to make it so. My hand trailed through Ash's hair. I had not willed it to. "I almost thought you would not come out." My voice was less even at this.
Ash stared up at me, and when she answered, her voice was very soft. "Sorry. But I'm here now."
"So you are," I said. The smile came before I had allowed it. I let it stay.
"I don't suppose I can stay like this… for a little while," Ash said. Her face flushed as she said it, and now she did not quite meet my gaze.
It was a strange request. But I would allow it, for now. "A little while," I agreed. Ash nodded and closed her eyes.
Minutes passed, and we stayed there in silence. Her head rested against my thigh, close enough to the thing that beat beneath my ribs.
"It sounds different," Ash said. Her eyes were still closed. "Softer, somehow."
I looked down at her. Of course she had noticed. Her senses were far keener than my own. "It does," I said.
Ash smiled. "I'm glad." Then her eyes opened, and they found mine. "Does it still hurt?"
"Only the tiniest fraction."
Something sad crossed her face, there and gone. "Then I can't wait for the day it doesn't hurt at all."
I had no answer for that. The words were almost a kind of vow, though she had asked nothing of me and promised nothing herself. What this was then, I did not know. I knew only that I minded it little.
Nothing interrupted us, not even the System. It was perhaps the only wise thing it had ever done. I would have tried Ruin again, if it had.
Eventually, Ash rose. She pushed herself upright and looked out at the white around us. There was little enough to look at. There was no horizon worth the name, no ground that differed from the sky.
"I still can't believe all of that happened," Ash said. Then her gaze dropped. It trailed down, to my forearms, and stayed there. I followed it.
Down my right ran a branching pattern of purest black. Down my left, its twin in white. Both had split far past what the Lines had been, and both curved inward at their farthest reaches, arcing toward some center they had not yet found.
The Inker Aldric had claimed that a Sigil's shape sometimes foretold the Crest to come. If that was true, then mine foretold nothing I could recognize. I did not know what shape a Beginning and an Ending were reaching toward. Perhaps they did not know either.
"Was it hard?" the Hero finally asked. Her gaze held mine again. I knew what she meant.
It was not, I wanted to say. I am Lysanthia, and however grand a trial might be for someone else, for me it would always be a petty thing. I almost said it. The words formed, and might have left. I shook myself.
"It was," I said instead. "It was…." I looked away from her, at the formless ground. "It was difficult." I took a breath and met her gaze.
Once, not so long ago, I had read a poem. One that had certainly been about me.
Silver-horned, she held dominion over the dark,
And wept black tears for worlds she'd set aflame,
Who loved nothing, and so destroyed everything,
My tears had not been black.
"I destroyed a thing because I l-" The word caught in my throat. "I destroyed because I liked a thing. It was strange," I finally said.
Ash nodded slowly, as if she understood everything I had been through with just those simple words. "Tell me about it sometime," Ash said. "I would like to hear everything, Lys."
She assumed I would, then? I might. But the certainty in her voice was vexing. "Very well." Then I looked at her, at her Sigils. "And you, Ash? Was it difficult?"
Ash was silent for a long moment. I almost wondered if I had asked the wrong question, or asked the right question in the wrong way. Finally she smiled, and it was a small smile. "It was less hard than I'd feared, and harder than I'd hoped."
It was a strange answer, but I could tell it was no attempt at deceit. Perhaps those were the only words Ash had. "I would like to hear about it," I said. "In great detail, if you are willing."
Ash nodded, and I took that for her answer. She was not done. "I killed you," she said. "In that world."
It was hardly a surprise. Mine had been a world where my hordes had drowned everything. Where all the Gods had been put to the sword, and all the races had bent the knee or been broken. Perhaps that was the culmination of the class of [Demon Queen]. If so, then it was no wonder that Ash had been shown a world where she had slain me.
What could be the pinnacle of a [Hero], save for a world built upon my corpse?
"And so you knew it was a false world. For only in a false world could I have been slain so."
"Something like that," Ash said, smiling. Then she glanced around, and I watched her take in the whole of where we were. "How long do you think it's been? Since we came in here?"
"I do not know, Hero," I said. I had thought about this plenty while I waited for Ash. There had been little else to do. "Clearly, time here works strangely. I experienced… a month in the illusion, I believe. Perhaps a little less. Whether that means days have passed outside, or months…." I trailed off. At the very least, I had not needed to eat since we had come here. Which was fortunate, for I did not know where our supplies had gone in all this endless white. Perhaps the place itself sustained us.
Ash was quiet for a time. I found her considering. Not just what I had told her, but what she should say next, and how. By now, I had started to learn Ash well.
"Can you- can you feel her? Sol, I mean."
Something inside of me ached. "I cannot," I said simply. "And I have tried." I had tried many times. I did not say that part.
"I know it's a small mercy, but I don't think it's been-"
There was blue. It filled the sky, and shaded everything in that same color, though there was precious little to shade. Ash and I both looked up.
[Participants: 2/2]
[Scenario Complete.]
[Trial Complete.]
The three lines held for a breath, and then they faded. In their place came two more.
[Assessing Trial….]
[Calculating Rewards….]
I stared up at the words. This was not unheard of, for me. In the old world, the System had given out Quests freely. Some belonged to one's Class. Some belonged to no Class at all. And when one succeeded, the blue would split the air, and it would say much the same as this. I had watched screens like this resolve ten thousand times. I had not thought I would ever see one again.
"What do you think it'll be?" Ash whispered. There was no one in all this white to hide our words from. She whispered anyway, and so did I.
"There are no stats anymore," I whispered back. "So perhaps a weapon, or the like."
[Rewards Calculated.]
The air in front of Ash split open, and a smaller screen unfolded before her.
[Acquired: 1 kg Wraithsteel]
Beneath the words hung a lump of dark metal, suspended in a sphere of blue energy. The energy dropped. Ash fumbled, and caught it against her chest.
I stared.
I had seen Wraithsteel before. It had been the finest of all the metals the Dwarves ever used in any of their Masterworks. The one secret they taught to no outsider. I had salted their veins and buried their forges, and in all my years I had never once learned the making of it. The dark metal shimmered as Ash turned it in her hands. At one angle it went nearly transparent, and at the next it was opaque.
A second screen split the air in front of me.
[Acquired: 1 kg Protean Steel]
I blinked, and in the next moment there was a strange glass bottle hanging in the air before me, filled with a silver liquid. The energy around it dropped away, and I caught the thing hurriedly. The bottle was small, easy enough to hold in one hand, but dense. Dense like one of those Essence Hearts had felt dense.
"Protean Steel," I murmured.
It was a strange name. I had known the name of every metal worth knowing in my age. Everything from Wraithsteel down to Dawnsilver. There had never been a Protean Steel. There had never been anything called that at all.
And besides all of that, why was it a liquid? The silver turned lazily inside the glass, and it turned in no direction that the tilt of the bottle could explain.
"The Archon never said anything about this," Ash said, eyeing her own prize. "But still, just being given raw material is a little…."
"It's not just raw material, Ash," I whispered. I had not tested it yet, and I was already sure. "This is like that forging class. Do you remember? The chalkiron."
I pressed a thread of the Cradle through the glass. The moment the white light touched the silver, I felt a hum, and a loud one at that. The chalkiron had been all but silent compared to this. "Yes," I said. "It is exactly like that chalkiron."
"I see." Ash looked at the metal in her own hands, and this time I was sure there was more appreciation in the looking.
I eyed my own reward with more consideration. I had not come in here expecting any reward at all. Given that, leaving with anything was a boon. And yet the System I knew had never once given a boon that was only that.
"What do you want?" I demanded of the floating screen in front of me, and of the larger one painted across the sky.
The System would not answer me, for it could not. It was a foolish question. I would have better luck holding a conversation with Sola-
The smaller screens in front of Ash and me disappeared. The text in the larger one changed, and it changed to something strange.
[Searching Archive….]
[Request Found]
I stared.
In my long life, I had cursed the System plenty. I had demanded answers of it more times than there were stars. I had raged at it, tested it, and killed the Gods who spoke for it. And not once had it ever reacted to anything I said.
Ash had gone very still beside me. She must have realized it too. I was hardly breathing by the time the text changed again.
[Unknown Errors Detected In Greater Whole]
[Reboot Greater Whole]
It took me a long few seconds to understand. This thing had felt like a shard ripped out from a Leviathan. A small piece cut out from a greater whole. I had seen a System screen at my Inking, one that had been flickering and covered with black Lines. Nothing like the one I saw before me now.
The novelty of being answered could wait. I needed to know.
"What is wrong with this 'Greater Whole'?" I demanded. "What exactly are you asking us to do?"
The System flickered once. The entire sky flickered with it before it solidified again. And now there was only a single line written across all that blue.
[Reboot Greater Whole]
"How dare you," I said. It came out very quiet.
"Lys-" Ash said, reaching out to touch my arm.
I pointed at the sky. Ruin curled over my fingertip. "You dare? After everything, you dare to speak? And when you finally do, you dare to make a request of me?" My voice had left quiet far behind. "I do not know what happened to you, System. I do not care. I will not wear another chain. Not for you. Not from you." I was breathing hard.
"Are you okay?" Ash asked softly, stepping closer.
"Yes. I-" I searched for an excuse, and found none worth speaking. "I apologize. That was unbecoming of me, Ash."
I looked at her, and found only sadness staring back. "No. I understand, Lys," Ash said. Then she looked up at the sky herself, and the sadness left her voice entirely. "That goes for me as well, System. I have no intention of playing your games. Not a second time."
Her voice was harder than my own had been.
Nothing happened. The System that had surely just answered me was now silent. Nothing happened for so long that I began to wonder whether the System answering me had been coincidence after all.
Then the sky flickered again. The white light of the entire chamber went dark for one full breath before it returned. When it did, the text had changed.
[World Integrity Critical]
[Reboot Greater Whole]
We stared up at it. And I received the strange and distinct impression that this was some manner of pleading. If a System could do such a thing. If a chain could beg the ones it once held.
"I don't understand," I murmured. "You are asking something of me, but I do not understand it. And even if I did, I would refuse you. I would refuse you a hundred times."
"It says World Integrity Critical," Ash murmured beside me. "Don't know what that is but…doesn't sound like a good thing."
"It does not," I agreed. "But perhaps the System now means to trick us into service, now that it can no longer chain us into it. I will not listen to a screen again."
The sky flickered again. The blue returned, but not only blue. I saw black. It began at the edges of the sky, thin lines of dark, slowly creeping across all that blue and towards the center.
[Intruder Detected]
[Error]
[Error]
[Error]
[Classification: V̸̢̛o̷͘-̵̘̚]
I could not read that last line at all. I could hardly read the others either, through all of the flickering.
I raised my right hand. "Ruin," I said. Black flame poured upward, farther than it had ever reached. It still did not reach the sky. And I suspected that even had it reached, it would have done nothing at all.
"Lys… what is happening?" Ash asked.
"I do not have the faintest idea, Ash," I said. And I meant it.
The entire sky flickered one last time, and the text changed even as the black kept creeping.
[Initiating Termination Sequence]
[World Integrity Critical]
[Find the heart of the world]
The System flickered once more, and then it was gone. And the light went with it. We stood in complete darkness. There was silence for several long moments. I felt Ash's hand find my right, and I held hers back, the glass cradled against my left arm.
"Ash. Are you okay?"
"I am," Ash said. "But… but I am deeply confused."
I nodded, though I knew the Hero could not see it. That first line must have led to the darkness we now stood in. I understood it, even if the words had been strange. This shard had...ended itself, rather than be taken by the black. I did not know how that made me feel, only that it was not nothing. Then there was the other line.
The heart of the world. That was what the System had said. I knew where that was, well enough. Or at least the place that had been called that, in my time. As did Ash. It seemed it still existed. But for the System to-
Something tugged at me. Something warm. Something soft. Something that was, for one single moment, confused, and in the next, utterly furious and utterly delighted at the same time.
Solara.
The bond flooded back into the place it had been torn from. I turned. Behind us, in the darkness, stood a white door. It had not been there before. I was certain of it.
"Ash. Let go of my hand. Just for a moment."
"What are you going to-"
I raised my right hand and fired Ruin.
I could see the flame even in that darkness. It burned a black deeper than the black around it, almost the same shade as the strange dark I had watched crawl across that screen. Almost, but not quite.
The Ruin ate through the door as surely as if the door were not there at all. The door did not resist even a little. And I suspected it would not have burned so, had this still been a place of white.
Light spilled in through the wound in the wood. Enough to see Ash by, and hardly one step farther.
"It was me this time," I murmured.
"What?"
"Nothing." I had half expected to see Ren on the other side of that light. I held out my hand. Ash looked down at it, and took it. Together, we walked toward the half-erased door.
I remembered the hallway outside the chamber well enough. It was the same featureless stone as the rest of the Academy. I expected to see that now.
The first thing I saw were strange signs. Plastered across the walls and half the floors. I almost read one before I noticed them. Students.
I counted four of them, three asleep in strange constructions of many pillows. One of them was a girl with hair the color of frost. Alisa sat at the back of all of them, leaning against the wall that led up to the stairs. She was staring at me. At us. Her eyes were wide, and her mouth was open.
It took her a second to catch herself, and I saw the effort the catching cost her. "You're finally-" She cleared her throat. "My rival has emerged from her hiding!" she said, one finger pointed at me. But the finger trembled, and there were circles of dark beneath her eyes. She had not slept properly for some time, then.
I did not understand. But I understood enough by now to know that it was perhaps my fault. I looked to Ash. For some reason, she was smiling back at me. I looked to Alisa, and gave the girl something rarer than Wraithsteel: the faintest twitch of a smile.
"It was not hiding, girl. It was a trial. There is a difference."
Alisa nodded slowly. For some reason, she wiped at her eyes. "The others will-"
There was a chirp. A very loud chirp. One loud enough to ring off the walls and wake every sleeping demonblood in the hollow, until they were staring at one another, and then at us.
I had already left Ash's side. I had dropped the glass, and it would have shattered on the stone had Ash not caught it. It did not matter.
I rushed toward the stairs, toward the tugging of the bond. And there I saw her, gliding down the stairwell. Black and gold, four wings beating in perfect rhythm. She glided, and she did it with elegance. I held my arms out for her.
Solara let out another mighty chirp. She did not land in my arms. She struck me in the forehead instead, and loosed a furious chirp on the way down. I caught her before she reached the ground.
She sat in my hands, and only then did I notice how much larger she had grown. When Solara hatched, she had fit in my cupped hands with room to spare. Now, there was no room to spare at all. Those big golden eyes had been enormous for her size then. Now they almost looked perfect for her size. Something wet trickled down my cheek.
"I apologize," I said. "I did not think it would take so long. You have… grown considerably, Sol."
The baby phoenix tucked her legs and settled into my hands. Her next chirp came smaller. I brought her close to my face. Her neck craned, and she pecked at my cheek, not nearly hard enough to hurt.
"She's gotten rounder too. Not just bigger," Ash said from my side. I had not noticed her come.
Solara turned to her and offered another soft chirp. "Hey, Sol," Ash said. "Sorry for being gone so long. I'm carrying a bit too much, or I'd brush one of your feathers."
Solara considered this for a long moment. I watched her consider it. Then she chirped, in something that was not quite approval. Perhaps she was warning the Hero that such impudence would be tolerated exactly once.
"Lysanthia. Ash." We both turned. Alisa was looking at us, and the look on her face could only be called frantic. "I know you've only just come outside, but there's no time. Ar-"
A tear opened in the world, directly behind the girl. And with it came the weight.
Alisa let out a strangled choke and dropped to her knees. Around the hollow, every demonblood who had just woken and risen from Sol's chirping went down. My own legs wobbled beneath me, and I nearly fell before I flooded my limbs with Essence. More of it than I liked. Far more of it than I would ever admit.
Sol was chirping with all four wings flared, and I gathered her against my chest and shielded her there with both arms.
Every instinct I possessed screamed danger. The weight of this was greater than anything else I had felt in this new world, save one. Save a general who should not be alive.
Ash took one step forward, and put herself between me and the tear. I looked at her back, and thought that there would be no shielding anyone from whatever this was.
From the yellow tear, a woman stepped out.
She wore silver armor, and it was beautiful. Long blonde hair fell loose behind her, almost to the floor. Her face was sharp, and yet oddly soft. Across her back hung a yellow sword so long and so broad that the size of it looked absurd, and somehow the absurdity did not make it less frightening.
And on her left forearm sat a mark. Two overlapping rings of yellow that turned and shifted without pause. Even as I watched, the mark vanished and I found it again on her right arm. Then the left. Then the right once more. It crossed no space between the two. It was simply here, and then it was there.
I had seen one mark beyond the Rune before now. Morrigan's beast had paced. It had moved across her flesh.
Distance is but a small thing to her. That is what the Archon had said. Perhaps this was some small part of what he had meant.
Her gaze swept over us. Over Ash, over me. And then it dropped. To our forearms. It rested there for a long moment. Then she looked up, and her eyes met mine. And she was smiling. Wide enough to show teeth.
I have read ten thousand faces across two lives. I have found fear beneath sneers, and calculation beneath piety. I looked beneath this smile, and I found nothing I could name.
"My name is Arianrhod Penderyn," the woman said, and her voice was sharp. "And as one of the Hands of the Divine-" She looked to Ash. "Ash." She looked to me. "Lysanthia." Her smile somehow went wider still. "By the authority of the Divine, I claim you both for the Great Hunt."
Ash and I stared. Nobody in the hollow moved. Nobody made a sound. Even Sol did not chirp.
Book 1 End