The Wrong Kind of Immortality

Eleuthera closed the viewing fold. “That went about as expected.”

Eirene thought about that for a moment.

The fight had lasted minutes. The outcome had been decided in seconds. The king had moved through the Sovereign’s magic the way water moved through cracks—finding every gap, exploiting every opening, never stopping. Part of that had been due to the weapon—but even disregarding its capabilities, most of the ‘battle’ had been about closing the gap between the two. Once the king caught up to the Sovereign, everything was over in seconds.

“Are Exemplars always stronger than Sovereigns?” she asked.

“No,” Orestis said. “Under normal circumstances—at comparable power levels—a Sovereign would be a serious threat to any Exemplar. That guy was just unlucky. The king is a peak Exemplar with decades of combat experience. And he had the equivalent of a divine weapon.”

“His actions were also completely dictated by his fear,” Eleuthera added helpfully.

Orestis nodded. “True. That had been his second mistake—power without composure is just expensive noise. At their level, both Sovereigns and Exemplars have range and the ability to reshape the battlefield. Mages, however, have versatility to go along with their range. A melee fighter’s advantage only applies if they can close the distance—and an experienced Sovereign wouldn’t have let that happen. Had he properly leveraged his advantage, he would have lasted longer.”

Eirene thought about that. She replayed the fight in her mind—not the spectacle, but the details. She thought about the spells and the king’s response to each of them. Most had been cut through. A few, he’d driven through. And some, he’d dodged entirely.

She focused on the latter. Why did he dodge? The beams, because it was simply more economical. She had no doubt the king could have cut or deflected those, had he been so inclined. But the spatial tears had been different. He moved around them because he couldn’t cut those.

“The spatial tears,” she said. “The Sovereign could have used those to keep the king at a distance.”

“Precisely,” Orestis said. There was approval in his voice—understated, but present. “If he hadn’t panicked, he could have deployed them around himself as barriers.”

“Or simply shattered the space around him to fill the area with spatial fractures, like a broken window,” Eleuthera added.

Orestis made a face. “Inefficient. But yes, that too. The king would have had to wait for the tears to seal before advancing. That would have bought the Sovereign time.”

“Time to do what?” Eirene asked. “He still couldn’t teleport. He’d be trapped inside his own barrier.”

“Time to think. That was what he needed most—a few seconds of breathing room to stop reacting and start reasoning.” He looked at her. “He didn’t die because the king was strong; he died because he never bothered to use his head.”

Eirene considered his words. What he didn’t say, but was implying, was that the problem had a solution. This was another teaching moment. She tried placing herself in that situation. What could she do?

Disruption fields worked by destabilising space—by causing fluctuations. Like waves. Theoretically, if she could identify those waves and create a matching but opposite wave, she could temporarily stabilise the area long enough for a quick teleport.

She presented the idea. Even as she spoke, she saw Eleuthera nodding along and Orestis smiling. Eirene was only guessing—theory crafting—she hadn’t expected to get it right on the first try.

“That would work?” she asked.

“You’re on the right track, but that’s not exactly the easiest thing to do,” Eleuthera said. “And not practical in battle. Because unless you’re aware of the exact frequency beforehand, matching resonance takes time.”

“Also, any competent engineer would design such fields to shift frequencies at random. Unless you’re exceptionally lucky, matching a resonance, then teleporting before the frequency changes, is unlikely.” He raised a finger. “Any plan that depends on luck is a terrible plan.”

“Then what?” Eirene said.

In response, Orestis pointed and opened a gate. Then paused to give Eleuthera the flattest of stares.

“Really?” he asked. “I’m right in front of you.”

The goddess put on the most innocent of expressions and said, “It could be Lyse watching you.”

Eirene immediately understood what happened. Part of her couldn’t believe the goddess still hadn’t stopped doing that. But then, another part of her thought that it was perfectly in character for Eleuthera.

Orestis chose to ignore the goddess and pointed at the gate. He had opened it over the ruins of what used to be the location of Kallistrate’s forward base. Eirene recognised the debris from the broken artefacts that had been used to hide their supply gate back then.

“When I said the Sovereign died because he didn’t use his head, I didn’t only mean that he failed to think under pressure,” Orestis said. “I was also referring to how, when the ward pylons activated, his only plan of escape had been to fly out of range.”

Eirene frowned. How was Kallistrate’s base related to that?

Then it clicked. The answer had been in front of him the entire time.

“The scramblers. They created a bubble of stable space around the gate—hiding it from the pylons’ detection,” she said, the idea coming together like pieces of a puzzle. “The same principle, but reversed. I could create a pocket of stable space around myself, then teleport from within the pocket.”

“Exactly.” Orestis closed the gate. “The Sovereign should have thought of a way to circumvent the anti-gate fields on the very first day itself. That was his first mistake. Especially since the clue to solving it had been at his own base.”

That made her wonder—why hadn’t he? Did he get too comfortable in his own power after crossing the Sixth Circle threshold? Or was he just lazy? Either way, she resolved to never let herself get complacent like that.

“Creating a localised area of stable space while inside a suppression field won’t be easy,” Orestis continued. “But it is possible. Something you should learn, and not just for escaping suppression fields—the underlying principle has broader applications.”

Of course she was going to learn it. When someone like King Hakon was coming at her, escaping was the only reasonable choice. Whether one was capable of doing so was a different matter. She intended to be good enough to do so.

That being said, she was not going to ignore another very glaring issue.

“I also want to learn close combat,” Eirene said.

“Naturally,” Orestis said, as if it had always been a foregone conclusion. “We will eventually get to that. Once you manage to get me to move during our sparring.”

He just had to add that last line, didn’t he? Eirene gave him a mock glare. He responded with a raised eyebrow.

“I think she’s quite close to doing so already,” Eleuthera said. “She just needs—”

Before she could continue, Orestis immediately shut her down. “You’re not joining us when we spar.”

“It would help her immensely if she could see some demonstrations!”

The conversation drifted after that, with Orestis rejecting Eleuthera’s increasingly ridiculous reasons for why it would make sense for him to let her join.

Eirene watched them while thinking about what she had learned. Not the tactical analysis; the other thing.

A thousand years, he said.

The only way for anyone to have lived that long was to reach the level of a Sovereign. Or beyond that, if she considered his familiarity with gods.

She couldn’t even begin to imagine the scale of a magical spell that would cause a soul to regress upon failure. Then again, if she considered the kind of experiments he’d likely been involved in—stealing from gods being an obvious example—such an outcome probably should not be too surprising.

The regression explained the gap at the centre of everything she’d observed about him. What surprised her was how little it changed. He was still the same—sardonic, precise, and reluctant to be noticed. Knowing the reason behind it didn’t alter who he was.

Perhaps it helped that he was keeping his promise to tell her when it happened to be convenient. It would have been all too easy to say the timing wasn’t right and push it off. That he chose not to, mattered.

The thought settled quietly. It confirmed what she had felt from the beginning—that her patience had been well placed. That the instinct which told her this person was worth waiting for had been right all along.

She watched him—drinking cold tea on a goddess’s blanket, expression already distant, thinking about something he hadn’t voiced.

There were still things he hadn’t spoken about. Like why he never trained. She still hadn’t forgotten what he’d said that day: ‘I have no interest in being in this world longer than I have to.’

Although she hadn’t shown it, those words had left a profound impact on her. Just what could have driven someone to that point?

Eirene didn’t know. Not yet.

But that didn’t matter. Orestis would tell her eventually. That, she knew.

***

The armistice came six days later.

Orestis heard about it through the Consortium’s news boards: a formal cessation of hostilities, negotiated through intermediaries at a neutral site. The terms were extensive—territorial concessions, reparations, and a list of conditions detailed enough to suggest that whoever had drafted them on Logrion’s side intended to make this war’s cost felt for a generation.

Looks like they’re not planning on letting Kallistrate off the hook so easily.

Such things were expected after losing a war. But that was the least of Kallistrate’s problems. They were facing consequences beyond what they could have imagined.

Kallistrate’s soldiers were returning home with bodies that betrayed them. Families watched sons and daughters collapse in the streets, aura flickering and failing. The berserker incidents were the worst of it—violent, sudden, and terrifying. Three had occurred within Axiomera itself. In two of them, civilians had been injured. In the third, a soldier had killed a fellow veteran during the course of being subdued.

In the aftermath, every soldier who had served was now considered a risk. No one knew who’d be next because there were no outward symptoms before they turned violent. Due to the concerns about public safety, the military had transferred everyone to a facility outside the city where they would be monitored.

Orestis knew the berserker incidents were concentrated among the younger troops—those who had activated their aura using the Temple’s programme. The ones showing different symptoms like fatigue, muscle deterioration, and coordination loss were the older veterans who already had stable foundations. However, the Temple’s programme meant that their body never adapted to any of their improvements since then.

Nobody else had connected it yet. The Temple was spinning the berserker incidents as a consequence of Logrion’s artefacts. They were trying to spin it as the result of being exposed to ‘illegal aura-disrupting weapons deployed against Kallistrate’s soldiers.’

They were claiming that the younger troops were more severely affected because they had been on the front lines most recently and had suffered the heaviest exposure.

Orestis scoffed after reading that. Having watched some of the fighting firsthand—having seen the veterans in front, protecting the recruits who could not even stand—he found it comical.

Of course, the public didn’t know any of that. This was the Temple doing damage control. The explanation was plausible enough that most people accepted it. A foreign enemy was easier to blame than a domestic institution, after all.

Actually, this is even better. The deeper they dig in to this narrative, the harder the reversal will hit them later.

Logrion’s strategists would also be aware of that. Once the documents were revealed, their insistence on accusing Logrion of wrongdoing would come off as an attempt to shift blame—of trying to hide their own crimes.

Orestis was fine with that.

Let it brew for a while longer.

***

He told Alke the next morning.

“I need to head back to Theramon,” he said. “I’ve been away from the family longer than I intended. I wanted to let you know beforehand, as a courtesy.”

That excuse had the advantage of being true while also being considerably less insulting than the actual reason.

Alke set down her document and studied him for a moment—not surprised, but assessing.

“How soon?” she asked.

“Within the month.”

That seemed like a reasonable length of time to get his things in order.

She nodded. “I appreciate the notice.” Then, after a pause: “You should expect a follow-up conversation. Not from me—from above.”

Well, that was to be expected. He had been marginally useful to the institution, after all; they would not want to let go of an asset without at least a cursory follow-up.

“Noted.”

He would just give them a generic explanation and then be on his way back home.

***

That evening, after dinner, Eirene said, “The armistice was announced.”

“Yes. I already told Alke I’m heading back to Theramon.”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said before,” she said, meeting his gaze. “About the woman who’s working on treating the sick soldiers.”

“She’ll be called the Saintess eventually. You don’t need to worry—she finds a cure,” he said, reassuring her.

Now that Eirene knew about his regression, she would take the statement as fact and not speculation.

“That’s not what I was getting at. She would need to do research to find a cure. Start from scratch. That would take time. Time where more people would succumb to Stage IV effects.”

Orestis watched her for a moment, understanding the implication. “You want me to help.”

“Would she be able to find the cure faster if you did?” Eirene asked.

“It’s very likely. Yes.”

Her response was immediate. “Then you should. Even if indirectly.”

He exhaled quietly, fingers tapping once against the table before going still. He really didn’t want the attention that would come from getting involved in that mess. But he didn’t want to refuse Eirene either. This was not a casual request—it clearly mattered to her.

I could refuse to be acknowledged for my help. And the disguise is always an option.

“I suppose I can think about it after finding the Saintess. That’s going to be the first hurdle. She’s still an unknown, and I’ve never met her before.”

Eirene’s expression brightened, the approval unmistakable.

“That shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” she said. “I spent time in Nomyra before coming here, remember? I have contacts in several of the temple networks. We can find her faster with those connections.”

He nodded.

Looks like going back home will have to wait a few more weeks.