Chapter XVI#
We Need To Talk#
running away from your responsibilities haha i would never
Warning
Chapter illustrations currently WIP.
There was no sign of the sigil. The deck wasn’t even burnt.
Lloyd and I were the only ones outside, the Verosavs having gone inside on account of not being able to handle the cold. Bia had gone with them to continue whatever ramblings they’d been engaged in. Arodorros had ignored my constant ‘we need to talk’s, so I had attempted to continue gathering context by investigating the… lack of remains of the cultist.
“You get any closer?” Lloyd said, bored. He was sat on one of the chairs reading something. “To figuring that out?”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I stood up. “He was just there and then he was gone. It left barely any remnant heat. Nothing was harmed but the cultist and his clothes and shit.”
“It’s probably just really high rank magic,” Lloyd shrugged.
“Aura magic that precise is barely even available in this side of the country,” I gestured. “And wielded by such a low ranker too. Not to mention the resources required to equip all of the cultists with whatever it did.”
“He was leading the group. Maybe he was the only one who had it. I didn’t get any weird items off of the others.”
“Well, the Governance sometimes doesn’t loot consistently.”
“Only for monsters parts. Magic refinement has a touch of randomness to it. But any actual material thing based in the physisphere should always be looted.”
“Point is, I got something,” I retrieved the item from my pouch. “Only one of them had it. At least, I think it’s the same thing.”
The object was a head-sized asymmetrical gold and red orb. Nailed to its surface by small pins were hundreds of miniature crystals in iridescent colours. It smelled of blood.
Lloyd tapped a finger to it for his client to report.
Item: [Haeline Conduit] (Heart)
[Obfuscated]
Item does not have a root in Governance system
You meet the requirements to use [Haeline Conduit]. Use Y/N?
“Is this what Grim’s profile looked like?” he asked, brow raised.
“Pretty much,” I said, stowing the object back into my inventory. “I suppose it would have to be something alien to both contain so much power and allow a low-tier idiot to use it.” I gave up examining the floor. “How did they activate it, though? Our guy wasn’t wearing one of these on him, and it wouldn’t be practical too. It’s big.”
“Maybe he had a dimensional storage power.”
“He activated it spontaneously. Didn’t pull anything out of anywhere.”
“Under his clothes?”
“Hiding this massive orb that whole time? While he was fighting me?”
“Right,” Lloyd said. “I didn’t even feel an aura burst when the beam went off.”
“Neither did I. These things, Grim and the cultists and maybe Arodorros. They don’t make any sense. They break things. They broke the Governance, now this cultist asshole is breaking metasphere logic.”
It couldn’t have been an ability. Too powerful. Too powerful means he shouldn’t have been able to activate it at all - what power could he have drawn on to do this? If it was an item, it would need to be at least physically out of a dimensional storage space for him to channel mana into it. I was no expert in metaphysical energy but I knew the basics.
“Grim said it came from ‘the cosmos,’” Lloyd shrugged. “There are things outside, like we’ve been theorizing ever since the Trinity was debunked. These things aren’t from our world. Why follow our rules?”
I sighed, burying my head in my hands. “Why do I have to deal with all this bullshit?”
“Well, you do have the super powerful hourglass artifa – ”
“That I only keep because you asked,” I glowered.
“It’s the right decision,” he shrugged.
“Not for us,” I hissed, then sighed. “Sorry. I know what you mean. Ughhhh.”
The tunnel wasn’t silent, but it was still peaceful. Though its length and emptiness and cold, dead air were far from welcoming, the sounds were comforting. The chatter of Bia and the Verosavs – and I think I heard Arodorros’ deep voice in the mix too, muffled behind the boat’s walls. The rushing of water, the soft beat of the engine belowdecks.
“Look,” Lloyd said. “I know you’re frustrated, but we have a responsibility to – ”
“I know. Adventurers protect,” I glanced around. “Let’s head belowdecks. It’s getting cold.”
“Right.”
We slipped downstairs to where I’d confronted Grim. Lloyd’s blood was still on the floor.
Lloyd withdrew an entire park bench from his storage space and set it down on the empty floor, across from the engine and its piping. He sat down.
“Join me?” he gestured, seeing me still standing. I ignored him, gauging dimensions with my finger, then nodded in satisfaction.
“Ah, no,” he smirked, recognizing the motion. “You don’t have your whole damn ea – ”
The easel dropped onto the floor with a sharp thud. A wave of the hand summoned my paint set. Not all abilities were combat oriented, after all. Many adventurers tend to forget that.
Ability: [Painter’s Arsenal] (Conjuring)
Incantation: none.
Cost: meagre mana
Cooldown: none.
Damage Output: none.
Effect:
-
Tier I
- Conjure a paint set
-
Tier III
- Paint automatically replenishes over time
-
Tier V
- Customize brush size and shape
“How is this even worth painting?” Lloyd complained. “It’s so dark.”
“There’s blood on the floor, and the owner of the blood in frame,” I said, retrieving a pencil and starting to sketch. “There must be some symbolism in that.”
“I thought you didn’t paint people?” he raised an eyebrow, settling back onto the bench. “Just so you know, I will not be sitting still.”
“It will probably be easier to create a pose in my head than to redraw yours,” I said.
“How can it be easier to invent something from scratch rather than build on existing?”
“I made that up,” I shrugged, currently inventing a basic sitting pose. The random bench helped with the atmosphere of pure confusion – sorry, pure, unadulterated, deep symbolism.
“Do you always paint when you have to talk to somebody?” Lloyd raised an eyebrow at my raging pencil strokes. “Does it help with the whole no social life thing?”
“I should stab Bia,” I rolled my eyes.
“Oh, she’s well meaning,” Lloyd said. “The jokes are just her way to cope.”
“Cope with…”
“You.”
“Ah,” I winced. “Do you think I should…”
“Just don’t be so strung up,” Lloyd shrugged. “She’s probably not too annoyed.”
“Right,” I sighed. “I can’t do anything right usually, much less with all this shit going on. I just wish… why us?”
“There’s a reason for everything.”
“That,” I said. “Is stupid. The sheer amount of – ”
“I’ve seen many people suffer for no fault of their own,” Lloyd said stoicly. “But we have to believe there’s a reason, right?”
I tilted my head. “What do you mean?”
“I think that… suffering is a… a necessary thing. Well no, not suffering itself but like – ”
“The suffering that happens.”
“Yea.”
“Necessary for what?”
“I think – I hope, that fate has an agenda. That all this is necessary for some great… end. That this end will be worth the means and – ”
“Lloyd, what sort of goddamn drug are you on?” I stopped to pull out my paintbrush. The thumbnail was done. “Is it the Anyrysm drink thing? I knew something like that would have side effects.”
“You down massive potions that grow your whole damn arm back,” Lloyd scoffed. “Anyrysm is an energy drink. One is more severe than the other.”
“One is also well-tested technolo – whatever. You would just blindly trust this… this intangible thing. This ‘fate.’”
“Well I can’t do anything about every issue, can I? Let me have some hope.”
“I suppose so,” I sighed.
He looked me in the eye, and I withdrew from my painting for a moment. “I hope things get better, Ari. I hope we beat Grim and Dawne backs off and we all go back to Javenshard and go adventuring like usual. We’ll get there.”
“You really think we have a chance at all that.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“There must be some way.”
“Why?”
“I just – that’s not the point! I’m trying to be encouraging.”
“Encouragement without evidence is simply bullshitting.”
“Take some good news, will you?”
“Fake news?”
“You are very frustrating.”
“People often find the truth frustrating.”
He gave me a flat look.
“You sound like my parents.”
“Really now?” I raised an eyebrow. “I got the impression you didn’t like them.”
“You would be correct,” he sniffed. “Very logical, the three of you.”
“Then why put up with me when you would shun them?”
“You are… driven.”
“I suppose,” I said, leaning back to observe the painting. Hands were very annoying to draw, even set mostly out of view like this.
There was silence for a few minutes.
“The family was always just so… rigid,” he said. “No one was allowed to be anyone other than a scholar or a researcher or some sort of craftsman. We had a legacy to uphold, and we were all pushed into that. One of my cousins nearly went insane studying for the Deliran final exams.”
“I see,” I grimaced. “Bia and I weren’t pushed into the adventuring business. After my parents’ team fell apart, they didn’t have much of a taste for it anyway.”
“What happened?”
“Killed off,” I said darkly. “Duskir implied it wasn’t monsters. But you can never really believe exactly what she says. Tell me more about Deliria.”
“The environment was intense. Lots of competition, challenge, nonstop.”
“That’s good. Challenge is good for advancement. The Governance proves that.”
“But you also need to wait, before your ability gains can consolidate, right?”
“I suppose,” the first brushstroke of gilded hair arrived on the painting.
“Rest is important too, and Deliria had no room for it. It was a constant uphill slog over and over and over and everyone was at each other’s throats and trying to one up another to get credits – it was just… not a good place to be, for timid teenage Lloyd.”
“Hmmph,” I smirked. “You could get that entire atmosphere in my household, back before Duskir and Faelorn went cuckoo and couldn’t do that anymore. Bia didn’t try, but I did. Which might not have been the best for her.”
“That’s… I’m sorry for you.”
“It’s pretty stupid, yes. And your situation.”
“Thank you. I just wonder why you’d ever raise a kid to…”
“Self fulfillment, or maybe just tradition. For the sake of tradition.”
Lloyd snarled. “‘Tradition.’ Waste of time. Always always just ‘do this stupid thing because all the dumb people before you did it too. Never improve. Just keep repeating and repeating and repeating –”
“And no real reasoning behind it either,” I added. “Respect your parents because they made you, respect your elders because age is apparently still important in the age of Governance-made near-immortals. You get in the game early enough and apparently you just get to do anything you want.”
“Exactly!” Lloyd slammed a hand on the bench and then frowned at his own aggression. “Just because of some arbitrary rul;e doesn’t mean I need to cut myself bald – ”
“Excuse me, wha – ”
“Delirans are weird, okay?”
We bickered and ranted on until I think night had fallen. The stars were not visible in the tunnel, much less this basement room. Eventually Lloyd went to bed, while I stayed to finish the painting.
I quite liked it. It had been a while since I’d drawn something outside wilderness studies, much less came up with anything of my own. That made the composition and the characters’ pose a little odd, but it was… new
I approached Lloyd, in a wreath of dark, dingy strokes. He sat on his parkbench, eyes reflecting starlight through the ceiling. The pool of blood now covered the floor.
I wonder if he’d like it.
-
Previous
-
Next