Chapter XVII#
Your Parents Fucking Suck#
well i knew that
Warning
Chapter illustrations currently WIP.
“Oh, nice, I wasn’t going to sleep anyway,” I scoffed.
“You don’t seem tired,” Arodorros said.
“I’m great at hiding things.”
“Not!” Bia sang.
“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”
“Yep! Miss me and my annoyingly hilarious dialogue interactions?”
“No.”
“Apologies, Ms. Hastor,” Arodorros interrupted. “But we will need privacy for this.”
“Okay…” she left.
“How do you plan on stopping them from eavesdropping?” I sat back down at the table, cupping my hands.
Arodorros tapped a ring on his finger, a silvery thing with a black gemstone set into it.
[Arodorros Nayirah] has cast [Conversation Lock] on you.
“...what?”
“No sound in, no sound out,” he said. “This device is very popular back in the Kingdom.”
“You have Governance interfacing technology?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Dawne developed very quickly,” he replied plainly.
I stared at the prompt, not dismissing it.“Faevinity has been trying to interface with the Governance since the dawn of science. If you’ve gone and done this already, how goddamn far ahead are you all?”
“The Matriarch could put all eight nations under her thumb in a matter of months,” he shrugged. “We simply choose not to. Though if we did, it might be easier to operate openly against the Haelborne threat.”
“Why must you keep it secret anyway?”
“The Haelborne already are looking into us on account of their instruments not piercing our defences. The Matriarch would prefer they have no need to look further. Although we would have a healthy chance of winning in the scenario of all-out war between Rattesse and Dawne, we would suffer heavy losses.”
“You don’t seem like the type to care.”
“The Matriarch is compassionate,” Arodorros said in a warning tone. “She does care.” He sucked in a breath. “We will move on to what I asked you back for.”
“Go on.”
“Your hourglass is a fragment of a god.”
“Sorry, what?”
“It’s from an ancient deity that the Matriarch slew,” he clarified. “Basically, part of the god’s corpse. It’s been in the Hastor Dynasty’s posession for millennia until – ”
“Did you just say millennia?”
“Yes?”
I narrowed my eyes. “How old is this… Matriarch?”
“That,” Arodorros huffed. “Is not my place to know nor tell.”
“Well – ”
“This god had a domain related to time, and your hourglass contains a fraction of that power. You’ve probably noticed some of its effects.”
“This thing can goddamn time travel?!”
“In theory,” he shrugged. “I believe the power required would kill you. But a few minor skips forward and backwards, you can handle. You have probably triggered it accidentally a lot.”
“Why the heck do I have it?! Why isn’t it locked up in a vault somewhere?!”
“Your parents are the ones responsible for that,” Arodorros scowled. “They absconded from Dawne with it.”
“You’re telling me Duskir and Faelorn robbed a vault.”
“Somehow,” he snorted. “Waste of potential. Incredible grades put to the worst of intentions. Even then, it shouldn’t have worked. After so many years of peace and prosperity, Dawne has grown lazy. Your parents may not have been the actual wake up call, but they certainly announced Grim.”
“You went to school with them.”
“Aethereanil’s biggest and greatest academy,” he nodded, a hint of pride blinking a smile on for just a second.
I put my head in my hands. Duskir and Faelorn already had a lot to answer for, but the faults just kept stacking up. Bia may have actually been right about something.
“So they did this. Why? Why would they steal it?! Why would they give it to me?!”
“Your parents…” Arodorros started, shook his head. “They were… they were… a bit eccentric.”
I sighed. “Believe me, I know.”
“Faelorn especially. I think he roped Duskir into it, somehow, but both of them were certainly on board.”
“Right,” I said, then paused. Perhaps this spy could help me understand what Father’s issues. Unable to resist the urge – “What were they like?”
“Your mother was very analytical. Sharp mind, very sharp. Faelorn was just as intelligent, but I wouldn’t call him sharp. Drunk, almost.”
“How?”
“Ari,” he scowled. “We have more important things to discuss.”
“You promised answers,” I blew cold air. “You will give them.”
“Be aware of the power dynamic in this bunker, Aryon Hastor.”
“Be aware of the power of reality in my veins, Nayirah.”
He snorted, but then glared.
“Tell me about my parents, Arodorros.”
“Your… oh, whatever. Your parents fucking sucked.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Blasphemy! Dawne was a fallen state, they said, the Matriarch was unjust, they said, Kaaldenvale doomed to inferiority under our hand within the century, rotting and stagnating. As if we are not the pinnacle of faevin advancement, another paradigm of prestige and power and – ”
“Faelorn. Tell me about Faelorn.”
“The worse of the pair. Always talking in abstractions and metaphors. He always said he knew something was off about Dawne. A lot of talk about a brush and paint. Scriptures, libraries, quills, paintings. I suppose that’s why they did it. Some great act of rebellion, lot of good it did, now Haelborne and dysphorium want you dead and your hourglass stolen.”
“Right, right,” I made mental notes. “Where do you think he got those ideas?”
“His hind end. He saw things. The clinics couldn’t fix him. He’s a broken creature, a devil, something cast down for treachery and – ” he stopped. Sighed. Hard. A fist clenched against the table, shaking it.
“I have indulged you enough,” he said. “Your hourglass.”
“I would like to know more – ”
“No more. You need sleep before we leave next morning and at this rate we’re not going to get there.”
I laid back. “Fine. But I am prying more later on. This should be a mutually beneficial partnership.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Yes, whatever I say.”
He snored, more in laughter than disapproval this time. “Your hourglass is bonded to you, but you may relinquish it and give it to another. You do not have to bear the responsibility of bringing it back to Dawne with me.”
Relief. “Why didn’t you start with that?”
“Let me finish. To fend off Grim on the journey back, we will need a Hastor.”
“Ah,” I sighed, hope evaporating as fast as it came. “For our reality bending. I see where this is going.”
“One of you will need to take the burden.”
“Could your Matriarch not have just sent another Hastor?”
“The bulk of the bloodline and the bulk of Dawne’s population are not suited to operating outside of it,” he said. “I am one of few specially trained agents. We prefer not to act outside the Kingdom, so there aren’t many of us and the Hastors are not amongst them. They carry more prestigious positions.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It does to us.”
“Is there a way to hide the hourglass from Grim and the Haelborne?”
“You want to hide a fragment of divine power from two interdimensional parties with technology on par with Dawne. How do you think I tracked you here?”
“But if you are at their power level, could you perhaps shield it from their perception?”
“It doesn’t matter what power level Dawne or the Haelborne or the dysphorium are at. It’s a piece of a god, Aryon. It shines like a beacon and anyone looking for its metaphysical frequency will find it with ease. Only the combined infrastructure of Dawne’s vaults and the Matriarch’s power would have kept it away from their sight, had your parents not…”
“...”
“I will leave you to your decision. For the record, I am sorry for this necessity.”
***
I imagine the others are packing up right now. I left a note that I was out hunting and hopefully nobody comes out after me.
Maybe they think I’m ditching. I was tempted. Maybe that refusal makes my decision for me, or maybe it only pushes it to a further level of betrayal.
I don’t know what I’ll say to Bia, but that’ll have to wait.
For now I’ll just keep levelling.
Crienbeast, veliophi, arionites, helae, voracrest. I’ll clear out this whole forest. I will confront what I know I can. I will wait for what I cannot.
Why did we have to leave Javenshard? Why did they have to leave Dawne? What great vision did Faelorn have to make him bring this upon his daughters?
This voracrest’s wing is slightly off. Have they all been different this whole time? I thought the Governance made carbon copies of monsters and printed them. I certainly never took the time to look; monsters are simply resources, however intelligent they get. Even the Governance can’t create a soul.
I wonder how Dawne’s Governance interfacing technology works. Our scientists always thought the Governance was seated in the dimensional membrane – otherwise it shouldn’t have the range to affect all of the planet. If Dawne can send aura signals that far and create signals complex enough to interact and ask for specific things from it… I wish I could see that place for myself.
I’ve always dodged responsibilities that I considered unnecessary. I suppose this one is, but I’m tempted to dodge it anyway. Bury myself in the ground like the veliophi. Maybe if you get high tier enough damage suppression affects abstract threats. Maybe I should just slay monsters in this patch of forest forever until the fate of the world can come knocking and I can say no.
I would like to go home.
Perhaps there is another way to see this. As some sort of opportunity – Bia would be smart enough to do that. Or maybe the term would be stupid enough. Maybe we will beat Grim and it’ll shoot us all the way up to the five-hundredth tier. The rats will be neutralized and I’ll get to see Dawne. Maybe they can fix Duskir. Oh, they’d probably execute her or something. Treason they did, against us all.
I hate this. I hate that this burden falls on me. I even hate that I can give it to someone else, because it tempts me and I hate myself for that and I hate Faelorn and I hate Duskir and I hate Grim and there are too many things they will not answer for and never will. Because no matter what, it won’t be enough to overturn their debts to an entire world.
Maybe the debt will be on me if I desert. Would that put me at fault? Would Bia be able to handle it, better than me, or vice versa? Is Arodorros’ mission more in danger with me or her? Maybe it’s the strategically more sound decision.
The hunt didn’t make me happy, but it kept me from being sad. I chided myself for having such basic emotions, then chided myself for just writing nonsense right there. I almost just mispelled right as write. I should sink into this numb, combative trance.
I shot another low level monster in the face with a light blade, not even registering what it was. I deflected a beam of light from another, considering since when monsters used lasers. I chopped away an arrow and a sword and kept going. Spikes and horns and claws dismantled and disarmed with seasoned, automatic ease. A loose trail of corpses marked my path, left where they landed unlooted.
Eventually I came to where the woods began getting less dense and decided I should return. Kilometres of bloodshed were left behind me, and I began the slow walk back, looting corpses as I went. I soon lost count, and wondered why I was counting in the first place.
It was only halfway through the return trip that I noticed the lone hooded, humanoid body in the midst of the monsters.