We stand there for a brief, awkward handful of seconds. Sierra already has her staff in hand. Adrian reacts slower, but he summons the water again.
I have Wraithfire at the tip of my fingers, but I can tell what the item Kirin is holding is. I don’t even need Appraise to identify the bomb, but I use it anyway.
Saturation Bomb
Category: 3
Tier: Gold
Tier increased with the charge of this weapon. Contains the detonations of ~100 nuclear strikes frozen at the instant of explosion. Effective range: 400 miles. Range of center blast: 20 miles.
“You recognize this?” Kirin asks, pointing at the comically large metal barrel he carries. “It’s not as strong as the one I dropped on PT-31, but you’re not as strong as that one, are you?”
“You’re not, either,” I say, triggering half a dozen skills at once. Wraithfire dances across my hands, leaving burning trails of flame outlined in blood as I trace my fingers through the air. “Want to bet?”
“Relax,” Kirin says, completely unperturbed by the skills I demonstrate. He glides to the ground smoothly and places the barrel down in Adrian’s water, which recedes immediately. “I’m not here to attack you. My orders are observation only.”
“Then why appear here?” Sierra challenges.
“With a bomb big enough to glass half the desert,” Adrian adds. “Great way to say ‘I come in peace,’ by the way.” The soul damage dulls parts of him, but his incomparable lack of wit is constant. That’s comforting, in some way.
Kirin points at the still-burning patch of land where the strange man’s visage was, raising an eyebrow. “Fresh ascensions, I swear. You all act the same.”
“Not just an ascension,” I say. “You’re from the Coalition. What do you want?”
“Again,” he replies, obviously irritated. “I’m here to watch. Got wind of the Titan signature appearing, connected the dots, and here you were. Someone else got to you first, so I dispatched him. He’s of no concern to me.”
The oddly feminine UCC operator sighs deeply, kicking his barrel. Sierra flinches.
“Then watch,” I say. “Why show yourself?”
I have half a mind to just attack him now while his guard is somewhat down, take advantage of momentary distractions to kill and Devour him. Kirin would be my 1,000th kill, and his Category and level must be high, since I remember him fighting Inome in close range and living to tell the tale.
I activate Antimemetic Cloak.
“That won’t work on me,” Kirin says, snapping his fingers. My skill falls away. “If you don’t try it again, I’ll just pretend you didn’t do it.”
“Worth a try,” I say. “Answer my question, then. Why not just watch, if that’s all you’re supposed to do?”
“My superiors,” he says, scrunching up his face in disgust at the word, “Would have you rampage through the Deadmarked and the cities they’ve controlled until I have collected sufficient data on you.”
“On me,” I say flatly. “The UCC wants to understand me. Not capture, not kill, not any of the things you’ve been doing up until now.”
Kirin shrugs. “Not my prerogative to question the Coalition. As I was saying. I’m not going to stand by while a hundred thousand civvies die. I decided to observe more directly.”
“And that entails?” Sierra asks, maintaining her white-knuckled grip on her deceptively powerful staff.
“Damage control,” he answers. “Redirection around population centers. If you get into a fight, I’m sending you and your enemy somewhere else. Nothing that harms any of you. Believe it or not, I’m not here to be a nuisance.”
“We’re supposed to believe this?” I ask him. “Put our trust in you?”
The operator rubs his temples. “Broken gods, I was supposed to be on vacation. Fucking babysitting duty. Seriously.”
“If you claim to want to resolve this with minimal bloodshed, then send us to Zelin,” Sierra suggests. “Adrian’s soul is damaged.”
“Not damaged,” Kirin cuts in. “It’s gone. Impressive, really. I was wondering why the report said you were dead, but it looks like you’ve got one and a half feet in the grave already. The other observer caught the soul-death, I’m sure. I’ve seen people survive with no body, but no soul? It’s been decades.”
“First time for everything,” Adrian mutters.
“I can send you to Zelin, sure. Can’t have you dodging the Deadmarked, though. That’s—”
“You won’t have to worry about that,” I cut in. “If anything, worry about your chances to survive through the next hour.”
Kirin shrugs dispassionately. “You’re not cloaking well enough, by the way. I can see that you’re trying, but the Titan signature is burning through. I’ve taken the liberty of shielding you while I’m by your side, but the moment I leave, every able-bodied person in Lorris is going to send their level best at you.”
I glare at him. “And?”
“And then I’d detonate this and run,” Kirin says, indicating the Saturation Bomb next to him. “I’ve done it before. You don’t want to try me. I’d say you don’t want to know my kill count, but you bloodthirsty anomalies are always the same on that front.”
I wonder if I can stop his bomb from detonating. A Siphon, maybe, though I don’t think that’d be enough. Descent unto the Void could throw me into a space that would be unaffected, but it takes time to start that skill up. I’m not sure I’ll have that time. Maybe if I coordinated with Sierra, I’d find something, but while that might be feasible in the future, it’s not right now.
“Then send us,” Sierra says. “Adrian needs assistance. Operator vow holds, I assume.”
“Assuming you haven’t broken it,” Kirin says. “I can’t tell. Won’t matter.”
That doesn’t seem to reassure her, but she does ultimately end up nodding her assent.
Adrian remains silent, but the water fades away.
“Great,” Kirin says. “Stand still.”
I don’t let go of my skills, ready to turn on him in an instant. I trust Kirin as far as I can throw him (which, to be fair, is quite far). If he tries anything, I promise myself, he’s a dead man.
The operator pauses in the middle of drawing out a runic circle. “Fuck. I’m not supposed to warn you, but I’m getting the idea that you’re going to try to kill me if I don’t let you know what you’re getting into, and I’m sick enough of the assassin collectives after me. Don’t need another.”
“What is it?” I ask evenly.
“You’re not going to the same places,” Kirin says, huffing out a sigh. He taps on something in the air, and a screen blossoms in front of him. It’s purely for show, of course, but he recites the text there anyway. “PP-447-7 is a UCC asset and may be assisted. If necessary, aid may be rendered to PT-32—that’s you, by the way—but no direct combat assistance may be applied. Zelin Deadmarked have been notified and are likely to isolate PT-32 upon arrival.”
“I know they’re after me,” I say. “You’re not helping.”
“My teleportation skill is going to send you to different places,” Kirin says slowly, as if talking to a baby. “The Deadmarked screw with the rules. If you teleport in their vicinity, the spell will be rewritten. They know what you are. You will be separated.”
“Then why even bring up the option of teleportation?” I ask. “Why would I ask to be ambushed?”
“Because you want to,” Kirin says flatly. “I’ve read your file. You’re drawn to battle like a fly to honey.”
I can’t say he’s wrong.
The last three days, I’ve been trying to unlock the true uses of my nullspace to little avail. As I discussed with Sierra, it’s absolutely true that my greatest leaps forward come with combat, most especially those battles where I am outclassed by an opponent whose capabilities I cannot counter.
I don’t know what the Zelin Deadmarked have to offer, but if they can redirect teleportation from someone who casually wields city-destroying power, they can’t be weak.
“Do it, then,” I say.
Sierra doesn’t ask if I’m sure. She knows I am.
“You’ll find me,” she tells me quietly, pressing something cold and round into my hand. “Or I’ll find you. Remember these?”
The Communication Stones. The gifts I received from the deep dwellers are paying dividends even now. “A hundred mile range.”
“I’ll talk to you soon,” Sierra says, showing me her copy of the item. “Ready?”
“Always.”
“Just a warning,” Kirin says as he completes the circle. “I’m following you. I won’t end up in the same place as any of you, so I won’t be able to cloak you anymore. Once you get there, it will be open season. Try not to kill too many noncombatants.”
I don’t say anything. If a civilian dies, they die. There is little he could say to get me to care.
Evidently, Kirin can tell. “Broken gods, you lot are annoying. Oh well. It shouldn’t be hard to find you.”
“Follow the screaming,” Adrian suggests. He starts on a second half of a joke, but he doubles over instead, wincing.
“Hurry,” Sierra says. “Please.”
“It’ll be active in five,” the operator says, igniting the circles encompassing us with the touch of a slender finger. “See you on the other side.”
“Don’t fall behind,” I tell Sierra, half-jokingly.
“You have my word,” she replies, showing me a lopsided smile.
The circle flashes blindingly bright, and the achingly familiar turbulence of teleportation sweeps over me.
And partway through, something changes. The skill zigs where it should zag, a direction is missed. Either Kirin’s warning was accurate or he’s betraying us. Either way, I’m sure I’m about to end up in a fight.
Exactly where I need to be.
I reappear in the center of a temple, directly in the center of a complex runic formation. The still-glowing circle covers every inch of the ground for dozens of feet in each direction, interrupted only by a set of twelve leafless trees.
Underneath each tree is a single body. I can’t tell what species they are, though their frames are humanoid; in fact, I can only understand that they’re corpses because portions of their faces are exposed.
Flowers coat them from head to toe, tearing straight through flesh to become a macabre solid-color blanket over the bodies. Twelve distinct flowers crowd over twelve unmoving bodies and trail off of them, forming uneven lines that ultimately meet right under my feet.
“Carnelian,” a familiar ethereal voice whispers. “Welcome.”
It’s him. The same man who greeted me with a projection ahead of Lorris minutes ago.
I stand, looking for the source of the voice. There’s no guarantee he’s actually here, I know that.
“So I did,” I say. “Show yourself.”
“To think you would walk straight into our open arms, Carnelian. Truly a pleasure.”
My patience for conversation has worn off. If he doesn’t want to explain what he’s doing, I can assume it’s more of the same. Capture, kill, study—I lack the ability to give a shit when my response will always, always be the same.
Wraithfire springs into existence at the tip of my palm.
“A poor choice,” the disembodied whisper announces.
The world tilts a degree off its axis, then back, filling me with the sensation of something other. Foreign.
A blink, and then a faceless man stands before me clad in the colors of the flowers beneath me. He spreads his hands.
Good. I have a target to kill now.
I touch the soul-burning flame to the ground, targeting the swirl of colors where the flowers meet—and it extinguishes.
All of it extinguishes. Wraithfire burns even the air itself, feeding on any fuel it can find, but the dark light of the black flame dissipates entirely until not even a spark remains.
Appraise, I command. Nothing happens.
Unlike the last time I was cut off from my skills, I don’t panic. I can still feel my magic; I can still sense my brethren.
This is exactly what I was looking for.
“Allow me to tell you a story,” says the floral priest says. “In a place of worship, there lies a gatekeeper and his gate. A traveler may enter, but all those who seek passage must agree to the gatekeeper’s laws.
“Time passes, and listless souls find refuge with the gatekeeper. After breaking bread with him, they find that they have forgotten their names. Listlessness is but a step from hatred, and so they break these laws, and in turn, they break.
“The gatekeeper’s first law is thus: disturb not the peace, else a flower takes root.”
A pinprick of pain stabs into my skull, right behind my eyes. I ignore it.
I close my eyes, focusing on the Titan framework within me. There is power locked within, I know there is. The only question that remains is how I can find a key.
Tendrils formed from chains of flowers interrupt me, crawling up my legs and binding me to the ritual circle beneath me. A dozen shackles tie me to the ground.
Or, at least, they try. Though my skills may be locked off, the system’s influence will never truly leave me, and I break through the flower chains with ease. My strength rivals those hundreds of levels above me.
“The gatekeeper’s second law: resist not his domain, else a flower blooms.”
The pain within my head spikes, and my vision disappears in one eye.
With the other, I see a blood-red amaryllis flower replace the left half of my face.
Zelin, elsewhere
When Sierra appears inside a facility that she recognizes as the UCC’s teleportation receiver, she almost uncloaks before realizing that nobody even takes note of her arrival.
Right. Now that Evelyn’s situation has changed so drastically and Aunt Marie’s received the data she needs from Sierra’s uniquely powerful backlash, Sierra is no longer a threat to be contained. She is simply… an afterthought.
Adrian gasps in her arms, and she abandons that thought a moment later.
They are in Zelin now. Her skill to Find the Path is still active; she can tell that the soul specialist is less than a mile away.
The specialist she seeks is likely Coalition-affiliated, given the time and place, but she knows her skills inside and out. Find the Path is a special skill from her Blue Mage class. With the empowerment she can offer herself with the bevy of skills she’s learned as a Red Mage, Sierra knows that the specialist is one that will help her.
Assuming the situation remains stable, of course, which is never a safe assumption.
“Can you walk?” Sierra asks Adrian.
Humans aren’t meant to live without a soul. His condition is rapidly worsening. She needs to get him attention immediately. Sierra remembers a time before the first cataclysm, when she was deployed as part of a strike team trainership program to fight the soulless husks of a city caught amidst an experiment gone wrong. She would not wish that fate on anybody.
“Yes,” he says eventually.
“Then follow me,” Sierra says, exiting the teleporation circle. Hundreds of people are doing the same across the warehouse they’ve arrived in. The two of them will not stand out, thankfully.
It is only as she leaves the building that she realizes that Operator Uten has not joined them.
I wonder why that is, she thinks. Did he go in search of Evelyn?
Speaking of Evelyn. Sierra knows that the other girl is likely already in battle. If there is one person on this planet that is more Hexed than Sierra, it has to be the woman who has been faced with the impossible and surpassed it, time and time again.
Sierra tries the Communication Stone even knowing that Evelyn must be fighting. “Evelyn, are you there?”
No response. Sierra pushes down the sense of unease that it brings up. She’s fine. She has to be.
She weaves her way through the Coalition facility’s corridors, ultimately arriving at a dusty door in an empty hallway marked as the Esoteric Recovery Unit. It is not locked.
Just like most of the Coalition, the division is more than it seems. Despite appearing empty and unused from the outside, she opens the door into a room the size of a farmer’s field, bustling with activity and specialists and disturbingly quiet patients.
“Fala Teir!” Sierra calls out. “I have a patient for you!”
The next few minutes are a blur. Even though her behavior should be disruptive, the UCC’s specialists are trained to handle anything, including an asset randomly wandering into one of their recovery units.
Fala—an elf with eyes so black Sierra thinks the sockets are empty at first—appears in front of them almost immediately. After a brief explanation and a cross-check to confirm that Sierra is who she says she is, Fala takes Adrian and lays him on a contraption that could be a hospital bed or an ancient torture device.
“He shouldn’t be alive,” the elf tells Sierra. His accent is thick and distinctly not from this continent. Sierra wonders what his story is.
“Well, I am,” Adrian replies.
“Can you fix him?” Sierra asks.
“Of course I can,” Fala scoffs. “You asked for me by name. Who do you think I am?”
Something is off. She continues speaking with Fala for a while longer, but she can’t shake the sensation that something is wrong. She prickles, feeling as if an unseen sword is hanging mere inches above her neck, but Sierra can’t identify what.
“A day for the operation itself, if I can manage the materials,” Fala says. “A month, bare minimum, of recovery after that.”
“Thank you,” Sierra says. The words feel hollow. She’s missing something in plain sight. Sierra has no danger sense, and she wishes dearly that she could have borrowed someone else’s to identify what’s wrong.
Unfortunately for her, all she has is her gut.
She casts a suite of protective skills as she leaves the building, layering them on more thickly than usual. Piercing Shield, Gold-tier. Resistance, Gold-tier. Contingency, Gold-tier, five times for five separate skill she might need in case of emergency.
Evelyn still isn’t responding.
That bad feeling is multiplying.
By the time Sierra finds her way out of the UCC building, navigating her way out of the underground multiplex, she’s sprinting.
She can’t even sense the presence of a Titan. After Evelyn’s ascension, her presence has been suffocating even when cloaked—why can’t Sierra find even a hint of her now?
I hope the answer to that question isn’t what I think it is.
“Special skill: Find the Path,” she whispers, dedicating the entire skill to locating her proto-Titan companion.
The skill will take time to execute, she knows, so she simply sprints through Zelin’s streets. The city is familiar to her, but she has no idea where she’s going. She just runs through main streets and alleys alike, drawing no small number of confused stares.
As her special skill reaches its apex, Sierra collides with another woman, knocking them both to the ground.
“Apologies,” Sierra says, offering a hand. “I should have been more careful. Let me help heal your injuries.”
The other woman takes it, her grip strong for such a delicate-looking figure. Her light yellow sundress is undirtied, surprisingly.
“This will just be a moment,” Sierra says, meeting the other woman’s eyes.
She freezes.
Piercing blue eyes. Two vestigial fangs. A presence so faint it does not even register to Sierra’s senses—perfectly cloaked.
The face is not entirely unfamiliar.
Sierra tries to free herself, but stunningly sharp fingernails dig into her arms, keeping her from moving.
“How wonderful it is to properly meet the demon girl’s closest associate,” Sapphire Clearwater says. “Why don’t you walk with me? We have your future to discuss.”
We stand there for a brief, awkward handful of seconds. Sierra already has her staff in hand. Adrian reacts slower, but he summons the water again.
I have Wraithfire at the tip of my fingers, but I can tell what the item Kirin is holding is. I don’t even need Appraise to identify the bomb, but I use it anyway.
Saturation Bomb
Category: 3
Tier: Gold
Tier increased with the charge of this weapon. Contains the detonations of ~100 nuclear strikes frozen at the instant of explosion. Effective range: 400 miles. Range of center blast: 20 miles.
“You recognize this?” Kirin asks, pointing at the comically large metal barrel he carries. “It’s not as strong as the one I dropped on PT-31, but you’re not as strong as that one, are you?”
“You’re not, either,” I say, triggering half a dozen skills at once. Wraithfire dances across my hands, leaving burning trails of flame outlined in blood as I trace my fingers through the air. “Want to bet?”
“Relax,” Kirin says, completely unperturbed by the skills I demonstrate. He glides to the ground smoothly and places the barrel down in Adrian’s water, which recedes immediately. “I’m not here to attack you. My orders are observation only.”
“Then why appear here?” Sierra challenges.
“With a bomb big enough to glass half the desert,” Adrian adds. “Great way to say ‘I come in peace,’ by the way.” The soul damage dulls parts of him, but his incomparable lack of wit is constant. That’s comforting, in some way.
Kirin points at the still-burning patch of land where the strange man’s visage was, raising an eyebrow. “Fresh ascensions, I swear. You all act the same.”
“Not just an ascension,” I say. “You’re from the Coalition. What do you want?”
“Again,” he replies, obviously irritated. “I’m here to watch. Got wind of the Titan signature appearing, connected the dots, and here you were. Someone else got to you first, so I dispatched him. He’s of no concern to me.”
The oddly feminine UCC operator sighs deeply, kicking his barrel. Sierra flinches.
“Then watch,” I say. “Why show yourself?”
I have half a mind to just attack him now while his guard is somewhat down, take advantage of momentary distractions to kill and Devour him. Kirin would be my 1,000th kill, and his Category and level must be high, since I remember him fighting Inome in close range and living to tell the tale.
I activate Antimemetic Cloak.
“That won’t work on me,” Kirin says, snapping his fingers. My skill falls away. “If you don’t try it again, I’ll just pretend you didn’t do it.”
“Worth a try,” I say. “Answer my question, then. Why not just watch, if that’s all you’re supposed to do?”
“My superiors,” he says, scrunching up his face in disgust at the word, “Would have you rampage through the Deadmarked and the cities they’ve controlled until I have collected sufficient data on you.”
“On me,” I say flatly. “The UCC wants to understand me. Not capture, not kill, not any of the things you’ve been doing up until now.”
Kirin shrugs. “Not my prerogative to question the Coalition. As I was saying. I’m not going to stand by while a hundred thousand civvies die. I decided to observe more directly.”
“And that entails?” Sierra asks, maintaining her white-knuckled grip on her deceptively powerful staff.
“Damage control,” he answers. “Redirection around population centers. If you get into a fight, I’m sending you and your enemy somewhere else. Nothing that harms any of you. Believe it or not, I’m not here to be a nuisance.”
“We’re supposed to believe this?” I ask him. “Put our trust in you?”
The operator rubs his temples. “Broken gods, I was supposed to be on vacation. Fucking babysitting duty. Seriously.”
“If you claim to want to resolve this with minimal bloodshed, then send us to Zelin,” Sierra suggests. “Adrian’s soul is damaged.”
“Not damaged,” Kirin cuts in. “It’s gone. Impressive, really. I was wondering why the report said you were dead, but it looks like you’ve got one and a half feet in the grave already. The other observer caught the soul-death, I’m sure. I’ve seen people survive with no body, but no soul? It’s been decades.”
“First time for everything,” Adrian mutters.
“I can send you to Zelin, sure. Can’t have you dodging the Deadmarked, though. That’s—”
“You won’t have to worry about that,” I cut in. “If anything, worry about your chances to survive through the next hour.”
Kirin shrugs dispassionately. “You’re not cloaking well enough, by the way. I can see that you’re trying, but the Titan signature is burning through. I’ve taken the liberty of shielding you while I’m by your side, but the moment I leave, every able-bodied person in Lorris is going to send their level best at you.”
I glare at him. “And?”
“And then I’d detonate this and run,” Kirin says, indicating the Saturation Bomb next to him. “I’ve done it before. You don’t want to try me. I’d say you don’t want to know my kill count, but you bloodthirsty anomalies are always the same on that front.”
I wonder if I can stop his bomb from detonating. A Siphon, maybe, though I don’t think that’d be enough. Descent unto the Void could throw me into a space that would be unaffected, but it takes time to start that skill up. I’m not sure I’ll have that time. Maybe if I coordinated with Sierra, I’d find something, but while that might be feasible in the future, it’s not right now.
“Then send us,” Sierra says. “Adrian needs assistance. Operator vow holds, I assume.”
“Assuming you haven’t broken it,” Kirin says. “I can’t tell. Won’t matter.”
That doesn’t seem to reassure her, but she does ultimately end up nodding her assent.
Adrian remains silent, but the water fades away.
“Great,” Kirin says. “Stand still.”
I don’t let go of my skills, ready to turn on him in an instant. I trust Kirin as far as I can throw him (which, to be fair, is quite far). If he tries anything, I promise myself, he’s a dead man.
The operator pauses in the middle of drawing out a runic circle. “Fuck. I’m not supposed to warn you, but I’m getting the idea that you’re going to try to kill me if I don’t let you know what you’re getting into, and I’m sick enough of the assassin collectives after me. Don’t need another.”
“What is it?” I ask evenly.
“You’re not going to the same places,” Kirin says, huffing out a sigh. He taps on something in the air, and a screen blossoms in front of him. It’s purely for show, of course, but he recites the text there anyway. “PP-447-7 is a UCC asset and may be assisted. If necessary, aid may be rendered to PT-32—that’s you, by the way—but no direct combat assistance may be applied. Zelin Deadmarked have been notified and are likely to isolate PT-32 upon arrival.”
“I know they’re after me,” I say. “You’re not helping.”
“My teleportation skill is going to send you to different places,” Kirin says slowly, as if talking to a baby. “The Deadmarked screw with the rules. If you teleport in their vicinity, the spell will be rewritten. They know what you are. You will be separated.”
“Then why even bring up the option of teleportation?” I ask. “Why would I ask to be ambushed?”
“Because you want to,” Kirin says flatly. “I’ve read your file. You’re drawn to battle like a fly to honey.”
I can’t say he’s wrong.
The last three days, I’ve been trying to unlock the true uses of my nullspace to little avail. As I discussed with Sierra, it’s absolutely true that my greatest leaps forward come with combat, most especially those battles where I am outclassed by an opponent whose capabilities I cannot counter.
I don’t know what the Zelin Deadmarked have to offer, but if they can redirect teleportation from someone who casually wields city-destroying power, they can’t be weak.
“Do it, then,” I say.
Sierra doesn’t ask if I’m sure. She knows I am.
“You’ll find me,” she tells me quietly, pressing something cold and round into my hand. “Or I’ll find you. Remember these?”
The Communication Stones. The gifts I received from the deep dwellers are paying dividends even now. “A hundred mile range.”
“I’ll talk to you soon,” Sierra says, showing me her copy of the item. “Ready?”
“Always.”
“Just a warning,” Kirin says as he completes the circle. “I’m following you. I won’t end up in the same place as any of you, so I won’t be able to cloak you anymore. Once you get there, it will be open season. Try not to kill too many noncombatants.”
I don’t say anything. If a civilian dies, they die. There is little he could say to get me to care.
Evidently, Kirin can tell. “Broken gods, you lot are annoying. Oh well. It shouldn’t be hard to find you.”
“Follow the screaming,” Adrian suggests. He starts on a second half of a joke, but he doubles over instead, wincing.
“Hurry,” Sierra says. “Please.”
“It’ll be active in five,” the operator says, igniting the circles encompassing us with the touch of a slender finger. “See you on the other side.”
“Don’t fall behind,” I tell Sierra, half-jokingly.
“You have my word,” she replies, showing me a lopsided smile.
The circle flashes blindingly bright, and the achingly familiar turbulence of teleportation sweeps over me.
And partway through, something changes. The skill zigs where it should zag, a direction is missed. Either Kirin’s warning was accurate or he’s betraying us. Either way, I’m sure I’m about to end up in a fight.
Exactly where I need to be.
I reappear in the center of a temple, directly in the center of a complex runic formation. The still-glowing circle covers every inch of the ground for dozens of feet in each direction, interrupted only by a set of twelve leafless trees.
Underneath each tree is a single body. I can’t tell what species they are, though their frames are humanoid; in fact, I can only understand that they’re corpses because portions of their faces are exposed.
Flowers coat them from head to toe, tearing straight through flesh to become a macabre solid-color blanket over the bodies. Twelve distinct flowers crowd over twelve unmoving bodies and trail off of them, forming uneven lines that ultimately meet right under my feet.
“Carnelian,” a familiar ethereal voice whispers. “Welcome.”
It’s him. The same man who greeted me with a projection ahead of Lorris minutes ago.
I stand, looking for the source of the voice. There’s no guarantee he’s actually here, I know that.
“So I did,” I say. “Show yourself.”
“To think you would walk straight into our open arms, Carnelian. Truly a pleasure.”
My patience for conversation has worn off. If he doesn’t want to explain what he’s doing, I can assume it’s more of the same. Capture, kill, study—I lack the ability to give a shit when my response will always, always be the same.
Wraithfire springs into existence at the tip of my palm.
“A poor choice,” the disembodied whisper announces.
The world tilts a degree off its axis, then back, filling me with the sensation of something other. Foreign.
A blink, and then a faceless man stands before me clad in the colors of the flowers beneath me. He spreads his hands.
Good. I have a target to kill now.
I touch the soul-burning flame to the ground, targeting the swirl of colors where the flowers meet—and it extinguishes.
All of it extinguishes. Wraithfire burns even the air itself, feeding on any fuel it can find, but the dark light of the black flame dissipates entirely until not even a spark remains.
Appraise, I command. Nothing happens.
Unlike the last time I was cut off from my skills, I don’t panic. I can still feel my magic; I can still sense my brethren.
This is exactly what I was looking for.
“Allow me to tell you a story,” says the floral priest says. “In a place of worship, there lies a gatekeeper and his gate. A traveler may enter, but all those who seek passage must agree to the gatekeeper’s laws.
“Time passes, and listless souls find refuge with the gatekeeper. After breaking bread with him, they find that they have forgotten their names. Listlessness is but a step from hatred, and so they break these laws, and in turn, they break.
“The gatekeeper’s first law is thus: disturb not the peace, else a flower takes root.”
A pinprick of pain stabs into my skull, right behind my eyes. I ignore it.
I close my eyes, focusing on the Titan framework within me. There is power locked within, I know there is. The only question that remains is how I can find a key.
Tendrils formed from chains of flowers interrupt me, crawling up my legs and binding me to the ritual circle beneath me. A dozen shackles tie me to the ground.
Or, at least, they try. Though my skills may be locked off, the system’s influence will never truly leave me, and I break through the flower chains with ease. My strength rivals those hundreds of levels above me.
“The gatekeeper’s second law: resist not his domain, else a flower blooms.”
The pain within my head spikes, and my vision disappears in one eye.
With the other, I see a blood-red amaryllis flower replace the left half of my face.
Zelin, elsewhere
When Sierra appears inside a facility that she recognizes as the UCC’s teleportation receiver, she almost uncloaks before realizing that nobody even takes note of her arrival.
Right. Now that Evelyn’s situation has changed so drastically and Aunt Marie’s received the data she needs from Sierra’s uniquely powerful backlash, Sierra is no longer a threat to be contained. She is simply… an afterthought.
Adrian gasps in her arms, and she abandons that thought a moment later.
They are in Zelin now. Her skill to Find the Path is still active; she can tell that the soul specialist is less than a mile away.
The specialist she seeks is likely Coalition-affiliated, given the time and place, but she knows her skills inside and out. Find the Path is a special skill from her Blue Mage class. With the empowerment she can offer herself with the bevy of skills she’s learned as a Red Mage, Sierra knows that the specialist is one that will help her.
Assuming the situation remains stable, of course, which is never a safe assumption.
“Can you walk?” Sierra asks Adrian.
Humans aren’t meant to live without a soul. His condition is rapidly worsening. She needs to get him attention immediately. Sierra remembers a time before the first cataclysm, when she was deployed as part of a strike team trainership program to fight the soulless husks of a city caught amidst an experiment gone wrong. She would not wish that fate on anybody.
“Yes,” he says eventually.
“Then follow me,” Sierra says, exiting the teleporation circle. Hundreds of people are doing the same across the warehouse they’ve arrived in. The two of them will not stand out, thankfully.
It is only as she leaves the building that she realizes that Operator Uten has not joined them.
I wonder why that is, she thinks. Did he go in search of Evelyn?
Speaking of Evelyn. Sierra knows that the other girl is likely already in battle. If there is one person on this planet that is more Hexed than Sierra, it has to be the woman who has been faced with the impossible and surpassed it, time and time again.
Sierra tries the Communication Stone even knowing that Evelyn must be fighting. “Evelyn, are you there?”
No response. Sierra pushes down the sense of unease that it brings up. She’s fine. She has to be.
She weaves her way through the Coalition facility’s corridors, ultimately arriving at a dusty door in an empty hallway marked as the Esoteric Recovery Unit. It is not locked.
Just like most of the Coalition, the division is more than it seems. Despite appearing empty and unused from the outside, she opens the door into a room the size of a farmer’s field, bustling with activity and specialists and disturbingly quiet patients.
“Fala Teir!” Sierra calls out. “I have a patient for you!”
The next few minutes are a blur. Even though her behavior should be disruptive, the UCC’s specialists are trained to handle anything, including an asset randomly wandering into one of their recovery units.
Fala—an elf with eyes so black Sierra thinks the sockets are empty at first—appears in front of them almost immediately. After a brief explanation and a cross-check to confirm that Sierra is who she says she is, Fala takes Adrian and lays him on a contraption that could be a hospital bed or an ancient torture device.
“He shouldn’t be alive,” the elf tells Sierra. His accent is thick and distinctly not from this continent. Sierra wonders what his story is.
“Well, I am,” Adrian replies.
“Can you fix him?” Sierra asks.
“Of course I can,” Fala scoffs. “You asked for me by name. Who do you think I am?”
Something is off. She continues speaking with Fala for a while longer, but she can’t shake the sensation that something is wrong. She prickles, feeling as if an unseen sword is hanging mere inches above her neck, but Sierra can’t identify what.
“A day for the operation itself, if I can manage the materials,” Fala says. “A month, bare minimum, of recovery after that.”
“Thank you,” Sierra says. The words feel hollow. She’s missing something in plain sight. Sierra has no danger sense, and she wishes dearly that she could have borrowed someone else’s to identify what’s wrong.
Unfortunately for her, all she has is her gut.
She casts a suite of protective skills as she leaves the building, layering them on more thickly than usual. Piercing Shield, Gold-tier. Resistance, Gold-tier. Contingency, Gold-tier, five times for five separate skill she might need in case of emergency.
Evelyn still isn’t responding.
That bad feeling is multiplying.
By the time Sierra finds her way out of the UCC building, navigating her way out of the underground multiplex, she’s sprinting.
She can’t even sense the presence of a Titan. After Evelyn’s ascension, her presence has been suffocating even when cloaked—why can’t Sierra find even a hint of her now?
I hope the answer to that question isn’t what I think it is.
“Special skill: Find the Path,” she whispers, dedicating the entire skill to locating her proto-Titan companion.
The skill will take time to execute, she knows, so she simply sprints through Zelin’s streets. The city is familiar to her, but she has no idea where she’s going. She just runs through main streets and alleys alike, drawing no small number of confused stares.
As her special skill reaches its apex, Sierra collides with another woman, knocking them both to the ground.
“Apologies,” Sierra says, offering a hand. “I should have been more careful. Let me help heal your injuries.”
The other woman takes it, her grip strong for such a delicate-looking figure. Her light yellow sundress is undirtied, surprisingly.
“This will just be a moment,” Sierra says, meeting the other woman’s eyes.
She freezes.
Piercing blue eyes. Two vestigial fangs. A presence so faint it does not even register to Sierra’s senses—perfectly cloaked.
The face is not entirely unfamiliar.
Sierra tries to free herself, but stunningly sharp fingernails dig into her arms, keeping her from moving.
“How wonderful it is to properly meet the demon girl’s closest associate,” Sapphire Clearwater says. “Why don’t you walk with me? We have your future to discuss.”
