by F. R. Brooks
James had a point.
Mobs rarely sat around and wailed their monstrous little heads off for no reason.
Typically, mobs weren’t even all that vocal.
“Hm. Guess we’re going to find out what it’s crying about.”
“Yeah… I’m just glad you hear it, too. ”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
James said nothing and pressed onward through the double doors. Liam trailed behind and waited for a response that never came. He wanted to believe that his brother simply had no interest in elaborating.
“Let’s keep going.”
James’s silence, however, unsettled Liam.
Liam gave up on attempting to interrogate his brother. There would be time for that later.
Hopefully.
* * *
10 | Thorns
The Chevalier’s Trial opened to a serene chamber with the same pale lighting as the foyer down below. Vines and foliage climbed across the ceiling and walls. Ivies spread throughout the room like an image of nature reclaiming a room of cold, sterile steel.
At the heart of the chamber, a statue towered before them. Easily twice their size and ornate in all its monstrous detail. James circled slowly around it with an impressed whistle.
A magnificent beast carved from marble welcomed them to the Chevalier’s Trial. Elongated arms hung at its side with clawed digits. A smooth, featureless face turned up toward the bright lights overhead. Tentacles protruded from the statue’s thick back, all reaching up for the light.
Evigilari…
The statue captured a moment in history that all citizens of Libelle learned of in school—the death of the last evigilari. A moment that marked the end of the war that had rendered their planet a frozen wasteland.
A spear ran through the evigilari’s body, pinning it in place and posing it in defeat.
That spear had belonged to the first exalt—Kai Odonata. A name and legacy which lived on through the same corporation that branded their sentisuits.
“Let’s find that screamer and put it out of its misery before I get a migraine.” James went ahead of Liam again, following the shrill cries down a nearby corridor.
Liam had fallen silent, caught up in the awe of the exquisitely carved effigy. At the base of the statue, Liam noticed three round indentations.
Something’s supposed to go here.
Something we need to collect from the trials?
Not far beyond the statue lay a descending corridor with low, cerulean light. On either side, the walls shimmered with the refracted light of lively, colorful aquariums. Prismatic angelfish fluttered into hiding within crags and rocks.
“This is some pretty cozy decor,” James said. “I might keep it when I take this place over. Chicks love aquariums.”
“Alyssa hates aquariums,” Liam said.
“Really?”
“Yes. She’s afraid of fish. Remember?”
“Oh, right…”
The uncomfortable awareness of something Alyssa kept hidden from James wrenched through Liam. Knowledge he’d been unfortunate to guess at during a conversation with Alyssa when no one else was present.
Just blurt it. Just say what she told you.
Get it off your chest.
How much would his convictions against Chrysid weigh against the possibility of never holding his own child?
“James, Alyssa’s…” Liam trailed off, attention grabbed by movement in the shadows beyond the aquarium tanks.
James stopped and waited with visible impatience.
“What about her?”
A beautiful face on the other side of the aquarium entranced Liam. The face of a woman who could stop him in his tracks, whether printed in glossy magazine pages or physically standing right there before him. Beyond a wall of glass and artificial sea stood the Chevalier, Serena Lucienne.
The Chevalier watched the two of them with a look that Liam could only describe as indifference. Refracted, rippling lights danced with shadows on her features. A white and gold sentisuit adorned her small, athletic body.
Cyan lucidium veins pulsed across her suit. The lucidium color of an electric exalt.
“Oh… shit,” James whispered as he noticed the Chevalier watching them. A coy smirk rose on his features. “Hey, girl.”
The Chevalier looked as if she hadn’t heard him. Her umber eyes fell back upon Liam and his pulse spiked with all the resurrected memories of his boyhood crush.
Perhaps the only sign that any time had passed for the Chevalier came in the slimming of her face and faint, violet circles under her eyes. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days.
James’s smirk seamlessly dissolved into something darker.
“You want to talk with us about Outpost 14 at all? The shit Chrysid’s been using the Destrier for?”
The Chevalier remained silent.
The intensity in James’s voice grew harsh as he demanded, “You wanna talk about what Chrysid did to Jove Darner? Huh!?”
When Liam realized just how long her gaze had lingered on him, he also realized how long it had been since he’d last breathed.
“ANSWER ME!” James roared. Liam flinched when James’s fist slammed against the surface of the aquarium. A frenzy of scattering fish darted to opposite ends of the tank.
The Chevalier, however, neither reacted nor seemed to hear him. She turned and disappeared into the shadows.
“Bitch,” James sneered through grit teeth.
Liam eyed James warily. A certain thought drifted through his mind. One that he had become quite familiar with over the last year of Exaltation.
I don’t have to be here. I’m only here because of James.
The truth is… I don’t know if I want to kill her.
There must be a reason why she chose ambivalence.
James’s fist slid away from the tank. He stared at the ground in silence and Liam tensed as if he watched a flipped coin land on its side and begin to wobble.
When that coin landed, James looked back up to Liam with a ghost of pleasantry in his voice. “Anyway, what were you saying about Alyssa?”
Liam swallowed dryly.
“Nothing. I… just meant that you should take care of her.”
With suspicion on his features, James quirked one brow.
“What, is she dying or something?”
Liam squinted. “What?”
“You just got all somber and shit. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Damn.”
“Well, what did you mean?”
“I mean…” Liam trailed off. “I mean… she loves you. More than anything in the world. You’re lucky to have a girl like that.”
“Right…” James could tell when Liam was dodging something, and Liam knew it. They were twins. They knew one another’s tells better than anyone else ever could.
They resumed their path in silence. Liam debated whether keeping Alyssa’s secret like that was the right choice or not. Perhaps she wanted to be the one to break the news to James.
Alternatively, there was the chance that spoiling that surprise for James would change nothing.
I don’t think I want to know what James would choose if given the choice.
At the end of the long corridor, a beautiful, green conservatory opened before them.
The source of the wailing awaited them at the heart of the chamber, presented to them upon a bed of clovers and tiny, white wildflowers.
“The hell is this…?” James regarded the wailing beast with disgust.
Crystalline vines with heavy thorns tangled around a large humanoid mob. Each diamond-like thorn was as big as Liam’s forearm, and most of them dug deep into the mob’s pallid flesh.
The mob curled and writhed against its binds. Ceaseless efforts to escape the painful state had created a large, shallow pool of dark blood beneath it. Crushed greens and flowers drowned under coagulated blood.
Liam felt an uncomfortable twinge of something in his chest. He had watched plenty of mobs
die, and he had slain and hunted more than he could count. However, Liam had never seen one bound like this and left to suffer slowly.
When he idly glanced back to the entrance from which they came, he noticed writing on the wall in glistening white paint: “Remember why you’re here.”
Liam squinted at the hurried penmanship.
Had… she written this? What does she intend by it? Remember that exalts kill beasts? Then why present one on a platter to the hunters?
“James,” Liam began, warily.
James summoned an ice lance and made his way toward the creature.
“Looks like an easy target,” James said of the withering beast. “Let’s not leave our darling Chevalier waiting—”
A thorny vine lashed out from the mob and cut his words short. James hit the ground with a curse and then conjured ice pillars around himself to grab hold of. The vines dragged him toward the wailing beast, who thrashed against its binds in a violent surge of adrenaline.
Before James could make his own attempt at cutting his way free, thick thorns jutted out from the thick vines and began digging into James’s suit. Veins of earthy red and copper spread across his armor. The thorns dug into his sentisuit, threatening to puncture his body.
“Wh-what the hell is this?!” James struggled against the thorny binds.
Liam rushed after his brother, conjuring a metal blade. He attempted to sever the vines. Upon contact, however, the blade rusted over and flaked apart into dust.
Rust? Why is it rusting?
A possible answer flit through his mind. Liam grabbed the tactical knife stored within his suit and made another attempt to cut the vines. No luck. However, the tactical knife didn’t rust over and disintegrate on contact.
Lucidium-transmuted metal breaks down when in contact with these vines… but real metal has no reaction to it.
What does this to lucidium—seilliancrist…!
“James, don’t move! The more friction you give it, the faster it’ll rip through your suit,” Liam called. “Redirect your lucidium reserves into repairs and damage mitigation!”
“This… bitch!” James grit his teeth in frustration as a flurry of spiked ice formed around him—he was livid and it was coming out in his element. James was deathly claustrophobic, and this trap preyed upon his panic.
“James, I’m not playing! Those thorns are made of seilliancrist—seilliancrist rapidly breaks down lucidium on contact.”
“The hell are you trying to tell me here!?”
“Our suits are made with polymerized lucidium, James! Those thorns are going to keep digging into your suit if you don’t hold still and mitigate the damage. Friction will only corrode your suit faster.”
“Damn it…!” James conceded, his breaths hastened with anxiety. The UI in his visor lit up with alerts and warnings of suit damage. James exhaled. “I… I’ve got a minute and thirty-seven seconds worth of LCR before my suit’s punctured in like, sixty places. These things are digging in fast. Whatever bright idea you’ve got, Professor, you better make it quick.”
A minute and thirty-seven seconds provided you don’t have another outburst with the ice and drain your LCR.
Keep your head on your damn shoulders.
Liam turned back to the beast and approached with caution. As he neared, he could make out the shape of an of orb glowing deep beneath the flesh of the creature’s breast. A faint, scarlet pulse ghosted through translucent skin.
So, she wants me to cut that orb from this thing and place it in the statue…
Liam searched for any hint of a trap. It felt too easy to just drive a knife into the thing and cut the orb out.
Following the vines between the creature and his brother, Liam spotted the source of each thorny tendril. They slithered out through the floor beneath the pool of blood, masked by all the other scarlet-stained flora that blossomed around the wilting beast.
The mob was just as much a victim to those vines as James was.
You’re not here because you want to be, are you?
Liam inched closer. The mob’s cries rattled through the chamber and a dull headache swelled in his skull. The closer he got, the tighter the vines crushed James, digging each thorn even deeper.
As his knife hovered over the beast’s translucent flesh, Liam paused.
One bloody, crystalline thorn pressed into its side caught his eye. It was different from the countless others in the diamond vine bramble. Darker, less moonstone-hued like the rest of the vines. More like a thorn carved of obsidian.
Several of the thorns puncturing the beast stood out in that very same way. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps there was a reason.
Regardless, the obsidian thorn was close enough for Liam to grab. The temptation to see what would happen if he tried to pry out the creature’s thorns gnawed at him.
Those thorns… I wonder…
“Liam! What are you doing!?” James struggled against tightening vines.
One quick pull and the obsidian thorn came free. Blood spilled from the beast’s punctured body. It howled in agony and jerked against its confines. The sound made some sick sensation wrench in Liam’s chest.
“Liam!” James cried.
The vine attached to the obsidian thorn shifted color and paled. The obsidian thorn in Liam’s hand crumbled and slipped through his fingers as seilliancrist dust.
A chain reaction followed the vine’s tangled path around the beast. More wounds opened in the creature as the vines began to go slack. Liam reached for more obsidian thorns and pulled them out, one by one. Pulling them gave the same chain reaction. He freed the creature from bloody, crumbling binds. Instead of lunging at him, however, the mob’s weak body slumped into the pool of blood and clovers beneath it.
Liam stepped back as the beast’s mewls faded into silence.
Nearby, James wriggled free of the tangle and disintegrating vines.
“Is it dead?”
Liam nodded as the mob’s corpse shriveled and flaked away into dull lucidium dust. Only a messy, scarlet orb remained, nestled in smashed clovers and coagulated blood. Liam picked it up and made his way out of the chamber.
James followed. “The hell was all that? Why didn’t you just cut the orb out?”
“I don’t know. A hunch, I guess,” Liam explained. “Just cutting out the orb felt too easy. Pulling out the thorns, though… the creature would bleed out anyway, leaving the orb behind. It felt more like a result that wouldn’t come with a trap.”
“What if you’d made the wrong choice?”
Wearily, Liam simply answered, “I… don’t know.”
James sighed and shrugged. “Whatever, Liam.”
Liam turned to the statue and the round indentations at the base. He turned the orb in his hand and smeared blood away with his thumb. The glyph on the orb was the alchemical symbol for quicksilver. Liam found a match and fixed the orb into the marble base.
Across the room, the corresponding symbol on the wall lit up. Seeing the symbol shine a playful neon blue triggered something in his memory from Euclid. The warmth of nostalgia blanketed his memories.
A sheet of notebook paper with a handful of alchemical symbols scrawled in electric blue ink. At least, symbols that he recognized as alchemical.
To the girl doodling them, however, they had different meanings.
“What… what’s with the creepy smile?” James asked.
“These symbols. They’re not just alchemical symbols, they’re glyphs for astrological modalities.” Liam pointed to the symbols marked in the indentations. “Cardinal. Mutable. Fixed.”
James quirked one brow.
“Lo showed me them,” Liam explained.
“Astrological…? I thought the Professor wasn’t into horoscopes.”
“I’m not. I was just reminded of something. I suspect there’s a message behind it. But… I’m not sure that I know enough about the subject to decipher it.”
“A message?”
Liam nodded. “When I look at
these symbols, I think of metals and elements. Old alchemy stuff. When Lo looks at them, she sees language based on astrological mythos. She’d probably know how to interpret it. I’m drawing blanks, though. I wonder what Lucienne intends by choosing these symbols.”
“Huh. Well. Let’s just get this over with. Her horoscope won’t matter when she’s dead.”
Liam’s smile faded.
“One down, two to go,” James said.
* * *
EXP: +27,000 EXP EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: WILLIAM STERLING || LV.81 → LV. 82 || EXP: 1037029 || stats ATK - 189 → 193 [+4] DEF - 232 → 234 [+2] AGI - 176 → 179 [+3] LUK - 118 → 121 [+3] EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: JAMES STERLING || LV.80 → LV. 81 || EXP: 1012321 || stats ATK - 226 → 228 [+2] DEF - 171 → 173 [+2] AGI - 224 → 226 [+2] LUK - 238 → 239 [+1]
* * *
The armor worn by exalts to make use of lucidium for both combat and practical use. Every sentisuit binds to the natural aetheric resonance within the wearer and converts lucidium accordingly. On the back of every sentisuit is an alchemical conversion system—it is through this system that lucidium is converted into the wearer’s innate element for manifestation. No matter what sentisuit one wears, the innate element will always be the same one drawn from their personal aetheric resonance.
“Liam, do you think aetheric resonance is like a soul or something?” Nym asked.
“Not sure… but it’s probably as close as we’re going to get to quantifying the energy that makes up a human soul. With our current technology, anyway.”
“But then again, what about people who put suits on and can’t make any element? Why doesn’t their aetheric resonance react to lucidium?”
“It just seems incompatible with the system we currently have. You know, when the alchemical conversion system was first developed, we were only able to transmute lucidium into four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. If we had been born 400 years ago, James and I wouldn’t be able to take part in Exaltation. They didn’t have technology to transmute lucidium to metal or ice. Metal, ice, electricity, and obscura are all fairly recent additions to the system.”
