Fractures (Facets of Reality Book 2)

by Jeremy Bullard

  "That's gotta be confusing, mate," Retzu commiserated. "Scores of people close enough to smell you pass gas, and not a one of them even knows you're here---"

  "Do what you will to me, but your efforts will be for naught," the sapphire spat, his tone a mixture of fury and desperation. "Divine is the man whose light is darkness."

  Retzu's blood ran cold at the recitation. His grip, already firm, tightened on the old man's neck until it was painful even for Retzu. "What did you say?"

  "Your lives are fleeting," rasped du'Cyphem smugly. "Mine is given to one who is eternal."

  Retzu's free hand dropped to the pommel of his tanto, but before he could pull it, Patrys tapped his shoulder pointedly and held the stone spearpoint before her, dangling on its leather thong.

  "Quite right," the assassin hissed through clenched teeth, then peeled his fingers from his dagger's hilt. He cast a sheepish look at du'Cyphem. "I can be a bit excitable, but Patrys is right. We've got questions, and you've got answers. So please, kind sir. Tell me about your kin, Heramis..."

  * * *

  The Highest watched from the shadows, His fury stoked and growing hotter by the second. It's not that He cared for Hogan du'Cyphem. Salt of the Abyss, the man's death would bring Him infinitely more pleasure than his service ever could have! But to think that du'Nograh had beaten him yet again -- and not even the man himself, but his barbaric brother -- such insolence simply would not stand.

  The Highest had thought to look in on the du'Cyphem granite who had been tasked with softening up the rebel leadership, only to have His obsidian vision blocked -- apparently, by the granite's death. The spell the Highest employed to commune with the granite was not like the one that showed Him the Granite Spire. That one had been bought with the blood of the Highest Himself, and was tied directly to the Spire rather than to the lives that occupied it. No, the link with the granite had been more fleeting, tied to the blood of House Cyphem through the gift of a talisman -- the granite spearpoint bearing the House's sigil. Failing the granite's blood, the Highest's spell could not work.

  Or so He'd thought, before the Crafter had serendipitously brought the spearpoint to another du'Cyphem, Hogan, the patriarch of his House.

  He hadn't seen much of the exchange -- just Hogan spilling his fetid guts about his service to the Highest, followed by his indignant march to the guildhouse of the Fellowship of the Silent Blade. Shadows were few along the walk, so the Highest could see very little of it. More than once, He tried to take hold of the shadows within du'Cyphem's body, only to watch His magics unravel. The patriarch did have a soft violet aura about him, betraying the presence of a null field, but he bore no shackle, so the Highest was left to wonder how it was being done. And Obsidian was just as impotent against the du'Nograh brother as it was against du'Cyphem. He suppose He could've killed the sapphire git, the one with the ruined throat, but that would've just been petty.

  The exchange between the Head of Guild and du'Nograh was rather hard to follow, as the only available shadow was on the far side of the room from them. The conversation rose and fell with the guildmaster's ire, alternating between explosive rage and seething silence. Apparently, in his harrowing of the rebels, du'Cyphem had run afoul of the guildmaster as well. Mildly interesting, but nothing particularly useful to Him.

  With a satisfied nod, the guildmaster called his men forward to seize the patriarch. As the assassins led du'Cyphem away from his once-captors, du'Nograh's hand fell from the sapphire's neck... and with his hand went the amethyst aura.

  "How...?" the Highest asked, baffled. Shackles were designed to restrain their wearers, not those that the wearers touched. It would be far too risky, far too restraining for a guard to be warded against magic rather than his prisoner, and so nobody had ever developed such a design. And yet, that was precisely the kind of effect that the Highest was seeing.

  No matter. Hogan du'Cyphem was released from the field, and soon he'd be released from this life.

  He'd no sooner had the thought that the shadow before Him flickered fitfully... then darkened altogether.

  "No..." the Highest said, His disbelief stoking His anger further.

  "No!"

  The Highest reached out to Obsidian, wielding against the shadowed wall, willing it to open to Him once again and reveal His prey. The Highest, the Vicar of the Crafter Himself, demanded it of the shadows.

  But the shadows would not oblige.

  "NO!"

  * * *

  Retzu had to admit, he felt a certain satisfaction as he watched the copper hilts slip the shackle around du'Cyphem's neck, giving his imprisonment a certain finality that it hadn't had under Retzu's ring. No longer needing the gem, he slipped it back into the purse at his belt and turned to his companion, standing across the room, staring out a window at the city beyond. "Sure didn't give us much, did he?" he asked, to nobody in particular.

  "I wouldn't say that," D'prox countered. "You now know who Heramis is."

  "Sure. The son of the general that we'd captured outside of Aeden, who then escaped from us and fled to parts unknown with the granite sister of one of our amethysts. We know that he was feeling out our defenses and resolve for some Earthen Rank response in the near future, but we still don't know when or how, or even if this Heramis will be a part of it."

  "No," the bald shol'tuk conceded. "But you do know that it's not now. And with du'Cyphem in hand, you know that there will be no more attacks from within. Bastion's safe. It may only be for a week or a month, but when trouble comes again, at least you'll see it coming this time."

  Retzu sniffed noncommittally and turned to Patrys. "Shall we?"

  Patrys turned brilliant sapphire eyes upon him, but when she spoke, it was to D'prox. Ye have any idea what it cost me to bring him to ye?

  "I do, lass," the aging shol'tuk affirmed. "His family took your voice from you. I'm sure your desire for vengeance is so thick you can taste it."

  Not vengeance. Justice.

  "Semantics," he dismissed with a wry grin. "They may seem like two different things, but when the one who was wronged is doling it out, the two bleed together. Just know that your concerns won't go unmet. The good patriarch will have more than his fair share of 'justice' by the time we're done with him."

  The young sapphire stood silent for a moment, then nodded. As they headed toward the door, she paused, addressing Retzu's sen'sia over her shoulder. Might wanna bind his hands as well, she added. He aims t' take his own life, and binding his magic will nae keep him from making good on those aims. D'prox nodded his appreciation for the warning.

  The road back to Caravan was a rather quiet one, for all that it was filled with late afternoon traffic -- merchants closing up shop, smithies washing the soot of the day from their bodies, friends and strangers alike greeting each other for the first round at whatever tavern they chose to patronize. And two somber souls, stealing through the press without a word passed between them.

  Retzu snickered at the crude irony. It wasn't as if Patrys would make a sound, somber or otherwise.

  T'is a mite insensitive, is it not?

  "Get out of my head," he chided, though not unkindly. "You gotta admit, there's a certain humor to it."

  Ye'll fergive me if I canna see it, she Whispered, her lips twisting in a grimace, making Retzu chuckle all the more.

  "Life's hard enough without us taking it so seriously. It's only the humor that makes it bearable. You gotta find something to laugh about, or it'll eat you alive."

  So says the solitary twin?

  The comment caught him up for a moment, but as he walked, he turned it over in his mind. There was an irony in that that he had overlooked.

  I thank ye fer yer words, and I'm sure there's a bit o' truth t' them, but I dinna think I can be that girl, she said, her words tasting of bitterness.

  The assassin knew where she was coming from. It was a hard lesson to learn, drawing humor from the humorless, and even harder to practice. Had it not been for Uncle Mik, he di
dn't know where he'd be. The old man hadn't just taken his family in when the Highest had the court of Aitaxen slaughtered. He hadn't just adopted him, Reit, and Anika when the Highest had come for their parents. He'd taught Retzu to laugh -- something that he had always been good at, but had forgotten. Anika had always been the hopeful one. Reit was the thoughtful one. Retzu... he was the clown. It was in his nature to laugh, but there's precious little to laugh about when your parents are hunted down and executed.

  But Uncle knew. He'd been around long enough to know how to channel all that anger into something useful, something just, freeing Retzu to laugh again.

  Though, Retzu admitted, it did give his sense of humor something of a morbid twist.

  "Tell ya what," he said. "I can't teach you how to laugh again, but I can give you something of what somebody gave me once -- a place to let your anger out so it doesn't hurt others. Or you. Unless, of course, you want it to."

  Are ye sure ye wanna do that? There's a lot that needs lettin' out.

  "I'm rather resilient, my dear," he chuckled, then patted his purse. "Besides, you'll be doing it on my terms."

  Chapter 17

  Sal stretched, trying vainly to work the knots out of his back. He wasn't sure how long he'd spent pouring over his find. The minutes -- hours? -- all seemed to bleed together.

  He vaguely remembered Gaelen showing up as ordered, then disappearing into the bowels of the facility, his expression a laughable mix of awe and trepidation. Sal was sure he bore a similar look.

  Aten'rih also vanished shortly thereafter. Chances were, he beat feet as soon as he found a way to justify it to himself. Not surprising. The big emerald hadn't been all that comfortable with this building-in-a-building to start with, and that unease only got worse when he tried -- and succeeded in -- reading the tarnished writing on the obsidian plaque.

  Partially read, anyway. Apparently, most of the writing appeared as meaningless decoration to the emerald -- obviously symbolic, but serving no purpose for him except to highlight the words that actually stood out to him. But Sal couldn't see those decorations. To Sal, the writing was of a single piece. It still read the same way for Aten'rih that it had for Sal, but just like the opalescent aura, the two mages didn't see the same thing. That didn't sit well with the commander. The last that Sal saw of him, he was muttering fearfully about "mysticism".

  Sal didn't dwell on that particular mystery for long, though. There were far too many other mysteries to distract him. Massive computer screens, tiny handheld devices, panels, relays... room upon room, filled to the brim with the inexplicable, things that would have barely fit in his own world, to say nothing of this one. The whole thing was both intoxicating and unnerving.

  The facility was in pristine condition, without so much as squeaky hinge or a mote of dust. But for the tarnished writing at the entrance, it would've seemed as if the janitorial staff were just on lunch break. With each new room he walked into, he thumbed the power button on any and every appliance he found there. Coffee pots all worked, as did the blenders, stoves, lights, computer monitors, what have you.

  Even the computers themselves booted up. Sorta. They'd come on, but then the screen would say something about an "information hub failure" in that strange generic writing that he'd found on the plaque, and then they'd power back down. That's it.

  No information. Nothing to research, or no access to it if there was.

  He searched through every room he came across, every office, but it became increasingly obvious that the one thing that this facility lacked was paper. Ya know -- the universal medium for permanent data storage. Completely obsolete in such a high tech facility, it would seem, and yet it was the one thing that could actually have told him something.

  Eventually, Sal found himself back in a side room that he'd come across early on, a lounge of some kind, like the waiting room in a fancy doctor's office. Here sat the only paper products in the whole facility that he could find, save for the toilet paper -- a stack of magazines.

  And all were written in what appeared to be Chinese.

  I can't frikkin win.

  At least the magazines had this fancy electronic paper, capable of playing small videos on a loop. He was able to gather some information from these, though to the backdrop of some fairly melodic Mandarin. The clips were all commercials, of course, advertising flying cars or luxury vacation packages or lingerie that could barely claim to be clothing at all. Still, the world that they illustrated seemed so far advanced from his Earth that they couldn't possibly have been the same planet. And yet...

  "Gah!" he growled, slapping the pages shut. He was getting nowhere. All this information, but all of it inaccessible to him. He should've studied Mandarin instead of Farsi. But how could he have foreseen this? Rubbing a rough hand across his cheeks in frustration, he pushed himself off the couch to go see how Gaelen was doing.

  He would've been better off with the magazines.

  He found the Mandiblean in the facility's central chamber -- little more than a large, circular room of grated flooring, bisecting a seemingly bottomless shaft of pure light. Sal tried repeatedly to get Gaelen's attention, but the man just stood there, dumbstruck and turning a slow pirouette, gawking like the village idiot at nothing in particular.

  Quiet. Silent. Not saying a word. Devoid of audible communication. Not giving any indication that he was aware of his surroundings at all, except for his expression of stupid wonder.

  "Gaelen!" Sal shouted.

  The amethyst nearly jumped out of his skin. "Sorry, Sal. You snuck up on me."

  "Remind me never to make you stand guard duty," he grumbled. "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  "What do you make of all this?"

  "What, the auras? I had them figured out a while ago," Gaelen scoffed. "I mean, it was a little challenging at first. As soon as I tried to use Amethyst to examine the aura, the white went violet. I actually had to look past the amethyst aura to see the other auras mixed in. But they're all there, represented as they should be. Well, most of them," he amended. "I don't see a brown aura for Granite, but I do see a yellow one, whatever that means."

  "Yellow?"

  "Yeah, but that's not the interesting part. See, below us and above us, the stream is of a single piece. But for this section here..." Gaelen pointed to the shaft, running his hand floor to ceiling and back. "Here the auras are separate but intermingling, almost like a braid, though it's hard to tell whether they're being unraveled or braided together. If I had to guess..." Sal waited for Gaelen's guess, but the amethyst just shrugged and shook his head.

  "What?" Sal demanded. "C'mon, man. Guess!"

  Gaelen ran a hand through his woolen hair, scruffing his head in bewilderment. "It's as if the separate mana streams are drawn into the braid, and then pushed back out from it again, more powerful than when they went in."

  "Like a repeater," Sal said, thinking back to the building dedication that he'd found just inside the doorway.

  "A what?"

  "A repeater. It takes a weak electronic signal and adds power to it to make it stronger."

  "Elek Tronik?"

  "Oh, c'mon, really?" Sal snapped, exasperated. He threw his arms out to both sides of him. "Look around, man. Monitors. Panels. Electronics everywhere!"

  Gaelen stammered, his eyes panning the room in uncertainty. "I... I don't..."

  Sal rubbed his palms into his eyes, as if he could wipe the frustration away. "Ya know what? I need a break. You stay here and... do whatever it is you can do. Look around. Mess with things. See if you can make any sense out of any of this."

  Sal left without hearing the amethyst's reply. And really, he couldn't have cared less how the mage would've replied. It was all just too weird. Even for him. Even for this place.

  When he first woke up in that prison, he'd been half-dead, so the shock of being in a new world was kinda dulled by, ya know, being half-dead. He'd had time to assimilate as he recuperated. He thought he'd done a bang-up job of it, to
o. But this...

  He was halfway back to Caravan before he even stopped to consider where he was going. Marissa, Jaren, Menkal, even Retzu -- they were his team, his go-to. What could they possibly tell him that he didn't know? If anybody on this planet could possibly claim to be an expert on the things in that facility, it'd be him. What answers could they possibly give him that he hadn't already considered?

  He looked down at his hand, still bunched tightly around the futuristic magazine -- FUTURENOW, read the title in those strange, self-translating letters, as if taunting him that the rest of the book was in non-translating Chinese.

  The publication wasn't just out of place in Sal's new world -- it was out of place in his old one. As was the "repeater" facility itself. The plaque in the entryway said that the facility had been built in 2241, so not only was the building from a different world, but also from a different time.

  What was Sal supposed to do with that?

  In the back of his mind, he knew he was starting to freak out, but he had no clue how to stop it. It seemed ridiculous that something like this would push him over the edge. What? Finding the impossible in a world filled with impossibility? Must be Friday. Or the last Toilday before Endweek. Whatever. He had magic, and winged horses, and frikkin dragons. What's a smart magazine or two among friends?

  He needed to get a grip.

  It didn't register that he'd made it back to camp until he blew into Marissa's tent, his home-away-from-barracks. "Excellent timing," the redhead said without looking up from where she was studying the swords Sal had found. "I've got some chowder in the kettle that's almost ready. Family recipe. It actually calls for Inland Sea snapper, but Ysrean rockhead isn't all that diff... What?" she cut herself off as she stared at Sal.