by J. Stone
The professor had successfully been able to recreate the serum to prolong Germ’s life, but he was still working on a way to recover the rat. He had thrown dozens of experiments into the Pocket over the years, but had never once attempted to bring one back. He had also let loose a large amount of test subjects inadvertently, and they were still occasionally finding them scattered throughout the household.
Erynn, meanwhile, had finished building the mechanical arm for Vincent and since returned to working on the fusion chamber that the empress had given her. She was devoting herself completely to her work just like Rowland, and Pearl worried from time to time that she was still having a hard time dealing with Germ’s absence.
Taking her set of brushes over to a nearby sink to rinse out the paint from the bristles, Pearl decided that it would be nice to make Erynn lunch. Earlier that morning she had set out some chicken that had been in their ice box, allowing it to thaw. The poultry would probably be just about ready to cook. The painter finished cleaning up her supplies, herself, and then made her way into the kitchen.
Grabbing a mason jar full of leftover homemade marinara sauce from a shelf in the kitchen, bread from a cabinet, and setting the thawed chicken breasts onto a cutting board, Pearl set to making Erynn a sandwich. Cutting the long bun of bread horizontally on the paper, she separated the bread into two pieces. She grabbed a heating board and, after slicing the chicken into slender strips, she threw the meat onto it, beginning to cook the raw chicken for Erynn’s sandwich. While the poultry cooked, she collected a pot and poured a bit of the sauce into it. Putting the pan atop the stove, she warmed the marinara to be used as a dipping sauce. Placing two slices of cheese on either side of the split buns, she took the bread and placed it into the oven, turning it onto a broil setting.
Juggling the various ingredients, Pearl eventually finished cooking everything and actually set to preparing the sandwich. She laid the strips of chicken on the melted cheese of the bun, poured the dipping sauce into a small porcelain cup, and placed the items onto a plate. Lastly, she pulled a glass from the cabinet, scooping in ice from the freezer box, and the filled it with water from the faucet. With the plate and glass in either hand, Pearl left the kitchen and headed down toward Erynn’s workshop at the back of the mansion’s basement level. She hadn’t been particularly hungry herself, so she neglected to prepare anything for her own lunch, but she thought it would be nice to spend some more time with her companion regardless.
Pearl found Erynn laying with her back on the floor and staring up at the wall. She held a small pink ball in her hands, tossing it up against the wall and catching it on the bounce back. She didn’t seem to notice when Pearl entered. Her focus was hardly even on the task of throwing the ball, as she seemed to be idly staring into the distance and catching it only on instinct.
“Ryn?” Pearl asked, sitting the plate and glass on one of the unoccupied tables.
No response from the chromesmith on the floor who kept absentmindedly bouncing the ball against the wall. Pearl walked over toward Erynn, and when she next bounced the ball, Pearl swiped it out of the air before it would’ve met with Erynn’s hand. She finally looked up and saw her companion standing over her.
“Hey, Pearl,” she said. “Something the matter?”
Holding her hand down to help Erynn up, Pearl replied, “Nope, just figured ya could use some lunch.”
Her stomach growled, and she looked down at herself with a realization. “I completely forgot that I was hungry,” Erynn replied, standing up with Pearl’s aid.
“Ya tend to do that, I’m findin’. Made ya a chicken sandwich with some of that dippin’ sauce we had left over.” Pearl gestured over to the table, which they approached and sat across from one another.
“What would I do without you, Pearl?” Erynn asked.
“Starve, I imagine,” she replied with a smile.
Erynn returned the smile and took a big bite of the sandwich.
“So, what’re ya workin’ on today?” Pearl inquired, looking around the workshop for clues.
The chromesmith pulled a hollow tube from her pocket, tossing it out onto the table. Swallowing, she explained, “Fusion chamber. I’ve got it setup in my pistol, but I don’t understand it. The first chamber looks normal enough, but the second… I don’t know. The way it’s configured, it looks like the bullet is intended to slide through the second chamber, but I just can’t imagine why. Those tubes came with the chamber and fit in there just fine, but they don’t seem to do much.”
“Smart as ya are, I’m sure ya can figure it out,” Pearl said.
Erynn shrugged unenthusiastically and took another bite from the sandwich. The hollow tube that Erynn had tossed on the table slowly continued to roll, eventually nearing Pearl’s side. She held out a hand to pick it up, and as soon as the cold metal touched her fingertips, a blinding blue light radiated from her, flowing into the shell. Pearl and Erynn both shielded their eyes, and she dropped the shell back to the table. The light receded, but the shell was permanently changed to reflect the unusual discharge of energy. Etched into the metal of the tube were miniature runes that she vaguely recognized from the book Viola had left with her. Each of the runes glowed with the eldritch light, casting on the shells an arcane spell. Pearl somehow knew that she had cast a sorcerous incantation on it, but how she had accomplished such a feat was a mystery to her. Erynn sat staring at Pearl, mesmerized by what she had just witnessed.
“What in calamity was that?” the chromesmith finally managed.
“I think… I think that was nexomancy…” Pearl allowed herself to say aloud.
“Hekta?” Erynn asked warily.
“I guess,” she replied with a wincing expression.
“Well, whatever it was, I think you killed my lunch,” Erynn flatly said, lifting the bread and picking up her chicken which had become blackened and shriveled, eyeing it disappointingly.
“That’s… weird,” Pearl said.
Dropping the burned meat to her plate, Erynn looked up suddenly. “I think I get it.” Erynn’s eyes fell from Pearl, landing on the still glowing, rune-inscribed shell that had minutes ago been a simple shaping of metal. “Hekta,” she once again repeated. Reticently reaching out to the tube, she just barely prodded it with one of her fingers before jerking it back.
“Ya okay?” Pearl asked, fearing Erynn may have burned herself.
“I think so,” she replied, looking up to her and offering a shrug. “I just figured it would be hot or something. Seems fine to the touch.”
Pearl watched, as Erynn once again reached out to the glowing metal. She lightly placed her finger to its surface, lifting it off the metal, but quickly placing it back when she was unharmed. The chromesmith picked up the shell and allowed it to roll around in her palm. The blue light from the tube was still glowing, but regardless, the chromesmith grabbed it up harmlessly.
Erynn smiled, looking through the hole in the object. “The empress said Dahlia’s sister could perform hekta, yeah?”
“Cordelia, yeah,” Pearl said. “She was supposed to be a nexomancer.”
“So, assuming that’s what you just did, not that I have any idea how that hekta stuff works,” Erynn continued, “then, I think I get it. Cordelia would give these rods some sort of power, and when Dahlia fired a bullet through the chamber that housed them, they would… imbue… I guess… the bullet with that power too.”
“Ya really think that’s what that was?” Pearl asked.
“One way to find out,” Erynn said with an eager, childlike smile.
She stood from the table, running over to her workbench, and grabbed the gun, which she had fitted the fusion chamber into. With a flick of her wrist, she ejected the chambers and loaded a single, bullet in the first and the glowing rod in the second. Pearl stood and joined Erynn cautiously, as she walked toward one side of the room where a dummy had been set up. From behind the chromesmith, Pearl watched, as Erynn took aim at the target and pulled the trigger.
“Toggle me,” Erynn softly murmured, staring blankly at the chaos of the blast.
“That’s what it’s s’posed to do?” Pearl asked with bewilderment.
“No idea,” she replied. “Anything in your book about something like that?”
“It was all… pretty vague… in practice,” she replied. “A lot of theory, I guess. Certainly didn’t expect that.”
“I feel like I should be the last person to admit it,” her companion began, “but maybe we should see if we can’t talk to the empress about that nexocology stuff.”
“Nexomancy,” Pearl corrected.
“Oh, right. Nexomor… What you said,” Erynn said. “It’s just that she seemed to know a little about it. And she did say that we could get in contact with her if we needed. This seems like a good need.”
Pearl looked down at her hands, attempting to inspect what couldn’t be seen. She had been lightly reading the book that Viola had given her. She hadn’t made it far enough into it to truly grasp what she had just witnessed, but the desire to learn more was definitely inside her. The power that the gun had channeled had come from her. Pearl needed to understand it. If she didn’t learn how to control it, who knows what damage she might accidentally do. “I think yer right. We need some help. Let’s see if we can’t talk to the empress.”
Chapter 19. Viola’s Council
Cleanup of the dead bodies had finished, and it had been the first day of the new council’s meeting. Crowley and the other councilors had been dealt with by the Ankalaran assassin, Solak, and though she could never claim credit for their deaths, Viola was quite pleased to see their reign of evil be at an end.
The empress had long since known who she was going to have replace the old council and be on the group of advisers and administrators. Part of her arrangement with Reginald Maynard truly had been to put him on the council, though she couldn’t imagine what a man like him would want with a position like that. If he’d given her any reason to doubt him, she would feel very reluctant about giving him that much power, but he had certainly earned a reward for his efforts in disrupting her mother’s reign to the point of chaos. If not for Maynard, Viola wasn’t sure that she could have ever taken her place. Maynard was still something of a wild card, but she hoped that the rest of the council would help control him for the time being.
Her goal was to properly balance out the council with multiple political, religious, and intellectual backgrounds rather than to simply involve a group of sycophantic zealots like her mother had. In addition, for the first time in the council’s history, someone born in a region other than the continental landmass that constituted Cultwick held the position. Not one, but two individuals now held that honor.
From Targeaux, Isaiah Carver, helped Viola by giving her an insight into the island’s mindset and culture, as well as serving to prove to them that they were important to her. Carver, like the empress, was a practicing Vaseevist, but he was also more than that. He was a skilled chromesmith, having learned the skill as a young boy. As an adult, he had used those skills to help provide various services to his fellow countrymen, such as a clean water initiative and a means to automate certain tasks of their agricultural communities. Carver had also served a role in various governmental and leadership positions. He was still quite young comparatively, but nonetheless experienced for what she needed from him.
The other councilor from outside Cultwick was Esther King from Ankalara. She served in much the same way as Carver, providing a window into their people and encouraging them to trust in the new empress. The empire had certainly not treated either of the foreign lands well, and Viola needed to do all she could to relieve the decades of tension between their people. King had not been a politician prior to joining the council having instead devoted her life to the pursuit and dispensation of knowledge. She was a learned philosopher and mathematician, two branches of study that Ankalara was famous for. Regardless, Esther was eager to serve on behalf of her people.
Aside from Maynard, there were two other councilors from Cultwick. First was Adelaide Bell. She had been the toughest find for Viola. Her goal was to keep one member of the council as having a background in the science that the empire was predominantly known for, biosynthesis. As much as Viola railed against it, it was important to their people. Adelaide, then, needed to be intelligent but also moral in her eyes. That particular combination had been quite difficult for the empress to find. For her career, Adelaide had avoided working with any lottery subjects, preferring to work instead with willing subjects who had diseases, abnormalities, and other assorted health problems. Additionally, she was not involved in the church in any way, so Viola was more willing to put her trust in Adelaide.
Lastly, there was Maya Snyder. For years, Snyder had been giving away her family’s money, attempting to house and feed the poor, cure the sick, and generally improve the well-being of Cultwick’s citizens. Born to a rich family, Snyder had inherited far more money than she knew what to do with, and she seemed a perfect fit for what Viola intended to accomplish during her time as empress of Cultwick. An aristocrat who cared beyond themselves to the problems of the lesser privileged wasn’t exactly a common occurrence in Cultwick, and Maya was rather unique.
Viola’s goal had been to put together a council that would actually represent the citizens of the greater Cultwick Empire, including the foreign lands that it now included. Viola believed that with this collection of individuals they might actually help her to improve the state of the empire over the course of her rule. She would have enough to worry about, and the old council only would’ve given her one more thing to keep an eye on. She did not regret having to turn to the assassin for aid, especially after Councilor Rhinehart had imprisoned their people for years.
Viola’s first major focus was setting up a manual labor workforce for a project that she needed to complete. In addition to satisfying her own goals, it would serve to give the impoverished and unemployed members of Cultwick a means of earning the money they needed for basic necessities. Though what she intended to have them working on was certainly not something that she wanted people to be aware of, she did have a way of getting around that. She had some minor qualms about what she would be putting them through, but, after all, it would serve the greater good in the end. She just had to focus on that when she considered their wellbeing.
With her own health in mind, she sat down at a table in her private quarters, across from Kyra. The sorcerous bandage was ready to be changed, and she was the only one Viola trusted to perform such an important task. The wrappings over her palm and wrist had once been a crisp white color, but were now discolored yellow from the leaking energy of the wound. Kyra laid out on the table the new bandage and a small elixir, both of which she had created, and she rolled up her sleeves to begin.
Leaning forward on the table, she asked, “Are you ready?”
Viola nodded. “Do it.”
Kyra began to peel off the bandages, as Viola looked on. With each layer, the color of the wrappings showed as darker and messier. Her blood wasn’t the substance leaking through, but rather her life essence itself. Blood magic being her focus, Viola delved too deeply into her own energy to cast the spell. The empress simply refused to rely on anyone else’s help to eliminate the infected of the Carrier Plague. She had always been arrogant, and it s
eemed she would have to pay for such hubris.
Her attendant was down to the last layers, and they began to stick to each other as she pulled them off. With each tug, Viola felt an incredible agony reaching from her palm nearly up to her elbow. The pain was as though the tendons of her arm were being yanked out through the cut. Kyra finally revealed the wound, pulling the entirety of the wrappings off.
What had once been a simple cut across her palm had now magically festered into a gaping gash. The flesh refused to stitch itself back together, and even had actively been pushing back, separating and making the laceration grow larger. The skin around the cut had grown a mixture of green and black that had nearly made its way around to the backside of her hand, to the knuckle of her fingers, and to her wrist. Blood was strangely absent from both her skin and inside the injury itself. There was a direct sight into her palm. The muscle seemed to have receded and died, which explained why she had such great difficulty using it. The bones that she could see looked to have withered nearly to nothing, and her tendons seemed to barely hold steady where they were. The wound was indeed grievous, but it was nothing compared to what it would become if she didn’t get help.
Kyra popped the top off the bottle and poured the elixir into the opening. To say that Viola experienced an intense pain would be quite short of the truth. She seemed to black out for a moment, as the liquid of the spell fell into her open palm and attempted to quell the growing magical necrosis. Squirming in her chair, the empress tried to yank her hand closer to her, but Kyra gripped it steadily and finished what she was doing. Putting the bottle aside, she wrapped the bandage around Viola’s hand. The pain slowly began to subside, as the cooling effect of the elixir kicked in. With the wound partially numb, Kyra was able to finish wrapping the bandage, eventually affixing the last strap in place.
