| |
September 24th
Phaedra walked behind Eldren, swathed in her new light cloak, as she followed him from the airship dock to Temple. The inner gates nestled at the back were an agonizing way off. Phaedra resisted the urge to reach out to Torin or Luca, not wanting to draw attention to her herself or them. She knew, without having to even look at them, that they were the same emotional wrecks she was. In Phaedra’s case, it was at least bittersweet. She conceded to herself that Torin and Luca themselves were far more likely to be assumed to be the enemy than she would be.
As they made their way through the city, Phaedra scanned the nearby faces for people who might recognize her, but everyone she passed was a stranger. Eldren had told her only a few people survived, and it crushed her to think of all those dead people she couldn’t save.
Eventually, they reached a doorway, and Eldren paused. Phaedra steeled herself. Eldren knocked, glancing at Phaedra, who looked at him resolute.
Orso opened the door, ready to greet Eldren, when he spied Phaedra. His jaw went slack, his face lost all its color, and he ushered the group in.
Merethyl hung out by the doorway while Eldren and Phaedra sat down. “Phaedra you’re. . .” Orso trailed off, mouth working.
Phaedra dropped her hood, averting her eyes as Orso winced. “Back from the dead?” she asked.
“It’s a surprise. No one’s ever left his army before.” He glanced at her two companions. “Who did you bring with you?”
Phaedra heard both men lower their hoods, looked down at her hands while they introduced themselves. “We’re not his thralls anymore,” Phaedra said, clearing her throat a few times.
“Did Demeter come with you?” Orso asked.
“She wanted to be left on the ’ship for now until it was safe. She’s with the others I brought back.”
“Can you fill me in?”
Phaedra recounted the tale, stopping to let Torin and Luca fill in their parts. When they were done, a heavy silence descended on the room.
“This is serious,” Orso said.
“I know. I only came back because I want to help bring him down once and for all.”
Orso stroked his beard. “Council won’t like this.”
Phaedra scoffed. “Council be damned.”
He eyed the three of them. “Can you provide anything that will convince them you’re here to help?”
Torin cleared his throat and produced a sheaf of papers. “I wrote a bunch of notes on Resurrected weaknesses. I didn’t have time for much else,” he said as Orso took the papers and looked over them. “But I’m happy to help in any way I can.”
“What about you?” Orso asked Luca. Luca passed over his own notes, saying nothing. Orso grunted, apparently satisfied. “I can’t guarantee they’ll say yes, but if this is accurate, it would be hard to turn you away.”
“They also helped me get the one ’stone to Eldren, and Torin helped cover up the one you gave me.”
Orso looked at the two men, clearly impressed. “That should potentially sway things.”
“What next?” Phaedra asked, hope fluttering in her chest.
Orso smiled at her. “I didn’t bring you into Temple as a child to give up on you now.” He looked at Eldren. “Go get Abraham. Don’t tell him who you brought back.”
Eldren sprang up and hustled out of the room past Merethyl. Orso watched him leave and then turned back to the three of them. “You’ve done well, Phaedra,” he said. “But I’m not surprised. If anyone could have pulled this off, I knew it would be you.”
Phaedra looked down at her hands. “If the answer is no, we’ll leave.”
“And where will you go?” he asked, holding up a hand as Phaedra opened her mouth. “No, we’re too invested to give up now. It’ll take some convincing, but as long as you all cooperate, it should be fine.”
A knock sounded at the door, and Torin and Luca raised their hoods. Phaedra looked down at her hands again as the door opened. “Hey, Orso, you. . ..” Phaedra turned and gave a small, tired smile as Abraham walked into the room. “Phaedra?” He asked. “Where is—”
“Demeter is on the ’ship,” Orso said. “Close the door before someone hears you,” he ordered. Abraham closed the door, not taking his eyes off Phaedra.
“How did you get free?” As he spoke, Abraham noticed the two men and frowned.
“Abraham, meet Torin and Luca, two of the former Resurrected.” As Abraham’s mouth worked, Orso held up the papers given to him by the two men. “They brought information you might be able to use.”
With shaking hands, Abraham took the papers and skimmed them. “This all makes sense. But why?” he asked, looking at them in shock.
“Because I wasn’t going to stick around, and I wasn’t going to leave people behind who didn’t belong,” she said, voice firm. “I converted more people than this, but most everyone else wound up dying.”
“Council isn’t going to like this,” Abraham said, handing the papers back to Orso.
“I know,” Orso said. “That’s why I approached you first. I want you in my corner before we bring this to them.”
“Of course. These notes that. . .” Abraham squinted at Phaedra’s newfound friends, “Torin and Luca? These alone give us something to hold out for. I can see how it would work, too. At least with the weaknesses, we’ve seen them brought down before. It’s just been a bear to repeat the process.”
Phaedra tried to shove Torin and Luca out of her thoughts. “We’ll do whatever it takes to prove we’re here to help.”
“That’s the other thing. It’s not like they randomly turned up on our doorstep. You brought them, Phaedra. And you have enough people who like you and trust you, even now. It’s going to make the process a hell of a lot easier.” Abraham exhaled. “You brought others, yes?” When Phaedra nodded, he continued. “As long as everyone cooperates, we can make this a nonissue. Especially since you’re our only real hope of victory.”
Torin’s exhale was long, and he reached out to lightly touch Phaedra’s arm for a moment. The thank you behind the gesture was obvious. “We’ll help however we can.”
“We’ll accept any help you can offer. Of course, we can’t just let you wander around yourselves, just in case.” Orso’s eyes flicked to Phaedra. “Phaedra is less of an issue than you two, because Phaedra is part of Temple. Getting them to trust her again won’t be as difficult.” He cleared his throat. “If you promise to work alongside someone we trust, it will look better.”
“Luca and I can work together,” Eldren offered. “Since he’s an alchemist, it’s a natural fit.”
“Torin and I are both magi, so we’d be a natural fit as well,” Phaedra said.
Abraham shrugged as Orso looked at him. “It’s fine by me. As long as the Council trusts Phaedra, that’s good enough.”
Orso looked at Torin. “Since you were once The Magus, maybe we could assemble some people to talk to you.”
“I can do that.”
***
Phaedra watched as Torin scribbled some notes in the journal she had provided him, passing it around to show people. “The Resurrected are hard to kill, but they’re not truly immortal. You just have to overwhelm the healing factor. Now it’s hard to generate that much power. It helps to have multiple people to help, as shown by. . .”
Phaedra listened with half an ear as he went on about weaknesses and how to exploit them. It wasn’t for her sake, anyway; it was for the people gathered. Orso and Abraham, amongst a handful of others, hung on his every word as Phaedra stood there, silent. No one had asked her anything yet, but it was less her reappearance and more the addition of Torin and Luca that caught everyone’s attention. Humanity had killed a few of the Resurrected over the years, but no one had actually taken people back.
“So how did you get free?” Abraham asked, a million other questions clear on his face.
Torin looked surprised. “That was Phaedra’s doing.”
All eyes turned to Phaedra, who paused in peeling an apple she had pilfered from the kitchen. “Oh. I overwhelmed Aurelius’s bond and replaced it.”
A million questions flew at her. She held a hand up for silence. “I guess my method wasn’t obvious,” she said. “One at a time, please.”
“How did you even do that?” Abraham asked. “It’s literally unheard of. And you’re just so. . . so. . .” he flapped his hands. “Nonchalant.”
“It’s hard to explain,” she said, glancing at Torin in the hopes he’d interject. They’d barely had time to go over this before the assembled crowd arrived, and she wasn’t sure she understood it all. “Torin thinks, and I agree, that it’s because I’m from a family of Seers. That it was easy for me to steal the bonds because of how that all works. Seers have a deeper bond with spirits than most others, after all.” Her grasp of her own birth powers was too limited to give an in-depth reason beyond that. “But Aurelius had been trying to stamp out familial abilities. That’s where the seers, oracles, and the empaths went, as well as the others, so he probably had no idea that either Demeter or I could swap out his bonds for ours.”
Torin cleared his throat as the group asked more questions. “Aurelius is a necromancer, and his powers are based on forging bonds. The bond he had with us was one of those, based on faking a connection he didn’t actually have. I suspect that Phaedra’s natural ability in her case outstripped what he could produce artificially.”
Phaedra suppressed a sigh as the attention shifted off her. She went back to peeling her apple, slicing off thin pieces to eat as she listened to Torin. It amazed her how he had transformed once it became clear that they were interested in both keeping him around and learning from him. Luca had bridged a lot of the gap by offering new technology that could turn the tide as well. He was off with Eldren to see what they could combine, and Phaedra had wound up with Torin.
“The magic that preserved us also amplified our abilities. But I also don’t know how he created us. My knowledge in that area is sorely lacking.”
“Can you guys create more like. . . well, like you?” someone asked from the back.
“I have no idea how he does it, so no.”
Phaedra wasn’t sure if her disappointment was because of lack of knowledge or that someone asked, but it rubbed her the wrong way they even brought it up. “We’re not fighting fire with fire,” she said, voice like sandpaper, “so don’t ask. I have enough nightmare fuel to last the rest of my life as it is,” she added, looking away.
“What we need are new tactics. Aurelius is always going to be the best regarding necromancy. We have no hope of getting close to his abilities soon enough for them to be useful.”
“What can we do?” Another unfamiliar voice asked the real question.
“That’s the hard part. We only weakened Aurelius; he’s not dead. Once he recovers, he’s going to be mad, and I don’t think we have enough time to teach a whole new magic theory.” He waved his hands as a murmur went up. “That’s not to say I can’t help. The best thing I can suggest is to have Luca perfect the spell cartridges and make as many of those as we can, and I can help manufacture more of Elena’s new shields. If we have time,” he said, another murmur going up, “I can do more. But right now, I want to focus on defense. That way, more people will survive.”
Phaedra glanced up at the movement from the back of the room and spied Demeter walking out. Demeter wasn’t a magus. She’d have gotten nothing from sitting in on the meeting. Phaedra frowned, wondering why Demeter was even in on this meeting to begin with. The people clustered around were all top level magi, because they needed to know this stuff. Demeter didn’t.
One by one, the group split up. Most of the gathered people clustered around Torin, including Abraham. It suited Phaedra just fine; she wasn’t in a mood to talk strategy with one of Temple’s finest.
“I’m still shocked you not only escaped, but brought people with you.” Phaedra looked up to see Orso coming over towards her, an impressed look on his face. “I knew I picked the right person.”
Phaedra resisted the urge to grab at her ’stone. “Why did you pick me instead of Demeter?” She asked, slicing off another piece of apple.
Orso’s face twisted, and he shook his head. “I’ll explain my reasoning when this is all over.”
Shaking her head, Phaedra’s shoulders twitched. “They selected her to be the one to take it, didn’t they?”
“I had different ideas, which is part of why I’m not on the High Council. Or Sub Council, for that matter.”
Phaedra’s gaze drifted to Torin and the crowd surrounding him. Not everyone was in the group, but so far, only Orso had come up to chat. “Sorry about that,” she finally said. “I know bringing us in against orders ruined any chance of that.”
“It is what it is, and I wasn’t going to turn away orphans.”
“You don’t regret it?”
“Not in the slightest.”
Phaedra ate another slice of apple. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“I know. But your actions just might be what saves us.”
Phaedra looked at Orso. It sat funny with her, reminding her of things Torin had said as well. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I didn’t do anything special.”
Orso harrumphed. “I’m glad you made it out alive,” he said, before stepping away.
Phaedra watched as he joined the crowd around Torin and smiled. She hoped it was a turning point for him. Since everyone was hanging on his every word, she figured she’d go find Eldren and see how he was faring with Luca.
Walking out of the door, she wandered the halls until she found the engineering lab he usually worked in. The alchemical lab was right next door, placed on purpose, since alchemy and engineering often overlapped. The magic lab was just on the other side, for the same reason. Knocking on the engineering room door, she opened it without waiting for an answer.
Eldren bent over the work desk, the much taller Luca a stark comparison next to him. Both men looked up, blinking in apparent confusion. “Aren’t you giving a lecture on magic and whatnot?” Eldren asked, looking surprised.
“They want to talk to Torin more than me,” she said, walking up to the workbench. “I figured I’d come find you.”
Eldren glanced around the room. “That’s fine. I just figured you’d stick around with Torin.”
“They’re more interested in him, and this is more up his alley than mine.”
Luca and Eldren both looked at her. “You’re always welcome here, Phae. Luca was giving me tips on how to improve the spell cannons to better handle the cartridges he’s making.”
Phaedra thought about Torin and his engineering skills. “Torin mentioned you were an engineer,” she said.
Luca huffed. “I’m only okay at it. I prefer alchemy.”
Her thoughts turned to the clockwork items in the magic lab of Aurelius’s flying fortress. How many had he made? She watched as he drew a notebook closer to him and started jotting something down. Eldren was also absorbed in what he was doing, which was fine tuning a small piece of clockwork with a journal full of notes next to him. Phaedra felt bad for interrupting them and got up. “I’ll catch you guys later.”
“See you Phae,” Eldren said, tone distant as he showed Luca something. She turned and walked out.
Phaedra was listless and wanted something to do. Eldren had struck up a quick friendship with Luca that surprised her somewhat, though she could see how it worked. She would have sought Torin, but he was busy, and she didn’t want to interfere with what he was doing. Council wouldn’t be happy, but Phaedra couldn’t care less. She knew he wouldn’t betray them. That left Demeter. Phaedra scowled as she thought about where her sister might be. She had no idea. Demeter these days was hard to find, harder than usual. Prior to Sanctuary City’s fall, she was often busy but always made time for Phaedra.
“Hey, Phaedra, I need you for something.”
Phaedra looked up at Abraham. His eyes drifted to her throat and looked away, mumbling something that Phaedra didn’t quite catch. “Torin sent me your way with some questions I had,” he said, louder.
Phaedra blinked a few times. “Oh.”
His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “By his own admission, he can’t answer questions about how you pulled it off.”
“I don’t know how much I can help. It was. . .” she thought about it and felt the color drain from her face. “I just listened. And the voice that used to guide me told me what to do.”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t necessary.”
Phaedra exhaled through pursed lips. “I know. Let’s go back to your office and I’ll try to answer as best as I can.”
