Delve

Moving slowly and carefully, Rain got to his feet, his outward calm belying his panic. The Warden didn’t look imposing, far from it, the old woman wearing a simple white shirt and plain brown pants. The plate dangling from her neck, though, left no room for doubt. It looked silver, except it wasn’t, the metal slightly shinier and much more elaborately engraved.

Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh—

OH SHIT IN ENGLISH!

After speaking common for so long, despite often warning himself of the danger, Rain had relaxed his anti-mindreader precaution of thinking in his original language. It had led to fewer mistakes through direct translation, sure, but now he was having trouble switching back.

Mental Ward is active in the rotation, so she shouldn’t be able to...no, she already did. How did she do that?If she can bypass it, there’s nothing to stop her from learning about—Don’t think about pink elephants! Focus on the present!

“Warden,” he said, doing an admirable job of hiding his utter lack of composure. He inclined his head respectfully, feeling blindly for Ameliah’s hand. “Thank you for your assistance.”

Still smiling, Vatreece glanced at Barstone, who stooped to retrieve his axe. “Oh, you hardly needed it. You’d have pushed him hard enough to earn his respect eventually, especially if your antlered friend came up to play. I am the one who should be thanking you. I’ve been trying to get one of them to cut themselves off since I returned Magabor, fool that I was to do so. You managed it within three minutes, hah.”

Having found Ameliah’s hand, Rain squeezed, taking comfort in her presence.

Then a horrible thought struck him. Shit! Ameliah’s thinking in common, and so is everyone else!

He squeezed harder, trying to impart the warning and making Ameliah glance at him.

Why didn’t I ever teach them English!? What was I thinking?! Even if the Warden can’t understand my thoughts, nothing will stop her from reading theirs. They know I’m from—ELEPHANTS! PINK DANCING ELEPHANTS!

Barstone held his half-moon axe horizontally in front of him in defiance of gravity. The size of the weapon should have sent him toppling over, but like with Halgrave’s hammer, some shenanigans were going on, clearly. The shenanigans only became more apparent as Barstone helped the Warden climb atop the blade, lifting her to Rain’s eye level. Settling herself cross-legged on the weapon, now better able to meet Rain’s terrified stare, the Warden gently tilted her head as she looked at him.

“What is an elephant?” she asked.

In English.

FUCK!

“Yes,” the Warden agreed, amusement flickering across her wrinkled features. “You know what the words mean, even if I do not. Most people try Zeelada or Vejik, never mind that I speak both. I had one old scholar try Ancient Pelendi on me, for all the good it did him. This, though? A language I’ve never even heard of? Where are you from, kid?”

ELEPHANTS! PINK ELEPHANTS! PINK ELEPHANTS AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE!

“Another world?” The Warden’s voice took on a note of actual surprise as she glanced at Ameliah, then back to Rain. “Interesting.”

FUCKING...FUCK! Ameliah! Did you—

“It wasn’t her,” the Warden said, still clearly amused. She nodded to where Vanna, Tarny, Sana, and Samson were watching. “It was them.” She interrupted herself with a half-shrug. “Well, all of your people, really. Even if not all of them know, they know, you know?”

“Warden,” Ameliah said, releasing Rain’s hand and stepping forward. Her voice was so politely subservient that it made Rain blink as she continued. “Please don’t read Rain’s mind. He knows things that could be dangerous if anyone learns them, even you. Things so dangerous that they almost destroyed the world he came from.”

“Well, now I’m even more interested,” said the Warden, glancing at Ameliah, then back to Rain. “Open your visors so I can see who I’m talking to.”

Rain did.

Because he’d wanted to.

NO!

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, concentrating. He wasn’t quite sure how he managed the mental calm required, but nevertheless, he fled, landing on hands and knees in his soul. His avatar shook, his muscles trembling violently as he fought for breath.

Damn it!

Struggling to his feet, he placed a hand over his chest, looking around at his deserted beach.

Hopefully, when my mind is in here, she won’t be able to—

“Sorry about the Command,” the Warden said from directly behind him.

Rain whirled, spinning to see the tiny old woman standing there. Were he not already inside his soul, he would have said he felt it leave his body.

“You know, I am very difficult to surprise,” the Warden said, licking her teeth as if she had something stuck in them. “You’ve managed it at least three times now. Four, if we count what you did with the barrier stone.”

“How—!?”

“I’m not really here,” the Warden said, kneeling to inspect the sand. “Entering another’s soul in truth is quite inadvisable. You place yourself at their mercy.” Walking over to a palm tree, still weathered from the storm, she waved an arm through it, not even a ripple disturbing her forearm as it passed through the wood harmlessly. “These aren’t bad. Very lifelike. Are you sure you’re a silver?”

“Please,” Rain said. “Ameliah wasn’t joking around. Some of the things I know—”

“You really believe that, don’t you?” the Warden interrupted. She tilted her head, giving him a knowing smile. “But not as strongly as you once did?”

Not trusting himself to reply, Rain looked away, remaining silent.

“I’ll have your secrets, worldwanderer, one way or another,” the Warden said, her smile fading. “I would much rather take them with your permission, but I will take them all the same. You have already shown too much for me to just let this be.”

Rain didn’t look up for a long time, and for whatever reason, the Warden seemed content to leave him time to think. A dull resignation came over him. When he finally raised his eyes, it was one last desperate ploy to stall, though he had no real hope she hadn’t already seen through it. “Are there others?”

Vatreece smirked, not needing to ask what he meant. “Fine, I’ll play along. Better like this, anyway, and you were kind enough to give me the time by coming in here. No. There are no others. Not now.”

She waved a hand, and four blocky stone letters appeared, hovering in mid-air.

SPQR

What? Hang on, is that...

“A fragment,” Vatreece said, smirking like he’d confirmed something for her. “And no, the Majistraal were not these Romans you are thinking about now.” She gestured. “Before they even called themselves by that name, the people who would become the Majistraal found this. It had been carved into the wall of a crumbling ruin, weathered almost to illegibility even then.”

Vatreece waved her hand again before he could ask how she knew. The letters vanished, only to be replaced by a three-dimensional image of a Dragon. It was so lifelike as to be photorealistic, tendrils of flame curling upward from its mouth in slow motion. Vatreece prodded it with a finger, prompting it to release a silent, angry roar. “Dragons are from Wix, originally, or so I have come to believe. Your realm is not the only one to have sent us visitors. The real land of myths is little like the stories, I think.”

She waved her hand again, and the Dragon was gone.

“I care little for the affairs of other worlds. The nothingness which lies between—Soulspace, as you call it, or the Liminal Void to the Majistraal—cannot be crossed by mortal art. Aside from the distances involved, there are system provisions preventing it.” She paused, rubbing her chin. “Though I see you don’t want to return. Interesting. Even if you could bring her with you? Even if you could bring all of them?” Vatreece tilted her head. “How foul is your world, exactly, that you would prefer one that is dying?”

What? Dying?

Vatreece snorted. “You’re as blind as the rest, then. And to think I was starting to get my hopes up about you.” She raised a hand. “It’s not dying quickly, I’ll grant. There should have been reprisal for what I did to Barstone, and yet there was none. Karum is dead, his system perverted by those that came after. Any heretic with an eye for history can see that, even in what little history remains. Ask yourself: why does the system function as it does? It is clearly artificial, but what is the net effect?” She stared at him. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question.”

Rain sighed, slumping down onto a rock. “Can’t you just pull my answer out of my mind?”

“Don’t be fresh,” the Warden snapped. “You’re the one who wanted a conversation.”

“I...don’t know,” Rain said.

He was exhausted, and he’d lost. It was over. Even his resignation could simply be more mind fuckery. He was unequivocally at her mercy, and even the tempting nuggets of information she was dangling couldn’t distract him from that fact.

Vatreece began tapping her foot. “I’m waiting.”

“Making people stronger,” Rain said dejectedly.

She gave him a look. “You can do better than that.”

“Getting us to spend purified essence. Helping us make our souls bigger. Encouraging us to dig holes. A bunch of things.” Rain waved a hand. “It’s training wheels.”

“Training wheels...” Vatreece said slowly, trailing off. She sat, and a hard wooden chair appeared to receive her. “An interesting metaphor that I am sure I will understand better in a moment. Did you deliberately choose something from your world just to be confusing?”

Rain sighed. “It doesn’t matter. You’re just going to wipe my memory once we’re done.”

“Now you’re just being petulant,” the Warden said. “I might, and I might not. It depends on you and what horrors I find locked away in your mind.” She snapped her fingers loudly, catching his attention. “It also depends on whether I like you, so try to take this seriously, would you?”

Rain didn’t reply. There was no point.

Vatreece sighed. “Fine, be that way. Next question. Suppose the system was given a job to do, and that job was giving power to those that can be trusted with it. Is it doing it well in that regard?”

Rain gave a dejected laugh. “Not even close.”

“And so you would change it,” the Warden said with a wry smile. “If not the system, then society. Oh, to be young.” She paused, looking speculative. “I will say, you’ve made a good start of it, even if your company’s name is a bit ambitious.”

Rain looked up, something about that statement managing to tickle his interest through his despair.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Vatreece said, settling back into her chair, which had become padded at some point without him noticing. “Ascension means attaining divinity, or at least, it used to.” She snorted. “Now, it just means climbing stairs.”

“So the gods really came from mortals?”

Vatreece laughed. “Hells if I know. I’m old, but not that old.”

“But you said Karum—”

The Warden interrupted him, throwing up her hands. “He was always a man! He was always a god! He was one and became the other! He never existed at all!” She sat forward, the chair becoming hard again, as if mirroring her irritation. “Before the modern Ellish dogma took hold, stodgy priests spent generations trying to stamp out anything but their truth. Now, it’s all, ‘You can be a god too if you just follow our teachings!’ What a wagonload! Show me one example of that working, and I’ll show you priests who don’t need to fear the past!”

“Right...” Rain said.

“Last question,” Vatreece said, getting to her feet atop her chair, now a stool. “Stand up.”

Rain stood, not because he felt she’d compelled him to do so, but because there was no point in resistance. He met her eye-to-eye, the added height of her platform barely enough to bring her to his level.

“Are you a good person?” the Warden asked.

“I...” Rain stopped, wanting to say yes but struggling as memories all the wrongs he’d ever committed flashed through his mind.

“Trick question,” Vatreece said with a snort, plainly having stood witness to the montage. “There are no good people.”

She hopped down from her stool, making Rain take a step back, then walked toward the shore. When she got there, she clasped her hands behind her back, simply staring out at the sea. Not knowing what else to do, Rain followed. As he came to a stop beside her, she spoke without preamble.

“Fecht is dying.”

“What?” Rain asked, feeling like he’d been saying that a lot.

“The clock of eternity has stolen his restraint,” Vatreece said in a strangely formal tone. “He views his Empire as the solution to the system’s injustice—control replaced with control. He would have its dominion persist after his death, and all he has done since becoming Potentate has been toward that goal. Now, however, he seems content to do himself what his Empire can not. The scars he left at Fel Sadanis will not heal in a dozen lifetimes, if they ever heal at all.”

Vatreece raised a wrinkled hand, inspecting her bony fingers, then made a fist. “The Watch takes a different view of what is possible when it comes to shepherding human nature. Even should Fecht’s Adamant Empire emerge victorious, even should it spread to control the entire world, ultimately, pride and greed will destroy it in the end. Human failings are no less a threat to the Empire than they are to the DKE and the Guild. Even the Watch is not immune to corruption, though I have done my best to root it out. Unfortunately, my time is no less limited than the Potentate’s, and some of the methods I might employ are even more abhorrent.”

She let her hand fall, then turned to face Rain. “I have a year left. More or less. Cling to my vessel as I might, I have stopped regenerating. The path to immortality is closed to me. My work will need to be continued by my successor.”

“Why are you...? Are...are you asking me if...”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Vatreece said, giving him a disgusted look as if to ask how anyone could be so stupid. “I haven’t even examined your mind yet. Perhaps you are not entirely without merit, but I don’t even need to read your history to know that you are soft, ignorant of the world, and painfully, painfully naive. No, when I am gone, Guardian Nem will take my place, like as not. I’d have stepped down fifty years ago, had any of them the drive to do what is required.”

“I...see,” Rain said.

“And now we return to it,” Vatreece said, ignoring his comment. She hovered up to his eye level, apparently having grown tired of playing along gravity. “Will you allow me to read your history willingly, or am I going to take what I must, as I must?”

Rain closed his eyes, then nodded. For what little difference it made.

All I can do is...trust her.

“Thank you,” the Warden said.

The only sign that she’d started was an expression of discomfort crossing her face, but she swiftly spoke through it. “Pain? Ah, I see. You placed memories of the obelisk at the fore, like a shell. I find myself surprised again. Few enough can enter their soul, but fewer still can order their thoughts into mnemonic defenses.”

“I’m as surprised as you are,” Rain said, feeling her press deeper. “I didn’t think it would really work.”

“Intent is the first and most important step,” the Warden said, pressing deeper. He got the sense that she was taking her time, being cautious, possibly for fear of anything the Majistraal obelisk might have left in his mind. Nevertheless, she was merciless, effortlessly peeling back the outermost layer of his defenses. She paused again to give him a look.

“Osaran tax law? Really?”

Rain shrugged helplessly. “I found it hard to get through.”

The Warden rolled her eyes, digging deeper. “One eight seven seven...Kars for Kids? This tune is infuriating.”

Despite everything, Rain smiled. “I warned you. Also, you just lost the game.”

“Childish...” the Warden muttered, abandoning her caution and roughly punching through. Rain hardly needed to hear her sharp intake of breath to know she’d found what she was looking for.

Already, the thread of the Warden’s conciousness that was speaking to Custodian Rain had been drawing heavily on her due to the speed of his inner world, but what it had just learned was enough to bring her entire mind to a stuttering halt.

Even with Barstone’s lesser brain supplementing her own, the deluge was overwhelming. The problem was information density, as she’d expected, but the magnitude of it surpassed anything she’d prepared herself for. A memory record taken from a farmer was easy to process, each day much like the rest and easy to skip. This... A lifetime of practice was of no help without a frame of reference to let her winnow the seeds from the chaff.

Even something that should have been familiar, such as a pencil sitting on a desk, contained so much. The fact that the yellow-painted wood contained graphite. The fact that it had been manufactured in a factory. What a factory was. How the machines within one worked, moving faster and with more precision than any awakened. How the Custodian had learned about them by watching television.

That the worldwanderer’s mind would be filled with foreign concepts went without saying, but he knew so MUCH.

About EVERYTHING.

Important. Unimportant. Downright trivial.

It was all there, all with the overwhelming, crystal-clear immediacy of a Dynamo.

Vatreece stumbled, almost dropping herself from the blade of her axe.

The INTERNET? Almost eight BILLION people, more than half of them connected, and they use it to share pictures of CATS?

Her various other threads staggered, disrupted in their conversations with Ascension’s members. Honed by a lifetime of experience, her mind was already working to defend itself, locking the infectious minutia away, compartmentalizing it behind barriers of pure thought. The Custodian lying bonelessly before her had no such protections.

How does he FUNCTION?

As awareness of her threads returned, she found herself the subject of concern, and not just from the Custodian. Yet another surprise for the day. Even Ascension’s adopted Imperial had rushed to her aid—though granted, he had only the vaguest concept of who she was.

“I’m fine, thank you,” she said, or some variation thereof, spoken from hundreds of imagined mouths in hundreds of imagined realities. Withdrawing her threads from all but a few of the minds around her, she left the rest in blissful catatonia while she resettled herself on her axe. She was already regretting the decision to use it as a chair.

Used to be, I had a little padding back there.

Ameliah jumped, her eyes shifting to the Warden’s. From her perspective, the world around her had just shifted, illusion falling to truth. “What just happened?” she demanded, stopping short as she spotted Rain collapsed at her feet. “Rain! Rain, are you okay?”

“No,” Rain said, reaching up to close his visor as she helped him sit. “She took my memories, Ameliah. All of them.”

“No,” Ameliah said, turning to the Warden with a horrified expression.

“Relax,” the Warden said, speaking to Rain as she worked on his mind’s defenses in the background. She knew of no other mentalist capable of direct memory extraction, having dealt with the last one years ago, but as the Custodian was proof, the universe was full of surprises. Giving no sign of the effort she was exerting, she continued speaking with a casual wave of her hand. “Nuclear fire was not unknown to me. Even a middling Alchemist may wield it, provided access to fissionables and sufficient Insight.”

“WHAT?!” Rain demanded.

“You really are saying that a lot,” the Warden said with a smile. “You are only surprised because you know so little of this world. Both fission and fusion would be common knowledge, I think, if the damage limit did not prevent them from functioning on the surface, and were the required elements not so scarce. You are right to fear proliferation, but your concern is overblown. There are far easier ways to destroy a city, ones not requiring such an absurd supply chain.” She snorted. “I must say, what your society managed to accomplish without magic is truly impressive.”

Finishing her repairs, Vatreece paused to survey her handiwork, double and triple checking to make sure they were exactly as they’d been. Memory Wipe, Command, and the like were all well and good, but actually editing a mind’s mentality was an exceedingly dangerous and manual process. Even the smallest, most innocuous change could ripple outward, destabilizing the entire thing and leaving its owner a drooling shrub. To build proper, lasting defenses for the Custodian, she would have needed to immerse herself in his thoughts to the point that she knew him more intimately than he knew himself. Apart from not having the time, such a thing would have been distinctly unwise. Even as it was, she would be chasing dank memes from the nooks and crannies of her consciousness for months.

Constructs, though...

Retrieving a flask from her hip, she blocked the nerves leading to her taste buds before taking a long draw of the phenomenally-strong restorative within. Ignoring Rain and Ameliah’s curiosity, she closed her eyes and returned to work. Constructs could be placed within a mind safely, and when they expired, they would simply fade away, but making them last was tricky.

First, she wrapped Rain’s entire mind within a Thought Shell, like any silver Mentalist might have made, exceptional only in its strength. Second, within that barrier, she coiled up something far more advanced—a twisted spring blade that would shred the Custodian’s memories to ribbons should the outer thought shell be breached. The final construct was the most complicated by far, her mana plummeting as she began weaving it into being.

“Um, excuse me, Warden?” Ameliah asked.

“Yes?” Vatreece asked, splitting off the barest sliver of her mind to guide her body while the rest of it concentrated.

“What did you do to them?” Ameliah asked, gesturing at the dead-eyed expressions of Barstone’s constables and the other Ascension members near the frozen ramp.

“They’re having a nap,” Vatreece said, taking another long draw from her flask. “They are not needed for what comes next.”

“And what comes next, exactly?” Rain asked. “Are you going to kill us? Wipe our minds? Order us to do your bidding?”

“You think so little of me,” Vatreece said, not as a question. Almost done now. She gestured to herself. “In my younger days, I was faced with a choice: to become a monster, or to hold myself back. Obviously, I chose the latter. I drew lines, lines I would never cross, no matter the need.” She had Barstone gesture to himself in turn, then spoke with his mouth. “Lines like this.”

“What did you do to him?” Rain asked.

Vatreece sighed, returning her full attention to the conversation as she finished her construct and set it to slumber within the Custodian’s mind. “I have suppressed his consciousness and taken his body as my own. It is what I mean to do to the rest of the Citizens.”

There was a long, stunned silence in response to that.

Finally, Rain spoke. “I guess your lines don’t mean much, then, do they?”

Vatreece smiled sadly, having her Barstone body help her original down from her axe. “Fecht isn’t playing by the rules, so why should I? The threat of him must be ended.” She stretched, then walked forward to punctuate her next statement by rapping her knuckles against Rain’s breastplate. “For. The greater. Good.”

“The end doesn’t justify the means,” Rain said, but the words sounded hollow. He knew she was right. He feared she was.

“The DKE could have defeated Fecht on their own by now,” Vatreece said. “However, they have proven that they will not work together, occupied as they are with defending their individual territories. Pointless. How has it worked for them so far, eh?”

She continued as Barstone. “And so, I will make them work together. I will make each of them more than they could ever have been on their own.” She gestured to her stolen body. “They will be my instruments. A deadly symphony—” she tapped her wrinkled temple, switching voices, “—guided by my singular mind. I will take them—” she switched back to Barstone, “—and I will strike for the heart.”

“That’s...” Ameliah said, sounding sick.

“Necessary,” Vatreece said, this time with Velika’s voice.

Rain and Ameliah whirled, and Vatreece smiled before deciding to tone down on the theatrics. The Citizens were overly reliant on their Mantles, but eventually, they’d find a Diviner and begin Scrying to see what had happened to Barstone. She needed to be done before then.

“Let her go,” Rain said, shifting his gaze to Velika, then to Barstone, then back to Vatreece’s original body, as if he was unsure where to look.

“Why?” Vatreece asked through Velika, honestly curious. “She has caused you no end of trouble. I would have thought you’d thank me for taking her off your hands.”

“I had a deal with her,” Rain said, meeting Velika’s eyes as he responded. “She promised to teach me.”

The Warden scoffed with all three of her bodies. “You don’t care about that. Not enough, anyway, and besides, she knows far less than she believes.” She tilted Velika’s head. “No, you want me to spare her because you pity her. Even after all she’s done.”

Rain shook his head. “I understand being trapped in a corner. She’s an asshole, sure, but nobody deserves...this.”

“She enjoyed it, you know,” Vatreece said. “Killing that friend of yours. She regrets it, now, sure, and so much else besides, but then? All she felt was her power andthe fleeting rapture of revenge. They weren’t even people to her. Just obstacles that had dared stand in her way.”

Rain looked away, his thoughts a confused mess.

Ameliah, though, stepped forward, kneeling down to confront Vatreece’s original body. “Everyone deserves a second chance. She turned over the city in the end. She fought the Empire with us.”

“Only to save herself,” Vatreece said. She held up a hand, her voice soft but heavy with the weight of Command. “Enough.”

Ameliah’s mouth clicked shut. Rain tried to speak up after her but found that he could not.

“Have it your way,” the Warden said. “Make her your little project. She is little use to me anyway, with only a single sword to her name. She does have one thing, however, that I will be taking. Did you know that it takes full concordance to forge a new Mantle, but that transferring one doesn’t even require a vote?”

As Velika, the Warden raised a hand to her chest. Using the technique she’d lifted from Barstone, she directed Velika’s essence, latching onto the crystalline spike lodged in her soul. Velika—the real Velika—screamed silently, experiencing the unmitigated agony of a vessel too weak to withstand the load. Not so much as a bead of sweat dripped from her body’s forehead, however, the pain locked away along with its owner in the deepest, darkest dungeon of her mind.

The spike came free at last, and the Warden directed Velika’s hand to draw it from her chest, the shard phasing through her flesh. “I’ve been wanting one of these for the longest time,” she said, passing it to her real self. Velika collapsed bonelessly as the Warden released her, the woman’s skull impacting solidly against the dirty ice. The former Citizen—now fully so—wasn’t conscious to feel it, not that such a hit would have done anything to her. When she woke, though, she would have a colossal hangover waiting for her, along with another surprise or two.

Ignoring Rain and Ameliah as they rushed forward to help the fallen Citizen, Vatreece contemplated the shard, bringing it to hover just in front of her heart. She angled her hand, and the point slipped through her failing flesh like it wasn’t even there. There wasn’t even a flicker of discomfort for her to block as the artifact dug into her soul, linking it to others all across the continent.

The Warden smiled.

She could feel them. Feel their souls, and through them, their minds, powerful...bright...and from within, unshielded.

All she had to do wastake control.

And so she did.