The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 496

Chapter 496: Trust

ARTHUR LEYWIN

The rolling waves beat against the shoreline. Cool wind wove in between the three of us, each a lord of our clan, our race. In the distance, an Epheotan seabird cried a hollow, mournful tune, as if lamenting what was about to happen.

“Lord Indrath. Welcome.” If Veruhn was surprised by Kezess’s sudden appearance, he hid it well. “It is a rare treat for you to visit us here in Ecclesia.”

The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife. How much had Kezess heard? I readied myself to fend off an attack.

“Arthur is needed at my castle,” Kezess said perfunctorily.

I hesitated. His tone bore no hostility. He wasn’t seething with suppressed mana or aether as if containing his rage. There was no outward sign of displeasure, not even the darkening of his eyes. If he’d heard anything dangerous, he was playing it incredibly close to the chest.

His request could have been a cover. It seemed unlike him to have come all this way to collect me in person, especially when Windsom had left me here barely more than an hour ago. Perhaps he wants to relocate this conversation to somewhere he has more power. I considered refusing. I’d be leaving my family—my clan—behind, without my protection. Even though I trusted Veruhn and his people, it was a ready-made excuse. Putting myself in Kezess’s power was foolish.

There was also the power dynamic between us to consider. I didn’t want to give the impression that I was distrustful or unreasonable. Every exchange between us couldn’t turn into an exaggerated pissing contest, like the battle of wills above the lava fields, or I would fail in my mission before I’d even begun. If he hadn’t overheard our conversation, I couldn’t afford to rouse his suspicion now.

“What’s this about?” I asked, watching him carefully as I walked along the skeletal pier to stand face to face with him.

“I shall tell you when we arrive,” Kezess said. To Veruhn, he added a perfunctory, “Farewell,” and then his power was wrapping around me.

I resisted on impulse, sheathing myself in aether. Kezess’s power struggled against my own, but only for an instant. I let him through, and then we were being shunted through space, appearing in a nondescript corridor only a moment later.

Torches flickered on the walls, highlighting a clean hallway with no doors and no apparent way in or out. “Hauling me off to the dungeons already?” I quipped, using the humor to hide my actual nervousness. “Do the other lords of the Great Eight know about this?”

Kezess didn’t answer. The tails of his jacket flared as he marched down the hallway. Rolling my eyes, I followed.

‘Arthur, where are you?’ Sylvie’s voice in my mind was light and distant.

I quickly explained what had happened.

Regis’s indignation burned beneath my skin. ‘Let us know if we need to stage a heroic rescue.’

No, hang tight, I urged them both. Just make sure my family is safe. I can handle things here. I clamped down hard on any doubt I felt about that statement, not wanting my companions to know just how nervous I really was.

After a hundred feet or so, Kezess stopped, and the wall to his right began to unfold. The stones separated like the teeth of a zipper, then rotated away and folded back as if made of cloth.

On the other side was a cell. It was bright, mostly due to a beam of light that extended from floor to ceiling in the middle of the room. Suspended in that light was Agrona.

He looked just as he had when I’d last seen him: blank-eyed and slack-jawed, like a puppet with its strings cut. His opulent clothes were wrinkled and stained, the chains and ornaments in his horns tangled together. In a word, he looked truly and utterly pathetic, less than a shadow of the horror that had for so long dominated my mind.

“No change then?” I asked. “Don’t you have healers?”

“Of course, Art.”

Turning back to Kezess, I found Lady Myre standing beside him, although I had felt no sign of her arrival. Tall and graceful, she wore the form of an ageless, beautiful woman instead of the wizened figure I’d first met. Her powerful aura only hit me after I realized she was there.

“We have access to incredible healing magic,” she continued, moving to stand right in front of Agrona. She had to crane her neck to look up at his blank face. “But nothing has managed to make so much as an eyelash flicker. Even Oludari Vritra could shed no light on Agrona’s condition.”

“Where is the Sovereign?” I asked, surprised they had involved him in this at all. It seemed dangerous to give him any knowledge he might turn against us, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew more than he was letting on.

“He’s a guest in my castle, for the moment.”

“He is clanless,” Myre added. “Lord Kothan has been happy to let Oludari remain in our care. There is a good chance the basilisks would kill him if he attempted to go home. Perhaps one day.”

I didn’t respond. The Vritra clan was a blight, and Oludari was no better. I was certain Kezess had only allowed him to live so far because of some deal Oludari made regarding me, but it was the wrong time to address that topic. “He seemed half mad when I spoke to him. It’s no wonder he knew nothing about Agrona. His gaze seemed to be focused well away from Alacrya.”

Kezess eyed me for a moment, considering. “Indeed. He agreed only that Agrona’s body is alive. It continues to cycle enough mana to maintain itself, as if Agrona were sleeping. But there is no mind present within the shell. Our best manipulators of mental energy—an aspect of magic that Agrona himself was an expert in—can find nothing to read or cling to inside him.”

“It’s as if his mind was destroyed completely,” Myre said. Sucking her teeth, she turned around to regard me, her expression calculating. “We need to understand what happened, Art. What else can you tell us about what occurred between you in that cave?”

I activated King’s Gambit.

Aether flooded my mind, which opened like the canopy of a great tree, every branch holding its own individual thought. The crown on my brow shed light over the faces of Kezess and Myre. Kezess’s jaw tightened, and his eyes shifted to a plum shade of purple. Myre cocked her head slightly, her gaze trailing from my aether core, along the channels I had forged to manipulate aether, and through the window of my eyes into what lay beyond. It was unclear just how much of what she saw she could understand.

My feet lifted off the floor, and I rotated around Agrona and the beam of light, studying him intently.

The threads of Fate were gone, not that I could see them without Fate’s presence. I had cut them away, which had resulted in the dissolution of Agrona’s impact on the world. The result was a sudden shockwave that tore across both continents. I couldn’t explain why it had left Agrona in this vegetative state, however, and even King’s Gambit was not able to invent new information out of nothing. Theories began to pile up, though, and a gnawing concern bit at my insides.

“I’ve told you everything I know.” Briefly, I reiterated my use of Fate, which I had already explained to Myre upon first waking in Epheotus. “Perhaps his mind simply couldn’t cope with the effects of being entirely severed from his people and plans.”

“But what does that mean?” Kezess said, pacing back and forth in front of Agrona in irritation. “What you describe is not possible.” He shot me a suspicious glance. “And if you had this power, why not kill him outright? Why stop at severing these ‘connections’ you have described.”

Had I not been deep within King’s Gambit, I would have had to suppress a smirk at his discomfort. As it was, this uncharacteristic show of emotion from Kezess was noted by only one of many parallel thought processes. “Fate, as the djinn correctly surmised, is another aspect of aether. It binds us together and helps to order the universe.” I purposefully kept the description vague and guessable. I didn’t want Kezess to understand the full truth yet. “The djinn had theorized a way to influence Fate, but it was limited.

“As for your other questions, the answer is simple.” I gazed down at him from where I floated. “Looking at the potential impact of my decision, I saw only a single path forward. Removal of the Legacy was the key, not destroying Agrona.” Kezess knew nothing about the building destructive force inside of the aetheric realm, unless he had overheard my conversation with Veruhn. I continued to hold eye contact, watchful for any flicker of acknowledgement or spark of understanding that would suggest he knew more than I’d told him.

“The way forward to what, exactly?” Kezess crossed his arms and held my gaze intently.

“A future that serves the most people in the most positive way,” I said, framing the answer obtusely.

He scoffed, but in his derision, I saw the truth: He hadn’t overheard the conversation. It was a relief, although I did not have to try to keep the emotion from my face due to King’s Gambit.

A separate thread of thought was examining him in a different light. I wondered, if I could still have seen the golden threads of Fate’s connections, what Kezess would look like. Over millennia, he had forced himself into the very center of power to influence both my world and Epheotus. His decisions impacted every lifeform on both worlds, his commands ended civilizations and gave birth to new races. Would he look like Agrona, bound in an uncountable number of those golden threads, or would he look more like the aspect of Fate itself, a being woven into the fabric of destiny?

“Perhaps in time, we will come to understand more,” Myre said placatingly, one hand brushing the back of her husband’s neck briefly. To me, she added, “There is one more thing we would ask of you, Art.”

“Perhaps you could release that ridiculous form,” Kezess said. His eyes were narrowed, but only very slightly, creating fine wrinkles around the corners. There was tension in his jaw and neck, and his irises had shifted toward magenta. He stood motionless. Whatever they were about to ask, he was uncertain, either about my answer or whether to ask at all.

Curious, I lowered to the ground and moved to face the pair of powerful asuras. Kezess’s request was most likely an attempt to handicap me, as he knew exactly what benefits King’s Gambit provided. “Perhaps you can forgive a small amount of caution on my own behalf, but I feel more comfortable with my godrune active. I wouldn’t ask that you shut yourself off from the mana that empowers your body in order to speak with me.”

“It displays a distinct lack of trust,” Kezess insisted. “I might even go so far as to call it an insult.”

“On the contrary, I have allowed myself to be placed under your power because I do trust you,” I lied. “You asked for me to come here, and I have. You asked for me to explain what happened to Agrona, and I have. The only reason for you to ask me to release my power is that you are distrustful of the advantage it provides me, an advantage that only serves to put us on a more even playing field.”

“If you feel more comfortable in the embrace of this magic, Art, then please keep it active,” Myre interjected.

Although she didn’t look at Kezess, something passed unspoken between them. He attempted to relax but wasn’t entirely successful.

“Although, as someone who you once might have called your mentor, I would suggest you be careful,” she added with a kind smile. “What you describe sounds like it could grow beyond comfort into an addiction.”

“Of course, Myre. I’ll be cautious,” I said, respectfully dismissive on the outside. One thread within the woven tapestry of my conscious thought focused entirely on her words, though.