Aurora's Rift, page 10
part #1 of Celestial Arcanists Series
Boss?
I look at the kid. “You make sure you’ve got what you need to help Libi. We’ll search the guy.”
There’s no handy box of loot, nothing but a small glow that shimmers in the slanting sunlight to show that there’s something worth looting.
I relieve the corpse of the sword belt, and after a moment’s thought, his armor as well goes in a pile. Ink and I strip him. I pocket the somewhat heavy purse he’s carrying without looking inside after holding it out to the changeling, who looks almost offended at the suggestion that they take it. Ink instead runs their fingers along the seams of the quilted armor pad that was under the soldier’s chainmail, and after a moment, the changeling gives a slight trill of delight.
“Here it is,” they say.
They pull out a small sheaf of parchment and hand it to me.
I look over it briefly, just long enough to know that it’s important.
Quest Updated: To Beith or Not To Beith. You’ve found enemy intelligence. Beith will almost certainly want to know.
“That’s the lot,” Ink says after a moment.
I nod, feeling another momentary thrill. “Let’s get Elan back to Irial and Libi.”
The morning suddenly seems more hopeful.
Ten
Someone must have seen us coming, because Irial is waiting for us when we arrive back at the encampment, straining to see our approach.
“Elan!” She calls out his name, and he hurries to her, looking as abashed as a teenager can.
I stand awkwardly by as she scolds him—though her scolding sounds fairly half-hearted when he tells her he found glasspetal—and within a few moments, she’s sent him off to prepare the treatment for Libi the baby.
Irial comes up to me when he’s gone and clasps my hands in hers. “Thank you, celestine.”
Celestine? That’s new.
Ink shoulders the dead soldier’s equipment they’re carrying, gives a jaunty salute, and vanishes into the crowd of milling onlookers so easily it gives me a jolt. Changelings.
“My pleasure. Elan seems to know his stuff.” He really does.
Irial beams at that. “He’s an alchemist. I am certain he would be more than pleased to share his skills with the camp.”
“Don’t say that too loudly, or Beith will probably have him working faster than he can say bramble.” But it might be me who wants to put this kid to work. If he knows potions, he’ll be needed.
“Thank you,” Irial says again. “I don’t have much—”
“Please.” I interrupt her. “Getting him back safely is its own reward.”
“Was there trouble?”
I can’t lie to her. Her thin face is haggard, probably from caring for a sick infant and worrying about losing her only son, but I can’t tell her he wasn’t in danger.
“Ran into a human scout is all. Ink and I took care of the situation, and Elan wasn’t hurt.”
Fear and relief flicker across her expression, but she nods. “As long as he’s safe.”
Quest Complete: Whistle While You Work. You rescued Elan from the human soldier and perhaps got more than one useful thing in the process. Your knowledge of herbs has also increased. Don’t be afraid to seek Elan out—he can help teach you more. +150 Experience. +50 Bonus Experience.
I excuse myself from Irial and make my way up the hill toward where Beith and the other elementals should be. I’m all too aware of the eyes of onlookers on me. They are curious and still uneasy, but they all give some sign of deference when I pass, whether it’s pressing two fingers to their lips or to their heart. The humans press their palms together instinctively the way their people do to pray, but some catch themselves, looking bewildered. When one looks up to the sky with her hand vertical at her chest and turns and presses her palm to her heart instead, the others follow.
The sight sends a chill through me. Fingers to the rift, hand to the heart. I can’t shake the feeling that something just shifted.
I push it out of my mind and hurry to find Beith.
She’s where she was the first night, Dar at her right hand. Teinath is there too when I arrive, and everyone looks up.
“There you are,” Teinath says. “Someone said you went looking for a kid? Alone?”
“Ink was with me,” I tell him. “We found the boy. He was about to get attacked by a human scout.”
I pull the sheaf of papers from my belt pouch and hand it to Beith. “We found this on him, concealed within his armor pads. Ink took the equipment somewhere—it might be useful.”
Beith takes the papers curiously. Her skin is almost silvery like birch in the sun. She reads it quickly.
“This is indeed important,” she breathes. The elemental glances at Teinath. “Those who came to fight us were instructed to leave no one alive except yourself, who they were told to bring in as a heretic.”
Teinath pales at that, and I hardly blame him. I know what they do to heretics, though it is not often they level that accusation at someone officially. That tells me something else, though—it tells me they didn’t see me as a threat. Yet.
Dar’s face darkens even as Teinath’s pales. “You know what this means,” she says to Beith urgently. “They will not stop at sending a small force that did not succeed.”
“Yes, daughter,” Beith says, waving away the younger elemental’s concern.
Everyone is quiet for a moment. Beith’s face is pensive, mulling over something I can’t guess at.
“We will need a strategy,” she says finally. There is something almost like relief in her words, almost like excitement.
Teinath looks at me, his expression unreadable. His shoulders slump for only an instant before he squares them again and looks away.
“Since the last rift, the humans have controlled almost every city on the continent,” Beith says. “We have watched as they consolidated their power and studied how they used it. We believe they have not been good or faithful stewards of that power.”
I shake my head. That much feels painfully obvious.
“But they are not the only peoples of Sirethan,” Beith goes on. “There was a time when we were strong in our many-ness. When we existed without simply seeking to crush one another into submission. Perhaps the rift is our chance to restore some balance.”
Dar looks as if she wants to say something, her mouth hanging slightly open and poised, but after a moment, she closes it and looks instead up at the rift itself.
“Teinath was raised in Viathan.” Beith smiles warmly at my companion. “The city is removed from the power centers of Mithrathan and Dunan, and as such, the people of Viathan enjoy more freedom, more movement than their Mithrathian counterparts. There have been whispers of an uprising for some time.”
My eyebrows shoot up at that. Lithrial understands this as enormous news, even if I myself am not completely conscious of the context. Again I have to marvel at the seamlessness of this game.
“We will go to Viathan,” Beith says. “There are places for us there, places we can listen, wait, and plan. And we will not be so vulnerable in the city as we are here in this gully. There, we can fade into the patchwork like autumn leaves blanketing the ground.”
I find myself nodding. That sounds smart. A place to regroup, a place to figure out what next.
“Do you agree?” Beith asks the question with a note of finality in her voice, and the edge of my vision pulses gold.
“Yes,” I say.
Quest Complete: To Beith or Not To Beith. You and the encampment’s followers will travel to Viathan, blend into the city, and seek to establish a seat of power separate from the humans’ theocracy. This path will lead you into the unknown. +100 Experience.
New Quest: Ma Grath, Ma Viathan. Travel to Viathan.
As I listen to Beith continue to speak and finally leave to seek out some much-needed lunch, the game lets me know I’ve been playing for eight hours again.
With regret, I look around the encampment once more and let it dissolve into stars.
As much as I want to keep playing as soon as I feed my human body its own lunch, there are boring things I have to take care of, like paying bills and checking my email. There is a dangerously-benign email from Horizon requesting an exit interview, which I immediately chuck to the back of my mind.
Other than that, my life is empty.
More and more, it feels like I’m waking up for the first time in years. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’ve kept myself so busy for so long that I forgot about…life.
That’s the thing, though, right? I tried the whole life thing before. I had friends, a partner I trusted, a project I adored. When Greg betrayed us—betrayed me—I lost all of it in one fell swoop. Before it happened, I might have expected that our remaining friends would band together. Darcy and Al and Sun—the four of us (well, five with Greg) had been inseparable.
But some rifts make islands of everyone, I guess. I wonder what happened to the others. I haven’t even been on social media in three years. Too painful to see all of their faces popping up in my memories.
Maybe working for Nebula could be a fresh start in other ways.
The thought of it is almost too scary.
I spend the rest of the day and into the evening working on a budget and a plan, which is the last thing I want to be doing. I put some of my older systems up for sale, and to my surprise, within an hour or so, most of them have offers.
Sleep is a long time coming when I finally crawl into bed around midnight. I keep expecting to blink and wake up in Sirethan, and I could do that, but if I’m going to meet with Zach tomorrow afternoon, I need to be fresh.
When I wake up Thursday morning, I take some time getting my portfolio in order. It’s been so long since I’ve even opened it that the plastic sleeves that hold the art break away from each other with a crackle. Nothing’s damaged, but the sound is strange, like breaking open the walls to a former life.
I leave the house early, dressed in the only pair of jeans I have and a lavender t-shirt with nothing on it and a grown-leather jacket I’ve missed wearing. Horizon never had so much as a casual Friday, but Nebula apparently never makes employees dress up. I heard once that you can even wear your pajamas to work there if you really want to, though I don’t know how much leeway they really give.
I stop for a burger on the way to the light rail, then immediately regret it after I snarf it down and have to stop at a convenience store for some gum to ward off my onion breath.
The city is doing its normal weekday thing, busy and buzzing, but I hardly notice it.
I suppose it makes sense that I’m this nervous. Zachariah Buchanan, in spite of his friendliness and effusive email etiquette, is still the CEO of one of the most profitable companies in the country.
The Nebula headquarters is only a few light rail stops from my neighborhood, and that makes me grotesquely early. I get to the building at twenty past twelve, which is almost early enough to be embarrassing.
But I suppose a chance to calm my frenetically beating heart and explore the campus isn’t unwelcome.
Their logo is all lowercase with the curve of the b swirling into an orbit of stylized stars behind the word. People mill about on the paths, which are all surrounded by lush green grass and heaps of trees. They’ve almost got a forest here. The buildings themselves are one of the new eco-structures, with plants growing from each separate floor and trees up on the roof that I can see peeking out over the edge. The birdsong is almost cacophony, in a strange, peaceful way.
And insects. During the years of the crisis when it looked like humanity might not have an earth to stand on much longer, insect populations declined by almost seventy-five percent. But here, there are bees, butterflies, all sorts of creatures amid the moss and trees and flowers growing from the company’s campus itself.
It’s almost magical in its own right.
I sit down on a bench surrounded by this strange oasis of nature in the middle of the city and pull out my phone since I’ve still got half an hour.
I do a couple searches for elf mage builds, just to get an idea of if I’m on the right track. I try to skip over anything I see about secret paths to avoid spoilers for now, but when it comes to specializations within classes, it takes me a moment to puzzle out what I’m seeing.
Or rather, what I’m not seeing.
Mages generally get their first specialization at the opening of the rift, it says, and they can choose to be a Stratos Healer, a Shadow Spellsword, Aranin’s Hand, or Basath’s Blade. Some of them look like cross-class specializations, and at the end of the list, there’s a footnote.
I thumb scroll my screen down to the footnote.
There have been rumors amid the Riftsworn that mages have the same chance for a fifth specialization that warriors and rogues do, but this has never been confirmed.
No way.
I do a quick search in a new tab for celestial arcanist aurora’s rift, but nothing comes up.
Not a single result.
There is no way. No way on my first play through of a game that’s been out for four years that I stumble into the one secret none of the hardcore fans have managed. Is there?
A quick look at the other specializations is enough to make me want to drool—they’re all legitimately awesome, from party healing to animal familiars to arcane assassins. I’m going to have a tough time choosing my next one when I hit level ten, but that’s not even the point. There’s nothing about the celestial arcanist. Nothing at all.
More than ever, I want to dive back into the game. I glance at the clock on my phone. Shit. I’ve gone from being embarrassingly early to needing to hurry not to be late.
Eleven
“Mr. Buchanan is waiting for you,” the receptionist says when I make it to the building I’m meant to go to with three minutes to spare.
I’m a little abashed at the waiting bit, but I try not to let on, following her down the corridor to the conference room.
There are even plants inside here. The hallway is lined with them in glass walls that somehow refract sunlight from outside, and water runs in streams between the layers of plant life. I almost stop short when I notice the beehive in the very wall.
The receptionist gives me a small grin. “Zach was so excited when they moved in. They’re actual honeybees. We’ve got a system set up now that collects the honey they make, and just last year, we were able to split the colony, so there’s another one on the fourth floor down below.”
What on earth is this place?
Part of me wonders if I’m still in my living room, strapped into VR.
With another smile, the receptionist gestures to a glass archway with wisteria hanging from it.
I enter the conference room, expecting to see Zach waiting, but Zach is nowhere to be seen.
The man present looks up at my entry and gives a short jolt, eyes widening for the barest second before he clears his throat and stands, pushing his chair back from the table. The room is bright, cheery, with flowers in the walls and a massive window overlooking the campus and the city.
“Ethan Buchanan,” he says, and I walk forward to shake his hand.
Ethan. Zach’s brother. The one Zach said loved my work? Oh, man.
“Evie Winterbourne,” I say, taking his hand and shaking it.
He seems to startle at the firmness of my grip, meeting it after a surprised moment and returning it. His hand is strong and smooth, and when he retracts it, he gestures to a chair across from him, which I take.
Ethan Buchanan doesn’t look that much like his brother except around his eyes and nose. His eyes are grey-blue, and his hair has enough curl in it to swirl in on itself in spite of being cut pretty short everywhere but on top.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I tell him when I sit.
“You too,” Ethan says politely. “Zach says you’ve had a hell of a week.”
I grimace. “You could put it that way.”
He gives me a tight-lipped half smile. “He’ll be here in a few minutes. He got held up.”
“Not a problem. I held myself up downstairs. Your campus is amazing.”
Ethan looks pleased at that. “It is, isn’t it?”
He gets up, heading over to a sideboard on the far side of the room that I didn’t notice when I came in. Like everything else, it seems to be made of glass, and he opens a mini fridge at the end that blends right into the rest of the design except for the slight curve of a handle.
“Want anything to drink? Eat?”
“What are the options?” I think he’s trying to put me at ease, but it’s just making me more nervous.
Ethan rattles off a few choices, and I pick a black cherry soda, which he brings to me in a fluted bottle that looks like it would belong better in Sirethan as something Elan would put the fancier potions in.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
The lid has one of those metal spring caps that you open by flipping back the wire to release it and can close again.
“So you’re only just playing Aurora’s Rift for the first time?” Ethan says as I take a drink.
The soda is the perfect amount of sweetness, but so fizzy it almost makes me sneeze. I try to disguise it, putting the bottle down and scrubbing at the tip of my nose with the back of my hand.
“Yeah,” I admit. “We weren’t exactly encouraged to explore at Horizon.”
“I believe that. Are you enjoying it so far?” Ethan peers at me intently from across the table.
“Oh, man. Yeah. The game is spectacular,” I say with complete honesty. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Hell. I don’t think I ever imagined anything like it. I think I expected a bit more combat, but I imagine I’ll get more than enough by the end, right?”
Ethan’s lip quirks. He’s got a small dimple in his right cheek. “I probably shouldn’t spoil anything, but let’s just say the game adapts itself to what you need and how you play. Some players go in with guns blazing, so to speak. Others—seems like you’re among them—see fighting as a last resort in defense of life or principles.”
