Aurora's Rift, page 11
part #1 of Celestial Arcanists Series
Huh. “That’s amazing.”
“Have you gotten to the ri—”
“Evie! You made it!”
Ethan’s question is cut off as his brother hurries into the room with a plate of…scones? He also seems to be juggling a tray of various jars.
“Erm. Hi!” I hop to my feet to help Zach, but he waves me off, sliding the tray onto the table as if he’s got a lot of practice.
From Ethan’s amused smile, looks like he probably does.
“I decided last minute that you should try some of our office specialties. Including the honey—Dana said you noticed our bees.”
“I did,” I say, bemused. Dana must be the receptionist.
Zach sits at the head of the table between me and Ethan, chattering happily about scones while he offers me a plate and asks if I’ve got any food intolerances to be aware of, which is awfully thoughtful of him.
This guy’s the CEO. No wonder his company’s successful. If he’s always like this, I can imagine the kind of loyalty he’d command.
While he starts talking about Nebula and the history of his and his brother’s work, I lather up a scone—they’re still warm, for god’s sake—with butter and honey, which is even in an adorable little jar with Nebula’s logo on it. They replaced the stars in orbit with bees. Of course they did.
I fill him in on what I did at Horizon when he asks, which makes him frown.
Feeling vaguely embarrassed, I stop to take a bite of my scone. The room is warm without being uncomfortable, and the sound of water running is a nice zen touch. I’m not sure what I said that disappointed Zach, but more and more, I’m finding I want to work here. Who knows—maybe the bits where the plebes work are all cinderblock with no windows and old stamp punch cards or something that you have to line up to clock in with in the morning, but I highly doubt it.
“Evie,” Zach says after a long pause, “I know you did marketing stuff for Horizon, but I brought you here because of your art. Is that your portfolio that you brought?”
Abashed, I nod, pulling the folio onto the table and sliding it into the middle where both brothers can look at it.
I nibble my scone while they page through it, both thoughtfully using a damp towel that was folded into a rose on the corner of the tray to wipe any crumbs or honey off their fingers before touching it.
Every once in a while, out of the corner of my eye, I see Ethan looking at me just for a second as if trying to figure something out.
When they’re done looking at my work, Zach leaves it open to a spread of soaring waterfalls against a backdrop of stars and a swirling galaxy I did a few years ago on a whim.
“So,” Zach says. He glances at Ethan, who gives him look I can’t parse. “This isn’t much of a secret, since there’s heaps of fan theory and speculation out there, but it’s not officially official yet, okay?”
I nod, nonplussed. He’s going to tell me something big without making me sign a non-disclosure agreement?
The thought feels so foreign, but when I think about it, really it doesn’t matter. Nebula has done one thing enormously well, and it doesn’t matter if someone tries to steal one of their ideas—the Nebula execution is what matters, and no one will come near their finesse.
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“When we started on Aurora’s Rift, it was really our pet project. Both Ethan and I grew up writing stories set in Sirethan—” There’s a snort from Ethan, and Zach grins. “I’m not saying they were good stories.”
“They were very earnest shit,” Ethan says.
This time it’s me who grins, and Ethan meets my eyes for a moment.
The room feels suddenly warmer. I cough and break eye contact. Zach, oblivious, is going on.
“We had this huge world we’d created with almost endless possibility within it, yeah? So when people are out there speculating about our next project it’s like—they don’t get it. This is our project. Nebula is Aurora’s Rift. Some folks have caught onto that, like I said. Fan theories and all that. What we’re moving into, the project that I frankly wanted to fling you at from the moment I saw you on that train, is the first major expansion to the game. It’s basically a second game in-world where you could play as your character or start a new one—it’s really up to you and the choices you make. But we want to make it spectacular, and we need all hands on deck.”
Zach lets out his remaining breath after his speech, looking to Ethan to continue for him.
After a moment, Ethan does.
“What we need is someone with a fresh eye and impeccable artistic talent. We wowed people with the game, and we want to take their breath away when we open up the world even wider to them. That’s where you come in.” Ethan isn’t smiling now, but there is intensity in his eyes that won’t let me break eye contact this time. “We need a creative lead. Art director doesn’t quite cover it, because really you’d be at partner level with me and Zach—”
“Me?” I’m proud it doesn’t come out as a squeak. What on Earth is happening? “I’m sorry, what? I’ve been pushing numbers for five years, and I’m so out of practice—”
Nice job, Winterbourne. Talk yourself out of the dream job. I stop talking and clear my throat, where it feels like my heart has decided to beat out a Congo line in my trachea.
“You’ll have time to get your feet under you,” Ethan says gently. He and his brother exchange another look.
This one’s easy enough to read. Disgust.
“We’ve worked with a lot of ex-Horizon employees, Evie,” Zach says. “Most of them come here so skittish we have to basically feed them sugar cubes until they trust us not to grind their bones into bread, which is super depressing. Some of the best talent in the field, and they come here beyond burnt out. Burnt to a crisp.”
“Right,” I say. My voice sounds very far away.
“You don’t have to answer right now,” Ethan says. “You’ve got several weeks before we’d need you in the office full time, and from what Zach told me, you could use with the vacation time. But we want you on board here.”
He pulls a tablet from the chair next to him and hands it to me.
My eyes almost bug out at the salary package they’re offering. Full benefits, twelve weeks of vacation a year? That’s three months! And Nebula employees only work thirty-two hours a week, to boot. Flexible hours, telecommute outside of structural planning times…all for literally twice the salary I made at Horizon.
I can’t say no to this. No one could say no to this.
“I’ll do it,” I say. My ribcage feels disconnected from itself—that’s how light my chest feels.
I expect them to both preen, because there’s no way they could expect me to say no, right? But they both look startled.
“Are you sure?” Zach asks. “I don’t want to pressure you at all. You just left your old job.”
“You said I have a few weeks, right?” I say. “Is that enough time to get through the main game?”
Ethan bursts out laughing. Damn, that dimple is dangerous. “Maybe.”
Whoa. Really?
“Just tell me what I need to do,” I say. “I’m in.”
Twelve
The trip home happens in a fog. Zach went out to generate all the paperwork while I sat and chatted with Ethan for a bit, nervously thanking him for his compliments on my art and asking a few questions about expectations, and by the time I left the office, I had an employee badge and everything.
I put it in the bowl with my keys in the entry of my apartment, feeling utterly shellshocked.
I haven’t been one to make any impulse decisions for a long time, not after the last one cost me everything, but this feels right. Exciting. Playing Aurora’s Rift makes me yearn to be part of the world of Sirethan, and Zach and Ethan have offered me just that.
“He’s playing it cool, but you have no idea how pumped Ethan is that you’re even in the same building as him. He fucking loves your work.” Zach said that to me as he walked me out of the building, which made my entire face catch on fire as if a giant were standing above me with a magnifying glass between the sun and my cheeks.
The thought of joining their team as a partner, having creative control over the expansion to this game that’s already changing my world—it’s huge. It’s like the biggest promotion I could imagine.
When I said so to Zach, he just gave me a sad little smile and told me that everyone deserves a big break, and he loves being the one to give them.
He told me I was worth it.
My eyes actually well up at that, and I am very glad I’m safely at home. Evie Winterbourne does not cry in public. Or at all, mostly. But there’s something about being made to feel like a cockroach for years at a time and then someone brushing you off and telling you that no, you’re not that after all. You’re better than that. They were wrong.
I ate dinner with the Buchanan brothers at the office before they showed me where I would be working in a top floor suite next door to both of them and a few other of their top folks, but my brain isn’t even processing that yet. I’m used to my dinky open plan office that smells kind of like the inside of a copier and also feet.
There are definitely no foot smells in the Nebula building. My own apartment is kind of depressing in comparison with its still-lingering aroma of pad thai.
I put the copies of my contracts into a drawer of my desk.
Ethan said a few weeks might not be enough to work my way through the game. Okay.
Doesn’t mean I can’t give it a shot.
I suit up and boot up Aurora’s Rift.
There is nothing like approaching Viathan.
The city is in the cleft of the mountains, its walls fashioned by some forgotten magic from the stone of the cliffs themselves. They are pale grey and cradle the city with two arms of solid rock. I remember Apathan telling me once that when the humans took over the city, they tried to rid the stone of the elven runes that were worked into them at their inception, and they found they could not. The best they could manage was to throw banners over them, because all their attempts to mortar over the elven writing failed with the first rain.
I don’t know if it’s true or if it’s just a story, but looking at the walls makes it feel real.
The sky is studded with clouds that move quickly across the expanse, sometimes hiding the rift, other times exposing it. We have been moving in groups over the past few weeks, finding our way to Viathan in a style that won’t seem overly suspicious, and with the appearance of the rift, few people will make note of changes as anything but an expected consequence.
Even so, when Teinath and I enter the city with Ink flitting around behind us, there is a palpable aura of fear about the place.
My wonder at the soaring stone buildings and glistening ancient domes is muted by the suspicion on the citizens’ faces. Not at us—at each other.
Teinath watches it all with hardly veiled pain on his face. After a beat I remember that this is his home.
This is the first time in my memory that I’ve been to a city that wasn’t Mithrathan. Apathan once took me to the countryside at high summer long ago, but other than that, I seldom ventured outside the Knolls. It wasn’t safe to be in the human districts of my city, not without wearing symbols of conversion.
Different from the straight, grid-like streets of much of Mithrathan, the streets of Viathan curve with the land itself. Apathan said the ancient elves tried to work with the earth, not against it, forming their cities to its shape rather than shaping the earth to suit their whims. I like that. The city immediately wins me over.
But the people are under a heavy weight, and as we walk through the inn district closest to the outer walls, it becomes more and more evident.
I follow Teinath through the city, a bit afraid someone will recognize him—the wrong someone, mostly. But no one does. It’s much as it was in Mithrathan. In the Knolls, someone might have recognized me, especially at the market. But outside? The chances dipped to near-impossibility.
“Are we anywhere near where you grew up?” I ask Teinath finally. It’s strange being back in the press of a city, the noises so different from the sounds of the forest and even the encampment.
“No,” Teinath says. He jerks his chin in the direction of the northwest. “My family lived off that way.”
Lived.
I’ve never asked Teinath about his past. When he first came to my apartment and had lunch with me and Apathan, he didn’t use the past tense.
He seems to realize he slipped. “I don’t like to talk about it when I first meet people,” he says quietly. “They’ve been gone a long while. I left the city to live with Beith after—after it happened.”
Ink has no such tact. I didn’t even think they were listening, but they are suddenly right between me and Teinath.
“What happened?”
Teinath sighs, and when he speaks, I can feel the sarcasm dripping from his words. “There was a plague.”
“What kind of plague?” I ask.
He motions at the two of us to turn up the hill, so we follow, glancing over his shoulder with a cynical, haunted look in his eyes I’ve not seen before. “The kind that miraculously only affects elves, serpentus, changelings, folk. You know. Being alive and non-human, unconverted.”
Ink hisses, and their hand comes down hard on Teinath’s shoulder. The elf jumps.
“Purge?”
“Quarantine, officially,” Teinath says, and he doesn’t have to say any more.
It’s rare, but not unheard of. I think it happened in the Knolls before I was born, if memory serves. A section of the city is cordoned off and usually set aflame. To “cleanse” it.
Ink drops the hand, nodding.
“I was hunting in the mountains,” Teinath says shortly. “Came back, got the news. That was five years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. I want to tell him about my parents, but I don’t know how. Mostly because I don’t even really know what happened to them.
“We’re almost there,” Teinath says in reply, though he meets my eyes with a look of understanding.
The house he leads us to is on the edge of one of Viathan’s hills in a nice area of the city, which in Mithrathan would mean entirely under human control. But the person who answers the door is serpentus, her skin coppery with a slight shimmer, and her nostrils flare when she sees the three of us on the stoop.
“Teinath,” she says without preamble. “And Lithrial. Ink. I am Sasun.”
She opens the door and lets us in. I am thankful she didn’t use any of our titles.
Following the serpentus into the house, I can see why people believe they are descended from dragons. She is tall and broad-shouldered, lithe in spite of that, and even though she is not wearing a sword, I can almost see one in her hands anyway, a great sword almost as tall as she is. She wears a simple sleeveless tunic and woolen trousers. Sword or no sword, I’m pretty sure she could put any one of us through a wall without breaking a sweat.
Then again, maybe not Ink. I think Ink would be on the ceiling before Sasun could try.
“Come,” Sasun says. “There is a place where we can relax.”
The way she says it implies that we can’t relax here, so I follow her through the house until she stops at a sitting room with no windows in the center of the second floor. I feel something emanating from the room, and my mana leaps to it.
“Good,” Teinath says, exchanging a look with the serpentus. “Thank you.”
Sasun shrugs and leads us in.
Passing through the doorway feels like it coats me in the kind of spray you can put on windows so water just beads up and falls right off them.
“Wards,” I say after a beat.
“Illegal wards,” Ink agrees, brightening. “Good. This is good.”
“Viathan is not the safest city just now,” Sasun says. “I think you lot will make it more dangerous before it gets any better.”
I hate to admit that she is probably right.
I nod slowly, meeting her eyes. Her eyes are orange, bright against the copper of her skin, and in the elf-magic light of the room here, I can almost see the outline of scales on her skin. She has no body hair except for that on her head, not even peach fuzz. She is beautiful and otherworldly.
I have to remind myself that I’m in another world.
“I would like to help,” she says. “Beith contacted me, and I said I would lend my home to the cause, but I would like to do more than that.”
“What is it you’d like to do?” I ask carefully.
“This place is mine,” Sasun says dismissively. “It was my mother’s, and she passed it to me, and I have kept it in her memory. But the rift is here. I carry the memories of my people, but the only direction they wish to look is back. I wish to look forward. Up. I think I can do that with you.”
Perhaps I am only becoming attuned to it, but my vision pulses gold again, lightly.
“We’d be honored,” I tell Sasun, and Ink looks at me with a raised eyebrow, but after a moment they return their gaze to the serpentus, looking thoughtful.
Companion Recruited: The Roar.
Quest Updated: Ma Grath, Ma Viathan. You have reached Viathan and rendezvoused with Beith’s contact, who has joined your party. Sasun is a powerful figure in Viathan and even more formidable on the battlefield, as you have already surmised. She is an invaluable ally—and an implacable foe, should you lose her esteem.
“What’s going on in the city?” I ask.
Sasun gestures at the sofas and chairs around the room, and everyone sits except Ink, who hovers by an expensive-looking desk that seems to be made from pure bone. I sit on a sofa with Teinath, with Sasun diagonally from us in an armchair. To my surprise, she pulls her bare feet up into the chair and sits with her arms around her knees.
“The current Speaker of the city is a nominally religious bureaucrat who has done passably well at keeping the various factions within the city placated,” Sasun says. “He is unmarried, which is part of the problem, because the Grand Temple is putting pressure on him to procreate.”
