Aurora's Rift, page 20
part #1 of Celestial Arcanists Series
He goes still. His green eyes are muted, not understanding.
Ink is nodding, pacing, hands deep in their pockets.
“Whatever Arnantas is doing is something he had planned already. He wouldn’t be able to move this fast if it weren’t.” The thought alone is enough to freeze my veins, but I go on. “How do you think word got here so quickly? A fast corvid could make the trip between Viathan and Mithrathan in a day, maybe a little more. He put this in motion before we took the city, but after the rift opened. This is their contingency.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, Ink stops pacing and stares at me. I know I’m right, and the changeling does too.
“It’s a test, but not one Arnantas is giving us. I don’t think he even cares we exist. Whoever’s in control of Viathan is incidental to him and whatever it is he’s doing up north, Teinath,” I say. My voice is pleading now. “He’s literally spreading the word about the Knolls as far south as here. He wants people to know what he’s doing. To feel helpless. This is a test not for the humans to see if we’ll fall for a trap, but for everyone else in Sirethan to see if we will just sit back and let our people die.”
Ink’s hands are out of their pockets now, fingernails worrying at the pads of their fingers in sharp, frenetic movements. “She’s right. She’s right. Of course she’s right.”
“Why has this gotten to you so much?” Teinath asks. “It’s my family that died when Feld quarantined our neighborhood here.”
“Well, mine’s going to die in the Knolls!” Ink yells.
Teinath falls silent, and his face contorts with regret and pain. “Ink, I’m sorry.”
The changeling swats at their own face, batting away tears.
“I followed you all the way from Mithrathan,” they say, giving up because the tears are falling in spite of their efforts to make them stop. “I was curious. I wanted to believe there was a chance things—that things could change. My family has just gone with it, right? That’s what changelings do. Everything changes, we say, even us. So we adapt, and we move with everyone punching us, and we roll with it, and we just keep going, but sometimes things only change if you fucking change it yourself.”
I know those tears, those angry tears. They’re the kind of crying that happens when you’re just done. Done and scared and fuck it.
“That’s why I left. I was there in the market when Lithrial was buying that knife.” Ink points to the knife on my belt that I haven’t even really used yet. “I saw her curious about the yelling. I saw you get punched, and I followed you, and then I saw Lithrial run into you, and instead of getting mad at you, she healed you. And invited you home! So I followed you there.”
Definitely kind of creepy, but Ink seems so innocent about it. There is a yearning in the changeling that I recognize in myself. They just want to be part of something, not just pressing their nose against the glass and finding themself shut out yet again.
“When you left, I followed you. I told my family I wanted to leave, and they told me not to.” Ink laughs, glancing over at the empty room where Elan now lives. “So I left a note and I left. And now here we are. And now the Knolls are quarantined, and I want to know what in the humans’ eight fucking torments we’re going to do about it.”
Quest Updated: Rift Off This, Part 2. While Mithrathan may still be readying a force to come your way, Ink has brought you urgent news of something just as dire: Arnantas in Mithrathan has quarantined the Knolls, where your apathan and Ink’s family reside, along with thousands of other innocents who will be put to death if you are not fast enough to save them. Many paths spread out before you. All will change the course of Sirethan’s history.
New Quest: Face Off. You watched Ink change their face in front of you. While this is a mythic power long-rumored to exist among changelings, most assume it is just that: mythical. Perhaps if you have earned Ink’s trust, they will discuss it with you.
It of course happens to be right at that moment that gold scrolls across my vision.
You have been in Sirethan for eight hours. Would you like to save and exit now?
My brain is reeling.
Maybe it would be a good moment to step away. It’s a single-player game; it’s not going to move on without me.
I let the world dissolve around me, though I can’t get Ink’s tear-streaked face out of my mind.
My apartment is too quiet.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the instantaneous jet-lag that hits when you hop from one world to another and it’s a completely different time of day. It was late afternoon in Sirethan, but it’s almost nine at night in my apartment.
For a while I just sit in my living room, trying to get all my thoughts together. They don’t seem to want to stay in one basket. They’d rather all roll around while I struggle to catch hold of any of them.
I feel more awake in my life since I’ve started playing. I want to play still, but at the same time, I want to—I don’t know. Go outside?
It’s not the worst impulse.
It takes me a few minutes to throw on my single pair of jeans and a t-shirt and my leather jacket, and I grab my keys on the way out the door.
When was the last time I wanted to actually go for a walk?
I don’t know, but I am going to cling to this racing pony as long as I can.
Outside, the sun’s only just set. The season in Sirethan is at least mostly matching up with the season here, late summer. The air is warm, and the sky is painted with orange and pink and a few streaks of fading gold from the sunset.
A few fireflies blink. The street is quiet.
It used to be unsafe to walk alone at night, back before the crisis. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to worry about something as simple as walking down the street. I guess in some ways, the world here has gotten better. Even though there are still people like Sam Cooke in it, at least I can go for a stroll.
There’s something in my chest I can’t put words to. Gratitude, maybe. It might not be just Aurora’s Rift—probably it’s a combination of that plus finally getting out of Horizon. Horizon: Expand Yours. The company slogan plays in my head unbidden. Yeah, right.
I walk toward the hub a few blocks away where there are stores, the light rail station, tram stops, everything. The closer I get, the more people are around. It’s Friday night, I realize. That means something to most people. For me it used to mean I could dive into a cocoon at home for two days if I was inhumanly lucky. Most weeks I got maybe twelve hours between crisis texts from a harried coworker needing an answer about a project or advice or generally just panicking.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Out of habit, my adrenal system kicks in. That’s how never I get good news on my phone. Ugh.
I pull it out, and wonder of wonders, it’s Ethan’s name on the screen.
I open the text.
Hey! Hope it’s not too obnoxious for me to text you on a Friday night, but Zach told me I was being stupid.
A laugh escapes me, and a passing couple turn to look at me.
Face burning, I start to reply before I notice that he’s typing. I wait. A moment later, another text comes through.
That text didn’t make much sense. Basically, I’m super interested to hear your thoughts on the game. If you’re up for sharing, that is! You might very well just be mired in Sirethan now.
He’s so…awkward. And excited. Which is kind of adorable.
That thought stops me in my tracks. He is now a colleague, even if he’s not my boss. Both Zach and Ethan made that emphatically clear. I’m kind of…top of the food chain. An oligarchy, and not in the billionaires-owning-entire-countries sort of way. The brothers aren’t even billionaires, which is something they have to maintain on purpose, because their company has been so successful. They literally just pour almost everything they make into infrastructure in developing countries that got hit worst by the crisis, which I remember Sam Cooke actually laughing at, because he’s actually Satan.
Right. Sidebar. Ethan Buchanan: colleague.
There’s no non-fraternization clause in my contract, but there is a process for employees who—
Stopping that thought train right there. Video game romance is all I’m going to entertain for the foreseeable future. Maybe just me and my…elf boyfriend.
For some reason, that makes it worse, thinking about Ferelthin.
My fingers are trembling a little when I finally manage to type my reply.
Not obnoxious at all! I just left the game because FEELINGS. And went for a walk.
There. Now I get to be the obnoxious one.
He doesn’t reply for a moment, so I stuff my phone into my pocket. There’s a night market down by the river, and since all I do lately is play this game and eat, I angle myself toward it.
My phone buzzes.
Yes, I think I know the need-a-walk feeling, and a lot of the feelings in the game are my own damn fault. SORRY.
Then a moment later,
Coincidentally, I am also on a walk and juggling dumplings and bubble tea.
I have no idea where Ethan lives, but dumplings and bubble tea sounds like heaven. There is a bubble tea stand in the night market, though, so that wish can come true.
I am stealing your idea, I tell Ethan. Bubble tea is a nutritious dinner, right?
I look up just as I’m tucking my phone away, and again I stop short, because there’s Ethan himself with a giant bubble tea tucked under his arm and a bowl of dumplings in his hand, looking at his phone and chuckling.
He clearly hasn’t seen me.
Oh, my god.
“Ethan?” I barely manage not to squeak.
He almost drops his phone and even more narrowly avoids dropping his bubble tea.
“Ack, I’m so sorry!” I don’t know what my hands are doing. They seem to be miming washing a window or doing the Charleston without my feet moving an inch.
“No, don’t be sorry!” Ethan’s managed to get hold of his food, his phone, and his tea, dumping his phone into his pocket and relocating the tea to a safer position in his hand.
“You live around here?” I ask. I don’t have a clue what else to say.
“Yeah,” he says. He points with his cup in the opposite direction of my apartment. “Just a couple blocks.”
“No way. I’m just that way.”
“At the risk of this sounding like a pick-up line instead of a genuine question, do you come here often?” The poor guy looks completely flustered.
“Erm, no. Prior to this week I spent most of my non-work time in a fugue state.” My stomach chooses that moment to gurgle. Oh, no. “I shouldn’t keep you—you probably have somewhere to be.”
“Not even a little bit. The second thing, I mean.” His cheeks flush. “I mean, I was just wandering and eating. Badly.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. “You haven’t seen me eat yet.”
“Well, we can fix that if you’re game. Dumpling?”
It is impossible not to like the guy. He said he was shy, but he’s clearly trying in spite of feeling awkward, because I’m a total nincompoop. I take a dumpling and pop it into my mouth. It’s delicious. Maybe it’s because I haven’t eaten since my ill-advised five o’clock in the morning PB&J, but the dumpling’s crispy on the outside and bursting with flavor on the inside, and I immediately need at least ten of my own.
“Thanks,” I say, prudently waiting until after I chew and swallow. “Where did you get these?”
He motions with his head. “I’ll show you. Bubble tea’s on the way, too.”
We chat about nothing until I’ve got my own food. I can’t remember half of what’s around me in the market—there are fairy lights strung between lamp-posts, all charged by the footpath itself, which is made of micro solar panels.
“But you’re really enjoying the game?” Ethan says after a bit.
“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” I tell him honestly. “Credence of Forsythia always felt like a game, you know? It was immersive, I guess. Smell-o-vision and all that, but it always felt scripted and—”
I break off, not sure of what I’m trying to say.
“Somehow even as an open-world MMORPG, it still felt like it had walls around it, if that makes sense. Paths you had to follow, everything defined. You could explore a lot, but you’d run into a barrier sooner or later.” I take a slurp of my bubble tea, since there’s no other way to actually drink the stuff. But Ethan’s doing the same, so it doesn’t matter if our slurping sounds like a jet breaking the sound barrier. “Aurora’s Rift feels organic. Like anything could happen. Like I could be anything.”
Ethan is actually blushing. Or beaming. Or both. “That’s—amazing to hear. Thank you. That’s what we wanted people to feel like. We wanted people to feel that anything is possible, even when the odds feel stacked against them. I’m—god, I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“I mean, you don’t need me to tell you that, right? Literal millions of people have said it in their reviews.” I’m a bit baffled by the strength of his response.
“Yeah, but none of those people made Lost Lands of the Sacred,” he says after a beat. His face gets pinker. “Or—okay, so maybe a couple of them did, but one of them was Greg, and his opinion rates somewhere below Sam Cooke on my list of valuable opinions. Which is saying a lot.”
Now I’m blushing. I want to take the lid off my bubble tea and pour the remaining ice over my face to cool it down. Where’s Aura of Deigith when I need it?
I can’t manage to actually say anything.
“Ugh, I’m sorry. I just blurt stuff out sometimes without thinking,” Ethan says.
“No, it’s okay!” I stop walking, buying time by slurping some more boba from the ice dregs of my tea. “I’m just honestly not used to being associated with the game at all, let alone in a way that doesn’t make me want to self-immolate.”
My turn to just blurt out words, I guess. To cover it, I start walking again. A firefly lights up right in front of my face and almost leaps away, like I startled it.
“I’m really so sorry about what Greg did to you and your team. It’s really fucked up.” Ethan doesn’t look at me when he says it, but he is shaking his head.
“I think I just thought it was my fault for a long time,” I say suddenly, voicing my recent epiphany. “Like I didn’t protect myself, like we didn’t protect ourselves, and it left us vulnerable, so it’s our fault he fleeced us.”
“Bullshit,” Ethan says succinctly. “It’s Greg’s fault.”
It’s so close to what I’ve said to myself that hearing someone else say it lifts a weight from my shoulders, one I didn’t realize had gotten so heavy.
“Thank you,” I tell him. I am really glad to get to work with this person.
“Did you hear what he’s doing now?” Ethan asks after a moment of silence. “No one in the industry will hire him.”
“Seriously?” That’s how far removed I’ve been from my ex. I’d just assumed he was still in the industry.
“Last I heard, he was working for collections.”
“Oh, my god.” A peal of gleeful laughter escapes me. “Greg? Collections?”
“Sometimes the universe does actually catch one of the deserving ones in its stomping,” Ethan says, sounding like he’s had personal experience with the flip side. “Apparently he blew all his money he made from the game and is having to work nine to five chasing down debts to pay off his own. So basically, karma.”
“Wow. Thank you for telling me that.” I feel lighter still with the news.
Almost worse than Greg screwing me and my team out of the game we built with our very souls was that he was the only one who got to keep doing what we’d all loved afterward. The game did well—well enough to make him a millionaire before word went public about how he’d managed to do it. I think there was even a law passed closing a few loopholes he’d exploited, which was the one good thing to come out of the whole shitstorm before this week.
The subject turns back to Sirethan, and he lets me gush about the game and the characters until eleven o’clock when I think we both decide we’re pushing the newly-defined boundaries of brand new colleagues-slash-friends to awkward territory.
I get home feeling freer than I have in years. My stomach is full and happy—my bladder is full and less happy—and I realize that I’ve been starving for more than just food.
Human company. Just someone to talk to without worrying that they—well. Full stop. Without worrying.
There were always moments with Greg where I could tell he was pushing boundaries. A nudge here, a shove there, an oh-was-I-leaning-on-this? here.
It’s shocking how refreshing it is to feel confident that Ethan is as aware of them as I am.
Not once in our two hour conversation did I feel that old tension, the old familiar guard I had to keep with Greg at all times just to maintain any bit of myself.
I collapse into bed at midnight and wake up Saturday morning feeling refreshed.
Naturally, I’ve almost forgotten how I left Sirethan.
Twenty-Four
“How fast can I get to Mithrathan?” It’s the first thing I say upon materializing in Viathan, and I’m not really surprised by how quickly the anxiety came flooding back in spite of my near euphoria in Evie-land. “Just—anything. Give me something.”
“Hart’s the fastest mount you’ll find,” Ink says. “Even then…more than a week? Almost two?”
“Then somebody find us some harts. Fastest in Viathan. I don’t care what it costs. Sell a relic if you have to.” I stride off down the corridor. “As soon as the others get back from the cave, figure out who’s rested enough to travel, and we’re gone.”
It might already be too late. We might arrive to find the Knolls burnt to the ground.
No.
For all my talk about Arnantas not caring about us, to a degree, I’m sure he does. I’m sure he will want to find us, make examples of us. The best way to do that is to make it a trap that can catch us—if we’re days away from the Knolls only to find out in Rahnbrug it’s already pointless, we’d turn right back around and return to Viathan where it’s safe.
