Airlean Tales S2E25: Truthseeker (1)

The late hour filled the Library of Ancients with an unearthly chill that grated at Karis’s bones. She flinched as she moved through the looming columns of book, shadows flickering from the low-burning opalite lanterns that mimicked brazier flame.

It was good that she was meeting the Keepers tonight, at least. It distracted her from wallowing in pathetic adolescent misery. Or so she told herself. Perhaps it also kept her from some critical self-awareness. She chose to ignore that.

The memory of Halcyon’s fingers pressing at her spine and the heat of his kiss on her mouth pushed intrusively into her mind.

She chose to ignore that too.

“Hello,” came a girl’s wispy voice from just behind her.

Karis jumped and drew her sword, only to find the blade pointing right at Keeper Sophrenia. The girl’s long, silky hair nearly hung over her face like a curtain, not unlike a ghoul or a banshee from the storybooks.

“Oh,” Karis said in a strangled tone. She felt her hand shaking. “Yes. Hello, Lady Keeper.”

“Are you alone?”

“It sounded like you wanted me to be.”

“I did.” The light from Karis’s lantern flickered eerily over Sophrenia’s face. “It will make the ceremony easier.”

Visions of cruel, bloody patterns carved into Karis’s flesh surfaced. She shuddered. “Ceremony? What, do you plan to cut me open?”

“No.” Sophrenia turned and motioned to follow. “I just don’t like talking to more than one person at a time.”

Asters above, this girl. Karis could not decide whether she was legitimately clueless, or simply a master at playing with her food.

She followed Sophrenia, expecting to be taken down the staircase into the bowels of the Library. But instead, the librarian led her up to the domed skylight, across a high walkway flanked by braziers glowing with cerulean flame.

A set of double doors opened to a chamber that looked like the slice of a picturesque forest glade. Thick, ancient oak trees with gnarled roots nested at the edge of a pool, which shimmered under hanging candlelight. Even from this distance, Karis could sense the aura of raw mana boiling just under the surface of the pool.

But something felt just a little wrong about the place. It picked incessantly at her until she finally placed it: there was no wildlife. Of course there would be no wildlife around a reservoir of concentrated mana; that was asking for trouble. Still, the forests of Airlea were always teeming with noise and movement, and with no birdsong, no sigh of the wind through brambles and leaves—Karis felt more like she was standing in a dressed-up graveyard.

“The Truesight Glade,” Sophrenia explained simply. “This is the environment most conducive to our clairvoyance.”

“It’s very…pastoral,” Karis offered. Which was a compliment. A small part of her had been expecting musty, bloodstained dungeons with boneshards and ink scattered about.

“We are descended from the Minstrel. Purveyor of not only prophecy, but peace, beauty, and the arts. These trees have been carefully maintained for hundreds of years.” Sophrenia gestured to a small stone platform at the water’s edge. “Stand there.”

Karis did.

“Now explain,” Sophrenia said. She reached into the folds of her robe and withdrew a pouch. From the pouch, she extracted a pinch of colored dust, which she sprinkled in a spiral pattern into the pool. “What exactly do you seek?”

Was this the beginnings of a scrying ritual? Karis tried not to ogle like a tourist. “Senator Vascea is keen on hiding something significant from us,” she said. “I should like to know what it is, and the specifics of its nature.”

“Senator Vascea hides a great many things. Her plans, her abilities, the workings of her Dominion, her personal feelings.” A different pouch, a sprinkling of a different substance. “I need more specifics.”

An aroma began to rise from the pool—cloying sweetness with a hint of acidity. The surface bubbled slightly.

“Something affiliated with mana degradation and corruption,” Karis said. “Something grand enough to endanger all our lives.”

Sophrenia paused for a moment, her hand frozen over the pool.

“Why?” Karis said skeptically. “Is my request so impossible? Do you refuse to share such secrets with an outlander? Or…do you require a steep price for forbidden knowledge?”

“It needs no price, because it needs no scrying. Nor is it forbidden.” Sophrenia returned the pouch and stepped beside Karis, bowing her head as if in prayer. “I’m only surprised that all of the senators have kept it from you.”

“Yes, well, they seem to think us all simpletons and servants far beneath their notice.”

“Hardly,” Sophrenia said. When she raised her head, her golden eye was glowing vibrantly. “It means they perceive you as a threat.”

A threat? Now that was interesting. Karis tried to keep the satisfaction from her face as she surveyed the pool, which was now bubbling actively, its prismatic surface rippling with roiling bubbles.

“Then what’s wrong with the pool?” she asked. “Are you using it to scry?”

“Oh, no. I’m not.” A sudden hand shoved squarely between Karis’s shoulderblades. “You will.”

The pressure was immediate, firm, and most importantly, completely unexpected. Karis tumbled forward with a graceless flail of arms. Her only thought before she hit the water was: I’m glad Hal wasn’t around to see this.

She plunged beneath the surface. But there was no rush of liquid up her nose or in her mouth. Her descent suddenly slowed, as if she was falling through a patch of remarkably fluffy clouds—then her feet hit solid ground.

Her brain took a moment to register it was not dead. Then another moment to be very cross about being hoodwinked. Those damned Keepers. She should have guessed that the sister was also nefarious and up to no good.

In the next moment, she registered that she was standing in a city. It was a sight both strange and familiar—vaulting classical spires, flowering bouquets over swaths of white cloth, sparkling waterfalls trickling from floating pavilions. The architecture was distinctly Atlantean, yet there was no sign of the opalite magitech that ordinarily ran through the city like veins. Men and women strode past Karis decked in archaic robes with patterned hems, some carrying clay jugs, others woven baskets.

“Welcome, Lady Frostplum,” said the most obnoxious voice Karis had ever heard, “to the ancient bastion of Atlantis. Before it was punted to the bottom of the sea.”

She turned to see the familiar boyish, aggravating visage of Keeper Soterios, smiling his untouchable smile, robes fluttering about his ankles like an angel. His grin broadened and he waved cheekily at her attention.

“You.”

“That’s not very polite.” He clicked his tongue. “I prefer to be addressed as Lord Keeper.”

And she preferred to address him with the sole of her shoe. “What are you doing here?”

“I knew you would be here tonight and thought I’d pop into the Truesight Glade to say hello.” He bowed. “Please, don’t let me keep you. Browse around at your leisure.”

As if she were shopping around a market, not pushed into a boiling vat of mysterious substance! She scowled darkly at him, but when she reached out to seize him, her hand passed through his form like smoke.

Soterios clicked his tongue again. “You should have known that this is not the physical world, Lady Frostplum.”

“I was hoping it was at least a dreamscape,” Karis said sourly, “so I could fulfill my dream of tanning your hide.”

“Goodness, so violent.” He laughed and swept a hand to the bustling city. “This is a dreamscape, but not exactly yours.”

“Whose is it, then? Yours?”

“The collective dreamscape of many. You’re looking at the largest collection of human memories in the world, extracted through magical means and compiled into one large dreamscape.”

She frowned. “That makes no sense at all. People don’t have shared dreams.”

“Such limited thinking for a renowned Hunter, Lady Frostplum!” Oh, she hated him. “It’s very possible, in fact. The pool you are in is not a pool of water, but of raw, liquified mana, not unlike a leyline. You are aware how approaching a leyline raises visual and auditory hallucinations?”

Karis had indeed heard such stories. Tall tales from addled adventurers who wandered too close to the leylines, speaking of tormented loved ones begging for aid, nonsensical cosmic sights, laws and historical events that never happened. They had seemed completely out of their minds.

“In environments of raw, volatile mana, all lines begin to blur,” Soterios said. “The boundaries between the physical and the mental and the spiritual grow ever dim. Thus do mana-induced hallucinations feed off of memories. That is essentially what you experience now—only in the Mnemonic Pool, it is contained, structured, made perfect by the pool’s confines.”

“You’re saying I am hallucinating?”

He gave a long, aggravating sigh. “Yes. Fine. If that’s the only way your mind can comprehend it, you are absolutely plastered.”

Karis was keen to tear into him then, because playing around with mana in the raw was no laughing matter. But she was distracted by a sudden flash of vivid red shooting past her.

She turned to see a small, excitable child barreling down the street, red hair bouncing like fur on a tiny dog. She instantly recognized that violent shade.

“That’s—”

“Xiphia Kairhea Vascea, as a child. Yes.” Soterios laughed. “Quite the darling image of her, no?”

Instinctively, Karis moved to follow little Xiph. She watched the girl scramble haphazardly through the streets, utterly lacking the prowling, deadly grace of her older counterpart. Several passersby drew back and whispered to each other as she passed.

As Karis focused on little Xiph, she noticed the surrounding buildings were shifting. Some of the classical architecture decayed; some walls materialized; some new roads opened; and through it all, piercing blue magitech veins shimmered to life, snaking through the city.

Disoriented, she turned to Soterios. “What exactly is happening?”

“As you attune to one memory, you are immersed into its context. Time. Place. People present.” He grinned. “This is likely the memory of Xiphia’s father, or the guardian he sent to shadow her steps without her knowledge. And, of course, the memories of others in the same time and place will contribute to the environment.”

That made…a little sense, Karis supposed. She continued to follow Xiph down roads and around corners until the bustle faded, the buildings growing more sparse, the outlines more blurry and indistinct. Xiph hopped a decorated fence rotting with mold and ivy, ducked under a half-fallen archway, and emerged into a small clearing of rubble and stones dotted with moss. There was a boy lunging rhythmically with a training spear, which was comedic due to his own tiny stature.

Oh dear, Karis thought amusedly. A tryst already, at such a young age.

Her amusement vanished the instant the boy turned at Xiph’s approaching footsteps, and she saw his face.

Because it was very obviously Halcyon Yuden.

His hair was cropped short, his stature scrawny and small, and his weapon was not the curved Yueraian glaive, but a narrow training spear. Yet, there was a gravity and seriousness to his expression that belied his age. She saw the same hint of bitterness in his beautiful blue eyes that she’d seen many times before. It looked out of place on a young face.

She felt her mouth open and close wordlessly for a moment, struggling past a sudden wave of indignation and pity blended into one flavor. How dare this flighty little senator taunt her again! How dare the salt be rubbed on an open, weeping wound! Halcyon Yuden, in an entrenched, fateful history with another woman—Karis wanted to scream.

No, that wasn’t quite right. She really felt like vomiting. All of her anger and shock and disappointment was congealing into one nasty puddle somewhere in her gut, and she wanted it out.

“That is the face,” droned Karis’s second-most hated voice, “of a jilted woman crossed in love, heartbroken by her paramour, made desolate by the whims of the Fates.”

Karis whipped around to face a slowly descending Sophrenia Ninotas, her robes billowing around her in a direct mirror to her twin brother. Unlike Soterios, her face was bland and utterly devoid of emotion—but seeing it was no less vexing as Karis suddenly remembered that this brat had pushed her into this very suspicious pool in the first place.

“You,” she said flatly. But throwing a tantrum would do nothing for her now. She tried to focus on the practicalities. “This memory has nothing to do with my initial inquiry.”

Sophrenia tilted her head like a little owl. “Give it time. Your soul was drawn to attune to this memory for a reason.”

Karis snorted. “As in, fate?”

“Maybe.”

“First you say this is a dreamscape, then a mana-induced hallucination, then fate? What is this place, Keeper?”

Sophrenia shot a look at Soterios.

“What?” he said.

“You’re bad at explaining, Rio.”

“I am not,” he protested. It was the closest to peeved that Karis had ever seen him. “She’s just bad at understanding, Sophie.”

Sophie turned back to Karis. “The pool in the Truesight Glade is raw mana, rendered in semiliquid form, contained by the ancient ore olympite in the perimeter. Your physical body is submerged in it. Still breathing, don’t worry—but your spirit thinks that it’s in a dreamscape.” She snapped her fingers. “It’s like your consciousness has been temporarily spirited away from your body into this world of memories.”

That certainly was clearer than Soterios’s roundabout explanation, if somewhat unnerving. “And where did this bank of memories come from? Even modern manacraft has no method to record or transfer memories.”

“Because it’s not manacraft. Atlanteans can choose to donate their remains to study. If there are no abnormalities in the corpses that prove useful to the sophists of Universitales, then they are cremated and donated to the Library. Their ashes then populate the Mnemonic Pool, and the mana within draws upon the imprint left by the ashes.”

Ashes. Donation. The pool. Karis’s jaw dropped as it all hit.

“I am submerged in liquid full of people’s ashes?”

“Yes,” Sophie said.

“And you didn’t ask me if I would accept this?! Or at least warn me?”

She blinked slowly. “People just end up screaming or crying or otherwise wasting time. It gets annoying.”

“You still can’t just ignore all procedure and push them into a pool of human remains without permission!”

“It’s not a pool of human remains.” She frowned. “Oh. Maybe it is. Well, you breathe in human remains every day. That’s practically what dust is.”

Marvelous. Karis kneaded at her temples, groaning. “Does this come with any…extended side effects?”

“Just maybe a dry mouth, nausea, auditory hallucinations, heartbeat abnormalities, and muscle pain. All temporary. It shouldn’t last longer than a week.”

A week?! She would have throttled this girl by the neck if there had been a physical body to throttle!

“But it’s alright,” Soterios cut in with a grin. “You’re young and healthy—or, at least healthy. You’ll be right as rain in a night, if you want my expert opinion.”

Never mind. She would throttle both of these insufferable twins. As soon as she was out of this awful place.

Scowling, Karis returned to little Xiph, who was still chattering away with Halcyon. “Ry-ry,” she called him. “I’m learning spearwork now. I’m totally gonna beat you!”

“Leave me alone,” little Halcyon said sullenly. “I told you this is my spot.”

“Oh yeah? I don’t see a flag!” Xiph put her hands on her hips. “Conquer the land first before you kick me out, you big baby!”

And just like the Halcyon that Karis knew, he was all bark and no bite. Grumpy, yet too polite to actually draw his training weapon and beat up this shrimp of a girl.

She hated it as much as she liked it.

Karis’s vision suddenly flickered, sending her stumbling. She tried to shake off the feeling with a flick of her head.

When she opened her eyes, there was Xiph and Halcyon again—a little taller, a little leaner, perhaps seven and nine years old. The little senator had her face buried in her knees, which were drawn to her chest. She looked properly miserable. Halcyon—no, Orion in those days—hovered nervously nearby, looking like a honeybee stuck between flowers.

When a tiny sob escaped Xiph, he jumped a little.

“Papa doesn’t want me,” Xiph said. Her voice was raw from what sounded like hours of crying. “Never did, but I didn’t think—I thought he wouldn’t send me away forever.”

Orion’s hand trembled as it extended, then awkwardly patted her head. He said nothing.

Xiph tore up a patch of moss with one hand and threw it blindly. “Airlea! I bet it’s ugly and stupid a-a-and so f-far away—” This time she burst into tears that made her incomprehensible.

Orion withdrew his hand, looking even more awkward.

It was only then when Karis realized that she could understand their language perfectly. Which shouldn’t have been possible. Especially as children, they would have no doubt spoken in Atlantean. But perhaps this world of mana and memories did not obey the rules of the physical. It made sense that since the Mnemonic Pool would draw upon mana imprints left by ashes, and the listener had known Atlantean, the meaning of the dialogue would be shown to her and not the exact verbiage.

Just as Karis was thinking this, the world shifted again.

Xiph sprouted a little. So did Orion. She was maybe ten years old; he was stretching out in that way that put him on the cusp of adolescence. They were lying down on the mossy rubble, staring up into a distant, cloudless sky, limbs carelessly sprawled like ragdolls. Karis noticed some unwinding bandages revealing dark purple bruises spotted all over Orion’s skin, and her lips pressed together.

I hated my family, he’d told her. I knew nothing but pain at their hands.

Perhaps it was well they were dead. Or they would know nothing but pain at her hands.

Xiph spoke, and Karis almost missed it from being too entrenched in her thoughts. “We should get married.”

Orion’s eyes sprung open. He turned his head to stare at Xiph. “What?”

“Married,” Xiph repeated. “You know. Husband and wife. We should get married and have kids and train our own little murderous family cohort.”

“Are you insane?” He sat up, looking indignant, but Karis didn’t miss the dark flush beginning to sweep across his cheeks to his ears. “Leventises are neutral. Arbiters. Not to fraternize with senators for the sanctity of keeping the Hunt.”

“I don’t even know what that means. Your words are so long for no reason.”

“It means that it wouldn’t be fair to other senators if I married you, because I’d be biased.”

“But you wouldn’t be a Leventis anymore,” she said smugly. “You’d be a Vascea consort. And that means you could sit up in the consort’s chambers under all those silks and fleeces. No one could bother you.”

“Don’t pretend this is for my sake. You’re scared because you don’t want to marry Prince Lunaren.”

Her face reddened. “Am not! It’s good for both of us! You because you’d finally get away from stinky old Nikos”—and she pointed at the finger-sized, grape-shaped bruises blossoming under the peeling bandage that ran all the way up his neck—“and me because—because I can’t leave, the dominion needs me! So you—you should marry me.”

Orion’s face did not move, but he did blush again as he looked away. “That’s a dumb idea.”

“It’s only dumb if it doesn’t work,” Xiph said. “It’s smart if it does. Marry me.” She faltered a little, her cheeks cherry-pink, fingers twisting together. “Please?”

Orion was quiet for a moment, still turned away.

“If you get strong enough to keep out the Leventises when they come for me,” he said finally, “I might think about it. A little.”

Xiph crowed in victory and pumped a fist and Orion smiled secretly and it was so perfectly romantic, wasn’t it? So divinely innocent and pure and domestic.

An acidic taste coated Karis’s mouth and it wouldn’t leave. Halcyon had conveniently omitted the bit where he’d returned Xiph’s affections. Perhaps if tragedy hadn’t struck and he hadn’t fled, then…they would have been wed. Flawlessly, wonderfully happy, strong enough to keep each other from death, the world’s most perfect warrior couple.

“This was pointless,” she said frostily, turning away. “I’ve learned nothing of actual importance.”

“Haven’t you?” Sophie’s golden eye pierced her to her core and made her want to squirm. “I think you’ve learned quite a lot, actually.”

“Nothing I asked for!”

“You will be drawn to memories within the Mnemonic Pool that align with the true desires of your heart. If you are dissatisfied, come back when your desires are more focused.”

“It illuminates my desires, you say?” Karis snapped. “No. It preys on insecurities.”

Sophie’s gaze was solemn. “If you let it.”

“Don’t blame the mediator for your own flaws, Lady Frostplum,” said Soterios, clicking his tongue. “It’s poor form.”

And Karis knew that the flare of fury from his words was only because they were true. She was distracted. She was a mess. She had tried to throw herself into Sethis’s mission to avoid the ghastly state of her own heart, and now not only would she pay the price, but Sethis would in wasted time. Because if he had been the one to come and not her, he would have remained focused; he would have gotten his answers. But not Karis. She was always so weak from her emotions, and they always bested her.

Angrily, she turned away. And pitched forward when the world suddenly jerked under her feet.

The sky shivered and blackened; the buildings around Karis fragmented, then melted back together. She heard a strangled gasp from both Soterios and Sophie, who crumpled and clutched their heads.

“What—what is it?” Karis demanded. “What’s wrong?”

They did not respond—either too overcome with pain, or too focused on some invisible battle that Karis could not see.

Another tremor shook the earth. Sophie threw back her head and released a terrible, strident wail that raked up Karis’s spine like nails—otherworldly, like a banshee. Oceanic currents swirled around her and her brother; then, in a blink, their figures vanished, as if turned to seafoam.

Oh, Karis thought. That can’t mean anything good.

She had done enough Threading to know that imbalances in a mana-induced dreamscape meant that dangerous fluctuations were happening in the waking world. It would be safest for her to follow the twins, and leave the Mnemonic Pool. Lingering could mean a disconnection with her physical body—at best, a coma, and at worst, brain death.

Yet Karis also knew that if trouble truly had come to Atlantis, this could possibly be her last opportunity for answers. Changes in the mana environment could affect or contaminate the Mnemonic Pool. Perhaps the Keepers would even be wounded or killed, and much ancient knowledge would pass with them.

She was alone now. No other people’s desires to warp the scrying. No other potential distractions. No further excuses.

What she learned this night could possibly save her country.

Karis sucked in a deep breath and steeled herself. When the world throttled again, she focused on it. The instability. The boiling point that seemed to bubble under the surface of the dreamscape. Something was amiss with the circulation of mana within Atlantis, and she forced herself to concentrate on it.

Finally, a sensation tugged her down, as if she was slipping into a whirlpool.

The world fell to darkness, and her with it.

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