Fifths Foretold

As it turned out, Laritsi’s soul wasn’t in the sword any longer; she had moved on. But the point was that she once was in the sword, and according to their research, a god had wielded her thousands of years ago—either Kohnjr or Jiro, but no one seemed to agree which—and she had worked against both god and man; almost no weapon was capable of that. The only one they had heard of that could work against a god was whatever Xe used to kill Jiro, and no one seemed to know what that really was. Likely, the gods didn’t want that knowledge out there. But it seemed, according to the histories buried here, that this sword had once come close to killing Nyha and Callorn. Was this soul… the reason?

The first time they attempted to make a soul weapon, blade and soul refused to bind with each other, as was the case with the second attempt, and the third. But when it came to the soul of Nerosi, the Milianuan-born, it worked. They were able to bind the soul to the weapon, and it cut truer than any blade either of them had ever held. Was it the type of soul, or was it something else in the artificery they had done differently?

She placed her hand on the wall of the room, and smiled. There was Mycelium in the walls, still thriving after all these years. Was it only in the tea room, or did it still grow everywhere? She focused her attention, feeling every branch of the massive web expanding through the walls beneath her fingers, and smiled again. Pointy-Ears really had kept up with it well. She searched the rooms one by one, and found him.

Pointy-Ears had been lying in bed, waiting for Round-Ears to get cleaned up. He had been working so hard since hearing about the evigseí, and now that the kids were actually here, he was in a rush to make sure their gifts were ready for them in the morning. This was really what set Round-Ears apart, Pointy-Ears thought, this drive to save the world that had always rejected him.

And then, he heard her voice in his mind. “Watcher’s Chamber,” she said. “Alone.”

He sat up and called to the shower, “There’s been a development.”

“You see the severity, then… well, all we’ll do is talk. I’ll be back soon. I wouldn’t advise popping in. If you need me, send Poncho, okay?”

“I love you more.” Pointy-Ears gave Round-Ears a peck on the lips, placed a hand on the wall, and slipped into the Mycelium network.

“Quite the renovation,” she said, by way of greeting, when he appeared in the Watcher’s Chamber.

“Hello, Loosha,” Pointy-Ears said. He pulled out a chair, turned it backwards, and sat in it. “This is sloppy, Sonu, especially for you.”

Puna had just left for the evening, and locked the door on his way out, so there were no more surprise visitors to bring her new items on her to do list, for tonight, anyway. She could try it again. Maybe she would have enough pieces this time, with the Loradan-Orivers and the Potcheeses being as helpful as they were today. And tonight, she was going to visit Thad again. It would be better to consider her questions carefully; it’s not like the spell gave her unlimited time with him.

She knew Benji was gone. No amount of sleuthing was going to bring him back, not after all this time, and not after the way he was faring the last time she saw him. But she had known since she was a child that she wouldn’t be able to rest easy until she knew what happened to him, and stopped it from happening to anyone else.

Glass shattered downstairs, and she looked up from the desk. She crossed to the monitor on her wall just in time to see one elf walk through the remains of the glass entrance door downstairs, and then walk out of frame, while another elf hunched over Puna’s desk and hit a few buttons, and then the cameras turned off.

Beatrice opened her desk’s bottom drawer, and latched on the wrist crossbow she kept in it, and as she locked the bolt into place, her door opened. She held her left arm aloft. “Not a step closer.”

The elf smiled, and muttered something under her breath. Beatrice’s arm fell limply to her side, and she fell back into her chair.