Chapter 73: The New Name

  I woke up the next day.

  I lay on the cot in the Stone-Singer’s Tavern, staring at the ceiling. It was made of dark, heavy oak, warded so thoroughly with silence enchantments that I couldn't even hear the chaotic, grinding machinery of the Gilded Gyre outside. It was the first true quiet I’d experienced since I fell out of London and into the multiverse.

  I raised my left arm. The skin from the elbow down was flawless. Pink, smooth, and completely devoid of the calluses, scars, and callouses I’d accumulated over twenty-odd years of jumping fences and picking locks. The Grade 3 Greater Pearl of Vitality had done exactly what it promised: it had restored me. But it had restored me to a factory default.

  I flexed the fingers. They moved perfectly, but my brain was still sending a delay signal, expecting the phantom pain of the Magister’s erasure spell to bite into my knuckles.

  I looked at the glass of water resting on the bedside table. I reached for it.

  My hand shot forward in a blur. My fingers clamped around the glass before my conscious mind fully registered the movement.

  Crack.

  The glass shattered, water and shards spilling over the wooden nightstand.

  I winced, pulling my hand back. "Right. Egress 20."

  In the corner of the room, a pile of dark, jagged boulders shifted.

  The rocks ground together, sliding upward and locking into place with the heavy, satisfying sound of a bank vault sealing shut. Vrex stretched, his massive granite arms brushing the ceiling. The scorch marks from the Arcanorum Enforcers were gone. His right hand, the one he’d regrown to catch me in the void, was a darker shade of obsidian than the rest of him.

  "You are leaking anxiety," Vrex rumbled, his golden eyes fixing on the puddle of water and broken glass on the nightstand. "And destroying the furniture."

  "Just updating the drivers," I muttered, shaking the water off my pristine new fingers. "Egress 20 is twitchy. How are you feeling, big guy?"

  "Solid," Vrex said. He tapped his chest. The dull, ambient hum of his Mana-Lung was working overtime, processing the thin, chaotic energy of the Gyre to feed his dense biology. "I am at Magnitude 108. I am rested. And I am ready to spend our fortune so we do not have to sleep in rented beds."

  "Agreed," I said, swinging my legs over the edge of the cot. I pulled on my boots and mentally reached into my Locus. I materialized the Wayfarer's Sash and clasped it around my waist, checking the weight of the Void-Knife at my hip. I missed my Slipstream Duster—the friction-nullifying coat had been shredded to confetti—but I was wearing a clean, sturdy canvas jacket I’d bought off the tavern keep last night for a fraction of a Faint Shard.

  "184 Lucent Shards," I said, a grin finally breaking through the morning fog. "We're going to buy armor. We're going to buy a ship. And we're going to get far away from any world run by bureaucrats."

  We stepped out of the room and headed down the spiraling, wrought-iron staircase to the main floor of the tavern.

  Usually, the Stone-Singer’s was packed with a motley assortment of Wayfarers, mercenaries, and void-scavengers drinking cheap engine-ale. But as we reached the landing, I stopped.

  The tavern was completely empty.

  The barkeep was gone. The music box was silent. The heavy wooden blast-doors that led out to the Gyre's main promenade were bolted shut.

  The only person in the room, an old woman sitting at a table in the center of the floor.

  She looked entirely mundane. She wore a thick, knitted shawl over a faded floral dress. Her silver hair was pulled back into a tight bun. She was calmly sipping tea from a delicate porcelain cup, and in her lap, she was knitting. But she wasn't knitting yarn. She was pulling faint, glowing threads of pure Wayline current out of the thin air and weaving them into a scarf.

  I didn't need my high Kensho to know we were in trouble. The sudden, suffocating pressure in the room felt like stepping into the deep ocean.

  I glanced at Vrex. The two-ton, fearless mountain of stone had frozen at the bottom of the stairs. His posture was rigid. He looked like a soldier who had just been caught sleeping on duty by a five-star general.

  "Vrex?" I whispered.

  "Do not draw your weapon, Kaelen," Vrex replied, his voice barely a vibration in the stone. "Do not even think about it."

  I focused my Kensho (15) on the old woman. I wanted a number. I wanted to know the Magnitude of the threat.

  The Astrolabe shrieked.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  In my mind's eye, the golden rings of my interface seized up with a sound like bending metal. The delicate constellations of my stats flickered and died. Where the Magnitude number usually hovered, the light was violently sucked inward.

  A perfect, vantablack circle burned itself into my vision.

  [Alert: Parallax Limit Exceeded. Ontology Critical.]

  [Warning: The Eclipse. Do not perceive. Do not engage. Existence is not guaranteed.]

  A spike of pure, white-hot agony pierced my temples—the Kensho Burn. I gasp, stumbling back against the railing, blood instantly welling up in my nose and dripping down to my lip. I squeeze my eyes shut, severing the scan.

  "You're trying to weigh a mountain with a kitchen scale, young man," the old woman said. Her voice was soft, warm, and entirely inescapable. "It's impolite to stare at a lady's numbers."

  I wiped the blood from my lip, my heart doing a frantic drum solo. An Eclipse. That's a first.

  "Madam Vash," Vrex said, his voice lowering into a deep, resonant hum of absolute respect. He actually bowed. A short, stiff hinge at the waist, but a bow nonetheless.

  "Vrex," the woman, Vash, replied, setting her teacup down. "You look terrible. You've been playing in the dirt again."

  "We encountered... structural complications," Vrex said carefully.

  Vash sighed, returning to her cosmic knitting. "Come here. Both of you. Sit."

  We didn't argue. I walked over, my Egress 20 making my steps perfectly silent, but my Horizon 15 barely keeping my knees from buckling under the sheer weight of her metaphysical presence. I pulled out a chair and sat. Vrex remained standing behind me, acting as my shadow.

  "I own the Gilded Gyre," Vash said to me, not looking up from her needles. "Every bolt, every chain, every speck of rust. It is my Domain. And I like my Domain quiet. Predictable. Profitable."

  "We paid our tab," I managed to say, leaning back and trying to project a confidence I absolutely did not feel.

  Vash smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "You paid the barkeep for a bed, Kaelen Vance. You did not pay for the migraine you've caused me."

  She tapped her knitting needle against the table.

  "Arcanorum is in chaos," she states smoothly. "The Spire is gone. The planetary Ward has collapsed. A Primordial Titan is currently turning the local atmosphere into plasma, and the Resonant Stream is screaming with distress signals. The universal market for Grade 2 Mana Cores has crashed because the primary factory is currently a crater."

  She looks up at me.

  "And rumor has it, a human who fights with telekinesis and an Unchained geo-construct were seen riding the explosion out of the atmosphere."

  "I was just doing some impromptu plumbing," I say, my mouth dry. "The Magisters were torturing a god to run their air conditioning. Seemed like a code violation."

  Vash chuckled, a dry, raspy sound. She looks at Vrex.

  "This," Vash said, pointing a needle at the gargoyle, "is exactly why your parents never let you off the leash, Vrex. Elowen and Basalt told me. They said, 'Vash, keep an eye on our boy. He has no sense of scale. If you leave him alone, he'll try to headbutt a moon.'"

  I blinked, looking up at Vrex. "Wait. You have parents? I thought you were just... quarried. You have a dad named Basalt?"

  "They are my Forgers," Vrex corrected, his stone jaw tightening with indignity. "The elder constructs who initiated my awakening. And they were overly cautious. They equated safety with perfection."

  "They equated survival with not angering the local deities," Vash countered sharply. "They survived a thousand cycles by walking softly. And what do you do the moment you go solo? You pick up a stray human with a hero complex and drop a mountain on a Tier 3 civilization."

  "Their way was stagnation," Vrex argued, his amber runes flaring slightly, a rare show of defiance. "I spent a century under their guidance and remained a Rank 2 Manifest. I was durable, but static. With Kaelen..." Vrex gestured to his own massive, darkened chest. "With Kaelen, the growth has been explosive. I am Apex. I broke my own limits because he finds the limits and forces me to hold the line."

  I feel a sudden, surprising swell of pride. The big guy actually liked my chaotic methods.

  "Explosive is the correct word," Vash says dryly. "You are vandals. You threw a rock through the multiverse's window."

  "We fixed Grey-Water," I shot back, leaning forward. "We left a beacon. We did something good."

  Vash stopped knitting. The room grew impossibly cold. The air pressure spiked, pressing against my lungs. My Astrolabe chimed a frantic, low-level warning.

  "Good and bad are local concepts, Wayfarer," Vash said, her voice echoing in the space between my ears. "I deal in balance. And you disrupted the balance."

  She held the silence for a long, agonizing moment. Then, the pressure vanished. The room returned to normal.

  "However," Vash said, taking another sip of her tea. "You also cleaned up my backyard."

  I rubbed my chest, taking a deep breath. "Excuse me?"

  "Ostracon," Vash says simply. "The Watcher and his crew. They were cowards. Poachers. They hung around the hydro-tubes, picking off rookies and farming their Remembrance. It was bad for tourism. I was going to have to deal with them myself eventually, but you saved me the paperwork. For a pair of rookies, taking out a Rank 2 Vector team is... commendable."

  "So, you're not going to turn us over to the Magisters?" I asked.

  "The Magisters can burn for all I care," Vash scoffed. "But actions have consequences, Kaelen. You destroyed a major trade hub. The Gyre relies on that trade. You owe me a deficit."

  "We have Shards," I offer, patting my sash. "We can pay a fine."

  "I don't want your pocket change," Vash says dismissively.

  "You require a guide," Vash corrected. "Someone who actually knows how to navigate the deep currents without accidentally starting a holy war. "

  Right on cue, the heavy bolts on the tavern's front doors slid back with a loud clack. The doors swung open, letting in the noise and neon glare of the Gyre.

  A man walked in.

  He didn't look like a Wayfarer.

  He wore a suit of power armor that was a violent assault on the eyes—hot magenta and gilded chrome, polished to a blinding mirror shine. It featured sweeping, dramatic shoulder pauldrons that served absolutely zero tactical purpose. His helmet—which sported an actual holographic mohawk. His helmet was tucked under his arm, revealing a scarred, middle-aged face with a scruffy beard and his eyes held the bright, breezy calm of a guy who had listened to a thousand tear-jerking, apocalyptic monologues and responded with a slow clap.

  He walks up to the table, completely ignoring the fact that Vash was an Eclipse-class entity. Pulling out a chair, sits down heavily, and sighs.

  "Vash," the man grunted. "Tell me these aren't the idiots who blew up the battery farm."

  "They are the idiots," Vash smiled sweetly. "Boys, meet your new member"

  The man looks at me. His eyes flat and unimpressed.

  "The name's Jack," he sighs, offering a limply elegant, rhinestone-studded gauntlet for me to shake or perhaps kiss, I genuinely cannot tell.

  I slowly reach out and shake his hand.

  Jack, huh I have heard that name somewhere.