Thereafter Chapter 24: The Cold Hard Truth
Michael has some questions, and the answers lead nowhere good.
Michael didn’t remember much from the day that followed. He ate, at some point, he walked around in the castle for a bit, he spent a long time staring out windows and out over the sprawling city from the flat roof of the huge building.
Thereafter was a larger place than he had expected it to be in many ways, but also smaller. Sure, you could easily see the border, the buffer zone of uninhabited rock that separated the buildings of the city from the lightless void outside it, colored ever so slightly in the ephemeral colors of the barrier keeping air on the inside, but, when the city ended, that was it. There were no suburbs or scantly populated outskirts, no farmlands or fisheries supporting the city. The town was packed to the gills, and the only places that weren’t were occasional plazas and other city engineering features that were neccesary to avoid utter misery for its inhabitants.
It was a strange city. Paradoxical in a way, so rich and so bereft of resources, so solid and so vulnerable, so ugly and so beautiful. It was an important place, Michael decided then and there. It was important not only because it was a shelter to countless bereft souls. It was important because it could become something good, something true and real, a place where people could not only survive, but thrive. It wasn’t going to get there by itself, Michael was certain, it would have to be helped. They would have to help it. If he only could piece it all together, he was sure he could help it.
“Hey, Mike, buddy, you doing alright?” Felipe’s voice didn’t as much snap Michael out of it as it alerted him that there was an “it” to snap out of. Felipe wasn’t alone of course, when Michael felt Alicia’s hand on his shoulder he realized how close to the edge of the roof he had gotten.
“Yeah,” he heard himself say. “I was just lost in thought. Sheep’s Gaze, I hear some call it… no wait, that’s a translation field thing again isn’t it?” Michael took a step back from the edge. Even though he had no plans to jump, he understood how it might look like he did, and that de-escalating could only be a good thing.
“You’ve been quiet a lot since the heist.” Alicia said. “We’re starting to worry about you bud.”
“Yeah I’m not…” Michael heard his voice crack. He didn’t want it to, but his voice seemed to not take his preferences into consideration. “I’m not doing so hot, lately.” It was an understatement, an understatement of comical, if not tragedic, proportions.
The Exalted, his friends, had helped him down the stairs. For parts of it, Michael found himself wondering how he had managed to get so stiff and ungainly in his stride, and then he remembered he had left his cane in his room that morning. He couldn’t remember if it had been a conscious choice, or if he had just left the room for some quick errand that had bled into the rest of his day.
In the Exalted Room, Lex had taken the initiative to form a cuddlepile with Michael in its center. He couldn’t quite tell if that was the kind of thing he’d like under normal circumstances, but as things were now, he found a small, but important, solace in it. The pressure, the weight of the others felt both like a distraction and a soothing balm to his mind. Somewhere in his brain, neurochemical processes that had kept humans caring for and loving each other since time immemorial fought against the thick, blubbery blanket of semi-forgetfulness. It wasn’t a rout either way, but Michael found himself thanking those fearless outnumbered neurotransmitters, for the attempt if nothing else.
Michael wasn’t quite sure when he made up his mind, or if he even did or if the decision didn’t show up unannounced and unasked for. Either way, once his mind was set he could do nothing but act.
“We need to talk to Eltern,” He said from his cocoon of friends. It was a terrible thing to take up the words to stop such a beautiful, softly loving thing as this cocoon; Even as he felt the cold ache of longing for this wonderful thing that he was about to leave, Michael could not stop himself from speaking. “I have some questions for him.”
Michael didn’t bother to knock as he entered Eltern’s office with the rest of the Exalted Heroes in tow. Eltern, for his part, looked up from the documents he quite possibly had grabbed in a split second decision to look busy for his unexpected guests.
“Exalted Michael,” Eltern said. It could be that Michael was prejudiced by this idea that had taken root in him, but it felt more like an act now than it had before, “what do I owe this pleasure.”
“We need to talk.” Michael said. “It’s about the Sword of Lakes.”
“Can this wait? I am terribly b…” Eltern shut up with a sharp exhale as Michael drove his shortsword into Eltern’s desk, burying the tip solidly in the wood.
“It most sincerely can not wait.”
Eltern took a deep breath, even in his state, Michael had to admit it was a powerful aura of fatherly disapproval to the gesture.
“Very well,” Eltern said. “Have a seat, all of you.”
Loath as he was to give Eltern any amount of time to recover, Michael did sit down on the chair opposite of Eltern’s desk. Behind him, Lex started conjuring stools for the rest. Michael made a mental note to thank them for how ride-or-die they was on this outburst of his. He wasn’t sure he’d give himself that kind of grace, in fact, him not doing so was central to many of his problems.
“So,” Eltern said before Michael could snap out of it to take the initiative. “You want to talk about the Sword of Lakes, do you?”
“Yes,” Michael said. “We searched Nih-Ka’s mansion for it, thoroughly.”
“No creepy crime-lord knickknack unexamined,” Felipe assented.
“And we didn’t even find the faintest clue the Sword had ever been there.”
“I was informed of this recently, yes. Regrettable, but perhaps not unexpected,” Eltern said. “We never were sure it was Nih-Ka who was behind the theft.”
“Bullshit,” Michael couldn’t help himself. “Maybe you weren’t sure, but you sure as shit was ready to let us believe he was.”
Eltern shrugged. “I’m no telepath, Exalted, if there are thoughts in your head you have none to blame about that than yourself.”
“Right, and the fact that we careened into this whole clusterfuck to murder a man you have made it perfectly clear you do not care for was quite convenient for you, wasn’t it?”
“I do not recall telling you to kill Nih-Ka,”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have to, would you? Nih-Ka was paranoid, dealing with internal strife. All it took was a spark and you’d have your assassination, and a stooge to go with it.”
“Now, Exalted, I want to be clear that I do not condone the murder, but if it helps you at all, Thereafter is a better place now that…”
“See I’m not so sure about that,” Michael interjected. “Nih-Ka was a criminal, but he kept things tidy. He kept the major movers and shakers from warring in the streets.”
“And it’s not like there are laws in Thereafter to break in the first place,” Alicia said.
“Details, details. In any state worth its salt Nih-Ka would be a criminal or worse.”
“Just like in any state worth its salt you would be king, right?”
“Now listen here young man, you forget yourself.”
“I do no such thing,” Michael leaned back. “We’ve wasted enough time on this. Lex, do you have the Truth Circle spell ready?”
“I keep telling you, it’s not a truth circle. But yes, it’s ready.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, just a little something something I asked Lex to come up with. It has quite the… harsh effect on people who utter things they know to be false.”
“You’re bluffing. There is no such spell.” Eltern’s eyes narrowed.
“Am I? There’s been no such spell yet.” Michael said, his face was neutral, which wasn’t a choice, he just had a hard time expressing emotions in the wake of the Nih-Ka-situation. “But in a city of thousands of cultures, each with their own magic, do you really think an ambitious and really clever spellweaver like Lex couldn’t put one together? Hell, do you actually know how magic works these days? I have it on good authority that you do not. That nobody does.”
Eltern was quiet for quite a while. Michael let him. It was a ploy on his end, but even so, Michael felt uncertainty ravage him. The truth that seemed so intuitive in his own head admittedly struggled somewhat in meeting Eltern’s easy confidence. Then, he saw it. It wasn’t a big thing. Hell, arguably it wasn’t even a tell, but the faint twitch that haunted Eltern’s left eye told Michael he was on the right track.
“This is absurd,” Eltern said. “No court in any world would accept any of this magic-compelled speech.”
“Good thing this isn’t going to a court then,” Michael said. “There’s no law in Thereafter, which means that if we believe you’re a bastard we’re just going to kick your ass and call it a day.”
“It’s not our cleverest plan,” Felipe said, “but on the bright side we’re decently sure we can do that without killing you, so that’s an improvement.
“Surely, you jest,”
“Verily, we do not.” Michael said. “If it’s killers we’ve become, it’s killers you have made us.”
Eltern sighed. “I guess you are entitled to knowing the truth, after all I’ve asked of you.” He reached out and gripped… something. Michael couldn’t quite focus his eyes on whatever it was as Eltern pulled the “it” out of the desk. “It may take your eyes a little bit to adjust.” Michael was about to ask what on earth Eltern was on about, then his ability to perceive the object came back, like one of those magic eye puzzles. Eltern was holding a long sword, one of those acutely heroic-looking weapons, from ostentatious pommel, to the finely crafted handle and exquisite guard. It was, however, the blade of the sword that caught Michael’s attention. The blade was like water. It unquestionably was some sort of steel, but there was a strange refractory quality to the metal that made it seem like the surface of a pond or, perhaps more fittingly, a lake.
For a brief second, Michael feared that Eltern was going to use the sword for the kind of work it was made for, but the fear faded as Eltern laid the blade down on his desk.
“This,” Eltern said, he sounded very tired to Michael’s ears, ”is the Sword of Lakes.”
“So it was never stolen?” Alicia asked.
“It never left the Castle,” Eltern answered.
“And Keegan?”
“He is currently spending some well-earned holiday time in a pocket dimension of my design,” Eltern said. “I have half a mind to keep him there after the hole he dug for himself with Nih-Ka, but this being a temporary arrangement was part of the deal.”
“Right,” Lex said. “Let me see if I got this right. Keegan comes to you, tells you he’s in debt to Nih-Ka and that he is putting on the squeeze, so you spirit him away and fake the theft of the Sword. Then you prod us to get into looking for the sword, knowing it’ll get us into trouble with Nih-Ka in some way shape or form.”
“Thus setting up a scenario where we kill the bastard for you,” Michael finished.
“Murder was never part of the plan,” Eltern insisted. “I was relying on you roughing him up, yes, but once the question of the sword came up, this’d let you know you were on the wrong track. I could then “recover” the sword whenever it was easiest and Nih-Ka would be discouraged from trying to put the squeeze on my people… there is one thing you have to understand.”
“Go on…”
“If I had not set these things in motion,” Eltern said, “I have no doubt in my heart Nih-Ka would have Keegan steal something important. I’m not sure it’d be the sword, but it would be something important.”
Michael wanted to respond, but he found a rage building up in him that blacked out anything sensible. Eltern had sent them careening towards a confrontation with Nih-Ka like they were common thugs in his employ. Even if it had resolved as amicably as he had envisioned, Nih-Ka would think twice about pushing on Keegan until he had found a way to manage the swift retribution. Besides, Michael was not entirely convinced Eltern had intended it to end peacefully. The murder of Nih-Ka, the murder Michael had committed, suited Eltern just fine.
“I guess that makes it OK, then,” Michael found himself saying, there was sharp irony in his voice that he had never heard before. It felt kin to the cold fire that was tearing at the walls of his chest. “What’s wrong with a little pre-emptive death sentencing in civilized society,”
“I did what had to be done,”
“You did what’d serve your own fucking goals you despicable coward. You made me a murderer with your shitty office politics.”
“Now now Michael, this isn’t the ideal outcome, clearly, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Something in Michael became unbound, or slipped loose. He saw red, he felt the cold fire burn out his mind. In retrospect, he remembered screaming profanities at Eltern, calling him, among others, a “two-faced judas” and “a quisling coward,” as well as several exotic varieties of the word “motherfucker” before Michael’s friends managed to escort him out of the room. He couldn’t remember how Eltern had reacted, but it almost didn’t matter. He had no faith in Eltern left, and whether he seemed contrite or not, Eltern had crossed the worst kind of line.
The night ended with a whimper rather than a bang as soon as Michael calmed down enough to think. He did cuddle up with the others in the Exalted Room for a bit, but his heart wasn’t in it, and it didn’t take too long before he excused himself to his room. He needed some alone time, some time to think, even though the conclusion, decision really, was clear as day in his head already.
Author’s Note: Of all the things I write that I have actual experience with, I believe arguments that make the jump to a fight is the thing I am worst at writing. There’s just so many layers of interpersonal stuff and outside context going on, and that’s without getting into how mixed in the emotions can be in the whole thing. It’s challenging, but I think I made the escalation work out pretty well in this one.
Next chapter is the last one in book 1, and after an epilogue chapter I’m going into a bit of a hiatus to outline book two. More details about that when we’re closer to it.
Catch you next time for the end of this beginning.
VSD