The Beginning After The End Chapter 292

Chapter 292

Chapter 292: Missing Pieces

It was with a pang of regret that I sat down with the stone cube I’d received from the djinn projection during my first adventure in the Relictombs. After my early attempts at understanding the relic back in Maerin, I had spent very little ti studying the geotric shapes within.

Still, my previous interaction with the keystone must have done sothing; the Relictombs had sensed that I had so knowledge of this edict of aether, whatever it was, and drawn us into this zone to test . Or perhaps it sensed the cube itself, tucked away in my extradinsional storage rune, and that alone was enough to bring us here.

For being a peaceful people, the djinn seed to have a very dark thodology in how they trained and protected their aetheric arts.

Settling myself cross legged on the floor with the cube in my lap, trusting in Regis and Haedrig to watch over while I worked, I began.

As before, I imbued aether into the relic, and its aether reached back out to . My vision faded into a wall of purple, and I pushed through it, finding myself once again surrounded by the countless floating and spinning geotric shapes.

Using aether, I was able to manipulate the shapes, moving and sorting them to try and make sense of their aning. I felt like an infant playing with alphabet blocks. There was no rhy or reason to the geotric forms, and although I could interact with them, I didn’t have any foundation for understanding, no idea what I was supposed to be doing.

Still, I had to believe the djinn wouldn’t have given this relic if there was no way for to solve it. I started by collecting similarly shaped symbols and organizing them into groups. Next, since they were geotric and not rune based, I looked for ways in which they fit together, treating it like an abstract puzzle.

This seed easy at first, as there were enough shapes that I was always able to find a piece to fit. Once I had a couple dozen pieces locked together, however, I realized the problem. Before , a sprawling, multi-directional fractal had taken shape, but I had run out of pieces that would connect to the shape I had created.

With no other choice, I broke the puzzle down and began again.

All the while, I felt my aether being drawn from and consud by the cube. Its sucking force wasn’t as bad in the Relictombs as it had been when I’d studied the keystone in Maerin, allowing to stay in longer, but it still put a limit on the amount of ti I could spend working on the relic in a single sitting.

I organized my pieces again, then began building the puzzle for the second ti, keeping in mind which pieces I had used during my first attempt. This ti, however, I found myself at a dead end even sooner, but I was too tired to restart again.

My eyes snapped open, and it took a mont for my mind to make sense of the mirror room with its constant movent and small army of reflected figures.

Regis was curled up in front of , one eye open and tracking the others closely. Ezra and Haedrig appeared to be asleep, while Kalon watched over Ada. Her mouth had been covered to muffle the constant stream of vitriol and lies.

“How long was I out?” I asked, startling Kalon, who practically jumped up to his feet.

He cleared his throat and sat back down. “Several hours, at least. Did you do...whatever you were trying to do?”

“I made so progress,” I replied elusively. I had a feeling he wouldn’t like to hear that I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.

From his bench on the other side of the fountain, Ezra said, “It’s been hours, and all you can say is you’ve made ‘so progress’?”

The young ascender stood up, glared at , and turned away, stomping off into the gloom.

“I’d already spent hours studying the...device before we got here,” I said, speaking to Kalon. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I’m doing what I can.”

His expression stoic, Kalon asked, “Are you sure there isn’t anything we can do to help?”

“Just don’t let your brother stab while I’m in there,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

Kalon laughed, causing the restrained and gagged Ada to snarl at him and twist within her bindings as if the sound pained her. Kalon gazed at her sadly for a mont before turning back to . “Do what you need to do, Grey.”

I felt like a well-wrung sponge; nearly every drop of my aether had been expended. I didn’t need much sleep, but I did need ti to replenish my aether core.

Standing, I ran through a series of martial movents Kordri had taught back in Epheotus to help get the stiffness out of my limbs. After several minutes of the routine, I sat back down beside Regis and began the process of absorbing ambient aether.

I felt my companion shifting nearby before I heard his voice in my head.

‘What’s it look like in there?’

I’m not sure how to describe it, honestly. I thought about the disparate shapes, the patterns I had designed, the walls of aetheric energy caging it all...What does it feel like when you go inside my body?

‘It’s sort of like swimming.’

I opened my eyes, breaking my ditation, and stared at Regis. The shadow wolf shrugged his shoulders.

‘You asked.’

Closing my eyes, I focused on the aether around , on drawing it through my aether channels and into my core. Inside of that relic, it’s pure knowledge. I feel like I’m trying to understand the contents of a complicated book by burning it and breathing in the smoke.

‘Any idea how much knowledge you need to inhale to get us out of here?’

More, I thought. A lot more.

***

The third attempt to put the puzzle pieces together wasn’t exactly a charm, but I did reach an unexpected mont of understanding. Without consciously making a decision to do so, I stopped trying to use all the pieces and instead just built a large cube.

The shape was relatively straightforward, fitting together naturally in my mind. Once I’d decided what to build, it almost seed as if the pieces presented themselves to when they were needed.

When the cube was complete, it began to glow and shimr like oil on water, then the lines of the individual pieces faded away until a solid, shimring box floated in front of . The oil-slick ripples settled and fell still, and each of the cube’s six faces lit up like an electronic screen from my previous life, showing the hall of mirrors.

Regis was still at his place by my side. Kalon now slept while Ezra watched over his sister. Haedrig, I was surprised to see, had his hand against one of the mirrors, apparently deep in conversation with its inhabitant. Nothing they said was audible, however. In fact, no sound ca from the cube at all.

I was at a loss. Though I’d clearly made so kind of breakthrough, I didn’t understand how this window to the outside world helped , or what it revealed about the edict of aether I was attempting to master.

Leaving the cube for the mont, I began building a second, smaller box with the remaining pieces. What I ended up with, however, looked more like a sharp-edged lump of dough than a true cube, as I lacked the pieces to make it perfect.

It took three more attempts, building the shape smaller each ti, to create a second perfect box. I waited, but nothing happened—no lights, no coalescence of energy, no visions of the outside world.

That’s when I had my second mont of understanding.

What if the cube—or, theoretically, any shape—represented the subconscious knowledge of so aspect of the edict of aether I was trying to learn? If I assud that the act of this puzzle-building was taphorical for studying the edict itself, then studying the sa thought—represented by the shape I built—would not move further toward understanding the whole.

With this in mind, I deconstructed the smaller square, but by then my aether core was near empty.

When I opened my eyes, I found things just as I had seen them projected by the screens.

“H-Haedrig,” I said, finding my voice croaky from misuse.

The ascender’s hand pulled away from the mirror whose inhabitant he had been speaking with and he quickly walked toward .

I took a long drink from the skin of water that rested at my side, dribbling so down my chin.

“Careful with that,” Haedrig said. “We may all regret not packing as many supplies as you before we escape this place.”

“How long?”

“I’d say maybe twelve...fifteen hours since you went in.” Haedrig was watching carefully, almost nervously.

‘Actually, it’s been thirteen hours and forty-eight minutes. Not that I’m counting or anything.’

“Wow. I’m lasting longer at least.”

“And we’re about out of food!” Ezra cut in, looking at incredulously. “Are you hoping to just stay in there until the rest of us starve to death?”

“You should be rationing your supplies,” I snapped, but before Ezra could respond I drew my food bundle from the extra dinsional storage rune on my forearm and tossed it to him. “I can get by for a few days.” Glancing at Haedrig, I added, “Make sure that gets split up—and rationed this ti.”

Ezra tossed the bundle onto the bench next to him and sat back down. “Thanks, hero.”

Haedrig took a seat next to and drank from his own flask. When I stayed silent, he turned to and raised a brow. “How are you doing?”

I shook my head. “I made so progress, but no epiphany yet.”

“That’s not what I ant.” Haedrig took another drink, then abruptly stopped himself before storing his flask in his dinsion ring. “Look at , not heeding my own advice.”

We sat in silence for a mont as I began replenishing my aether.

Haedrig cleared his throat. “So, aether...”

I sighed. Though I was loath to discuss it, I was also surprised it had taken so long for one of them to bring it up after I ntioned aether to the false-Ada. The best way to lie, I had decided, was to tell as much of the truth as possible.

Speaking quietly so Ezra wouldn’t overhear, I said, “This isn’t my first trip into the Relictombs, though you couldn’t call my previous visit an ascent, really.”

Haedrig seed entirely unsurprised by this revelation, giving a deadpan look. “Thank you for finally stating the obvious.”

“I woke up in a sanctuary room, half-dead, with no mory of how I’d got there. The first room I ca to was full of these awful, zombified-chira-things, and they almost killed , but while I was fighting them I realized I could use a new kind of magic. Aether.”

Haedrig gestured toward Regis. “The wolf?”

“Yeah, he was the first manifestation. Then I learned that...teleportation trick I used to get us out of the last zone.” When Haedrig only nodded, I turned to et his eye. “You seem surprisingly relaxed about all this.”

“I knew there was sothing different about you,” he answered with a shrug. “I could sense it. To be honest, it’s why I wanted to join you on your ascent. To see what would happen around you.”

I thought back to Alaric’s description of the Relictombs, and how it changed based on who was within it. So ascenders, he had told , would take every ascent with a new group, hoping to discover new and unexplored reaches of the ancient mages’ creation.

“And the djinn?”

“It’s what the ancient mages called themselves,” I answered truthfully. They were gone, thanks to the Indrath Clan, and I couldn’t see any harm in sharing the na now. “I found a...spirit, or manifestation, or sothing...it’s what gave the relic.”

Haedrig shook his head and gave a look of purest amazent. “You’ve discovered more about the Relictombs in two ascents than I have in twenty. You lucky wigeon.” His eyes fell to the relic in my lap. “Still, risky to have held onto that. The Vrita—Sovereigns would skin you alive if they knew you’d discovered a relic and not handed it over the second you were out of the Relictombs.”

“Fortunately for ,” I said, thinking about the imbecilic guards who t at the exit portal in Maerin, “I ca out in a little backwater town. They were as surprised to see there as I was to be there.”

“Lucky wigeon,” he said again, shaking his head.

“How are things out here?” I asked after a short pause. It felt good to just...talk, and I realized I didn’t want our conversation to end so soon.

“Tense and sullen,” Haedrig answered matter-of-factly. “The boy’s near to boiling over. He’s eaten through his rations and half of what we pulled out of Riah’s dinsion ring. Subjecting himself to the anger and fear from the reflections isn’t helping, but he didn’t stop even when his brother commanded him to.”

“They’re practically manifestations of his own inner turmoil,” I said, thinking about my life as Grey after Headmaster Wilbeck was murdered. I had fanned the flas of my rage in any way I could. “I guess it’s cathartic for him.”

Haedrig only grunted, and we lapsed into silence.

Casting about for a topic of conversation, I suddenly rembered Haedrig’s reaction when I had asked the false-Ada about aether earlier.

“Back on the topic of aether,” I started, sowhat unsure how to ask what I wanted to know. “Earlier, when I ntioned it...well...you seed surprised.”

Haedrig t my eye then looked down at the ground, letting his green hair fall over his face. “You’re observant, Grey. You’ve—you’ve shown a lot of trust in . If the wrong person found out how you’d co to that relic, you could be executed.”

There was no hint of a threat in Haedrig’s words. Instead, he sounded genuinely grateful for the trust I’d shown him; I’d told the others only that it was a device for housing knowledge, and hoped that would be enough to satisfy their curiosity for the ti being.

“I’ve studied aether a bit,” he continued, “but that’s not sothing I can talk about often. It’s not a...polite topic of conversation in most circles, and my family doesn’t approve. In fact,” he added with a bitter laugh, “my family doesn’t really approve of anything I do. They expect to sit at ho like a good little—”

Haedrig cut himself off and shot an embarrassed glance. “Sorry, family is a bit of a sore subject for .”

“I can empathize,” I said with a sad smile. “No matter how hard we try, we can’t be perfect sons.”

“No, we cannot,” Haedrig replied, sowhat bitterly. “Perhaps my birth parents would have thought differently, but I wasn’t raised by my own blood. The house that brought up—well—they do not appreciate my aspirations as an ascender.”

“But ascenders are so highly regarded in”—I stopped myself from saying “Alacrya,” instead fumbling for a mont before finishing—“in most families.”

“Oh, don’t get wrong; my adopted blood is very eager to establish renown as both soldiers in the war against Dicathen and as ascenders, whether through blood or patronage. But I wasn’t ant for this life...at least, not according to them.”

Before I could say more, Headrig stood and straightened his armor. “I’m sorry, Grey, but I think I’d like so ti alone with my thoughts. I’ll leave you to your ditation.” After a mont’s pause, he added, “Thank you for listening,” then walked away.

‘I didn’t think it was even possible, but that guy seems to have as many secrets as you,’ Regis said with a chortle. The shadow wolf was curled up between and Ezra, his eyes closed, though clearly he had been paying close attention.

You think he’s another Dicathian stranded in Alacrya and hiding his identity to avoid being hunted down by the Vritra? I grinned and pushed at Regis’s backside with my boot.

‘No, you fool, but he’s definitely not telling us everything.’

You may be right. Still, I can’t help but trust him. I hadn’t realized it until that mont, but it was true. Despite myself, despite our short accaintence, I trusted Haedrig to watch my back. I couldn’t say the sa from the Granbehl brothers.

‘Whatever. Trust away, but if he does anything weird I’ll still bite his arm off.’

Smiling and shaking my head, I went back to my diation, preparing myself for yet another attempt at the keystone.

***

When I pushed through the purple wall surrounding the field of geotric shapes, I found the cuboid screen still intact. Within it, I watched Haedrig walk down the shadowy hall, his eyes down, his expression thoughtful.

My perspective shifted, focusing instead on Ezra as he stood up and walked toward . Regis imdiately abandoned his pretense of being asleep, lifting his head and gazing at Ezra. The young ascender stopped, t the shadow wolf’s eyes for several seconds, then turned to walk away, though he stayed close enough to keep an eye on Ada.

I forced my consciousness away from the screen, focusing instead on the remaining shapes. I already knew that creating another cube served no purpose, so I began building the first thing that ca to mind: a pyramid.

It was more difficult than the cube. The pieces didn’t seem to fit together correctly. They didn’t jump out at like they had before, guiding , and so I found myself dismantling and rebuilding the shape again and again. By the ti my aether core was empty, I still hadn’t discovered the right pieces to complete a satisfactory pyramid.

Still, once my mind was set on it, I felt compelled to see it through. I knew instinctively there had to be a way to combine the shapes and figures into the image in my mind, and the next ti I entered the keystone, I tried again.

But it wasn’t until my third day—my trips into the keystone were lasting nearly sixteen hours by this point, with the remaining ti dedicated to replenishing my aether and getting a little sleep—that I succeeded in forging a perfect tetrahedral pyramid.

As before, the pieces shimred and ford a solid shape, and when the glow receded, each of the pyramid’s faces showed an image, just like the cube. Each image was of the mirror room, but there was sothing very wrong with what I was seeing.

In the first picture, I could see myself sitting cross-legged on the floor with the keystone in my lap, Regis sitting in front of , and Kalon watching over Ada. The strangest sense of deja vu washed over , and I realized that this had been the mont I had first seen in the cuboid display when I had completed it.

What in the world?

In the second image, the mirror room was empty except for the dozens of imprisoned ascenders. Then an opalescent portal appeared hanging in mid air, and I stepped out.

Despite being in a room full of mirrors for the last few days, I hadn’t spent much ti looking at myself since my body had been rebuilt. It was strange to think that the man in the image flinching and preparing to defend himself was .

My pale wheat hair whipped around when I turned toward the reflections moving in the mirror, thinking I was going to get attacked. My golden eyes narrowed as I glared around the room, then widened in surprise at what they saw.

“Who—who are they?” I heard myself ask.

Then Kalon and Ezra appeared, bumping into . “What the hell?”

I was seeing the past, I realized, as if it had been captured by a recording artifact. The cuboid shape showed the present. In the faces of the pyramid, I could watch the past play back like a ho video.

Using aether, I spun the pyramid around to better see the third and forth sides. The mirror rooms shown by those facets were empty of people, but when I looked closely I realized more of the mirrors were empty in these visions.

They must be older than the others, I thought, which made sense when I considered the two different sides showing and my party.

If the first shape shows the present, and the second shape shows the past...

My heart beat rapidly as I considered the third shape. Was it possible?

My attention was drawn back to the cube. Haedrig sat next to Regis, his fingers running through the shadow wolf’s thick mane. Regis’s eyes were closed, his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth—the very picture of a satisfied pet enjoying a good scratch.

Traitor, I thought, smiling.

Behind them Kalon was sitting with Ada, his head in his hands, and Ezra was standing before one of the mirrors, his hand pressed against it.

I let out a sigh. Fool. The boy was only torturing himself by interacting with those spirits. They had nothing to share but their madness and hatred. Listening to them would only drive him to darkness and despair.

Turning back to the images visible on the sides of the pyramid, I watched as our ti in the mirror room played out again. I found it difficult to turn away, watching for the second ti as Ada was taken by the phantom.

The false-Ada skittered across the room unseen, distracted as we all were, and crawled up on top of Riah. Riah seed unconscious, but she still flinched away when Ada leaned down, then pressed her lips against Riah’s.

Riah convulsed, one sharp, unnatural jerk, then fell still, pale as a ghost.

The phantom had sohow drawn the lifeforce directly out of Riah, killing her instantly. I had assud it was so kind of aetheric being, like most of the monsters in the Relictombs, but I hadn’t seen anything as powerful or deadly as this.

In front of , the false-Ada, now restrained, snapped forward, almost biting Kalon. No, not biting—almost kissing Kalon. We’d had no idea how close to death he had been in that mont.

I shook away the thoughts spiraling in my mind. Reliving these past monts was a trap, like living life in a circle.

I needed to start building the next shape...and I knew exactly what it needed to be.