The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 395

Chapter 395

Chapter 393: Beneath Taegrin Caelum

NICO SEVER

My feet pounded along the bare floor of the long hallway. It was so, so long...had it been this long before? The pale lights blinking on and off, on and off...

I could hear them, the idiots in the crowd, cheering as if my entire world wasn’t about to end, as if he wasn’t going to kill her. When had my friend become so blinded by his desire to rule?

In the distance, I could just see the miniscule arch of a paler light at the end of this tunnel that seemed to stretch from the beginning of my life straight to its end.

Something moved to my right, and I flinched away from it, then slowed, my rushed steps becoming an awkward sideways shuffle as I tried to both stay still to watch and continue to move forward. Through a sort of window in the hallway wall, an image was playing.

A group of adventurers were gathered in a small clearing in the woods. The Beast Glades, I remembered. Introductions were being made to a young boy in a white mask that covered his face, but not the telltale auburn hair draped around it. “Elijah Knight. A-class, dark orange conjurer. Single specialization in earth.”

The voice shivered through me like an electrical shock. It was my voice, except...it also wasn’t. This was my memory, but not. Elijah Knight had been my false name growing up in Dicathen, when my real self was subdued, hidden—no, taken from me.

I’d thought most of these older memories were buried. I’d purged them. Elijah’s purpose had been to grow close with Arthur, but he was weak, a tool that had served its purpose and been tossed aside. That wasn’t me. He wasn’t me. These weren’t my memories.

I could hear Grey and Cecilia fighting in the distance. The sounds of their blades hammered against one another, each resounding clang a near-death blow in my electrified, nerve-wracked mind.

I began to run again.

More memories of Eiljah Knight’s brief life flashed by to either side: The Dire Tombs, Xyrus Academy, his growing bond with Arthur, the kindness from the Leywins and Helsteas, Tessia Eralith...

Enough with these things, I ordered. I don’t care. I don’t want these memories.

“What a mess,” one of the lights said, flickering nervously.

I slowed again, staring at it. Since when did lights speak?

“This? I thought it cleaned up well enough. A few more hours and he won’t even know he was cut open,” a man said, his voice coming from a television screen tucked away in the corner between the shallow ceiling and unadorned wall of the endless hallway.

“Didn’t you hear? Vechor was attacked. A staging area for the war in Dicathen completely wiped off the map,” the light answered with a pulse of brightness.

“You know I’ve been down here for days. I haven’t heard anything. What time is it, even?” The man on the television looked around, a comically weary expression on his face. “We’ve been the only ones down here for hours. I’m tired as a wogart boar after breeding season.”

“Sovereigns. You’re gross sometimes, you know that?”

Below the screen, a window into another memory showed young Arthur stepping into the room we’d shared at Xyrus Academy. “Arthur!” Elijah yelled, grabbing Arthur firmly.

“There, there. Yes, I’m still alive. You can’t get rid of me that easily,” came the sarcastic response.

“I know,” Elijah said with a wet sniffle. “You’re like a cockroach.”

I had been so thrilled to have my best friend back. Bile rose up in my throat. The best friend who murdered my one true love...

“No,” I ground out through clenched teeth, tears welling up from the corners of my eyes. “I don’t care about any of this. Where is Cecil? Show me Cecilia!”

I felt the light grow brighter, almost like it was leaning toward me. “Did he say something?” it asked.

“Shit, let’s finish cleaning him up and get him back to his room,” the man in the television said. “Agrona won’t be happy if he wakes up on the table, and I sure don’t want to be the one to explain what happened.”

Wakes up? I thought, repeating the words to myself. Why would...

A dream, I realized with a jolt. Only a stupid dream.

Wake up!

My eyes snapped open. The damp-darkened stone of a low ceiling filled my vision. Two blindingly bright lighting artifacts on moveable stands were illuminating my bare, blood-covered torso. There was a cross-shaped incision over my sternum, the edges raw as the flesh slowly knit itself back together, the entire wound shining with a chemical-smelling ointment.

A woman in red robes approached, focused on wetting a square of cloth from a bowl on a table next to me. Then, she met my eyes, and froze. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

I tried to move and realized my wrists were shackled to the table. Kicking out experimentally, I confirmed my legs were as well. I tensed. The thick, worn leather creaked as I strained against it. A feeling of panic rose up in me as my strength flagged, then the bindings finally snapped, and there was a loud ping as a rivet ricocheted off the wall.

The woman let out a startled gasp, and the other voice cursed as something metallic clattered to the ground.

“S-Scythe N-Nico,” the woman sputtered, taking a step back and bowing.

With my free hand, I unstrapped my other wrist and sat up.

I was resting on a cold metal table at the center of a sterile, largely empty room. The air pressed close around me, heavy with moisture. The woman slowly lowered her rag back into its bowl, which sat on a small bench next to a tray of tools, some still slick with blood. A larger table was pressed against one wall, and several implements I didn’t immediately recognize were arrayed across it, along with an open notebook.

Metal scraped on the ground, and I turned to see a man in the same white robes. He was slowly putting several metal pins back onto a tray that he must have dropped when I woke.

“What did you say?” I asked, but when the man looked confused, I realized it had been some time since anyone had spoken. “What don’t you want to explain?”

I wasn’t sure what was happening or where I was. The last thing I remembered, I’d been in Vechor, and—

Grey!

My hand went to the cross cut into my sternum. I reached for my mana, a half-remembered nightmare of my core being destroyed lapping at the edges of my mind.

My core felt strange. Distant, both mine and not mine. Just like the Elijah memories. I ground my teeth against the thought.

A blood iron spike manifested from the shadows beneath the table and sank into the man’s chest. His eyes bulged madly as he clawed at the spike, but his movements quickly became lethargic, and within seconds his limp body sagged, his blood running along the smooth black metal in little rivers before dripping to the damp floor.

Icy claws raked at my insides, my core a heavy ball of pain in my sternum, and it was all I could do to hold on to the magic.

“W-what happened to me...” I turned back to the woman, holding myself on one trembling elbow. “What were you doing to me?”

She had shrank back a step but was paralyzed by my gaze. “The High S-Sovereign, he...he...”

Both her hands came up, and a weak shield of light blue transparent mana hummed into existence between us. She turned to run and slammed into a second spike. From my angle, the sharp point speared out of her lower back, and a crimson ring began to stain her white robes.

Cold sweat broke out across my brow at the effort of casting and the pain it caused me. My arms shook as I broke the ankle restraints, and I had to support myself on the side table as I maneuvered around to the woman’s front.

The spike had gone in just above her hip and was pinning her in place, but it was thin, its form a weak, trembling thing, just like me.

Despite the pain and fatigue, I took hold of her chin and forced her to face me. “What were you doing to me?”

“W-wanted to understand...examining your...core,” she gasped. “She...healed it. But it’s...imperfect...”

I pressed my fingers into the incision marks again. These two had opened me up and poked around inside my body. They hadn’t asked, hadn’t even planned on telling me. I felt no anger at this, which in itself seemed remarkable. I was always angry, now. My temper burned like a forgefire right beneath my skin, and any gust of adversity made it flare bright and hot.

Except...

I looked at the woman. Really looked at her. She had dull brown, unremarkable eyes, and mousy hair that matched it almost exactly. Worry lines were etched into her face, and she had patches of chewed skin on her lips, which I could picture her biting with nervous curiosity as she peered at my insides like I was a bullfrog pinned to the table.

“What happened at the Victoriad? Did we capture Grey? Kill him?”

I read the answer in the woman’s face. Her eyes dilated, leaking frightened tears that mixed with the snot dribbling from her nose. Her lips parted then squeezed shut, the muscles in her jaw working silently.

And I felt...

Nothing.

Soulfire jumped to life over the metal of the spike, then raced along the trail of her blood and into her body. Her brown eyes rolled back in her head, and she screamed, but only for a moment. The soulfire was in her lungs an instant later, and she was dead. Not because I was angry, but simply because she didn’t matter.

I dismissed the two blood iron spikes I had summoned, letting the bodies fall unceremoniously to the floor, then slumped back against the wall and slid down it into a sitting position. There, I could only wait for the pain and weakness to recede.

My attention turned back to the room.

There were two exits. Through an open door led, I could see a small room with a desk and shelves full of scrolls and journals. After a few minutes of rest, I pushed myself up on the wall and moved to investigate the contents, but there was nothing there of interest. It did, however, lead me back to the open book on the table in the examination room.

The notes were in runic shorthand. I flipped through several pages until I got the jist of it, then spent a few more minutes perusing the contents.

It only confirmed what I’d already guessed.

Cecilia had saved me. She had used her powers as the Legacy—her absolute control over mana—to heal my core after Grey destroyed it. But it wasn’t as strong as it had been before. With time, perhaps I could regain what I’d had. Agrona would allow me another rune or two, I was certain. That would force my core to clarify further.

“And if it doesn’t...” I said aloud, but stopped, surprised that the numbness I felt was captured so clearly in my voice. I was certain the weakness of my core and my magic would infuriate me later, but right now, in the moment, in this place, within the aftereffects of whatever these researchers had done to me, I only felt calm.

No, not even calm. I felt...nothing. Except, perhaps, a mild sense of curiosity.

The second door was closed and barred. I pulled the bar from its housing and let it drop heavily to the floor, then opened the door.

I found myself in a wide, high-ceilinged corridor. I could sense the weight of the earth-attribute mana pressing in around me; wherever I was, it must have been deep underground.

To my right, the corridor opened up into a large space that looked and felt like a cross between a scientific laboratory and a dungeon. I’d been in too many similar facilities in Taegrin Caelum, being poked and prodded and tested.

Bitter bile burned the back of my throat, and I spit on the floor.

The lab wasn’t currently occupied, and I sensed nothing interesting in that direction, so I turned left instead. Several sources of mana radiated weakly further down the hall, and I was in no hurry to return to the fortress above. The surgical wounds on my bare chest itched, and my core ached.

I wasn’t ready to face any of that yet, not Agrona’s disappointment or Cecilia’s worrying. Down here in the cool dungeons, I felt at home in the loneliness. It was difficult to admit even to myself, but I was enjoying the apathetic catatonia that had replaced the ever-present rage always burning in my chest.

And so I followed the hallway, curious about what secrets might be buried beneath Taegrin Caelum.

The stone of the floor and walls were occasionally marred with gouges like claw marks, and old blood discolored it in streaks and smears. Labs, offices, and surgical rooms opened off both sides, some closed and locked, others open, but all empty and uninteresting.

Then I reached the first cell.

The next few cells passed by without my focusing on them beyond acknowledging that they contained more prisoners. No one as interesting as the phoenix asura, but then, I was regretting having stopped to speak to her. Her attempts to barter for her freedom had instantly upset the fragile balance of my emotions, and I could feel the blessed blankness being eaten up by my anger. Acknowledging this only sped up the process. _{fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓}