Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

The rest of the day passes without me trying to fix anything else.

After the Team Battle, the talk with Freya, and the meeting with Rahul, my body can still move, but my head has hit its limit. I go back to my room at the Academy, close the COMM and the Forum, and fall asleep before some new problem finds a way to knock on the door.

The next morning, I wake early.

I sit on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, sorting through what has to happen in the next thirty days.

Four percent of experience. The Rank C wall. The team for the Deep Asylum. An exit route Rahul can’t provide. The Silver Fang has to keep producing without leaning on my decisions, and the factory still has to survive the attention the launch earned it.

Then I think about Rhayne.

When the chance came to return to Earth, Veric got a Reentry Pearl through the Azurea contacts. Oliver knew veterans and merchants who could find, lend, or sell a stone even when the market ran dry.

Rhayne stayed in Thirstfall.

She had no powerful family, no network of old teammates, nobody holding a pearl for the day she needed it. The others had roads back. She stayed behind because nobody opened one for her.

In the Team Battle, Rhayne pushed the Void Capacitor to ninety-nine percent to hold the link with me. She kept control of the Void Monarch and passed out after spending what was left to put Split Fang down.

I’ve already put weapons and gear in her hands and called it a gift.

This time I want to give her something that doesn’t have to help her kill anyone.

I’ll need three Reentry Pearls. One for me, one for Rhayne, one for Zhang Xi. Zhang Xi has to be part of the reentry plan. Rhayne has been diving a long time. She’ll need a healer willing to spend part of her ninety-six hours on Earth.

I know where to get all three.

The hard part is staying alive until the trade.

I find Zhang Xi in the ground-floor hall of the Bear Pelt. The inn is still quiet, only a few tables taken, warm bread coming out of the kitchen. She sits near a window, drinking tea and reading a small gray-covered book.

She closes it as I come over.

"You look better."

"Sleep helped."

"Good. You needed it."

I sit across from her.

"Are you planning to go back to Earth soon?"

She sets the cup down on the table.

"I’d go today, if I could."

"You couldn’t find a Reentry Pearl?"

"I looked before the Oathring. The few for sale already had buyers, or prices I’m not willing to pay." She watches me for a moment. "Why are you asking?"

"I can get one for you."

Zhang Xi doesn’t jump at it. She knows me well enough to look for the cost before she takes the offer.

"In exchange for what?"

"I want you to meet me on Earth and help me with something."

"What kind of something?"

"I need a healer I trust. Rhayne’s been submerged for years, and her body’s probably at its limit. I don’t want her coming back and burning her ninety-six hours on physiotherapy, sealed inside reconstruction machines."

She goes quiet, weighing it.

"You mean to take Rhayne to Earth."

"If she accepts."

"And where would I find you?"

"I still need Rhayne’s district. I’m in District Four. Northern suburbs."

She tilts her head a little. "I’m in District Six. I can reach District Four in about five hours by plane, depending on the connections."

"Close enough."

"You still haven’t explained how you plan to get three Reentry Pearls."

"I know a place."

"A shop?"

"A dungeon."

Her calm doesn’t shift, but her fingers stop around the cup.

"Is that why you need a healer?"

"No. It helps, but I need you on Earth. You know what it costs in global credits to hire a healer Diver willing to spend her own hours over there. You’d come back, and use part of it as payment for the pearl."

Zhang Xi thinks it over for a few seconds.

"I can do that."

"Good. That works."

She opens the book again but doesn’t go back to reading.

"What Rank?"

"I’ll tell you everything after I talk to her."

"Why wait?"

"Because I’m not building an expedition to drag Rhayne back to a place she might not want to see."

Zhang Xi accepts that.

"When you decide, send the details. If she takes the risk, I’ll come."

I thank her and leave the Bear Pelt before she finds another question I’m not ready to answer.

I touch behind my ear, opening the COMM as I head for the port.

"You awake?"

Rhayne’s answer comes fast. "I’m at the factory."

"Meet me on the terrace by the east quay. I want to talk."

She doesn’t ask what about.

When I arrive, two cups are already on an outdoor table at a small place near the factory. Rhayne picked a spot with a view of both the port and the building’s main entrance.

The ocean runs out until it meets the water-sky of Thirstfall. Morning light passes through both surfaces and dissolves the line of the horizon. Cranes swing crates between the ships, and the machine noise from the factories arrives muffled by distance.

Rhayne is in her combat clothes, hair pulled back. The red marks around her eyes have faded, though they’re still there when she turns to face me.

"Zhang Xi said I should rest," she says. "Richard said the factory would collapse if everyone decided to obey their doctors."

I sit across from her. "How are you feeling?"

"My head still aches when I try to gather OXI. They’ve banned me from any Void skill for the day."

"And you came to work."

"I came to watch. Richard’s running it."

I look toward the factory. "That’s probably hurting more than the overload."

"A little."

I pick up the cup. The tea is hot, not yet touched.

"I want to take you to Earth."

Rhayne doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes leave the factory and find mine.

"You got a Reentry Pearl?"

"Not yet."

"So you mean to buy one? They’re expensive."

"I mean to get three. One for me, one for you, one for Zhang Xi."

She lets her hair down, visibly uncomfortable with what I said.

"Why?"

"Because Veric and Oliver got to go back when the chance came. You didn’t."

Her expression barely changes, but she’s weighing every word now.

"Veric had the Azurea family. Oliver had enough contacts to find a stone. You stayed because you had neither."

"I’m fine—"

"That’s still true."

She looks out at the port. "You don’t have to make up for something you didn’t cause."

"I’m not making up for anything."

I wait until she looks back at me.

"Before we go into the Deep Asylum, I want you to have the chance to go home. You almost lost control in the arena because of a link with me. I’m not going to ask you to walk through another near-suicide door without giving you the chance to see Earth first."

Rhayne runs her thumb along the rim of the cup.

"You talk like you don’t expect everyone to come back from that prison."

"I do. I also plan to be ready in case I’m wrong."

She takes that without arguing.

"Where are these pearls?"

"A Rank C dungeon called the Ferryman’s Toll."

She sips her tea before answering. "Never heard of it."

"Few people look for it by its real name. The records don’t treat it as a trade dungeon. After you beat the guardian, there’s a hidden passage. At the center there’s an altar that produces one Reentry Pearl for every offering it accepts."

"What kind of offering?"

"A reliquary for a pearl."

Her hand rises toward one of the Moondrop Aegis earrings. I notice it before her fingers reach the stone.

"You don’t have to decide now."

She pulls the hand back, but her eyes stay on the earring.

"You said the altar demands an item."

"That’s how the rule got known."

Her eyes narrow. "And it isn’t?"

I drink a little before answering. "It doesn’t have to be something physical. The rule says a reliquary."

The crane noise fills the silence between us.

"What else could you hand over?"

"I’m not going to explain now."

"Why?"

"Because you’d start choosing based on what I said. The altar has to receive something true, without you weighing it first."

Rhayne doesn’t look satisfied, but she doesn’t ask again. She knows enough about Thirstfall to understand that some rules react to intent before they recognize the object.

"Has Zhang Xi already agreed to go in?"

"She agreed to hear the details once you decide. She’ll meet us in District Four. She’s in District Six, a few hours out."

"You arranged everything before talking to me. You don’t even know where I live."

"I know your accent. You’re close enough for me to reach you in a few hours. I just confirmed the third person could come. The rest is up to you."

Rhayne turns the cup between her hands.

"What’s the completion rate?"

I could lead with the advantages, walk her through the path, mention the mistakes the earlier teams made. She’d see the attempt.

"Five percent."

Her eyes go wide and her arms drop to her sides. "Five?"

"Most teams go in thinking all they have to do is reach the guardian. The ones who find the altar bring expensive gear, rare materials, everything they think is valuable. If the guardian doesn’t kill them, they try the trade, and it’s refused. Then they try to force the mechanism, or reach some other way out."

"And they die."

"Many."

"We’re two Rank D and one Rank C."

"Yes."

She sets her forearms on the table.

"You know a secret."

The tone isn’t a question.

"I know the path the first team that came out with pearls used. I know which of the guardian’s methods to use, which to avoid, and what the altar is actually looking for."

"So the five percent doesn’t matter."

"It matters."

The port wind moves a few strands of her hair.

"My memories belong to another future. The Chaos Theory has already changed people, meetings, places I knew. When it’s something the system built, it always makes everything harder. If the dungeon stayed close to what I remember, we go in with an edge none of the other teams had. Even so, everything can shift in there, and we’ll have to catch it before the difference kills us."

Rhayne looks out at the ocean.

"When do you want to go?"

"After Zhang Xi clears your OXI. Two or three days, if she signs off on the state you’re both in."

"Our link affinity is high. I can see you, feel you. What do you mean, only four percent left? You planning a rank up in there?"

"Long story. Sharma’s reward. But yes, probably."

She can tell I’ve already run the math on this.

"You want to go back to Earth, get experience, and test how ready we are before the Deep Asylum."

"I want three pearls. The rest is a useful side effect."

Rhayne finally drinks the whole cup. She stays quiet for a while, watching a ship pull away from the quay until it disappears into the brightness of the horizon.

"I want to go back to Earth," she says.

She says it quietly.

I don’t ask for whom, or for what. She’ll tell me when she wants to.

"Then I’ll confirm with Zhang Xi."

"Before that, I want to know one thing."

I wait.

Rhayne turns to face me.

"How hard is it, really?"

I look at the earrings she nearly offered before she even knew the rule, then out at the open water past the port.

"Hard enough to make a pearl look like the cheap half of the trade. And it’s the most coveted item in Thirstfall."

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