Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

The conversation goes on a few more minutes, but my attention is already split.

Veric understood the message. That was the easy part. The problem is giving him time to find Garen, explain who’s sitting in this room, and decide what to do without turning the Academy into a military operation.

Azurea Castle is close.

Even so, a few minutes can make a difference when the man who will one day assassinate the king is sitting across from me.

I open the HUD in the corner of my vision.

[OXI: 4,981 / 5,000]

Almost full.

I wait for Joseph to finish an explanation about suppliers tied to the northern routes before I raise my hand.

"I’m going to step out for a few minutes. My OXI dropped, and I saw a recharge station in the corridor on my way in."

Rae lifts his eyes to me, probably trying to remember the moment I spent any energy in this room.

"You know how it is... being close to two Rank A men is corrosive for my aura."

Joseph simply smiles.

"Of course. Go take care of that. It would be embarrassing to lose a promising Rank C to nineteen badly lit corridors."

I stand.

"I intend to survive."

"I hope so."

Joseph rests the golden gauntlet on the table. The blue runes between his fingers light up for an instant as he moves his hand.

"Just don’t try to run. If you take too long, Rae and I will come after you to make sure you’re safe."

The tone is light.

The intent behind it isn’t.

Rae lets out a small laugh, more from social convenience than genuine amusement.

"With two Rank A men worried about me, I’m starting to feel very protected."

Joseph smiles wider.

"That’s the idea."

I turn and leave.

The station is less than thirty meters ahead.

I set my hand under the energy arc and confirm the charge. A blue light runs across my wrist, the OXI answers through the newly widened channels, and the machine ends the process a few seconds later.

[OXI: 5,000 / 5,000]

[Scales: 1,654 > 1,653]

Nineteen points. One Scale.

A ridiculous excuse, now registered as truth. If anyone is watching, I really did use the machine.

The rest is time management.

I walk to another floor, stop by the restroom, drink water at a public station, and stand in front of an academic notice board for a few minutes, feigning interest in a list of cadet activities. I open Silver Fang notifications, answer a simple message from Richard about an ingredient question, and take a turn around the building’s outer corridor.

I don’t want to look like I’m hiding.

I want to look busy.

Almost twenty minutes later, I go back.

When I open the door, Joseph is laughing.

Not that small, controlled smile he used with me. He’s laughing with his body tipped back, one hand on his stomach and the other braced on the table. Rae also wears a smile, but there’s an obvious effort in it. The kind of expression you use when someone important is telling a story you already wish had ended.

Joseph is the first to notice me.

"Finally. I was already deciding which team to send to look for your body."

I go back to my chair.

"The machine held up. I took the chance to handle a few things along the way."

"Twenty minutes to recover OXI..."

"Academic administration has very interesting corridors."

Joseph laughs again.

Rae takes the pause to shift direction.

"We talked a little while you were out. Joseph raised a possibility that might be relevant to your plans."

I already dislike the sentence before I hear the rest.

Joseph turns his chair slightly toward me.

"Nothing immediate. Rae explained your relationship with Silver Fang better, and I believe I was approaching the subject too narrowly."

"That usually ends up expensive for me."

"In this case, it could end very well."

He rests his arms on his knees.

"You don’t have to abandon Leona Hartwell to work with us in the future. Silver Fang can stay your commercial partner. The LDP can keep moving through their channels. They’re useful relationships, and I see no benefit in destroying them."

The exit I’d been using just got smaller.

"And where would the Deepwarden come in?"

"In you."

Joseph says it as if describing the most obvious point of the conversation.

"Not in your factory. Not in Silver Fang. You could keep all of those ties and, when you decide to take on a larger affiliation, join the Deepwarden personally."

Rae comes in before I can answer.

"As the saying goes, you’ve already made clear you intend to go to the trenches. Joseph knows that environment better than any instructor I could put in front of you. Having a recognized structure behind your name before you arrive would eliminate several problems."

Now the two of them are building the same wall from different sides.

Rae in the role of the careful mentor.

Joseph offering protection.

I know where that ends.

"I don’t intend to join a guild before going to the trenches."

Joseph doesn’t react with irritation.

"May I ask why?"

"I want to know the place before taking on commitments that will decide who I can work with there."

"That reasoning works in civilized regions."

Joseph crosses his legs and points at me lightly with the gauntlet as he speaks.

"The Front isn’t an extension of the Academy, Sands. You can land on a bad route and die before you find the first outpost. You can sleep at an inn and discover the next day that the owner sold your location. You can cross an area controlled by a guild that decides to charge for the road after you’ve already entered it."

The gauntlet’s runes blink with the movement of his fingers.

"A Deepwarden symbol avoids most of that before anyone even asks your name."

He’s right.

That’s the problem.

The Deepwarden offers safety because it spent decades making it dangerous to exist without it.

"I still prefer to know the ground first."

Joseph watches me for a few seconds.

Rae tries to ease the friction.

"He isn’t asking you to sign anything today. We’re talking about a future transition. You could keep learning under the Academy, keep the commercial relationship with Silver Fang, and formalize something when you’re ready to enter the Front."

I look at Rae.

"When I’m ready, I can consider proposals."

"’Consider’ is a very comfortable word," Joseph says.

The smile is still there.

"It’s also an honest word."

"Honesty is great. It just gets a little tiring when it’s used as a shield."

The room shifts by degrees.

Joseph stays seated the same way. Rae still keeps his hands on the table. No aura has risen.

Even so, that conversation has stopped being commercial.

Joseph tilts his head.

"Is there a specific reason you don’t want to leave that door open?"

’It’s a bad question.’

Saying I don’t trust the Deepwarden would create another terrible question.

Explaining why would be impossible.

Showing enthusiasm would have even worse consequences.

"The door is open for proposals," I answer. "Not for early decisions."

Joseph goes quiet.

Then he laughs.

Low at first.

Then he lets out a breath and shakes his head, as if I were a boy insisting on an amusing argument.

"You really do make Rae work for his money."

Rae opens his mouth.

"Joseph—"

"No, it’s fine."

Joseph raises his hand.

The gauntlet comes with it.

The movement looks like part of the conversation until the arm keeps rising.

The blue core on the back points at my face.

I stay seated.

Joseph is smiling.

"Sands, I stepped out of my schedule, came all the way to the Academy, listened to an impressive amount of praise about you, and spent most of the morning offering solutions to problems you admit you have."

A luminous line appears inside the core.

Then another.

The runes between his fingers begin to light in sequence.

Rae stops smiling.

"Joseph."

"I’m joking."

He doesn’t look away from me.

The charge keeps building.

The air in front of the gauntlet starts to vibrate, and I feel my Horizon react before any conscious command. I hold the response back. Eventide could appear in my hand in an instant, but materializing it against a Rank A at this distance would only turn a political threat into an execution.

Joseph tilts his arm slightly, lining the center of the gauntlet up with my forehead.

"I just want to make sure my visit isn’t a big waste of time."

He laughs again, and that’s what makes the scene worse.

There’s no anger in his voice. No vein jumping in his neck. Joseph seems genuinely entertained.

"When the moment comes for us to have a serious conversation about your future, I expect some cooperation. Nothing dramatic. I don’t like turning simple things into problems."

The light in the gauntlet core gains density.

’I can feel the concentration of OXI from here. Damn lunatic...’

Rae pushes his chair back.

"Joseph, enough."

"Almost."

He narrows his eyes, still smiling.

That’s when something else crosses my range of senses.

An OXI signature so dense that Joseph’s presence seems to shrink.

’Rank SS.’

The effect runs through the room without any visible explosion. My body recognizes the difference before my head finishes the calculation. Joseph feels it in the same moment. So does Rae.

Joseph’s smile disappears for a fraction of a second.

"Damn... shit. Almost there."

The gauntlet’s energy dies.

He lowers his arm and rests his back against the chair as if nothing happened.

I search for the signature mentally.

’It isn’t Garen. He’s Rank S.’

’It isn’t Rahul either.’

After having that aura crushing my body on more occasions than I’d like to recall, I’d recognize the son of a bitch in my sleep.

The presence keeps advancing down the corridor.

’It’s really heavy, and they are making no effort at all to hide themselves.’

The door opens without a single knock.

The man who walks in looks like he was dressed for the wrong job.

The administrative robes of white silk with a high collar belong to some refined director who probably exists in another Academy. On Kaelen, they sit strangely. His shoulders are broad and heavy, built by a life carrying armor plate, and no elegant cut of fabric can erase the impression of a retired warlord trying to adjust to civilization.

A jagged purple scar crosses his left cheek. The track of a Deep-Sea crawler. The old contraction of the flesh pulls that side of the mouth upward, leaving a permanent cynical sneer on his face.

The eyes complete the image.

The right one is human and looks deeply bored.

The left is no longer an eye.

A red mana-gem turns inside the socket, slow and steady, casting a faint glow over the scar as it passes across the room.

First Rae.

Then Joseph.

The gem stops on the gauntlet.

Only then does it come to me.

Kaelen closes the door behind him.

"Joseph."

The voice fills the room without his needing to raise it.

Joseph has already recovered his social smile.

"Director."

Kaelen walks to the table.

"Why did I feel your signature rise while I was in the corridor?"

Joseph looks at his own gauntlet.

"A demonstration. Nothing important."

The red gem quickens a rotation.

Then points at me.

"A demonstration aimed at a student?"

The silence turns uncomfortable.

Rae tries to take the conversation.

"Director, we were discussing some commercial agreements related to the LDP’s expansion. The situation only—"

Kaelen raises a hand.

Rae stops.

The gesture doesn’t even carry OXI.

It doesn’t need to.

Joseph rests his elbow on the chair and tries to recover the lightness.

"There was no aggression. Sands and I were having a private conversation about some future possibilities. I think you read the rise in energy more seriously than we intended."

Kaelen looks at me.

"Was he intimidating you?"

Joseph answers first.

"I believe Sands can respond without help."

Kaelen slowly turns his face toward him.

The boredom in the human eye recedes.

"I wasn’t asking you."

Joseph breathes out through his nose.

"Director, with all due respect, this is a business meeting. I came as a representative of the Deepwarden and expected some discretion. I’m certain Valerius will find it interesting to learn that our conversations inside Azure Academy are interrupted this way."

Kaelen goes still.

The red gem keeps turning.

"Was that a threat?"

Joseph opens his hands.

"It was information."

The pressure erupts.

My chest sinks against the chair.

The air seems to gain weight, and the runic structures on the walls answer with small bluish pulses. Rae plants a foot against the floor as his own Rank A aura reacts on instinct. Joseph loses his smile, and the core of the gauntlet lights briefly before his own hand puts it out.

Kaelen doesn’t change his posture.

The white silk keeps covering that soldier’s body like borrowed clothes.

"I have Deepwarden members teaching in my classrooms," he says. "Others work in the laboratories, run sectors, and take part in my training fields. Do you know why?"

Joseph holds his gaze.

Kaelen steps closer to the table.

"Because I allow it."

The thunderous voice drops lower, but loses none of its force.

"Valerius’s men cross my gates because I consider some of them useful to this institution. As long as they’re here, they obey the rules of Azure Academy. Not the rules of the Deepwarden."

Joseph rises slowly.

The Rank gap doesn’t vanish because he’s irritated. Even so, pride is a common disease among people who survive long enough to reach the Abyssal.

"Maybe you should choose carefully how you speak about my superior."

The sneer from Kaelen’s scar seems to grow, though no new expression appears.

"Tell Valerius exactly how I spoke of him."

The red gem spins faster now.

"If he thinks letting his men work here has turned the Academy into his territory, he can come discuss it with me in person."

Joseph moves the gauntlet.

He doesn’t quite point it.

Rae has stopped pretending any amusement. He watches the two of them, trying to decide whether stepping in would save the meeting or just put his body between two men who could level this part of the building.

I stay seated.

This isn’t how I imagined buying time for Garen.

Kaelen advances half a step.

The Rank SS pressure follows the movement, making the runes on the walls pulse again. Joseph adjusts his feet, and the golden hand drops to his side, ready now for very different reasons than a few minutes ago.

The room is close to forgetting this began as politics.

That’s the moment a hand enters my field of vision and settles calmly on Kaelen’s broad shoulder.

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