Edge Cases

End of Book 1. Chapter 63: Revelation in the Night

End of Book 1. Chapter 63: Revelation in the Night

It was a small celebration, really. Sev heard Orkas say that he would have preferred it to be bigger, but there hadn't been time to gather everything they needed part of why they had taken so long to reach the Guild to begin with was because they'd sent out several of their hunters and gatherers to try to collect food, both to lessen the burden they would place on the Guild and to gather enough for a small feast.

But it really was a small feast, and Sev felt a little guilty that he was part of the celebration at all. Misa wanted him there, he knew, and yet the food was so scarce; what was placed out on the tables barely seemed enough to feed all the villagers, let alone two extra mouths...

Then again, Misa had scoffed and told him to ignore it, when he'd brought up the problem.

It turned out that every villager had already had dinner the feast that was laid out here wasn't meant to be a replacement for a meal. It was meant to be a small celebration of the village, with all the popular dishes that were often shared by the best cooks they had.

Or the worst, in a few cases. It was a celebration of the little bit of culture they'd developed together as a village. That didn't mean that all of it was good.

"You should try the bloodberry pie!" Charise beamed at him. "Adremel made it. He's our resident blacksmith. Very quiet, keeps to himself, basically just bakes this every time we have a village gathering."

Behind her mother, Misa rapidly shook her head. Sev blinked at her once, then at the slice of pie that Charise was offering him. It steamed and... bubbled?

Why was the pie bubbling?

He couldn't exactly... refuse? Because he could see Adremel, staring at him with a look that he absolutely could not read. The lizardkin stood in the corner of the gathering with his arms crossed, rebuffing most attempts to speak to him with a short glare except for Vex, who was rambling animatedly about enchanting onto metal. Adremel didn't seem to mind him.

Sev swallowed, looking at the pie Charise was offering him, and with far more drama than was probably necessary he took the place, carefully sliced into the pie with his fork, and took a bite.

It was delicious. Flaky pastry, some sort of chocolate-strawberry taste that sparked over his tongue. Sev paused, taking a moment to savor the flavor.

Then he glared at Misa. "You made me think this was bad!"

"It's tradition," Misa said with a grin. "We make everyone think Addy's pies are bad when they first try them. All the kids think he can't cook because he's a blacksmith."

"Turns out blacksmiths are really good at controlling fire," Charise said cheerfully, and Addremel grunted in the background, as if in agreement.

"Bloodberries require a lot of fine temperature control," the blacksmith explained after a moment, when the conversation between him and Vex paused. "Too hot and they taste burnt. Too cold and you can't really bring out the flavor, and they taste like overprocessed chocolate."

"The fire mana does something to the flavor, I think," Vex added.

"Now it's your turn!" Charise swung yet another slice of the pie, this time towards Derivan, who took the plate and stared at it awkwardly.

"I am... unable to taste?" he said.

"Don't worry about it," Charise said with a grin. "I got our skeleton friend to taste some stew, I can help you too. We just need our resident [Taste Tester]. Michael!"

A short, brown-haired kid popped up. "Wha?"

"We need your [Remote Tasting] skills again," Charise said cheerfully. Michael brightened.

"I get to have more pie?"

"Not too much," Charise warned, but he was already reaching greedily for the plate; Sev grinned a little as the kid nearly gobbled down the pie. A faint glow was the only hint that he'd used [Remote Tasting] at all.

Poor Derivan seemed mostly overwhelmed.

"This is what taste is like?" he asked. He moved his head experimentally around, as if trying to work at the phantom taste he was experiencing, though Sev had no idea what it felt like to him. "I am... unsure what to think."

"I was hoping he'd be more wowed," Vex stage-whispered to him. He was watching the display with wide eyes, though, clearly interested in Derivan's experience of a new sensation.

"Eh, cut him a break. It's his first time experiencing any kind of taste. For all he knows it's fucked," Misa said dryly, then glanced at Addremel. "Uh, no offense."

The skill box appeared in front of him a second later.

[Look Up] [Active Skill] [Grade: Maxed]

Look up and remember. Onyx

Sev glanced upwards. It was a message, then, in the form of a skill? There was nothing unusual, as far as he could tell. The sky was dark, since it was in the middle of the night, and the moon shone down on them all.

Through his connection with Aurum, Sev felt a shock of recognition. The shock reverberated, and the connection between them suddenly expanded, divine mana pouring in waves into that connection he felt pressure pushing against him, asking him for permission, and he felt an instinctive urge to deny

not his own, he realized. An instinct. He was anchoring Aurum, and anchors had to reject requests like these

Fuck that.

He accepted.

Divine mana burst out of him, coalescing into robes, into an orb of gold, into Aurum an avatar of him, anyway, composed purely out of golden mana. The god was far smaller than he had been in the Serpent, the approximate size of a human child, which was likely for the best; this event would have gotten people's attention as it was...

...except it hadn't. Everyone else was frozen in time, save for him and his team. Aurum bent over and retched, and his chest heaved in panicked, frightened breaths.

"They're gone," he said, his voice trembling. "I remember now It's hard to remember. But you have to remember. Please. I can't say it. It doesn't let me."

"What the fuck," Misa said, her eyes wide; an instant later, they narrowed. "I tried [Endless Echoes]. There's something censored from us. I can't pull information from half the echoes."

"My status is flickering," Derivan reported. "The new stats are all going red and white."

"Mana is going wild, especially around that bottle of yours," Vex said. "I can... it's trying to tell me something, too. I've never seen mana behave like this."

Sev tried to use [Look Up], but the skill seemed to do nothing. Vex's gaze flickered over to him again when he did.

"Do that again," Vex said, and when he did, Vex frowned. "Your mana's reaching out to Misa... I can't see where it goes."

"I can Shift that mana to be visible," Derivan offered, and when Vex nodded at him, he reached out. There was no apparent visible change for Sev but Vex evidently could see something. The lizardkin reached out.

"It's trying to touch the anchor, but the anchor is rejecting it," Vex said softly. "If I can just..."

He reached out with his mana manipulation, like he was forcing a key into a lock.

Something clicked.

Sev remembered, now. He remembered looking at the sky above the anchor, at the pinpricks of light; remembered staring at the Serpent of the Night Sky and its endless sea of gleaming points.

Vex and Derivan remembered the skill he'd used, the dark fog that looked just like the dark sky above them, and the fireballs that hung in the air.

Misa remembered the five-point fruit, too, the one she'd used in an echo.

There was one word that could have been used to describe all those things one word that had been eroded into conceptual nothingness.

"It's the stars," Sev said, though they all seemed to realize it at the same time. It was important, anyway, and so he said it out loud, and ignored the way the word seemed to catch on the wind and get whisked away. He tried again, pushing on the skill, and Vex and Misa and Derivan all helped, shattering whatever remnants of the infolock remained, if it had ever been an infolock at all.

Sev looked up at the blank expanse of the night sky, and felt a cold dread creep into him.

"The stars are gone."

BOOK ONE END