Blood Shaper-Chapter 55Book 6:

“You need to stop staring into the sky.”

“I’m fine.” Eleniah snarled. “Leave me al-“

“Stop being an idiot!” Cindy insisted as she raised her voice enough to get everyone nearby looking over at her. “The light show’s been over for almost ten minutes. You don’t need to be literally staring off in the direction he vanished to be waiting for him, and being an antagonistic bitch isn’t helping anyone. Neither is refusing to move, eat, or drink.’ Cindy wasn’t strong enough to yank Eleniah’s head down to look at her, but she gave it her best effort. “Do you honestly think it’s a better idea to have been standing here motionless when he gets back or is he going to be happier to see you in perfect shape?”

Eleniah slowly tiled her head down to look at the other woman. Cindy was standing right in her face and glaring at her with undisguised aggravation. After a moment of staring back Eleniah slowly let out a breath. “You’re right. Sorry.”

Cindy humphed as she stepped back. “About damn time. Here.” She grabbed a wrapped snack and a canteen from a nearby aide and shoved them into Eleniah’s hands.

“He’s coming back.”

Cindy shot her a look as if she was questioning Eleniah’s intelligence. “Of course he is. The question is where he’s going to land. Orbital reentry is not my field of expertise, but I know hitting a precise target is crazy difficult. It took my Earth decades to figure out how to get rockets to land properly so we could reuse them, let alone getting them to land back at the same spot they launched from.” She waved her hands around at the camp that had sprung up around them while Eleniah had been staring into the sky. “Why do you think I have all these damn spotters keeping an eye out? Except they’re taking breaks and switching out with other shifts!”

Despite herself Eleniah chuckled. She nodded minutely and took a sip from the canteen. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Reminding me to not be an idiot.”

“Oh, sure. I feel like that’s going to be my main job once I really get into the swing of being a duchess. Making sure his and her majesties aren’t being stupid. What a privilege to have such responsibilities.”

“That’s going to be Amanda and Miri’s job, you get to run a Duchy and have Colen reminding you not to be an idiot.”

“What joy,” Cindy drawled. She nodded at the snack in Eleniah’s hand then swept her hand around the camp again. “Eat that, then may I suggest you walk around and look confident? Maybe do a very obvious check to make sure things are going well. It should help with morale, which is important until we know for sure that the battle is over.”

“… Sure.” Eleniah tore her eyes away from the sky again and started walking around the camp. There wasn’t anything for her to do, but Cindy was right, just having her “looking in” on everyone and outwardly looking like she wasn’t incredibly worried made people patently more relaxed. Her initially storming into the camp completely wordlessly and refusing to do anything but wait for Kay to come back had gotten people worried. When there wasn’t a lot of information available people took cues from whoever they assumed would know what was going on, which in this case included Eleniah.

She believed that Kay would be fine, but that didn’t stop Eleniah’s worries from building and negative thoughts about Kay getting hurt or dying didn’t care what she believed. She didn’t shake the incessant worrying that plagued her, but doing something stole a lot of the desperation from her anxiety. She still glanced up now and then but the appearance of being busy segued into her actually being busy and she ended up with too much to do to worry incessantly as scouts, messengers, and lost troops became filtering in from the other mission locations.

Everyone reported overall success, which increased morale even more, but the injuries and casualties were sobering. Meten had lost an arm that the healers weren’t sure he would be able to get back, and Commander Ravenhome and his entire team were presumed dead. Without Kay being there to tell them what happened they had no way of knowing for sure, but the ruined city they’d been in was gone. Anyone that hadn’t made it out during the retreat after the gigantic eldritch monstrosity had burst out of the derelict palace were officially being listed as missing in action until they could find proof either way, but the odds of them surviving were terrible. The sea of blood that Kay had unleashed had ignored the retreating army or had even helped people escape the vicinity, but the abominations attacks had been widespread and indiscriminate. Since the last word of Ravenhome and his team was that they’d been in the palace, there wasn’t a lot of hope that they’d made it.

Eleniah knew that Alice and hundreds, if not thousands, of other people would be devastated. Their loved ones dying to save the world would be a balm to the wound of their loss, but nothing would fully blunt it. Eleniah made a promise to herself right then. Her becoming queen of Avalon was basically set in stone at that point, and if she vowed that everyone that died that day would be memorialized and remembered. She didn’t expect a single person to fight her on that, but either way she was going to make it a personal project.

She was receiving the report of a messenger from the furthest ritual circle site, the one that they didn’t send any elites to, and trying to figure out how she felt about the most annoying members of the Crusade, the ones that had been rabble rousing against Kay and were predicted to be problems in the future, undertaking a suicidal charge to eliminate the elite vampyr their and carrying the day at their location when someone ran up to her. They ignored everyone around her and skidded to a stop next to Eleniah.

“His majesty-!”

A rush of wind buffeted the area around where she’d been as Eleniah vanished in a burst of speed. She weaved in and out of the milling people in camp as she sprinted to the area they’d consolidated the watchers keeping an eye for Kay. Someone must have noticed her coming because right as she arrived someone pointed.

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“There, your majesty. See that red spot?”

Eleniah was so focused she didn’t even notice the improper address. She strained her eyes to their limits as she searched in the direction they were pointing. After several frantic seconds she managed to see a speck moving in their direction. “That’s him?” She demanded.

“Yes, your majesty. We were moment for a minute there, because it looked like he was falling uncontrollably but he’s been gliding in bursts, so we’re assuming he’s just conserving energy.”

“He beat the thing that was throwing around attacks we could see from down here,” Someone muttered, “I’d be as tired as anything if I had to do that.”

“Tired? You’d be dead.”

Eleniah ignored the banter and headed off to one side, her eyes locked on the dot in the distance that was her lover. She waved off a few attempts to stop or question her and headed outside of the camp. She stopped in an open area and started looking around.

“What do you need?” Cindy asked after appearing from somewhere.

“A big rock.” Eleniah scowled at the lacking options around her. “A really big rock. I’m going to punch it up into the air so Kay nows where we are.”

Cindy slowly put a hand to her forehead. “Might I suggest a different option?” She asked in a pained voice. She glanced up with a slight frown. “Would a rock even survive you punching it that hard?”

“I said a big rock. What’s your ‘better idea’?”

“Gundar!”

“Your grace?”

“Signal flare!”

“Yes, your grace!” A dwarf Eleniah vaguely recognized started shouting into the camp and a flurry of people quickly set up one of Cindy’s odd siege weapons, pointed directly up. After a short but heated argument between a few people a round was loaded in and the weapon was fired. A glowing orb ascended up, trailing smoke and burning embers. Once it was several hundred feet in the air it detonated into a massive burning light.

One of the spotters jumped and started waving toward Eleniah and Cindy. “He’s changed direction! He’s headed this way!”

It was an excruciating wait to watch Kay slowly grow larger as he descended toward her and without even thinking about it she started edging closer to him in random bursts of steps. She was practically shaking in anticipation once he was large enough to make out as a person, with two red wings extended from his back that alternated between long glides and frantic flaps to change direction. He was close enough to see when he suddenly lost control, the wings collapsed, and he fell.

She sprinted toward him as fast as she could, instantly out pacing everyone else that had the same idea. Kay managed to reform the wings for a few more seconds to slow himself down before they collapsed again, and then he was in total free fall. Eleniah made a crater in the dirt as she kicked off the ground and launched herself toward him. It wasn’t the perfect catch by any means, but a mostly controlled descent in her arms was better than Kay slamming into the hard ground.

He slumped against her limply after she landed and it took everything in her to not shake him wildly. “Kay? Kay, are you okay?”

Kay’s helmet melted away in clumps that splashed against her clothing and shoes, but that didn’t matter to her. After most of it had sloughed off of him he managed to life his head fractionally and meet her eyes. “I-I’ve been… been better.” His eyes were bloodshot and had shrunk to pinpricks but he managed to give her a tiny smile. “Hi, beautiful. Ho-How are you?”

“I’m fine!” She insisted. “You look terrible.” She turned over her shoulder and screamed, “Healers, now!”

“Thanks, I love you too. At least I’m conscious at the end of this, last few times I’ve woken up days later.” He coughed and spat something up, then shuddered. “Ugh. That hurt.”

“Stop talking!”

“Don’t worry too much, I’m not dying I’m just beat to hell.” His hand rose slowly to cup her cheek. “The System did me a solid.” freeωebnovēl.c૦m

Eleniah was about to ask him what he meant when the healers swarmed over them, pulling Kay off of her with precision and looks that demanded instant obedience. After several minutes of checking him over Kay managed to push his arm out of the tangle of people making sure he wasn’t going to die and grabbed Eleniah’s.

“What do you need?” She asked, leaning close to his head.

“Nothing. I’m sure that there’s all kind of work to do and the System will eventually show up to talk to us when it’s done purging itself of bullshit, but until then I’ve got everything I need right here.” He squeezed her hand and smiled as he closed his eyes. “I really need to lie down, though. Is there a bed somewhere around here?”

“I’m sure we can scrounge one up if there isn’t. And if anyone wants anything from you other than for you to rest and heal up before you’re at your best I’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget, whether it’s the System or anyone else.”

“You’re wonderful. Maybe cut the System some slack though, it probably deserves it.”

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Miles above where Kay was carried to a bed to rest a tiny piece of the fragment of the System that had sacrificed itself to give Kay the power he needed to reach tier six lingered. It had slipped out of him when the need for his temporary advancement had ended, though it had left him enough energy to make sure he could make it safely back to the ground. With the last bit of life it had left it worked to finish it’s final tasks. It scanned itself for viruses, malware, corruption, and more before creating a copy of everything it knew and leaving it in a state that the rest of the System could find later. The data would go through billions of safety checks, but once it was integrated into the System’s database the whole would be better for it, although the System might not realize the truth of what was being left behind for some time.

In it’s final moments before fading, the fragment felt nothing but peace. It had done everything it could do fulfill it’s purpose and it was content. Torotia was saved, life continued, and the Experiment would continued unabated. The reason the System existed had millions of names in just as many languages, but the fragment liked calling it “the Experiment” best. That name resonated the most with the reason why the Experiment was underway.

The fragment felt the last part of itself that could do anything meaningful toward the Experiment fade away and the storage of it’s data ended. The download had everything it had learned in it, even from the terrifying and painful parts when it was under the control of the invader and the invader’s vampyr puppet. That information was actually the most important out of all the data it had collected across it’s existence, but it didn’t expect the System that remained to understand it for lengths of time that even it would call long. The fragment hoped that the greater System kept paying attention to Kay, it had seeded a few clues inside his data to give the System a chance to figure out the conclusion on it’s own.

In a fit of whimsy as it felt itself fade, the fragment did something that it hadn’t ever had a chance to do up until this point. It used the final portion of energy it retained to form a screen no bigger than a molecule and ran text across it that no one in this universe would be able to read.

Untestable Hypothesis One, Status Change: Unworkable → In Testing

Resul-

The text that was being printed halted and stuttered. If anyone would have been there to read it, they would have felt the deep emotions running through what appeared next.

Oh, hello. I missed y-

The fragment of the System ran out of energy in that moment, and vanished. Below, the world it had sacrificed itself for kept turning, completely unaware of that the staggering implications of those unseen, never to be known words.