Crystalise: The Exaltation System: ASCENDANT Read online

  “James, what the fuck!? Where were you!?” Liam growled.

  “I don’t know, man, but it wasn’t very disco.”

  They looked up, greeted by a replica of a meteor hammer crashing down upon them. The brothers ducked away, and the orb whipped past them, smashing into another mirror.

  Disoriented, James barely dodged the orb’s next strike. He took a blow to the chest upon the mob’s second shot. The replica moved fast to descend upon James, aiming for an easy headshot.

  With a flick of his wrist, Liam sent a wave of lucidium reinforcement through the chain sword. When it snapped back, each metal disc had merged to form one solid javelin. His next shot would be a gamble.

  “James, get down!”

  Liam timed his throw and hoped for luck to finally favor him as he pitched the javelin. Its trajectory cut through the spinning rhythm of the rotating chain and pierced the replica just shy of the neck.

  The replica crumpled to the floor beside James. In death, its illusion faded, revealing a lithe, humanoid creature with a featureless face and numerous, thin, tendrils twitching from its back.

  Liam breathed a sigh of relief at the peace that followed.

  James inched away from it in disgust.

  “Fuck, these things are ugly,” he said.

  Little remained of the disintegrating mob. A tiny, red orb clinked on the floor as the carcass carrying it faded.

  “This is the last one, you think?” James picked up the orb.

  Liam nodded as he watched the empty space where the carcass had once been.

  He picked up the javelin and willed the metal to dissolve and be reabsorbed back into his system as lucidium.

  “That was one hell of a lucky shot for a guy with your luck,” James said.

  “Yeah… looks like my stars are aligned a little differently today.”

  Liam’s gaze drifted to one of the broken glass panes—the one where he’d seen his own reflection acting suspiciously.

  That reflection’s actions made little sense to him—if it had been the obscuran mob, it could have just lunged out to attack. Instead, that glance toward James had seemed more like a warning that Liam did not heed.

  “Where’d you go? When that thing pulled you in?”

  “I don’t know how to describe it,” James said. “I guess… It felt like I was just falling. Everything was dark… but it felt like there were lights in there, coming from somewhere. It felt like forever but at the same time, it felt like seconds before I got spit back out again.”

  “There’s not a lot of research on the attack capabilities of obscuran mobs. That Lucienne even managed to acquire one and use it against us is shocking to me. Then again… she’s the Chevalier. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised,” Liam said. “Just… after seeing all that, I’ve got physics questions.”

  James squinted at Liam. “Your twin brother gets sucked into some crazy, obscuran black hole and you’ve got physics questions?”

  Puzzled, Liam looked back to James, “…yes? I mean, you came back just fine.”

  James just shook his head in disapproval and began walking to the chamber’s entrance.

  Liam followed. “I’m just saying, I’d like to try and replicate that in a more controlled environment sometime.”

  “Yeah? You do, huh? Well, you can throw Art in there next time.” James gestured to the mirrors, “I’m… good on mirrors in general for the next decade.”

  * * *

  EXP: +27,000 EXP EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: WILLIAM STERLING || LV.83 → LV. 84 || EXP: 1091029 || stats ATK - 193 → 196 [+3] DEF - 234 → 235 [+2] AGI - 179 → 182 [+3] LUK - 121 → 124 [+3] EXALT ADJUSTMENTS: JAMES STERLING || LV.82 → LV. 83 || EXP: 1066321 || stats ATK - 229 → 231 [+2] DEF - 174 → 176 [+2] AGI - 229 → 231 [+2] LUK - 240 → 241 [+1]

  * * *

  Chrysid is the capital city of Libelle and the Domicile of Novus Lucus. Chrysid is also an umbrella term referring to the governing body which oversees the creation of laws and regulations in Libelle.

  13 | Balance

  A soft, blue glow from illuminated circuitry along the walls. The once-dark hall of mirrors hummed to life as they made their return to the evigilari statue. Scattered flecks of luminous white paint on the ceiling glowed shone like distant stars.

  With the glittering lights reflected on the mirrors around them, Liam felt as if they were walking through a long corridor suspended in space.

  For a moment, he felt quite nostalgic for the observatory and science museum back home in Euclid. There had been a corridor quite like this one, albeit smaller and shorter. Instead of mirrors lining the walls and floors, there had been a dated hologram projection system to entertain the children passing through.

  Serena Lucienne… she came from Euclid.

  It was then that he realized how many of the corridors thus far had reminded him of places back home. Places of childhood memories. The aquarium. That art gallery.

  All Chevaliers had the duty of designing their trial. Knowing that Chevalier Serena Lucienne had hailed from Euclid, the pieces clicked in Liam’s mind. Serena was replicating places from home.

  The reproductions, however, were distorted in some way. As if she were painting an image from a memory out of a dream. Or perhaps a memory that had broken down over the years, elongating hallways and exaggerating the things that felt so much larger than they really were through the eyes of a small child.

  “Thinking about something?” James asked.

  “Home.”

  James fell silent for a time. Liam thought about bringing up the space corridor from the museum in Euclid—but he opted against it. James never liked those field trips.

  “There was another message back there, written on a mirror,” Liam said. “Remember your reflection.”

  “I didn’t notice,” James answered.

  “Did you see anything else odd back there?”

  “Like…?”

  “I… don’t know if it was a trick from that obscuran mob, but I saw something weird in the mirrors. My own reflection—and I thought it was the mob. Maybe it was. But then the mob would have to be in two places at once.”

  “Wasn’t that what Nym was saying? When it showed up in multiple places across her map?”

  “Yeah. You’re right. I just… can’t help but wonder if there was a second one or something. Or if we’re not entirely alone.”

  “We’re in the Spire of the Chevalier. Think about it. You said it yourself, most of the floors below are research facilities, right? She probably has a whole zoo full of obscuran mobs. It was probably just another part of her collection screwing with your head.”

  “Maybe,” Liam shrugged. “It just… didn’t seem like it wanted to attack me.”

  “Don’t overthink it. Obscura as an element is all head-fuckery.”

  “Yeah.”

  The orb in Liam’s palm, collected from the obscuran mob, had the symbol for sulfur carved into it. Remember your reflection. Liam wondered if those words were meant to be metaphorical or literal.

  Sulfur. Soul. Cardinal. Initiation, impetus.

  Remember your reflection. Remember why they want you. Remember why you’re here.

  Introspective, sure. But what did it matter to Lucienne whether they did any soul-searching or not before they challenged her? Whether they lived or died?

  They returned to the central chamber where the evigilari statue awaited them.

  “James,” Liam said, “after everything from Outpost 14… everything that they killed Jove for… how are you even going to change what Chrysid’s doing?”

  “The Chevalier is the most powerful exalt in Libelle,” James answered. “Not even the heads of Chrysid can defy the Chevalier.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Think about it. Chrysid and the Chevalier work as equals because they must. The Chevalier protects Libelle from… creatures like that,” James gestured to the evigilari statue. “Without the Chevalier, mankind buckles under the next invader that comes
to suck our planet dry. Humanity ends. Chrysid’s corrupt, but they know that they need a Chevalier. They need a weapon more powerful than themselves… and now, we also know why they don’t just wage war against the Chevalier if they deem them a threat. We saw what happened to the other realms. Think about it all, Liam—Lucienne’s complicit in Chrysid’s actions.”

  “You’re sure of that, too?”

  “If she’s got the best interests of human life in mind, she should be against them. But she’s not. As a Chevalier, you can’t just look at what Chrysid’s doing and think it’s fine, let it continue. No, man. She’s with them.”

  Liam didn’t care to remember the things they had seen under Outpost 14. Nor did he care to recall Jove’s existential collapse after the matter. He wanted to remember Jove as the sunny, carefree man who taught them everything. The man who opened the world to them.

  James had a point—if there was any conscience in the heart of the Chevalier, surely Lucienne would protest the truth that Chrysid erased from their history books.

  “You think there’s a chance that she may not know about it all?” Liam idly rolled the orb in his hand.

  “She’s been Chevalier for over ten years. There’s no way in hell she wouldn’t know. Hell, they would have to ensure she knows how to pilot the Destrier—and now we know what that thing’s really for. Listen, Liam. She knows. She knows about this whole goddamn thing and she’s in on it.”

  …and yet, she prompts us to remember our reasons for being here.

  In Libelle, there were countless exalts across the realm at any given time. Many simply wanted to fulfil their required three years of service to Libelle and live through their Exaltation. Get to Rank 3 and be permitted back into civilian life.

  Others dreamt of fighting their way to championship matches, for celebrity and prestige. The higher one’s rank at the end of Exaltation, the more money and opportunity they went home to.

  There were those who fought to unseat the Chevalier and take the title for themselves. Among those, there were exalts who saw it all simply as a title and a position of power and influence.

  Then, there were the fringe few who many considered anarchists. Those who spoke openly of their want to become Chevalier solely to bring an end to the Exaltation system, no matter how much the people of Libelle adored the entertainment and “safety” it brought them.

  Liam had spent his years regarding those anarchists as detached from reality, conspiratorial, and without grounding in fact or logic.

  It took losing Jove to change that.

  It took seeing records of Chrysid’s disregard for human life or truth to change that. He would give anything to go back to the blissful ignorance on the day he reached Rank 3.

  He had been so happy, so sure that he would go home to Euclid for good. No more Exaltation.

  All I ever wanted was to be done with my three years or get my Rank 3 and go back home. Finish my studies. Get a job, marry a pretty girl. Settle down and leave this nightmare behind me.

  But then what? How many years of comfortable denial would follow? How many years of sweeping it under the rug until my own son or daughter has to go out and run the chance of never coming home?

  “You going to put the orb in the hole or are you just gonna stare at it?” James asked.

  Liam eyed the indentation on the statue’s base. Lucienne’s messages echoed through his mind.

  “Let’s say you go up there, you fight her, you win. You become Chevalier. What do you choose afterward? Power or change?”

  Irate, James growled, “Liam… come on.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “You know my answer! Now’s not the time to screw around!” James grabbed for the orb.

  Liam pulled back. “Remind me.”

  “Change! Of course, I want change!”

  “Alright. So, say you become Chevalier. The Destrier is all yours and all the power that comes with that machine. Somehow you manage to convince the Pillars to join you—”

  “Why wouldn’t they? Why would I have to convince them? The Pillars all answer to the Chevalier.”

  “Just hear me out.”

  “No. It’s bullshit. That’s their job, Liam. The Pillars answer to the Chevalier before Chrysid because the Chevalier has the Destrier at their disposal. You’ve seen that what that thing can do, Liam. You know why nobody fucks with the person who has the keys to that mech… besides, all I’d have to do is show the world what’s really going on and nobody would question me.”

  Liam swallowed hard and tried not to think about the images he saw on the monitors of Outpost 14. He only needed to see a few moments of that machine’s test run footage to understand why no Chevalier in recent history had used it—publicly, anyway.

  Archival footage of Chevaliers Cuevas still haunted his mind. In that footage, the Destrier wandered the scorched remains of what was once a city in some neighboring realm.

  James and even Jove had initially argued that they were seeing footage taken out of context.

  “They wouldn’t send the Destrier to kill innocents in another realm,” James had argued, “…we’re probably seeing the aftermath of some fight. Chrysid probably sent the Destrier to help them fend off wasteland mobs or something.”

  No wasteland mob was capable of such destruction.

  Besides… if it had been a rescue effort, why hadn’t Libelle heard of contact with another realm? What reasons did Chrysid have to keep that visit a secret?

  In that footage, Liam recalled that horizon near the screen’s edge. A dead, hazy sky littered with smokestacks and the silhouette of a crumbling cityscape.

  The Destrier was not there to save anyone.

  Instead, it tore apart several smoldering buildings and scoured the facilities at the heart of the fallen city. Layer after layer of concrete and steel hardly stopped the massive machine. Not even the thick plate of seilliancrist beneath the city stopped the Destrier from burning its way through. When the footage went blindingly bright from the reveal of the lucidium core, Cuevas’s voice broke the recording’s silence.

  “Passage to the core secured. Core cleared for harvest.”

  It had been all the confirmation they needed to know the truth behind Libelle’s isolation.

  Liam’s gaze settled on the orb in his hand.

  Fixing that orb into place and unlocking their path to the Chevalier provided only two outcomes: their deaths and the erasure of what they stumbled upon or the beginning of a war that Liam feared James would ultimately lose.

  “Just listen to me,” Liam said, “…we only saw the tip of that iceberg. Who’s to say that the Pillars know about it? Or that they’d believe you?”

  “I would show them. I’d do whatever it took to show them what Chrysid’s really sitting on that weapon for. Not Evigilari. For greed. I’d show them why they need to listen, if they have any shred of loyalty to humanity. That’s what exalts are for, aren’t they? To protect humanity. From the Evigilari.”

  “Yeah… of course.”

  Still, Liam hesitated to give the orb to James.

  James’s jaw clenched. He tensed for a moment, huffed, and then relaxed to feign calm.

  “…I’d show them the same footage we saw with Jove,” James said with a pleasant, but forced smile.

  For a moment, Liam once again felt that sensation of having lived that very moment before. A recollection of a memory that couldn’t possibly exist.

  What did I do back then?

  Hell… what the hell do I even mean by “back then?”

  Liam shoved that feeling of uncomfortable familiarity aside.

  “That’s all it takes, right?” James said with a casual shrug. “If it convinced Jove and I, it’ll convince Libelle.”

  “Right… so, say that you succeed. You take down Chrysid. What’s your next move?”

  “Why are you asking all these stupid questions?”

  “She’s left these questions for us, James!” Liam said, gesturing to the symbols
on the orbs. “She wants us to connect the fucking dots!”

  “She wants you and little overthinkers like you to interpret signs and symbols in a way that aligns with your perception of reality,” James said. “You do see how much she stands to gain by causing us to question our motivations for being here, right? Or our preparedness for whatever future lies ahead of a Chevalier?”

  Liam fell silent.

  “It’s called planting seeds of doubt, Liam,” James hissed. “Get inside your enemy’s head and chip away at the legs slowly until they crumble under their own weight. You even told me yourself—the Chevalier, she’s into psychology, right? It shouldn’t surprise you that she’s fucking with your head.”

  James made one last attempt to grab the orb and his fist closed tight around Liam’s.

  Liam refused to give it up.

  “She’s been planting little hints of some deeper meaning to these stupid puzzles all along because she knows who we are. She knows that you’re ‘The Professor’ and even though you’ve never met, she can probably read you like an open book—you’re a neurotic overthinker.”

  Something wrenched in Liam’s chest at the idea that Serena may have had more awareness of his existence than he ever considered.

  “Lucienne created traps that look harmless but hit like freight trains because anyone who’s ever heard me on broadcast can probably tell that, yeah, I’m brash, I’m a little reckless, I’m the meathead of the group.”

  “But you’re not,” Liam said.

  You wear that mask because it’s disarming.

  “Thanks, man. Glad to hear from ‘The Professor’ that I’m not the dumb jock I come off as.”

  James’s grip on Liam’s fist tightened.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Liam said, “…what do you plan to do next, after you’ve ended the structure of the world as we know it and have to build something else in its place?”

  “What?”

  “Destroying the system without knowing what to do next only creates conditions for the next Chrysid to spring up and start the whole thing over again. Who do you think will jump on that? What organizations do you think are going to side with you? The Aviere? The anarchic exalts? Moreover, who might decide they’re more fit to guide a broken system and challenge you?”