Elmira
Finally! Beneath the adrenaline, beneath the lingering taste of fear and hungry tendrils trying to find purchase in her blood, El felt something stirring. A pulse of exhilaration. She should not feel this way. Not after everything she had endured. The years of watching the Syndicate grow, of getting her hands dirty for the General’s cause, for his unyielding empire. He had shown his cards.
“A key to the Weave!” she sent into her mind. “Is that even possible?”
There was a cold silence and a seeping dread. “Do not be preposterous. Mortals cannot tear down that which gods have built.”
“He believes so.”
“Arrogance.”
But El had seen the look in his eyes. Something tugged at her mind, an elusive thought that slipped away before she could catch it. Focus, El. But whatever it was faded like a drop in the rain.
No time to go home. Ducking into a small alley out of sight from the main road, she crouched down between two large crates and took a look at the box in her hands. With bated breath, she rifled through the contents quickly until she found a thick envelope tied with a string of red and black twine.
Footsteps stayed her hand until they faded with raspy laughter in their wake.
Breathe, she told herself. Focus.
The knot unravelled, and she pulled the contents out. Blueprints. Instructions. Her eyes skimmed over language and diagrams that her brain had never been much good at. Engineering was the only class she had ever flunked at the Academy, but a few things still lingered in the back of her mind.
Look at the glyphs on the casing, said the exasperated voice of her teacher from long ago. She did.
One of them was out of place. Subtle. Deliberate? A sigil rotated a single degree off alignment, but it unbalanced the entire construct. The pattern felt… wrong. Like a melody out of tune. A story that skipped a beat to rush to the end. Something scratched behind her eyes, something old.
What did it remind her of?
Ignis, it was right there! Why could she not think of it?
“Go home.”
El blinked, pushing the papers back into its envelope and retwining the seal. “Why? I am not done. I need to see Arman.”
“Go home.”
Oh… Before she could protest, the karai’i flared again against her wrist. It took her a moment to realize it had been firing off a short pulse pattern for the past ten minutes. Her heart raced as the gem-encrusted stone that had remained dormant since her arrival in Khorun activated. It came again, as if sensing her doubt. That home.
“Not now,” she breathed, closing her eyes. “Please, not now. Not now, damn it.”
A man’s voice cracked inside her mind. A message so botched by the intense interference that it was nearly impossible to understand, but she knew the order. “Elmira Delid, you are hereby summoned by the Council of Agartha. Return immediately and with haste.”
“No,” she thought because her throat was too tight to shape words.
She stayed there for a moment, the envelope gripped tightly in her hand, as if the weight of those blueprints could anchor her to the crumbling remains of her conviction. So close. So damn close.
“Why should I abandon my mission at the moment of breakthrough?” she wondered when she could draw breath again. She didn’t care who heard her. Let them think she talked with ghosts. Gods knew plenty around here did.
Because something was wrong with the summons. It was too neat. Too perfect. Too clear despite the interference. Elmira sat up straighter, already putting the envelope in her satchel. They had used her surname, she realized. It was a failsafe put in place after the Second Sundering. Because it meant guardian, protector. The codeword said that it was time to run. Not because there was time, but because it was already too late.
Elmira's eyes shut tightly. “Fuck.”
Her mind screamed to argue, to fight, to stay and finish what she had started, but underneath it all, something deeper stirred. A pressure behind her ribs, low and insistent. Not fear. Not yet. But the whisper of something about to go wrong in a way she would never be able to fix.
Her patron’s voice was low but clear as it echoed in her mind. “Agartha is in peril. Her guardians are ready to rise.”
The words were like a hammer as the implications and her brief triumph fell in shards around her.
“Shterc…”
All she had to do was meet Arman. Pass along what she’d found. Plan the strike. Sabotage the machine. That was the mission. That was the whole point of everything, of years of lies, of looking over her shoulder, of trading pieces of herself for trust she could never keep.
The pull of her oath to her home and her people was strong. Stronger than El. It was like waking up from a bad dream and realizing it was no dream. She blinked rapidly, opening her eyes again to the harsh world around her, the noise of the camp fading into the background as she tried to push away the confusion and the emotions that anchored her here.
The guardians were ready to rise, which meant only one thing. Whatever she carried now, whatever it was that came next was so dangerous that even the gods themselves called her off.
The Guardians were rising. Alana.
Alana was an aspirant. She would stand amongst them. Face the trials. Face the Elder and the Judge. El’s grip tightened on the box, a strange tension crawling into her muscles as two worlds pulled at her like a ragdoll. She had been living in the shadows for so long, but now… Now the truth was blinding.
I cannot do this. Not both.
Not both.
With a final, frustrated exhale, El forced herself to her feet. One world had plenty of her, the other had only one. There was no going back. She could not afford to let her emotions slip. Could not afford to let any of this distract her. The call had been spoken. The Guardians were ready, but she could not let that distract her. Not now. Not when she was this close.
She straightened her back and took another step forward, deeper into the heart of the Syndicate’s web.
But with a gentle breath of reversal from her patron, the echo of El the Rogue vanished into the Maze, and Elmira Delid, Elder of Agartha, Voice of Ayursha, stepped into her place, watching her go with tears in her eyes.
“That is not your path, child,” Ayursha said in a voice that left nothing to interpret.
“Why not?” she wondered, but the question was futile.
She knew why, and it made her angry. Furious hot rage warmed her from the inside. But it never got an escape before it dwindled into something far colder.
Get to Arman, she told herself, but she already knew she wouldn’t see him. Already knew what she must do.
The array of thoughts and mixed feelings collided and shifted like a broken record, cycling through in endless repetition until she found herself standing outside a rather sizable, yet simple, hut made of metal and wood. The structure was solid and well-maintained, with the humble symbol of the mechanic’s guild proudly displayed on the door.
It stood in stark contrast to Noke’s chaotic workshop. This, right here, was a place of discipline, of quiet reputation earned through years of work. A far cry from the disorganized, hurried energy that often filled her thoughts when she thought of Noke. This man, however, did not feel the need to boast of his skills. Everyone who saw his work knew exactly who Arman the Mech was.
Elmira placed the heavy box on the ground in front of the famous and infamous workshop and faltered. There was no rational reason for it. That knot in her chest, that hesitation, came from somewhere deep and young. Elmira had never been one to be affected by her emotions in such a way, but El had no such filters.
“I have failed,” she said silently, regarding the door in front of her. The thought scraped against her ribs, raw and furious.
“No. You have survived.”
She stared at the box filled with parts but liberated of its instructions. Its utter passiveness a reminder of the choice she had made. Thousands of nights spent in the cold silence of her hiding place had been filled with plans and contingencies, each one of them more precise than the last. But the one plan she hadn’t prepared for, the one piece she hadn’t accounted for, was the quiet affection that had bloomed between her and Arman. How had she found herself so attached?
The distant sound of the world, of time slipping away, was so overwhelming, yet at that moment, it was as if she were back in that bar. A place that felt like another life entirely.
As often happens at the brink of the end, the whirlwind of thoughts brought her back to their beginning. She remembered the first time they had met, almost as if it had been written in the stars for them to cross paths. A chance encounter, a drink ordered, and unspoken tension hanging in the air.
