The Effaced: Chapter Thirty-One (Patreon)

Rhys sighed as he leaned back in the chair. Hadiya was slumped over the table, exhausted from running around constantly. The fact that Kelly was running around was understandable – Rhys had pulled more than his fair share of all nighters as a teen – but the fact that Axel was apparently well enough to keep going, and to risk getting into combat, despite the fact it was almost midnight, and they’d all spent the entire day running from one emergency to the next?

Well, if nothing else, it was truly a testament to the power of the body modifications the Arenamaster had forced onto her adopted children. 

Rhys was starting to lean back in his chair, close his eyes, and take a bit of a nap, at least until Axel was back, when the phone started to ring again. Rhys quickly snatched it up, putting the cone to his ear and microphone to his mouth. 

“Hello?” he said quietly. 

Maybe the lawyer was working a late night, or one of the political friends who Rhys had called and either spoken to or else left a message with the all-hours secretaries had happened to remember something useful about who was paying off the constables, twisting the justice system, and reshuffling the district attorneys to cover up the murder of his father. 

The voice that came through on the other line was not one he knew, however. It was crisp, clean, smooth, and masculine. It was neither old, nor young, and every word was spoken with precision, as if to make it as clear as possible.

Typically, a person’s voice over the telephone was at least somewhat distorted, but this man’s voice was so clear that it was as if he was speaking directly to Rhys from mere paces away.

“Might I inquire if I am presently speaking to Mister Rhys Ermonte?” the voice asked. 

“You are,” Rhys said, straightening up a bit in his chair. 

His mind raced as he tried to place the voice. It wasn’t the prime minister, head general, or Archmage Davalier, he’d heard all of them over the radio. It wasn’t any of the senators his father had worked with, or any of the Ligature’s high ranking members that he knew. 

“Excellent. I believe you were looking into exonerating Mister Axel Font, also known by the alias ‘Mist’, while doubtless also attempting to identify the group that killed your own father. If that is the case, we can work together.”

“I am,” Rhys said. “I believe you have me at a disadvantage, sir. Who might I be speaking to?” 

“My apologies, Mister Ermonte, it must have slipped my mind,” the voice said, though Rhys didn’t believe for a second that the voice had made a mistake. “Though I must say, if you are unable to deduce my identity from the results of this telephone call, I am rather disappointed. After all, we have met before. Even if you do not remember me, you should be able to guess who I am speaking for.”

Rhys’ mind worked, but he still couldn’t place who this was. And whoever they were, they had to be powerful. That limited his options, but not enough.

He’d never been as involved in the political scene as his father had been, mainly joining the Ligature as a perfunctory movement in order to spread the research he found, as he firmly . This entire thing had left him entirely out of his depth.

The only thing that he could think of was the president of a major corporation, a senator for an opposing party like the Steelair Party, Three-Falcon Party, or Bulwark Party, a member of the Overriding Judiciary Council, or maybe an otherworldly power like a Faerie King, Demonic Throne, or Archangel. 

“What do you want, in exchange for information on who killed my father, and freeing Axel?” Rhys asked quietly. 

“That, my dear boy, is simple,” the man said. “My organization only requires a few simple tasks. First and foremost, we do not want your silly little proposal to pass.” 

Rhys’ brain raced. How did they know about the third generation tattoos? Apart from himself and Hadiya, the only ones in the entire city who should even know a third generation tattoo existed were Kelly and Axel, and both of them had sworn oaths. Not committing perjury was one thing, but tricking a faerie king was another entirely.

Then his brain caught up with himself. That wasn’t the plan. The plan was to have the tattoos introduced only after the senate was debating over the proposal of distributing aura drainage and activation enchantments. 

“The free distribution of enchanting materials is important for the city’s continued growth and survival,” Rhys said. “You can’t reasonably expect me to stifle that.”

“We can, and we do,” the voice said, completely calm. He wasn’t angry, or even upset. He had told Rhys what to do, and he expected it to be done. 

“Second, we expect you to turn over a handful of materials,” the voice continued. “Namely, we believe you have found references to a deep realm. We want your complete, unredacted reports on it, complete with any photographs, and the central item you alluded to.”

Rhys felt his brows furrow as he tried to figure out what, exactly, the man was talking about. 

The realms, like the Elemental Fields, Fallen Void, Fae Sovereignties, and so on weren’t his speciality, but he vaguely remembered learning about the deep realms in college – supposedly, if you traversed deep enough through the absolute hellscape that was the Fallen Void, you could open a portal that went deeper, into what their equivalent of another realm was. 

But that was more myth than truth. The deep realms were the kind of thought experiment that might be true, but it was pointless to try and find out, like the classic idea that the entire world was just a massive illusion being concocted by a powerful mind mage. 

Realms nested in other realms might exist, but even the best druids Rhys had ever met had admitted that they were a myth. He even remembered Fatima, one of the druids he went to college with, heading into the Fallen Void to try and reach into whatever world would come beyond it, and utterly failing.

When had he encountered anything to do with them? He hadn’t even had a chance to do any field work in months, since his return from the tomb outside of Agaris. 

Oh. 

Wait. 

In that tomb, he’d found descriptions for a ritual that made a superpowered druid that was unbound by normal limitations related to aura by combining bits from all of the realms except the Wandering Path, and a truly horrifying amount of human sacrifice. Not even arua-spark extraction and consumption, like most did – no, it had used full human sacrifice.

Hadiya and Bloody Eyes had used it as a basis for the design of their tattoos, to a degree, and its incredibly outdated, impractical, and unethical use of blood magic to stand in for rare, aura generating and bonding materials, as well as to tap into planar friction, had been the impetus for newer, far less unethical tattoos that used the chicken sacrifices and similar techniques to building an aura generator as a part of the baseline for generation of a directable aura, even one as constrained as the current tattoos were. 

But there had been something else mentioned in one of the texts he’d found in the tomb. Supposedly, the ritual described allowed the druid to reach beyond the planes. 

Rhys had honestly thought it was a bunch of pomp and circumstance, like saying that a beefed up earth sorcerer would be strong enough to split a mountain in two. But he supposed that it might have been a reference to the myth of the deep realms…

It was also possible they knew about it. He hadn’t exactly kept it a secret. Some of the information about the rituals themselves was removed from his reports before he published them, but if someone knew where to look, they could deduce he found some druidic artifacts.

“Do you mean my most recent tomb expedition?” he asked, just to clarify. 

“I believe so, Mister Ermonte,” the voice said. “A complete, unredacted report, including where you found the tomb, and the artifact.” 

Rhys glanced over to the desk where the clay tablet had been set up near the planar friction machine. 

“I see,” Rhys said. “I believe that can be arranged, certainly. It will take me a bit of time to compile everything, but while I’m normally insistent these sorts of artifacts are brought to museums, I can bend my moral code if it means saving an innocent man and getting information on my father’s murderers.” 

“Drop it off with a bellhop in the Maddox-Jung Hotel, and tell them to bring it to room four-eighty-six,” the man said. “That will be sufficient. The bellhop will return with a bag containing ample evidence of influence from a certain high-profile member of the–” 

For the first time, the voice seemed to stumble slightly. 

“Member of the elite, who has blackmailed a handful of judges into cooperation, in an attempt to get your plan to fail. We are working for a brighter future, Mister Ermonte. Your father never understood that.” 

“Hold on,” Rhys said. “I can’t do the first thing you asked of me.” 

“Oh, I believe you can,” the voice said. “We are aware of the fact you are still in communication with Miss Hadiya Abbas, who met with your father. She is the spearhead for the project to bring magic to the masses.”

“She’s hardly the only one,” Rhys said. “Have you seen what the Zherenian archmages have been coming up with, now that the borders between them and their northern neighbor are open?” 

“Mmm, yes,” the voice said, sounding somewhat disdainful. “What a shame. We had hoped you would realize that magic cannot be trusted in the hands of the boorish masses, but it seems you’re cut from the same cloth as your father.” 

“I can promise to make an honest effort to convince her,” Rhys said. “I cannot promise she will listen to me.” 

The line was silent for a moment, then the voice spoke up. 

“We are amenable to that. Included within the information bag will be a Juris Signum from the Dreamscape. Should you fail to argue with full effort within twenty four hours of taking it, it will seal your mind entirely. If you do not take it, it will return to us, and we will be forced to take retributive action.” 

The voice wasn’t angry, simply matter of fact. 

“Should I be expected to allow you to keep a seal in my mind to break it at any given moment?” 

“The seal will dissolve after twenty four hours, if it does not activate,” the voice said. “You may have Miss Hadiya Abbas look it over, as I understand she is rather an expert at interplanar magic.” 

“Fine, I’ll take your seal, attempt to convince her, and bring you the information about the tomb,” Rhys said. “But I want one more thing to be made clear to me.” 

“I will provisionally agree to answer,” the man said. “There are things I will not, but so long as you do not ask anything unreasonable, I can provide your answer either now, or in the bag the bellhop brings to you.” 

The comments the voice had made… Rhys was beginning to suspect what was going on. 

“Was your organization the one who killed my father?” Rhys asked quietly. 

“That was an unauthorized contract assassin,” the man said. “We did not order your father’s death, and we would appreciate being able to terminate the membership of one of the rogue members of Nexus.”

Nexus… Rhys vaguely recalled his father warning him to stay away from anyone who called themselves a member, but he couldn’t place it. It wasn’t a political party, just an odd pick of words. 

“Room four-eighty-six of the Maddox-Jung Hotel,” the voice said. “Don’t keep us waiting, Mister Ermonte. You have three days.” 

Then there was a clicking sound, followed by the buzzing of a dead line. 

Rhys sucked in a slow, unsteady breath.