The Effaced: Chapter Thirty-Six (Patreon)

At the head of the conference table, on the far end of the room, was an older man. Tall, dark skinned, with a bald head polished to outshine the wooden floors, he wore a suit that was tailored perfectly, and very little jewelry, apart from a set of defensive artifacts on a necklace.

“Ah, mister Ermonte, mister Font, come in,” the man said. His voice was crisp, clean, and smooth, incredibly precise. “Please, take a seat.” 

He gestured at the seats on either side of the table, perpendicular to him, and I sat where he indicated without complaint. Rhys did as well, and put his briefcase on the fine wooden table, then pushed it over to the man. 

“This contains my report, unredacted, alongside the artifact,” Rhys said. “You’re welcome to look it all over, if you wish.” 

The man clicked his fingers, and Egress teleported next to him, raising her hand over the briefcase. Green, purple, white, and gray light flickered over the case and her hands, then she nodded and teleported back to the door. She must have had an intangible familiar and the third arch-star, not unlike Firefright. 

The man opened the briefcase and removed the artifact, studying it. His brow creased, but he didn’t say anything. He took out the papers and scanned them quickly, then put them down. Either he’d committed them to memory with a mental spell or the perfect memory arch-star, or else he was satisfied with the brief glimpse he saw, because he pushed the case back to us. 

“Thank you very much, Mister Ermonte,” he said. “I believe you are now owed some information. If you would?” 

Egress appeared next to him again, then waved her hand and a door to the Wandering Path ripped open. I felt my eyebrows creep up. Having a boon or artifact that could just instantly conjure the door was… impressive. Then again, if she really did have some of the resources of Nexus, it was entirely possible that she’d be able to afford these things. Druidry either took a lot of skill, a lot of time, or a lot of money, and it seemed like she had both skill and money. 

Egress removed a manila folder from a shelf within the Wandering Path, then teleported next to us, and placed it down. She raised two fingers, and purple-gray magic swirled off of them, condensing into a twisting, knot-like structure, which fell onto the table next to the envelope. A moment later, she teleported back to the door, and the gate to the Wandering Path zipped itself shut. 

The man just smiled and leaned forwards, putting his elbows on the table and steepling his fingers as he watched us. Rhys flipped open the folder and began scanning through it, and his face went pale. 

“A member of the Overriding Judiciary Council?” Rhys asked in disbelief, so quiet that he was almost inaudible.

“A funny thing about the government,” the man said with a smile. “You did not even recognize me, despite the fact that I am one of the most powerful people in the country.” 

Remembering Egress’ warning, I chose my words carefully. 

“I didn’t. I would have recognized some of the most powerful people, though, like the Prime Minister, Grand General, or Archmage Davalier, but I’m not certain who you are.” 

“Ah, but you see, that is the very phenomena that I was speaking of,” the man said. “While the positions of Prime Minister, Grand General, and Consulate Archmage are all well known, their most potent power is the ability to represent Elderglass on the global stage. Not internally. Who has the greatest internal power?” 

“The Overriding Judiciary Council?” I offered. I knew they had the ability to veto laws or make new ones based on their court rulings, but in all honesty, I wasn’t sure. 

“They are some of them,” the man agreed. 

“Also the Senate Lead Organizer and the Parliament Chairm…an,” Rhys said, his eyes going wide. “That’s you.” 

“I have to apologize, but I’m not sure about either of those positions,” I admitted. 

“To boil the position down to the bare basics, we use a bicameral system for determining laws,” the man said. “The parliament and the senate have to agree in order to pass laws and funding.” 

I had already known that, but I didn’t want to annoy this man, since Rhys seemed to be having something of a panic attack while he was looking at the man, which probably meant that the position had a lot of power. 

“The Senate Lead Organizer controls a significant amount of the budget, sets those who can speak in the senate, counts the votes from the senators, and sends proposed bills to the Parliament,” the man said calmly. “The Parliament Chairman coordinates who in the parliament is able to speak and take the floor, organizes parties, and determines what bills will be voted upon, and in what order.” 

I stared at him. That sounded like a lot of power. Way more than should be in the hands of just two people. They could effectively force laws to pass or fail by holding them back, even if the entire rest of the senate or parliament wanted them to pass. 

“They’re also, much like the Overriding Judiciary Council, selected internally,” the man said. “While it’s true they need to be a member of the relevant branch through the general election first, once they have taken office, they rarely leave. Most hold office until they die, or are on death’s door. The Organizer and Chairman are selected internally, much as the Overriding Judiciary Council is selected by the votes of the Prime Minister, Grand General, and Consulate Archmage, then approved by the senate and parliament.” 

“Nexus isn’t a conspiracy or a series of secret agents,” Rhys said. “It’s just… People in positions of power befriending one another and doing favors for one another?” 

“There is more to Nex–” the man started to say. 

He didn’t get a chance to finish, though, as the entire building rocked and shook. I immediately started building magic, but Egress was even faster. She teleported next to him in a second, and a portal to the Wandering Path appeared. She bodily tackled him through the opening, and then it snapped shut. 

I had to hand it to her, the reaction time was impressive. She might have been paid an absurd amount, judging by her powerset, but she was certainly earning that paycheck. 

The building shook again as my metal sense spell went off and I shot to my feet. 

“Time to go,” I said. “We need to get out of here now, and we need to evacuate as many people as possible on the way out.” 

“What’s happening?” Rhys asked. 

“An attack,” I said, ripping the door open and striding down the hall. There was no smoke this time, thankfully, but there was already the screeching and groaning of metal as the supports were sabotaged. Again. 

Then an explosion ripped through the hall, and for the second time in as many days, I was thrown to my feet by the sheer force of it. 

Rhys didn’t handle it as well as Hadiya, as he was thrown against the wall and ground and struggled to get up, but I leapt back to my feet. 

That explosion had been uncomfortably near us, so I started building magic, then looked back at Rhys. 

“Can you get out?” 

“The Ligature has an emergency evacuation, but it only works in the city. It cut–” 

“Focus,” I half-snarled. It was easy to babble while panicking, especially if you didn’t have training. 

Rhys took in a breath, then nodded. 

“Yes. I can.” 

“Go,” I commanded firmly. 

“But–” Rhys started to protest, but I cut him off. 

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to escape a falling building. But I won’t be fine if you don’t get the evidence out of here safely. And Nexus will be after us if you don’t take that thing and try to convince Hadiya.” 

Or if Fake-Mist appeared and I had to protect him, since he had virtually no combat skills, but I didn’t say that out loud. Rhys nodded and flicked his aura out. A knot unfurled, brown and silver, an autumnal fae boon, and a portal opened. He stepped through it, and it vanished. 

I turned and started moving towards the source of the explosion, lightening my mass, then using my coat to float me off the floor and move faster than I could run. As the building shook again, I was able to keep moving.

It didn’t take me long to arrive. Using metal manipulation and a jacket with metal might not have been the fastest possible way to fly, but I had years of practice. Even sans a flying disc, crossing a building wasn’t exactly hard. 

There was a hole in the wall where the Arenamaster’s requisitioned airship had begun firing, and again, I saw Fake-Mist sitting at the gunner’s turret. When she saw me, her eyes lit up, and she dove off, floating through the air to meet me, a new sword flying from her hands. 

I met her blow in midair and brought my blade down with all the power I could to knock hers out of her hand. She let the sword fall down and went to bring it up into my chest.

I started splitting my focus with my second arch-star then. I threw the first half of my mind into swordfighting, while with the second I started building up my surprise attack. Fake-Mist was going to be much more likely to be running a metal sensory spell, so I didn’t bother reaching out for all of the metal around us, instead turning my focus to something that she really should expect… But I was betting she wouldn’t. 

She spun through the air, layering a series of slashes that grew increasingly swift. I’d picked out one of the weaknesses of her magic from the last fight though – acceleration had a lot of power, but as it continued to work, the cost steadily increased. That made it markedly different from a force rune, with a flat cost for a flat effect. 

The other weakness I’d noticed was that when she stopped, the spell broke. While scientifically speaking, an object can have a speed of zero but still have an acceleration, her spell had broken anyways.

I was guessing that came from the fact that she was using an experimental, risks killing you if you cast a spell even slightly wrong, not yet ready to be made into a real version, rune-bond. 

Because rune bonds were physical, but they were also affected by language, which was intrinsically conceptual, and while the concept of acceleration as separate thing from speed was older and more firmly established in the collective subconscious. 

And when you took power before it was firmly established, you ran into limits that shouldn’t be there. Just like I couldn’t generate negative mass or reshape anything because it had a mass, she had to keep something moving in order to keep adding to its speed. 

I shed her blows, but didn’t try to keep up by matching her speed with my own metal rune bond to move my blade. Instead, I enforced my coat, letting it take the blows that it was meant to, and focused my spellcraft on breaking through the spells on the blade that would make it harder to effect with metal magic, while in the back of my head, I was still working on my surprise for her.

She left a slice on my cheek that I was too slow to block, but I broke through the defenses, and her sword jittered to a stop in mid-air. She growled and broke my spell in a second, given she had the range and familiarity advantage, but I’d already wiped out her acceleration spell. 

We continued trading blows like that in mid-air, me playing defense and stopping her from getting the upper hand.

Even if my surprise didn’t work, I was confident that I’d be able to win, given time. My aura was denser than hers, and I was still a long way from draining the stockpile I’d stored in my first arch-star. 

But if I could stop her faster…

I finished building and powering my surprise spells, and they neatly fell into place. I layered a series of anti-tampering, mass-increasing, and metal-shoving spells into a bullet, then with Odril’s familiar power, infused my fourth archstar tinto my gun. 

I swept the fake version of me’s sword aside and shot her.