A/N
Timeskip coming up tomo's chap, not today, my bad.
2 chapters combined to 3.5k ish chap, enjoy!
Chapter 792: The Impossible Light
Before any of us could say anything, Lady Laelyn spoke up.
"Let me deal with this."
That was fine with me, so I nodded once and stepped back toward the wall near the window, rolling my shoulders inward, dropping my chin, letting my posture collapse into something smaller and unremarkable, something that powerful people's eyes naturally slide over.
Beric looked at me and the corner of his mouth tightened, but he said nothing, turning to face the door instead and clasping his hands behind his back in the formal military rest position, which was either him deciding to trust the plan or him deciding that continuing to argue with me while a Rank 7 elder bore down on us wasn’t a good idea.
One moment everything seemed fine, the next moment, the door exploded inward.
Elder Sorrin stepped through the debris with his robes moving around him from the force of his own aura, his eyes scanning the chamber in a single sweeping arc that catalogued every corner for threats before focusing on the three of us.
I picked up the broken door handle that had skittered toward my feet and set it on the windowsill.
Sorrin took in the chamber. Lady Laelyn standing composed near the meditation mat. Beric at parade rest looking like the loyal soldier he was. Me, crouching near a piece of debris and tidying up in the background as though the only thing I had to worry about in the world was whether the floor got swept before morning.
"Elder Sorrin," Lady Laelyn said, gesturing toward the wreckage of the doorway. "What is the meaning of all this?"
The Elder blinked, and I watched him recalibrate rapidly. The threat-assessment mode was replaced by embarrassment, which was not an expression I had expected to see on that face.
"My deepest apologies, Saintess," he bowed. "I sensed a foreign energy signature coming from this chamber at a level that should not be possible within the Academy's walls, and my first concern was naturally for your safety."
He paused, and a look of confusion flashed across his face.
"The energy," he whispered, looking lost in thought, "was neither Blue Sun nor Red Sun. It was something I do not have a name for."
Lady Laelyn turned and gestured toward Beric.
"The Blue Sun blessed him for his years of loyal service," she said. "And for the devotion he has shown in protecting its heir. I witnessed it myself."
Sorrin's gaze moved to Beric and his eyes widened, and I watched him lean forward like he couldn’t quite believe what his senses were reporting back to him. The remnants of whatever the world had done to Beric were still faintly detectable.
Beric, to his considerable credit, met the elder's examination without flinching.
"I don’t understand what was given to me," Beric said. "I know only that I felt something change, and that it came without warning, and that whatever it is, I intend to use it in service of the lady I am sworn to protect." He paused, then added, "As I have always done."
Sorrin straightened and the confusion on his face resolved itself into reverence. His hands came together in the gesture Blue Sun practitioners used when acknowledging divine action.
"The Blue Sun's wisdom exceeds all mortal comprehension," he nodded. "That it would look down on a dedicated guardian and grant recognition for service given freely, without cultivation or resonance, speaks to the depth of its perception. This is a blessing without precedent."
When I heard this, I was in the middle of gathering splinters from the floor near the ruined door frame, I had to hold in a tired sigh.
Every time I thought I had fully accounted for how thoroughly the belief systems of this world had taken root in even the most capable minds, something like this reminded me that I hadn’t fully accounted for it at all.
Hiron devoted his entire existence to the Red Sun with the unquestioning fervor of a man ready to give up his body to a foreign entity. The elders of the Blue Sun Academy spoke about their sun with the fanaticism of a zealot. And Elder Thorn, with all his centuries of resistance and his secret knowledge, had his own sun that he served loyally.
Nobody in this world looked up at those burning spheres and saw them clearly. They all looked up and saw something that confirmed what they already believed. And that meant that as long as you attributed the unexplainable to whichever sun your audience already trusted, even a Rank 7 cultivator would open his arms and accept the explanation without hesitation.
The Blue Sun rewarded him.
Those four words were enough for Sorrin to swallow the entire thing whole.
"Beric will need some time to adjust," Lady Laelyn said. "Whatever has been granted to him will need practice to master."
Sorrin heard the dismissal in it. He was a Rank 7 elder, and she was the newly invested Saint, and the political architecture of this Academy had just shifted in her favor, so he didn’t linger.
"I apologize for the damage," he bowed, his eyes moving to the destroyed door and back again. "I will see that it is repaired before morning. You have my word, my lady."
He inclined his head toward Beric and left the chamber.
Throughout the entire exchange, his gaze never once moved to the servant quietly collecting debris. I liked that. There was something restful about being nobody, and I had to admit that I was going to miss that feeling.
Beric turned from the doorway and the look he gave me was complicated.
"You handled that well," I said.
"I told the truth," he replied. "I don’t understand what was given to me, but I do intend to use it in her service."
Lady Laelyn had moved to stand near the center of the chamber and looked me in the eye.
"So Tomas, what is the plan now?"
I looked at her, and then at Beric, and I allowed myself a small smile because after everything that had happened in this chamber tonight, we had come through it intact, and the board in front of us had changed in our favor, and there was still a long and difficult road ahead but the next step on it was one I had been thinking about since I awakened the power of the Golden Sun.
"It’s time to recruit Elder Thorn."
After everything that I had shown them about the elder, the look of surprise and hesitance that appeared in their eyes didn’t surprise me. So, I spent the next few minutes explaining to the two of them through my spiritual sense without any unnecessary drama attached to it why we needed to get the elder on our side.
The first reason was that Elder Thorn was a significant threat because he was specifically targeting the Saint, believing that the Saint was the Blue Sun’s tool to ending this world. And while he was right about that, Lady Laelyn was no longer under the influence of the Saint’s Essence, but the elder didn’t know that, which meant he was probably in his quarters right now thinking of a way to end her reign before it properly began.
The second reason I wanted to recruit the elder was because without Kal, I didn’t have much confidence in stopping Hiron’s plan. I only knew the location of a few of the many formation sites, that definitely wouldn’t be enough to have a significant impact on the ritual.
So, if anyone was going to know the location of the other sites, it would be Elder Thorn. And if he wanted to bring back the Golden Sun, then he needed to ensure that both the Blue Sun and Red Sun failed their plan, only that way could his own succeed, not that I had any intentions of merging the two suns together, at least not yet.
But if we wanted a chance to recruit the elder, we couldn’t bring Beric with us, that could complicate things. Lady Laelyn understood what I was saying immediately. Beric, on the other hand, was more stubborn.
"That’s not happening," he said. "I'm not leaving the lady's side after everything that has happened."
"You wouldn't be leaving her side for the sake of convenience," I said. "You'd be staying here because we need you here. Elder Thorn is known for his paranoia and suspicion. If he senses a foreign signature allied with the Saintess heading towards his quarters, he will make a decision about what it means before any of us open our mouths, and the decision he makes will probably be a violent one."
Beric was quiet for a moment, his jaw tight, and I could see him turning the logic over in his head, looking for the flaw in it, and I respected that he didn't simply dismiss it.
"Why does Lady Laelyn need to go at all," he said. "From what you showed us, the man is a lunatic. He chains people to trees and destroys their souls. He has spent centuries killing saints. And your plan is to walk the current saint directly to his door."
"Because I'm just a servant," I said. "A servant doesn’t get a private meeting with a Rank 7 elder. A servant gets ignored at best and violently removed at worst. The saint gets a meeting because the saint is the one person in this building that Elder Thorn is guaranteed to pay attention to, and I need his attention long enough to tell him the things he needs to hear."
"That sounds too dangerous," Beric shook his head. “I can’t allow that.”
"Beric," Lady Laelyn said, and she waited until his eyes moved to her before she continued. "I have just spent three days having something take root inside my cultivation and try to rewrite what I was thinking from the inside out, and Tomas pulled it out of me in thirty seconds, so I think we can manage a conversation with a suspicious elder."
"You survived three days of the Saint's Essence because you're extraordinary," Beric said. "That doesn't mean I send you into a room with a man who murders saints as a professional habit."
"No one is being murdered," she said.
"We don’t know that," he said.
"I think Tomas knows what he's doing."
Beric looked at her for a long moment, and I watched the struggle move through his expression.
"I don't trust anyone with the lady," he said finally, and he looked at me when he said it. "Not elders I don't know, not plans I don't fully understand, and not whatever you are, Tomas. Whatever that was." He gestured at where our joined hands had been, where the chamber had lit up and shaken, where a saint's corruption had been pulled out through what should have been an impossible technique. "I don't trust things I can't explain, and I can't explain you. Which means I am coming. This isn’t a discussion."
I held his gaze for a moment, and then I looked away, because he was right not to trust anyone and I knew I would do the same thing in his shoes and arguing further would have been insulting to both of us.
"Fine," I said. "But you'll need to control your reactions once we're inside. Elder Thorn is not someone who responds well to open hostility, and a Rank 7 aura leaking into his personal chambers uninvited will end the conversation before it starts."
"I have been managing my anger in the service of this household since before you were born."
I couldn’t argue with that.
Azure spoke while Beric turned to check on Lady Laelyn.
"Master, this is probably a good thing, actually," Azure said. "Elder Thorn is not someone we can predict, and if he decides this meeting is actually an opportunity to remove the Saint before she can consolidate power, then a pseudo-Rank 7 can at least act as a shield."
"I didn't know you were so invested in Lady Laelyn's survival," I replied internally, finding it somewhat unexpected given that Azure's concern for people outside of my immediate survival was usually expressed in the form of tactical assessments.
"A shield for you, Master," Azure said, "I'm invested in you not ending this loop the same as the last one with your soul in pieces and Elder Thorn walking away looking satisfied with his work."
Well, that was a perfectly reasonable motivation.
***
Elder Thorn's quarters were exactly the sort of room I expected it to be, which was to say they were unremarkable to the point of being almost aggressive about it: a narrow stone chamber tucked into the eastern face of the Academy's oldest tower, with a single window looking out over the mountain ridge and a writing desk so bare that the grain of the wood was the only decoration it had ever known, and the walls held nothing, no scroll, no formation anchor, no ceremonial weapon, nothing that would indicate that one of the most dangerous cultivators alive called this place home.
I had been in rooms like this before, back at Azure Peak, Sect Master Yuan's quarters had that same emptiness, and I had learned to read it as a sign that the person living there had long since stopped needing to prove anything to anyone who might walk through the door.
The three of us stood just inside the threshold, and I was acutely aware of how we must have appeared to him, Lady Laelyn in her Saint's robes still carrying the faint luminescence of the Cerulean Spire's energy around her shoulders, Beric flanking her left side with his arms loose at his sides and his jaw set like he was ready for this conversation to become violent at any moment, and me, still wearing the plain grey servant's clothes from a week ago.
The elder was standing when we entered, which meant he had known we were coming, or at least known that someone was coming, and he had chosen to receive us standing because sitting would have implied comfort and comfort wasn’t something Elder Thorn seemed inclined to offer.
He was skinnier than I remembered from the vision, and I had to consciously remind myself that this version of him had never chained me to a tree or pressed a soul severance character to my forehead, that this was a different loop and a different encounter and the particular terror I associated with his face belonged to a memory he didn't share.
"Saintess," Elder Thorn smiled. "I confess I hadn't expected the honor of your attention. I'm not generally considered someone whose company the newly invested Saint should seek out, and for good reason I admit."
"It's regarding the Blue Sun's visions," Lady Laelyn said, not fazed by the meaning behind the elder’s words. “I have learned that things aren’t what they seem.”
That made the elder freeze.
I could immediately tell what the elder was thinking.
He was wondering what the Blue Sun had told her about him. He was wondering if this was how it ended, with a saint and a foreign-powered guard arriving at his door to remove the problem he represented.
"There is no eye that sees what happens within this chamber," he warned, his eyes narrowing. "And no ear that hears. I have made certain of that over many years. Which means, Saintess, that if you've come here believing the Academy's authority extends into this room, you've made a mistake I am not obligated to ignore."
It was obvious what the elder was saying. He had some way to prevent the Blue Sun from spying on him, which meant right now, none of the suns were watching this conversation. Even though he was saying this as a threat, I saw it as something different, it meant that I could speak openly without resorting to spiritual sense.
That was something I was very grateful for because the last thing I needed was to project my voice into Elder Thorn's head and discover exactly what he did when unexpected things happened inside his mind, probably something destructive, something that would end this loop prematurely.
The elder's attention moved back to Beric as the smile on his face widened.
"Does the guard imagine he will be sufficient to the occasion," Elder Thorn said. "Or does the servant," and now his gaze settled on me again, sharper than before, "carry some ability that I haven't yet identified, because I will tell you honestly that something about this particular arrangement of people in my doorway makes me uncomfortable."
He wasn't wrong to be on edge, and he clearly knew he wasn't wrong.
I had known from the moment we began walking toward his quarters that Elder Thorn wouldn't be fooled by the servant performance the same as Elder Sorrin had been fooled by it, because Sorrin looked at the world through the lens of Blue Sun hierarchy and saw what the hierarchy told him to see, but Elder Thorn was someone who questioned everything, even someone that looked like a nobody.
Beric didn’t take the threat so well, he took one step forward, and the aura that leaked out of him in that moment was involuntary, I could tell, because his jaw tightened immediately afterward and he pulled it back. However, for just that one second, the temperature in the room dropped and the candle flames on Elder Thorn's table bent sideways simultaneously.
"I would suggest," Beric said, his voice a half-growl, "that you speak about the lady with the respect she deserves."
Lady Laelyn placed her hand on his arm without looking at him.
"I understand why you would doubt my sincerity," she said to Elder Thorn. "I understand that from where you are standing I must look like every other Saint that has passed through this Academy, someone who has accepted what they were given without examining what giving it cost them, but I am not that, and the reason I know I am not that is that I have my grandmother's blood and her instincts, and she spent her life asking the questions that this Academy taught everyone around her not to ask."
Elder Thorn looked at her for a long moment, and something in his expression moved, something very small and very old.
"When your grandmother came to me all those years ago," he said, and his voice had lost a fraction of its harshness, "I believed her, because Lady Vareyn was one of the three people in my long experience who understood that the light you follow determines where you end up, and she paid the price for that understanding in full." His gaze sharpened. "But you are very young, Saintess. Young enough that what you believe you've been dragged into and what you've actually been dragged into may not yet be the same thing, and that will be your undoing...”
Beric stepped forward again, and this time the aura came out as a flood.
"How dare you threaten…"
"Master," Azure said. "You should do something Beric does something permanent."
He was right. This had gone on long enough.
I stepped forward, and in doing so I stepped slightly in front of both of them, which was probably not what either of them expected from the servant who had been standing quietly near the wall.
"You might not believe her words," I said, "but you should believe mine."
And then I let the suppression go.
It was a small release, precise, contained to my eyes alone, the golden light surfacing for just a moment through the outer color, enough to be seen, enough to be unmistakable to anyone who had spent centuries studying the history of what the three suns had looked like before the Sundering split them apart.
Elder Thorn had been in the middle of drawing breath for his next sentence, and the breath simply stopped. He stood there looking at me with an expression that I had never seen on his face in any loop, in any version of any conversation I had ever witnessed or imagined, what I was looking at was pure shock.
"Im..." he started, and his voice cracked on the word, and he tried again, and it cracked again, and the third time it came out barely above a whisper: “Impossible.”