Edge Cases

174 - Book 3: Chapter 39: Next Steps

Figuring out what to do next was rather more complicated than it should have been, Vex thought.

Jakka and his children could not be allowed to go free, that was a given. The rebels would have to capture and house them far easier said than done, although Helix was insistent that they would be able to do it.

Vex had no idea how. He seemed fully intent on just dragging their bodies through the streets.

"You're not going to just drag them through the streets, right?" Vex asked his brother hesitantly.

"Of course not!" Helix said indignantly. "We're going to dress them up as potato sacks."

Vex took a deep breath, then saw Helix's smirk, and let himself relax. "Almost got me with that one," he said with a small smile.

It was strange, being so amicable with his older brother. His relationship with Helix had never been like this it had always been fraught with jealousy and clashing viewpoints, arguments about how best to use their magic... They had never had the opportunity to just be brothers.

Helix seemed far more comfortable in his own skin and with the people around him, now. Before, he had been far more irritable.

"Vex?" Derivan called gently. "We must go. I cannot keep the portal open for much longer."

"I'll keep you up to date," Helix said with a wink, mimicking typing through the system. Vex gave his brother a nod, hesitated for a second, and stepped up to give him a quick hug; Helix stiffened for a moment, then returned the hug, some unseen tension in his body slowly dissolving.

"Good to have you back, brother," Helix said quietly.

Vex gave him a small smile, then turned and darted back through Derivan's portal, and back into the little home they had made for themselves in the middle of the Roads.

It was more of a temporary base than anything. The Roads had allowed all four of them to meet back up after they'd completed their respective paths, dumping the four of them into a larger, circular cavern with a number of square-shaped empty homes built into the dirt.

It reminded Vex strangely of Mundane. He wondered if this was an abandoned city, or if it was waiting to have people move in. Everything within it seemed unused and clean, so perhaps the Roads were preparing it for use... It served them well enough for now, though, so they decided to take a break.

None of them quite wanted to go through the red, menacing door at the other side of the cavern yet.

Well, except for Misa. Misa really wanted to go through the red, menacing door.

For now, though, the four of them had other things on their minds.

"You said you saw something?" Vex asked. He sat on one side of the table in the small, square home they'd appropriated for themselves; the furniture in the place was plain but functional, and comfortable enough for all of them.

Derivan's expression was grave. "I believe I know the cause of the growth spells failing. If they are what I think they are, then we do not have as much time as we think. Elyra will need evacuation."

Vex jolted. "Evacuation?"

"That seems extreme," Sev said, but he didn't sound skeptical. He frowned slightly, glancing off into the air like he was quietly communicating with someone, and then furrowed his brows. "You're worried about disrupting the rebellion's plans, yeah?"

"It is a concern," Derivan admitted. "They will not have as much time to raid the Houses as would be ideal for them. By my estimations, we have less than a month before growth as a concept stops functioning in Elyra entirely."

"What did you see, Deri?" Vex asked, his voice almost pleading. Elyra was his home. His relationship with his home was complicated, certainly; he didn't like almost any of Elyra's policies, and he had almost no love left for his family save for his well, now two of his brothers.

Derivan sighed. "Void Wyrmlings," he said.

And then he explained.

He'd already told them all about what he'd experienced in his section of the Roads the way he'd entered the Void, the fact that he'd encountered others in there. The fact that monsters had all once been people was a true shock to them all.

It was even more of one when he shared that many of them were planeshifted species as well. Obreve had once been far more diverse, containing peoples from all sorts of realms.

Now they had barely anyone left.

"I suspect that the wyrmlings are not truly wyrmlings at all. They do not seem alive. The system knows that they exist, in a manner of speaking, but I had to Patch it for it to display them at all. I suspect the system once directly pointed out the Void..." Derivan tilted his head, aiming his gaze suddenly towards Misa. "Ah. But I can see why it no longer does so."

"What?" Misa sounded slightly nonplussed. "Why are you looking at me?"

"I had to borrow from your Path system to force the system to create a display for the wyrmlings," Derivan explained. "It did not cause any damage to your part of the system, but... the piece that was connected to the wyrmling had further deteriorated. It is difficult to interact with the Void without deteriorating, I suspect."

"Eugh." Misa made a discomforted sort of noise, shaking her head. "Not sure I like the thought of Void worms poking their way through reality."

"Regardless," Derivan said. "They appear to feed on the concept of growth. We understand now that magic functions through the application of glyphs, which themselves pull from the conceptual sphere. It appears that within the area dominated by Elyra's reality anchor, the concept of growth itself is slowly being erased."

Silence reigned for a moment, and then Vex spoke.

"You're worried about what will happen after," he said. "It's not just the lack of food, but once the wyrmlings run out of things to eat..."

"The Void is already encroaching on Elyra," Derivan said with a nod. "The anchor is still functioning, or we would not be here; the wyrmlings are either a new development, or the anchors themselves are no longer enough, even fully intact as they are."

"Or the Void is evolving," Misa mumbled, and the rest of her team stared at her. "What? It's possible!"

"I hope not," Sev said with a shudder. "Bad enough that we're faced with the end of all reality. We don't need it being alive."

"I do not think that is the case, fortunately," Derivan said. "But if the rebellion is to succeed, it must do so soon. If we impress upon them that they need to evacuate the city..."

"We'll tell them what's going on," Vex said. "Helix knows something is up, anyway, and I trust them to figure things out and ask for help if they need it. They're more likely to believe us than the nobles, anyway."

"We'll ask them for help," Syvila decided.

She was too old for this. Ingress was looking at her with a sad-but-understanding sort of look on his face, Helix had his brows furrowed, and half the rest of the rebellion's leaders looked angry. The others looked resigned.

"You want to ask for help?" one demanded. He was cloaked in shadow, his voice distorted by the magics on it, but she knew who he was. Justin ran a food kitchen somewhere in Southern Elyra. He'd seen what the nobles had done more or less firsthand. She understood his anger understood what she was asking of them all.

"This is bigger than us," Syvila said quietly. "If Elyra itself is in danger, then even the nobles must put aside their struggles for power."

"They won't do that," Justin scoffed; several of the other members of the rebellion nodded beside him. Syvila couldn't deny that they might have a point. The food crisis was, in itself, something the nobles should have put aside their differences to handle and yet they had not.

The people of Elyra had mostly been left to starve.

But what were they going to do? Evacuating Elyra would be far harder without the help of the nobles. Getting their help would make it that much faster.

"Are you even sure that your brother is telling the truth?" another person spoke up. Kryla, a simple lizardkin apothecary in the western corner of Elyra. In the wake of the growth spells beginning to fail, she had worked tirelessly to create a potion that reduced the need for food, and had even been partially successful but none of the nobles had funded her, no matter how much she begged.

Now she spoke directly to Helix, who stiffened slightly at the hint of condescension in her tone. "You and he are both nobles. Are we to take your word for this coming disaster?"

"You do not have to." This time, the person that spoke up was a priest Jukar, of orcish descent. Syvila remembered seeing him working in the streets, healing the starving and the sick; healing could stave off the effects of starvation, but never enough. He'd driven himself to mana exhaustion with it. "I have spoken with Urasta. The danger is true."

"The gods are involved with this?" Kryla asked, and this time she sounded appropriately chastised; she sent an apologetic look to Helix, who waved it off. Syvila watched the exchange with a small amount of pride.

It wasn't the first time Helix had had friction with other members of the rebellion, and it likely wouldn't be the last. She'd smoothed things over as best as she could, and they were slowly getting used to one another, even if sparks still flew at times. What was important was that Helix understood their distrust, and the other members of the rebellion were willing to admit to their mistakes.

"They are," Jukar confirmed. "They have been receiving warnings... There is a threat, previously unknown to them. Gods have been erased, and no one has been the wiser, for the information has been hidden from us. And this is just another part of that problem. Our world is crumbling. There is no longer time to struggle for power. We must find somewhere safe. For the people."

It was the longest thing Jukar had ever said in a meeting, and it left the entire hall silent. Ghostly fire flickered in the walls around them, protecting them from the prying minds of the Wisfield house.

"So the threat is real, we are agreed," Syvila said finally. "We vote on reaching out, and working with the nobles to evacuate?"

"And on what to do if they fail to help us," Kryla said. "They have no reason to believe us, and even if their own priests tell them..."

"I doubt they'll want to help," Helix said, and many eyes in the room turned to him. He shrugged. "They aren't going to believe you. I'm sorry. Doesn't matter if their own priests tell 'em otherwise. This threatens their power."

"We must try," Syvila said, but there was a small downward quirk at the corner of her lips; she did not have high hopes, either. "But if they do not help us... what we must do has changed. Elyra is no longer safe to stay in, and so the rebellion will no longer focus on taking the kingdom from the nobles. We will focus on evacuation. We might not win in a straight fight, but they cannot stop us from leaving, and from bringing as many as we can with us."

Quiet murmurs erupted across the room, but most of them were in agreement.

The vote passed, and the people in the room slowly filtered out. Syvila sighed, turning back to her books, and let the rest of the library slowly shimmer back into existence around her.

She hadn't expected to end up in quite this position when she'd chosen to help a young lizardkin, so uncertain about his place in the world. What Vex had uncovered now was so far beyond her she felt her scales aging just from thinking about it. And yet if he hadn't...

A tongue flicked out, and she turned the page of the book she was reading delicately, respectfully.

It would be some time still before she could rest.