The Path of Ascension

Chapter 239

Quill coughed out a mouthful of blood, tracking down another section of internal bleeding and stopping it with a [Bandage]. Calling his injuries wounds was a bit of an understatement, as they were better described as horrific damage. His left hand was gone, floating a few miles away after one of Linda’s attacks. Everything below his waist was also cut off and floating in space as gobbets no larger than a mana stone. He was pretty sure the largest bit had once been a part of one of his boots.

If he wasn’t a Tier 15, able to ignore merely debilitating damage with enough concentration and effort, he’d have already died.

As the anger and rage that had been fueling him slowly drained away, Quill blinked his eyes back into focus as he focused on the drama unfolding right in front of him.

Frederic’s spirit bore a distinct resemblance to a volcano about to erupt, and Luna’s incisors had sharpened into full cat fangs peeking through her lips.

Frederic silently snapped, the sound vanishing into the inky blackness of space, and the entire group reappeared in the skies above the Gerble estate. Matt’s barrier around Hardy and his goons were gone, but in exchange, they’d been placed right in front of the soldiers assigned to apprehend them, and were led off to a spaceship hovering nearby. His left hand floated in front of him and he stored it away so he could later reattach it.

Below them, the noble estate bore a distinct resemblance to a toppled anthill, with army personnel swarming the place.

A few of those army personnel in healer’s garb rushed over to Quill and immediately moved to start healing him, but he waved them off. He was more interested in the events unfolding in front of him than the healers stitching his wounds closed. After all, he wasn’t getting half his body regrown anywhere but a hospital.

Part of him wished Melinda was nearby, but then he remembered that she had stepped off the Path. There simply was no market price for her healing, and so, he could no longer benefit from her healing while he remained on the Path so even if she was near he couldn't get healed by her.

Torch joined them, bringing with her a scraggly-looking man, and Quill frowned. Justinian Miller, for that was the only person it could be, looked rough. Actually, rough was putting it nicely; he looked like Matt had in the beginning of his Folded Reflection life, when he resisted his captors and was subsequently punished. That had bad implications, with him being a peak Tier 14 and having been held captive for five hundred years.

Frederic glared at the man in Luna’s grip, his words carrying a hint of a growl as he spoke. “I knew House Gerble wasn’t acting alone, but I hadn’t thought it was you, Ilkor.”

Quill’s AI handily provided an EmpireNet bio of Ilkor Hastings, the local duke. He was from an old noble line, an old rival of Frederic’s family from back when that faction of inherited nobility settled the area that now made up Frederic’s kingdom. The major thing Quill noted was that they didn’t have any major scandals, at least before now.

Luna released the man and drifted backwards, pulling Linda away from the two nobles. Quill was a bit sad he wasn’t about to see her be crushed in an argument, but he mostly wanted her to stand trial, which she couldn’t do as a mushed corpse.

Illkor blurred, a glowing hand replacing where Luna had taken his old one, speaking without making noise. Then, he reeled back as though struck, glared at Frederic, and spoke at Tier 12 speeds, “I was merely removing scum from the Empire, as are all our duties. If I had known you were there to intercede on our young heroes' behalf, I wouldn’t have bothered. I’ll pay the fine for excessive force and interfering without argument.”

He nodded to Quill, and he needed to resist the urge to give him a rude gesture. It was clearly bullshit, and he was trying to cover the fact he had been trying to kill a key witness in a horrific crime.

The question was, how was Frederic going to handle it? Let him off? Punish him?

Frederic simply responded with a slow shake of his head. “This won’t be that simple, Ilkor. The Emperor himself has a personal interest in seeing this case resolved. After all, Mr. Miller was abducted before he appointed me as overseer of this sector, and that means it was his responsibility. Regardless, if you think I would allow you to be free of this with a simple fine, you don’t understand what my role is. You were attempting to kill a key witness in an Imperial Crime, and if I find out that you were complicit in even the slightest way for Mr. Miller’s captivity, you will face full and complete penalties for all misdeeds.”

Ilkor sneered at Frederic, “So you get raised to a king, and you throw your own kind away to suckle at the Emperor's teat? How embarrassing.”

Frederic’s spirit radiated such genuine anger that Quill nearly took a step back, but the sensation passed as the king fixed his eyes on the duke. “Ilkor Hastings. Do you treat the rest of your duties with the same lack of care as your words? Our mandate is to act as stewards and protectors of the common man. We are nobles, and our bearing must reflect that. There is a right and proper way to undertake this action, through contracts and bonds of service. We are not thugs, stealing men away from their homes in the dead of night, we are nobles, we are rulers, and our tools are law and order. Power, tempered with wisdom, not reaching beyond its means to accomplish what it wishes. Sheppards of our flock, strengthening them so they empower us just as we cultivate our planets to grow stronger. I will stand against you should you overreach, just as surely as I oppose the Emperor attempting to do the same. That is my job, my duty, Ilkor.”

Frederic turned away, but kept speaking. “Ilkor, do not leave this planet until further notice. You are officially a suspect in the case of Mr. Miller, and your actions now have established sufficient cause for a full Royal audit. Fleeing will only make things worse for you.”

With that, Frederic turned away from the duke and towards Justinian. The newly-rescued man quivered like a rabbit as he hid behind Torch, but Quill’s partner gently reassured and guided him to face the king better.

“Good day, Mr. Miller. My name is Frederic Macheteuil, and I am, as of a few decades ago, the King of this sector. I am genuinely sorry for all that you have undergone, and will do all within my power to ensure you are made whole in the wake of this ordeal. Should you need me for anything or have any concerns, contact me day or night, regardless of your location. I will pay for all interplanetary messaging costs.” Having said that, Frederic proffered the man a pad which Quill was sure had a personal line to the royal. It wasn’t like the former captive would have been given an AI.

Except, Justinian didn’t take it. He didn’t even reach out, but instead just looked between the offered pad and Torch. After a moment, she reached out and grabbed the pad before offering it to Justinian herself. That was enough for the man, who took it from her and clutched it to his chest.

With a shallow bow in goodbye, Frederic floated up into the sky, meeting a massive floating island and estate as it appeared from chaotic space.

Quill had seen such floating estates before, but the last one he had come across was Duke Ignite’s from when they first entered the Vassal kingdom of the Seven Suns. It hadn’t been half as large, and he hadn’t been able to sense the ripple from the estate tearing its way through space to arrive back then.

It felt like a sledgehammer hitting him as his sense of reality warped, and with his pre-existing injuries, Quill wanted to vomit.

Thankfully, the moment quickly passed, and he was better in seconds.

Ilkor was already gone the next time Quill looked his way. Considering the Duke was forbidden from leaving the planet, he couldn’t care less where the noble went. Quill was sure there was a trash heap about to be sent into a rift that the man could call home for his stay. The noble was almost certainly in cahoots with Linda, and would be going down with her. But from what he had seen, Ilkor wasn’t as strong as Luna, let alone Frederic, which was all that mattered. He wouldn’t be escaping even if he tried.

Quill almost hoped Ilkor would try. Currently, they had nothing substantial enough to charge a Duke with, as everything was circumstantial. But defying a direct order from an appointed King was more than enough to be thrown into a prison cell.

He was also glad Frederic seemed honestly angry at the situation. It could all be an act put on for his benefit, but there was a level of sincerity to the man's words and actions that made him believe it.

Seeing the army personnel who moved in to look over Torch and Justinian, Quill went to do the same, but hesitated in seeing how Justinian could barely control himself from flinching back from everyone but Torch. The man had clearly imprinted on Torch as his savior, and Quill couldn’t blame him in the least. For all Justinian knew, anyone could be complicit in the crimes against him or want to capture him themselves.

Everyone except Torch.

And while even that logic wasn’t entirely sound, as even she could have only saved him to keep him locked up, Quill understood emotions weren’t always logical.

He was just glad to see the man alive and free. Everything else could be slowly fixed, but seeing their rescue effort had succeeded made all the injuries he had sustained more than worth it.

He and Torch exchanged a quick pair of AI messages, and Torch floated the two of them over to him. “Justinian, this is my partner Quill. He was the one who got me inside the estate and then fought Linda so we had time to escape.”

Justinian swallowed, looking at Quill’s mangled body, so he proffered his single remaining hand, which still held his invulnerable left hand, and wiggled the severed limb. “Good to meet you, and don't worry about this. I’ll be healed in no time. Speaking of which, why don’t we both get checked out?”

“Thank you. I. I. I… I just. I—”

Quill waved him down, making sure to keep the movement slow.

“I’ve had worse, believe me. I just want to make sure you’re okay.” He wanted to say he understood what the man was going through, and had sort of gone through something similar, but that would both give away his identity and Talent. He was going to ask Luna if he could tell Justinian about the part of the Folded Reflection life later, as they could just say he had gotten a different Talent, and that might help the man. But he wasn’t going to do so out in the open.

Still, his reassurance seemed to settle Justinian down, and the three of them flew over to the nearest hospital, which had a few rooms taken over by the army for their use, where they were immediately looked over.

The hospital staff, seeing Justinian was physically fine, wanted to pull Quill into a separate room to start regrowing his body. But with how Justinian was resisting being separated from Quill or Torch, he told them to just start the healing.

That got some grumbles from the healers about the proper procedure, but needs must, and Justinian’s comfort took priority currently.

With Torch sitting in a chair against the wall, Quill had most of his body regrown while a local therapist talked to Justinian. Like before, they had tried to get Justinian to do this alone in a separate room, but he flatly refused to leave, and no one pushed him too hard.

Quill had spent his fair share of time with therapists, and while not one himself, he knew a thing or two about the science. From what he was hearing from Justinian, things had been very, very rough in the last few decades, but they hadn’t always been that bad.

Like in his own false life, Justinian had been given strict deadlines and harsh punishment if he didn’t provide in that time frame. While he didn’t explain how his Talent worked, he mentioned how if he didn’t give them an essence stone quickly enough, they would take away comforts and possibly inflict pain. They hadn’t had to punish him in a long time, as he had long since given up, accepting his fate as a captive and having been given quite a nice room.

That ended when he failed to create his Concept with a Shard of Reality. After his first failure, they hadn’t been too harsh, or so he said. But after the third, where they realized he wasn’t just failing to create his Concept, but actively resisting it so he would remain mortal and could eventually just die, things had taken a turn for the worse.

“They partitioned the room and put me behind a glass wall so I could see the nice bed, but I had to sleep on the concrete floor. So I could see the shower but never had enough water to drink, let alone clean myself with. So I could see the food they put out for me, but I couldn't eat anything other than tasteless gruel.”

Torch sent him a short recording her AI had taken of the cell that Justinian had been in, and it was as he said, if not worse. The small area behind the glass where he was forced to live had been tiny and too small for him to even lay down all the way in, and was otherwise utterly bare. Not a toilet, not a sink, no food.

Nothing.

It was torture in the truest sense when compared to the opulence just feet away.

Justinian looked off into the distance as he recounted to the therapist. “It was awful. I knew that if I just gave back up, I could get all of the nice things back, but I didn’t want to. I had already given up once, but I had never been able to escape. I just wanted an escape. So what if I needed to spend a thousand years uncomfortable before I died? There was still an escape at the end of it that they couldn’t heal away. I just wanted out. I wanted out. I wanted out. I wanted out.”

As his repeated words started to blur into a mess, he started to scream and flail about so badly that the therapist authorized a strong sedative skill being used on him, finally putting Justinian to sleep.

Quill looked to Torch, and even through their masks, he could tell she was as shaken as everyone else by the display. He wasn’t surprised at all having lived through something similar, and just hoped they could get the man the help he needed.

Once the healing was completed, he and Liz moved to a nearby room where Luna waited without saying a word. Matt was sure she would have seen and heard everything, and while they might have physically freed Justinian, he was still a deeply broken man whose issues couldn’t be solved with a few months of planning and a few hours of hard work.

There was a very real possibility that Justinian could never really recover from his trauma, and all of them knew it.

After Luna looked over Matt’s newly regrown body, Liz stripped out of her armor and mask, sitting on a portioned-off section of the room. She looked awful, her skin a sickly pale streaked with gray. Her eyes were dull and listless, and her breathing was labored. Her tough front had been exactly that, a front for the watching eyes.

The potion they had used to simulate her death had real side effects that weren’t easily sidestepped, and would prove fatal in just a few days. With the medical staff they had, they could probably save her life, but with the damage her spirit was suffering, it would take years for Liz to fully recover. Years they could avoid, thanks to her bloodline.

Liz closed her eyes and killed herself.

From within, her skin began to glow, pulsing and flickering. It started at her chest, but in moments spread out to her limbs until her entire body was radiating reddish-gold light. Flames burst from her skin, consuming his wife as she stared straight ahead, mouth locked in a silent scream. Flames and embers burst forth from her skin as she self-immolated, then collapsed into a pile of ashes.

Even knowing that she’d be fine, watching Liz’s spirit shrivel away into nothing was a harrowing experience. Fortunately, less than a moment later, the ashes began to burn again, with the flames running backwards in some places and normally in others. That went on for a long moment before erupting into a pyre of fire that subsided into a much healthier-looking and practically radiant Liz, albeit covered in fading ash.

She immediately broke into a coughing fit, ash spewing from her mouth. Matt handed her a bottle of water, which she downed gratefully.

“That wasn’t as bad as I expected. Sure, dying sucked, but I feel so much better now.” she pulled a few drops of golden blood through her skin. “My Concept feels… wonderful. It’s refilling my mana, strengthening my magic, and enhancing my body. And it’s not even stressing my willpower. Wow. I think I need to experiment with this.”

She wrinkled her nose and continued, “My bloodline, on the other hand, feels like someone buried a sponge in a desert, though. I’ll need to molt in the next few days.”

Matt pulled Liz into a hug and sat with her in silence for a long moment, just processing everything.

Things weren't settled, but they had succeeded.

He wasn’t surprised that she’d need to molt soon. Even Mara could allegedly only be reborn seven times before she’d need to spend some time allowing her bloodline to rest and recharge, though Liz said she was pretty sure that she could do at least eight or nine in a row. After all of their rebirths were used up, a phoenix would need to ‘molt’ their entire body by turning portions of it to ash and shedding it over the course of a few weeks to months before they could use the ability again.

How it was different from the rebirth they could use mid-battle was a subject of contention, as the outward process was almost identical, just slower, but all phoenixes said it was different. Sleep and a coma might look outwardly the same, but they were very different things after all, and their molts were how their bloodline recharged itself.

Matt still didn’t understand a lot of how bloodlines worked, but as far as he was concerned, it just meant Liz was out of commission for a little while. Which at least worked out well enough.

While his body was whole again, he was also very much on healing cooldown, and wouldn’t be fighting for a while yet. At least his higher Tier had also increased the amount of healing he could take in one go, or else he might be dealing with prosthetics again, which he was glad to avoid.

When he and Liz stood up and got her redressed in her Torch outfit, Luna finally spoke. “Well done. There are—” she cut herself off with a shake of the head. “We’ll talk later. Just… well done. Matt, you can tell Mr. Miller about your life in Minkalla if you wish. Just say you had a Talent for copying skills. It's close enough to Quill’s Talent that no one will really question it. I and King Frederic will be protecting your conversations. Speaking of which, he’s going to want to talk to you two in the next day or so. Officially, as Ascenders.”

With that, she vanished, leaving the two of them to return to the room they had moved Justinian to. Neither of them felt it was good for him to wake up alone in a room after being locked inside for so long.

To that end, Matt had simply shaped a hole in the hospital wall, letting in both wind and sun, with the light rain being kept at bay with a few hastily scrawled low Tier runes. The door was also removed at Matt’s insistence, and the hospital only balked a little. If Justinian really wanted those things back, they could easily return them, but he was confident that the last thing the former captive wanted to see was a door or lock of any kind.

Privacy would be a distant second thought to someone who had been caged as he had been.

As they expected, Justinian woke up groggy, but quickly pushed himself up off the bed and tried to stumble out of it.

Liz caught him and said, “Easy there, Justinian. It's not a dream. Look. There is the outside.”

He looked at her Torch mask for a moment as if reassuring himself before he nodded. Despite that, he still crawled out of the bed and moved to the open hole. His hand stretched to where there would be a wall and hovered as if he was afraid to touch it.

“I dreamed of this so many times, but every time I would wake up, and there would be a wall. I know it's real, but I can’t reach out and test it. What if it's fake? What if trying to touch it wakes me up, and I’m still locked away.”

As he started shaking, Matt saw as Liz was going to speak, but held up a hand. “It's awful. The fear that you are powerless but useful. Trapped for an intrinsic part of yourself and never even given the ability to free yourself. The captors aren’t stupid; they don't let you get skills. They won’t let you exercise. They won’t let you take the steps you need to save yourself. It’s not like the movies, where the hero eventually frees himself through ingenuity and smarts. Few people in real life are dumb enough to leave an obvious escape method available. They treat you well once you break and start to cooperate, but that only makes it worse. You feel less than a pet. Less than a tool. Just an obedient slave to be wrung dry of every bit of value you possibly have to offer.”

Justinian’s hand started to shake violently as he slowly turned to Matt with the question written all over his face.

Explaining, Matt gestured to the open wall and to the sky. “Far away from here, there is a place called Minkalla. It's essentially a hidden realm, filled with trials and tests. One of those tests makes you live out different lives, and you need to wake up. In one of my lives, I had a really good Talent, where I could just wave my hand and make a skill shard appear in it. I grew up poor and sold a few to buy a rift slot. I was about to leave the city when the bus I was on got into a crash. I woke up, and they had implanted a device into my brain that hurt me anytime I tried to resist their orders. It was awful, and I quickly gave in. I wasn’t strong enough to resist the pain. I wasn’t strong enough to break out. I was simply a captive until I woke up.”

Seeing Justinian's hand still hovering right next to the place where the wall would be, Quill continued, “That life was ultimately a false one that faded away like a dream. I can’t say I’ve been through the same thing you have, but I can say that I get it. At least a little. More than anyone else here.” Nodding to the wall, he didn’t rush Justinian. “Test it when you want to. Not before. I can tell you it's not a dream a million times, but until you start to believe it, it won't matter.”

Hand still hovering, Justinian asked, “Would you check?”

Matt shook his head. “If you are asking Quill, the Pather, I'd say yes. If you are asking Quill, the kid locked in a box for doing nothing more than existing, no. He’d rather live in the illusion than wake up.”

Justinian seemed shocked that Matt admitted that, but Matt just walked to the edge of the wall and took a deep breath before slowly letting it out into the silence.

They all stood there for a long while until a knock on the doorframe got their attention.

It was the therapist. “Gdftn.” he paused, noted their confusion, and adjusted down to their Tier 12 processing speed. “I apologize. Good afternoon Mr. Miller. I’m Doctor Hernandez, and I’d like to talk to you a little more.”

Justinian flinched, clearly not using his spiritual perception to watch his back. Having lived in a spiritual perception-proof box, that wasn’t surprising, but his flinching so near an open wall made the therapist flinch as well.

Matt didn’t bother to reach out and steady him. They were only on the third floor, and even if he landed on his head, he wouldn’t get more than a bruise.

Justinian didn’t look at the doctor, but instead looked at Matt, who stood next to him.

“I don't want to wake up, but I can’t live in a dream.”

His hand moving the final few inches, Justinian crossed the threshold and into the outside.

He stared at his hand, splattered by a few drops of rain.

His laugh wasn’t entirely steady or even particularly sane, but seeing him willing to test his prison walls made Matt at least a little confident that he could recover.

Justinian was strong, despite everything he had been through.

While Justinian still refused to be alone without Matt and Liz, he seemed to settle down quite a bit after doing his little test. In fact, he actually refused to stay inside the hospital and marched his way outside, just to sit in the drizzle. Being a Tier 14, it wasn’t like a little summer rain would hurt him, but the hospital staff worked with him and actually let him stay outside while administering their tests and treatment.

Justinian, as it turned out, had been an avid outdoorsman in his childhood. He had always loved exploring and reading about delvers' adventures in unique and exotic rifts. Matt hadn’t read any of the stories Justinian grew up with, being hundreds of years younger than the man, but did recognize a few of them that had been adapted into movies in the intervening time, which shocked Justinian. He, like Matt in the false life, had been given access to small bits and pieces of media and content to keep him sane, but it had all been well curated to ensure he remained docile and not get any ideas about escape. Adventure movies were most certainly not on the approved list, and the three of them spent part of each night under the stars watching a movie or two.

Despite his efforts to re-acclimate himself to society through Quill and Torch, Justinian wasn’t even close to being better in just a few days. He was socially inept at the best of times, having forgotten most of the small things people did in polite society, and while the therapist, Doctor Hernandez, worked with him on that, it was clear he would need a specialist to give him more individual lessons.

One thing the doctors recommended for Justinian to get a sense of freedom was to learn a skill or craft that he would have never been able to do inside the box he had been locked up in. Matt was pretty sure that they expected him to pick something like art, music, or even combat; the hospital staff seemed a little baffled by Justinian's choice of hiking.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t at least try those things, but none seemed to catch his interest as much as being able to just walk in any direction he chose when he chose.

It was on one of those hikes that Quill finally learned the Talent set that had caused Justinian so much pain. His Tier 1 Talent allowed him to condense nearby essence into essence stones of his Tier. His second was an odd one that extended the range at which he could absorb essence to condense, with the down side of making essence stones used on himself increasingly inefficient.

Detrimental growth Talents were even more rare than detrimental Tier 1 Talents, and it was an interesting inversion of Matt’s own early situation. Where Matt’s first Talent had been awful for him overall, and his second had fixed his problems and set himself up for greatness, Justinian instead received an amazing starting hand, then got a Talent which crippled the speed he could have otherwise progressed at without it.

To hear him tell it, the Gerbles had been furious when they learned that Justinian wouldn’t be able to be boosted up to Tier 14 in short order, and then Tier 24 soon after. Between the low Tier world and the absolute secrecy requirements, getting him to advance had been quite the slow process, involving his captors killing monsters in front of him and having him take the essence through a bracelet.

Not that things were easy now that he found a hobby.

For the first few days, Justinian seemed to be almost perfectly normal, if a little unaware, but once he seemed to really realize that he had been freed from captivity, he started to relapse pretty hard. A few times, he went fully catatonic, and other times, he got violent and tried to break out of whatever area he was in, whether it be the bathroom, a hall, or even the outdoors. Those times were dangerous, as while his captives had made him allocate most of his essence as a mage, Justinian was still a peak Tier 14 mage. Even with dangerously uncompressed essence that put him more on par with a Tier 12 in strength, that was more than enough to be hazardous to the low Tier staff, forcing Matt and Liz to pull them out of harm's way a number of times.

No one blamed the man, but it was clear that there was a long road to recovery for Justinian.

For those responsible, things were far, far less clear.

Despite Frederic saying things would be solved in a few days, it took over a week just to come back with the initial reports so they could start the court procedures. Even the scum of the Empire was entitled to their own council, and House Gerble’s lawyers were trying to throw every obstacle, real or imagined, at Frederic to slow down proceedings.

The worst part was, it worked.

Matt was no lawyer, but he knew the law to a basic level. Enough to know that while Frederic could enact some rights as a Royal and efficiently sidestep the law to punish the Gerbles, due to the damning evidence the two of them had found and provided. Namely, Mr. Miller himself. If he did so, he would be making it seem like the case they had against the Gerble’s wasn’t as solid as the newspapers were claiming, and more importantly, let Ilkor get away with whatever level of involvement he actually had. That meant every i needed to be dotted and every t needed to be crossed before the actual trial began, which involved scrutinizing everyone’s actions and their reasons for said actions.

And doing that to a Duke wasn’t easy, slowing things down further.

Quill and Torch, despite being on The Path, were not immune. In fact, they were the main targets of the defense in the early days.

Luna had actually prepared them for times when they would be called to testify, but even the pretrial questioning was enough to make Matt want to kill the slimy lawyer defending Linda. He understood the man was simply doing his job to protect his clients interests, but the man seemed to take enjoyment out of questioning him and trying to poke holes in his story.

Thankfully, their case had been well documented by both Luna, the army, the IAB, and themselves, which immediately shut down most of the avenues of attack the lawyer tried to use.

Matt wasn’t even sure why they bothered with trying to deflect blame, but Frederic explained to them one night over a meal that the man was simply trying to create enough doubt that he could get the death penalty off the table.

Whether it would actually work would only come clear at the trial, unfortunately.