Chapter 443: Fear
Optional music for today: Rok Nardin - Cursed Tides )
( https://youtu.be/LBaY5HRXsnA )
Late Evening - Late Winter - Year 24 : Ampelos | Bahamut
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*Tap...* What, truly, is silence? *Tap...* Is it merely the lack of sound? *Tap...* Or perhaps a moment where the air turns so heavy you can feel its every shifting current?
As I moved across the marble floor where dozens of elders and ancients lowered their voices to murmurs, I brought that into question—the gentle taps from my feathery steps resonating.. echoing through the silence like distant church bells.
But, while their gazes were caught on me and the decorated blade at my hip, there was one exception. *Rattle-Shuffle...* Hearing a subtle scurry within the arrangement of guests, I turned to see a man who looked akin to the children exploring the festival outside, yet carried an unfitting presence.
Dressed as though his clothing was thrown on in passing, he was a skinny, young-looking man with a set of large, round glasses similar to Chioni's laying across his nose like some weathered scientist.
Despite his fragile appearance though, his crown proudly donned a set of large grey horns that could only belong to the true form of an elder, and his face bore a confidence you couldn't ignore. "Good evening, sir." Stopping in front of me with a polite cheerfulness, he extended a slender hand with a conflicting ease. "It is an honor to meet an envoy of the Ragnarok family!"
Intrigued, I gripped his hand, only to find it as gentle as his appearance. -What an odd man...- "Hello," Matching his gaze, my voice purred with a dominance that hadn't been mustered since my time as Nott. "And who would you be?"
Yet he still met my gaze without a flinch. "Ah, forgive my informality. I am Aeolos Akomi Kai—host of tonight's assembly."
"I see." -And to think his sister is the eccentric one...- Looking him up and down again, I expanded my aura through the estate, unable to keep the skeptical look off my face. "So it seems you were expecting me?"
"It certainly doesn't come as a surprise." Dismissing a pair of hovering maids with a flick of his aura, conversation around us resumed as though on cue. "Please forgive my lacking hospitality, the blizzard has.. sabotaged our preparations..." Looking up through the glass arch stretching across the ceiling, into the darkness of the snowstorm, the light in his eyes flickered a forced glow. "In any case, thank you for coming. Allow me to guide you to a quieter place to talk. This way."
Idly glancing over the crowd as we began walking, the controlled sway in my tail slowly. As we moved, I inspected every nook of the estate, dissected every artifact, and followed every secret passageway, but the more I looked, the more I was at a loss. Even in the most secretive laboratories, almost half a kilometer underground, I found nothing damning, with only some older Acardi pieces even being of note. -Looks like they were dissecting an Acardi crawler...-
Yet Aeolos's composure still felt strained, as if he were holding up a wall by himself. Perhaps family matters.. perhaps to hide something...
But I didn't pry yet, making my way out of the main hall without a mutter before coming into a large office I could only assume was the patriarch's: book-lined, mythril-ribbed, and presently drowning in loose parchment, scrolls, and maps.
"Please forgive the mess," he muttered, sweeping papers aside with a sigh of genuine fatigue. "Appearances are harder to keep up in places no one usually sees..."
I gave an understanding nod in response. -What a troubled man...- Looking through some of the papers, I found an assortment of scientific documents, maps, name lists, and merchant trade order forms from hundreds of different human kingdoms. -Is he.. searching for something?-
But we continued.
Eventually reaching the back of the office, he ushered me through a small, almost invisible door hidden behind the colossal draconic desk, leading us into a glass-ceilinged inner study decorated with mythril and gold, and layered with dozens of barriers thick enough to keep out the eyes of anyone outside.
At least anyone but me.
*Click* Sealing the door behind us, the ambient hum of auras colliding within the estate dampened, replaced by an almost palpable stillness before the gentle clack of glass echoed out. "Please." Motioning to a pair of high-back chairs sat around a low table littered with papers stamped with foreign seals, he poured two glasses of tea, downing his in one go before slumping back with a worn smile. "I know your family values directness, so allow me to get right to the point..."
-Hm...- Unbuckling the rose gold sword at my waist, I gently rested it against the chair before sitting down, curling my long fenririan tail around myself with a pleasurable mix of intrigue and curiosity. "I appreciate your forwardness." Relaxing my wings, I laid back. "Before I start though, I'd like to ask you why you think I'm here."
He instantly tensed, leaning forward with a thinned gaze. "Is it not because my letter to the Cabinet was received? I requested an investigator months ago."
Shaking my head, I watched his eyes darken. "I am indeed here to investigate something, but it is not on the Cabinet's order. No such request has reached them to my knowledge." -If they did, Hera would've probably said something...-
The relief in his gaze immediately drained like a lake with a shattered dam—the inexplicable tension he showed before I entered the main hall returning in a rush.
But it just made me more interested. "Would you like to explain what is going on, or should I start?"
Leaning back, gripping the arm of the chair so hard the gold deformed, he nodded. "Please go ahead... It would be naive to believe I could take so much of your time because of my own.. incompitencies..."
-Hm...- Looking him in the eyes for a moment, silently judging his demeanor as his mind raced, I paused before easing the chill in my voice. "Your household's name has reached my ears by being attached to certain.. irregularities I've run into lately." I let my words hang before continuing. "Having found some information regarding your estates involvement with the half-breed uprising a number of years ago, I have reason to believe this isn't such a shallow matter."
Seeing me relax my hand on the hilt of my sword, questions ripped the few-remaining emotions off his face and out of his voice. "The matter with the rebellion was my father's doing." Leaning back, he showed his palms. "At that time, he courted every fringe idealist who would pay him to tinker, and when the uprising collapsed, he disappeared with it. Weeks later, I woke up to the smell of fire, and came in here to find nearly every paper in his desk, and in this back room reduced to ash without a burn mark anywhere."
"The deliberate destruction of information," I mumbled.
"Precisely." Joining his hands together, his tone turned cold. "I am certain my Father has gotten into some dangerous matters since then, but his activities are unrelated to this estate."
-Hm...- "Is that the matter you wished the cabinet to investigate? To break off suspicions early?" Fully expecting him to nod in agreement, I sank into thought.
But instead, his tone firmed. "Not directly." Seeing my gaze snap to him, he was quick to continue. "A few years ago now, Father's research wing received a number of crates—salvage from an ancient debris field near the mountain in the Holy Kingdom. Supposedly, it was something the higher-ups wanted to investigate and research."
-That must be the crawler I sent people to investigate...-
"But attached to the salvage was a note instructing specifically my sister, Thaleia, to 'study it for the future of power'." His voice tightened. "At first, it just reignited her passion for studying and research, but after a while, her demeanor started to shift and she started leaving the estate more and more often until about two months ago, when she vanished completely." He quickly motioned toward a neat stack of papers next to us. "Those rumors of missing people is my doing. I begged every noble house and branch office in the city for information, even the cabinet for as little as a trace of her, but received nothing."
Lifting up and sifting through a series of letters, I read the responses to his pleas, dated and empty. "So you host a party, to..." Motioning him on, he continued in a rush.
"To try and inquire about the matter personally, while upholding the facade of my Father still studying here to uphold the interest and grants from investors." Reaching up and tugging at his collar, he looked like a boy in a man's jacket. "I'm no rebel, sir. I'm a steward standing on rotten planks."
Silence instantly settled between us, this time with shared acknowledgement rather than a hush.
He wasn't lying.
"Then it seems our interests align." Releasing my gentle touch from the sword, I allowed myself to ease into the chair, my tail gently coiling around its leg.
Aeolos immediately, visibly relaxed—his shoulders dropping as if a crushing weight had lifted from him. "Truly?" His voice was hopeful but tempered, the cautious optimism of someone who'd faced disappointment far too often.
"Indeed. What you've described aligns closely with several.. troubling leads I've uncovered elsewhere." Shifting my attention back to the scattered documents, I quickly identified a few familiar sigils—one, in particular, that was etched into the containers aboard the Styx's Fang. "Did your sister leave behind any personal journals or research notes before she disappeared?"
"Only scraps," He admitted bitterly. "There are some fragments that read like riddles, but nothing coherent enough to use as a guide... As time passed, she became increasingly secretive, even from me—her letters sounding more foreign, like someone else's voice was behind the ink."
A chill slowly danced down my spine. "Could you bring me to what remains of her work?"
With practiced haste, he rose, moving to an intricately carved shelf before pulling off a sealed, mythril-string-bound journal laid between thick, frost-covered tomes. "She left this behind. I found it hidden beneath the cushion she laid on in her study." Handing it over, hope and despair fought in his eyes. "I've never been able to decipher much from it besides.. a decline in mental acuity... But perhaps you may recognize something..."
Gently grabbing it, a cold instantly pierced my gloves—a frost forming on my fingertips as I opened the cover to find the same insignia carved. -A star contained in an iron ring...- Tracing my finger around it, I pushed my aura into the cover, immediately finding strings of runes woven through the fabric like a web of divinity, tracing through the spine and masking the pages with writing that wasn't truly there.
-How.. intricate...- Darkening my gaze, my fingers settled on the first page before a crisp snap rang out, and the oppressive cold emanating from the book settled with a wave of warmth. "Your sister must have known quite the impressive rune worker..." *Snap* Hearing yet another snap as I snipped the runic string in the book's spine, the ink on the exposed pages morphed before forming pages of text.. diagrams.. and math...
All detailing an understanding of science only Hera could rival.
Yet as I turned the pages, what began as dry, meticulous breakdowns of Acardi crawler components, slipped—subtly at first. Schematics became erratic, margins bled with broken formulae—looping endlessly—and her handwriting became fractured, with letters no longer following invisible lines on the paper.. as if her mind was trying to outrun itself.
But perhaps most concerning were the contents itself.
She started hearing things... 'Whispers beneath the fractures.. voices behind the artifacts...' Then the nightmares started.
Scrawled between lines of math were desperate passages—repetitive and cyclical, like she was losing time.
Until, at last, the math was blotted with words.
The final page, barely legible over the mess of scribbled equations and half-sketched reactor cores, she wrote a single line—etched with such pressure that the paper tore beneath it.
'They watch from the fracture.. the metal sings from the depths... We cannot remain as we are. We are calling them.. luring them to the surface... And to survive, we must ignite the sky.'
'Father... I understand...'
Finally, slowly, closing the book, frost continued to cling to the tips of my gloves.. not from the book, but from me...
This wasn't madness, it was revelation—perhaps the last coherent thought of a mind forced to comprehend something incomprehendable...
A fear so deep, the concept of allegiance, faith, and blood crumbled like a tower of sand.
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