I nodded. “Yeah. Or, I know of her, anyway. So, she turned on your group and helped the people who were attacking?”
“Yeah. It was obvious this was a planned ambush. Rochelle and Lawrence put up a good fight, but that swordsman was just too much. Must have been an Emerald. Even three Citrines couldn’t stand up against him. Tenjin was starting to recover, but then Elora laid into him with her magic, too. Managed to pin him down like she did with Echion, then that masked woman knocked Tenjin out.”
That… sounded insane. The idea of a group of humans managing to incapacitate a visage — even if they accomplished it through the element of surprise — it was mind-boggling.
Then again, I’d seen Keras manage to hold Katashi at bay in a straight fight.
And Tenjin was the Visage of Inspiration. He wasn’t known for his combat abilities. It was possible that he was considerably weaker in a direct confrontation than someone like Katashi would be.
Something she said earlier scratched at the back of my mind, though. “Why do you think Echion might have been able to handle the situation if he hadn’t been incapacitated?”
Vera winced. “You saw that mark on his forehead, yeah?”
I nodded and another piece of the puzzle slid into place. “You’re experimenting with making artificial attunements, aren’t you?”
Vera ran a hand through her hair. “Been doing that for decades. This was… a little more advanced than that. I won’t bombard you with theory, but the point is that Tenjin was right. It’s incredibly dangerous work.”
She paused, taking a breath, then continued. “We were bringing Echion into the tower to test him against monsters. We tried smaller tests at home, of course, but we needed something closer to real combat. If the test had succeeded, we’d have had a weapon that might have been strong enough to prevent a war.”
I could understand the logic behind that. In fact, I was very interested in the subject of artificially creating attunements myself.
If there was a way to give anyone power — and the power they wanted, not just what the goddess chose to give them — we could work toward a society with vastly better efficiency and quality of life for everyone.
Elementalist farmers could make rain for their own crops. Shaper blacksmiths could create tools and weapons with less effort and better quality results. Summoner couriers could teleport from place to place, saving tremendous amounts of time and effort.
There were already some people doing all these things, but most attuned were bound tightly to the military or similar pursuits. And, of course, only those people who were both wealthy enough to take the test and lucky enough to succeed managed to earn attunements. Most farmers never even stood a chance at getting one. Marissa’s family probably had to save up for years just to get her a shot at taking the test.
I could see problems with giving attunements to everyone, of course. The Judgments might have served as some sort of vetting process to determine who would be safe enough to carry one without causing harm to others, and the school education afterward served a second step in that process.
Moreover, two years of proper training meant it was less likely that an Elementalist would accidentally set a farm on fire or do something equally catastrophic.
I was optimistic that a society equipped to create attunements could find a way to make it work. It was something I wanted to research on my own, and if people were already succeeding, I wanted to know more.
The last part of what she said did bother me a little, though. Strong enough to prevent a war? Any individual attuned with that level of power was strong enough to start a war, too — or just cause tremendous damage. I’d need to find out more about that.
“What can you tell me about what you were doing with Echion? Why use a child?”
Vera shook her head. “I’m not going to get into that. It’s a deep secret for a reason. And before you chastise me for it, keep in mind that Tenjin wanted us to stop doing the experiments. I’m pretty confident Katashi wouldn’t want me spreading knowledge about them further.”
I shook my head. “Katashi seemed to want to kill Echion outright. Do you know why?”
Vera shrugged. “I can only speculate that Katashi was strongly opposed to what Echion represented. I doubt the visages are happy with the idea of artificial attunements in general.”
I nodded at that. “Can you tell me anything more about the tests you were planning to run?”
She winced. “I’d really rather not discuss anything that might make Katashi even angrier with me.”
That was pretty disappointing. I wanted to know as much as possible about these tests so I could understand exactly how they worked.
Maybe I could eventually devise safer alternatives?
More importantly, I had some pretty serious moral issues with the idea of testing experimental magic on children — but I didn’t have enough context to know what dangers, if any, the tests might have involved.
I shook my head. “Fine. We can talk about it more later if it becomes necessary. For the moment, though, tell me what happened next.”
“Once Tenjin was out, we tried to fall back, but that swordsman was brutal, and Elora knew all our tricks. She was one of the strongest members of our group in the first place. That masked woman teleported out with Tenjin. That was the last thing I saw before the swordsman knocked me out. Then I woke up in a jail cell.”
I frowned. “Describe the swordsman.”
“Tall, olive skin, brown hair. He had a local accent. He talked with the other traitor and Elora a bit during the fight. Didn’t say too much, but it sounded like he was the one giving orders.”
That brought a couple people to mind. “Any chance it was Keras?”
She shook her head. “Don’t think so. Hair was shorter and lighter. Skin was darker.”
As it turned out, I knew an Emerald-level swordsman who met that description pretty much perfectly. Derek Hartigan.
And he was, of course, standing right outside.
This was going to be awkward.
I’d known from the moment that I’d seen Elora Theas on the list that there was a good chance Derek was involved, too. This wasn’t explicit confirmation, but it made the possibility much more likely.
Keras was still a possibility. Someone as powerful as he was could have had another attunement we weren’t aware of that enabled him to change his appearance. If he had a Shadow Attunement or something similar, he could have changed minor things once he ended up in that cell so that Vera wouldn’t recognize him. I kept that possibility at the back of my mind, but Derek was clearly the more immediate concern.
I put my thoughts together and replied. “Okay. So, Elora betrayed your group for reasons unknown. She probably summoned Tenjin intentionally… but if the goal of her and her compatriots was to attack Tenjin, why bother with all this?”
Vera twisted her lips as she considered that. “Not sure. I assume those two people with her were connected with Tenjin somehow and wanted his attention focused on something else, giving them a chance to attack while he was distracted. Or maybe it’s a political thing. Presumably, they escaped with an unconscious Tenjin — and then I ended up in that jail somehow, along with Echion. Maybe they wanted to make Caelford look responsible for Tenjin’s disappearance?”
I could follow that logic. “To drive a rift between Caelford and Valia. Yeah, that makes sense. Or just to get Katashi to focus his attention on Caelford and Valia while Edria is at our borders… If Katashi sends monsters to attack us because his brother is missing, that gives Edria a window to strike while our forces are defending the university.”