Apotheosis (Song of Sophangence Book 3)

by E. I. McAllistair

  “I know you are trying to make me feel better, but you can’t. Sure I couldn’t suddenly turn an arrow into a high caliber round like Maggie, but I knew something was different. Stefani may be the only person who genuinely had no idea she was a Quintessence. I feel so dirty now.”

  “Why does it make such a difference now though if deep in your heart you always knew?”

  “Doesn’t everyone have something they keep hidden? Something nasty that is bearable as long as no one found out about it, but the moment they did, all the shame that had been building up comes seeping out all at once?”

  “We all have secrets. It is okay.”

  “Not this one. Not convincing myself and others that I could ever begin to understand the pain Earth and Fire Affinities have endured for centuries by creating a false sense of disenfranchisement. I’m sorry. Thank you for telling me. I know you only wanted what is best for me, but I need to be alone now.”

  She stands and gathers her things, slowly making her way from him. As he watches her, feeling guilty for assuming to understand others’ feelings, she turns back to him, her face somber.

  “Centripetus. That is pretty cool. Better than anything I could have thought of. How did you come up with it?”

  “It has its roots in the concept of centripetal force, the revolutions folding a substance upon itself rapidly to create something new and better through repetition.”

  She gives a faint smile as she turns to walk away. “Leave it to you.”

  With his reveal not going at all how he planned it, Anaar decided to go give the news to someone he was sure would react in a positive manner with absolute certainty. On his walk over to Exploration, Anaar thought about how his view of things could easily be far from what others might think. This made him worry even more about his impending trip to find this brother he never knew he had. If his feelings remained antagonistic, Anaar did not know what he planned to do about the situation.

  As usual the lab was in a state of controlled chaos, papers and manuscripts stacked all around. Rather than calling out, he took the time to quietly search as he worked on getting his own thoughts in order. At last he found the old man snoozing peacefully in his chair. Anaar almost turned to leave him to his rest, but he knew he would never hear the end of it if the information came to him secondhand.

  Shaking his shoulder gently, “Gramps, wake up.”

  The old man awoke with a start, his flailing causing him to back into a desk and knock over some papers. “Anaar my boy! I was having such a dreadful dream! I could not be more thankful you came to wake me.”

  “Then I think you will enjoy what I have to tell you even more.”

  “What is that?”

  “I have confirmed the existence of a new manifestation.”

  Fredderick sprang from his chair with the exuberance of a joey that had just become independent from its mother’s pouch. “Where?! Who?!”

  “Pryshka Apendu. I just finished talking to her and giving her the details of my study. She agrees that she had some idea that it might have been a manifestation, but she had never heard of anything like it, so she dismissed it.”

  “This is the best news I have heard in some time!”

  “Why is that?”

  He pulls up a notepad which had a number of names, all of which Anaar recognized. “I have been trying to figure out how she fit into the framework of my theory. So far, she had been the only outlier with no explanation. I was simply going to list her as a pure coincidence, but this is much better!”

  As Anaar took a closer look at the paper, it became clear what he was talking about. “Your theory that manifestations have a sort of magnetism that draws themselves together, the strongest being rare or unique ones.”

  “Exactly! Now she fits perfectly into the equation! When you first told me how you had befriended her, I thought it was odd how much time you spent together. Then there is the relationship with the Electrokinetic-”

  “Codi. Please don’t ever let her hear of you simply referring to her as a manifestation. I promise it will be that last words you say.”

  “Yes, yes, I am aware of her violent tendencies. Well then, if you discovered this, that means you are officially a fully fledged authority in the field of attunements! This is ever so exciting! Tell me all about it!”

  “I named it Centripetus, and it is a passive ability. It allows the user to exponentially navigate or become more skillful at something the more exposure they have to it. Thus far, her mastery in over twenty martial arts, including her own unique weapon and that of Maggie’s, plus her innate ability to become deadlier the longer a fight goes on were the basis for my theory.”

  Fredderick’s eyes glimmer with pride and excitement as Anaar continues to explain his theory and the ability. The more he heard, the more excited he became, a never-ending stream of questions following each point. They talked for hours until Anaar had to remind the old man to eat so he could go see Seles before it became too late. Though he was not happy to have his conversation cut short, he did as he was advised. Anaar quickly portaled out without him noticing, making sure he conveniently left out that it may be the last time they ever spoke.

  29

  Sun beckoned the intertwined men from their blissful slumber. For a long while Anaar refused to move from his position, the heat of Phavian making for the ultimate thermal blanket. With Phavian’s warmth and his inherent immunity to cold, it made for Anaar never needing to turn on the heat in his room. The buildings were very well insulated to boot, but he could not help but let his mind wonder about trivial things such as how much it would cost to heat such a place if he had to pay for it.

  Phavian was a hard sleeper, and often a snorer. To Anaar’s more sensitive ears, it was as if he was sharing his bed with a snowblower. Because of his ability as a Grand Synestate, he usually was able to negate the cost of his enhanced senses as all of them were equally enhanced. He had been forced to become adept at drastically increasing his sight, taste, and sense of smell at the cost of almost losing his sense of hearing and touch. He allowed the touch to revert to more typical human levels, while the hearing he was almost deaf. If he left his ability to feel enhanced, the vibrations of Phavian’s snoring was still somewhat of a hinderance to sleep.

  He quickly learned humans pass gas in their sleep much more than he realized, and morning breath was almost a death sentence. Even then, the stolen moment he was experiencing was something he would not trade for the world. Running his fingers through Phavian’s coils, something he rarely had the luxury of doing as he was very picky about his hair and he wore a cap to bed most of the time, everything in him smiled. With a gentle kiss, he could taste the familiar sensation of ice cream, something he had spent part of the night attempting to explain to Phavian.

  It was time to rise, at least for him, as the reason he chose to leave in the morning was so he would not be prompted with excuses to stay. It took an extreme amount of convincing to get Maggie to go home so the two could enjoy some privacy before he set off. She had fully embraced her place as his best friend and the second woman to hold his heart, but there were still times Phavian felt she was a bit overbearing.

  Slipping out of Phavian’s embrace by changing to his Gaseous Form to prevent disturbing him, he stifled a laugh as he thought about Maggie and Phavian bickering back and forth the night prior.

  “Maggie… Go home already!”

  “No! I am staying the night! Anaar is going off to find some psychopath and you expect me to just prance home like it is a normal day?! There is more than enough room in the bed for all of us.”

  “You are absolutely not sleeping in the bed with us even if you did stay over.”

  “Why not?!”

  “Do you not find that even slightly inappropriate?”

  “Sometimes I wonder who is the girl here. We can make an Anaar sandwich. He is bigger than both of us, so it is more than a buffer.”

  “Can I not be likened to food?”

  “You h
ave a boyfriend! How can you not understand this?! What if Anaar wanted to sleep over in the bed with you and Dan?”

  “Good luck. Now that know he is a Synestate, I dare him to try. You’d think he just ingests cans of beans before bed. Plus why does it matter? Anaar is our friend, he doesn’t want either of us, though the bed might be a little small…”

  “Fine, I was trying to be… I don’t know, a gentleman or something? We wanna fuck. Like hardcore, room in shambles fucking.”

  “When did we decide on this?”

  “Dude! Not helping!”

  Maggie grumbles as she jumps up from the seat and leans over the seat from behind, squeezing Anaar tight. “Whatever! Do your nasties! If he doesn’t come back, I’m getting rid of you to balance the scales.”

  “Does everyone think I’m headed to certain doom?”

  With a sloppy kiss on his forehead, Maggie releases him, grabbing her bag as she prepares to leave. “You are scary enough. Knowing there are two of you, I am actually more concerned for the planet.”

  On her way out the door she turns back, giving one final grumble with a hand gesture, then closes the door behind her.

  “Why didn’t I listen to you when you told me to limit her exposure to Codi?”

  “Because you never listen to me, so why would you start then?”

  “Good point. Sex time!”

  Rummaging through his closet Anaar realized that he had not quite thought his endeavor through. He knew that he would need to speak to his mother, that much was certain, but it never dawned on him to plan things out farther than that. On one hand he could technically travel light without any belongings simply because he could always portal back for things he needed. On the other hand, he wondered if doing so would give mixed messages, not only to others, but to himself.

  He settled on taking some items with him in a backpack and staying home for the time being. If nothing else it would give him some quality time with his mom, something he had been seriously lacking, but could not exactly just pop home on whims as if it were not on the opposite end of the country. His rustling must have been louder than he expected, because when he came out of the closet, Phavian was lying there watching him.

  “So you are really doing this, huh?”

  “Of course. Did you think I played my own funeral march for nothing?”

  “Don’t fucking joke around like that. This dude is the real deal. You aren’t a Fire Affinity. I shattered every bone in my arm trying to damage him and it did nothing. What do you think is going to happen with you?”

  “We’ll sit down for a nice cup of tea and discuss our childhoods?”

  Phavian jumps up from the bed, naked and at attention. “Why aren’t you taking this seriously?! He tried to kill me. He killed hundreds in Haxby, and all you can do is play around like this is some game!”

  “Whoa there. Want to put that thing away? That is currently the most dangerous thing I have to face.”

  Phavian looks down, “You know it just does that! Stop dicking around!”

  “Wouldn’t you be-”

  “Poor word choice, but you know what the fuck I mean!”

  “I’ve survived lots of things. If he does truly intend to kill me, I’m pretty sure it will be the same.”

  “That’s all you have to say? You said he is your opposite! What if he like, cancels out your powers or something?!”

  “To be fair, considering I have Affinity Detection as an Air Affinity, there would be a good argument for him having Affinity Suppression since he is an Earth Affinity. Both are practically unheard of so if I don’t deal with him now, that could be a problem. As it stands, he has no such ability so I think I am safe.”

  “You aren’t doing anything to help the situation by giving ways my fears could come true.”

  “What do you want me to say? I’m scared shitless. I have never met someone close to me in power, now I have someone far stronger than me. Not only that, he is also the only other person who has a secondary attunement, and for whatever reason he is not feeling very brotherly. All I can do is hope that his anger toward me is misplaced and we can work through it.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I don’t think I can hurt him, let alone kill him. His Invulnerability is something else altogether. Though it is pretty rare, typically it is somewhat selective in what it covers. I still don’t understand his ability. Not only that, but something about his Earth attunement’s natural stamina is different. It is like it makes him long lived like a Water Affinity. I need to make peace with him because he isn’t going away any time soon.”

  “This isn’t like you to go into something without a plan.”

  “Yeah, because before yesterday I was the biggest freak I had ever met. Something tells me standard tactics are not going to do much here.”

  “Please! Just take more time to think about this at least! That is-”

  Anaar cross the space in an instant and kisses Phavian deeply. When he pulls back there are the beginnings of tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “I love you. I know you are worried, but if I sit idle, that only leaves room for another Haxby incident. I have a responsibility.”

  He moves backwards as a portal opens and he steps into it. Before Phavian could react, he was gone, the portal closed. Phavian felt guilty because he was secretly overjoyed since any remnants of doubt about Anaar had been expunged, and he could breathe freely knowing the man he loved had never tried to kill him. He did not know if he could bear the price of that peace though: the possibility of losing that love forever.

  Anaar’s room was just as he remembered it. Even once he had manifested as a Transporter, he never came back home. He made a rule for himself that he must avoid it at all costs. Of course there were the logistics of explaining why he was back home, but also he remembered how much it took out of him to leave.

  He had tested the limits of his powers, practiced and trained incessantly and gotten much better very rapidly as he was prone to doing. He found his range greatly exceeded that of Ripp’s, something that gave him more data and insight into the understanding of echelons. He had yet to find a destination that was too much for him to handle, whereas Ripp, someone with over a decade of experience and a refinement to her abilities, struggled with cross country trips.

  As he expected, his mother was already at work. He wondered why he even sent most of his money home if she was only going to continue working the way she did. He only wanted to give her a better life, allow her to enjoy the fruits of her labor, but she would rather work herself to the bone instead.

  “Why do you rebuff Mr. Ingraham’s concerns, even though you share them?”

  Are you planning on lecturing me too?

  “It is not intended as a lecture, but an honest query. As I am the only other person who truly understands might of this opponent, it seems foolish to leave your loved ones in a state of panic and distress.”

  If I told them how I really felt, there is no way they would let me go.

  “They have no way of containing you.”

  Of course they don’t. Not physically at least. Their concern is both endearing and painful. I pretended in front of Phavian, but like you said, he is exactly right. I have no idea what will happen between us. What if we are like positive and negative charges that cancel one another out? I have spent so long downtrodden about possibly having a life that will never end, but I never thought about it ending too soon.

  “It is normal for humans to question their mortality. You have been in a rare position where you never have needed to. This makes for a unique opportunity. I believe you should seize it.”

  Wow, you pulled out the Psychology module for me. I must be in a bad way.

  “You deserve assistance like any other person.”

  Do you ever think about it?

  “I think of many things. What specifically are you referencing?”

  Dying.

  “I am artificial. I am a collection of data. I was born of technology.
It is typical for human technology to advance in a linear fashion barring a catastrophic event. Therefore I consider myself similar to you in that I will likely persist until the cataclysm of this planet.”

  So you aren’t bothered?

  “If no life exists, I have no purpose. My primary purpose is to serve. If there is no one to serve, there is no point in my existence. Even my own purpose which is to grow and learn would be discontinued if there is nothing to learn from.”

  Anaar thought about what Hobb had said for a long time. He knew Hobb better than anyone else, but he had never expected their outlooks on their lives to be so similar. As he was thinking, he decided to formulate a plan for finding Yefferson.

  Although he made it sound convincing, he knew that finding this mystery brother of his would not be easy. All he had was a name, and that was presuming the name was real. To pass the time while he waited for his mother to come home, he decided to take a trick from Ripp’s playbook.

  With his ability to open windows to anywhere on the planet, he remembered Ripp using them for reconnaissance during the school rankings. With his synesthetic capabilities, he could open portals high in the sky and then zoom in to look for Yefferson, or at least possible traces of his mayhem. With Hobb’s integration, his ability to navigate was almost instantaneous since Hobb could pull coordinates to places easily.

  He spent hours gazing through portals into larger cities, hoping he could get even the tiniest of readings. What he had never considered was how his abilities worked together utilizing this method. To his eyes, there was just rainbow colored haze indicating the various people he saw. He had become used to the halo around people, the intensity indicating their echelon and the color their attunement.

  After years of living with it, he had found ways to disable it, much like all his other abilities, but he instead decided it was simpler to make peace with it. He could never tell Merc that was how he always knew who they were. It was like they were walking around with a large sign that said ‘Shapeshifter.’ There were times he wished his ability was not so rare, as he wondered if it was normal for the brain to put the information into terms that was easily understandable.