Numenera

by Monte Cook

  The weapon returned to Rillent through the air yet again. “You are children poking your fingers into an adult’s concerns,” he said through clenched teeth that might have been a smile on anyone else. “Yes, your little plan worked. You got me to strengthen the barrier, stopped the main transfer of energy. But the kubrics have been activated for years, filling with energy. I’ve been able to siphon a modicum of that off during that time, but here? I can access all of it, now that you’ve given me this place. You may have kept me from becoming the god of two worlds, but I’ll still be the god of one.”

  Despair settled into Kyre’s bones, emotional pain on top of the physical ones that already held him to the floor. He could see Aviend’s face, caught her expression. She hadn’t known that either.

  “I’ve devoted my life to this pursuit. Did you really think you could understand these systems better than I?” Rillent’s hands were once again gliding across the controls. Adroit. Almost lazy. Showing off. “Perhaps you should have become an Aeon Priest after all, Nuvinae’s daughter. Perhaps then you could have understood enough to actually take me down.”

  Oh, Kyre thought. After all this time, all that headspace, Rillent still didn’t know Aviend very well. Already, Kyre could feel her moving in response to Rillent’s words, coming toward him.

  He thought he heard her say, “Contingencies within contingencies.” He felt her fingers along his skin, and then the cool edge of her wristblade as she sliced through the leather around his neck. She was shaking. She’d absorbed most of the weapon’s energies. She placed the device in his good hand, and then slumped against him. She looked small and broken as that day in the treehouse, what felt like so long ago. But he could feel her, fast and shallow breaths, alive.

  He lay on the ground, gathering himself. She’d put it in his hand. There had to be some last ounce of strength in him. For the Stere. For both Steres. For his friends. For redemption.

  In his hand, the cypher weighed less than it ever had around his neck. It felt like nothing. Carrying it all this time. For what? He’d thought for himself, in case he ever got to that place, that place where he couldn’t resist Rillent’s commands. But now he knew that he’d carried it for this moment.

  The energy disruptor could disrupt anything – living or mechanical – but only for a mere moment. Maybe it would be enough. He thumbed the dial on the back. One direction was for organic disruption, the other for mechanical. He carefully moved the dial to the mechanical side.

  A pulse of translucent energy spread instantly through the weird chamber. Everything went dark.

  Near him, Aviend made no move or sound. Kyre struggled to his feet. At least the pain in his arm would keep him from thinking about his leg. He staggered in the darkness toward where he knew Rillent to be. What was his plan? Throttle him? Knock him unconscious? He’d dropped his last weapon somewhere.

  Kyre stepped forward, silent and slow in the dark. Somewhere in front of him, Rillent would be there, working the controls, trying to bring them back. He’d have that bladed staff-thing of his. Kyre tensed, ready to launch himself at the man as soon as he saw him. The only advantage he had was surprise.

  Lights started flickering back on. More lights. Where was Rillent? Kyre saw the controls returning to power, but–

  Rillent was on the floor, right in front of him. Rillent shuddered and writhed, both hands clutching his forehead. His silver weapon lay on the ground by his feet.

  As power fully restored itself in the star’s inner chamber, Kyre stared down at the man who had destroyed so much of the world he loved. He was convulsing. His eyes were pulled tight. His fingers digging at the front of his forehead.

  Skist. The energy disruptor hadn’t just affected numenera in the star. It had affected Rillent’s implant as well. It was just a moment, a mere moment of disruption, but it must have done something horrible inside Rillent’s head. The implant must have been more than a key. It must have been rooted deep in the man’s brain. And now it was killing him.

  The whole time, Kyre had been wearing that thing around his neck. The whole time, he had possessed the means to kill Rillent.

  He went down on his knees – pains of his body forgotten – trying to pull Rillent’s hands from the device, trying to hold him steady. He didn’t know what else to do. Kyre could hear Aviend climbing to her feet, coming to stand beside Rillent’s writhing body.

  “He’s going to die,” he said.

  “Good.” Her reply was quick. Instinctual. Sharper than he’d ever heard her.

  He didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t as if he forgot everything that had happened over the years. The lies. The intimidation. The graves. The wolflilies. But he’d seen a different world. A place where things had gone differently. Better. Someone, somewhere, made another choice, and it made all the difference. But there were still choices to make. Any one of those choices could make a different world. And everyone made choices like that every day.

  But he really was only interested in one choice at the moment.

  This choice.

  Choose, the philethis said.

  He stopped trying to move Rillent’s fingers away; their hold was too tight, riveting with every shudder. Kyre put his hands on Rillent’s shoulders, tried to hold his quivering body still with the weight of his own. “If we take him, now, we can get him to Thorme. She can help him.”

  Aviend, the person he loved more than he thought possible, looked at him as if he were mad. But only for a moment. She knew him. She knew him better than anyone else ever could. She understood.

  “You skisting brehmhearted fool,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  There is no Rillent. Not really. Oh, the tall man walks among them, his purple eyes staring out beneath the horrific scars that cover the front and top of his head. He stares blankly at the forest when they take him out on walks. Delgha says the names of plants and animals in an effort to teach him to talk again.

  But it’s not Rillent. Not the man who lorded over the Steremoss for these many years. Maybe, just maybe, he will recover a bit. Have an opportunity to make some new choices of his own. But for now, they will look after him.

  “We rescue people,” Kyre had said to the others when they brought him back to the base. “It’s what we do.”

  “You’re too kind,” Aviend says practically every day, motioning with her chin toward Kyre’s now-useless arm. “Way too kind.” But she says it with a bit of a smile. And more than a bit of affection. Way more.

  Rillent’s glaives had surrendered quickly or fled. The destriatch, now complete and whole, scattered into the woods to live natural lives as hunters, but not murderers. One, they now keep as a guardian. Kyre wants to name it Barber, but Aviend doesn’t think that’s funny at all. Well, maybe a little.

  Quenn, emboldened by how many people he’d got out of the kubric before it sealed, took Kyre’s words to heart. “We save people.” It was hard to see past the glow of satisfaction in his face in those early days as he helped return all of the trenchers and workers back to their homes. It would take months to get everyone adequately settled, but Quenn and Vesi are up for it.

  “I’ve seen another you,” Kyre tells Aviend. “Another Stere. I know there are many possibilities. Many paths. We thought maybe that other world had no Rillent. But what if it did, but he was just different? What if he’d made other choices? Taken another path?”

  Aviend sees the wisdom of it. It’s a deep, profound sort of wisdom. But that doesn’t mean she likes it. She remembers too well who he was to ever completely accept who he might become. At least, that’s how it feels now.

  It could be years before Rillent can talk, and Thorme’s confident that he won’t be the same man. Too much damage. But Kyre does what he can to make him comfortable. Almost like a child, they’ll raise him as one of their own. Help him make the right choices. Maybe in that future, Aviend will be able to look him in the eye.

  Maybe.

  It will take those years to repair the damage that’
s been wrought. The kubrics, now sealed, can just be buried again, perhaps. The town can be rebuilt. These are challenges she can focus on. And with Kyre at her side, she knows they’ll succeed.

  She doesn’t ask him about that other world. He tries to get everyone to call wolflilies heartblooms, but she never asks why. She knows he saw things there that spoke to his heart. She knows that sealing that world away forever caused him a lot more pain than she had been expecting. She sees him sometimes, looking out at the forest, hoping to see ghosts that are never there anymore.

  Heartblooms has a nice ring to it. As does Delgha’s idea for starting up a new clave. Vesi’s first in line to join. She’s as eager and capable as Aviend is tired. Someday, she’ll be ready to lead.

  People in the Steremoss seem interested in Gavani again, and why not? Delgha’s convinced the star has more secrets and wonders to reveal, and she’s probably right. But for now, it’s enough to lay in the warm grass amid the… heartblooms with her love and look up at the star and all the other stars and wonder if they all hold mysteries like the one they discovered.

  And it’s enough to just wonder, and not know.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS & INSPIRATIONS

  We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the No Name Writers’ Group – Erin Evans, Rhiannon Held, Corry Lee-Boehm, Kate Marshall, and Susan J Morris – for their feedback, insight, and time. A big thank you to Federico Musetti and his fabulous cover and to John Petersen for capturing the characters so beautifully. And to all of the wonderful people at Monte Cook Games: you’re our Night Clave, and we’ll fight beside you every step of the way.

  Monte and Shanna

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Monte Cook has worked as a professional writer for more than 20 years. As a fiction writer, he has published numerous short stories and two novels. As a comic book writer, he has written a limited series for Marvel Comics called Monte Cook’s Ptolus: City by the Spire, as well as some shorter work. As a nonfiction writer, he has published the wry but informative The Skeptic’s Guide to Conspiracies.

  His work, however, as a game designer, is likely most notable. Since 1988, he has written hundreds of tabletop roleplaying game books and articles and won numerous awards. Monte is likely best known for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, which he co-designed with Jonathan Tweet and Skip Williams. In 2001, he started his own game design studio, Malhavoc Press, and published such notable and award-winning products as Ptolus, Arcana Evolved, and the Book of Eldritch Might series. As a freelance game designer, he designed HeroClix and Monte Cook’s World of Darkness, and he has worked on the Pathfinder RPG, the Marvel Comics massively multiplayer online game, and numerous other games and related projects.

  He is the designer of Numenera.

  montecookgames.com • twitter.com/montejcook

  Shanna Germain is the creative director for Numenera and The Strange. An award-winning writer and editor, her poems, essays, stories, novellas, and articles have been widely published in places like Apex Magazine, Best American Erotica, Best Bondage Erotica, Best Lesbian Romance, Lightspeed, Salon and more. She has garnered a variety of awards for her work, including a Pushcart Prize nomination, the Rauxa Prize for Erotic Poetry, and the C Hamilton Bailey Poetry Fellowship.

  Her most recent books include The Lure of Dangerous Women (Wayzgoose Press, 2012), Leather Bound (HarperCollins, 2013), and As Kinky As You Wanna Be (Cleis Press, 2014).

  shannagermain.com • twitter.com/shannagermain

  ANGRY ROBOT

  An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

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  An Angry Robot paperback original 2017

  Numenera and The Night Clave copyright © 2017 Monte Cook Games, LLC. Numenera and its logo are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC in the USA and other countries. All Monte Cook Games characters and character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are trademarks of Monte Cook Games, LLC.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  UK ISBN 978 0 85766 719 9

  US ISBN 978 0 85766 720 5

  EBook ISBN 978 0 85766 721 2

  Cover by Federico Musetti

  Set by ARGH! Nottingham.

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  ISBN: 978-0-85766-721-2